Table of Contents
Volume 41, Number 4
July - August 2010

The Story of Gomer
Mrs. Dottie Sumner

The Story of Gomer

Who can understand love? This story found in Hosea is a picture of the greatest human love we could ever comprehend!

To summarize this woman, Gomer, here’s a short verse:

Gomer was wayward and lived a bad life;

Hosea loved her, and took her to wife.

Bought back from her lovers, restored to her place;

God shows us by this His love and His grace.

The prophet Hosea pictures God’s love for His people. God gave Hosea a love for this woman Gomer, a harlot. He told him to marry her, and have children. They had three children and the Lord named each one, with reference to His love for His people Israel.

Gomer was wayward and turned to other men for satisfaction and security. Though Hosea pleaded with her to return to him, she kept on seeking others. She was, finally, at the end and destitute. We see her offered for sale in the slave market. In Hosea chapter 3, the Lord said to him, “Go yet, love a woman beloved of her friend, yet an adulteress, according to the love of the Lord toward the children of Israel, who look to other gods.”

So Hosea bought her, restored her to his home again, and just as Israel was for a period of time “without” leadership, her faithfulness would have to be proved over time. She had to know that Hosea, her husband, was the one who loved and provided for her in all she needed.

 This is all to picture Israel’s adultery as a nation. She had forsaken the Lord and turned to others for her needs. Whatever gain she had gotten from them, she didn’t realize it was the Lord taking care of her.

 In the first 10 chapters God likened Israel to an adulterous woman who had sold herself to others, and the Lord is the Wounded Lover, but in chapter 11 we see another picture, a tender scene of youth in the midst of the story of adult prostitution.

“When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt … I taught Ephraim also to go, taking them by their arms; but they knew not that I healed them. I drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love: and I was to them as they that take off the yoke on their jaws, and I laid meat unto them” (Vss.1, 3, 4).

Here the young nation is pictured as needing a parent’s help to walk. Then the Lord in love says, “How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? how shall I deliver thee, Israel?… I will not execute the fierceness of mine anger, I will not return to destroy Ephraim; for I am God and not man; the Holy One in the midst of thee”(Vss.8, 9).

So the Lord had – and has – great love for His people Israel – as well as His people in this time, the church. Though wayward, the Lord will always care for us.

This is a lesson for all. When we go astray and seek other “gods” to satisfy, we can liken ourselves to Gomer. Read this book again and see this great love!