Hosea son of Beeri was the first of the Twelve Minor Prophets. The Lord commanded him to marry Gomer, a woman of harlotry — a living parable of God's covenant with unfaithful Israel. He took her back even after her serial infidelity: 'I will betroth thee to me for ever; I will betroth thee to me in justice, and judgment, and in mercy, and in commiserations' (Hos 2:19).
He prophesied to the Northern Kingdom in the final decades before the Assyrian conquest of Samaria (722 BC). The Lord's love for Israel is shown as the love of a faithful spouse for an unfaithful one, of a father teaching his son to walk: 'When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son' (Hos 11:1) — quoted by St. Matthew of the Flight into Egypt.