Hosea is the first of the twelve "minor prophets" that make up the back of the Old Testament Bible. (Don't let "minor prophets" throw you, by the way. At first I thought it was a catty dig from some die-hard Old Testament fanbase posting insults on internet forums: "Hosea totally sold out after his first prophecy!" "It's not about being a divine conduit for the will of God anymore! It's about the money." Alas, it's not nearly so interesting; it just means the prophecies are shorter.)

The Book of Hosea chronicles the story of — spoiler — the prophet Hosea. According to Hosea, the Lord God comes to him with explicit instructions that he marry a prostitute. No, really. Hosea speedily complies and shacks up with the prostitute Gomer (presumably unrelated to the Pyle family), who—in a move uncommon to the profession—spits out a shitload of kids. Hosea does his best with his new-car-smell harlot wife, buying her lots of nice things and making love to her with regularity. Despite Hosea's sex-and-purchase-based love strategy, though, she continues to harlot around like it's going out of style.

Following several decades of faithless marriage between Hosea and village bicycle Gomer, God reveals his reason for demanding all the hooker-sex in the first place. The union, it turns out, makes for a perfect metaphor for the Lord's relationship to Israel. In forsaking their covenant by exploring other religions (golden calves, Ba'al and whatnot), Isreal is like the faithless whore Gomer, and God the exasperated spouse. You hussy, Israel.

Why the Lord felt it necessary to demand His prophets solicit prostitutes simply to make a bad simile about false gods isn't explored with any conviction. Perhaps He'd misplaced His sock puppets. Either way, the remainder of the Book of Hosea has God continuing—and continuing, and, believe me, continuing—His argument about the whole Isreal-whore thing. God hammers His point home, then through the drywall, then out into the other room. Cliff's Notes version: The Lord will sell us into captivity for our idolatrous, sinning ways. He will punish us with judgment for our wicked disloyalty. He will take back everything he gave us, strip us naked, lay waste to our fig trees and watch as we die of thirst.* Will God laugh with his hands atop his hips while we die? He doesn't say, but judging from the tone here: most probably yes.

If I had to sum up the Book of Hosea in a nutshell: watch your back, Israel. God's a good damn cop, and you just pushed Him too far.

* But that's not all! If you worship false gods now, the Lord will also suffocate your children and grind their skulls to powder at no extra cost!

While researching the Book of Hosea I read a lot of online essays by Christian scholars. I became sympathetic when I saw just how much these poor guys had to read between the lines with the Old Testament.

The problem is that modern Christianity takes its cues on morality from the New Testament, most of which is directly contradicted in the pages of the Old. You'll have OT God saying something indescribably awful, like: "Their infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their women with child shall be ripped up (Hosea 13:16)." Now some poor Christian scholar has to run "I kill babies" through the New Testament decoder ring until he's able to come up with something like: "This passage is really God saying that he loves us, and that we must prepare ourselves for the coming of Christ."

It's hard to fault these guys for trying to knead a little New Testament sugar into the proceedings. After all, there's not a word about loving neighbors or God's love or even Christ in the OT—mostly just a lot of ranting about worshipping false gods being the last mistake you'll ever make, and one bitch gets turned to salt. As far as I could see, there's not even a single mention of Heaven in the Old Testament. Basically, you submit to God's will for your entire lifespan. Then you die. If you don't, he kills you. God is then flabbergasted and enraged when people start worshipping sex gods.

The Lord 's biggest marketing flaw—and most likely why he had to constantly threaten people against worshipping the competition—is that, let's face it, he's just such a fucking downer. Every time Israel took a moral nosedive, you could set your watch by the old bearded guy jogging in from the desert to let everyone know how pissed off God was. Where was God when Israel was ticking along like a Swiss watch? They were His chosen people, after all—there had to have been something there to commend them. Just once, would it have killed God to send a prophet into town with a little flattering encouragement?

I hope I'm not alone in finding it incredibly inconsistent that God would spend thousands of years hammering home one single mission statement—under NO circumstances can you EVER worship ANYONE BUT ME—then, out of nowhere, send His son down to Earth and not expect some confusion.

Put it like this: if you had children, and from their births onward you did nothing but threaten to drown them, burn them and destroy utterly every thing they've ever loved if they ever listen to anyone but you? You've given away your right to be surprised when they nail the babysitter to a tree.

Some long-haired idiot starts going around preaching tolerance and love and eternal rewards in the afterlife—oh, and by the by, he's the son of God—I can sort of understand how this might have been greeted with skepticism. "Have you met your father? We're talking about the guy who threatened to kill my kids last week unless I prayed twice as hard."

My take is, after six thousand years of yelling until His throat was hoarse not to worship false gods, God finally decided to figure out why people were attracted to them in the first place, and discovered they offered people actual hope, without as many furious threats of skin-flaying murder. Tired of seeing his consumer base run off to rival gods, and realizing that the whole threat-based advertising campaign wasn't hitting his target demo, God clearly must have realized: if He didn't take care of the acolyte, the competition would.

His son sprinted to Earth with the new marketing strategy, and of course was promptly killed—because really, claiming to be the son of the biggest asshole in the universe is like writing "Nail Stakes Here" on your palms with a sharpie. But despite a few early kinks, God's big franchising initiative caught on in the long term—the New Testament's been on the bestseller lists ever since.

if you honestly believe the old smelly guy in the sandals is a conduit through which an omnipotent being complains at you, I'm willing to concede to the power of your faith. But the second a prophet assures you God told him to fuck prostitutes and you aren't getting suspicious, I'm afraid you've left Faithville entirely and moved to Gullible Retardburg.

I mean, come on: hookers? This is Old Testament God, for Old Testament God's sake. He afflicts people with boils for saying His name aloud. I'm no Bible expert, but I think it's safe to say anyone threatening to kill you for using make-up isn't about to let you solicit prostitutes just to visualize a point. What, is God writing an essay or something? He's God. When He wants you to do something, He doesn't waste time comparing your sins to the fucking rain against a windowsill; He chisels DO THIS into a big goddamn rock and shoots flaming swords at your skull if you don't.

If someone's telling you the Lord asked him to do something so He could transform it into heavy-handed allegory, it's possible you're not worshipping God. You might actually be worshipping the scrawny goth kid who chain smokes cigarettes behind the Kentucky Fried Chicken.

“Ye are not my people, and I will not be your God.” (Hosea 1:9)