Criswell
Theological Review 7.1 (1993) 1-14
[Copyright © 1993 by
digitally prepared for use at
Gordon and
AN INTRODUCTION TO HOSEA
DUANE A. GARRETT
Canadian Southern Baptist Seminary
The Book of
Hosea is the written record of the prophecies that Ho-
sea son
of Beeri1, gave to the nation of
The book
primarily denounces
warns of a
coming judgment, but it also contains promises of restora-
tion (e.g., 3:4-5; 14:4-72). The
book is perhaps best known for the
story of
Hosea's sad marriage to Gomer. In structure, the book
is di-
vided into
two major sections: (1) chaps. 1-3, which deal with Hosea's
marriage and
lessons it provides for
lection of
various prophecies concerning
The Prophet
and His Times
Nothing is known of Hosea the man
apart from the matter of his
marriage to Gomer. The metaphors in 7:4-8 hardly prove that he was
a
baker.3 All we know is that he was a prophet to the northern kingdom
of
Israel.4
A great deal more is known, however,
about his times. He tells us
that he
ministered "during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and
Hezekiah,
kings of
Jehoash king of
1 Assuming that yrixeB;-NB, means that Beeri,
otherwise unknown, was Hosea's father
rather than
an ancestor.
2 Throughout this essay,
verse numbers refer to the English versification except in
footnotes
where Hebrew text is cited.
3 Contrary to some
interpreters. See R K. Harrison, Introduction to the Old Testa-
ment (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1969) 859.
4 J. L. Mays, Hosea,
OTL (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1969) 2, observes that Hosea
was
apparently a young man, of marriageable age, when he became a prophet.
2 CRISWELL THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
790 to 750
B.C., came to power while
He was able
to extend the borders of
perity of the nation (2 Kgs
the
prosperity was not spread equally among the Israelites. A two-class
system
developed in which the tedium and poverty of the lower
class
contrasted strongly with the oppressiveness and glut of the upper
class. On
Jeroboam's death,
king was
assassinated by his successor. This, combined with the rise of
an
invigorated
successors Shalmanesar V (727-722 B.C.) and Sargon II (722-705 B.C.),
sealed the
fate of
Internal evidence suggests that
Hosea ministered during the lat-
ter part of Jeroboam's reign and for some
years following (Hezekiah's
reign did
not begin until about 715 B.C.). This would indicate that he
lived to
see the fall of
it as a
past event.
One cannot easily correlate any text
in Hosea with any known
event of
contemporary history. Some scholars assert that Hosea 5
reflects the
period of the Syro-Ephraimite war (735-733 B.C.).5
The
suggestion is
weak, however, because in Hosea
the
aggressor (
dersen and Freedman more plausibly suggest that
this text refers to
border
disputes in the reign of Uzziah of Judah.6
In general, Hosea de-
scribes the
volatile political situation following the death of Jeroboam
II in which
power changed hands rapidly (e.g., 7:3-7; 8:4). It is reason-
able,
therefore, to suppose that most of Hosea's extant messages come
from the
decades of 755 to 735 B.C.
The
Authorship and Compilation of Hosea
Few scholars
today doubt that the bulk of the book comes from
the
messages of Hosea himself, but many attribute the actual commit-
ment of his words to writing not to the
prophet but to a group of dis-
ciples.7 This outlook on the writing of the prophetic books is not
founded on
solid evidence, however. Although we know from the ex-
ample of
Jeremiah 36 that prophets employed scribes, that text also
informs us
that the prophets had a direct hand in the process of pro-
5 For example, H. W
Wolff, Hosea, Hermeneia (Philadelphia:
Fortress, 1974) xxi.
6 E
7 Cf.
Wolff, Hosea, xxix-xxxii, and Andersen and Freedman, Hosea, 53.
Duane A Garrett: AN INTRODUCTION To HOSEA 3
ducing written versions of their proclamations.
At any rate, there is no
reason to
doubt that the messages of Hosea come from the prophet
himself.
A number of scholars, however,
contend that the book has a fair
number of redactional interpolations. One opinion is that the refer-
ences to
was a
"pro-Judah" redaction designed to distance
demnation pronounced against
redaction that
took the condemnatory oracles originally delivered
against
position,
too, stems more from the current habits of scholarship than
from any
real evidence. It is more likely that Hosea regarded the Da-
vidic king in
that
knew that
difficult days lay ahead for
A few scholars maintain that the
"optimistic" oracles do not stem
from
Hosea, but this tendency to regard the prophets as incapable of
complex
attitudes regarding the place of
fallen out
of favor. In Hosea's case, the sayings of condemnation and
the
sayings of salvation are so thoroughly intertwined, and the style is
so
evidently uniform, that any effort to treat the positive statements as
secondary
should be abandoned.9
The Hebrew
Text of Hosea
Second only to Job, Hosea contains
probably the most difficult
Hebrew in the Bible. Problem texts abound. For this reason, scholars
of
recent generations quickly resorted to emendation of the text or re-
garded the LXX as a better representation of the
Urtext than the MT.
More
recently, scholars have been hesitant to emend the MT or ac-
cept the LXX; advances in Hebrew linguistics
have allowed for new
approaches to
the interpretation of enigmatic texts.10 Even so, prob-
lem passages remain.
8 Cf. Wolff, Hosea,
xxxi-xxxii, and W. H. Schmidt, Introduction to the Old Testa-
ment (London: SCM, 1979) 204.
9 Cf. G. Fohrer, Introduction to the Old Testament
(Nashville: Abingdon, 1968) 422.
10 Contrast the following
assessments across the generations. W. R. Harper (Amos
and
Hosea, ICC [
one of
the most corrupt [texts] in the 0.T., the number of passages which almost defy
in-
terpretation being extremely large." Andersen and Freedman (Hosea, 60)
write that there
are
"more than enough oddities and peculiarities which can be defended,
interpreted,
and
explained to undermine the hypothesis of extensive corruption."
4 CRISWELL THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
The text of 5:2a, for example, is
especially difficult and an enor-
mous variety of interpretations and
emendations have been pro-
posed.11 The two most common renditions today are, "The rebels are
deep in
slaughter" (NIV) and "a pit dug deep in Shittim"
(NRSV [REB
is
similar]). The former is an attempt to translate the unemended
text
but is a
questionable rendition of the Hebrew.12 The second interpre-
tation involves two emendations13 but
fits the context well. The last
two
lines of v 1 speak of a "snare at Mizpah"
and a "net spread on Ta-
bor." The
proposed "pit" obviously parallels "snare" and
"net" just as
the
proposed "Shittim" parallels "Mizpah" and "Tabor," and "I will
punish all
of them" (5:2b) could be taken to refer to Mizpah,
Tabor, and
Shittim
together.14 Both renditions are therefore
defensible.15 The
LXX, by the
way, is significantly different.16
Therefore, although scholars rightly
hold the text of the MT in
higher
regard now than they did some years ago, one cannot slavishly
assume that
the MT is correct. Other examples of disputed texts where
emendation is
possible or likely could easily be given.17
Another question is whether or not Hosea is written as poetry or
prose. Our
knowledge of classical Hebrew scansion being as limited as
it is,
one cannot answer this question definitively. Scholars therefore
tend to
take the middle way of describing Hosea as prophetic dis-
course with
strong affinities to poetry.18 Andersen and Freedman,
working with
the criterion that the definite article, the relative pro-
11 See
Harper, Amos and Hosea, 267-72.
12 The MT reads Uqymif;h, MyFiWe hFAHEwav;.
The noun hvAHEwa occurs only here, but it
could be
taken as a feminine noun from FHw and thus mean "slaughter." The
word
MyFiWe might be translated "rebels" on
the basis of the root FUW
found in Ps 40:5 and the
word MyFise ("deeds that swerve [?]") in Ps 101:3; cf. also the
root FUw
"to turn aside." The
verb Uqymif;h, means, "they make deep," although it might be taken
adverbially to mean
"they are in deep." Andersen and Freedman, Hosea,
386-88, support this translation al-
though they
admit that the text is "largely unintelligible in its present form."
13 One
must read tHEwa,
"pit," for hFAHEWa
"Shittim," for MyfiWe. Wolff, Hosea,
94; Mays, Hosea,
79; and D. Stuart, Hosea-Jonah, WBC (Waco: Word, 1987) 88-89 support
the
emendations.
14 The
change from the second person in v 1 to the third person in v 2a, however,
is a
problem for this emendation.
15 On
balance, I prefer to emend to "pit" and "Shittim."
Y. Mazor, "Hosea 5.1-3: Be-
tween Compositional Rhetoric and Rhetorical
Composition," JSOT 45 (1989) 119-20,
shows that
in the emended version of the text, 5:1c-2 has precisely the same rhetorical
structure as
5:1ab.
16 It
reads, o{ oi[
a]greu<ontej th>n qh<ran kate<phcan
("which the pursuers of the hunt
held
fast"). The use of hunting imagery, however, could be taken as a support
for the
emendation.
17Cf.
C. S. Ehrlich, "The Text of Hosea 1:9," JBL 104:1 (1985)
13-19.
18
Wolff, Hosea, xxiv, for example, speaks of Hosea having "elevated
prose" that
can
easily shift into "stricter poetic forms."
Duane A Garrett: AN INTRODUCTION To HOSEA
5
noun, and
the definite object marker are more rare in poetry than in
prose,
have found that these particles are more frequent in chaps. 1-3
than in
4-14. While the exact numbers for each passage of the book
vary,19 they support the impression many readers
have of the book,
namely,
that chaps. 1-3 are a more prosaic introduction while chaps.
4-14
constitute the more poetic main body of the prophecies.
Sometimes Hosea is taken to be a representative of a northern, Is-
raelite dialect of Hebrew. This deduction is not
surprising in light of
the
difficulties in the language, but we do not possess enough data to
conclude that
his language was typical of a northern dialect.
The Imagery and Style of Hosea
Hosea uses striking images; a typical condemnation of
gins with
the simile, "Ephraim is like a dove" (
Ephraim like
a senseless bird fluttering between
search of a
place of safety and straying far from God. In 6:4, he
de-
clares that
in the
heat of the day. In
that
bears no good fruit, which in context apparently refers equally to
good
deeds and to children. Sometimes his imagery turns on a Hebrew
word
play.20
Wolff observes that Hosea uses a wide variety of metaphors for
Yahweh; some
are quite surprising. In addition to the traditional hus-
band
(2:2), father (11:1), and physician (14:4) images, Yahweh is also
a
fowler21 (
green tree
(14:8), and even decay or infection22 (
non-traditional and even shocking language to get his point across to a
hard-hearted and perhaps jaded people.
Hosea can turn his images in unexpected directions. In 7:4-7, the
nation is
likened to a hot oven with the meaning that
debauchery and
intrigue. In 7:8, however, Ephraim is like a flat cake
19
Andersen and Freedman, Hosea, 60-66.
20 In
8:9, the image of Ephraim as a wild ass may have its origin in a word play on
Myirap;x, and xr,P,. In
further
examples, see P. A. Kruger, "Prophetic Imagery: On Metaphors and Similes
in
the Book
of Hosea," J Northwest Semitic Languages 14 (1988) 143-51.
21 For
further discussion of this metaphor, see P. A Kruger, "The Divine Net in
Hosea
22 The
line hdAUhy; tybel; bqArAkAv; MyirAp;x,l;
wfAkA ynixEva is generally rendered something
like,
"I am like a moth to Ephraim, like rot to the people of
makes a
good case for translating wfa as "pus." See also Stuart, Hosea,
105. Andersen and
Freedman (Hosea,
412) takes it to mean "maggots." Cf. NRSV.
23
Wolff, Hosea, xxiv.
6 CRISWELL THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
not
turned over; instead of being the oven that produces the heat,
is
dough in the oven and is sure to be burnt on the bottom. The mean-
ing is evidently that
sult in being "burnt," i.e.,
suffering loss.24
Hosea also brings penetrating pathos to his message through the
use of
questions in the mouth of God. A particularly strong example is
11:8 (NIV):
"How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you
over,
Zeboiim? My heart is changed within me; all my
compassion is
aroused."
See also 6:4 and 8:5. Through the anthropomorphism of God
seeming to
be at wit's end about his people's stubborn sinfulness, Ho-
sea
transforms the abstraction of divine compassion into vivid reality.25
A difficulty in interpreting Hosea is his tendency to use short,
pithy
declarations rather than longer prophetic discourse. Context is
of
limited value in interpreting some passages because sometimes one
can
scarcely be sure where one text breaks off and another begins.
This is not
to say that it is impossible to demonstrate structure in a
larger
text. On the basis of an analysis of 5:1-3 and
rhetorical
unity in chap. 5;26 J. Lundbom, similarly,
uses an inclusio
pattern to
maintain the unity of 4:4b-9a.27 Even so, large scale rhetori-
cal
structure is not nearly so obvious in Hosea as in some other pro-
phetic books.
At times, the sayings seem almost contradictory. In
example, the
text promises that God will redeem
abruptly
declares that he will have no compassion28 on the nation and
that
their children will be slain and their pregnant mothers ripped
open. The
prophet obviously intends for the reader to take in each
short
declaration in sequence, without transitions, so that the reader
might
fully experience the jolting effect of these pronouncements.
Rather than
distill his message down to a logically consistent whole,
he
confronts the reader with diverse truths presented in the most
24 Thus
C. E Keil, The
Minor Prophets (
25 On
the other hand, these questions do not have the significance that J. G. Janzen
("Metaphor
and Reality in Hosea 11," Semeia 24
[1982] 7-44) ascribes to them. Janzen is
operating in
the framework of process theology and sees here evidence of existential de-
velopment in God.
26 Mazor, "Hosea 5.1-3," 115-26.
27 J. R
Lundbom, "Contentious Priests and Contentious
People in Hosea 4:1-10,"
VT 36 (1986) 52-70. See also Lundbom's analysis of
phetic Rhetoric in Hosea," VT 29
(1979) 300-308.
28
Although the meaning of MHano is not certain (it is a hapax legomenon),
it proba-
bly means "compassion" here. Cf. NIV; NRSV; and REB. Andersen and Freedman (Ho-
sea,
625, 640) take it to mean "the cause of sorrow."
Duane A. Garrett: AN INTRODUCTION To
HOSEA 7
stark and
unqualified possible form. This forces the reader to reckon
with the
full impact of his words.
Form Criticism and Hosea
A number of scholars, principally Wolff, attempt to apply form
criticism to
Hosea. Wolff observes that Hosea uses, for example, the
"prophetic speech," the "divine speech," the
"lament," and the "exhor-
tation." The "disputation"29
is crucial to his analysis; the Book of Ho-
sea is
at the same time Yahweh's legal indictment against
the
prophet's dispute with his fellow Israelites. Wolff imagines Hosea
addressing the
audience in short "kerygmatic units"
between which
the
audience may have responded with questions or objections. In this
way,
Wolff accounts for the somewhat choppy, uneven style of Hosea
The analogy
of the court dispute at the city gate is the backdrop for
Hosea.
Wolff also believes that some addresses were given to small
circles of
disciples rather than to larger, open crowds (e.g., 11:1-11).30
Other scholars are less certain about form criticism as applied to
Hosea.
Stuart, for example, states that "typical prophetic formal com-
position
characteristics are either so subtly combined or so artistically
modified in
Hosea's oracles that one has to consider each oracle on an
ad hoc
basis."31 This is tantamount to saying that traditional form criti-
cism is impossible in Hosea, since form
criticism by definition is not ad
hoc but
seeks to demonstrate repeated, meaningful patterns in the lit-
erature (e.g., the forms observable in the
Psalms). Fohrer is specifically
skeptical
about Wolff's reconstructed Sitzen im Leben for his "keryg-
matic units,"32 and Andersen
and Freedman share that skepticism.33 In-
deed,
Wolff's analyses are undermined by their very complexity as he
seeks to
demonstrate which lines are original, which are redactional,
why the
oration is so irregular, and how the whole fits into its pur-
ported
setting.34 The best one can say is that although one may well
identify a
number of motifs in Hosea, and that an atmosphere of legal
dispute is
no doubt deliberately created in the book, true form critical
investigation has yet to yield convincing results.
29
Hebrew: byri.
30 Wolf, Hosea, xxiii-xxx. Wolff believes that larger prophetic
orations are marked
by the
naming of the addressee, the beginning of a new theme, and the absence of a
copula.
31
Stuart, Hosea, 8.
32 Fohrer, Introduction,
421-22.
33
Andersen and Freedman, Hosea, 72, 127.
34 Cf.
Wolff, Hosea, 74-76, as an example of this.
8 CRISWELL THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
The Marriage to Gomer
The story of Hosea's marriage to Gomer
is at the same time both
the
dominant theological metaphor and the major interpretive prob-
lem of Hosea That the faithless wife is
symbolic of
beyond
doubt; more questionable is the actual interpretation of chaps.
1 and 3.
Although there is risk of oversimplification, common interpre-
tations of these texts may be set forth in the
following schema.
I. Chapters 1-3 are a parable or allegory with no historical
basis.
At least two variants of this
interpretation are proposed.
A. The whole story is a vision and has no
relationship to Ho-
sea's actual marriage and family life.35
B. Gomer was a
real but faithful wife and chap. 1 is only in-
dicative of
a wretched prostitute (not his wife) as a
prophetic symbol of
God's compassion on Israel.36
II. Chapters 1 and 3 are historical but refer to two different
women.
Hosea first married the prostitute Gomer, at the
begin-
ning of his prophetic ministry, to illustrate
God.
Later in his ministry he married a second woman, also a
prostitute,
to illustrate God's compassion and the hope of salva-
tion.37
Interpretation I. B. above could also be considered a vari-
ant
of this interpretation.
III. Chapters 1 and 3 are historical and refer to the same woman
(Gomer). At least three interpretations follow this
reasoning.
A. God commanded Hosea to marry an immoral
woman. He did
so, and she gave him one son but soon returned
to her old
ways and bore him two children of doubtful
paternity (1:2-
9). Hosea then apparently separated from her or was aban-
doned by her (2:2a).
She fell into poverty and disgrace, and
eventually
into slavery. Hosea bought her out of slavery
and restored her to the family (3:1-3).38
B. Essentially the same as III. A., a
variant interpretation seeks
to avoid the scandal of God commanding Hosea to marry a
flagrantly immoral woman by asserting that the reference
35 Thus
J. Calvin, Commentaries on the Twelve Minor Prophets (
Baker, n.d.) 1:43-45. Calvin misses the point when he
argues that there is no reason it
could not
have been a vision; the onus is on him to show that it was a vision.
36 R H. Pfeiffer, Introduction to the Old
Testament (
1941) 567-70.
37 Fohrer, Introduction, 420-21.
38 For
example, J. Limburg, Hosea-Micah, Interpretation
(
1988) 8-15.
Duane A.Garrett: AN INTRODUCTION To HOSEA 9
to Gomer's immorality
in 1:2 is proleptic, or that when he
married her she had tendencies to immorality but
had not
yet actually engaged in extramarital sex, or
that Hosea did
not deliberately marry a wanton woman but
only retrospec-
tively realized that his unhappy marriage was
actually, in
the providence of God, a portrayal of God's
relationship to
Israel.39
C. Chapters 1 and 3 are variant accounts of the same event;
no sequence is intended.40 Hosea
was commanded to marry
a prostitute (1:2), he purchased Gomer from a slave market
(1:3; 3:1-3), and then had one child by
her before she re-
turned to her immorality (1:3-9). The word
"again" in 3:1
is an editorial insertion.
Which of these interpretations is preferable? First of all, the
view
that the
whole narrative is parabolic and non-historical must be re-
jected out of hand. Hosea could not have
credibly proclaimed the story
of his
wayward wife as the representation of
if at
the same time he was living as a happily married man.41 More-
over, it
is implausible that he would have presented his wife in the
terms of
chap. 1 if in fact she was a woman of virtue.
The second major interpretation, that two
separate women are in
view
here, is also unlikely. While it is true that the Hebrew of 3:1 is
indefinite
("love a woman loved by another"42) and does not
specifically
say,
"your wife,” context strongly suggests that Gomer
is intended. An-
dersen and Freedman offer several reasons for
believing that the same
woman is
meant and that a sequence of events from chap. 1 to chap. 3
is
intended. First, the woman of 3:1 is already an adulteress, which sug-
gests
continuity with chap. 1. Second, the word "again" in 3:1 implies
continuity.43 Third, in chap. 1 he was to marry an immoral woman but
in 3:1
he was to love a wife already fallen. This, too, suggests develop-
ment. Fourth, 3:3 does not describe the
training of a new wife but the
discipline of a
wayward wife. This also goes against interpretation
III. C.44
39
Andersen and Freedman, Hosea, 155-70. cf. G. Archer, A
Survey of Old Testa-
ment Introduction (Chicago: Moody, 1974) 323.
40 Cf.
the discussion in C. H. Bullock, An
Introduction to the Old Testament Pro-
phetic Books (Chicago: Moody, 1986) 91. Bullock cites R. Gordis
(HUCA 25 [1954] 9-35)
as
holding to this view.
41 Cf. J. A Soggin, Introduction to the Old Testament (
1976) 249.
42 Translating fEre tbEhuxE hw.Axi-bhEc<.
43 This
is true regardless of whether dOf is connected to j`le or rm,xyovE.
44
Andersen and Freedman, Hosea, 293. They also give a fifth argument
related to
their
interpretation of 2:6 (MT = 2:8).
10 CRISWELL THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
Interpretation III. C. is not persuasive for the reason given
above
and also
because it fails to serve as an adequate model for Hosea's
theological
message. Hosea not only describes the covenant violation
and
punishment of
healing. If
one treats chap. 3 simply as a doublet of chap. 1, one loses
that
sequence in the analogy. Also, the language of chap. 2 favors read-
ing chap. 3 as a subsequent development.
Interpretation III. A., in spite of (or perhaps because of)
the
offenses it
carries, is the most plausible explanation of the text. The ar-
gument that Hosea was told to marry a woman
described "prolepti-
cally" as immoral or that she merely had
promiscuous tendencies but
had not
yet actually committed any immoral acts is meaningless. Apart
from the
fact that there is no credible argument that the Hebrew of
1:2 means,
"a woman who is going to commit
fornication,"45 one must
recognize that
in Hosea's actual situation the distinction would have
been
immaterial. What could be worse than marrying a woman with
full
knowledge that she would be faithless in years to come? In that
context,
concern about what she may have done prior to the marriage
quickly
loses relevance. One may of course argue that Hosea only ret-
rospectively saw the hand of God in the events of his
unhappy mar-
riage, but that flies in the face of the most
natural reading of 1:2-3,
that
first he was told by God to marry an immoral woman and then he
did it.
Finally, elements in the text imply that Gomer was in
fact a
prostitute.46
The marriage to Gomer was the most
poignant, painful, and dra-
matic "prophetic speech-act" in the
Old Testament.47 Other prophets also
did
things that were strange, difficult, and even shameful in order to con-
vey their message to
three
years as a sign of the coming exile of
Ezekiel lay
on his side before a representation of
every day
for over a year and during that time ate food cooked with ma-
nure (Ezekiel 4). Closer to Hosea's condition,
he was also forbidden to
mourn when
his wife died (24:15-18). Jeremiah, by contrast, was not al-
lowed to
marry (Jer 16:2). In short, it was not unusual for
the prophets
45
Although the phrase MyniUnz; tw,xe is unusual and its precise meaning is
debated,
there is
little reason to regard it as proleptic or as a
description of a psychological ten-
dency. Indeed, Gomer
may well have been a prostitute prior to the marriage, although
we
cannot be certain.
46 Comparing ancient Near Eastern customs, P. A Kruger ("
J Northwest
Semitic Languages 11
[1983] 107-16) observes that 2:5b refers to the fee
paid a
prostitute and that 2:2b may allude to ornaments worn by prostitutes.
47 Mays
(Hosea, 24) who translates Hos 1:2a as,
"The beginning of Yahweh's speak-
ing through Hosea," comments that the
"marriage was not a way for Yahweh to speak to
Hosea but through him" (emphasis original).
Duane A Garrett: AN INTRODUCTION To HOSEA
11
to
behave in a manner contrary to custom and normal human longing in
order to
give their words dramatic force.
Perhaps the most striking aspect of the history of Hosea's mar-
riage is that he would take Gomer
back after she had been with other
men.
Such a practice contradicts Deut 24:1-4. This does not refute the
interpretation of Hosea 1-3 proposed here but in a paradoxical man-
ner confirms it. From the standpoint of
unthinkable that
a man would take back an unfaithful wife who had
been
separated from him and living with other men.48 But when Ho-
sea
bought her out of slavery and restored her to the family,49 he
lustrated in
the most profound way possible the depth of God's grace.
Finally, evangelicals should know that feminist interpreters ap-
proach Hosea from a radically different
direction, one in which Gomer
is more
victim than villain. Some accuse Hos 2:3-6 of
endorsing sexual
violence
toward women.50 Dijk-Hemmes develops a
more abstract but
more
radical interpretation. She argues that Hosea gives us distorted
fragments of Gomer's love poetry-love songs that were analogous to
the woman's
parts in Song of Songs. In this reconstruction, these love
songs
extolled the erotic and nurturing power of the woman/goddess,
but
Hosea misconstrued them in order to crush the religion of the
mother-goddess and establish patriarchal, oppressive religion.51
48
Although Hosea may not have been in technical violation of Deut 24:1-4 since,
as far
as we can tell from the text, he did not give her a written certificate of
divorce.
D. B. Wyrtzen ("The Theological
hand,
argues that 2:2 represents an actual divorce rather than separation. Also, the
act of
publicly
stripping a woman taken in adultery was an outraged husband's ritual of di-
vorce elsewhere in the ancient Near East; cf.
Kruger, "
49The
precise significance of j`yilAxe ynixE-Mgav; wyxil; yyih;ti xlov; ("and you shall not be for
a man but
indeed I [shall be] to you") in 3:3 is widely debated. It would appear
that a
period of
isolation for Gomer is in view after which Hosea
perhaps resumed marital re-
lations with her. Cf. Wolff, Hosea,
61-62; Andersen and Freedman, Hosea, 301-5. It is of
course
possible that he did not resume normal sexual relations with her.
50 Cf.
R J. Weems, "Gomer:
Victim of Violence or Victim of Metaphor?" Semeia
47
(1989)
87-104, and T D. Setel, "Prophets and
Pornography: Female Sexual Imagery in
Hosea,"
in L. Russell, Feminist Interpretation of the Bible (
1985) 86-95.
It is not sufficient to respond to this allegation by saying that Hosea 2 is
"only a metaphor" and therefore does not condone abuse
of women. A meaningful evan-
gelical interpretation of Hosea 2 must come in
the context of a fully developed theology
of
family life.
51 E van
Dijk-Hemmes, "The Imagination of Power and the
Power of Imagination:
An Intertextual Analysis of Two Biblical Love Songs," JSOT
44 (1989) 75-88. Apart from
the fact
that the representation of Gomer singing love-songs
analogous to Song of Songs
is pure
hypothesis, one should note that Song of Songs does not promote goddess
religion
(see my volume on Song of Songs in the New American
Commentary) and that Hosea is
not so
much in a struggle against the goddess as he is in a contest against Baal, the
meta-
phorical rival of Yahweh (
12 CRISWELL THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
The Theology of Hosea
Readers understandably interpret Hosea through the metaphor of
the
unfaithful wife as a representative of
message
behind the marriage to Gomer as a metaphor that not
only
addresses
Hosea's generation of wayward Israelites but reaches back
to
describe the entire history of the nation (including
short, the
story of his marriage retells the whole sad experience of the
covenant
people. Ezekiel draws upon the marriage image and retells it
in
Ezekiel 16 with
The
importance of "faithfulness" in Hosea, as well as the metaphor of
the
"lawsuit; naturally merge into the marriage metaphor.53
should have
shown fidelity to the covenant just as a wife should show
fidelity to
her marriage vows, and
God just as
an adulteress faces the charges brought by her husband.54
It would be incorrect, however, to assume that this is the whole
of
Hosea's message. In chaps. 4-14, although the analogy of
the wayward
wife
never disappears entirely, Hosea does not dwell upon it but rather
uses
other metaphors for
wife but
a son. In 5:13-6:3, the image of
suffering from
disease and wounds controls the text (cf. Isa 1
:5-6). It
would be a
mistake to expound the whole of Hosea as if the picture of
the
fallen wife dominated every passage, for clearly it does not.
Hosea's message contains, as one would expect, a great deal of
condemnation. He particularly abhors the degenerate priesthood of Is-
rael (e.g., 4:4-9). Indeed, he regards them as
little better than a gang of
thugs
(6:9). He also has little respect for
pears to
allude to the rapid succession of kings after Jeroboam II. The
mention of
only Jeroboam II in the title (1:1) may in fact imply that
Hosea
considered him to be the last king of
legitimacy.
At the same time, no other biblical text so vividly portrays the
per-
sonal love of God. The vivid picture of God as
a loving parent remem-
bering when he taught his now deviant child to
walk (11:3) is
unsurpassed in
tenderness and pathos.
52 B.
Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (
tress,
1979) 381.
53
Various forms of the root dsh ("faithfulness") occur in
(Hebrew text)
6:4, 6;
4:1, 4;
12:3. 4:1 is especially significant in that it has both roots and is to some
degree
programmatic for the whole of 4:1-14:9.
54 This
metaphor does not occur elsewhere in the ancient Near East for the rela-
tionship between a god and his followers according
to Kruger ("
Duane A Garrett: AN INTRODUCTION TO HOSEA 13
Hosea makes allusions to, and builds his theology upon, the Torah.
U. Cassuto points to many examples of parallels between Hosea
and
the
Pentateuch, and conclusively shows that Hosea was dependent on
the Law
rather than the other way around.55 A number of scholars rec-
ognize Hos 12:1-6,
where the prophet alludes to Genesis 25 and 32, as
an
example of "inner" biblical exegesis that can serve as a guide in the
interpretation and application of Scripture.56 Stuart demonstrates
that
not only
Hosea but other prophets also looked back to the "curses and
blessings"
of the covenant as a primary source for their messages.57
Also, when
God curses the land and its inhabitants in Hos 4:3,
he does
so in a
sequence that is the reverse of the creation narrative of Genesis
1 and thus
nullifies the blessings of creation.58 In
short, Hosea shows
us that
sound theology is based upon the Canon.
A remarkable feature of Hosea is that it ends with a wisdom saying
comparable to Prov 1:1; 30:4-6 and Eccl 12:13-14: "Who is wise? He
will
realize these things. Who is discerning? He will understand them.
The ways of
the Lord are right; the righteous walk in them, but the re-
bellious stumble in them" (Hos 14:9, NIV). In one sense this is not sur-
prising because Hosea's book is characterized by
the pithy, aphoristic
statements
common in wisdom. It is remarkable, however, for a
prophet to
end with so obvious a wisdom statement. Scholars generally
regard the
verse as redactional, but that conclusion is
unnecessary.59
The
self-conscious admission that the text is difficult to understand
refers to
the paradoxical way in which it presents its truths. Gross
55
"The Prophet Hosea and the Books of the Pentateuch,” reprinted in U. Cassuto,
Biblical and Oriental Studies (Jerusalem: Magnes,
1973) 1:79-100. For further com-
ment, see D. A Garrett, Rethinking
Genesis (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1991) 54-55. Con-
trast J. Day, "Pre-Deuteronomic
Allusions to the Covenant in Hosea and Psalm 78; VT
36 (1986)
1-12.
56 Not
surprisingly, interpretations differ. W. J. Kaiser, Jr. ("Inner Biblical
Exegesis
as a Model
for Bridging the 'Then' and 'Now' Gap: Hos 12:1-6,” JETS
28 [1985] 33-46)
develops an
evangelical model. S. L. McKenzie ("The Jacob Tradition in Hosea 12:4-5;
VT 36 [1983] 311-22) operates in the
documentary hypothesis framework but argues
that
Hosea is giving a parody of a blessing that was pronounced at
condemn the
cult at the shrine and equate the people with the deceitfulness of Jacob
L. M. Eslinger ("Hosea 12:5a and Genesis 32:29: A Study in
Inner Biblical Exegesis;
JSOT 18 [1980] 91-99) argues that the Hosea
text is based on the Genesis text but has
radically
reinterpreted it.
57 Stuart, Hosea, xxxi-xlii; 7-8; passim.
58 The
sequence in Hosea is people, beasts, birds, and fish; contrast Gen 1:20-27. It
contains the
verb Jsx,
which is important in other creation reversal narratives (cf. Zeph
1:2-3 and Jer 8:13). See M. Deroche,
"The Reversal of Creation in Hosea," VT 31 (1981)
400-409.
59
Wolff (Hosea, 239) who regards the verse as redactional,
nevertheless observes
that it
contains the typical Hosean word "stumble"
(lwk)
used here and in 4:5; 5:5; 14:2.
14 CRISWELL THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
infidelity
leads to a divorce that, contrary to Law and custom, is re-
solved in
reconciliation. Terrible judgment and unfailing compassion,
as well
as promises of absolute destruction and of healing restoration,
are set
side-by-side with no guide to how all of this is to work itself out.
Convoluted
as it all may seem, the final verse assures the reader that
Yahweh's
ways are in fact straight and urges that the true path to un-
derstanding and life is through submission and
obedience.
This
material is cited with gracious permission from:
The
www.criswell.edu
Please
report any errors to Ted Hildebrandt at:
thildebrandt@gordon.edu