It is not of miii'h consequence for the interpreta- tion of tliK prophft's book whether we suppose his man'ia'.je real or parabolical. In any case his con- ception of tlie relation of J" to I.srael is clear. If the story is a paral)le, it evidently helped Hosoa's mind in conceivin;; the divine relation to iniaoine a human analogy to it. And many scholars have felt that it helped them to realize his idea and liow he readied it to suppose the story historical : — to fancy a man of the i)rophet's depth and sensitive- ness of nature united to a liiiht woman, who could not even understand a mind and love like his ; his aniiuisli and desolateness on discovering how tliinsrs were ; an<l yet, amidst whatever inward strugo]es, his patience and self-forgetfulness, and the un- changiui; triteness of his affection, which could not let his wife go, but sought lier out in order to recover her from Iter evil. Such a history of liis own, it is thouglit, helps to explain the colour which he has thrown over the relation of .1" to Ills people — the human and moral and personal colour ■which he gives to tlie relation.
One or two general considerations may be stated. (1) Israel's unfaithfulness and declension must have been patent to Hosea apart from any history of his own, as it was to Amos and to Klijah a century earlier. And .I"'s constant goodne,ss must have been equally patent, as it was to Amos (■2''-^') and to Isaiah (i'-). And the fatal issues of the people's ingratitude must have also been clear. These general truths needed no particular history of his own to impress them on llosea. (2) It is not therefore these ideas of the relation of .1" to Israel
that are peculiar to Hosea, but the conception of the marriage tie under which the relation has been brought. Wellhausen considers the cunclusiou •unavoidable' that something in the prophet's e.xiRMience must have suggested this new idea (A'/. I'riiph. p. lO.'i). But there was little in it new. It was cihstomaiy to regard the community or land iis mother of the inhabitants; to regard tlie .iiod as the 'baal,' i.f. lord or liusband of the land ; and also to regard the inhabitants as his chlldnn (Nu 21--'). It therefore May very near to think of tlie god as the hu.sband of the worshipping nation- ality or mother land. It is not at all likely that tlic conception was in form original to Ilo.sca or even peculiar to Israel' (\V. 1{. Smith, I'rujih. 171 ; cf. US !l'i ff.). The idea was so current that llosea makes Israel expre.ss it, • I will relurii to my liist husband' ('!'), and a,t;aiii, 'Thou shall no nioie call me my baal' (2"'). It did not therefore need any e.Kpericnces of tlie prophet's own to suggest this idea to him, (?<) What is ."itrange rather is that he did not reject the idea, considering its a.<sociations. lie has retained it, and what is new in him lies in this, that he lifts the conception of the marriage relation of God and jieople out of the natuiv- sjihere, to which it originally belonged, iiii<i the moral sphere, and gives it developments of .'sur- prising depth and tenderness. No one will attirm that domestic experiences of his own were nece.ssary to this, and no one need deny that they might have been helpful. Kven on the latter supposition, it must have been some higher intluence that enabled him to make the transition from his own history to that of God an<l the people, for it was not just every good man with a had wife in Israel that perceived in his own experiences a reHeilion of the history of God with His people, and forth- with became a prophet. (4) The (juestion is not without wider connexions. There may be a risk tif attributing too much to circumstances and too little to mental idio.synorasy in the prophets, and of forgetting that they had stable convictions regarding God, and were not dependent on inci- dents for their ideas of Him. llosea's conceiition of God is very unlike that of Amos, but every line of his book proves that he was very unlike Amos in type of mind. There may also be a risk of allowing our general views of the stage of religious development reached by Israel in this a^e to modify our particular views of llosea's teaching. If we suppose that Hosea is the first to reach tlie profound thoughts of the spirituality and love of God which he sets forth, we .shall welcome any incident or occasion in his life which just at this time suggested such thou.shts. But his allusions to the history of Israel do not suggest that he came with an idea of God learned from .some other source which he read into the history. He does not read the love of God into the histoi'y, he reads it out of it. It is the hi.storv that has taught him what J" is (91" ll'if- 12'"' 13" ).
B. SEioxo Drr/s/n.v.—Chs. 4-14.— Attempts have been made to divide these chapters into sec- tions illustrating particular ideas, but without success. Kwald found three sections — tirst. the arraisninent, 4'-C"» ; .second, the punishmmt, (jini_(('j . and third, retrospect of the earlier hisiorv, exhortation, and comfort, O'D-H'". Driver (LO'f^ 30:5) finds the thought of Israel's <inilt to pie- dominate in 4-8 ; her pu/iishment in 9'-lI" ; wliile both idea-s are combined in clis. 12. 13, with a glance into the brighter future in ch. 14. But in truth the p.issage is scarcely divisible ; it ccjiisista of a multitude of variations all executed on one theme, Israel's apostasy or unfaithfulness to her God. This unfaithfulness is a condition of the mind, ' a spirit of whoredoms,' and is revealed in all the aspects of Israel's life, though particularly