Skip This One (Transcript)
Chris Sims: "For I am like a lion to Ephraim, and like a young lion to the house of Judah. Yes, I will tear them to pieces and depart. I will carry them off, and no one can rescue them." The B of Hosea, chapter 5, verse 14.
Hello, friends and neighbors, and welcome to Apocrypals. This is the podcast where two non-believers read through the Bible, but we try not to be jerks about it, and we are your hosts. My name is Chris Sims. With me, as always, is Benito Cereno. Benito, Merry Christmas, how are you?
Benito Cereno: Hey, Chris, Merry Christmas also to you.
C: That's what you say at the end of the show, so like, we're done. All right, bye, buddy.
B: All right, it's been good living with you. Aha, it's been good.
C: Jeepers.
B: That's a different book. That's a different Book of Bible episode that will have that song.
C: I was thinking we might have to request this entire bit to be cut out. It's a rocky way to start this show.
B: It sure is.
C: With my bad bit and then this? I think I need everybody to hear that deep cut that you just stabbed into my brain.
B: We're doing the show. I don't know when this episode's gonna come out. Sometime within November or December or something. We got another one that we've recorded that hasn't even come out yet because we're trying to bank some to make up for the episode deficit. The "epicit"?
C: The season break. The planned season break. The planned totally acceptable season break.
B: Yeah, the fully normal, everyone knows how it is, seasonal break. But anyway, yeah, so we've kind of been trying to bank some episodes, but then spacing out there released. So who knows when this will hit, but I assume probably late November, early December. If it's early December, I might be in Europe when people hear this. That would be fun.
C: You're planning on going back to Germany?
B: Yeah, hitting Germany, but also Austria, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, very briefly, and France.
C: All my podcast co-hosts going to Europe.
B: Yeah.
C: I'm here in Minneapolis.
B: Yeah. Matt from War Rocket Ajax and also my co-host on Friends to the End has been in Italy or is still in Italy, I think, as of this recording. I think he's been having a good old time. He went to the Vatican. I told him he had to go to the Vatican and he did go. So whew are, you know, the Vatican Museum specifically. So, I'm glad he did because, boy, I think he would not have considered unless, except for my pro tip recommendation that he go see the Sistine Chapel, I'm not sure he would have. So, I don't know if you would have known about that deep travel cut, but your boy, Benito, was looking out and said, "You know what you should do? Go see that painted ceiling."
C: Now, what is this? I haven't heard of it.
B: Yeah, so the Vatican, you see, is a hill in the trans-Tibertine area of Rome. And there, they set up a pretty big church. And that church has a museum. And in that museum, there is a chapel. And that chapel was painted by one of the Ninja Turtles. And it's pretty fancy.
C: I'm just in Minneapolis. It's going to snow.
B: Yeah.
C: By the time you are listening to this, it will have snowed again.
B: You've had snow already, right?
C: October 13th.
B: October 13th, wow. Alright. We have not had snow. It is probably... Oh, I can actually look it. It's 56 degrees and sunny.
C: 39. Right here.
B: Weather report. Snuck it in.
C: This is the worst! This is the worst! Why can we not start the show right?
B: I don't know. I don't know.
C: I was like, hey, we don't have a whole lot to talk about, but you know, we're friends. People like listening to us talk. That was a bad idea. That was a terrible idea. What are we reading, Benito?
B: Hey, we're reading the book of Hosea because we're trying to bank some episodes or doing a couple of shorter things and I said, well, let's do a minor prophet and so we're covering Hosea, the first of the minor prophets.
C: But did I say it wrong at the top of the show?
B: You said Jose, which is fine. That's what I thought it was when I was a kid. I thought it was the same name. And in fact, when I saw JOS-
C: Oh, you said it like a child. It's okay. Put that in the recording for everyone to hear forever. You said it like a baby.
B: When I saw the name Jose, like, you know, the Spanish language name Jose, J-O-S-E. When I saw that as a kid, I was like, that's not how it's spelled. I know from the Bible. It's H-O-S-E-A. But apparently some people say Hosea. I have never heard that in my life, but that is listed as a pronunciation on Wikipedia.
C: It's weird that they didn't credit this with his last name.
B: Which is?
C: Which is Can You See?
B: It's what?
C: Can You See?
B: Oh, oh, buddy. Oh. Wow. I was gonna say Feliciano, but...
C: No, that's- you're thinking of the Book of Luke.
B: Yeah, yeah.
C: I might just call this episode Skip This One.
B: Just- Just-
C: Like, we should do it, we should continue to do it. I've got some good jokes written about it, but maybe this episode 108: Skip This One.
B: Episode 108, give this one a miss.
C: Yeah. Episode 108, it is morning time. I hope everyone is loving this content. Book of Hosea, first of the 12 Minor Prophets. Why is he first? I don't know. The 12 Minor Prophets are ranged roughly chronologically. He's not the earliest. Amos is definitely earlier. Obadiah might be earlier. But there he is, Hosea, and his wife Gomer.
C: And his wife, Gomer, who he did not have some kind things to say about.
B: No, true.
C: To lead off his biblical prophecy.
B: Yeah.
C: Here's what I wrote down about the book of Hosea, which: Hosea. Hey there Lucas, if you could cut that in back at the beginning so I don't sound like a foolish baby child, that would be great. I would appreciate that. Thank you.
I wrote down that this is the book of Hosea or one standard length of biblical prophecy.
B: Yeah.
C: Cause it does feel a bit like those things where it's like, we made a neural network, read Isaiah and Jeremiah, and then write 12 pages. A lot of this, A, it's a short book in general. B, a lot of it is like pretty similar ground. Folks, you're never going to believe what has happened to Israel. You're not going to believe it. No one could have seen this coming.
B: Now that we've read through the book of Kings, right? Like people fully know what is going to to happen to the northern and Southern Kingdoms. It's not great. And now you understand the entire genre of prophetic literature. It is about the falling of the northern and then the Southern Kingdom. Of course, we've already covered that because we've done all the major prophets at this point. So, you know, the earlier layers of Isaiah are all about the Assyrian conquest of the Northern Kingdom. The later parts are about the Babylonian conquest of the Southern Kingdom. Jeremiah is about Babylonian conquest of Judah. Here we've got from the Minor Prophets, we've got Hosea and Amos and Obadiah and Micah, which we've already covered on the show. Those are all Northern Kingdom books. And then the later ones in the Minor Prophets like Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, those are either leading up to or following the Babylonian exile. So it's like, those are the two major events that prophecies are about. Basically, they're like, "We hecked up, now these large empires are coming to conquer us. And it's all because we've been kissing calves, it turns out.
C: Yep.
B: I mean, that's it. You've learned it. You figured out what the... You, the listener. I don't mean you individually, Chris, but you, the listener, you've done it. You've cracked the Da Vinci Code of prophetic literature. But the thing that I think, in my opinion, that makes Hosea stand out is those weird first three chapters where, you know, we see like God makes the prophets do weird stuff, right? Ezekiel, God made him eat poop bread and cut off his hair and throw it into the wind, that kind of stuff. He made Isaiah have babies and give them symbolic names. So, the thing that really makes Hosea stand out is that God is like, "I need you to marry a woman who is not gonna be faithful to you. Let her have some other man's children. And that is a metaphor." And once you get past that, yeah, definitely it feels like standard length of prophecy kind of stuff.
I mean, I guess I might as well talk a little bit about the background as much as there is, right? As long as we're on this train of thought. Hosea is listed first among the Minor Prophets, which in the Tanakh, in the Jewish Bible, the 12 Minor Prophets are all collected together in one book called the Book of the Twelve. Hosea is the first of those. They're in the same order in the Jewish Bible and in Protestant and Catholic Bibles. However, the 12 Minor Prophets are arranged differently in the Septuagint. And so as a result, they are in a different order in Eastern Orthodox Bibles. But in all cases, Hosea is the first.
And so Hosea would have been written in the eighth century BCE leading up to the fall of the Northern Kingdom to the Assyrian Empire. We see in the introduction that he's contemporary to a number of different kings of Israel, Israel as in the Northern Kingdom. So when we say Israel in this episode, we'll be referring to the Northern Kingdom of Israel with the capital Samaria, also known as Ephraim. It's frequently called that by one of the major tribes in that area. But we see very early on that there are a number of kings during the time of Hosea's tenure as a prophet, starting with Jeroboam II, who reigned from 787 to 747 BCE, and during whose time the kingdom of Israel was doing pretty good. They were pretty prosperous. Then there's a series of, well, let me see here. Let me bring up this chart of kings of Israel. So, Jeroboam II dies of natural causes. He's followed by Zechariah, who reigned for six months, and he was assassinated. You guys, this was in 2 Kings. You guys might remember it. We did this like two episodes ago. And he is succeeded by a guy named Shalom who ruled over Samaria for one month and was assassinated. Then we get a king, Menahem, who manages to reign for 10 years and dies of natural causes, but he's followed by Pekahiah, who rules for two years before being assassinated. And he is followed by Pekah, who is assassinated. And so, in the course of like 15 years, they've had four different kings assassinated. So, there's been a considerable amount of royal turnover, I guess we would call it. A lot of that stuff is gonna be happening during the tenure of Hosea.
This book is going to be one of the earlier books of prophecy. He comes after Amos, let's see, maybe after Obadiah, otherwise one of the earliest and therefore one of the earliest written down books of the Bible, right? The book of Hosea almost certainly precedes the Torah as we know it, right? The first five books. A lot of these minor prophets are some of the earliest complete texts in the Bible.
Let's see, what else? The name Hosea, despite, as I said, myself as a kid thinking it was the same as the name Hosea, it is not. Hosea, of course, is Joseph. Hosea is actually, it's the same as Joshua, but without the part that means God, right? If Joshua is God saves, you might remember in the book of Numbers way back, Hosea was the original name of Joshua, successor of Moses, the leader of of the Israelites as they conquered Canaan. His name was originally Hosea, and as a reward, Moses adds God into his name. So instead of just being salvation, his name becomes God is salvation. So Hosea becomes Yahoshua. Anyway, Hosea, a common name, but it just means he saves or salvation. It's Joshua without the Joe part. I don't know. What else is missing, Chris? What other information do we normally give on this show?
C: I think this is your department.
B: Yeah, I know.
C: If that's all there is, then you can just go ahead and dive in.
B: Let's dive into the offering plate, more like.
[Musical interlude]
C: Benito.
B: Yes, Chris.
C: People might wanna support this show, not this episode--
B: Not this episode.
C: --in particular, but we've got many others.
B: The previous episode was a real banger.
C: Previous episode was really good. In fact, all of season two up to this point, it's been quite good, I think.
B: Yeah.
C: Job, that was a good one. Revelation, that was a good one. This one, we're getting through it.
B: Here we are.
C: And you know what helps us get through it?
B: Is it support from listeners like you?
C: It is.
B: Again, the universal you, not you individually, specifically Chris.
C: Right, I got it, yeah.
B: Yeah.
C: And if people do want to support the show, if listeners like me, the universal me, want to support the show, how exactly can they go about that, Benito?
B: Hey, they can go to ko-fi.com/apocrypals. That's K-O dash F-I dot com slash apocrypals. As I say frequently, it's the name of the site slash the name of the show. Couldn't be easier. And it couldn't be easier for you to leave us a little something, a little widow's mite in the collection plate there. Donations in increments of any number of dollars.
C: High numbers of dollars.
B: Even higher.
C: Higher numbers of dollars.
B: Ludicrously high numbers of dollars. All the options are there.
C: If someone could pay $44 billion for the bad website.
B: Yeah, you can pay $3 for this episode of--
C: I would say you could pay $1 billion for this.
B: Oh, okay.
C: And you know what? You could own it and we would be free.
B: That's true. For the low, low price of $1 billion, You could own this podcast, which is to say we could start every episode by saying, welcome to Brony Star 420 presents Apocrypals.
C: If you're having some trouble getting that camel through the eye of a needle. Why don't you walk that camel on over to ko-fi.com/apocrypals.
B: That's right. We make needles very big over there.
C: That is a--it's a large needle. It's a big old needle. It's the St. Louis Gateway Arch. You can prove that camel on through and we will lighten that burden on you, my friend.
B: It's so true. You can follow the teachings of both Moses and Jesus by just making things a little bit easier for me and for Chris. Again, a genuine and sincere thank you to those of you who have donated. We do appreciate it. It is literally the only means of financial support that we have for this show. So we are able to do it because of the support of listeners like the Universal You.
C: If your camel is still burdened by gold and silver, Benito.
B: Yes, Chris.
C: It's coming up on Christmas time.
B: It is.
C: It is Christmas time for you and me.
B: Yeah, that's right.
C: We're coming on Christmas. That doesn't make it a Christmas song.
B: OK.
C: River? Not a Christmas song.
B: All right.
C: I will die on this snowy hill with Parson Brown.
B: So you're claiming that Winter Wonderland is a Christmas song?
C: I'm claiming that Winter Wonderland is more of a Christmas song than River.
B: One of them says the word Christmas and the other does not.
C: You can say the word Christmas all you want. Hard Candy Christmas isn't about Christmas. Hard Candy Christmas is not a Christmas song. My experience at Dollywood, riding the train they have at Dollywood, where they were playing selections from Dolly's Christmas album, And it was like her singing Jingle Bells with children, lovely. And then like her singing Winter Wonderland with children, lovely. And then Hard Candy Christmas, a song about someone in a deep depression after a breakup.
B: Yeah.
C: In which it is not Christmas. Christmas is merely a metaphor.
B: Yeah. Similarly, I've noticed a number of people covering the John Prine song Christmas in Prison as a Christmas song. That song is not about Christmas. Again, Christmas is a metaphor for that. Even when you are deeply depressed, there are still some good things in life, like a person you love. And that's the Christmas part. And the prison is the depression part. It's not a Christmas song anyway.
C: Anyway, it's coming up on Christmas and you've got a lot of Christmas related content that is both available and coming at your Patreon.
B: That's true. Yeah, I've already actually already started. And there will have been who knows how many updates by the time this episode actually hits. But there will be quite a bit of Christmas content. But one of the things that I'm doing is I'm, so far, daily posting entries from the not finished, but a draft of my Christmas handbook that I wrote a little while ago. That needs some pretty heavy rewriting and a lot of additional information, but I'm sharing it so that people can see it anyway. Different entries on different figures each day between now and Christmas.
So if you're interested in that, that's at the $5 level on my Patreon, which is patreon.com/benitocereno all one word, you know, as well as the regular stuff I'm posting up there. History of the Kings of Britain, which if you've been waiting for the actual King Arthur stuff instead of the pre-King Arthur stuff, it's here. Merlin is here. Merlin is here and you get the whole story of how he was born and him and the tower with the dragons under it and all that stuff. It's here. It's coming up. Uther Pendragon is alive at this point in the history. So if you're interested in that stuff, that's also at the five dollar level. Otherwise, I always post links to podcasts and articles and videos and all the other new content that I have that you can get at the lower levels as well. So if you can follow me there, I'd really appreciate it. A) Helps me be alive and B) You know, would allow me to buy a delicious sauerkraut donut in Innsbruck, perhaps when I'm there. in early December. -
C: Sauerkraut donut?
B: Yeah, it's a thing. Innsbruck is famous for their--
C: I don't even know what you would spend on that and then give it to me directly.
B: I mean, maybe. Every time I'm tempted to buy a sauerkraut donut, I'll just Venmo Chris instead. Thank you for the support of anyone who follows me on Patreon. I'm doing my best to put a lot of cool, good content on there. I might be putting too much content on there. Kyle Starks yelled at me for updating twice in one day, which he doesn't know 'cause he's subscribed at, like, the lowest level. So the highest level people get a lot more updates than the $1 people like Kyle Starks.
C: But those are some ways you can give back monetarily to the show and its creators, if you like. I've mentioned Benito's Patreon because if you like this show, you may or may not like other things that I do, but you will almost certainly like the kind of stuff that Benito is supposed to get his Patreon.
There are also non-monetary ways you can give back. You can leave us a review on the various websites and podcatchers of your choice that you use to listen to the show. Apple Podcasts is always a good one. You can leave reviews on Spotify now, I believe. We've gotten some good ones. Leave a rating. All you have to do is click that five stars. Do not miss and click any other number of stars.
B: Unless you can somehow manage to click seven stars.
B: The perfect number. Yeah. Those are the ways you can help us. And now let us help Hosea. Help? Question mark?
B: Yeah.
C: The nations of Israel and Judah.
[Musical interlude]
C: Benito, I feel like this entire book is a plot from you to get me to bust our clean tag.
B: Maybe so.
C: This is hard mode in a way that like- Song of Solomon was like hard mode. This is like nightmare expert mode.
B: It's worse. You read the HCSB version as did I. I mean, I actually read the HCSB version and the in the NRSV version. This opens up with the God Yahweh, the Based God, saying to Hosea, "Go and marry a promiscuous wife and have children of promiscuity."
C: Yeah, that's how this thing leads off.
B: Yeah, that's not the translation in the NRSV.
C: Oh, is it? Is it not? Is that not how other people... Because I did write down not what you'd expect the Lord to say based on other parts of this book written by Mr. Paul.
B: Let's see here, in verse two alone, one, two, three times, instead of promiscuity, uses a word that rhymes with boredom. Three times in one verse there. Give yourself a wife of boredom and do commit great boredom by forsaking the Lord. That's the level the NRSV is operating at. The first thing we get, and this is the first basically two chapters, and again, like I said, the thing that makes this book stand out from other works of prophecy is that God wants to make a point to the people of Israel by forcing his servant Hosea to have a miserable life because he wants him to marry a woman who will definitely cheat on him. It's because it's a metaphor for Israel.
C: Right. The fact that Hosea then goes on to be like, So I married this lady.
B: Yeah.
C: It's like he's doing standup comedy in a lot of it. Like he's like in the eighties.
B: Yeah.
C: At one point I just wrote down Ho "Dice" Sea.
B: Oh!
C: Also, I do feel like we need like a cut to Gomer being like, "Hey, what the heck?"
B: Yeah. Also, I mean, Gomer, if we could drop a Shazam in there, it'd be pretty good.
C: Absolutely not. Nope. Oh, I can do it. Oh, you're gonna have to reach a little higher for that fruit Sisyphus.
B: Oh, that's... Chris. I admit it's the straight play.
C: Also, it is a reference that was old when we were young.
B: So true. But I think we all know that the TikTok generation loves Gomer pilot USMC. They love it.
C: That's patently and demonstrably false.
B: If there's anything that Zoomers like, it is redneck caricatures in the military.
C: Yep.
B: All the things they like.
C: We've already spent too much time on this bit. It's a short book, I know.
B: Okay. Anyway.
C: So, Goomer, they have a kid.
B: They have multiple kids, or at least she has multiple kids.
C: It does specifically say she conceived and bore him a son. What does it say in the NRSV, by the way?
B: It's the same. She conceived-
C: No, I mean about the "Go and marry a promiscuous wife."
B: "Go and take for yourself a wife of boredom and have children of boredom, for the land commits great boredom by forsaking the Lord." But again, not boredom. You guys get it.
C: That's literally the opposite. That is the opposite of a wife of boredom. A wife of boredom is the opposite of a promiscuous wife. That's all. That's all I'm saying.
B: Okay. Do we need to dissect that?
C: I don't think we do. Gomer conceived and bore a son.
B: Yes.
C: Which Hosea may or may not have been involved in that, and is named Jezreel. Jezreel?
B: Jezreel, yeah.
C: A little bit of a weird name for a son, but sure, right?
B: Yeah, it means God sows. It's the name of a place that we saw in 1 Kings, if I recall correctly, a place where a battle took place. And so it's supposed to remind of the bloodshed on the house of Jehu because of their sins, right? So it's reminding Israel of their sins. And so the name of this son is supposed to indicate the bloodshed that will be brought upon the Kingdom of Israel.
C: And you know, a lot of people are named after places.
B: Yep.
C: You could be named Atlanta.
B: Sure.
C: I mean, a lot of places are named after people. There was a TV lady named New York for a while.
B: Yep, that's true. At first I was like, "What are you talking about?" But you're right. I love New York was the show, right?
C: Yeah.
B: Yeah.
C: So yeah, you know, name your kid Jizreel. Sure.
B: Yep.
C: Let's talk about the second and third kid.
B: Mm-hmm.
C: But what's going on when this becomes a weird Family Circus cartoon? Who got this paint all over the wall? Not my people.
B: Not my people. So Gomer has a daughter whose name is No Compassion or Lo Ruhamah in Hebrew there, but yeah, no compassion, no pity because I don't know if I need to explain this. It's because the Lord does not have any compassion or pity for the sinful nation of Israel. That's it.
C: I like that the first one was like a little bit of a metaphor.
B: Yeah, right.
C: And then the second one is name her no compassion for I will no longer have compassion on the house of Israel.
B: Yeah.
C: And also now your daughter's named "no compassion" for the rest of her life.
B: And the thing is, it's eventually gonna reach a point where she's gonna be in kindergarten and it's gonna be like--
C: And she's gonna have to go by like No Compassion S.
B: Exactly, because there's just a whole suite of them because we don't know how many prophets God has was talking to at the time.
C: At least 12.
B: No Compassion S, No Compassion G, can you go get the glue sticks off of the counter or whatever?
C: One of them's got to go by Pash.
B: Yeah. Then the next child is not my people, Lo-ammi. Not my people.
C: Third base.
B: Hey.
C: That reference was also old when we were young. That was old when we were pre-young, but still a good one.
B: That was old when Gomer Pyle was on.
C: A lot of these private children these days have unusual names.
B: A great bit.
C: Let's see how we got it. Not my people and no compassion are our children. Chapter 2, this is chapter 2 verse 2, "Rebuke your mother, rebuke her." And I was like, "Oh, Hosea's is in therapy. 'Cause I've gotten that. I've had to go through that process as well.
B: The mother rebuking.
C: It's necessary. Like it's a little cliche, but you're gonna encounter it.
B: Yeah.
C: Then a little later, the Lord says, "I will have no compassion on her children because they are the children of promiscuity." And I wanna be like, "But you just said I should go, you just said I should go go to promiscuous wife."
B: Yeah.
C: I get it.
B: It's a metaphor, but it's a metaphor, He's making real people live these metaphors. But yes, the metaphor, if you guys haven't got it, is Israel. Israel is the promiscuous wife, right? And God is the husband who is being cheated on by Israel, who is in this time of prosperity under the reign of Jeroboam II. They've gone off and they're worshiping graven images, especially calves, and they're bowing to God such as Baal and Asherah, and they're forgetting. And God really points out here kind of this prosperity, right? If she thought, "I will go after my lovers, the men who give me my food and water, my wool and flax, my oil and drink," and God is like, "Yeah, you forgot who created food and water, who created wool and flax, who created oil and drink. It's me. And so I will block her with thorns. I will enclose her with a wall so she cannot find her paths."
C: Then the Lord launches his new podcast, which is about being a high value alpha male.
B: Okay, yeah.
C: Which kicks off in verse seven about how "she will pursue her lovers, but not catch them. She will seek them, not find them. Then she will think, I will go back to my former husband, for then it was better for me than now." And you know, that's what, like, but what are you bringing to the table? Cause I'm like a high value alpha God.
B: I put the grain on the table. I put the woolen flax on your back. Think about that as I expose your shame and nakedness to the sight of your lovers.
C: 'Cause you know, you're 24 now. So.
B: TikTok.
C: The value's going down.
B: Yeah, oh boy.
C: All right, now I know that this was not initially written in English. I know that. I'm not a stupid child.
B: Right.
C: Sometimes insinuate that I'm a dumb baby.
B: Yes, as I frequently do, as I walk through the streets ringing my bell, Chris, a stupid baby.
C: Yes. Attempting to shame me.
B: Yes.
C: However, we have gotten a couple of pages now of metaphors involving promiscuity and cheating. A lot of sexy metaphor, a lot of sexy prophecy here. Could you do me a favor? Yes, Chris. Could you just read the first line here in chapter two, verse 13? Could you, could you read that out loud for me? Cause I don't think I can.
B: I will punish her for the days of the balls, when she burned incense to them. Yes. Or the Baals.
C: The Baals.
B: The balls.
C: Yeah. That, more than anything else, makes me believe in prophecy.
B: There it is.
C: Is that you wrote a punchline for a language that did not yet exist.
B: That's right. He's getting punished for all that balling.
C: Could you also maybe skip down to verse 17, which was the one where I lost it?
B: "For I will remove the names of the balls from her mouth."
C: Not since Boanerges.
B: Yeah.
C: Not since Boanerges. Has hit me that hard.
B: "'I will remove the balls from her mouth, so sayeth the Lord."
C: The Baals.
B: The Baals. The Baals, the ba-alls.
C: The ba-alls is even funnier.
B: Oh man.
C: I mean, that's the highlight of the book and maybe Bible.
B: Yes, when the Lord promises that he will remove the balls from the mouth of Israel. I mean, in short, that's the thrust of the book, right?
C: It sure is!
B: Israel is like a promiscuous wife going after foreign gods, and as a result, the nation will be punished. The Assyrians have been divinely appointed to bring destruction and ruin upon Samaria. But if they return to God, they will be welcomed. And as it said in the previous verse, they will be as numerous as the sands of the sea. And I mean, that's it. We're gonna cover the other chapters, but like, that's it. You guys get punished for idolatry, but I still love you. It sounds, Chris, I have to say, and I'm sorry to say this, because again, we do try to be respectful. It sounds like an abusive relationship, right? A little bit?
C: A little bit. It sounds like a bad relationship, both metaphorically and in the more literal sense.
B: But like, the premise is, "I will destroy you, but then I'm gonna comfort you because I still love you." That doesn't sound... If a human person did that, I don't think we'd be like, "That's good."
C: It's not great. It's sure not great.
B: Yeah. But I don't wanna denigrate the Based Fod, Yahweh. Although, it doesn't sound very based, I have to say. Sounds pretty cringe.
C: Speaking of cringe, this chapter ends with, you know that little comic strip about the little guy wearing the shirt, the No Fear shirt?
B: Yes.
C: Like it's the 90s?
B: Yes.
C: And then something happens in the second panel and that's what people like to change. They like to change it to like, "Anime is bad."
B: Yeah.
C: Or "No new BTS" or "TikTok dance trends." We're losing listeners by the second, dude. I gotta reach out to the youth.
B: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
C: And the third panel of the little comic strip, it's one fear.
B: Right.
C: Right? 'Cause the first one was [indistinguishable] of the beginning.
B: You know what the original middle panel was, right?
C: Uh no, I don't.
B: It's another guy wearing a shirt that says, "What if they made [bleeps covering 'Simpsons Porn'] illegal?" That's the original.
C: That's the original?
B: That's the original panel, yeah.
C: That's where it's, we can't, we can't, do you have to bleep that, Lucas?
B: That's it.
C: I thought about that because it says, verse 23 here is, "I will sow her in the land for myself and I will have compassion on no compassion." So I drew a little t-shirt that says, "One Compassion."
B: One Compassion!
C: Which I think is a good shirt to get.
B: Yeah.
C: Chapter three is where it's like he's doing stand up. 'Cause chapter three, verse one, "Then the Lord said to me, 'Go again, show love to a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress, just as the Lord loves the Israelites, though they turned other gods and love raisin cakes.'" That's in there.
B: It is.
C: I wrote a triple question mark next to like, I mean, yeah, I would probably love raisin cakes too if I lived in a world where Reese's Cups didn't exist.
B: Yeah, refined sugar does not exist. The sweetest thing you can find is a date or a raisin. It seems like out of left field, supreme diss on people who like raisin cakes.
C: You're like, what's the problem with raisin cakes, bud?
B: Well, they were used in pagan festivals, as we can see in Isaiah. Let's see what Isaiah has to say. Isaiah 16.
C: Maybe throw some more of those honey cakes around at your festivals. If you want to compete in the cutthroat world of ancient world religions, get some bees involved.
B: I think you're right, Chris. You gotta accelerate the cake wars. You gotta raise the stakes on the cakes.
C: Raise the cakes.
B: If God wants people back, I think He needs to stop calling them promiscuous and start offering them delicious cakes. Because I feel like God had the capacity to introduce—what if God had just made it rain zebra cakes or star crunch or something like that? The people of ancient Israel would have never had anything like that. They'd just been eating dates and honey, but what if suddenly a star crunch appeared on the grass-like dew?
C: Yeah, I gotta say, it's that old adage, I don't know if it comes from the Bible or what, but it's you catch more flies with honey than by selling them into bondage to the Assyrians.
B: That's true, so true.
C: And raining destruction so that no one stone sits upon another, that's just like, it's a thing I heard somewhere.
B: Yeah, I was looking up this verse from Isaiah 16, verse 7. "Therefore, let Moab wail, let everyone wail for Moab, mourn utterly stricken for the raisin cakes of Kiraraseth." So get wrecked Raisin Cakes.
C: If I don't call it skip this one, get wrecked Raisin Cakes might be it. Chapter four, we get a real classic here in verse five, chapter four, verse five. "And I will destroy... your mother."
B: Yes. It's a real, real case of the dozens.
C: The dodecalog?
B: The dodecalog. It's the dodecalog. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly.
C: That's a good joke.
B: That is a good joke. It's an extremely good joke. You should be--
C: Specifically for you, that's a good joke.
B: You should 100% be proud of that joke.
C: Thank you.
B: Yeah, chapter four is laid out as a case, right? It's not uncommon in prophetic literature for the complaints of God to be laid out like a legal case, right? And so the Lord has a case against the inhabitants of the land of no truth, no faithful love, no knowledge of God in the land. And yeah, it just lays out the different sins, cursing, lying, murder, stealing, adultery. And it is for that reason that God will destroy your mother.
C: Later on in the chapter, we get the line, "They have an appetite for their transgressions." Great album.
B: Great album. Appetite for transgressions, yeah.
C: But then in verse 10 here we get, "They will eat but not be satisfied." That's bad. Eating but always being hungry, that's terrible. But then he says, "They will be promiscuous but not multiply." Promiscuity, wine, and new wine. And it's like, "Okay, well, hang on. That sounds good, actually."
B: Yeah, "Now you're selling me on it." Yeah, exactly.
C: Now I feel like promiscuous, but we don't have to worry about kids.
B: Yeah, promiscuity without consequences? Let's go.
C: And we get [inaudible]
B: Two wines, wine and new wine.
C: In this economy?
B: That's right. And all I have to do is consult wooden idols? Let's go, baby.
C: The Lord also does say, "I will not punish your daughters when they act promiscuously or your daughters-in-law when they commit adultery." Which it's a pretty hard turn. I mean, it's good, it's good. That's progress.
B: Right, because it's the men who are going off to make sacrifices with temple sex workers. So it is they, the people without discernment, who are doomed.
C: Right. And why do they do this? Why do they do this? As we find out in chapter five, a spirit of promiscuity is on them, which I assume the spirit of promiscuity is that one ghost from Ghostbusters in the scenes that is in that movie.
B: That movie popular with children.
C: The movie that I saw when I was like four, it's wild that that is in that movie.
B: It is definitely the fly in the ointment.
C: 'Cause it's not like funny. It's like a little bit funny, 'cause Dan Aykroyd makes a funny face. But like, first of all, that should be the only thing anyone talks about for the rest of that film.
B: Like they never get to Gozer. They never get to stay Puff because they are so obsessed with hold on a second. Ray, what happened?
C: Ray, why were you why were you in the bed? This was a job. This was work. What was the call? What did someone tell Janine? Hey, I got a ghost. I don't really know if I need to get rid of it. This is New York City. You're telling me you couldn't just sell that house?
B: Yeah, it's a selling point for real estate.
C: Unbelievable, unbelievable.
B: It's got a spirit of promiscuity in it. That's how we put it in the listing.
C: Imagine calling an Annie Potts answers the phone. and you're like, "Can I speak to anyone else, please? Please put Harold Ramis on the phone. "I'm a little uncomfortable discussing this."
B: You would feel more comfortable discussing that with Harold Ramis.
C: I would feel more comfortable discussing it with Egon, I think.
B: You could discuss it in clinic--
C: He's going to be very clinical about it.
B: In clinical terms, yeah, yeah. Janine would absolutely roast you. Maybe Egon is the way to go.
C: Not gonna talk to Venkman about it.
B: He would quit. He would quit the Ghostbusters.
C: Also, how was it not Venkman?
B: Well, because Dan Aykroyd wrote the movie.
C: I mean, okay, that raises even more questions. (laughing)
B: And he's like, wait a second, guys, I gotta, first of all, check out this face I can make. Second of all, I think I got a vehicle for including this face in the movie.
C: That is such a first draft scene that was left in.
B: Yes, it is.
C: Unbelievable.
B: Yeah.
C: All that.
B: Yeah, I'm glad we're doing the work to retain the Zoomers, who have definitely seen Ghostbusters 1 from 1984, a year that they acknowledge exists.
C: Here's the thing, Gen Z, they used to just show that on TV. It'd be Saturday afternoon and you'd be watching the Super Station, TBS, and they would show that, and then they would show a James Bond movie, the name of which I cannot say on this show, 'cause I would feel weird about it, but they called the movie that and put it on TV, And there's a scene where someone says it in the movie and Roger Moore has the look on his face of, I guess we're doing this.
B: And you could smoke at McDonald's.
C: I remember the Hardee's in my town had a smoking section like into the late '80s, and it was like elevated in the center of the restaurant. Don't put it in the middle, you idiots. First of all, it's a Hardee's.
B: The smoke would rise.
C: Yeah, yeah. rather than falling.
C: Army crawl at Hardee's. You're in Hardee's, you don't care about your life.
B: Instead of assuming it would fall like a disgusting pall all over the remainder of the restaurant. Hardee's baby, you gotta go get a biscuit. And in the '80s, you could get a California raisin at Hardee's.
C: Yeah, and Hosea wouldn't like that. Boom, full circle, brought it back. You didn't think we could do it.
B: That's right. You know what I heard through the grapevine? God hates raisin cakes.
C: You know, tell me about chapter 6 and how maybe there might be some later interpretations of what we get in chapter 6 here.
B: Okay, let's see. Did you have a specific verse that we're thinking about here?
C: Yeah, chapter 6 starting in verse 1. You know, some people refer to this as the ninth gospel.
B: The ninth gospel, yeah. Okay, yeah, yeah. "Come let us return to the Lord, for it is He who has torn and He will heal us. He is struck down and He will bind us up. two days He will revive us, and on the third day He will raise us up that we may live before Him." Yeah, I would say that that... Actually, I don't know. Does that one get quoted in the New Testament? It seems like it would. And there definitely are a couple of verses in this one that get quoted in the New Testament that have less immediate relevancy to the narrative of Jesus, right? So the main narrative of Jesus is He dies for the sins of humanity in is raised on the third day." That seems like that would be a good verse. Instead, later, there's the verse where it says, "I'll call my son out of Egypt," and Matthew was like, "Oh, man, I gotta figure out a way to get Jesus into Egypt as a baby." And so that happens, and that's the one that gets quoted.
C: Yeah, it's almost like maybe that whole thing about rising from the dead on the third day maybe was not part of the book of Matthew.
B: I don't know, but you know what is essential? We gotta get him into Egypt so God can call his son out.
C: We also get a solid line: "This is why I've used the prophets to cut them down. I have killed them with the words of my mouth. My judgment strikes like lightning." Which I believe was my motto when I was a professional critic.
B: Nice. I feel like if you could make those rhyme, get it into a 4/4, that's a pretty good battle rap line. Somebody work on that.
C: Chapter seven, we get another good bit. Like I said, a lot of this is just, we've read Isaiah, we've read Jeremiah. We've encountered a lot of similar things before. God doesn't like what you're doing and he's gonna do bad stuff.
B: Yeah.
C: A thing that I like here in chapter seven is talking about how all of the sins and crimes will be exposed because they never considered that I remember all their evil. Now their sins are all around them. They are right in front of my face, which is pretty good.
C: There's extended metaphor comparing people to half-baked bread and half-baked cakes. Was Hosea just hungry when he wrote this maybe?
C: He might've been. He might've been hungry and maybe in a fight with his wife.
B: His blood sugar was low and he was really craving carbs. And so all he could think about, bread in the oven, half-done cake. And then chapter 11, Ephraim has become like a silly dove. You silly dove. What does it say in HCSB? Yeah, a silly, senseless dove is the same. So silly.
But yeah, one of the other recurring things is, you know, keep in mind when we've gone through the history of this that, you know, part of the poor decision-making on the part of the Northern Kingdom is seeking alliances, especially with Egypt against Assyria, and those end up backfiring. And so there's a lot of calls from Hosea not to seek help from Egypt, not to seek mercy from Assyria, but rather, you know, you should be relying on God. So here where it says, you know, they call upon Egypt, they go to Assyria. That's a real silly dove move.
Chapter 8, "Assyria hovers over the house of the Lord like a vulture because they've broken his covenant, transgressed his laws."
C: We get a classic line here, "They sow the wind and reap the whirlwind."
B: Yeah, this is the origin of that. I'm glad you pointed that one out because probably in a way the most lasting legacy of the Book of Hosea. People definitely still quote that one.
C: Later on in chapter 7, we get a good burn. "When Ephraim multiplied, his altars for sin, they became his altars for sinning. Though I were to write out for him 10,000 points of my instruction, they would be regarded as something strange." First of all, great line. If I wrote you step-by-step instructions, you still wouldn't get it. Pretty good. Second, if God wrote out 10,000 points of instruction, that would be strange. I would also regard that as a little weird.
B: God did write a few instructions, however. Was it 10,000? No, officially it's 600 and something.
[Histor of the World Part 1: 'The Lord Jehovah has given unto you these fifteen... [thud] Oi. Ten! Ten commandments for all to obey!']
B: But yeah, regarded as strange. They make sacrificial gifts, they eat the flesh. The Lord does not accept them. Yeah, chapter 9, "Don't result... Don't rejoice." I tried to say "rejoice" and "exalt" at the same time, so I said "don't result" is what happened. "Don't rejoice jubilantly, because you've acted promiscuously." You guys get the metaphor. Do you have anything for nine, Chris? Any lines you want to look at here?
C: If anybody out there listening is a player on or knows someone, could pass this along to the Memphis Grizzlies of the National Basketball Association.
B: Mm-hmm.
C: If you're looking for something to put on the shoes or put on a wristband or something, maybe look at Hosea 9:6.
B: Yeah.
C: When you're taking on the Charlotte Hornets later tonight as we're recording this.
B: Hosea 9:6, baby. What's gonna happen? What's gonna be the result, Chris?
C: Memphis will bury them. Put that on there.
B':' Put that on there. If you're making your poster board, you're thinking about John 3:16, the classic, no, no, Hosea 9:6.
C: Yeah.
B: That's a pro tip from your boys at Apocrypals.
C: Take that to the game. We have to have a listener in Memphis. We may not have a listener in Memphis who goes to basketball games.
B: Right, that might be the sticking point, yeah.
C: We had a lot of fun here. We do get the Lord saying, "even if they raise children, I will bereave them of each one. Yes, woe to them when I depart from them." Yikes.
B: Yeah, a lot of children are about to be killed, right? Ephraim must lead out his children for slaughter. That is a thing. It's gonna get worse. It's gonna get worse before it gets better. "I will kill the precious offspring in their wombs even if they bear children."
C: Chapter 10, we're back to getting a little sexy.
B: Finally.
C: In a weird way.
B: Finally.
C: Hosea is all over the map. He's hungry. He's mad. He's having some trouble at home. Weirdly, weirdly, what word do we use?
B: We say horny.
C: Thirsty, weirdly thirsty.
B: We just say horny.
C: Weirdly horny.
B: Yeah.
C: This is when he's talking about Samaria and the calf of Beth Aven, which I don't know about. Do you know anything about the calf of Beth Aven?
B: Well, Beth Aven is the city of Bethel, so.
C: Ah, got it.
B: The word Aven means wickedness. I guess it's a dunk on the city of Bethel by calling it the daughter of wickedness. But yeah, so presumably they're worshiping calf statues there.
C: Ephraim is a well-trained calf that loves to thresh, but I will place a yoke on her fine neck. All right, okay Hosea. Which, first of all, Hosea is a prophet, so we know he nasty.
B: He is nasty.
C: We know he nasty.
B: Yeah.
C: Doing something weird. Now talking about, "I don't like that," seems very personal.
B: Yeah, he's letting a little too much leak onto the page from the brain.
C: "You have plowed wickedness and reaped injustice. You have eaten the fruit of lies." That's just a really good line that I liked. Hey, could you read chapter 11 verse 2 for me, please?
B: 11:2? Yeah.
C: Yeah. Don't read it in advance. Just read it out loud as you see it.
B: Okay. "The more they called them, the more they departed from me. They kept sacrificing to the balls and burning offerings to idols.
C: Just long enough that it's funny again. ...in this book.
B: Yeah. Uh... Oh man. All right, let's see. It is a little bit interesting. "How can I give you up Ephraim? How can I hand you over Oj Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I treat you like Zeboyim?" Those are the forgotten cities that were destroyed along with Sodom and Gomorrah, right? We always talk about why is it always Sodom and Gomorrah and never Admah and Zeboyim?
C: I think you answered your own question.
B: Yeah, I sure did. Yeah, 12, let's go.
C: Hosea is talking a lot about Ephraim in here.
B: Yeah.
C: And all of Ephraim's lies and violence and covenants with Assyria and such. And then in a very matter of fact statement here in chapter 12, which I just like, the Lord also has a dispute with Judah.
B: Yeah, which for the most part throughout this book, there are a couple places where it's just like Israel sucks, you're so terrible, but Judah, God still loves Judah, which you can pretty much tell are later interpolations by redactors from Judah. But here, oh wow, actually an indictment against Judah, very rare, but here it is, comparing Judah to Jacob, trying to supplant his brother in the womb, striving with God, and so on. As we know from a historical perspective, Judah manages to hang on a little while longer than Israel, some 200 years, I guess.
C: Chapter 13, we get some more threatening statements from the Lord. "So I will be like a lion to them. I will look like a leopard on the path. I will attack them like a bear robbed of her cubs and tear open the rib cage over their hearts. I will devour them like a lioness, like a wild beast that would rip them open." That's intense, especially because it's got lions and leopards and bears.
B: Oh my.
C: There it is. Also, probably much more famous here in chapter 13 is what we get in verse 14. We talked about "Reap the whirlwind," like that is a classical line. This one I think is gotta be one of the most oft quoted in Bible. Is this from Hosea?
B: Yeah, yeah, and this gets quoted in the 1 Corinthians, yeah.
C: Yeah. In the HCSB, it's "Death, where are your barbs? Sheol, where is thy sting?" Or "Where is your thing?"
B: Let's see, NRSV has "O death, where are your plagues? O Sheol, where is your destruction?" So yeah, that's a famous one, like I said. Yeah, quoted in 1 Corinthians and then subsequently quoted by a large number of people.
C: Chapter 4, Hosea offers a plea to repent, and that's pretty much it.
B: Yeah, let me just read this last little bit here, which takes the style of what would later become wisdom literature. We've read a little bit of, we've read a couple of pieces wisdom literature. That's still kind of like the biggest pool of books we haven't dipped into yet, because they are long and plotless is why. But, "Oh, Ephraim, what have I to do with idols? It is I who answer and look after you. I am like an evergreen cypress. Your faithfulness comes from me. Those who are wise understand these things. Those who are discerning know them. For the ways of the Lord are right and the upright walk in them, but transgressors stumble in them." And that's the end of the Book of Hosea.
C: Pretty quick, some interesting stuff in here. The reason like the whole neural net thing came to mind is like, it's got a lot of the elements of other prophets that we've seen. Like I said, we've read through Jeremiah and Isaiah, which are both much longer than this and encompass very similar things.
B: Yeah.
C: But there's enough weirdness. There's enough that's just not quite right about it.
B: Yeah, there's definitely a couple of strange bits.
C: There's a whole bit about how he hates his wife.
B: Yeah. Yeah, that definitely does make it stand out. But otherwise, yeah, it's very similar to the major prophets that we have read. Because again, covering the same historical period, prophesying the same coming doom, which is, you know, just a reminder, the fall of the Northern Kingdom of Israel to the Assyrian empire in, I want to say 721 BCE. Things are going to be repeated, but there's a couple good bits, good lines, weird bits. I don't know, minor prophet.
C: Any lines that we did not cover that caught your eye?
B: Not really. I think we hit the good ones. Did you have one?
C: I mean, I highlighted a lot of this just because I like, a great thing about the prophets, minor and major, is that there's a lot of stuff about who's gonna get theirs.
B: Yeah.
C: So I did highlight a lot of those. A lot of those were very fun. Mostly I did just want to talk about... Mostly I just wanted to talk about "Fry[?] for the names of the balls from your mouth." Clean tag. Two ways.
B: Yeah, yeah.
C: Gotta hit that glottal stop.
B: You know how it is. I don't come down to the temple where you work.
C: The idea that either of us is a scholar is laughable.
B: Oh, man.
C: Oh, all right. That's Hosea.
B: It's clowns all the way down, everybody. Oh, man.
C: That's Hosea. Good stuff. Good stuff.
B: It is. Yeah.
C: Benito, what are we doing next?
B: Next time will be our Christmas episode as we are in the season. Changing it up a little bit, we're actually going to do a Jewish text for Christmas. We're going to be reading The Toledot Yeshu, the life and times of Jesus. It is a text read by Jewish people in the 18th century, read by Jewish people on Nittelnacht, which is what they called Christmas Eve. And we'll talk all about that and why Jewish people would be reading the life story of Jesus on Christmas Eve and why that is. That'll be a fun and interesting one. That will be our Christmas episode for this year.
B: That is a fun time. In theory, that'll be out by Christmas.
C: Yeah, yeah.
B: Until then, where can everybody find us online? For now, we're still on the bad website, the worst website, twitter.com. You can find us @apocrapals. Please find us there and shoot us a message. You can also find us on tumblr at apocrapals.tumblr.com. You can find our Discord by going to apocrapals.com/discord or just Google "Apocrypal's Discord" and you'll find the invitation link and you can join our fun community of cool people who got mad when I said they don't listen to this show. So, my bad.
C: Why did you say they don't listen to this show?
B: Because if you follow conversations on there, they're always like, "Oh, you know what the podcast should do? What if they did an episode about the Gospel of Matthew?" For example.
C: Well, it's been a while.
B: Well, hard evidence that they don't listen to the show. But speaking of cool fan community, it is the cool fan community that puts together Apocapals.wiki, the fan-run repository of quite a bit of information about this show that you're listening to right now. You can also be an editor on it. Just find our good pal, Jemaleddin, Jemal Cole. Find him @jemaleddin on Twitter. Shoot him a message, and he can set you up as an editor at apocrypals.wiki. Let's see, we have a merch store and you can find the link in the show notes or in the pinned tweet on our Twitter account. I think that's the places. If you're looking for me specifically, please find me on Twitter and Instagram @benito_cereno. And most importantly, please, please, please find me on patreon.com/benitocereno, all one word. I promise there's really cool stuff going up there as we speak. All right, Chris, what about you?
C: Everybody can find everything that I do at my website, which is the-isb.com. That'll have links to all the podcasts that I do and things that I've written that you may or may not enjoy. Hopefully you do. Congratulations if you made it all the way to the end of this episode.
B: Yeah.
C: It's a real first thing in the morning recording session, huh?
B: It sure is. It's definitely, it is morning time, and we were trying to get 90 minutes of content out of a very short book that covers a lot of the same ground as other books that we have already done.
C: And we did it.
B: We did it, arguably.
C: We did get 90 minutes out of it.
B: Yes.
C: We got 90 minutes, some of which were out of the book.
B: Yeah.
C: So, you were about the very successful motion picture Ghostbusters 1984.
B: That's right. Arguably the best part of this episode.
C: Definitely one that's gonna get snipped out and go into the best of compilation, I think. I'll tell you that right now. might just go straight to YouTube. All right, everybody, we will be back with the Toledat Yeshu in our next episode. Until then, for Benito Cereno, I've been Chris Sims. Don't forget, Black Lives Matter.
B: Trans rights are human rights.
C: As are abortion rights.
B: Cops are not your friend. I hope you voted. Its voting is still in the future when we're recording this, but I hope in the past when it comes out that you have voted.
C: You absolutely should. Benito, peace be with you.
B: And also with you.
[Musical interlude]
B: I saw a tweet recently that was like 40 minutes into a podcast. All right, let's dive right in. And I felt personally attacked.
C: That's the show. The show is the people.
B: Yeah.
C: If you want Bible, you can get it.
B: It's true.
C: If you just want Bible, you can get it.
B: It's true. (beep)
C: 17 minutes, 18 minutes into the recording.
B: Yeah, okay.
C: You can just go ahead and dive in.
B: Let's just dive in.
