| |
Easton's Bible Dictionary
salvation, The son of Beeri, and author of the book of
prophecies bearing his name. He belonged to the kingdom of Israel. "His Israelitish
origin is attested by the peculiar, rough, Aramaizing diction, pointing to the
northern part of Palestine; by the intimate acquaintance he evinces with the localities
of Ephraim ( Hosea
5:1 ; 6:8
; 6:9
; 12:12
; 14:6
, etc.); by passages like Hosea
1:2 , where the kingdom is styled 'the land', and Hosea
7:5 , where the Israelitish king is designated as 'our' king." The period
of his ministry (extending to some sixty years) is indicated in the superscription
( Hosea
1:1 ,
1:2 ). He is the only prophet of Israel who has left any written prophecy.
Hitchcock's Dictionary of Bible Names
Hoshea
Smith's Bible Dictionary
(salvation) Son of Beeri, and first of the minor prophets. Probably the life,
or rather the prophetic career, of Hosea extended from B.C. 784 to 723, a period
of fifty-nine years. The prophecies of Hosea were delivered in the kingdom of
Israel. Jeroboam II was on the throne, and Israel was at the height of its earthly
splendor. Nothing is known of the prophets life excepting what may be gained from
his book.
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
ho-ze'-a:
I. THE PROPHET
1. Name
The name (hoshea Septuagint Osee-; for other forms see note in DB), probably meaning
"help," seems to have been not uncommon, being derived from the auspicious verb
from which we have the frequently recurring word "salvation." It may be a contraction
of a larger form of which the Divine name or its abbreviation formed a part, so
as to signify "God is help," or "Help, God." according to Numbers
13:8 ,
13:16 that was the original name of Joshua son of Nun, till Moses gave him
the longer name (compounded with the name of Yahweh) which he continued to bear
(yehoshua'), "Yahweh is salvation." The last king of the Northern Kingdom was
also named Hosea (2
Kings 15:30), and we find the same name borne by a chief of the tribe of Ephraim
under David (1
Chronicles 27:20) and by a chief under Nehemiah (Nehemiah
10:23).
2. Native Place
Although it is not directly stated in the book, there can be little doubt that
he exercised his ministry in the kingdom of the Ten Tribes. Whereas his references
to Judah are of a general kind, Ephraim or Samaria being sometimes mentioned in
the same connection or more frequently alone, the situation implied throughout
and the whole tone of the addresses agree with what we know of the Northern Kingdom
at the time, and his references to places and events in that kingdom are so numerous
and minute as to lead to the conclusion that he not only prophesied there, but
that he was a native of that part of the country. Gilead, e.g. a district little
named in the prophets, is twice mentioned in Hosea (6:8
; 12:11)
and in such a manner as to suggest that he knew it by personal observation; and
Mizpah (mentioned in Hosea
5:1) is no doubt the Mizpah in Gilead (Judges
10:17). Then we find Tabor (Hosea
5:1), Shechem (Hosea
6:9 the Revised Version (British and American)), Gilgal and Bethel (Hosea
4:15 ; 9:15;
10:5
, 10:8
, 10:15
; 12:11).
Even Lebanon in the distant North is spoken of with a minuteness of detail which
could be expected only from one very familiar with Northern Palestine (Hosea
14:5 - 8).
In a stricter sense, therefore, than amos who, though a native of Tekoah, had
a prophetic mission to the North, Hosea may be called the prophet of Northern
Israel, and his book, as Ewald has said, is the prophetic voice wrung from the
bosom of the kingdom itself.
3. Date
All that we are told directly as to the time when Hosea prophesied is the statement
in the first verse that the word of the Lord came to him "in the days of Uzziah,
Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam the son
of Joash, king of Israel." It is quite evident that his ministry did not extend
over the combined reigns of all these kings; for, from the beginning of the reign
of Uzziah to the beginning of that of Hezekiah, according to the now usually received
chronology (Kautzsch, Literature of the Old Testament, English Translation), there
is a period of 52 years, and Jeroboam came to his throne a few years before the
accession of Uzziah.
When we examine the book itself for more precise indications of date, we find
that the prophet threatens in God's name that in "a little while" He will "avenge
the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu." Now Jeroboam was the great-grandson
of Jehu, and his son Zechariah, who succeeded him, reigned only six months and
was the last of the line of Jehu. We may, therefore, place the beginning of Hosea's
ministry a short time before the death of Jeroboam which took place 743 BC. as
to the other limit, it is to be observed that, though the downfall of "the kingdom
of the house of Israel" is threatened (Hosea
1:4), the catastrophe had not occurred when the prophet ceased his ministry.
The date of that event is fixed in the year 722 BC, and it is said to have happened
in the 6th year of King Hezekiah. This does not give too long a time for Hosea's
activity, and it leaves the accuracy of the superscription unchallenged, whoever
may have written it. If it is the work of a later editor, it may be that Hosea's
ministry ceased before the reign of Hezekiah, though he may have lived on into
that king's reign. It should be added, however, that there seems to be no reference
to another event which might have been expected to find an echo in the book, namely,
the conspiracy in the reign of Ahaz (735 BC) by Pekah of Israel and Rezin of Damascus
against the kingdom of Judah (2
Kings 16:5 ; Isaiah
7:1).
Briefly we may say that, though there is uncertainty as to the precise dates of
the beginning and end of his activity, he began his work before the middle of
the 8th century, and that he saw the rise and fall of several kings. He would
thus be a younger contemporary of amos whose activity seems to have been confined
to the reign of Jeroboam.
4. Personal History (Marriage)
Hosea is described as the son of Beeri, who is otherwise unknown. Of his personal
history we are told either absolutely nothing or else a very great deal, according
as we interpret chapters 1 and 3 of his book. In ancient and in modern times,
opinions have been divided as to whether in these chapters we have a recital of
actual facts, or the presentation of prophetic teaching in the form of parable
or allegory.
(1) Allegorical View
The Jewish interpreters as a rule took the allegorical view, and Jerome, in the
early Christian church, no doubt following Origen the great allegorizer, states
it at length, and sees an intimation of the view in the closing words of Hosea's
book: "Who is wise, that he may understand these things? prudent, that he may
know them?" (Hosea
14:9).
It is a mystery, he says; for it is a scandal to think of Hosea being commanded
to take an unchaste wife and without any reluctance obeying the command. It is
a figure, like that of Jeremiah going to the Euphrates (when Jerusalem was closely
besieged) and hiding a girdle in the bed of the river (Jeremiah
13). So Ezekiel is commanded to represent, by means of a tile, the siege of
Jerusalem, and to lie 390 days on his side to indicate the years of their iniquity
(Ezekiel
4); and there are other symbolical acts. Jerome then proceeds to apply the
allegory first to Israel, which is the Gomer of chapter 1, and then to Judah,
the wife in chapter 3, and finally to Christ and the church, the representations
being types from beginning to end.
Calvin took the same view. Among modern commentators we find holding the allegorical
view not only Hengstenberg, Havernick and Keil, but also Eichhorn, Rosenmuller
and Hitzig. Reuss also (Das Altes Testament, II, 88) protests against the literal
interpretation as impossible, and that on no moral or reverential considerations,
but entirely on exegetical grounds. He thinks it enough to say that, when the
prophet calls his children "children of whoredom," he indicates quite clearly
that he uses the words in a figurative sense; and he explains the allegory as
follows: The prophet is the representative of Yahweh; Israel is the wife of Yahweh,
but faithless to her husband, going after other gods; the children are the Israelites,
who are therefore called children of whoredoms because they practice the idolatry
of the nation. So they receive names which denote the consequences of their sin.
In accordance with the allegory, the children are called the children of the prophet
(for israel is God's own) but this is not the main point; the essential thing
is the naming of the children as they are named. In the third chapter, according
to this interpretation, allegory again appears, but with a modification and for
another purpose. Idolatrous Israel is again the unfaithful wife of the prophet
as the representative of Yahweh. This relation can again be understood only as
figurative; for, if the prophet stands for Yahweh, the marriage of Israel to the
prophet cannot indicate infidelity to Yahweh. The sense is evident: the marriage
still subsists; God does not give His people up, but they are for the present
divorced "from bed and board"; it is a prophecy of the time when Yahweh will leave
the people to their fate, till the day of reconciliation comes.
(2) Literal View
The literal interpretation, adopted by Theodore of Mopsucstia in the ancient church,
was followed, after the Reformation, by the chief theologians of the Lutheran
church, and has been held, in modern times, by many leading expositors, including
Delitzsch, Kurtz, Hofmann, Wellhausen, Cheyne, Robertson Smith, G. A. Smith and
others. In this view, as generally held, chapters 1 and 3 go together and refer
to the same person. The idea is that Hosea married a woman named Gomer, who had
the three children here named. Whether it was that she was known to be a worthless
woman before the marriage and that the prophet hoped to reclaim her, or that she
proved faithless after the marriage, she finally left him and sank deeper and
deeper into sin, until, at some future time, the prophet bought her from her paramour
and brought her to his own house, keeping her secluded, however, and deprived
of all the privileges of a wife. In support of this view it is urged that the
details are related in so matter-of-fact a manner that they must be matters of
fact. Though the children receive symbolical names (as Isaiah gave such names
to his children), the meanings of these are clear and are explained, whereas the
name of the wife cannot thus be explained. Then there are details, such as the
weaning of one child before the conception of another (Hosea
1:8) and the precise price paid for the erring wife (Hosea
3:2), which are not needed to keep up the allegory, and are not invested with
symbolical meaning by the prophet. What is considered a still stronger argument
is relied on by modern advocates of this view, the psychological argument that
there is always a proportion between a revelation vouchsafed and the mental state
of the person receiving it. Hosea dates the beginning of his prophetic work from
the time of his marriage; it was the unfaithfulness of his wife that brought home
to him the apostasy of Israel; and, as his heart went after his wayward wife,
so the Divine love was stronger than Israel's sin; and thus through his own domestic
experience he was prepared to be a prophet to his people.
The great difficulty in the way of accepting the literal interpretation lies,
as Reuss has pointed out, in the statement at the beginning, that the prophet
was commanded to take a wife of whoredoms and children of whoredoms. And the advocates
of the view meet the difficulties in some way like this: The narrative as it stands
is manifestly later than the events. On looking back, the prophet describes his
wife as she turned out to be, not as she was at the beginning of the history.
It is urged with some force that it was necessary to the analogy (even if the
story is only a parable) that the wife should have been first of all chaste; for,
in Hosea's representation, Israel at the time of its election in the wilderness
was faithful and fell away only afterward (Hosea
2:15 ;
9:10;
11:1). The narrative does not require us to assume that Comer was an immoral
person or that she was the mother of children before her marriage. The children
receive symbolic names, but these names do not reflect upon Gomer but upon Israel.
Why, then, is she described as a woman of Whoredoms? It is answered that the expression
'esheth zenunim is a class-descriptive, and is different from the expression "a
woman who is a harlot" ('ishshdh zonah). A Jewish interpreter quoted by Aben Ezra
says: "Hosea was commanded to take a wife of whoredoms because an honest woman
was not to be had. The whole people had gone astray--was an 'adulterous generation';
and she as one of them was a typical example, and the children were involved in
the common declension (see Hosea
4:1 f) ." The comment of Umbreit is worthy of notice: "as the covenant of
Yahweh with Israel is viewed as a marriage bond, so is the prophetic bond with
Israel a marriage, for he is the messenger and mediator. Therefore, if he feels
an irresistible impulse to enter into the marriage-bond with Israel, he is bound
to unite himself with a bride of an unchaste character. Yea, his own wife Comer
is involved in the universal guilt" (Prak. Commentary uber die Propheten, Hamburg,
1844). It is considered, then, on this view, that Gomer, after her marriage, being
in heart addicted to the prevailing idolatry, which we know was often associated
with gross immorality (see Hosea
4:13), felt the irksomeness of restraint in the prophet's house, left him
and sank into open profligacy, from which (Hosea
3) the prophet reclaimed her so far as to bring her back and keep her secluded
in his own house.
Quite recently this view has been advocated by Riedel (Alttest. Untersuchungen,
Leipzig, 1902), who endeavors to enforce it by giving a symbolic meaning to Gomer's
name, Bath-Diblaim. The word is the dual (or might be pointed as a plural) of
a word, debhelah, meaning a fruitcake, i.e. raisins or figs pressed together.
It is the word used in the story of Hezekiah's illness (2
Kings 20:7), and is found in the list of things furnished by abigail to David
(1
Samuel 25:18). See also 1
Samuel 30:12 ; 1
Chronicles 12:40. Another name for the same thing, ashishah, occurs in Hosea
3:1, rendered in the King James Version "flagons of wine," but in the Revised
Version (British and American) "cakes of raisins." It seems clear that this word,
at least here, denotes fruit-cakes offered to the heathen deities, as was the
custom in Jeremiah's time (Jeremiah
7:18 ;
44:17). So Riedel argues that Comer may have been described as a "daughter
of fruit-cakes" according to the Hebrew idiom in such expressions as "daughters
of song," etc. (Ecclesiastes
12:4 ; Proverbs
31:2 ; 2
Samuel 7:10 ; Genesis
37:3, etc.).
It will be perceived that the literal interpretation as thus stated does not involve
the supposition that Hosea became aware of his wife's infidelity before the birth
of the second child, as Robertson Smith and G. A. Smith suppose. The names given
to the children all refer to the infidelity of Israel as a people; and the renderings
of Lo'-ruchamah, "she that never knew a father's love," and of Lo-'ammi, "no kin
of mine," are too violent in this connection. Nor does the interpretation demand
that it was first through his marriage and subsequent experience that the prophet
received his call; although no doubt the experience through which he passed deepened
the conviction of Israel's apostasy in his mind. |
|
James Robertson
Tags:
author, bible commentary, bible history, bible reference, bible study, define, gomer (wife), hosea, hoshea, minor prophets (first), osee
Comments:
|
 |
|
