And this is the Bamel podcast with Marty Sullivan. I'm his co-host, Brent Bellings.

Today we examine the message of Hosea, as depicted in the prophetic theater of his own

life through his marriage to the prostitute, Gomer.

Yeah. We continue through our look at the pre-Assyrian prophets. We had in our last podcast

with Amos. And we got one more to which audience, Brent to Israel.

To Israel. That's right. You got two more that are going to be to Judah in the pre-Assyrian

time period. But Amos and Hosea are two prophets that are speaking to the Northern Kingdom

of Israel. Now, in the last podcast, we talked about how every prophet seemed to have a

what Brent, an image, an image, a picture that drives their prophecy. For Amos, what was

it? It was the plum line. Plum line. Extra credit. Can you remember the second one?

Nope. I was looking at something about plum line. When you were talking about that, so I

wasn't really listening. It was looking for pictures. Yeah. Right fruit is the other image

that comes up there. But plum line is Amos's image. And Hosea had, I think I said in

the last podcast, sometimes these images were just a literary device that the prophet

would use to paint a picture. And sometimes these images were like real life theater. And

Hosea had prophetic theater in his life. God gave him the task. It just depends on how you

read it. Like how did this really go? Did God really tell him he had to marry a prostitute?

Did Hosea fall in love with a prostitute? How did this all work? Did he get the idea?

We don't necessarily know. But as the prophecy tells it, God instructs Hosea to go marry

a prostitute named Gomer. So that's how the prophecy begins. We have 14 chapters here

in Hosea. The first three tell the story. There's a backstory to Hosea that sets up the stage

for the rest of the prophecy throughout the rest of the book. So chapter one here, and

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