by
Damien F. Mackey
“Isaiah like Hosea
had three known children, all of whose names were prophetic”.
This is controversial, because
- for a start - the prophet Hosea, though a contemporary of Isaiah, is
universally (I think) considered to have been a person distinct from Isaiah.
I, however, find Hosea and
Isaiah to be so alike as needing to be merged into one.
The names of Isaiah, Hosea, are
of very similar meaning, being basically derived from the same Hebrew root for
‘salvation’, יֵ֫שַׁע
- “Isaiah” (Hebrew יְשַׁעְיָהוּ , Yeshâ‘yâhû)
signifies: “Yahweh (the Lord) is salvation”.
- “Hosea” (Hebrew הוֹשֵׁעַ) means practically the same: “Yahweh
(the Lord) is saviour”.
Hosea’s/Isaiah’s Family
Though no doubt young, the
prophet Hosea was given the strange command by God to marry an ‘unfaithful’
woman: “‘Go, take yourself a wife of harlotry and have children of harlotry,
for the land commits great harlotry by forsaking the Lord’. So he went and took
Gomer the daughter of Diblaim …” (Hosea 1:2-3).
Biblical scholars have
agonised over the type of woman this Gomer might have been: adulteress? harlot?
temple-prostitute? But essentially the clue is to be found in the statement
above that she was a citizen of the ‘land of great harlotry’: namely, the northern
kingdom of Israel.
A further likeness between
Isaiah and Hosea, central to this article, was the fact that ‘their’ names and
those of ‘their’ children were meant to be, in their meanings, prophetic signs.
- The prophet Isaiah tells us:
“Behold, I and the children whom the Lord has given me are for signs and
portents ...” (Isaiah 8:18).
- Similarly, the names of the
children of the prophet Hosea were meant to be prophetic (Hosea 1:4, 6, 9).
Charles Boutflower, who had
written perceptively on Isaiah’s children, had rightly noted the prophetic
significance of their names and those of Hosea’s children, without, however,
thinking to connect Isaiah and Hosea as one: “Isaiah like Hosea had three known
children, all of whose names were prophetic” (The Book of Isaiah I-XXXIX,
1930, p. 49).
Previously, I had written about
this:
It is most unlikely, one would
have to think, to have two great prophets operating contemporaneously over such
a substantial period of time, and each having three children whose names were
prophetic.
In fact, the prophet will -
like his father, Amos, who is also Micah (“Amos redivivus”) -
undergo various name changes
as Divine prophetic messaging will require. While some of Isaiah’s ‘other’
names may simply be just a variation on the primary name Isaiah (e.g. Hosea,
Uzziah, Asaiah), others will be quite different names.
For instance Isaiah will, when
the Lord determines to Comfort Israel (cf. Isaiah 40:1-48:22; 66:12-13,
etc.), become Nahum, meaning Comfort, Compassion, Consolation.
And, from Tobit 14:4, we know
that Nahum was Jonah.
A common element in much of
this is that the prophet belonged to the tribe of Simeon.
Prophets were usually of the
Levite clan, but Isaiah’s father, Amos (Amoz) had declared that he was not your
typical prophet (Amos 7:13-14): “‘Don’t prophesy anymore at
Bethel, because this is the king’s sanctuary and the temple of the
kingdom’. Amos answered Amaziah, ‘I was neither a prophet nor the son
of a prophet, but I was a shepherd, and I also took care of sycamore-fig
trees’.”
From the necessary connection
of Isaiah/Hosea with “Uzziah son of Micah of the tribe of Simeon” (Judith
6:14-15):
The
Israelites came down from their city and found [Achior], untied him, and
brought him into Bethulia. They placed him before the rulers of the
city, who in those days were Uzziah, son of Micah of the tribe of
Simeon, and Chabris, son of Gothoniel, and Charmis, son of Melchiel.
we learn that our prophet governed
Bethulia, brilliantly identified by Charles C. Torrey as the strategic city of
Shechem in the north (“The Site of ‘Bethulia’”, Journal of
the American Oriental Society, Vol. 20,
1899). Now, this Bethulia
was the northern Bethel, to where Isaiah’s father had been sent by the Lord (as
we read above).
Isaiah/Hosea will further
connect with the tribe of Simeon in the person of Nahum, traditionally
considered to have been of that same tribe: “According to
pseudo-Epiphanius (De Vitis Proph. in Opp. 2:247),
Nahum was of the tribe of Simeon”: Nahum -
Biblical Cyclopedia
But, wait a minute, wasn’t it Hosea
who was a prophet to the north, whilst Isaiah was basically a prophet of Jerusalem?
No, Isaiah/Hosea ranged far
and wide, both northern and southern kingdom, even to Nineveh in Assyria. For
the prophet was a princely character of vast influence, whose father Amos is traditionally
considered to have been the brother (brother-in-law?) of King Amaziah of Judah.
Thus the Douay version of Judith 8:34 informs us that the Simeonite Uzziah of
Bethulia (Bethel) was “the prince of Juda[h]” and “the prince of the people of Israel” – the
prince of both the north and the south!
He was obviously a person of the
greatest significance!
Important: Before discussing the
potentially six children of the compound prophet, Isaiah-Hosea, it sorely needs
to be pointed out that:
It is quite incorrect to take
the Isaiah 7 text about Immanuel as applying solely and entirely to the Messiah
Jesus Christ. Immanuel was the personal name of one of the three named sons of
Isaiah and his wife.
The Messiah did not have the
personal name of “Immanuel”, but “Jesus” (Matthew 1:21): ‘… you are to name him
Jesus’. Yet, the divine Messiah was more perfectly Immanuel, “God is with us”,
than any human person could hope to be. Christians can sometimes bypass,
completely, the literal meaning of Isaiah’s text and totally apply it to the well-known
New Testament scenario. I know this from personal experience, having been
berated by Catholic colleagues for insisting that Isaiah 7 occurred in the
context of a Syro-Ephraïmite civil war raging at the time of King Ahaz of
Judah. Those who do not admit this “forget that the Old Testament retains its own intrinsic value as
Revelation reaffirmed by our Lord himself” (The Catechism of the
Catholic Church, # 129):
Christians therefore read the Old Testament in
the light of Christ crucified and risen. Such typological reading discloses the
inexhaustible content of the Old Testament; but it must not make us forget that
the Old Testament retains its own intrinsic value as Revelation reaffirmed by
our Lord himself. 105 Besides, the New Testament has to be
read in the light of the Old. Early Christian catechesis made constant use of
the Old Testament. 106 As an old saying put it, the New
Testament lies hidden in the Old and the Old Testament is unveiled in the New. 107
The children
Just today (14th
August, 2026, St. Maximilian Kolbe), I have come to think that at least one of
these children, Isaiah’s-Hosea’s, was a duplicate, that Lo-ammi was Immanuel.
The prophet Hosea, by having
been commanded to take an unfaithful wife, will learn the hard way what the
Lord has had to put up with, with his unfaithful people of Israel.
Consequently, Hosea will be
told to identify his children by names indicating the wages of apostasy: namely,
Jezreel; Lo-ruhamah (a girl); and Lo-ammi (Hosea 1:2-9):
When
the Lord began to speak through Hosea, the Lord said to
him, ‘Go, marry a promiscuous woman and have children with her, for like
an adulterous wife this land is guilty of unfaithfulness to the Lord’. So
he married Gomer daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a
son.
Then
the Lord said to Hosea, ‘Call him Jezreel, because I will soon
punish the house of Jehu for the massacre at Jezreel, and I will put an end to
the kingdom of Israel. In that day I will break Israel’s bow in the Valley
of Jezreel’.
Gomer conceived
again and gave birth to a daughter. Then the Lord said to Hosea, ‘Call
her Lo-Ruhamah (which means “not loved”), for I will no longer show love
to Israel, that I should at all forgive them. Yet I will show love to
Judah; and I will save them—not by bow, sword or battle, or by horses and
horsemen, but I, the Lord their God, will save them’.
After
she had weaned Lo-Ruhamah, Gomer had another son. Then
the Lord said, ‘Call him Lo-Ammi (which means “not my people”), for
you are not my people, and I am not your God’.
Later, though, the Lord will, in
his great mercy, reverse this, the prophet using chiastic structure (Hosea
2:23):
Jezreel
… I will plant her for myself in the land;
I will show my love to the one I called ‘Not my loved
one’.
I will say to those called ‘Not my people’, ‘You are my people’;
and they will say, ‘You are my God.’”
Jezreel, which means “God scatters”,
will be now be planted.
Lo-ruhamah (the girl), “not
loved”, will be shown love.
Lo-ammi, which means, not my
people”, will be “my people”.
Here is how I would connect up
the twin scenario.
Hosea’s first-born, Jezreel, to
be re-planted in the land, becomes Isaiah’s first-born, Shear-jashub, “a remnant
shall return” (Isa 7:3; cf. 8:18).
Somewhat typical of the Old
Testament, the girl, Hosea’s daughter, ‘now to be loved’, is passed over – she does
not appear to have any connection in Isaiah.
Hosea’s son, Lo-ammi, becomes
Immanuel, when “… they will say, ‘You are my God’,” that is, “God is with us”.
Happily, Abarim
publications, an expert site on Hebrew names, has listed the name Immanuel
as being a name related to (Lo-) ammi:
Lo-ammi | The amazing name Lo-ammi: meaning and etymology
Actually, our compound prophet
must have had, not three, but four children - three boys and one girl, because,
after Immanuel, in Isaiah 8, we are told about a son whose long name only a
mother could love (apparently it is the longest name in the Bible):
Maher-shalal-hash-baz (“Spoil Speeds And Prey Hastens”).
