1. Of all the prophetic writings, not one is so difficult as this book. The difficulty lies largely in the style. It is terse, abrupt, full of mixed metaphors, obscure allusions, grammatical anomalies, aggravated no doubt, in many cases, by a corruption of the text, to which they naturally give rise. But the difficulty is also largely increased by the prophet's temperament. “The words of upbraiding, of judgment, of woe, burst out one by one, slowly, heavily, condensed, abrupt, from the prophet's heavy and shrinking soul.”1 [Note: E. B. Pusey, The Minor Prophets, 25.]
Hosea has not given us a compact piece of work such as the Book of Amos, for he had not the clear and orderly mind of the elder prophet. The cast of his genius is that of the lyrical poet rather than the orator. Chapters 1-3 form a distinct work-the First Book of Hosea-complete in itself, and composed before the fall of the Jehuite dynasty. It is a spiritual autobiography-the confessio amantis wrung from a heart which, through the anguish of its outraged human love, has won its way to the secret of the love Divine. Chapters 4-14 make up the Second Book of Hosea, manifestly of later date in its contents than the First. This is a continuous and discursive poetical harangue. The conclusion (chap. 14) is distinctly marked and beautifully finished; and at different points, especially towards the beginning, we may detect the commencement of new homilies. But no articulated scheme is visible. The whole work is a free, and for the most part unstudied, résumé by the prophet of his preaching in Israel. Forgetting the occasions of time and place, Hosea pours out in full flood the thoughts and emotions that possessed him during the years of his fruitless ministry. The sense of God's love is ever stronger than the sense of His wrath, and the true key to Hosea's meaning often lies in realizing the abruptness with which his feelings succeed each other, like the storms and sunshine of an April day. The man was not so much an intellect; he was a great, overflowing heart. He cannot think out things and reason out things. He sways like a pendulum from one extreme to another: now blazing indignation against the people's wickedness and blindness and madness, and the next moment lamenting over them like a mother over her only son. Emotion is the characteristic of Hosea's writing.
We English are really an emotional nation at heart, easily moved and liking to be moved; we are largely swayed by feeling, and much stirred by anything that is picturesque. But we are strangely ashamed of anything that seems like sentiment; and so far from being bluff and unaffected about it, we are full of the affectation, the pretence of not being swayed by our emotions. We have developed a curious idea of what men and women ought to be, and one of our pretences is that men should affect not to understand sentiment, and to leave, as we rudely say, “all that sort of thing to the women.” Yet we are much at the mercy of clap-trap and mawkish phrases, and we like rhetoric partly because we are too shy to practise it. The result of it is that we believe ourselves to be a frank, outspoken, good-natured race; but we produce an unpleasant effect of stiffness, angularity, discourtesy, and self-centredness upon more genial nations. We defend our bluffness by believing that we hold emotion to be too rare and sacred a quality to be talked about, though I always have a suspicion that if a man says that a subject is too sacred to discuss, he probably also finds it too sacred to think about very much either; yet if one can get a sensible Englishman to talk frankly and unaffectedly about his feelings, it is often surprising to find how delicate they are.1 [Note: A. C. Benson, Joyous Gard, 77.]
2. Hosea's personal history supplies the master-key to his teaching. Jehovah's faithfulness to Israel and Israel's thankless unfaithfulness to Jehovah are the ideas which permeate and give unity to the whole book. 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 adequately express the feelings of the Divine Heart. Gomer in fact is not merely an emblem; she is a representative. As Gomer has erred, so Israel as a nation has erred. Gomer was unchaste and, it would seem, a devotee of Asherah. So were too many others of the women of Israel; while the kindred worship of Baal or Baal-Jehovah absorbed the religious feelings of the men. Hosea, who has learned to “know Jehovah,” is cut to the quick by such apostasy; he spares no detail of the abominations that are committed; with a kind of grieved surprise he puts before the people the inevitable punishment; but when he has fully realized the awful nature of the doom, he melts with pity, and recalls the woe. The remainder of the prophecy is entirely devoted to interpreting to Israel its past, and especially its present, history in the light of this new revelation of the love of God.
3. The general thought of Hosea's message is summed up briefly in connexion with a very few propositions: (a) Israel is wicked through and through, and her condition morally is that of rottenness, (b) Israel is politically doomed, the last stages of decay having now been reached. (c) Jehovah is Israel's father, with all a father's love and interest; He is Israel's husband, with all a husband's love and devotion. (d) Israel fails to comprehend Jehovah; has a totally wrong conception of Him; in short, Israel does not know Jehovah. (e) Israel deceives herself in her acts of repentance; but there is a repentance which consists in turning back to Jehovah. (f) Israel's present attitude toward Jehovah's love means, in the end, her total destruction.
4. Hosea looks to the very depth of the heart of his country, and sees that it is in a state of corruption which can only end in dissolution. Like Amos, he dwells on the outward and glaring forms of evil; but he probes more deeply than his predecessor into the causes from which they spring, and details more precisely the forms which they assume. Even in the powerful rule of Jeroboam ii. he is only able to see a godless militarism, founded upon massacre. But when Jeroboam was dead, and in the ensuing anarchy, when the elemental passions of human nature surged over the petty barriers opposed to them by rival usurpers, he felt more and more that it had become his unhappy lot to be the prophet of the decadence and overthrow of the land he loved. King succeeded king and dynasty dynasty with horrible rapidity. There was no truth, or mercy, or knowledge of God in the land; there was nothing but swearing and lying and killing and stealing and committing adultery, which called for an immediate and ravaging retribution. Page after page of the prophet rings with denunciations of drunkenness, robbery, and whoredom. The noble oppresses the peasant, the money-lender grinds with his cruel usury the poor victim he has got under his clutches, the corn-dealers band together to raise the price of bread in the starving towns, so that the poor are driven to desperation.
Political ruin had also fallen upon the land. Placed there in that position of unsettlement, of exposure to the intrigues of two powerful empires, the people were driven on to ruin by the selfish schemes and disunion of their leaders and rulers, who did not comprehend that a nation's real welfare consists in virtue, in brotherhood, in justice, in mercy, in industry, in well-doing, in loving union of class with class, in the obedience of all to God above, in faith and heroic aspiration to work out a career on earth worthy of God, who called them to be a nation.
5. The causes of the wide-spread immorality were twofold, as Hosea, resident perhaps in Samaria, saw more clearly and pointed out more definitely than Amos.
(1) The first cause Hosea points out for us in the shape of tremendous denunciation of Israel's prophets and Israel's priests. From Hosea, the earliest of the Northern prophets whose works are extant, to Malachi, the latest prophet of the returned exiles, the priests had very little right to be proud of their title. Their pretensions were, for the most part, in inverse proportion to their merits. The neutrality, or the direct wickedness, of the religious teachers of a country, torpid in callous indifference and stereotyped in false traditions, is always the worst sign of a nation's decadence. Amos had found by experience that for any man who desired a reputation for worldly prudence, the wisest rule was to hold his tongue; but Hosea, for whom there was no escape from his native land, nothing remained but to bear the reproach that “the prophet is a fool, and the spiritual man is mad,” uttered by men full of iniquity and hatred. The priests suffered the people to perish for lack of knowledge. They set their hearts on their iniquity and contentedly connived at, if they did not directly foster, the sinfulness of the people, which at any rate secured them an abundance of sin-offerings. And there was worse behind. They were active fomenters of evil; they were as “a snare on Mizpah, and a net spread on Tabor.” Two other places-Gilead and Shechem-were rendered infamous by their enormities. Bloody footprints marked the soil, and “as bandits lying in wait, (so doth) the company of priests; they murder on the road towards Shechem; yea, they commit outrages.”
Professor Maurice, in a letter dated December 27th, 1865, criticizes one of the most novel aud characteristic positions assumed by Stanley in his second volume of Lectures on the Jewish Church. The Professor, after thanking him for the book, says: “The one subject upon which I have not yielded to your arguments is that of the priesthood. I do not dispute any of your facts, or their value; I should go further than you go in speaking of the sins of the Jewish priest, and of those who, rightly or wrongly, have borne that name in all countries and all ages. Priests, Jewish and heathen and Christian, it seems to me, have been worse than other men, because they themselves have offered, and have led mankind to offer, sacrifices to Moloch and Ashtaroth-or, in later times, emphatically to the Devil-when they have been appointed to offer them to the Eternal God of Truth and Love. I cannot exempt them from this terrible charge under the plea that they had not the very highest of functions in being witnesses that all creation is God's, or that any mere words of the prophet, grand as they may be, could dispense with the actual offering which the priests, as representatives of their nation or of humanity, were to bring.”1 [Note: R. E. Prothero, The Life and Correspondence of Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, ii. 249.]
(2) But the second cause of the national apostasy lay deeper still-the religious declension and false worship of the people, in its two forms of Baal- or nature-worship, and Jehovah-worship under the figure of a calf or young bull. Hosea's diagnosis of the guilt of Israel is an instance of the penetrating insight granted to a soul made sensitive by keen sorrow. Outwardly, Israel was not faithless to her God. She frequented the sacred festivals, offered the customary sacrifices, performed the traditional ritual; and she did all this as the service of Jehovah. Nevertheless, Hosea charged her with apostasy. The God Hosea knew was a great, spiritual God; a God whose whole being cared supremely for moral things, not for physical things; a God who meant this world to be only a means to an end, to be the platform on which a human drama was to be played, a scaffolding within which a temple of eternal human character of goodness was to be built up, a kingdom of heaven on earth. Hosea's God longed for righteousness, justice, truth, mercy between man and man; for aspirations of unselfishness, of heavenliness in human hearts. Israel's God bore the same name as Hosea's God. Israel's God, worshipped at His shrine, was Jehovah-Jehovah, the old orthodox God of the nation. And Israel had not cancelled one of the old articles of its creed. Israel had not touched one of the laws that came down out of antiquity-laws stamped with the name and backed by the will of Jehovah. But Israel had utterly transformed the character of the God it worshipped. The corruption was doubtless growing deeper every year. The God of Israel, through being addressed as Baal, was 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 practically 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 fused with those of the latter, and would bring their gross practices and licentious spirit with them.
The root-sin, from which all others spring, is unfaithfulness to Jehovah. Israel is a harlot and an adulteress. She has broken the marriage vow by religious apostasy. The false gods for which she has deserted Jehovah are her lovers. The Phœnician nature-worship was essentially immoral, and it is not always easy to decide whether Hosea is speaking literally or figuratively. Probably he regarded the abominations connected with the worship of Baal and Ashtoreth as the outward symbol of the spiritual sin, and did not care to distinguish sharply.
Idolatry indeed is wickedness; but it is the thing, not the name, which is so. Real idolatry is to pay that adoration to a creature which is known to be due only to the true God. He who professeth to believe in one Almighty Creator, and in His Son Jesus Christ, and is yet more intent on the honours, profits, and friendships of the world than he is, in singleness of heart, to stand faithful to the Christian religion, is in the channel of idolatry; while the Gentile, who, notwithstanding some mistaken opinions, is established in the true principle of virtue, and humbly adores an Almighty Power, may be of the number that fear God and work righteousness.1 [Note: John Woolman, Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes (Journal, 52).]
6. The separation of the Northern Kingdom from Judah comes in for blame from the prophet also. Israel's rebellion and defection from the house of David, truly considered, was defection from Jehovah also. This is its primary offence, and the root of all other offences. Hence in their regeneration they shall undo their past rebellion, “and seek Jehovah their God, and David their king.”
For these sins judgment is close at hand. Samaria must bear the punishment of her guilt. The kingdom of Ephraim must be destroyed. But even while He pronounces sentence, Jehovah's compassion is moved. He yearns over the guilty nation with the tenderest affection. “How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? how shall I deliver thee, Israel? how shall I make thee as Admah? how shall I set thee as Zeboim? Mine heart is turned within me, my compassions are kindled together.”
When I survey the occurrences of my life, and call into account the finger of God, I can perceive nothing but an abyss and mass of mercies, either in general to mankind, or in particular to myself. And, whether out of the prejudice of my affection, or an inverting and partial conceit of His mercies, I know not,-but those which others term crosses, afflictions, judgments, misfortunes, to me, who inquire further into them than their visible effects, they both appear, and in event have ever proved, the secret and dissembled favours of His affection. It is a singular piece of wisdom to apprehend truly, and without passion, the works of God, and so well to distinguish His justice from His mercy as not to miscall those noble attributes; yet it is likewise an honest piece of logick so to dispute and argue the proceedings of God as to distinguish even His judgments into mercies. For God is merciful unto all, because better to the worst than the best deserve; and to say He punisheth none in this world, though it be a paradox, is no absurdity.1 [Note: Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici.]
7. But the most touching and beautiful picture of the restoration is in the dialogue between the penitent people and Jehovah with which the book closes. They approach Him with a prayer for pardon, confessing their sin and promising no more to turn for help to worldly powers or material forces, no more to worship the work of their hands. Very gracious is the answer: “I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely: for mine anger is turned away from him.”
Thus the commanding thought in Hosea is the love of God to the children of Israel. In love He redeemed them from Egypt; His relations to them, all through their history, have been those of love; even His chastisements have been inflicted in love; and, finally, their restoration and everlasting peace shall come about through Jehovah's love. This relation of love Hosea expresses by calling Jehovah the Father, and especially the Husband, of Israel. The idea of the latter relation runs through the whole prophecy, and is the more fertile idea of the two; or, at least, is truer to the primary conception of the Old Testament religion, which is that of a covenant, and not that of generation by Jehovah; although the latter idea, really the more profound, is touched upon by Hosea, and more fully developed by later prophets. 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. All human relationships within the Israelite 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, that fills the foreground of Hosea's prophecies. His highest aim is to set forth its moral nature, as opposed to the altogether non-moral and quasi-physical union supposed to exist between a heathen deity and his worshippers. Jehovah is not more loving than righteous. His union with His people may be, must be, indestructible, but this is because “love is strong as death,” and therefore must be able to command a response of love in its own object. The Israelites must one day feel a love to Jehovah which is not merely as a “morning-cloud,” and Hosea exhausts the resources of his art in picturing this delightful future. 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.
How truly, and how beautifully, does the teaching of Hosea supplement and complete the sterner doctrine of Amos. Amos confines himself to that eternal truth which is the very foundation of a religious character-that God is righteous, and must have righteousness in His worshippers. He lays bare, with unsparing hand, the hollowness and shams of a religion which thinks to satisfy God with outward forms of worship, while it is all the time transgressing the first principles of morality. He witnesses to one side of the character of God. Hosea, with a deeper insight, a keener sympathy, a tenderer heart, supplies the motive power of religion and of life when he draws back the veil which hides the face of God and reveals that truth which is the very life-blood of our Christianity to-day, that “the Heart of the Eternal is most wonderfully kind.”
In an introduction written for Professor Gerhart's Institutes of the Christian Religion, Schaff expresses himself clearly upon the Divine love as revealed in Christ as the starting-point of theology. “Every age,” he says, “must produce its own theology. What do we know about decrees passed millions of years ago in the hidden depths of eternity? Can we conceive God as deliberately discussing with Himself a plan of constructing a world, and finally coming to a conclusion and making out a programme? Is this not subjecting the infinite and eternal Being to the limitations of time and the conditions of a logical process of ratiocination? But we do know the historical manifestations of God in Christ. We do know the God of the Gospels and the Epistles; and the God whom Christ has revealed to the world is a God of saving love. There is no greater word in the whole Bible than the sentence ‘God is love,' and the other which is like unto it, ‘God so loved the world (that is, all mankind,) that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have eternal life.' Shall we substitute for this, ‘God is a sovereign'? ‘God loved the elect,' and the elect only?… God's love is universal in its aim, and intent and abundant in its provision for the salvation of every human soul made in the image of God and redeemed by the blood of Christ. If any one is lost, he is lost by his own unbelief, not by an eternal decree of reprobation or an act of preterition, or any lack of intention or provision on the part of God.… The theology of the future will be the theology of love. Such a theology will give new life to the church, and prepare the way for the reunion of Christendom.”1 [Note: The Life of Philip Schaff, 477.]
