Hosea

VIEW:43 DATA:01-04-2020

savior; safety
(same as Hoshea)
Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary



HOSEA.?The name of the prophet Hosea, though distinguished by the English translators, is identical with that of the last king of Israel and with the original name of Joshua; in these cases it appears in the EV as Hoshea. Hosea, the son of Beeri, is the only prophet, among those whose writings have survived, who was himself a native of the Northern Kingdom. The main subject of the prophecy of Amos is the Northern Kingdom, but Amos himself was a native of the South; so also were Isaiah and Micah, and these two prophets, though they included the Northern Kingdom in their denunciations, devoted themselves mainly to Judah.
Hosea?s prophetic career extended from shortly before the fall of the house of Jerohoam ii. (c. B.C. 746) to shortly before the outbreak of the Syro-Ephraimitish war in B.C. 735?a period of rapidly advancing decay following on the success and prosperity of the reign of Jeroboam ii. He began to prophesy within some 10 or 15 years of the prophetic activity of Amos at Bethel, and continued to do so till some years after Isaiah had made his voice heard and his influence felt in the Southern Kingdom. Influenced himself probably by Amos, he seems to have exercised some influence over Isaiah; but these conclusions must rest on a comparison of the writings of the three prophets. Our direct knowledge of Hosea is derived entirely from the book which bears his name; be is mentioned nowhere else in the OT.
If the account given in the 1Jas_3:1-18 rd chapters of Hosea were allegory, as many ancient and some modern interpreters have held, our knowledge of Hosea would be slight indeed. But since these chapters are clearly not allegorical, there are few prophets whose spiritual experience is better known to us. In favour of an allegorical interpretation the clearly symbolical character of the names of Hosea?s children has been urged; but the names of Isaiah?s children?Shear-jashub and Maher-shalal-hash-baz?are also symbolical (cf. Isa_8:18). Moreover, if the narrative were allegorical, there would be just as much reason for the names of Hosea?s wife and her father as for the names of the children being symbolical; on the other hand, in real life it was within the power of the prophet to give symbolical names to the children, but not to his wife or her father. The names of Hosea?s wife, Gomer, and her father, Diblaim are not symbolical. Further, the reference to the weaning of Lo-ruhamah in Isa_1:8 is purposeless in allegory, but natural enough in real life, since it serves to fix the interval between the birth of the two children.
The command in Isa_1:2 has seemed to some, and may well seem, if prophetic methods of expression are forgotten, impossible except in allegory. It is as well, therefore, to approach the important narrative of Hosea with a recollection of such a method of describing experience as is illustrated by Jer_18:1-4. This describes a perfectly familiar scene. The incident, translated out of prophetic language, is as follows. On an impulse Jeremiah one day went down to watch, as he must often have watched before, a potter at his work; but on this particular day the potter?s work taught him a new lesson. Then he recognized (1) that the impulse that had led him that day was from Jahweh, and (2) that the new suggestion of the potter?s wheel was a word from Jahweh. So again, Jer_32:6 f. describes what we should term a presentiment; after it was realized, it was recognized to have been a word from Jahweh (Jer_32:8). Interpreted in the light of these illustrations of prophetic methods of speech, the narrative of Hos_1:1-11 gives us an account of the experience of Hosea, as follows. Driven by true love in which, probably enough, Hosea at the time felt the approval, not to say the direct impulse of Jahweh, Hosea married Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim. After marriage she proved unfaithful, and Hosea heard that the woman whom he had been led by Jahweh to marry had had within her all along the tendency to unfaithfulness. She was not at the time of marriage an actual harlot, but, had Hosea only fully understood, he would have known when he married her, as these years afterwards he has come to know, that when Jahweh said, ?Go, marry Gomer,? He was really saying ?Go, marry a woman who will bestow her love on others.? His new, sad knowledge does not make him feel less but more that his marriage had been ordered of God. Not only through the love of youth, but even more through the conflict and the treachery and the ill-return which his love has received, Jahweh is speaking. Had Hosea spoken just like Jeremiah, he might have continued: ?Then I discovered that my wife had played the harlot, and that my children were not mine. Then I knew that this was the word of Jahweh, and Jahweh said unto me: Even as the bride of thy youth has played the harlot, even so has My bride, Israel, played the harlot: even as thy children are children of harlotry, even so are the children of Israel children of harlotry, sons of the Baals whom they worship.?
Apparently Hosea reached the conclusion that none of the children were his; he calls them without exception ?children of harlotry? (Hos_1:2). But the name Jezreel (Hos_1:4) certainly does not suggest that at the birth of his firstborn he was already aware of his wife?s unfaithfulness, the name of the second, Lo-ruhamah (?Not pitied,? Hos_1:6), does not prove it, and even that of the third child, Lo-ammi (?Not my kinsman,? Hos_1:9), may merely carry further the judgment on the nation expressed unquestionably in the first and probably in the second. In any case we may somewhat safely infer that Hosea became a prophet before he had learned his wife?s unfaithfulness, and that in his earnest preaching he, like Amos, denounced inhumanity as offensive to God; for this is the purpose of the name Jezreel; the house of Jehu, established by means of bloodshed and inhumanity (Hos_1:4), is about to be punished. ?Kindness not sacrifice? (Hos_6:6) must have been the ideal of religion which from the first Hosea held up before his people.
It has generally been inferred that Hosea?s wife subsequently left him (or that he put her away), but that at last in his love for her, which could not be quenched, he rescued her from the life of shame into which she had sunk (ch 3). And this perhaps remains most probable, though Marti has lately argued with much ability (1) that ch. 3 does not refer to Gomer, (2) that, unlike ch. 1, ch. 3 is allegorical, and (3) that ch. 3 formed no part of the original Book of Hosea. Be this as it may, it is clear that although the circumstances of Hosea?s married life were not the cause of his becoming a prophet, they do explain certain peculiar characteristics of his message and personality: his insistence on the love of God for Israel, and on Israel?s sin as consisting in the want of love and of loyalty towards God; and the greater emotional element that marks him as compared with Amos. At the same time, it is important not to exaggerate the difference between Amos and Hosea, of to lose sight of the fact that Hosea not less than Amos or Isaiah or Micah insisted on the worthlessness of religion or of devotion to Jahweh which was not ethical (Jezreel, Hos_1:4; Hos_6:6). In considering the greater sympathy of Hosea with the people whom he has to condemn, it must he remembered that he was of them, whereas Amos, a native of the South, was not.
G. B. Gray.
Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible
Edited by James Hastings, D.D. Published in 1909

Placed first of the minor prophets in the canon (one collective whole "the book of the prophets," Act_7:42), probably because of the length, vivid earnestness, and patriotism of his prophecies, as well as their resemblance to those of the greater prophets, Chronologically Jonah was before him, 862 B.C., Joel about 810 B.C., Amos 790 B.C., Hosea 784 to 722 B.C., more or less contemporary with Isaiah and Amos. Began prophesying in the last years of Jeroboam II, contemporary with Uzziah; ended at the beginning of Hezekiah's reign. The prophecies of his extant are only those portions of his public teachings which the Holy Spirit preserved, as designed for the benefit of the uuiversal church. His name means salvation. Son of Beeri, of Issachar; born in Bethshemesh.
His pictures of Israelite life, the rival factions calling in Egypt and Assyria, mostly apply to the interreign after Jeroboam's death and to the succeeding reigns, rather than to his able government. In Hos_2:8 he makes no allusion to Jehovah's restoration of Israel's coasts under Jeroboam among Jehovah's mercies to Israel. He mentions in the inscription, besides the reign of Jeroboam in Israel, the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, though his prophecies are addressed primarily to Israel and only incidentally to Judah; for all the prophets whether in Judah or Israel regarded Israel's separation from Judah, civil as well as religious, as an apostasy from God who promised the kingship of the theocracy to the line of David. Hence Elijah in Israel took twelve stones to represent Judah as well as Israel (1Ki_18:31). Eichhorn sees a Samaritanism in the masculine suffix of the second person (-ak).
STYLE AND SUBJECT. Abrupt, sententious, and unperiodic, he is the more weighty and impressive. Brevity causes obscurity, the obscurity being designed by the Spirit to call forth prayerful study. Connecting particles are few. Changes of person, and anomalies of gender, number, and construction, abound. Horsley points out the excessively local and individual tone of his prophecies. He specifies Ephraim, Mizpah, Tabor, Gilgal, Bethel or Bethaven, Jezreel, Gibeah, Ramah, Gilead, Shechem, Lebanon, Arbela. Israel's sin, chastisement, and restoration are his theme. His first prophecy announces the coming overthrow of Jehu's house, fulfilled after Jeroboam's death, which the prophecy precedes, in Zachariah, Jeroboam's son, who was the fourth and last in descent from Jehu, and conspired against by Shallum after a six months' reign (2Ki_15:12).
The allusion to Shalmaneser's expedition against Israel as past, i.e. the first inroad against Hoshea whose reign began only four years before Hezekiah's, accords with the inscription which extends his prophesying to the reign of Hezekiah (2Ki_17:1; 2Ki_17:3; 2Ki_18:9). He declares throughout that a return to Jehovah is the only remedy for the evils existing and impending: the calf worship at Bethel, established by Jeroboam, must be given up (Hos_8:5-6; Hos_10:5; Hos_13:2); unrighteousness toward men, the necessary consequence of impiety towards God, must cease, or sacrifices are worthless (Hos_4:2; Hos_6:6, based on Samuel's original maxim, 1Sa_15:22). The Pentateuch is the foundation of his prophecies.
Here as there God's past favors to Israel are made the incentive to loving obedience (Hos_2:8; Hos_11:1; Hos_12:9; Hos_13:4, compare Exo_20:2). Literal fornication and adultery follow close upon spiritual (Hos_4:12-14). Assyria, the great northern power, which Israel foolishly regards as her friend to save her from her acknowledged calamities, Hosea foresees will be her destroyer (Hos_5:13; Hos_7:11; Hos_8:9; Hos_12:1; Hos_14:3; Hos_3:4; Hos_10:6; Hos_11:11). Political makeshifts to remedy moral corruption only hasten the disaster which they seek to avert; when the church leans on the world in her distress, instead of turning to God, the world the instrument of her sin is made the instrument of her punishment.
Hosea is driven by the nation's evils, present and in prospect, to cling the more closely to God. Amidst his rugged abruptness soft and exquisite touches occur, where God's lovingkindness, balmy as the morning sun and genial as the rain, stands in contrast to Israel's goodness, evanescent as the cloud and the early dew (Hos_6:3-4; compare also Hos_13:3; Hos_14:5-7).
DIVISIONS. There are two leading ones: Hosea 1-3; Hosea 4-14. Hosea 1; Hosea 2; and Hosea 3 form three separate cantos or parts, for Hosea 1-3 are more prose than poetry. Probably Hosea himself under the Spirit combined his scattered prophecies into one collection. Hosea 4-14, are an expansion of Hosea 3. On his marriage to Gomer, Henderson thinks that there is no hint of its being in vision, and that she fell into lewdness after her union with Hosea, thus fitly symbolizing Israel who lapsed into spiritual whoredom after the marriage contract with God on Sinai. (See GOMER.) But an act revolting to a pure mind would hardly be ordained by God save in vision, which serves all the purposes of a vivid and as it were acted prophecy. So the command to Ezekiel (Hos_4:4-15).
Moreover it would require years for the birth of three children, which would weaken the force of the symbol. In order effectively to teach others Hosea must experimentally realize it himself (Hos_12:10). Gomer, daughter of Diblaim, was probably one associated with the lascivious rites of the prevalent idolatries. Hosea's union in vision with such an one in spite of his natural repugnance would vividly impress the people with God's amazing love in uniting Himself to so polluted a nation. Hosea's taking her back after adultery (Hosea 3), at the price of a slave, marks Israel's extreme degradation and Jehovah's unchangeable love yet about to restore her. The truth expressed by prophetic act in vision was Israel's idolatry (spiritual impurity, "a wife of whoredoms") before her call in Egypt and in Ur of the Chaldees (Jos_24:14) as well as after it.
So also the Saviour took out of an unholy world the church, that He might unite her in holiness to Himself. No more remarkable prophecy exists of Israel's anomalous and extraordinary state for thousands of years, and of her future restoration, than Hos_3:4-5; "Israel shall abide many days without a king (which they so craved for originally), without a sacrifice (which their law requires as essential to their religion), without an image ... ephod ... teraphim (which they were in Hosea's days so mad after). Afterward shall Israel return and seek the Lord their God, and David their king ... in the latter days." But first must come her spiritual probation in the wilderness of trial (Hos_2:14) and her return to the Egypt of affliction (Hos_8:13; Hos_9:3), not literal "Egypt" (Hos_11:5).
New Testament references: Hos_11:1 = Mat_2:15; Hos_6:6 = Mat_9:13; Mat_12:7; Hos_1:10; Hos_2:1-23 = Rom_9:25-26; Hos_13:14 = 1Co_15:55; Hos_1:9-10; Hos_2:23 = 1Pe_2:10; Hos_10:8 = Luk_23:30; Rev_6:16; Hos_6:2 = 1Co_15:4; Hos_14:2 = Heb_13:15. The later prophets also stamp with their inspired sanction Hosea's prophecies, which they quote. Compare Hos_1:11 with Isa_11:12-13; Hos_4:3 with Zep_1:3; Hos_4:6 with Isa_5:13; Hos_7:10 with Isa_9:12-13; Hos_10:12 with Jer_4:3. (See OSHEA.)
Fausset's Bible Dictionary
By Andrew Robert Fausset, co-Author of Jamieson, Fausset and Brown's 1888.

Hose'a. (salvation). Son of Beeri, and first of the minor prophets. Probably the life, or rather the prophetic career, of Hosea extended from B.C. 784 to 723, a period of fifty-nine years.
The prophecies of Hosea were delivered in the kingdom of Israel. Jeroboam II was on the throne, and Israel was at the height of its earthly splendor. Nothing is known of the prophet's life, excepting what may be gained from his book.
Smith's Bible Dictionary
By Dr. William Smith.Published in 1863

son of Beeri, the first of the minor prophets. He is generally considered as a native and inhabitant of the kingdom of Israel, and is supposed to have begun to prophesy about B.C. 800. He exercised his office sixty years; but it is not known at what periods his different prophecies now remaining were delivered. Most of them are directed against the people of Israel, whom he reproves and threatens for their idolatry and wickedness, and exhorts to repentance, with the greatest earnestness, as the only means of averting the evils impending over their country. The principal predictions contained in this book, are the captivity and dispersion of the kingdom of Israel; the deliverance of Judah from Sennacherib; the present state of the Jews; their future restoration, and union with the Gentiles in the kingdom of the Messiah; the call of our Saviour out of Egypt, and his resurrection on the third day. The style of Hosea is peculiarly obscure; it is sententious, concise, and abrupt; the transitions of persons are sudden; and the connexive and adversative particles are frequently omitted. The prophecies are in one continued series, without any distinction as to the times when they were delivered, or the different subjects to which they relate. They are not so clear and detailed, as the predictions of those prophets who lived in succeeding ages. When, however, we have surmounted these difficulties, we shall see abundant reason to admire the force and energy with which this prophet writes, and the boldness of the figures and similitudes which he uses.
2. HOSEA, or HOSHEA, son of Elah, was the last king of Israel. Having conspired against Pekah, son of Remaliah, king of Israel, he killed him, A.M. 3265; B.C. 739. However, the elders of the land seem to have taken the government into their hands; for Hoshea was not in possession of the kingdom till nine years after, 2Ki_15:30; 2Ki_17:1. Hoshea did evil in the sight of the Lord, but not equal to the kings of Israel who preceded him; that is, say the Jewish doctors, he did not restrain his subjects from going to Jerusalem to worship, if they would; whereas, the kings of Israel, his predecessors, had forbidden it, and had placed guards on the road to prevent it. Salmaneser, king of Assyria, being informed that Hoshea meditated a revolt, and had concerted measures with So, king of Egypt, to shake off the Assyrian yoke, marched against him, and besieged Samaria. After a siege of three years, in the ninth year of Hoshea's reign, the city was taken, and was reduced to a heap of ruins, A.M. 3282. The king of Assyria removed the Israelites of the ten tribes to countries beyond the Euphrates, and thus terminated the kingdom of the ten tribes.
Biblical and Theological Dictionary by Richard Watson
PRINTER 1849.

At the time of the prophet Hosea’s ministry (the eighth century BC) the ancient Israelite nation was divided into two kingdoms, Israel in the north and Judah in the south. Hosea began his ministry late in the reigns of Jeroboam II of Israel and Uzziah of Judah, and continued it through the reigns of succeeding kings (Hos_1:1).
Unfaithful religion
Hosea’s work was concerned with the north more than the south. Israel’s religion had been corrupted through Baal worship, with the result that the nation was heading for judgment and would be taken captive to a foreign land.
Because the covenant between Israel and Yahweh was likened to a marriage covenant, Israel’s association with other gods was really spiritual adultery (Hos_4:17; Hos_5:4; Hos_6:10; Hos_7:16; Hos_8:5-6; see BAAL). Hosea saw a fitting illustration of this when his own wife Gomer left him for other lovers. She became a prostitute (Hos_1:2; Hos_2:2).
Gomer’s pleasures did not last and she was sold as a slave. Hosea, who still loved his erring wife, had remained faithful to his marriage covenant, and when he found Gomer a slave, he bought her back (Hos_3:1-3). Hosea’s covenant love for Gomer pictured Yahweh’s covenant love for his people. They too would go into captivity but, after being cleansed of their adulterous association with the Canaanite gods, would be brought back to live in their land again (Hos_2:17-20; Hos_3:4-5; Hos_14:4-7).
Corrupt society
During the reigns of Jeroboam II and Uzziah, Israel and Judah enjoyed political stability, economic prosperity and territorial expansion greater than at any time since the days of David and Solomon (2Ki_14:23-27; 2Ki_15:1-2; 2Ch_26:1-15). This development, however, brought with it greed and corruption on a scale that neither Israel nor Judah had experienced previously. The two prophets who began to attack the social injustice and religious corruption of the age were Amos and Hosea. They came from different parts of the country, but both were concerned more with the northern kingdom than with the southern.
The particular social evils that the prophets attacked were connected with the exploitation of the poor by those of the upper classes. The people who benefited from the prosperity of the age were not the farmers (who made up the majority of the population) but the officials and merchants. They could cheat and oppress the poor as they wished, knowing that because of the corruption of the courts, the poor had no way of defending themselves (Hos_4:1-2; Hos_6:8-9; Hos_12:7-8). Again, the judgment announced upon the nation was that of conquest and captivity (Hos_5:14; Hos_9:6; Hos_10:3-8; Hos_10:13-15; see also AMOS).
Outline of Hosea’s prophecy
Hosea recounts his unhappy family experiences and shows how those experiences reflect the state of affairs in Israel (1:1-2:1). Like Gomer, Israel has been unfaithful to her husband God (Yahweh) (2:2-23), but as Hosea redeemed Gomer from slavery, so God will redeem Israel from the coming captivity (3:1-5).
The central section of the book is a collection of various short messages that Hosea preached over the years. The messages are not in chronological order, but all are connected with Israel’s moral corruption. Corrupt religion produces a corrupt nation, whether in its everyday life (4:1-5:7), its foreign policy (5:8-14), its loyalty to God (5:15-6:6) or its concern for justice (6:7-7:7). The nation has rebelled against God by making alliances with foreign nations (7:8-16) and by giving itself to Baal worship (8:1-14).
Israel’s punishment is therefore certain (9:1-17). The nation will reap what it has sown (10:1-15). The people have despised God’s love (11:1-11) and exploited each other (11:12-12:14), and thereby have guaranteed captivity for their nation (13:1-16). But when the people repent, God will forgive them and bring them back to their land (14:1-9).
Bridgeway Bible Dictionary by Don Fleming
PRINTER 1990.

hō̇-zē?a:
I. The Prophet
1. Name
2. Native Place
3. Date
4. Personal History (Marriage)
(1) Allegorical View
(2) Literal View
II. The Book
1. Style and Scope
2. Historical Background
3. Contents and Divisions
(1) Hosea 1 through 3
(2) Hosea 4 through 14
4. Testimony to Earlier History
5. Testimony to the Law
6. Affinity with Deuteronomy
Literature

I. The Prophet
1. Name
The name (הושׁע, hōshēa‛ Septuagint ̓Ωσηέ, Ōsēé; for other forms see note in DB), probably meaning ?help,? seems to have been not uncommon, being derived from the auspicious verb from which we have the frequently recurring word ?salvation.? It may be a contraction of a larger form of which the Divine name or its abbreviation formed a part, so as to signify ?God is help,? or ?Help, God.? according to Num_13:8, Num_13:16 that was the original name of Joshua son of Nun, till Moses gave him the longer name (compounded with the name of Yahweh) which he continued to bear (יהושׁע, yehōshua‛), ?Yahweh is salvation.? The last king of the Northern Kingdom was also named Hosea (2Ki_15:30), and we find the same name borne by a chief of the tribe of Ephraim under David (1Ch_27:20) and by a chief under Nehemiah (Neh_10:23).
2. Native Place
Although it is not directly stated in the book, there can be little doubt that he exercised his ministry in the kingdom of the Ten Tribes. Whereas his references to Judah are of a general kind, Ephraim or Samaria being sometimes mentioned in the same connection or more frequently alone, the situation implied throughout and the whole tone of the addresses agree with what we know of the Northern Kingdom at the time, and his references to places and events in that kingdom are so numerous and minute as to lead to the conclusion that he not only prophesied there, but that he was a native of that part of the country. Gilead, e.g. a district little named in the prophets, is twice mentioned in Hos (Neh_6:8; Neh_12:11) and in such a manner as to suggest that he knew it by personal observation; and Mizpah (mentioned in Neh_5:1) is no doubt the Mizpah in Gilead (Jdg_10:17). Then we find Tabor (Hos_5:1), Shechem (Hos_6:9 the Revised Version (British and American)), Gilgal and Bethel (Hos_4:15; Hos_9:15; Hos_10:5, Hos_10:8, Hos_10:15; Hos_12:11). Even Lebanon in the distant North is spoken of with a minuteness of detail which could be expected only from one very familiar with Northern Palestine (Hos_14:5-8). In a stricter sense, therefore, than amos who, though a native of Tekoah, had a prophetic mission to the North, Hosea may be called the prophet of Northern Israel, and his book, as Ewald has said, is the prophetic voice wrung from the bosom of the kingdom itself.
3. Date
All that we are told directly as to the time when Hosea prophesied is the statement in the first verse that the word of the Lord came to him ?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.? It is quite evident that his ministry did not extend over the combined reigns of all these kings; for, from the beginning of the reign of Uzziah to the beginning of that of Hezekiah, according to the now usually received chronology (Kautzsch, Literature of the Old Testament, English Translation), there is a period of 52 years, and Jeroboam came to his throne a few years before the accession of Uzziah.
When we examine the book itself for more precise indications of date, we find that the prophet threatens in God's name that in ?a little while? He will ?avenge the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu.? Now Jeroboam was the great-grandson of Jehu, and his son Zechariah, who succeeded him, reigned only six months and was the last of the line of Jehu. We may, therefore, place the beginning of Hosea's ministry a short time before the death of Jeroboam which took place 743 bc. as to the other limit, it is to be observed that, though the downfall of ?the kingdom of the house of Israel? is threatened (Hos_1:4), the catastrophe had not occurred when the prophet ceased his ministry. The date of that event is fixed in the year 722 bc, and it is said to have happened in the 6th year of King Hezekiah. This does not give too long a time for Hosea's activity, and it leaves the accuracy of the superscription unchallenged, whoever may have written it. If it is the work of a later editor, it may be that Hosea's ministry ceased before the reign of Hezekiah, though he may have lived on into that king's reign. It should be added, however, that there seems to be no reference to another event which might have been expected to find an echo in the book, namely, the conspiracy in the reign of Ahaz (735 bc) by Pekah of Israel and Rezin of Damascus against the kingdom of Judah (2Ki_16:5; Isa_7:1).
Briefly we may say that, though there is uncertainty as to the precise dates of the beginning and end of his activity, he began his work before the middle of the 8th century, and that he saw the rise and fall of several kings. He would thus be a younger contemporary of amos whose activity seems to have been confined to the reign of Jeroboam.
4. Personal History (Marriage)
Hosea is described as the son of Beeri, who is otherwise unknown. Of his personal history we are told either absolutely nothing or else a very great deal, according as we interpret Hos_1:1-11 and Hos_3:1-5 of his book. In ancient and in modern times, opinions have been divided as to whether in these chapters we have a recital of actual facts, or the presentation of prophetic teaching in the form of parable or allegory.
(1) Allegorical View
The Jewish interpreters as a rule took the allegorical view, and Jerome, in the early Christian church, no doubt following Origen the great allegorizer, states it at length, and sees an intimation of the view in the closing words of Hosea's book: ?Who is wise, that he may understand these things? prudent, that he may know them?? (Hos_14:9).
It is a mystery, he says; for it is a scandal to think of Hosea being commanded to take an unchaste wife and without any reluctance obeying the command. It is a figure, like that of Jeremiah going to the Euphrates (when Jerusalem was closely besieged) and hiding a girdle in the bed of the river (Jer 13). So Ezekiel is commanded to represent, by means of a tile, the siege of Jerusalem, and to lie 390 days on his side to indicate the years of their iniquity (Ezek 4); and there are other symbolical acts. Jerome then proceeds to apply the allegory first to Israel, which is the Gomer of chapter 1, and then to Judah, the wife in chapter 3, and finally to Christ and the church, the representations being types from beginning to end.
Calvin took the same view. Among modern commentators we find holding the allegorical view not only Hengstenberg, H?vernick and Keil, but also Eichhorn, Rosenm?ller and Hitzig. Reuss also (Das Altes Testament, II, 88ff) protests against the literal interpretation as impossible, and that on no moral or reverential considerations, but entirely on exegetical grounds. He thinks it enough to say that, when the prophet calls his children ?children of whoredom,? he indicates quite clearly that he uses the words in a figurative sense; and he explains the allegory as follows: The prophet is the representative of Yahweh; Israel is the wife of Yahweh, but faithless to her husband, going after other gods; the children are the Israelites, who are therefore called children of whoredoms because they practice the idolatry of the nation. So they receive names which denote the consequences of their sin. In accordance with the allegory, the children are called the children of the prophet (for israel is God's own) but this is not the main point; the essential thing is the naming of the children as they are named. In the third chapter, according to this interpretation, allegory again appears, but with a modification and for another purpose. Idolatrous Israel is again the unfaithful wife of the prophet as the representative of Yahweh. This relation can again be understood only as figurative; for, if the prophet stands for Yahweh, the marriage of Israel to the prophet cannot indicate infidelity to Yahweh. The sense is evident: the marriage still subsists; God does not give His people up, but they are for the present divorced ?from bed and board?; it is a prophecy of the time when Yahweh will leave the people to their fate, till the day of reconciliation comes.
(2) Literal View
The literal interpretation, adopted by Theodore of Mopsucstia in the ancient church, was followed, after the Reformation, by the chief theologians of the Lutheran church, and has been held, in modern times, by many leading expositors, including Delitzsch, Kurtz, Hofmann, Wellhausen, Cheyne, Robertson Smith, G. A. Smith and others. In this view, as generally held, chapters 1 and 3 go together and refer to the same person. The idea is that Hosea married a woman named Gomer, who had the three children here named. Whether it was that she was known to be a worthless woman before the marriage and that the prophet hoped to reclaim her, or that she proved faithless after the marriage, she finally left him and sank deeper and deeper into sin, until, at some future time, the prophet bought her from her paramour and brought her to his own house, keeping her secluded, however, and deprived of all the privileges of a wife. In support of this view it is urged that the details are related in so matter-of-fact a manner that they must be matters of fact. Though the children receive symbolical names (as Isaiah gave such names to his children), the meanings of these are clear and are explained, whereas the name of the wife cannot thus be explained. Then there are details, such as the weaning of one child before the conception of another (Hos_1:8) and the precise price paid for the erring wife (Hos_3:2), which are not needed to keep up the allegory, and are not invested with symbolical meaning by the prophet. What is considered a still stronger argument is relied on by modern advocates of this view, the psychological argument that there is always a proportion between a revelation vouchsafed and the mental state of the person receiving it. Hosea dates the beginning of his prophetic work from the time of his marriage; it was the unfaithfulness of his wife that brought home to him the apostasy of Israel; and, as his heart went after his wayward wife, so the Divine love was stronger than Israel's sin; and thus through his own domestic experience he was prepared to be a prophet to his people.
The great difficulty in the way of accepting the literal interpretation lies, as Reuss has pointed out, in the statement at the beginning, that the prophet was commanded to take a wife of whoredoms and children of whoredoms. And the advocates of the view meet the difficulties in some way like this: The narrative as it stands is manifestly later than the events. On looking back, the prophet describes his wife as she turned out to be, not as she was at the beginning of the history. It is urged with some force that it was necessary to the analogy (even if the story is only a parable) that the wife should have been first of all chaste; for, in Hosea's representation, Israel at the time of its election in the wilderness was faithful and fell away only afterward (Hos_2:15; Hos_9:10; Hos_11:1). The narrative does not require us to assume that Comer was an immoral person or that she was the mother of children before her marriage. The children receive symbolic names, but these names do not reflect upon Gomer but upon Israel. Why, then, is she described as a woman of Whoredoms? It is answered that the expression 'ēsheth zenūnı̄m is a class-descriptive, and is different from the expression ?a woman who is a harlot? ('ishshāh zōnāh). A Jewish interpreter quoted by Aben Ezra says: ?Hosea was commanded to take a wife of whoredoms because an honest woman was not to be had. The whole people had gone astray - was an 'adulterous generation'; and she as one of them was a typical example, and the children were involved in the common declension (see Hos_4:1 f) .? The comment of Umbreit is worthy of notice: ?as the covenant of Yahweh with Israel is viewed as a marriage bond, so is the prophetic bond with Israel a marriage, for he is the messenger and mediator. Therefore, if he feels an irresistible impulse to enter into the marriage-bond with Israel, he is bound to unite himself with a bride of an unchaste character. Yea, his own wife Comer is involved in the universal guilt? (Prak. Comm. ?ber die Propheten, Hamburg, 1844). It is considered, then, on this view, that Gomer, after her marriage, being in heart addicted to the prevailing idolatry, which we know was often associated with gross immorality (see Hos_4:13), felt the irksomeness of restraint in the prophet's house, left him and sank into open profligacy, from which (Hos_3:1-5) the prophet reclaimed her so far as to bring her back and keep her secluded in his own house.
Quite recently this view has been advocated by Riedel (Alttest. Untersuchungen, Leipzig, 1902), who endeavors to enforce it by giving a symbolic meaning to Gomer's name, Bath-Diblaim. The word is the dual (or might be pointed as a plural) of a word, debhēlāh, meaning a fruitcake, i.e. raisins or figs pressed together. It is the word used in the story of Hezekiah's illness (2Ki_20:7), and is found in the list of things furnished by abigail to David (1Sa_25:18). See also 1Sa_30:12; 1Ch_12:40. Another name for the same thing, 'ăshishāh, occurs in Hos_3:1, rendered in the King James Version ?flagons of wine,? but in the Revised Version (British and American) ?cakes of raisins.? It seems clear that this word, at least here, denotes fruit-cakes offered to the heathen deities, as was the custom in Jeremiah's time (Jer_7:18; Jer_44:17). So Riedel argues that Comer may have been described as a ?daughter of fruit-cakes? according to the Hebrew idiom in such expressions as ?daughters of song,? etc. (Ecc_12:4; Pro_31:2; 2Sa_7:10; Gen_37:3, etc.).
It will be perceived that the literal interpretation as thus stated does not involve the supposition that Hosea became aware of his wife's infidelity before the birth of the second child, as Robertson Smith and G. A. Smith suppose. The names given to the children all refer to the infidelity of Israel as a people; and the renderings of Lō'-rūḥāmāh, ?she that never knew a father's love,? and of Lō-‛ammı̄, ?no kin of mine,? are too violent in this connection. Nor does the interpretation demand that it was first through his marriage and subsequent experience that the prophet received his call; although no doubt the experience through which he passed deepened the conviction of Israel's apostasy in his mind.

II. The Book
1. Style and Scope
Scarcely any book in the Old Testament is more difficult of exposition than the Book of Hosea. This does not seem to be owing to any exceptional defect in the transmitted text, but rather to the peculiarity of the style; and partly also, no doubt, to the fact that the historical situation of the prophet was one of bewildering and sudden change of a violent kind, which seems to reflect itself in the book. The style here is pre?minently the man. Whatever view we may take of his personal history, it is evident that he is deeply affected by the situation in which he is placed. He is controlled by his subject, instead of controlling it. It is his heart that speaks; he is not careful to concentrate his thoughts or to mark his transitions; the sentences fall from him like the sobs of a broken heart. Mournful as Jeremiah, he does not indulge in the pleasure of melancholy as that prophet seems to do. Jeremiah broods over his sorrow, nurses it, and tells us he is weeping. Hosea does not say he is weeping, but we hear it in his broken utterances. Instead of laying out his plaint in measured form, he ejaculates it in short, sharp sentences, as the stabs of his people's sin pierce his heart.
The result is the absence of that rhythmic flow and studied parallelism which are such common features of Hebrew oratory, and are often so helpful to the expositor. His imagery, while highly poetical, is not elaborated; his figures are not so much carried out as thrown out; nor does he dwell long on the same figure. His sentences are like utterances of an oracle, and he forgets himself in identifying himself with the God in whose name he speaks - a feature which is not without significance in its bearing on the question of his personal history. The standing expression ?Thus saith the Lord? (?It is the utterance of Yahweh? the Revised Version (British and American)), so characteristic of the prophetic style, very rarely occurs (only in Hos_2:13, Hos_2:16, Hos_2:21; Hos_11:11); whereas the words that he speaks are the very words of the Lord; and without any formal indication of the fact, he passes from speaking in his own name to speaking in the name of Yahweh (see, e.g. Hos_6:4; Hos_7:12; Hos_8:13; Hos_9:9, Hos_9:10, Hos_9:14-17, etc.). Never was speaker so absorbed in his theme, or more identified with Him for whom he speaks. He seems to be oblivious of his hearers, if indeed his chapters are the transcript or summary of spoken addresses. They certainly want to a great extent the directness and point which are so marked a feature of prophetic diction, so much so that some (e.g. Reuss and Marti) suppose they are the production of one who had readers and not hearers in view.
But, though the style appears in this abrupt form, there is one clear note on divers strings sounding through the whole. The theme is twofold: the love of Yahweh, and the indifference of Israel to that love; and it would be hard to say which of the two is more vividly conceived and more forcibly expressed. Under the figures of the tenderest affection, sometimes that of the pitying, solicitous care of the parent (Hos_11:1, Hos_11:3, Hos_11:5; Hos_14:3), but more prominently as the affection of the husband (Hos_1:1-11; Hos_3:1-5), the Divine love is represented as ever enduring in spite of all indifference and opposition; and, on the other hand, the waywardness, unblushing faithlessness of the loved one is painted in colors so repulsive as almost to shock the moral sense, but giving thereby evidence of the painful abhorrence it had produced on the prophet's mind. Thus early does he take the sacred bond of husband and wife as the type of the Divine electing love - a similitude found elsewhere in prophetic literature, and most fully elaborated by Ezekiel (Ezek 16; compare Jer 3). Hosea is the prophet of love, and not without propriety has been called the John of the Old Testament.
2. Historical Background
For the reasons just stated, it is very difficult to give a systematic analysis of the Book of Hos. It may, however, be helpful to that end to recall the situation of the time as furnishing a historical setting for the several sections of the book.
At the commencement of the prophet's ministry, the Northern Kingdom was enjoying the prosperity and running into the excesses consequent on the victories of Jeroboam II. The glaring social corruptions of the times are exhibited and castigated by Amos, as they would most impress a stranger from the South; but Hosea, a native, as we are led suppose, of the Northern Kingdom, saw more deeply into the malady, and traced all the crime and vice of the nation to the fundamental evil of idolatry and apostasy from the true God. What he describes under the repulsive figure of whoredom was the rampant Worship of the be‛ālı̄m, which had practically obscured the recognition of the sole claims to worship of the national Yahweh. This worship of the be‛ālı̄m is to be distinguished from that of which we read at the earlier time of Elijah. Ahab's Tyrian wife Jezebel had introduced the worship of her native country, that of the Sidonian Baal, which amounted to the setting up of a foreign deity; and Elijah's contention that it must be a choice between Yahweh and Baal appealed to the sense of patriotism and the sentiment of national existence. The worship of the ba‛als, however, was an older and more insidious form of idolatry. The worship of the Canaanite tribes, among whom the Israelites found themselves on the occupation of Palestine, was a reverence of local divinities, known by the names of the places where each had his shrine or influence. The generic name of ba‛al or ?lord? was applied naturally as a common word to each of these, with the addition of the name of place or potency to distinguish them. Thus we have Baal-hermon, Baal-gad, Baal-berith, etc. The insidiousness of this kind of worship is proved by its wide prevalence, especially among people at a low stage of intelligence, when the untutored mind is brought face to face with the mysterious and unseen forces of Nature. And the tenacity of the feeling is proved by the prevalence of such worship, even among people whose professed religion condemns idolatry of every kind. The veneration of local shrines among Christians of the East and in many parts of Europe is well known; and Mohammedans make pilgrimages to the tombs of saints who, though not formally worshipped as deities, are believed to have the power to confer such benefits as the Canaanites expected from the ba‛als. The very name ba‛al, originally meaning simply lord and master, as in such expressions as ?master of a house,? ?lord of a wife,? ?owner of an ox,? would be misleading; for the Israelites could quite innocently call Yahweh their ba‛al or Lord, as we can see they did in the formation of proper names. We can, without much difficulty, conceive what would happen among a people like the Israelite tribes, of no high grade of religious intelligence, and with the prevailing superstitions in their blood, when they found themselves in Palestine. From a nomad and pastoral people they became, and had to become, agriculturists; the natives of the land would be their instructors, in many or in most cases the actual labor would be done by them. The Book of Jdg tells us emphatically that several of the Israelite tribes ?did not drive out? the native inhabitants; the northern tribes in particular, where the land was most fertile, tolerated a large native admixture. We are also told (Jdg_2:7) that the people served the Lord all the days of Joshua and of the elders who outlived Joshua; and this hint of a gradual declension no doubt points to what actually took place. For a time they remembered and thought of Yahweh as the God who had done for them great things in Egypt and in the wilderness; and then, as time went on, they had to think of Him as the giver of the land in which they found themselves, with all its varied produce. But this was the very thing the Canaanites ascribed to their ba‛als. And so, imperceptibly, by naming places as the natives named them, by observing the customs which the natives followed, and celebrating the festivals of the agricultural year, they were gliding into conformity with the religion of their neighbors; for, in such a state of society, custom is more or less based on religion and passes for religion. Almost before they were aware, they were doing homage to the various ba‛als in celebrating their festival days and offering to them the produce of the ground.
Such was the condition which Hosea describes as an absence of the knowledge of God (Hos_4:1). And the consequence cannot be better described than in the words of Paul: ?As they refused to have God in their knowledge, God gave them up unto a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not fitting? (Rom_1:28). Both Hosea and Amos tell us in no ambiguous terms how the devotees of the impure worship gave themselves up ?to work all uncleanness with greediness? (Eph_4:19; compare Amo_2:7 f; Hos_4:14); and how deeply the canker had worked into the body politic is proved by the rapid collapse and irretrievable ruin which followed soon after the strong hand of Jeroboam was removed. The 21 years that followed his death in 743 bc saw no fewer than six successive occupants of the throne, and the final disappearance of the kingdom of the ten tribes. Zechariah, his son, had reigned only six months when ?Shallum the son of Jabesh conspired against him ... and slew him, and reigned in his stead? (2Ki_15:10). Shallum himself reigned only a month when he was in the same bloody manner removed by Menahem. After a reign of 10 years, according to 2Ki_15:17 (although the chronology here is uncertain), he was succeeded by his son Pekahiah (2Ki_15:22), and after two years Pekah ?his captain? conspired against him and reigned in his stead (2Ki_15:25). This king also was assassinated, and was succeeded by Hoshea (2Ki_15:30), the last king of the ten tribes, for the kingdom came to an end in 722 bc. Hosea must have lived during a great part of those troubled times; and we may expect to hear echoes of the events in his book.
3. Contents and Divisions
(1) Hosea 1 Through 3
We should naturally expect that the order of the chapters would correspond in the main with the progress of events; and there is at least a general agreement among expositors that Hosea 1 through 3 refer to an earlier period than those that follow. In favor of this is the reference in Hos_1:2 to the commencement of the prophet's ministry, as also the threatening of the impending extirpation of the house of Jehu (Hos_1:4), implying that it was still in existence; and finally the hints of the abundance amounting to luxury which marked the prosperous time of Jeroboam's reign. These three chapters are to be regarded as going together; and, however they may be viewed as reflecting the prophet's personal experience, they leave no room for doubt in regard to the national apostasy that weighed so heavily on his heart. And this, in effect, is what he says: Just as the wife, espoused to a loving husband, enjoys the protection of home and owes all her provision to her husband, so Israel, chosen by Yahweh and brought by Him into a fertile land, has received all she has from Him alone. The giving of recognition to the ba‛als for material prosperity was tantamount to a wife's bestowing her affection on another; the accepting of these blessings as bestowed on condition of homage rendered to the ba‛als was tantamount to the receiving of hire by an abandoned woman. This being so, the prophet, speaking in God's name, declares what He will do, in a series of a thrice repeated ?therefore? (Hos_2:6, Hos_2:9, Hos_2:14), marking three stages of His discipline. First of all, changing the metaphor to that of a straying heifer, the prophet in God's name declares (Hos_2:6) that He will hedge up her way with thorns, so that she will not be able to reach her lovers - meaning, no doubt, that whether by drought or blight, or some national misfortune, there would be such a disturbance of the processes of Nature that the usual rites of homage to the ba‛als would prove ineffectual. The people would fail to find the ?law of the god of the land? (2Ki_17:26). In their perplexity they would bethink themselves, begin to doubt the power of the ba‛als, and resolve to pay to Yahweh the homage they had been giving to the local gods. But this is still the same low conception of Yahweh that had led them astray. To exchange one God for another simply in the hope of enjoying material prosperity is not the service which He requires. And then comes the second ?therefore? (Hos_2:9). Instead of allowing them to enjoy their corn and wine and oil on the terms of a mere lip allegiance or ritual service, Yahweh will take these away, will reduce Israel to her original poverty, causing all the mirth of her festival days to cease, and giving garments of mourning for festal attire. Her lovers will no longer own her, her own husband's hand is heavy upon her, and what remains? The third ?therefore? tells us (Hos_2:14). Israel, now bereft of all, helpless, homeless, is at last convinced that, as her God could take away all, so it was from Him she had received all: she is shut up to His love and His mercy alone. And here the prophet's thoughts clothemselves in language referring to the early betrothal period of national life. A new beginning will be made, she will again lead the wilderness life of daily dependence on God, cheerfully and joyfully she will begin a new journey, out of trouble will come a new hope, and the very recollection of the past will be a pain to her. As all the associations of the name ba‛al have been degrading, she shall think of her Lord in a different relation, not as the mere giver of material blessing, but as the husband and desire of her heart, the One Source of all good, as distinguished from one of many benefactors. In all this Hosea does not make it clear how he expected these changes to be brought about, nor do we detect any references to the political history of the time. He mentions no foreign enemy at this stage, or, at most, hints at war in a vague manner (Hos_2:14 f). In the second chapter the thing that is emphasized is the heavy hand of God laid on the things through which Israel had been led astray, the paralyzing of Nature's operations, so as to cut at the root of Nature-worship; but the closing stage of the Divine discipline (Hos_3:1-5), when Israel, like the wife kept in seclusion, neither enjoying the privileges of the lawful spouse nor able to follow after idols, seems to point to, and certainly was not reached till, the captivity when the people, on a foreign soil, could not exercise their ancestral worship, but yet were finally cured of idolatry.
The references to Judah in these chapters are not to be overlooked. Having said (Hos_1:6) that Israel would be utterly taken away (which seems to point to exile), the prophet adds that Judah would be saved from that fate, though not by warlike means. Farther down (Hos_1:11) he predicts the union of Israel and Judah under one head, and finally in Hos_3:1-5 it is said that in the latter day the children of Israel would seek the Lord their God and David their king. Many critics suppose that Hos_1:10 f are out of place (though they cannot find a better place for them); and not a few declare that all the references to Judah must be taken as from a later hand, the usual reason for this conclusion being that the words ?disturb the connection.? In the case of a writer like Hosea, however, whose transitions are so sharp and sudden, we are not safe in speaking of disturbing the connection: what may to us appear abrupt, because we are not expecting it, may have flashed across the mind of the original writer; and Hosea, in forecasting the future of his people, can scarcely be debarred from having thought of the whole nation. It was Israel as a whole that was the original bride of Yahweh, and surely therefore the united Israel would be the partaker of the final glory. As a matter of fact, Judah was at the time in better case than Israel, and the old promise to the Davidic house (2Sa_7:16) was deeply cherished to the end.
(2) Hosea 4 Through 14
If it is admissible to consider Hosea 1 through 3 as one related piece (though possibly the written deposit of several addresses) it is quite otherwise with Hos 4 through 14. These are, in a manner, a counterpart of the history. When the strong hand of Jeroboam was relaxed, the kingdom rapidly fell to pieces; a series of military usurpers follows with bewildering rapidity; but who can tell how much political disorder and social disintegration lie behind those brief and grim notices: So and So ?conspired against him and slew him and reigned in his stead?? So with these chapters. The wail of grief, the echo of violence and excess, is heard through all, but it is very difficult to assign each lament, each reproof, each denunciation to the primary occasion that called it forth. The chapters seem like the recital of the confused, hideous dream through which the nation passed till its rude awakening by the sharp shock of the Assyrian invasion and the exile that followed. The political condition of the time was one of party strife and national impotence. Sometimes Assyria or Egypt is mentioned alone (Hos_5:13; Hos_8:9, Hos_8:13; Hos_9:6; Hos_10:6; Hos_14:3), at other times Assyria and Egypt together (Hos_7:11; Hos_9:3; Hos_11:5, Hos_11:11; Hos_12:1); but in such a way as to show too plainly that the spirit of self-reliance - not to speak of reliance on Yahweh - had departed from a race that was worm-eaten with social sins and rendered selfish and callous by the indulgence of every vice. These foreign powers, which figure as false refuges, are also in the view of the prophet destined to be future scourges (see Hos_5:13; Hos_8:9 f; Hos_7:11; Hos_12:1); and we know, from the Book of Ki and also from the Assyrian monuments, how much the kings of Israel at this time were at the mercy of the great conquering empires of the East. Such passages as speak of Assyria and Egypt in the same breath may point to the rival policies which were in vogue in the Northern Kingdom (as they appeared also somewhat later in Judah) of making alliances with one or other of these great rival powers. It was in fact the Egyptianizing policy of Hoshea that finally occasioned the ruin of the kingdom (2Ki_17:4). Thus it is that, in the last chapter, when the prophet indulges in hope no more mixed with boding fear, he puts into the mouth of repentant Ephraim the words: ?Assyria shall not save us; we will not ride upon horses? (Hos_14:3), thus alluding to the two foreign powers between which Israel had lost its independence.
It is not possible to give a satisfactory analysis of the chapters under consideration. They are not marked off, as certain sections of other prophetical books are, by headings or refrains, nor are the references to current events sufficiently clear to enable us to assign different parts to different times, nor, in fine, is the matter so distinctly laid out that we can arrange the book under subjects treated. Most expositors accordingly content themselves with indicating the chief topics or lines of thought, and arranging the chapters according to the tone pervading them.
Keil, e.g., would divide all these chapters into three great sections, each forming a kind of prophetical cycle, in which the three great prophetic tones of reproof, threatening, and promise, are heard in succession. His first section embraces Hosea 4 to Hos_6:3, ending with the gracious promise: ?Come, and let us return unto Yahweh,? etc. The second section, Hos_6:4 to Hos_11:11, ends with the promise: ?They shall come trembling as a bird ... and I will make them to dwell in their houses, saith Yahweh.? The third section, Hos_11:12 to Hos_14:9, ends: ?Take with you words, and return unto Yahweh,? etc. Ewald's arrangement proceeds on the idea that the whole book consists of one narrative piece (chapters 1 through 3) and one long address (chapters 4 through 14), which, however, is marked off by resting points into smaller sections or addresses. The progress of thought is marked by the three great items of arraignment, punishment, and consolation. Thus: from 4:1 through 6:11 there is arraignment; from Hos_6:11 to Hos_9:9 punishment, and from Hos_9:10-14 :10 exhortation and comfort. Driver says of chapters 4 through 14: ?These chapters consist of a series of discourses, a summary arranged probably by the prophet himself at the close of his ministry, of the prophecies delivered by him in the years following the death of Jeroboam II. Though the argument is not continuous, or systematically developed, they may be divided into three sections: (a) chapters 4 through 8 in which the thought of Israel's guilt predominates; (b) chapter 9 through 11:11, in which the prevailing thought is that of Israel's punishment; (c) Hos_11:12 through Hos_14:1-9 in which these two lines of thought are both continued (Hos_12:1-14, 13), but are followed (in Hos_14:1-9) by a glance at the brighter future which may ensue provided Israel repents.? A. B. Davidson, after mentioning the proposed analyses of Ewald and Driver, adds: ?But in truth the passage is scarcely divisible; it consists of multitude of variations all executed on one theme, Israel's apostasy or unfaithfulness to her God. This unfaithfulness is a condition of the mind, a 'spirit of whoredoms,' and is revealed in all the aspects of Israel's life, though particularly in three things: (1) The cult, which, though ostensibly service of Yahweh, is in truth worship of a being altogether different from Him; (2) The internal political disorders, the changes of dynasty, all of which have been effected with no thought of Yahweh in the people's minds; and (3) The foreign politics, the making of covenants with Egypt and Assyria, in the hope that they might heal the internal hurt of the people, instead of relying on Yahweh their God. The three things,? he adds, ?are not independent; the one leads to the other. The fundamental evil is that there is no knowledge of God in the land, no true conception of Deity. He is thought of as a Nature-god, and His conception exercises no restraint on the passions or life of the people: hence, the social immoralities, and the furious struggles of rival factions, and these again lead to the appeal for foreign intervention.?
Some expositors, however (e.g. Maurer, Hitzig, Delitzsch and Volck), recognizing what they consider as direct references or brief allusions to certain outstanding events in the history, perceive a chronological order in the chapters. Volck, who has tempted a full analysis on this line (PRE2) thinks that chapters 4 through 14 arrange themselves into 6 consecutive sections as follows: (1) chapter 4 constitutes a section by itself, determined by the introductory words ?Hear the word of Yahweh? (Hos_4:1), and a similar call at the beginning of Hos_5:1-15. He assigns this chapter to the reign of Zechariah, as a description of the low condition to which the nation had fallen, the priests, the leaders, being involved in the guilt and reproof (Hos_5:6). (2) The second section extends from Hos_5:1 to Hos_6:3, and is addressed directly to the priests and the royal house, who ought to have been guides but were snares. The prophet in the spirit sees Divine judgment already breaking over the devoted land (Hos_5:8). This prophecy, which Hitzig referred to the time of Zechariah, and Maurer to the reign of Pekah, is assigned by Volck to the one month's reign of Shallum, on the ground of Hos_5:7 : ?Now shall a month (the King James Version and the Revised Version margin, but the Revised Version (British and American) ?the new moon?) devour them.? It is by inference from this that Volck puts Hos 4 in the preceding reign of Zechariah. (3) The third section, Hos 6:4 through 7:16, is marked off by the new beginning made at Hos_8:1 : ?Set the trumpet to thy mouth.? The passage which determines its date is Hos_7:7 : ?All their kings are fallen,? which, agreeing with Hitzig, he thinks could not have been said after the fall of one king, Zechariah, and so he assigns it to the beginning of the reign of Menahem who killed Shallum. (4) The next halting place, giving a fourth section, is at Hos_9:9, at the end of which there is a break in the Massoretic Text, and a new subject begins. Accordingly, the section embraces Hos_8:1 to Hos_9:9, and Volck, agreeing with Hitzig, assigns it to the reign of Menahem, on the ground of Hos_8:4 : ?They have set up kings, but not by me,? referring to the support given to Menahem by the king of Assyria (2Ki_15:19). (5) The fifth section extends from Hos_9:10 to Hos_11:11, and is marked by the peculiarity that the prophet three times refers to the early history of Israel (Hos_9:10; Hos_10:1; Hos_11:1). Identifying Shalman in Hos_10:14 with Shalmaneser, Volck refers the section to the opening years of the reign of Hoshea, against whom (as stated in 2Ki_17:3) Shalmaneser came up and Hoshea became his servant. (6) Lastly there is a sixth section, extending from Hos_12:1 to the end, which looks to the future recovery of the people (Hos_13:14) and closes with words of gracious promise. This portion also Volck assigns to the reign of Hoshea, just as the ruin of Samaria was impending, and there was no prospect of any earthly hope. In this way Volck thinks that the statement in the superscription of the Book of Hos is confirmed, and that we have before us, in chronological order if not in precisely their original oral form, the utterances of the prophet during his ministry. Ewald also was strongly of opinion that the book (in its second part at least) has come down to us substantially in the form in which the prophet himself left it.
The impression one receives from this whole section is one of sadness, for the prevailing tone is one of denunciation and doom. And yet Hosea is not a prophet of despair; and, in fact, he bursts forth into hope just at the point where, humanly speaking, there is no ground of hope. But this hope is produced, not by what he sees in the condition of the people: it is enkindled and sustained by his confident faith in the unfailing love of Yahweh. And so he ends on theme on which he began, the love of God prevailing over man's sin.
4. Testimony to Earlier History
The references in Hosea to the earlier period of history are valuable, seeing that we know his date, and that the dates of the books recording that history are so much in dispute. These references are particularly valuable from the way in which they occur; for it is the manner of the prophet to introduce them indirectly, and allusively, without dwelling on particulars. Thus every single reference can be understood only by assuming its implications; and, taken together, they do not merely amount to a number of isolated testimonies to single events, but are rather dissevered links of a continuous chain of history. For they do not occur by way of rhetorical illustration of some theme that may be in hand, they are of the very essence of the prophet's address. The events of the past are, in the prophet's view, so many elements in the arraignment or threatening, or whatever it may be that is the subject of address for the moment: in a word, the whole history is regarded by him, not as a series of episodes, strung together in a collection of popular stories, but a course of Divine discipline with a moral and religious significance, and recorded or referred to for a high purpose. There is this also to be remembered: that, in referring briefly and by way of allusion to past events, the prophet is taking for granted that his hearers understand what he is referring to, and will not call in question the facts to which he alludes. This implies that the mass of the people, even in degenerate Israel, were well acquainted with such incidents or episodes as the prophet introduces into his discourses, as well as the links which were necessary to bind them into a connected whole. It is necessary to bear all this in mind in forming an estimate of the historical value of other books. It seems to be taken by many modern writers as certain that those parts of the Pentateuch (JE) which deal with the earlier history were not written till a comparatively short time before Hosea. It is plain, however, that the accounts must be of much earlier date, before they could have become, in an age when books could not have been numerous, the general possession of the national consciousness. Further, the homiletic manner in which Hosea handles these ancient stories makes one suspicious of the modern theory that a number of popular stories were supplied with didactic ?frameworks? by later Deuteronomic or other ?redactors,? and makes it more probable that these accounts were invested with a moral and religious meaning from the beginning. With these considerations in mind, and particularly in view of the use he makes of his references, it is interesting to note the wide range of the prophet's historical survey. If we read with the Revised Version (British and American) ?Adam? for ?men? (the King James Version Hos_6:7), we have a clear allusion to the Fall, implying in its connection the view which, as all admit, Hosea held of the religious history of his people as a declension and not an upward evolution. This view is more clearly brought out in the reference to the period of the exodus and the desert life (Hos_2:15; Hos_9:10; Hos_11:1). Equally suggestive are the allusions to the patriarchal history, as the references to Admah and' Zeboiim (Hos_11:8), and the repeated references to the weak and the strong points in the character of Jacob (Hos_12:3, Hos_12:12). Repeatedly he declares that Yahweh is the God of Israel ?from the land of Egypt? (Hos_12:9; Hos_13:4), alludes to the sin of Achan and the valley of Achor (Hos_2:15), asserts that God had in time past ?spoken unto the prophets? (Hos_12:10), ?hewed? His people by prophets (Hos_6:5), and by a prophet brought His people out of Egypt (Hos_12:13). There are also references to incidents nearer to the prophet's time, some of them not very clear (14; Hos_5:1; Hos_9:5 :15; Hos_10:9); and if, as seems probable, ?the sin of Israel? (Hos_10:8) refers to the schism of the ten tribes, the prominence given to the Davidic kingship, which, along with the references to Judah, some critics reject on merely subjective grounds, is quite intelligible (Hos_3:5; Hos_4:15).
5. Testimony to the Law
We do not expect to find in a prophetic writing the same frequency of reference to the law as to the history; for it is of the essence of prophecy to appeal to history and to interpret it. Of course, the moral and social aspects of the law are as much the province of the prophet as of the priest; but the ceremonial part of the law, which was under the care of the priests, though it was designed to be the expression of the same ideas that lay at the foundation of prophecy, is mainly touched upon by the prophets when, as was too frequently the case, it ceased to express those ideas and became an offense. The words of the prophets on this subject, when fairly interpreted, are not opposed to law in any of its authorized forms, but only to its abuses; and there are expressions and allusions in Hosea, although he spoke to the Northern Kingdom, where from the time of the schism there had been a wide departure from the authorized law, which recognize its ancient existence and its Divine sanction. The much-debated passage in Hos (Hos_8:12), ?Though I write for him my law in ten thousand precepts? (the Revised Version (British and American) or the Revised Version margin ?I wrote for him the ten thousand things of my law?), on any understanding of the words or with any reasonable emendation of the text (for which see the comm.), points to written law, and that of considerable compass, and seems hardly consistent with the supposition that in the prophet's time the whole of the written law was confined to a few chapters in Ex, the so-called Book of the Covenant. And the very next verse (Hos_8:13), ?As for the sacrifices of mine offerings, they sacrifice flesh and eat it; but Yahweh accepteth them not,? is at once an acknowledgment of the Divine institution of sacrifice, and an illustration of the kind of opposition the prophets entertained to sacrificial service as it was practiced. So when it is said, ?I will also cause all her mirth to cease, her feasts, her new moons, and her sabbaths, and all her solemn assemblies? (Hos_2:11; compare Hos_9:5), the reference, as the context shows, is to a deprivation of what were national distinctive privileges; and the allusions to transgressions and trespasses against the law (Hos_8:1; compare Deu_17:2) point in the same direction. We have a plain reference to the Feast of Tabernacles (Hos_12:9): ?I will yet again make thee to dwell in tents, as in the days of the solemn feast? (compare Lev_23:39-43); and there are phrases which are either in the express language of the law-books or evident allusions to them, as ?Thy people are as they that strive with the priest? (Hos_4:4; compare Deu_17:12); ?The princes of Judah are like them that remove the landmark? (Hos_5:10; compare Deu_19:14); ?Their sacrifices shall be unto them as the bread of mourners? (Hos_9:4; compare Deu_26:14); ?They (the priests) feed on the sin of my people? (Hos_4:8; compare Lev_6:25 f; Lev_10:17). In one verse the prophet combines the fundamental fact in the nation's history and the fundamental principle of the law: ?I am Yahweh thy God from the land of Egypt; and thou shalt know no god but me? (Hos_13:4; compare Exo_20:3).
6. Affinity with Deuteronomy
It is, however, with the Book of Dt more than with any other portion of the Pentateuch that the Book of Hos shows affinity; and the resemblances here are so striking, that the critics who hold to the late date of Dt speak of the author of that book as ?the spiritual heir of Hosea? (Driver, Commentary on Deuteronomy, Intro, xxvii), or of Hosea as ?the great spiritual predecessor of the Deuteronomist? (Cheyne, Jeremiah, His Life and Times, 66). The resemblance is seen, not only in the homiletical manner in which historical events are treated, but chiefly in the great underlying principles implied or insisted upon in both books. The choice of Israel to be a peculiar people is the fundamental note in both (Deu_4:37; Deu_7:6; Deu_10:15; Deu_14:2; Deu_26:18; Hos_12:9; Hos_13:4). God's tender care and fatherly discipline are central ideas in both (Deu_8:2, Deu_8:3, Deu_8:5, Deu_8:16; Hos_9:15; Hos_11:1-4; Hos_14:4); and, conversely, the supreme duty of love to God, or reproof of the want of it, is everywhere emphasized (Deu_6:5; Deu_10:12; Deu_11:1, Deu_11:13, Deu_11:22; Deu_13:3; Deu_19:9; Deu_30:6, Deu_30:16, Deu_30:20; Hos_4:1; Hos_6:4, Hos_6:6). Now, when points of resemblance are found in two different books, it is not always easy to say on merely literary grounds which has the claim to priority. But it does seem remarkable, on the one hand, that a writer so late as the time of Josiah should take his keynote from one of the very earliest of the writing prophets two centuries before him; and, on the other hand, that these so-called ?prophetic ideas,? so suitable to the time of 'the kindness of youth and love of espousals' (Jer_2:2), should have found no place in the mind of that ?prophet? by whom the Lord brought Israel out of Egypt (Hos_12:13). The ministry of Moses was to enforce the duty of whole-hearted allegiance to the God who had made special choice of Israel and claimed them as His own. Nor was Hosea the first, as it is sometimes alleged, to represent the religious history of Israel as a defection. Moses had experience of their apostasy under the very shadow of Sinai, and all his life long had to bear with a stiff-necked and rebellious people. Then, again, if these ?Deuteronomic? ideas are found so clearly expressed in Hosea, why should it be necessary to postulate a late Deuteronomist going back upon older books, and editing and supplementing them with Deuteronomic matter? If Moses sustained anything like the function which all tradition assigned to him, and if, as all confess, he was the instrument of molding the tribes into one people, those addresses contained in the Book of Deuteronomy are precisely in the tone which would be adopted by a great leader in taking farewell of the people. And, if he did so, it is quite conceivable that his words would be treasured by the God-fearing men among his followers and successors, in that unbroken line of prophetic men to whose existence both Amos and Hosea appealed, and that they should be found coming to expression at the very dawn of written prophecy. Undoubtedly these two prophets took such a view, and regarded Moses as the first and greatest Deuteronomist.

Literature
Harper, ?Minor Prophets,? in ICC; Keil, ?Minor Prophets,? in Clark's For. Theol. Library; Huxtable, ?Hosea,? in Speaker's Comm.; Cheyne, ?Hosea,? in Cambridge Bible; Pusey, Minor Prophets; Robertson Smith, Prophets of Israel; G. A. Smith, ?The Book of the Twelve,? in Expositor's Bible; Horton, ?'Hosea,? in Century Bible; Farrar, ?Minor Prophets,? in Men of the Bible; A. B. Davidson, article ?Hosea? in HDB; Cornill, The Prophets of Israel, English translation, Chicago, 1897; Valeton, Amos en Hosea; Nowack, ?Die kleinen Propheten,? in Hand-Comm. z. Altes Testament; Marti, Dodekapropheton in Kurz. Hand-Comm.

International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
PRINTER 1915.

Hosea, son of Elah, and last king of Israel. He conspired against and slew his predecessor Pekah, and seized his dominions. 'He did evil in the sight of the Lord,' but not in the same degree as his predecessors: and this, by the Jewish commentators, is understood to mean that he did not, like former kings of Israel (2Ki_15:30), restrain his subjects from going up to Jerusalem to worship. The intelligence that Hosea had entered into a confederacy with So, king of Egypt, with the view of shaking off the Assyrian yoke, caused Shalmaneser, the king of Assyria, to march an army into the land of Israel; and after a three years' siege Samaria was taken and destroyed, and the ten tribes were sent into the countries beyond the Euphrates, B.C. 720 (2Ki_15:30; 2Ki_17:1-6; 2Ki_18:9-12). The chronology of this reign is much perplexed [see ISRAEL].
The Popular Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature
by John Kitto.

Hosea
(Heb. Hoshe'd, הוֹשֵׁע, deliverance), or “HOSHEA” (as it is more correctly Anglicized in Dent. 32 — 44; 2Ki_15:30; 2Ki_17:1; 2Ki_17:3-4; 2Ki_17:6; 2Ki_18:1; 2Ki_18:9-10; 1Ch_27:20; Neh_10:23; but “Oshea” in Num_13:8; Num_13:6), the name of several men.
1. HOSHEA or OSHEA (Sept. Αὐσή and Ι᾿ησοῦς,Vulg. Osee and Josue), the original name of JOSHUA SEE JOSHUA (q.v.) Moses's successor (Num_13:8; Num_13:16; Dent. 32:44).
2. HOSHEA, the son of Azariah, and viceroy of the Ephraimites under David (1Ch_27:20).
3. HOSEA (Sept. Ο᾿σηέ,Vulg. Osee, N.T. ῾Ωσεή, “Osee,” Rom_9:25), the son of Beeri (Hos_1:1-2), and author of the book of prophecies which bears his name. SEE PROPHET.
The personal history of the prophet Hosea is so closely interwoven with his book of prophecies that it will be most convenient to consider them together; indeed he principal recorded events of his life were a series of prophetical symbols themselves. The figments of Jewish writers regarding Hosea's parentage need scarcely be mentioned (see J. Fredericus, Exercit. de Hosea et vaticiniis ejus, Lips. 1715). His father has been confounded with Beerah, a prince of the Reubenites (1Ch_5:6). So, too, Beeri has been reckoned a prophet himself, according to the rabbinical notion that the mention of a prophet's father in the introduction to his prophecies is a proof that sire as well as son was endowed with the oracular spirit.
1. Place. — Whether Hosea was a citizen of Israel or Judah has been disputed. The pseudo-Epiphanius and Dorotheus of Tyre speak of him as being born at Belemoth, in the tribe of Issachar (Epiphan. De Vitis Prophet. cap. 11; Doroth. De Proph. cap. 1). Drusius (Critici Sacri, in loc., tom. 5) prefers the reading “Beth-semes,” and quotes Jerome, who says, “Osee de tribu Issachar fuit ortus in Beth-semes.” But Maurer contends strenuously that he belonged to the kingdom of Judah (Comment. Theol., ed. Rosenmüller, 2, 391); while Jahn supposes that he exercised his office, not, as Amos did, in Israel, but in the principality of Judah. Maurer appeals to the superscription in Amos as a proof that prophets of Jewish origin were sometimes commissioned to labor in the kingdom of Israel (against the appeal to Amos see Credner, Joel, p. 66; Hitzig, Kurzgef. exeget. Handb. zum A. T. p. 72). Bat with the exception of the case recorded in 1Ki_13:1 (a case altogether too singular and mysterious to serve as an argument), the instance of Amos is a solitary one, and seems to have been regarded as anomalous by his contemporaries (Amo_7:12). Neither can we assent to the other hypothesis of Maurer, that the mention of the Jewish kings Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, by Hosea in his superscription is a proof that the seer regarded them as his rightful sovereigns, as monarchs of that territory which gave him birth. Hengstenberg has well replied, that Maurer forgets “the relation in which the pious in Israel generally, and the prophets in particular, stood to the kingdom of Judah.
They considered the whole separation, not only the religious, but also the civil, as an apostasy from God. The dominion of the theocracy was promised to be the throne of David.” The lofty Elijah, on a memorable occasion, when a direct and solemn appeal was made to the head of the theocracy, took twelve stones, one for each tribe — a proof that he regarded the nation as one in religious confederation. It was also necessary, for correct chronology, that the kings of both nations should be noted. The other argument of Maurer for Hosea's being a Jew, viz. because his own people are so severely threatened in his reproofs and denunciations, implies a predominance of national prepossession or antipathy in the inspired breast' which is inconsistent with our notions of the piety and patriotism of the prophetic commission (Knobel, Der Prophetismus der Hebraer, 1, 203). We therefore accede to the opinion of De Wette, Rosenmüller, Hengstenberg, Eichhorn, Manger, Uhland, and Kuinol, that Hosea was an Israelite, a native of that kingdom with whose sins and fates his book is specially and primarily occupied. The name Ephraim occurs in his prophecies about thirty-five times, and Israel with equal frequency, while Judah is not mentioned more than fourteen times. Samaria is frequently spoken of (Hos_7:1; Hos_8:5-6; Hos_10:5; Hos_10:7; Hos_14:1), Jerusalem never. All the other localities introduced are connected with the northern kingdom, either as forming part of it, or lying on its borders: Mizpah, Tabor (Hos_5:1), Gilgal (Hos_4:15; Hos_9:15; Hos_12:12 [11]), Bethel, called also Bethaven (Hos_10:15; Hos_12:5 [4]; Hos_4:15; Hos_5:8; Hos_10:5; Hos_10:8); Jezreel (1:4), Gibeah (Hos_5:8; Hos_9:9), Ramah (Hos_5:8), Gilead (Hos_4:8; Hos_12:12 [11]), Shechem (Hos_6:9), Lebanon (Hos_14:6-7), Arbela (Hos_10:14 [?]).
2. Time. — There is no reason, with De Wette, Maurer, and Hitzig, to doubt the genuineness of the present superscription, or, with Rosenmüller and Jahn, to suppose that it may have been added by a later hand though the last two writers uphold its authenticity. These first and second verses of the prophecy are so closely connected in the structure of the language and style of the narration, that the second verse itself would become suspicious if the first were reckoned a spurious addition. This superscription states that Hosea prophesied during a long and eventful period, commencing in the days of Jeroboam, the son of Joash, extending through the lives of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and concluding in the reign of Hezekiah. As Jeroboam died B.C. 782, and Hezekiah ascended the throne 726, we have the round term of about sixty years, B.C. cir. 784724, as the probable space of time covered by the utterance of these predictions (Maurer, in the Comment. Theol. p. 284, and more lately in his Comment. Gram. Hist. Crit. in Proph. Min. Lips. 1840). The time when they were committed to writing may probably be fixed at about B.C. 725. This long duration of office is not improbable, and the book itself furnishes strong presumptive evidence in support of this chronology. The first prophecy of Hosea foretells the overthrow of Jehu's house; and the menace was fulfilled on the death of Jeroboam, his great-grandson. This prediction must have been uttered during Jeroboam's life. Again, in Hos_10:14, allusion is made to an expedition of Shalmaneser against Israel; and if it was the first inroad against king Hoshea (2Ki_17:4), who began to reign in the twelfth year of Ahaz, the event referred to by the prophet as past must have happened close upon the beginning of the government of Hezekiah. These data corroborate the limits assigned in the superscription, and they are capable of verification by reference to the contents of the prophecy.
(a.) As to the beginning, Eichhorn has clearly shown that we cannot allow Hosea much ground in the reign of Jeroboam (823-782).
The book contains descriptions which are utterly inapplicable to the condition of the kingdom of Israel during this reign (2Ki_14:25 sq.). The pictures of social and political life which Hosea draws so forcibly are rather applicable to the interregnum which followed the death of Jeroboam (781-771), and to the reign of the succeeding kings. The calling in of Egypt and Assyria to the aid of rival factions (Hos_10:3; Hos_13:10) has nothing to do with the strong and able government of Jeroboam. Nor is it conceivable that a prophet who had lived long under Jeroboam should have omitted the mention of that monarch's conquests in his enumeration of Jehovah's kindnesses to Israel (Hos_2:8). It seems, then, almost certain that very few at least of his prophecies were written until after the death of Jeroboam (781).
(b.) As regards the end of his career, the title leaves us in still greater doubt. It merely assures us that he did not prophesy beyond the reign of Hezekiah. But here, again, the contents of the book help us to reduce the vagueness of this indication. In the sixth year of Hezekiah the prophecy of Hosea was fulfilled, and it is very improbable that he should have permitted this triumphant proof of his divine mission to pass unnoticed. He could not, therefore, have lived long into the reign of Hezekiah; and as it does not seem necessary to allow more than a year of each reign to justify his being represented as a contemporary on the one hand of Jeroboam, on the other of Hezekiah, we may suppose that the life, or, rather, the prophetic career of Hosea, extended from 782 to 725, a period of fifty-seven years.
3. Order in the Prophetic Series. — Hosea is the first in order of the twelve minor prophets in the common editions of the Scriptures (Heb., Sept., and Vulg.), an arrangement, however, supposed to have arisen from a misinterpretation of chap. 1:2, which rather denotes that what follows were the first divine communications enjoyed by this particular prophet (see Jerome, Prefiat. in 12 Prophetas; Hengstenberg, Christol. Keith's translated, 2:23; De Wette, Einleitung, § 225; Rosenmüller, Scholia in Min. Proph. p. 7; Newcome, Pref. to Min. Prophets, p. 45). The probable causes of this location of Hosea may be the thoroughly national character of his oracles, their length, their earnest tone, and vivid representations. The contour of the book has a closer resemblance to the greater prophets than any of the eleven productions by which it is succeeded. (See below.) There is much doubt as to the relative order of the first four or five of the minor prophets: as far as titles go, Amos is Hosea's only rival; but 2Ki_14:25 goes far to show that they must both yield in priority to Jonah. It is perhaps more important to know that Hosea must have been more or less contemporary with Isaiah, Amos, Jonah, Joel, and Nahum.
4. Circumstance, Scope, and Contents of the Book. — The years of Hosea's public life were dark and melancholy (see Pusey, Minor Prophets, ad loc.). The nation suffered under the evils of that schism which was effected by “Jeroboam, who made Israel to sin.” The obligations of law had been relaxed, and the claims of religion disregarded; Baal became the rival of Jehovah, and in the dark recesses of the groves were practiced the impure and murderous rites of heathen deities; peace and prosperity fled the land, which was harassed by foreign invasion and domestic broils; might and murder became the twin sentinels of the throne; alliances were formed with other nations, which brought with them seductions to paganism; captivity and insult were heaped upon Israel by the uncircumcised; the nation was thoroughly debased, and but a fraction of its population maintained its spiritual allegiance (2Ki_19:18). The death of Jeroboam II was followed by an interregnum of eleven years (B.C. 781- 770), at the end of which his son Zachariah assumed the sovereignty, and was slain by Shallum, after the short space of six months (2Ki_15:10). In four weeks Shallum was assassinated by Menahem. The assassin, during a disturbed reign of ten years (B.C. 769759), became tributary to the Assyrian Pul. His successor, Pekahiah, wore the crown but two years, when he was murdered by Pekah. Pekah, after swaying his bloody scepter for twenty years (B.C. 757-737), met a similar fate in the conspiracy of Hoshea; Hoshea, the last of the usurpers, after another interregnum of eight years, ascended the throne (B.C. 729), and his administration of nine years ended in the overthrow of his kingdom and the expatriation of his people (2Ki_17:18; 2Ki_17:23).
The prophecies of Hosea were directed especially against the country of Israel or Ephraim, whose sin had brought upon it such disasters — prolonged anarchy and final captivity. Their homicides and fornications, their perjury and theft, their idolatry and impiety, are censured and satirized with a faithful severity. Judah is sometimes, indeed, introduced, warned, and admonished. Bishop Horsley (Works, 3, 236) reckons it a mistake to suppose, “that Hosea's prophecies are almost wholly directed against the kingdom of Israel.” The bishop describes what he thinks the correct extent of Hosea's commission, but has adduced no proof of his assertion. Any one reading Hosea will at once discover that the oracles having relation to Israel are primary, while the references to Judah are only incidental. In Hos_1:7, Judah is mentioned in contrast with Israel, to whose condition the symbolic name of the prophet's son is especially applicable. In Hos_1:11 the future union of the two nations is predicted. The long oracle in chap. 2 has no relation to Judah, nor the symbolic representation in chap. 3. Chap. 4 is severe upon Ephraim, and ends with a very brief exhortation to Judah not to follow his example. In the succeeding chapters allusions to Judah do indeed occasionally occur, when similar sins can be predicated of both branches of the nation. The prophet's mind was intensely interested in the destinies of his own people. The nations around him are unheeded; his prophetic eye beholds the crisis approaching his country, and sees its cantons ravaged, its tribes murdered or enslaved. No wonder that his rebukes were so terrible, his menaces so alarming, that his soul poured forth its strength in an ecstasy of grief and affection. Invitations replete with tenderness and pathos are interspersed with his warnings and expostulations. Now we are startled with a vision of the throne, at first shrouded in darkness, and sending forth lightning, thunders, and voices; but while we gaze, it becomes encircled with a rainbow, which gradually expands till it is lost in that universal brilliancy which itself had originated (chaps. 11 and 14).
5. — The Prophet's Family Relations. — The peculiar mode of instruction which the prophet details in the first and third chapters of his oracles has given rise to many disputed theories. We refer to the command expressed in Hos_1:2 — ”And the Lord said unto Hosea, Go, take unto thee a wife of whoredoms and children of whoredoms,” etc.; Hos_3:1, “Then said the Lord unto me, Go yet, love a woman beloved of her friend, yet an adulteress,” etc. Were these real events, the result of divine injunctions literally understood, and as literally fulfilled? Or were these intimations to the prophet only intended to be pictorial illustrations of the apostasy and spiritual folly and unfaithfulness of Israel? The former view, viz. that the prophet actually and literally entered into this impure connubial alliance, was advocated in ancient times by Cyril, Theodoret, Basil, and Augustine; and more recently has been maintained by Mercer, Grotils, Houbigant, Manger, Horsley, Eichhor, Stuck, and others. Fanciful theories are also rife on this subject. Luther supposed the prophet to perform a kind of drama in view of the people, giving his lawful wife and children these mystical appellations. Newcome (Minor Prophets) thinks that a wife of fornication means merely an Israelite, a woman of apostate and adulterous Israel. So Jac. Capellus (In loseam; Opera, p. 683). Hengstenberg supposes the prophet to relate actions which happened, indeed, actually, but not outwardly. Some, with Maimonides (Joreh Nevochim, pt. 2), imagine it to be a nocturnal vision; while others make it wholly an allegory, as the Chaldee Paraphrast Jerome, Drusius, Bauer, Rosenmüller, Kuino; and Lowth. The view of Hengstenberg (Christology, 2, 11-22), and such as have held his theory (Marki Diatribe de uxore fornicationum accipienda, etc., Lugdun. Batav. 1696), is not materially different from the last to which we have referred (see Libkerk in the Theol. Stud. u. Krit. 1835, p. 647 sq.). Besides other arguments resting on the impurity and loathsomeness of the supposed nuptial contract, it may be argued against the external reality of the event that it must have required several years for its completion, and that the impressiveness of the symbol would therefore be weakened and obliterated.
But this would almost equally apply to the repeated case of Isaiah (Isa_8:3; Isa_20:3). Other prophetic transactions of a similar nature might be referred to. Jerome (Comment. ad loc.) has referred to Eze_4:4. On the other hand, the total absence of any figurative or symbolical phraseology seems to require the command to be taken in a literal sense, and the immediate addition of the declaration that the order was obeyed serves to confirm this view. It is not to be supposed, as has sometimes been argued, that the prophet was commanded to commit fornication. The divine injunction was to marry — “Scortum aliquis ducere potest sine peccato, scortari non item” (Drusius, Comm. ad loc. in Critici Sacri, tom. 5.). Moreover, if, as the narrative implies, and as the analogy of the restored nation requires, the formerly unchaste woman became a faithful and reformed wife, the entire ground of the objection in a moral point of view vanishes (see Cowles, Minor Prophets, ad loc.). In fact, there were two marriages by the prophet: the first, in Hos_1:2 of a woman (probably of lewd inclinations already) who became the mother of three children, and was afterwards repudiated for her adultery; and the second, in chap. 3 of a woman at least attached formerly to another, but evidently reformed to a virtuous wife. Both these women represented the Israelitish nation, especially the northern kingdom, which, although unfaithful to Jehovah, should first be punished and then reclaimed by him. Keil, after combating at length (Minor Prophets, introduct. to Hosea) against Kurtz's arguments for the literal view, is obliged to assign the moral objection as the only tenable one. This, however, is a very unsatisfactory mode of disposing of the question, for we are not at liberty thus to explain away the reality of the occurrence simply to evade its difficulties. Moreover, if it be a symbol, what becomes of its force unless based upon a fact? Nor do the prophets receive visions respecting their own personal acts. Finally, the internal suggestion of a wrong act to the prophet's mind as one to be not merely tolerated, but committed, would be equivalent, in point of moral obliquity, to the actual deed itself; at least according to our Savior's rule of guilt in such a matter (Mat_5:28). This last remark leads us to the true solution of the whole difficulty, which has simply arisen from judging O.T. morals by a Gospel standard, in neglect of the important principle enunciated by Christ himself on the very question of the relations of the sexes (Mat_19:8). The Mosaic precept (Lev_21:14) has no pertinence here, for Hosea was not a priest.
But in whichever way this question may be solved whether these occurrences be regarded as a real and external transaction, or as a piece of spiritual scenery, or only (Witsi Miscell. Sac. p. 90) as an allegorical description it is agreed on all hands that the actions are typical; that they are, as Jerome calls them, sacramenta futurorum. One question which sprang out of the literal view was whether the connection between Hosea and Gomer was marriage or fornication. Another question which followed immediately upon the preceding was “an Dens possit dispensare ut fornicatio sit licita.” This latter question was much discussed by the schoolmen, and by the Thomists it was avowed in the affirmative.
Expositors are not at all agreed as to the meaning of the phrase “wife of whoredoms,” אֵשֶׁת זְנוּנַים; whether the phrase refers to harlotry before marriage, or unfaithfulness after it. It may afford an easy solution of the difficulty if we look at the antitype in its history and character. Adultery is the appellation of idolatrous apostasy. The Jewish nation were espoused to God. The contract was formed in Sinai; but the Jewish people had prior to this period gone a-whoring. Jos_24:2-14, “Your fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood in old time, and they served other gods.” Comp. Lev_17:7, in which it is implied that idolatrous propensities had also developed themselves during the abode in Egypt so that the phrase here employed may signify one devoted to lasciviousness prior to her marriage. Yet this propensity of the Israelites to idolatry had been measurably covert prior to the Exode. On the other hand, none but a female of previously lewd inclinations would be likely to violate her conjugal obligations; and Eichhorn shows that marrying an avowed harlot is not necessarily implied by אֵשֶׁת זְנוּנַים which may very well imply a wife who after marriage becomes an adulteress, even though chaste before. In any case the marriage must be supposed to have been a real contract, or its significance would be lost. Jer_2:2, “I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals, when thou wentest after me in the wilderness, in a land that was not sown.” The facts in the case of the Israelitish nation correspond with this symbol of a woman who had been of bad repute before marriage, and who proved a notorious profligate afterwards. יִלְדֵי זְנוּנַים, children of whoredoms, refer most naturally to the two sons and daughter afterwards to be born. They were not the prophet's own, but a spurious offspring palmed upon him by his faithless spouse, as is intimated in the allegory, and they followed the pernicious example of the mother. Spiritual adultery was the debasing sin of Israel. “Non dicitur,” observes Manger, “cognovit uxorem, sed simpliciter concepit et peperit.” The children are not his. It is said, indeed, in Jer_2:3, “She bare him a son.” The word לוֹ is wanting in some MSS. and in some copies of the Sept. If genuine, it only shows the effrontery of the adulteress, and the patience of the husband in receiving and educating as his own a spurious brood. The Israelites who had been received into covenant very soon fell from their first love, and were characterized by insatiable spiritual wantonness yet their Maker, their husband, did not at once divorce them, but exhibited a marvelous long-suffering.
The names of the children being symbolical, the name of the mother has been thought to have a similar signification. Gomer Bath-Diblair may have the symbolic sense of one thoroughly abandoned to sensual delights; גֹּמֶר signifies completion (Ewald, Grannmat. § 228); דַּבְלִיַם בִּתאּ, “daughter of grape-cakes,” the dual form being expressive of the mode in which these dainties were baked in double layers. The names of the children are Jezreel, Lo-ruhamah, and Lo-ammi. The prophet explains the meaning of the appellations. It is generally supposed that the names refer to three successive generations of the Israelitish people. Hengstenberg, on the other hand, argues that “wife and children both are the people of Israel: the three names must not be considered separately, but taken together.” But as the marriage is first mentioned, and the births of the children are detailed in order, some time elapsing between the events, we rather adhere to the ordinary exposition. Nor is it without reason that the second child is described as a female. The first child, Jezreel, may refer to the first dynasty of Jeroboam I and his successors, which was terminated in the blood of Ahab's house shed by Jehu at Jezreel. The name suggests also the cruel and fraudulent possession of the vineyard of Naboth, “which was in Jezreel,” where, too, the woman Jezebel was slain so ignominiously (1Ki_16:1; 2Ki_9:21). But since Jehu and his family had become as corrupt as their predecessors, the scenes of Jezreel were again to be enacted; and Jehu's race must perish. Jezreel, the spot referred to by the prophet, is also, according to Jerome, the place where the Assyrian army routed the Israelites. The name of this child associates the past and future, symbolizes past sins, intermediate punishments, and final overthrow. The name of the second child, Lo-ruhamah, “not-pitied,” the appellation of a degraded daughter, may refer to the feeble, effeminate period which followed the overthrow of the first dynasty, when Israel became weak and helpless as well as sunk and abandoned. The favor of God was not exhibited to the nation: they were as abject as impious. But the reign of Jeroboam II was prosperous; new energy was infused into the kingdom; gleams of its former prosperity shone upon it. This revival of strength in that generation may be typified by the birth of a third child, a son, Lo- ammi, “not-my-people” (2Ki_14:25). Yet prosperity did not bring with it a revival of piety; still, although their vigor was recruited, they were not God's people (Lectures on the Jewish Antiquities and Scriptures, by J. G. Palfrey, 2, 422, Boston, 1841). See each name in its place.
6. Division of the Book. — Recent writers, such as Bertholdt, Eichhorn, De Wette, Stuck, Maurer, and Hitzig, have labored much, but in vain, to divide the book of Hosea into separate portions, assigning to each the period at which it was written; but from the want of sufficient data the attempt must rest principally on taste and fancy. A sufficient proof of the correctness of this opinion may be found in the contradictory sections and allotments of the various writers who have engaged in the task. Chapters 1, 2 and 3 evidently form one division: it is next to impossible to separate and distinguish the other chapters. The form and style are very similar throughout all the second portion.
The subdivision of these several parts is a work of greater difficulty: that of Eichhorn will be found to be based upon a highly subtle, though by no means precarious criticism.
(1.) According to him, the first division should be subdivided into three separate poems, each originating in a distinct aim, and each after its own fashion attempting to express the idolatry of Israel by imagery borrowed from the matrimonial relation. The first, and therefore the least elaborate of these, is contained in chap. 3; the second in Hos_1:2-11; the third in Hos_1:2-9, and Hos_2:1-23. These three are progressively elaborate developments of the same reiterated idea. Hos_1:2-9 is common to the second and third poems, but not repeated with each severally (4, 273 sq.).
(2.) Attempts have been made by Wells, Eichhorn, etc., to subdivide the second part of the book. These divisions are made either according to reigns of contemporary kings, or according to the subject matter of the poem. The former course has been adopted by Wells, who gets five, the latter by Eichhorn, who gets sixteen poems out of this part of the book.
These prophecies — so scattered, so unconnected that bishop Lowth has compared them with the leaves of the Sibyl — were probably collected by Hosea himself towards the end of his career.
8. Style. — The peculiarities of Hosea's style have often been remarked. Jerome says of him, “Commaticus est, et quasi per sententias loquens” (Praef ad XII. Proph.). Augustine thus criticises him: “Osea quanto profundius loquitur, tanto operosius penetratur.” His style, says De Wette, “is abrupt, unrounded, and ebullient; his rhythm hard, leaping, and violent. The language is peculiar and difficult” (Einleitung, § 228). Lowth (Prelect. 21) speaks of him as the most difficult and perplexed of the prophets. Bishop Horsley has remarked his peculiar idioms his change of person, anomalies of gender and number, and use of the nominative absolute (Works, vol. 3). Eichhorn's description of his style was probably at the same time meant as an imitation of it (Einleitung, § 555). His discourse is like a garland woven of a multiplicity of flowers: images are woven upon images, comparison wound upon comparison, metaphor strung upon metaphor. He plucks one flower and throws it down that he may directly break off another. Like a bee, he flies from one flowerbed to another, that he may suck his honey from the most varied pieces. It is a natural consequence that his figures sometimes form strings of pearls. Often he is prone to approach to allegory often he sinks down in obscurity” (compare 5:9; 6:3; 7:8; 13:3, 7, 8, 16). Obscure brevity seems to be the characteristic quality of Hosea; and all commentators agree that, “of all the prophets, he is, in point of language, the most obscure and hard to be understood” (Henderson, Minor Prophets, p. 2). Unusual words and forms of connection sometimes occur (De Wette, § 228; see also Davidson, in Horne, 2:945).
9. Citation in the N.T. — Hosea, as a prophet, is expressly quoted by Matthew (Mat_2:15). The citation is from the first verse of chap. 11 Hos_6:6 is quoted twice by the same evangelist (Mat_9:13; Mat_12:7). Other quotations and references are the following: Luk_23:30; Rev_6:16; Hos_10:8; Rom_9:25-26; 1Pe_2:10; Hosea 1, 10; Hos_2:23; 1Co_15:4; Hos_6:2; Heb_13:15; Hos_14:2. Messianic references are not clearly and prominently developed (Gramberg, Religionsid. 2, 298). This book, however, is not without them, but they lie more in the spirit of its allusions than in the letter. Hosea's Christology appears written, not with ink, but with the spirit of the living God, on the fleshly tables of his heart. The future conversion of his people to the Lord their God, and David their king, their glorious privilege in becoming sons of the living God, the faithfulness of the original promise to Abraham, that the number of his spiritual seed should be as the sand of the sea, are among the oracles whose fulfillment will take place only under the new dispensation.
10. Commentaries. — The following are the exegetical helps on the w-hole book of Hosea separately, and the most important are designated by an asterisk (*) prefixed: Origen, Selecta (in Opp. 3, 438); Ephraem Syrus, Explanatio (in Opp. 5, 234); Remigius Antissod., Commentarius [fragment] (in Mai, Script. Fet. VI, 2:103); Jarchi, Aben-Ezra, and Kimchi, Scholia (ed. with Notes, by Coddaeus, L. B. 1623, 4to; by De Dieu, ib. 1631, 4to; also extracts, with additions, by Von der Hardt, Helmst. 1702, 4to [with a historical Introduction ib. eod.]; and by Mercer. Genesis 1574, 1578; L. B. 1621, 4to; and [including several other minor prophets] Genesis 15, fol.; Giess. 1595, 4to; Götting. 1755, 4to); Abrabanei, Comment. (in Lat. with notes, by F. al-Husen, L. B. 1687, 4to); Luther, Enarratio (Vitemb. 1526, 1545; Frcft. 1546, 8vo; also in 0pp. 4, 598; also Senterntie, ib. 684); Capito, Commentarius (Argent. 1528, 8vo); Quinquarboreus, Notae [including Amos, Ruth, and Lam.] (Par. 1556, 4to); Brentz, Commentarius (Hag. 1560, 4to; Tub. 1580, fol.; also in Opp. 4); Box, Commentaria (Coesaraug. 1581, fol.; Ven. 1585, 4to; Lugd. 1587, 8vo; improved edition bv Gyrel, Brix. 1604, 4to), De Castro, Commentaria (Samant. 1586, fol.); Vavassor, Commentarius (in Opp. Vitemb. 4, 348; Jen. 4, 764); Mcatthoeus, Pralectiones (Basil. 1590, 4to); Polansdorf, Analysis (Basil. 1599, 4to; 1601, 8vo); Zanchius, Commentarius (Neost. 1600, 4to; also in Opp. 5); Gesner, Illustratio (Vitemb. 1601, 1614, 8vo); Pareus, Commentarius (Heidelberg, 1605, 1609, 4to); Downame, Lectures [on. ch. 1-4] (London 1608, 4to); Cocceius, Illustratio (in Opp. 11, 591); Krackewitz, Commentarius (Francof. 1619, 4to); Beisner, Commentarius (Vitemb. 1620, 8vo); Rivetus, Commentarius (L. B. 1625, 4to; also in Opp. 2:488); *Burroughs, Lectures [chapter 14 by Sibbs and Reynolds] (London 1643 52, 4 vols. 4to; London 1843, 8vo); Lightfoot, Expositio (in Works, 2, 423); Ursinus, Commentarius (Norib. 1677, 8vo); *Pocock, Commentary (Oxon. 1685, fol.; also in Works, 2, 1); *Seb. Schmid, Commentarius (F. ad MI. 1687, 4to); Biermann, Ontleding (Utrecht, 1702, 4to); Wacke, Expositio (Ratisb. 1711, 8vo); Graff, Predigten (Dresd. 1716, 4to); Kromayer, Specimen, etc. [including Joel and Amos] (Amst. 1730, 8vo); Terne, Erklarung (part 1, Jen. 1740: 2, Eisenb. 1748, 8vo); Klemmius, Note (Tübing. 1744, 4to) Dathe, Dissertatio [on Aquila's vers. of Ho] (Lips. 1757; also in Opusc. Lips. 1796); Happach, Expositio [on certain passages] (Cobl. 1766 sq., 8vo); Struensee, Uebers. (Frankf. and Lpz. 1769, 8vo); Neale, Commentary (London 1771, 8vo); Michaelis, Chaldea [Jonathan's Targum] (Gött. 1775, 4to); Staudlin, Erlaut. (in his Beitr. 1 sq.); Euren, Exanen [of var. readings] (1, Upsal. 1782; 2, ib. 1786; also in Aurivellii, Dissert. p. 594); Schrier, Erlaut. (Dessau, 1782, 8vo); Manger, Commentarius (Campis, 1782, 4to); Pfeiffer. Uebers. (Erlangen, 1785, 8vo); Uhland, Annotationes (in 12 pts. Tübing. 1785-97, 4to); Volborth, Erklarung (part 1, Gott. 1787, 8vo); Kuinol, Erlauterung (Leips. 1789, 8vo; also in Latin, ibid. 1792, 8vo); Roos, Observationes [on difficult passages] (Erlang. 1780, 4to); Vaupel, Erklar. (Dresden, 1793, 8vo); *Horsley, Notes (London 1801, 1804, 4to; also in Bib. Crit. 2, 134); Philippson, Commentirung [includ. Joel] (Dessau, 1805, 8vo; also in his Israelitische Bibel); Bickel, Erlaut. (Konigsb. 1807, 8vo); Gaab, Dijudicatio [on the vers. of H. in the London Polyglot] (in 2 pts. Tüb. 1812, 4to); Rosenmüller, Scholia (part 7, vol. 1, 1827, 8vo); Goldwitzer, Anmerk. (Landsh. 1828, 8vo); *Stuck, Commentarius (Lips. 1828, 8vo); Schroder, Erlaut. [vol. 1 of min. proph.. includ. Hosea, Joel, and Amos] (Lpz. 1829, 8vo); De Wette, Ueber d. geschl. Beziehung, etc. (in the Theol. Stud. u. Krit. 1831, p. 807); Mrs. Best, Dialogues (London 1831, 12mo); Redslob, Die Integritat, etc. [of 7, 4-10] (Hamb. 1842, 8vo); *Simson, Erklar. (Hamb. 1851 8So); Drake, Notes [includ. Jonah] (London 1853, 8vo; also Sermons [includ. also Amos], ib. ed. 8vo); Kurtz. Ehe d. H. (Dorpat. 1859, 8vo); Kara, פֵּרוּשׁ(Breslau, 1861, 4to); Winsche, Auslegung [Rabbinical] (Lpz. 1868 sq. 8vo); Bassett, Translation (London, 1869, 8vo). SEE PROPHETS, MINOR. 4, 5. HOSHEA SEE HOSHEA (q.v.).

CYCLOPEDIA OF BIBLICAL, THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL
press 1895.

FACEBOOK

Participe de nossa rede facebook.com/osreformadoresdasaude

Novidades, e respostas das perguntas de nossos colaboradores