The Husband Who Bought His Wife Back

One day God asked a man named Hosea to do a very strange thing.

"Hosea," he said, "marry a woman named Gomer. Love her with your whole heart. One day she will run away from you. When she does, I want you to love her still."

God asked this because he wanted to give his people a picture they could see and touch. Hosea lived in the northern kingdom of Israel, among people whose love for God had wandered off after other things, and God wanted them to watch this story happen right in front of them. Hosea would be a little like God. And Gomer, who would run away, would be like all the people God loved who kept running from him.

So Hosea married Gomer. He gave her a warm home and a soft place to sleep and children who laughed in the morning.

But after a while, Gomer grew restless. She thought, "Maybe there is something better out there. Maybe someone else would love me more." And one night, while the house slept, she slipped out into the dark.

She wandered far. Farther than she ever meant to go. She gave herself to people who did not really love her, and she fell, and she fell, until one terrible day she had nothing left at all. She was sold. She stood in the market like a thing to be bought, with the whole town watching, and her face burned with shame.

Maybe you know a little of that feeling. The fear that if anyone found out where you had been, how far you had run, how much you had gotten wrong, they would stop loving you. They would turn their faces away.

That is exactly what Gomer thought. She was sure Hosea was finished with her now. Who would ever want her back?

But God said to Hosea, "Go again. Go and love her again. Go and bring her home."

And Hosea went. He walked right into that market where everyone could see him. He looked straight at her, even now, even here. He counted out the price, silver and barley, everything she cost, and he bought his own wife back. He bought back the one who had run away from him.

Then he took her hand. "You are mine," he said. "Come home."

Through Hosea, God was telling his people what was in his heart. They had wandered. They had given themselves to a hundred smaller things. And still he said, "I will go and get them. I will pay whatever it costs. I will bring my people home." He had done it before. Long before, when his people were slaves in Egypt, he had come down himself to set them free and carry them home. Now he promised to do it again.

And long after Hosea, Someone else came walking into the marketplace of this whole sad, runaway world. Jesus. The true Husband. He looked straight at the ones who had wandered far, and he paid the price for them, not with silver but with himself, to buy back a whole family who could never have bought themselves back.

He is still going out to find them, one by one, the way you go looking for everyone you love. And if you have ever wandered, even far, even into the dark, he knows exactly where you are. One day you will feel a hand take yours, and hear him say what Hosea said: "You are mine. Come home."