The Pulpit Commentary — Hosea — Section 40

of rrYercnce and Adoring love. They shall "worship the Father in spirit and in trnth." "The lt'vi11g God." The world hM abounded with dead gods; there is but one 1i1•ing God. He is the Living One. He is J.ife, the primal Fount of all existence, Christ calls him the living Father. "As the livin~ Father sent me , , , I live in the ::Cather, ~o he that eatet.J1 with me shall live by me.' III. The race is destined t-0 a COMMON LEADERSHIP, "Then shall the children of Judah and the children of Israel be gathered together, and appoint themselves one head, and they ~hall come up out of the land : for great shall be the day of Jezrcel." 1. Thi~ leader~hip shall nnit.e the most hostile. "Then shall the children of Judah and tbr chilrlren or Israd be gathered together." Great and long-enduring was the hostility existiug between these people. The time will come when all antipathies existing amongst peoples shall he destroyed. "Ephraim shall not envy Judah: they shall be of one heart and one mind." 2. This leadership shall be by common appointment. 'l'!Jey shall "appoint the:mselves one Head." Their Lea<ler will not be forced upon them contrary to their consent, nor will he force himself. Who is the Leader? Christ. He is the Leader of tile people. He is the Commander-in-chief, he is the Captain of our salvation. All shall unite in him. He is the Head of the Church. 3. This leadership will be gloriou~. "They shall come up out of the land: for great shall be the day of Jezreel." As Moses led the Jews out of the wilderness, as Cyrus delivered them from Babylon, Christ v.'i.11 lead them out of Egyptian darkness and Babylonian corruption. "Israel is here called Jezreel," says Matthew Henry, "the seed of God. This seed is now sown in the earth, and buried in the clods, but great shall be its day when the hmTrst comes." "For I dipt into the future, far u human eye could see, Saw the vision of the world, and all the wonders that would be; Saw the heavellB fill with oommerce, argosies of me.gic se.ils, Pilots of the purple twilight, drooping down with costly bales: Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there re.ined a ghastly dew From the nations' airy ne.vies grappling in the ceutre blue; Far along the world-wide whisper of the south wind rushing warm, With the etande.rde of the peoples plungiDg tbro' the thunderstorm: Till the war-drum throbb'd no longer, and the battle-flags were furl'd In the parliament of man, the federation of the world. There the common se11Be of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe, And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law." (Tennyson.) D.T, Ver. 1.-Superscription. Consider here-- I. THE PROPHET. "Hosea, the son of Beeri." Hosea, whose name (Hoshea, "sal- ,·ation ") remiuds of Jesus (Matt. i. 20), was: 1. .A native of Israel. One, therefore, "ho lived in the midst of the evils which he describes, and felt a patriot's love for his people. 2. .A man of gentle, pensive, and =fiding nature. This made hie anguish nt tbe thought of the natiou's sins and impending ruin the more poignant. There are i:triking resemblances betw~en this prophet.and Jeremiah, who sustained a relat~on to .,udah similar to that which Hosea sustmned to Israel. 3 . .A man sorely tried by domestic sorrow. Hosea was no mere spectator of the evils of the time. The iron had entered his own soul He had been tried in the sorest way a man can be tried, by the unfaithfulness of his wife. It was, however, in connection with this sorrow that God's word came to him (,•er. 2). It was his own experience which enabled him to enter so deeply into the mystery of God's love to Israel. . II. Hrs TD1ES. "In the days of lJ zziah, J otham," etc. He dates by the re1gne of the legitimate kings of the house of Dadd. Israel, after the fall of Jeroboam'& house, was governed by usurpers (Menahem, Pekah, Hoshea, etc.). 1. The chronology of the times. '!'Lis has important bearings on the duration of the prophet's ministry, and on the time which elapsed before the downfall of the kingdom. We cannot here, however, enter at length into the tangled questions raised by the apparent conflict of Hebrew and Assyrian da~s (cf. Robertson Smith, 'Prophets of Israel,' Leet. iv. and notes),  I 0B, I, 1-11,) 'l'HE BOOK 01<' HOSEA. 37