The texts of Hosea and Jeremiah present prophets who heard and spoke for God in and through the vernacular of their culture. As Dr. Weems taught us, that vernacular was androcentric with a mean misogynistic streak...
...and in a shame/honor society the worst thing you can call a man is a bad woman. But I know that God is bigger than all of our images and idioms including biblical ones, and I know no one is disposable no matter how the text frames them.
The text would have us believe God told Hosea, “Go find you a ho.” I have questions for male religious leaders who condemn women’s expressions of sexuality but find loopholes for their own.
Not even the text calls Gomer a whore. What it does call her is daughter of Diblaim. Whether Diblaim is her mother’s name, her father’s name or her home town she is somebody. She is somebody’s child. She comes from somewhere. She has a name. She has people. Whore is not her name.
The reader/hearer is supposed to assume that Gomer is a whore because she is who Hosea chose. In fact there is nothing in what the text discloses about Gomer that makes her out to be a whore if that is supposed to be code for prostitute.
Dr. Gale Yee teaches that promiscuous is the better translation. Translation matters. And who translates matters. Gomer is a promiscuous woman; woman & wife are conflated into a single word. Now I hear the charge to Hosea differently-God called Hosea to marry a promiscuous woman.
God called Hosea to marry a woman who had more sexual experiences & sexual experience than the world especially the religious folk thought was good for her. God told Hosea to marry the kind of woman people would say no one would want b/c there are different rules for women & men.
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