Scripture
Hosea 3:1 — “Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another and is an adulteress. Love her as the Lord loves the Israelites.”
Sometimes God asks prophets to do weird things. Ezekiel had to lie on his side for 390 days. Isaiah walked around naked for three years. But Hosea? God asked him to marry a prostitute.
And when she inevitably left him for other lovers, God’s command was even more radical: “Go get her back. Love her again. Show them what my hesed looks like.”
Can you imagine? Hosea’s friends probably thought he’d lost his mind. “Dude, she cheated on you. Multiple times. You owe her nothing. Walk away.”
But that’s exactly the point. Hesed doesn’t operate on an economy of owing and earning. It operates on covenant.
I think about a friend of mine, whose husband walked out after twenty years of marriage. Left her for someone half his age, cleaned out their bank account, and never looked back. The divorce was brutal.
Two years later, he called. Cancer diagnosis. Terminal. Could she possibly… would she consider… helping him through treatment? His new girlfriend had bailed the moment things got hard.
Her friends were livid. “Are you kidding? After what he did to you? You owe him nothing.”
And they were right. She didn’t owe him anything.
But she showed up anyway. Not because he deserved it. Not because she was trying to win him back. But because somewhere deep in her bones, she understood hesed.
Covenant love that transcends what’s fair or logical.
“I’m not doing this for him,” she told me. “I’m doing this because this is who God has called me to be.” She was and is a person who loves with hesed.
Here’s the thing: hesed is unreasonable. It makes no sense from a cost-benefit perspective. It’s the kind of love that pursues the unfaithful, that buys back the beloved from slavery, that refuses to quit even when quitting would be justified.
And this is how God loves us. Not because we’ve earned it. Not because we deserve it. But because God made a covenant, and God keeps God’s word.
Period.
Takeaway
Hesed doesn’t make sense. It’s covenant love that shows up even when it’s not deserved, even when it’s not reciprocated.
Closing Prayer
God, Your hesed toward me is unreasonable and beautiful. Help me love others with that same covenant loyalty, even when it doesn’t make sense.
Grace and Peace,
Andrea