Please read the passage before reading the commentary
Hosea was a prophet with a history. He had divorced his wife, but he still loved her. He was all for dating her again, going back to the places that they had frequented in the early days of their relationship.
As Hosea had wanted to do with his ex-wife, God had revealed to him that God wanted to do the same thing, to lead God’s people back to the time of the Exodus and those forty years in the wilderness. At that time Israel had learned to call God by God’s own personal name, probably Yahweh. In Hosea’s time, however, the people were calling God Baal, which was the name of a pagan fertility god and which they translated as “Boss”. God, however, did not want to be known as a boss, but as a friendly, generous, loving God, more like a Father than a slave-driving boss.
Our God is a god of relationships, which is why we know God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God is not a solitary lone figure, or a figment of our imagination, but rather a God of community and family relationships. In fact, God so wanted to be a God of relationships that God created the world in order to share God’s glory with creatures.
We are broken people, much like Hosea. Yet, even in our deserts and trying times, God is working with us to have us understand God as the One who wants to have good relationships with us. God is not the awful judge, not the man upstairs, but the Father of our Lord Jesus who loves us and came to us to teach us the ways of God.
Even though we are broken people, God wants to lead us back to those days of old when we had better relationships with God. God has married us by sending us Jesus God’s Son. God still comes in the likeness of human flesh to show us God’s loving face. God wants us to respond to God’s proposal by accepting God’s hand in marriage and living is community with God.