One option is that Hosea’s children will be the result of his wife’s promiscuity. But Hosea 1:3 tells us that Gomer conceived after they had married. It is better to understand it as the children’s association with their mother’s shameful lifestyle, which will reflect negatively on them.1 It may also be a prediction of their own fate, following in their mother’s footsteps.2 This has merit because it may be a further indictment on Israel, and the ongoing fruit of their immoral behaviour.
2 When the LORD first spoke through Hosea, the LORD said to Hosea, “Go, take to yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the LORD.”