[423] Cf. W. R. Smith, Prophets, 157: Hosea's "language and the movement of his thoughts are far removed from the simplicity and self-control which characterise the prophecy of Amos. Indignation and sorrow, tenderness and severity, faith in the sovereignty of Jehovah's love, and a despairing sense of Israel's infidelity are woven together in a sequence which has no logical plan, but is determined by the battle and alternate victory of contending emotions; and the swift transitions, the fragmentary unbalanced utterance, the half-developed allusions, that make his prophecy so difficult to the commentator, express the agony of this inward conflict."
[425] Præf. in Duod. Prophetas.
[426] Especially in chap. vii.
[427] As in xi. 2 b.
[428] This is especially the case in x. 11-13; xi. 4; xiv. 5.
[429] E.g. vi. 5 b: M.T. משפטיך אור יצא which is nonsense; LXX. משפטי כאור, My judgment shall go forth like light. xi. 2: M.T. מִפְּנֵיהֶם; LXX. מִפָּנַי הֵם.
[430] iv. 4, עמי for עמך; 8, נפשם for נפ—perhaps; 13, צִלָּה for צִלָּהּ; v. 2; vi. 2 (possibly); viii. 4, read יכרתוּ; ix. 2; xi. 2, 3; xi. 5, 6, where for לא read לו; 10, read לֵֶךְ; xii. 9; xiv. 9 a, לוֹ for לִי. On the other hand, they are either improbable or quite wrong, as in v. 2 b; vi. 2 (but the LXX. may be right here); vii 1 b; xi. 1, 4; xii. 5; xiii. 14, 15 (ter.).
[431] v. 5 (so as to change the tense: and Judah shall stumble); xii. 3, etc.
[432] vi. 3; viii. 10, 13; ix. 2; x. 4, 13 b, 15 (probably); xii. 2; xiii. 9; xiv. 3. Wrong tense, xii. 11. Cf. also vi. 3.
[433] E.g. viii. 13.
[434] Cf. the Hebrew and Greek, of e.g., iv. 10, 11, 12; vi. 9, 10; viii. 5, 6; ix. 8, 9.
[435] viii. 13 (14 must be omitted); ix. 17.
[436] Introd. 284.
[437] E.g. iv. 15 (?); vi. 11-vii. 1 (?); vii. 4; viii. 2; xii. 6.
[438] Einl., 323.
[439] אשם, v. 15; x. 2; xiii. 1; xiv. 1.
[440] P. 313.
[441] viii. 14 is also rejected by Wellhausen and Cornill.
[442] Loc. cit.
[444] v. 4.
[445] Deut. xxxii. 10-12: a song probably earlier than the eighth century. But some put it later.
[446] Psalm xviii.
[447] ii. 10 f.
[448] iii. 2.
[449] Matt. xi. 12.
[450] ii. 23, Heb.
[451] ii. 20, Heb.
[452] vi. 3, 4; vii. 8; ix. 10; xiv. 6, 7, 8.
[453] vii. 11, 12; x. 11; xi. 4, etc.
[454] Pregnant construction, hath committed great harlotry from after Jehovah.
[455] These personal names do not elsewhere occur. גֹּמֶר; Γομερ. דִּבְלַיִם; Δεβηλαιμ B; Δεβηλαειμ, AQ. They have, of course, been interpreted allegorically in the interests of the theory discussed below. גמר has been taken to mean "completion," and interpreted as various derivatives of that root: Jerome, "the perfect one"; Raschi, "that fulfilled all evil"; Kimchi, "fulfilment of punishment"; Calvin, "consumptio," and so on. דבלים has been traced to דִּבלה, Pl. דִּבְלִים, cakes of pressed figs, as if a name had been sought to connect the woman at once with the idol-worship and a rich sweetness; or to an Arabic root, דבל, to press, as if it referred either to the plumpness of the body (cf. Ezek. xvi. 7; so Hitzig) or to the woman's habits. But all these are far-fetched and vain. There is no reason to suppose that either of the two names is symbolic. The alternative (allowed by the language) naturally suggests itself that דבלים is the name of Gomer's birthplace. But there is nothing to prove this. No such place-name occurs elsewhere: one cannot adduce the Diblathaim in Moab (Num. xxxiii. 46 ff.; Jer. xlviii. 2).
[456] Hist. Geog., Chap. XVIII.
[457] לֹא רֻחָמָה, probably 3rd pers. sing. fem. Pual (in Pause cf. Prov. xxviii. 13); literally, She is not loved or pitied. The word means love as pity: "such pity as a father hath unto his children dear" (Psalm ciii.), or God to a penitent man (Psalm xxviii. 13). The Greek versions alternate between love and pity. LXX. οὐκ ἠλεημένη διότι οὐ μὴ προσθήσω ἔτι ἠλεῆσαι, for which the Complutensian has ἀγαπῆσαι, the reading followed by Paul (Rom. ix, 25: cf. 1 Peter ii. 10).
[458] Here ver. 7 is to be omitted, as explained above, p. 213.
[459] Do not belong to you; but the I am, אהיה, recalls the I am that I am of Exodus.
[460] Augustine, Ambrose, Theodoret, Cyril Alex. and Theodore of Mopsuestia.
[461] It is interesting to read in parallel the interpretations of Matthew Henry and Dr. Pusey. They are very alike, but the latter has the more delicate taste of his age.
[462] i. 2.
[463] The former is Matthew Henry's; the latter seems to be implied by Pusey.
[464] Robertson Smith, Prophets of Israel.
[465] Apparently it was W. R. Smith's interpretation which caused Kuenen to give up the allegorical theory.
[466] Two instances are usually quoted. The one is Isaiah vi., where most are agreed that what Isaiah has stated there as his inaugural vision is not only what happened in the earliest moments of his prophetic life, but this spelt out and emphasised by his experience since. See Isaiah I.-XXXIX. (Exp. Bible), pp. 57 f. The other instance is Jeremiah xxxii. 8, where the prophet tells us that he became convinced that the Lord spoke to him on a certain occasion only after a subsequent event proved this to be the case.
[467] An Eastern woman seldom weans her child before the end of its second year.
[468] iii. 2.
[469] From a speech by John Bright.
[470] iv. 13, 14.
[471] Cf. the spiritual use of the term, Isa. lxii. 4.
[472] For proof and exposition of all this see Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, 92 ff.
[473] ii. 8.
[474] So best is rendered חסד, ḥesedh, which means always not merely an affection, "lovingkindness," as our version puts it, but a relation loyally observed.
[475] An expansion of this will be found in the present writer's Isaiah XL.-LXVI. (Expositor's Bible Series), pp. 398 ff.
[476] ii. 13.
[477] ii. 5, 13.
[478] ii. 5.
[480] The participle Qal, used by God of Himself in His proclamations of grace or of punishment, has in this passage (cf. ver. 16) and elsewhere (especially in Deuteronomy) the force of an immediate future.
[481] So LXX.; Mass. Text, thy.
[482] The reading גְּדֵרָהּ is more probable than גְּדֵרָה.
[483] Or they made it into a Ba'al image. So Ew., Hitz., Nowack. But Wellhausen omits the clause.
[484] Wellhausen thinks that up to ver. 14 only physical calamities are meant, but the הצלתו of ver. 11, as well as others of the terms used, imply not the blighting of crops before their season, but the carrying of them away in their season, when they had fully ripened, by invaders. The cessation of all worship points to the removal of the people from their land, which is also implied, of course, by the promise that they shall be sown again in ver. 23.
[485] Cf. Isa. xl. 1: which to the same exiled Israel is the fulfilment of the promise made by Hosea. See Isaiah XL.-LXVI. (Expositor's Bible), pp. 75 ff.
[486] Wellhausen calls ver. 18 a gloss to ver. 19.
[487] Massoretic Text, her.
[488] It is at this point, if at any, that i. 10, 11, ii. 1 (Eng., but ii. 1-3 Heb.) ought to come in. It will be observed, however, that even here they are superfluous: And the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured nor counted; and it shall be in the place where it was said to them, No People of Mine are ye! it shall be said to them, Sons of the Living God! And the children of Judah and the children of Israel shall be gathered together, and they shall appoint themselves one head, and shall go up from the land: for great is the day of Jezreel. Say unto your brothers, My People, and to your sisters (LXX. sister), She-is-Pitied. On the whole passage see above, p. 213.
[489] Or that is loved of her husband though an adulteress.
[490] So LXX. The homer was eight bushels. The lethech is a measure not elsewhere mentioned.
[491] On these see above, Introduction, Chap. III., p. 38.
[492] On the text see above, p. 214.
[493] xi. 9.
[494] As the stories all written down before this had made familiar to Israel.
[495] כי formally introduces the charge.
[496] Lit. swearing and falsehood.
[497] Ninth, sixth, eighth and seventh of the Decalogue.
[498] Amos vi. 1.
[499] iv. 4. According to the excellent emendation of Beck (quoted by Wünsche, p. 142), who instead of ועמככמריב proposes ועמי ככמריו, for the first word of which there is support in the LXX. ὁ λαός μου. The second word, כמר, is used for priest only in a bad sense by Hosea himself, x. 5, and in 2 Kings xxiii. 5 of the calf-worship and in Zech. i. 4 of the Baal priesthood. As Wellhausen remarks, this emendation restores sense to a passage that had none before. "Ver. 4 cannot be directed against the people, but must rather furnish the connection for ver. 5, and effect the transference from the reproof of the people (vv. 1-3) to the reproof of the priests (5 ff.)." The letters יכהן which are left over in ver. 4 by the emendation are then justly improved by Wellhausen (following Zunz) into the vocative הכהן and taken with the following verse.
[500] The application seems to swerve here. Thy children would seem to imply that, for this clause at least, the whole people, and not the priests only, were addressed. But Robertson Smith takes thy mother as equivalent, not to the nation, but to the priesthood.
[501] A reading current among Jewish writers and adopted by Geiger, Urschrift, 316.
[502] Heb. the heart, which ancient Israel conceived as the seat of the intellect.
[503] Wellhausen thinks this third place-name (cf. Amos v. 5) has been dropped. It certainly seems to be understood.
[505] So all critics since Hitzig.
[506] Mal. ii. 4.
[507] Isa. xliv. 11.
[508] The verse is very uncertain. LXX. read a different and a fuller text from Ephraim in the previous verse to harlotry in this: "Ephraim hath set up for himself stumbling-blocks and chosen Canaanites." In the first of alternate readings of the latter half of the verse omit הבו as probably a repetition of the end of the preceding word; the second alternative is adapted from LXX., which for מגיניה must have read מגאונה.
[509] So by slightly altering the consonants. But the text is uncertain.
[510] Note on the Pride of Israel.—גאון means grandeur, and is (1) so used of Jehovah's majesty (Micah v. 3; Isa. ii. 10, 19, 21; xxiv. 14), and (2) of the greatness of human powers (Zech. x. 11; Ezek. xxxii. 12). In Psalm xlvii. 5 it is parallel to the land of Israel (cf. Nahum ii. 3). (3) In a grosser sense the word is used of the rank vegetation of Jordan (Eng. wrongly swelling) (Jer. xii. 5; Zech. xi. 3: cf. Job xxxviii. 11). It would appear to be this grosser sense of rankness, arrogance, in which Amos vi. 8 takes it as parallel to the palaces of Israel which Jehovah loathes and will destroy. In Amos viii. 7 the phrase may be used in scorn; yet some take it even there of God Himself (Buhl, last ed. of Gesenius' Lexicon).
Now in Hosea it occurs twice in the phrase given above— גאון ישראל בפניו וענה (v. 5, vii. 10). LXX., Targum and some Jewish exegetes take ענה as a ל״ו verb, to be humbled, and this suits both contexts. But the word בפניו to his face almost compels us to take ענה as a ל״י verb, to witness against (cf. Job xvi. 8; Jer. xiv. 7). Hence Wellhausen renders "With his arrogance Israel witnesseth against himself," and confirms the plaint of Jehovah—the arrogance being the trust in the ritual and the feeling of no need to turn from that and repent (cf. vii. 10). Orelli quotes Amos vi. 8 and Nahum ii. 3, and says injustice cleaves to all Israel's splendour, so it testifies against him.
But the context, which in both cases speaks of Israel's gradual decay, demands rather the interpretation that Israel's material grandeur shows unmistakable signs of breaking down. For the ethical development of this interpretation, see below, pp. 337 f.
[511] Probably the ancient war-cry of the clan. Cf. Judg. v. 14.
[512] Yet ver. 9 goes with ver. 8 (so Wellhausen), and not with ver. 10 (so Ewald).
[513] For צו read שׁוא.
[514] Wellhausen inserts Judah, with that desire to complete a parallel which seems to me to be overdone by so many critics. If Judah be inserted we should need to bring the date of these verses down to the reign of Ahaz in 734.
[515] Guthe: "King Fighting-Cock."
[516] See Isaiah I.-XXXIX. (Expositor's Bible), pp. 242 ff.
[517] Cheyne indeed (Introduction to Robertson Smith's Prophets of Israel) takes the prayer to be genuine, but an intrusion. His reasons do not persuade me. But at least it is clear that there is a want of connection between the prayer and what follows it, unless the prayer be understood in the sense explained above.
[518] Isaiah ix. 10.
[519] Cf. Isaiah xviii. 4.
[520] Saying: so the LXX. adds and thereby connects chap. v. with chap. vi.
[521] Read ויִךְ.
[522] Literally hunt, pursue. It is the same word as is used of the unfaithful Israel's pursuit of the Ba'alim, chap. ii. 9.
[523] So by a rearrangement of consonants (כשחרנו כן נמצאהו) and the help of the LXX. (εὑρήσομεν αὐτόν) Giesebrecht (Beiträge, p. 208) proposes to read the clause, which in the traditional text runs, like the morn His going forth shall be certain.
[524] Read מִשְׁפָּטִי כָאוֹר יֵצֵא.
[525] Or like Adam, or (Guthe) like the heathen.
[526] The verb means to prove false to any contract, but especially marriage.
[527] Read מחכי.
[528] In several passages of the Old Testament the word means unchastity.
[529] Here the LXX. close chap. vi., taking 11 b along with chap. vii. Some think the whole of ver. 11 to be a Judæan gloss.
[530] Cf. Joel ii. 9, and the New Testament phrase to come as a thief.
[531] v. 4.
[532] The text is unsound. Heb.: "like an oven kindled by the baker, the stirrer (stoker or kneader?) resteth from kneading the dough until it be leavened." LXX.: ὡς κλίβανος καιόμενος εἰς πέψιν κατακαύματος ἀπὸ τῆς φλογός ἀπὸ φυράσεως στέατος ἑῶς τοῦ ξυμωθῆναι αὐτό—i.e. for ישבת they read אש לחבת. Oort emends Heb. to בוער הם אפהו, which gets rid of the difficulty of a feminine participle with תנור. Wellhausen omits whole clause as a gloss on ver. 6. But if there be a gloss it properly commences with ישבת.
[533] LXX. μετατοιμῶν??
[534] LXX. kindled, בָּעְרַוּ. So Vollers, Z.A.T.W., III. 250.
[535] Lit. lurking.
[536] Massoretic Text with different vowels reads their baker. LXX. Εφραιμ!
[539] Numb. xxiii. 9 b; Josh. ii. 8.
[540] Deut. xxxiii. 27.
[541] Deut. xxxiii. 18, 19.
[542] יִתְבֹּלֵל from בלל. In Phœn. בלל seems to have been used as in Israel of the sacrificial mingling of oil and flour (cf. Robertson Smith, Religion of Semites, I. 203); in Arabic ball is to weaken a strong liquid with water, while balbal is to be confused, disordered. The Syriac balal is to mix. Some have taken Hosea's יתבלל as if from בליל (Isa. xxx. 24; Job vi. 5), usually understood as a mixed crop of wheat and inferior vegetables for fodder; but there is reason to believe בליל means rather fresh corn. The derivation from בלה to grow old, does not seem probable.
[543] xii. 8.
[544] ix. 9 f.
[545] See above, p. 261, and below, p. 337.
[546] But the reading is very doubtful.
[547] For יתגררו read יתגדדו.
[548] Wellhausen's objection to the first clause, that one does not set a trumpet to one's gums, which חֵךְ literally means, is beside the mark. חֵךְ is more than once used of the mouth as a whole (Job viii. 7; Prov. v. 3). The second clause gives the reason of the trumpet, the alarum trumpet, in the first. Read כי נשר (so also Wellhausen).
[549] Cf. Amos: Seek Me = Seek the good; and Jesus: Not every one that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord; but he that doeth the will of My Father in heaven.
[550] So LXX., but Hebrew it.
[551] Davidson's Syntax, § 136, Rem. 1, and § 71, Rom. 4.
[552] So by the accents runs the verse, but, as Wellhausen has pointed out, both its sense and its assonance are better expressed by another arrangement: Hath it grown up? then it hath no shoot, nor bringeth forth fruit.
Yet to this there is a grammatical obstacle.
[553] Wellhausen's reading to Egypt with love gifts scarcely suits the verb go up. Notice the play upon P(h)ere', wild-ass and Ephra'[îm].
[554] So LXX. reads. Heb.: they shall involve themselves with tribute to the king of princes, presumably the Assyrian monarch.
[555] So LXX.
[556] Text obscure.
[557] LXX. addition here is plainly borrowed from ix. 3. For the reasons for omitting ver. 14 see above, p. 223.
[558] ii. 16.
[559] On this verse see more particularly below, pp. 340 ff.
[560] So LXX.
[561] Read יערכו. Cf. with the whole passage iii. 4 f.
[562] לחמם for להם.
[563] יָבִיאוּ.
[564] Plural: so LXX.
[565] Others read they are gone to Assyria.
[566] Literally knows. See below, p. 321, n. 682.
[568] So, after the LXX., by taking העמיקו with this verse, 8, instead of with ver. 9.
[569] iv. 12.
[570] iv. 13, 14.
[571] Here, between vv. 11 and 12, Wellhausen with justice proposes to insert ver. 16.
[572] So Wellhausen, after LXX.; probably correct.
[573] So we may attempt to echo the play on the words.
[574] Cf., e.g., the Proverbs of Ptah-Hotep the Egyptian, circa 2500 b.c. "There is no prudence in taking part in it, and thousands of men destroy themselves in order to enjoy a moment, brief as a dream, while they gain death so as to know it. It is a villainous ... that of a man who excites himself (?); if he goes on to carry it out, his mind abandons him. For as for him who is without repugnance for such an [act], there is no good sense at all in him."—From the translation in Records of the Past, Second Series, Vol. III., p. 24.
[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 first clause; and it is possible that it may have been from a root שׁוּחַ or שִׁיח, corresponding to Arabic sâḥ, "to wander" in the sense of scattering or being scattered.
[577] After LXX.
[578] Doubtful. Lawsuits?
[579] "Calf," "inhabitants"—so LXX.
[580] LXX. supplies.
[582] Very uncertain. Wellhausen reads from his idol, מעצבו.
[583] קצף: compare Arabic qṣf, "to break"; but there is also the assonant Arabic qṣb, "reed." The Rabbis translate foam: cf. the other meaning of קצף—outbreak of anger, which suggests bubble.
[584] Rosenmüller: more than in. These days are evidently not the beginning of the kingship under Saul (so Wellhausen), for with that Hosea has no quarrel, but either the idolatry of Micah (Judg. xvii. 3 ff.), or more probably the crime of Benjamin (Judg. xix. 22).
[585] Obscure; text corrupt, and in next verse uncertain.
[586] For the tense of the verse both participles are surely needed. Wellhausen thinks two redundant.
[587] Deut. xxv. 4; 1 Cor. ix. 9; 1 Tim. v. 18.
[588] LXX.: fruit of life.
[589] צדק surely in the sense in which we find it in Isa. xl. ff. LXX.: the fruits of righteousness shall be yours.
[590] We shall return to this passage in dealing with Repentance; see p. 345.
[591] So LXX. Wellhausen suspects authenticity of the whole clause.
[592] Wellhausen proposes to read בעריד for בעמיך, but there is no need.
[593] See above, p. 216, n. 411.
[594] So LXX.
[596] St. John's Gospel, i. 12, 13.
[597] Or occasionally for the king as the nation's representative.
[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 clause.
[602] So again rightly the LXX.
[603] The reading is uncertain. The לֹא of the following verse (6) must be read as the Greek reads it, as לֹו, and taken with ver. 5.
[604] x. 11.
[605] Or lifted forward from the neck to the jaws.
[606] Isa. lxiii. 13, 14.
[607] Ver. 6 has an obviously corrupt text, and, weakening as it does the climax of ver. 5, may be an insertion.
[608] Are hung or swung towards turning away from Me.
[609] This verse is also uncertain.
[610] For בעיר, which makes nonsense, read לבעור, to consume, or with Wellhausen amend further לא אובה לבער, I am not willing to consume.
[611] They will follow Jehovah; like a lion He will roar, and they shall hurry trembling from the west. Like birds shall they hurry trembling from Egypt, and like doves from the land of Assyria, and I will bring them to their homes—'tis the oracle of Jehovah. Not only does this verse contain expressions which are unusual to Hosea, and a very strange metaphor, but it is not connected either historically or logically with the previous verse. The latter deals with the people before God has scattered them—offers them one more chance before exile comes on them. But in this verse they are already scattered, and just about to be brought back. It is such a promise as both in language and metaphor was common among the prophets of the Exile. In the LXX. the verse is taken from chap. xi. and put with chap. xii.
[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.), claims to have proved that it contains "eine wohlgegliederte Rede des Propheten" (p. 292). But he reaches this conclusion only by several forced and precarious arguments. Especially unsound do his pleas appear that in 8b לעשק is a play upon the root-meaning of כנען, "lowly"; that כנען, in analogy to the בבטן of ver. 4, is the crude original, the raw material, of the Ephraim of ver. 9; and that כימי מועד is "the determined time" of the coming judgment on Israel.
[617] Something is written about Judah (remember what was said above about Hosea's treble parallels), but the text is too obscure for translation. The theory that it has been altered by a later Judæan writer in favour of his own people is probably correct: the Authorised Version translates in favour of Judah; so too Guthe in Kautzsch's Bibel. But an adverse statement is required by the parallel clauses, and the Hebrew text allows this: Judah is still wayward with God, and with the Holy One who is faithful. So virtually Ewald, Hitzig, Wünsche, Nowack and Cheyne. But Cornill and Wellhausen read the second half of the clause as עם־קדשים נצמד, profanes himself with Qedeshim (Z.A.T.W., 1887, pp. 286 ff.).
[618] Why should not Hosea, the master of many forced phrases, have also uttered this one? This in answer to Wellhausen.
[619] So LXX., reading שוא for שד.
[620] Isa. xxx. 6.
[621] Heb. Judah, but surely Israel is required by the next verse, which is a play upon the two names Israel and Jacob.
[622] Supplanted is 'aqab, the presumable root of Ja'aqab (Jacob). Wrestled with God is Sarah eth Elohim, the presumable origin of Yisra'el (Israel).
[623] Heb. us, LXX. them.
[624] Ver. 6—And Jehovah God of Hosts, Jehovah is His memorial, i.e. name—is probably an insertion for the reasons mentioned above, pp. 204 f.
[625] This, the most natural rendering of the Hebrew phrase, has been curiously omitted by Beer, who says that באלהיך can only mean to thy God. Hitzig: "durch deinen Gott."
[626] Some take these words as addressed by Jehovah at Bethel to the Patriarch.
[627] So nearly all interpreters. Hitzig aptly quotes Polybius, De Virtute, L. ix.:διὰ τὴν ἔμφυτον Φοίνιξι πλεονεξίαν, κ.τ.λ.. One might also refer to the Romans' idea of the "Punica fides."
[628] Or, full man's strength: ct. ver. 4.
[629] But the LXX. reads: All his gains shalt not be found of him because of the iniquity which he has sinned; and Wellhausen emends this to: All his gain sufficeth not for the guilt which it has incurred.
[630] Others to demons.
[631] Field, but here in sense of territory. See Hist. Geog., pp. 79 f.
[632] Uncertain.
[633] נשיא for נשא.
[634] Read with Ewald כתבנתם. LXX. read כתמונת.
[635] Here the LXX. makes the insertion noted on pp. 203, 226.
[636] So LXX., רעיתיך.
[637] Read וֶאֱהִי.
[638] אשׁור, usually taken as first fut. of שור, to lurk. But there is a root of common use in Arabic, sar, to spring up suddenly, of wine into the head or of a lion on its prey; sawâr, "the springer," is one of the Arabic names for lion.
[639] We shall treat this passage later in connection with Hosea's doctrine of the knowledge of God: see pp. 330 f.
[640] After the LXX.
[641] Read with Houtsma וכל שריך וישפטוך.
[642] Literally a son not wise, perhaps a name given to children whose birth was difficult.
[643] The LXX. reads: Ποῦ ἡ δίκη σου, θάνατε; ποῦ τὸ κέντρον σου, ᾅδη; 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 the grave, and who delivered you from death—but now I will call up the words (sic) of death against you; for repentance is hid from My eyes." So Raschi. 2. "I would have redeemed them from the grip of Sheol, etc., if they had been wise, but being foolish I will bring on them the plagues of death." So Kimchi, Eichhorn, Simson, etc. 3 "Should I" or "shall I deliver them from the hand of Sheol, redeem them from death?" etc., as in the text above. So Wünsche, Wellhausen, Guthe in Kautzsch's Bibel. etc.
B. Taken as a promise. "From the hand of Sheol I will deliver them, from death redeem them," etc. So Umbreit, Ewald, Hitzig and Authorised and Revised English Versions. In this case repentance in the last clause must be taken as resentment (Ewald). But, as Ewald sees, the whole verse must then be put in a parenthesis, as an ejaculation of promise in the midst of a context that only threatens. Some without change of word render: "I will be thy plagues, O death? I will be thy sting, O hell." So the Authorised English Version.
[645] Text doubtful.
[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 with regard to Hosea xiv. 2-10 conclusions entirely opposite to those reached above. Professor Cheyne denies the passage to Hosea on the grounds that it is akin in language and imagery and ideas to writings of the age which begins with Jeremiah, and which among other works includes the Song of Songs. But, as has been shown above, the "language, imagery and ideas" are all akin to what Professor Cheyne admits to be genuine prophecies of Hosea; and the likeness to them of, e.g., Jer. xxxi. 10-20 may be explained on the same ground as so much else in Jeremiah, by the influence of Hosea. The allusion in ver. 3 suits Hosea's own day more than Jeremiah's. Nor can I understand what Professor Cheyne means by this: "The spirituality of the tone of vers. 1-3 is indeed surprising (contrast the picture in Hos. v. 6)." Spirituality surprising in the book that contains "I will have love and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God rather than burnt-offerings"! The verse, v. 6, he would contrast with xiv. 1-3 is actually one in which Hosea says that when they go "with flocks and herds" Israel shall not find God! He says that "to understand Hosea aright we must omit it" (i.e. the whole epilogue). But after the argument I have given above it will be plain that if we "understand Hosea aright" we have every reason not "to omit it." His last contention, that "to have added anything to the stern warning in xiii. 16 would have robbed it of half its force," is fully met by the considerations stated above on p. 310.