Criswell Theological Review 7.1 (1993) 15-38
[Copyright © 1993 by
digitally prepared for use at
Gordon and
THE PROPHETIC DENUNCIATION OF
RELIGION IN HOSEA 4-7
M. DANIEL CARROLL R.
El Seminario Teologico Centroamericano
Defining
the Approach
The issue of
religion is central to any understanding of the background
and
message of the Book of Hosea. In this prophetic text both the per-
sonal life of the prophet, as well as national
religious life, have drawn
scholarly
interest. The most celebrated interpretative problem, of course,
concerns the
first three chapters and the relationship of the prophet with
Gomer
(and, some would argue, with another woman in chap. 3), and the
connection of
this narrative to Canaanite religious practice.l
In years past, certain scholars also
highlighted the harsh critique
of ritual in
6:6 (cf. 4:1-2, 15; 5:5; 8:13; 9:4; 12:11) and other prophetic
texts
(e.g., Amos 4:4-5; 5:4-5, 21-26); ethical monotheism was claimed
1 For recent detailed
surveys of scholarly opinions, see, e.g., R K. Harrison, Intro-
duction to the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1969) 861-68; R E. Clements,
Understanding
the Book of Hosea, Rev
Exp 72 (1975) 408-12; G. I. Davies, Hosea (Old
Testament
Guides;
"The
Marriage Motif in Israelite Religion in Ancient Israelite Religion: Essays
in Honor
of
Frank Moore Cross,
eds. P. D. Miller, Jr., P. Hanson, S. D. McBride (
tress,
1987) 421-28. H. L. Ginsberg, following Kaufmann, believes that chaps. 1-3 come
from
another prophet and refer to the Baal worship of the ninth-century under Ahab:
chaps.
4ff. would reflect later struggles within Yahwism (“Hosea,
Book of,” Encyclopaedia
Judaica [
offered a
materialist reading of these chapters and concludes that they are a metaphoric
description of
the political economy: the wife alludes to the warrior elite and the children
to the
peasant classes ("Agricultural Intensification as Promiscuity in the Book
of Hosea;
unpublished
paper, Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, 1993; for a sum-
mary, see AAR/SBL Abstracts 1993, 137).
16 CRISWELL THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
to be
the unique and lasting contribution of those who spoke for Yah-
weh. Accordingly, textbooks on prophetism sometimes have dedicated
space to
clarifying that the prophets did not desire the eradication of
all
formal religion, but rather exhorted the people to live out their
faith in
mercy and justice and not to limit belief in God to mere exter-
nal religious rites.2
Recent research into the nature of religion in eighth-century Pal-
estine and the analysis of the textual data of
Hosea have moved beyond
simply
attempting to establish the practice of certain non-Yahwistic
rit-
uals, such as cultic prostitution,3
to a broader investigation of mono-
theism in
ancient
to
widespread syncretism, popular as well as official, throughout the
monarchical
period. New approaches posit a contested and difficult rise
of
monotheism, which would contrast with the biblical picture of the
revelation of a
single deity at the very beginning of
Lang, for
instance, postulates that the prophet Hosea is an important
figure in
the development and eventual success of what he labels the
2 E.g., J. Lindblom, Prophecy in
Ancient
60
(Interestingly, some of the concerns of Wellhausen
and Duhm have been raised again
by J.
Barton in Oracles of God: Perceptions of Ancient Prophecy in
[
American
Liberation Theology, J. P. Miranda defends the strict anti-cultus
stance that a
first
reading of certain prophetic passages might suggest: according to his critical
recon-
struction, God can only be found in interhuman justice (Marx and the Bible: A Critique
of the
Philosophy of Oppression,
trans. J. Eagleson [Maryknoll:
Orbis, 1974] 44-67; cf.
J. Pixley," dExige el Dios verdadero sacrificios cruentos?,” Revista de interpretaciOn biblica
latinoamericana 2 [1988] 109-31). On the other hand, some
suggest a close tie between
Hosea and the cult. H. W. Wolff has proposed that Hosea was a member of a Levitical circle
in Hosea
(Philadelphia: Fortress, 1974) xxii-xxiii (cf. R R
Wilson, Prophecy and Society
in
Ancient
ceived widespread acceptance.
3 See below, n. 37.
4 For
a helpful introduction to issues involved in the larger debate,
see D L. Petersen,
"
Interpretation:
Essays in Honor of Brevard S. Childs, eds. G. M. Tucker, D L. Petersen, R. R.
growth and
official imposition of monotheism and who provide helpful bibliography, al-
though
defending different reconstructions, include M S. Smith, The Early History
of God:
Yahweh and
the Other Deities in Ancient
O. Keel and
C. Uehlinger, Gottinnen,
Gotter und Gottessymbole. Neue Erkenntnisse zur
Religionsgeschichte Kanaans und
phischer Quellen (Freiberg: Herder, 1992); and various
essays in part one of Ancient
Israelite Religion, 3-299. A helpful survey of the
archaeological data, which does not deal
directly with
the thorny issue of development, is found in R. S. Hess, "Yahweh and his
Asherah? Epigraphic Evidence for Religious
Pluralism in Old Testament Times" in One
God, One
Lord in a World of Religious Pluralism, eds. A D Clarke and B. W. Winter (
bridge: Tyndale House, 1991) 5-33.
M. Daniel
Carroll R: THE DENUNCIATION OF RELIGION 17
"Yahweh-alone movement."5 Some scholars, accordingly, would also
question the
objectivity of the presentation of the nature of Canaanite
religion in
OT texts, as these are now evaluated as evidence of this con-
certed effort to give an aggressively negative
view of a competing faith.
This
article, however, does not try to tackle the complex task of trying
either to
define precisely what were the elements of Canaanite religion
that the
prophet Hosea found distasteful, or to locate his ministry and
message
within the current debate on monotheism.
In addition to this issue of uncertainty in the establishing of a
pre-
cise religious setting for the background of
the Book of Hosea, is the
problem of
ascertaining clear historical referents. The lack of explicit
historical
information and the fact that the title (1:1) suggest a ministry
spanning
decades sometimes can make confident identification of
tual particulars difficult.6
The following discussion of chaps. 4-7 takes a more literary ap-
proach to the final form of this prophetic text.7
The goal is to try to
understand the
world within the text, instead of focusing on the rela-
tionship of the biblical data to eighth-century
which lies
behind the text. Space will not permit a detailed reading,
which
would involve a careful investigation of the poetics of the book--
that is,
elements such as detailed structural analysis, style, figurative
5 B.
Lang, "The Yahweh-alone Movement and the Making of Jewish Monotheism;
Monotheism
and the Prophetic Minority (The
Social World of Biblical Antiquity Series 1;
Hosea
include G. I. Emmerson's attempt to differentiate the
prophet's original religious cri-
tique from the one embodied in the present form
of the text, which is claimed to be the
work of Judaean redactors (Hosea, An Israelite Prophet in Judaean Perspective [
JSOT, 1984]
chap. 3); W. I. Toews analyzes Hosea's critique
within the larger framework of
the
reforms of Jeroboam I (Monarchy and Religious Institution under Jeroboam I
[
Scholars Press, 1993] 151-72).
6
Note, e.g., the comments by F. I. Andersen and D. N. Freedman, Hosea (Garden City:
Doubleday, 1980) 313. Their reluctance to specify historical details with absolute
certainty
goes
beyond just facile identification of historical referents (names, places and
events) to
include
avoiding speculation about possible cultic or social settings of the prophetic
oracles
(72-74, 313-17),
which is a major concern of the form critical approach utilized by com-
mentators such as Wolff and Mays. Attempts to
coordinate oracles with particular moments
in the
prophet's ministry abound. For a recent effort, see Davies, Hosea,
30-37. Another
related
issue is how the book itself portrays
Hosea and Salvation History (Berlin: Walter de Groyter, 1990)
117-30.
7 The
phrase "the final form of the text" distinguishes our approach from
others that
concentrate on
sorting out what are considered to be original from later material (For a
defense of
the canonical form, see Harrison, Introduction to the Old Testament
868-72,
and some
conservative commentaries such as D. A. Hubbard, Hosea [
InterVarsity, 1990] 31-34; cf. Andersen and Freedman, Hosea, 52-76,
316f.). Some evan-
gelicals would defend the integrity of the text on
theological grounds. Elsewhere I argue
for
taking the prophetic text (in that case, Amos) as literature for methodological
and
18 CRISWELL THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
language,
point of view, plot, and characterization.8 Rather, some atten-
tion will be paid to the shape of these four
chapters and to how that might
contribute to
the highlighting of thematic aspects of the prophetic mes-
sage. In
other words, this presentation combines a literary with a topical
concern.
The issue to be explored is the nature of Yahweh religion within
the
world of the text of Hosea 4-7. Several questions spark the reading
of
these chapters. For example, what is the nature of
in
these chapters? What is Yahweh himself perceived to be like in this
religious
world? Why does the prophet condemn this religion which
claims to
worship Yahweh? Who are those most responsible for prac-
ticing and propagating this kind of belief in
Yahweh?
pastoral
reasons (M. D Carroll R, Contexts for Amos: Prophetic Poetics in Latin Ameri-
can
Perspective [
different
kinds of reading strategies deal with the final form of the biblical text. Note
the
helpful
methodological discussions by D. J. A. Clines ("Reading Esther from Left
to Right:
Contemporary
Strategies for Reading a Biblical Text") and M. G. Brett ("Four or
Five
Things to do
With Texts: A Taxonomy of Interpretive Interests") in The Bible in
Three Di-
mensions: Essays in Celebration of Forty Years of
Biblical Studies in the University of
77, respectively. For recent surveys of critical approaches, see G. A. Yee, Composition and
Tadition in the Book of Hosea: A Redactional
Critical Investigation (
Press, 1987)
1-25, and Davies, Hosea, 93-106.
Finally, it should be emphasized that this
is a
reading of Hosea alone. No effort will be made to pursue the fruitful insights gener-
ated by intertextual
readings; cf. D N. Fewell, ed., Reading Between
Texts: Intertextuality
and the
Hebrew Bible
(Louisville: WestminsterlJohn Knox, 1992). For an
example of such
an
approach to the Book of Hosea, see the essay in the same volume by D Krause,
"A
Blessing
Cursed: The Prophet's Prayer for Barren Womb and Dry Breasts in Hosea 9,”
191-202.
8 For
a general bibliography for these features, see Carroll
R, Contexts for Amos,
178-80. For some poetic details in this particular prophetic text,
note, e.g., R. B, Chisolm,
Jr.,
"Wordplay in the Eighth-Gentury Prophets," BS
144 (1987) 44-52; P. A. Krueger,
"Prophetic
Imagery: On Metaphors and Similes in the Book Hosea," JNSL 14 (1988)
143-51; P.
J. Botha, "The Communicative Function of
Comparison in Hosea," Old Testa-
ment Essays 6 (1993) 57-71; Davies, Hosea (OTG), 107-115; 1: Jemielity, Satire and the
Hebrew
Prophets
(Louisville: Westminster/ John Knox, 1992) 84-116; H. Fisch,
Poetry
with a
Purpose: Biblical Poetics and Interpretation (
Press, 1988) 136-57. P. R House has touched on characterization and plot in the book
of
Hosea, but
within the larger literary framework of the Book of the Twelve (The Unity
of the
Twelve [
the
prophetic text, which some literary readings suggest, should not ignore
supposed re-
dactional development Note, e.g., Yee, Composition
and Tradition in the book of Hosea
(cf. D. Carr, "Reaching for Unity in Isaiah," JSOT 57
[1993] 61-80). H.
Marks connects
his
views on the literariness of each of the Twelve with observations concerning
per-
ceived redactional
layers and the possible canonical markers of the final compilers
("The
Twelve Prophets," The Literary Guide to the Bible, eds. R. Alter
and
[
M. Daniel
Carroll R.: THE DENUNCIATION OF RELIGION 19
In the discussion, Hosea 4-7 is divided into three principle
parts.
These
chapters open with 4:1-3, which offers an introduction to what fol-
lows;
4:4-5:7 describes the worship in
trary to the divine demands; and, lastly,
5:8-7:16 critiques
politics and
foreign policy and their relationship to Israelite religion.
Introductory Accusation and Judgment
(4:1-3)
Most commentators consider this passage to be the introduction
which sets
the tone and lists the basic violations deserving of judgment
which will
be developed in the following chapters.9 The theological
framework for
this pericope is the Mosaic Covenant,10
whether in a
formal
sense as a covenant lawsuit11 or simply in a broader manner of
an
Indictment because of covenant violation.12
4:1 opens the accusation by mentioning the lack of three key cove-
nantal qualities: tm,x< ('emet),
ds,H, (hesed), and tfaDa (da'at).
The first has
been
translated in the versions as "good faith" (
(NASB, NIV,
NRSV). This term is related to the concept of truth and car-
ries the notions of constancy, reliability,
and integrity in word and deed.
Yahweh
himself is the standard by which this faithfulness is measured
(
9
E.g., for Andersen and Freedman, 4: 1-3 is the introduction to chaps. 4-7 (Hosea,
331); for D.
A. Hubbard it introduces chaps. 4-11 (Hosea, 95-96); for J. L. Mays
these
verses
introduce chaps. 4-14 (Hosea [Philadelphia:
Westminster, 1969] 61).
10 For
an extensive exposition of the notion of covenant in Hosea, see W. Bruegge-
mann, Hosea: Tradition for Crisis
(Atlanta: John Knox, 1968). Besides commentaries such
as D.
Stuart, Hosea-Jonah (Waco: Word, 1987), which makes extensive use of
covenant
theology,
also note J. Bright, Covenant and Promise: The Prophetic Understanding of
the
Future in
Pre-Exilic
ets, Vol. I: The Assyrian Period, trans. M.
Kohl (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983) 90-93;
J. Day,
"Pre-Deuteronomic Allusions to the Covenant in
Hosea and Psalm lxxviii; VT 36
(1986) 1-12.
Those not supporting a well developed covenant background for the proph-
ets include D. J. McCarthy, Old Testament
Covenant: A Survey of Current Opinion
(Atlanta:
John Knox, 1972) 35-40, 78f.; R E. Clements, Prophecy and Tradition (
Basil
Blackwell, 1978) 8-23. Cf. the discussion on recent developments in covenant
stud-
ies in K. Kitchen, "The Fall and Rise of
Covenant, Law and Treaty; Tyn Bul 40 (1989)
118-35.
11
Bright, Covenant and Promise 89-90; K. Nielsen, Yahweh as Prosecutor
and
Judge: An
Investigation of the Prophetic Lawsuit (Rib Pattern), (Sheffield: JSOT, 1978)
32-34; Mays,
Hosea, 61; Wolff, Hosea, 66; Stuart, Hosea-Jonah, 7&-75 (Stuart
extends the
lawsuit to
the end of the chapter). Note, however, M. De Roche, "Yahweh's RIB
against
JBL 102
(1983) 563-74.
12 Andersen and Freedman, Hosea, 331; Hubbard, Hosea,
96.
13 See
A Jepsen, "Nmx," Theological Dictionary of
the Old Testament (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974) 1: 292-323; W. C. Kaiser, Toward Old
Testament Ethics (Grand
20 CRISWELL THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
"mutual trust" (
(NRSV). A
reciprocal relationship is presupposed, and this bond is to be
made
manifest in actions. In the context of the prophets, this relationship
is the
covenant: Yahweh has committed himself to a particular people,
and they
are called to reflect this love and grace concretely with one an-
other in
the community.14 The last quality that is mentioned is tfd or
"knowledge."15 In the context of the book,
this knowledge certainly does
refer to a
certain theological content, such as the traditions of the Patri-
archs (12:3-4, 12 [MT = 12:4-5, 13]), of the
Exodus (
17]; 11:1-4;
12:9, 13 [MT =
13:5) and
the teachings of the Torah (4:6; 8:1, 12). But the term includes
as well
an understanding of Yahweh's covenantal demands which is to
be
reflected in obedience and moral conduct. Hence, the NIV translates
the
phrase Myhlx tfd here as "acknowledgement of God."
The list of five charges that follow in 4:2a offer an application
of the
three sins
of omission in 4:1 within human relationships.16
Although
the
knowledge of God is a more general concept, the lack of faithfulness
(tm,x<)
probably could be taken as fleshed out in cursing and lying, and
the
absence of steadfast love (ds,H,) in murder, stealing, and adultery.
Each of
these five corresponds to one of the Ten Commandments.17 The
last line
of this verse is very problematic,18 but it is possible that the
Rapids: Zondervan, 1983) 222-34. tmx and dsH often appear in hendiadys, but the fact
that
these terms appear as part of a list of three and each is prefixed by the
conjunction
+ negative particle would suggest that here they be considered
separately.
4 See
N. Glueck, Hesed
in the Bible, trans. (