Next week in Sunday School, we’re going to talk about the book of Hosea. Hosea is, in a lot of ways, almost a polar opposite of what we discussed in Job: it’s expressly covenantal, and it attributes punishment to bad behavior.
Hosea is the first of the twelve minor prophets in the Hebrew Bible. Note that “minor prophet” doesn’t mean less important--it just means that they’re short books, especially in comparison with the three major prophets, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Jeremiah.
The book of Hosea is tough, though. Like really tough. Partly, that’s because of familiarity issues--if you’re anything like I was a week ago, you’ve never read Hosea. But it’s also because of genre and style (a prophetic book, with a mix of prose and poetry), context (probably the decades following the Assyrian conquest of the Northern Kingdom), and weirdly literalized metaphor. Moreover, we have legal language here, and some relatively misogynistic language and images.
With all that, though, Hosea is fascinating, interesting, and valuable. And next Sunday, I’d love for us to dig Hosea and see what value we can pull out of it. To do that, it would be great if you could read for it. The whole book is only 14 chapters long, but those chapters are fierce and bear extended concentration and rereading. If you’re not up for reading all 14, it would be great if you could read at least chapters 1-3 and 4:1-3. Again, I recommend a good study Bible, but if you don’t have half a dozen of those hanging around, the NET Bible is also a great place to have at it.
Again, Sunday, feel free to ask any questions you have about Hosea, but also don’t hesitate to ask them in advance here.
I’m looking forward to talking about Hosea on Sunday!
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