Hosea lived and preached (as he himself indicates in the title) in the time of the other and last Jeroboam, king of Israel, at which time also Isaiah lived in Judah, also Amos and Micah; but Hosea was the oldest among them.
(2) Jeroboam was also a fine and blessed king, who did much in the kingdom of Israel, as the second book of Kings, Cap. 14:23 ff. testifies, but still remained with the old idolatry of his forefathers, the kings of Israel, that indeed there were many excellent men in the people at that time, who nevertheless could not make the people righteous. For the devil had the heartache to cause in this people, that they always killed the prophets, and burned their children to idols, and thus filled the land with blood debts. As he is here in the first chapter, v. 5, Israel 1) therefore mourns.
(3) It appears that this prophecy of Hosea was not written in full, but that some pieces and sayings were taken from his sermons and put together in a book; but in it one can feel and find so much about how he carried out the two offices abundantly and confidently. First, that he preached hard against idolatry in his time, and punished the people freshly, together with the kings and his princes and priests.
1) In the Weimar: Jesreel; in the Erlanger: Jesrael.
He has certainly eaten death (like the others) and died as a heretic against the priests and as a rebel against the king, because this is a prophetic and apostolic death; so Christ himself had to die. On the other hand, he also prophesied about Christ and his kingdom powerfully and almost comfortingly, as especially the second [v. 19] and thirteenth [v. 14] and fourteenth chapters [v. 7] indicate.
4. But because he uses the word "whore" and "fornication" many times, and in the first chapter "takes a whore-wife," let no one think that he is so lewd, both in words and deeds; for he speaks spiritually, and that same whore-wife has been his true, honest wife, and has begotten true children with her; But the woman and the children had to bear such a shameful name, as a sign and punishment of the idolatrous people, who were full of spiritual fornication (that is, idolatry), as he himself says in the text: "The land runs after fornication from the Lord." Just as Jeremiah wore wooden chains and cups as a sign, and commonly all prophets did something strange as a sign to the people. So here his wife and children must also have whore names, as a sign against the whoreish, idolatrous people. For it is not to be believed that God should call a prophet a fornicator, as some want to interpret Hoseam here.