Commentaries and Podcasts

There was a break at 1:14, where the connection dropped and I was not sure where in respect to the presentation that had happened. Therefore some verses were discussed twice, and I left that in the recording but cut out almost all of the whitespace.

Hosea Chapters 6 through 9

Hosea 1:10 says: “Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured nor numbered; and it shall come to pass, that in the place where it was said unto them, Ye are not my people, there it shall be said unto them, Ye are the sons of the living God.” In order to realize the fulfillment of this prophecy, we must find the dispersed people of the children of Israel deported by the Assyrians, which Hosea is describing. The prophet Isaiah, speaking of the coming fate of these very same children of Israel, records these words of Yahweh in the 66^th chapter of his prophecy: “19 And I will set a sign among them, and I will send those that escape of them unto the nations, to Tarshish, Pul, and Lud, that draw the bow, to Tubal, and Javan, to the isles afar off, that have not heard my fame, neither have seen my glory; and they shall declare my glory among the Nations.”

Tarshish is Tartessus in Spain. Pul is an allegorical name for Assyria after one of its kings, as can be ascertained in the books of Kings and Chronicles. Lud is Lydia in Anatolia. Tubal at this time lived on the Black Sea. Javan are the Ionians, and represents the lands of the Greeks. Within 300 years of the deportations of the Israelites, the Germanic people showed up in all of these places, threatening their very existence. They overthrew Assyria, sacked Lydia, and forced the people of Tubal up through the Caucasus mountains. They threatened Ionia, sacked Etruria – another land of the Lydians in northern Italy, and settled what became known as Gaul as far west as Spain, or what was once Tarshish. No other people ever showed up in all of these places in the centuries following the deportations of the Israelites. This is the “large place” where the children of Israel were to be fed by Yahweh, where he says at Hosea 4:16: “now the LORD will feed them as a lamb [Christ the lamb] in a large place.” With the spread of Christianity to Europe, every word of these prophecies has come true.

Hosea Chapters 3 through 5

Last week, discussing Hosea chapters 1 and 2, I think that the primary lesson was summed up in the idea that the children of Israel are a nation of whores, and a whore as a nation, because they sought intercourse in commerce with all of the other nations, which they had been commanded to remain separate from. This is seen near the beginning of Hosea chapter 2, where it says “2 Plead with your mother, plead: for she is not my wife, neither am I her husband: let her therefore put away her whoredoms out of her sight, and her adulteries from between her breasts; 3 Lest I strip her naked, and set her as in the day that she was born, and make her as a wilderness, and set her like a dry land, and slay her with thirst. 4 And I will not have mercy upon her children; for they be the children of whoredoms. 5 For their mother hath played the harlot: she that conceived them hath done shamefully: for she said, I will go after my lovers, that give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, mine oil and my drink.” Today, chasing after the produce of China, Mexico, and every other race on the earth, we are whores once again. That is why, speaking of the then-future Mystery Babylon, the Revelation again depicts the nation of Israel as a whore: and that is where we are now, awaiting Babylon's fall. For her intercourse with other nations, the nation of Israel was punished and carried away by the Assyrians and later Babylonians, as a judgement from Yahweh. This message continues throughout Hosea.

Hosea Chapter 1

I decided to present the prophecy of Hosea commencing with this week, because on the Saturday program over the next few weeks I plan to present my papers on the Scythians and their origins - God willing – and this prophet more than any other with the arguable exception of perhaps Isaiah, goes hand-in-hand with the history of the deportations of Israel and Judah.

Hosea began his prophesying, according to his own introduction, at the time when Uzziah (who is also sometimes confusingly called Azariah in the King James Version) ruled over Judah and and Jeroboam II ruled over Israel. Both of these men reigned for a long time: Uzziah, who was stricken with leprosy while he ruled, from about 791-739 BC and Jeroboam II from 793-753 BC. Therefore Hosea began to prophecy before 753 BC. He wrote until the days of Hezekiah. Hezekiah ruled Judah from about 729-698 BC and since there was no king in Israel after Hoshea's rule ended circa 722 BC, we see that Hosea did not mention any king after Jeroboam II even though six kings followed him before Israel was fully broken as a kingdom. Therefore Hosea wrote from no later than 753 BC unto at least 722 BC, a period of at least 32 years during the time described in the Bible from II Kings chapters 14 to 20, and from II Chronicles chapters 26 to 32.

James Chapters 4 and 5 - 01-20-2012

Here, because of its importance, and because of the ways in which the chapter is abused, I thought to repeat James chapter 3, and to present it in a manner a little more pointed than how it was presented last week. 

III 1 You must not produce many teachers, my brethren, knowing that we shall receive a greater judgment. 2 For we all fail often! If anyone does not fail in word, he is a perfect man able to guide with a bridle even the whole body. 3 Even if the bridles of horses are put into their mouths for which to persuade them for us, then we maneuver their whole body. 4 Behold also, there are such great ships, and being driven by severe winds, maneuvered by the smallest rudder, being driven straight where impulse desires. 5 Thusly also the tongue is a small body-part and boasts loudly. Behold how small a fire ignites so great a forest! 6 And the tongue is a fire, an ornament of injustice. The tongue sits among our body-parts soiling the whole body and setting ablaze the course of existence, and being burned by Gehenna! 

Gehenna, the destruction caused by the fiery trials of this life, the wars and strife caused by the tongue. All of these things are of course true, but we must consider how and what kind of speech causes men to slip. And in whose perception do men slip? One man may think that you have erred when he does not like what you say. But what is sin, to slip in the eyes of man? Or to slip in the eyes of God? It may well be that man's pride which causes him to think badly about you. Therefore we have only one Judge: Yahshua Christ, and one Guide, which is His Word.

The Epistle of James - 01-13-2012

II 1 My brethren, do not with respect of the stature of persons hold the faith of our Prince Yahshua Christ of honor. 2 For if perhaps a man should enter into your assembly hall with a gold ring in a shining garment, and a beggar should enter in a filthy garment, 3 then you should look upon he wearing the shining garment and say “You sit here comfortably”, and to the beggar you should say “You stand there”, or “Sit beneath my footstool”, 4 have you not made a distinction among yourselves and become judges of evil reasonings? 

“Respect of persons” is respect for the stature or the status of persons in judgement. The Greek word προσωπολημψία comes from πρόσωπον, literally the face, and a verb which means to receive. The use of the term by James reflects that same idea which Paul often infers where the King James Version translates the Greek word προσωπολημψία, which is literally the receiving of a man's appearance, and related words and phrases as “respect of persons”. 

The Epistle of James, Chapter 1 - 01-06-2012

I do not see how the Hebrew name Ya'aqob, the Greek Iakobos, could have possibly become James in English. At first I pondered the notion that the translators of the King James Version were purposefully flattering the king who commissioned them. However that cannot besince the spelling of this name in the 1560 Geneva Bible is Iames, which today we would write as James. Wanting instead to be faithful to the Greek, when I translated the New Testament I spelled it Iakobos, leaving it as it appears in the Greek Nominative case. The English name James seems to have come from the French word for leg, which is jambe (the 'b' is silent). A related French word jamon, refers to a leg of ham. King James Version apologists strive to connect the two terms since Iakob does come from a Hebrew word with a meaning connected to the heel of the foot. But Ya'aqob (Strong's # 3290) means "heel holder" and therefore allegorically it means "supplanter", and that has nothing to do with a pig's leg.  

The prophecy of Obadiah is a prophecy concerning Edom, that nation which descended from Esau, Jacob's brother. In order to understand the prophecy concerning Edom, one must understand all of the history of the nation, and its relationship to Israel and to God, from the days of Jacob and Esau.

The angels that left their first estate, left it because they decided to race-mix with men, and also with many other species, something we find only in apocryphal literature but which our Bibles as we know them today do not sufficiently explain. When Adam was placed into the Garden of Eden, that tree of the knowledge of good and evil – the results of that first rebellion against God – was already in the garden. These were a race of people (or angels if you must) who at one time knew good, and then knew evil – when they had rebelled against God. Their creation is not explained in Genesis, although Christ tells us in Luke chapter 10 and in the Revelation at chapter 12 that they fell “from heaven”.

The fall of Adam was the partaking by him and his wife of this tree of the knowledge of good and evil – they race-mixed with that person represented by the epithet of “serpent”. Cain was the result of this union, and in spite of the corrupted text we currently know as Genesis 4:1, it can be discerned in several other ways that Cain was not the son of Adam, although he was the son of Eve. Later on in the New Testament, but also often in the allegories of the Old Testament, are the descendants of Cain often referred to as “serpents”.

The Book of Jonah - 12-23-2011

2 Kings 14:16-27: 16 And Jehoash slept with his fathers [perhaps around 798 BC], and was buried in Samaria with the kings of Israel; and Jeroboam his son reigned in his stead. 17 And Amaziah the son of Joash king of Judah lived after the death of Jehoash son of Jehoahaz king of Israel fifteen years. 18 And the rest of the acts of Amaziah, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah? 19 Now they made a conspiracy against him in Jerusalem: and he fled to Lachish; but they sent after him to Lachish, and slew him there. 20 And they brought him on horses: and he was buried at Jerusalem with his fathers in the city of David. 21 And all the people of Judah took Azariah, which was sixteen years old, and made him king instead of his father Amaziah. 22 He built Elath, and restored it to Judah, after that the king slept with his fathers. 23 In the fifteenth year of Amaziah the son of Joash king of Judah Jeroboam the son of Joash king of Israel began to reign in Samaria, and reigned forty and one years. 24 And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD: he departed not from all the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin. 25 He restored the coast of Israel from the entering of Hamath unto the sea of the plain, according to the word of the LORD God of Israel, which he spake by the hand of his servant Jonah, the son of Amittai, the prophet, which was of Gathhepher. 26 For the LORD saw the affliction of Israel, that it was very bitter: for there was not any shut up, nor any left, nor any helper for Israel. 27 And the LORD said not that he would blot out the name of Israel from under heaven: but he saved them by the hand of Jeroboam the son of Joash.

 So Jonah the prophet, the son of Amittai, lived and prophesied before the time of Jeroboam the son of Joash of the kings of Israel. Jeroboam II was king in Israel for about 40 years, from about 793 BC, so Jonah definitely prophesied before 753 BC, and possibly before 793 BC – although that is not certain from the text here in 2 Kings 14. This places Jonah as one of the earliest of all of those prophets of the Bible from Isaiah to Malachi which can be dated.