Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/309

297 H O S E A 297 seems to rest on mistaken exegesis and too narrow a con ception of the way in which the Divine word was com municated to the prophets. There is no reason to suppose that Hosea knowingly married a woman of profligate character. The point of the allegory in i. 2 is plainly infidelity after marriage as a parallel to Israel s departure from the covenant God, and a profligate wife (D OIJT DC N) is not the same thing with an open prostitute (run). The marriage was marred by Comer s infidelity; and the struggle of Hosea s affection for his wife with this great unhappiness a struggle inconceivable unless his first love had been pure and full of trust in the purity of its object furnished him with a new insight into Jehovah s dealings with Israel. Then he recognized that the great calamity of his life was God s own ordinance and appointed means to communicate to him a deep prophetic lesson. The recognition of a divine command after the fact has its parallel, as Wellhausen observes, in Jeremiah xxxii. 8. This explanation of the narrative, which is essentially Ewald s, has commended itself to not a few recent expositors, as Valeton, Wellhausen, and Nowack. It has the great advantage of supplying a psychological key to the conception of Israel or the land of Israel (i. 2) as the spouse of Jehovah, which dominates these chapters, but in the later part of the book gives way to the personification of the nation as God s son. This conception has, indeed, formal points of contact with notions previously current, and even with the ideas of Semitic heathenism. On the one hand, it is a standing Hebrew usage to represent the land as mother of its people, while the repre sentation of worshippers as children of their god is found in Num. xxi. 29, where the Moabites are called children of Chemosh, and is early and widespread throughout the Semitic field (cf. Trans. Bib. Arch., vi. p. 438; Jour, of Phil., ix. p. 82). The combination of these two notions gives at once the conception of the national deity as husband of the land. On the other hand, the designation of Jehovah as Baal, which, in accordance with the antique view of marriage, means husband as well as lord and owner, was current among the Israelites in early times (see BAAL), perhaps, indeed, down to Hosea s age (ii. 16). Now it is highly probable that among the idolatrous Israelites the idea of a marriage between the deity and individual worshippers was actually current and connected with the immo rality which Hosea often condemns in the worship of the local Baalim, whom the ignorant people identified with Jehovah. For we have a Punic woman s name, pysn^HX, &quot;the betrothed of Baal&quot; (Etiting, Punisclw Steinc, pp. 9, 15), and a similar conception existed among the Babylonians (Herod., i. 181, 182). But Hosea takes the idea of Jehovah as husband, and gives it an altogether different turn, filling it with a new and profound meaning, based on the psychical experiences of a deep human affection in contest with outraged honour and the wilful self-degradation of a spouse. It can hardly be supposed that all that lies in these chapters is an abstract study in the psychology of the emotions. It is actual human experience that gives Hosea the key to divine truth. Among those who do not recognize this view of the passage, the controversy between allegory and literalism is carried on chiefly upon abstract assumptions. The extreme literalists, of whom Dr Pusey may be taken as the modern representative in England, will have it that the divine command justified a marriage otherwise highly improper, and that the offensive circumstances magnify the obedience of the prophet. This is to substitute the Scotist and Neo-Platonic notion of God for that of Scripture. On the other hand, the allegorists, lio argue that God could not have enjoined on His prophet a mar riage plainly improper and fitted to destroy his influence among the people, are unable to show that what is repulsive in fact is fit subject for a divine allegory. A third school of recent writers, led by Hengstenberg, and resting on a thesis of John Smith, the Cam bridge Platonist, will have it that the symbolical action was trans acted in what they allow themselves by a contradictio in adjccto to call an objective vision. This view has been adopted by Fair- bairn (Pi-02)hecy, cli. v. sec. ii. ). The recent Continental literature of the controversy is catalogued by Nowack in his Commentary, p. xxxvi. It was in the experiences of his married life, and in the spiritual lessons opened to him through these, that Hosea first heard the revealing voice of Jehovah (i. 2). Like Amos (Amos iii. 8), he was called to speak for God by an inward constraining voice, and there is no reason to think that he had any connexion with the recognized prophetic societies, or ever received such outward adoption to office as was given to Elisha. His position in Israel was one of tragic isolation. Amos, when he had discharged his mission at Bethel, could return to his home and to his friends ; Hosea was a stranger among his own people, and his home was full of sorrow and shame. Isaiah in the gloomiest days of Judah s declension had faithful disciples about him, and knew that there was a believing remnant in the land. Hosea knows no such remnant, and there is not a line in his prophecy from which we can conclude that his words ever found an obedient ear. For him the present condition of the people contained no germ or pledge of future amendment, and he describes the impending judgment, not as a sifting process (Amos ix. 9, 10) in which the wicked perish and the righteous remain, but as the total wreck of the nation which has wholly turned aside from its God. In truth, while the idolatrous feasts of Ephraim still ran their joyous round, while the careless people crowded to the high places, and there in unbridled and licentious mirth flattered themselves that their many sacrifices ensured the help of their God against all calamity, the nation was already in the last stage of internal dissolu tion. To the prophet s eye there was &quot; no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land nought but swearing, and lying, and killing, and stealing, and adultery ; they break out, and blood toucheth blood &quot; (iv. 1, 2). The root of this corruption lay in total ignorance of Jehovah, whose precepts were no longer taught by the priests, while in the national calf-worship, and in the local high places, this worship was confounded with the service of the Canaanite Baalim. Thus the whole religious constitution of Israel was undermined. And the political state of the realm was in Hosea s eyes not more hopeful. The dynasty of Jehu, still great and powerful when the prophet s labours began, is itself an incorporation of national sin. Founded on the bloodshed of Jezreel, it must fall by God s vengeance, and the state shall fall with it (i. 4, iii. 4). This sentence stands at the head of Hosea s predictions, and throughout the book the civil constitution of Ephraim is represented as equally lawless and godless with the corrupt religious establishment. The anarchy that followed on the murder of Zachariah appears to the prophet as the natural decadence of a realm not founded on divine ordinance. The nation had rejected Jehovah, the only helper. And now the avenging Assyrian is at hand. Samaria s king shall pass away as foam on the water. Fortress and city shall fall before the ruthless invader, who spares neither age nor sex, and thistles shall cover the desolate altars of Ephraim. But the ultimate theme of all prophecy is not judgment but redeeming love, and the deepest thought of every Hebrew seer is the sovereignty of Jehovah s grace in Israel s sin. Hosea could discern no faithful remnant in Ephraim, yet Ephraim in all his corruption is the son of Jehovah, a child nurtured with tender love, a chosen people, whose past history declares in every episode the watchful and patient affection of his father. And that father is God and not man, the Holy One who will not and cannot sacrifice His love even to the just est indignation (chap. xi,). To the prophet who knows this love of Jehovah, who has learned to understand it in the like experience of his own life, the very ruin of the state of Israel is a step in the loving guidance which makes the valley of trouble a door of hope (ii. 15), and the wilderness of tribulation as full of promise as the desert road from Egypt to Canaan was to Israel of old. Of the manner of Israel s repentance and conversion Hosea presents no clear image, nay, it is plain that on this point he had nothing to tell. The certainty that the people will at length return and seek Jehovah their God and David their king rests, not on any germ of better things in Israel, but on the invincible supremacy of Jehovah s love And so the two sides of his prophetic declaration, the passionate denuncia tion of Israel s sin and folly, and the not less passionate XII. - 18