Hosea

HOSE'A (God is help) called Osee in Rom 9:25, one of the twelve Minor Prophets, who prophesied between 790 and 725 b.c. in the kingdom of Israel, under the reign of Jeroboam II., when the kingdom had reached the zenith of its earthly prosperity, and was fast ripening for ruin. He was a contemporary of Isaiah. We know nothing of his life. His character appears in his book, which reveals a heart full of sadness and sympathy in view of the sins of the people, yet full of hope. He has been called the Jeremiah of Israel. The Book of Hosea consists of 14 chapters, and relates to the kingdom of Israel. The first part (chs. 1-3) belongs to the first period of his active life under Jeroboam; the second (chs. 4-14) presents his later labors, when judgment had already set in. The discourses are partly threatening, partly hortatory and comforting. He is one of the most obscure among the prophets. "He delivers his message as though each sentence burst with a groan from his soul, and he had anew to take breath before he uttered each renewed woe. Each verse forms a whole for itself, like one heavy toll in a funeral-knell." The greatest difficulty in the book is the marriage of the prophet with Gomer, "a wife of whoredoms," by divine command, and the names of the offspring of this marriage -Jezreel, Lo-ruhamah, and Lo-ammi (Hos 1:2-9). The literal interpretation (of several of the Fathers, Dr. Pusey, Kurtz, and others) is scarcely reconcilable with the law which forbids a priest to marry an unchaste woman, Lev 21:7-14. It is better, therefore, to explain the marriage (with many modern commentators) figuratively, as a vision or as a symbol of the monstrous sin of spiritual whoredom or apostasy from the true God. Lo-ruhamah means "unpitied," and Lo-ammi, "not-my-people." Immediately afterward the future acceptance is announced, where the people will know God by the term Ishi, "my husband" (Hosea 2:16). The passages Hosea 1:10 and 1 Chr 2:23 are quoted by Paul, Rom 9:25, as a prophecy of the conversion of the heathen. The second section is free from symbolical acts. The style of Hosea is highly poetical, bold, vigorous, terse, and pregnant, but abrupt and obscure. "Hosea is concise," says Jerome, "and speaketh in detached sayings." "In Hosea," says Ewald, "there is a rich and lively imagination, a pregnant fulness of language, and great tenderness and warmth of expression. His poetry is throughout purely original, replete with vigor of thought and purity of presentation."