Book of Hosea
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40 free Book of Hosea trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Hosea is one of the strangest and most moving books in the Old Testament. It opens with God telling a prophet to marry a woman who will be unfaithful to him, then turns that painful home life into a picture of a whole nation's broken promises. Across fourteen short chapters the tone swings from fury to tenderness and back, in some of the most vivid poetry in the Bible. This quiz covers the story of the prophet's wife and children, the best-known verses, the animals and farm images that fill the poetry, the kings and places in the background, and the lines that Jesus and the first Christian writers went on to quote. Early questions stick to what most readers remember; later rounds reach into single verses and the history behind them. It suits Bible study groups, Sunday school classes and anyone reading through the Bible who wants to check what has stuck. Every answer comes with a short explanation that points back to the text, and the full set can be printed for a group.
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Q 01Hosea 11:1 says that when Israel was a child, God loved him and called his son out of where?
Egypt
Egypt here points back to the Exodus, yet the New Testament reapplies the line to the infant Jesus, whose family fled abroad to escape King Herod.
Q 02Hosea 8:7 gave English a proverb about consequences: those who sow the wind shall reap what?
The whirlwind
The whirlwind stands for the ruin that Israel's idols and hired allies would bring back on the nation, and the phrase now titles several works of fiction.
Q 03In the Book of Hosea, what is the name of the unfaithful woman God tells the prophet to marry?
Gomer
Gomer daughter of Diblaim has three children with symbolic names, and the prophet later buys her back, acting out God's refusal to give up on Israel.
Q 04According to Hosea 4:6, God's people are destroyed for lack of what, which their priests have rejected?
Knowledge
Knowledge here means knowing God and his law, and the verse turns the charge on the priests: because they threw it away, God says he will reject them in turn.
Q 05According to Hosea 6:6, a verse Jesus quotes to his critics, God desires what rather than sacrifice?
Mercy
Mercy outranks ritual in this verse, and Jesus quotes it twice in the Gospels, once when he is criticised for sharing a table with tax collectors.
Q 06Hosea 13:14 taunts which enemy, asking where its plagues are, in words Paul reuses in 1 Corinthians?
Death
Death is addressed alongside Sheol, the Hebrew underworld, and Paul turns the taunt into a victory cry in his chapter on resurrection.
Q 07Hosea 12 recalls which patriarch grasping his brother's heel in the womb and later wrestling with an angel?
Jacob
Jacob was renamed Israel after that wrestling match, so the prophet holds up the ancestor's scheming and striving as a mirror for the nation that carries his name.
Q 08In Hosea 13:8, God says he will attack forgetful Israel like which animal robbed of her cubs?
A bear
A bear robbed of her cubs joins a run of predators in the passage: God also pictures himself pouncing like a lion and lurking by the path like a leopard.
Q 09Which Canaanite storm god does the Book of Hosea accuse Israel of chasing in place of the LORD?
Baal
Baal also meant 'master' in Hebrew, so in Hosea 2:16 God says Israel will stop calling him by that title and say 'my husband' instead.
Q 10Which empire, courted by Israel's kings in the Book of Hosea, destroyed the northern kingdom around 722 BC?
Assyria
Assyria is the 'great king' Israel runs to for a cure in Hosea 5:13; the prophet answers that this doctor cannot heal the wound and will end up as master.
Q 11Hosea 8 says a craftsman made which idol of Samaria, which is no god and will be smashed to pieces?
A calf
A calf of gold had stood at the northern shrines since the kingdom's first ruler set two up as rivals to Jerusalem, and Hosea 13 mocks the worshippers who kiss them.
Q 12In Hosea 3, the prophet buys back his wife for fifteen shekels of silver and a measure of which grain?
Barley
Barley and silver together buy her back, after which he tells her to live with him faithfully for many days, a picture of Israel's long years without a king.
Q 13Hosea 3:5 says the Israelites will one day return to seek the LORD and which long-gone king of all Israel?
David
David was long gone by the prophet's time, so readers take the line as a promise of a future ruler from his family rather than the man himself.
Q 21In Hosea 11:3, God recalls taking the young nation Israel in his arms and teaching it to do what?
Walk
Walk belongs to a chapter that has been called one of the high points of the Old Testament: God as a parent, stooping to feed a child who never knew who had healed it.
Q 22Hosea 3:1 says the Israelites turn to other gods and love which sweet food offered to idols?
Raisin cakes
Raisin cakes were pressed from dried grapes and used in idol worship; the King James Version reads the Hebrew differently and has 'flagons of wine' here.
Q 23God tells Hosea to name his first son after which valley, where the house of Jehu had shed blood?
Jezreel
Jezreel means 'God sows', so the name carries a threat and a promise at once: judgment on the royal house first, then a nation sown back into its land.
Q 14In Hosea 6:2, the people expect God to revive them and raise them up on which day?
The third day
The third day is probably an idiom for 'after a short while': the people expect to be back on their feet almost at once, and God replies that their loyalty fades like morning mist.
Q 15Hosea 7:11 likens Israel, flitting between two rival empires for help, to which silly, senseless bird?
A dove
A dove is easy prey, and in the next verse God says he will throw his net over the flock as it flutters from one foreign court to the other.
Q 16Hosea 10:1 pictures Israel as which luxuriant plant, building more altars the more fruit it produced?
A vine
A vine that thrives is the problem here: the richer the harvest, the more Israel lavished on altars and sacred pillars, which God vows to break down.
Q 17Hosea 12:13 says the LORD brought Israel out of slavery 'by a prophet', meaning which unnamed leader?
Moses
Moses goes unnamed so the weight falls on the word prophet: the nation was freed and kept safe by one, yet in the prophet's own day it scorns such messengers.
Q 18Hosea 14 praises the fragrance and the wine of which neighbouring land?
Lebanon
Lebanon is named three times in three verses, as the closing promise heaps up pictures of a restored Israel rooted like its great trees and blooming like a lily.
Q 19The Book of Hosea stands first in which collection of twelve books, a label traced to Augustine of Hippo?
The Minor Prophets
The Minor Prophets are minor only in length: Augustine's label set these twelve short books apart from longer ones such as Isaiah and Jeremiah.
Q 20Which Francine Rivers novel, filmed in 2022, retells the Book of Hosea in Gold Rush California?
Redeeming Love
Redeeming Love makes the link plain: its hero is a farmer named Michael Hosea, told by God to marry Angel, a prostitute who keeps running away from him.
Q 24Which name, meaning 'not my people', does God give the youngest child of the prophet in Hosea 1?
Lo-ammi
Lo-ammi is the harshest of the children's names, yet the chapter ends by reversing it: those so labelled will be renamed children of the living God.
Q 25Hosea 1:1 dates the prophet to the reign of which prosperous king of Israel, the son of Jehoash?
Jeroboam
Jeroboam II ruled for forty-one years, the longest and richest reign the northern kingdom knew, yet Hosea 7 already pictures its rulers falling one after another.
Q 26Which New Testament book applies Hosea 11:1, about a son called home from a foreign land, to the infant Jesus?
Matthew
Matthew quotes the verse as the holy family flees from Herod, although the prophet was looking back at Israel's early history rather than ahead.
Q 27The Book of Hosea often calls the whole northern kingdom of Israel by the name of which leading tribe?
Ephraim
Ephraim was the dominant northern tribe and the home of the kingdom's first ruler, so its name came to stand for the whole realm, as Judah's did in the south.
Q 28In Hosea 10:8, what do the people beg to cover them and fall on them, words Jesus repeats in Luke?
Mountains and hills
Mountains and hills are begged to bury a nation whose shrines lie in ruins, and Jesus quotes the cry to the women mourning him on the road to the cross.
Q 29In Hosea 14:5, God promises to be like what to Israel, so that the nation blossoms like a lily?
Dew
Dew reverses an earlier image: in chapter 6 it stood for Israel's loyalty, gone by mid-morning, and here it is God's steady gift that makes the land bloom.
Q 30In Jewish, Catholic and Protestant Bibles, which book, by the son of Pethuel, comes directly after Hosea?
Joel
Joel carries no date in its text, and Eastern Orthodox Bibles, which follow the old Greek order, move it down to fourth place among the twelve.