THE STORYTELLER'S BIBLE
Act IV - The Prophets, Scene 4
Script by Bob Allen
For four voices

Scene 4

                                    (READER 3 CROSS TO CENTER STAGE.  READERS #1, #2 AND #4 SIT AND TURN THEIR BACKS TO THE AUDIENCE.)

1  2  4

3

VOICE THREE:        Did I love her?  More than anyone will ever know.  From the first time I saw her on our wedding day I loved her.  She looked so small and fragile, like a delicate clay decanter fashioned expressly for holding the essence of perfume.  An overwhelming urge to protect her, to save her from all the hard knocks this world can deliver, overcame me.  I wanted to put my arms around her, shelter her from harm and never let her go.  Gomer!  Her name became sweet music to my ears.  Oh, I knew all along what God said she would do, but I kept thinking that surely she would respond to my love.  When the children were born, first Jezreel and then Lo-ruhamah, I trusted that becoming a mother would strengthen the bond between us.  She would come to love me the way I loved her.  It was not to be.  Lo-ammi was born in the spring and by summer she was gone.  Her infidelity was a tremendous embarrassment, after all I was a prophet of God.  Hosea, the prophet.  Everyone knew about Gomer and Hosea, it was the talk of the town.  I struggled with my conscience about even continuing to preach, and yet I knew—I had known from the beginning--God could use even this tragedy to bring glory to Himself.  At first she continued to stay in touch with the children.  I would beg them to remind her of my love.  I often sent food and money covertly through channels that could not be traced back to me.  She never suspected that I continued to support her, that without me she would have quickly become totally destitute.  Instead, she gave the credit to those she had chosen, those who had replaced me as her first love.  I wrote letters, love letters, expressing in the most intimate language the care with which I would nourish and cherish her if only she would return.  I declared my eternal, unfailing devotion, and yet she continued in her unfaithfulness, spurning my every advance.  There were many times during those years when I reflected on the thought that such love as I had for Gomer could only have come from God Himself.  She had done nothing to gain my love, nothing to retain it, nothing to requite it.  She had done nothing—yet I loved her. 

                                    It was my oldest son, Jezreel, who brought me word of the auction.  Her house had been re-possessed, she was deeply in debt and in order to pay her creditors the judge had declared that she herself was to be sold into slavery.  There were no other bidders, after all, what was she worth?  Still I paid full price: fifteen shekels of silver, a homer and a half of barley.   Once again she was mine.  Surely now she would acknowledge my love.  Surely now her heart would return to me and she would accept me for my love.