Page:An Exposition of the Old and New Testament (1828) vol 4.djvu/880



We have now before us, I. The twelve minor pi-ophets; which some oi the ancients, in reckoning up the books of the Old Testa- ment, put all together, and reckon but as one book. They are called the lesser prophets, not because their writings are of any less authority or usefulness than those of the greater prophets, or as if these prophets were less in God's account, or might be so in ours, than the other, but only because they are shorter, and less in bulk, than the other. We have reason to think that these prophets fireached as much as the others, but that they did not write so much, nor is so much of their preaching kept upcn record. Many excellent prophets wrote nothing, and others but little, who yet were very useful m their iiy. And so ui the Christian church there have been many burning and shining lights, who are not known to posterity by their writings, and yet were in no way inferior in gifts, and graces, and service- ableness, to their own generation, than those who are; and some who have left but little behind them, and make no great figure among authors, were yet as valuable men as the more voluminous writers. These twelve small prophets, Josephus says, were put into one volume by the men of the great synagogue in Ezra's time, of which learned and pious body of men the three last of these twelve prophets are sup- posed to have been themselves members. These are what remained of the scattered pieces of inspired writing. Antiquaries value the fragmenta veterum — the fragments of antiquity ; these are the frag- ments of firofihecy, which are carefully gathered up by the Divine Providence and the care of the clmrcli, that nothuig might be lost; as St. Paul's short epistles after his long ones. The son of Sirach speaks of these twelve firofiheta with honour, as men that strengthened Jacob, Ecclus. xlix. 10. Nine of these prophets prophesied before the captivity, and the three last after the return of the Jews to their own laud. Some difference there is in the order of these books. We place them as the ancient Hebrew did; and all agree to put Hosea first; but the ancient Septuagint places the six first in this order — Hosea, Amos, Micah, Joel, Obadiah, and Jonah; the thing is not material. And if we covet to place them according to their seniority, as to some of them We shall find no certainty. II. We have before us the prophecy of Hosea, who was first of all the writing prophets, somewhat before Isaiah. The ancients say. He was of Beth-shemesh, and of the tribe of Issachar. He continued very lung a prophet; the Jews reckon that he prophesied near fourscore and ten years; so that, as Jerom observes, he prophesied of the destruction of the kingdom of the ten tribes, when it was at a great dis- tance, and lived himself to see and lament it, and to improve it when it was over, for warning to its sister kingdom. The scope of his prophecy is to discover sm, and to denounce the judgments of God against a people that would not be reformed. The style is very concise and sententious, above any of the pro- phets; and in some places it seems to be like the book of Proverbs, without connexion, and rather to be called Hosea's sayings than Hosea's sermons. And a weighty adage may sometimes do more service than a laboured discourse. Huetius observes that many passages in the prophecies of Jeremiah and Ezekiel seem to refer to, and to be borrowed from, the prophet Hosea, who wrote a good while befoi-e them. As jer. vii. 34. — xvi. 9. — xxv. 10. and Ezek. xxvi. 13. speak the same with Hos. ii. 11. so Ezek. xvi. 16, 8cc. is taken from Hos. ii. 8. And that promise of sennng the Lord their God, and David their king, Jer. xxx. 8, 9. Ezek. xxxiv. 23. Hosea had before, ch. iii. 5. And Ezek. xix. 12. is taken from Hos. xiii. 15. Thus one prophet confirms and corroborates another; and all these worketh that one and the self-same Spirit.