Hosea: A Type for Christ or God’s Bride?

I was listening to my audio bible and heard a passage from Hosea 3:1-9 that sounded like a type for Christ:

The Lord said to me, “Go, show love to your wife again, even though she loves another man and continually commits adultery.  Likewise, the Lord loves the Israelites although they turn to other gods and love to offer raisin cakes to idols.” So I paid fifteen shekels of silver and about seven bushels of barley to purchase her.

Hosea means “help” or “salvation” and the prophet does appear to speak to God’s love for us by sending His Son to die for us on the cross in Hosea 6:1-3:

Come, and let us return unto the Lord: for he hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind us up.  After two days will he revive us: in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight.  Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the Lord: his going forth is prepared as the morning; and he shall come unto us as the rain, as the latter and former rain unto the earth.

Upon further study, however, I think that Hosea is a type for God’s relationship to His eventual wife: Israel. 

Looking at Hosea’s life, we learn that God instructed Hosea to marry a prostitute.  He chose Gomer, who was not faithful to him.  God chose Israel to be His bride, which has also been unfaithful in its covenant with the Lord.  So one could say that God also chose a harlot.

When we look at the names of Hosea and Gomer’s children, their firstborn was named Jezreel, which means God sows.  The second child was a daughter named Lo-Ruhamah, which means no pity or no mercy.  Their third child, Lo-Ammi, means not my people.  That sounds an awful lot like God’s long-suffering relationship with Israel, which turned to worship Baal and not the Lord.

Hosea is such a beautiful story because despite God’s judgment, it also typifies God’s love for Israel.  Hosea speaks to the day when Israel will finally repent and be welcomed back into the arms of her long-awaiting Husband.

Therefore, behold, I will allure her [Israel] and bring her into the wilderness, and I will speak tenderly and to her heart.  There I will give her her vineyards and make the Valley of Achor [troubling] to be for her a door of hope and expectation. And she shall sing there and respond as in the days of her youth and as at the time when she came up out of the land of Egypt. And it shall be in that day, says the Lord, that you will call Me Ishi [my Husband], and you shall no more call Me Baali [my Baal].  For I will take away the names of Baalim [the Baals] out of her mouth, and they shall no more be mentioned or seriously remembered by their name. (Hosea 2:14-17, Amplified Bible).