The regular haftarah for Parshat Bamidbar is a curious one — though this year, we will read Machar Chodesh in its stead since the new moon is on Sunday this coming week. The haftarah for Parashat Bamidbar, from the Book of Hosea, opens with God commanding Hoshea the Prophet to marry a harlot. He has three children with her, and of course, since she is a harlot, his paternity is never clear.
The language with which God commands him hints at what God’s motivation is for this strange act: “And God said to Hoshea, take a harlot as a wife and have children of harlotry from her, for the land has committed harlotry before God.” The story of Hoshea’s marriage is heavily laden with much prophetic allegory for Israel, from the phrasing, to the names of his wife and children, to the way the story ends.
The book of Hoshea tells us that, obeying God, he marries a prostitute whose name is Gomeh bat Divalim. According to the Talmud, her name is a reference to who she was: she was not a high class prostitute, but a low one, who was used by many and then violently cast aside.
The names God commands Hoshea to give his children are also dripping with messages for Hoshaya and the “House of Israel”, the ten tribes in the north of the land. For instance, Hoshea’s second child is to be named, ““Lo Ruchama”, (“No Mercy”): “Because I will not continue to have mercy on the house of Israel since they have taken their own wife (i.e. idols instead of God).” God commands him to name his third child, “Lo Ami” (“Not My People”): “Because you [Israel] are not my people and I will not be to you.”
The prophecy continues with words of comfort, explaining God will ultimately forgive the Jewish people and marry them forever. The way this is described though is not in the typical path, by which the Jewish people repent and then God takes them back. This time, it seems to be initiated by God:
“Therefore I [God] will seduce you [the Jewish people] and take you to the desert [the place of God’s first forty years with the Jewish people, and the name of this week’s Torah portion], and speak to your heart. I will give her vineyards from there, and the Valley of Ruin to become a hopeful beginning, there she shall respond as in the days of her youth, as when she came up from the land of Egypt. And on that day, declares the Lord, you will call Me “Ishi”, [“My Husband”], and no longer “Ba’ali” [“My Master”].”
The Talmud (Pesachim 86) provides some Midrashic background to this haftarah:
“God said to Hosheya, your children [the Jewish People] have sinned. Hosheya should have responded, ‘They are your children, have mercy on them.’
But instead, Hosheya said, ‘The whole world is yours, exchange them for another nation.’
So God told Hosheya, ‘Marry a harlot, have children who may not be yours, then send them away. If Hoshaya can send them away, so shall I send away the Jewish people…’
God told him to send them away but Hoshea responded, ‘I have children with her, I can not send her away and divorce her.’
God said to Hosheya, ‘If your wife who is a prostitute and your children about whom you do not know if they are yours or not, you can not send away, how much more so the People of Israel, who are my children, the progeny of Abraham Isaac and Jacob!’”
Hoshea is callous when it comes to an intellectual evaluation of the Jewish people, suggesting God find some other, more loyal, people to take their place. But when it is personal, his emotions come into the frame and his mercy and love triumph.
We have a great deal to learn from Hoshea about judging others, Jewish communities, and the Jewish people. If it was personal, wouldn’t our mercy abound? Let us be sure we apply such emotions of love and caring to others whom we might be quick to judge.