Today is the fifth day of December. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I'm Brian. It's going to be here with you today.

Grab a little sip of coffee and off we go a new day another step forward and we concluded the

book of Daniel yesterday so we have some new territory to move in

the prophetic book of Josea and that brings us into the final grouping of books that we will encounter in the Old Testament and they're known as the minor prophets and there are 12 books in this grouping of the minor prophets they begin with

Jose and they end with the last book of the Old Testament Malachai so we don't

have that many more days left so we moving through these pretty quick as we push toward the end of the

year. Hosea probably lived in the 8th century BC. He probably saw the the

northern kingdom of Israel be destroyed by the Assyrian invasion,

and the Northern Kingdom was his homeland.

And there are many biblical scholars that believe that these prophecies from the Northern Kingdom were collected together in the Southern Kingdom of Judah after the Assyrians destroyed Israel.

One of the themes that we'll see in

Josea is this theme of marriage.

And we find this used often in the Bible

to represent God's love and commitment and faithfulness with his people and also his people's

betrayal and adultery against him when they were in covenant with him.

There's not any place in the Bible

that this is more vividly captured.

And the marriage covenant is the right metaphor because we've been watching God's people

chasing other gods and committing spiritual adultery since we started the Bible

practically and so when we place it in the context of marriage, God's reaction to the

betrayal, to the adultery, to the cheating of his people is understandable.

We'll see it in the language.

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