could look forward to a restored people and a repaired polity. The ten tribes had no separate future. Their tempotal punishment WM irreversible. It was only as associated with, and absorbed in, Joda.h that they could hope for restored vitality. This feeling colours all the prophet'.s language and darkens bis mental view. Hie love is disquieted and saddened by the prospect; yet hie trust in Jehovah triumphs over a.11. Hie confidence in the spiritual meroies which are in store ior Israel is unshaken, and abides with him as e, living certainty. To this confidence he is guided by his 1
unalterable conviction of the Lord's love for his people; he has learned that" God is love." Hosea's wedded life is .the outward symbolizing of this truth, e,nd taught that man should in like manner love his fellow. Those who were embraced in the arms of one Father should love as brethren; they should have that filial affection to Jehovah which none could feel for a. heathen deity, and that affection. for one another which can reign only in a united family. These ideas will be found to run throngh the whole book, and to underlie'-~ach rebuke, prophecy, and expostnlation. If we come to consider what influence earlier Isra-elite literatuTe exercised upon Hosea; we have but few facts on which to rest. References to past Jewish history, such as the story of Jacob (eh. xii. 3, 4, 12), the wanderings in the wilderness(ch. xiii. 5), the exodus (eh. xii. 9, 13), the destruction of Sodom and the other cities (ch ..-xi. 8), the transactions connected with Achcir (eh. ii.15), Gibeah (ch.-x. 9), and Baal-peor (ch.ix.10), presn.ppose acquaintance with Genesis,, Joshua., and Judges, as we know of no other sources whenc~ such in:foPID.ation could be obtained. Many parallefums of idiom a.rid langnage are ·found in Hosea and the Pentateuch, whieh show that the ,latter was extant in the northern kingdom, and can only be accounted for by its existence in a written form. The prophet; himself refers to the Pentatench when he introduces God as saying (eh. viii. 12), "Though I wrote for him my· Law in ten thousand precepts, they were counted as a strange thing.I' The "manifold [ or, 'ten thon.sand,' according to the ' Chethib '] 'precepts " 'is a· rhetorical exaggeration for the numerous laws contained in the Pentateuch, of which the Jews reckoned two hundred and forty-eight affirmative and three hundred and sixty-five negative. The parallelisms hav~ been noticed by many commentators. The following are a few of them:. Ch. i. 2, "Th!;! laI;Ld bath committed great whoredom;" and Lev. xx. 5, "All that go a-whoring after them, to commit whoredom with Molech." • Ch. i. 10, "The number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea; " and Gen. xxii. 17 and xxxii. 12. Ch. iv. 8, "They eat up the sin offering of my people;" according to Lev. vi.17. Ch. iv.10, "They shall eat, and· not have enough; " and Lev. xxvi. 26. Ch. xi. 1, "I called my son out of Egypt; " and Exod. iv. 22, " Say unto Pharaoh, Thus saith the Lord, Israel is my son." Ch. v. 6, "With their flocks and with their herds they shall go to seek the Lord;" and Exod. x. 9, "With our flocks and with our herds wil1 we go; for we must hold a. feast unto the Lord." Ch. ii. 17, "I will take away the names of Ilaalim out of her mouth, and they xii INTRODUOTION TO