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[10] forms the chief problem for literary criticism presented by the book.[11] Amongst the more recent commentators, Davidson, G. A. Smith and Nowack regard Hosea xiv. as written by the prophet, though the second admits its chronological misplacement and the third its later expansion. On the other hand, it is altogether rejected by Cheyne, Wellhausen, Marti and Harper. These claim that the passage reflects the later standpoint of completed punishment, and is therefore inconsistent in the prophet who anticipates that punishment. But the case is different from that of the epilogue to Amos, since Hosea’s personal experience covers forgiveness as well as discipline (Marti consistently, though without ground, rejects this experience also). There seems, therefore, to be no sufficient evidence for denying thoughts of restoration to Hosea, whilst it is highly probable that such passages would be amplified in a later age. Indeed, the importance of these passages for the interpretation of Hosea is apt to be overrated, for, as one of those rejecting them remarks, though Hosea “promised nothing,” yet he “contributed a conception of Yahweh which made such a future not only possible but even probable” (Harper, p. cliii.). We may therefore read the closing chapter as, at least, the explicit statement of a hope implicit in Hosea’s teaching.
Hosea could discern no faithful remnant in Ephraim, yet Ephraim in all his corruption is the son of Yahweh, a child nurtured with tender love, a chosen people, whose past history declares in every episode the watchful and patient affection of his father. And that father is God and not man, the Holy One who will not and cannot sacrifice His love even to the justest indignation (chap. xi.). To the prophet who knows this love of Yahweh, who has learned to understand it in the like experience of his own life, the very ruin of the state of Israel is a step in the loving guidance which makes the valley of trouble a door of hope (ii. 15), and the wilderness of tribulation as full of promise as the desert road from Egypt to Canaan was to Israel of old. Of the manner of Israel’s repentance and conversion Hosea presents no clear image—nay, it is plain that on this point he had nothing to tell. The certainty that the people will at length return and seek Yahweh their God rests, not on any germ of better things in Israel, but on the invincible supremacy of Yahweh’s love. And so the two sides of his prophetic declaration, the passionate denunciation of Israel’s sin and folly, and the not less passionate tenderness with which he describes the final victory of divine love, are united by no logical bond. The unity is one of feeling only, and the sob of anguish in which many of his appeals to a heedless people seem to end turns once and again with sudden revulsion into the clear accents of evangelical promise, which in the closing chapter swell forth in pure and strong cadence out of a heart that has found its rest with God from all the troubles of a stormy life.
The strongly emotional temperament of Hosea suggests comparison with that of Jeremiah, who like himself is the prophet of the decline and fall of a kingdom. The subsequent influence of Hosea on the literature of the Old and New Testaments is very marked. Not only is it seen in the conception of the relation between God and His people as a marriage, which he makes current coin (cf. Marti, p. 15), but still more in the fact that his conception of the divine character becomes the inspiration of the book of Deuteronomy and so of the whole canon of Scripture. “In a special degree, the author of Deuteronomy is the spiritual heir of Hosea.”[12]
Recent Literature (where references to older works will be found): Cheyne, “Hosea” in Cambridge Bible (1884); W. R. Smith, The Prophets of Israel,2 with Cheyne’s introduction (1895); G. A. Smith, “The Book of the Twelve,” i., in The Expositor’s Bible (1896); Nowack, Die Kleinen Propheten (1897); Wellhausen, Die Kleinen Propheten3 (1898); Smend, Alttest. Religionsgeschichte,2 pp. 204 f. (1899); Davidson, art. “Hosea” in Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible, ii. pp. 419 f. (1900); Marti, art. “Hosea” in Ency. Biblica, ii. c. 2119 (1901) (a revision of the original article by W. R. Smith, in the Ency. Britannica, partially reproduced above); Marti, Dodekapropheton (1903); W. R. Harper, “Amos and Hosea” in Inter. Critical Commentary (1905) (with copious bibliography).
(W. R. S.; H. W. R.*)
[1] Traditions about Hosea.—Beērī, the prophet’s father, is identified by the Rabbins with Beērah (1 Chron. v. 6), a Reubenite prince carried captive by Tiglath-Pileser. This view is already expressed by Jerome, Quaest. in Paralip., and doubtless underlies the statement of the Targum to Chronicles that Beērah was a prophet. For it is a Jewish maxim that when a prophet’s father is named, he, too, was a prophet, and accordingly a tradition of R. Simon makes Isa. viii. 19, 20 a prophecy of Beērī (Ḳimcḥi in loc.; Leviticus Rabba, par. 15). According to the usual Christian tradition, however, Hosea was of the tribe of Issachar, and from an unknown town, Belemoth or Belemon (pseudo-Epiphanius, pseudo-Dorotheus, Ephraem Syr. ii. 234; Chron. Pasch., Bonn ed., i. 276). As the tradition adds that he died there, and was buried in peace, the source of the story lies probably in some holy place shown as his grave. There are other traditions as to the burial-place of Hosea. A Jewish legend in the Shalshelet haqqabala (Carpzov, Introd., pt. iii. ch. vii. § 3) tells that he died in captivity at Babylon, and was carried to Upper Galilee, and buried at צפת, that is, Safed (Neubauer, Géog. du Talmud, p. 227); and the Arabs show the grave of Nebi ’Osha, east of the Jordan, near Es-Salt (Baedeker’s Palestine, p. 337; Burckhardt’s Syria, p. 353).
[2] The supposed reference of viii. 9-10 to the tribute paid by Menahem to Tiglath-Pileser (2 Kings xv. 19), and dated, on the monuments, 738 B.C., depends on a corrupt text: read v. 10 with Septuagint.
[3] Some scholars hold that his attack is directed against the very principle of monarchy (Nowack, p. 8; Smend, p. 209: “Hosea rejects the kingship in itself”; Wellhausen, p. 125: “The making of kings in Israel is for him, together with the heathen cultus, the fundamental evil”). This view depends on a disputed interpretation of the reference to Gibeah (x. 9; cf. ix. 9); and on the words: “I give thee kings in mine anger, and I take them away in my wrath” (xiii. 11), which may refer to the rise and fall of contemporary kings (cf. Marti, ad loc). In any case, as Wellhausen himself says (p. 132): “He does not start from a dogmatic theory, but simply from historical experience.”
[4] 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.