Criswell
Theological Review 7.1 (1993) 1-14
[Copyright © 1993 by
digitally prepared for use at
Gordon and
AN INTRODUCTION TO HOSEA
DUANE A. GARRETT
Canadian Southern Baptist Seminary
The Book of
Hosea is the written record of the prophecies that Ho-
sea son
of Beeri1, gave to the nation of
The book
primarily denounces
warns of a
coming judgment, but it also contains promises of restora-
tion (e.g., 3:4-5; 14:4-72). The
book is perhaps best known for the
story of
Hosea's sad marriage to Gomer. In structure, the book
is di-
vided into
two major sections: (1) chaps. 1-3, which deal with Hosea's
marriage and
lessons it provides for
lection of
various prophecies concerning
The Prophet
and His Times
Nothing is known of Hosea the man
apart from the matter of his
marriage to Gomer. The metaphors in 7:4-8 hardly prove that he was
a
baker.3 All we know is that he was a prophet to the northern kingdom
of
Israel.4
A great deal more is known, however,
about his times. He tells us
that he
ministered "during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and
Hezekiah,
kings of
Jehoash king of
1 Assuming that yrixeB;-NB, means that Beeri,
otherwise unknown, was Hosea's father
rather than
an ancestor.
2 Throughout this essay,
verse numbers refer to the English versification except in
footnotes
where Hebrew text is cited.
3 Contrary to some
interpreters. See R K. Harrison, Introduction to the Old Testa-
ment (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1969) 859.
4 J. L. Mays, Hosea,
OTL (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1969) 2, observes that Hosea
was
apparently a young man, of marriageable age, when he became a prophet.
2 CRISWELL THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
790 to 750
B.C., came to power while
He was able
to extend the borders of
perity of the nation (2 Kgs
the
prosperity was not spread equally among the Israelites. A two-class
system
developed in which the tedium and poverty of the lower
class
contrasted strongly with the oppressiveness and glut of the upper
class. On
Jeroboam's death,
king was
assassinated by his successor. This, combined with the rise of
an
invigorated
successors Shalmanesar V (727-722 B.C.) and Sargon II (722-705 B.C.),
sealed the
fate of
Internal evidence suggests that
Hosea ministered during the lat-
ter part of Jeroboam's reign and for some
years following (Hezekiah's
reign did
not begin until about 715 B.C.). This would indicate that he
lived to
see the fall of
it as a
past event.
One cannot easily correlate any text
in Hosea with any known
event of
contemporary history. Some scholars assert that Hosea 5
reflects the
period of the Syro-Ephraimite war (735-733 B.C.).5
The
suggestion is
weak, however, because in Hosea
the
aggressor (
dersen and Freedman more plausibly suggest that
this text refers to
border
disputes in the reign of Uzziah of Judah.6
In general, Hosea de-
scribes the
volatile political situation following the death of Jeroboam
II in which
power changed hands rapidly (e.g., 7:3-7; 8:4). It is reason-
able,
therefore, to suppose that most of Hosea's extant messages come
from the
decades of 755 to 735 B.C.
The
Authorship and Compilation of Hosea
Few scholars
today doubt that the bulk of the book comes from
the
messages of Hosea himself, but many attribute the actual commit-
ment of his words to writing not to the
prophet but to a group of dis-
ciples.7 This outlook on the writing of the prophetic books is not
founded on
solid evidence, however. Although we know from the ex-
ample of
Jeremiah 36 that prophets employed scribes, that text also
informs us
that the prophets had a direct hand in the process of pro-
5 For example, H. W
Wolff, Hosea, Hermeneia (Philadelphia:
Fortress, 1974) xxi.
6 E
7 Cf.
Wolff, Hosea, xxix-xxxii, and Andersen and Freedman, Hosea, 53.
Duane A Garrett: AN INTRODUCTION To HOSEA 3
ducing written versions of their proclamations.
At any rate, there is no
reason to
doubt that the messages of Hosea come from the prophet
himself.
A number of scholars, however,
contend that the book has a fair
number of redactional interpolations. One opinion is that the refer-
ences to
was a
"pro-Judah" redaction designed to distance
demnation pronounced against
redaction that
took the condemnatory oracles originally delivered
against
position,
too, stems more from the current habits of scholarship than
from any
real evidence. It is more likely that Hosea regarded the Da-
vidic king in
that
knew that
difficult days lay ahead for
A few scholars maintain that the
"optimistic" oracles do not stem
from
Hosea, but this tendency to regard the prophets as incapable of
complex
attitudes regarding the place of
fallen out
of favor. In Hosea's case, the sayings of condemnation and
the
sayings of salvation are so thoroughly intertwined, and the style is
so
evidently uniform, that any effort to treat the positive statements as
secondary
should be abandoned.9
The Hebrew
Text of Hosea
Second only to Job, Hosea contains
probably the most difficult
Hebrew in the Bible. Problem texts abound. For this reason, scholars
of
recent generations quickly resorted to emendation of the text or re-
garded the LXX as a better representation of the
Urtext than the MT.
More
recently, scholars have been hesitant to emend the MT or ac-
cept the LXX; advances in Hebrew linguistics
have allowed for new
approaches to
the interpretation of enigmatic texts.10 Even so, prob-
lem passages remain.
8 Cf. Wolff, Hosea,
xxxi-xxxii, and W. H. Schmidt, Introduction to the Old Testa-
ment (London: SCM, 1979) 204.
9 Cf. G. Fohrer, Introduction to the Old Testament
(Nashville: Abingdon, 1968) 422.
10 Contrast the following
assessments across the generations. W. R. Harper (Amos
and
Hosea, ICC [
one of
the most corrupt [texts] in the 0.T., the number of passages which almost defy
in-
terpretation being extremely large." Andersen and Freedman (Hosea, 60)
write that there
are
"more than enough oddities and peculiarities which can be defended,
interpreted,
and
explained to undermine the hypothesis of extensive corruption."
4 CRISWELL THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
The text of 5:2a, for example, is
especially difficult and an enor-
mous variety of interpretations and
emendations have been pro-
posed.11 The two most common renditions today are, "The rebels are
deep in
slaughter" (NIV) and "a pit dug deep in Shittim"
(NRSV [REB
is
similar]). The former is an attempt to translate the unemended
text
but is a
questionable rendition of the Hebrew.12 The second interpre-
tation involves two emendations13 but
fits the context well. The last
two
lines of v 1 speak of a "snare at Mizpah"
and a "net spread on Ta-
bor." The
proposed "pit" obviously parallels "snare" and
"net" just as
the
proposed "Shittim" parallels "Mizpah" and "Tabor," and "I will
punish all
of them" (5:2b) could be taken to refer to Mizpah,
Tabor, and
Shittim
together.14 Both renditions are therefore
defensible.15 The
LXX, by the
way, is significantly different.16
Therefore, although scholars rightly
hold the text of the MT in
higher
regard now than they did some years ago, one cannot slavishly
assume that
the MT is correct. Other examples of disputed texts where
emendation is
possible or likely could easily be given.17
Another question is whether or not Hosea is written as poetry or
prose. Our
knowledge of classical Hebrew scansion being as limited as
it is,
one cannot answer this question definitively. Scholars therefore
tend to
take the middle way of describing Hosea as prophetic dis-
course with
strong affinities to poetry.18 Andersen and Freedman,
working with
the criterion that the definite article, the relative pro-
11 See
Harper, Amos and Hosea, 267-72.
12 The MT reads Uqymif;h, MyFiWe hFAHEwav;.
The noun hvAHEwa occurs only here, but it
could be
taken as a feminine noun from FHw and thus mean "slaughter." The
word
MyFiWe might be translated "rebels" on
the basis of the root FUW
found in Ps 40:5 and the
word MyFise ("deeds that swerve [?]") in Ps 101:3; cf. also the
root FUw
"to turn aside." The
verb Uqymif;h, means, "they make deep," although it might be taken
adverbially to mean
"they are in deep." Andersen and Freedman, Hosea,
386-88, support this translation al-
though they
admit that the text is "largely unintelligible in its present form."
13 One
must read tHEwa,
"pit," for hFAHEWa
"Shittim," for MyfiWe. Wolff, Hosea,
94; Mays, Hosea,
79; and D. Stuart, Hosea-Jonah, WBC (Waco: Word, 1987) 88-89 support
the
emendations.
14 The
change from the second person in v 1 to the third person in v 2a, however,
is a
problem for this emendation.
15 On
balance, I prefer to emend to "pit" and "Shittim."
Y. Mazor, "Hosea 5.1-3: Be-
tween Compositional Rhetoric and Rhetorical
Composition," JSOT 45 (1989) 119-20,
shows that
in the emended version of the text, 5:1c-2 has precisely the same rhetorical
structure as
5:1ab.
16 It
reads, o{ oi[
a]greu<ontej th>n qh<ran kate<phcan
("which the pursuers of the hunt
held
fast"). The use of hunting imagery, however, could be taken as a support
for the
emendation.
17Cf.
C. S. Ehrlich, "The Text of Hosea 1:9," JBL 104:1 (1985)
13-19.
18
Wolff, Hosea, xxiv, for example, speaks of Hosea having "elevated
prose" that
can
easily shift into "stricter poetic forms."
Duane A Garrett: AN INTRODUCTION To HOSEA
5
noun, and
the definite object marker are more rare in poetry than in
prose,
have found that these particles are more frequent in chaps. 1-3
than in
4-14. While the exact numbers for each passage of the book
vary,19 they support the impression many readers
have of the book,
namely,
that chaps. 1-3 are a more prosaic introduction while chaps.
4-14
constitute the more poetic main body of the prophecies.
Sometimes Hosea is taken to be a representative of a northern, Is-
raelite dialect of Hebrew. This deduction is not
surprising in light of
the
difficulties in the language, but we do not possess enough data to
conclude that
his language was typical of a northern dialect.
The Imagery and Style of Hosea
Hosea uses striking images; a typical condemnation of
gins with
the simile, "Ephraim is like a dove" (
Ephraim like
a senseless bird fluttering between
search of a
place of safety and straying far from God. In 6:4, he
de-
clares that
in the
heat of the day. In
that
bears no good fruit, which in context apparently refers equally to
good
deeds and to children. Sometimes his imagery turns on a Hebrew
word
play.20
Wolff observes that Hosea uses a wide variety of metaphors for
Yahweh; some
are quite surprising. In addition to the traditional hus-
band
(2:2), father (11:1), and physician (14:4) images, Yahweh is also
a
fowler21 (
green tree
(14:8), and even decay or infection22 (
non-traditional and even shocking language to get his point across to a
hard-hearted and perhaps jaded people.
Hosea can turn his images in unexpected directions. In 7:4-7, the
nation is
likened to a hot oven with the meaning that
debauchery and
intrigue. In 7:8, however, Ephraim is like a flat cake
19
Andersen and Freedman, Hosea, 60-66.
20 In
8:9, the image of Ephraim as a wild ass may have its origin in a word play on
Myirap;x, and xr,P,. In
further
examples, see P. A. Kruger, "Prophetic Imagery: On Metaphors and Similes
in
the Book
of Hosea," J Northwest Semitic Languages 14 (1988) 143-51.
21 For
further discussion of this metaphor, see P. A Kruger, "The Divine Net in
Hosea
22 The
line hdAUhy; tybel; bqArAkAv; MyirAp;x,l;
wfAkA ynixEva is generally rendered something
like,
"I am like a moth to Ephraim, like rot to the people of
makes a
good case for translating wfa as "pus." See also Stuart, Hosea,
105. Andersen and
Freedman (Hosea,
412) takes it to mean "maggots." Cf. NRSV.
23
Wolff, Hosea, xxiv.
6 CRISWELL THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
not
turned over; instead of being the oven that produces the heat,
is
dough in the oven and is sure to be burnt on the bottom. The mean-
ing is evidently that
sult in being "burnt," i.e.,
suffering loss.24
Hosea also brings penetrating pathos to his message through the
use of
questions in the mouth of God. A particularly strong example is
11:8 (NIV):
"How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you
over,
Zeboiim? My heart is changed within me; all my
compassion is
aroused."
See also 6:4 and 8:5. Through the anthropomorphism of God
seeming to
be at wit's end about his people's stubborn sinfulness, Ho-
sea
transforms the abstraction of divine compassion into vivid reality.25
A difficulty in interpreting Hosea is his tendency to use short,
pithy
declarations rather than longer prophetic discourse. Context is
of
limited value in interpreting some passages because sometimes one
can
scarcely be sure where one text breaks off and another begins.
This is not
to say that it is impossible to demonstrate structure in a
larger
text. On the basis of an analysis of 5:1-3 and
rhetorical
unity in chap. 5;26 J. Lundbom, similarly,
uses an inclusio
pattern to
maintain the unity of 4:4b-9a.27 Even so, large scale rhetori-
cal
structure is not nearly so obvious in Hosea as in some other pro-
phetic books.
At times, the sayings seem almost contradictory. In
example, the
text promises that God will redeem
abruptly
declares that he will have no compassion28 on the nation and
that
their children will be slain and their pregnant mothers ripped
open. The
prophet obviously intends for the reader to take in each
short
declaration in sequence, without transitions, so that the reader
might
fully experience the jolting effect of these pronouncements.
Rather than
distill his message down to a logically consistent whole,
he
confronts the reader with diverse truths presented in the most
24 Thus
C. E Keil, The
Minor Prophets (
25