Ep 133: The Adult(ery) Episode

00:00- Where I will remove the name of the balls from her mouth.

00:05(laughing)

00:06Well, the names, the names of the balls.

00:08- The names of the balls.

00:09- Yeah, thunder and lightning.

00:11(laughing)

00:13- Donner and Blitzen.

00:15- All right, if the left one don't get you,

00:17then the right one will.

00:18(laughing)

00:20(upbeat music)

00:23- Hey everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

00:27- And I'm Dan Beacher.

00:28- And you're listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast

00:32where we increase public access

00:33to the academic study of the Bible and religion.

00:36And we combat the spread of misinformation

00:39about the same how-go things today, Dan.

00:42- Things go well for me.

00:44You're back under the weather, I think, a little bit.

00:47- A little bit.

00:48I'm on the end of it.

00:50- I'm guessing that our listeners will forgive

00:52a little bit of nasal resonance coming out of it.

00:56- Hopefully, yeah, I think sometimes I can make the baritone

00:59a little more pleasing.

01:00- A little bit of a little sexier.

01:02(laughing)

01:03- All right.

01:04- All right, he's going for sexy everybody.

01:06- Well, when I was a missionary,

01:08there was a time I called into the mission office.

01:11I was in the mission home, I was in the offices.

01:13I was the Financiero.

01:15I was the financial secretary for several months.

01:18And I had a great relationship still do

01:20with my mission president's wife, Julie.

01:23She was wonderful.

01:24We all called her Laermana, but one day I called in,

01:28I had a cold and I was a president there.

01:33And she was like, "Who is this?"

01:35She's like, "Elder McClellan."

01:36She's like, "Your voice sounds really sexy,

01:38"Elder McClellan."

01:39And that made me deeply uncomfortable.

01:42- Wow, there you go, I like it.

01:44(laughing)

01:45- But shout out to Julie, she's awesome.

01:47- What did you call her Laermana?

01:50- Laermana.

01:51- Laermana, the woman.

01:52- The sister.

01:54Oh, the sister, that's what it is, that's what it is.

01:56- Yes, yes.

01:57(gasping)

01:58- And Laermana.

01:59(laughing)

02:01- So, yeah, anyway, moving beyond my extreme discomfort

02:05with that.

02:06- Yeah, yeah, let's climb into a show.

02:08I think we can do it.

02:10Today we're gonna be doing a couple of fun segments.

02:13And we're keeping it sexy.

02:15I think we're gonna keep the theme sex-themed

02:20throughout the entire show.

02:21We're bringing sexy way back, way back, way back to the--

02:26- 2,800 years almost.

02:27- Yeah, exactly.

02:28We're going as far back as we can comfortably go.

02:33The first thing we're gonna do,

02:34we're gonna do an, it's the law.

02:37We haven't done one of these for a little while.

02:39- Yeah.

02:40- And that's gonna be one of the top 10

02:44of all of the commandments.

02:46- Yeah.

02:47- Of all the 10 commandments, this is one of them.

02:50- It is one of them, and it is the one about adultery.

02:54So, that'll be fun.

02:56- And then, we're gonna, there's an unassuming book

02:59just sort of buried in the middle

03:01of the Hebrew Bible called Hosea.

03:04- Hosea, we don't talk about it a lot.

03:07A lot of people don't know what's going on with Hosea

03:09unless, of course, they're scholars of the Old Testament

03:12or the Hebrew Bible, in which case they know,

03:14Hosea is a big deal.

03:16- Okay.

03:16- And we're gonna talk about why Hosea is a big deal.

03:19- Yeah, yeah, beyond just how often it references sex work.

03:24But if Hosea was a person, it would come up to you

03:28at a party and say, "I'm kind of a big deal."

03:32So, all right, and that joke has levels.

03:36So anyway, yeah.

03:37- That'll be our chapter and verse

03:39in the second half of the show.

03:40But first off, it's the law.

03:43(upbeat music)

03:46Breaking the law, breaking the law.

03:48- As the great poet said, scraping the jaw,

03:51scraping the jaw.

03:53- Oh, okay.

03:54- That was a...

03:54I can't do that laugh anymore.

03:58My voice does not do the crack with the laugh.

04:02- You can't do the, you can't be this anymore.

04:04- No, not as much as I used to be able to.

04:07When I was younger, I could do the...

04:08(laughing)

04:09Yeah, I can't.

04:10(laughing)

04:12All right, so, here's the thing.

04:14We're talking about, I don't even know which

04:17of the 10 Commandments it is.

04:19I guess this is--

04:20- Well, it's verse, X is 20, verse 14.

04:23- Right.

04:24- And there's a...

04:25(laughing)

04:26- Just depends on how you count.

04:27- Yeah, this is a little inside baseball,

04:29but I have taught primary multiple times in my--

04:34- That's the child classes in mornin' them, yeah.

04:40- Yes, and my students come out of there

04:44knowing more than their parents do about the Bible.

04:47- No one's surprised to hear that.

04:49- No, no, no, no, no.

04:50And one of the things, one year, I was like,

04:51guess what, all y'all, you're memorizing the 10 Commandments.

04:54And those kids came out of there knowing the 10 Commandments

04:57and I used a little, I don't even remember what they,

05:01what you call it, an initialism where you had a little

05:05narrative that you, and for the Mormons I would say,

05:09why I never see President Monson at Salt Lake?

05:14And so you got worship, you got idols,

05:19you got the name, you got the Sabbath,

05:23and then P is for parents, and then Monson is murder,

05:28at is adultery, at Salt Lake, or steal, lie,

05:33and then Salt Lake City, C is covet.

05:36- Okay.

05:37- If you can remember that,

05:38you can remember all 10 Commandments.

05:39So why I never see President Monson at?

05:43- So that's the seventh Commandment, yeah.

05:45- Okay.

05:46- According to, according to the,

05:47a protestant numbering of the--

05:50- That's right, as we have discussed,

05:52there are many different ways that you can enumerate

05:55the Commandments, and 10 is not really

06:00a very good number for them.

06:03- No, no, you could count more than that.

06:05Although, we've already talked about how Exodus 34

06:08is the only place where it actually refers

06:11to the set of Commandments as 10.

06:13- And it's not these ones.

06:14- And it's not these ones, right?

06:15- No, it's the, you shall not boil a kid

06:19in its mother's milk, and stuff like that.

06:22- Yeah, something about yeast and bread,

06:26and who knows, the festival of--

06:27- Last stuff like that.

06:28- Yeast, I don't know, it's just crazy.

06:30- There is a reference in, I think, Deuteronomy three

06:33or four, where it talks about these 10 things,

06:36and then Deuteronomy five recounts the 10 Commandments,

06:40almost exactly as we find in Exodus 20.

06:43- Right.

06:43- But yeah, you could divide it into a few different numbers.

06:46So, we got number seven, it's two short words in Hebrew,

06:49low, teen, off.

06:51I mean, nuff said, right?

06:54- Right, or nuff said, the thing.

06:57- Yeah, but, and that literally means

07:02you shall not commit adultery.

07:04- Okay, and that sounds straight forward.

07:09- It sounds-- - Doesn't it though?

07:11- Easy, it sounds like, oh, we now know what that means.

07:16And here's the thing, I don't think we do.

07:19And the reason that I don't think we do,

07:22and I'll let you elucidate this quite a lot,

07:26but what I notice, and maybe other astute listeners

07:30may have caught this as they did their own Bible study,

07:34or as they listened to our show,

07:36and heard stories about all of these characters,

07:38or whatever, the Bible's totally fine

07:42with a lot of things that we consider adultery now.

07:45- Yes, yes.

07:46The Bible doesn't seem to care much

07:51when guys are out there getting their thing wet.

07:56And--

07:58- Well, as long as--

07:59- As long as it's not with someone

08:01who belongs to another man.

08:03- Right, and that's, yeah, that seems to be the crux of it,

08:07right, it's a property rights issue as much as anything.

08:10- It is a property rights issue.

08:11A lot of people want to make this about,

08:14like there's no parody here.

08:16- Right.

08:16- It is very much a case of women are the property of men.

08:21- Right.

08:24- And a man who is betrothed to a woman,

08:27or married to a woman, that contractual relationship

08:32is considered sacrosanct in that society,

08:35because that's the relationship that facilitates

08:38procreation, and so that's what carries the society

08:42on, strengthens it, perpetuates it,

08:43protects it, all that kind of stuff.

08:45And so, the adultery is really

08:50a violation of those property rights,

08:55which is why a woman is prohibited from having

08:59any and all premarital or extramarital sex period.

09:03A man is not, as long as the woman

09:08is not betrothed or married to someone else.

09:10So, a man is legally not prohibited from going out

09:14and having sex with a sex worker,

09:18or with a woman who is not betrothed

09:22or married to someone else, whether he's married or not.

09:26And that's what I love people.

09:27- So, there are some sort of legalistic things

09:32that can happen, like, the Bible does delineate,

09:36again, whoever this woman is, if she is not married,

09:43she is likely the property now of her father.

09:48- Father, right.

09:49- And her sexual inexperience is a commodity that he owns.

09:54- Absolutely.

09:55- So, if someone were to sleep with,

09:57if a man married or otherwise is to sleep

10:01with a woman, he is violating her father's rights

10:06in that respect, right?

10:07- Yes, now, this is for an Israelite.

10:11- Okay.

10:12- So, this is a free-born Israelite.

10:16- That's right, that's right.

10:17- Because if she's a foreigner,

10:18or if she is an enslaved girl or something like that,

10:22it doesn't really matter.

10:24But it matters if she is eligible

10:27for proper Israelite marriage,

10:29because her father then stands to benefit financially

10:32from that transaction.

10:34And so, yes, it's a violation of his property, right?

10:36It's not as serious a violation.

10:38So, we see in Exodus 22, 16, we see in Deuteronomy 22, 28,

10:43and 29, that Exodus 22, 16 uses a word

10:47that a lot of scholars translate seduce.

10:50So, it's not clear that it is non-consensual.

10:54There is some coercion going on, maybe.

10:57It might be sexual assault, it might not be.

11:00Deuteronomy 22, 28, and 29, it's clearly sexual assault.

11:04No matter what an apologist tells you,

11:06it is about sexual assault.

11:10They will make up all kinds of crap about the verb tafas.

11:14And say, it just means to handle,

11:15it just means he's handling her, you know?

11:17It's consensual, and that's garbage.

11:21Every time the object of the verb is a person,

11:24it means force.

11:26So, anyway, in those two cases,

11:30the perpetrator owes the father an elevated bride price.

11:35And then he is required to marry the girl,

11:38'cause she's damaged goods now.

11:40She's no longer eligible for proper Israelite marriage.

11:44And so, the penalty is like, well, you broke it, you bought it.

11:49And then, since we're using a fairly rough terminology

11:53for all of this, can we make it clear

11:55that this is not our feeling.

11:57No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

12:00But this literally is exactly how the Bible treats

12:03these scenarios.

12:04Yes, because the, and when you look in Deuteronomy 22,

12:0828, and 29, and the verses that lead up to it,

12:1022 through, 22 is one, 23 through 27 is another segment.

12:15When you look at these things, the problem is that

12:20this has violated someone's rights,

12:22which is why if the woman is betrothed or married,

12:24the penalty for the, the assault is death.

12:28If she's not betrothed or married,

12:30it's that elevated bride price.

12:32And it's, you've got to marry her,

12:34you're never allowed to divorce her.

12:36Her father can reject the marriage, however,

12:39and just take the money.

12:41But what that indicates is that the severity

12:45of the punishment depends upon who is asserting rights

12:49over the woman's pro-creative capacities

12:51and sexual availability.

12:53Is it a husband, in which case, death?

12:56Is it cake or death?

12:58Is it get death?

12:59Or you get the wedding cake from marrying this girl?

13:03It's the case of cake or death.

13:05One wonders if Eddie Isard had this in mind.

13:09I would not be surprised that he Isard is a genius

13:13and on several levels.

13:16So it would not surprise me in the least.

13:19However, yeah, you're absolutely right.

13:20This is a question of property rights

13:23and adultery comes down to property rights.

13:26It is not a moral,

13:27it is not a fundamentally moral question.

13:30It's a question of property rights.

13:32Which is why, if a guy's married,

13:35he can go out and have sex with a sex worker.

13:38That's, she's not eligible for proper Israelite marriage.

13:41Nobody owns her.

13:42- Well, we've talked about this multiple times

13:45where heroes of the Bible,

13:47people who are considered good,

13:52upstanding men of the Bible

13:54have gone out and partaken of sex work

13:59with no problem, including every,

14:03well, not with no problem.

14:04So every now and then it's his daughter-in-law tricking him.

14:08- Yes.

14:08- But the problem isn't that he partook

14:12of a sex worker's wares.

14:14- Right, that's never an issue.

14:18- Yeah, so there's quite an asymmetry here

14:21going on regarding responsibilities related to sex

14:26and the propriety of sex.

14:29Because it's, people today like to think of sex

14:32as this holy, like not full of holes,

14:36but there are holes involved,

14:37but in this sanctified thing where,

14:42oh, this is the power that grants life and stuff like that.

14:47No, not in the Hebrew Bible.

14:48- Yeah, the-

14:49- Hebrew Bible sex was just an everyday part of life.

14:52- And we're talking about like the big dogs

14:55of the Hebrew Bible.

14:56Abraham has the whole thing with Hagar.

14:59- Yes.

15:00- So he's got a wife, she's not producing.

15:04- Yeah.

15:05- And so he sleeps with her maid servant, right?

15:10'Cause that's basically it.

15:12- And slave girl, yeah.

15:14- Jacob has a whole bunch of,

15:18he's got Leah and Rachel and sleeps

15:21with their maid servants as well.

15:23- Yep.

15:25- You got Judah who messed up with the daughter-in-law

15:30because he wouldn't give his other son to her

15:32'cause he thought she was the black widow.

15:37- And she tricked him into impregnating her

15:41and he was like, who no boy now?

15:43- Yeah, you got me.

15:46- Ah, you.

15:47- That was a good trick.

15:48- Well played.

15:49Yeah, so in none of these cases is anyone treating sex

15:54as if it is some sacrosanct kind of experience

16:00that God has placed these boundaries around outside of,

16:07questions of property rights.

16:10So adultery is a very different thing in the Hebrew Bible.

16:14It is not what we talk about

16:18when we talk about adultery today.

16:20- Right.

16:21- When Jesus says any man who looks on a woman

16:24or less after her has committed adultery already

16:26with her in his heart,

16:28that is a significant renegotiation of what's going on here.

16:33- Well, we should dive into that

16:34because it does seem like the New Testament

16:36does have a modified version

16:41or a modified view of what adultery is

16:45and what it means.

16:48- Yes, and that is primarily the product

16:51of Greco-Roman society.

16:54- Okay.

16:54- Because we have the introduction of Greek philosophy,

16:59one, and then Greco-Roman family conventions,

17:03household conventions and norms and things like that.

17:06Where it was still,

17:09men had a lot more freedom than women still,

17:12but those who were a little more philosophically oriented

17:17were asserted a bit more parity

17:21between the sexes related to sexual activity

17:24because sexual desire began to be seen as kind of this,

17:29one of the baser urges of the corrupt flesh.

17:34And particularly through a platonic lens

17:36where you had the divine,

17:38the world of the divine and the world of the flesh

17:41and you were really trying to transcend

17:43the world of the flesh to commune with

17:46and hopefully one day return to the world of the divine.

17:49This is where the idea of the logos, the word,

17:54Jesus says the word, this is what it's based on,

17:56this is what Paul is talking about an awful lot.

17:59But as a result of this, sex was seen as something dirty.

18:03Right, and we've talked about this.

18:08They talk about it as carnal as being of, yeah, like you say,

18:13it becomes this thing of two realms

18:15where one group of things is sort of of the body

18:20and of the earth and that's the lesser things.

18:24And then there are the things of the spirit

18:26and of the divine and that's the things

18:30to which one is supposed to aspire.

18:33Which, yeah, I mean, I disagree but that's the Greeks for you.

18:38What are you going to do?

18:39Yeah, it's all Greek to them.

18:42And something that you have in Greco-Roman period Judaism

18:50is this whole spectrum of approaches

18:53to the propriety of sex.

18:55And we've talked about this before

18:57where there were some hardliners who talked about sex

19:02as something that was only ever appropriate for procreation.

19:05And so it was totally inappropriate

19:07when it was not explicitly for the sake of procreation.

19:11So, you know, past menopause, sorry, man, y'all are retired.

19:15You know, the wife is menstruating,

19:19you know that's already out.

19:21She's pregnant right now, sorry,

19:23you're gonna have to take matters into your own hands or not.

19:27But there were those who said

19:29and even when you are engaged in intercourse

19:33for the sake of procreation,

19:34you're not allowed to enjoy it.

19:37Because to enjoy it is to mess around

19:42in the filth of fleshly desire.

19:45And so you're supposed to be above that.

19:46You're supposed to be just doing your husbandly duty

19:50with a stoic face, you know,

19:56maybe a little bead of sweat drips off your nose

19:58or whatever, but otherwise you are stone faced.

20:02It is your joyless exertion that is required for you.

20:07And then you had others who are a little more lenient

20:12who are like, you know, if they're, you know,

20:16past the period of being able to have kids,

20:20it's no big deal.

20:22But otherwise, you know, you're supposed to be,

20:25stay away from doing it

20:26when it's not explicitly for procreation.

20:28So you had this whole spectrum

20:29of approaches to the propriety of sex.

20:31But for the most part,

20:32it was considered something that we are better

20:36leaving behind.

20:37And this is the approach of Paul.

20:39This is the approach of the author of the Gospel of Matthew.

20:42Has Jesus say, you know,

20:45there are those who are born eunuchs.

20:47There are those who are made eunuchs by men.

20:49And there are those who make themselves eunuchs

20:51for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.

20:54And this is a hard saying and...

20:58- Yeah.

20:59- It is.

21:00- I agree, that is a hard, yeah, that's rough.

21:04- And he says that anyone who can accept it, accept it.

21:07Basically saying, you know, the real ones

21:10are going to be celibate.

21:14And perhaps even, you know,

21:16and this led to self-castration

21:18among a lot of early Christians.

21:20And a lot of people don't know

21:21that one of the first rules they laid down,

21:24they did three things at the Council of Nicaea,

21:26325 CE Constantine.

21:28They were there to resolve the Aryan controversy.

21:30They were there to come up with a new way

21:33to determine the date of Easter every year

21:35that decoupled it from Judaism

21:37and allowed people to calculate it on their own.

21:39Third thing they did was come up with a list of canon law.

21:42Law number one, nobody who has castrated himself

21:46is eligible for the clergy.

21:47- Oh.

21:48- Yeah, yeah.

21:49- I was like, sorry, you thought you were a real one.

21:53- And you thought you were doing the right thing.

21:54- You're out now, yeah, sorry.

21:57- So the sexual ethic was just,

22:01it was motivated by Greek philosophy

22:04and Greco-Roman societal conventions.

22:06So when we look at how Paul and Jesus

22:09and other folks are talking about sex in the New Testament,

22:12it's very different from the Hebrew Bible.

22:14- Yeah.

22:15- And it's influenced by Greek philosophy.

22:18- And it's so important, you talk a lot

22:22about univocality is your word.

22:25- Yes.

22:26- About how people, anyone who assumes

22:28that the entirety of the Bible from Genesee to Reveille

22:33is going to be in harmony with each other.

22:38You're just gonna be, you're just missing the depth

22:43and the breadth of this book,

22:48this more rather this huge series of books.

22:51It's not all book, it is many books over centuries.

22:56And yeah, of course there are going to be philosophical

22:58and legal and moral innovations over that much time.

23:03- Absolutely.

23:04And I think it does so much violence to the text

23:06to force it into these strictures and say,

23:09no, not allowed to say that.

23:11It's not allowed to do that.

23:12It has to say this.

23:13- Right.

23:14- It's so, the book is so much more fascinating

23:17and so much weirder.

23:20- When you allow it to operate on its own terms

23:22and so much cooler.

23:24- I think you do its thing.

23:27- I think you and I really,

23:30and I think most of our listeners really embrace

23:32the weirdness that you're discussing.

23:34But I do think that that might be why it's so uncomfortable

23:39for a lot of people because they want this book

23:41to be holy and pure.

23:45Like they want to be able to look to it

23:48and have it just be the exalted, perfect word of God

23:53so that they don't have to think about it.

23:57So that it's not challenging.

23:59So that it's just easy and nice.

24:02- And it just sits there as the transcendent

24:06and unassailable authority for your identity politics.

24:10They don't want, they want it to change everybody else.

24:13You don't want it to change you.

24:15You just want to leverage it as the change everybody.

24:19- Yeah, bludgeon to go make everybody else

24:22fall in line with your thinking.

24:25Whatever that thinking happens to be.

24:27- Yeah.

24:28And then you go and you compare the story of David

24:32and Bathsheba and all of his wives

24:35and all of his concubines and whatever

24:37with the Matthew quote of Jesus about,

24:41yeah, if you look at a woman lustfully,

24:44you've already committed adultery.

24:46Those are two very different perspectives.

24:51- Yeah, yeah.

24:52And that's also Matthew saying you have to obey

24:55the law of Moses.

24:57Only I'm ratcheting it up.

24:58I'm ratcheting up some of the laws.

25:00- Right, yeah.

25:01You have to obey the law of Moses

25:02but we're redefining all of it.

25:04We're redefining it.

25:05Your righteousness must exceed the righteousness

25:08of the Pharisees.

25:09So yeah, it is, and when you look at the stories

25:13about King David, what does Nathan compare David's adultery to?

25:18He compares it to stealing some farmer's lamb

25:26and eating it.

25:27And it's like, well, it's a person

25:33that you have effectively raped.

25:36- It's a human being.

25:37- Yes.

25:38And also you had the farmer killed

25:40in that particular metaphor.

25:42- Yeah, yeah.

25:43And what is it about again?

25:46His property.

25:47- Property rights, yeah.

25:48- It wasn't because there was something morally wrong

25:53about this particular phallus in this particular area.

25:59It wasn't that this, and later the more holiness code laws,

26:04that's where you have this idea

26:09that these actions generate this metaphysical contamination

26:13that gets out on the land and pollutes the land

26:15and the land can only handle so much

26:17before it's gonna vomit you out.

26:19You do get this idea that there is this metaphysical aspect

26:24to these sins, but for the folks who wrote Samuel knows,

26:28is just that she belonged to somebody else.

26:30She violated somebody else's property rights.

26:33And as king, that's a no-no.

26:35Nobody cares about that.

26:36Sheba in that text.

26:38- Right.

26:39So yeah, it's problematic as a all get out.

26:44- Well, maybe not for them, maybe not for David,

26:48but it's problematic for us.

26:51- Yes.

26:52And it should be problematic for all y'all out there.

26:56- And this brings up, this is only tangentially related

26:59to our topic, but it is something that has me fuming.

27:03- Oh.

27:03- Somebody on Twitter or X or whatever the hell

27:08people wanna call it these days.

27:11Recently, like X, my algorithm on X,

27:15is so effed right now.

27:18If I can say that.

27:20- I thought everybody's was.

27:22That's the way I left.

27:23All I get is these Christian nationalists

27:28and freaking Elon and it just irritates me to no end.

27:33However, somebody posted something,

27:37said in response to something about divine command ethics,

27:42they said the universe goes unchanged if someone rapes.

27:47Without God, morals have no meaning.

27:51And I responded to this.

27:53God of the Bible doesn't really seem to care about rape.

27:57It's not even punished unless it's a free Israelite girl,

27:59then it's only a property crime against her husband,

28:02in which case it's the death penalty or her father,

28:04when in which case he pays an elevated bride price,

28:06foreign and enslaved girls could be violated at will.

28:09Somebody who's evidently been following me on Twitter

28:13for some time took issue with my statement

28:17and just wanted to complain about it.

28:19And what they retreated to was first Corinthians seven,

28:24one through five.

28:27I don't know if you have this passage memorized,

28:30but this is something that a lot of people have appealed to

28:33where it says the husband's body is not his own

28:37and wife's body is not her own.

28:39They should render unto each other due benevolence,

28:43which is basically a way to say,

28:46you owe your spouse conjugal, their conjugal rights.

28:50- Right. - And so he,

28:51so this person commented,

28:53people have no right to arbitrarily refuse intimacy

28:58in marriage, parentheses, first Corinthians seven,

29:02one through five, closed parentheses.

29:03And I've seen this verse come up a lot recently.

29:06This is apologetics for marital rape.

29:11This is insisting that there's no such thing as marital rape

29:15because a wife's body is not her own in marriage

29:18and that her husband has a right to her body.

29:22And that is so abominable.

29:26- Yeah, it is on its face, obviously wrong.

29:31- Yeah, it's disgusting, but it is something

29:37that an awful lot of Christians on social media

29:40seem to think is perfectly fine.

29:42- Yeah. - And if you're in a worldview

29:46where if you're participating in a society

29:49or a worldview where that is seen as okay,

29:53you need to sit a few plays out.

29:56You need to come to grips with the fact

29:59that that is rape apologetics.

30:02- Yeah. - There is no circumstance

30:06in which a woman's right to her bodily autonomy

30:10is forfeited to a man, ever.

30:14And it does not matter if you are Paul

30:17who prided himself in being celibate anyway,

30:22he wasn't even on the field for any of this.

30:25So I don't care what he has to say.

30:29But yeah, I love when people bring up

30:33first Corinthians seven, one through five.

30:35- Well, it's just, yeah.

30:37I mean, and I have seen both women and men online

30:42quoting that idea and saying, you know, the, the,

30:48and it's all, what's funny is that the way you said it,

30:51I don't know that I knew the scripture

30:54that was, that they were referencing when they did it.

30:56But the way you said it made it sound like the man,

31:00the woman also has the right to just don't man sex

31:03- Well, that's how, yeah, that's how men make it sound.

31:06- Okay, it's like, it's reciprocal.

31:08It's reciprocal.

31:09- Right.

31:10- It's reciprocal.

31:11Yeah, now I will say there are not a ton of women out there

31:11She can demand it too.

31:16who are like, I'm not getting it enough, sweetie.

31:19But that's not true.

31:20There are women out there like I was gonna say,

31:23I know a lot of old over 40 women and yeah,

31:27there are plenty of them who would like more sex.

31:32And not a one of them has ever considered demanding it

31:35as their right from their partner.

31:39- Or maybe not even demanding it, just taking it.

31:42- Right.

31:43- Like they don't even act like that is something

31:46that they're thinking about.

31:48NRSVUE says this,

31:50(humming)

31:51but because of cases of sexual immorality,

31:53each man should have his own wife

31:54and each woman, her own husband.

31:56The husband should give to his wife what is due her

31:59and likewise the wife to her husband.

32:01For the wife does not have authority over her own body,

32:04but the husband does, likewise,

32:06the husband does not have authority over his own body,

32:08but the wife does, do not deprive one another,

32:11except perhaps by agreement for a set time

32:13to devote yourselves to prayer

32:15and then come together again so that Satan may not tempt you

32:18because of your lack of self control.

32:20And really all Opal is saying is that if you're married,

32:23you need to make sure you have the relief valve

32:26of occasional prophylactic passionless sex.

32:30Otherwise it's gonna get pent up

32:32and then something bad is gonna happen.

32:35So, but this gets far too often leveraged by men

32:39to mean you're not allowed to deny me sex.

32:43- And I think a lot of those apologists

32:48would attack us and say,

32:51who are we to say that the Bible's morality is wrong

32:56or that the Bible's definition,

32:58the Bible's definition of what's okay

33:02isn't correct and yet they would be the first ones

33:07to say, no, you know, you can't have three wives

33:11and four concubines.

33:12- No, you can however many sex slaves you want.

33:15- Right, right.

33:16Yeah, we've rejected, we've come to the consensus

33:20that we reject so much of the Bible's not just sexual ethic,

33:23but just ethic in general.

33:24- Right.

33:25- That the notion that it bears any authority

33:29in and of itself that is absolute is absolutely laughable.

33:33It's all negotiable.

33:34And people can get as upset about that as they want,

33:37that doesn't change the fact.

33:38- And it must have been negotiated.

33:39- Yes.

33:40- You have to, and so like taking the position

33:44that well, one part of the Bible says that

33:47I get to meridily rape my wife.

33:51Yeah, as you say, you're doing apologetics for rape now.

33:59- Maybe back off of that one, that's probably it.

34:02- That's a loser right there.

34:04- Yeah, and that's an auto-block response for me.

34:09So, yeah, sorry, that was a bit of a tangent

34:13that took more time than I did.

34:14- No, no, it was important.

34:15And I'm glad that we went there.

34:17Well, all right, there you go, that's the law.

34:21Please feel free to ignore it or to redefine it

34:26as pleases your morality.

34:29Let's move on to our chapter and verse.

34:33(upbeat music)

34:36And this week's chapter and verse,

34:37we're going to Hosea.

34:40Hosea is a prophet, and this is his book.

34:44It's an interesting one.

34:48As I was reading it, and it's not one of,

34:53usually when you and I do a whole book.

34:56- Yeah, it's usually a one chapter book.

34:58- It's a one chapter, maybe two, three chapters.

35:01This one has 14 chapters, so.

35:03- Yes.

35:04- It's a little, and what drives me--

35:06- You're getting the 30,000 foot view.

35:09- Right.

35:10- We're in comfort plus, but we're getting

35:12the 30,000 foot view.

35:14- And what drives me bonkers about it,

35:16and what was so hard for me as I was reading it,

35:19is that it keeps saying the same damn thing over and over.

35:24And over, but it uses a lot of metaphor,

35:29it uses a lot of symbolism,

35:32and it gets, for my money, quite confusing in the process.

35:37So, I don't know, so dive in.

35:39- Well, let's set the stage first.

35:41- Yeah, that's what I was going to say.

35:43- We're in the eighth century,

35:46and this may mean absolutely nothing to many of you.

35:49Maybe you have no framework for thinking about this,

35:52but if we have pre-exilic Israel and post-exilic Israel,

35:56and the exile's in the middle, the exile is sixth century.

36:01- Okay.

36:01- Pre-exilic is everything prior to that.

36:04Seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth,

36:06brings you traditionally to Saul, and David, and Solomon.

36:10- Okay.

36:11- We're not gonna worry about everything after the exile.

36:14This is the eighth century.

36:16The northern kingdom of Israel still exists.

36:18The southern kingdom of Judah is there,

36:21and both of them are thriving.

36:24You have a king in the northern kingdom,

36:26Jeroboam II, who reigns for about 40 years.

36:31You have a king in the southern kingdom of Judah,

36:33named Isaiah, who reigns for about 40 years.

36:37And as a result of the unusually long reigns

36:40of these two kings, there is a lot of prosperity.

36:44There is trade going on, there is building going on,

36:47there is population growth going on,

36:50there is concentration of wealth.

36:53And this is what actually catalyzes

36:57a lot of the prophetic literature

36:59that comes from the eighth century,

37:00Micah, Amos, Isaiah, Hosea.

37:04These are eighth century prophets,

37:06and we've talked about it before.

37:08One of their main problems is with all the wealth

37:12and the prosperity and the suffering of the poor

37:16and the needy, and the afflicted, and the poor.

37:19And Hosea is no exception.

37:22Hosea 6.6 is the famous, I will have mercy

37:26and not sacrifice that Jesus in the gospel of Matthew

37:30quotes twice, tells his challengers,

37:33go and learn what that means.

37:36So Hosea is one of a bunch of prophets

37:41who pop up in the eighth century

37:44right when people are getting really wealthy

37:46to chew them out for social injustices that are going on.

37:51So Hosea is from the Northern Kingdom,

37:54and the Northern Kingdom is gonna be destroyed in 722 BCE.

37:59The Assyrians come in and they take away

38:02the 10 tribes of Israel, and they are assimilated

38:06into Assyria and later Babylon, and they disappear,

38:10and they are functionally gone.

38:12Right, now we believe that remnants of these 10 tribes

38:17were left behind or ran down to the Southern Kingdom.

38:23And so there are fragments of those populations

38:28that became part of the Southern Kingdom of Judah,

38:31but the last 10 tribes of Israel is a reference

38:33to what happens in 722 BCE.

38:36Right.

38:37Hosea is writing between around 750 BCE

38:42and around 720 BCE.

38:44So he's talking about this.

38:47Now, scholars say--

38:48- This is a thing that's happening in real time for Hosea.

38:51- For the, yes, for the prophet Hosea.

38:54Now, scholars are in pretty widespread agreement

38:56that a good chunk of Hosea does go back

39:00to somebody and a poetic prophet

39:04who was writing in the 8th century BCE.

39:07So there is disagreement about exactly how much of it

39:12is from the middle of the 8th century

39:14and how much of it is the end of the 8th century

39:17or into the 7th century, or maybe post-exilic in origin.

39:22Some people think there are some deuteronomistic revisions

39:25going on here and there.

39:26Some people think that the author of Hosea

39:30and the particular ideological school that produced Hosea

39:35might be responsible for the later production

39:39of Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic histories

39:41because of the close relationships between the two.

39:44So we don't have a real clear idea

39:46about what is genuine and what is not,

39:48but most scholars think that probably the majority

39:52of it is genuine.

39:53- Okay, so that's a good thing to note.

39:56- Yes, as so much of this book ends up not being authentic

40:00to what it claims to be.

40:01- Yeah.

40:02(upbeat music)

40:05- So verse one starts off the word of the Lord

40:09that came to Hosea, son of Barry,

40:12in the days of King Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz,

40:15and Hezekiah of Judah.

40:17And in the days of King Jeroboam, son of Joash of Israel.

40:20So we got four kings, his tenure overlaps

40:24with the reigns of four different kings, starting with--

40:26- But Joash said that we had kings with long reigns,

40:29but like I guess, so he's presiding prophet

40:34over all of these, the reigns of all these kings.

40:40- Yeah, so Uzziah is reigning from around 787, 75

40:45to around 747, 35, something like that.

40:49And so Hosea is like the last 15ish years of Uzziah's reign.

40:54Jotham is 15 years, Ahaz is 20 years,

41:00and then Hezekiah is batting clean up there.

41:04So Hosea is mainly toward the beginning of Hezekiah,

41:09but-- - Right.

41:10- And then in the days of King Jeroboam, son of Joash,

41:13he just mentions Jeroboam, which is odd

41:17because he reigns from 790ish to 750ish.

41:22So he's ignoring the northern kingdom for the rest of

41:29the existence of the northern kingdom down to 722

41:32when it gets destroyed.

41:34- And just so that I'm clear, the northern kingdom is Israel

41:38and the southern kingdom is Judah, is that correct?

41:41- That is correct, yes.

41:42Now the northern kingdom, the capital is Samaria,

41:47so that's why, I don't know if you recall

41:49when you read through Hosea,

41:50there was a lot of mention of Samaria,

41:53but Hosea also refers to the northern kingdom is Ephraim?

41:57- Yeah, like there are so many, like, yes,

42:02Ephraim confused the crap out of me,

42:04had to look that one up.

42:05- Yeah.

42:06- And yes, I didn't know that Samaria was a capital city

42:11rather than another kingdom, I wasn't,

42:13I was confused about that.

42:15- Yeah, so it's spoken of as a region, but yeah,

42:19but you know, that's why when you get down

42:22to the New Testament, they're like,

42:23don't go through Samaria, don't go through there.

42:25- But Banny!

42:26- Stay away from there, stay away from Samaria.

42:29- But, and then we get to verse two,

42:31I remember several years ago, I sat down,

42:33I was like, I'm gonna translate the book of Hosea,

42:36and I stopped at verse two.

42:39(laughing)

42:41- You didn't make it very far.

42:42- No, but I had a lot of other things getting in the way,

42:45but here's what the NRSVUE says.

42:47When the Lord first spoke through Hosea,

42:49the Lord said to Hosea, go, take for yourself

42:53a wife of prostitution.

42:57- And have children of prostitution.

42:57- Yeah.

43:00For the land commits great prostitution

43:03by forsaking the Lord.

43:05- So, and I'm just gonna pull up the Hebrew real quick

43:09of Hosea one verse two.

43:14And it, he says, instead of the word of Hosea,

43:18(speaking in foreign language)

43:20take for yourself, (speaking in foreign language)

43:23So, a wife of, and then it's the plural,

43:27prostitution's sex workings.

43:29It's probably an abstract plural,

43:32meaning it's referring to the abstraction.

43:36- Yeah, the idea of prostitution.

43:38- So, it's unclear if the idea is,

43:42marry a woman who's a sex worker,

43:44or marry a woman who is characterized by promiscuity,

43:50or marry a woman who was born of sex work.

43:56Like, there are a variety of different ways

43:58to interpret this, and it's not exactly clear.

44:02- What is going on?

44:03- Well, and also, none of the interpretations,

44:07none of the potential interpretations make it any better.

44:10It's still wildly confusing why the Lord

44:14is saying this to Hosea.

44:15Like, why do you want Hosea?

44:18Basically, it turns out that the Lord is just saying,

44:21"Hey, take this kind of wife

44:24"because it'll be useful for my metaphor."

44:26- Yeah, yeah.

44:27You'll love this, the payoff is great.

44:31But there's also an interesting thing.

44:34It says, "Take for yourself a woman of prostitution

44:38"and children of prostitution."

44:41So, it's not clear that it's saying,

44:43"Have children with this woman, but adopt

44:46"the children that have been born to this woman

44:49"as an outcome of her sex work."

44:53Like, it's unclear what's going on here.

44:56Not the kind of thing that you would expect

44:58from a prophet in our day and age,

45:01or unless,

45:06maybe for some Christian nationalist,

45:08this is exactly the kind of thing you would expect.

45:11- Hegseth or something coming in strong

45:14with something weird.

45:15I would say, one of the things that's really interesting

45:19for me, I'm glad that you mentioned

45:20trying to translate this,

45:22because one of the ways that I sometimes

45:26explore a biblical text for this show

45:29is that I listen to a recording of someone

45:32who has done a recording of the Bible,

45:36but nobody's done that for the NRSVUE.

45:41So, they're usually reading out of the King James version.

45:44So, I'm listening to the King James version

45:46while I'm following along with the NRSVUE,

45:49just to sort of, you know,

45:50that way I can see the differences and whatever.

45:52And I'll tell you what, Hosea frequently,

45:54it's just like, that, those translation differences

45:57are off the rails.

45:59- Yeah.

46:00- It is so hard to follow.

46:01It is like, I have to pause and go,

46:03wait, what did he just say?

46:05What does this say?

46:06So, yeah, like the King James version of verse two says,

46:11in the beginning of the word of the Lord by Hosea,

46:15or the beginning of the word of the Lord by Hosea,

46:17and the Lord said to Hosea,

46:19"Go take unto thee a wife of hoardoms

46:22"and children of hoardoms,

46:24"for the land hath committed great hoardom,

46:27"departing from the Lord."

46:29- Yeah.

46:30- Right.

46:31- And it's such an odd thing to do,

46:34'cause it seems like the...

46:36I'm imagining Hosea being like, "Uh-huh, uh-huh."

46:41Okay.

46:43Yeah.

46:44Couldn't I just write down that I did this?

46:48- Since it seems like the impact is in other people

46:48- Right.

46:52finding out about it.

46:54- Right.

46:55- And so I could just write down that I did this.

46:57God's like, "No, you have to go do it."

46:59- You have to actually do it.

47:00- I don't think you're understanding me.

47:02It doesn't seem meaningful until I tell other people about it,

47:07and I could just tell them about it.

47:10(laughing)

47:12Like, you really want me to do this,

47:16and then just write down that I did it,

47:18and then publish that.

47:20- You and I need to write a biblical sitcom.

47:22I don't know why we had that's not on our plate yet.

47:25We're gonna crowdfund that eventually.

47:28- Yeah, so he went and he took Gomer,

47:32daughter of DeBlime,

47:35and she conceived and bore him a son.

47:37So this makes it sound like,

47:40no, the Texas saying have children

47:43of sex workings,

47:46promiscuity,

47:47prostitution's, hoardums, whatever,

47:49and whether this means because that was her profession,

47:54or maybe it means this is going to characterize them,

47:58maybe they're going to grow up to engage.

48:02The son is going to engage in sex work.

48:05I don't know.

48:06But I mean, it seems reasonable to just say that,

48:11because their mother was a sex worker,

48:16they are the children of sex workers,

48:18and there's a stigma that just sort of follows them

48:21because of that or something.

48:22- Maybe.

48:23You would think that since he's the one,

48:25he's the one who is the father, that that would,

48:29doesn't his profit hood kind of cover a multitude of sex work?

48:34But I don't know.

48:37And the Lord said to him, name him Jezreel.

48:40And that's the valley in the northern kingdom of Israel

48:43that is very prominent.

48:45That's where they got a lot of their wealth from.

48:48- Oh, okay.

48:49- For a little while, that's one of the agriculturally,

48:53that's one of the richest areas in all of Israel,

48:56is the Jezreel Valley.

48:57- Okay.

48:58- For a little while, I will punish the house of Jehu

49:01for the blood of Jezreel,

49:02and I will put an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel.

49:05On that day, I will break the bow of Israel

49:07in the valley of Jezreel.

49:09And we have talked about Jehu

49:12getting slain in the northern kingdom.

49:21Anyway, she conceived again and bore a daughter.

49:24Then the Lord said to him, name her lo ruchama,

49:28which means there is no mercy

49:33or there is no compassion or something like that.

49:38So this is where the Cobra Kai

49:40get their motto from, mercies for the weak.

49:45For I will no longer have pity on the house of Israel

49:49or forgive them, but I will have pity on the house of Judah

49:54and I will save them by the Lord their God.

49:56I will not say them by bow or by sword or by war

49:59or by horses or by horsemen.

50:01When she had weaned lo ruchama,

50:03she conceived and bore a son,

50:04then the Lord said, name him lo ami,

50:07which means not my people.

50:10For you are not my people and I am not your God.

50:14So rough names for these kids to grow up.

50:18- That's right, not only rough names,

50:20but like that's some rough stuff that God is pronouncing.

50:24- Yeah.

50:24- You said that Jose, wait,

50:26Jose is an Israelite or a Judahite?

50:30- Probably from the northern kingdom of Israel.

50:32Probably in Israel.

50:33- Okay, so God is saying to a guy from Israel.

50:36- Yeah.

50:37- Screw Israel, Israel sucks.

50:39I'm not gonna save Israel.

50:40I'm gonna save Judah, but Israel's going down.

50:44- Yeah.

50:45- That's rough.

50:46- Yeah.

50:47- It's not great.

50:49And yeah, to be like, name your kid,

50:53name your kid, your nation is going to be destroyed.

50:58- Yeah, name your kid, Israel sucks.

51:00And just have him walk around with that

51:03and let people ask questions.

51:05- And it goes on like that.

51:09There's chapter two, I think is,

51:12it's overwhelmingly poetry.

51:15Chapter one is some narrative,

51:17but chapter two is when we get into the poetry

51:19and that's where things get really interesting.

51:22But I think, where is it?

51:26I think it's verse 16.

51:27- Yeah.

51:2816, we have the poetry and then we get into more names.

51:33The poetry is all about ball.

51:34- Right.

51:36- This is one of the main things.

51:37The point of this is Israel is God's wife,

51:40Israel is worshiping other gods

51:43and that is metabolized as adultery.

51:48- Right.

51:49- So this is what is going on with Hosea and Gomer,

51:51that, you know, wife of prostitution or sex workings

51:55and that's what's going on between God and Israel.

51:58And ball is kind of the main antagonist

52:03in all of this poetry.

52:05- Yeah.

52:06- And then verse 16 says, on that day says the Lord,

52:09you will call me and then NRSVUE says my husband,

52:14Ishii is how it reads in Hebrew.

52:17And no longer will you call me Bali, which means my ball.

52:22Now this is a play on words

52:24because the Hebrew word ball can mean husband.

52:28- Okay.

52:29- It means it can mean lord, master, husband.

52:33Don't read into any of that or read into it.

52:37- Yes, the husband was the lord or master,

52:40but Bali was probably a title that could be used to refer

52:45to Adonai the God of Israel

52:48'cause it would mean my master.

52:50- And so when we look in Samuel and Kings and things like that,

52:50- Right.

52:54one of Saul's sons is named Ashball,

52:57which would mean man of ball or man of the lord or master.

53:02It could be a title for the God of Israel.

53:06- It all gets very confusing.

53:07Can I just say name your God's a name rather than a title

53:12because otherwise it just becomes a weird thing.

53:16- Yeah, so this play on words is saying,

53:21don't call me that anymore

53:23'cause that reminds me of Sancho over there.

53:28And says, "Instead, call me my husband."

53:31And then verse 17, "For I will remove the name

53:33"of the balls from her mouth and they shall."

53:38- You know, let me tell you something.

53:39I read that and I was hoping we would pass over it

53:43so that I didn't have to giggle at it.

53:46I mean, removing balls from your mouth is--

53:48- Yes, the names of the balls.

53:51- The names of the balls.

53:52- Thunder and lightning.

53:53- Donner and Blitzen.

53:58- All right, if the left one don't get you,

54:00then the right one will.

54:04- Oh my gosh, we have descended, my friends.

54:08- 16, 10.

54:09- Oh, and they shall be mentioned by name no more.

54:14So we're still dealing with that.

54:17- I'm confused about the plurality

54:19of the names of the balls.

54:21- Yes, this is something that's interesting

54:23that you find it in judges, you find it in Jose,

54:26you find it in a couple of places where you have the balls

54:30and the Asheras, and there are a couple different ways

54:35this could be interpreted.

54:36One way is to understand each individual ball or Ashera

54:41to mean the local manifestation.

54:43Kind of like you have the Virgin of Guadalupe

54:45and you have the Virgin of this other place over here

54:48and you have the Virgin of this other place over here.

54:50And that's supposed to reflect the fact

54:53that there was a manifestation of the Virgin

54:56in a specific way to respond to a specific need

54:59and you have that in the ancient West Asian,

55:04kind of ritual landscape.

55:10And there's a book called The Splinter Divine,

55:14which tries to talk about how you have

55:17these different manifestations of deities

55:19in a bunch of different places.

55:20So that could be an explanation.

55:22Another explanation is that the word ball

55:24had become lexicalized as a kind of generic reference

55:29to a foreign deity.

55:31So the balls just means all those foreign deities.

55:35The lords, the masters, the gods of all of the lands.

55:39And Asheras would mean the female deities

55:43of all these lands, and they're both being associated

55:45with fertility deities and rituals and things like that,

55:50because that's one of the ways that you can make them sound

55:55as gross as possible.

55:57They're the naughty, dirty ones.

55:59- Yes, 'cause if you need something to be dirty,

56:01then it's about sex.

56:03And that's why Mary Magdalene became a sex worker

56:06is because she was inaccurately conflated

56:10with a woman, a sinful woman in another chapter in Luke.

56:15And then Pope Gregory the Great was like,

56:18well, she's hugely sinful.

56:21What does that mean?

56:22Well, that means she was a sex worker.

56:24- Obviously, so then Mary Magdalene became a sex worker.

56:28But so yeah, there's a lot of fertility stuff

56:33being attributed to the balls and the Asheras,

56:37which probably wasn't accurate.

56:38But we basically get two different kinds of promises here.

56:43God is using this metaphor to say, I'm gonna punish my wife,

56:55and there are all these accusations

56:59about how the wife has been unfaithful in all this.

57:01- And again, the wife is Israel in this metaphor.

57:04- Yes, yes.

57:05In another part of the story, the son is Israel

57:10in the metaphor, so it gets complicated.

57:12- It keeps throwing itself around.

57:14It is hard to follow.

57:15I gotta say, like, if you're reading it,

57:19just like so much of the Bible, as you read it,

57:23you can either do the glaze over

57:25and just get through it sort of reading.

57:28- Yeah.

57:28- And just hope you get something out of it

57:31that's meaningful to you,

57:32or you can really buckle down and try to understand it,

57:36and that is a chore.

57:38- Yeah, good luck.

57:39Godspeed.

57:40But there's, and mainly when you look through

57:45all the poetry and all the metaphors,

57:47Jose is basically representing God as saying,

57:49"Look, you hurt me, you cut me deep."

57:54And I kinda wanna end things,

57:58but I love you too much.

58:00So I'm going to ultimately restore our relationship.

58:05And there are folks who divide,

58:09divide Jose into three segments,

58:10chapters one through three, four through 11,

58:13and then 12 through 14.

58:15And the second and third segments,

58:18they kinda focus on a bunch of accusations,

58:20and then end with a promise of restoration.

58:25And then chapter 14 ends with the call to repentance

58:29and a promise of restoration.

58:33So a promise of restoration, but not before.

58:37- I'm gonna really mess you up.

58:39- Yeah, yeah.

58:40Like there's this whole like, yes, you cheated on me,

58:44you're awful, you went and got your barley

58:47and your wine from another dude.

58:50And I'm pissed off about it.

58:52And I'm gonna wreck ya.

58:54- You beat some other dude's wheat in his threshing floor.

58:59- And then maybe I'll let you back in.

59:04- Yeah.

59:05- It doesn't sound, I'm just gonna say it.

59:07It doesn't sound like a healthy marriage.

59:08- No, no, it's an abusive marriage

59:12where God has all the control

59:16and is a jealous, spiteful master or lord or husband.

59:21Yeah, so, but, and you know, it gets worse

59:27and you go to Jeremiah or the book of Revelation.

59:31- Right.

59:32- Where then you've got a bunch of like,

59:36shaming and sexual abuse and stuff like that.

59:39That is going on as a result of the infidelity

59:43of the metaphorical wife.

59:46- Yeah, so it can get worse,

59:50but yeah, that's the main thrust of the metaphor in Hosea

59:55that Israel has been an unfaithful wife.

59:58God is torn, but ultimately God's love for Israel

60:02is going to win out in the end.

60:05And so, even though there's going to be

60:07the destruction of the northern kingdom of Israel,

60:09even though there's going to be the Babylonian exile,

60:13ultimately there will be restoration.

60:15And this brings up an issue that people have been wrestling

60:19with since the Babylonian exile is,

60:23when is the restoration actually happening?

60:25When, you know, people have been reading Hosea ever since

60:29and Christians who read Hosea today

60:33are still looking forward to this restoration

60:36and they're appropriating it for themselves.

60:39You know, the followers of Jesus are now Israel.

60:43There's that supersessionism.

60:46But, and when you look through all the prophecies

60:49about restoration and even later texts that are like,

60:53we almost got there, but not quite.

60:55But it's coming, it's right around the corner.

60:57You know, Daniel thinks it's going to happen

61:00in the mid-160s BC.

61:01- Any minute now.

61:02- Yeah, and it doesn't happen.

61:04And the book of Revelation thinks,

61:06oh, any minute now it's going to happen.

61:07And it doesn't happen.

61:092,000 years down the road.

61:10Any minute now it's going to happen.

61:11Oh, we got China, we got Russia and we got Turkey

61:16and they're going to surround Israel

61:17and that's going to be the second coming.

61:18Oh, it's going to happen on September 23rd.

61:21Oh, it's going to happen.

61:22No, it was September 25th.

61:23No, actually it's going to be in October.

61:25- Right.

61:26- Yeah, the restoration never seems to happen

61:30the way it is, it is prophesied.

61:33So this is something that,

61:34that people are continuously looking forward to.

61:38And this is why I think we've talked about this before.

61:42Maybe we haven't focused on it,

61:44but the Christian Old Testament ends with Malachi

61:49because it's the great and the terrible day of the Lord comes.

61:52He will turn the hearts of the parents of the children

61:54and the hearts of the children of the parents

61:55so that I will not come and strike the land with a curse.

61:58And yeah, I will send you the prophet Elijah.

62:00And this is a convenient segue

62:03into the gospel of Matthew introducing Jesus

62:05as the fulfillment of all this stuff.

62:08But if you go into the Jewish Bible,

62:13it ends at the end of 2nd Chronicles 36.

62:19Thus says, King Cyrus of Persia, the Lord, the God of heaven

62:23has given me all the kingdoms of the earth

62:25and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem,

62:27which is in Judah.

62:28Let any of those among you who are of his people

62:31may the Lord their God be with them go up.

62:34So this is the realization of restoration,

62:39not the final one, but it is the Jewish arrangement

62:44of Hebrew Bible text ends with this,

62:47I think intentionally in order to close the book

62:51on a partial fulfillment and an expectation of return

62:56and restoration in the future,

62:58which is ultimately what Hosea is looking forward to.

63:04And unfortunately, Gomer and Lo Rukhama and Lo Ami

63:09and Jezreal never got to see it.

63:12But hopefully they were not teased too maliciously.

63:15- I mean, I think that the, I like the idea

63:18of restoration being the takeaway.

63:23Even if it never actually happens,

63:26it's just a nicer takeaway.

63:28The reason that you and I,

63:29I'm just gonna spill this really quickly

63:31and then we'll close it up.

63:33But the reason that you and I are actually doing

63:35a Hosea episode is because we had a patron right into us

63:40who had said that he had gone to,

63:45he or she had gone to a some sort of evangelical meeting

63:50that he had been invited to in college,

63:58he or she had been invited to in college.

64:01And they went to the church

64:05and basically got a, he got harangued when they got there

64:10by this reading of Hosea

64:16that compared everyone in the room to whores.

64:19So I feel like there's one,

64:21there are different potential takeaways here

64:24and it does make sense that someone's takeaway from Hosea

64:28would be about prostitution because Hosea was obsessed

64:33with sex workers.

64:35Yeah, yeah, you couldn't shake a stick at Hosea

64:40without him calling somebody a whore.

64:42He's the little old lady around the board table

64:47in Tommy Boy who goes,

64:49and that's when the horrors come in.

64:51(laughing)

64:53And David's bed, he goes, kind of like her idea.

64:55(laughing)

64:57The very last verse of Hosea, 14, nine,

65:00very famous verse.

65:02A lot of scholars think this is actually written

65:04by the people who collected and published Hosea's writings

65:08rather than by Hosea himself.

65:10And it says, those who are wise understand these things,

65:13those who are discerning know them

65:15for the ways of the Lord are right

65:17and the upright walk in them,

65:18but transgressors stumble in them.

65:21So it does end with a, you know,

65:26choose the right kind of.

65:28Walk upright, don't stumble.

65:31Yeah, but yeah, well, you can focus,

65:35it is easy to get lost in the sauce of fornications

65:39and sex workings and zenunim.

65:44But I think the point there is really,

65:47Hosea is trying to say, you are such disgusting people,

65:53but God loves you so much that God is going

65:57to bring you back into the fold eventually.

66:00Once you get your crap together,

66:03just get it together, put it in a backpack.

66:08Turns out that it is not within human nature

66:11to ever actually get it together.

66:14So, alas, we'll be waiting on that restoration

66:18for a long, a good long while.

66:20Yeah, he needed to adopt the eternal perspective.

66:24(laughing)

66:26The getting together will only be gotten together

66:30in the great beyond when you're getting together.

66:33Yes, once we have shuffled off this mortal coil

66:35and we will get all the coils together.

66:38(laughing)

66:41All right friends, well, there you go,

66:43there's your Hosea for the day.

66:45Go out there and commit some adultery if you want to.

66:51We're not fans of it, but far be it from us

66:55to prohibit anybody there.

66:57Yeah, we're not moralizing here.

66:59That's not our job.

67:00All right, thank you so much for joining us.

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67:29That's bonus weekly content.

67:31Thanks so much to Roger Goudy for editing the show.

67:35We'll talk to you again next week.

67:37Bye everybody.

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