Hey everybody, I'm Matt. This is the Ten Minute Bible Hour Podcast, and I am faced with a conundrum at the front end of our conversation today. And that conundrum is how do you go on the internet and figure out what the most socially acceptable, least offensive term is at any current time for a woman of the night, a woman who participates in the oldest of professions. I'm gonna go, I think, with prostitute, because seems like that one's pretty timeless and pretty clinical. At any given time, there's a lot of different words for a woman who finds herself in this situation. And indeed, when we turn to the Bible book of Hosea, we've got a lady on screen who is in exactly that kind of spot. This lady's name is Gomer. Yeah, I know. That's that's her name. I maybe it was like a real hot trendy name back then, like when all the girls were named Brittany or whatever in the mid-1990s, or Emily spelled E-M-I-L-I-E-G-H in the early 2000s, or Emma or Ella in the mid to late 2000s and early 20 teens. I don't know. There's always like, you know, real cute trendy names. It's hard for me to imagine that Gomer was ever on that list, but maybe it was. So there's this lady, and her name's Gomer. We're just gonna roll with it. And she plays a very strange role in the very strange Old Testament prophetic book of Hosea. How are we getting to Hosea in the middle of a season on Galatians? Well, in Galatians chapter 3, verse 13, what am I doing? It's Hebrews. It's not Galatians at all. This is your first time doing a Bible podcast, Whitman. Pull it together. Galatians 3 13. Paul says, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law. Hosea is a book about redemption. And in particular, the object of redemption is this lady named Gomer, who, for all intents and purposes, is a prostitute. Now, Hosea is a prophet to the northern kingdom of Israel, as we discussed yesterday. He was prophesying right around the time of the ultimate collapse, the ultimate fall of the northern kingdom of Israel. And with Hosea, God chooses to employ a method that he's used a few other times with prophets and will use a few other times with prophets in the Old Testament, where the story of their life or their almost public prophetic performance art is part of their story. It's part of communicating their message, it's part of sending the image. I mean, at other times God's got a prophet in the Old Testament roasting poop over a fire. I'm not kidding. Stuff like this happens, but it's all meant to illustrate a point. Well, in the book of Hosea, which is a book about judgment and redemption, it opens like this The word of the Lord that came to Hosea, the son of Beari, I've never tried to say that out loud, I don't think. B-E-E-R-I, during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and during the reign of Jeroboam, son of Jehoash, king of Israel. Jeroboam, not a lot of fun. When the Lord began to speak through Hosea, the Lord said to him, Quote, Go take to yourself an adulterous wife and children of unfaithfulness, because the land is guilty of the vilest adultery in departing from the Lord. Huh. I'm guessing his heart sank in that moment. I mean, every good young Christian man is kind of hoping that God will give him a faithful wife. It's one of the greatest blessings that a man could ever experience, and yet here Hosea is faithful to the Lord, and he gets this message. Verse three So Hosea married Gomer, daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son. Also, what a bummer for Gomer here to have the word of the Lord come to Hosea and be like, Hosea, Israel has whored itself. So I need you to go find a woman who's just like that. And then Hosea's like, Bummer, but all right, let's see here. Gomer, you'll be perfect. So he goes and he obeys God. They get married, and she has kids. Then the Lord said to Hosea, Call this son Jezreel, because I will soon punish the house of Jehu for the massacre at Jezreel, and I will put an end to the kingdom of Israel. In that day I will break Israel's bow in the valley of Jezreel. Oh, okay, remember yesterday you were talking about the flower pot that got knocked off at things, and it's got to be redeemed. I mean, this is uh pretty bad breakage here. This is a mess, very bad things have happened. Gomer conceived again and gave birth to a daughter. Then the Lord said to Hosea, Call her Lo Ruhama, for I will no longer show love to the house of Israel, that I should at all forgive them. Yet I will show love to the house of Judah, and I will save them, not by the bow, sword, or battle, or by horses or horsemen, but by the Lord their God. Just a quick interjection here, reminder, this is this guy's life. By all appearances, this is actually happening to him. They're having these kids together. It doesn't look like he's having a fun marriage at all. And even the fun part where you get to pick a name for your kid, where it's like, we're gonna call him Tristan Lightning or whatever. I don't know, you brainstorm cool stuff, and then ultimately you end on something real simple like Matt or John or Josh or something, which is fine too. They don't even get to do that. God's telling them what names, and all the names are lousy. Verse 8 After she had weaned Lo Ruhama, Gomer had another son. Then the Lord said, Call him Loamai, for you are not my people, and I am not your God. If you haven't figured it out, all of the names here in the original language mean the thing that then the text goes on to explain. Quote, yet the Israelites will be like the sand on the seashore, which cannot be measured or counted in the place where it is said to them, You are not my people, they will be called sons of the living God. The people of Judah and the people of Israel will be reunited, and they will appoint one leader and will come up out of the land, for great will be the day of Jezreel. Okay, because we're working on Galatians, and this takes us down a whole very different path of prophecy and fulfillment and all of that. I'm not gonna try to unpack or speculate about exactly how this redemption is going to work, exactly who carries through the lineage here. I mean, a couple verses ago it looks like God is saying it's gonna come through Judah, yet I will show love to the house of Judah. But it looks like somehow there's redemption for the northern kingdom, somehow, at some point as well. That's a conversation for another day. The bottom line is we get done with chapter one, and we see there's this faithful man, Hosea, living in a very unfaithful kingdom where horrible atrocities have happened under horrible leadership in opposition to the clear commands of God, and God decides we're gonna do some performance art, and it is going to happen with your actual life, Hosea. Go marry this unfaithful woman named Gomer and have kids. And with each kid, I mean, remember, I mean, this is what, even if they're Irish twins, is that offensive? Can you say Irish twins? I don't actually know if that's offensive. I guess we're just gonna leave that in there. Even if they're Irish twins born within 12 months of each other, this is still at minimum three years of this dude's life with all of the joy of having the next kid coming down the pike, and then it's capped with this name and this thing. This is a really rough deal. And all of it, I mean, this holy man of God, his whole life and his whole household and his offspring are all a giant metaphor for the faithlessness of the people of God. Jose is a very long-suffering man and he's got a legit mess on his hands. The metaphorical flower pot has been firmly knocked off the porch and is firmly a giant heap of ugly mess knocked down there on the ground. Well, then in chapter two, it tells the story of Gomer, more or less voluntarily, adulterying so hard that she gets stuck in maybe the bleakest kind of physical slavery in the household of somebody else. She's utterly faithless to Hosea and not really a victim in all of this either. She went looking for trouble. But then chapter three, which is a very short chapter and is more or less the end of the narrative part of the book of Hosea, it reads like this after all the calamity of chapter two. The Lord said to me, Quote, go show love to your wife again, though she is loved by another and is an adulteress, love her as the Lord loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin cakes. There's a whole history to that as well. It's a pagan thing. So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and about a homer and a letheck of barley. Dude has to go buy back his own unfaithful wife with his own money and his own resources. That's where the redemption thing comes in. It wasn't free to fix what had happened. Labor would have to be expended to make the broken pot beautiful again. And the only one who's in a position to do it here is Hosea. So again, Hosea is going to pay to fix the thing he didn't break. He's going to pay to buy back his own wife who sold herself to slavery with another. Hosea three, three, this is Hosea talking. Then I told her, You're to live with me many days. You must not be a prostitute or be intimate with any man, and I will live with you. For the Israelites will live many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred stones, without ephod or idol. Afterwards the Israelites will return and seek the Lord their God and David their king, they will come trembling to the Lord and to his blessings in the last days. Again, there's a ton more to unpack there about exactly what that timeline looks like. But simply put, here at the end of all things for the northern kingdom of Israel, it looks like God's judgment is sure in the moment, but there is still some sort of redemption to be had. And the story of Hosea, an ugly, ugly, brutal story, paints that picture of redemption. That redemption story isn't terribly compelling or interesting if there isn't something really ugly and broken that needs to be redeemed. And the story does a great job of giving us something really ugly and broken, a horrible situation that needs to be redeemed. So look, when Paul is bringing up the word redemption in Galatians chapter three, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law. God buying back the lost at his own expense. The Good Shepherd exerting his effort to go and find the sheep who wandered because of their own dumbness. This isn't some new concept that is being introduced in the New Testament. Here Paul is tapping into something very, very old that is absolutely central to the whole story of God's plan for the whole Bible and all of history, which is at its heart a redemptive plan. More on this, Munana. I'm Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.