PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
The Expositor's Bible: The Book of the Twelve Prophets, Vol. 1
Smith, George Adam · 134,148 words · 196 reading sections
I. The Confusion Of The Nation.
HOSEA vii. 8-x. Moral decay means political decay. Sins like these are the gangrene of nations. It is part of Hosea's greatness to have traced this, a proof of that versatility which distinguishes him above other prophets. The most spiritual of them all, he is at the same time the most political. We owe him an analysi…
859 wordsSECTION 122I. The Confusion Of The Nation.
If the first of Hosea's epigrams satirises Israel's foreign relations, the second, with equal brevity and wit, hits off the temper and constitution of society at home. For the metaphor of which this epigram is composed Hosea has gone to the baker. Among all classes in the East, especially under conditions requiring has…
761 wordsSECTION 123I. The Confusion Of The Nation.
With virtue and single-hearted faith have disappeared intellect and the capacity for affairs. _Ephraim is become like a silly dove--a dove without heart_, to the Hebrews the organ of the wits of a man--_they cry to Egypt, they go off to Assyria_. Poor pigeon of a people, fluttering from one refuge to another! But _as t…
420 wordsSECTION 1242. Artificial Kings And Artificial Gods.
HOSEA viii. 4-13. The curse of such a state of dissipation as that to which Israel had fallen is that it produces no men. Had the people had in them "the root of the matter," had there been the stalk and the fibre of a national consciousness and purpose, it would have blossomed to a man. In the similar time of her out…
585 wordsSECTION 1253. The Effects Of Exile.
HOSEA ix. 1-9. Hosea now turns to describe the effects of exile upon the social and religious habits of the people. It must break up at once the joy and the sacredness of their lives. Every pleasure will be removed, every taste offended. Indeed, even now, with their conscience of having deserted Jehovah, they cannot p…
617 wordsSECTION 1264. "The Corruption That Is Through Lust."
HOSEA ix. 10-17: cf. iv. 11-14. Those who at the present time are enforcing among us the revival of a Paganism--without the Pagan conscience--and exalting licentiousness to the level of an art, forget how frequently the human race has attempted their experiment, with far more sincerity than they themselves can put int…
1,098 wordsSECTION 1274. "The Corruption That Is Through Lust."
It may be said that a large part of the art of the day, which takes great licence in dealing with these subjects, is exercised only by the ambition to expose that ruin and decay which Hosea himself affirms. This is true. Some of the ablest and most popular writers of our time have pictured the facts, which Hosea descri…
276 wordsSECTION 1285. Once More: Puppet-Kings And Puppet-Gods.
HOSEA x. For another section, the tenth chapter, the prophet returns to the twin targets of his scorn: the idols and the puppet-kings. But few notes are needed. Observe the reiterated connection between the fertility of the land and the idolatry of the people. _A wanton vine is Israel; he lavishes his fruit:_[576] _t…
721 wordsSECTION 129Footnotes:
The political decay of Israel, then, so deeply figured in all these chapters, must end in utter collapse. Let us sum up the gradual features of this decay: the substance of the people scattered abroad; the national spirit dissipated; the national prestige humbled; the kings mere puppets; the prophets corrupted; the nat…
691 wordsSECTION 130Footnotes:
[575] 2 Peter i. [576] Doubtful. The Heb. text gives an inappropriate if not impossible clause, even if ישׁוה be taken from a root שׁוח, to _set_ or _produce_ (Barth, _Etym. Stud._, 66). LXX.: ὁ καρπὸς εὐθηνῶν αὐτῆς (A.Q. αὐτῆς εὐθηνῶν), "her [the vine's] fruit flourishing." Some parallel is required to בקק of the fir…
310 wordsSECTION 131_The Fatherhood And Humanity Of God_
HOSEA xi. From the thick jungle of Hosea's travail, the eleventh chapter breaks like a high and open mound. The prophet enjoys the first of his two clear visions--that of the Past.[595] Judgment continues to descend. Israel's Sun is near his setting, but before he sinks-- "A lingering light he fondly throws On the d…
1,037 wordsSECTION 132_The Fatherhood And Humanity Of God_
But we cannot be loved by God and left where we are. Beyond the grace there lies the long discipline and destiny. We are called from servitude to freedom, from the world to God--each of us to run a course, and do a work, which can be done by no one else. That Israel did not perceive this was God's sore sorrow with them…
1,072 wordsSECTION 133_The Fatherhood And Humanity Of God_
Upon this gracious passage there follows one of those swift revulsions of feeling, which we have learned almost to expect in Hosea. His insight again overtakes his love. The people will not respond to the goodness of their God; it is impossible to work upon minds so fickle and insincere. Discipline is what they need. _…
373 wordsSECTION 134Footnotes:
[595] See above, p. 253. [596] St. John's Gospel, i. 12, 13. [597] Or occasionally for the king as the nation's representative. [598] See below, pp. 321-3. [599] 1 John iii. [600] So rightly the LXX. [601] LXX., rightly separating מִפְּנֵיהֶם into מִפָּנָי and הֵם, which latter is the nominative to the next claus…
324 wordsSECTION 135_The Final Argument_
HOSEA xii.-xiv. 1. The impassioned call with which last chapter closed was by no means an assurance of salvation: _How am I to give thee up, Ephraim? how am I to let thee go, Israel?_ On the contrary, it was the anguish of Love, when it hovers over its own on the brink of the destruction to which their wilfulness has …
314 wordsSECTION 1361. The People And Their Father Jacob.
HOSEA xii. In no part even of the difficult Book of Hosea does the sacred text bristle with more problems. It may well be doubted whether the verses lie in their proper order, or, if they do, whether we have them entire as they came from the prophet, for the connection is not always perceptible.[613] We cannot believe…
635 wordsSECTION 1372. The Last Judgment.
HOSEA xiii.-xiv. 1. The crisis draws on. On the one hand Israel's sin, accumulating, bulks ripe for judgment. On the other the times grow more fatal, or the prophet more than ever feels them so. He will gather once again the old truths on the old lines--the great past when Jehovah was God alone, the descent to the ido…
720 wordsSECTION 1382. The Last Judgment.
This great verse has been very variously rendered. Some have taken it as a promise: _I will deliver ... I will redeem...._ So the Septuagint translated, and St. Paul borrowed, not the whole Greek verse, but its spirit and one or two of its terms, for his triumphant challenge to death in the power of the Resurrection of…
291 wordsSECTION 139Footnotes:
[612] xi. 7. [613] This is especially true of vv. 11 and 12. [614] Even in the most detachable portion, vv. 8-10, where the און of ver. 9 seems to refer to the באונו of ver. 4. [615] Viz. in vv. 3 and 15. [616] Beer indeed, at the close of a very ingenious analysis of the chapter (_Z.A.T.W._, 1893, pp. 281 ff.), cl…
659 wordsSECTION 140Footnotes:
[643] The LXX. reads: Ποῦ ἡ δίκη σου, θάνατε· ποῦ τὸ κέντρον σου, ᾴδη; But Paul says: Ποῦ σου, θάνατε, τὸ νῖκος· ποῦ σου, θάνατε, τὸ κέντρον; I Cor. xv. 55 (Westcott and Hort's Ed.). [644] The following is a list of the interpretations of verse 14. A. Taken as a threat 1. "It is I who redeemed you from the grip of th…
257 wordsSECTION 141"_I Will Be As The Dew_"
HOSEA xiv. 2-10. Like the Book of Amos, the Book of Hosea, after proclaiming the people's inevitable doom, turns to a blessed prospect of their restoration to favour with God. It will be remembered that we decided against the authenticity of such an epilogue in the Book of Amos; and it may now be asked, how can we com…
939 wordsSECTION 142"_I Will Be As The Dew_"
At some point or other, then, in the course of his ministry, there was granted to Hosea an open vision like to the vision which he has recounted in the second chapter. He called on the people to repent. For once, and in the power of that Love to which he had already said all things are possible, it seemed to him as if …
671 wordsSECTION 143"_I Will Be As The Dew_"
_I will heal their backsliding,_ _I will love them freely:_ _For Mine anger is turned away from them._ _I will be as the dew unto Israel:_ _He shall blossom as the lily,_ _And strike his roots_ deep _as Lebanon;_ _His branches shall spread,_ _And his beauty shall be as the olive-tree,_ _And his smell as Lebanon…
459 wordsSECTION 144Footnotes:
[646] Cf. vi. 6, etc. [647] Cf. xii. 2, etc. [648] Cf. i. 7; ii. 22, 25. [649] Cf. xi. 4. [650] Cf. xi. 8, 9. [651] Since preparing the above for the press there has come into my hands Professor Cheyne's "Introduction" to the new edition of Robertson Smith's _The Prophets of Israel_, in which (p. xix.) he reaches …
709 wordsSECTION 145_The Knowledge Of God_
[661] This alternative, which Robertson Smith adopted, "though not without some hesitation" (_Prophets_, 413) is that which follows the Hebrew text, reading in the first clause לִי, and not, like LXX., לוֹ, and avoids the unusual figure of comparing Jehovah to a tree. But it does not account for the singular emphasis l…
814 wordsSECTION 146_The Knowledge Of God_
To understand what Hosea meant by knowledge we must examine the singularly supple word which his language lent him to express it. The Hebrew root "Yadh'a,"[673] almost exclusively rendered in the Old Testament by the English verb to know, is employed of the many processes of knowledge, for which richer languages have s…
656 wordsSECTION 147_The Knowledge Of God_
Hosea's chief charge against the people is one of stupidity. High and low they are _a people without intelligence_.[687] Once he defines this as want of political wisdom: _Ephraim is a silly dove without heart_, or, as we should say, _without brains_;[688] and again, as insensibility to every ominous fact: _Strangers h…
747 wordsSECTION 148_The Knowledge Of God_
The means which God took to impress Himself upon the heart of His people were, according to Hosea, the events of their history. Hosea, indeed, also points to another means. _The Torah of thy God_, which in one passage[699] he makes parallel to _knowledge_, is evidently the body of instruction, judicial, ceremonial and …
734 wordsSECTION 149_The Knowledge Of God_
The _second_ stage of the knowledge of God was when the Nation awoke to His leading, and _through a prophet_, Moses, were _brought up out of Egypt_. Here again no miracle is adduced by Hosea, but with full heart he appeals to the grace and the tenderness of the whole story. To him it is a wonderful romance. Passing by …
833 wordsSECTION 150Footnotes:
We are already aware, however, that Hosea did not count this as God's final revelation to His people. Doom is not doom to him, as it was to Amos, but discipline; and God withdraws His people from their fascinating land only that He may have them more closely to Himself. He will bring His Bride into the wilderness again…
687 wordsSECTION 151_Repentance_
[704] xii. 13, 14. [705] _A youth._ [706] LXX., followed by many critics, _his sons_. But _My son_ is a better parallel to _young_ in the preceding clause. Or trans.: _to be My son_. [707] So LXX. See p. 293. [708] So rightly LXX. [709] xi. 1-3. [710] ix. 10. [711] xiii. 4-6. [712] xii. 10. Other references to …
740 wordsSECTION 152_Repentance_
* * * * * Hosea's most simple definition of repentance is that _of returning unto God_. For _turning_ and _re-turning_ the Hebrew language has only one verb--shûbh. In the Book of Hosea there are instances in which it is employed in the former sense;[724] but, even apart from its use for repentance, the verb usually m…
780 wordsSECTION 153_Repentance_
But misery alone never led either man or nation to repentance: the sorrow of this world worketh only death. Repentance is the return to God; and it is the awakening to the truth about God, to the facts of His nature and His grace, which alone makes repentance possible. No man's doctrine of repentance is intelligible wi…
710 wordsSECTION 154_Repentance_
But Hosea does not attack the service of strange gods only because it is unfaithfulness to Jehovah, but also because, as the worship of images, it is a senseless stupidity utterly inconsistent with that spiritual discernment of which repentance so largely consists. And with the worship of heathen idols Hosea equally co…
678 wordsSECTION 155_Repentance_
To us who, after twenty-five more centuries of talk, know painfully how words may be abused, it is strange to find them enforced as the tokens of sincerity. But let us consider against what the prophet enforces them. Against the _kissing of calves_ and such mummery--worship of images that neither hear nor speak. Let us…
736 wordsSECTION 156Footnotes:
A repentance so thorough as this cannot but result in the most clear and steadfast manner of life. Truly it is a returning not by oneself, but _a returning by God_, and it leads to the _keeping of leal love and justice, and waiting upon God continually_.[767] [723] See above, p. 320. [724] vii. 16, _They turn, but no…
445 wordsSECTION 157_The Sin Against Love_
HOSEA i.-iii.; iv. 11 ff.; ix. 10 ff.; xi. 8 f. The Love of God is a terrible thing--that is the last lesson of the Book of Hosea. _My God will cast them away._[768] _My God_--let us remember the right which Hosea had to use these words. Of all prophets he was the first to break into the full aspect of the Divine Mer…
445 wordsSECTION 158I.
Most men learn that love is inseparable from pain where Hosea learned it--at home. There it is that we are all reminded that when love is strongest she feels her weakness most. For the anguish which love must bear, as it were from the foundation of the world, is the contradiction at her heart between the largeness of h…
932 wordsSECTION 159Ii.
We talk of breaking law: we can only break ourselves against it. But if we sin against Love, we do destroy her; we take from her the power to redeem and sanctify us. Though in their youth men think Love a quick and careless thing--a servant always at their side, a winged messenger easy of despatch--let them know that e…
654 wordsSECTION 160Ii.
Now this is surely the terror of God's love--that it can be resisted; that even as it is manifest in Jesus Christ we men have the power, not only to remain, as so many do, outside its scope, feeling it to be far-off and vague, but having tasted it to fall away from it, having realised it to refuse it, having allowed it…
571 wordsSECTION 161_The Book Of Micah_
[768] x. 17. [769] vii. 13. [770] ix. 10. [771] xi. 1, 2. [772] xi. 4. [773] xi. 8; xii. 1. "But I am full of power by the Spirit of Jehovah To declare to Jacob his transgressions, and to Israel his sin." The Book of Micah lies sixth of the Twelve Prophets in the Hebrew Canon, but in the order of the Septuagin…
824 wordsSECTION 162_The Book Of Micah_
We see, then, that all critics are practically agreed as to the presence of interpolations in the text, as well as to the occurrence of certain verses of the prophet out of their proper order. This indeed must be obvious to every careful reader as he notes the somewhat frequent break in the logical sequence, especially…
537 wordsSECTION 163First Section: Chaps. I.-Iii.
No critic doubts the authenticity of the bulk of these chapters. The sole question at issue is the date or (possibly) the dates of them. Only chap. ii. 12, 13, are generally regarded as out of place, where they now stand. Chap. i. trembles with the destruction of both Northern Israel and Judah--a destruction either ve…
827 wordsSECTION 164Second Section: Chaps. Iv., V.
This section of the book opens with two passages, verses 1-5 and verses 6, 7, which there are serious objections against assigning to Micah. 1. The first of these, 1-5, is the famous prophecy of the Mountain of the Lord's House, which is repeated in Isaiah ii. 2-5. Probably the Book of Micah presents this to us in the…
751 wordsSECTION 165Second Section: Chaps. Iv., V.
2. Verses 6, 7, may refer to the Captivity of Northern Israel, the prophet adding that when it shall be restored the united kingdom shall be governed from Mount Zion; but a date during the Exile is, of course, equally probable. 3. Verses 8-13 contain a series of small pictures of Jerusalem in siege, from which, howeve…
413 wordsSECTION 166Third Section: Chaps. Vi., Vii.
The style now changes. We have had hitherto a series of short oracles, as if delivered orally. These are succeeded by a series of conferences or arguments, by several speakers. Ewald accounts for the change by supposing that the latter date from a time of persecution, when the prophet, unable to speak in public, uttere…
779 wordsSECTION 167Third Section: Chaps. Vi., Vii.
4. Verses 7-20.--This passage starts from a totally different temper of prophecy, and presumably, therefore, from very different circumstances. Israel, as a whole, speaks in penitence. She has sinned, and bows herself to the consequences, but in hope. A day shall come when her exiles shall return and the heathen acknow…
596 wordsSECTION 168Footnotes:
[774] See above, pp. 6 f. [775] Note that the Hebrew and English divisions do not coincide between chaps. iv. and v. In the Hebrew chap. iv. includes a fourteenth verse, which in the English stands as the first verse of chap. v. In this the English agrees with the Septuagint. [776] Caspari. [777] In the fourth editi…
682 wordsSECTION 169_Micah The Morasthite_
[808] And also Giesebrecht, _Beiträge_, p. 217. MICAH i. Some time in the reign of Hezekiah, when the kingdom of Judah was still inviolate, but shivering to the shock of the fall of Samaria, and probably while Sargon the destroyer was pushing his way past Judah to meet Egypt at Raphia, a Judæan prophet of the name of…
736 wordsSECTION 170_Micah The Morasthite_
The valley-mouth near which Moresheth stands has always formed the south-western gateway of Judæa, the Philistine or Egyptian gate, as it might be called, with its outpost at Lachish, twelve miles across the plain. Roads converge upon this valley-mouth from all points of the compass. Beit-Jibrin, which lies in it, is m…
1,520 wordsSECTION 171Footnotes:
The prophet speaks:-- _Tell it not in Gath,_ _Weep not in Acco,_[828] _In Beth-le-'Aphrah_[829] _roll thyself in dust._ _Pass over, inhabitress of Shaphir,_[830] _thy shame uncovered!_ _The inhabitress of Sa'anan_[831] _shall not march forth;_ _The lamentation of Beth-esel_[832] _taketh from you its standing._ …
692 wordsSECTION 172[824] Lxx.
[823] יענה בנות, that is, the ostriches: cf. Arab, wa'ana, "white, barren ground." The Arabs call the ostrich "father of the desert: abu sahârâ." [825] Isa. x. 28 ff. [826] It is well put by Robertson Smith's _Prophets_^2, pp. 289 ff. [827] iii. 12. [828] LXX. ἐν Ἀκειμ; Heb. "weep not at all." [829] לְֽעַפְרָה can…
293 wordsSECTION 173_The Prophet Of The Poor_
MICAH ii., iii. We have proved Micah's love for his countryside in the effusion of his heart upon her villages with a grief for their danger greater than his grief for Jerusalem. Now in his treatment of the sins which give that danger its fatal significance, he is inspired by the same partiality for the fields and the…
710 wordsSECTION 174_The Prophet Of The Poor_
The prophet speaks:-- _Woe to them that plan mischief,_ _And on their beds work out evil!_ _As soon as morning breaks they put it into execution,_ _For--it lies to the power of their hands! They covet fields and--seize them,_ _Houses and--lift them up._ _So they crush a good man and his home,_ _A man and his he…
708 wordsSECTION 175_The Prophet Of The Poor_
"And thanne come Pees into parlement · and put forth a bille, How Wronge ageines his wille · had his wyf taken. 'Both my gees and my grys[851] · his gadelynges[852] feccheth; I dar noughte for fere of hym · fyghte ne chyde. He borwed of me bayard[853] · he broughte hym home nevre, Ne no ferthynge ther-fore · for n…
1,023 wordsSECTION 176_The Prophet Of The Poor_
Micah's tyrants, too, had religion to support them. A number of the hireling prophets, whom we have seen both Amos and Hosea attack, gave their blessing to this social system, which crushed the poor, for they shared its profits. They lived upon the alms of the rich, and flattered according as they were fed. To them Mic…
962 wordsSECTION 177Footnotes:
"By ihesus with here jeweles · youre justices she shendeth,[864] And lith[865] agein the lawe · and letteth hym the gate, That feith may noughte have his forth[866] · here floreines go so thikke, She ledeth the lawe as hire list · and lovedays maketh And doth men lese thorw hire love · that law myghte wynne, The …
519 wordsSECTION 178_On Time'S Horizon_
MICAH iv. 1-7. The immediate prospect of Zion's desolation which closes chap. iii. is followed in the opening of chap. iv. by an ideal picture of her exaltation and supremacy _in the issue of the days_. We can hardly doubt that this arrangement has been made of purpose, nor can we deny that it is natural and artistic.…
708 wordsSECTION 179_On Time'S Horizon_
A prophet speaks:-- _And it shall come to pass in the issue of the days,_[875] _That the Mount of the House of Jehovah shall be established on the tops_[876] _of the mountains,_ _And lifted shall it be above the hills,_ _And peoples shall flow to it,_ _And many nations shall go and say:_ "_Come, and let us up to…
743 wordsSECTION 180_On Time'S Horizon_
Such is the ideal world, seen and promised two thousand five hundred years ago, out of as real an experience of human sin and failure as ever mankind awoke to. Are we nearer the Vision to-day, or does it still hang upon time's horizon, that line which seems so stable from every seer's point of view, but which moves fro…
699 wordsSource & rights
Public domain in the USA; original historical text digitized by Project Gutenberg.
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Historical Christian writing; not Scripture.