Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Book Overview - Hosea

by John Dummelow

Introduction

1. The Man and his Message. The book of Hosea is for several reasons one of exceptional interest. With that of Amos, his older contemporary, it marks the beginning of literary, as distinct from purely oral, prophecy. By this is not meant that Hosea was a composer in the sense that the word would be applied to a Macaulay or a Bishop Butler; but that his discourses, some or all of them at first delivered orally, were afterwards written down in a collected form, together with such incidents of his life as had a direct bearing upon his teaching. This fact is of great importance. We know that Elijah and Elisha exercised a great influence upon the religious history of their time; but we can only to a small extent gauge that influence, because we can form only a crude notion of what their teaching was really like. It is their acts, rather than their words, which claim the reader's interest. With Hosea it is very different. It is impossible not to see that he was a living force; and if his actual influence was not great, that was due to no weakness or omission on his part, but to the fatuity and moral degradation of the people.

Like Amos Hosea was a prophet to the northern kingdom, but unlike him he was also a prophet of the north. His sympathy was unquestionably with Israel: the fortunes of Judah have only a subordinate interest for him. His mission was to check, if possible, the growing corruption of morals, religion, and politics; and to rouse the nation to repentance, in order to ward off the impending catastrophe. The nation had acquired great prosperity and wealth under Jeroboam II but these, without moral character and religious purity, only tended to disruption and decline.

What gives quite a unique and pathetic interest to the book is the personal history of the prophet, and its influence on the form which his early and, to some extent, all his teaching took. Other prophets performed various symbolical acts to explain or enforce their teaching (see e.g. Isaiah 20:2-3; Jeremiah 13:1; Ezekiel 4), but Hosea's domestic life was itself an acted parable. Sweet and noble as that life was, its importance, as the prophet understood it, lay not in itself, but in the religious truth which it symbolically expressed. In early life he married a woman who proved a faithless wife, and he seems to have made many fruitless efforts to reclaim her (Hosea 1:2-3).

After bearing him three children, to whom he gave symbolic names, she deserted him for her lovers (Hosea 2:2). So forbearing was he, however, that he redeemed her for the price of a slave (Hosea 3:1), and tried to win her back to purity and love by gentle restraint (Hosea 3:3).

As Hosea looked abroad on the idolatry and wickedness of his time, he realised that 'the state was the individual writ large,' and that here was being repeated on a larger scale his own domestic tragedy. In Gomer's unfaithfulness to him, he saw a parable of Israel's unfaithfulness to God; in his own love and tenderness, he saw the reflection of God's love to Israel; and in his own forgiveness and continued efforts for his wife's salvation, he saw a parallel to Jehovah's loving-kindness and tender mercy towards the faithless nation (Hosea 3:3-5). Israel, the paramour of heathen gods, had been wooed and wedded by Jehovah, but had proved faithless, going back again to idols, and coquetting with foreign powers. But ever and again, and now most of all, Jehovah was seeking to win the nation back; even though, as with Gomer, a painful discipline might be necessary (Hosea 4:1-4).

Tenderness may, in fact, be described as the keynote of Hosea's prophecy. It was a necessary attribute of God, without which He would not be true to Himself. Those who imagine that the God of the Old Testament is only a God of justice and wrath might well study this book attentively.

Though we find no such definite Messianic pictures as those of Isaiah, more than once the prophet foretells the restoration of Israel from captivity, the union of Israel and Judah in one kingdom under a Davidic king, and the establishment of a purer worship and a fuller knowledge of God, as constituting a glorious hope. This hope appears sometimes as imminent, as succeeding a short period of captivity, or even as an alternative to it; sometimes as belonging to a far-off, or possibly ideal, future: see especially Hosea 1:10-11; Hosea 3:5; Hosea 6:1-3; Hosea 14:4-8. St. Paul explains some of Hosea's prophecies as fulfilled in the Christian church: see Romans 9:25-26; 1 Corinthians 15:55.

The style of the book is very terse and difficult, and marked by rapid changes of thought and feeling. In some cases it may be conjectured that we have before us fragments of teaching, rather than complete discourses. In many verses the meaning is so obscure that the explanations offered must be regarded as far from certain. In some few no really satisfactory explanation has been yet given, and that partly because our knowledge of many of the events alluded to is very meagre.

2. The Historical Situation. Hosea lived and prophesied in the last period of the northern kingdom of Israel, and probably witnessed, perhaps even shared, the captivity. His work began in the closing years of Jeroboam II (782-741), and was continued under his successors: see Hosea 1:1. In Jeroboam's hands the government was firm and stable, and the northern kingdom extended its boundaries as far as the borders of Hamath (2 Kings 14:25) on the north, and to the Dead Sea and 'the brook of the wilderness' (Amos 6:14) on the south. The death of Jeroboam was followed by a period of anarchy and terror, which was only ended by the Assyrian captivity. Zechariah, the son of Jeroboam, reigned for only six months, when his career was closed by assassination at the hands of Shallum, an adventurer, who mounted the throne only to be slain and f succeeded a month later by Menahem, the general commanding the troops at Tirzah (2 Kings 15:10-14; Hosea 7:3-7). In order to strengthen his position, Menahem seems to have asked assistance from Tiglath-pileser III, king of Assyria (the Pul of 2 Kings 16:19), who took advantage of the weakness of the king's position to claim a tribute. Menahem's reign extended only over four or five years. He was succeeded by his son Pekahiah (2 Kings 15:23), who reigned two years when Pekah, one of his generals, murdered him in his palace and seized the throne. Pekah was probably the leader of the party in the state that was opposed to Menahem's alliance with Assyria, and preferred to seek the aid of Assyria's rival Egypt (Hosea 7:11). In 735 Pekah joined with Rezin of Damascus in an expedition against Ahaz, king of Judah (2 Kings 16:5; Isaiah 7:1-9). Ahaz invoked Assyrian aid, and Tiglath-pileser came to his assistance, ravaging Galilee and Gilead (2 Kings 15:29), and taking the inhabitants into captivity. Pekah, who had reigned for about three years, fell a victim to a conspiracy headed by Hoshea, whom the Assyrian ruler recognised as king. Hoshea ruled quietly for nine years (731-722); but, on the death of Tiglath-pileser, he entered into a conspiracy with Seve or So, king of Egypt, and ceased his tribute to Assyria. Shalmaneser, the new king of Assyria, thereupon invaded his territory, and laid siege to Samaria, which fell to his successor Sargon (722), when the kingdom of Israel came to an end.