Hosea Commentary

Hosea experienced betrayal and anguish because of his wife’s adultery. Hosea’s experiences reflect God’s agony over his people’s sins. God’s justice requires judgment, but in his love, God promises to redeem his chosen people. Hosea opens a window for us into the very heart of God.

Setting

Few eras in ancient Israel were more turbulent than the mid-700s BC. Hosea began his ministry in the northern kingdom toward the end of the long and stable reign of Jeroboam II (793–753 BC). Despite being an evil king (2 Kgs 14:23-24), Jeroboam was a strong and capable leader who expanded the boundaries of Israel to an extent not seen since the glorious days of David and Solomon (2 Kgs 14:25-28). Jeroboam’s successes brought great wealth to some Israelites, but left many others poor and destitute.

Jeroboam II died early in Hosea’s ministry. During the following three decades, six different kings sat on Israel’s throne. Only one died a natural death; four were assassinated. In the midst of this political turmoil, hostile foreign powers were threatening to destroy the nation.

The northern kingdom, which had worshiped pagan gods from its inception, now turned even more forcefully to these foreign deities. The Israelites grasped at any straw that might save them from destruction, but they refused to turn to the Lord. Then in 722 BC, the relentless Assyrian empire destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel.

Hosea proclaimed God’s coming judgment to this frantic nation in its final days. But he also offered hope, imploring the Israelites to return to the Lord, who alone could restore them.

Summary

Chapters 1–3 describe the prophet’s unhappy marriage to an unfaithful wife. The purpose of this section is not to present a biography but to illuminate God’s painful relationship with Israel, his chosen people. Just as Hosea’s wife, Gomer, was unfaithful, Israel acted like a prostitute by worshiping Canaanite gods. Hosea proclaimed God’s judgment, but he also announced God’s desire to reclaim his wayward bride and restore her relationship with him.

Chapters 4–14 contain a diverse collection of Hosea’s prophecies, presented in roughly chronological order from early in his ministry until just before the destruction of Israel in 722 BC. In these chapters, the prophet presents God’s charges against the people of Israel and especially against their leaders. The consequences for their sin would be severe—the nation would be destroyed. However, God would not give up his chosen people. The book concludes with a divine promise of future restoration.

Authorship and Date

We know nothing about the prophet Hosea apart from this book. We learn his father’s name (1:1), that he was married to a woman named Gomer, and that he had children with her.

Hosea prophesied to the northern kingdom of Israel from around 760 BC until just before the fall of Israel in 722 BC (see 1:1). Hosea would have memorized his oral prophecies, and eventually he or his followers would have written them down and gathered them into a single anthology. This work might have been done in the southern kingdom of Judah sometime after the fall of Israel in 722 BC.

Literary Characteristics

Hosea was well-educated in Israel’s literature, history, and faith. His prophecies rely on literary and rhetorical techniques—such as figurative language, proverbs, and folk sayings—that made God’s message more vivid and compelling to the Israelites.

Meaning and Message

God’s covenant with Israel stands at the center of Hosea’s prophecy. When God entered into covenant with Israel at Mount Sinai, he offered the Israelites the incredible opportunity of living in intimate relationship with the Creator and sustainer of the universe. The covenant promised spiritual and material blessings to his people, while obligating them to live rightly before him. The Lord had faithfully kept his covenant with the Israelites and they had enjoyed his blessings, but they had chosen to rebel against him and disregard his plan and purpose.

Marriage is a powerful and memorable symbol of the covenant relationship between the Lord and his people. As a loving husband, the Lord provided Israel with land, food, drink, clothing, and security. Yet like an adulterous spouse, Israel sought fulfillment through the idolatrous worship of the Canaanite gods. These deities became Israel’s lovers, and she attributed all of God’s blessings to them. The personal life of the prophet Hosea with his wife, Gomer, played out in miniature this same drama of a wife’s unfaithfulness and a husband’s anguish over his wayward bride.

Israel rejected her covenant with the Lord. In response, Hosea proclaimed God’s judgment. Yet even as the covenant was the foundation for divine judgment, it was also the basis for God’s mercy. God did not judge Israel simply to punish her; his desire was to redeem her. Divine judgment was intended to turn Israel back to her true husband, so that in his mercy, he might restore her and reestablish his covenant with her.

Hosea shows that God’s mercy is extended to Israel through judgment, not instead of judgment. God has done the same thing for us: Through the judgment at the cross of Christ, God extends an invitation of mercy to all.

An Exposition, with Practical Observations, of The Book of the Prophet Hosea

I. We have now before us the twelve minor prophets, which some of the ancients, in reckoning up the books of the Old Testament, put all together, and reckon but as one book. They are called the minor 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 preached as much as the others, but that they did not write so much, nor is so much of their preaching kept upon record. Many excellent prophets wrote nothing, and others but little, who yet were very useful in their day. And so in the Christian church there have been many burning and shining lights, who are not known to posterity by their writings, and yet were no way inferior in gifts, and graces, and serviceableness 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 last three of these twelve prophets are supposed 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 fragments of prophecy, which are carefully gathered up by the divine Providence and the care of the church, that nothing might be lost, as St. Paul's short epistles after his long ones. The son of Sirach speaks of these twelve prophets with honour, as men that strengthened Jacob, Ecclus. 49:10. Nine of these prophets prophesied before the captivity, and the last three after the return of the Jews to their own land. 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 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 the first of all the writing prophets, being raised up somewhat before the time of Isaiah. The ancients say, He was of Bethshemesh, and of the tribe of Issachar. He continued very long a prophet; the Jews reckoned that he prophesied nearly fourscore and ten years; so that, as Jerome observes, he prophesied of the destruction of the kingdom of the ten tribes when it was at a great distance, 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 sin, 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 prophets; 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 before them. As Jer 7:34; Jer 16:9; Jer 25:10; and Eze 26:13, speak the same with Hos 2:11; so Eze 16:16, etc., is taken from Hos 2:8. And that promise of serving the Lord their God, and David their king, Jer 30:8, Jer 30:9. Eze 34:23, Hosea had before, Hos 3:5. And Eze 19:12 is taken from Hos 13:15. Thus one prophet confirms and corroborates another; and all these worketh that one and the self-same Spirit.

THE first of the twelve minor prophets in the order of the canon (called "minor," not as less in point of inspired authority, but simply in point of size). The twelve are first mentioned by Jesus, the son of Sirach (Ecclesiasticus 49:10). St. Stephen, in Act 7:42 (in referring to Amo 5:27), quotes them as forming one collective body of writings, "the book of the prophets." So JEROME and MELITO, the first Greek father who has left us a catalogue of these books. The collection of the sacred books is by Jewish tradition attributed to the great synagogue of learned scribes formed by Ezra. Many think Nehemiah completed this collection by adding to the books already in the canon those of his own times. Malachi, the last in the series, probably aided him in determining with infallible authority what books were entitled to be ranked in the inspired canon. The chronological order differs from the canonical. Joel, about 810 B.C.; Jonah, about 810 B.C., or, as others, first, 862 B.C.; Amos, about 790 B.C.; Hosea, about 784 B.C. Hosea, the contemporary of Isaiah, Micah, and Amos, seems to have entered on his prophetical office in the last years of Jeroboam (contemporary in part with Uzziah), and to have ended it in the beginning of Hezekiah's reign, 722 B.C., that is, about sixty years in all, from 784 B.C. to 722 B.C. The prophets, however, were not uninterruptedly engaged in prophesying. Considerable intervals elapsed, though their office as divinely commissioned public teachers was never wholly laid aside. The Book of Hosea which we have constitutes only that portion of his public teachings which the Holy Spirit saw fit to preserve for the benefit of the Church. The cause of his being placed first of the twelve was, probably, the length, the vivid earnestness, and patriotism of his prophecies, as well as their closer resemblance to those of the greater prophets. His style is abrupt, sententious, and unrounded; the connecting particles are few; there are changes of person, and anomalies of gender, number, and construction. His name means Salvation. He was son of Beeri, of the tribe of Issachar, born in Beth-shemesh [JEROME]. His mention, in the inscription, of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, is no proof that he belonged to Judah: for the prophets in Israel regarded its separation from Judah, civil as well as religious, as an apostasy from God, who promised the dominion of the theocracy to the line of David. Hence Elijah in Israel took twelve stones to represent Judah, as well as Israel (Kg1 18:31). Hence Hosea dates from Judah's kings, as well as from Jeroboam of Israel, though he belonged to Israel, with whose sins and fate his book is chiefly occupied. He, however, makes incidental references to Judah. His first prophecy foretells the overthrow of Jehu's house, fulfilled on the death of Jeroboam, Jehu's great-grandson (Kg2 15:12), in Zachariah, Jeroboam's son, the fourth and last from Jehu, conspired against by Shallum. This first prediction was doubtless in Jeroboam's life, as Zachariah, his son, was only suffered to reign six months; thus the inscription is verified that "the word of the Lord came unto him in the days of Jeroboam" (Hos 1:1). Again, in Hos 10:14, Shalmaneser's expedition against Israel is alluded to as past, that is, the first inroad against King Hoshea, who began to reign in the twelfth year of Ahaz; so that as Ahaz' whole reign was sixteen years, the prophecy seems to have been given about the beginning of Hezekiah's reign. Thus the inscription is confirmed that the exercise of his prophetical functions was of such a protracted duration.

Hosea (Hos 11:1) is quoted in Mat 2:15; also Hos 6:6 in Mat 9:13; Mat 12:7; compare Rom 9:25-26, quoting Hos 1:10; Hos 2:1, Hos 2:23; Co1 15:55, quoting Hos 13:14; Pe1 2:10, quoting Hos 1:9-10; Hos 2:23. Messianic references are not frequent; but the predictions of the future conversion of Israel to the Lord their God, and David their king, and of the fulfilment of the promise to Abraham that his spiritual seed should be as the sand of the sea (Hos 1:10; Hos 3:5), clearly refer to the New Testament dispensation.

The first and third chapters are in prose, the rest of the book is rhythmical.

Next: Hosea Chapter 1