Hosea understands himself to be called to take as wife a woman
of ill repute — a whore, an adulteress — by whom he fathers three children with symbolic names: the Punished One (Jezreel), No Mercy (Lo Ruuhamah), and Not My
People (Lo Ammi)(1:6 — 9).
In the Fourth Gospel, the first inquiry a Jew made
of Jesus came from a rabbi, learned, aristocratic, a ruler
of his
people; Jesus» first contact with the Samaritans was with a woman
of ill repute, humble and socially unimportant, even unacceptable.