The name Samuel means “name of God” or “his name is El,” where El is the name of the God of strength and power. His parents were a Levite named Elkanah and Hannah, who was unable to have children for many years. Elkanah and Hannah were devout Jews who visited the sanctuary at Shiloh every year to worship and sacrifice (1 Sam. 1:3).
The books of Joel and Amos are two of twelve books known as the minor prophets; not minor as in unimportant, but minor because of book length- in fact, the books of Isaiah is as long as all of the minor prophet books put together. Jewish tradition groups them into a single book called the “Book of the Twelve.”
Hosea the man and Hosea, the book. Hosea the man wrote about the life that God commanded him to live. The book of Hosea is the story of a man’s obedience to God, a sacrificial obedience that illustrated both Israel’s disobedience and God’s steadfast love for his people. But...would you obey if God told you to marry the town harlot? That was what Hosea had to do, as a way of illustrating the behavior of the nation of Israel.
