in his prophetic teaching (Shear-jashub, Isa. vii. 3, comp. x. 21;
Maher-shalal-hash-baz, viii. 3). And the name of Gomer bath
Diblaim is certainly that of an actual person, upon which all
the allegorists, from the Targum, Jerome and Ephraem Syrus
downwards, have spent their arts in vain, whereas the true symbolical
names in the book are perfectly easy of interpretation.[1]
That the ancient interpreters take the whole narrative as a mere
parable is no more than an application of their standing rule that
everything in the Biblical history is allegorical which in its literal
sense appears offensive to propriety (comp. Jerome’s proem to
the book). But the supposed offence to propriety seems to rest
on mistaken exegesis and too narrow a conception of the way
in which the Divine word was communicated to the prophets.[2]
There is no reason to suppose that Hosea knowingly married
a woman of profligate character. The point of the allegory
in i. 2 is plainly infidelity after marriage as a parallel to Israel’s
departure from the covenant God, and a profligate wife (אשת זנונים)
is not the same thing with an open prostitute (זונה). The
marriage was marred by Gomer’s infidelity; and the struggle
of Hosea’s affection for his wife with this great unhappiness—a
struggle inconceivable unless his first love had been pure and
full of trust in the purity of its object—furnished him with a new
insight into Yahweh’s dealings with Israel. Then he recognized
that the great calamity of his life was God’s own ordinance and
appointed means to communicate to him a deep prophetic lesson.
The recognition of a divine command after the fact has its
parallel, as Wellhausen observes, in Jer. xxxii. 8.
It was in the experiences of his married life, and in the spiritual lessons opened to him through these, that Hosea first heard the revealing voice of Yahweh (i. 2).[3] Like Amos (Amos iii. 8), he was called to speak for God by an inward constraining voice, and there is no reason to think that he had any connexion with the recognized prophetic societies, or ever received such outward adoption to office as was given to Elisha. His position in Israel was one of tragic isolation. Amos, when he had discharged his mission at Bethel, could return to his home and to his friends; Hosea was a stranger among his own people, and his home was full of sorrow and shame. Isaiah in the gloomiest days of Judah’s declensions had faithful disciples about him, and knew that there was a believing remnant in the land. Hosea knows no such remnant, and there is not a line in his prophecy from which we can conclude that his words ever found an obedient ear.
As already stated, this prophecy falls into two clearly distinguished sections,[4] the former (i.-iii.), already dealt with, accounting for the general standpoint of the latter (iv.-xiv.). It is not possible to make any convincing subdivisions of this latter section (cf. G. A. Smith, i. p. 223) which is best regarded as a series of separate discourses on certain recurrent topics, viz. (a) the cultus, (b) the social disorder and immorality, (c) political tendencies (alliance with either Assyria or Egypt sought).[5] In regard to each of these topics, the attitude of the prophet involves the discernment of present guilt, and the assertion of future punishment. For him the present condition of the people contained no germ or pledge of future amendment, and he describes the impending judgment, not as a sifting process (Amos ix. 9, 10) in which the wicked perish and the righteous remain, but as the total wreck of the nation which has wholly turned aside from its God. In truth, while the idolatrous feasts of Ephraim still ran their joyous round, while the careless people crowded to the high places, and there in unbridled and licentious mirth flattered themselves that their many sacrifices ensured the help of their God against all calamity, the nation was already in the last stage of internal dissolution. To the prophet’s eye there was “no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land—nought but swearing, and lying, and killing, and stealing and adultery; they break out, and blood toucheth blood” (iv. 1, 2). The root of this corruption lay in total ignorance of Yahweh, whose precepts were no longer taught by the priests, while in the national calf-worship, and in the local high places, this worship was confounded with the service of the Canaanite Baalim. Thus the whole religious constitution of Israel was undermined. And the political state of the realm was in Hosea’s eyes not more hopeful. The dynasty of Jehu, still great and powerful when the prophet’s labours began, is itself an incorporation of national sin. Founded on the bloodshed of Jezreel, it must fall by God’s vengeance, and the state shall fall with it (i. 4, iii. 4). This sentence stands at the head of Hosea’s predictions, and throughout the book the civil constitution of Ephraim is represented as equally lawless and godless with the corrupt religious establishment. The anarchy that followed on the murder of Zachariah appears to the prophet as the natural decadence of a realm not founded on divine ordinance. The nation had rejected Yahweh, the only helper. And now the avenging Assyrian[6] is at hand. Samaria’s king shall pass away as foam on the water. Fortress and city shall fall before the ruthless invader, who spares neither age nor sex, and thistles shall cover the desolate altars of Ephraim.
In our present book of Hosea, this condemnatory judgment on contemporary Israel culminates in a chapter of appeal for penitence, with promise of divine forgiveness. The question of the authenticity of this and of other “restoration” passages[7] forms the chief problem
- ↑ Theodorus Mops. remarks very justly, καὶ τὸ ὄνομα καὶ τὸν πατέρα λέγει, ὡς μὴ πλάσμα ψιλόν τι δοκοίη τὸ λεγόμενον, ἱστορία δὲ ἀληθὴς τῶν πραγμάτων.
- ↑ This explanation of the narrative, which is essentially Ewald’s, is now generally accepted. It has the great advantage of supplying a psychological key to the conception of Israel or the land of Israel (i. 2) as the spouse of Yahweh, which dominates these chapters, but in the later part of the book gives way to the personification of the nation as God’s son. This conception has, indeed, formal points of contact with notions previously current, and even with the ideas of Semitic heathenism. On the one hand, it is a standing Hebrew usage to represent the land as mother of its people, while the representation of worshippers as children of their god is found in Num. xxi. 29, where the Moabites are called children of Chemosh, and is early and widespread throughout the Semitic field (cf. Trans. Bib. Arch. vi. 438; Jour. of Phil. ix. 82). The combination of these two notions gives at once the conception of the national deity as husband of the land. On the other hand, the designation of Yahweh as Baal, which, in accordance with the antique view of marriage, means husband as well as lord and owner, was current among the Israelites in early times, perhaps, indeed, down to Hosea’s age (ii. 16). Now it is highly probable that among the idolatrous Israelites the idea of a marriage between the deity and individual worshippers was actually current and connected with the immorality which Hosea often condemns in the worship of the local Baalim whom the ignorant people identified with Yahweh. For we have a Punic woman’s name, ארשתבעל, “the betrothed of Baal” (Euting, Punische Steine, pp. 9, 15), and a similar conception existed among the Babylonians (Herod. i. 181, 182). But Hosea takes the idea of Yahweh as husband, and gives it an altogether different turn, filling it with a new and profound meaning, based on the psychical experiences of a deep human affection in contest with outraged honour and the wilful self-degradation of a spouse. It can hardly be supposed that all that lies in these chapters is an abstract study in the psychology of the emotions. It is actual human experience that gives Hosea the key to divine truth.
- ↑ Davidson (D.B. ii. 422) remarks that “it was not his misfortunes that gave Hosea his prophetic word. Israel’s apostasy was plain to him, and he foreshadowed her doom in Jezreel, the name of his first child, before any misfortunes overtook him. At most, his misfortunes may at a later time have given a complexion to his prophetic thoughts.” Wellhausen (p. 108) objects to the emergence of the call from the experience, on the ground that the name given to the first child gives no indication that Hosea had yet reached his specific message, the infidelity of his wife and of Israel, though it shows him already as a prophet. Marti (p. 15) agrees with Davidson in making the order (a) call, (b) marriage and birth of three children, (c) comprehension of the significance of the marriage for himself and for Israel. The statement made above must be interpreted of Hosea’s specific message from Yahweh, as recorded in his book.
- ↑ Marti disregards this generally accepted division, arguing that (a) i.-iii. was not written earlier than iv.-xiv., (b) iii. is not Hoseanic, (c) ii. is much more akin to iv.-xiv. than to i.-iii. (Comm. p. 1; cf. Enc. Bib. 2123 n.3). He holds that another wife, not Gomer, is intended in iii., which is an allegory referring to Israel, as Gomer referred to Judah. His arguments are not convincing.
- ↑ So, practically, Davidson, D.B. ii. p. 423 seq., where the detailed references will be found.
- ↑ This is too definite for the data; cf. Davidson, l.c. “Hosea has no clear idea of the instrument or means of Israel’s destruction. It is ‘the sword’ (vii. 16, xi. 6), the ‘enemy’ (viii. 3, v. 8-9); or it is natural, internal decay (vii. 8-9, ix. 16), the moth and rottenness (v. 12).”
- ↑ e.g. i. 10–ii. 1, ii. 14 f., iii. 5, v. 15–vi. 3, xi. 10-11.
