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THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL AND THEIR PLACE IN HISTORY TO THE CLOSE OF THE EIGHTH CENTURY, B.C.

LECTURE 4: HOSEA AND THE FALL OF EPHRAIM.

The prophetic work of Amos, which we examined in last Lecture, falls entirely within the prosperous reign of Jeroboam II. Hosea began to prophesy in the same reign, as appears not only from the title of his book, but from the contents of the first two chapters. "Yet a little while," says Jehovah in Hosea i. 4, "and I will punish the house of Jehu for the bloodshed of Jezreel" — that is, for the slaying of the seed of Ahab — "and will cause to cease the kingdom of the house of Israel." But Hosea continued his ministry after the prediction of judgment on the descendants of Jehu had been fulfilled, and the latter part of his book contains unmistakable references to the state of anarchy into which the Northern Kingdom fell on the extinction of the last great dynasty that occupied the throne of Samaria. Before we address ourselves, therefore, to the study of his life and prophecies it will be convenient to take a rapid survey of the history of Ephraim after the death of Jeroboam, and in order to gain a clear view of the sequence of events it is indispensable to say a few words on the tangled chronology of the period, which is usually interpreted in a way that does no small violence to the Biblical narrative.

According to the chronology which has passed into general currency from the Annals of Archbishop Ussher, and is represented on the margins of most English Bibles, the death of Jeroboam was followed by an interregnum of eleven years, after which his son Zachariah reigned for six months, when he was slain by Shallum. The Bible knows nothing of this interregnum, but on the contrary informs us in the usual way that Zachariah reigned in his father's stead (2 Kings xiv. 29). The coronation of Zachariah must in fact have followed as a matter of course, since his father died in peaceable possession of the throne. Even if revolt broke out immediately on this event, the party which sided with the old dynasty would at once recognise the legal heir as king, and, as it is admitted that Zachariah did mount the throne, if only for six months, we cannot doubt that he would date his accession from the time when he became king de jure. And apart from this it is quite inconceivable that an interregnum of eleven years, with the stirring incidents inseparable from a prolonged period of civil war, could be passed over in absolute silence by the Biblical narrative.

Whence, then, do Archbishop Ussher and other chronologists derive their eleven years of interregnum? From the death of Solomon to the fall of Samaria the history of the books of Kings forms a double line. Dates are determined in the one line by years of the kings of Ephraim, in the other by years of the kings of Judah, and as the author of our present book of Kings used separate sources for the history of the two kingdoms we must assume, at all events provisionally, that the two lines of chronology were originally distinct. In point of fact they are not merely distinct, but of unequal length, as may be shown by the following simple calculation. According to the Judaean line there are just 480 years from the founding of Solomon's temple to the return from Babylonian exile, B.C. 535. According to the Northern reckoning the fall of Samaria took place in the 241st year from the revolt against Jeroboam, or in the 278th year of the temple. Counting then up the Judaean line and down the other we get for the date of the fall of Samaria B.C. 737. On the other hand, if we start from the statement of 2 Kings xviii. 9, that Samaria fell in the sixth year of Hezekiah, remembering that he reigned twenty-nine years in all, and that his death fell 160 years before the restoration, we get for the date of Samaria's fall B.C. 719. In other words, the Judaean line is about twenty years longer than the Northern one. It is in order to get over this discrepancy without admitting any error in the two sets of numbers that chronologists assume the long interregnum after Jeroboam II.'s death, and another period of anarchy somewhat later. [2] But in point of fact to invent an interregnum of which the history does not speak is quite as serious a liberty with the text as to suppose that there is some error in the numbers. On the other hand, to suppose that the numbers have been corrupted in transmission, and to introduce arbitrary corrections — as was done, for example, by the late George Smith, who gives Jeroboam II. fifty-one years instead of forty-one, and Pekah thirty instead of twenty — is thoroughly unsatisfactory. The facts justify us in saying that the chronology as we have it cannot be right; but they do not justify us in amending it at our own hand and by purely conjectural methods. And when we look at the thing more closely we are led to ask, not whether this or that particular number is corrupt, but whether the early Hebrews had a precise chronology dating every event by the years of the reigning king. As the history now stands we have an exact date for the accession of each monarch, but events happening in the course of a reign are habitually undated. No date of the Northern history prior to the fall of Samaria is given by the year of the reigning king of Ephraim, and in the history of Judah, till the time of Jeremiah, almost all events, dated by years of the kings of Jerusalem, have reference to the affairs of the temple (1 Kings vi. 37, 38; xiv. 25, 26; 2 Kings xii. 6; xviii. 13 seq.; xxii. 3; xxiii.23). In the temple archives, therefore, a systematic record of dates seems to have been kept, but the system did not extend to general affairs; Amos, for example, does not date his prophecy by the year of King Uzziah, but says that it was "two years before the earthquake." Where there is no precise system by which events are regularly dated, a reckoning by round numbers can hardly be avoided; and on such a system the most natural unit in estimating long periods is not the year but a round period of years taken to represent a generation. Traces of this way of counting are common enough in early history, and among the Hebrews the unit was taken at forty years — forty, in fact, being a common round number in antiquity. [3] The whole early chronology of the Hebrews is measured by this unit. Forty, twenty, and eighty are constantly-recurring numbers; the period from the Exodus to the founding of the temple is 480 years, or twelve forties, and an equal period extends from the latter event to the return from exile, while 240 years is the duration of the Northern Kingdom. But again, when we analyse the 480 of the Judaean genealogy and the 240 of the Northern Kingdom, we find that each is naturally divided into three equal parts, and in each case the commencement of the second third is given by a date which is not due to the redactor of the books of Kings, but stood in the original sources from which he worked. The second third of the Judaean line begins with the year of Joash's reforms in the temple, and ends with the death of Hezekiah. In the Northern line the second period of 80 years precisely corresponds with the duration of the Syrian wars, which began four years before the death of Ahab. These cannot be mere coincidences; they are part of a system, and, when taken with other details which cannot be dwelt on here, they seem to show that the chronology on each line was constructed on the method of genealogies, and reduced to years by what a mathematician might call a method of interpolation, — that is, by starting with certain fixed dates, which were taken as the great divisions of the scheme, and then filling up the intervals in an approximate way from a rough knowledge of the longer or shorter duration of the several reigns. The scheme as a whole, at least as regards Judah, appears to have been worked out after the Exile, since it reckons back from the date of the return. It has also been shown by a critical argument, supported by observation of the Septuagint text, that the 480 years from the Exodus to the temple were added to the text of 1 Kings vi. after the Exile. Of course a chronology framed in this way can make no claim to be absolutely exact, and it ceases to be surprising that the two lines for Ephraim and Judah are not precisely correspondent. The whole body of dates except the few that are derived from the original sources are to be regarded as nothing more than an approximate and partly conjectural reconstruction of the chronology, which we cannot hope to render more exact without the help of records lying outside of the Bible.

Of late years, however, such external aid has turned up in the records of the Assyrian kings. Unlike the Hebrews, the Assyrians were exact chronologers. They had considerable astronomical knowledge, and thus had learned to keep a precise record of years. As Roman chronology is based on the list of consuls, or as the Athenians named each year after the so-called Archon Eponymus, so in Assyria there was a high official appointed annually who gave his name to his year of office. The list of these eponyms or date-giving officials has fortunately been preserved in a number of copies, and, as a note of royal expeditions and the like stands opposite each name, it forms, in conjunction with other monuments, a complete key to Assyrian chronology, the accuracy of which has been verified by numerous tests, on which it is unnecessary to enlarge. The lower part of the Eponym Canon runs parallel with the Canon of Ptolemy, which is one of the chief bases of ancient chronology, and in this way it becomes possible to express the Assyrian dates with reference to the Christian era.

Now the Assyrian annals mention Jehu as paying tribute to Shalmaneser B.C. 842, and Menahem is mentioned B.C. 738, 104 years later. It can be shown that this tribute of Jehu must have fallen in one of the first years of his reign, and as the sum of the reigns from Jehu to Menahem inclusive is just 112 years, according to the Bible, the Assyrian records confirm the general accuracy of the Northern line of chronology for this period, and completely justify us in our refusal to allow the eleven years' interregnum of the Ussherian chronology. It ought, however, to be observed that these results do not afford any guarantee that the details of the Bible chronology, even in Northern Israel, are more than approximate, or weaken the force of the argument that the original reckoning was in round numbers. For there is every reason to believe that the old history of the Northern prophets, from which the editor of the books of Kings worked, gave eighty years for the Syrian wars; and, with this datum and a generation of prosperity under Jeroboam II., the editor could not fail to give a tolerably correct estimate of the length of the period in question. For the period between Menahem and the fall of Samaria the Biblical chronologer seems to have had less full guidance from ancient sources. For, according to the monuments, Samaria was besieged dr. B.C. 722, so that the reigns of the last three kings of Samaria, which the Bible estimates at thirty-one years, must be reduced by one half. [4] The practical result of this inquiry is that the decline of Israel, after the death of Jeroboam, was much more rapid than appears from the usual chronology, and instead of occupying sixty years to the fall of Samaria, was really complete in less than half that time. This rapid descent from the prosperity of the days of Jeroboam throws a fresh light on the predictions of speedy destruction given by Amos and Hosea.

Let us now, with the aid of the amended chronology, take a rapid view of the successive steps in the fall of the kingdom of Samaria. On the death of Jeroboam II., his son Zachariah succeeded to the throne, but after six months lost his kingdom and his life in the conspiracy of Shallum. The assassin assumed the royal dignity, but was not able to maintain it, for he was immediately attacked by Menahem, and perished in turn. Menahem established himself on the throne after a ferocious struggle (2 Kings xv. 16). The success, however, was not due to his own prowess, but to the assistance of Pul, king of Assyria, to whom he gave a thousand talents, raised by a tax on the great men of the country, "that his hand might be with him to confirm the kingdom in his hand" (2 Kings xv. 19). Menahem reigned, therefore, as an Assyrian vassal, and so within a few months after Jeroboam's death his dynasty was extinguished, and the foe, whose approach Amos foresaw, had laid his strong hand on Israel, never again to relax his grasp. On the death of Menahem, the flame of civil war broke out once more. His son Pekahiah was assassinated after a short reign, and the throne was occupied by a military adventurer named Pekah, supported by a band of Gileadites. Pekah allied himself with Rzin of Damascus, and formed the project of dethroning Ahaz, king of Judah. Ahaz appealed to Tiglath Pileser, who marched westward, led the Damascenes captive, as Amos had foretold, and also depopulated Gilead and Galilee. In this disastrous war Pekah had lost his prestige, and, though the Assyrians seem to have left him in power, he was presently attacked and slain by Hoshea, the son of Elah. He in turn had to reckon with the Assyrian, and had to pay a subsidy and yearly tribute as the price of his throne. But Hoshea was eager to cast off the yoke, and sought help from the king of Egypt, who had begun to bid against Assyria for the lordship of the mountains of Canaan, which formed the natural barrier between the great powers of the Nile and the Tigris. This defection sealed the doom of Samaria. The Assyrians again invaded the land; after a prolonged and desperate resistance, the capital was taken, and the Israelites were carried captive to the far East, new populations being brought from Babylon and other districts to take their place. It appears from the Assyrian monuments that a vassal kingdom existed in Samaria after this deportation, which no doubt was only partial, and it is not improbable that it was ruled by princes of Hebrew race for half a century longer; [5] while we know that Jehovah worship did not altogether cease in the land, and was even accepted in a corrupt form by the new colonists (2 Kings xvii. 24 seq.; 2 Kings xxiii. 15; Jer. xli. 5). But the distinctive character of the nation was lost; such Hebrews as remained in their old land became mixed with their heathen neighbours, and ceased to have any share in the further history of Israel and Israel's religion. When Josiah destroyed the ancient high places of the Northern Kingdom he slew their priests, whereas the priests of Judaean sanctuaries were provided for at Jerusalem. It is plain from this that he regarded the worship of the Northern sanctuaries as purely heathenish (comp. 2 Kings xxii. 20 with ver. 5), and it was only in much later times that the mixed population of Samaria became possessed of the Pentateuch, and set up a worship on Mount Gerizim in imitation of the ritual of the second temple. We have no reason to think that the captive Ephraimites were more able to retain their distinctive character than their brethren who remained in Palestine. The problem of the lost tribes, which has so much attraction for some speculators, is a purely fanciful one. The people whom Hosea and Amos describe were not fitted to maintain themselves apart from the heathen among whom they dwelt. Scattered among strange nations, they accepted the service of strange gods (Deut. xxviii. 64), and, losing their distinctive religion, lost also their distinctive existence. The further history of the people of Jehovah is transferred to the house of Judah, and with the fall of Samaria Northern Israel ceases to have any part in the progress of revelation.

Hosea, or Hoshea, as the name should rather be written, is the last prophet of Ephraim. [6] Unlike Amos, he was himself a subject of the Northern Kingdom, as appears from the whole tenor of his book, and especially from vii. 5, where the monarch of Samaria is called "our king,'' Like Amos, he is mainly concerned with the sins and calamities of the house of Joseph; but, while Amos speaks from observation which, with all its closeness, is that of an outsider, whose personal life lay far from the tumults and oppressions of the Northern capital, Hosea views the state of the kingdom from within, and his book is marked by a tone of deep pathos, akin to that of Jeremiah, and expressive of the tragic isolation of the prophet's position in a society corrupt to the very core and visibly hastening towards dissolution. Amos could deliver his divine message and withdraw from the turmoil of Samaria's guilty cities to the silent pastures of the wilderness; but the whole life of Hosea was bound up with the nation whose sins he condemned and whose ruin he foresaw. For him there was no escape from the scenes of horror that defiled his native land, and the anguish that expresses itself in every page of his prophecy is the distress of a pure and gentle soul, linked by the closest ties of family affection and national feeling to the sinners who were hurrying Israel onwards to the doom he saw so clearly, but of which they refused to hear. And so while the work of Amos was completed in a single brief mission, the prophecies of Hosea extend over a series of terrible years. The first two chapters of his book are dated from the reign of Jeroboam, the gala-days of the nation (ii. 13), when the feast-days, the new moons, and the Sabbaths still ran their joyous round, and the land was rich in corn and wine and oil, in store of silver and gold (ii. 8). But the later chapters of the prophecy speak of quite other times, of sickness in the state which its leaders vainly sought to heal by invoking the help of the "warlike king" [A.V. King Jareb] of Assyria (v. 13), of civil wars and conspiracies, of the assassination of monarchs, of new dynasties set up without Jehovah's counsel, and powerless to better the condition of the nation (vii. 7; viii. 4), of a universal reign of perjury and fraud, of violence and bloodshed (iv. 1, 2). These descriptions carry us into the evil times that opened with the fall of the house of Jehu; but the actual captivity of Israel is still in the future (xiii. 16): even in the closing chapter of his book Hosea addresses a nation which has not come to open breach with the Assyrians, but cherishes the vain hope of deliverance through their help (xiv. 3). Gilead and Galilee, which were depopulated by Tiglath-Pileser in his expedition against Pekah (B.C. 734), are repeatedly referred to as an integral part of the kingdom (v. 1; vi. 8; xii. 11), and it is therefore probable that the work of Hosea was ended before that event, and that the prophet was spared the crowning sorrow of seeing with his own eyes the fulfilment of the doom of his nation. [7]

There is no reason to believe that Hosea, any more than Amos, was connected with the recognised prophetic societies, or ever received such outward adoption to office as was given to Elisha. At chapter iv. 5 he comprises priest and prophet in one condemnation. Israel is undone for lack of knowledge, for the priests whose office it was to teach it have rejected the knowledge of Jehovah, and He in turn will reject them from their priesthood. They shall fall, and the prophet shall fall with them in the night, their children shall be forgotten of Jehovah, and their whole stock shall perish. [8] Thus Hosea, no less than Amos, places himself in direct opposition to all the leaders of the religious life of his nation, and like his Judaean compeer he had doubtless to reckon with their hostility. "As for the prophet," he complains, "a fowler's snare is in all his ways, and enmity in the house of his God" (ix. 8). To discharge his ministry year after year amidst such opposition was a far harder task than was appointed to Amos. Even Amos was constrained to exclaim that in times so evil the part of a prudent man was to hold his peace (Amos v. 13). But Amos at least could shake the dust off his feet and return to his kindred and his home; Hosea was a stranger among his own people, oppressed by continual contact with their sin, lacerated at heart by the bitterness of their enmity, till his reason seemed ready to give way under the trial. "The days of visitation are come, the days of recompense are come, Israel shall know it; the prophet is a fool, the man of the spirit is mad for the multitude of thine iniquity and the great hatred" (ix. 7). The passionate anguish that breathes in these words gives its colour to the whole book of Hosea's prophecies. His language and the movement of his thoughts are far removed from the simplicity and self-control which characterise the prophecy of Amos. Indignation and sorrow, tenderness and severity, faith in the sovereignty of Jehovah's love, and a despairing sense of Israel's infidelity are woven together in a sequence which has no logical plan, but is determined by the battle and alternate victory of contending emotions; and the swift transitions, the fragmentary unbalanced utterance, the half-developed allusions, that make his prophecy so difficult to the commentator, express the agony of this inward conflict. Hosea, above all other prophets, is a man of deep affections, of a gentle poetic nature. His heart is too true and tender to snap the bonds of country and kindred, or mingle aught of personal bitterness with the severity of Jehovah's words. Alone in the midst of a nation that knows not Jehovah, without disciple or friend, without the solace of domestic affection — for even his home, as we shall presently see, was full of shame and sorrow — he yet clings to Israel with inextinguishable love. The doom which he proclaims against his people is the doom of all that is dearest to him on earth; his heart is ready to break with sorrow, his very reason totters under the awful vision of judgment, his whole prophecy is a long cry of anguish, as again and again he renews his appeal to the heedless nation that is running headlong to destruction. But it is all in vain. The weary years roll on, the signs of Israel's dissolution thicken, and still his words find no audience. Like a silly dove fluttering in the toils, Ephraim turns now to Assyria, now to Egypt, "but they return not to Jehovah their God, and seek not Him for all this." Still the prophet stands alone in his recognition of the true cause of the multiplied distresses of his nation and still it is his task to preach repentance to deaf ears, to declare a judgment in which only himself believes. And now the Assyrian is at hand, sweeping over Canaan like a fatal sirocco. "An east wind shall come, the breath of Jehovah ascending from the wilderness, and his spring shall become dry and his of all precious jewels. Samaria shall be desolate, for she hath rebelled against her God: they shall fall by the sword: their infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their women with child shall be ripped up" (xiii. 15).

And yet, when all is lost, the prophet's love for guilty and fallen Israel forbids him to despair. For that love is no mere earthly affection. It is Jehovah's love for His erring people that speaks through Hosea's soul. The heart of the prophet beats responsive to the heart of Him who loved Israel when he was a child and called His son out of Egypt. "How can I give thee up, Ephraim? How can I cast thee away, Israel? My heart burns within Me, My compassion is all kindled. I will not execute the fierceness of My wrath; I will not turn to destroy thee; for I am God and not man, the Holy One in the midst of thee" (xi. 8). How this invincible love shall triumph even in the bitter fall of the nation Hosea does not explain. But that it will triumph he cannot doubt. In the extremity of judgment Jehovah will yet work repentance and salvation, and from the death-knell of Samaria the accents of hope and promise swell forth in pure and strong cadence in the last chapter of the prophecy, out of a heart which has found its rest with God from all the troubles of a stormy life. " I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely: for Mine anger is turned away from him. I will be as the dew to Israel: he shall bud forth as the lily and strike his roots as Lebanon ... Who is wise, and he shall understand these things? prudent, and he shall know them? For the ways of Jehovah are right, and the just shall walk in them; but the transgressors shall fall therein."

Hosea is a man of emotion rather than of logic, a poet rather than a preacher, and the unity of his book is maintained through the sudden transitions and swift revulsions of feeling characteristic of his style, not by a well-planned symmetry of argument such as we find in Amos, but by a constant undercurrent of faith in the identity of Jehovah's love to Israel with that pure and unselfish affection which binds the prophet himself to his guilty and fallen nation. Jehovah is God and not man, the Holy One in the midst of Israel. But this does not mean that the heart of Jehovah has no likeness to that of man. His righteousness is not an impersonal unlovable thing with which His reasonable creatures can have no fellowship, and which they cannot hope to comprehend. "Where Amos says that Jehovah knows Israel, Hosea desires that Israel should know Jehovah (ii 20; iv. 1, 6; vi. 3; viii. 2; xiii. 4). And this knowledge is no mere act of the intellect; to know Jehovah is to know Him as a tender Father, who taught Ephraim to walk, holding them by their arms, who drew them to Himself with human cords, with bands of love (xi. 1 seq.). In chap. vi. 6 the knowledge of God is explained in a parallel clause, not by "mercy,'' as the Authorised Version renders it, but by a word (hesed) [9] corresponding to the Latin pictas, or dutiful love, as it shows itself in acts of kindliness and loyal affection. It is quite characteristic of the difference between the two prophets, that in Amos this word hesed or kindness never occurs, while in Hosea it not only expresses the right attitude of man to God, but kindness and truth, kindness and justice, are the sum of moral duty (iv. 1; x. 12; xii. 6). Amos in such a case would speak of justice alone; his analysis of right and wrong pierces less deeply into the springs of human action. For the kindness of which Hosea speaks is no theological technicality; it is a word of common life used of all those acts, going beyond the mere norm of forensic righteousness, which acknowledge that those who are linked together by the bonds of personal affection or of social unity owe to one another more than can be expressed in the forms of legal obligation.

In primitive society, where every stranger is an enemy, the whole conception of duties of humanity is framed within the narrow circle of the family or the tribe; relations of love are either identical with those of kinship or are conceived as resting on a covenant. "Thou shalt show kindness to thy servant," says David, "for thou hast brought thy servant into a covenant of Jehovah with thee." And so in Hosea the conception of a relation of love and kindness between man and God goes side by side with the conception of Jehovah's covenant with Israel (vi. 7; viii. 1). Jehovah and Israel are united by a bond of moral obligation, — not a mere compact on legal terms, a covenant of works, as dogmatic theology would express it, but a bond of piety — of fatherly affection on the one hand, and loyal obedience on the other. Jehovah and Israel form as it were one community, and hesed is the bond by which the whole community is knit together. It is not necessary to distinguish Jehovah's hesed to Israel which we would term his grace, Israel's duty of hesed to Jehovah which we would call piety, and the relation of hesed between man and man which embraces the duties of love and mutual consideration. To the Hebrew mind these three are essentially one, and all are comprised in the same covenant. Loyalty and kindness between man and man are not duties inferred from Israel's relation to Jehovah, they are parts of that relation; love to Jehovah and love to one's brethren in Jehovah's house are identical (compare iv. 1 with vi. 4, 6), To Hosea, as to Amos, justice and the obligations of civil righteousness are still the chief sphere within which the right knowledge of Jehovah and due regard to His covenant are tested. "Where religion has a national form, and especially in such a state of society as both prophets deal with, that is necessary; but Hosea refers these obligations to a deeper source. Israel is not only the dominion but the family of Jehovah, and the fatherhood of God takes the place of his kingly righteousness as the fundamental idea of Israel's religion. Jehovah is God and not man, but the meaning of this is that His love is sovereign, pure, unselfish, free from all impatience and all variableness as the love of an earthly father can never be.

This fundamental thought of Hosea, that the relation between Jehovah and Israel is a relation of love and of such duties as flow from love, gives his whole teaching a very different colour from that of Amos. Amos, as we saw, begins by looking on Jehovah as the Creator and God of the universe, who dispenses the lot of all nations and vindicates the laws of universal righteousness over the whole earth; and, when he proceeds to concentrate attention on his own people, the prophet still keeps the larger point of view before the mind of his hearers, and treats the sin and judgment of Israel as a particular case under the general laws of Divine government, complicated by the circumstance that Jehovah knows Israel and has personal communications with it in which no other nation shares. Hosea has no such universal starting-point; he deals with the subject not from the outside inwards but from the heart outwards. Jehovah's love to His own is the deepest thing in religion, and every problem of faith centres in it. To both prophets the distinction which we are wont to draw between religious and moral duties is unknown; yet it would not be unfair to say in modern language that Amos bases religion on morality, while Hosea deduces morality from religion. The two men are types of a contrast which runs through the whole history of religious thought and life down to our own days. The religious world has always been divided into men who look at the questions of faith from the standpoint of universal ethics, and men by whom moral truths are habitually approached from a personal sense of the grace of God. Too frequently this diversity of standpoint has led to an antagonism of parties in the Church. Men of the type of Amos are condemned as rationalists and cold moderates; or, on the other hand, the school of Hosea are looked upon as enthusiasts and unpractical mystics. But Jehovah chose His prophets from men of both types, and preached the same lesson to Israel through both.

To Amos and Hosea alike the true standard of religious life is the standard of conduct. The state of the nation before its God is judged by its actions; and the prevalence of immorality, oppression, and crime is the clearest proof that Israel has departed from Jehovah. The analysis of Amos stops at this point; he does not seek into the hidden springs of Israel's sin, but simply says, Without a return to civil righteousness, which you are daily violating, you can find no acceptance before Jehovah. Hosea, on the contrary, with his guiding principle of a relation of love between Jehovah and Israel, pierces beneath the visible conduct of the nation to the disposition that underlies it. Amos had said, Cease your ritual service, and do judgment and justice (Amos v. 24); Hosea says, "I desire love and not sacrifice, and knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings" (Hosea vi. 6). Amos judges the moral offences of Israel as breaches of universal law aggravated by the possession of special privileges; Hosea judges them as proofs of a heart not true to Jehovah, out of sympathy with His character, and ungrateful to His love. Accordingly, while Amos deals mainly with Israel as a state, Hosea habitually thinks of Ephraim as a moral individual, and goes back again and again to the history of the nation, treating it as the history of a person, and following its relations to Jehovah from the days of the patriarch Jacob (xii. 2, 3, 12), through the deliverance from Egypt onwards (xii. 13; xi. 1 sew.). He dwells with special interest on the first love of Jehovah to His people when He found Israel like grapes in the wilderness (ix. 10), when He knew them in the thirsty desert (xiii. 5), before the innocence of the nation's childhood was stained with the guilt of Baal-peor, and its early love had vanished like the dew of dawn, or like the light clouds which hang on the mountains of Palestine in the early morning and dissolve as the sun gets high (vi. 4). Hosea's allusions to the past history of Israel are introduced in unexpected ways, and are often difficult to understand. Sometimes he seems to refer to narratives which we no longer possess in the same form (ix. 9; x. 9); but their general drift is always the same — to vindicate the patient consistent love of Jehovah to His nation, and to display Ephraim's sin as a lifelong course of spurned privileges and slighted love. It is this thought of the personal continuity of Israel's relations to Jehovah that leads the prophet to speak of God's dealings with Jacob; for Jacob is, in fact, the nation summed up in the person of its ancestor (comp. Heb. vii. 10). And so the whole history, from the days of the patriarchs downwards, is the history of a single unchanging affection, always acting on the same principles, so that each fact of the past is at the same time a symbol of the present (ix. 9), or a prophecy of the future (ii. 15; compare Josh. vii. 24). It is worth remembering, in connection with Hosea's frequent use of the early history, that in last Lecture we saw reason to believe that the sanctuaries of Northern Israel, to which he belonged, were the special home of the greater part of the patriarchal history, as it is still told in the book of Genesis; and it is hardly disputable that some episodes in that history personify the stock of Israel or individual tribes, and so treat them as moral individuals, much in the same way in which Hosea treats Ephraim. The blessing of Jacob ascribes a personal character to Reuben, Levi, and Simeon, which is the character of the tribes, not of individual sons of Jacob, and refers to narratives which there are the very strongest reasons for regarding as allegories of historical events subsequent to the settlement of the Hebrews in Canaan. This consideration enables us to see that the allegorical treatment of Jehovah's relations to Israel in the book of Hosea would appear much less strange and puzzling to his contemporaries than it does to a modern reader. Their current habits of thought and expression made this way of teaching easy and natural. [10]

Since Hosea everywhere concentrates his attention on the personal attitude and disposition of Ephraim towards Jehovah, as constituting the essence of the national sin, he is led to look at the sins of the people's worship much more closely than Amos does. Amos contents himself with noting the acts of injustice and immorality that were done in the name of religion, and with urging that no ritual service can be acceptable to Jehovah where civil righteousness is forgotten. Beyond this he shows a degree of indifference to all practices of social worship which is not uncharacteristic of an inhabitant of the desert. But when Israel's relation to Jehovah is conceived as a personal relation, the intercourse of Jehovah with His people at the sanctuary naturally assumes a much larger significance. Acts of worship are the direct embodiment of the attitude and feelings of the worshipper towards his God, and in them Hosea finds the plainest exhibition of Ephraim's unfaithfulness. It is necessary to look somewhat closely at the way in which this point is developed. In speaking of Ephraim's connection with Jehovah in the language of human relationship, it was open to the prophet to make use of various analogies. Jehovah was Israel's King, but this image did not adapt itself to his idea. [11] He required a more personal relation, such as is supplied by the analogy of domestic life. The idea of a family relation between Jehovah and Israel appears in the book of Hosea in two forms. On the one hand Ephraim is Jehovah's son (xi. 1), and this is the predominant figure in the latter part of the book. But in the first three chapters, which present the prophet's allegory in its most complete and original form, the nation or land of Israel (i. 2; ii. 13) appears as Jehovah's spouse. The two figures are intimately connected, indeed in chapter i. they occur combined into a single parable. For, according to a common Hebrew figure, a land or city is the mother of its inhabitants, or, by a slight variation of the symbolism, the stock of a family or clan is personified as the mother of the members of the clan (2 Sam. xx. 19; Ezek. xix. 2; Hosea iv. 5). The mother is the ideal unity of land and nation, having for her children the actual members of the nation as they exist at any particular time. Jehovah, therefore, is at once the father of His people, and the husband of their ideal mother. We are not to suppose that Hosea invented either form of this image. That the deity is the father of his worshippers, that the tribe springs from the stock of the tribal god, who is worshipped as the progenitor of his people, is a common conception in heathenism (comp. Acts xvii. 28). In Num. xxi. 29 the Moabites are called the sons and daughters of Chemosh, and even Malachi calls a heathen woman "the daughter of a strange god" (Mal. ii. 11). Proper names expressive of this idea are common among the Semites, a familiar instance being Benhadad, "son of the god Hadad." But in heathenism it is to be observed that god-sonship has a physical sense; the worshippers are of the stock of their god, who is simply their great ancestor, and so is naturally identified with their interests, and not with those of any other tribe. In Israel, however, the idea of Jehovah's fatherhood could not take this crass form in the mind of any one who remembered the history of Jehovah's relations to His people. The oldest forefathers of the Hebrews in their original seats beyond the Euphrates were not the people of Jehovah, but served other gods (Josh. xxiv. 2), and Jehovah's relation to Israel is not of nature but of grace, constituted by the divine act of deliverance from Egypt. And so, according to Hosea, Jehovah does not love Israel because he is His son, but took him as His son because He loved him (xi. 1). The same contrast between natural and positive religion is expressed in the conception of Jehovah's covenant with His people; for a relation resting on a covenant is not natural but moral. There was no covenant between Moab and Chemosh, but only a natural kinship quite independent of Moab's conduct. But in Israel the rejection of Jehovah's covenant suspends, and but for sovereign love would cancel, the privileges of sonship. The sonship of Israel, therefore, must find its expression in filial obedience, and from this point of view the sin of the people is that they have ceased to take heed to Jehovah (iv. 10) and hearken to Him (ix. 17). Ephraim is not a wise son (xiii. 13). Jehovah has spoken much to him by the ministry of His prophets (xii. 10), but though He should write for him a myriad of precepts, they would seem but a strange thing to this foolish child (viii. 12).

But though Hosea dwells on the sonship of Ephraim with great tenderness, especially in speaking of the childhood of the nation, the age of its divine education (xi. 1 seq.), this analogy does not exhaust the whole depth of Israel's relation to Jehovah. In ancient society the attitude of the son to the father, especially that of the adult son employed in his father's business, has a certain element of servitude (Mal. iii. 17). The son honours his father as the servant does his master (Mal. i. 6.; Exod. xx. 12). Even now among the Arabs the grown-up son and the slave of the house do much the same menial services, and feel much the same measure of constraint in the presence of the head of the house. It is only towards his little ones that the father shows that tenderness which Hosea speaks of in describing the childhood of Ephraim. And so the whole fulness of Jehovah's love to His people, and the way in which Israel has proved unfaithful to that love, can be fitly brought out only in the still more intimate relation of the husband to his spouse.

In looking at the allegory of Jehovah's marriage with mother-Israel, or with the mother-land, we must again begin by considering the current ideas which served to suggest such a conception. Alike in Israel and among its heathen neighbours, the word Baal, that is "Lord" or "Owner," was a common appellative of the national Deity. Instead of the proper names compounded with Jehovah, which are common from the time of Elijah, we frequently find in old Israel forms compounded with Baal which are certainly not heathenish. When we meet with a son of Saul named Ish-Baal, a grandson Meri-Baal, both names meaning "Baal's man," while David in like manner gives to one of his sons the name of Beeliada, "Baal knoweth,'' we may be sure that Baal is here a title of the God of Israel. [12] In Hosea's time the worshipping people still addressed Jehovah as Baali, "my Lord," and the Baalim of whom he often speaks (ii. 13; xiii. 1, 2) are no other than the golden calves, the recognised symbols of Jehovah. Now, among the Semites the husband is regarded as the lord or owner of his wife (1 Pet. iii. 6), whom in fact, according to early law, he purchases from her father for a price (Exod. xxi. 8; xxii. 17). [13] The address Baali is used by the wife to her husband as well as by the nation to its God, and so in an early stage of thought, when similarities of expression constantly form the basis of identifications of idea, it lay very near to think of the God as the husband of the worshipping nationality, or of the mother-land. [14] It is not at all likely that this conception was in form original to Hosea, or even peculiar to Israel; such developed religious allegory as that which makes the national God, not only father of the people, but husband of the land their mother, has its familiar home in natural religions. In these religions we find similar conceptions, in which, however, as in the case of the fatherhood of the deity, the idea is taken in a crass physical sense. Marriage of female worshippers with the godhead was a common notion among the Phoenicians and Babylonians, and in the latter case was connected with immoral practices akin to those that defiled the sanctuaries of Israel in Hosea's day. [15] It even seems possible to find some trace in Semitic heathenism of the idea of marriage of the Baal with the land which he fertilises by sunshine and rain. Semitic deities, as we saw in Lecture I. (p. 26), are conceived as productive powers, and so form pairs of male and female principles. Heaven and Earth are such a pair, as is well known from Greek mythology; and, though Baal and Ashtoreth are more often represented as astral powers (Sun and Moon, Jupiter and Venus), it is certain that fertilising showers were one manifestation of Baal's life-giving power. Even the Mohammedan Arabs retained the name of Baal (ba'l) for land watered by the rains of heaven. The land that brings forth fruit under these influences could not fail to be thought of as his spouse; and, in fact, we have an Arabic word ('athary) which seems to show that the fertility produced by the rains of Baal was associated with the name of his wife Ashtoreth. [16] If this be so, it follows that in point of form the marriage of Jehovah with Israel corresponded to a common Semitic conception, and we may well suppose that the corrupt mass of Israel interpreted it in reference to the fertility of the goodly land, watered by the dews of heaven (Deut. xi. 11), on principles that suggested no higher thoughts of God than were entertained by their heathen neighbours.

This argument is not a mere speculation; it gives us a key to understand what Hosea tells us of the actual religious ideas of his people. For we learn from him that the Israelites worshipped the Baalim or golden calves under just such a point of view as our discussion suggests. They were looked upon as the authors of the fertility of the land and nothing more (ii. 5); in other words, they were to Israel precisely what the heathen Baalim were to the Canaanites, natural productive powers. We have already seen that a tendency to degrade Jehovah to the level of a Canaanite Baal had always been the great danger of Israel's religion, when the moral fibre of the nation was not hardened by contest with foreign invaders, and that in early times the reaction against this way of thought had been mainly associated with a sense of national unity, and with the conception of Jehovah as the leader of the hosts of Israel. These patriotic and martial feelings were still strong during the Syrian wars; and in the time of Amos, in spite of the many Canaanite corruptions of the sanctuaries, Jehovah was yet pre-eminently the God of battles, who led Israel to victory over its enemies. But a generation of peace and luxury had greatly sapped the warlike spirit of the nation, while the disorders of the state had loosened the bonds of national unity. The name of Jehovah was no longer the rallying cry of all who loved the freedom and integrity of Israel, and the help which Ephraim had been wont to seek from Jehovah was now sought from Egypt or Assyria. Jehovah was not formally abjured for Canaanite gods; but in the decay of all the nobler impulses of national life He sank in popular conception to their level; in essential character as well as in name the calves of the local sanctuaries had become Canaanite Baalim, mere sources of the physical fertility of the land. And that this view of their power was embodied in sexual analogies of a crass and physical kind, such as we have found to exist among the heathen Semites, is proved by the prevalence of religious prostitution and widespread disregard of the laws of chastity, precisely identical with the abominations of Ashtoreth among the Phoenicians, and accompanied by the same symbolism of the sacred tree, which expressed the conception of the deity as a principle of physical fertility (Hosea iv. 13 seq.).

Thus, in looking at Hosea's doctrine of the marriage of Jehovah with Israel, we must remember that the prophet was not introducing an entirely new form of religious symbolism. The popular religion was full of externally similar ideas; the true personality and moral attributes of Jehovah were lost in a maze of allegory derived from the sexual processes of physical life; and the degrading effects of such a way of thought were visible in universal licentiousness and a disregard of the holiest obligations of domestic purity. In such circumstances, we might expect to find the prophet casting aside the whole notion of a marriage of Jehovah, and falling back like Amos on the transcendency of the Creator and Ruler of the moral universe. But he does not do so. Instead of rejecting the current symbolism he appropriates it; but he does so in a way that lifts it wholly out of the sphere of nature religion and makes it the vehicle of the profoundest spiritual truths. Jehovah is the husband of His nation. But the essential basis of the marriage relation is not physical, but moral. It is a relation of inmost affection, and lays upon the spouse a duty of conjugal fidelity which the popular religion daily violated. The betrothal of Jehovah to Israel is but another aspect of the covenant already spoken of; it is a betrothal "in righteousness and in judgment, in kindness and in love," a betrothal that demands the true knowledge of Jehovah (ii. 19, 20). A union in which these conditions are absent is not marriage, but illicit love; and so the Baalim or local symbols of Jehovah, with which the nation held no moral fellowship, worshipping them merely as sources of physical life and growth, are not the true spouse of Israel; they are the nation's paramours, and their worship is infidelity to Jehovah. There is no feature in Hosea's prophecy which distinguishes him from earlier prophets so sharply as his attitude to the golden calves, the local symbols of Jehovah adored in the Northern sanctuaries. Elijah and Elisha had no quarrel with the traditional worship of their nation. Even Amos never speaks in condemnation of the calves. But in Hosea's teaching they suddenly appear as the very root of Israel's sin and misery. It is perfectly clear that in the time of Hosea, as in that of Amos, the popular worship was nominally Jehovah worship. The oath of the worshippers at Gilgal and Bethel was by the life of Jehovah (iv. 15); the feasts of the Baalim were Jehovah's feasts (ii. 11; 13, ix. 5); the sanctuary was Jehovah's house (ix. 4), the sacrifices His offerings (viii. 13). But to Hosea's judgment this ostensible Jehovah worship is really the worship of other gods (iii. 1). With the calves Jehovah has nothing in common. He is the living God (i. 10), the calves are mere idols, the work of craftsmen (xiii. 2); and the nation which calls the work of its hands a god (xiv. 3) breaks its marriage vow with Jehovah and loves a stranger.

If the prophecy of Hosea stood alone it would be reasonable to think that this attack on the images of the popular religion was simply based on the second commandment. But when we contrast it with the absolute silence of earlier prophets we can hardly accept this explanation as adequate. Amos is as zealous for Jehovah's commandments as Hosea; and, if the one prophet condemns the worship of the calves as the fundamental evidence of Israel's infidelity, while the other, a few years before, passes it by in silence, it is fair to conclude that the matter appeared to Hosea in a much more practical light than it did to Amos. Our analysis of Hosea's line of thought enables us to understand how this was so. Amos judges of the religious state of the nation by its influence on social relations and the administration of public justice. But Hosea places the essence of religion in personal fidelity to Jehovah and a just conception of His covenant of love with Israel. The worship of the popular sanctuaries ignored all this, setting in its place a conception of the Godhead which did not rise above the level of heathenism. The attachment of Israel to the golden calves was not the pure and elevated affection of a spouse for her husband. It was in its very nature a carnal love, and therefore its objects were false lovers, who had nothing in common with the true husband of the nation. Hosea does not condemn the worship of the calves because idols are forbidden by the law; he excludes the calves from the sphere of true religion because the worship which they receive has no affinity to the true attitude of Israel to Jehovah. By this judgment he proves the depth of his religious insight; for the whole history of religion shows that no truth is harder to realise than that a worship morally false is in no sense the worship of the true God (Matt. vi. 24; vii. 22).

As we follow out the various aspects of Hosea's teaching we see with increasing clearness that in all its parts it can be traced back to a single fundamental idea. The argument of his prophecy is an argument of the heart, not of the head. His whole revelation of Jehovah is the revelation of a love which can be conceived under human analogies, and whose workings are to be understood not by abstract reasonings but by the sympathy of a heart which has sounded the depths of human affection, and knows in its own experience what love demands of its object. One of the first points that struck us in Hosea's impassioned delineation of Israel's infidelity, in the inward sympathy with which he mourns over his nation's fall, yet holding fast the assurance that even in that fall the love of Jehovah to His people shall find its highest vindication, was that Jehovah's affection to Israel is an affection that burns within the prophet's own soul, which he has not learned to speak of by rote but has comprehended through the experience of his own life. It is a special characteristic of the Hebrew prophets that they identify themselves with Jehovah's word and will so completely that their personality seems often to be lost in His. In no prophet is this characteristic more notable than in Hosea, for in virtue of the peculiar inwardness of his whole argument his very heart seems to throb in unison with the heart of Jehovah. Amos became a prophet when he heard the thunder of Jehovah's voice of judgment; Hosea learned to speak of Jehovah's love, and of the workings of that love in chastisement and in grace towards Israel's infidelity, through sore experiences of his own life, through a human love spurned but not changed to bitterness, despised yet patient and unselfish to the end, which opened to him the secrets of that Heart whose tenderness is as infinite as its holiness.

In the first chapters of the book of Hosea the faithlessness of Israel to Jehovah, the long-suffering of God, the moral discipline of sorrow and tribulation by which He will yet bring back His erring people, and betroth it to Himself for ever in righteousness, truth, and love, are depicted under the figure of the relation of a husband to his erring spouse. This parable was not invented by Hosea; it is drawn, as we are expressly told, from his own life. The Divine Word first became audible in the prophet's breast when he was guided by a mysterious providence to espouse Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim, who proved an unfaithful wife and became the mother of children born in infidelity (1, 2, 3). The details of this painful story are very lightly touched; they are never alluded to in that part of the book which has the character of public preaching — in chapter 1. the prophet speaks of himself in the third person; and as Hosea gave names to the children of Gomer, names of symbolic form, to each of which is attached a brief prophetic lesson (1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 seq.), it is plain that he concealed the shame of their mother and acknowledged her children as his own, burying his bitter sorrow in his own heart. But this long-suffering tenderness was of no avail. In chapter iii. we learn that Gomer at length left her husband, and fell, under circumstances of which Hosea spares the recital, into a state of misery, from which the prophet, still following her with compassionate affection, had to buy her back at the price of a slave. He could not restore her to her old place in his house and to the rights of a faithful spouse; but he brought her home and watched over her for many days, secluding her from temptation, with a loyalty which showed that his heart was still true to her. [17] These scanty details embrace all that we know of the history of Hosea's life; everything else in chapters i. and iii., together with the whole of chapter ii., is pure allegory, depicting the relations of Jehovah and Israel under the analogy suggested by the prophet's experience, but working out that analogy in a quite independent way.

It is difficult to understand how any sound judgment can doubt that Hosea's account of his married life is literal history; it is told with perfect simplicity, and yet with touching reserve. "We feel that it would not have been told at all, but that it was necessary to explain how Hosea became a prophet, how he was led to that fundamental conception of Jehovah's love and Israel's infidelity which lies at the root of his whole prophetic argument. Those who shrink from accepting the narrative in its literal sense are obliged to assume that Hosea was first taught by revelation to think of Jehovah's relation to Israel as a marriage, and that then, the better to impress this thought on his auditors, he translated it into a fable, of which he made himself the chief actor, clothing himself with an imaginary shame which could only breed derision. But in truth, as we have already seen, the history of Hosea's life is related mainly in the third person, and forms no part of his preaching to Israel. It is a history that lies behind his public ministry; and we are told that it was through his marriage with Gomer-bath-Diblaim — whose very name shows her to be a real person, not a mere allegory — that Hosea first realised the truths which he was commissioned to preach. The events recorded in chap. i. are not Hosea's first message to Israel, but Jehovah's first lesson, to the prophet's soul. God speaks in the events of history and the experiences of human life. He spoke to Amos in the thundering march of the Assyrian, and he spoke to Hosea in the shame that blighted his home. [18]

Apart from the still surviving influence of the old system of allegorical interpretation, which, though no longer recognised in principle, continues to linger in some corners of modern interpretation, the chief thing that has prevented a right understanding of the opening chapters of our book is a false interpretation of chap. i. 2, as if Hosea meant us to believe that under divine command he married a woman whom he knew from the first to be of profligate character. But the point of the allegory is that Gomer's infidelity after marriage is a figure of Israel's departure from the covenant God, and the struggle of Hosea's affection with the burning sense of shame and grief when he found his wife unfaithful is altogether inconceivable unless his first love had been pure, and full of trust in the purity of its object. Hosea did not understand in advance the deep prophetic lesson which Jehovah desired to teach him by these sad experiences. It was in the struggle and bitterness of his spirit in the midst of his great unhappiness that he learned to comprehend the secret of Jehovah's heart in his dealings with faithless Israel, and recognised the unhappiness of his married life as no meaningless calamity, but the ordinance of Jehovah, which called him to the work of a prophet. This he expresses by saying that it was in directing him to marry Gomer that Jehovah first spoke to him (comp. Jer. xxxii. 8, where in like manner the prophet tells us that he recognised an incident in his life as embodying a divine word after the event). It was through the experience of his own life, which gave him so deep an insight into the spiritual aspect of the marriage tie, that Hosea was able to develop with inmost sympathy his doctrine of the moral union of Jehovah to Israel, and to transform a conception which in its current form seemed the very negation of spiritual faith, full of associations of the merest nature worship, into a doctrine of holy love, freed from all carnal alloy, and separating Jehovah for ever from the idols with which His name had till then been associated.

The possession of a single true thought about Jehovah, not derived from current religious teaching, but springing up in the soul as a word from Jehovah Himself, is enough to constitute a prophet, and lay on him the duty of speaking to Israel what he has learned of Israel's God. But the truth made known to Hosea could not be exhausted in a single message, like that delivered to Amos. As the prophet's own love to his wife shaped and coloured his whole life, so Jehovah's love to faithless Israel contained within itself the key to all Israel's history. The past, the present, and the future took a new aspect to the prophet in the light of his great spiritual discovery. Hosea had become a prophet, not for a moment, but for all his life.

We have already seen that the greater part of the book of Hosea, from chap. iv. onwards — the only part that has the form of direct address to his people — appears to date from the period of increasing anarchy, while the briefer prophecies in chap, i., associated with the names of Gomer's three children, belong to the reign of Jeroboam II. It would seem, therefore, that Hosea was conscious of his prophetic calling for some years before he appeared as a public preacher; and this fact we can well understand in a nature so poetically sensitive, and in connection with the personal circumstances that first made him a prophet. But it was impossible for him to be altogether silent. He felt that he and his family were living lessons of Jehovah to Israel, and in this feeling he gave to the three children symbolical names, to each of which a short prophetic lesson was attached. In this he was followed by Isaiah, whose sons, Mahar-shalal-hash-baz and Shear-jashub, also bore names expressive of fundamental points in the prophet's teaching.

The eldest of Gomer's sons was named Jezreel. "For yet a little while," saith Jehovah, "and I will punish the house of Jehu for the sin of Jezreel, and will cause to cease the kingdom of the house of Israel. And in that day I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel" — the natural battlefield of the land. To Hosea, as to Amos, the fall of the house of Jehu and the fall of the nation appear as one thing; both prophets, indeed, appear to have looked for the overthrow of the reigning dynasty, not by intestine conspiracy, as actually happened, but at the hand of the destroying invader. It was fitting, therefore, that the great sin of the reigning dynasty should hold the first place in the record of the nation's defection. To Hosea that sin begins with the bloodshed of Jezreel, the treacherous slaughter of the house of Ahab. The very existence of the ruling dynasty rests on a crime which cries for vengeance.
 

That Hosea judges thus of a revolution accomplished with the active participation of older prophets is a fact well worthy of attention. It places in the strongest light the limitations that characterise all Old Testament revelation. It shows us that we can look for no mechanical uniformity in the teaching of successive prophets. Elisha saw and approved one side of Jehu's revolution. He looked on it only as the death-blow to Baal worship; but Hosea sees another side, and condemns as emphatically as Elisha approved. In the forefront of his condemnation he places the bloodshed, still unatoned, which, according to the view that runs through all the Old Testament and was familiar to every Hebrew, continued to cry for vengeance from generation to generation. But we must not suppose that in Hosea's judgment all would have been well if the house of Omri had retained the throne. The Northern kingship in itself, and quite apart from the question of the particular dynasty, is a defection from Jehovah — "They have made kings, but not by Me; they have made princes, and I knew it not " (viii. 4); "Where now is thy king to save thee in all thy cities, and thy judges, of whom thou, saidst, Give me a king and princes? I gave thee a king in Mine anger, and take him away in My wrath" (xiii. 10, 11). The kingdom of Ephraim, in all its dynasties, rests on a principle of godless anarchy. What wonder, then, that the nation devours her judges like a fiery oven: [19] all their kings are fallen (vii. 7), the monarchy of Samaria is swept away as foam upon the water (x. 7). The ideal which Hosea holds up in contrast to the unhallowed dynasties of the North is the rule of the house of David. In the days of restoration the people shall inquire after Jehovah their God, and David their king (iii. 5). Now, it is not surprising that Amos, who was himself a man of Judah, should represent the re-establishment of the ancient kingdom of David as part of the final restoration; but when Hosea, a Northern prophet, gives utterance to the same thought, he places himself in striking contrast to all his predecessors, who never dreamed of a return of Ephraim to the yoke cast off in the days of the first Jeroboam. No doubt there were many things which made such a thought natural, at least in the days of anarchy that followed the death of Jeroboam II. The stability of the Davidic throne stood in marked contrast to the civil discords and constant changes of dynasty to which the prophet so often alludes; and, though he speaks of Judah as sharing Israel's sin and Israel's fall (v. 5, 10, 13, 14; viii. 14), Hosea regards the corruption of the Southern kingdom as less ancient (xi. 12; Heb., xii. 1) and deep-rooted (iv. 15), and, in his earlier prophecies at least, excludes Judah from the utter destruction of the North. When Jehovah's mercy is withdrawn from Israel He will yet save Judah, though not by war and battle as in days gone by (i. 7). Hosea is so essentially a man of feeling, and not of strict logic, that it would be fruitless to attempt to form an exact picture of his attitude to Judah, expressed as it is in a series of brief allusions scattered over a number of years. In his last picture of Israel's restoration the house of David is not mentioned at all, and images of political glory have no place in his conception of the nation's true happiness. One part of the ideal of Amos is the resubjugation of the heathen once tributary to David; he looks for a return of the ancient days of victorious warfare. But Hosea has altogether laid aside the old martial idea as we found it expressed in Deut. xxxiii. The fenced cities of Judah are a sin, and shall be destroyed by fire (viii. 1-i). The deliverance of Judah is not to be wrought by bow or sword (i. 7); repentant Ephraim says, "We will not ride upon horses" (xiv. 3). His picture of the future, therefore, lacks all the features that give strength to an earthly state; it reads like a return to Paradise (ii. 21 seq.; xiv.). In such a picture the kingship of David is little more than a figure. The return of David's kingdom, as it actually was, would by no means have corresponded with his ideal; but the name of David is the historical symbol of a united Israel. To Hosea the unity of Israel is a thing of profound significance. His whole prophecy, as we know, is penetrated by the conception of the people of Jehovah as a moral person; the unity of Israel and the unity of God are the basis of his whole doctrine of religion as a personal bond of love and fidelity. Thus the political divisions of Israel on the one hand, and on the other the idolatry which broke up the oneness of Israel's God, are set forth by Hosea as parallel breaches of covenant; when he mentions the one he instinctively joins the other with it (viii. 4; x. 1 seq.). In contrast to this twofold defection and division "Jehovah their God and David their king" appear in natural connection.

One sees from all this that in Hosea's hands the old national theory of the religion of Jehovah is on the point of breaking up, and that new hopes take its place. This was indeed inevitable. The ideal of a victorious and happy nation, dwelling apart in a goodly land and secure from invasion in Jehovah's blessing on its warlike prowess, as we find it in the prophecies of Balaam or the Blessing of Moses, was hopelessly shattered by the first contact with a great conquering empire such as Assyria. Amos was the first to realise that the advance of Assyria meant the ruin of Israel as it actually was, but he did not see that the new movements of history meant more than speedy captivity, that Israel could never again be restored on its old footing. To him it still seems possible that the remnant of the nation, purified by sifting judgment, may return to Canaan and restore the ancient kingdom of David. His picture of the last days is no more than a glorified image of the best days of the past, when the flow of Jehovah's blessings, victory in war and prosperous seasons in time of peace, is renewed in fuller measure to a nation purged of sinners. The realism of this picture has no counterpart in Hosea's eschatology. The total dissolution of national life which he foresees is not a mere sifting judgment, but the opening of an altogether new era. Hosea never draws a distinction between the sinners who must perish in captivity and the righteous remnant which shall return. To him Ephraim is not a mingled society of the righteous and the wicked, but a single moral person which has sinned and must repent as one man. Amos does not look for national repentance; the wicked remain wicked, and perish in their sins, the righteous return in their old righteousness, and so the new Israel is just a continuation of the old. But to Hosea the repentance of the nation is a resurrection from the dead. "Come and let us return to Jehovah, for He hath torn and He will heal is; He hath smitten and He will bind us up. After two days will He revive us, in the third day He will raise us up, and we shall live before Him" (vi. 1 seq.; xiii. 14). Even Ephraim's hard heart cannot for ever resist Jehovah's love. "He will allure her and lead her into the wilderness" of exile "and speak to her heart" (ii. 14). The desolate valley of Achor shall be to her the gate of hope, and there "she shall answer as in the days of her youth and the day when she came up out of the land of Egypt" (ii. 15). When His people are scattered in exile Jehovah shall roar like a lion, and the wanderers shall come fluttering to His call like a bird from Egypt, like a dove from the land of Assyria (xi. 10, 11). The purpose of the judgment is not penal; it is meant to teach them that Jehovah alone is the husband of Israel, and the giver of those good things which in their blindness she esteemed the gifts of the Baalim (ii. 5 seq.). Taught by adversity, Ephraim shall acknowledge that neither the alliance of strange empires, nor his own prowess, nor his vain idols can give deliverance; "Asshur shall not save us, we will not ride upon horses, neither will we say any more to the work of our hands, Ye are our gods; for in Thee the fatherless findeth mercy." And so at length all Israel shall be saved; but in this redemption every feature of the old nation has disappeared — its state, its religion, its warlike might, its foreign policy, king and prince, sacrifice and sanctuary, images (ephod) and teraphim. The very face of nature is changed; the wild beasts of the field, the fowls of heaven, the creeping things of the earth are at peace with Jehovah's people; sword and battle are broken out of the earth that they may lie down safely (ii. 18). Jehovah alone remains overshadowing Israel and Israel's land with His infinite compassion (xiv. 7). And then the voice of Ephraim is heard, "What have I to do any more with idols? I answer and look to Him; I am as a green fir-tree, from me is Thy fruit found." [20]

It is no mere accident that Hosea in this closing picture returns to the image of the evergreen tree which played so large a part in that nature-religion which it was his chief work to contend against. In translating religion into the language of the most spiritual human affections, Hosea fixed forever the true image of religious faith; and we still find in his book a fit expression of the profoundest feelings of repentant devotion — a delineation of Jehovah's forgiving love which touches the inmost chords of our being. But to Hosea the worshipping subject, the object of God's redeeming grace is the nation in its corporate capacity, not a true person but a personified society. So long as the individual side of religion fails to receive that central place which it holds in the Gospel it is impossible to represent the highest spiritual truth without some use of physical analogies; and this shows itself in the most characteristic way when the book of Hosea closes with an image derived from mere vegetative life. The true goal of Hosea's ideas lay beyond his own horizon, in a dispensation when the relation of the redeeming God to every believing soul should have all that tenderness and depth of personal affection with which he clothes the relation of Jehovah to Israel. [21]  

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