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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadGreater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 440. Hosea
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Literature
Batten, L. W., The Hebrew Prophet (1905), 85.
Cheyne, T. K., Hosea (Cambridge Bible) (1889).
Clifford, J., The Gospel of Gladness (1912), 28.
Davidson, A. B., Biblical and Literary Essays (1902), 82.
Duhm, B., The Twelve Prophets (1912), 30, 81.
Edghill, E. A., The Evidential Value of Prophecy (1906), 58.
Elmslie, W. G., Expository Lectures and Sermons (1892), 54.
Fairweather, W., The Pre-Exilic Prophets, 41.
Farrar, F. W., The Minor Prophets, 69, 82.
Findlay, G. G., The Books of the Prophets, i. (1900) 155.
Foakes-Jackson, F. J., The Bible History of the Hebrews (1903), 261.
Fowler, G. H., Things Old and New (1892), 140.
Harper, W. R., Amos and Hosea (International Critical Commentary) (1905), cxl. 201.
Horton, R. F., The Minor Prophets (Century Bible).
Houghton, L. S., Hebrew Life and Thought (1906), 183.
Kirkpatrick, A. F., The Doctrine of the Prophets (1892), 107.
Maclaren, A., Expositions: Ezekiel to Malachi (1908), 94, 100, 114, 127, 134.
McWilliam, T., Speakers for God (1902), 27, 34.
Ottley, R. L., A Short History of the Hebrews (1901), 188.
Sanders, F. K., and Kent, C. F., The Messages of the Earlier Prophets (1899), 47.
Smith, G. A., The Book of the Twelve Prophets (Expositor's Bible), i. (1896) 211.
Smith, W. R., The Prophets of Israel (1882), 144.
Welch, A. C., The Religion of Israel under the Kingdom (1912), 97.
Whitham, A. R., Old Testament History (1912), 317.
Woods, F. H., and Powell, F. E., The Hebrew Prophets, i. (1909) 24.
Dictionary of the Bible, ii. (1899) 419 (A. B. Davidson).
Dictionary of the Bible, ii. (Single-volume, 1909) 364 (G. B. Gray).
I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely: for mine anger is turned away from him.- Hos_14:4.
The mantle of Amos fell upon the shoulders of Hosea. It is almost impossible to imagine a greater contrast. The one left his own country to deliver a single message of warning and woe to the light-hearted people of the Northern Kingdom; the other spent a life-long ministry in preaching to his disheartened and disorganized compatriots. A remarkable difference is also discernible in the character and message of the two prophets: Amos, the inflexible preacher of righteousness and judgment to come; Hosea, the tender-hearted prophet of outraged love.
1. The pages of Hosea cast a lurid light upon the condition of Israel during the ten or fifteen years which followed the death of Jeroboam. The contemporary of Amos during the later years of Jeroboam ii., he also continued to prophesy in the troublous times which began with the overthrow of the house of Jehu. In that age of corruption, conspiracies, and assassinations, when four out of the six successors of Jeroboam died by violence, he made a noble effort to stem the tide of ungodliness. The social evils which Amos denounced had increased rather than abated. Private as well as public honour was lost. Immorality was openly practiced unrebuked. The debasing customs of the Canaanite neighbours of the Israelites were eagerly adopted. The hollow ceremonial worship of Jehovah, which had served well enough as a national religion in time of prosperity, broke down under the test of adversity. The nation, which had lost faith in itself and had begun to seek support in foreign alliances, also began to lose faith in the Jehovah whom in its thought it had degraded almost to the level of a heathen deity. Israel presented the sad example of a nation in the state of moral, political, and religious collapse, while slowly the irresistible and insatiable foe, Assyria, was advancing to crush it. In imagination it is possible to appreciate, in part at least, what must have been the anguish of the inspired poet, patriot, and prophet, who was forced to witness the suicide of his beloved nation. In the light of these facts we understand why the extracts from his sermons, delivered during these tragic days and preserved in chapters 4-14, are impassioned-often obscure-cries, now of denunciation, now of anguish, now of entreaty. Indignation and sorrow, tenderness and severity, faith in the sovereignty of Jehovah's love, and a despairing sense of Israel's infidelity are woven together in a sequence which has no logical plan, but is determined by the battle and alternate victory of contending emotions; and the swift transitions, the fragmentary utterance, the half-developed allusions, that make his prophecy so difficult to the commentator, express the agony of this inward conflict.
2. His ability, notwithstanding conflicting feelings, to give expression to a system of theology which was to serve henceforth as the basis of all Israelite thought, is a factor worthy of consideration in any estimate of his character. He was, in a strange and true sense, a typical Israelite, and his thought, as time shows, was the thought which Israel would accept. This must have come about, at least in part, because his character was fundamentally the Israelite character-strong, complex, emotional, religious.
The whole history of the world to this day is in truth one continual establishing of the Old Testament revelation: “O ye that love the Eternal, see that ye hate the thing that is evil! to him that ordereth his conversation right, shall be shown the salvation of God.” And whether we consider this revelation in respect to human affairs at large, or in respect to individual happiness, in either case its importance is so immense, that the people to whom it was given, and whose record is in the Bible, deserve fully to be singled out as the Bible singles them. “Behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the nations; but the Eternal shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee!” For, while other nations had the misleading idea that this or that, other than righteousness, is saving, and it is not; that this or that, other than conduct, brings happiness, and it does not; Israel had the true idea that righteousness is saving, that to conduct belongs happiness.… As long as the world lasts, all who want to make progress in righteousness will come to Israel for inspiration, as to the people who have had the sense for righteousness most glowing and strongest; and in hearing and reading the words Israel has uttered for us, carers for conduct will find a glow and a force they will find nowhere else.1 [Note: Matthew Arnold, Literature and Dogma.]