Abide: Hosea and Joel

Joseph Stuart: Throughout the scriptures, the Lord and his prophets teach about covenants- the ability for us to bind ourselves to God through the power of the priesthood. Sometimes though, we forget that we are also bound to each other in covenant relationship. Indeed, we are not only bound to God, but when we are bound to God, we are bound to all of his creation. We'll discuss covenants and much much more in this episode of Abide: A Maxwell Institute Podcast. 

My name is Joseph Stuart, I’m the Public Communication Specialist of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship at Brigham Young University. Kristian Heal is a research fellow at the Maxwell Institute, and each week we discuss the week's block of reading from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Come, Follow Me curriculum. We aren't here to present a lesson but rather to hit on a few key themes from the scripture block, so as to help fulfill the Maxwell Institute's mission to inspire and fortify Latter-day Saints in their testimonies of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, and engage the world of religious ideas. Today, we are once again joined by our colleague, Dr. Jennifer Lane, Neal A. Maxwell Research Associate at the Maxwell Institute. Jennifer is Professor Emerita of Religious Education at Brigham Young University-Hawai’i, where she also served as Dean of Religious Education and Associate Academic Vice President for curriculum. She has published extensively on the scriptures and is the author of the recent book, Finding Christ in the Covenant Path: Ancient Insights for the Modern World, published in 2020 by BYU’s Religious Studies Center. Welcome back, Jennifer!

Jennifer Lane: Thank you. It is a pleasure to be here.

Stuart: The pleasure is all ours. And we are going to be discussing Hosea and Joel today, as I said at the top. And something that somewhat surprised me in rereading this section was the relationship between Hosea and his wife. How might we think about their relationship?

Lane: That's a great question. And that's often where people maybe get stopped; that it’s just so odd. What am I to make of this book of Scripture, because we have a prophet who's told essentially to go marry a harlot, a prostitute, and then their life, their children are leaving, coming back, like what is going on? This is very, very strange. And so just… did this really happen? Those kind of questions, sometimes people obsess over a little bit. And I think we can lower the barriers to getting into this text by not worrying so much about what actually happened, because there's no consensus, even among Latter Day Saint scholars reading this text, there's no consensus. Is what is described in scripture here, actually, word for word, what happened? So there are some people who think, yes, this is a historical reality, the prophet for purposes of helping Israel understand how covenants work, and have the potential to reconcile no matter how far away we go from him, that he was asked to marry a prostitute, and that his wife did leave him and then come back again. And so that's one way of reading it, there's a sort of middle ground where some of it may be there. And some of it might be kind of a literary device. And then others look at it and say, this is just a way of thinking about, it’s a story to help us understand. But it really the thing, that thing that matters is the way it's told, is supposed to really speak to us on a very personal level. So we hear these stories. And it feels like this is someone I know, that I care about. And this is something they're going through. And so I feel it deeply. And I think that even though we can maybe bracket the exact historical reality, but experience of feeling somebody's pain, somebody's loss…I think that's supposed to be there. And so we don't want to separate ourselves from that, while at the same time, we want it to feel personal and literal. The deepest reality is a question of: how are we reconciled? What does betrayal look like? And then how was God's plan in bringing us back to him? Because the betrayal really matters? Here is sort of his covenant people, what do we do to leave him? And then how does he have a plan to bring us back?

Stuart: Thank you so much for that, Jennifer. So also, when noticing the names, how are they working in Hosea? Are they symbolic, or are there other things that we should understand?

Lane: Great, and this is another thing where sort of in the history of this time period, names had meaning. We can talk about the name of his wife, Gomer, the name of three children they had together. They can very well be real people with real names, but at the same time, what's significant is the meaning of the name. And so the sense of whether these were the names these actual family members had or not, isn't so much the point as what is being taught through the names. So we start with just in chapter one, the very beginning of his story, and in verse three, he went into Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim, and then she has a child. And so that started with Gomer. The name itself means “complete”, but this as a story you can see can go both ways. So complete is very positive and can have this sense of perfection, but it can also be very negative. So this sense of done finished, like I am done with you, our relationship is over. So there's a kind of…and I think that He just starts out with that sense that's embedded in human agency, that we can go either way, in the choices we make. But it's not necessarily even though the choices we make may separate us, the part of the beauty of this powerful story is that our choices are not irreconcilably separated.

Stuart: So how about Jezreel?

Lane: Yeah, so then we have three children. So if we work through these verses, we have the marriage to Gomer. And then you have- the first child is Jezreel. And so in verse 4 is sort of child being named Jezreel, foreshadowing what's going to happen to the children of Israel, so that they will be… the word means sow or scatter, in this context, it’s being used negatively. But there are other places later on, we'll see where sowing is a positive thing. But here, it also has a sense of scattering. And then in verse 6, we have another child, a daughter, and the name… and this is very clear, not just something that the prophets coming up with this, this is a name, that saying something sort of communicating through this child whose child's name to the house of Israel call her name, Lo-Ruhamah, which as a text goes on to say, “I will no more have mercy upon the house of Israel.” So that's literally the name means no mercy. So the first child's name is scatter. The second child's name is no mercy. And then we get to verse 9. So a third child comes along, call his name Lo-Ammi. And then explanation for you, ye are not my people, and I will not be your God. So there's these names that are very ominous, bad, bad things are happening, because of what has happened. So there's sort of this warning, of loss of separation of scattering.

Kristian Heal: I kind of imagined when Hosea introduced himself as synagogue, it reminds me of when Latter-day Saints name their children Nephi. Or something. There's a story that goes with the name, you've got a name that you then have to explain. And that explanation, in some sense, is a testimony. It's really a kind of a powerful, because it's something so kind of personal to an individual. Your name is also this kind of witness in when it's given by God, it's really kind of really interesting and sort of arresting, which I think is the purpose. Because our names are so personal to us, we kind of think of this name as then being this their identity as a… as a witness of what God is going to be to his people.

Lane: And that I think, really does help us understand how that personal sense of not just telling the Prophet “Go tell the people, they're going to be scattered, go tell the people!” They had the names associated with the children. There's almost a sense of, okay, this is what you're reaping like, this is the fruit of a life that as a people you've brought forth. And this is what this gives they’re, Hosea’s children. So just even like, he's part of the sense of we are all we separate ourselves and bad things are happening. But the good news is, it's not all bad news.

Stuart: Mostly, I'm just imagining these poor kids showing up to ancient Israelite soccer practice and having to share their names with everyone. But even in thinking about children, it reminds me of Abrahamic promise that Abraham's lineage would be as great as the sands of the sea or stars of the sky. But it seems to be like the foil to the Abrahamic covenant, is that intentional on the author's part?

Lane: I think so. And that's really you see it very closely, going from verse 9, to verse 10. So as soon as their sense of, you're not my people, I will not be your God, which is a reversal of what the covenant relationship is, that we see a glimpse of this isn't permanent. And we see that in verse 10, where you have the “Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea which cannot be measured, nor numbered.” And so there's the sense of the sort of harkening back to the Abrahamic covenant, to the promise that there will be a restoration that will be a re-gathering and reversal. Though despite having separated themselves individually and collectively from God, there's going to be renewal, reconciliation and becoming God's children. And that is, I think, is hopeful when you have such a sobering pact. And again, we go back to verse 10, is so beautiful, where this again, the reversal is very explicit, “That it shall come to pass that in the place where it was said unto them, ‘Ye are not my people,’” which was just the previous verse, “It shall be said unto them, ie are the sons of the living God”, so that it's not just restoration, but that it's even it's heightened, that there's a sense of not just being the people of God, but I think this is an even more exalted sense. So that, that having been separated, that there's going to be returned and a lifting up put into an even stronger relationship, and an even closer echoing or sort of mirroring that the image of God in the people of God.

Stuart: And that happens with the children too? Of Hosea, right?

Lane: Yeah. So you see this kind of lived out with them. And so, the warning that things are going to be bad, that there's going to be a scattering, but also that it's not going to last. And sometimes this, the promise is, you know, generations hence, but still, that I think, having reversal gives hope. And so you see some of that hope, in…in this chapter, and also continues in in chapter 2. So in sort of the continuation of that is verse 11. “So the children of Judah, and the children of Israel shall be gathered.” So there's the scattering, but there's going to be a gathering, they're going to come together. And it's interesting it is that play on the first son's name, great shall be the day of Jezreel. So that which is lost, that which is scattered with scattering of Israel is going to be brought back in a great day. And if we look right, in, sort of, in chapter 1, go to the beginning of chapter 2, you have a little bit more of this play on the names. But again, it's a reversal. And I'm hoping that the poor kids, you know, felt some comfort in this, because it's really sobering to have, have names of doom. But, this is what we see at the beginning of chapter 2, where he says, “Stay unto your brethren, Ammi, and to your sisters Ru-hama”, though that exact reversal of low Ammi and low Ru-hama. So that the message is, yes, there's consequences. But God's nature is such that, that there's going to be mercy, and there's going to be restoration and reconciliation to being their God, and they being his people again. And you see if you flip to the end of chapter tw2o, the exact same pattern again, using those sowing. So here sowing being the more positive sense of Jezreel, rather than scattering, “I will sow her unto me in the earth, and I will have mercy upon her that had not obtained mercy. And I will say to them, that we're not my people that are my people. And they shall say, ‘Thou art my God.’” So there's this, this sense of, yes, it's going to be tough. In time, things will be made.

Heal: Again, you're showing this kind of wonderful way, in which the story, this overarching story of kind of scattering and gathering of punishment and redemption of judgment, and then mercy being played out in this kind of one very kind of interesting way with these names, I think points also, in a wonderful way to how carefully crafted the scriptures are, and how they're using this language. And using these names, and then kind of bringing them back. They're using repetition. They're binding this together and weaving it together. In really kind of fascinating ways. We're used to talking about some of this sort of structure in terms of the chiasms or parallelism. But this is another way in which language is used so carefully in the scriptures, especially the Hebrew Bible.

Stuart:And in addition to that carefulness around language, I just think that the narrative that's being shared here is one that is relatable to pretty much everyone, which is that family relationships can be a little bit tough, right? As much as everyone would like to think that it's all perfect family home evenings and sitting on the front bench of sacrament meeting together. That's generally not how these relationships work on the ground all the time. So how does this drama speak meaningfully about how Jehovah is speaking to his people through Hosea?

Lane: I think that, that what you're capturing, they're really trying something you can feel very abstract is having a relationship with God be made very immediate. And I think that the sense, the covenant, creating family relationships, and the immediacy and the challenge of family relationships, is something that was felt more deeply and understood more clearly, in the ancient world. In ancient Israel, making a covenant wasn't just seen as a sort of impersonal contract, but it was really understood as creating a new family relationship. So that's why the metaphors of adoption and marriage to understand a relationship with God, run throughout the Old Testament, because this is just, it's very personal. Then, covenant is personal. And not only understanding covenant as family relationship, but also there's another concept that is widespread in the ancient world and widespread in the Hebrew Bible, but again, just is different than the way we use language today. And that has to do with the verb “to know”. And so, there's a scholar who has worked with this language and he, Terrance Fretheim, talks about how knowing and knowledge in biblical Hebrew points to being in a relationship, in a relationship when things are working. They're talking about, like a right relationship as opposed to a dysfunctional relationship. This is a quote from Fretheim: “And no God is to be in a right relationship with him. With characteristics of love, trust, respect, and open communication.” So a healthy, good relationship. So God Himself is the focus. A personal relationship, growing out of a living encounter with God. This language likely has its origins in marriage relation is often used as a metaphor for the God of Israel relationship so that the children of Israel, they likely as we all do have relationships that were positive and relationships that weren't as good. And so to understand, if God wants to have a good relationship, I want to have this kind of relationship where you say that you live with him and in relation to him in a way that has all the positive characteristics of the best relationships.

Stuart: That's fascinating, because it's pointing to a certainly more intimate and certainly more personal, but also, it's more than just a cursory knowledge that God exists. It is a way of living, it's a way of interacting. And I wonder if that's part of the problem that God is trying to point out to Israel here, which is… to borrow from Isaiah, “you're drawing nigh ontome with your lips, but your hearts and actions are far from me.”

Lane: That's exactly what this language in Hosea is trying to communicate. It is one thing to know about God. It's another thing to know that there is a God, but knowing God, in the sense it’s being used in Hosea, really does point to living out covenant faithfulness. So being true to God is knowing God. And you see that right at the beginning of chapter 4, that there's a couple verses that just pops out. When we read here, “The word of the Lord, the children of Israel, for the Lord has a controversy” with so he's like, he's an accusation. He's like, I'm calling you out on this “has a controversy with inhabitants of the land because there is no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God and the land.” By swearing and lying and killing and stealing, committing adultery, they break out blood touches blood. So the children of Israel are not living up to their covenant promises. They're not being faithful to God, but they're also not treating each other well, which is part of living in a right relationship with God. And so we talked about God's nature, the truth and the mercy. The integrity, the loving kindness, the way God is. So when we're not living the way God lives, we don't really know Him, we might know that He's there, we might know about Him, but we don't really know Him. So without truth, without mercy, there is no knowledge of God. And so that covenant faithfulness, the way they're treating each other shows they do not know God. They might say, like you say, they might, their words might say, even their external worship. And gonna be a place where Hosea talks about to really know him is to keep covenants to walk in his way, and to treat people with, with honesty, with truth, with kindness, the way that God works with us. And so this creates this, the rupture is a lack, you have a relationship, but you're not living in that relationship. Which is why there's an analogy of adultery, you're, you're not living in the relationship, you've had the relationship, but you've, you've left it. And verse 6, I think, in chapter 4 really highlights that. He says, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because thou rejected knowledge, I will also reject ye.” And so there’s this forgetting the law of God, God's not throwing them out, he's just saying, “You've left me, You've left me because because the way you're living where you're treating each other,” and that he's just telling them, and what's up, this is the reality that you're living right now. And so this is why we, we can't be close. You've moved away from me.

Heal: It feels like these relationships are in themselves transformative. There is sort of intimacy, there's connection, this sort of learning, but you can't help in a true relationship it seems, as you're describing it, to actually be changed somehow. That the sign of the relationship is actually in this is sort of this constant connection between our relationship with God and our relationship with humanity. This kind of vertical and horizontal relationship. It's as though you're saying the strength of your horizontal relationships is a sign of the strength of your vertical relationship.

Lane: And then when one starts to go, the other is going to start to go. And it might start either way. They're both going to break down. I think it's a really, really important point. Because there's knowing this, this ancient sense of what knowing is, it is all encompassing, and that it has to do with a relationship with God. But as you point out, very rightly, so it's also the horizontal, we start to treat other people the way God would not treat them. We really don't know God. Here's another quote from Fretheim, where he continues to develop his way that the verb “to know" incorporates everything about about human experience and interaction with a world so that the meaning can include sensory knowledge, intellectual knowledge, practical skill and physical intimacy. So he says, “In the broadest sense, this verb yadeh, to know, means to take various aspects of the world of one's experience into the self. So there's this relational sense of the resultant relationship with that which is known that the knowing is being of everything that you're interacting with.” And so the fundamentally relational character of knowing against a narrow intellectual sense, is, is shown here. And so I think, again, kind of pushing us away from our idea of like, I know that there's a God, or I know about God, so I either have information about God as knowing God, or I have a testimony that there is a God as knowing God. And the book of Hosea, I think more than almost any book in scripture is pushing us to a deeper sense of what knowing God is. It has to do with everything, that not just our relationship with God, but our lives, our whole lives are part of that knowledge, the way we… the choices we make, the way we treat other people is part of coming to know God. And that I think has, it helps us understand the story really well, because that kind of intimate quality of knowledge that we see in the scriptures, and you see biblical language, is really helps point to what covenant relationship is supposed to be.

Heal: This reminds me of Jesus telling those who claim to know Him, “You didn't know me.” Well, this sort of drawing deeply on these kind of Old Testament roots of what it really means to know someone and have that you can do kind of wonderful things, it looks like, you can sort of make all kinds of claims look as though you've had all of these experiences, but that these chapters are pointing beautifully to what it actually means to to know God. And to be able to say, for God, ultimately to be able to say to us, yes, you did, you did know me, and I can see it in the way that you lived your life.

Lane: bsolutely. And that that I think is where making this personal, I think the power of having a personal story. Because the story, it can seem rather abstract. You see this in chapter 13, where we know that the children of Israel start to worship false gods. And I think this is part of the point you made Kristian, about, you can get off track, either horizontally, or vertically. And that either one starts to change the other. And I think this might be an example where in chapter 13, verse 2 are talks about they're sinning, they're making molten images of their silver idols, according to the understanding. That their worshipping other gods, is a betrayal of a covenant relationship. And so we see this in this chapter. But that the worst part of it is, it's changed, they're changed. And the way they treat each other is different. Because of that. They're worshiping God. And then they start worshiping gold. And that changes the way they see people. And that changes the way that they treat people. And so calling them out isn't just like, well, stop bowing down to those fake gods and bow down to me. I think God knows what it does to us. I don’t think it’s like he's feeling slighted. But he's seeing that we're getting twisted, and our hearts are being turned. And we're turning into something else, something other than his true children, who are made in His image. And we start to treat each other like objects, when we're not truly worshiping Him.

Heal: This is lovely, this has really kind of opened my eyes to what God means about being kind of jealous. Reading Hosea, I had a sense that this is about fidelity and infidelity. It's about being kind of faithful. But actually, it seems to be more about God, being concerned about what's happening to us, because of our infidelity. It's not simply a you need to be faithful to me. But look what's happening to you because you're not being faithful to me.

Lane: There's a sorrow, I think that he feels, of what we turn ourselves into, when we turn away from Him and we lose that kind of intimate personal connection. When we're closer to Him, we radiate the love that we feel from Him to those around us. And that's, I think, part of why the first commandment’s first worshiping God, because when we do love God, it helps us to love other people. And because we've partly we feel God's love for us. And then we feel God's mercy towards us. And we're more merciful to other people as well. But when we lose that relationship, then everything else is going to get confused and soured in our lives. And as we stick here to chapter 13, we kind of see almost this wistfulness of like, this is the way we used to be. This is the happy memories of when we started our relationship together. And so you see this in Chapter 13, verse 4, and through this thinking back, and I think asking them to think that back when we were in love, back when we were happy together, when you wanted to be my covenant people and have me for your God, when you left Egypt and you were willing to covenant at Sinai. And he uses that language here. “I am the Lord thy God from the land of Egypt, and thou shalt know no God but me, for there is no savior beside me. I didn't know thee in the wilderness in the land of great drought.” So it's this going back to Sinai going back to the creation of the covenant creation of a relationship with the people of Israel as a whole. This covenant language shows up earlier. So Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the patriarchs, matriarch, we have covenant between them, and Jehovah, and it is because of that covenant where the Lord actually acts to redeem, and we'll see some of that theme of redemption here. But the promise that he makes, it shows up several places, because of the covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, he will redeem Israel and brings them out of bondage. And then as a people, they covenant and as what happened at Sinai is a collective covenant with the Lord. But there's this, I think this to me, it's, it's really this feeling of loss and longing for the intimacy and the feeling of love that was there that is now they've moved away from that. And but I think you describe it really beautifully, Kristian. That he is worried about what's happening to the children of Israel, without that closeness.

Stuart:That brings to mind too, that, even with Hosea and his children, having these names that portend doom and gloom, the reversal does come. That God is anxious for us to turn to Him. And do we see that message of redemption explicitly in Hosea? Is that something that we really need to dig into to see later on?

Lane: This is a great question because, of course, it's one of the big overarching themes throughout scripture, but it also shows up on a micro level, as well as the macro level. And so we know that the Lord told the children of Israel, “I'm going to redeem you, because of the covenant that was made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” So that earlier covenant created a relationship and this is another here's one more sort of concept from ancient Israel that helps us get more out of scripture, so that there was a family member in when we use the term Redeemer, that's actually a family term, better translation is kinsman redeemer. So the oldest male member of a family would have the responsibility if somebody either got captured, became a slave as a prisoner of war, or they had gotten so poor that it had to sell themselves or their children into debt slavery, that the kinsman redeemer, the Joel, would have that responsibility to make things right again, to reverse the loss and to bring back that which had been broken, and to restore. And so when the Lord says “I'm the Redeemer of Israel”, it's because of the covenant. He has that family relationship in which he is going to act, to redeem, to reverse what people sometimes have brought upon themselves. And we really see that here in Hosea with this beautifully crafted narrative of individuals, but the story of individuals is pointing to this larger message for all of us as his covenant people. So we're here… you have the Lord saying to Hosea in chapter 3, the Lord's says, go yet love a woman beloved, her friend, yet an adulterous according to this really interesting phrase, according to the love of the Lord, towards the children of Israel. So clearly, this is a metaphor or representation, Hosea is being asked to go and to buy his wife out of some kind of bondage she’s gotten into. She's at a point where she has, we don't know exactly the details what she's done, but she's stuck, she can't get herself out. And so in order to buy her out of bondage, the word redeemed both in Hebrew and English actually literally means to buy out of bondage. And that's what we see happening in verse 2. So “I bought her to me for 15 pieces of silver for home or barley for half a homer of barley.” So like there's a literal price, she must have had some kind of debt, slavery or bondage, something that's happened where she's in trouble, and that she's being redeemed. That here, Hosea representing the Lord is rescuing her and allowing her to come back to be with him again. And so we have the sort of metaphor for it on this micro level for the big picture. What does the Lord as the Redeemer of Israel do when Israel gets itself back into slavery again? I mean, brought Israel out of the slavery of Egypt, redeemed from bondage. But yet bad things are gonna happen again and again, as the kinsman redeemer, the Lord is going to bring back, is going to mend that which is broken is going to restore that which is lost.

Stuart: That makes me think of my five year old running at the pool every single time and falling at least once every single time. And every time I may think to myself, kid, let's do what I asked you to, and you're not gonna fall. But nevertheless, always having arms open and wanting to console her in that way. And I think that thinking about covenant, not only in the family relationship that we just spoke about, but really in a much broader sense. And Hosea gets to this in chapter 2, could you share with us what your research shows about this?

Lane: Yeah, this is really a beautiful, and I think a moving image with just like the story of you and taking care of your daughter, even though if you would just listen, you wouldn't find yourself in this mess, and I wouldn't have to fix things and I wouldn't have to pick you up and bring you back. And, and I think the Lord through the prophet is speaking to us as his people speaking in ancient Israel, but also that we can hear his voice today, knowing that the kind of covenant relationship he wants is one, ultimately, that will not just be between us, but that will have a healing, sort of healing the world dimension to it, and that I that's what I get when I read the beginning. Well, here in verse 18, chapter 2, 18 19, and 20, that the image of the Covenant, sort of permeating all creation, “In that day, I will make a covenant for them, with the beasts of the field, with the fowls of heaven, with the creeping things on the ground”, it's like, it's like this new creation, making things right again. “And I will break the bow and the sword and the battle of the earth. And I will make those as millennial imagery and make them to lie down in safety.” Beautiful, beautiful language in verse 19, “I will betroth thee unto me, forever. Ye, I will betroth thee unto me in righteousness, and in judgment, and in loving kindness and in mercies.” And then verse 20, “and I will even betroth unto thee faithfulness, and thou shalt know the Lord.” So the extent to which the Lord wants to take all of creation and all of his children back to Himself in an embrace, and for us to know how much He loves us. And He wants, He wants his creation, He wants his world, He wants his children, to feel that unity, the peace, and that these are promises of what He wants for all of us. And I think when we see knowing in that sense, it actually makes other passages like my scripture, mastery, John 17:3 “and this is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God and Jesus Christ who thou hast sent” So that sense of knowing God, that is eternal life. It's a quality of life, that relationship, developing a relationship, wanting to live in that relationship. That's the kind of life that he wants for us and for all his children. I think just to me the language in Hosea, that those verses in chapter 2, just speak to that invitation, that longing that the Lord has to, to live with us in peace and love, and for us, to choose Him and to live in harmony with that. So I think that there's a different scholar, but I think that he captures something that helps us sort of understand what is this knowing? How is it that knowing God is eternal life, like what does that mean? It's clearly not information, and it's certainly more than testimony. It's a way of living in relation to God. And so Showtrough here argues, and I think beautifully illustrates the yadah, that to know indicates without exception, not a merely intellectual knowledge or ignorance, so like you know or you don't know, but a relationship to deity that includes practical behavior. So knowing the Lord is related to serving, believing, seeking, clinging to, calling by names, all these, these active verbs that relate. Every choice we make, to pray, every choice we make, to obey every choice we make, to be kind, is a choice to know the Lord, to be merciful, to be compassionate, because that's who He is. That's how He is. And so we know him, when we start to take on the kind of life that he has. And then the flip side, of course, is when the scriptures use the phrase “not knowing” that it means that we're turning away. We're choosing not to live the language Showtrough uses is an apostasy from him in violation of his demands. That the Lord is inviting us to live in his way and that is it takes trust and takes faith to say I want to live this way and not the way I want to live, but the invitation is to come to know Him and That's, that's a promise of what covenant faithfulness is.

Stuart: Well, that brings to mind something that is really meaningful to me, which is that it's not just the performing of actions that leads us into this intimate relationship, this knowledge, this knowing of God. Because I think all of us can relate to times in our lives, when we are going through the motions. We're just trying to survive. We're trying to get through our day, or get through our weeks, or get through our months. And those circumstances often come outside of our control. And I think that the Lord understands that when we're doing things for the sake of doing them, that that is something, but that that there is a richer relationship waiting, when we are able to more intentionally focus on our relationship with God, too.

Lane: Yeah, that's the invitation. And this is a passage from Hosea that the Savior used in his mortal ministry where he called out some of his contemporaries for focusing so much on the externals, but not trying to seek that sort of developing a character of God. So the feeling is like, it's enough, if I check the boxes, but if I check the boxes, I don't have to necessarily change the way of thinking or feeling and, and that it's, it's fascinating that, that he uses Hosea in his discussion of the Pharisees in Matthew 9. But he quotes Hosea 6:6 where the Lord says to Israel, “I desired mercy, and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God, more than burnt offerings.” Now, of course, temple worship, sacrifices are part of the commandments. He's not saying, don't like, just throw out that. But clearly what he's prioritizing is the heart and taking on. So the divine nature of cassette of this mercy, this loving kindness, that's, you can go through the motions all day long, but treat other people horribly and you think that that's not good enough. That's not really knowing God, that what you need to know, to know God is to have that quality, of compassion, of loving kindness, truly knowing God, not in… not in going through the motions, I feel like I can skip it, because I think goes back to Kristian’s original point that God gives us things to do, stay connected with him, so that we can feel his mercy and love and radiate it outward. So we say, well, I'm just gonna focus on radiating mercy outward, and I don't really need to worry about maintaining my relationship with God by doing the things he's asked me to do, then we're setting ourselves up for failure.

Stuart: Yeah. And I think in this way, it's showing that God wants all of us. He's never wanted, half-hearted discipleship. In fact, he seems to reserve his most condemnation for those who are lukewarm, those who are having a difficulty in not being able to decide where they are. But again, just want to underscore as you have, this not only need for reconciliation, but the availability and God's desire for us to reconcile to him that we see in Hosea chapter 10, as well.

Lane: Absolutely, and I think that this is where he uses again, a lot of this imagery, just like a marriage or family is an immediate part of people's lived experience, that we see for people who are basically have agriculture that they have sowing and reaping, is going to be very personal and very meaningful. So He uses that kind of language, to kind of help them understand how to build a relationship with Him, and thereby become the kind of person that can radiate that love and mercy to other people. And we go to Hosea 10 by 12, and 13, are really important. I'll start with 13, because it starts with where things are going wrong. Where he says “You plowed wickedness, and you reaped iniquity. You've eaten the fruit of lies, because without its trust in thy way, and the multitude of mighty men.” So living in ways that are contrary to what God, we've covenanted to do is he's using these agricultural analogies to help us understand there's going to be consequences. That, that when we plow this, when we sow this, what we are going to reap what we're going to have as the fruit is going to be ultimately sad and unpleasant. And the hope is, and this is where he wants a relationship, but he also…there's agency and where you make choices and he’s inviting us as part of this invitation to reconcile in verse 12. In the beautiful language “Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy, break up your fallow ground, for it is time to seek the Lord till he come and reign righteousness upon you.” And to me, I love that sort of a collaborative relationship image where we're not just doing it alone. Like I'm trying really hard, but no matter how much I try sow good, if it doesn't rain, it's not going to grow. And and I think the Lord is telling us if we do our part, that He's going to help us, He's going to give us His Spirit which brings greater renewal. Sort of when we are doing what we can, that we're inviting him to participate in that effort and to be godly people to be holy people, and that he will come and rain righteousness upon you. And it's interesting that we tend to have to start ourselves and it is an invitation, so we pray for help, because we trust that help is going to come and so that trying to be good, trying to do good, invites help, and it builds, reaching out. It also is a way of reaching up and inviting Him to help us be the kind of people we want to be. So I just think that this is very practical. It speaks to me, it speaks to me about the Lord wanting to help me be reconciled to help me reverse the ways in which I haven't been the person that I want it to be. It gives me hope that help is going to be there to become that person.

Stuart: Thanks so much for helping us think our way through Hosea. Now, Kristian, we're also looking at the book of Joel this week. What should we know about the book of Joel before we dive in further?

Heal: So this is the next of the so-called “minor prophets”. Not that there's anything minor about them, they just wrote shorter books than the likes of Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel. So the book of Joel is thought to be a late work and a composite word. The first part chapters 1 through to 27 describes a desolating crisis and its resolution; scholars attribute the rest of the book to another author or authors. It seems to come from a different world, the world as David Peterson notes, “of late prophetic, or early apocalyptic literature.” In this section, he continues, “The world of ritual disappears and is replaced by the return of prophecy, cosmic symbolism, conflict with foreign nations, and images of fertility.” This latter section also includes more allusions to other biblical texts, again, suggesting a late date of composition.

Stuart: So in reading Joel, it seems like there's a whole lot of bad stuff going on. Do we know what sort of crises that the ancient Israelites were facing? In the book that Joel wrote?

Heal: The crisis described in the first part of the book is a devastating plague of locusts, a plague so devastating. That it’s likened to a marauding army in chapter 2. And that's my reading, at least other scholars consider the chapter to be referring to a secondary threat, the actual threat of military incursion. So, we have a people who are living in a time in which they have this plague of locusts and perhaps this threat of other kinds of plagues. Such a devastating plague was actually a reasonably unusual occurrence in the Middle East. Evidence from a later period suggests that it was something that might happen, as the month, the century the sort of huge plagues that just devastated entire regions. The relative rarity of such a plague explains the opening exaltation that should be told to children and grandchildren. This is the kind of devastation that should be spoken about for generations. The New Revised Standard Version captures the relentless and total destruction described in chapter 1, verse 4. It says, “What the cutting locusts left the swarming locusts has eaten. What the swarming locusts left the hop locust has eaten, and what the hopping locusts left, the destroying locust has eaten.” This is just a relentless wave after wave, plague that has resulted in complete and utter devastation.

Stuart: So, what does the Lord expect ancient Israel to do and their response?

Heal: The initial response to this total destruction is lamentation, a sense of dismay, understandably. However, as the chapter goes on, the prophet calls the people to turn to God naturally. Solemn is a fast he says, proclaiming assembly, gather the elders or the inhabitants of the land in the house of the Lord your God, and cry out to the Lord.

Stuart: So do they understand the locus to be a curse, sent from God like a direct consequence of their actions?

Heal: So God is seen as the cause of the destruction, the cry that the day of the Lord is coming in the opening of the second chapter echoes the sentiment found in the first chapter, “At last for the day for the day of the Lord is near, is you'll come like havoc from Shaddai.” Yet, unlike other prophetic books that describe a crisis, this book offers no specific cause. This crisis is not a rebuke or a punishment. It seems simply to be the cycle of nature. But since God is the God of nature, this catastrophe can only be described as a great and terrible day of the Lord. A day in which the awesome destructive power of nature is unleashed. Still, even in the face of such destruction, prayer is effective in relieving this burden, and stemming the destruction. It says in Joel chapter 2, “Then the Lord was roused on behalf of his land and had compassion upon his people.” In response to his people, the Lord declared, “I will grant you the new grain, the new wine, and the new oil, and you shall have them in abundance. Never more will I let you be a mockery among the nations.” So what's more, God promises to help the nation rebuild rapidly. “I will repay you for your years that the swarming locust has eaten”, the Lord promises as a witness to them, and goes on, “You shall know that I am in the midst of Israel, that I am the Lord your God, that there is no other and my people should be shamed no more.”

Stuart: I really love that phrase that the Lord will repay for the years that the swarming locust has eaten. And Janiece Johnson made a really lovely graphic that goes with that that you can find on the Maxwell Institute's Instagram page, which is at @BYUMaxwell. So after this destruction on terrifying levels, might even say biblical levels, what happens in the remainder of the book?

Heal: In the remainder of the book, we transition from a specific environmental catastrophe to an apocalyptic vision concerning those days when God will restore the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem. These verses have a messianic and end times ring to them, and are reused in both contexts. The pinnacle of the prophecy is the return of the presence of the Lord to Zion. In Joel 3:21. Peter quotes from Joel 2:28 through 32, in his sermon in Acts 2, to show her the dispensing of the gifts of the Spirit that Joel prophesized is for being fulfilled in that moment.

Stuart: So what could Latter Day Saints take away as the overarching takeaways from the book of Joel, that we can think about in the big picture?

Heal: So I think the message of Joel is twofold. This is what I took away from it. Firstly, disasters will happen. They've happened to us, they're happening now all around us in the world.

Stuart: We're recording this in the summer, we're still confident that there will be disasters whenever you're listening to them. Because I'm a very warm and fuzzy person. That's why I'm saying that.

Heal: Haha. This is true. The world is a delicate living system with floods and droughts, lean years and fat years. Sometimes these come as punishment for people oppressing the poor, or turning away from God. But sometimes they also just happen. In both cases, our best response is increased faithfulness, and trust. God can lessen the impact of natural disasters, and God can heal the earth, if we will just stop doing those things that bring about his wrath, or more rapidly return it to its previous state after a natural disaster. The subtle message of Joel is that we have been given a world that is beautiful and abundant, full of all that we need to flourish as a people and if we're good stewards, taking care of the earth. That even when natural disaster strikes, God will hasten the healing of the earth. And we can return to living in his presence.

Stuart: I think that’s a beautiful place for us to end today. Have a blessed week y’all.

Thank you for listening to Abide: A Maxwell Institute Podcast. Could you please rate review and subscribe to the podcast wherever you're listening to this podcast? And follow us on social media at @BYUMaxwell on YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and sign up for our newsletter at mi.byu.edu. Thank you and have a great week.