Hosea son of Beeri הושע בן בארי

The opening verse lists four kings of Judah and one of Israel — the longest dating in all of the Twelve, and it places Hosea in the same years as Amos, Micah and Isaiah.

The book begins with a command that commentators of every generation recoiled from: "Go, take yourself a wife of harlotry and children of harlotry." Gomer daughter of Diblaim bears three children, and each is given a name that is a verdict: Jezreel, for the blood shed by the house of Jehu; Lo-ruhamah, "not pitied"; Lo-ammi, "not My people."

The book then unfolds the image both ways. The people are a wife who went after lovers and never understood that it was her husband who gave her the bread, the wine and the wool. But every section ends in return, and it is said in the words of betrothal recited ever since while putting on tefillin: "I will betroth you to Me forever; I will betroth you to Me in righteousness and justice, in kindness and mercy; I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness — and you shall know the LORD."

Hosea works in the years of the Northern Kingdom's outward splendour and says what Amos says: there is no truth, no kindness and no knowledge of God in the land. A generation after his death Samaria was gone.