101 HOSEA. The Word of the ETERNAL which was to Hosea son of Beeri, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam son of Joash, king of Israel. 1. The beginning of the word of the ETERNAL by Hosea. 2. Then the ETERNAL spake to Hosea, Go, take thee a wife of hiring, and children born of hiring, for the land goeth utterly a hiring from after the ETERNAL. 3. So he went and took Gomer, a woman' of two cakes of figs, and she conceived and bare him a son; 4. And the ETERNAL said to him, Call his name God's 1 A woman of two cakes of fiys, or daughter of Diblaim. The Title gives the traditional conjecture respecting the book, formed by Jewish grammarians, possibly in the school of Hillel, a little before the Christian era; but at a date unfixed, though hardly earlier than the Maccabees, and certainly not so late as St. Jerome's time, A.D. 400. 1. Thoughts which no less than the Eternal Spirit woke in Hosea's mind, here begin to find voice. Either God suffered Hosea the last king to wed fallen Israel, as it were a fallen woman of low price; or more probably, the Prophet weds under a strong impulse, or else represents himself in parable as wedding, one who may serve as type, i.e. pattern, of a nation revolting from its heart's true lord. 4. The children so inauspiciously born are called scattering (i.e. Jezreel),' for yet a little while, and I visit the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu, and cause to cease the kingdom of the house of Israel. 5. And it shall come to pass in that day, that I break the bow of Israel in the valley of God's-scattering. 6. And she conceived again, and bare a daughter; and he said to him, call her name Unpitied, (Lo-ruchamah,) for I will no more have pity again upon the house of Israel, but will utterly take them away. 7. But the house of Judah I will have pity upon, and will save them by the ETERNAL their God, and will not save them by bow, nor by sword, nor by battle, by horses and by horsemen. 8. And when she had conceived the girl Un-pitied, (Lo-ruchamah,) she conceived, and bare a son. 9. And he said, Call his name, No people mine, (Lo 2 Jezreel means God's-scattering, and also God's- sowing. Jezreel, God's-scattering, because God will scatter to the winds a rebellious folk, and scatter in its place the seed of a more dutiful nation. 5-6. The Vale of Jezreel, or Plain of Esdraelon, already perhaps marked by conflict with the Assyrian, seems a fit place for the judgment, and its name acts significantly as a parable. 2ndly, a child is called Unpitied (Lo-ruchama), because the destruction at hand seemed unrelenting. 7. But of Judah the Prophet hopes better things, knowing little of it as yet, but hoping its religious character may be better preserved; and that the city of Jehovah's worship may be a city of peace. 8, 9. A third child is named so as to signify the reprobation, or national casting off, of Israel's northern Ammi,) for ye are not my people, and I will not belong to you. 10. Yet shall be the number of the sons of Israel as the sand of the sea, which can neither be measured nor numbered, and it shall be in the place where is said to them,* You are no people of mine, it shall be said to them; 11. You are the sons of the Living God. And the sons of Judah and the sons of Israel shall be gathered together, and set for themselves one head, and go up from the land, for great the day of God's-scattering (or Jezreel); 12. Say then to your brothers, People Mine, (Amm-i,) and to your sister, Thou that art Pitied, (Ruchamah.) 13. Plead with your mother, plead; for she is not my wife, and I am not her husband; but let her put away her Yet shall be, &c. LXX. xai žv ò áρíÐμòs, к. T. X. kingdom. Compare Psalm lxxviii. 67, 68, where the feeling is expressed, which St. Paul inverts, and contrasts spiritually, so as to teach God's rejection of all claims by external birth in favour of spiritual faithfulness and purity. Compare St. John's Gospel, iv. 20, 24. 10, 11, 12. Either the Prophet relenting imagines the Divine mercy large enough to embrace the Ten tribes together with Judah and Benjamin, and to set up again a Davidical kingdom; or, more probably, those verses, which so greatly interrupt the line of thought and argument, were inserted by some hopeful patriot in the time between the return from Babylon and the Asmonean Princes. 13, 14, 15. The Prophet then continues, or returns to, his main argument of the infidelity of Israel to her God, hiring from her face, and her adulteries from between her breasts; 14. Lest I strip her naked, and set her as in the day of her being born, and make her as a wilderness, and set her as a dry land, and make her die with thirst, 15. And her sons (lest) I have no pity upon; for they are sons born of hiring; for their mother played the harlot; and she that conceived them was brought to shame : 16. For she said, Let me go after my lovers, the givers of my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink. II. 1. Therefore behold me hedging thy way with thorns, and I fence up the fence, that she shall not find her paths; and when she pursues her lovers, she shall not overtake them, and when she seeks them, she shall not find them. Lest I have no pity. Vulg. Non miserebor, but ne miserear would have been truer to the Hebrew, which carries on particles, and specially negatives, to subjoined clauses, without repeating them. and the danger of the Divine wrath throwing her back from the fruitful land to a life of tents in the wilderness. If she is faithless, how can she count on God's faithfulness? 16. She fancied that the wealthy kingdoms, with whom she contracted commerce and alliance were the sources of her coarse prosperity, which she values above truth, righteousness, sanctity. 1. Distress and siege at length interrupt her commerce and her embassies. 2. Then will she say, Let me go back again to my first husband, for it was better with me then than now, 3. Though she knew not that I gave her the corn and the wine and the fresh oil, and made silver plentiful for her, and gold, which they wrought for their lord [Baal]. 4. Therefore will I turn back and take away my corn in its time, and my new wine in its season, and strip off my wool and my flax for covering her nakedness. 5. Therefore now will I uncover her shame to the eyes of her lovers, and no man shall deliver her out of my hand: 6. But I will cause all her mirth to cease, her festival, her new moon, and her sabbath, and her every appointed season. 7. And I will lay waste her vine and her fig-tree, of which she said, These are my love-tokens, which my lovers have given me, and I will make them a forest that the wild creature of the field devour them; 8. And I will visit upon her the days of the lords, (i.e. the Baals,) to whom she burns incense, while she decks • Go back again. Heb. Go, and return. 7 Which they wrought. So Vulg. fecerunt, but LXX. she wrought, iπoinσe. • Turn back, and take away. Or simply, Take away again. 2. She begins to suspect that even worldly prosperity has a higher Giver. 3. It was God who gave her the means of fattening until she became wanton; 4, 5, as she learns, when He takes away His own gifts, and makes her contemptible to the great kingdoms, and foreign priesthoods, which she blindly idolised. 6, 7, 8. Her festivals of religion mingled with mirth become times of mourning. Instead of sitting every man. under his vine and fig-tree, rejoicing in peaceful subjection |