The prophet and his work.
This subject may be appropriately introduced with some remarks about the minor prophets. They are "minor," not because their work was of less consequence than that of the four major prophets, but simply because the Scriptures which they wrote are shorter. The contents of the minor prophets are very unfamiliar to many Christians. Possibly the pulpit is partly to blame for this.
I. THE PERSON OF HOSEA.
1. His name and descent. Our names are mere arbitrary labels affixed to us; but, among the Jews, names were often given in allusion to circumstances in character or destiny. "Hosea" means "salvation." To some readers this name may appear to stand in direct contrast to his message, seeing that he denounced national ruin. Yet it was appropriate, after all; for Hosea's ultimate prophetic word was the redeeming mercy of Jehovah. We know nothing of his father, Beeri; or of his own life, except as reflected in his book. He was a native and citizen of the kingdom of the ten tribes (Hosea 1:2; Hosea 7:5). He loved his fatherland with the deep love of a patriot; and his life-message was to "Ephraim." He is the only prophet of that kingdom who has contributed to the Bible a book which is really a prophecy.
2. His lengthened ministry. Hosea must have been a young man when, during the powerful reign of Jeroboam II; he began his life-work; and he maintained his testimony throughout the turbulent period which ensued after the death of that prince, and indeed nearly to the time of the deportation of Israel into Assyria. He thus labored bravely during more than two generations. He did not withdraw from his ministry after thirty or forty years' work, upon the plea of long service. Nor did he retire on the ground of his non-success, although it does not appear that he ever made a convert, or enjoyed the sympathy of even "a very small remnant" of his fellow-countrymen.
II. HIS TIMES. Hosea lived in the eighth century before Christ, about the time when Rome was being built. He must have begun his labors some years before Isaiah in the southern kingdom. His times were characterized by:
1. Deep spiritual apostasy. Indeed, his life extended over the darkest period of the whole history of Israel. God had, in great grace, espoused the Hebrew people to himself, and had called himself their Husband. But they had been miserably unfaithful to him. The kingdom of the ten tribes, especially, had "committed great whoredom" (verse 2). Its very existence as a separate kingdom was a course of adultery. Its political flirtations with Egypt and Assyria, when it ought to have relied wholly on Jehovah, were acts of adultery. The calf-worship at Jeroboam's two "chapels of ease" was adultery. The Baal-worship introduced by Jezebel, with its shameful rites, was adultery. The nation, in fact, had cast off all fear of God, and lost all knowledge of him.
2. Fearful moral corruption. Wherever the foundations of religion are undermined, immorality becomes gross and rampant. Hoses contemplated almost with despair the universal secularity and violence and dissoluteness (or rather, dissolution) of society in his day. Riot and drunkenness prevailed everywhere. Sensuality was observed as a sacrament in the temples of Baal and Ashtoreth. Rivers of blood flowed through the land (Hosea 4:1-3).
3. Hopeless political anarchy. After the death of Jeroboam II; the flames of revolution burst forth, and were never entirely quenched until the nation was suddenly carried into captivity. There was often confusion in the government, and sometimes utter anarchy. Kings perished by the hand of the assassin, and factions strove one with another until they were mutually devoured. Soon came the final rush of rain; and Hoses must have lived almost to see it.
III. HIS LIFE-WORK. Hosea is the Jeremiah of the northern kingdom. But his isolation was more complete, his sorrow more tragic, and his prophetic work more barren of results than even Jeremiah's.
1. He denounced Ephraim's sin. The nation had rejected Jehovah as its Husband, and gone a-whoring after other gods. So Hosea was raised up on purpose to rebuke this unfaithfulness in all its forms: the Baal-worship, the calf-worship, the rampant licentiousness, the revolt from the house of David, and the leaning for aid upon heathen powers.
2. He pronounced Ephraim's doom. When he began his ministry there were as yet no signs of ruin. Hosea's thunderbolts dropped at first out of a clear sky. It was the time of Jeroboam II; when the kingdom was in the zenith of its prosperity. But from first to last the prophet warned the ten tribes that their commonwealth would soon become a total wreck. They would be carried away into perpetual exile. God would set their kingdom aside on account of its sins, and not for seventy years only (as would be the case with Judah), but forever.
3. He announced redeeming love in store for Ephraim. For, after all, Hoses was not a despairing pessimist. He spoke with confidence of the continuance of the Divine tender mercy towards Israel. The northern kingdom, as such, must perish; but, notwithstanding, Jehovah will yet have a people for himself, who shall be gathered out of all the twelve tribes. So Hoses mingled with his menaces urgent calls to repentance. His appeals are surcharged with the tenderest pathos. It has been pointed out that he is the first of the Hebrew prophets who calls God's affection for his people by the name of "love;" the first clearly to forecast the Christian conception of the fatherhood of God, with the infinite tenderness implied in it. Hosea's message of grace was that God has still the heart of a husband towards Israel, and the heart of a father towards her children.
IV. HIS scour. It is important to distinguish between a prophet's life-work and his contribution to Holy Scripture.
1. The arrangement. This book is by no means a methodical record of Hosea's long ministry. It comprises only a few notes indicative of its burden and spirit. Yet the order of the book seems to be chronological. The first three chapters tell of the "word" given him before the fall of Jehu's house, and while the kingdom still seemed strong and flourishing. The other chapters reflect those vicissitudes of frightful anarchy and feeble misrule which characterized the fifty years that followed.
2. The speaker. It is worthy of notice that throughout the book the speaker is generally the Lord in his own person. The whole prophecy contemplates Israel's disobedience to "the first and great commandment;" and so the first personal pronouns usually refer to God himself. The Lamentations of Jeremiah is a sad book, but the Book of Hoses reverberates with even a profounder bass of sorrow; it is the saddest book of Holy Scripture, being in effect the lamentations of Jehovah. Hoses shows us the Divine heart as it were agitated with such conflicts of passion as a good man might experience whose conjugal and parental love had been cruelly blighted.
3. The style. Hoses is really a poem. It is so even in literary form; for only Hosea 1:1-11. and 3. are written in prose. The first three chapters constitute a symbolical introduction, while the body of the book (Hosea 4-14) is a dirge, composed of mingled wailings, entreaties, threatenings, and promises. The style is abrupt, sententious, laconic, and "rather to be called Hosea's sayings than Hosea's sermons" (Matthew Henry). But "a verse may find him who a sermon flies."
4. The profitableness of the book to us. Although Hoses was raised up primarily for Israel, his prophecy has its place as an elect stone in the temple of Divine revelation. It teaches the politician that only "righteousness exalteth a nation." It reminds the moralist that a sound and pure ethics can rest only upon a foundation of living religion. It warns the Christian of the danger of harboring idols within his heart. Hoses is by no means a shallow book. It is not for superficial minds. It requires—as its epilogue (Hosea 14:9) suggests very deep and diligent study.—C.J.
Hosea's marriage and prophetic training.
When this text is announced, possibly some may say, "What a shocking subject to preach about! Well it is shocking, indeed. God intends it to be so. But to our feelings spiritual adultery should be even more revolting than the literal whoredom which the Holy Spirit presents here as its prophetic symbol. And we must not forget that this painful passage records "the beginning of the word of the Lord by Hosea."
I. HOSEA'S CONJUGAL DISHONOR. How are we to explain the narrative portions (Hosea 1:1-11. and 3) of this book? The most interesting problem of Hosea's life, and the "vexed question" in the exposition of his prophecy, lies in the meaning of this story of his domestic experiences. There have been three principal interpretations. At the one extreme is the severely literal view; viz. that Hosea, in obedience to a Divine command, united himself in marriage with a woman notorious for her impurity. At the other extreme is the purely allegorical view; viz. that the narrative is to be regarded merely as a parable; or, at most, that the marriage took place in prophetic vision only (Jerome, Calvin, Hengstenberg, etc). The exegesis which the writer of this homily prefers lies between these two; viz. that Hosea's marriage was real, but that Gomer did not become profligate until after she had borne the prophet's three children (Ewald, Professor A.B. Davidson, Dr. Robertson Smith, etc). No view which it is possible to take is free from difficulties; but this last one is not exposed to the insurmountable objections which, in the writer's judgment, adhere to the two extreme interpretations. It also furnishes an appropriate parallel in Hosea's experience to the love of God for his people Israel. The prophet, accordingly, contracted a marriage which turned out to be unhappy. Gomer did not love God. Her heart became contaminated with the moral miasma which was poisoning the social life of the whole nation. Hosea's quiet home, his simple occupations, and his devout sabbath-keeping, grew distasteful to her. She felt her life intolerably slow. After the birth of her third child she was directly tempted, and wandered and fell. Gomer joined the throng of the priestesses of Ashtoreth, took part in the abominable rites of the Phoenician idolatry, and left her poor husband to "cry to vacant chairs and widowed walls" that she had made his home desolate. Hosea's love for his spouse had been very deep and tender, and he felt that he loved her still, despite the fierce conflict which his affection had now to wage against his outraged honor. It would almost seem too, from the ominous names given to the children, that they also, as they grew up, followed for a time in their mother's evil ways. So Hosea begins his book by showing that it was the blighting of his fireside joys and the breaking of his household gods that first made him "a man of sorrows."
"Now I sit
All lonely, homeless, weary of my life,
Thick darkness round me, and the stars all dumb,
That erst had sung their wondrous tale of joy.
And thou hast done it all, O faithless one!
O Gomer! whom I loved as never wife
Was loved in Israel, all the wrong is thine!
Thy hand hath spoiled all my tender vines,
Thy foot hath trampled all my pleasant fruits,
Thy sin hath laid my honor in the dust."
(Dean Plumptre)
II. GOD'S PROVIDENCE IN THIS DISHONOR. The shipwreck of his home-happiness taught Hosea very solemn spiritual lessons. He heard in it the voice of Jehovah pointing out to him his life-work. Looking around, he perceived that his experience was not an isolated one. Rather, his home was a picture of the moral state of the entire northern kingdom. The land was reeking with sensuality. And with that sin the sin of idolatry was closely intertwined. So Hosea became very deeply convinced that all the crime and vice of the age sprang from one spiritual root: "The land had committed great whoredom, departing from the Lord." He reflected that his own bitter experience was but a parable of God's experience. What Gomer was to him, the Israelitish nation had been to Jehovah. She had been betrothed to God "in the days of her youth, when she came up out of the land of Egypt;" and the nuptials had been celebrated at Mount Sinai. But, alas I she had fallen now into foul and shameless idolatry. Hosea, from his own sad experience, could have sympathy with God. Himself a victim—and not an eye-witness merely—of the wickedness of his age, he realized more fully than he could otherwise have done the odiousness of Israel's apostasy. When he thought of Gomer, he could understand the words of the second commandment, "I the Lord thy God am a jealous God." And thus his conjugal dishonor was his birth as a prophet. It was "the beginning of the word of the Lord in Hosea." The Book of Hosea is a poem; and while, of course, "the poet is born, not reader events in his own life are oftentimes needed to strike from him the poetic fire. Although the poet is "dowered with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, the love of love," it is also true that
"Most wretched men
Are cradled into poetry by wrong:
They learn in suffering what they teach in song."
(Shelley)
It was notably so with Hoses. Affliction was his one prophetical school. So, when he now sits down to begin his book, he recounts at the outset his domestic wrongs, in the light of his ripe experience of their Divine meaning. God had "girded" him, though at first he had "not known" it. The Lord had said, in his own Divine plan of Hosea's life, "Go, take unto thee a wife of whoredoms, and children of whoredoms." The event had taught him that his desolate home was a type of Israel's ruin; and his pity for Gomer—which longed to restore her from her wasted life—a faint shadow of the yearning love of God for his apostate people.
III. LESSONS FOR OURSELVES.
1. God himself is the supreme end of our life. He is so:
2. All of us require to repent of Gomer's sin. Our evil hearts have gone a-whoring from our God; our wrong words and actions are the children born of our adultery. Each of us may say—
"Thou, my soul, wast loved,
As bride by bridegroom, by the eternal Lord;
And thou, too, hast been false."
(Dean Plumptre)
3. A course of affliction affords a valuable prophetic curriculum. There is a sense in which "all the Lord's people" should be "prophets." But, before we can be fully qualified and accomplished to teach the truth as it is in Jesus, we must be washed, not only in his blood, but in our own hearts' blood also.—C.J.