The Divided Kingdom
- When
- c. 750–720 BC
- Written by
- Hosea
- Chapters
- 14
The big idea
Hosea’s marriage to an unfaithful wife becomes a living parable: Israel has played the harlot, yet God’s love will not let her go.
Themes
- God’s faithful love
- Knowing God
- Return and healing
- Spiritual adultery
Memory verse
For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.
Key passages
- 1–3Hosea’s marriage
- 6:6Mercy, not sacrifice
- 11:1–4When Israel was a child
- 14Return, O Israel
Links to other Scripture
- Matthew 9:13Go and learn what this means
- Matthew 2:15Out of Egypt I called my son
- Romans 9:25–26Not my people, now my people
- 1 Peter 2:10Now the people of God
Read the text
Choose a chapter to read it here in the King James Version. Verses with a dotted underline have notes from Bible scholars. Tap one to open them.
Notes from
Chapters
King James text and the commentaries of Henry, Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, Gill, Clarke, Calvin, and Keil and Delitzsch are in the public domain. Tyndale Open Study Notes are used under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license, from tyndaleopenresources.com. Texts were reformatted for this site.
Journal prompts
Keep a journal or notebook for your study. Write your answers there, in your own words.
- Where do you see Christ in this book?
- Hosea kept loving a wife who kept leaving. What does that show you about how God loves you?
- “I desired mercy, and not sacrifice.” Where have you offered effort when he was asking for your heart?
- Hosea ends with an invitation to return. What would returning look like for you today?
- In one sentence, this book is about…