“Gomer conceived again and gave birth to a daughter. The Holy One said to Hosea, ‘Name her I don’t love you; because, I have no love for the House of Israel. Because, I can’t forgive them'” (Hosea 1.6).
For the summer, I thought we’d journey through the Twelve Prophets (or Minor Prophets as they were called when I was a kid). Join me, if you like, as we read through these often overlooked writings.
Hosea has one of the strangest beginnings of any book in the Bible. The prophet, it seems, receives the message to not only marry a particular woman (we’ll talk about that another time) but also what to name their children. The names are prophetic. They’re also, disturbing.
Call her lo-ruhamah, Hosea is told when his second child is born. The word is difficult to translate since it only appears in this book. It’s rendered as “no mercy” or “no compassion” by many versions. Those are, in some ways, more theological and less personal than what’s being said here. Hosea’s daughter’s name is I don’t love you.
Think of that for a moment: every time her mother and father say her name they’re telling her that she isn’t loved. Every time they holler down the hall for her to come to dinner or that her friends have just pulled up in the driveway, they’re reminding her of this horrible truth: they don’t love her.
Imagine, telling someone that they aren’t loved, that you don’t love them, over and over again.
As shocking as that should be, I’ll bet some of you are thinking about someone in your life who has experienced this or is the one who has treated a son or daughter like this. I wish this part of the story didn’t seem so unsurprising to me. That I can actually think of a parent saying this to their child—the person above all others in this world that needs their love—is tragic.
Those children don’t hear those exact words as Hosea’s daughter did. No, it’s in a thousand little cuts. It’s small jabs and criticisms—you’re just like your mother/father, you are so lazy, you never try hard enough. No, they aren’t as harsh a statement as I don’t love you, but they add up, accumulate in mind and heart until the weight of them convinces a person of that reality. No one loves you. No one could love you.
And most of us don’t need anyone else saying this to us. We’re very good at saying it to ourselves.
Very few of us stand in front of the mirror in the morning and say to that reflection, I don’t love you. But most of us say those words in different ways—I can’t do anything right, I am such a bad person/friend/spouse, I don’t know why anyone wants to be with me.
Those words that sound so horrible to our ears, which we know are not true, sound so very accurate inside our heads. And why not, as Hosea and Gomer’s daughter did, we hear them moment upon moment, day after day.
I wonder, alone in her room, lying on her bed in tears, how often Hosea’s daughter longed for a new name, one that told her something other than those words she’d heard all her life. A name that said, without qualification or doubt, I love you.
A new name. Maybe like the one we need for ourselves.
Jesus, every word you said on this earth was to tell us how much we are loved, how worthy each of us is of love. Help me to repeat those words to the person in the mirror, the one to whom you have given a new name: beloved.