In Part One of my reply to LJ's latest attempt to prove consistency in 2 Kings 10:30 and Hosea 1:4, we saw that he has so far done nothing but recycle his assertions that "the blood of Jezreel" in the latter verse meant the children of Israel who had been killed by the Assyrians and, in apparent support of the assertion, requote passages where prophets irrelevantly said that Yahweh was angry at the northern kingdom because of its idolatrous practices. In so doing, he has yet to give any credible textual evidence that the expression "blood of Jezreel" was ever used in the figurative sense that he has arbitrarily assigned it. I have repeatedly told him that I do not deny that Hosea and other prophets claimed that idolatrous practices were going to cause Yahweh to bring about the downfall of the northern kingdom but that this in no way proves that Hosea meant for his readers to understand that "the blood of Jezreel" in 1:4 meant the children of Israel who had been killed by the Assyrians. Despite my numerous challenges for him to cite one example--just one--of where any biblical writer ever used unequivocally this expression in the sense that he is claiming, LJ has yet to act on that challenge. He is beginning to sound like a broken record that says over and over, "Idolatry was encouraged by the kings in Jehu's dynasty, and this caused God to declare that he was going to withdrawn his mercy and bring the kingdom to an end." Perhaps if I put my response to this in bold italic print, he will stop repeating this unverifiable rant and finally get down to the task of showing us logical textual reasons why we should think that after almost three thousand years, he has seen a nuance in Hosea 1:4 that had until now eluded all biblical scholars.

Nobody denies that Hosea and other prophets were upset over idolatrous practices in the northern kingdom. We all agree to this, so please stop repeating something that nobody denies and show us textual evidence that Hosea meant for his readers to understand "the blood of Jezreel" to mean the children of Israel who had been killed by the Assyrians.

The principle of Occam's razor seems applicable here: the simplest explanation is probably the right one. In 841 BC, Jehu usurped the throne of Israel by massacring the royal family of Israel in the city of Jezreel. All descendants and associates of the Israelite king were killed. After Jehu's death, four generations of his direct descendants reigned as kings in Israel. This all happened in a time when vicarious punishment was widely practiced, so when a prophet who probably accepted the propriety of this custom said that his god Yahweh was going to "avenge the blood of Jezeel on the house of Jehu," he most likely meant that Yahweh was going to punish the house of Jehu because of the blood that was shed at Jezreel by the eponymous ancestor of this dynasty. If not, why not? If LJ intends to reject the simplest, most likely meaning of "the blood of Jezreel," he will have to show very compelling textual evidence to show that his interpretation is right and the simpler interpretation wrong. That is the problem facing him.

LJ's broken record continues.

Notice that LJ assumes that if a biblical prophet predicted that an event was going to take place, we can know that it did even if no biblical or extrabiblical records of it exist. As I have said before, he says that he isn't a biblical inerrantist, but he certainly talks like one.

LJ prefers to cite texts instead of quoting them, so let's take a look at his idea of implied prophecy fulfillment. The part that LJ considers a "prophecy" is italicized.

Genesis 46:2 God spoke to Israel in visions of the night, and said, "Jacob, Jacob." And he said, "Here I am." ³ Then he said, "I am God, the God of your father; do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for I will make of you a great nation there. ⁴ I myself will go down with you to Egypt, and I will also bring you up again; and Joseph's own hand shall close your eyes."

Genesis 49:33 When Jacob ended his charge to his sons, he drew up his feet into the bed, breathed his last, and was gathered to his people. 50:1 Then Joseph threw himself on his father's face and wept over him and kissed him.

Although the perceived "prophecy" didn't say anything about death, it probably was a reference to the custom of using a hand to close the eyes of someone who had just died with his eyes open, but that interpretation is by no means necessarily implied. The obvious intention of the statement was to communicate that "God" in the days when he routinely dropped in on his chosen ones to converse with them wanted to assure Jacob [Israel], who had been grieving over the loss of his son Joseph, that he would be reunited with Joseph in Egypt. To see in this a "prophecy" that Joseph's hand would close his father's eyes when he had died is to stretch a mile to find an example of prophecy fulfillment. It also illustrates, as I noted above, that LJ automatically assumes that if the Bible says X, then we can know that X happened even though there may be no real evidence that it did.

Three years before Israel fell to Assyria would have been the sixth year of Hoshea's nine-year reign. Here is the biblical account of his entire reign.

2 Kings 17:1 In the twelfth year of King Ahaz of Judah, Hoshea son of Elah began to reign in Samaria over Israel; he reigned nine years. ² He did what was evil in the sight of Yahweh, yet not like the kings of Israel who were before him. ³ King Shalmaneser of Assyria came up against him; Hoshea became his vassal, and paid him tribute. ⁴ But the king of Assyria found treachery in Hoshea; for he had sent messengers to King So of Egypt, and offered no tribute to the king of Assyria, as he had done year by year; therefore the king of Assyria confined him and imprisoned him. ⁵ Then the king of Assyria invaded all the land and came to Samaria; for three years he besieged it. ⁶ In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria captured Samaria; he carried the Israelites away to Assyria. He placed them in Halah, on the Habor, the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes. ⁷ This occurred because the people of Israel had sinned against Yahweh their God, who had brought them up out of the land of Egypt from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. They had worshiped other gods ⁸ and walked in the customs of the nations whom Yahweh drove out before the people of Israel, and in the customs that the kings of Israel had introduced. ⁹ The people of Israel secretly did things that were not right against Yahweh their God. They built for themselves high places at all their towns, from watchtower to fortified city; ¹⁰ they set up for themselves pillars and sacred poles on every high hill and under every green tree; ¹¹ there they made offerings on all the high places, as the nations did whom Yahweh carried away before them. They did wicked things, provoking Yahweh to anger; ¹² they served idols, of which Yahweh had said to them, "You shall not do this." ¹³ Yet Yahweh warned Israel and Judah by every prophet and every seer, saying, "Turn from your evil ways and keep my commandments and my statutes, in accordance with all the law that I commanded your ancestors and that I sent to you by my servants the prophets." ¹⁴ They would not listen but were stubborn, as their ancestors had been, who did not believe in Yahweh their God. ¹⁵ They despised his statutes, and his covenant that he made with their ancestors, and the warnings that he gave them. They went after false idols and became false; they followed the nations that were around them, concerning whom Yahweh had commanded them that they should not do as they did. ¹⁶ They rejected all the commandments of Yahweh their God and made for themselves cast images of two calves; they made a sacred pole, worshiped all the host of heaven, and served Baal. ¹⁷ They made their sons and their daughters pass through fire; they used divination and augury; and they sold themselves to do evil in the sight of Yahweh, provoking him to anger. ¹⁸ Therefore Yahweh was very angry with Israel and removed them out of his sight; none was left but the tribe of Judah alone. ¹⁹ Judah also did not keep the commandments of Yahweh their God but walked in the customs that Israel had introduced. ²⁰ Yahweh rejected all the descendants of Israel; he punished them and gave them into the hand of plunderers, until he had banished them from his presence. ²¹ When he had torn Israel from the house of David, they made Jeroboam son of Nebat king. Jeroboam drove Israel from following Yahweh and made them commit great sin. ²² The people of Israel continued in all the sins that Jeroboam committed; they did not depart from them ²³ until Yahweh removed Israel out of his sight, as he had foretold through all his servants the prophets. So Israel was exiled from their own land to Assyria until this day. ²⁴ The king of Assyria brought people from Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath, and Sepharvaim, and placed them in the cities of Samaria in place of the people of Israel; they took possession of Samaria, and settled in its cities. ²⁵ When they first settled there, they did not worship Yahweh; therefore Yahweh sent lions among them, which killed some of them. ²⁶ So the king of Assyria was told, "The nations that you have carried away and placed in the cities of Samaria do not know the law of the god of the land; therefore he has sent lions among them; they are killing them, because they do not know the law of the god of the land." ²⁷ Then the king of Assyria commanded, "Send there one of the priests whom you carried away from there; let him go and live there, and teach them the law of the god of the land." ²⁸ So one of the priests whom they had carried away from Samaria came and lived in Bethel; he taught them how they should worship Yahweh. ²⁹ But every nation still made gods of its own and put them in the shrines of the high places that the people of Samaria had made, every nation in the cities in which they lived; ³⁰ the people of Babylon made Succoth-benoth, the people of Cuth made Nergal, the people of Hamath made Ashima; ³¹ the Avvites made Nibhaz and Tartak; the Sepharvites burned their children in the fire to Adrammelech and Anammelech, the gods of Sepharvaim. ³² They also worshiped Yahweh and appointed from among themselves all sorts of people as priests of the high places, who sacrificed for them in the shrines of the high places. ³³ So they worshiped Yahweh but also served their own gods, after the manner of the nations from among whom they had been carried away. ³⁴ To this day they continue to practice their former customs. They do not worship Yahweh and they do not follow the statutes or the ordinances or the law or the commandment that Yahweh commanded the children of Jacob, whom he named Israel. ³⁵ Yahweh had made a covenant with them and commanded them, "You shall not worship other gods or bow yourselves to them or serve them or sacrifice to them, ³⁶ but you shall worship Yahweh, who brought you out of the land of Egypt with great power and with an outstretched arm; you shall bow yourselves to him, and to him you shall sacrifice. ³⁷ The statutes and the ordinances and the law and the commandment that he wrote for you, you shall always be careful to observe. You shall not worship other gods; ³⁸ you shall not forget the covenant that I have made with you.You shall not worship other gods, ³⁹ but you shall worship Yahweh your God; he will deliver you out of the hand of all your enemies." ⁴⁰ They would not listen, however, but they continued to practice their former custom. ⁴¹ So these nations worshiped Yahweh, but also served their carved images; to this day their children and their children's children continue to do as their ancestors did.

For sheer silliness, few biblical passages equal this one. Here are just a few of the absurdities.

What is important for the purpose of the discussion on the Jehu problem is the fact that Hosea uttered this prediction and how it relates to the context.)

Israel's defeat in this battle will serve as a sign of the fulfillment of Hosea’s prophecy that God will cause to cease the kingdom of the house of Israel.

As pointed out at the outset, Hosea begins his prophecy with God’s declaration that the northern kingdom has departed from God by committing spiritual “whoredom” (v. 2),

which firmly establishes Israel’s idolatry as the context for the following verses (v. 3 ff).

Maybe LJ is unaware that more than one prediction (prophecy) will often be found in a single biblical passage. Indeed it is hard to find a prophetic passage in books like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and even Hosea that contained only one prediction. Consider the passage below from Isaiah's prophecy against Babylon.

13:6 Wail, for the day of Yahweh is near; it will come like destruction from the Almighty! ⁷ Therefore all hands will be feeble, and every human heart will melt, ⁸ and they will be dismayed. Pangs and agony will seize them; they will be in anguish like a woman in labor. They will look aghast at one another; their faces will be aflame. ⁹ See, the day of Yahweh comes, cruel, with wrath and fierce anger, to make the earth a desolation, and to destroy its sinners from it. ¹⁰ For the stars of the heavens and their constellations will not give their light; the sun will be dark at its rising, and the moon will not shed its light. ¹¹ I will punish the world for its evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; I will put an end to the pride of the arrogant, and lay low the insolence of tyrants. ¹² I will make mortals more rare than fine gold, and humans than the gold of Ophir. ¹³ Therefore I will make the heavens tremble, and the earth will be shaken out of its place, at the wrath of Yahweh of hosts in the day of his fierce anger. ¹⁴ Like a hunted gazelle, or like sheep with no one to gather them, all will turn to their own people, and all will flee to their own lands. ¹⁵ Whoever is found will be thrust through, and whoever is caught will fall by the sword. ¹⁶ Their infants will be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses will be plundered, and their wives ravished. ¹⁷ See, I am stirring up the Medes against them, who have no regard for silver and do not delight in gold. ¹⁸ Their bows will slaughter the young men; they will have no mercy on the fruit of the womb; their eyes will not pity children. ¹⁹ And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the splendor and pride of the Chaldeans, will be like Sodom and Gomorrah when God overthrew them. ²⁰ It will never be inhabited or lived in for all generations; Arabs will not pitch their tents there, shepherds will not make their flocks lie down there. ²¹ But wild animals will lie down there, and its houses will be full of howling creatures; there ostriches will live, and there goat-demons will dance. ²² Hyenas will cry in its towers, and jackals in the pleasant palaces; its time is close at hand, and its days will not be prolonged.

If LJ will take the time to examine this passage, he should be able to identify some twenty different predictions, so why does he find it so hard to understand that the prophet Hosea, in a single biblical verse, made two entirely different predictions: (1) Yahweh was going to punish the house of Jehu for the blood that the founder of this dynasty had shed in a massacre at Jezreel, and (2) Yahweh was going to bring the nation of Israel to an end. The only substantial difference in the wording of the two predictions is that Hosea specifically stated the reason why Yahwah was going to punish the house of Jehu, whereas the reason for his destruction of the nation of Israel wasn't directly stated within the context of the prediction, because that reason, i. e., idolatry, was addressed throughout the rest of his book.

If LJ could just lay aside his obsession with finding some way to make Hosea 1:4 consistent with 2 Kings 10:30, he should be able to find basically unrelated dual predictions in the same prophetic passages in Hosea. Here is just one example.

5:8 Blow the horn in Gibeah, the trumpet in Ramah. Sound the alarm at Beth-aven; look behind you, Benjamin! ⁹ Ephraim shall become a desolation in the day of punishment; among the tribes of Israel I declare what is sure. ¹⁰ The princes of Judah have become like those who remove the landmark; on them I will pour out my wrath like water. ¹¹ Ephraim is oppressed, crushed in judgment, because he was determined to go after vanity. ¹² Therefore I am like maggots to Ephraim, and like rottenness to the house of Judah. ¹³ When Ephraim saw his sickness, and Judah his wound, then Ephraim went to Assyria, and sent to the great king. But he is not able to cure you or heal your wound. ¹⁴ For I will be like a lion to Ephraim, and like a young lion to the house of Judah. I myself will tear and go away; I will carry off, and no one shall rescue. ¹⁵ I will return again to my place until they acknowledge their guilt and seek my face. In their distress they will beg my favor.

In the parts printed in italics, Hosea prophesied against Israel and in the underlined parts against Judah--all within the same context. Why then can't LJ see that Hosea's prophecy in 1:4 also contained separate predictions: (1) a prophecy that Yahweh would punish the house of Jehu for the blood that its eponymous ancestor had shed at Jezreel and (2) a prophecy that Yahweh would punish the nation of Israel for its idolatry?

Whatever meaning that "we assign" to the phrase must also take into consideration that prophets, as noted above, often put multiple predictions into a single passage.

Here are facts that LJ is trying to ignore: (1) Jehu massacred the royal family of Israel and all of its officials and associates. (2) This massacre occurred at Jezreel. (3) The word blood [דם] was often used in the Old Testament in reference to blood shed in abundance or quantity as in the examples below.

1. Ezekiel 9:9 He [the being in the vision] said to me, "The guilt of the house of Israel and Judah is exceedingly great; the land is full of bloodshed [דם] and the city full of perversity; for they say, 'Yahweh has forsaken the land, and Yahweh does not see.'"

2. Ezekiel 28:21 Mortal, set your face toward Sidon, and prophesy against it, ²² and say, Thus says Yahweh GOD: I am against you, O Sidon, and I will gain glory in your midst. They shall know that I am Yahweh when I execute judgments in it, and manifest my holiness in it; ²³ for I will send pestilence into it, and bloodshed [דם] into its streets; and the dead shall fall in its midst, by the sword that is against it on every side. And they shall know that I am Yahweh.

3. Deuteronomy 32:39 See now that I [Yahweh], even I, am he; there is no god besides me. I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; and no one can deliver from my hand. ⁴⁰ For I lift up my hand to heaven, and swear: As I live forever, ⁴¹ when I whet my flashing sword, and my hand takes hold on judgment; I will take vengeance on my adversaries, and will repay those who hate me. ⁴² I will make my arrows drunk with blood [דם], and my sword shall devour flesh--with the blood [דם] of the slain and the captives, from the long-haired enemy. ⁴³ Praise, O heavens, his people, worship him, all you gods! For he will avenge the blood [דם] of his children, and take vengeance on his adversaries; he will repay those who hate him, and cleanse the land for his people.

An expression in the last verse of the passage immediately above deserves special notice. This is where this song says that "he [Yahweh] will avenge the blood of his children." This should remind readers of the almost parallel statement in the passage in dispute, where Yahweh, through the prophet Isaiah said, "I will avenge the blood of Jezreel on the house of Jehu" [1:4]. If Yahweh said in the Deuteronomic song exactly what he meant, i. e., avenge the blood of his children, instead of cloaking the word children in some mysterious, figurative language, we have to wonder why he couldn't have spoken just as directly in Hosea 1:4 and said that he would avenge "the blood of his children" [who had been killed by the Syrians] if that was really what he meant. Well, needless to say, intelligent readers (to borrow an expression from LJ), will realize that there is no need to think that Yahweh was speaking in riddles when he said that he would avenge the blood of Jezreel on the house of Jehu but rather that he was referring to what the word Jezreel literally meant, the place where Jehu had shed blood in large quantities.

Similar parallel statements are even in the passage where Jehu was presumably commissioned to go destroy the house of Ahab.

2 Kings 9:6 So Jehu got up and went inside; the young man poured the oil on his head, saying to him, "Thus says Yahweh the God of Israel: I anoint you king over the people of Yahweh, over Israel. ⁷ You shall strike down the house of your master Ahab, so that I may avenge on Jezebel the blood of my servants the prophets, and the blood of all the servants of Yahweh. ⁸ For the whole house of Ahab shall perish; I will cut off from Ahab every male, bond or free, in Israel.

Again, this passage had Yahweh speaking directly to say exactly what he meant, i. e., avenging the blood of his servants the prophets and the blood of all his servants. He didn't resort to double-talk by referring to the deaths of his prophets and servants as "the blood" of something other than exactly what they were. He said that he was going to avenge the blood of his servants the prophets and all his servants. Why should any sensible reader think that an almost parallel statement in Hosea 1:4 was intended to mean something other than exactly what it said, i. e., the blood of those whom Jehu had massacred at Jezreel?

Well, of course, blood shed in abundance or quantity, as the expression certainly implies, would result in death, but it more accurately conveys the meaning of slaughter or massacre. Brown, Driver, and Briggs is widely recognized as one of the leading Hebrew lexicons, and it specifically states that the expression as it was used in Hosea 1:4 referred to "blood in quantity... shed by rude violence" equaled "slaughter" (Hendrickson Publishers, 1999, p. 196).

LJ has by no means proven that Jezreel symbolized the nation of Israel. He has simply asserted that it did. He would help his case if he would comply with my request to cite one example--just one--of where Jezreel was ever used in the figurative sense that he is claiming for Hosea 1:4. I am sure that readers know that if he knew of any such example, he would have quoted it long ago.

As I have repeatedly shown, the face-value meaning of the expression does not support this assertion. To understand "the blood of Jezreel" to mean Jehu's blood massacre at Jezreel is consistent with a primary principle of hermeneutics and literary interpretation that says that the language of a text should be interpreted literally unless there are compelling reasons to assign figurative meaning. As I have repeatedly pointed out, the desire to have inerrancy in the text is not a compelling reason to assign figurative meaning, especially when the literal meaning makes perfectly good sense. Hosea lived in a time when vicarious punishment was an accepted way of life, so there is nothing unreasonable about understanding his statement to mean that Yahweh was going to hold Jehu's descendants responsible for the massacre that he committed at Jezreel. LJ has no room to argue that this interpretation is inconsistent with 2 Kings 10:30, which had Yahweh praising Jehu for the massacre, because (1) LJ claims that he is not a biblical inerrantist, and (2) even if LJ were an inerrantist, the desire to have inerrancy in the Bible is not a compelling reason to assign an unlikely figurative meaning to an otherwise simply worded expression.

As I have also repeatedly pointed out, Hosea's belief that Yahweh was going to destroy the nation of Israel because of its idolatry was simply a superstition of his time. That LJ apparently shares that superstition speaks volumes about his gullibility. He apparently believes that Hosea by divine inspiration accurately predicted Israel's conquest and destruction by Assyria, but to prove that he did so prophesy, LJ will have to clear the following hurdles.

1. The book of Hosea did make references to Assyria, which indicate that the Israelites would be taken there as captives (7:11; 8:9; 9:3; 10:6), but as previously noted, there is scholarly evidence that the text of Hosea was corrupted by Judean scribes after the fall of the northern kingdom in order to leave the impression that Yahweh favored Judah over Israel. Before he can prove prophecy fulfillment in the Assyrian conquest of Israel, then, LJ will have to prove that the references to the conquest were not retrospective additions to the text that were made to leave the impression of prophetic fulfillment.

2. If LJ can prove the authenticity of these predictions, he will then have to prove that they were predictions made by divine inspiration and not just by educated guessing. Although Hosea's prophetic ministry probably didn't extend into the reign of Hezekiah of Judah, the opening verse of the book claimed that it did. If Hosea did live that long, he would have witnessed the conquest of Israel in 722 BC, so writing about what he knew had happened could hardly be construed as prophecy. If, as many scholars think, Hosea did not live until the reign of Hezekiah but only through the reign of Jeroboam II, he would have lived close enough to the Assyria conquest to surmise that its rising military influence and successes against adjoining Syria would eventually be directed against Israel.

LJ certainly can't prove that Hosea accurately prophesied Israel's conquest by Syria, but for the sake of argument, let's just assume that he did. How would the success of this prophecy prove that "the blood of Jezreel" in Hosea 1:4 was intended to mean the blood of the children of Israel who had been killed by the Syrians? That is a problem that LJ is trying to hide behind a smoke screen of endless comments about other biblical passages that in no way support the spin he has tried to put onto Hosea's prediction that Yahweh was going to avenge the blood of Jezreel on the house of Jehu. He is, in other words, saying that Jezreel in this verse meant "the children of Israel," but to give any credence at all to this claim, he will have to cite examples in other biblical passages where this name was so used--unequivocally. Until he does that, he has nothing at all to support his spin on the verse, so does he seriously expect intelligent readers to think that he has been able to find a meaning in this verse that has eluded biblical readers and scholars for 2,500 years?

Understanding "the blood of Jezreel" here to be... well, the blood of Jezreel fits in even better with the context of the time when vicarious punishment was routinely practiced and thought to be the will of God. The expression meant nothing more than that the prophet Hosea thought that Jehu's bloody massacre at Jezreel warranted punishment, which Yahweh was going to inflict on his descendants. In this respect, Yahweh would be doing nothing more than what was said in Exodus 20:5,"I Yahweh your God am a jealous God, punishing the children for the iniquities of the parents, to the third and the fourth generation.... Jehu was the parent of the dynasty reigning in Israel in the time of Hosea. He had committed a bloody atrocity that Hosea thought merited punishment administered to his descendants. This is an interpretation that requires no verbal gymnastics, and the only reason why LJ doesn't want to accept it is that it is inconsistent with 2 Kings 10:30, where Yahweh praised Jehu for having done well in executing that which was right in his eyes by destroying the house of Ahab.

As noted above, multiple predictions are common place in prophetic passages, so there is no reason at all to think that that was not the case here: (1) Hosea predicted that Yahweh would punish the descendants of Jehu for having committed the bloody massacre at Jezreel. (2) Hosea predicted that Yahweh would bring the nation of Israel to an end and then went on to explain that idolatrous practices would be the reason for the second punishment. As I have said, the only reason why LJ rejects this understanding of the verse is that he wants to make Hosea's prophecies consistent with the praise heaped on Jehu in 2 Kings 10:30. At the time of Hosea's prophecy, however, the book of 2 Kings hadn't yet been written, so he could not have known that a century and a half later some other biblical writer would see the massacre at Jezreel in an entirely different light.

This is certainly true, but blood used in reference to massive bloodshed, as noted in the examples above would connote the idea of massacre, slaughter, or multiple murders. Here are additional examples of where it was so used.

2 Kings 21:16 Moreover Manasseh shed very much innocent blood, until he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another....

2 Kings 24:3 Surely this [the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem] came upon Judah at the command of Yahweh, to remove them out of his sight, for the sins of Manasseh, for all that he had committed, ⁴ and also for the innocent blood that he had shed; for he filled Jerusalem with innocent blood, and Yahweh was not willing to pardon.

Psalm 79:1 O God, the nations have come into your inheritance; they have defiled your holy temple; they have laid Jerusalem in ruins. ² They have given the bodies of your servants to the birds of the air for food, the flesh of your faithful to the wild animals of the earth. ³ They have poured out their blood like water all around Jerusalem, and there was no one to bury them.

Lamentations 4:13 It was for the sins of her [Jerusalem's] prophets and the iniquities of her priests, who shed the blood of the righteous in the midst of her. ¹⁴ Blindly they wandered through the streets, so defiled with blood that no one was able to touch their garments.

These examples are more parallel to "the blood of Jezreel" than LJ's examples of the Bible's references to the blood of single deaths like those of Ashabel and Naboth. The "blood of Jezreel" connoted mass murders and not just the murders of single individuals.

Of course, the Bible sometimes used blood to mean responsibility for death. It was so used in many places besides the example that LJ just quoted.

Leviticus 20:9 All who curse father or mother shall be put to death; having cursed father or mother, their blood is upon them. ¹⁰ If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death. ¹¹ The man who lies with his father's wife has uncovered his father's nakedness; both of them shall be put to death; their blood is upon them. ¹² If a man lies with his daughter-in-law, both of them shall be put to death; they have committed perversion, their blood is upon them. ¹³ If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death; their blood is upon them.

This passage was simply saying that those who are put to death in the circumstances described are responsible for their own deaths because they violated laws that prohibited what they had done, and that meaning of blood was made quite clear by the contexts in which it was used. Surely, however, LJ isn't trying to argue that the word had this meaning in Hosea 1:4. Here it was saying that the house of Jehu is being held responsible for the massive bloodshed of its eponymous ancestor at Jezreel. In other words, the responsibility for the deaths at Jezreel was imputed not to the individuals who had been killed (as was the case in the examples just cited) but to the party who had caused the deaths to occur. That party was Jehu, but since he was dead at the time of Hosea's prophetic ministry, the responsibility for the deaths was imputed to Jehu's descendants. As previously noted, belief in the propriety of vicarious punishment wasn't at all unusual in biblical times, so understanding Hosea's prediction of vengenance on the house of Jehu for the blood of Jezreel to mean exactly what it says is entirely consistent with the views of the time in which the prediction was made.

Yes, Hosea thought that the northern kingdom had bitterly offended Yahweh by its idolatry, despite warnings from prophets, and that because of this offense, Yahweh was going to destroy Israel. Because of the warnings, so Hosea thought, Ephraim's [Israel's] blood, i. e., responsibility for its destruction, would be "upon him." On that, LJ and I agree. Now all he needs to do is give some convincing textual evidence that "the blood of Jezreel" in Hosea 1:4 meant the blood of the children of Israel who had been killed by the Syrians and Assyrians because of their idolatry. In the first place, any deaths of Israelites at the hands of the Syrians and Assyrians would have been due to purely political reasons. Their religious practices would have had nothing at all to do with it.

With a clarification that I will soon add below, I too think that these translations accurately represent Hosea's meaning in Hebrew, but how does that prove that "the blood of Jezreel" in 1:4 meant the blood of the children of Israel who had been killed by the Syrians and Assyrians. LJ is talking about everything but the core problem that he needs to address: Did the blood of Jezreel in 1:4 not mean what it says? If not, what evidence besides his mere word does LJ have to establish that it meant the blood of the children of Israel killed by Syrians and Assyrians?

Those who check the link immediately above will see that in this part of my reply, I had explicated chapters 11-13 to show that "the broader context" of the verses that LJ quoted above shows "that the prophet was deeply concerned about idolatrous practices in Israel" but was also outraged over other offenses besides idolatry. One of those offenses, widespread bloodshedding, which was a "crime" that was condemned earlier, is included in the following versions of 12:14.

NRSV: Ephraim has given bitter offense, so his Lord will bring his crimes down on him and pay him back for his insults.

NIV: But Ephraim has bitterly provoked him to anger; his Lord will leave upon him the guilt of his bloodshed and will repay him for his contempt.

REB: Ephraim gave bitter provocation; he will be left to suffer for the blood he has shed; his Lord will punish him for all his blasphemy.

These translators, then, saw idolatry as just one of the moral offenses that the prophet ranted against. LJ has a habit of cherry picking his quotations, but those who take the time to read the verses preceding the two that he quoted will have no trouble recognizing that Hosea was concerned about far more than just Israel's idolatry.

Hosea 12:1 Ephraim herds the wind, and pursues the east wind all day long; they multiply falsehood and violence; they make a treaty with Assyria, and oil is carried to Egypt. ² Yahweh has an indictment against Judah, and will punish Jacob according to his ways, and repay him according to his deeds. ³ In the womb he tried to supplant his brother, and in his manhood he strove with God. ⁴ He strove with the angel and prevailed, he wept and sought his favor; he met him at Bethel, and there he spoke with him. ⁵ Yahweh the God of hosts, Yahweh is his name! ⁶ But as for you, return to your God, hold fast to love and justice, and wait continually for your God. ⁷ A trader, in whose hands are false balances, he loves to oppress. ⁸ Ephraim has said, "Ah, I am rich, I have gained wealth for myself; in all of my gain no offense has been found in me that would be sin." ⁹ I am Yahweh your God from the land of Egypt; I will make you live in tents again, as in the days of the appointed festival. ¹⁰ I spoke to the prophets; it was I who multiplied visions, and through the prophets I will bring destruction. ¹¹ In Gilead there is iniquity, they shall surely come to nothing. In Gilgal they sacrifice bulls, so their altars shall be like stone heaps on the furrows of the field. ¹² Jacob fled to the land of Aram, there Israel served for a wife, and for a wife he guarded sheep. ¹³ By a prophet Yahweh brought Israel up from Egypt, and by a prophet he was guarded. ¹⁴ Ephraim has given bitter offense, so his Lord will bring his crimes down on him and pay him back for his insults. 13:1 When Ephraim spoke, there was trembling; he was exalted in Israel; but he incurred guilt through Baal and died.

Besides idolatry, Hosea in this passage railed against falsehood, violence, trade with Egypt, false scales [balances], etc. Notice that verse 11 refers to the iniquity in Gilead, but earlier Hosea had raved against Gilead, calling it "a city of them that work iniquity," which is "stained with blood" (6:8). In this same context, he referred to "the company of priests [who] murder in the way toward Shechem" and various other acts of "whoredom" in Ephraim (v:9), so when Hosea said in 12:14 that Ephraim's "blood shall be left upon him," he was certainly saying that the impending doom, which he thought was coming from Yahweh, would be brought upon the nation for its idolatry, but he by no means was limiting Israel's destruction to this one "sin." LJ has talked extensively about the idolatry that the house of Jehu had "promoted" in Israel, which he thinks was the reason why Yahweh was going to punish Jehu's descendants and bring the nation to an end, but I wonder if he considered Jehu's descendants responsible for the robbery, murder, false merchandising, trade with Egypt, and all the other offenses that Hosea raved against. Does LJ think that the kings of the Jehu dynasty had forced the Israelites to engage in these "sinful" activities? For that matter, does he think that the Jehu kings had compelled by force the practice of idolatry in the kingdom?

Before leaving this point, I want readers to see the final paragraph in the section of my reply that LJ referred to above. He conveniently failed to address the argument in it.

There is a clear difference in the way that Hosea used the two terms. The one claimed that the house of Jehu would receive vicarious punishment for Jehu's actions at Jezreel; the other claimed that Ephraim [Israel] would receive punishment for its own offenses. LJ may counter that I am now assuming that "the blood of Jezreel" was making reference to Jehu's massacres at Jezreel, and I certainly do think that this is the most plausible interpretation of the expression, but for the sake of argument, let's assume that it meant what LJ is claiming, i. e., the descendants of Jehu living in Hosea's time would be exterminated because of all of the children of Israel whose blood was shed by the Syrians during the reigns of Jehu, Jehoahaz, Jehoash, Jeroboam II, and Zechariah. The first three of these kings were dead at the time that Hosea made the prophecy, so if it meant what LJ is claiming, he would still be arguing that the descendants of Jehu living in Hosea's time were going to be punished because of "sins" committed by their ancestors. That interpretation would still be a case of vicarious punishment, which would be different from 12:14 that was saying that Ephraim [Israel] would suffer for the blood that he had [personally] shed.

If LJ wants to make 12:14 more inclusive than just the offense of shedding blood, he may do so, but that would not affect the basic meaning of the text, which was that the nation of Israel would itself be responsible for the punishment that Yahweh was going to inflicted on it for its various "sins." In fact, this passage is one of the last ones that LJ should cite in support of his claim that "the blood of Jezreel" was a statement that put blame for Israel's idolatry on the house of Jehu, because the obvious thesis in chapter 12, quoted above, was that Ephraim [Israel], and not the kings of the Jehu dynasty, was itself responsible for the doom that would shortly be coming upon it.

Is LJ--the expert in Hebrew, who can see subtle nuances in expressions that he claims have been misunderstood for centuries--saying that he doesn't know whether the KJV rendering of Hosea 12:14 is correct?

I just showed that the broader context of the two verses that LJ quoted clearly shows that idolatry was just one of the offenses that Hosea thought would cause Yahweh to bring the kingdom to an end. If he doesn't know what is the correct translation of this verse, why should we think that his unique understanding of Hosea 1:4 is correct?

I will agree with this interpretation except for LJ's attempt to limit Israel's "death" to the offense of idolatry. As I showed above, the broader context of chapters 11-13 shows that Hosea raged against other offenses, like violence, falsehood, trade with Egypt, oppression of the innocent, and false scales [balances], as well as idolatry.

LJ has wasted our time here, because I don't disagree with either his understanding that the past tense of die was used in 13:1 to denote certainty or his interpretation of the passages just quoted in which certainty was also indicated by the past tense. I myself have often use the example of Shemi to express my disagreement with biblical inerrantists who try to find an error in the warning to Adam and Eve that they would surely die "on the day" that they ate of the forbidden fruit. The case of Shemi shows that "on the day that one did X, he would surely die" was simply an idiom in Hebrew that expressed certainty. LJ and I disagree on the issue of certainty in Hosea 13:1 only in his apparent belief that idolatry was the only offense that the prophet thought would cause Yahweh to bring the kingdom to an end. LJ complained about the length of my replies, but he is wasting reams of space on irrelevant matters like the long paragraph above. He needs to spend his time quoting passages where Jezreel was unequivocally used to mean the children of Israel who had been killed by the Syrians and Assyrians rather than passages where certainty of future events was communicated by using the past tense.

The iniquity of Ephraim is bound up, his sin is kept in store. The pangs of childbirth come for him, but he is an unwise son; for now he does not present himself at the mouth of the womb. Shall I ransom them from the power of Sheol? Shall I redeem them from Death? O Death, where are your plagues? O Sheol, where is your destruction? Compassion is hid from my eyes. [sic] [Hosea 13:12-14, RSV; cf. 1 Corinthians 15:54-55] [sic]

The prediction of Israel's restoration isn't nearly as clear in this passage as it is in the following ones.

Hosea 3:4 For the Israelites shall remain many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or pillar, without ephod or teraphim. ⁵ Afterward the Israelites shall return and seek Yahweh their God, and David their king; they shall come in awe to Yahweh and to his goodness in the latter days.

Hosea 14:4 I will heal their disloyalty; I will love them freely, for my anger has turned from them. ⁵ I will be like the dew to Israel; he shall blossom like the lily, he shall strike root like the forests of Lebanon. ⁶ His shoots shall spread out; his beauty shall be like the olive tree, and his fragrance like that of Lebanon. ⁷ They shall again live beneath my shadow, they shall flourish as a garden; they shall blossom like the vine, their fragrance shall be like the wine of Lebanon.

In 1:11, Hosea even predicted an eventual reunification of Israel and Judah under one ruler. The fact that this prophecy failed, as did the same predictions by Isaiah (27:13) and Jeremiah (50:4-5), doesn't seem to bother LJ or, at least, he has not yet commented on these failed restoration prophecies. My point is that if Hosea's prophecies of restoration failed, why should we get excited about his predictions that Israel would some day fall to conquest by a foreign power?

Yes, but it didn't happen, did it? So what is LJ's point, and how does any of this show that "the blood of Jezreel" in Hosea 1:4 meant the blood of the children of Israel who had been killed by the Syrians and Assyrians?

Basically, this is true, although it is stretching imagination to say that kings like Zimri (1 Kings 16:15) and Shallum (2 Kings 15:13), who had reigned only seven days and one month respectively, and Tibni, whose four-year reign was marked with continuous civil war, as his followers struggled with Omri for control of the kingdom (1 Kings 16:21-22) had "presided over the idolatry of the nation." Furthermore, Jehua had eradicated Baalism in the kingdom (2 Kings 10:18-30), his only failure with respect to idolatry being that he did not remove the golden calves from Bethel and Dan (v:29). Since Jeroboam had installed the calves, Jehu could hardly be accused of "presiding over" this form of idolatry. As we will see below, LJ objects to my having said that Jehu had only "allowed" the worship of the calves, but that is an accurate description of his role in the matter.

At any rate, the northern kingdom from its formation had had kings who either promoted or tolerated idolatry in different forms, yet the kingdom managed to endure for some 200 years. Finally, in the reign of Hoshea, it fell to Assyrian conquest, and the people were taken into captivity from which they never returned. To say that this conquest was orchestrated by a god because of the nation's idolatry is to paint a rather uncharitable picture of the Israelite god Yahweh. He allowed the nation to survive during what LJ calls the "promotion" of idolatry by kings A, B, C, D, etc., but then after two centuries, he decided to destroy the kingdom during the reign of Hoshea, who did "evil in the sight of Yahweh, yet not as the kings of Israel who were before him" (2 Kings 17:2). In other words, as I pointed out before, Yahweh was a god who tolerated the "promotion" of idolatry by the worst of the worst, like Jeroboam I and Ahab, but then when things improved, he lowered the boom and brought the nation to an end.

This is all superstitious silliness, of course, but it is exactly what LJ is trying to defend. As I leave this point, I will just ask him again to explain to us how the fact that most of the kings of Israel had "promoted" idolatry would prove that "the blood of Jezreel" in Hosea 1:4 meant the blood of the children of Israel. Can he cite any passage in the Bible where Jezreel was unequivocally used to mean the blood of the children of Israel who had been killed by the Syrians and the Assyrians? Furthermore, if this was what Hosea wanted his readers to understand, why didn't he just say "the blood of the children of Israel" instead of the blood of Jezreel? Why would a writer inspired by an omniscient, omnipotent deity have been unable to say exactly what he meant? Although he claims not to be an inerrantist, LJ, like many who are avowed inerrantists, tries to explain away discrepancies in the Bible by depicting Yahweh as a deity who spoke in riddles rather than plain, easy-to-understand language.

The Old Testament writers did indeed rage against the "sins of Jeroboam." As I pointed out in Part Four of my first replies to the spin that LJ is trying to put onto "the blood of Jezreel," the "sins of Jeroboam" were the yardstick by which the writer(s) of the books of Kings used to evaluate the reigns of the kings of Israel. The idolatry begun by Jeroboam was clearly an anathema to the writer(s) of these books. Nobody that I know has ever denied this, but how does the anger of the prophets over Jeroboam's brand of idolatry in any way prove that "the blood of Jezreel" in Hosea 1:4 meant the blood of the children of Israel who had been killed by the Syrians and Assyrians?

Yes, they did, but how does that prove that "the blood of Jezreel" in Hosea 1:4 meant the blood of the children of Israel who had been killed by the Syrians and Assyrians?

This seems to be LJ's argument. The Old Testament writers held the kings of Israel responsible for the eventual destruction of the nation; therefore, the blood of Jezreel in Hosea 1:4 meant the blood of the children of Israel who had be killed by the Syrians and Assyrians.

I wonder if LJ knows what non sequitur means.

Yes, I have repeatedly said that I agree that prophets and biblical writers, who lived in a time when vicarious punishment was accepted as a social/religious practice, thought that Israel's defeats and destruction would be caused by "the sins of Jeroboam," but how does that in any way prove that "the blood of Jezreel" in Hosea 1:4 meant the blood of the children of Israel whom Yahweh had allowed the Syrians and Assyrians to kill because of the nation's idolatrous practices? Prophets also believed that people and nations sometimes suffered calamities because of the offenses of others, so why does LJ think that Hosea did not mean in 1:4 that the house of Jehu was going to be punished because of a sin committed by its eponymous ancestor? Well, the answer to that question is simple: if he accepted this most probable meaning of the verse, he would have to admit that there is a discrepancy in the Bible.

Here is another example of LJ's wasting time to try to prove a point that I have never denied. Yes, vicarious punishment was a way of life in biblical times. I don't deny that, and I have never denied it. If I write it in bold print, maybe LJ will finally understand that I agree with him on this point. The fact that vicarious punishment was a widespread, socially accepted practice in biblical times doesn't help LJ's case at all. It helps mine, because it shows that punishment of the house of Jehu for an offense committed by its eponymous ancestor would have been entirely consistent with the thinking of Hosea's time. Now why doesn't LJ show us where any biblical writer ever unequivocally used Jezreel to mean the chilren of Israel? That is what he must do to make his case, but despite repeated requests that he do this, he has persistently danced around the challenge.

How many times will I have to tell LJ that I have never denied that biblical prophets and writers put the blame for Israel's idolatry and other offense on the ruling kings? As I have said over and over, people living in those superstitious times never thought that things just happened. If good fortune happened to a person or nation, this was seen as an indication that their god was pleased with them. If bad fortune happened, this was seen as punishment from their angry god. I addressed this ancient superstition at length in Part One of my first series of replies to the spin that LJ is trying to put on "the blood of Jezreel," so I am a bit confused about why LJ is wasting so much time trying to make a point that he should know that I agree with.

What I don't agree with is his apparent belief that because Old Testament writers "held the royal family of Israel chiefly responsible for Israel's idolatry," this somehow proves that "the blood of Jezreel" in Hosea 1:4 meant the blood of the children of Israel who had been killed by the Syrians and Assyrians. Old Testament writers also thought that their god Yahweh vicariously punished people for the sins of their ancestors, so why doesn't LJ think that this widespread belief would prove that "the blood of Jezreel" in Hosea 1:4 meant the blood of those who had been massacred by Jehu in Jezreel for which Yahweh intended to bring down vengeance on Jehu's descendants? The latter view is certainly more likely than the first, because the latter view requires no verbal gymnastics. It just merely accepts the face-value meaning of the language in the text.

As I have now pointed out several times, Jehu destroyed Baal worship in the northern kingdom but didn't destroy the golden calves in Bethel and Dan, which had been erected by Jeroboam. Hence, he allowed this form of idolatry to continue, even though he had zealously stamped out Baalism. In pointing this out above, I showed that kings like Zemri, Shallum, and Tibni could not have "promoted" Jeroboam's form of idolatry either because of reigns that had lasted one month or less or from preoccupation with continuous civil war, but for the sake of argument, let's just assume that every last king of the northern kingdom had spent every waking moment trying to promote worship at Jeroboam's shrines. How would that prove that "the blood of Jezreel" in Hosea 1:4 was meant to convey the idea that the descendants of Jehu were going to be destroyed because of the blood of the children of Israel who had been killed by Syrian and Assyrian military action in the kingdom?

Yes, they do, but how does that in any way prove that "the blood of Jezreel" in Hosea 1:4 meant the blood of the children of Israel who had been killed by the Syrians and Assyrians? As I just pointed out above, biblical passages just as clearly indicate that prophets and writers believed that their god punished people for the "sins" of their ancestors. By LJ's brand of twisted logic, this would prove that "the blood of Jezreel" in this text referred to the blood that Jehu had shed at Jezreel. That conclusion may be a non sequitur, but it is just as valid as the way that LJ is trying to reason, and it has the added advantage of being consistent with the face-value meaning of the text.

Yes, that is what the biblical writers thought. As I have repeatedly said from the beginning of my replies to the spin that LJ is now trying to put onto Hosea 1:4, biblical writers, almost always after the fact, found scapegoats to blame for national calamities. After the fall of Israel to Assyrian conquest, the writers, as the link above will show, put the blame for this on the "sins of Jeroboam." I have yet to see anything that LJ has written in reply to the section just linked to, so I will quote the most relevant part.

This was a recurring theme in the book of Judges. The people would do evil in the sight of Yahweh, and then some kind of adversity would follow. Eventually, the adversity, usually some kind of foreign oppression, would end, and change of fortune would immediately be attributed to their having "cried out to Yahweh" (Judges 3:9,15). Such accounts merely reflected a belief of the times, because the people then thought that their gods were involved in every event in their lives. When disasters and calamities happened, such as defeats in battles or conquests by invading armies, they reasoned that they had done something that displeased their gods. This kind of thinking was an excellent example of the post hoc ergo propter hoc [after this, therefore because of this] fallacy, which has no doubt resulted in many silly superstitions, such as beliefs that breaking mirrors or walking under ladders will cause bad luck. After occasions of tragedy it was always easy to find something considered wrong by contemporary societal standards, so it was common in those days to blame famines, oppression, or conquests, or whatever on actions believed to have angered the gods.

That was no doubt the case in LJ's "proof text" cited above. 1 Kings 14:14-16 does say that Yahweh would cut off the house of Jeroboam and "give up Israel" because of the sins of Jeroboam, but readers should keep in mind that the book in which this condemnation appears was, as I pointed out above, written well after the Assyrian conquest of Israel in 722 BC. The question of why Yahweh would have allowed this to happen to his "chosen people" was a bothersome question that demanded an explanation, and the author of the books of Kings had one: It happened because of the sins of Jeroboam. It would never have occurred to the writer that it had happened because, as a modern English idiom says, "shit happens." No, if it happened, there had to have been a reason, so Jeroboam was made the scapegoat, even though he had reigned and died of apparently natural causes (1 Kings 14:19-20) in 901 BC, 179 years before the Assyrian conquest of Israel in 722 BC. Yahweh certainly took his good sweet time getting around to "cutting off" the house of Israel for the sins of Jeroboam, didn't he?

I trust that I was not the only one to notice how LJ was trying to play both sides of the street. Earlier, he had said that "the blood of Jezreel" was the deaths of the children of Israel who had died under the reigns of the Jehu dynasty and that it was because of those deaths that "God" was going to put an end to the house of Israel, but then he turned around and cited a "proof text" that says that Yahweh would "cut off" Israel because of the sins of Jeroboam. Let's look at a full quotation of what LJ's "proof text" says.

1 Kings 14:14 Moreover Yahweh will raise up for himself a king over Israel, who shall cut off the house of Jeroboam today, even right now! ¹⁵ "Yahweh will strike Israel, as a reed is shaken in the water; he will root up Israel out of this good land that he gave to their ancestors, and scatter them beyond the Euphrates, because they have made their sacred poles, provoking Yahweh to anger. ¹⁶ He will give Israel up because of the sins of Jeroboam, which he sinned and which he caused Israel to commit."

This passage is rather easy to understand. It put an after-the-fact blame on Jeroboam for the Assyrian conquest of the northern kingdom and the deportation of its people to regions beyond the Euphrates. LJ, then, needs to make up his mind. Did Yahweh destroy the northern kingdom and send its population into captivity because of the sins of Jeroboam or did he do it because of the blood of the children of Israel who had been killed during the reigns of the Jehu dynasty? He can't have it both ways.

Sensible readers, of course, will realize that the author of Kings was simply interpreting events in accordance with his religious beliefs. A national calamity had happened, and someone had to be responsible for it. He made Jeroboam the scapegoat. Later on, in 2 Kings, he made king Manasseh the scapegoat for the Babylonian conquest of Judah and the subsequent captivity of its population (2 Kings 23:26-27; 2 Kings 24:3-4). This was just the way that superstitious people living in superstitious times thought, but if the Kings writer was correct in saying that Yahweh would destroy the northern kingdom because of the sins of Jeroboam, then LJ's claim that Hosea prophesied the destruction of the northern kingdom because of the sins of the Jehu dynasty can't also be right.

Let's hope that LJ will try to reply to this argument rather than just repeating like a broken record that biblical writers held the kings of Israel responsible for idolatry in the northern kingdom. Nobody that I know denies that, but the fact that biblical writers thought this in no way proves that "the blood of Jezreel" in Hosea 1:4 was intended to mean the blood of the children of Israel whom the Syrians and Assyrians had killed.

Yes, of course, the writer saw Zemri's destruction of the house of Baasha as "a judgment of God." Everything of a calamitous nature in those days was seen as a judgment of God. To the superstitious minds of people living then nothing ever happened just because it happened. They thought that their god caused everything to happen.

How does the fact that the biblical writer saw Zemri's destruction of the house of Baasha a judgment of "God" in any way prove that Hosea meant for his readers to understand that the blood of Jezreel, which was going to be avenged on the house of Jehu, meant the blood of the children of Israel who had been killed by the Syrians and Assyrians?

This is rank question begging. Instead of trying to prove that "the blood of Jezreel" in Hosea 1:4 meant "the death of the nation," LJ simply assumed that it did and asked us to accept this question without any proof."

Here LJ has simply added to his assumption that "the blood of Jezreel" meant the death of the nation of Israel. There is no linguistic or hermeneutic principle known that would justify the spin that LJ is trying to put onto this expression. In usurping the kingship of Israel, Jehu slaughtered the royal family of Israel at Jezreel. The slaughter included all of the king's relatives, associates, and officials. Any reference to the blood of Jezreel would immediately bring this massacre to mind, so the face-value meaning of the expression is exactly what it says--the blood of Jezreel. If Hosea had another meaning in mind, he could have used a basic course in writing, because he put nothing into the context of the passage to indicate that he had any other meaning in mind. If LJ is going to continue trying to defend his spin on this verse, he is obligated to offer some kind of textual evidence to support it.

Before I leave this point, I want to call the readers' attention to the word eventually in LJ's statement immediately above: Provoking the Lord God of Israel to anger with their [Israel's] idols eventually resulted in the death of the nation. Eventually-- Yahweh ewventually destroyed the nation of Israel because of its idolatry. Jeroboam started the idolatry around 931 BC, and it was continued through the reigns of 18 other kings over a period of two centuries until, finally, in 722 BC Yahweh destroyed the kingdom. That is what LJ expects us to believe, but as I said in the quoted section above, Yahweh certainly took his good sweet time in "cutting off" the nation of Israel because of the sins of Jeroboam, didn't he? A more rational view is that whatever happened in Israel from Jeroboam until the Assyrian conquest happened for purely political/social reasons, but biblical writers were incapable of perceiving the political scene in this way, so they engaged in scapegoating. Jeroboam was the scapegoat for the destruction of the nation of Israel, just as Manasseh was the scapegoate for Judah's conquest by Babylon, and Jehu was the scapegoat for the assassination of Zechariah, which ended the Jehu dynasty in Israel. Blame--biblical writers always found some scapegoat to blame for political events like these.

LJ continues his question begging by just asserting that "Jezreel represented the people of Israel" but offering no textual evidence to support it. To see just how devoid of supporting evidence he is, let's look at his proof text, which I will quote in its broader context.

Hosea 11:1 When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. ² The more I called them, the more they went from me; they kept sacrificing to the Baals, and offering incense to idols. ³ Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, I took them up in my arms; but they did not know that I healed them. ⁴ I led them with cords of human kindness, with bands of love. I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks. I bent down to them and fed them. ⁵ They shall return to the land of Egypt, and Assyria shall be their king, because they have refused to return to me.

Nowhere in this entire context did Hosea refer to Israel as Jezreel. As already noted, he referred to Israel as "Ephraim" and Judah as Jacob (12:2), but nowhere in the entire book did Hosea identify Jezreel as Israel. Twice (1:11; 2:22) Jezreel was used to indicate conditions of prosperity prior to a reunified kingdom of Israel and Judah under one ruler, which would result from Yahweh's rather than the Baalim's "sowing" the land (2:14-23). I examined this issue in detail in Part One of my previous replies, so there is no need to rehash that information here. That this last use of Jezreel referred to conditions of prosperity that Yahweh would bring upon the land prior to its reunification with Judah is evident by an appeal to the literal etymology of the name, which as previously noted meant "Yahweh sows."

Hosea 2:21 On that day [of restoration] I will answer, says Yahweh, I will answer the heavens and they shall answer the earth; ²² and the earth shall answer the grain, the wine, and the oil, and they shall answer Jezreel; ²³ and I will sow him for myself in the land. And I will have pity on Lo-ruhamah, and I will say to Lo-ammi, "You are my people"; and he shall say, "You are my God."

The most plausible way to interpret Hosea's usage of Jezreel is that the naming of the prophet's first son was intended to represent Jehu's bloody massacre at Jezreel, for which Hosea thought that Yahweh would soon punish Jehu's descendants. After having made his point about his displeasure with Jehu's blood massacre, the prophet used the literal meaning of the name in reference to reunification changes that were presumably going to happen. Those changes never occurred, but LJ doesn't seem to let this prophecy failure deter him in his attempts to spin his way out of a biblical inconsistency. That he would devote so much time to trying to find consistency in a book that he himself admits is in many places inconsistent is not at all easy to understand.

I have already shown here that LJ's claim that Gomer's second and third child were illegitimate is "iffy" at best. The link just given will show that LJ based this claim on the fact that the text says, in the case of the first child's birth, that Gomer conceived and bore him [Hosea] a son but omits the pronoun him in recording the births of the next two children. I showed in the section just linked to that it wasn't at all unusual for the Bible in recording births to say only that the mother conceived and bore a son or daughter. LJ's claim that Lo-ruhamah and Lo-ammi were "bastards" is just another example of how he reads into biblical texts what he wants to see.

Yes, the Bible says that Tiglath-pileser invaded Israel and exacted tribute from king Menahem, but how does any of it prove that "the blood of Jezreel" in Hosea 1:4 meant the blood of the children of Israel who had been killed by the Syrians and Assyrians? LJ seems to think that if he summarizes parts of Israelite history, he is proving that his spin on the blood of Jezreel in Hosea 1:4 is correct. He doesn't seem to recognize when he is resorting to non sequiturs.

English is apparently a second language to LJ, so we will excuse him for not knowing the difference in less and fewer. That is, in fact, a distinction that eludes many native speakers of English.

Yes, and none of this in any way proves that "the blood of Jezreel" in Hosea 1:4 meant the blood of the children of Israel who had been killed by the Syrians and Assyrians. It does, however, expose a major flaw in the ancient belief that the gods brought about the deaths of kings whose lives didn't conform to social and religious standards of the time. As LJ just pointed out, Zechariah, Shallum, Pekahiah, and Pekah were assassinated by their successors, as were some of the kings before them. Those assassinations were the result of political ambition and not divine providence. Seizing an opportunity, Baasha assassinated Nadab and all members of his family. The writer of Kings interpreted this as Yahweh's way of punishing Nadab for the sins of his father Jeroboam (1 Kings 15:25-30), but intelligent readers will understand that this was just the custom of the time when usurpers killed anyone who posed a political threat to them. In the same way, Zemri assassinated Elah and all of his kinsmen (1 Kings 16:8-13), not as punishment from Yahweh as the writer claimed but for purely political reasons. He wanted to be undisputed king. This was no doubt the reason why Jehu massacred the royal family of Israel and all of its associates and officials, but the superstitious author of 2 Kings saw it as Yahweh's punishment of the house of Ahab (2 Kings 9:7-9). When Jehoram of Judah succeeded his father Jehoshaphat, he killed all of his brothers and several princes (2 Chron. 21:4) in order to eliminate possible competition to the throne. This was just a way of life at that time, and the god Yahweh had nothing to do with it. The fact that LJ seems to buy the idea that all of these events were being orchestrated by Yahweh merely shows that even people living in enlightened times are often shackled to ancient religious superstitions.

And in what way does this prove that "the blood of Jezreel" in Hosea 1:4 meant the blood of the children of Israel who had been killed by the Syrians and Assyrians?

No divine mercy had ever been shown to Israel, because human events are regulated by natural circumstances and not by gods who sit in the sky and pull strings. LJ seems to be making a point of Hosea's prediction that Yahweh, as the name Lo-ruhamah symbolized, would show Israel no mercy, but, as I have pointed out above, LJ seems not the least bothered by Hosea's predictions that didn't materialize, such as his prophecy that Yahweh would reunite Israel and Judah under one ruler (1:11). At any rate, even if Hosea had made a genuine prophecy in predicting that Yahweh would withdraw his mercy from Israel, that would in no way prove that "the blood of Jezreel" in 1:4 meant the blood of the children of Israel who had been killed by the Syrians and Assyrians.

Yes, that is what the passage says, but that proves nothing more than that the Chronicle writer believed the ancient superstition that good fortune came when God was pleased and bad fortune when he was displeased. There is nothing in the passage that would prove that "the blood of Jezreel" in Hosea 1:4 meant the blood of the children of Israel who had been killed by the Syrians and the Assyrians.

If Hosea had really meant what LJ is claiming, he could have easily written the verse to say it in plain language.

And Yahweh said to him, "For yet a little while, and I will avenge on the house of Jehu the blood of the children of Israel who have been killed because of the sins of Jeroboam, which they also sinned and caused Israel to sin."

Written like this, every reader would understand it to mean what LJ is claiming, so if that was what Hosea meant, why didn't he write it that way? Why didn't Yahweh inspire him to write it that way?

Here is another example of LJ's fuzzy reasoning. He apparently wants us to accept the premise that delayed vicarious punishment was appropriate and just when it was presumably being exacted by the Hebrew god Yahweh, but he conveniently ignores the fact that the Old Testament is full of examples of Yahwistic punishment that was swift and immediate. We noted earlier the example of Achan, who had "sinned" by keeping for himself some of the booty taken in the capture of Jericho (Josh. 7:16-26), and the punishment of death that was inflicted on his entire family and all of his livestock. That punishment was imposed right after the violation and not on his descendants 200 years later. Likewise, when the priests Nadab and Abihu offered "strange fire" in their censers, fire came out from Yahweh immediately and devoured them (Lev. 10:1-2). The punishment was not delayed for two or three generations and then inflicted on descendants of Nadab and Abihu. When Korah, Dathan, and Abiram led a rebellion against the leadership of Moses, the earth opened and swallowed them and their households (Num. 16:1-35). Yaweh presumably punished them immediately and not their descendants generations later.

The Bible records examples of collective punishment from Yahweh that was immediately imposed when Israel "sinned."

Judges 3:7 The Israelites did what was evil in the sight of Yahweh, forgetting Yahweh their God, and worshiping the Baals and the Asherahs. ⁸ Therefore the anger of Yahweh was kindled against Israel, and he sold them into the hand of King Cushan-rishathaim of Aram-naharaim; and the Israelites served Cushan-rishathaim eight years.

Judges 3:12 The Israelites again did what was evil in the sight of Yahweh; and Yahweh strengthened King Eglon of Moab against Israel, because they had done what was evil in the sight of Yahweh. ¹³ In alliance with the Ammonites and the Amalekites, he went and defeated Israel; and they took possession of the city of palms. ¹⁴ So the Israelites served King Eglon of Moab eighteen years.

Judges 4:1 The Israelites again did what was evil in the sight of Yahweh, after Ehud died. ² So Yahweh sold them into the hand of King Jabin of Canaan, who reigned in Hazor; the commander of his army was Sisera, who lived in Harosheth-ha-goiim.

Judges 6:1 The Israelites did what was evil in the sight of Yahweh, and Yahweh gave them into the hand of Midian seven years. ² The hand of Midian prevailed over Israel; and because of Midian the Israelites provided for themselves hiding places in the mountains, caves and strongholds. ³ For whenever the Israelites put in seed, the Midianites and the Amalekites and the people of the east would come up against them. ⁴ They would encamp against them and destroy the produce of the land, as far as the neighborhood of Gaza, and leave no sustenance in Israel, and no sheep or ox or donkey. ⁵ For they and their livestock would come up, and they would even bring their tents, as thick as locusts; neither they nor their camels could be counted; so they wasted the land as they came in. ⁶ Thus Israel was greatly impoverished because of Midian; and the Israelites cried out to Yahweh for help.

In none of these examples is there any implication that Yahweh's punishment on the nation was delayed for generations. The writer indicated that the Israelites "did what was evil in the sight of Yahweh," who send immediate punishment through foreign oppression. The only sensible way to view all of this is to assume that Yahwistic punishment in the Bible, whether immediate or postponed, was simply a prevailing superstition passed along by writers who couldn't conceive of anything significant happening without divine intervention. Hence, when disasters or calamities followed soon after something perceived as "sinful" had happened, prophets and writers explained it as punishment from Yahweh. When long periods without disasters or calamities followed ostensibly "sinful" actions by either the nation or individuals, this was seen as the longsuffering of Yahweh, but when the disasters or calamities finally came, as they invariably will, the writers interpreted them as punishment for something that individuals, usually kings like Jeroboam or Jehu, had done years earlier. Unfortunately, LJ's mind seems to be stuck three thousand years in the past.

To try to find biblical support for his arbitrary spin on "the blood of Jezeel," LJ at this point launched into a tedious but incomplete listing of what he said was every place where the expression "blood of..." was used in the Old Testament. To keep my replies manageable, I will stop here and continue in Part Three, where I will show flaws in LJ's arbitrary interpretations of some of the key examples in his chart and especially his misunderstanding of "the blood of Jerusalem" in Isaiah 4:4.