mmmmmmmmfmmmmmmm THE CMBRJJ}GE BIBLE FOfi SCHOOLS 6c COLLEGES T. K. CHEYNE, D. D. J.J. S. PEROWNE, D.a BISHOP OF WORCESTER KREGEL'S BOOKSTORE New and Used Religious Books and Sets Bought and Sold 525 EASTERN AVE.. S. L GRAND RAPIDS 6. MICH. ^'/ '€ijt Cam^britJse Bttle for ^t|)ools anti Ccillejses, H O S E A. Ilontl0n: C. J. CLAY AND SONS, CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE, AVE MARIA LANE. Cambritige: DEIGHTON, BELL, AND CO. ILcipjig: F. A. BROCKHAUS. l^ebJ gorfe; MACMILLAN AND CO. €tit Camirttrjje %Mt for ^tfiouls anU Collejjes* General Editor:— J. J. S. PEROVVNE, D.D., Bishop of Worcester. Z yf~~ A> HOSEA. ^ IV/TJI NOTES AND INTRODUCTION BY THE REV. T. K. CHEYNE, M.A, D.D. ORIEL PROFESSOR OF THE INTERPRETATION OF HOLY SCRIPTURE AT OXFORD ; CANON OF ROCHESTER. EDITED FOR THE SYNDICS OF THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OTambrflrge : AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 1892 \_All Rights reserved.] Catnbritige: PRINTED BY C. J. CLAY, M.A. AND SONS, AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. PREFACE BY THE GENERAL EDITOR. The General Editor of The Cambridge Bible for Schools thinks it right to say that he does not hold himself responsible either for the interpretation of particular passages which the Editors of the several Books have adopted, or for any opinion on points of doctrine that they may have expressed. In the New Testament more especially questions arise of the deepest theological import, on which the ablest and most conscientious interpreters have differed and always will differ. His aim has been in all such cases to leave each Contributor to the unfettered exercise of his own judgment, only taking care that mere controversy should as far as possible be avoided. He has contented himself chietly with a careful revision of the notes, with pointing out omissions, with 6 PREFACE. suggesting occasionally a reconsideration of some question, or a fuller treatment of difficult passages, and the like. Beyond this he has not attempted to interfere, feeling it better that each Commentary should have its own individual character, and being convinced that freshness and variety of treatment are more than a compensation for any lack of uniformity in the Series. Deanery, Peterborough. CONTENTS. PAGES I. Introduction. 9 — 39 Chapter I. The prophet's name and origin. His period and its characteristics 9 — 15 Chapter II. Hosea's domestic history. Parable or fact? 15—19 Chapter III. The second Book of Hosea 19—22 Chapter IV. The five leading ideas of the pro- phecy. Hosea compared with prophets before and after him ... 22 — 32 Chapter V. His style, etc 3^—39 Chronological Table 40 n. Text and Notes 41 — 130 Index I. To the Subjects treated of 131— ^ II. To the Chief Passages from other Parts of the Bible, illustrated in the Note? 132 The Text adopted in this Edition is that of Dr Scrivener's Cambridge Farag}-aph Bible. A few variations from the ordi- nary Text, chiefly in the spelling of certain words, and in the use of italics, will be noticed. For the principles adopted by Dr Scrivener as regards the printing of the Text see his In- troduction to the Paragraph Bible, published by the Cambridge University Press. INTRODUCTION. CHAPTER I. The Prophefs name and origin. — His period and its characteristics. The Book of Hosea stands first among the writings of the 'Minor Prophets', not because it was thought to be the earHest (for of this there is no proof), but because it is the longest. Joel (at least according to the ordinary opinion) and Amos are both prior in time to Hosea, and Amos in particular ought to be very carefully compared with the subject of our present study. Hosea indeed is throughout enigmatical and obscure compared with Amos, partly from the pecuHarities of his style, partly from the want of such illustrative details as those with which we have been supplied by his predecessor (Am. vii. lo — 17). The pro- phet's name is one specially characteristic of Northern Israel; it was borne by the last king of the Ten Tribes (2 Kings xv. 30), and also originally by Joshua (Num. xiii. 8, 16 ; Deut. xxxii. 44). True, the prophet appears in Auth. Vers, as Hosea, but there is no difference between the names of the three persons in the Hebrew. The form in our Bibles was suggested by the Osee of the Septuagint and the Vulgate; St Jerome bears witness that even in his time there was no distinction between the letters Sin and Shin. It is St Jerome again who informs us (see his note on i. i) that in some Greek and Latin MSS. the name of the prophet was written Ause, which reminds us of the form which the name assumes in the Assyrian inscriptions — Ausi'. Nothing is known of the prophet's father Beeri; it was a Jewish fancy that lo INTRODUCTION. he too was a prophet, and verses 19, 20 of Isa. viii. (see De- litzsch's note) were even declared to be words of Beeri which had intruded into the text of Isaiah^. That Hosea was a native of the northern kingdo77i needs no proof to any one who has read his book. Without laying any stress on occasional Arama- isms, or on the phrase * our king' in vii. 5, which is probably enough a popular phrase taken up half-satirically by the pro- phet, it would seem that the flow of sympathy towards the Israelites, the intimate knowledge of their circumstances, the topographical 2 and historical allusions, point unmistakably to one born and bred in the northern state. How different is the superficial though not untruthful survey of things and people given by a mere visitor from Judah — the prophet Amos! In addition to this, consider Hosea's apparent familiarity with the great love-poem of Northern Israel, which is of course not coun- terbalanced by his probable knowledge of the Book of Amos^ — a Judahite prophet, but commissioned to prophesy to Israel (vii. 15). A subtler argument in favour of the same view may be derived from the tone of Hosea's religion, which is on the whole both warmer and more joyous (see especially chaps, ii. and xiv.) than that which prevails in the great Judahite prophets. Hosea seems indeed to have been affected by the genial moods of nature in the north, and to have partaken of that expansive, childlike character, which as a matter of fact led his country- people astray, but which might have issued in loving obedience to the God of love. We have taken some pains to prove the Israelitish origin of the prophet, because it is this which gives his book such a high historical importance. There is very much to interest us in that northern people of which we have for the most part such fragmentary and indirect notices. It embraced the larger part of the old Israelitish community, and, sad as were the final ^ It need hardly be said that there is no inconsistency of style be- tween these two verses and those which precede and follow to justify the theory of interpolation. 2 See V. I, vi. 8, 9, xii. 11, xiv. 5, 6. ' On both points, see end of Introduction. INTRODUCTION. ii results of its struggle for independence, the struggle itself was from a secular point of view not merely excusable but inevit- able. Nor can we doubt that, if we knew more at first hand respecting the north-Israelitish kingdom, we should find much to sympathize with even morally, and many germs of good which might have developed into lovely 'plants of Jehovah.' Elijah is hardly a full representative of Israel's moral capacities. His character could not help being affected by his origin. He was a Gileadite^, a fellow-tribesman perhaps of those Gadites of David 'whose faces were like the faces of lions', and who were 'as swift as the roes upon the mountains' (i Chron. xii. 8), and of those 'fifty men of the Gileadites' who captured and slew Pekahiah in his royal fortress (2 Kings xv. 25). Very different is Hosea, and the difference is reflected in his character, which again is partly accounted for by his origin. That one of so typically Israelitish a nature, and so full of love for his northern home, should have taken such a hopeless view of the prospects of the state, seems proof enough of the deadly corruption which prevailed. As Stanley has said^, he was the Jeremiah of Israel ; no wonder therefore that he met Jeremiah's fate of opposition and contempt^ (ix. 7, 8, comp. Jer. xxix. 26, 27). Hosea, then, was the prophet of the decline and fall of Is- rael ; so much indeed is clear from a glance at his book. But did he prophesy during the whole of this sad period ? It is not by any means inconceivable, according to our chronological table, but we are bound to test the view by internal evidence. First of all, there is the heading (i. i), which states that Hosea received divine revelations 'in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and in the days of Jero- boam the son of Joash, king of Israel.' The natural inference would be that these two historical periods synchronized. But if anything is certain in Biblical history, it is that Jeroboam II. of Israel died before his contemporary Uzziah or Azariah of 1 'Elijah the Tishbite, of Tishbeh in Gilead', 1 Kings xvii. i (Ewald and Thenius, following the Septuagint and Josephus). 2 Lectures on the Jezvish Church, ii 369. 3 It was the fate of Amos, too, in Hosea's own country (Am. vii. 10—13). 12 INTRODUCTION. Judah. We need not however accuse the author of the heading of an error in calculation ; the heading is probably a thought- less combination of two distinct traditions or views which do not refer to the same amount of prophetic writing. That the first three chapters, which form a whole in themselves, were written in the reign of Jeroboam II., is sufficiently clear from internal evidence. The ruin of the house of Jehu is still future in chap. i. (see ver. 4), and the picture of the prosperous condi- tion of Israel given in chap. ii. agrees with no admissible period but that of Jeroboam II. Hence the first part of the heading may reasonably be presumed to have been originally prefixed to the small prophetic roll containing chaps, i. — iii. As for the second part, it was doubtless intended to refer to the complete book of Hosea ; the author of it however is not to be taken quite at his word. The fact that the book of Isaiah (or shall we say, Isa. i. — xxxix. ?) is preceded by a heading which mentions the same four kings of Judah, suggests that one and the same editor wrote the heading of Isaiah and the latter part of that of Hosea. Now it may be assumed as practically certain that the former heading (or at any rate the chronological part of it) was the work of a scribe during the Exile, so that this late editor pro- bably only knew in a vague way that Isaiah and Hosea were more or less contemporary. Micah he thought (for we can hardly doubt that he also wrote Mic. i. i) was a little junior to those two, and so he left out 'Uzziah' in the heading of Micah's book. In the case of Micah we have seen already that internal evidence does not bear out a strict interpretation of the heading, and it will be easy to prove the same in the case of Hosea. It is true that 'Shalman' is referred to in x. 14, and that Dr Pusey and Mr Bosanquet have identified this name with Shalmaneser, but we shall see later on how groundless this view is; true, further, that King Hoshea formed political relations with Egypt such as are referred to in vii. 11, xii. i, but a party friendly to Egypt must from the nature of the case have existed before Hoshea's reign ; true, lastly, that x. 5, 6, xiii. 16 contain detailed predic- tions of an Assyrian conquest which have been supposed^ to 1 Prebendary Huxtable, Speaker's Commentary, Vol. vi. p. 405. INTRODUCTION. 13 indicate that the events foretold were on the point of taking place, but the expressions could just as well have been used under Pekah or Menahem as under Hoshea, and xiv. 3 shows that when the latter chapters were written the Jews had not finally broken with Assyria. The reigns of Ahaz and Hezekiah seem therefore to be out of the question as periods for any part of Hosea. There remains, as a possible date for chaps, iv. — xiv., the reign of Jotham, who was contemporary with Zecha- riah, Shallum, Menahem, and Pekahiah, and perhaps for two or three years with Pekah. Many have thought that the diffi- cult passage viii. 10 refers to the tribute which Menahem paid to Tiglath-Pileser^ (2 Kings xv. 19 mentions him by his private name Pul), but the Hebrew text probably needs correction. It is at any rate certain that the picture described in chaps, iv. — xiv. is one of alarming national decline both in the moral and in the political sphere. In chap. ii. the prophet had severely reprimanded the Israelites for confounding Jehovah with the Canaanitish Baalim (see on ii. 16, 17), but he says nothing of that fearful moral corruption which in the later chapters he sees to be eating away the life of the nation. Why this is the case, is uncer- tain : it would be hazardous to assume that the corruption did not in some degree exist. If Hosea did not at once depict it in its true colours, we may conjecturally ascribe this either to the hopefulness of youth, or to the circumstance that the people of the district from which he sprang were comparatively pure in their morals, owing perhaps to their remoteness from the great centres of a debasing worship. Can we support this latter theory by external evidence? It seems that we can with at least a reasonable degree of certitude. We need not dogmatize here as to the composition of that exquisite love-poem the Song of Songs, but we may at any rate be allowed to hold that the most characteristic portions of it are monuments of the reign of Jero- boam II. If so, it is evident that the rustic beauties of N. Israel not only had external attractions, but also the 'gentlest and ' Tiglath-Pileser mentions Rasunnu (Rezin) of Damascus and Mini- khimmi (Menahem) of Samaria among his tributaries in the eighth year of his reign, B.C. 738 (Schrader). 14 INTRODUCTION. noblest' womanly virtues^. The generally admitted fact that the Book of Hosea contains reminiscences of the Song of Songs suggests that a change had passed over Israel since that poem (or some portion of it) was written, otherwise the prophet would clearly stand self-convicted of exaggeration. We may perhaps ascribe this change in part to the removal of the vigorous states- man upon the throne, who must surely have recognized the poli- tical importance of preserving intact the moral foundations of the state : — it is of Jeroboam's upstart successors that the prophet complains that they took pleasure in wickedness, and shared in the licentiousness of their people (vii. 3, 4). And no wonder that they did so, when, as in the decline of the Roman state, rough 'pretorians' seized and gave away the crown 2. Could it be otherwise, when the tone of society was set by the coarsest and most lawless natures? Such was not a period in which many women like the Shulamite or men like the prophet liosea could be expected to arise. Add to this, that the priests found it their interest to encourage vice and sensuality (iv. 6 — 8), and what further need have we of witnesses to the inner necessity of the speedy downfall of a self-betrayed state ? The concluding years of the reign of Jotham saw the forma- tion of an alliance between Rezin king of Syria and Pekah king of Israel, based on the importance of opposing a firm front to the aggressions of Assyria. They needed the support of Judah, but Jotham, perhaps from religious motives, held back. Hosea makes no allusion to the Syro-Israelitish inroads which led up to the great invasion described in Isa. vii. The inroads he might have passed over in silence, but scarcely the invasion. A reunion of north and south was a part of his most cherished ideal (i. 11), but such a reunion as was now threatened he could not but denounce as prematurely involving Judah in the fate of her apostate sister. From his not mentioning it, it is plain that he was no longer prophesying, and it is for a similar reason plain that no part of his book was written as late as the inva- 1 Delitzsch, Canticles and Ecclesiastcs, E. T., p. 5. 2 See Heilprin, Historical Poetry of the Ancient Hebrews, ii. 118. INTRODUCTION. 15 sion of Gileadi and Naphtali by Tiglath-Pileser. It is a satis- faction to believe that such a devoted patriot (if the word be allowable) had closed his eyes before this 'beginning of pangs'— this first fulfilment of his reluctant threatening-s. CHAPTER II. Hosed s do7nestic history. — Parable or fact? — Chap, ii, alone afi allegory. At the opening of this essay, a regret was expressed that we had no such illustrative details respecting Hosea as in the case of Amos. We have in fact no information as to his outward circumstances, or as to his intercourse with the different classes in the state. But we do know a series of domestic events which Hosea himself viewed as interpretative of God's purposes for him, and as conveying to him a clearly defined mission. The prophet has himself lifted the veil from his home life, and the sad story is briefly this. In the reign of Jeroboam II., when the nation was already on the down-hill road to moral ruin, Hosea married a wife named Gomer. He hoped the best of her, there is no reason to think otherwise; but she proved unworthy of his trust. Whether her profligacy showed itself in simple adultery, or in her following the licentious rites of the consort of the Canaanitish Baal (Ashdrah)^, we know not. But such was ^ In fact, Gilead is repeatedly referred to as a part of N. Israel (see V. T, vi. 8, xii. 11). 2 As Dean Plumptre well remarks [Lazarus and other Poems, p. 209), 'The two sins of idolatry and sensual licence were closely intertwined.... It would be hardly too much to say that every harlot in Israel was probably a votary of the goddess' (see on iv. 13, 14). Asherah (trans- formed by Auth. Vers, into 'grove') was, as most think, the name of a Canaanitish goddess, though some scholars prefer to regard the word as a noun meaning 'pole', the sacred tree being represented by a pole on or near the altar. In any case the goddess had such an artificial tree or symbol of a tree erected near her altars. Those who take Asherah to be the name of a goddess refer to the Assyrian dsir, fern. dsirat 'favourable', whence also probably the name Asher (a divine i6 INTRODUCTION. Hosea's love for his wife, and such perhaps his hope of reclaim- ing her, that he took no legal step against her, and acknowledged her three children for his own. At last, however, Gomer fled away to her paramour, but even then Hosea's love followed her. He found her, as it would seem, already despised and shamed ; perhaps her paramour had grown weary of her, and brutally sold her for a slave. At any rate, Hosea had to buy her back for the price of a slave, — "weeping blinding tears, I took her to myself, and paid the price (Strange contrast to the dowry of her youth "When first I wooed her) ; and she came again To dwell beneath my roof. Yet not for me The tender hopes of those departed years, And not for her the freedom and the love I then bestowed so freely. Sterner rule Is needed now. In silence and alone, In shame and sorrow, wailing, fast, and prayer, She must blot out the stains that made her life One long pollution^." Such is the stor>' told us in the first and third chapters. There is no attempt to soften the colouring by half-tints ; 'rough fresco- strokes,' to adopt Ewald's phrase, seemed perhaps more effec- tive. Besides, it would have led some to accuse Hosea of egotism, a fault from which a prophetic writer must be con- spicuously free, if he had lavished his artistic power on his own tragic history. The student is, however, much indebted to Dean Plumptre for his strikingly suggestive poem, a few lines from which are quoted above. A poet as well as an expositor, he name, like Gad). They also quote passages in which an image of the Asherah is spoken of (see i Kings xv. 13; 2 Chr. xv. 16; 2 Kings xxi. 7), and others in which vessels and tents for the Asherah are mentioned (2 Kings xxiii. 4); also the famous phrase in i Kings xviii. 19, 'the prophets of the Baal and the prophets of the Asherah.' This is quite consistent with the occasional use of the word for the material symbol of the goddess. It is right to add that Hosea does not mention Asherah byname: he only alludes to the worship of her (iv. 13). But Amos does not mention either Asherah or Baal. ^ Plumptre, Lazarus Sec, pp. 87 — 88. INTRODUCTION. 17 felt that Hosea's poetic imagination was marked by spontaneity and originality. At a later period of Hebrew literature, a fic- titious narrative of this kind might be conceivable, but not in the still youthful bloom of lyric poetry, and in the case of so fresh and original a poet as Hosea. We are thus taking a different line from Dr Pusey when he says, ' There is no ground to justify our taking as a parable what Holy Scripture relates as a fact.' There must be some plausible ground for it, or the opinion rejected by Dr Pusey would not have commended itself to the majority of modern commentators. It is not at all a necessary inference from the inspiration of the Scriptures that the events described by Hosea should be historical; it is rather an in- tuition which comes of itself to the unbiassed reader who has any poetic insight. The only plausible argument on the other side is that Hosea seems^ when understood literally, to confess to an act which offends our moral consciousness. But had Hosea really meant this, he could have said at once that the bride of his choice had been ' a harlot.' He simply says that she was 'a woman of whoredom', which, according to He- brew idiom, need only mean 'a woman of an unchaste dispo- sition'; we must suppose that he afterwards found out Gomer to be a woman of the character described (see on i. 2) The inherent difficulties of the parabolic interpretation are much greater than any slight difficulty in the literalistic one adopted by Ewald and Wellhausen in Germany, and by Dr Pusey, Dean Plumptre, and Prof. Robertson Smith in England. It is indeed much to say after Dean Plumptre's poem that there is any difficulty in the literalistic view, and if there be, it is only because the Dean, following Dr Pusey and early Jewish autho- rities, unfortunately adopts the view that Hosea deliberately married a woman who was, in the later Jewish phrase, *a sinner,' with the view of reclaiming her. ' To seek and save the lost, Forgetful of my calling and my fame, To call thee mine, and bring thee back to God, Became the master-passion of my heart'.' ^ Dean Plumptre, Lazarus &c., p. 84. HOSEA 2 ig INTRODUCTION. The chief difficulties in the parabolic interpretation are (i) the refractory name Gomer, which refuses to be unlocked by the parabolic key, and contrasts so strongly with the names of the children, and (2) that this interpretation leaves it unex- plained how Hosea came to think of Jehovah's relation to Israel as a marriage. With regard to (i), M. Reuss exposes the weakness of his own position by remarking, ' II est fort proba- ble que ces noms doivent avoir une signification symbolique, comme tous les autres qui vont suivre. Mais nos dictionnaires h^breux n'offrent aucun moyen de la retrouveri.' And with regard to (2), as the present writer has endeavoured to enforce elsewhere, 'Throughout the Old Testament we detect a gracious proportion between the revelation vouchsafed and the mental state of the person receiving it^' But what proportion is there between this new and strange revelation and the mental state of a worshipper of a Deity as moral as Baal and Asherah were immoral? It was no doubt the custom among the heathen relations of the Israelites, and probably among the semi-heathen Israelites, to speak of the god of heaven as married to the land^ But how came Hosea to admit so distinctly heathenish a con- ception within the circle of the prophetic rehgious ideas .'' It is not enough to reply that ' the word of Jehovah came to'.him :' how could such a 'word' come to him, unless there were already some point of contact for it in his mind ? He 7;ius^ have been prepared by personal experience to find a moral element in this conception which fitted it for the use of a prophet of Jehovah. 1 Reuss, Les prophltes, i. 138. There is no strangeness in the pro- phetic names of the children (comp. Isa. vii., viii.), but nothing obliges us to assume that the mother had one too. 2 The Book of Isaiah Chronologically Arranged, p. 22. 3 It is a remarkable 'survival' of this idea that the cognate word to Baal in Arabic {ba'l") means, according to Lane, 'any palm-trees, and other trees, and seed-produce, not watered ; or such as are watered by the rain : or palm-trees that imbibe with their roots, and so need not to be watered ', in short vegetation which owes nothing to artificial irriga- tion, and is the direct product of the 'rain from heaven.' See below on ii. 21, 22, and especially Prof. Robertson Smith {The Prophets of Israel, pp. 172, 409), who has thrown much fresh light on this part of Hosea. INTRODUCTION. 19 Why not, then, accept Hosea's statement of his experiences in its literal sense, interpreting his phraseology, however, with due attention to Hebrew idiom ? Thus much by way of introduction to chaps, i. and iii. ; the meaning which the prophet's sad history, interpreted, as he felt, by an inward divine voice, conveyed to him, will be seen in its full beauty, when we come to chaps, iv. — xiv. The word 'allegory' or 'parable' belongs properly not to these chapters, but to chap, ii., in which the ideas which Hosea had gained through his providential discipline are set forth in figurative language. The position of this chapter (with which i. 10, 11 ought, as we shall see, to be taken) is remarkable. Whether its contents represent Hosea's thoughts previously to the events described in chap, iii., is uncertain ; the chapter may equally well express his later reflexions, and be simply designed as a commentary on the names ' Lo-ruhamah' and ' Lo-ammi' in i. 6, 9. CHAPTER III. The second Book of Hosea. — A reproduction^ not a report. — Neither in chronological nor in logical order. — Heart-logic. — Gomer and Hosea both types. With the Messianic promise (taking this adjective in the wider sense) at the end of chap, iii., we have evidently reached the close of one great portion of prophecy. Chaps, iv. — xiv. have a unity of their own : we might almost call them the second Book of Hosea. That there is a substratum of prophetic oratory is proved by the allusions to facts and persons, obscure to us but clear to the original hearers ; in fact, in ix. i the motive of the discourse is still perfectly visible. Yet we cannot suppose that Hosea delivered any part of this ' book' in its present form ; it can only be a reproduction by the prophet himself of the main points of his discourses, partly imaginative, partly on the basis of notes. We might have looked for this to prove a connected record of the state of things in Israel from one definite historical 2 — 2 20 INTRODUCTION. point to another. Such however is not the case. Although in one respect chap. iv. seems to justify its priority (namely, that Judah is spoken of more hopefully, ver. 15, than later on), yet upon the whole we cannot say that the early chapters belong, say, to Menahem's reign, and the later ones to Pekah's. Nor is there any clear evidence of a designed logical connexion ; Bishop Lowth even compares the book to 'sparsa qusedam Sibyllse folia.' Pauses there are from time to time in the pro- phecy (see especially v. i, viii. i, ix. i, xii. i), but it is not ob- vious that they mark stages in the development of an argument. There is indeed an argument, but it is one of the heart, not of the head. It is based on the assumption that Jehovah cannot be less loving and less faithful than the creatures He has made. Bitter domestic experience has developed in the prophet the most wonderful capacity for unselfish affection, and he argues from this (somewhat as our Lord in Matt. vii. 1 1) to the existence of a still greater passion of self-sacrificing love in ' the framer of hearts.' We have seen how Hosea, after selecting, as he had thought, a bride like the Shulamite of his favourite poem, dis- covered to his unutterable grief that instead of a ' lily of the valleys' (Cant. ii. i), he had unawares 'enfolded in [his] arms A lily torn and trampled in the mire^.' We have seen, too, how, after Gomer had fled from her home, in obedience to an unchaste impulse, the master-feeling which that sweet old poem calls 'strong as Death' and 'obstinate as Sheol^' (Cant. viii. 6), prompted him to rescue her from her desti- tution, and bring her home again, not indeed at first to freedom, but to the cleansing chastisement of seclusion. We have seen the bitter experience, but not as yet penetrated into the mystery of its meaning. Both Hosea's impulses were according to the ^ Dean Plumptre {Lazarus and other Poems, p. 85), who however prefixes the words 'I, knowing all', which imply a misinterpretation of i. ■2. 2 Death is a synonym for Sheol or the Hebrew Hades (as Isa. xxviii, 15, 18, xxxviii. iS). The Underworld is represented as having a mysterious power of attracting and swallowing up all men. INTRODUCTION. 21 unmistakable will of God, who overruled this domestic tragedy to a wise and gracious end. Hosea was to learn what no pro- phet had learned before, and what no prophet ever could have learned by a mechanical revelation from without — viz. that the essence of the divine nature was not justice but love (comp, I John iv. 8). Gomer in her prime of purity was a symbol of Israel whom Jehovah 'found as grapes in the wilderness' (ix. 10) ; in her unnatural infidelity, of Israel who 'went after' the Baalim (ii. 13); in her undeserved gradual restitution into the position of a wife, of Israel, first led aside into the wilder- ness, and then taken back to the full favour of an eternally loving God. And Hosea in his mixed and harrowing feelings towards Gomer is himself a type of Jehovah. His loathing abhorrence of her sin, his flaming indignation at her infidelity, and, stronger than either, his tender compassion at the depth of misery to which she has reduced herself, are but a reflexion of Jehovah's feelings towards His people. Hosea's work is to give expression to this newly-found truth. He does so in what may be called in the main a lyric monologue of Jehovah Himself. He has no occasion to say, 'Thus saith the Lord^' Without referring to any past revelation and clothing it in self-chosen words, he feels and knows that the words which well up from his heart ade- quately express the feelings of the divine Heart. Gomer in fact is not merely an emblem ; she is a representative. As Gomer has erred, so Israel as a nation has erred. Gomer was unchaste and, it would seem, a devotee of Ashdrah ; so were too many others of the women of Israel, while the kindred worship of Baal or Baal-Jehovah absorbed the religious feelings of the men. Hosea, who has learned to 'know Jehovah ', is cut to the quick by such apostasy ; he spares no detail of the abominations that are committed ; with a kind of grieved sur- prise he puts before the people the inevitable punishment, but when he has fully realized the awful nature of the doom, he melts with pity, and recalls the woe (see xiii. 13 — xiv. i)-. His ^ This formula occurs only once in chaps, iv. — xiv.; see xi. i r. 2 In his flow of sympathy towards the object of the judgment Hosea 22 INTRODUCTION. feelings are those which are natural to a pure-minded worship- per of Jehovah, trained in the high thoughts of prophetic re- ligion ; but they also correspond, as an inner voice assures Hosea, to what may analogously be called the feelings of Je- hovah, who has prepared His servant in so exceptional a way to think in unison with Himself. A fitter person than Hosea surely could not be found to be Israel's prophet in the gathering storm. Knowing Jehovah's 'secret' (Am. iii. 7), he could be faithful to Him without being untrue to Israel. Next to Jeho- vah, he loves his country and his wife with a clinging, inextin- guishable love. But only next to Jehovah ; for Hosea knows that all relationship is rooted in Him, and that both the people of Israel (xi. i) and each individual Israelite (i. 10) are before everything else ideally Jehovah's sons. If we cannot therefore strictly call him a patriot, we can at any rate say that he has something higher than even patriotism — an enthusiasm for that 'pearl of great price' described by the phrase 'the divine sonship of Israel' CHAPTER IV. The five leading ideas of the prophecy. — {a) Iinjnorality of the northern ki7igdont. — {b) Sinfilness of the idolatrous Jehovah- worship and of the co7ifusio7i of Jehovah and Baal. — if) Sififulftess of IsraePs foreigti policy. — {d) Sinfuhiess of the separate kingdom of Israel. — {e) The conception of love as the bo7id betwee7t Jehovah a7id Is7'ael, a7id betwee7i the i7idi- vidual Israelites. — Hosea co7npared with prophets befo7-e and after hi7n. — No personal Messiah i7i Hosea. To summarize the contents of the book before us is a pecu- liarly difficult task, systematic order being more alien to Hosea than perhaps to any other prophet. Still an incomplete sketch is only exceeded by the unknown author of the early prophecy on Moab in Isa. XV., xvi., adopted by Isaiah (see Isa. xvi. 13). The latter too M'as possibly a N. Israelite, to judge from his minute acquaintance with Moabitish topography. INTRODUCTION. 23 may be attempted, {a) It will be noticed at once what a large part of his book is taken up with lamentations over the general immorality of the Israelites, which appears (comparing the statements of Amos and Hosea with those of the prophets of Judah) to have been more glaring than that which at any time prevailed in the south. The Israelites of the north seem, in fact, to have admitted a larger Canaanite element than those of the south, who had received a considerable infusion of Arab bloods Not that Hosea altogether neglects the moral state of Judah. At first he gives a more favourable verdict of her than of the sister-country (i. 6, 7, comp. iv. 15), but later on strong complaints of her misconduct are incidentally made — complaints, through which we can hear the pulsations of a loving heart (v. 10 — 13, vi. 4, xi. 12). Hosea, therefore, like all the 'goodly fellowship', is a preacher of morality. He represents Jehovah as saying, 'For I delight in love, and not in sacrifice, and in the knowledge of God more than in burnt-offerings' (vi. 6); and whatever the precise meaning of 'love' may be (on which see some pages further on), 'love to man' must be, even if only indirectly, referred to, just as the ' knowledge of God ' includes the imitation of God (as Jer. xxii. 16). It was the sacred duty of the priests, according to Hosea, to teach a morality based upon pure religion (iv. 6) ; instead of which, they only promoted a worship which infallibly developed into at least one form of gross immorality, and welcomed the spread of iniquity, because the consequent sin-offerings were profitable to themselves (v. i, iv. 8). They even took the lead in outraging the law (vi. 9), and the prophet tells us soon after, that even the king and the princes took an unnatural delight in the general licence (vii. 3). So true was that which Isaiah, perhaps at this very time, said of the northern kingdom, 'And they that lead this people cause them to err, and they that are led of them are destroyed' (Isa. ix. 16). ^ Prof Robertson Smith, The Prophets of Israel, p. 201. 24 INTRODUCTION. {b) Hosea does not, however, delude himself with the idea that preaching will of itself convert his brethren. He knows but too well that their errors in morality have sprung from their 'backsliding' in religion, in a word, from their idolatry (evidence of which still exists in the oldest Israelitish seals). And hence one of the most striking features of Hosea is his mcessant pole- mic against the worship — not of the Phoenician Baal, which had been put down by Jehu — but of the small plated images of a bull, which were the symbols of Jehovah in the local sanctuaries of the north (i Kings xii. 28, comp. Ex. xxxii. 4, 5). Even Amos has not a word to say against these images, whereas Hosea flatly denies that there is any divine power behind them (viii. 5, 6) and describes them as the source of all the varied evils which are ruining the community. And the longer he lived, the more convinced of this he became. In chap, ii., as we have seen, he does not refer to the corrupting effect upon morals of the popular religion, but chaps, iv. — xiv. are full of it. The corrup- tion was doubtless growing deeper every year. The God of Israel, through being addressed as Baal (ii. 16), w^ confounded with the local divinities of the Canaanites^ and the moral influence of the old Jehovah-worship was lost. Indeed, the Baal-cultus itself, in which the Jehovah-cultus was now practi- cally merged, was descending in the scale of religions. The Israelites were no longer in the stage of naive faith, and so could not recognize the old nature-worship in its original significance. They were formalists of the worst kind, because the meaning of their forms had never been a high and elevating one. And besides this, the still grosser form of Baal-cultus introduced by the Tyrian princess^ Jezebel probably had a baleful effect on the native religion, since its persecuted adherents would become 1 The Israelites considered themselves Jehovah-worshippers (viii. 1 3, ix. 4, 5). But the prophet quietly calls the local Jehovah-Baals 'other gods' (iii. i), and says that in her feast-days Israel 'forgat me' (ii. 13; comp. 11). - Comparing i Kings xvi. 31 with Menander in Josephus Antiq. viii. 13, 2 and Contra Apion. i. 18, we may infer, with Ewald [History, iv. 39) that Jezebel was the daughter of Ethbaal king of Tyre, who had formerly been a priest of Astarte. INTRODUCTION. 25 fused with those of the latter, and would bring their gross prac- tices and licentious spirit with them. (On the whole subject of the popular rehgion of N. Israel, see commentary on ii. 13, 16, 21, 22). {c) One proof of the formalism of the Jehovah-Baal worship (though it is a proof, as we shall see, of something else besides) is the want of faith in the protecting care of its deity shown by the north-Israelitish people. We must first of all ascertain Hosea's judgment on this point, and then explain in what sense we can adopt it. Not only, says the prophet, has ' Ephraim' deserted Jehovah, but he has also 'hired loves among the nations' (viii. 9, 10). This is an expression for the attempts of the rulers to bribe the favour of their powerful neighbours Egypt and Assyria (see v. 13, vii. 11, viii, 9, 10, xii. i, xiv. 3, and comp. ^2 Kings xvii. 4). In fact, there seem to have been two factions ':n the northern as well as probably in the southern kingdom (Isa. XXX. I — 7, xxxi. i — 3, comp. 2 Kings xvi. 7), the one devoted to Assyria, the other to Egypt. Hosea was equally opposed to both. Like Dante, he thought it an honour *to have formed a party by himself alone ^' Hosea denounces the policy of the rulers as not merely a sin but a blunder. To trust in chariots and horses in preference to Jehovah, who was ' their God from the land of Egypt' (xii. 9, xiii. 4), is the part of 'a silly dove without understanding' (vii. 11). To coquet with the neighbour- ing empires will too surely lead to enforced expatriation. Egypt a.nd Assyria (such perhaps is the prophet's meaning, comp. Isa. vii. 18, 19) shall fight for the land of Israel, and shall each carry part of the inhabitants into captivity. Instead of the gentle yoke of Jehovah, so touchingly described in the words — ' I was unto them as they that lift up the yoke over their cheeks, and I bent towards him and gave him food ' (xi. 4), the Israelites shall pass under the tyranny of aliens, — ' He shall return unto the land of Egypt, and Asshur — he shall be his king, because they have refused to return ' (xi. 5). Paradise, xvii. 69. 26 INTRODUCTION. Such is Hosea's judgment on the 'folly' of the Israelites, and his prophetic intuition of its inevitable consequences. He ex- presses himself with a condensation which may obscure to some readers the real kernel of his thought. What he really means we have to divine from our knowledge of his religious position. We must remember that the Jehovah of the N. Israehtes was very different from the Jehovah of Hosea, and that he had now sunk to the level of the Canaanitish Baal. The necessary con- sequence, at that stage of the Baal-worship, was formalism ; and when to this was added the surprising successes of the Assyrians, whose warfare was avowedly in part directed against foreign deities as well as foreign nations \ we cannot be surprised that the Israelites began to distrust the protecting care of their god. Logically, therefore, the 'folly' of the Israelites consisted, not in making terms with Assyria, but in accepting a corrupt form of the worship of Jehovah, which could no more inspire courage than the love of goodness, and therefore doomed its adherents to a rapid national decline. {d) Another leading idea in this prophecy is one very closely connected with those already mentioned, viz. the sinfulness of the separate kingdom of Israel. Hosea has a remarkably clear view of the different aspects of the 'schism', and represents Jehovah as saying — ' I give thee kings in mine anger, and take them away in my wrath' (xiii. ii). In one sense, then, the separate kingdom of Israel was justifiable ; in another it was not. It must be confessed, however, that the latter aspect is predominant in Hosea's mind (comp. viii. 4), whereas the former is exclusively present to the narrator in I Kings xi. 29, comp. 2 Chron. xi. 4 (see further note on i. 4). ^ Sargon says in his Annals, 'I counted all the armies of the god Assur, and I marched against these towns ', and carries captive not only men but gods ; he brings countries into subjection not merely to himself but to Assur {Records of the Past, vii. 25 — 26). Esarhaddon's Annals contain the remarkable statement that, after taking away the gods of the Arabs, he wrote the mighty deeds of 'Assur my lord' upon them, and also his own name, and sent them back repaired (Budge, The History of Esa7-haddon, p. 57). INTRODUCTION. 27 The ground for Hosea's severe view is that he feels pure religion to be the safeguard of the national existence. As no compromise IS allowable between Jehovah and Baal, so there should be no opposition to the divinely sanctioned house of David. A rival dynasty involves a rival deity, as Hosea expressly says in viii. 4. The Israelites might regard themselves as worshippers of Jeho- vah, but the prophet contradicts this without scruple in the fol- lowing verses (viii. 5, 6). He certainly yearned for the healing of the 'schism' by a Davidic king, and speaks in his earlier prophecy (iii. 5) as if Providence were leading in this direction. The event proved that he was too hopeful, but the fact that he left his early work unaltered, shows what a mistake it is to insist too much on a literal fulfilment of every detail of prophecy, particularly in Hosea the most lyrical and the least reflective of all the prophets, who evidently uses prediction, just as he uses upbraidings and threatenings, partly to relieve his own over- wrought feelings, partly to move his people to a timely repent- ance. As Prebendary Huxtable remarks, 'The style very often assumes the form of prediction ; but this form is probably for the most part adopted, rather as an engine of persuasion, than as an absolute foretelling of what was about to happen^' No doubt some of Hosea's particular predictions have been fulfilled, but we have no right to assume that the prophet himself attached more importance to these predictions than to others. The truth is that he has no fixed view respecting the future of Judah, much less about the reunion of the two kingdoms. In i. 6, 7 he contrasts the mercy not extended to Israel with the mercy extended to Judah, but in vi. 11 (comp. v. 5, 14, viii. 14, X. ii,xii. 2), he points to a 'harvest' of retribution for Judah similar to that destined for Israel; and if in i. 11 he antici- pates the healing of the ' schism', yet in chap. xiv. his radiant description of the future contains not a line of hope for Judah. (e) And now, to complete this brief sketch, a conception has to be described which is the highest and deepest, and therefore the most fundamental, in the book. As Professor Davidson ^ Speaker's Commentary, vol. vi. p. 405. 28 INTRODUCTION. has shown ^. all the other conceptions which have been mentioned admit of being derived from this. We need not however con- clude that it was the first to be developed in the mind of Hosea, but only that when Providence caused it to germinate, it strengthened his hold on every other truth. We have already spoken of it by anticipation as 'a newly-found truth' (p. 21), because though it is also prominent in the Book of Deuteronomy, there is no satisfactory evidence that that remarkable book was generally known in the age of Hosea. It is the truth ' that love is the highest attribute of God ; so that a man should love God, and from love to Him keep all His commandments, because God first loved him^; which easily leads to the conclusion that a man ought in like manner to love his fellow man^' These words of Ewald, written with reference to Deuteronomy, are equally applicable to Hosea, though a slight inaccuracy seems to need correction^. The duty of brotherly love is not, either in Hosea or in Deuteronomy, an inference from the fact that Israel has been first loved by God; it is rather a condition of the individual Israelite's participation in that love. The stream of Jehovah's love flows forth to Israel as a community^ ; he who would drink of this stream must prove his right by proving his membership in the community, which can only be done by showing love to his brother- Israelites. It would be still more accurate to say that the true Israelite is one who loves both his fellow-Israelites and Jehovah of his own accord, just as Jehovah of His own accord loved Israel (ix. 10, xi. i, comp. xiv. 4)^. All human 1 The Expositor, 1879, p. 258 &c. 2 'See Deut. vi. 4 — 9, vii. 6 — 11; further, xi. i, x. 15, xxiii. 6, with X. 12, 13, xix. 9, and at the close xxx. 6 — 20.' 3 'Deut. X. 18, 19.' ^ History of Isj'ad, iv. 223. It seems clear that the commands to love Jehovah in Deuteronomy are addressed to Israel, not to the indi- vidual Israelite. * Prof. Davidson well says, * Throughout the prophets, who are statesmen in the kingdom of God, the person or subject with whom Jehovah enters into relations is always the community of Israel' {The Expositor, 1879, p. 25S). ^ * Loyalty and kindness between man and man are not duties in- ferred from Israel's relation to Jehovah, they are parts of that relation ; INTRODUCTION. 29 relationships within the Israelitish community are rooted in the primal love of Jehovah to Israel; Hosea learned this truth in the school of Providence, and he implies it in all his moral teaching. It is this primal love, however, which fills the fore- ground of Hosea's prophecies. His highest aim is to set forth its moral nature, as opposed to the altogether non-moral and quasi-physical union supposed to exist between a heathen deity and his worshippers. Jehovah is not more loving than righteous. His union with His people may be, must be indestructible, but this is because (to quote Israel's great eulogy of love once more) ' love is strong as Death', and therefore must be able to com- mand a response of love in its own object (comp. ii. 15, 'she shall respond there' &c.). The IsraeHtes must one day feel a love to Jehovah which is not merely as a 'morning-cloud' (vi. 4), and Hosea exhausts the resources of his art in picturing this delight- ful future (chap. xiv.). The sin of individuals cannot hinder Jehovah's mercy to the nation ; only if the actual nation persists in forsaking His law, it will have to pass through a very hurricane of cleansing judgment (xiii. 15). Such being the principal idea of the book, can we be sur- prised that the chief speaker is Jehovah Himself.'* There was no conscious striving after effect on Hosea's part, but had he only professed to report a message from Jehovah, how cold by com- parison would his words have left us ! ' God only knows the love of God', and if the words of the prophecy are stamped with the genius of Hosea, they are none the less truthful revelations of the divine Heart. The delicacy of the prophet's phraseology is worthy of note. Though he does not shrink from using one of the ordinary words for 'to love' in describing Jehovah's relation to Israel (xi. i), yet the word which gives the tone as it were to the book is one with a distinctly moral tinge — khised. As is explained in the note on iv. 6, this word has a threefold applica- tion, and can be used of the relation of God to man, of man to God, and of a man to his neighbour. It is assumed that the love to Jehovah and love to one's brethren in Jehovah's house are identical (compare iv. i with vi. 4, 6).' Robertson Smith, The Prophets of Israel, p. 102. INTRODUCTION. giver and the receiver of khdsed are united by a bond of moral obligation, and in the three passages in which the word occurs in Deuteronomy (v. lo, vii. 9, 12), the idea of a covenant or con- tract is either expressed or (as in v. 10) implied. This idea is not indeed completely developed in Hosea's mind (see on vi. 7, vii. i), but he knows full well that there is a moral bQndjDC- tween Jehovah and Israel, comparable to the relation of a Juis- band to a wife (as especially in chaps, i. — iii.), or of a father to a son (as xi. i, 3, 8, xiii. 13, comp. i. io)\ though since Jehovah is 'God and not man' (xi. 9), higher than either, because free from all earthly taint. The word occurs six times in Hosea in its various senses 2, and, as has been hinted already, it is now and then slightly difficult to define its meaning. The point to remember is that by adopting this word (which is not used once by the sterner prophet Amos) Hosea impresses the idea that Jehovah's love to Israel, keen as it is, has a moral foundation. The Psalmists took up both the idea and the expression ; where the Auth. Vers, renders 'saint', the Hebrew generally has khdstd, loving or pious one. In one psalm it is interesting to observe that 'my pious ones' is explained in the parallel line by 'those that have made a covenant with me' (Ps. 1. 5), which confirms the view of khesed taken above. These are the five leading ideas of the prophecy of Hosea. They are covered over with the flowers of poetic imagery, and the student might have missed the salient points of the book without thus much of guidance. It will be seen that we owe a precious truth to Hosea, and that his book marks a fresh stage in the slow progress of revelation. Compare him with Amos who prophesied but a few decades earlier. Amos had a keen ^ This, like the former, corresponds to a heathen Semitic conception ; see Num. xxi. 29, where the Moabites are described as 'sons' of Chemosh. Prof. W. Wright has pointed out similar instances of the use of 'son' for 'worshipper' in Syriac proper names, e.g. Bar-Hadad, Bar-laha, Bar-Ba'-shSmin, in which the second name of the compound is the appellation of the deity (Hadad, AlahajjH[^l-sh$m!n) specially worshipped by the person so named. TrataKhns of the Soc. of Biblical Archceology, vi. 438. •S^' - - See ii. 21, iv. i, vi. 4, 6, x. 12, xii. 7. INTRODUCTION. 31 sense of justice, and rightly transfers this attribute to Jehovah, but he had not that wonderful intuition of the milder side of the divine nature which we find in Hosea, Amos thinks of Jehovah as the king of Israel and her judge; Hosea as her Husband and her Father. Amos again expresses no dread of the reli- gious symbolism prevalent in N. Israel; like Elijah and Elisha, he lets the 'golden calves' pass without a word of protest. Hosea feels that those gross animal symbols distract the atten- tion of the worshippers from those moral attributes in which Jehovah delights most to be known. We need not then be sur- prised that, having achieved so much, he falls short in various ways of the attainments of his successors, {a) If he equals Jeremiah in tenderness, he is inferior to him in moral depth. He has no conception of the relation of Jehovah to the indivi- dual soul, apart from the nation, and therefore no presentiment of Jeremiah's profound idea of the new covenant. Again {b), he does not succeed like Isaiah and (still more) Jeremiah in expressing his latent consciousness of the unity of God (comp. on i. 10, ii. 10). As a rule, like Amos, he speaks of Jehovah as the national God of the Israelites (comp. iii. 4, 5, ix. 3), and only perhaps once crosses the line which separates monolatry (or the acknowledgment of one God as the national patron) and monotheism, viz. when he says that the converted Israelites shall be called 'sons of the living God' (i. 10)^, implying appa- rently that the other so-called gods were 'dead' (in the sense of Ps. cvi. 28). And (^r) although it is clear from iii. 4 that Hosea (at least at one time) hoped great things from a future Davidic prince, yet there is wanting that touch of mystery and passion- ate emotion which we find in Isaiah's two great prophecies of (to use the later phrase) the Messiah. It is true that a scholar as accurate as he is orthodox (Delitzsch) thinks that 'David' in the passage referred to means ' a king who is the antitype and ^ One is tempted to quote xiii. 4, but though the conclusion may seem to point to monotheism, the preceding words are only a strong expression of monolatry. The belief that Jehovah is higher than all other divinities ('', shall yet stand at the head of a reunited and victorious nation-. CHAPTER V. His style. — His taicoiiiiectedness. — His love of figures. — Has the language of his book been retouched? — Literary i?ifiu- ences to which Hosea was subject. — Did he kfiow the Pen- tateuch? — His 01091 testimony to the existence of written laws. — Parallelisi7is in Hosea and the Pentatetcch. — Hosed s literary influence on later writers. — Are the New Testa- me?it references to Hosea to be accepted as regulative of critical exegesis ? The proverb, 'le style c'est I'homme', is peculiarly true of Hosea. His genius especially fitted him for lyric poetry, and in more favourable circumstances and with more artistic cul- ture he might have produced the most admirable psalms and elegies. Duty however compelled him to 'hang up his harp' and preach to a perverse generation. How he preached, we can hardly judge from his book, which is anything but a verbal reproduction of discourses actually delivered ; but we may fairly surmise that his preaching would have seemed ineffective by ^ Messianic Prophecies., translated by Curtiss (1880), pp. 60, 61. 2 Neither Amos nor Hosea speaks of a Davidic world-empire; their outlook into the future is purely national. In Am. xi. 12 we should render 'and all the nations {7iot, heathen) which have been {uot, are) called by my name.' The prophet means that the empire of David should one day be restored in its fullest extent. INTRODUCTION. 33 the side of that of Amos. It was not so much the mere chill of neglect (for Amos suffered equally from this) as the emotional distress caused by his message of woe that choked his utter- ance and brought confusion into his style. The prize of the orator and the lyric poet he left to others, but could not disown the gift of song with which God had endowed him. As Ewald remarks, 'in its free outbursts the discourse [sometimes] ap- proaches to the nature of lyric poetry^', though few will follow that great scholar in his strophic arrangement of the book: the transitions of thought in Hosea are too abrupt to be brought into a scheme of such an artificial order. 'Exhaustless is the sorrow', as Ewald elsewhere says, 'endless the grief wherever the mind turns, and ever and anon the tossing restless discourse begins again, like the wild cry of an anguish that can hardly be mastered 2.' Symmetrical divisions, then, such as we can easily make in the oratorical prophet Amos, are out of the question. There is but rarely a distinct connexion, except in the tone of feeling, even between one verse and another. As St Jerome remarked long ago, 'Osee commaticus est [is broken up into clauses] et quasi per sententias loquens^'; or, in the words of Dr Pusey, ' each verse forms a whole for itself, like one heavy toll in a funeral knell ^.' Even the fetters of grammar are almost too much for Hosea's vehement feehng; inversions (vii. 8, ix. II, 13, xii. 8, and perhaps xiv. 9), anacolutha (ix. 6, xii. 8 &c.), and ellipses (ix. 4, xiii. 9 &c.) are especially frequent in his pro- phecy. Parallelism, which is elsewhere so prominent in poet- ical and rhetorical language, and which is often so great a help to the interpreter, is feebly represented; Hosea's rhythm is the artless rhythm of sighs and sobs. It is remarkable, however, that, unlike Jeremiah, he can take bold poetic flights in the midst of his grief. His figures are full of suggestiveness. Thus he compares Jehovah on His terrible side to the lion (v. 14, xiii. 7), the panther (xiii. 7), and the bear (xiii. 8) ; he does not even 1 Ewald, The Prophets, i. 228. 2 Ewald, i. 218. ^ Preface to the Minor Prophets. * Minor Prophets, p. 6. HOSEA 34 INTRODUCTION. disdain the simile of a moth (v. 12) ; while to represent the milder aspect of his God he has recourse to the latter rain (vi. 3) and the beneficent provision of the 'night-mist' (xiv. 5). The figure of the lion's roar in xi. 10 is used exceptionally, not to set forth the terrors of God's judgments, but His far-reaching summons to His scattered children. With equal or still greater suggest- iveness the Israel of the future is compared to the 'lily' which grows so profusely in the north of Palestine, and the stedfast roots of the cedar (xiv. 6), and to the ever-green fir-tree of Lebanon^ (xiv. 8). Paronomasias and plays upon words are also very characteristic of Hosea in his non-lyrical moods (see viii. 7, ix. 15, X. 5) xi. 5, xii. 11, and notice the use of the name Jezreel in i. 4, 11, comp ii. 22, 23; the change of the name Beth-el into Beth-aven in iv. 15, x. 5, comp. v. 8; the allusion to the derivation of Ephraim in ix. 16, xiii. 15, and perhaps xiv. 9). All these peculiarities, it is to be feared, give the Book of Hosea a rather repellent aspect, which is not diminished by the number of pecuHar words and constructions, and by the corrupt state of some parts of the text. It would be interesting to learn whether we really possess the discourses of Hosea in their original dialect, or whether they have been retouched for the benefit of a new public. The latter is in itself a plausible hypothesis, though incapable of demonstration ; except a fev/ Aramaic words and verbal forms (which rriay not all of them be due to Hosea) there is nothing in the language even distantly sug- gestive of a northern dialect'^. In dealing with a great writer like Hosea, we are bound to ask, To what literary influences of his time was he subject? A question in this case more easily asked than answered, owing to our ignorance of the literature of the northern kingdom. The Song of Songs Hosea was almost certainly familiar with (see xiv. 6 — 9), and we have no right to suppose that this was the 1 Prof. Robertson Smith's interesting remarks on this figure {The Prophets of Israel, p. 190) depend for their validity on an interpretation of the passage which the present writer is unable to adopt. 2 In literary Hebrew, remarks Gesenius, there is nothing which has a sufiicient claim to pass for a provincialism. INTRODUCTION. 35 only northern poem which educated and enriched his fancy. The Book of Amos was doubtless known in N. Israel, and would have a special interest for Hosea, though the two prophets are at the opposite poles of style, and except in Hos. iv. 15, x. 5, 8 (comp. Am. i. 5, v. 5), Hos. viii. 14 (comp. Am. i. 4 &c.), Hos. xi. 10 (comp. Am. i. 2) we cannot say that the younger prophet has clear allusions to the elder ^. There may have been other prophetic writings known to him, Joel for instance (Joel iii. 16 is more strikingly parallel to Hos. xi. 10 than Am. i. 2), or if not Joel (the early date of this book being now frequently called in question), some no longer extant books, for the reference of the phrase 'the prophets' in Hos. vi. 5 is perhaps not to be confined to prophets like Elijah and Elisha ; at least we can hardly sup- pose that written prophecy sprang into existence in Joel (?) and Amos almost in full perfection 2. What amount of written his- tory or legislation Hosea had before him is much disputed. That he was acquainted with many salient facts in the tra- ditional narratives is indeed certain : — see for the life of Jacob, xii. 3, 4, 12 ; for the destruction of the cities of the 'circle' of the Jordan, xi. 8; for the Exodus, ii. 15, xi. i, xii. 9^, 13; for the 1 In the first of these passages the allusion is in the name Beth-avcn (House of vanity, i.e. of vain idols, for Beth-el, House of God); simi- larly Amos speaks of the 'valley of Aven.' In the second Hosea refers to the refrain with which Amos closes each of his seven denun- ciations in Am. i. 4 — ii, 5. In the third he follows Amos in comparing Jehovah to a lion. 2 See Ewald [The Prophets, i, 60), who lays great stress on the indications of an earlier prophetic literature in the Book of Joel (see ii. 32 'as Jehovah has said', and notice how 'the day of Jehovah' and the restoration of Judah are spoken of in i. 15, ii. t, iii. i as already familiar to the reader). He also refers to Hos. vii. 12 'ac- cording to the announcement to the community', and to the 'fragments from the earliest period' cited by Isaiah in ii. 2 — 4 (comp. Mic. iv. I — 4) and XV. — xvi. 12. 2 In this verse most find two allusions to the early history, the one in the phrase 'Jehovah thy God from the land of Egypt' and the other in the mention of 'dwelling in tents.' The second allusion however depends on the rendering of the Hebrew ^odh; is it to be rendered 'yet again', or simply 'yet' (i.e. 'in the future'), as Auth. Vers.? In the latter case there is no necessary allusion to the privations of the desert-wanderings. See commentary. 36 INTRODUCTION. wanderings, ii. 3, xiii. 5 ; for Achan (?), ii. 15 ; for Baal-peor, ix. 10; and for the outrage at Gibeah, ix. 9, x. 9. It was the custom with the older commentators to leap from this to the conclusion that Hosea had before him the canonical books in which the same occurrences are referred to ; but we cannot be sure that he did not obtain these facts from oral tradition or from sources earlier than the canonical books in their present form (see com- mentary on xii. 3, 4). More stress may plausibly be laid on the parallelisms of phraseology and idea in Hosea and the Penta- teuch. Almost every commentary on Hosea contains lists of such parallelisms, and for completeness' sake a list is appended here, though the writer must express the hope that students in an early stage will remember the youthful David's reply to king Saul in i Sam. xvii. 39. Such a list will only be of any real value to those who have already satisfied themselves on other grounds as to the period of the composition of the books of the Pentateuch. One test of the soundness of such a critical de- cision will be its relation to the history of the progress of revela- tion. If it be impossible to write this history with Deuteronomy accepted as a work of the Mosaic or at any rate pre-Hezekian age, of what use is any number of parallelisms between Deu- teronomy and the Book of Hosea.? All that is certain with regard to Hosea's relation to the Law is what he tells us himself, viz. that laws with a sanction which, though ignored by the N. Israelites, he himself recognized as divine were in course of being written down^ (viii. 12). Our present text makes him even say that the divine precepts might be reckoned by myriads, but this would not apply even to our present Pentateuch, and we should probably correct ribbo ' myriad ' into dibhrS ' words (of ^ The Targum and Aben Ezra, followed by the Authorized Version, render 'I have written' (better, 'I wrote'). The tense is the imperfect, which is sometimes used in highly poetical passages where past oc- currences are referred to; see Driver, Hebrew Tenses, § 27 (i) (/3). Such a use of the imperfect would however here be isolated, nor is the passage in a poetical style. We must therefore reject the rendering of Auth. Vers., and with it the theory that the prophet refers simply and solely to a body of Mosaic legislation. In fact, when Moses is referred to by Hosea, it is as a prophet and a leader of the people, not as a legislator (xii. 13). INTRODUCTION. my law)^' There may of course either have been various small law-books, or one large one ; we cannot determine this point from the Book of Hosea. So far as we can infer anything, the laws in question must have been of a simple character, and have related to civil justice rather than to rites and ceremonies. In the centralization of worship, which is so prominent in the Book of Deuteronomy, Hosea takes no interest; he does not even mention Jerusalem, and applies the phrase ' the house of Jehovah' to a temple or temples of Jehovah in the * schismatic' kingdom (ix. 4). Mr Sharpe^ has, it is true, revived an opinion of St Jerome that the words — 'For Ephraim has multiplied altars in order to sin, altars are to him for the purpose of sinning' (viii. 1 1), refer to the Deuteronomic law of one altar (Deut. xii. 11 — 14), but the repetition of *to sin' proves that the emphasis is not on the multiplied altars but on the *sin' committed at the altars (comp. iv. 13, 14; Am. ii. 8). Indeed, was it likely that a pro- phet who had already mentioned ' sacred pillars' and even 'teraphim' without a word of remark on their illegality^ (iii. 4) would denounce the Israelites for their hereditary custom of multiplying altars ? With these preliminary cautions, we may proceed to collect parallelisms of phraseology in Hosea and the Pentateuch. Compare — ^ ' ^":. ' } with Hos. i. 10 (*as the sand of the sea'). Ex. iv. 22 — xxiii. 13 Deut. xviii. 15 — xxvi. 14 — xxviii. 68 — xxxi. 16 ■ — xxxii. 10 xi. I ('my son'). ii. 17 (names of idols to be abolished). xii. 13 (Moses a great prophet). ix. 4 (mourning bread). viii. 13 (Israel's return to Egypt). i. 2 (religious symbolism). ix. 10 (Israel 'found in the wilderness'). ^ So Gratz and Kuenen ; see on viii. 12. 2 A^oies and Dissertations on Hosea (1884), p. 83. ^ The writer, of course, does not mean to imply that Hosea attached a religious value either to these pillars or to the sacrifices mentioned in the same passage (iii. 4). 38 INTRODUCTION. The above is a short list compared with some that have been drawn up^: the more dubious parallelisms, like that of iv. 4 and Deut. xvii. 8 — 13, have been omitted. After all, is any one of them equal in interest to the striking parallelism of thought between Hosea and Deuteronomy indicated already (see p. 28)? It only remains to estimate the literary influence of Hosea, putting aside such questions as the chronological relation of his book to that of Deuteronomy. As we have seen already, the prophetic roll must soon have been carried into Judah, where it quickly became a favourite, as we must infer from the more or less distinct allusions to it made by later prophets. There are not many of these in Isaiah, though both Amos and Hosea have contributed elements to his teaching ; we can only be sure that Isaiah is alluding to his predecessor in i. 23, where he adopts a paronomasia from Hos. ix. 15. More allusions occur in Jere- miah, Ezekiel, and the second part of Zechariah : compare Hosea ii. 15 with Jer. ii. 2 ; Hosea iii. 5 with Jer. xxx. 9, Ezek. xxxiv. 25 ; Hos. iv. 3 with Jer. xii. 4 (and Zeph. i. 3) ; Hos. x. 12 with Jer. iv. 3; Hos. i. — iii. with Jer. iii. 8, Isa. 1. i, Ezek. xvi. and xxiii. ; Hos. ii. 18 with Ezek. xxxiv. 25; Hos. ii. 22 with Jer. xxxi. 27, Zech. x. 9 ; Hos. ii. 17 with Zech. xiii. 2 ; Hos. xii. 8 with Zech. xi. 5. Some of these allusions relate to Hosea's striking application of the symbol of marriage. In fact, as the great Jewish scholar Dr Zunz has shown from medieval Hebrew poetry, this affecting symbol of their ideal hopes never ceased to attract and delight the poets of Israel. But this is not all. The New Testament, too, as we might expect, contains several expressed or implied references to the Book of Hosea: — com- pare Hos. i. 10 with Rom. ix. 26 ; Hos. ii. i, 23 with Rom. ix. 25, I Pet. ii. 10; Hos. vi. 6 with Matt. ix. 13, xii. 7 (quotation by our Lord); Hos. x. 8 with Luke xxiii. 30, Rev. vi. 16, ix. 6 ; Hos. xi. I with Matt. ii. 15 ; Hos. xiii. 14 with i Cor. xv. 55. With regard to these references it hardly needs to be remarked that, so far as they imply interpretations, they would not all stand the test of a purely Western criticism. Their force was great to 1 For longer lists see Curtiss, The Leviiical Fries Is (1S77), pp. 176 — 8; Sharpe, llosea (1884), pp. 72 — 84. INTRODUCTION. 39 those for whom the writers meant them, but cannot be equally so to us. It is allowable indeed to trace in the providential history of the people of Israel more than one a7taIogy to that of Israel's Messiah, but to say that 'out of Israel did I call my son' (Hos. xi. i) is in a strict sense of the word a prediction of the infant Christ's return from Egypt violates the canons of exe- gesis. Delitzsch against his will expresses the weakness of this position when he calls this a 'typical prophecy^.' Typical persons and events one can understand, but if there be typical prophecies, what are the anti-typical ones ? Surely for us Westerns the true Christian element in the Book of Rosea con- sists, not in 'typical prophecies', but in that far-reaching intuition of God's forgiving love which took shape as it were in the ful- ness of time in Jesus Christ. ^ Messianic Prophecies (1880), pp. 61, 62. CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. ^*^ The chronology of the kings is perplexed and uncertain. From the Assyrian inscriptions the following dates have been obtained (see Schrader, The Cuneiform Inscriptions and the Old Testament, trans- lated by Whitehouse. Jehu was alive in 842 (tribute to Shalmaneser). — Azariah or Uzziah 742-740. — Menahem 738 (tribute to Tiglath Pileser). — Pekah 734 (con- quered by Tiglath Pileser). — Hoshea 728-722 (fall of Samaria), — Hezekiah 701 (invasion of Judah). Various systems have been framed, partly on the basis of the Assyrian, partly on that of the Biblical data. The table which follows is a fragment of Duncker's {History of Antiquity, vol. ii.). Judah. Israel. Jehu 843-815 Uzziah 792-740 Jeroboam n. 790-749 Jotham 740-734 Zechariah, Menahem Pekahiah Pekah Shallum 749 748-738 738-736 736-734 Ahaz 734-728 Hoshea 734-722 Hezekiah 728-697 ROSEA. THE word of the Lord that came unto Hosea, the son 1 of Beeri, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel. The beginning of the 2 word of the Lord by Hosea. And the Lord said to Hosea, Go, take unto thee a wife of whoredoms and chil- Chap. I. Hosea and his Wife. A Parable for the Israelites. 1. On the heading, see Introduction. 2. The beginning of the word of the Lord by Hosea] If we render the Hebrew text thus, the words are a heading to the first part of the book, viz. chaps, i. — iii. ; they are apparently taken thus by the LXX., the Vulg. , and perhaps the Targ. and the Peshito. It would however be better to translate with the Vulg., 'The beginning of Jehovah's speaking by (or, with) Hosea', because *by Hosea' goes better with a verbal than with a common noun ; or, with Kalisch, 'The beginning of that which Jehovah spoke' (comp. Job xviii. 21 ; Ps. Ixxxi. 6); or, with Ewald, 'At the first, when Jehovah spoke with Hosea' (comp. Ps. iv. 8, xc. 15, and possibly Gen. i. i). 'With Hosea' is the preferable render- ing. As Ewald remarks, the phrase 'to speak with' implies that he who speaks is a superior being (comp. Zech. i. 9, 13, 14; Num. xii. 2, 8). The original narrative no doubt began at 'Jehovah said ' : the words prefixed make the sentence heavy. take unto thee\ i.e. marry (as Gen. vi. 1 and often), with regard to Gomer; recognize as thine own with regard to the children. Is this marriage of Hosea a real or a fictitious one? Symbolical it certainly is, but whether literally true or not, the student must decide on a view of the somewhat peculiar exegetical data. See Introduction, and comp. note below on v. 3. a wife of whoredoms] i.e. {a) one with a deeply rooted inclination to adultery, or {b) as most explain, a woman already steeped in sin. In favour of {n), it may be pointed out that the prophet does not say, 'Take unto thee a harlot'. His wife is brought before us throughout 42 ROSEA, I. [vv. 3,4, dren of whoredoms : for the land hath committed great 3 whoredom, departing from the Lord. So he went and took Gomer the daughter of Diblaim ; which conceived, and 4 bare him a son. And the Lord said unto him, Call his name Jezreel ; for yet a little while^ and I will avenge the as a type of Israel ; she must at first have been innocent in act to symbolize what Jehovah elsewhere calls ' the kindness of thy (Israel's) youth, the love of thine espousals' (Jer. ii. 2). Upon this view it follows that the language employed is dictated by Hosea's subsequent experience. He could not, of course, know that Gomer had an in- clination to infidelity, until it had been exhibited in act. children of whoredoms\ i.e. either children inheriting their mother's evil tendencies, or the offspring of an adulterous union, (Comp. ii. 4. ) for the land hath co?nmitted...'\ This is the meaning of Hosea's acted parable. As Gomer became the wedded wife of the prophet, so 'the land', i.e. the people, of northern Israel had entered into an analogous mystic relation to Jehovah (see on ii. 21, 22). As Gomer, after her espousals, committed whoredom, so Israel, after her first love, went astray after other gods (see chap. ii.). Israel in the narrower sense of the word seems to be meant, for afterwards we read 'I will have mercy upon the house of Judah' [v. 7). 3. Corner^ the daughter of Diblaini] Various attempts have been made to extract a meaning from these names, which by its appropriate- ness to the circumstances of the Israelites might favour the view that the events related are fictitious and not real. Gomer may plausibly be interpreted 'perfection' (i.e. consummate in wickedness), and Diblaim 'cakes of figs' (i.e. the sweetness of sin). Rahmer has pointed out this view in the Talmud (see Yraxx^GV?, Monatsschrift, xiv. 216 foil.), so that St Jerome's similar explanation must have come from his Jewish teacher. But the fact that the children of Hosea (like those of Isaiah) have names which are obviously symbolic does not justify us in forcing an allusion out of the name of the mother. It has been suggested, but the view is not borne out by usage, that Diblaim is the name of Gomer's birth- place; Diblathaim was a Moabitish town (see Jer. xlviii. 22 and Moabite Stone 1. 30). The termination is that of the dual. bare him a so)i\ i.e. bare a son, whom for the mother's sake he recog- nized. 4. Call his name yezreef] The child of guilt ; therefore not Israel but Jezreel (or, more exactly, Izreel). The name is referred to for its historical associations (comp. on ii. 22). It points both backward and forward— backward to the massacre of Ahab's family by Jehu (2 Kings ix. X.), and forward to the punishment for that wild and cruel act. Hosea (in whom natural peculiarities have been purified and not extin- guished by the spirit of prophecy) regards the conduct of Jehu in a different light from the writer of 2 Kings x. 30. The latter praises Jehu for having 'done unto the house of Ahab according to all that was in my mind'; he speaks on the assumption that Jehu had the interests of vv. 5—7.] HOSEA, I. 43 blood of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu, and will cause to cease the kingdom of the house of Israel. And it shall 5 come to pass at that day, that I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel. And she conceived again, and 6 bare a daughter. And God said unto him. Call her name Lo-ruhamah : for I will no more have mercy upon the house of Israel ; but I will utterly take them away. But 7 I will have mercy upon the house of Judah, and will save Jehovah's worship at heart, and that he destroyed the house of Ahab as the only effectual means of advancing them. The former blames Jehu apparently on the high moral ground that Jehovah 'desires mercy (love) and not sacrifice' (vi. 6). He speaks as the Israelites of his time doubt- less felt. They no more recognized Jehu as a champion of Jehovah than did the priests of Baal whom he basely entrapped (2 Kings x. 18, &c.). But Hosea doubtless felt in addition that the idolatry to which the house of Jehu was addicted rendered a permanent religious reform hopeless. Image-worship could not be suppressed by such half- hearted worshippers of Jehovah, and hence, Jehovah's moral govern- ment of His people must have made it certain to Hosea that even on this ground alone the dynasty of Jehu could not escape an overthrow. yet a little while, and I will avenge... "[ * Avenge'; lit. 'visit'. Hosea represents (like a fellow-prophet, Am. vii, 9) the destruction of the northern kingdom as synchronizing with the overthrow of Jehu's dynasty. This was a remarkable proof of insight into God's purposes. Both prophets saw the beginning of the end, though the final catastrophe (722) took place about nineteen years later than the death of Jeroboam II. (741). 5. the bow of Israel^ The bow, the symbol of power (Gen. xlix. 24; Jer. xlix. 35). 171 the valley of Jezreel^ It seemed fitting that this 'battlefield of Palestine' (as the valley of Jezreel had already become, see on Judg. vi. 33) should be the scene of so momentous an event, fitting also that where Jehu had sinned, Jehu's house should be punished. There would have been a 'poetical justice' in such an arrangement, had such been the will of Providence. But there can be no doubt that Hosea had an accurate knowledge of the Assyrians as the destined instruments of Israel's overthrow (see on viii. 10). 6. hare a daughter] The nation being personified sometimes as a man, sometimes as a woman. Lo-richamah'\ i.e., Uncompassionated. but I will utterly take them away] Rather, that I should forgive them. 7. But I will have viercy upon the house of Judah] Grave as are the charges brought against Judah by the prophets, it appears to have been some degrees better off religiously than Israel ; probably, as it was a poorer country, its nature-worship was less extravagantly sensuous than that of the north. Hosea elsewhere counsels Judah not to offend 44 HO SEA, T. [vv. 8, 9. them by the Lord their God, and will not save them by bow, nor by sword, nor by battle, by horses, nor by horse- 8 men. Now when she had weaned Lo-ruhamah, she con- 9 ceived, and bare a son. Then said God, Call his name Lo-ammi : for ye are not my people, and I will not be to the same extent as Israel (iv. 15), and later on accuses Judah rather of inconstancy than of absolute rebellion (xi. ii). by the Lord their God] Tautologically, as Gen. xix. 24. Or, 'as Jehovah their God' (i.e 'in the character of &c., comp. Ex. vi. 3 'as El Shaddai', Ps. Ixviii. 4 'his name is, essentially, in Jah'). Observe Hosea recognizes Judah's higher religious ideal. not... by bow] Judah, then, was in danger of trusting .in warlike equipments, as Isaiah afterwards describes it as doing (Isa. ii. 7). And yet, if Israel, with all its natural strength, could not resist the Assyrian attack, it was clear that the weaker kingdom could only do so by supernatural aid. Comp. Isa. xxxi. 8, xxxvii. 33. 'Battle' should be equipment of wax. 8, 9. The birth of a Son. Lo-aifimi] i.e. not my people. Observe the climax in the names. 'Jezreel' announces the judgement ; Lo-ruhamah, the withdrawal of Jehovah's affection; Lo-ammi, the treatment of Israel as a foreign people. I will not be yotir God] Lit., *I will not be for (or, to) you', i.e. perhaps, 'on your side' (comp. Ps. Ivi. 10, cxviii. 6, cxxiv. i, 2), or, as Prof. Robertson Smith ^, 'I am no longer Ehyeh', alluding to Ex. iii. 14, 'And God said unto Moses, I will be that which I will be (viz. what I have promised and you look for) ; and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I will be (Ehyeh) hath sent me unto you'. According to this view, Ehyeh is equivalent to Yihyeh or what-, ever is a more correct form of the name miswritten Jehovah — the revealed name of Israel's God, and Hos. i. 9 is the earliest witness to the true meaning of Ex. iii. 14. 'I am no longer Ehyeh for you' will thus be a contrast to 'I will save Judah as the Lord (Yahveh = Yihyeh) their God' [v. 7). It is however doubtful whether Hosea shews ac- quaintance elsewhere with the document to which Ex. iii. 14 belongs, and at any rate it is more natural to suppose, as A. V. (after Yefet the Karaite) has done that lelohim ' (for) God ' has dropped out of the text. 10, 11. There is a great difference among authorities as to the way in which these verses and ii. i should be connected with the context, (a) Those who consult a Hebrew Bible will most probably find the first chapter of Hosea closed at v. 9, and the second opened with v'hdydh 'and it shall come to pass'. Thus Hosea's (like Isaiah's) first prophetic discourse is made to begin with a promise. The objection is that the transition from v. 3 to z^. 4 of the chapter thus produced is unique for its abruptness even in the Book of Hosea. ('Say ye to your brethren, * British and Foreign Evangelical Review, Jan. 1876, pp. 153 — 165. V. lo.l HOSEA, T. • 45 your God. Yet the number of the children of Israel shall lo be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured nor numbered; and it shall come to pass, that in the My people', and directly after, 'Plead with your mother, plead'.) {b) Still more objectionable is the arrangement of A. V., derived from one form of the Hebrew text, and followed by the Septuagint, Luther, and Calvin. Its only justification lies in the accidental circumstance that two successive verses in the Hebrew text begin with an imperative. Verse i chap. ii. in A. V. is utterly unintelligible by itself, and the transition from the first to the second imperative becomes even more strikingly abrupt than in the Hebrew Bible, {c) Feeling these objec- tions, Ewald and Pusey propose to begin the second chapter of the book with the verse which stands fourth in order in our Hebrew Bibles. But most readers cannot help seeing that the transition from threatening to promise, from Lo-ammi, to Ammi, is singularly abrupt, and not to be admitted except from dire necessity, {d) The transposition of lines or sentences is well known to be a fruitful source of error in ancient texts. Hence it has been suggested that vv. i — 3 of chap. ii. in the common Hebrew Bible (i.e. the last two verses of chap. i. and the first of chap. ii. in A. V.) originally stood at the end of chap. ii. The plau- sibility of this suggestion of Heilprin's and Steiner's would be seen to most advantage, if these verses could be explained at the end of chap, ii. This would be only following the precedent of St Paul, who adopts a very similar arragement in Rom. ix. 25, 26. (Verse 9 therefore should be taken as the close of chap, i., and ii. i as the close of chap, ii.) 10— ii. 1. Predicted alteration of Names. Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be] However sad the present prospects of Israel may be, a glorious future is in store for him. So our translators mean us to interpret the passage, confounding the province of the translator with that of the expositor. The Hebrew merely says, And it shall come to pass that the number of the chil- dren of Israel shall be, &c. In all probability, this verse should have come after ii. 23, to the opening statement of which it gives a further development. 'I will sow her for myself in the land,' were the words of Jehovah in reversing the prophetic import of the name Jezreel. Now the Divine speaker assures us that the 'sowing' shall be followed by a rich harvest of inhabitants. An increase in population is elsewhere also a leading feature in the promised prosperity of Israel; e.g. (not to quote the disputed passage. Is. ix. 3), Mic. ii. 12, where the restored remnant is said to be 'tumultuous for the multitude of men'. Observe that the blessing is at first limited in its scope (as it is again in chap. xiv.). 'Children of Israel' means evidently, not all Israel, but the northern kingdom, for in the next verse (comp. i. 6, 7) 'the children of Israel' are clearly distinguished from 'the children of Judah'. The limitation was natural, because the prophet belonged to the northern and larger section of the nation; the horizon is widened immediately after, so as to include Judah. as the sand of the sea] Comp. Gen. xxii. 17, xxxii. 12. 46 HOSEA, I. [v. II. place where it was said unto them, Ye are not my people, there it shall be said unto them, Ye are XI the sons of the living God. Then shall the children of Judah and the children of Israel be gathered together, and appoint themselves one head, and they shall come up out of the land : for great shall be the day of Jezreel. in the place where it was said nnto theni\ This may mean either Palestine, or, more plausibly, the land of captivity. But surely the fact, and not the place, of restoration is the thought which fills the mind of the prophet. The sense is much improved by adopting the alternative version, instead of its being said, &c. It is true that an indisputable parallel for the sense 'instead of is wanting, neither Isa. xxxiii. i\ nor 2 Kings xxi. 19 being decisive. But grammatical theory raises no objection to the proposed rendering, and where this is the case the Hebrew concordance must not override the exercise of exegetical tact. Ye are not my people'] Or, Ye are Lo-ammi, the sorts of the living God] 'The living God', as i Sam. xvii. 26, Deut. V. 26, in contrast to the idol-gods {^dilhn, or 'nothings', as Isaiah delights to call them) : one of the earliest appearances of" prophetic monotheism (see on ii. 10). Notice the bold expression 'sons'. At the foundation of popular Semitic religion (the religion of the group of nations to which the Assyrians and the Syrians, the Israelites and the Arabs equally belonged) lay the materialistic idea that the worshipping nation was the offspring of the patron-divinity. Hosea allows and adopts the expression, but signifies by it a moral kinship rather than a physical one. Compare the remarkable passages in Num. xxi. 29, Mai. ii. 11, and see note on xi. i. 11. Then shall the children of Jzidah and the children of Israel be gathered together] Thus the schism of north and south shall be. healed (comp. Isa. xi. 13, Ezek. xxxvii. 22) — a schism to which by implication Hosea denies the Divine sanction, on the ground (we may suppose) that Jehovah being one, His people must also be one. See on iii. 4, and comp. iii. 3, viii. 4, xiii. 10, 11. In the last passage, however, Jehovah is represented as in a certain sense sanctioning the usurping dynasties of Israel ('in His anger'), and in the idealizing description which follows (chap, xiv.) Judah seems to find no place appoint themselves one head] The 'one head' is doubtless the Davidic king (iii. 5). come zip out of the land] The recruited people, too numerous for *the land to bear them ', shall seek to enlarge their territory (comp. Am. ix. 1 2, Isa. xi. 14, Mic. ii. 12, i?). The 'land' spoken of can only be Palestine, since there is nothing in the context to suggest that either the land of captivity (as Kimchi, following the Targum) or the earth in general is intended. 'Come up' should rather be go up, i.e. march to battle, as Nah. ii. 2, Joel i. 6, and often. for great shall be the day of Jezreel] The result of the warlike enter- prise of Judah and Israel is not expressly mentioned, but the addition w. 1,2.] HOSEA, II. 47 Say ye unto your brethren, Ammi ; And to your sisters, Ruhamah. Plead with your mother, plead : For she is not my wife, neither ajn I her husband : of these words permits no doubt of its success. Hosea means by the phrase, not the day on which Jehu's guilty dynasty shall be cut short ; for the name Jezreel has now been freed from all gloomy associations, and become a title of the regenerate people of Israel. Besides, in phrases like 'the day of Jezreel', the name is always either that of a person, or of a place, or a city personified. Chap. II. 1. The parallel lines here seem misleading. Say ye...'] Now that the storm-cloud "has rolled away, those names of baleful import Lo-ammi and Lo-ruhamah have ceased to be ad- missible, and are altered into the direct opposites. The verse is best understood as the conchision of chap, ii., just as 'Call his name Lo- ammi', &c. ought to form the conclusion of chap. i. The persons addressed are perhaps the disciples of the prophet, who are directed to communicate the joyful news summed up in the names Ammi ('my people') and Ruhamah {'she hath found compassion') to the whole nation. 2 — 23, i. 10, 11, ii. 1. Hosea's first discourse, slightly obscured by the dislocation of some of its verses (see above on i. lo, ir). The prophet sets forth in more intelligible language what he has already suggested rather enigmatically. The finest part of the chapter is from z/. 14 to V. 23, where Hosea shows how Israel will emerge purified from her captivity, and enjoy the love and favour of her Divine Bridegroom. 2 — 7. The prophecy begins with a solemn admonition on the faith- less conduct of Israel towards her Divine Bridegroom. ^ The dramatis personce are the same as in chap, i, ; only, whereas in chap. i. the husband, wife, and children, are both historical persons and significant symbols, in chap. ii. they are obviously pure allegories. Isi-ael beconies the adulterous wife, and Jehovah the aggrieved husband. The in- dividual Israelites are the children. The appeal of Jehovah to the latter implies that they have not altogether given way to their inherited propensities ; they can still be expected, at least in some cases, to co- operate for the extinction of a corrupt worship. Comp. 1 Kings xix. 18 'seven thousand in Israel... which have not bowed unto the Baal'. 2. Plead with your mother, plead] The repetition of the appeal shews its urgency. 'Do not murmur against me', Jehovah seems to say, 'plead your cause against your own mother : Israel is the author ot her own calamities.' for she is not my wife...] A parenthetical explanation of the ex- pression 'your mother'. Adultery has destroyed the relation of the wife to the husband, but not of the mother to the children. Comu. Isa. 1. I. 48 HOSEA, II. [vv. 3, 4. Let her therefore put away her whoredoms out of her sight, And her adulteries from between her breasts ; Lest I strip her naked, and set her as in the day that she was born, And make her as a wilderness, and set her like a dry land, And slay her with thirst. And I will not have mercy upon her children ; her whoredoms out of her sight] Rather, from her face, the index of obstinacy (comp. Jer. iii. 3), as the breasts of shamelessness. 3. Lest I strip her naked...] So far the punishment of the adulteress agrees with that customary among the Germans (Tac. Ger?7i. §§ 18, 19). But the punishment of the Hebrew adulteress is not intended to stop here ; death was the penalty she had to fear — death by strangling, according to the Rabbinical explanation of Lev. xx. 10, Deut. xxii. 22, death by stoning, according to Ezekiel in a passage which alludes to the present (Ezek. xvi. 39, 40, comp. John viii. 5). But the prophet speaks here of neither form of punishment, but of death by thirst in the desert. The meaning of the allegory is, that the people of N. Israel shall be put to open shame, and deprived of the rich temporal blessings vouchsafed to them. At the beginning of Israel's history, we see her, as it were, a homeless wanderer in the wilderness, with nothing either in her nature or in her surroundings to promise a longer existence than was enjoyed by many another of the Semitic pastoral tribes (comp. Ezek. xvi. 5), and the close of her history, says the prophet, shall present an exactly similar picture. Observe in passing how nearly the ideas of 'land' and 'people' cover each other in the mind of Hosea. In fact, in the mythic stage of religion (from which Hosea's country- men had not as yet for the most part emerged), it was the land which was imagined as in direct relation to the deity, the people being only so related in virtue of their dwelling in the land. They were in fact the children of the land (comp. Ezek. xiv. 15 'bereave it,' viz. the land); nationality, land, and religion were three inseparable ideas. Hence, though Hosea begins with the figure of disclothing, he glides insensibly into forms of expression appropriate to a land. 'Lest I make her as the wilderness, and set her as a dry land, and slay her with thirst.' The latter expression could of course be used of a wanderer in the desert, but was also allowable of a desolate region (see Ezek. xix. 13, and comp. Koran xxx. 18). 4. And upon her children...] No bar shfi.ll be opposed, Jehovah declares, to the natural consequence of a corrupt and corrupting re- ligion. Israel, as an independent nation, must at least for a time cease to be. It appears then that the appeal in ver. 4 was uttered as a forlorn hope. All but a few of the Israelites were too far gone to desire to cooperate in a reformation. They were the 'children of vv. 5—7.] ROSEA, II. 49 For they be the children of whoredoms. For their mother hath played the harlot : 5 She that conceived them hath done shamefully : For she said, I will go after my lovers, That give me my bread and my water, My wool and my flax, mine oil and my drink. ^ Therefore behold, I will hedge up thy way with thorns, 6 And make a wall, that she shall not find her paths. And she shall follow after her lovers, but she shall not 7 overtake them; And she shall seek them, but shall not find them: Then shall she say, I will go and return to my first husband ; whoredom', not merely as the children of idolaters, but as idolaters themselves. 5. I will go after my lovers...'] Israel, then, had given up the true Jehovah for 'lovers' (i.e. not, as the Targum explains it, and as the phrase often means, especially in Ezekiel, the neighbouring peoples whose favour was courted by the Israelites, but, as w. 10, 15 suggest, the Baalim). 7nme oil and my drink] Rather, diinTcs (as margin), i.e. wine and various fermented liquors made from fruits such as the date, the mul- berry, the fig, and the dried raisin (see Tristram, Natural Hist. 0/ Bible, p. 412). Observe the influence of the primitive idea that the land (rather than the people) was in mystic relation to Jehovah ; see on w. 21, 22. 6. / will hedge up thy way with thorns] Notice how, in the excite- ment of anger, the person changes from the second to the third. The figure is that of a traveller, who has not indeed lost his way, but finds it shut up by a thorn-hedge planted right across it, and by a wall, which formerly could be scaled through a breach, but is now solidly built up. Job iii. 23, xix. 8 and Lam. iii. 7, 9 are strikingly parallel. The reality signified is of course some dark calamity utterly paralyzing the vital powers. In the second line render a wall for her (lit., 'her wall'). 7. not overtake... not find them] Because the sense of the mystic nearness of the Baalim, formerly enjoyed by their worshippers, will have disappeared together with the prosperity which they were imagined to have granted; prayers and sacrifices will have lost their supposed efficacy. I will go and return] Rather, Let me go and return. A resolution which strikingly resembles that of the Jews in Upper Egypt in the time of Jeremiah, who persisted in worshipping the Queen of Heaven, on the ground that when they had worshipped her in former times ' they had plenty of food, and were well, and saw no evil' (Jer. xliv. 17). Israel's language here reminds us of a later parallel passage (vi. i — 3) ; HOSEA 4 so HOSEA, II. [vv. 8, 9. For then was it better with me than now. For she did not know that I gave her corn, and wine, and oil, And multiplied her silver and gold, Which they prepared for Baal. Therefore will I return, and take away my corn in the time thereof, And my wine in the season thereof, And will recover my wool and my flax given to cover her nakedness. it is not so much the expression of penitence, as of a longing to escape from the sense of misery. then was it better with me than now] For, after all, Israel was better off materially at the opening of her national existence. She had not indeed as yet appropriated the good things of Canaanitish civilization ; but her independence was secured, and she had a bright horizon of hope. 8 — 13. The offended Husband describes the compulsion which he will employ towards his faithless wife. 8. J^or she did not know that /.,.] Rather, and she (the recipient of such favours) hath not taken notice that it was I who gave her the corn, and the new wine, and the fresh oil. Com, new wine, and fresh oil, are the three great material blessings of the land of Canaan (see Deut. vii. 13, xi. 14, xii. 17, &c.). silver and gold\ The fruits of commerce, then, are also the gifts of Jehovah (contrast the language of Isaiah in a different mood, Isa. ii. 7). The riches of N. Israel are testified to by the Black Obelisk of Shal- maneser II., where 'silver and gold, bowls of gold, cups of gold, bottles of gold, vessels of gold' are mentioned in the tribute paid by Yahua habal Khumri (Jehu, son of Omri) to the Assyrian king. which they prepared for Baal] Rather, which they have used in the service of the Baal, (i.e. the pretended Baal or 'lord' whom they worship). This may allude partly to the overlaying of images with silver and gold, as was the practice in Judah in the time of Isaiah (Isa. xxx. 22), but no doubt refers chieiiy to the molten images in the form of a calf (i. e. a small bull), which the first Jeroboam placed on the bdmoth or high places at Bethel and at Dan, and doubtless else- where. It is possible, however, to render 'and who multiplied silver for her, and gold, which (viz. which gold) they have used,' &c. In this case the reference will be exclusively to the golden bulls. This view is favoured by the Hebrew accentuation. 9. And now in order radically to cure the Israelites of this error (viz. that their good things have come from the Baals) the people are for a time to be deprived of these blessings. return and take away] Rather, take back again. ffiy corn... my wine... my wool... my flax] For though Israel may vv. lo— 12.] HOSEA, II. 51 And now will I discover her lewdness in the sight of her i lovers, And none shall deliver her out of mine hand, I will also cause all her mirth to cease, 1 Her feast days^ her new moons, and her sabbaths, and all her solemn feasts. And I will destroy her vines and her fig trees, j speak, as in v. 7, of ^my bread and my water,' these things were really the property of Jehovah, who could withdraw them at any moment, even in the 'time' or season of the corn and the new wine, when the husbandman was counting implicitly on the harvest and the vintage. recover'\ Or, rescue, viz. from the misuse to which these gifts would be put by the idolaters. given to cover her nakedness] Thus reminding Israel that in her natural condition she was utterly helpless and destitute. Comp. Ezek. xvi, 8, which evidently alludes to this passage. 10. in the sight of her lovers] Note here that the prophet seems to admit the real existence of the Baalim. Seems, but only seems ; for in iv. 1-2 he describes the popular oracles as 'stocks,' and in xiv. 3 he describes it as folly to say 'to the work of our hands, Ye are our gods,' Hosea's language here is probably poetically free, just as in Ps. xcvi. 4 a psalmist declares that Jehovah is 'to be feared above all gods' {'elohtm), though he adds in v. 5 that 'all the gods of the nations are but ^elilim 'nothings' or 'not-gods.' The later prophets are more emphatically monotheistic (see Introduction, part v., and comp. on i. 10). 11. her feast days, her new moons, and her sabbaths] (The Hebrew has the singular, ' her feast-day ' &c.) These expressions are remarkable, for Hosea is a prophet of northern Israel. It would appear, then, that the separation of north and south did not involve a discontinuance of the festivals in the north (see ix. 5). Amos had already predicted the ruin of the 'feasts' in N. Israel (Amos viii. 10). In addition to the 'feasts' which are doubtless those mentioned in the earliest body of legislation (Ex. xxiii. 14, &c,, xxxiv. 18, &c.), Hosea specifies the new moon and the sabbath (comp. i Kings iv. 23) as passing away together with the national independence. This was not strictly speaking the case with regard to the sabbath, which became one great bond of union among the Jews in exile. But the old, popular sabbath of unrestrained joy (comp. Hosea's 'all her mirth') did pass away; the sabbath of Is. Iviii. 13 was very different from that which was popularly observed in ancient Israel. and all her solemn feasts] Or, festal assemblies. The term is more comprehensive than 'feast'; the Levitical legislation recognizes seven 'festal assemblies', but only three 'feasts' (comp. Lev. xxxiii.). 12. her vines and her fig-trees] The Hebrew has 'her vfne and her* fig-tree'. It would seem as if here, as in Joel i. 7, Israel personified 4—2 52 HOSEA, II. [v. 13. Where^ she hath said, These are my rewards that my lovers have given me : And I will make them a forest, And the beasts of the field shall eat them. 13 And I will visit upon her the days of Baalim, where/)? she burnt incense to them, were represented with a vine and a fig-tree, like any individual Israelite (i Kings iv. 25). But A. V. gives the right sense. my rewards] The 'hire' or 'reward' of a prostitute is meant (comp. ix. I, and see on v. 5). a foresf] A frequent feature in descriptions of desolation (comp. Isa. v. 6, vii. 2^, xxxii. 13; Mic. iii. 12). 'A forest' however is misleading; the word {ya^ar) often means low, tangled brushwood (e.g. Cant. ii. 3; Isa. xxi. 13; i Sam. xiv. 25, 26). The idea in the prophet's mind is inaccessibility, not stateliness (like that of forest- trees). the beasts of the field] * Field ' = open country. The enemies of Israel are compared to wild beasts in Isa. Ivi. 9 ; Ezek. xxxiv. 25. 13. / will visit upon her the days of Baalini] To 'visit' is to examine or take notice of, whether in a favourable sense or the reverse. ' Baalim ' should rather be tlie Baalini (the various local Baals). Hosea has referred to the holydays of Jehovah {v. ri); now he com- plains of the holydays of the Baalim, which, there is reason to think, are, in name at least, the same holydays as those of the more spiritual worshippers of Jehovah (new moons, sabbaths, and festal assemblies), but differing from these in the total absence of a spiritual element. They are in fact nothing better than sensual merry-makings and displays of finery such as the heathen loved at the turning-points of the agri- cultural year. But what does Hosea mean by 'the Baalim'? Certainly not, as some have supposed, statues of a god distinct from Jehovah called Baal — a view which is opposed by 7k 19, ' I will take away the names (not, the name) of the Baalim out of thy mouth'. The com- parison of another Semitic religious vocabulary will here, as so often, facilitate our exegesis. With the Phoenicians the word Baal, 'lord', was an appellative term for a god, and was used as well for any local as for the national deity. It occurs in the phrase 'Melkart, Baal of Tyre' in the bilingual inscription on two candelabra known as Meli- tensis prima; and if we only had Canaanitish and Israelitish inscriptions we should doubtless find that the Canaanitish and popular Israelitish usage was identical with that of the Phoenicians. What Hosea does mean by 'the Baalim' is the varieties of the one national deity specially worshipped in different Israelitish localities, such as Baal-Hamon, Baal- Hazor, Baal-Shalisha, Baal-Tamar, &c. In spite of the name Baal (see on v. 16) it was Jehovah who was worshipped at the 'high places,' just as in Mohammedan Syria it is Allah who, in name at least, receives the adoration of the felldhtn. But the worship was, from Hosea's point of view, a purely nominal one, just as the worship of Allah by V. 14.] HOSEA, II. 53 And she decked herself with her earrings and her jewels, And she went after her lovers, and forgat me, saith the Lord. Therefore behold, I will allure her, 14 iYiQfelldktn is mixed up with many most un-Mohammedan elements. The Israelites of the north looked upon the Baalim, as the givers of their bread and their water, their oil and their 'drinks'; in short, as in no essential respect different from the heathen Baalim of the Canaanites. This was, no doubt, a backsliding from the spiritual truths which seem to be involved in the revelation of Sinai. But it was a backsliding which can be accounted for ; it is not to be traced, as the older writers on the Old Testament naively traced it, to a peculiar wickedness in the primitive Israelites. A fusion of the religion brought by the Israelites from Sinai with the religion found by them in Canaan, was, humanly speaking, inevitable; partly because from pre- historic times the Hebrews, equally with the Canaanites had used the term Baal, 'lord', as an appellative for a deity, and partly because, like the Cuthsean colonists of the cities of Samaria, they thought it essential to learn 'the manner (rather, religion) of the god of the land' (2 Kings xvii. 26), since the national prosperity seemed to depend on the favour of the territorial deities. burned incetise] The word will also cover the burning of sacrifices upon the altar, as Lev. i. 9, 17, &:c. Comp. Ps. Ixvi. 15 'incense [or, the sweet smoke] of rams.' her ear7'ings and her jewels] Rather, her nose-ring' (as only one ring is mentioned, and there is no evidence that Hebrew ladies had a store of these articles), as Gen. xxiv. 47, and her necklace (as Prov. XXV. 12). Popular religious ideas required such ornaments for holy days. See Ex. iii. 21, 22 (comp. v. 18), and Koran, Sura xx. 61 ' on the day of ornament ' (i.e. at the festival). 14 — 23. And now the notes of threatening are dying away; bright and glorious days are announced for both sections of the nation. There shall be a second Exodus ; no more idolatry ; no more war ; no cloud upon Israel's relation to her God. (Notice in passing the limi- tations of this stage of religious knowledge; the Messianic hope is as yet confined entirely to the people of Israel.) 14. Therefore] i.e. because, without Jehovah's help, Israel will never come to herself, and reform (comp. Isa. xxx. 18). Her punishment has an educational object; the threat has a tinge of promise. I will allure her...] The pronoun is expressed in the Hebrew. / have not forgotten her, though she has forgotten me. 'Allure her' seems out of place in introducing the punishment ; generally the exile is described as an expulsion (comp. Jer. viii. 3). Either we must read with Buhl, 'I will loose hei bonds' {mYaiiekhdh, cf. Jer. xl. 4), or we must suppose a violation of natural order such as occurs now and then in Hebrew, so that the 'alluring' may refer to the cordial address of Jehovah spoken of afterwards. Kimchi explains, ' I will put into her heart to return, while she is yet in exile '. Plow beautifully the promise 54 HOSEA, II. Tvv. 15, 16. And bring her into the wilderness, And speak comfortably unto her. And I will give her her vineyards from thence, And the valley of Achor for a door of hope : And she shall sing there, as in the days of her youth, And as in the day when she came up out of the land of Egypt. And it shall be at that day, saith the Lord, that thou shalt call me Ishi ; And shalt call me no more Baali. anticipates the great prophecy of Israel's restoration, which opens, remarkably enough, with the very phrase used by Hosea, 'Speak ye to the heart of Jerusalem' (Is. xl. 2). [According to another expla- nation of the passage which goes back to St Jerome, the wilderness is not only a place of afifliction, but one of hope. The latter sense seems to be opposed by a passage in Ezekiel (xx. 33 — 38) which is evidently a reminiscence of our passage, and which refers to the wilderness exclusively as a place of punishment. Keil, on the other hand, thinks that Israel is to be led into the wilderness, not for punishment, but for deliverance from bondage. This certainly explains the 'I will alhire her,' but is not consistent with the next verse, in which allusion is made to the punishment undergone in the wilderness. Comp. on xiii. 10.] into the wilderness] By 'wilderness' Hosea means not merely the desert which lay between Canaan and the land of captivity, but the captivity or exile itself. Sojourn in a heathen land appeared to pious Israelites like a wandering in the desert (comp. Isa. xli. 17). speak comfortably unto her\ Lit., 'speak unto her heart'. 15. / will give her her vineyardsfrom thence] So soon as she has left the wilderness ('from thence'), Jehovah will restore to her the vine- yards which he had taken away [v. 12). the valley of Achor for a door of hope] Whereas the first Israelites had to call their first encampment after crossing the Jordan the valley of Achor or 'Troubling' (Josh. vii. 26), their descendants shall find the same spot a starting point for a career of success. Another prophet praises the same valley for its fertility (Is. Ixv. 10). she shall sing there] Or, 'thereupon'. Alluding to the songs of Moses and Miriam in Ex. xv. i (see v. 21, where, as St Jerome with Jewish writers points out, the same verb is used of Miriam's 'answer- ing' the song of Moses). But antiphonal singing is not suitable here, and much less in vv. 23 — 25 (where A. V. arbitrarily alters the render- ing of the verb). Render, she shall respond there. Theod. iiroKpi- d-^fferat, Aq. viraKoijaeL (scil. ry Kwptv). But Hebrew grammar is more consulted by adopting Buhl's emendation, 'she shall go up {'al^ihdh) thither' (i.e. homewards), as in 'the days of her youth' (comp. Jer. ii. 2), when she came out of Egypt. 16. thou shalt call me Ishi; and shalt call me no more Baali] The vv. 17, 18.] HOSEA, II. 55 For I will take away the names of Baalim out of her 17 mouth, And they shall no more be remembered by their name. And in that day will I make a covenant for them with ,3 the beasts of the field, And with the fowls of heaven, and with the creeping things of the ground : And I will break the bow and the sword and the battle out of the earth, terms Ishi, *my husband', and Baali, *my lord', are "properly speaking synonymous, so that, but for the association of Baal with a false rehgion, Jeho/ah as the Bridegroom of Israel might quite innocently be ad- dressed as Baali. The occurrence of Baal in the proper names of families of patriots like Saul, David, y^nathan, y^ash (the father of Jerubbaal), and indeed merely such a name as Beahah, 'Jehovah is Baal' (i Chron. xii. 5), shew that Jehovah was actually so addressed in the earlier period of Israelitish history. The danger however to the reli- gious purity of Israel was, as we have seen {on v. 13), very great, and Hosea naturally refused to recognize in Jehovah-Baal the spiritual deity to whom his own allegiance was sworn. Our prophet was therefore the continuator of the work of Elijah. The Phoenicized Baal-cultus of Ahab was doubtless more corrupt than that which Hosea had to deal with, but the spiritual perceptions of Hosea were sharpened by a fuller training than that which the older prophet had enjoyed. It is remark- able, as an instance of the freedom with which a later prophet could allowably treat an earlier one (a freedom which reminds us of the treat- ment of the Law of Moses by our Lord), that Jeremiah actually uses the verb bd''al, 'to be a lord or husband', of Jehovah (Jer. xxxi._>a^ ^JJ^ 17. I will take away the names of the Baalim ] Tenacious as the popular memory is, the unholy names shall be expunged from it. 'Remem- bered' should be mentioned; comp. Josh, xxiii. 7; Ps. xvi. 4, and especially the reminiscence of our passage in Zech. xiii. 2 (where ' the idols' has taken the place of 'the BaaUm'). 'Out of her mouth', a change of person for the sake of variety. 18. / will make a covenant... ^ The language reminds us of Zech. xi. 10, where Jehovah 'breaks his covenant which he has made with all the peoples', restraining them from injuring the Israelites, and still more of Ezek. xxxiv. 25 (evidently based on this passage). The 'covenant' (Heb. frith) is in fact an ordinance imposed by Jehovah; it is not correct to say that it is a 'treaty' between Israel and the wild beasts. Probably 'ordinance' is the original meaning, which was afterwards widened into 'covenant'. Comp. vi. 7; Deut. xxxiii. 9; 2 Kings xi. 4; Jer. xi. 6; Job xxxi. i ; Ps. cv. 10. and I will break... out of the earth] Comp. Ps. xlvi. 9. But the context requires the rendering, out of the land. All the ' equipment of war' (see on i. 7) of Israel's enemies shall be destroyed (comp. Ps. Ixxvi. 3). 56 HOSEA, II. [w. 19—21 And will make them to lie down safely. And I will betroth thee unto me for ever ; Yea, I will betroth thee unto me in righteousness, and in judgment, And in lovingkindness, and in mercies. I will even betroth thee unto me in faithfulness : And thou shalt know the Lord. And it shall come to pass in that day, I will hear, saith the Lord, I will hear the heavens, i 19. I will betroth thee unto me\ A second marriage-ceremony among the Israelites had to be preceded by a second betrothal. Jehovah promises here that this betrothal shall be *for ever', i.e., that no differ- ences shall destroy the mutual harmony between Jehovah and His people, (comp. Jer. xxxi. 35 — 37; Is. liv. 8 — 10). Righteousness and justice, &c. shall be as it were the bond which unites the pair. The triple mention of the betrothal indicates the solemnity of the act. 20. and thoit shalt know the Lord] The 'knowledge' of Jehovah is repeatedly insisted upon by Hosea (see iv. i, v. 4, vi. 3, 6); not however a merely intellectual one, but that which rests upon spiritual experience, and results in moral practice. Such experience was lacking in Hosea's countrymen; 'the spirit of whoredom is in the midst of them, and they have not known Jehovah' (v. 4). It was natural to describe as an element of the realized ideal that Jehovah's people should at last 'know' him. How much weaker is the alternative reading, 'know that I am the Lord', though supported by the precious Babylonian codex, as well as by the Vulgate ! 21. 22. / will hear...] Rather, I will respond (and similarly throughout). It is a beautiful picture of the harmony between the physical and the spiritual spheres, Jezreel (i.e. Israel, see next verse) asks its plants to germinate ; they call upon the earth for its juices ; the earth beseeches heaven for rain ; heaven supplicates for the divine word which opens its stores; and Jehovah responds in faithful love. The idea is that of Am. ix. 13; Joel iii. 18, but it is expressed in an unusual manner. Striking parallels have been quoted from Euripides and iEschylus (fragments beginning respectively 'Epa fxkv 6/x^pov ydi' , orav ^t]pbv iribov and 'E/j^ ixkv ayvos ovpavos Tpwcrai x^^^"^) > but we need not have recourse for illustrations to classical literature. The prophets and psalmists have no scruple in adopting and spiritual- izing popular (i.e. heathenish) Semitic modes of thought. One of the most prevalent of these modes of thought is referred to by Hosea both in this chapter and in i. 2. The heathen Semitic deities were the pro- ductive powers of nature, and were grouped in couples of male and female principles, known in the middle zone of Semitic countries as Baal and Baalath ( = Baaltis), Baal and Asherah (see note in Introd., part II.), and Ashtar (or Ashtor) and Ashtoreth (or Astarte). It was vv. 22, 23.] HOSEA, II. 57 And they shall hear the earth ; And the earth shall hear the corn, and the wine, and the 22 oil ; And they shall hear Jezreel. And I will sow her unto me in the earth ; 23 And I will have mercy upon her that had not obtained mercy; believed that the fruitful earth was the issue of this union; or, by a variation of the same myth, that the earth itself was the female principle. Hence the idea that the land (see i. 2. and comp. the expressions in vv. 5, 9), and, by a later inference, the people of Israel, were the offspring or the spouse of their God was a truism to the hearers of the prophet; but that divine sonship was not physical but moral (see below, on xi. i), and that the nation's Bridegroom could even divorce his spouse — these were strange and offensive ideas. The latter indeed was so inconceivable that Hosea was directed to explain it by allegorizing a distressing episode in his own history. We must not omit to notice in conclusion that the adaptation of mythic and therefore strictly speaking heathenish forms of speech is not confined to the records of revealed religion. The Arabic vocabulary of Mohammedan times contains a group of parallel expressions which may pertinently be referred to here. Thus, for instance ^a/i and ^athtliari or ^atharl are used of land which is watered from heaven (i.e., by rain and not by springs), and these, being derivatives of the Arabic forms of the divine names Baal and Ashtar, imply the very same myth which has been mentioned above. So too both in Talmudic Hebrew and in Arabic 'field, or land of Baal' means land which has no need of irriga- tion, and baH in Arabic, according to Lane, any seed-produce only watered by the rain. (See Prof. Robertson Smith, The Prophets of Israel, pp. 172, 409, Cheyne, The Prophecies of Isaiah, Vol. II. p. 295 = 282 ed. 2). These significant phrases throw a fresh light, not only (as Prof. Smith has shown) on Hosea, but also on the language of Isa. xlv. 8, 'Shower, ye heavens from above. ..let the earth open, and let them (viz. heaven and earth) bear the fruit of salvation'. yezreel\ In i. 4 Jezreel was only mentioned for its historical associa- tions, without any reference to the meaning of its name. Here however it evidently has a symbolic value, viz. 'God sows (it)'. 23. And I will sozu her unto me in the earthy Rather, In the land. Jehovah declares that Jezreel shall verify her name {Jier name, for Jezreel means restored Israel) by being sown anew in the promised land. (Similarly Jeremiah, see xxxi. 27, 28). Thus one of the symbolic names of chap. i. is not indeed changed, but transformed by interpreta- tion. The other names are absolutely reversed. 'Unto me', because while they were outside 'Jehovah's land', the relations of Jehovah to Israel seemed interrupted. I will have mercy upon ] Rather, I wlU compassionate Uncom- passionated [Lo-ruhamah], and to Not-my-people [Lo-ammi] I wiU 58 HOSEA, III. [vv. i, 2. And I will say to them 7vhich were not my people, Thou art my people; And they shall say, Thou art my God. 3 Then said the Lord unto me, Go yet, love a woman beloved of her friend, yet an adulteress, according to the love of the Lord toward the children of Israel, who look to 2 other gods, and love flagons of wine. So I bought her to say, Thou art My-people [Ammi] ; and lie (viz. Not-my-people) shall say, My God! St Paul's quotation in Rom. ix. 25 (in a form which differs both from the Hebrew and from the Septuagint) has been already referred to in illustration of a critical hypothesis (see on i. 10, 11). A post-exile prophecy also contains an unmistakable allusion to this pas- sage (Zech. xiii. 9, end). Applications like these shew how great was the posthumous influence of the prophets. Ch. III. The second part of the parable of Hosea's family- life. 1. Go yet, love] Rather, Once more go love, indicating that the narrative dropped at i. 9 is now resumed. (Notice also in this connexion the change of the third person into the first in chap, iii.) It is the same woman who is meant ; otherwise a different form of expression would have been used (like that in i. 2), besides which the allegory would have been spoiled had there been two women concerned. Gomer is throughout the symbol of faithless but not forsaken Israel. The narrative is told in a condensed allusive style, which makes some demand on the imagination of the reader. If Gomer is to be taken back, it is clear that she must have left her husband, and the price at which {v. 2) she has to be brought back shews that she had fallen into depths of misery. beloved of her friend, yet an adulteress] Rather, beloved of a para- mour, and an adulteress. As if Jehovah had said. Love her just as she is; the definition is added for the reader's sake, to show how great an act was demanded of Hosea, like 'Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest' (Gen. xxii. 2). For the rendering 'paramour', comp. Jer. iii. 20; Lam. i. 2. who look...] Rather, whereas they (on their side) turn. flagons of wine] Rather, cakes of grapes. Cakes of dried grapes were common articles of food, mentioned with cakes of figs, bread, and wine, and parched corn (i Sam. xxv. 18). The cakes here mentioned, however, must have been of a superior kind ; they bear a different name, and appear from Isa. xvi. 7 (corrected translation) to have been considered as luxuries. They formed part of David's royal bounty on the removal of the ark to Jerusalem (2 Sam. vi. 19), or more correctly of the sacrificial feast implied by the context. This latter point is interesting as it suggests that Baal-worship was closely related to the festivities of the vintage (Prof. Robertson Smith, The Old Testament in the Jewish Church, p. 434). Hosea too seems to refer to these cakes in connexion with the sacrificial feasts, not without a touch of sarcasm. vv;3, 4-] HOSEA, III. 59 me for fifteen pieces of silver, and for a homer of barley, and a half homer of barley : and I said unto her, Thou shalt 3 abide for me many days ; thou shalt not play the harlot, and thou shalt not be for another man : so will I also be for thee. For the children of Israel shall abide many days 4 / bought her to me] Why Hosea had to buy his wife back from her paramour, does not appear; had he lost his rights over her by her flight and adultery? Perhaps it was simply to avoid an altercation with the adulterer, or we may imagine such a scene as is depicted by Dean Plumptre in his poem ' Gomer' {Lazarus, p. 87). The view of Pococke and Pusey that Hosea means to explain how he undertook to allow his wife just sufficient for a decent maintenance till she should be reinstated in her full position, accounts no doubt for grain being given as well as money, but does violence to the letter of the text, as there is no suffi- cient proof of the rendering 'I provided her with food'. for fifteen pieces of silver, and for a homer of barley, and a half- homer of barley] In 2 Kings vii. 18 two seahs of barley are rated at a shekel. This however was immediately after the siege of Samaria had been raised ; the normal rate would probably have been lower, say three seahs at a shekel, so that a homer (= 30 seahs) would have cost ten shekels and a homer and a half fifteen. The total price paid by Hosea would therefore be thirty shekels (about £^. i^s.) the average value of a slave (see Ex. xxi. 32). Why it was paid partly in money, partly in kind, cannot be determined. Hosea only tells us enough to make the allegory intelligible. Gomer in her misery is a type of Israel in her unhappy alienation from her God. a half homer] Strictly, a lethech. The Sept. has *a bottle of wine' [ve^eK o'ivov). Probably the translator was unacquainted with the 'lethech', which was apparently nof^a primitive measure. Its precise relation to the homer is uncertain; A.V. however is borne out ^ ^ by the Jewish tradition. There is nothing analogous to it in the Egyptian dry measure, which in other details agrees exactly with the Hebrew (Revillout, Revue egyptologique II. 190). 3. Thoti shalt abide for me many days] Rather, shalt sit still (as Isa. XXX. 7, Jer. viii. 14 in A. V.). Gomer is to lead a quiet secluded life ; her Ucentious course is cut short, and her conjugal intercourse may not yet be resumed. This is to last for 'many days,' i.e. as long as is necessary to assure Hosea of Gomer's moral amendment. so {will) I also {be) for thee] i. e. Hosea plights his troth that he will form no connexion with any other woman but Gomer. ' Ego vicissim tibi fidem meam obligo', Calvin. Others, with Aben Ezra and Kimchi, understand, instead of 'will be', 'will not go in', taking the clause as a contrast to that which precedes ('but I will not go in unto thee'). Ewald renders, 'and yet I am kind unto thee'. It is possible that some short word (such as 'so' or 'not') has dropped out of the text. 4. For...] The explanation of this latter part of the prophet's acted allegory. As he has restrained his erring wife from even the 6o HOSEA, III. [v. 4. without a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an image, and without an ephod, and without legitimate gratification of her natural instincts, so Jehovah will chastise idolatrous Israel by depriving her of her civil and religious institutions. By 'the children of Israel' Hosea means the Ten Tribes, as elsewhere in these chapters, shall abide] Rather, shall sit still (as v. 3). jnany days] The prophet has received no revelation as to the dura- tion of the captivity of the Ten Tribes. without a king and withozit a prince] The abolition of 'king and princes' corresponds to the denial of intercourse with her lovers to Gomer. The term 'prince' is used partly of the magnates of the state in general, partly of the 'elders' or heads of families, who played such an important part in the Israelitish community (comp. Ex. iii. 16; 2 Sam. xix. 11; i Kings viii. i, xx. 7; Jer. xxvi. 17). A king and princes are mentioned together again in vii. 3, xiii. 10 (and probably in viii. 10). without a sacrifice and without an image] The withholding of this and the next pair of objects corresponds to the cessation of conjugal intercourse between Hosea and Gomer. Consequently as Hosea represents Jehovah, the 'image' (or rather consecrated pillar, Heb. ma^febcih) spoken of must stand in some relation to Jehovah, must in fact be of one of those pillars sacred to Jehovah, which, as many think, lasted on in Judah (much more therefore in Israel) at any rate till the time of Hezekiah : see note on x. i. The 'pillars' were the distinguishing marks of holy places, and are therefore very naturally combined by Hosea with sacrifices or altars (Sept., followed by Pesh. and Vulg. reads 'altar' here instead of 'sacrifice'). Comp. Dean Plumptre: No pomp of kings, no priests in gorgeous robes, No victims bleeding on the altar-fires. No golden ephod set with sparkling gems. No pillar speaking of the gate of heaven. No Teraphim with strange mysterious gleam Shall give their signs oracular. {Lazarus^ p. 90.) It follows from this passage of Hosea that the worship of Jehovah in northern Israel presented features altogether alien to the orthodox worship of Jehovah according to the Law, and that Hosea raises no protest against it. He refers to its suspension as a privation corre- sponding to and equally felt with that of king and princes. We must remember however that the kings of N. Israel were regarded by Hosea as usurpers. without an ephod] The high priest's ephod is described in Ex. xxviii. 6 — 14. It was a sleeveless coat of splendid and costly material, and with two ouches of onyx on the shoulders, bound by a rich girdle. Over it was worn the so-called choshen, a jewelled breastplate, with the Urim and Thummim. But what connexion had this coat with the sacred 'pillar' and the teraphim? It is as difficult to answer as the question with regard to Gideon's ephod in Judg. viii. 24 — 27. The V. 5.] HOSEA, III. 6i teraphim : afterward shall the children of Israel return, and s seek the Lord their God, and David their king ; and shall fear the Lord and his goodness in the latter days. root-meaning of ephod is simply to overlay, and the feminine form of the word ephod {aphicdddh) is used in Isa. xxx. it of the gold plating of images. The easiest supposition is that both in Judg. i.e. and here * ephod' means, not an article of sacerdotal dress but an image of Jehovah overlaid with gold or silver (so in Judg. xvii., xviii.; iSam. xxi. lo, xxiii. 6, 9, xxx. 7, 8, but not i Sam. ii. 18, xxii. 18). It is no doubt strange to find this idolatry of Jehovah still prevalent among the larger section of the Israelites. But the fact is in harmony with all that Hosea tells us of the religious state of his country elsewhere. and without teraphi??i] Ephod and teraphim were evidently used for similar purposes (see Judg. xvii., xviii.). The latter word only occurs in the plural form ; the teraphim seem to have been household gods (see Gen. xxxi. 19, 34; i Sam. xix. 13, 16), a relic of primitive Semitic ancestor-worship (if we may connect with Assyrian tarpu, a word from the same root as Heb. Rephaim 'the shades' — see margin of R. V. of Isa. xiv. 9). Certainly no other plausible derivation has been found (see Sayce, Hibbert Lectures, pp. 63, 451). Strange that such survivals should occur. Compare, on the general question of fetishism in the Old Testament, Max Miiller, Hibbert Lectures, p. 60). If so, we may connect them with the 'creeping things and beasts and idols (gilliilim) of the house of Israel ' which Ezekiel saw ' pour- trayed upon the wall' in the 'chambers of imagery' (Ezek. viii. 10 — 12). Josiah indeed had attempted to put away 'the teraphim and the gillidini'' (2 Kings xxiii. 24), but in vain; the Jews took them with them into exile. Ezekiel represents the king of Babylon as seeking an oracle from his teraphim (Ezek. xxi. 21); at any rate, this was the principal use of the teraphim to the Israelites — to divine by (Zech. x. 2). The meaning of 'ephod and teraphim' was already forgotten in the time of the Septuagint translator of Hosea, who renders ovZk lepareias ovd^ drjXaiv (he identifies the teraphim with the Thummim, comp. Sept. Deut. xxxiii. 8 ; elsewhere S-fjXa or StjXwo-is =^the Urim). 5. return] i.e. from their evil courses of disobedience to their God and to the legitimate royal house. David their king\ There is a great body of authority for regarding this as an expression for the Messiah. So the Targum took it, so Aben Ezra, and other Jewish writers cited by Pococke. The inter- pretation rests on the undoubted fact that in Jer. xxx. 9 ; Ezek. xxxiv. 23, 24, xxxvii. 24, 25 'David' means the ideal king of the future who should prove as it were a second David. In all these passages however there is something in the context to determine the reference to a person, and all these passages belong to a later period in the development of the Messianic revelation. The analogy of Am. ix. 11 suggests that what is in Hosea's mind is, not the person of the king, but the dynasty. In short, ' David' = the representative of David. Precisely so 62 HOSEA, IV. [v. I. 4 Hear the word of the Lord, ye children of Israel : For the Lord hath a controversy with the inhabitants of the land, Because there is no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land. Rehoboam is still 'David' in i Kings xii. i6, and the high priest * Aaron' in Ps. cxxxiii. i. Hosea does not sanction the usurping dynasties (see on i. ii). and shall fear the Lord and his goodness"] Rather, and shall come eagerly to Jehovah and to his goodness (or, 'to His good things'). ' Come eagerly to ' is literally, ' tremble to ', but the idea is not that they will tremble at their own unworthiness, but rather ' trement prae gaudio' (as the same verb means in Isa. Ix. 8). Comp. the similar expression in xi. lo, where however the idea of speech is included. The parallel passage in Jer. xxxi. lo proves that the revived love of the Israelites for Jehovah will have 'cast out fear'. in the latter days'] Rather, in the days to come (lit., *in the sequel of the days') ; see on Mic. iv. i. Hosea does not mean to say that this will be the last aiijov in the course of history ; but only that after Israel's captivity, nothing will arise to break the harmony between Jehovah and his people. Ch. IV. Israel's gross moral corruption, abetted and INCREASED BY HIS RELIGIOUS GUIDES. 1 — 3. The people are summoned to hear whereof Jehovah accuses them, viz. the universal prevalence of the most crying sins. The pro- phet assures them that this is the true cause of the physical calamity which is becoming more and more general in its range. 1. ye children of Israel] The northern kingdom only is addressed (see z*. 15, where the prophet turns aside to Judah). the Lord hath a controversy] Jehovah is both plaintiff and judge ; comp. xii. 2 ; Isa. i. no truth, nor mercy] Or, 'no truthfulness and no kindness.' The Hebrew khesedh includes in its wide range of meaning ^ (i) the love of God to man, as Ps. v. 7, (2) the love of man to God, as vi. 4, and (3) brotherly love, or the love of a man to his neighbour, as often. Here the context favours the last of these applications. St Jerome well describes the connexion between the two qualities, — 'nee Veritas absque misericordia sustineri potest, et misericordia absque veritate facit negligentes, unde alterum miscendum est alteri'. In short, truth without love leads to hardness, love without truth to weakness. nor knowledge of God] This might well have been mentioned first. Moral practice is low, because the heart has no experience of God's personal dealings with it (see on ii. 20). 1 On the Hebrew words for love, comp. Carl Abel, Ueber den Begriff der Liehe in einigen alien utid neuen Sprachen, Berlin, 1872, pp. 63. vv. 2—4.] HOSE A, IV. 63 By swearing, and lying, and killing, and stealing, and 2 committing adultery, they break out, And blood toucheth blood. Therefore shall the land mourn, 3 And every one that dwelleth therein shall languish. With the beasts of the field, and with the fowls of heaven ; Yea, the fishes of the sea also shall be taken away. Yet let no man strive, nor reprove another : 4 For thy people are as they that strive with the priest. 2. Bj/ swearing...] Rather, (There is nothing: but) swearing and lying, &c. The ' swearing' meant is of course false swearing (x. 4). dreak out] Viz. into acts of violence ; or, ' break into (houses) ', as Job xxiv. 16. blood toucheth blood ] The Hebrew has ' bloods ', i.e. bloodshed. The sense is, one deed of blood follows close upon another. 3. shall the land mourn] Or, 'doth...continually mourn', for the pro- phet speaks amidst the anarchical and revolutionary scenes which followed upon the death of Jeroboam II. A severe drought is repre- sented as the punishment of Israel's misdoings. Nature, throughout the prophetic literature, sympathizes with man's sins and sorrows. Comp. Isa. xxiv. 3 — 6, Am. viii. 8 ; Jer. xii. 4; Joel i. 18 (where render at end ' suffer punishment'). with the beasts...] Better, both, &c. (lit. * in', i.e. whether consisting of... or of...). 4 — 6. It is not you, the laity, bad as you are, who are most to blame ; do not waste your time in mutual recrimination. The real blame lies with the priests. Jehovah has a solemn word for thee, O priest ; thy whole clan are virtually in rebellion against me. For thy penalty, thou shalt suffer one blow after another, (a 'fall' means a calamity), as it were by day and by night ; and thine accomplice, the prophet, shall partake in thy punishment. Yea, thy whole stock, priests as well as people, Jehovah will destroy. And why ? Because thou, O priest, whose duty it v/as to teach the life-giving knowledge of God, hast absolutely rejected it thyself. Henceforth thou art no priest of mine. 4. Yet let no man strive... as they that strive with the priest] The view of the meaning of this verse suggested by A.V. may be expressed in the words of Henderson. * All reproof on the part of their friends or neighbours generally would prove fruitless, seeing they had reached a degree of hardihood, which was only equalled by the contumacy of those who refused to obey the priest, when he gave judgment in the name of the Lord, Deut. xvii. 12.' This assumes that the counsel not to strive comes from Jehovah. We might however follow Ewald, who under- stands the opening words of v. 4 to mean that the people * will not permit any one, even a prophet, to contend with them, although they themselves do not scruple in the least to quarrel with every one, even 64 HOSEA, IV. [vv. 5, 6. Therefore shalt thou fall i7i the day, And the prophet also shall fall with thee m the night, And I will destroy thy mother. My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge, Because thou hast rejected knowledge, with the priest who would admonish them, in spite of the traditional reverence for his office, Deut. xvii. 8 — 18; Eccl. iv. 17, 18.' The com- parison at the end of the verse, when explained thus, is no doubt obscurely expressed, but not more so than that in v. 10, ' the princes of Judah are become like those that remove the bound.' Still there are objections, viz. (i) that in v. 6 the second person undoubtedly refers to the priesthood, and why should it be taken differently in z/. 5 ? and (2) that in v. 6 the priests are so vehemently denounced, that we can hardly suppose that contending with them would be referred to as a sin inz/. 5. Various conjectures have been proposed for emending the passage. The most plausible is that of Prof. Robertson Smith ( The Prophets of Israel^ p. 406), who for kim'Tibhe 'as they that strive with', xG?ids mdric bht ' have rebelled against me.' At any rate, we must agree with him and with Mr Heilprin, that the concluding word is a vocative — ' O priest.' The view of the meaning of vv. 4 — 6 given in the note before this is based upon this conjecture. ' Priest' here = priestly caste, as 'a prophet' in Deut. xviii, 18 = an order of prophets. 5. the prophet also] Hosea of course refers to the lower class of prophets, to whom prophecy was simply a means of livelihood (comp. Mic. iii. II and Amaziah's words in Am. vii. 12), and who, like the priests, often came visibly drunk to their most solemn functions (Isa. xxviii. 7). The spiritually-minded prophets of this period do not inveigh against their rivals as false prophets (this term came from the Sept. version of Jeremiah), but as those who prostitute a sacred calling to sel fish purposes. Very similar charges are brought against the priests, who are not on that account called false priests, though from the highest point of view they were such. thy mother] i.e. the stock from which thou springest, i.e. either the entire Israelitish race (comp. ii. 2), or some partly independent portion of that race, not indeed here a city (as 2 Sam. xx. 19; comp. Ps. cxlix. 2), but the caste or clan of the priests (so Prof Robertson Smith). The expression ' I will also forget thy children ' (see below) favours the latter view. 6. My people are destroyed] The prophet cannot escape, because the people is on the brink of ruin through the prophet's fault. It is the perfect of prophetic certitude, ' my people is already as good as de- stroyed.' for lack of knowledge] More precisely, by reason of (their) lack of knowledge. The 'knowledge of God' is meant (see on v. i). thou hast rejected knowledge] Thou is emphatically expressed in the Hebrew. 'Knowledge', viz. of God's revealed will, was theoretically a deposit in the priestly order (Deut. xxxiii. 10 j Ezek. xliv. 23; Mai. ii. 7). V. 7.] HOSEA, IV. 65 I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me : Seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children. As they were increased, so they sinned against me : Therefore will I change their glory into shame. There is no reason to think that the 'priest-people' of Israel is addressed ; there was no priest-people till after the return from exile. forgotten... forget] To 'forget' what has been committed to one's charge is the same as to ignore it. The penalty of the priests is not really distinct from that of the people (see v. 9); the priestly office could in no full sense be maintained in captivity. the law of thy God] 'Thy God', because the priest was specially ' brought near' to Jehovah. ' The law ', Heb. tordh, will cover oral as well as written instructions (comp. Deut. xvii. 11), but a later passage (viii. 12) shows that a written legislation existed in Hosea's time. The contents of this may be presumed from Hosea's language to have been, at any rate to a large extent, concerned with applications of religious morality. thy children] i. e. the members of the priestly caste ; ' thy brethren ' would be more consistent with the figure (comp. ' thy mother ', v. 5). 7 — 10. Here the priests are referred to in the third person ; they have been degraded from a great position; how sore must be the punishment ! 7, As they were increased. . . ] Rather, The more they increased, the more, &c. No doubt the priestly caste shared in the general prosperity under Jeroboam II., but the official conscience, torpid to begin with, was only the more deadened. A flagrant example of the sinning of the priests is given in the next verse. will I change their glory iftto shajne] An ancient various reading (one of the so-called Tikkune Soferim, on which see the Introductions to the Old Testament) is, ' they have exchanged my glory for shame ', i.e. the glory of Jehovah for the shameful worship of Baal. 'To ex- change (gods)' or ' to take another in exchange ' is a recognized phrase for a lapse into idolatry, and we know that the Jewish scribes sometimes ventured to modify expressions in the Scriptures which they thought too bold or liable to misunderstanding (see Geiger's Urschrift). If we do not go so far as to accept the whole of this various reading, it would seem that we must at least accept the correction of the ist pers. sing, into the 3rd plur. in the verb, rendering they have exchanged their glory for infamy; comp. Jer. ii. 11 'my people have exchanged their glory for that which doth not profit' (i.e. idols), Ps. cvi. 20 'they ex- changed their glory (v. 1. his glory) for the form of an ox.' Still the received reading, already adopted in the versions, gives a good sense, and considered by itself is not less justifiable than the proposed cor- rection. According to it, 'their glory' means, not Jehovah, but the splendour of their position as priests. These verses are important as showing how influential that position was ; we could not have inferred this from the scanty references in the historical books. HOSEA e 66 HOSEA, IV. [vv. 8— ii. They eat up the sin of my people, And they set their heart on their iniquity. And there shall be, like people, like priest : And I will punish them for their ways, And reward them their doings. For they shall eat, and not have enough : They shall commit whoredom, and shall not increase : Because they have left off to take heed to the Lord. Whoredom and wine and new wine take away the heart. 8. T/iey eat tip the sin of my people'] The subject of the verb is evidently the priests (see v. 9), and the phrase can therefore only mean, they eat the sin-oflfering of my people (i.e. the portion assigned to the priests, comp. Lev. x. 17). Here we come into collision with a theory of the radical school of criticism that the Levitical legislation (including the appointment of 'sin-offerings' and 'guilt-offerings') originated after the Babylonian captivity. There are however two earlier references to the sin-offering, viz. here and in Ps. xl. 6, and one to the guilt- offering in Prov. xiv. 9, not to insist on the disputable allusions in Isa. i. 11 ; IMic. vi. 7 ; 2 Kings xii. 16 (17). And if the dates of one or another of these passages be challenged, yet the supposed novelties are not referred to at all frequently in undoubtedly post-Captivity writings. Sin-offerings are mentioned twice (Neh. x. 34 ; 2 Mace. xii. 43) ; guilt-offerings only once (if we accept a very probable emendation of Ezra x. 19, pointing ashdmim). Next, granting a reference to the sin-offering, does the prophet mean to condemn the priests for eating of it ? Certainly not ; whatever were the traditional rules respecting the sin-offering, the priests would naturally have a just claim to their portion of the victim. The next clause explains the charge brought against them — it is that (like the sons of Eli, i Sam. ii. 13 — 17) they greedily devoured what the people brought to atone for their sins ; so that in eating the ' sin-offering ', they also fed upon the ' sin ' (the same word, khattath, covers both) of Jehovah's people. Instead of trying to stem the tide of iniquity, they long for its onward march, with a view to unholy gains. set their heart] Literally, 'lift up their soul' (or, 'each one his soul'), i.e. 'direct their desires', as Ps. xxiv. 4, xxv. i. 9. like people, like priest] i.e. the priest shall fare no better than the people. His official 'nearness' to Jehovah shall be no safeguard to him. I will punish them...'\ Rather, punish him, viz. the priest representing the order. 10. they shall eat...] Greed is punished retributively by insufficiency of food (Mic. vi. 14 ; Lev. xxvi. ■26) ; whoredom by childlessness. 11 — 14. Thus the priests have led the way, and the people follow. They have lost the spiritual faculty ; a wild impulse to the most sensual idolatry has carried them away. 11. Whoredom, &c.] 'The heart', not 'their heart' (as the Targum vv. 12, 13.] HOSEA, IV. 67 My people ask counsel at their stocks, 12 And their staff declareth unto them : For the spirit of whoredoms hath caused them to err, And they have gone a whoring from under their God. They sacrifice upon the tops of the mountains, 13 And burn incense upon the hills, and Peshito). It is a moral adage, showing that Hosea was not more inclined than Isaiah to abandon simple moral teaching to the class of 'wise men', who ' sat in the gate ' and conveyed practical lessons in the form of proverbs. It is literal whoredom that is meant, as, even apart from vv. 13, 14, the juxtaposition with 'wine and new wine' shows. The impure rites of nature-worship had destroyed the reverence for the marriage-bond. Heart here means 'the spiritual understanding', 'a heart to know Me' (Jer. xxiv. 7); 'sons of Belial' cannot 'know Je- hovah' (2 Sam. ii. 12). For the drunkenness of Samaria comp. Is. xxviii. 1. 12. My people ask counsel at their stocks'\ Lit., ' My people — he asketh counsel at his wood.' Jehovah alone can give oracular 'counsel' ; not the teraphim, nor yet the bull-images of Jehovah. The latter did, indeed, seem to the Israelites to bring Jehovah near to their conscious- ness, but it was not the true Jehovah, who could not be represented by images (viii. 6) and hated the rites of the Israelitish worship (ix. 15); Hosea therefore calls them 'wood'; comp. Hab. ii. 19; Jer. ii. 27, x. 8. There is a touch of melancholy in ' my people ' ; comp. Isa. iii. 12. their staff declareth unto the?n] ' Declareth ', with reference to secret things, as Isa. xliii. 9, xliv. 7. The ' staff' is probably the diviner's wand; so in Ezek. xxi. 21 the king of Babylon combines consultation of the teraphim with divination by arrows, which is merely another form of rhabdomanteia (Sept. substitutes 'wands', pa^dov, for 'arrows'). Wands were one of the recognized instruments of soothsaying, in both East and West; see Pococke, Specimen HistoHae Arabiim, p. 327; Azraki, The Chronicles of the city of Alecca, Arabic and German by Wlistenfeld, I. 73 ; Herodotus iv. 67 ; Tacitus, Germ. 10. Pococke however thinks 'staff' is synonymous with 'stocks', and that a staff is meant which had an idol carved at the top. the spirit of whoredoms'] i.e. an impulse prompting them to whoredom (in the literal sense, to avoid tautology) ; comp. 'spirit of perverseness ' (Isa. xix. 14), 'spirit of uncleanness ' (Zech. xiii. 2), 'spirit of jealousy ' (Num. V. 14). 13. upon the tops of the mountains'] * Every high hill and every green tree ' are repeatedly mentioned together as the scenes of the popular nature-worship (e.g. i Kings xiv. 23; 2 Kings xvii. 10; Jer. ii. 20, iii. 6) ; and, to avoid misunderstanding, it would have been better to supply an ' and ' before ' under oaks ', &c. The sacred hill-tops were specially selected for being treeless — 'bare places' they are called in Jer. iii. 2. 'Elms' should rather be terebinths (Tristram, Natural Hist, of Bible, p. 350). 68 HOSEA, IV. [vv. 14, 15. Under oaks and poplars and elms, Because the shadow thereof is good : Therefore your daughters shall commit whoredom, And your spouses shall commit adultery. 14 I will not punish your daughters when they commit whoredom, Nor your spouses when they commit adultery : For themselves are separated with whores. And they sacrifice with harlots : Therefore the people that doth not understand shall fall. 15 Though thou, Israel, play the harlot, Yet let not Judah offend ; And come not ye unto Gilgal, 13. therefore your dmighters shall commit whoredo7?i] (Rather, do com- mit.) Harlotry and idolatry being so inextricably connected, it was only natural that the women should be given up to licentiousness ; the more religious they were, the stronger would the evil habit be. For 'spouses', read daughters-in-law. The allusion is to the lascivious worship of Asherah and Ashtoreth (the goddesses were distinct) ; see next verse. Asherah or ' the propitious ' was at first probably a title of the feminine variety of the Assyrian deity Ishtar. See Introduction. 14. The precedence in guilt belongs to the elders who set so wicked an example. theniselves are separated withi Rather, they themselves go aside with. A change of person, instead of 'ye yourselves.' harlots'] Rather, consecrated harlots, i.e. women who dedicate themselves, or are dedicated by others, to the service of Asherah or of Ashtoreth, and give up their chastity in honour of the goddess. Mesha, king of Moab, says that, when he took Nebo from the Israehtes, he slew the men, but spared the women in order to devote them to Ashtar-Chemosh (Moabite inscription, lines 16, 17). sacrifice'] Probably the reference is partly to the feast which followed the sacrifice (Ex. xxxii. 6). shall fall] Rather, shall he dashed to the ground. 15—19. Judah is cautioned not to fall into the same ruin as Israel, of which a deterrent picture is given. 15. offend] Rather, become guilty, viz. by participation in Israel's idolatry. coftie not ye unto Gilgal] Gilgal was one of the chief seats of the idolatrous worship of the north, see ix. 15, xii. 11; Am. iv. 4, v. 5. But which of the Gilgals (see Smith's BibL Diet) is meant? The Jewish commentators are agreed that it was the famous Gilgal ' in the east border of Jericho' where Joshua pitched his camp for the first time after crossing the Jordan (Josh. iv. 19), and later on 'the true centre of the whole people' (Ewald, History of Israel, iii. 29). Pro- bably they are right. No doubt, we should have expected this Gilgal vv. i6, 17.] HOSEA, IV. 69 Neither go ye up to Beth-aven, Nor swear, The Lord liveth. For Israel shdeth back as a backsliding heifer : 16 Now the Lord will feed them as a lamb in a large place. Ephraim is joined to idols : 17 Let him alone. to have belonged to Judah, but the natural boundary of the two kingdoms was not the historical one; 'those places which their past history had rendered most sacred or memorable — Bethel, Gilgal, Jericho — were incorporated in the northern kingdom ' (Ewald, Hist. iv. 3). neither go ye up to Beth-aveti] A Beth-aven near Bethel is mentioned Josh. vii. 2; I Sam. xiii. 5, but this Beth-aven, 'house of vanity', or *of wickedness', is a keenly sarcastic substitute for the desecrated name Bethel, 'house of God' (see x. 5, 8, and comp. Am, iv. 4, v. 5; I Kings xii. 29 — 33). 'Go ye up', because Bethel was situated on the slopes of a hill, comp. i Sam. x. 3, 'going up to the Elohim (i.e. the sacred place) to Bethel.' nor swear. The Lord liveth"] Hosea may mean to say that the oath 'As Jehovah liveth' has been so profaned by the Israelites of the north that he wishes to see it abolished. It is more likely however (considering Deut. x. 20; Jer. iv. 2) that he deprecates oaths by the Jehovahs of Gilgal and Bethel — oaths which in the mind of the swearer are connected with idolatrous symbols of Jehovah, precisely as Amos denounces those who say, 'As thy God, O Dan, liveth', and 'As thy God, O Beer-sheba, liveth' (Am. viii. 14, corrected partly from the Sept.). 16. slideth back as a backsliding heifer] Rather, is stubborn like a stubborn heifer. A favourite figure of the prophets, xi. 4; Jer. xxxi. 18; comp. Deut. xxxii. 15. now the Lord will feed the?n as a lamb in a large place] Israel in the weakness of captivity is compared to a lamb in a large pasture- ground, which is an object of attack to all the wild beasts prowling about — so most commentators explain. But 'a large place' is every- where else an image for prosperity (see Ps. xviii. 19, xxxi. 8, cxviii. 5), and Isaiah in describing a happy future says, 'in that day shall thy cattle feed in large pastures (Isa. xxx. 23).' It is much safer, therefore, follow- ing Ewald and Hitzig, to take the passage as an incredulous exclamation or question, this being so, should the Lord feed them as a lamb in a large meadow ! In fact, a prophet would hardly have said that Je- hovah shepherded His people during the Dispersion (see Ezek. xxxiv. II — 14), and in the very next verse Jehovah exclaims, 'Let him alone.' On the other hand, the clause, thus translated, fits most naturally into the context,— ' Israel is a stubborn heifer, how then should it expect to be treated as kindly as a lamb ?' 17. jointed to idols] The cognate noun is used in Mai. ii. 14 of a wife in her relation to her husband, and in Isa. xliv. 11 of an idol- worshipper in his mystic relation to his god (comp. i Cor. x. 20). 70 HOSEA, IV. [vv. 1 8, 19. 18 Their drink is sour; they have committed whoredom continually : Her rulers with shame do love, Give ye. 19 The wind hath bound her up in her wings, And they shall be ashamed because of their sacrifices. 18. Their drink is sour...] This translation is cannot be sustained philologically. If the text is correct, the only version at once intelligible and philologically sound is, ' Their drunkenness has passed by.' For the rendering of the verb comp. i Sam. xv. 32 Hebr., and for 'drunk- enness', lit. drink, comp. i Sam. i. 14, xxv. 37 (where 'wine' must be synonymous with 'the fumes of wine'). Connecting this clause with the following, we may render (as Henderson, following the Jewish commentator Abarbanel), When their carousal is over they indulge in lewdness, i.e. when tired of one sin they plunge without scruple into another. The Sept. rendering ripeTLtre Xavavaiovs is very difficult to justify. The Peshito omits the words. St Jerome explains the whole clause, Factum est, inquit Deus, convivium eorum a me alienum. /ler rulers with sha??ie do love, Give ye] Rather, her shields are enamoured of infamy (Henderson). This involves a slight change in the points, necessary in order to make sense of the word rendered 'infamy.' Probably, however, as Abp. Seeker was the first to infer from Sept. and Pesh., there is an erroneous repetition of three letters (comp. a similar case in Ps. Ixxxviii. 17), so that we may render simply, 'her shields love infamy' ('shields' for 'rulers', as Ps. xlvii. 10). The Septuagint, indeed, suggests a various reading which possibly deserves the preference ; it renders, riyairr)(rav aTtfiiav e/c (ppvayfj-aTos avrrjs. Here, as in Am. viii. 7, the Greek translator seems to have misunderstood the expression, 'the excellency of Jacob' (i.e. Jehovah). The Hebrew which he had before them may be thus put into English, they love infamy rather than her Excellency (or, her Pride, i. e. Jehovah, Israel's God), ^pvayfxa is in fact the rendering of Heb. gdofi in Zech. xi. 3 and three other passages. 19. The wind hath bound her up in her wings] A figure for the suddenness and violence with which the enemy should carry Israel away into exile (comp. Isa. Ivii. 13). The perfect is that of prophetic certitude. Chap. V. Interlacing descriptions of guilt and punishment. 1 — 7. A personal arraignment of the priesthood (accused less directly in chap, iv.) and of the court, who, instead of warning the people, have led them into the snare of sin. So entangled are they in it that they cannot repent, and Judah too has fallen. They may seek to propitiate Jehovah by sacrifices, but in vain : the judgment is close at hand. vv. 1—3.] HOSEA, V. 71 Hear ye this, O priests ; And hearken, ye house of Israel ; And give ye ear, O house of the king ; For judgment is toward you. Because ye have been a snare on Mizpah, And a net spread upon Tabor. And the revolters are profound to make slaughter, Though I have been a rebuker of them all. I know Ephraim, and Israel is not hid from me : 1. priests] Hosea addresses the priests of the high places in N. Israel. O house of the king\ i.e. the king and his courtiers, whether of the royal family or not. judgment is toward yoii] Rather, the judgment is for you. a snare on Mizpah, and a net spread iipon Tabor] Tabor is the well- known mountain of the name in Galilee (see Judg. iv. 6), and may be taken as the representative of the region on the west of the Jordan (as Ps. Ixxxix. 12); Mizpah (a common name = place of watch) is most probably Mizpah in Gilead (Judg. x. 17, xi. 11, 29), also called Ramoth-Gilead (Josh. xx. 8, xxi. 36; 2 Kings ix. i, 4, 14), and conse- crated by Jacob (Gen. xxxi. 45 — 54). Probably these places (comp. next note) are mentioned because the idolatrous worship was most dangerously seductive there. The worshippers were like the deluded birds who sought shelter in the woods and ravines (comp. 2 Sam. xxvi. 20 ; Ps. xi. i). 2. And the revolters are profound to tnake slaughter] The expres- sions used have a most un-Hebraic cast, and what can the 'slaughter' refer to? There is nothing at all in the context to suggest that the slaying of sacrifices is meant (as many after St Jerome have supposed), and it is very harsh to understand it as a fresh image for the priests' abuse of their position. It is better to render (changing a Teth into a Tav), The apostates are gone deep in corrupting (comp. ix. 9). The ancient versions already found the passage obscure. The Septua- gint (and similarly the Peshito) renders 5 (sc. rh SLktvov) ol dypevofTcs T7]v Oripav Kar^TTTi^av. Possibly they had had a somewhat different text. Certainty is unattainable, and another plausible and easy emendation deserves at least a mention, from its suitableness to the context. And the pit of Shittim they have made deep. Having been a station of the camp under Moses and Joshua (Num. xxv. i; Josh. iii. r, v. i), it is probable, though unproved, that Shittim contained one of the popular shrines or holy places. though I have been a rebuker of them all] Lit., *and I am chastise- ment for them all'; comp. Ps. cix. 4 A.V., 'I give myself unto prayer' (lit., *I am prayer'). This however is very harsh, and it is simpler to transpose two letters and render, and there is no correction for any of them. 72 ROSEA, V. [vv. 4, 5. For now, O Ephraim, thou committest whoredom, and Israel is defiled. They will not frame their doings to turn unto their God: For the spirit of whoredoms is in the midst of them, And they have not known the Lord. And the pride of Israel doth testify to his face : Therefore shall Israel and Ephraim fall in their iniquity ; Judah also shall fall with them. 3. / know Israel^ The pronoun is expressed for emphasis, I who punish Israel am well acquainted with its open and secret sins. 4. They will not frame... '\ Rather, as in the margin, Their doings will not suffer tliem to turn unto their God. The same idea that from the meshes of an inveterate vicious habit there is hardly an escape is expressed in vii. •2, comp. John viii. 34 ; Rom. vi. 16. the spirit of whoredoms] See on iv. 12. is in the midst of them] Rather, is "witMn them, i. e. in their inmost being. have not known] Rather, know not (see on ii. 20). 5. And the pride of Israel doth testify to his face] Rather, But... shall testify to his face. 'The pride of Israel' is capable of two in- terpretations. It may mean Israel's vainglorious self-confidence, which is so hateful to Jehovah, and as it were testifies against Israel on the day of Jehovah's assize (Isa. ii. 12). But it is more natural to take the phrase as a title of Jehovah (see on iv. 18 'her rulers', &c.), borrowed probably from Am. viii. 7. How does Jehovah 'testify against' anyone? The answer is furnished by Ruth i. 21, 'Jehovah hath testified against me, and Shaddai hath afflicted me.' An ob- jection of small weight has been raised, viz. that Jehovah, in the pro- phetic figure, is the complainant and the judge, but not the witness. The answer is that the Hebrew ^dndh is not exactly 'to witness' but 'to meet with words or a declaration'; hence it can be used of a judicial sentence. Hosea means that Jehovah has spoken one of those words which kill (comp. vi. 5) — has delivered a judgment by which Israel shall 'fall.' The rendering 'Israel's pride shall be humbled' adopted in the 'Speaker's Commentary' from the Sept., the Targum, and the Peshito, scarcely suits the following words * to (lit. in) his face.' Still less suitable is it in vii, 10, where the phrase is re- peated. Israel and Ephraifti] i.e., Israel and especially Ephraim; like 'Judah and Jerusalem' (Isa. ii. i). shall fall] Rather, shall stumble. A figure for calamity (as Isa. viii. 15, xxxi. 3, and often). In iv. 15 the prophet uses less distinct language with regard to Judah's punishment ; she is warned not to offend rather than threatened with punishment. Perhaps this chapter represents the utterances of a later period than the preceding chapter. vv. 6—8.] ROSEA, V. 11 They shall go with their flocks and with their herds to 6 seek the Lord ; But they shall not find him; he hath withdrawn himself from them. They have dealt treacherously against the Lord : ^ For they have begotten strange children : Now shall a month devour them with their portions. Blow ye the cornet in Gibeah, 8 And the trumpet in Ramah : 6. with their flocks and with their herds] i.e., with their sacrificial offerings. This passage affords decisive proof (if indeed the converging evidence from other quarters can be held incomplete) that the Israelites of the north simply and in good faith professed to be worshippers of Jehovah. It will be too late, says the prophet, to use the ordinary means of appeasing Jehovah's wrath, which have only a value as the outward signs of penitence and faith (see on vi. 6). Micah uses similar expressions respecting prayers which are offered too late (Mic. iii. 4). 7. Why Jehovah has withdrawn himself, dealt treacherously\ i.e. faithlessly. The word is used of an adulteress, Jer. iii. 20. they have begotten strange children] The subject of the verb are the Israelites individually, of whom the same statement is made which we have already met vidth respecting the nation in ii. 4, 5. now shall a month devour them] The time for punishment has arrived. Instead of watching gladly for the new moon to fix the various hallowed festivals (comp. ii. 11), they should have a 'fearful looking for of judgment ' increasing as each new moon arose. If not this, then perhaps the next would bring with it a slaughtering, plun- dering horde of invaders. ' Month ' should rather be new moon (as nothing is added to qualify the sense). with their portions] i.e. the lands assigned to the several tribes and families (comp. *the portion of Jezreel,' 2 Kings ix. 10). 8 — 15. The prophet 'in the spirit' sees the thi-eatened trouble bursting upon both the separated kingdoms. In vain will Ephraim seek help from Assyria ; there is no deliverance from Jehovah's hand until Ephraim repents. 8. Blow ye the cornet. ..the trumpet] A usual direction on the ap- proach of an invading army; see viii. i; Jer. iv. 5, vi. i. Previously to the captivity the cornet and the trumpet were probably different names for the same instrument, as the Law (Num. x. i — 10, xxxi. 6) prescribes the use of the silver trumpet {khago^erah) in cases when, ac- cording to the prophetic and historical books, the cornet or shofdr was used. In writings of post-Captivity origin (Ps. xcviii. 6; i Chr. xv. 28; 2 Chr. XV. 14) they appear to represent different instruments, or rather slightly different varieties of the same instrument. The Mishna tells us that the shofdr was sometimes straight, sometimes curved, and this difference would of course involve a difference of note. We may help 74 ROSEA, V. fw. 9, lo. Cry aloud at Beth-aven, After thee, O Benjamin. Ephraim shall be desolate in the day of rebuke : Among the tribes of Israel have I made known that which shall surely be. The princes of Judah were like them that remove the bound : ourselves to form an idea of the Hebrew trumpets by representations of the Egyptian (see Wilkinson, Manjiers and Customs, ii. 260, &c.). Gibeah...Ramah'\ Both towns were situated on eminences, and there- fore well adapted for signals of alarm ; both apparently belonged to Judah. Gibeah (lit. 'a hill') is * Gibeah of Benjamin ' (i Sam. xiii. 2, xiv. 16), or 'Gibeah of Saul' (i Sam. xi. 4); the Ramah (lit. 'height') is the same where Samuel dwelt (i Sam. xv. 34). Both probably belonged at this time to Judah (see i Kings xv. 21 ; Isa. x. 29). Taking in Bethel, the cities are those from which the signal of alarm could be heard in both kingdoms. after thee, Bettjamin\ Rather, behind thee, Benjamin ; this is the cry of warning which the men of Beth-aven or Bethel (a border- town between Benjamin and Ephraim) are to send on to the Benja- mites. Understand either 'the sword rages', or more simply 'be on thy guard.' Sept. however renders (from a different text?), e^iarr} 'BevLa/j.ip, 'Benjamin is distraught.' It is worth noticing that Hosea (the prophet of the tribes which proudly claimed the name of Israel) does not mention Jerusalem. To have mentioned the capital of Judah would perhaps have led him to widen his range of thought too much. But under the name 'Benjamin' he has been thought to hint obscurely at Jerusalem, for ' the boundary between Judah and Benjamin ran at the foot of the hill on which the city stands, so that the city itself was actually in Benjamin ' (Fergusson, in Smith's B ible- Dictionary , I. 983). 9. rebuke'] Rather, punishment, as the same word is rendered Ps. cxlix. 7 A.V. 'punishments upon the people(s).' The root meaning of the word is 'judicial decision.' afuong the tribes of Israel] i.e. Israel in its widest sense is the object of Hosea's denunciations. The phrase ' the tribes of Israel ', standing by itself, never means the Ten Tribes only. have I made known...] Or, do I make known that which is sure (lit. trustworthy). 10. were like them that retnove the bound] Rather, are become like them that remove the landmark. The landmarks were under the protection of religion (Prov. xxii. 28, xxiii. 10; Deut. xix. 14), and to remove them laid the offender under a curse, according to Deut. xxvii. 17. Hosea cites the offence as the greatest conceivable example of revolutionary caprice. Judah, it would seem, was not more fortunate now in its upper classes than Israel (comp. vi. 10, 11 Sept., and Isaiah's 'these also', viz. the chief men of Jerusalem, Isa. xxviii. 7). vv. II— 13.J HOSEA, V. 75 Therefore I will pour out my wrath upon them like water. Ephraim is oppressed and broken in judgment, u Because he willingly walked after the commandment. Therefore will I be unto Ephraim as a moth, 12 And to the house of Judah as rottenness. When Ephraim saw his sickness, 13 And Judah saw his wound, Then went Ephraim to the Assyrian, And sent to king Jareb : like water\ Jehovah's wrath is like fire in its destructiveness, and like a swollen stream in its abundant volume. 11. Ephraim is oppressed and brokefi in judgment\ The same two participles are again combined in Deut. xxviii. 33, and, as here, in con- nexion with invasion, 'thou shalt be only oppressed and crushed alway' (so Auth. Vers.). The judgment meant is God's. The idea was so familiar that a more distinct form of expression was unnecessary. The Hebrews and the other Semitic peoples regarded war as a kind of plead- ing before a judge; comp. for the latter, the Syriac khayeb 'damnavit, vicit', and for the former Isa. liv. 17, where 'weapon' is parallel to ' tongue that riseth against thee '). Compare Schiller's Die Weligeschichte ist das Weltgericht. Somewhat less probable is the rendering 'crushed as to (his) right', i.e. his right of national independence. he willingly walked after the C07ninandmeni'\ 'The commandment' (or, 'ordinance') is generally explained of the arbitrary calf- worship (rather bull-worship) set up by Jeroboam I., but as the word only occurs once again in the stammering speech of the drunkards (Isa. xxviii. 10), it seems more than probable that we should adopt the reading of Septuagint and Peshito, and render the whole clause, lie "woidd go after vanity (i.e. after idols, as Jer. xviii. 15; Ps. xxxi. 6). With this reading, too, we can account for the fact that the noun has no article. Archbishop Seeker well points out that the two initial letters of the next word in the Hebrew are such as help to account for the scribe's supposed error. 12. Therefore will I de...] Rather, And as for me, I am, &c. The same two figures are of frequent occurrence ; they are combined again in Job xiii. "28. A gradual inward corruption was destroying the two Israelitish states quite as effectually as a foreign conquest. Anarchy and civil war combined with a retrograde religion and a lax morality to bring northern Israel in particular to the verge of ruin. Elsewhere Hosea describes its condition as a living death (xiii. i). 13. Both states are conscious of the destroying cancer, but neither of them adopts the only possible means of arresting its progress. his sickness... his woutid'\ The ordinary figure for corruption of the body politic; comp. Isa. i. 5, 6; Jer. xxx. 12, 13. and sent to kingyareb'\ Some have thought that as Ephraim and Judah 76 HOSEA, V. [vv. 14, 15. Yet could he not heal you Nor cure you of your wound. For I will be unto Ephraim as a lion, And as a young lion to the house of Judah : I, even I, will tear and go away ; I will take away, and none shall rescue him. I will go a7id return to my place, Till they acknowledge their offence, and seek my face : are both mentioned in the first line, the subject of the second verb in this second line must be Judah. As the text stands, however, this is impossible, and if 'Judah' once stood in the text as the subject of 'sent', it is not easy to conjecture how it dropped out. None of the ancient versions contains the word. But who is 'king Jareb', or rather the fighting king (a nickname for the king of Assyria), to whom Ephraim sent? Sennacherib has been thought of, as if there were a playful interpretation of a shortened form of this name, but the short for Sennacherib (on the analogy of Baladan for Merodach-Baladan, Sharezer for Nergal-Sharezer) would be akhirib, not irib. Schrader thinks that the king meant is Asurdan, who in 755 and 754 made expe- ditions against Khatarik (the Hadrach of Zech. ix. i) and Arpadda (Arpad); Nowack prefers Tiglath-Pileser II., to whom the epithet •fighter' would accurately apply. In the uncertainty of the Israehtish chronology of this period, a decision is difficult. The boldest conjecture is that of Prof. Sayce, viz. that ' Jareb ' was the name borne by Sargon before he usurped the throne, just as ' Pul ' is now known to have been once borne by Tiglath-Pileser. yet could he not...] Rather, though he will not be able to heal you, nor shall ye he relieved (or, with other points, shall he relieve you) of your wound. Delitzsch fully explains the passage in his note on Prov. xvii. 22. The word rendered 'wound' means both bandage and ulcer, and the verb is used in Syriac for ' to be delivered, or, removed.' How completely the politicians of Israel miscalculated, appears from x. 6. li If a stronger figure is necessary to warn Israel of the destructive- ness of his present course, Jehovah will compare himself to a lion (comp. Isa. xxxi. 4). as a Hon., and as a young Hon] Hebrew has at least five words for •lion'; of the two selected here, the first describes this terror of ancient Palestine as a roarer (so xiii. 7), the second as covered with a mane. /, even /] For the axe may be human, but the hand which wields it is divine (Isa. x. 15). / will take away...] i.e. I will carry off the prey. The passage reminds us of the comparison of the Assyrians to a lion in Isa. v. 29. 16. return to my place] See Mic. i. 3, from which it is clear that Jehovah's 'place' is the heavenly temple (Isa. vi. 1). Now that Jehovah has for a time deserted his guilty people, he will return to his seat on high, and watch (Isa. xviii. 4) the doings of men. He has full con- fidence that Israel on his side will return and repent. vv. I, 2.] ROSEA, VI. 77 In their affliction they will seek me early. Come and let us return unto the Lord : For he hath torn, and he will heal us ; He hath smitten, and he will bind us up. After two days will he revive us : In the third day he will raise us up, acknowledge their offence\ Rather, feel their guilt (as the word means in Lev. iv. 4, 5 ; Zech. xi. 5), Chap. VL how little has israel effected, and how little will he ever effect, by his fits of repentance, which contrast so VIOLENTLY WITH HIS FLAGRANT TRANSGRESSIONS OF GOD'S LAW ! 1 — 3. The prophet enters into the feelings of the only too quickly repentant Israelites, and imagines them encouraging each other to return to Jehovah. These three verses are closely connected with the end of the preceding chapter; comp. 'let us return', 'he hath torn' (z/. i), and 'his going forth' [v. 3), with 'I will go and return' (v. 15), and 'I, even I, will tear' (v. 14). Ver. 2 is parenthetical. Comp. the similar profession of the Israelites in viii. 2. 1. he will heal us\ At any rate the Israelites have found out the true physician (comp. vii. i, xi. 3). Assyria 'could not heal them' (v. 13). 2. This verse contains the germ of the striking allegory of the dry bones (Ezek. xxxvii. i — 10), and reminds us also of the prediction of an Israelitish resurrection in Isa. xxvi. 19. The idea is that, contrary to all human expectation Israel shall quickly emerge from the depths of trouble. What human skill could cure a dangerously wounded man in three days? Yet a wonder as great has happened to the sick man Israel. That the passage has primarily a contemporary reference, and contains a figurative description of a national revival, is admitted by Pococke, who however endeavours to combine with this view a very forced inter- pretation of pre-critical origin. He thinks the Jews 'might say, after two days, &c., because by him whom God would so raise up deliverance should be wrought for them when their case was as desperate as of one that had been so long dead ' ; or, to put his view of the secondary meaning more clearly, the resurrection of the coming Christ was to the Israelites (though they knew it not) the justification of their hope of a national restoration. The view is ultimately traceable to the paraphrase in the Targum, 'he will revive us in the days of consolation which are to come', i.e. at the resurrection (see the Peshito of John xi. 25, which shows that 'consolation' and 'resurrection' are synonymous in Aramaic). Pusey and many old expositors even take the supposed reference to our Lord's resurrection to be primary. But the context certainly does not favour any such reference, whether primary or secondary. Calvin, with his usual fine perception, remarks, 'sensus ille videtur mihi nimium argutus. ' 78 HOSEA, VI. [vv. 3, 4. And we shall live in his sight. Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the Lord : His going forth is prepared as the morning ; And he shall come unto us as the rain, As the latter and former rain unto the earth. O Ephraim, what shall I do unto thee ? O Judah, what shall I do unto thee ? For your goodness is as a morning cloud, And as the early dew // goeth away. live in his sight\ Lit., 'before him', i.e., under his protection (comp. Gen. xvii. 18; Isa. liii. 2; Jer. xxx. 20. 3. Then shall ive know, &€.] But as this construction is resumptive oiv. I, we had better translate, Yea, let us know, let us be zealous to know, Jehovali, i.e.. to know him as our master, protector, and friend. Why so? Because the want of this knowledge was the cause of Israel's misery. It was however a hasty resolution, from which a full and free confession of sin was faially absent (contrast penitent Israel's words in xiv. 2). Hence the complaint of the omniscient Holy One which follows in ver. 4. his going forth'\ \nz. from his 'place' in heaven (v. 15.) is prepared as the morning'\ Or, 'is certain as the grey of morning' (which heralds the glories of sunrise). The speakers, then, are *a people that walk in darkness' (Isa. ix. i). as the rain, as the latter and former rain unto the earthy Rather, as the heavy rain, as the latter rain which watereth the earth. Comp. Ps. Ixii. 6. The Israelites count upon the return of God's favour %vith the same confidence with which, at the autumnal and vernal equinoxes, a farmer counts upon the former and latter rain. Their confidence is excessive ; they presume on God's forgiveness without complying with His conditions. 4. The answer of Jehovah, who cannot be satisfied with such a superficial repentance and such hasty resolutions of 'knowing' Him. ■what shall I do unto thee?] 'What other means can possibly be em- ployed to move thee to a serious repentance?' Comp. Isa. v. 4. your goodness] Rather, your piety. The word {khesedh) is the same as that rendered in v. 6 'mercy'; and so St Jerome here ('the mercy which I had been wont to shew'), and Keil (explaining, as in iv. i, 'your kindness to those in need '). But the context requires another sense — 'your love to God', and this is what A.V. means, though it expresses it weakly. The Peshito also renders ' goodness ', and again in V. 6. as a morning cloud, atid as the early dew it goeth away] Rather, ...and as the night mist which early goeth away (so again xiii. 3). The 'cloud' spoken of, then, is a cloud such as Isaiah speaks of as coming 'in the heat of harvest' (Isa. xviii. 4); more precisely, it is one of those dense masses of night-vapour, which the westerly vv. 5, 6.] HOSEA, VI. 79 Therefore have I hewed theiji by the prophets ; I have slain them by the words of my mouth : And thy judgments are as the Hght that goeth forth. For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; winds of summer bear from the Mediterranean Sea, and which more than supply the place of dew. After ' making a fair show ' in the bright morning light, they are soon sucked up by the hot sun, and pass away (Neil, Faleslifte Explored, p. 138). The cognate word in Arabic means a soft rain (comp. Deut. xxxii. 2). Comp. on xiv. 6. .6. Similar fitful repentances have already forced Jehovah to inter- pose, like a severe but kind physician who will cut out the diseased part rather than suffer the evil to spread. hewed them by the prophets] i. e. warned them of the fatal conse- quences of their conduct. The divine or prophetic word has a de- stroying power ascribed to it (Isa. xi. 4, xlix. 2; Jer. i. 10, v. 14; I Kings xix. 17). thy judgments are as the light that goeth forth] 'Thy judgments,' i.e. those pronounced upon thee. According to this reading we have to supply 'as,' and suppose a sudden change of pronoun. The Septuagint, however, with the Peshito, and even the Targum, reads differently — my judgment shall go forth as the light (this simply involves a slightly different grouping of the letters). 'My judgment', viz. that upon Israel; 'shall go forth', for we are no longer in the imagined future (as in vv. i — 3) ; ' as the light ', that all may see it and tremble. 6. A further explanation of these severe judgments, the moral effect of which the prophet has been considering. For I desired 7nercy and not sacrifice] Rather, for I delight in piety and not in sacrifice. The Hebrew is vague ; khesedh 'dutiful love' may mean either ' piety ' or ' kindness ', — love to God or love to man. The parallel clause favours the former, the context at first sight the latter ; but we may keep ' piety ', for both love to God and the knowledge of God are regarded as leading to the imitation of God's (piXavdpojirla. (comp. Jer. xxii. 16 'was not this to know me', and 2 Sam. ix. 3 ' that I may show the kindness of God unto him '). As Aben Ezra well remarks, it is stedfast love which the prophet means, not that which is like a cloud {v. 4). 'And not sacrifice ' = ' rather than sacrifice ' ; the prophet thinks comparatively little of sacrifices, but does not denounce them as positively displeasing to God. Comp. Isa. i. 11 — 20; Mic vi. 6 — 8; Jer. vii. 22, 23 (though this is of doubtful interpretation). The sacrifices alluded to are those which the Israelites will at a future time offer in the vain hope of propitiating Jehovah (v. 6). This first half of the verse is twice quoted by our Lord (Matt. ix. 13, xii. 7). A striking parallel occurs in a saying ascribed to Buddha, who, however, unlike our Lord, denounced animal sacrifices as in themselves wrong : ' If a man live a hundred years, and engage the whole of his time and attention in religious offerings to the gods, sacrificing elephants and horses, and other life, all this is not equal to one act of pure love in saving life' (Beal's Texts from the Buddhist Canon). 8o HOSEA, VI. [w. 7—9. And the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings. But they Hke men have transgressed the covenant : There have they dealt treacherously against me. Gilead is a city of them that work iniquity, A?id is polluted with blood. And as troops of robbers wait for a man, 7. The contrast between Israel's conduct and Jehovah's requirements. Bui they like men...] Literally, But they — they lilse (other) men transgress the covenant (or, perhaps, the ordinance, see on viii. i). The word rendered ' men ' {'dddm) means ordinary or less privileged men, as in Ps. Ixxxii. 7 and most probably Job xxxi. 33, ' If I covered like (common) men my transgressions.' It is assumed (as in Job /.^.) that ordinary men are addicted to certain vices, and that such privileged persons as Job or the Israelites ought to act up to a higher standard. The mention of the transgressions of ' (other) men ' reminds us of Isa. xxiv. 5, where the inhabitants of the world are said to have 'trans- gressed commandments, violated the statute, broken the perpetual covenant ', partly perhaps with reference to the ' law written in the heart', and partly to Gen. ix. i — 16. The Targum, the Talmud, and the Vulgate (followed byDelitzsch on Job xxxi. 33) render, 'like Adam', but the Book of Genesis says nothing of a 'covenant' M'ith Adam. there} Implying a gesture of indignation. The divine speaker points to the northern kingdom as the scene of the unfaithfulness (comp. 'there' in v. 10). 8, 9. Two spots of specially ill fame are singled out — Gilead and the road to Shechem. 8. Gilead] Here alone, and probably in Judg. x. 17, mentioned as the name of a town. We still find the name of Gilead (in its Arabic form JiVdd) lingering at various parts of the ancient Gilead, but we cannot venture on a combination with the prophet's Gilead. Ramoth- Gilead would seem, from its importance, a not unlikely place to be meant. polluted with blood] Rather, tracked with bloody foot-prints ; comp. the striking expression used of Joab in i Kings ii. 5. The Gileadites, half civilized mountaineers, seem to have been distinguished for their ferocity (comp. 2 Kings xv. 25). From the next verse we may perhaps infer that at Gilead too the priests were foremost in lawlessness. 9. And as troops...] Rather, And as bandits lying in wait, (so doth) the company of priests; they murder on the road towards Shechem ; yea, they commit outrages. The reference in the figure is either to the doings of native banditti (comp. vii. r), or to those of the guerilla-bands of Arameans, Moabites, &c., which were constantly invading Israel and Judah (2 Kings v. 2, xiii. 20), whenever the central power was weak. The word for 'company' {khebher) implies an organized guild (such as the Pharisees afterwards), so that there was no public opinion to check the offenders. Shechem had long ago been notorious for the highway robberies committed by its inhabitants, and vv. lo, II ; 1,2.] ROSEA, VI. VII. 8i So the company of priests murder in the way by consent : For they commit lewdness. I have seen a horrible thing in the house of Israel ; lo There is the whoredom of Ephraim, Israel is defiled. Also, O Judah, he hath set a harvest for thee, n When I returned the captivity of my people. When I would have healed Israel, 7 Then the iniquity of Ephraim was discovered, and the wickedness of Samaria : For they commit falsehood ; and the thief cometh in, And the troop of robbers spoileth without. And they consider not in their hearts 2 That I remember all their wickedness : was therefore destroyed by Abimelech (Judg. ix. 25, 45). It lay on the road, which was doubtless much frequented, from Samaria and the north to Bethel, now the chief sanctuary of the so-called Ten Tribes. Gilead and Shechem together represent the eastern and western divisions of the kingdom. 10, 11. Jehovah is still the speaker. From his heavenly ' place ' he points indignantly (as v. 7) to the abominations practised * there ', i.e. in the whole land of Israel, for even Judah has not escaped the infection. The stnicture of the verses becomes more symmetrical, if we attach the concluding words of v. 10 to v. 11, and turn v. w thus, altering one vowel-point, Israel is defiled; for thee also, Judah, a harvest is appointed. The Septuagint partly favours this, rendering eixiavdrf 'lapariX Kal 'Iov5a. The concluding words of v. 11 should rather be attached to v. i of chap. vii. Chap. VII. 1 — 7. The moral degradation of Israel, especially of its ruling class, which, so far from stemming the tide of corruption, applauds and encourages its progress. 1. How foolish is the conduct of Israel ! When the great turning- point in her fortunes arrives, the day of mingled punishment and mercy, all his wickedness will be remembered and brought to light. To improve the sense and restore balance to the opening of the verse, it is expedient to read thus, with Ewald, When I turn the fortunes of my people, when I heal Israel, then will be manifest Ephraim's guilt and Sama- ria's wickedness, how they practise falsehood, and the thief cometh in, and bandits roam abroad without. Comp. iv. 2. Samaria is mentioned, as the abode of the princes next spoken of. 2. t/iejf consider not in their hearts'] Rather, as margin, they say not to their heart. 'Heart' here = self; the meaning is therefore they have no pricks of conscience. HOSEA 6 S2 ROSEA, VII. [vv. 3—6. Now their own doings have beset them about ; They are before my face. They make the king glad with their wickedness, And the princes with their lies. They are all adulterers, as an oven heated by the baker, W7io ceaseth from raising after Ae hath kneaded the dough, until it be leavened. In the day of our king the princes have made Awi sick 2£//M bottles of wine ; He stretched out his hand with scorners. For they have made ready their heart like an oven, whiles they lie in wait : now their own doings have beset them abotif] They are so entangled in sin (to use a more familiar figure) that they cannot even try to repent. they are before my face\ Comp. Ps. xc. 8. 3 — 6. The highest personages are not too refined for the most sen- sual pleasures. A consuming passion inflames them as if with the heat of a furnace. Their way of celebrating a royal commemoration is to indulge in monstrous excess. 4. as an ove7i...'\ The fire corresponds to sensual lust, the oven is the heart. The baker ceaseth from kindling (so we should render), when the oven has reached a certain heat, and then he leaves the fire to smoulder, till the fermentation of the dough is complete, and a fresh heating is necessary. So after passion has once been gratified, it smoulders for a time, but is afterwards kindled to a greater heat than before, when some attractive object comes within its range. 6. Here the figurative description is interrupted by one from real life. In the day of our king] Either the coronation- day (so the Targum), or (comp. Matt. xiv. 6) the royal birthday is meant. The prophet quotes the words of the princes. He was himself too loyal to the house of David to adopt the phrase seriously. have made hi?n sick with bottles of wine] Rather, are become sick with the fever of wine. The Auth. Version probably means to imply that the princes meant to assassinate the king when he was drunk ; but there is no evidence of this (see on v. 7). he stretched out his hand with scorners] i.e. he (the king) entered into close relations with proud, lawless men (comp. Prov. xxi. 24). So Isaiah too calls the politicians of Judah 'men of scorn' (Isa. xxviii. 14). Hosea may perhaps refer to some lawless project decided upon in the intoxication of the revel. 6. For they have made ready their heart like an oven, whiles they lie in wait] Better, with Ewald, *Yea, almost like the oven have they made their heart in their intrigue', if there were only sufficient justifica- tion for the rendering. This view of the verse makes it a climax to ver. vv. 7—9.] HOSEA, VII. 83 Their baker sleepeth all the night ; In the morning it burneth as a flaming fire. They are all hot as an oven, 7 And have devoured their judges ; All their kings are fallen : There is none among them that calleth unto me. Ephraim, he hath mixed himself among the people ; 8 Ephraim is a cake not turned. Strangers have devoured his strength, and he knoweth 9 // not : 5. Better still, by self-evident corrections of the text, For their inward part is like an oven, their heart burneth in them (the reason for the strong expression 'scorners'j. their baker] Better, to follow the vocalizing of Targum and Peshito, and render, their anger, viz. against the destined victims of their in- trigue. sleepeth all the nighf] Rather, still retaining the consonants of the text, smoketh all the night (for the phrase, comp Deut. xxix. 20). The night is mentioned as the time when evil devices are matured. 7. The consequence of all this licence. King after king falls a victim to the violent passions he has fostered in his subjects. Four regicides are recorded within forty years (2 Kings xv.). And yet no one calls to Jehovah for help ! Sacrifices indeed were not wanting (vi. 6), but those who offered them had no true 'knowledge of God', and so they profited them not. 8 — 16. The outward evidences of Israel's decay. 8. he hath tfiixed hi??iself among the people"] Rather, he mixeth himself among the peoples. How ? By courting the favour now of Egypt, now of Assyria [v. 11). a cake not turned] Burnt to a coal at the bottom, raw dough at the top : an apt emblem of a character full of inconsistencies (Bishop Hors- ley). The explanation is plausible, as long as we look at the figure by itself. But the context, which refers only to Israel's political decline, favours another view. *A brand snatched from the burning' is a figure of a country, rescued only just in time from destruction. Hosea's 'cake not turned ' may equally well be an emblem of a country half ruined by calamities, and not rescued. The calamities of Israel, alas ! are of his own making; by mingling with 'the peoples' he sought for warmth, but found a destroying conflagration (cf Isa. xlvii, 14). The 'cake' is the round flat cake of bread which was baked on hot stones (i Kings xix. 6) or on hot ashes, and required frequent turning, to prevent its being burned. 9. Strangers have derjoured his strength] By heavy tribute and desolating invasions. The 'strangers' would be Hazael and Benhadad (2 Kings viii. 12, x. 32, 33, xiii. 3, 7), Pul (2 Kings xv. 19, 20), 6—2 84 HOSEA, VII. [vv. 10—12. Yea, grey hairs are here and there upon him, yet he knoweth not. And the pride of Israel testifieth to his face : And they do not return to the Lord their God, nor seek him for all this. Ephraim also is like a silly dove, without heart : They call to Egypt, they go to Assyria. When they shall go, I will spread my net upon them ; I will bring them down as the fowls of the heaven ; I will chastise them, as their congregation hath heard. and Tiglath-Pileser (2 Kings xv. 29), though the two last are really the same person, Pul being the private name of a usurper who took the old royal name of Tiglath-Pileser (as proved by Mr Pinches). gray hairs are he7-e and there upon hiin\ Lit., *are sprinkled upon him.' That a state has different stages, analogous to the periods of human hfe, was a familiar idea; comp. xi. i ; Isa. xlvi. 4; Ps. Ixxi. 18 (where the speaker is probably the personified people, comp. v. 20 in the Hebrew). 10. And^ the pride of Israel...'] Repeated from v. 5, just as xii. 9 a is repeated in xiii. 4 a. It is not the prophet who speaks condemning a bad quality in his people, but Jehovah, Israel's true Pride, and the source of Israel's prosperity, who utters a solemn word of warning translated into act. How much more suitable this explanation is in such a context than either of the alternatives mentioned on v. 5. for all this] i.e. in spite of all this chastisement, comp. Isa. ix. 12, 17, 21. 11. Ephrairii also is like...] Rather, But Ephraim is become like a silly dove without understanding. This verse does not begin a fresh section, but is closely connected with the preceding. As a dove, fleeing from a hawk, is snared in the fowler's net, so Ephraim, when afraid o"f Assyria, calls in the assistance of Egypt, and when afraid of Egypt, applies to Assyria (see Introduction). In his folly he does not observe the snare which the false friend, or rather {v. 12) Jehovah, prepares for him. 12. When they shall go] Rather, As soon as they go. I will spread 7ny net] The image of Jehovah's net is not a frequent one; see however Job xix. 6; Ezek. xii. 13, xvii. 20, xix. 8, xxxii. 3. Here the net means captivity. / will bring them down] Apparently by placing a bait to draw them to the earth, at least if the figure is to be continued. Am. ix. 2 is therefore not parallel. as their congregation hath heard] Lit., 'according to the announce- ment to their congregation.' Comp. Isa. liii. i, 'Who hath believed our announcement' (a cognate word) = 'that which we heard'. The punishment, says Hosea, will agree exactly with his own repeated predictions (comp. v. 9). vv. 13—16.] ROSEA, VII. 85 Woe unto them ! for they have fled from me : 13 Destruction unto them ! because they have transgressed against me : Though I have redeemed them, yet they have spoken lies against me. And they have not cried unto me with their heart, 14 When they howled upon their beds ; They assemble themselves for corn and wine, A7id they rebel against me. Though I have bound and strengthened their arms, 15 Yet do they imagine mischief against me. They return, but not to the most High : 16 13. they have fled from me'\ like birds scared out of their nest ^Isa. xvi. 2) ; but the Israelites have only themselves to blame for the fatal consequence. They have left their true home, and shall find no second (see on ix. 17). transgressed'^ Or, 'rebelled'; strictly, 'broken away.' though I have redeemed...'] Rather, I indeed would redeem them, but they, &c. The 'lies' of the Israelites related (see next verse) to Jehovah's power and willingness to save. 14. with their heart, when they howled] Rather, in their heart, ■but they howl. The prophet contrasts the quiet communion of the heart with Jehovah and the wild-beastHke 'howling' of the impenitent Israelites, who murmur at the withdrawal of material blessings. Comp. Isa. xxiv. II. they assemble themselves] i.e. to lament together in their affliction. But the rendering is doubtful. Ewald, better, 'they excite them- selves ' (or, are inwardly moved). But it is much more natural to suppose that Daleth has become altered into Resh, and that we should read differently. Render therefore, with the Septuagint and some Hebrew MSS., they cut themselves. It is an allusion to a well-known sign of mourning, forbidden indeed by the Law (Deut. xiv. i ; Lev. xix. 28, xxi. 5), but habitually practised in Palestine (Jer. xvi. 6, xli. 5, xlvii. 5, xlviii. 37), and still noticeable in the time of St Jerome (comm. on Jer. xvi. 6). 15. Though I have bound aftd strengthened their arms] Rather, I Indeed have trained and strengthened their arms. The Israelites had had a proof of this not long since when 'Jehovah saw the affliction of Israel that it was very bitter', and 'saved them by the hand of Jero- boam the son of Joash ' (2 Kings xiv. 27). 16. They return, but not to the most High] Rather, They turn ig: F. A. BROCK HAUS. i^efaj^Dork: MACMILLAN AND CO. CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BV J. & C. F. CLAY, AT THK UNIVERSITY PRESS. THE CAMBRIDGE BIBLE FOR SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES. General Editor, J. J. S. Perowne, Bishop of Worcester. ©pmionsi of tfte ^regsJ* **// is difficult to com?nend too highly this excellent series." — Guardian. *^The modesty of the general title of this series has, we believe, led many to misundersta^id its character and taiderrate its value. The books are well suited for study in the upper forms of our best schools, but not the less are they adapted to the wants of all Bible sttidents who are not specialists. We doubt, indeed, whether any of the numerous popzilar commentaries recently issued iji this country will be found more service- able for general use." — Academy. *' One of the most popular and useful literary enterprises of the nineteenth century." — Baptist Magazine. " Of great value. The whole series of comments for schools is highly esteemed by students capable of forming a JudgvieJtt. 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The opening sections at once prove the thorough competence of the writer for dealing with questions of criti- cism in an earnest, faithful and devout spirit ; and the appendices discuss a few special difficulties with a full knowledge of the data, and a judicial reserve, which contrast most favourably with the superficial dogmatism which has too often made the exegesis of the Old Testament a field for the play of unlimited paradox and the ostentation of personal infalli- bility. The notes are always clear and suggestive; never trifling or irrelevant; and they everywhere demonstrate the great difference in value between the work of a commentator who is also a Hebraist, and that of one who has to depend for his Hebrew upon secondhand sources . ' ' — A cademy . I. Kings and Ephesians. " With great heartiness we commend these most valuable little commentaries. We had rather purchase these than nine out of ten of the big blown up expositions. Quality is far better than quantity, and we have it here." — Sword and Troiuel. II. Kings. "The Introduction is scholarly and wholly admirable, the notes must be of incalculable value to students." — Glasgozv Herald. "It would be difficult to find a commentary better suited for general use. " — Academy. lo.ooo 8/1094 2 CAMBRIDGE BIBLE FOR SCHOOLS ^^ COLLEGES. The Book of Job. "Able and scholarly as the Introduction is, it is far surpassed by the detailed exegesis of the book. In this Dr Davidson's strength is at its greatest. His linguistic knowledge, his artistic habit, his scientific insight, and his literary power have full scope when he comes to exegesis...." — The Spectator. " In the course of a long introduction, Dr Davidson has presented us with a very able and very interesting criticism of this wonderful book. Its contents, the nature of its composition, its idea and purpose, its integrity, and its age are all exhaustively treated of.... We have not space to examine fully the text and notes before us, but we can, and do heartily, recommend the book, not only for the upper forms in schools, but to Bible students and teachers generally. As we wrote of a previous volume in the same series, this one leaves nothing to be desired. The notes are full and suggestive, without being too long, and, in itself, the introduction forms a valuable addition to modern Bible literature." — The Educational TiT?ies. "Already we have frequently called attention to this exceedingly valuable work as its volumes have successively appeared. But we have never done so with greater pleasure, very seldom with so great pleasure, as we now refer to the last published volume, that on the Book of Job, by Dr Davidson, of Edinburgh.... We cordially commend the volume to all our readers. The least instructed will understand and enjoy it ; and mature scholars will learn from it." — Methodist Recorder. Psalms. Book I. "His commentary upon the books of Samuel was good, but this is incomparably better, shewing traces of much more work and of greater independence of scholarship and judgment.... As a whole it is admirable, and we are hardly going too far in saying that it is one of the very ablest of all the volumes that have yet appeared in the 'Cambridge Bible for Schools'." — Record. "Another volume of this excellent Bible, in which the student may rely on meeting with the latest scholarship. The introduction is ad- mirable. We know of nothing in so concise a form better adapted for Sunday- School Teachers." — Sunday-School Chronicle. " It is full of instruction and interest, bringing within easy reach of the English reader the results of the latest scholarship bearing upon the study of this ever new book of the Bible. The Introduction of eighty pages is a repertory of information, not drily but interestingly given. " — Methodist Recorder. 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"It seems in every way a most valuable little book, containing a mass of information, well-assorted, and well-digested, and will be useful not only to students preparing for examinations, but to many who want OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. a handy volume of explanation to much that is difficult in the Psalter, We owe a great debt of gratitude to Professor Kirkpatrick for his scholarly and interesting volume." — Church Tunes. "In this volume thoughtful exegesis founded on nice critical scholar- ship and due regard for the opinions of various writers, combine, under the influence of a devout spirit, to render this commentaiy a source of much valuable assistance. The notes are 'though deep yet clear,' for they seem to put in a concentrated form the very pith and marrow of all the best that has been hitherto said on the subject, with striking freedom from anything like pressure of personal views. Throughout the work care and pains are as conspicuous as scholarship." — Literary Churchman. 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Ecclesiastes ; or, the Preacher.— " Of the Notes, it is sufficient to say that they are in every respect worthy of Dr Plumptre's high repu- tation as a scholar and a critic, being at once learned, sensible, and practical. ...Commentaries are seldom attractive reading. This little volume is a notable exception." — The Scotsman. Jeremiah, by A. W. Streane, B.D. "The arrangement of the book is well treated on pp. xxx., 396, and the question of Baruch's relations with its composition on pp. xxvii., xxxiv., 317. The illustrations from English literature, history, monuments, works on botany, topography, etc., are good and plentiful, as indeed they are in other volumes of this series." — Church Quarterly Revieiv. Malachi. "Archdeacon Perowne has already edited Jonah and Zechariah for this series. Malachi presents comparatively few difficulties and the Editor's treatment leaves nothing to be desired. His introduction is clear and scholarly and his commentary sufficient. We may instance the notes on ii. 15 and iv. 1 as examples of careful arrangement, clear exposition and graceful expression." — Academy. " The Gospel according to St Matthew, by the Rev. A. Carr. The introduction is able, scholarly, and eminently practical, as it bears on the authorship and contents of the Gospel, and the original form in which it is supposed to have been written. It is well illustrated by two excellent maps of the Holy Land and of the Sea of Galilee.' — English Churchman. "St Mark, with Notes by the Rev. G. F. Maclear, D.D. Into this small volume Dr Maclear, besides a clear and able Introduc- tion to the Gospel, and the text of St Mark, has compressed many 4 CAMBRIDGE BIBLE FOR SCHOOLS &- COLLEGES. hundreds of valuable and helpful notes. In short, he has given us a capital manual of the kind required — containing all that is needed to illustrate the text, i. e. all that can be drawn from the history, geography, customs, and manners of the time. But as a handbook, giving in a clear and succinct form the information which a lad requires in order to stand an examination in the Gospel, it is admirable I can very heartily commend it, not only to the senior boys and girls in our High Schools, but also to Sunday-school teachers, who may get from it the very kind of knowledge they often find it hardest to get. " — Expositor. ' ' With the help of a book like this, an intelligent teacher may make •Divinity' as interesting a lesson as any in the school course. The notes are of a kind that will be, for the most part, intelligible to boys of the lower forms of our public schools ; but they may be read with greater profit by the fifth and sixth, in conjunction with the original text." — T/te Academy. "St Luke. Canon Farrar has supplied students of the Gospel with an admirable manual in this volume. It has all that copious variety of illustration, ingenuity of suggestion, and general soundness of interpretation which readers are accustomed to expect from the learned and eloquent editor. Anyone who has been accustomed to associate the idea of 'dryness' with a commentary, should go to Canon Farrar 's St Luke for a more correct impression. He will find that a commen- tary may be made interesting in the highest degree, and that without losing anything of its solid value. ...But, so to speak, it is too good for some of the readers for whom it is intended." — The Spectator, The Gospel according to St John. "The notes are extremely scholarly and valuable, and in most cases exhaustive, bringing to the elucidation of the text all that is best in commentaries, ancient and modern." — The English Churchman and Clerical yoiirnal. "(i) The Acts of the Apostles. By J. Rawson Lumby, D.D. (2) The Second Epistle of the Corinthians, edited by Professor Lias. The introduction is pithy, and contains a mass of carefully-selected information on the authorship of the Acts, its designs, and its sources. The Second Epistle of the Corinthians is a manual beyond all praise, for the excellence of its pithy and pointed annotations, its analysis of the contents, and the fulness and value of its introduction." — Examiner. "The Rev. H. C. G. Moule, B.D., has made a valuable addition to The Cambridge Bible for Schools in his brief commentary on the Epistle to the Romans. The 'Notes' are very good, and lean, as the notes of a School Bible should, to the most commonly ac- cepted and orthodox view of the inspired author's meaning ; while the Introduction, and especially the Sketch of the Life of St Paul, is a model of condensation. It is as lively and pleasant to read as if two or three facts had not been crowded into well-nigh every sentence." — Expositor. "The Epistle to the Romans. It is seldom we have met with a work so remarkable for the compression and condensation of all that is valuable in the smallest possible space as in the volume betore us. Within its limited pages we have ' a sketch of the Life of St Paul,' we have further a critical account of the date of the Epistle to the Romans, of its language, and of its genuineness. The notes are OPINIONS OF THE PRESS numerous, full of matter, to the point, and leave no real difficulty or obscurity unexplained." — The Examiner. ''The First Epistle to the Corinthians. Edited by Professor Lias, Every fresh instalment of this annotated edition of the Bible for Schools confirms the favourable opinion we formed of its value from the exami- nation of its first number. The origin and plan of the Epistle are discussed v^rith its character and genuineness." — The Nonconformist. Galatians. **Dr Pekowne deals throughout in a very thorough manner with every real difficulty in the text, and in this respect he ha? faithfully followed the noble example set him in the exegetical master- piece, his indebtedness to which he frankly acknowledges." — Modern Church. "The introductory matter is very full and informing, whilst the Notes are admirable. They combine the scholarly and the practical in an unusual degree It is not the young students in 'schools and colleges' alone who will find this Commentary helpful on every page. " — Record. "This little work, like all of the series, is a scholarly production; but we can also unreservedly recommend it from a doctrinal standpoint ; Dr E. H. Perowne is one who has grasped the distinctive teaching of the Epistle, and expounds it with clearness and definiteness. In an appendix, he ably maintains the correctness of the A. V. as against the R. V. in the translation of II. i6, a point of no small importance." — English Churchman. The Epistle to the Ephesians. By Rev. H. C. G. Moule, B.D. " It seems to us the model of a School and College Commentary — comprehensive, but not cumbersome; scholarly, but not pedantic." — Baptist Magazine. The Epistle to the Philippians. " There are few series more valued by theological students than ' The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges,' and there will be no number of it more esteemed than that by Mr H. C. G. Moule on the Epistle to the Philippians." — Record. Thessalonians. "It will stand the severest scrutiny, for no volume in this admirable series exhibits more careful work, and Mr Findlay is a true expositor, who keeps in mind what he is expounding, and for whom he is expounding it." — Exposiio7y Times. "Mr Findlay maintains the high level of the series to which he has become contributor. Some parts of his introduction to the Epistles to the Thessalonians could scarcely be bettered. The account of Thessa- lonica, the description of the style and character of the Epistles, and the analysis of them are excellent in style and scholarly care. The notes are possibly too voluminous ; but there is so much matter in them, and the matter is arranged and handled so ably, that we are ready to forgive their fulness. ...Mr Findlay's commentary is a valuable addition to what has been written on the letters to the Thessalonian Church." — Academy. "Of all the volumes of this most excellent series, none is better done, and few are so well done as this small volume.... From begin- ning to end the volume is marked by accurate grammatical scholarship, delicate appreciation of the apostle's meaning, thorough investigation 6 CAMBRIDGE BIBLE FOR SCHOOLS er' COLLEGES. of all matters open to doubt, extensive reading, and deep sympathy with the spiritual aim of these epistles. It is, on the whole, the best commentary on the Thessalonians v/hich has yet appeared, and its small price puts it within reach of all. We heartily recommend it." — Methodist Recorder, "Mr FiNDLAY has fulfilled in this volume a task which Dr Moulton was compelled to decline, though he has rendered valuable aid in its pre- paration. The commentary is in its own way a model — clear, forceful, scholarly — such as young students will welcome as a really useful guide, and old ones will acknowledge as giving in brief space the substance of all that they knew. " — Baptist Magazine. Hebrews. " Like his (Canon Farrar's) commentary on Luke it possesses all the best characteristics of his writing. It is a work not only of an accomplished scholar, but of a skilled teacher." — Baptist Magazine. Tlie Epistles of St John. By the Rev. A. Plummer, D.D. "This forms an admirable companion to the 'Commentary on the Gospel according to St John,' which was reviewed in The Chtirchinan as soon as it appeared. Dr Plummer has some of the highest qualifica- tions for such a task ; and these two volumes, their size being considered, will bear comparison with the best Commentaries of the time." — The Churchman. Revelation. "This volume contains evidence of much careful labour. It is a scholarly production, as might be expected from the pen of the late Mr W. H. SiMCOX The notes throw light upon many passages of this difficult book, and are extremely suggestive. It is an advantage that they sometimes set before the student various interpre- tations without exactly guiding him to a choice." — Guardian. "Mr SiMCOX has treated his veiy difficult subject with that con- scious care, grasp and lucidity which characterises everything he wrote." — ModeJ'n Church. W^z ^mailer orambvitige i3it)U for Schools. ' ' We can only repeat what we have already said of this admirable series, contaiimtg, as it does, the scholarship of the larger work. For scholars in our elder classes, and for those preparing for Scripture exami- nations^ no better co77i7nentaries can be put into their hands J^ — Sunday- School Chronicle. ^''Despite their small size, these volumes give the substance of the admirable pieces of work on which they are founded. We can only hope that in many schools the class-teaching will proceed on the lines these com- mentators suggest.'^ — Record. " We should be glad to hear that this series has been introduced into many of our Sunday-Schools, for xvhich it is so admirably adapted.^'' — Christian Leader. ^^ All that is necessary to be known and learned by pupils in junior and eleynentary schools is to be found in this se?-ies. Indeed, much more is provided than should be required by the examiners. We do not know what more could be done to provide sejisible, interesting, and solid Scrip- tural instruction for boys and girls. The Syndics of the Cambridge OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. University Press are rendering great services both to teachers and to scholars by the publication of snch a valuable series of books, in which slipshod work could not have a place. ^^ — Literary World. '^For the student of the sacred oracles who utilizes hours of travel or moments of waiting in the perusal of the Bible there is nothing so handy, and, at the same time, so satisfy itig as these little books Nor let anyone suppose that, becatise these are school-books, therefore they are beneath the adult reader. They contain the very ripest results of the best Biblical scholarship, and that in the very simplest form ^'' — Christian Leader. " Altogether one of the most perfect examples of a Shilling New Tes- tament co7?imejttary which even this age of cheapness is likely to produce,''"' — Bookseller. Samuel I. and II. "Professor Kirkpatrick's two tiny volumes on the First and Second Books of Samuel are quite model school-books ; the notes elucidate every possible difficulty with scholarly brevity and clearness and a perfect knowledge of the subject." — Saturday Review. "They consist of an introduction full of matter, clearly and succinctly given, and of notes which appear to us to be admirable, at once full and brief." — Church Times. Kings I. "We can cordially recommend this little book. The Intro- duction discusses the question of authorship and date in a plain but scholarly fashion, while the footnotes throughout are brief, pointed, and helpful." — Review of Reviews. St Matthew. "The notes are terse, clear, and helpful, and teachers and students cannot fail to find the volume of great service." — Publishers' Circular. St Mark. St Luke. "We have received the volumes of St Mark and St Luke in this series.... The two volumes seem, on the whole, well adapted for school use, are well and carefully printed, and have maps and good, though necessarily brief, introductions. There is little doubt that this series will be found as popular and useful as the well-known larger series, of which they are abbreviated editions." — Guardian. St Luke. "We cannot too highly commend this handy little book to all teachers." — Wesleyan Methodist Sunday-School Record. St John. "We have been especially interested in Mr Plummer's treatment of the Gospel which has been entrusted to his charge. He is con- cise, comprehensive, interesting, and simple. Young students of this inim- itable book, as well as elder students, even ministers and teachers, may use it with advantage as a very serviceable handbook." — Literary JVo)'ld. "A model of condensation, losing nothing of its clearness and force from its condensation into a small compass. Many who have long since completed their college curriculum will find it an invaluable handbook." — Methodist Times. Acts. "The notes are very brief, but exceedingly comprehensive, comprising as much detail in the way of explanation as would be needed by young students of the Scriptures preparing for examination. We again give the opinion that this series furnishes as much real luelp as would usually satisfy students for the Christian ministry, or even minis- ters themselves." — Literary World. THE CAMBRIDGE GREEK TESTAMENT FOR SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES with a Revised Text, based on the most recent critical authorities, and English Notes. '■'■ Has achieved an excellence which puts it above criticism.'''' — Expositor. St Matthew. *' Copious illustrations, gathered from a great variety of sources, make his notes a very valuable aid to the student. They are indeed remarkably interesting, while all explanations on meanings, applications, and the like are distinguished by their lucidity and good sense." — Pall Mall Gazette. St Mark. "Dr Maclear's introduction contains all that is known of St Mark's life; an account of the circumstances in which the Gospel was composed, with an estimate of the influence of St Peter's teaching upon St Mark ; an excellent sketch of the special characteristics of this Gospel; an analysis, and a chapter on the text of the New Testament generally. " — Saturday Review. St Luke. *'0f this second series we have a new volume by Archdeacon Farrar on St Luke, completing the four Gospels It gives us in clear and beautiful language the best results of modern scholarship. We have a most attractive Introductioti. Then follows a sort of composite Greek text, representing fairly and in very beautiful type the consensus of modern textual critics. At the beginning of the exposition of each chapter of the Gospel are a few short critical notes giving the manuscript evidence for such various readings as seem to deserve mention. The expository notes are short, but clear and helpful. For young students and those who are not disposed to buy or to study the much more costly work of Godet, this seems to us to be the best book on the Greek Text of the Third Gos^el.'^— Methodist Recorder. St John. " We take this opportunity of recommending to ministers on probation, the very excellent volume of the same series on this part of the New Testament. We hope that most or all of our young ministers will prefer to study the volume in the Cambridge Greek Testa??ient for Schools.'^ — Methodist Recorder. The Acts of the Apostles. "Professor Lumby has performed his laborious task well, and supplied us with a commentary the fulness and freshness of which Bible students will not be slow to appreciate. The volume is enriched with the usual copious indexes and four coloured maps." — Glasgow Herald. I. Corinthians. "Mr Lias is no novice in New Testament exposi- tion, and the present series of essays and notes is an able and helpful addition to the existing books." — Guardian. The Epistles of St John. "In the very useful and well annotated series of the Cambridge Greek Testament the volume on the Epistles of St John must hold a high position.... The notes are brief, well informed and intelligent." — Scotsrnan. CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY C. J. CLAY, M.A. AND SONS, AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. Date Due BS1565 .C531 ^ . Hosea, with notes and introduction. Princeton Theological Seminary-Speer Library