Endnote 2 – How Hosea Transformed the Lord of the Realm into a Temperamental Spouse

The issue is not simple, of course, for in Hosea 2:5, 12, we find imagery that sounds like paid sex:

“For she said, ‘I will go after my lovers; They give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.’ … I will lay waste her vines and fig trees,

Of which she said, ‘These are my pay, which my lovers have given me.’” These verses occur, however, in the midst of a lengthy and complex metaphorical poem in which there is not always an exact analogy between Gomer and Israel, so we should not really derive much about Gomer from the verses.