In the Bible the wicked person is often compared to chaff carried away by the wind. Some commentators saw in the corresponding Hebrew word an indication not of wind, but of the Spirit of God, since wind and spirit in the Hebrew text of the Old Testament are indeed denoted by one word. But this does not change the essence of the matter: whether by a wind sent from God or by His own breath, the wicked person is carried away all the same. Wickedness, rejection by God, is associated both by the prophets and by the hymnographers with lightness, with the weightlessness of the rejected person, with his emptiness. Sometimes this emptiness is revealed on the day of the Last Judgment, sometimes on the day of calamity, which the prophets often view as a day of preliminary judgment, not yet final but already significant: every such judgment becomes God’s indication of human sinfulness and wickedness.

What stands behind the emptiness of the wicked person? One can, of course, see in it only a literary image, similar to the way we speak in Russian of an empty person who amounts to nothing. But the matter, it seems, is not only literary images. In biblical books death is often spoken of as the emptying of the dying person, who loses his vital strength and increasingly turns into a shadow, into an empty shell of his former self. Death, as the prophetic books and the book of Psalms speak of it, often begins not when a person dies physically, for a person may leave this world, on the contrary, “full of life,” as the Torah says, for example, about the death of the patriarchs, but when he loses God, when he turns away from Him. This is not surprising: the fullness of life is with God, and the one who ignores God or resists Him naturally and gradually loses participation in life, first spiritual and then physical.

The first thing that departs when God’s life is lost is stability: first spiritual, then psychological, and in the end sometimes physical as well. Then a person no longer begins to rejoice during sacrifice, but to be ashamed of his condition, for to reveal weakness at a solemn and responsible moment is not the most joyful event in life. Thus the loss of the spiritual core empties a person, making him easy prey for any wind that blows upon him.

At the Lord's instruction, the prophet buys back a prostitute who is betraying her husband. He pays little for her, only half the price that would later be given for the Savior, and he does this in order that she may stop her former way of life and be freed from it. Here before us is another foreshadowing of Christ's action, by which He redeemed us from slavery to sin. It would seem that paying a ransom means turning a person into the property of the one who paid it, but in this case it makes us free: the Redeemer, having delivered us from the power of evil, wants to see in us not slaves, but friends.

The bitter prophecy that the people would remain without a king and without worship, as we know, soon came true literally. Like many other prophetic warnings, it has been justified more than once over the course of millennia. Alas, a people often brings heavy troubles upon itself. But the warning that as a result of human wickedness "even the fish of the sea will perish" makes it clear: retribution for sin can prove more terrible than the flood, which did not harm the fish.

Such a warning sounds very relevant in our day, when people know how to destroy on an enormous scale and are not very eager to renounce sin. No less important is the call not to accuse one's neighbor, an occupation beloved by many, many people in every age. But especially serious is the warning that the people will be destroyed for lack of knowledge, that is, for conscious refusal of it. It appears that this means it is not enough to accept the Lord's Revelation at a minimal and formal level: His wisdom requires constant and deepening attention to it. And this in turn entails the need to change not only familiar ideas, but also one's habitual way of life, and that is so troublesome... As a result, small transgressions, accumulating, lead to monstrous heaps of sin.

The most important theme of the prophet Hosea is faithfulness. Israel's unfaithfulness to its God is likened to human fornication and adultery. Moreover, these two forms of unfaithfulness are interconnected (see Hos. 4:13). In denouncing the people and calling them to repentance, to a change of life, Hosea at the same time prophetically shows, through his own faithfulness in marriage, the path by which God wants to restore Israel after the coming catastrophe. God's love and faithfulness will warm Israel's heart (Hos. 3:5).