Gomer and Hosea

Last week was a good time to take a little break.  We're starting a new big section today.  Here's the next two verses of Hosea 2:

4. Accuse your mother!  Accuse [her]!
    For she is not my wife,
    And I am not her hubsand.
Let her turn her promiscuity away from her face
    And her adultery from between her breasts.
5. Or else I will strip her naked
    And I will make her as on the day of her birth.
And I will set her as in the desert,
    And I will make her like a land of drought,
    And I will kill her with thirst.

Learning Curve

People are slowly catching up this week, which means we're slowly seeing comments appear on old posts.  If you're interested, peek back at a few.  At the bottom of each entry on the main page, you can see how many comments exist for each post, and even jump straight to them.  You can post comments of your own, too; if you don't have (or want to use) one of the accounts suggested, you can choose Name/URL from the drop down list, and just leave URL blank.

In addition his thoughts on a few of our posts, Mark adds this general question:  

Hosea is proving to be complicated.  There's a lot of new stuff to learn to understand the meaning.  It reminds me of Revelation.  Is it intrinsic in Old Testament study that the context and history are so much more involved than the New Testament?  Or is this just a difference in the way we approach them?

It's a good question, so I thought we'd look at that today.  And like Hosea itself, the answer is complicated.