The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

General Editor:—J. J. S. PEROWNE, D.D.,

Dean of Peterborough.

HOSEA,

WITH NOTES AND INTRODUCTION

by

THE REV. T. K. CHEYNE, M.A., D.D.

LATE FELLOW AND LECTURER OF BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD, AND RECTOR OF TENDRING, ESSEX.

EDITED FOR THE SYNDICS OF THE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Cambridge:

AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.

1884

[All Rights reserved.]

PREFACE

BY THE GENERAL EDITOR

The General Editor of The Cambridge Bible for Schools thinks it right to say that he does not hold himself responsible either for the interpretation of particular passages which the Editors of the several Books have adopted, or for any opinion on points of doctrine that they may have expressed. In the New Testament more especially questions arise of the deepest theological import, on which the ablest and most conscientious interpreters have differed and always will differ. His aim has been in all such cases to leave each Contributor to the unfettered exercise of his own judgment, only taking care that mere controversy should as far as possible be avoided. He has contented himself chiefly with a careful revision of the notes, with pointing out omissions, with suggesting occasionally a reconsideration of some question, or a fuller treatment of difficult passages, and the like.

Beyond this he has not attempted to interfere, feeling it better that each Commentary should have its own individual character, and being convinced that freshness and variety of treatment are more than a compensation for any lack of uniformity in the Series.

Deanery, Peterborough.

CONTENTS

I.  Introduction

Chapter  I.  The prophet’s name and origin. His period and its characteristics

Chapter  II.  Hosea’s domestic history. Parable or fact?

Chapter  III.  The second Book of Hosea

Chapter  IV.  The five leading ideas of the prophecy. Hosea compared with prophets before and after him

Chapter  V.  His style, etc.

Chronological Table

II.  Notes

Index  I.  To the Subjects treated of

  II.  To the Chief Passages from other Parts of the Bible, illustrated in the Notes

*** The Text adopted in this Edition is that of Dr Scrivener’s Cambridge Paragraph Bible. A few variations from the ordinary Text, chiefly in the spelling of certain words, and in the use of italics, will be noticed. For the principles adopted by Dr Scrivener as regards the printing of the Text see his Introduction to the Paragraph Bible, published by the Cambridge University Press.

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER I

The Prophet’s name and origin.—His period and its characteristics

The Book of Hosea stands first among the writings of the ‘Minor Prophets’, not because it was thought to be the earliest (for of this there is no proof), but because it is the longest. Joel (at least according to the ordinary opinion) and Amos are both prior in time to Hosea, and Amos in particular ought to be very carefully compared with the subject of our present study. Hosea indeed is throughout enigmatical and obscure compared with Amos, partly from the peculiarities of his style, partly from the want of such illustrative details as those with which we have been supplied by his predecessor (Amos 7:10-17). The prophet’s name is one specially characteristic of Northern Israel; it was borne by the last king of the Ten Tribes (2 Kings 15:30), and also originally by Joshua (Numbers 13:8; Numbers 13:16; Deuteronomy 32:44). True, the prophet appears in Auth. Vers. as Hosea, but there is no difference between the names of the three persons in the Hebrew. The form in our Bibles was suggested by the Osee of the Septuagint and the Vulgate; St Jerome bears witness that even in his time there was no distinction between the letters Sin and Shin. It is St Jerome again who informs us (see his note on Hosea 1:1) that in some Greek and Latin MSS. the name of the prophet was written Ause, which reminds us of the form which the name assumes in the Assyrian inscriptions—Ausi’. Nothing is known of the prophet’s father Beçri; it was a Jewish fancy that he too was a prophet, and verses 19, 20 of Isaiah 8 (see Delitzsch’s note) were even declared to be words of Beçri which had intruded into the text of Isaiah[1]. That Hosea was a native of the northern kingdom needs no proof to any one who has read his book. Without laying any stress on occasional Aramaisms, or on the phrase ‘our king’ in Hosea 7:5, which is probably enough a popular phrase taken up half-satirically by the prophet, it would seem that the flow of sympathy towards the Israelites, the intimate knowledge of their circumstances, the topographical[2] and historical allusions, point unmistakably to one born and bred in the northern state. How different is the superficial though not untruthful survey of things and people given by a mere visitor from Judah—the prophet Amos! In addition to this, consider Hosea’s apparent familiarity with the great love-poem of Northern Israel, which is of course not counterbalanced by his probable knowledge of the Book of Amos[3]—a Judahite prophet, but commissioned to prophesy to Israel (Hosea 7:15). A subtler argument in favour of the same view may be derived from the tone of Hosea’s religion, which is on the whole both warmer and more joyous (see especially chaps, 2 and 14) than that which prevails in the great Judahite prophets. Hosea seems indeed to have been affected by the genial moods of nature in the north, and to have partaken of that expansive, childlike character, which as a matter of fact led his country-people astray, but which might have issued in loving obedience to the God of love.

[1] It need hardly be said that there is no inconsistency of style between these two verses and those which precede and follow to justify the theory of interpolation.

[2] See Hosea 5:1, Hosea 6:8-9, Hosea 12:11, Hosea 14:5-6.

[3] On both points, see end of Introduction.

We have taken some pains to prove the Israelitish origin of the prophet, because it is this which gives his book such a high historical importance. There is very much to interest us in that northern people of which we have for the most part such fragmentary and indirect notices. It embraced the larger part of the old Israelitish community, and, sad as were the final results of its struggle for independence, the struggle itself was from a secular point of view not merely excusable but inevitable. Nor can we doubt that, if we knew more at first hand respecting the north-Israelitish kingdom, we should find much to sympathize with even morally, and many germs of good which might have developed into lovely ‘plants of Jehovah.’ Elijah is hardly a full representative of Israel’s moral capacities. His character could not help being affected by his origin. He was a Gileadite[4], a fellow-tribesman perhaps of those Gadites of David ‘whose faces were like the faces of lions’, and who were ‘as swift as the roes upon the mountains’ (1 Chronicles 12:8), and of those ‘fifty men of the Gileadites’ who captured and slew Pekahiah in his royal fortress (2 Kings 15:25). Very different is Hosea, and the difference is reflected in his character, which again is partly accounted for by his origin. That one of so typically Israelitish a nature, and so full of love for his northern home, should have taken such a hopeless view of the prospects of the state, seems proof enough of the deadly corruption which prevailed. As Stanley has said[5], he was the Jeremiah of Israel; no wonder therefore that he met Jeremiah’s fate of opposition and contempt[6] (Hosea 9:7-8, comp. Jeremiah 29:26-27).

[4] ‘Elijah the Tishbite, of Tishbeh in Gilead’, 1 Kings 17:1 (Ewald and Thenius, following the Septuagint and Josephus).

[5] Lectures on the Jewish Church, ii 369.

[6] It was the fate of Amos, too, in Hosea’s own country (Amos 7:10-13).

Hosea, then, was the prophet of the decline and fall of Israel; so much indeed is clear from a glance at his book. But did he prophesy during the whole of this sad period? It is not by any means inconceivable, according to our chronological table, but we are bound to test the view by internal evidence. First of all, there is the heading (Hosea 1:1), which states that Hosea received divine revelations ‘in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel.’ The natural inference would be that these two historical periods synchronized. But if anything is certain in Biblical history, it is that Jeroboam II. of Israel died before his contemporary Uzziah or Azariah of Judah. We need not however accuse the author of the heading of an error in calculation; the heading is probably a thoughtless combination of two distinct traditions or views which do not refer to the same amount of prophetic writing. That the first three chapters, which form a whole in themselves, were written in the reign of Jeroboam II., is sufficiently clear from internal evidence. The ruin of the house of Jehu is still future in chap. 1 (see ver. 4), and the picture of the prosperous condition of Israel given in chap. 2 agrees with no admissible period but that of Jeroboam II. Hence the first part of the heading may reasonably be presumed to have been originally prefixed to the small prophetic roll containing chaps. 1–3.

As for the second part, it was doubtless intended to refer to the complete book of Hosea; the author of it however is not to be taken quite at his word. The fact that the book of Isaiah (or shall we say, Isaiah 1-39?) is preceded by a heading which mentions the same four kings of Judah, suggests that one and the same editor wrote the heading of Isaiah and the latter part of that of Hosea. Now it may be assumed as practically certain that the former heading (or at any rate the chronological part of it) was the work of a scribe during the Exile, so that this late editor probably only knew in a vague way that Isaiah and Hosea were more or less contemporary. Micah he thought (for we can hardly doubt that he also wrote Micah 1:1) was a little junior to those two, and so he left out ‘Uzziah’ in the heading of Micah’s book. In the case of Micah we have seen already that internal evidence does not bear out a strict interpretation of the heading, and it will be easy to prove the same in the case of Hosea. It is true that ‘Shalman’ is referred to in Hosea 10:14, and that Dr Pusey and Mr Bosanquet have identified this name with Shalmaneser, but we shall see later on how groundless this view is; true, further, that King Hoshea formed political relations with Egypt such as are referred to in Hosea 7:11, Hosea 12:1, but a party friendly to Egypt must from the nature of the case have existed before Hoshea’s reign; true, lastly, that Hosea 10:5-6, Hosea 13:16 contain detailed predictions of an Assyrian conquest which have been supposed[7] to indicate that the events foretold were on the point of taking place, but the expressions could just as well have been used under Pekah or Menahem as under Hoshea, and Hosea 14:3 shows that when the latter chapters were written the Jews had not finally broken with Assyria. The reigns of Ahaz and Hezekiah seem therefore to be out of the question as periods for any part of Hosea. There remains, as a possible date for chaps, 4–14, the reign of Jotham, who was contemporary with Zechariah, Shallum, Menahem, and Pekahiah, and perhaps for two or three years with Pekah. Many have thought that the difficult passage Hosea 8:10 refers to the tribute which Menahem paid to Tiglath-Pileser[8] (2 Kings 15:19 mentions him by his private name Pul), but the Hebrew text probably needs correction.

[7] Prebendary Huxtable, Speaker’s Commentary, Vol. vi. p. 405.

[8] Tiglatḥ-Pileser mentions Raṣunnu (Rezin) of Damascus and Minikhimmi (Menahem) of Samaria among his tributaries in the eighth year of his reign, b.c. 738 (Schrader).

It is at any rate certain that the picture described in chaps. 4–14 is one of alarming national decline both in the moral and in the political sphere. In chap. 2 the prophet had severely reprimanded the Israelites for confounding Jehovah with the Canaanitish Baalim (see on Hosea 2:16-17), but he says nothing of that fearful moral corruption which in the later chapters he sees to be eating away the life of the nation. Why this is the case, is uncertain: it would be hazardous to assume that the corruption did not in some degree exist. If Hosea did not at once depict it in its true colours, we may conjecturally ascribe this either to the hopefulness of youth, or to the circumstance that the people of the district from which he sprang were comparatively pure in their morals, owing perhaps to their remoteness from the great centres of a debasing worship. Can we support this latter theory by external evidence? It seems that we can with at least a reasonable degree of certitude. We need not dogmatize here as to the composition of that exquisite love-poem the Song of Songs, but we may at any rate be allowed to hold that the most characteristic portions of it are monuments of the reign of Jeroboam II. If so, it is evident that the rustic beauties of N. Israel not only had external attractions, but also the ‘gentlest and noblest’ womanly virtues[9]. The generally admitted fact that the Book of Hosea contains reminiscences of the Song of Songs suggests that a change had passed over Israel since that poem (or some portion of it) was written, otherwise the prophet would clearly stand self-convicted of exaggeration. We may perhaps ascribe this change in part to the removal of the vigorous statesman upon the throne, who must surely have recognized the political importance of preserving intact the moral foundations of the state:—it is of Jeroboam’s upstart successors that the prophet complains that they took pleasure in wickedness, and shared in the licentiousness of their people (Hosea 7:3-4). And no wonder that they did so, when, as in the decline of the Roman state, rough ‘pretorians’ seized and gave away the crown[10]. Could it be otherwise, when the tone of society was set by the coarsest and most lawless natures? Such was not a period in which many women like the Shulamite or men like the prophet Hosea could be expected to arise. Add to this, that the priests found it their interest to encourage vice and sensuality (Hosea 4:6-8), and what further need have we of witnesses to the inner necessity of the speedy downfall of a self-betrayed state?

[9] Delitzsch, Canticles and Ecclesiastes, E. T., p. 5.

[10] See Heilprin, Historical Poetry of the Ancient Hebrews, 2:118.

The concluding years of the reign of Jotham saw the formation of an alliance between Rezin king of Syria and Pekah king of Israel, based on the importance of opposing a firm front to the aggressions of Assyria. They needed the support of Judah, but Jotham, perhaps from religious motives, held back. Hosea makes no allusion to the Syro-Israelitish inroads which led up to the great invasion described in Isaiah 7. The inroads he might have passed over in silence, but scarcely the invasion. A reunion of north and south was a part of his most cherished ideal (Hosea 1:11), but such a reunion as was now threatened he could not but denounce as prematurely involving Judah in the fate of her apostate sister. From his not mentioning it, it is plain that he was no longer prophesying, and it is for a similar reason plain that no part of his book was written as late as the invasion of Gilead[11] and Naphtali by Tiglath-Pileser. It is a satisfaction to believe that such a devoted patriot (if the word be allowable) had closed his eyes before this ‘beginning of pangs’—this first fulfilment of his reluctant threatenings.

[11] In fact, Gilead is repeatedly referred to as a part of N. Israel (see Hosea 5:1, Hosea 6:8, Hosea 12:11).

CHAPTER II

Hosea’s domestic history.—Parable or fact?—Chap. 2 alone an allegory

At the opening of this essay, a regret was expressed that we had no such illustrative details respecting Hosea as in the case of Amos. We have in fact no information as to his outward circumstances, or as to his intercourse with the different classes in the state. But we do know a series of domestic events which Hosea himself viewed as interpretative of God’s purposes for him, and as conveying to him a clearly defined mission. The prophet has himself lifted the veil from his home life, and the sad story is briefly this. In the reign of Jeroboam II., when the nation was already on the down-hill road to moral ruin, Hosea married a wife named Gomer. He hoped the best of her, there is no reason to think otherwise; but she proved unworthy of his trust. Whether her profligacy showed itself in simple adultery, or in her following the licentious rites of the consort of the Canaanitish Baal (Ashérah)[12], we know not. But such was Hosea’s love for his wife, and such perhaps his hope of reclaiming her, that he took no legal step against her, and acknowledged her three children for his own. At last, however, Gomer fled away to her paramour, but even then Hosea’s love followed her. He found her, as it would seem, already despised and shamed; perhaps her paramour had grown weary of her, and brutally sold her for a slave. At any rate, Hosea had to buy her back for the price of a slave,—

[12] As Dean Plumptre well remarks (Lazarus and other Poems, p. 209), ‘The two sins of idolatry and sensual licence were closely intertwined.… It would be hardly too much to say that every harlot in Israel was probably a votary of the goddess’ (see on Hosea 4:13-14). Ashérah (transformed by Auth. Vers, into ‘grove’) was, as most think, the name of a Canaanitish goddess, though some scholars prefer to regard the word as a noun meaning ‘pole’, the sacred tree being represented by a pole on or near the altar. In any case the goddess had such an artificial tree or symbol of a tree erected near her altars. Those who take Ashérah to be the name of a goddess refer to the Assyrian âsir, fem. âsirat ‘favourable’, whence also probably the name Asher (a divine name, like Gad). They also quote passages, in which an image of the Ashérah is spoken of (see 1 Kings 15:13; 2 Chronicles 15:16; 2 Kings 21:7), and others in which vessels and tents for the Ashérah are mentioned (2 Kings 23:4); also the famous phrase in 1 Kings 18:19, ‘the prophets of the Baal and the prophets of the Ashérah.’ This is quite consistent with the occasional use of the word for the material symbol of the goddess. It is right to add that Hosea does not mention Ashérah by name: he only alludes to the worship of her (Hosea 4:13). But Amos does not mention either Ashérah or Baal.

“weeping blinding tears,

I took her to myself, and paid the price

(Strange contrast to the dowry of her youth

When first I wooed her); and she came again

To dwell beneath my roof. Yet not for me

The tender hopes of those departed years,

And not for her the freedom and the love

I then bestowed so freely. Sterner rule

Is needed now. In silence and alone,

In shame and sorrow, wailing, fast, and prayer,

She must blot out the stains that made her life

One long pollution[13].”

[13] Plumptre, Lazarus &c., pp. 87–88.

Such is the story told us in the first and third chapters. There is no attempt to soften the colouring by half-tints; ‘rough fresco-strokes,’ to adopt Ewald’s phrase, seemed perhaps more effective. Besides, it would have led some to accuse Hosea of egotism, a fault from which a prophetic writer must be conspicuously free, if he had lavished his artistic power on his own tragic history. The student is, however, much indebted to Dean Plumptre for his strikingly suggestive poem, a few lines from which are quoted above. A poet as well as an expositor, he felt that Hosea’s poetic imagination was marked by spontaneity and originality. At a later period of Hebrew literature, a fictitious narrative of this kind might be conceivable, but not in the still youthful bloom of lyric poetry, and in the case of so fresh and original a poet as Hosea. We are thus taking a different line from Dr Pusey when he says, ‘There is no ground to justify our taking as a parable what Holy Scripture relates as a fact.’ There must be some plausible ground for it, or the opinion rejected by Dr Pusey would not have commended itself to the majority of modern commentators. It is not at all a necessary inference from the inspiration of the Scriptures that the events described by Hosea should be historical; it is rather an intuition which comes of itself to the unbiassed reader who has any poetic insight. The only plausible argument on the other side is that Hosea seems, when understood literally, to confess to an act which offends our moral consciousness. But had Hosea really meant this, he could have said at once that the bride of his choice had been ‘a harlot.’ He simply says that she was ‘a woman of whoredom’, which, according to Hebrew idiom, need only mean ‘a woman of an unchaste disposition’; we must suppose that he afterwards found out Gomer to be a woman of the character described (see on Hosea 1:2) The inherent difficulties of the parabolic interpretation are much greater than any slight difficulty in the literalistic one adopted by Ewald and Wellhausen in Germany, and by Dr Pusey, Dean Plumptre, and Prof. Robertson Smith in England. It is indeed much to say after Dean Plumptre’s poem that there is any difficulty in the literalistic view, and if there be, it is only because the Dean, following Dr Pusey and early Jewish authorities, unfortunately adopts the view that Hosea deliberately married a woman who was, in the later Jewish phrase, ‘a sinner,’ with the view of reclaiming her.

‘To seek and save the lost,

Forgetful of my calling and my fame,

To call thee mine, and bring thee back to God,

Became the master-passion of my heart[14].’

[14] Dean Plumptre, Lazarus &c., p. 84.

The chief difficulties in the parabolic interpretation are (1) the refractory name Gomer, which refuses to be unlocked by the parabolic key, and contrasts so strongly with the names of the children, and (2) that this interpretation leaves it unexplained how Hosea came to think of Jehovah’s relation to Israel as a marriage. With regard to (1), M. Reuss exposes the weakness of his own position by remarking, ‘Il est fort probable que ces noms doivent avoir une signification symbolique, comme tous les autres qui vont suivre. Mais nos dictionnaires hébreux n’offrent aucun moyen de la retrouver[15].’ And with regard to (2), as the present writer has endeavoured to enforce elsewhere, ‘Throughout the Old Testament we detect a gracious proportion between the revelation vouchsafed and the mental state of the person receiving it[16].’ But what proportion is there between this new and strange revelation and the mental state of a worshipper of a Deity as moral as Baal and Ashérah were immoral? It was no doubt the custom among the heathen relations of the Israelites, and probably among the semi-heathen Israelites, to speak of the god of heaven as married to the land[17]. But how came Hosea to admit so distinctly heathenish a conception within the circle of the prophetic religious ideas? It is not enough to reply that ‘the word of Jehovah came to him:’ how could such a ‘word’ come to him, unless there were already some point of contact for it in his mind? He must have been prepared by personal experience to find a moral element in this conception which fitted it for the use of a prophet of Jehovah. Why not, then, accept Hosea’s statement of his experiences in its literal sense, interpreting his phraseology, however, with due attention to Hebrew idiom?

[15] Reuss, Les prophètes, i:138. There is no strangeness in the prophetic names of the children (comp. Isaiah 7; Isaiah 8), but nothing obliges us to assume that the mother had one too.

[16] The Book of Isaiah Chronologically Arranged, p. 22.

[17] It is a remarkable ‘survival’ of this idea that the cognate word to Baal in Arabic (ba’lu) means, according to Lane, ‘any palm-trees, and other trees, and seed-produce, not watered; or such as are watered by the rain: or palm-trees that imbibe with their roots, and so need not to be watered’, in short vegetation which owes nothing to artificial irrigation, and is the direct product of the ‘rain from heaven.’ See below on Hosea 2:21-22, and especially Prof. Robertson Smith (The Prophets of Israel, pp. 172, 409), who has thrown much fresh light on this part of Hosea.

Thus much by way of introduction to chaps. 1 and 3; the meaning which the prophet’s sad history, interpreted, as he felt, by an inward divine voice, conveyed to him, will be seen in its full beauty, when we come to chaps. 4–14. The word ‘allegory’ or ‘parable’ belongs properly not to these chapters, but to chap. 2, in which the ideas which Hosea had gained through his providential discipline are set forth in figurative language. The position of this chapter (with which Hosea 1:10-11 ought, as we shall see, to be taken) is remarkable. Whether its contents represent Hosea’s thoughts previously to the events described in chap. 3, is uncertain; the chapter may equally well express his later reflexions, and be simply designed as a commentary on the names ‘Lo-ruhamah’ and ‘Lo-ammi’ in Hosea 1:6; Hosea 1:9.

CHAPTER III

The second Book of Hosea.—A reproduction, not a report.—Neither in chronological nor in logical order.—Heart-logic.—Gomer and Hosea both types

With the Messianic promise (taking this adjective in the wider sense) at the end of chap. 3, we have evidently reached the close of one great portion of prophecy. Chaps. 4–14 have a unity of their own: we might almost call them the second Book Of Hosea. That there is a substratum of prophetic oratory is proved by the allusions to facts and persons, obscure to us but clear to the original hearers; in fact, in Hosea 9:1 the motive of the discourse is still perfectly visible. Yet we cannot suppose that Hosea delivered any part of this ‘book’ in its present form; it can only be a reproduction by the prophet himself of the main points of his discourses, partly imaginative, partly on the basis of notes. We might have looked for this to prove a connected record of the state of things in Israel from one definite historical point to another. Such however is not the case. Although in one respect chap. 4 seems to justify its priority (namely, that Judah is spoken of more hopefully, ver. 15, than later on), yet upon the whole we cannot say that the early chapters belong, say, to Menahem’s reign, and the later ones to Pekah’s. Nor is there any clear evidence of a designed logical connexion; Bishop Lowth even compares the book to ‘sparsa quædam Sibyllæ folia.’ Pauses there are from time to time in the prophecy (see especially Hosea 5:1, Hosea 8:1, Hosea 9:1, Hosea 12:1), but it is not obvious that they mark stages in the development of an argument. There is indeed an argument, but it is one of the heart, not of the head. It is based on the assumption that Jehovah cannot be less loving and less faithful than the creatures He has made. Bitter domestic experience has developed in the prophet the most wonderful capacity for unselfish affection, and he argues from this (somewhat as our Lord in Matthew 7:11) to the existence of a still greater passion of self-sacrificing love in ‘the framer of hearts.’ We have seen how Hosea, after selecting, as he had thought, a bride like the Shulamite of his favourite poem, discovered to his unutterable grief that instead of a ‘lily of the valleys’ (Song of Solomon 2:1), he had unawares

‘enfolded in [his] arms

A lily torn and trampled in the mire[18].’

[18] Dean Plumptre (Lazarus and other Poems, p. 85), who however prefixes the words ‘I, knowing all’, which imply a misinterpretation of Hosea 1:2.

We have seen, too, how, after Gomer had fled from her home, in obedience to an unchaste impulse, the master-feeling which that sweet old poem calls ‘strong as Death’ and ‘obstinate as Sheól[19]’ (Song of Solomon 8:6), prompted him to rescue her from her destitution, and bring her home again, not indeed at first to freedom, but to the cleansing chastisement of seclusion. We have seen the bitter experience, but not as yet penetrated into the mystery of its meaning. Both Hosea’s impulses were according to the unmistakable will of God, who overruled this domestic tragedy to a wise and gracious end. Hosea was to learn what no prophet had learned before, and what no prophet ever could have learned by a mechanical revelation from without—viz. that the essence of the divine nature was not justice but love (comp. 1 John 4:8). Gomer in her prime of purity was a symbol of Israel whom Jehovah ‘found as grapes in the wilderness’ (Hosea 9:10); in her unnatural infidelity, of Israel who ‘went after’ the Baalim (Hosea 2:13); in her undeserved gradual restitution into the position of a wife, of Israel, first led aside into the wilderness, and then taken back to the full favour of an eternally loving God. And Hosea in his mixed and harrowing feelings towards Gomer is himself a type of Jehovah. His loathing abhorrence of her sin, his flaming indignation at her infidelity, and, stronger than either, his tender compassion at the depth of misery to which she has reduced herself, are but a reflexion of Jehovah’s feelings towards His people. Hosea’s work is to give expression to this newly-found truth.

[19] Death is a synonym for Sheól or the Hebrew Hades (as Isaiah 28:15; Isaiah 28:18; Isaiah 38:18). The Underworld is represented as having a mysterious power of attracting and swallowing up all men.

He does so in what may be called in the main a lyric monologue of Jehovah Himself. He has no occasion to say, ‘Thus saith the Lord[20].’ Without referring to any past revelation and clothing it in self-chosen words, he feels and knows that the words which well up from his heart adequately express the feelings of the divine Heart. Gomer in fact is not merely an emblem; she is a representative. As Gomer has erred, so Israel as a nation has erred. Gomer was unchaste and, it would seem, a devotee of Ashérah; so were too many others of the women of Israel, while the kindred worship of Baal or Baal-Jehovah absorbed the religious feelings of the men. Hosea, who has learned to ‘know Jehovah’, is cut to the quick by such apostasy; he spares no detail of the abominations that are committed; with a kind of grieved surprise he puts before the people the inevitable punishment, but when he has fully realized the awful nature of the doom, he melts with pity, and recalls the woe (see Hosea 13:13 to Hosea 14:1)[21]. His feelings are those which are natural to a pure-minded worshipper of Jehovah, trained in the high thoughts of prophetic religion; but they also correspond, as an inner voice assures Hosea, to what may analogously be called the feelings of Jehovah, who has prepared His servant in so exceptional a way to think in unison with Himself. A fitter person than Hosea surely could not be found to be Israel’s prophet in the gathering storm. Knowing Jehovah’s ‘secret’ (Amos 3:7), he could be faithful to Him without being untrue to Israel. Next to Jehovah, he loves his country and his wife with a clinging, inextinguishable love. But only next to Jehovah; for Hosea knows that all relationship is rooted in Him, and that both the people of Israel (Hosea 11:1) and each individual Israelite (Hosea 1:10) are before everything else ideally Jehovah’s sons. If we cannot therefore strictly call him a patriot, we can at any rate say that he has something higher than even patriotism—an enthusiasm for that ‘pearl of great price’ described by the phrase ‘the divine sonship of Israel.’

[20] This formula occurs only once in chaps, 4–14; see Hosea 11:11.

[21] In his flow of sympathy towards the object of the judgment Hosea is only exceeded by the unknown author of the early prophecy on Moab in Isaiah 15, 16, adopted by Isaiah (see Isaiah 16:13). The latter too was possibly a N. Israelite, to judge from his minute acquaintance with Moabitish topography.

CHAPTER IV

The five leading ideas of the prophecy.—(a) Immorality of the northern kingdom.—(b) Sinfulness of the idolatrous Jehovah-worship and of the confusion of Jehovah and Baal.—(c) Sinfulness of Israel’s foreign policy.—(d) Sinfulness of the separate kingdom of Israel.—(e) The conception of love as the bond between Jehovah and Israel, and between the individual Israelites.—Hosea compared with prophets before and after him.—No personal Messiah in Hosea

To summarize the contents of the book before us is a peculiarly difficult task, systematic order being more alien to Hosea than perhaps to any other prophet. Still an incomplete sketch may be attempted, (a) It will be noticed at once what a large part of his book is taken up with lamentations over the general immorality of the Israelites, which appears (comparing the statements of Amos and Hosea with those of the prophets of Judah) to have been more glaring than that which at any time prevailed in the south. The Israelites of the north seem, in fact, to have admitted a larger Canaanite element than those of the south, who had received a considerable infusion of Arab blood[22]. Not that Hosea altogether neglects the moral state of Judah. At first he gives a more favourable verdict of her than of the sister-country (Hosea 1:6-7, comp. Hosea 4:15), but later on strong complaints of her misconduct are incidentally made—complaints, through which we can hear the pulsations of a loving heart (Hosea 5:10-13, Hosea 6:4, Hosea 11:12). Hosea, therefore, like all the ‘goodly fellowship’, is a preacher of morality. He represents Jehovah as saying,

[22] Prof. Robertson Smith, The Prophets of Israel, p. 201.

‘For I delight in love, and not in sacrifice,

and in the knowledge of God more than in burnt-offerings’ (Hosea 6:6);

and whatever the precise meaning of ‘love’ may be (on which see some pages further on), ‘love to man’ must be, even if only indirectly, referred to, just as the ‘knowledge of God’ includes the imitation of God (as Jeremiah 22:16). It was the sacred duty of the priests, according to Hosea, to teach a morality based upon pure religion (Hosea 4:6); instead of which, they only promoted a worship which infallibly developed into at least one form of gross immorality, and welcomed the spread of iniquity, because the consequent sin-offerings were profitable to themselves (Hosea 5:1, Hosea 4:8). They even took the lead in outraging the law (Hosea 6:9), and the prophet tells us soon after, that even the king and the princes took an unnatural delight in the general licence (Hosea 7:3). So true was that which Isaiah, perhaps at this very time, said of the northern kingdom,

‘And they that lead this people cause them to err,

and they that are led of them are destroyed’ (Isaiah 9:16).

(b) Hosea does not, however, delude himself with the idea that preaching will of itself convert his brethren. He knows but too well that their errors in morality have sprung from their ‘backsliding’ in religion, in a word, from their idolatry (evidence of which still exists in the oldest Israelitish seals). And hence one of the most striking features of Hosea is his incessant polemic against the worship—not of the Phœnician Baal, which had been put down by Jehu—but of the small plated images of a bull, which were the symbols of Jehovah in the local sanctuaries of the north (1 Kings 12:28, comp. Exodus 32:4-5). Even Amos has not a word to say against these images, whereas Hosea flatly denies that there is any divine power behind them (Hosea 8:5-6) and describes them as the source of all the varied evils which are ruining the community. And the longer he lived, the more convinced of this he became. In chap. 2, as we have seen, he does not refer to the corrupting effect upon morals of the popular religion, but chap. 4–14 are full of it. The corruption was doubtless growing deeper every year. The God of Israel, through being addressed as Baal (Hosea 2:16), was confounded with the local divinities of the Canaanites[23], and the moral influence of the old Jehovah-worship was lost. Indeed, the Baal-cultus itself, in which the Jehovah-cultus was now practically merged, was descending in the scale of religions. The Israelites were no longer in the stage of naïve faith, and so could not recognize the old nature-worship in its original significance. They were formalists of the worst kind, because the meaning of their forms had never been a high and elevating one. And besides this, the still grosser form of Baal-cultus introduced by the Tyrian princess[24] Jezebel probably had a baleful effect on the native religion, since its persecuted adherents would become fused with those of the latter, and would bring their gross practices and licentious spirit with them. (On the whole subject of the popular religion of N. Israel, see commentary on Hosea 2:13; Hosea 2:16; Hosea 2:21-22).

[23] The Israelites considered themselves Jehovah-worshippers (Hosea 8:13, Hosea 9:4-5). But the prophet quietly calls the local Jehovah-Baals ‘other gods’ (Hosea 3:1), and says that in her feast-days Israel ‘forgat me’ (Hosea 2:13; comp. 11).

[24] Comparing 1 Kings 16:31 with Menander in Josephus Antiq. viii. 13, 2 and Contra Apion. i. 18, we may infer, with Ewald (History, iv. 39) that Jezebel was the daughter of Ethbaal king of Tyre, who had formerly been a priest of Astarte.

(c) One proof of the formalism of the Jehovah-Baal worship (though it is a proof, as we shall see, of something else besides) is the want of faith in the protecting care of its deity shown by the north-Israelitish people. We must first of all ascertain Hosea’s judgment on this point, and then explain in what sense we can adopt it. Not only, says the prophet, has ‘Ephraim’ deserted Jehovah, but he has also ‘hired loves among the nations’ (Hosea 7:9-10). This is an expression for the attempts of the rulers to bribe the favour of their powerful neighbours Egypt and Assyria (see Hosea 5:13, Hosea 7:11, Hosea 8:9-10, Hosea 12:1, Hosea 14:3, and comp. 2 Kings 17:4). In fact, there seem to have been two factions in the northern as well as probably in the southern kingdom (Isaiah 30:1-7; Isaiah 31:1-3, comp. 2 Kings 16:7), the one devoted to Assyria, the other to Egypt. Hosea was equally opposed to both. Like Dante, he thought it an honour ‘to have formed a party by himself alone[25].’ Hosea denounces the policy of the rulers as not merely a sin but a blunder. To trust in chariots and horses in preference to Jehovah, who was ‘their God from the land of Egypt’ (Hosea 12:9, Hosea 13:4), is the part of ‘a silly dove without understanding’ (Hosea 7:11). To coquet with the neighbouring empires will too surely lead to enforced expatriation. Egypt and Assyria (such perhaps is the prophet’s meaning, comp. Isaiah 7:18-19) shall fight for the land of Israel, and shall each carry part of the inhabitants into captivity. Instead of the gentle yoke of Jehovah, so touchingly described in the words—

[25] Paradise, xvii. 69.

‘I was unto them as they that lift up the yoke over their cheeks,

and I bent towards him and gave him food’ (Hosea 11:4),

the Israelites shall pass under the tyranny of aliens,—

‘He shall return unto the land of Egypt,

and Asshur—he shall be his king,

because they have refused to return’ (Hosea 11:5).

Such is Hosea’s judgment on the ‘folly’ of the Israelites, and his prophetic intuition of its inevitable consequences. He expresses himself with a condensation which may obscure to some readers the real kernel of his thought. What he really means we have to divine from our knowledge of his religious position. We must remember that the Jehovah of the N. Israelites was very different from the Jehovah of Hosea, and that he had now sunk to the level of the Canaanitish Baal. The necessary consequence, at that stage of the Baal-worship, was formalism; and when to this was added the surprising successes of the Assyrians, whose warfare was avowedly in part directed against foreign deities as well as foreign nations[26], we cannot be surprised that the Israelites began to distrust the protecting care of their god. Logically, therefore, the ‘folly’ of the Israelites consisted, not in making terms with Assyria, but in accepting a corrupt form of the worship of Jehovah, which could no more inspire courage than the love of goodness, and therefore doomed its adherents to a rapid national decline.

[26] Sargon says in his Annals, ‘I counted all the armies of the god Assur, and I marched against these towns’, and carries captive not only men but gods; he brings countries into subjection not merely to himself but to Assur (Records of the Past, vii. 25–26). Esarhaddon’s Annals contain the remarkable statement that, after taking away the gods of the Arabs, he wrote the mighty deeds of ‘Assur my lord’ upon them, and also his own name, and sent them back repaired (Budge, The History of Esarhaddon, p. 57).

(d) Another leading idea in this prophecy is one very closely connected with those already mentioned, viz. the sinfulness of the separate kingdom of Israel. Hosea has a remarkably clear view of the different aspects of the ‘schism’, and represents Jehovah as saying—

‘I give thee kings in mine anger,

and take them away in my wrath’ (Hosea 13:11).

In one sense, then, the separate kingdom of Israel was justifiable; in another it was not. It must be confessed, however, that the latter aspect is predominant in Hosea’s mind (comp. Hosea 8:4), whereas the former is exclusively present to the narrator in 1 Kings 11:29, comp. 2 Chronicles 11:4 (see further note on Hosea 1:4). The ground for Hosea’s severe view is that he feels pure religion to be the safeguard of the national existence. As no compromise is allowable between Jehovah and Baal, so there should be no opposition to the divinely sanctioned house of David. A rival dynasty involves a rival deity, as Hosea expressly says in Hosea 8:4. The Israelites might regard themselves as worshippers of Jehovah, but the prophet contradicts this without scruple in the following verses (Hosea 8:5-6). He certainly yearned for the healing of the ‘schism’ by a Davidic king, and speaks in his earlier prophecy (Hosea 3:5) as if Providence were leading in this direction. The event proved that he was too hopeful, but the fact that he left his early work unaltered, shows what a mistake it is to insist too much on a literal fulfilment of every detail of prophecy, particularly in Hosea the most lyrical and the least reflective of all the prophets, who evidently uses prediction, just as he uses upbraidings and threatenings, partly to relieve his own overwrought feelings, partly to move his people to a timely repentance. As Prebendary Huxtable remarks, ‘The style very often assumes the form of prediction; but this form is probably for the most part adopted, rather as an engine of persuasion, than as an absolute foretelling of what was about to happen[27].’ No doubt some of Hosea’s particular predictions have been fulfilled, but we have no right to assume that the prophet himself attached more importance to these predictions than to others. The truth is that he has no fixed view respecting the future of Judah, much less about the reunion of the two kingdoms. In Hosea 1:6-7 he contrasts the mercy not extended to Israel with the mercy extended to Judah, but in Hosea 6:11 (comp. Hosea 5:5; Hosea 5:14, Hosea 8:14, Hosea 10:11, Hosea 12:2), he points to a ‘harvest’ of retribution for Judah similar to that destined for Israel; and if in Hosea 1:11 he anticipates the healing of the ‘schism’, yet in chap. 14 his radiant description of the future contains not a line of hope for Judah.

[27] Speaker’s Commentary, vol. vi. p. 405.

(e) And now, to complete this brief sketch, a conception has to be described which is the highest and deepest, and therefore the most fundamental, in the book. As Professor Davidson has shown[28], all the other conceptions which have been mentioned admit of being derived from this. We need not however conclude that it was the first to be developed in the mind of Hosea, but only that when Providence caused it to germinate, it strengthened his hold on every other truth. We have already spoken of it by anticipation as ‘a newly-found truth’ (p. 21), because though it is also prominent in the Book of Deuteronomy, there is no satisfactory evidence that that remarkable book was generally known in the age of Hosea. It is the truth ‘that love is the highest attribute of God; so that a man should love God, and from love to Him keep all His commandments, because God first loved him[29]; which easily leads to the conclusion that a man ought in like manner to love his fellow man[30].’ These words of Ewald, written with reference to Deuteronomy, are equally applicable to Hosea, though a slight inaccuracy seems to need correction[31]. The duty of brotherly love is not, either in Hosea or in Deuteronomy, an inference from the fact that Israel has been first loved by God; it is rather a condition of the individual Israelite’s participation in that love. The stream of Jehovah’s love flows forth to Israel as a community[32]; he who would drink of this stream must prove his right by proving his membership in the community, which can only be done by showing love to his brother-Israelites. It would be still more accurate to say that the true Israelite is one who loves both his fellow-Israelites and Jehovah of his own accord, just as Jehovah of His own accord loved Israel (Hosea 9:10, Hosea 11:1, comp. Hosea 14:4)[33]. All human relationships within the Israelitish community are rooted in the primal love of Jehovah to Israel; Hosea learned this truth in the school of Providence, and he implies it in all his moral teaching. It is this primal love, however, which fills the foreground of Hosea’s prophecies. His highest aim is to set forth its moral nature, as opposed to the altogether non-moral and quasi-physical union supposed to exist between a heathen deity and his worshippers. Jehovah is not more loving than righteous. His union with His people may be, must be indestructible, but this is because (to quote Israel’s great eulogy of love once more) ‘love is strong as Death’, and therefore must be able to command a response of love in its own object (comp. Hosea 2:15, ‘she shall respond there’ &c.). The Israelites must one day feel a love to Jehovah which is not merely as a ‘morning-cloud’ (Hosea 6:4), and Hosea exhausts the resources of his art in picturing this delightful future (chap. 14). The sin of individuals cannot hinder Jehovah’s mercy to the nation; only if the actual nation persists in forsaking His law, it will have to pass through a very hurricane of cleansing judgment (Hosea 13:15).

[28] The Expositor, 1879, p. 258 &c.

[29] ‘See Deuteronomy 6:4-9; Deuteronomy 7:6-11; further, Deuteronomy 11:1, Deuteronomy 10:15, Deuteronomy 23:6, with Deuteronomy 10:12-13, Deuteronomy 19:9, and at the close Deuteronomy 30:6-20.’

[30] ‘Deuteronomy 10:18-19.’

[31] History of Israel, iv. 223. It seems clear that the commands to love Jehovah in Deuteronomy are addressed to Israel, not to the individual Israelite.

[32] Prof. Davidson well says, ‘Throughout the prophets, who are statesmen in the kingdom of God, the person or subject with whom Jehovah enters into relations is always the community of Israel’ (The Expositor, 1879, p. 258).

[33] ‘Loyalty and kindness between man and man are not duties inferred from Israel’s relation to Jehovah, they are parts of that relation; love to Jehovah and love to one’s brethren in Jehovah’s house are identical (compare Hosea 4:1 with Hosea 6:4; Hosea 6:6).’ Robertson Smith, The Prophets of Israel, p. 162.

Such being the principal idea of the book, can we be surprised that the chief speaker is Jehovah Himself? There was no conscious striving after effect on Hosea’s part, but had he only professed to report a message from Jehovah, how cold by comparison would his words have left us! ‘God only knows the love of God’, and if the words of the prophecy are stamped with the genius of Hosea, they are none the less truthful revelations of the divine Heart. The delicacy of the prophet’s phraseology is worthy of note. Though he does not shrink from using one of the ordinary words for ‘to love’ in describing Jehovah’s relation to Israel (Hosea 11:1), yet the word which gives the tone as it were to the book is one with a distinctly moral tinge—khésed. As is explained in the note on Hosea 4:6, this word has a threefold application, and can be used of the relation of God to man, of man to God, and of a man to his neighbour. It is assumed that the giver and the receiver of khésed are united by a bond of moral obligation, and in the three passages in which the word occurs in Deuteronomy (Hosea 5:10, Hosea 7:9; Hosea 7:12), the idea of a covenant or contract is either expressed or (as in Hosea 5:10) implied. This idea is not indeed completely developed in Hosea’s mind (see on Hosea 6:7, Hosea 7:1), but he knows full well that there is a moral bond between Jehovah and Israel, comparable to the relation of a husband to a wife (as especially in chaps, 1–3), or of a father to a son (as Hosea 11:1; Hosea 11:3; Hosea 11:8, Hosea 13:13, comp. Hosea 1:10)[34], though since Jehovah is ‘God and not man’ (Hosea 11:9), higher than either, because free from all earthly taint. The word occurs six times in Hosea in its various senses[35], and, as has been hinted already, it is now and then slightly difficult to define its meaning. The point to remember is that by adopting this word (which is not used once by the sterner prophet Amos) Hosea impresses the idea that Jehovah’s love to Israel, keen as it is, has a moral foundation. The Psalmists took up both the idea and the expression; where the Auth. Vers. renders ‘saint’, the Hebrew generally has khâsîd, loving or pious one. In one psalm it is interesting to observe that ‘my pious ones’ is explained in the parallel line by ‘those that have made a covenant with me’ (Psalm 50:5), which confirms the view of khésed taken above.

[34] This, like the former, corresponds to a heathen Semitic conception; see Numbers 21:29, where the Moabites are described as ‘sons’ of Chemosh. Prof. W. Wright has pointed out similar instances of the use of ‘son’ for ‘worshipper’ in Syriac proper names, e.g. Bar-Hadad, Bar-lâhâ, Bar-Ba‘-shěmîn, in which the second name of the compound is the appellation of the deity (Hadad, Alâhâ, Ba‘l-shěmîn) specially worshipped by the person so named. Transactions of the Soc. of Biblical Archœology, vi. 438.

[35] See Hosea 2:21, Hosea 4:1, Hosea 6:4; Hosea 6:6, Hosea 10:12, Hosea 12:7.

These are the five leading ideas of the prophecy of Hosea. They are covered over with the flowers of poetic imagery, and the student might have missed the salient points of the book without thus much of guidance. It will be seen that we owe a precious truth to Hosea, and that his book marks a fresh stage in the slow progress of revelation. Compare him with Amos who prophesied but a few decades earlier. Amos had a keen sense of justice, and rightly transfers this attribute to Jehovah, but he had not that wonderful intuition of the milder side of the divine nature which we find in Hosea. Amos thinks of Jehovah as the king of Israel and her judge; Hosea as her Husband and her Father. Amos again expresses no dread of the religious symbolism prevalent in N. Israel; like Elijah and Elisha, he lets the ‘golden calves’ pass without a word of protest. Hosea feels that those gross animal symbols distract the attention of the worshippers from those moral attributes in which Jehovah delights most to be known. We need not then be surprised that, having achieved so much, he falls short in various ways of the attainments of his successors, (a) If he equals Jeremiah in tenderness, he is inferior to him in moral depth. He has no conception of the relation of Jehovah to the individual soul, apart from the nation, and therefore no presentiment of Jeremiah’s profound idea of the new covenant. Again (b), he does not succeed like Isaiah and (still more) Jeremiah in expressing his latent consciousness of the unity of God (comp. on Hosea 1:10, Hosea 2:10). As a rule, like Amos, he speaks of Jehovah as the national God of the Israelites (comp. Hosea 3:4-5, Hosea 9:3), and only perhaps once crosses the line which separates monolatry (or the acknowledgment of one God as the national patron) and monotheism, viz. when he says that the converted Israelites shall be called ‘sons of the living God’ (Hosea 1:10)[36], implying apparently that the other so-called gods were ‘dead’ (in the sense of Psalm 106:28). And (c) although it is clear from Hosea 3:4 that Hosea (at least at one time) hoped great things from a future Davidic prince, yet there is wanting that touch of mystery and passionate emotion which we find in Isaiah’s two great prophecies of (to use the later phrase) the Messiah. It is true that a scholar as accurate as he is orthodox (Delitzsch) thinks that ‘David’ in the passage referred to means ‘a king who is the antitype and descendant of David[37].’ But since no stress is laid on the character of the king, and in Hosea 1:11 he is merely spoken of as a ‘head’, it seems better to explain the term on the analogy of 1 Kings 12:6, and to leave the prophet of Immanuel in his unapproached originality. Thus Hosea, to whom kingship is not the most congenial idea, merely maintains, and that without any emphasis, the position already won by Amos (Hosea 9:11-12) that the family of David, now shorn of so much of its glory, shall yet stand at the head of a reunited and victorious nation[38].

[36] One is tempted to quote Hosea 13:4, but though the conclusion may seem to point to monotheism, the preceding words are only a strong expression of monolatry. The belief that Jehovah is higher than all other divinities (’el ‘elyôn) does not necessarily imply that no other gods have a real existence.

[37] Messianic Prophecies, translated by Curtiss (1880), pp. 60, 61.

[38] Neither Amos nor Hosea speaks of a Davidic world-empire; their outlook into the future is purely national. In Amos 9:12 we should render ‘and all the nations (not, heathen) which have been (not, are) called by my name.’ The prophet means that the empire of David should one day be restored in its fullest extent.

CHAPTER V

His style.—His unconnectedness.—His love of figures.—Has the language of his book been retouched?—Literary influences to which Hosea was subject.—Did he know the Pentateuch?—His own testimony to the existence of written laws.—Parallelisms in Hosea and the Pentateuch.—Hosea’s literary influence on later writers.—Are the New Testament references, to Hosea to be accepted as regulative of critical exegesis?

The proverb, ‘le style c’est l’homme’, is peculiarly true of Hosea. His genius especially fitted him for lyric poetry, and in more favourable circumstances and with more artistic culture he might have produced the most admirable psalms and elegies. Duty however compelled him to ‘hang up his harp’ and preach to a perverse generation. How he preached, we can hardly judge from his book, which is anything but a verbal reproduction of discourses actually delivered; but we may fairly surmise that his preaching would have seemed ineffective by the side of that of Amos. It was not so much the mere chill of neglect (for Amos suffered equally from this) as the emotional distress caused by his message of woe that choked his utterance and brought confusion into his style. The prize of the orator and the lyric poet he left to others, but could not disown the gift of song with which God had endowed him. As Ewald remarks, ‘in its free outbursts the discourse [sometimes] approaches to the nature of lyric poetry[39]’, though few will follow that great scholar in his strophic arrangement of the book: the transitions of thought in Hosea are too abrupt to be brought into a scheme of such an artificial order. ‘Exhaustless is the sorrow’, as Ewald elsewhere says, ‘endless the grief wherever the mind turns, and ever and anon the tossing restless discourse begins again, like the wild cry of an anguish that can hardly be mastered[40].’ Symmetrical divisions, then, such as we can easily make in the oratorical prophet Amos, are out of the question. There is but rarely a distinct connexion, except in the tone of feeling, even between one verse and another. As St Jerome remarked long ago, ‘Osee commaticus est [is broken up into clauses] et quasi per sententias loquens[41]’; or, in the words of Dr Pusey, ‘each verse forms a whole for itself, like one heavy toll in a funeral knell[42].’ Even the fetters of grammar are almost too much for Hosea’s vehement feeling; inversions (Hosea 7:8, Hosea 9:11; Hosea 9:13, Hosea 12:8, and perhaps Hosea 14:9), anacolutha (Hosea 9:6, Hosea 12:8 &c), and ellipses (Hosea 9:4, Hosea 13:9 &c.) are especially frequent in his prophecy. Parallelism, which is elsewhere so prominent in poetical and rhetorical language, and which is often so great a help to the interpreter, is feebly represented; Hosea’s rhythm is the artless rhythm of sighs and sobs. It is remarkable, however, that, unlike Jeremiah, he can take bold poetic flights in the midst of his grief. His figures are full of suggestiveness. Thus he compares Jehovah on His terrible side to the lion (Hosea 5:14, Hosea 13:7), the panther (Hosea 13:7), and the bear (Hosea 13:8); he does not even disdain the simile of a moth (Hosea 5:12); while to represent the milder aspect of his God he has recourse to the latter rain (Hosea 6:3) and the beneficent provision of the ‘night-mist’ (Hosea 14:5). The figure of the lion’s roar in Hosea 11:10 is used exceptionally, not to set forth the terrors of God’s judgments, but His far-reaching summons to His scattered children. With equal or still greater suggestiveness the Israel of the future is compared to the ‘lily’ which grows so profusely in the north of Palestine, and the stedfast roots of the cedar (Hosea 14:6), and to the ever-green fir-tree of Lebanon[43] (Hosea 14:8). Paronomasias and plays upon words are also very characteristic of Hosea in his non-lyrical moods (see Hosea 8:7, Hosea 9:15, Hosea 10:5, Hosea 11:5, Hosea 12:11, and notice the use of the name Jezreel in Hosea 1:4; Hosea 1:11, comp, Hosea 2:22-23; the change of the name Beth-el into Beth-aven in Hosea 4:15, Hosea 10:5, comp. v. 8; the allusion to the derivation of Ephraim in Hosea 9:16, Hosea 13:15, and perhaps Hosea 14:9). All these peculiarities, it is to be feared, give the Book of Hosea a rather repellent aspect, which is not diminished by the number of peculiar words and constructions, and by the corrupt state of some parts of the text. It would be interesting to learn whether we really possess the discourses of Hosea in their original dialect, or whether they have been retouched for the benefit of a new public. The latter is in itself a plausible hypothesis, though incapable of demonstration; except a few Aramaic words and verbal forms (which may not all of them be due to Hosea) there is nothing in the language even distantly suggestive of a northern dialect[44].

[39] Ewald, The Prophets, i. 228.

[40] Ewald, i. 218.

[41] Preface to the Minor Prophets.

[42] Minor Prophets, p. 6.

[43] Prof. Robertson Smith’s interesting remarks on this figure (The Prophets of Israel p. 190) depend for their validity on an interpretation of the passage which the present writer is unable to adopt.

[44] In literary Hebrew, remarks Gesenius, there is nothing which has a sufficient claim to pass for a provincialism.

In dealing with a great writer like Hosea, we are bound to ask, To what literary influences of his time was he subject? A question in this case more easily asked than answered, owing to our ignorance of the literature of the northern kingdom. The Song of Songs Hosea was almost certainly familiar with (see Hosea 14:6-9), and we have no right to suppose that this was the only northern poem which educated and enriched his fancy. The Book of Amos was doubtless known in N. Israel, and would have a special interest for Hosea, though the two prophets are at the opposite poles of style, and except in Hosea 4:15; Hosea 10:5; Hosea 10:8 (comp. Amos 1:5; Amos 5:5), Hosea 8:14 (comp. Amos 1:4 &c.), Hosea 11:10 (comp. Amos 1:2) we cannot say that the younger prophet has clear allusions to the elder[45]. There may have been other prophetic writings known to him, Joel for instance (Joel 3:16 is more strikingly parallel to Hosea 11:10 than Amos 1:2), or if not Joel (the early date of this book being now frequently called in question), some no longer extant books, for the reference of the phrase ‘the prophets’ in Hosea 6:5 is perhaps not to be confined to prophets like Elijah and Elisha; at least we can hardly suppose that written prophecy sprang into existence in Joel (?) and Amos almost in full perfection[46]. What amount of written history or legislation Hosea had before him is much disputed. That he was acquainted with many salient facts in the traditional narratives is indeed certain:—see for the life of Jacob, Hosea 12:3-4; Hosea 12:12; for the destruction of the cities of the ‘circle’ of the Jordan, Hosea 11:8; for the Exodus 2:15; Exodus 11:1; Exodus 12:9[47], 13; for the wanderings, Hosea 2:3, Hosea 13:5; for Achan (?), Hosea 2:15; for Baal-peor, Hosea 9:10; and for the outrage at Gibeah, Hosea 9:9, Hosea 10:9. It was the custom with the older commentators to leap from this to the conclusion that Hosea had before him the canonical books in which the same occurrences are referred to; but we cannot be sure that he did not obtain these facts from oral tradition or from sources earlier than the canonical books in their present form (see commentary on Hosea 12:3-4). More stress may plausibly be laid on the parallelisms of phraseology and idea in Hosea and the Pentateuch. Almost every commentary on Hosea contains lists of such parallelisms, and for completeness’ sake a list is appended here, though the writer must express the hope that students in an early stage will remember the youthful David’s reply to king Saul in 1 Samuel 17:39. Such a list will only be of any real value to those who have already satisfied themselves on other grounds as to the period of the composition of the books of the Pentateuch. One test of the soundness of such a critical decision will be its relation to the history of the progress of revelation. If it be impossible to write this history with Deuteronomy accepted as a work of the Mosaic or at any rate pre-Hezekian age, of what use is any number of parallelisms between Deuteronomy and the Book of Hosea? All that is certain with regard to Hosea’s relation to the Law is what he tells us himself, viz. that laws with a sanction which, though ignored by the N. Israelites, he himself recognized as divine were in course of being written down[48] (Hosea 8:12). Our present text makes him even say that the divine precepts might be reckoned by myriads, but this would not apply even to our present Pentateuch, and we should probably correct ribbo ‘myriad’ into dibhré ‘words (of my law)[49].’ There may of course either have been various small law-books, or one large one; we cannot determine this point from the Book of Hosea. So far as we can infer anything, the laws in question must have been of a simple character, and have related to civil justice rather than to rites and ceremonies. In the centralization of worship, which is so prominent in the Book of Deuteronomy, Hosea takes no interest; he does not even mention Jerusalem, and applies the phrase ‘the house of Jehovah’ to a temple or temples of Jehovah in the ‘schismatic’ kingdom (Hosea 9:4). Mr Sharpe[50] has, it is true, revived an opinion of St Jerome that the words—

[45] In the first of these passages the allusion is in the name Beth-aven (House of vanity, i.e. of vain idols, for Beth-el, House of God); similarly Amos speaks of the ‘valley of Aven.’ In the second Hosea refers to the refrain with which Amos closes each of his seven denunciations in Amos 1:4 to Amos 2:5. In the third he follows Amos in comparing Jehovah to a lion.

[46] See Ewald (The Prophets, i. 60), who lays great stress on the indications of an earlier prophetic literature in the Book of Joel (see Joel 2:32 ‘as Jehovah has said’, and notice how ‘the day of Jehovah’ and the restoration of Judah are spoken of in Joel 1:15, Joel 2:1, Joel 3:1 as already familiar to the reader). He also refers to 7:12 ‘according to the announcement to the community’, and to the ‘fragments from the earliest period’ cited by Isaiah in Isaiah 2:2-4 (comp. Micah 4:1-4) and Isaiah 15:1 to Isaiah 16:12.

[47] In this verse most find two allusions to the early history, the one in the phrase ‘Jehovah thy God from the land of Egypt’ and the other in the mention of ‘dwelling in tents.’ The second allusion however depends on the rendering of the Hebrew ôdh; is it to be rendered ‘yet again’, or simply ‘yet’ (i.e. ‘in the future’), as Auth. Vers.? In the latter case there is no necessary allusion to the privations of the desert-wanderings. See commentary.

[48] The Targum and Aben Ezra, followed by the Authorized Version, render ‘I have written’ (better, ‘I wrote’). The tense is the imperfect, which is sometimes used in highly poetical passages where past occurrences are referred to; see Driver, Hebrew Tenses, § 27 (1) (β). Such a use of the imperfect would however here be isolated, nor is the passage in a poetical style. We must therefore reject the rendering of Auth. Vers., and with it the theory that the prophet refers simply and solely to a body of Mosaic legislation. In fact, when Moses is referred to by Hosea, it is as a prophet and a leader of the people, not as a legislator (Hosea 12:13).

[49] So Grätz and Kuenen; see on Hosea 8:12.

[50] Notes and Dissertations on Hosea (1884), p. 83.

‘For Ephraim has multiplied altars in order to sin,

altars are to him for the purpose of sinning’ (Hosea 8:11),

refer to the Deuteronomic law of one altar (Deuteronomy 12:11-14), but the repetition of ‘to sin’ proves that the emphasis is not on the multiplied altars but on the ‘sin’ committed at the altars (comp. Hosea 4:13-14; Amos 2:8). Indeed, was it likely that a prophet who had already mentioned ‘sacred pillars’ and even ‘teraphim’ without a word of remark on their illegality[51] (Hosea 3:4) would, denounce the Israelites for their hereditary custom of multiplying altars?

[51] The writer, of course, does not mean to imply that Hosea attached a religious value either to these pillars or to the sacrifices mentioned in the same passage (Hosea 3:4).

With these preliminary cautions, we may proceed to collect parallelisms of phraseology in Hosea and the Pentateuch. Compare—

Genesis 22:17  with Hosea 1:10 (‘as the sand of sea’).

Genesis 32:12  with Hosea 1:10 (‘as the sand of sea’).

Exodus 4:22  with Hosea 11:1 (‘my son’).

Exodus 23:13  with Hosea 2:17 (names of idols to be abolished).

Deuteronomy 18:15  with Hosea 12:13 (Moses a great prophet).

Deuteronomy 26:14  with Hosea 9:4 (mourning bread).

Deuteronomy 28:68  with Hosea 8:13 (Israel’s return to Egypt).

Deuteronomy 31:16  with Hosea 1:2 (religious symbolism).

Deuteronomy 32:10  with Hosea 9:10 (Israel ‘found in the wilderness’).

The above is a short list compared with some that have been drawn up[52] the more dubious parallelisms, like that of Hosea 4:4 and Deuteronomy 17:8-13, have been omitted. After all, is any one of them equal in interest to the striking parallelism of thought between Hosea and Deuteronomy indicated already (see p. 28)?

[52] For longer lists see Curtiss, The Levitical Priests (1877), pp. 176–8; Sharpe, Hosea (1884), pp. 72–84.

It only remains to estimate the literary influence of Hosea, putting aside such questions as the chronological relation of his book to that of Deuteronomy. As we have seen already, the prophetic roll must soon have been carried into Judah, where it quickly became a favourite, as we must infer from the more or less distinct allusions to it made by later prophets. There are not many of these in Isaiah, though both Amos and Hosea have contributed elements to his teaching; we can only be sure that Isaiah is alluding to his predecessor in Isaiah 1:23, where he adopts a paronomasia from Hosea 9:15. More allusions occur in Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the second part of Zechariah: compare Hosea 2:15 with Jeremiah 2:2; Hosea 3:5 with Jeremiah 30:9, Ezekiel 34:25; Hosea 4:3 with Jeremiah 12:4 (and Zephaniah 1:3); Hosea 10:12 with Jeremiah 4:3; Hosea 1-3 with Jeremiah 3:8, Isaiah 50:1, Ezekiel 16, 23; Hosea 2:18 with Ezekiel 34:25; Hosea 2:22 with Jeremiah 31:27, Zechariah 10:9; Hosea 2:17 with Zechariah 13:2; Hosea 12:8 with Zechariah 11:5. Some of these allusions relate to Hosea’s striking application of the symbol of marriage. In fact, as the great Jewish scholar Dr Zunz has shown from medieval Hebrew poetry, this affecting symbol of their ideal hopes never ceased to attract and delight the poets of Israel. But this is not all. The New Testament, too, as we might expect, contains several expressed or implied references to the Book of Hosea:—compare Hosea 1:10 with Romans 9:26; Hosea 2:1; Hosea 2:23 with Romans 9:25, 1 Peter 2:10; Hosea 6:6 with Matthew 9:13; Matthew 12:7 (quotation by our Lord); Hosea 10:8 with Luke 23:30, Revelation 6:16; Revelation 9:6; Hosea 11:1 with Matthew 2:15; Hosea 13:14 with 1 Corinthians 15:55. With regard to these references it hardly needs to be remarked that, so far as they imply interpretations, they would not all stand the test of a purely Western criticism. Their force was great to those for whom the writers meant them, but cannot be equally so to us. It is allowable indeed to trace in the providential history of the people of Israel more than one analogy to that of Israel’s Messiah, but to say that ‘out of Israel did I call my son’ (Hosea 11:1) is in a strict sense of the word a prediction of the infant Christ’s return from Egypt violates the canons of exegesis. Delitzsch against his will expresses the weakness of this position when he calls this a ‘typical prophecy[53].’ Typical persons and events one can understand, but if there be typical prophecies, what are the anti-typical ones? Surely for us Westerns the true Christian element in the Book of Hosea consists, not in ‘typical prophecies’, but in that far-reaching intuition of God’s forgiving love which took shape as it were in the fulness of time in Jesus Christ.

[53] Messianic Prophecies (1880), pp. 61, 62.

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE

*** The chronology of the kings is perplexed and uncertain. From the Assyrian inscriptions the following dates have been obtained (see Schrader, The Cuneiform Inscriptions and the Old Testament, German ed., pp. 465–6).

Jehu was alive in 842 (tribute to Shalmaneser).—Azariah or Uzziah 742–740.—Menahem 738 (tribute to Tiglath Pileser).—Pekah 734 (conquered by Tiglath Pileser).—Hoshea 728–722 (fall of Samaria).—Hezekiah 701 (invasion of Judah).

Various systems have been framed, partly on the basis of the Assyrian, partly on that of the Biblical data. The table which follows is a fragment of Duncker’s (History of Antiquity, vol. ii.).

Judah.

  Israel.

  

  Jehu

  843–815

Uzziah

  792–740

  Jeroboam II.

  790–749

Jotham

  740–734

  Zechariah, Shallum

  749

  

  Menahem

  748–738

  

  Pekahiah

  738–736

  

  Pekah

  736–734

Ahaz

  734–728

  Hoshea

  734–722

Hezekiah

  728–697