(1) As you may have gathered from watching television, Hosea has a tendency to overstate his case.

(2) Hosea uses the bold image of his own disastrous marriage to an unfaithful woman.

(3) Read the Book of Hosea about this.

(4) When could this covenant Hosea is speaking of, then, have been established?

(5) God told Hosea to find a wife, and told him ahead of time that she would be unfaithful to him.

(6) The word of the LORD that came unto Hosea, the son of Beeri, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel.

(7) The whole book of Hosea makes a gigantic analogy between Hosea's marriage to a prostitute and Gd's marriage to the Israel.

(8) Chapter two describes both the attitude of Hosea toward his unfaithful wife and that of God toward Israel.

(9) Why did Hosea choose an unfavorable and impossible partner ? How will you choose a partner?

(10) Among the earliest of these prophets is Hosea, who is thought to have written in the 8th century B.C.E.

(11) For instance, in Hosea 6:7 the prophet indicts the rebels of his generation by likening them to the first man, Adam, who rebelled against God.

(12) Hosea, and later Jesus, prove that God longs not to punish but to love.

(13) The book of Hosea portrays almost the opposite: a God of passion and fury and tears and love.

(14) Hosea 6:7 ("like Adam") confirms the consciousness of the Biblical authors of a prelapsarian covenant of works.

(15) The book begins with God's marriage instructions to Hosea .

(16) He will respond to us as surely as the arrival of dawn or the coming of rains in early spring" (Hosea 6:3).

(17) Hosea once said, "Oh, that we might know the Lord!

(18) The fulminations of the Hebrew prophets such as Amos, Hosea and Jeremiah against the betrayal of religion are an example.

(19) There is no time in the history of redemption that it would make sense for Hosea to view as involving the establishment of a conditional covenant with all mankind.

(20) We have read today an extreme rebuke to God's people, the nation of Israel, by the prophet Hosea .

(21) There is nothing wrong with following the weather patterns, but Hosea is stating that as surely as we acknowledge the sun and rain coming, we need to acknowledge the coming of the Lord.

(22) So in the early part of the 7th century B.C.E., decades after Hosea issued his sermons, Israel was still awash in religious pluralism.

(23) First of the 12 Minor Prophets in the Old Testament, traditional author of the Book of Hosea.