_THE THICK NIGHT OF ISRAEL_
HOSEA iv.-xiv.
It was indeed "thick night" into which this Arthur of Israel stepped
from his shattered home. The mists drive across Hosea's long agony
with his people, and what we see, we see blurred and broken. There
is stumbling and clashing; crowds in drift; confused rallies; gangs
of assassins breaking across the highways; doors opening upon lurid
interiors full of drunken riot. Voices, which other voices mock, cry
for a dawn that never comes. God Himself is Laughter, Lightning,
a Lion, a Gnawing Worm. Only one clear note breaks over the
confusion--the trumpet summoning to war.
Take courage, O great heart! Not thus shall it always be! There wait
thee, before the end, of open Visions at least two--one of Memory and
one of Hope, one of Childhood and one of Spring. Past this night,
past the swamp and jungle of these fetid years, thou shalt see thy
land in her beauty, and God shall look on the face of His Bride.
* * * * *
Chaps, iv.-xiv. are almost indivisible. The two Visions just
mentioned, chaps. xi. and xiv. 3-9, may be detached by virtue of
contributing the only strains of gospel which rise victorious above
the Lord's controversy with His people and the troubled story of
their sins. All the rest is the noise of a nation falling to pieces,
the crumbling of a splendid past. And as decay has no climax and ruin
no rhythm, so we may understand why it is impossible to divide with
any certainty Hosea's record of Israel's fall. Some arrangement we
must attempt, but it is more or less artificial, and to be undertaken
for the sake of our own minds, that cannot grasp so great a collapse
all at once. Chap. iv. has a certain unity, and is followed by a new
exordium, but as it forms only the theme of which the subsequent
chapters are variations, we may take it with them as far as chap.
vii., ver. 7; after which there is a slight transition from the
moral signs of Israel's dissolution to the political--although Hosea
still combines the religious offence of idolatry with the anarchy
of the land. These form the chief interest to the end of chap. x.
Then breaks the bright Vision of the Past, chap. xi., the temporary
victory of the Gospel of the Prophet over his Curse. In chaps.
xii.-xiv. 2 we are plunged into the latter once more, and reach in
xiv. 3 ff. the second bright Vision, the Vision of the Future. To
each of these phases of Israel's Thick Night--we can hardly call them
Sections--we may devote a chapter of simple exposition, adding three
chapters more of detailed examination of the main doctrines we shall
have encountered on our way--the Knowledge of God, Repentance, and
the Sin against Love.