_A PEOPLE IN DECAY: 1. MORALLY_
HOSEA iv.-vii 7.
Pursuing the plan laid down in the last chapter, we now take the
section of Hosea's discourse which lies between chap. iv. 1 and
chap. vii. 7. Chap. iv. is the only really separable bit of it; but
there are also slight breaks at v. 15 and vii. 2. So we may attempt
a division into four periods: 1. Chap. iv., which states God's
general charge against the people; 2. Chap. v. 1-14, which discusses
the priests and princes; 3. Chaps. v. 15-vii. 2, which abjures the
people's attempts at repentance; and 4. Chap. vii. 3-7, which is a
lurid spectacle of the drunken and profligate court. All these give
symptoms of the moral decay of the people,--the family destroyed by
impurity, and society by theft and murder; the corruption of the
spiritual guides of the people; the debauchery of the nobles; the
sympathy of the throne with evil,--with the despairing judgment that
such a people are incapable even of repentance. The keynotes are
these: _No troth, leal love, nor knowledge of God in the land. Priest
and Prophet stumble. Ephraim and Judah stumble. I am as the moth to
Ephraim. What can I make of thee, Ephraim? When I would heal them,
their guilt is only the more exposed._ Morally, Israel is rotten.
The prophet, of course, cannot help adding signs of their political
incoherence. But these he deals with more especially in the part of
his discourse which follows chap. vii. 7.
1. THE LORD'S QUARREL WITH ISRAEL.
HOSEA iv.
_Hear the word of Jehovah, sons of Israel!_[495] _Jehovah hath a
quarrel with the inhabitants of the land, for there is no troth nor
leal love nor knowledge of God in the land. Perjury_[496] _and murder
and theft and adultery!_[497] _They break out, and blood strikes upon
blood._
That stable and well-furnished life, across which, while it was still
noon, Amos hurled his alarms--how quickly it has broken up! If there
be still _ease in Zion_, there is no more _security in Samaria_.[498]
The great Jeroboam is dead, and society, which in the East depends
so much on the individual, is loose and falling to pieces. The sins
which are exposed by Amos were those that lurked beneath a still
strong government, but Hosea adds outbreaks which set all order at
defiance. Later we shall find him describing housebreaking, highway
robbery and assassination. _Therefore doth the land wither, and every
one of her denizens languisheth, even to the beast of the field and
the fowl of the heaven; yea, even the fish of the sea are swept up_
in the universal sickness of man and nature: for Hosea feels, like
Amos, the liability of nature to the curse upon sin.
Yet the guilt is not that of the whole people, but of their
religious guides. _Let none find fault and none upbraid, for My
people are but as their priestlings._[499] _O Priest, thou hast
stumbled to-day: and stumble to-night shall the prophet with thee._
One order of the nation's ministers goes staggering after the other!
_And I will destroy thy Mother_, presumably the Nation herself.
_Perished are My people for lack of knowledge._ But how? By the
sin of their teachers. _Because thou_, O Priest, _hast rejected
knowledge, I reject thee from being priest to Me; and as thou hast
forgotten the Torah of thy God, I forget thy children_[500]--_I on
My side. As many as they be, so many have sinned against Me._ Every
jack-priest of them is culpable. _They have turned_[501] _their glory
into shame. They feed on the sin of My people, and to the guilt of
these lift up their appetite!_ The more the people sin, the more
merrily thrive the priests by fines and sin-offerings. They live
upon the vice of the day, and have a vested interest in its crimes.
English Langland said the same thing of the friars of his time. The
contention is obvious. The priests have given themselves wholly to
the ritual; they have forgotten that their office is an intellectual
and moral one. We shall return to this when treating of Hosea's
doctrine of knowledge and its responsibilities. Priesthood, let us
only remember, priesthood is an intellectual trust.
_Thus it comes to be--like people like priest_: they also have fallen
under the ritual, doing from lust what the priests do from greed.
_But I will visit upon them their ways, and their deeds will I
requite to them. For they_--those _shall eat and not be satisfied_,
these _shall play the harlot and have no increase, because they have
left off heeding Jehovah_. This absorption in ritual at the expense
of the moral and intellectual elements of religion has insensibly
led them over into idolatry, with all its unchaste and drunken
services. _Harlotry, wine and new wine take away the brains!_[502]
The result is seen in the stupidity with which they consult their
stocks for guidance. _My people! of its bit of wood it asketh
counsel, and its staff telleth to it_ the oracle! _For a spirit of
harlotry hath led them astray, and they have played the harlot from
their God. Upon the headlands of the hills they sacrifice, and on
the heights offer incense, under oak or poplar or terebinth, for
the shade of them is pleasant._ On _headlands_, not summits, for
here no trees grow; and the altar was generally built under a tree
and near water on some promontory, from which the flight of birds
or of clouds might be watched. _Wherefore_--because of this your
frequenting of the heathen shrines--_your daughters play the harlot
and your daughters-in-law commit adultery. I will not come with
punishment upon your daughters because they play the harlot, nor
upon your daughters-in-law because they commit adultery._ Why? For
_they themselves_, the fathers of Israel--or does he still mean the
priests?--_go aside with the harlots and sacrifice with the common
women of the shrines_! It is vain for the men of a nation to practise
impurity, and fancy that nevertheless they can keep their womankind
chaste. _So the stupid people fall to ruin!_
(_Though thou play the harlot, Israel, let not Judah bring guilt on
herself. And come not to Gilgal, and go not up to Beth-Aven, and take
not your oath_ at the Well-of-the-Oath, Beer-Sheba,[503] _By the life
of Jehovah!_ This obvious parenthesis may be either by Hosea or a
later writer; the latter is more probable.[504])
_Yea, like a wild heifer Israel has gone wild. How now can Jehovah
feed them like a lamb in a broad meadow?_ To treat this clause
interrogatively is the only way to get sense out of it.[505]
_Wedded to idols is Ephraim: leave him alone._ The participle means
_mated_ or _leagued_. The corresponding noun is used of a wife as
the _mate_ of her husband[506] and of an idolater as the _mate_ of
his idols.[507] The expression is doubly appropriate here, since
Hosea used marriage as the figure of the relation of a deity to his
worshippers. _Leave him alone_--he must go from bad to worse. _Their
drunkenness over, they take to harlotry: her rulers have fallen in
love with shame, or they love shame more than their pride._[508] But
in spite of all their servile worship the Assyrian tempest shall
sweep them away in its trail. _A wind hath wrapt them up in her
skirts; and they shall be put to shame by their sacrifices._
This brings the passage to such a climax as Amos loved to crown his
periods. And the opening of the next chapter offers a new exordium.
2. PRIESTS AND PRINCES FAIL.
HOSEA v. 1-14.
The line followed in this paragraph is almost parallel to that of chap.
iv., running out to a prospect of invasion. But the charge is directed
solely against the chiefs of the people, and the strictures of chap.
vii. 7 ff. upon the political folly of the rulers are anticipated.
_Hear this, O Priests, and hearken, House of Israel, and, House
of the King, give ear. For on you is the sentence!_ You, who have
hitherto been the judges, this time shall be judged.
_A snare have ye become at Mizpeh, and a net spread out upon Tabor,
and a pit have they made deep upon Shittim;_[509] _but I shall be
the scourge of them all. I know Ephraim, and Israel is not hid from
Me--for now hast thou played the harlot, Ephraim, Israel is defiled._
The worship on the high places, whether nominally of Jehovah or not,
was sheer service of Ba'alim. It was in the interest both of the
priesthood and of the rulers to multiply these sanctuaries, but they
were only traps for the people. _Their deeds will not let them return
to their God; for a harlot spirit is in their midst, and Jehovah_, for
all their oaths by Him, _they have not known. But the pride of Israel
shall testify to his face; and Israel and Ephraim shall stumble by
their guilt--stumble also shall Judah with them._ By Israel's pride
many understand God. But the term is used too opprobriously by Amos
to allow us to agree to this. The phrase must mean that Israel's
arrogance, or her proud prosperity, by the wounds which it feels in
this time of national decay, shall itself testify against the people--a
profound ethical symptom to which we shall return when treating of
Repentance.[510] Yet the verse may be rendered in harmony with the
context: _the pride of Israel shall be humbled to his face. With their
sheep and their cattle they go about to seek Jehovah, and shall not
find_ Him; _He hath drawn off from them. They have been unfaithful
to Jehovah, for they have begotten strange children_. A generation
has grown up who are not His. _Now may a month devour them with their
portions!_ Any month may bring the swift invader. Hark! the alarum of
war! How it reaches to the back of the land!
_Blow the trumpet in Gibeah, the clarion in Ramah;_
_Raise the slogan, Beth-Aven: "After thee, Benjamin!"_[511]
_Ephraim shall become desolation in the day of rebuke! Among the
tribes of Israel I have made known what is certain!_
At this point, ver. 10, the discourse swerves from the religious to
the political leaders of Israel; but as the princes were included
with the priests in the exordium (ver. 1), we can hardly count this a
new oracle.[512]
_The princes of Judah are like landmark-removers_--commonest of
cheats in Israel--_upon them will I pour out My wrath like water.
Ephraim is oppressed, crushed is_ his _right, for he wilfully
went after vanity._[513] _And I am as the moth to Ephraim, and as
rottenness to the house of Judah._ Both kingdoms have begun to
fall to pieces, for by this time Uzziah of Judah also is dead, and
the weak politicians are in charge whom Isaiah satirised. _And
Ephraim saw his sickness, and Judah his sore; and Ephraim went
to Asshur and_[514] _sent to King Jareb--King Combative, King
Pick-Quarrel_,[515] a nickname for the Assyrian monarch. The verse
probably refers to the tribute which Menahem sent to Assyria in
738. If so, then Israel has drifted full five years into her "thick
night." _But He cannot heal you, nor dry up your sore. For I_,
Myself, _am like a lion to Ephraim, and like a young lion to the
house of Judah. I, I rend and go My way; I carry off and there is
none to deliver._ It is the same truth which Isaiah expressed with
even greater grimness.[516] God Himself is His people's sore; and not
all their statecraft nor alliances may heal what He inflicts. Priests
and Princes, then, have alike failed. A greater failure is to follow.
3. REPENTANCE FAILS.
HOSEA v. 15-vii. 2.
Seeing that their leaders are so helpless, and feeling their wounds,
the people may themselves turn to God for healing, but that will
be with a repentance so shallow as also to be futile. They have no
conviction of sin, nor appreciation of how deeply their evils have
eaten.
This too facile repentance is expressed in a prayer which the
Christian Church has paraphrased into one of its most beautiful
hymns of conversion. Yet the introduction to this prayer, and its
own easy assurance of how soon God will heal the wounds He has made,
as well as the impatience with which God receives it, oblige us to
take the prayer in another sense than the hymn which has been derived
from it.[517] It offers but one more symptom of the optimism of this
light-hearted people, whom no discipline and no judgment can impress
with the reality of their incurable decay. They said of themselves,
_The bricks are fallen, let us build with stones_,[518] and now they
say just as easily and airily of their God, _He hath torn_ only _that
He may heal_: we are fallen, but _He will raise us up again in a day
or two_. At first it is still God who speaks.
_I am going My way, I am returning to My own place,_[519] _until they
feel their guilt and seek My face. When trouble comes upon them, they
will soon enough seek Me, saying_:[520]--
"_Come and let us return to Jehovah:_
_For He hath rent, that He may heal us,_
_And hath wounded,_[521] _that He may bind us up._
_He will bring us to life in a couple of days;_
_On the third day He will raise us up_ again,
_That we may live in His presence._
_Let us know, let us follow up_[522] _to know, Jehovah;_
_As soon as we seek Him, we shall find Him._[523]
_And He shall come to us like the winter-rain,_
_Like the spring-rain, pouring on the land!_"
But how is this fair prayer received by God? With incredulity, with
impatience. _What can I make of thee, Ephraim? what can I make of thee,
Judah? since your love is like the morning cloud and like the dew so
early gone._ Their shallow hearts need deepening. Have they not been
deepened enough? _Wherefore I have hewn_ them _by the prophets, I have
slain them by the words of My mouth, and My judgment goeth forth like
the lightning._[524] _For leal love have I desired, and not sacrifice;
and the knowledge of God more than burnt-offerings._
That the discourse comes back to the ritual is very intelligible.
For what could make repentance seem so easy as the belief that
forgiveness can be won by simply offering sacrifices? Then the
prophet leaps upon what each new year of that anarchy revealed
afresh--the profound sinfulness of the people.
_But they in human fashion_[525] _have transgressed the covenant!
There_--he will now point out the very spots--_have they
betrayed_[526] _Me! Gilead is a city of evildoers: stamped with
bloody footprints; assassins_[527] _in troops; a gang of priests
murder on the way to Shechem. Yea, crime_[528] _have they done. In
the house of Israel I have seen horrors: there Ephraim hath played
the harlot: Israel is defiled--Judah as well._[529]
Truly the sinfulness of Israel is endless. Every effort to redeem
them only discovers more of it. _When I would turn, when I would
heal Israel, then the guilt of Ephraim displays itself and the evils
of Samaria_, these namely: _that they work fraud, and the thief
cometh in_--evidently a technical term for housebreaking[530]--while
_abroad a crew_ of highwaymen _foray. And they never think in their
hearts that all their evil is recorded by Me. Now have their deeds
encompassed them: they are constantly before Me._
Evidently real repentance on the part of such a people is impossible.
As Hosea said before, _Their deeds will not let them return._[531]
4. WICKEDNESS IN HIGH PLACES.
HOSEA vii. 3-7.
There follows now a very difficult passage. The text is corrupt, and
we have no means of determining what precise events are intended. The
drift of meaning, however, is evident. The disorder and licentiousness
of the people are favoured in high places; the throne itself is guilty.
_With their evil they make a king glad, and princes with their
falsehoods: all of them are adulterers, like an oven heated by the
baker,..._[532]
_On the day of our king_--some coronation or king's birthday--_the
princes were sick with fever from wine. He stretched forth his hand
with loose fellows_,[533] presumably made them his associates.
_Like an oven have they made_[534] _their hearts with their
intriguing._[535] _All night their anger sleepeth:_[536] _in the
morning it blazes like a flame of fire. All of them glow like an
oven, and devour their rulers: all their kings have fallen, without
one of them calling on Me._
An obscure passage upon obscure events; yet so lurid with the
passion of that fevered people in the flagrant years 743-735 that
we can make out the kind of crimes described. A king surrounded by
loose and unscrupulous nobles: adultery, drunkenness, conspiracies,
assassinations: every man striking for himself; none appealing to God.
From the court, then, downwards, by princes, priests and prophets,
to the common fathers of Israel and their households, immorality
prevails. There is no redeeming feature, and no hope of better
things. For repentance itself the capacity is gone.
* * * * *
In making so thorough an indictment of the moral condition of Israel,
it would have been impossible for Hosea not to speak also of the
political stupidity and restlessness which resulted from it. But he
has largely reserved these for that part of his discourse which now
follows, and which we will take in the next chapter.
FOOTNOTES:
[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 ככמריו ועמי,
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.
[504] But see above, p. 224.
[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--וענה בפניו
ישראל גאון (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 (נמצאהו כשחרנו) 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 יֵצֵא כָאוֹר מִשְׁפָּטִי.
[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 לחבת אש. Oort emends Heb. to אפהו
הם בוער, 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!