So he went and took Gomer the daughter of Diblaim; and she conceived, and bore him a son.
He, who created marriage, commanded to Hosea, whom he should marry. The prophet was not defiled, by taking as his lawful wife, at God’s bidding, one defiled, however hard a thing this was. “He who remains good, is not defiled by coming in contact with one evil; but the evil, following his example, is turned into good.” But through his simple obedience, he foreshadowed Him, God the Word, who was called “the friend of publicans and sinners” Matthew 11:19; who warned the Pharisees, that “the publicans and harlots should (enter unto the kingdom of God before them” Matthew 21:31; and who now vouchsafes to espouse, dwell in, and unite Himself with, and so to hallow, our sinful souls. The acts which God enjoined to the prophets, and which to us seem strange, must have had an impressiveness to the people, in proportion to their strangeness. The life of the prophet became a sermon to the people. Sight impresses more than words. The prophet, being in his own person a mirror of obedience, did moreover, by his way of life, reflect to the people some likeness of the future and of things unseen. The expectation of the people was wound up, when they saw their prophets do things at God’s command, which they themselves could not have done. When Ezekiel was bidden to show no sign of mourning, on the sudden death of “the desire of his eyes” Ezekiel 24:16-18, his wife; or when he dug through the wall of his house, and carried forth his household stuff in the twilight, with his face covered Ezekiel 12:3-7; the people asked, “Wilt thou not tell us what these things are to us, that thou doest so?” (Ezekiel 24:19, add Ezekiel 12:10). No words could so express a grief beyond all power of grieving, as Ezekiel’s mute grief for one who was known to be “the desire of his eyes,” yet for whom he was forbidden to show the natural expressions of grief, or to use the received tokens of mourning. God Himself declares the ground of such acts to have been, that, rebellious as the house of Israel was Ezekiel 12:2, “with eyes which saw not, and ears which heard not,” they might yet consider such acts as these.