_Flower Garden and Greenhouse._--Close attention must be paid to
protecting all tender plants, for it is not uncommon to have the care
of a whole year spoiled by one night's neglect. Vigilance and extra
hot fires will have to be kept up when the thermometer falls to 34
deg. or 35 deg. in the parlour or conservatory. It is well to set the
plants under the benches or on the walks of the greenhouses; if they
are in the parlour move them away from the cold point and protect them
with paper; this will usually save them even if the thermometer falls
to 24 deg. or 26 deg. Another plan in the greenhouse is to dash water
on the pipes or flues, which causes steam to rise to the glass and
freeze there, stopping up all the crevices. With plants outside that
require strawing up or to be mulched, this will have now to be
finished.
_Fruit Garden._--In sections where it is an advantage to protect grape
vines, raspberries, &c., from severe frost, these should be laid down
as close to the ground as possible, and covered with leaves, straw or
hay, or with a few inches of soil. Grapes may be pruned. Fruit trees
may be pruned from now till March in the north.
_Vegetable Garden._--Celery in trenches should receive the final
covering for the winter, which is best done by leaves or light stable
litter; in the latitude of New York it should not be less than 12 in.
thick. Potatoes, beets, turnips or other roots in pits, the spinach
crop in the ground, or any other article in need of protection, should
be attended to before the end of the month; manure and compost heaps
should be forwarded as rapidly as possible, and turned and mixed so as
to be in proper condition for spring. Remove the snow that accumulates
on cold frames or other glass structures, particularly if the soil
which the glass covers was not frozen before the snow fell; it may
remain on the sashes longer if the plants are frozen in, since they
are dormant, and would not be injured if deprived of light for eight
or ten days. If roots have been placed in cellars, attention must be
given to ventilation, which can be done by making a wooden box, say 6
by 8 in., to run from the ceiling of the cellar to the eaves of the
building above. (L. H. B.; P. H.)
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF MODERN WORKS ON HORTICULTURE.--W. Robinson, _Alpine
Flowers_; Lord Redesdale (A. B. Freeman Mitford), _The Bamboo Garden_;
J. Weathers, _Bulbous Plants_ (33 col. plates); H. H. Cousins,
_Chemistry of the Garden_; W. Watson, _Cactus Culture for Amateurs_;
R. P. Brotherston and M. R. Smith, _Book of the Carnation_; J.
Weathers, _Cottage and Allotment Gardening_; J. Veitch and Sons,
_Manual of Coniferae_; W. Wells, _Culture of the Chrysanthemum_; Rev.
S. E. Bourne, _Book of the Daffodil_; Geo. Nicholson, _Dictionary of
Gardening_ (5 vols.); W. Robinson, _The English Flower Garden_; Geo.
Schneider, _Book of Choice Ferns_ (3 vols.); W. Robinson, _Flora and
Sylva_ (3 vols.; col. plates by the late H. G. Moon); J. Weathers,
_Flowering Trees and Shrubs_ (33 col. plates); J. Weathers, _French
Market-Gardening and Intensive Cultivation_; T. Smith, _French
Gardening_; Geo. Bunyard and O. Thomas, _The Fruit Garden_; Josh.
Brace, Fruit Trees in Pots; Dr R. Hogg, The Fruit Manual; M. C. Cooke,
_Fungoid Pests of Cultivated Plants_; Thos. H. Mawson, _The Art and
Craft of Garden-Making_; J. Weathers, _A Practical Guide to Garden
Plants_; W. Watson, _The Gardeners' Assistant_; C. H. Wright and D.
Dewar, _The Gardeners' Dictionary_; J. Weathers, _Garden Flowers for
Town and Country_ (33 col. plates); Chas. Baltet, _The Art of Grafting
and Budding_; W. Thomson, _The Grape Vine_; Thos. Baines, _Greenhouse
and Stove Plants_; R. Irwin Lynch, _The Book of the Iris_; G. Jekyll,
_Lilies for English Gardens_; E. A. Ormerod, _Manual of Injurious
Insects_; Dr A. B. Griffiths, _Manures for Fruit and other Trees_; F.
W. Burbridge and J. G. Baker, _The Narcissus_ (48 col. plates); H. A.
Burberry, _The Orchid Cultivator's Handbook_; B. S. Williams, _The
Orchid Grower's Manual_; J. Veitch & Sons, _Manual of Orchidaceous
Plants_; Dr Paul Sorauer and F. E. Weiss, _Physiology of Plants_; W.
Watson, _Orchids, their Culture and Management_; G. Massee, _Plant
Diseases_; Rev. A. Foster-Melliar, _Book of the Rose_; Wm. Paul, _The
Rose Garden_ (20 col. plates); G. Jekyll and E. Mawley, _Roses for
English Gardens_; J. Weathers, _Roses for Garden and Greenhouse_ (33
col. plates); _Nat. Rose Society, Handbook on Pruning Roses_; Rev. J.
H. Pemberton, _Roses, their History, Development and Culture_; Very
Rev. Dean Hole, _A Book about Roses_; J. Hoffmann, _The Amateur
Gardener's Rose Book_ (20 col. plates; translated from the German); A.
Gaut, _Seaside Planting of Trees and Shrubs_; E. Beckett, _Book of the
Strawberry_; W. Iggulden, _The Tomato_; J. Weathers, _Trees and Shrubs
for English and Irish Gardens_ (33 col. plates); Vilmorin et Cie.,
_The Vegetable Garden_ (Eng. ed. by W. Robinson); A. F. Barron, _Vines
and Vine Culture_; G. Jekyll, _Wall and Water Gardens_; W. Robinson,
_The Wild Garden_; L. H. Bailey, _Practical Garden Book_ (New York,
1908). (J. Ws.; W. R. W.)
HORTON, CHRISTIANA (c. 1696-c. 1756), English actress, first appeared in
London as Melinda in _The Recruiting Officer_ in 1714 at Drury Lane.
Here she remained twenty years, followed by fifteen at Covent Garden. At
both houses during this long career she played all the leading tragedy
and comedy parts, and Barton Booth (who "discovered" her) said she was
the best successor of Mrs. Oldfield. She was the original Mariana in
Fielding's _Miser_ (1733).
HORTON, ROBERT FORMAN (1855- ), British Nonconformist divine, was born
in London on the 18th of September 1855. He was educated at Shrewsbury
school and New College, Oxford, where he took first classes in classics.
He was president of the Oxford Union in 1877. He became a fellow of his
college in 1879, and lectured on history for four years. In 1880 he
accepted an influential invitation to become pastor of the Lyndhurst
Road Congregational church, Hampstead, and subsequently took a very
prominent part in church and denominational work generally. He delivered
the Lyman Beecher lectures at Yale in 1893; in 1898 he was chairman of
the London Congregational Union; and in 1903 of the Congregational Union
of England and Wales. In 1909 he took a prominent part in the 75th
anniversary celebration of Hartford Theological Seminary. His numerous
publications include books on theological, critical, historical,
biographical and devotional subjects.
HORTON, SAMUEL DANA (1844-1895), American writer on bimetallism, was
born in Pomeroy, Ohio, on the 16th of January 1844. He graduated at
Harvard in 1864, and at the Harvard Law School in 1868, studied Roman
law in Berlin in 1869, and in 1871 was admitted to the Ohio bar. He
practised law in Cincinnati, and then in Pomeroy until 1885, when he
gave up law for the advancement of bimetallism. His attention had been
turned to monetary questions by the "greenback campaign" of 1875 in
Ohio, in which, as in former campaigns, he had spoken, particularly
effectively in German, for the Republican party. He was secretary of the
American delegation to the Monetary Conference which met in Paris in
1878, and edited the report of the delegation. To the conference of 1881
he was a delegate, and thereafter he spent much of his time in Europe,
whither he was sent by President Harrison in 1889 as special
commissioner to promote the international restoration of silver. He died
in Washington, D.C., on the 23rd of February 1895. Horton's principal
works were _The Silver Pound_ (1887) and _Silver in Europe_ (1890), a
volume of essays.
HORUS (Egyptian _Hor_), the name of an Egyptian god, if not of several
distinct gods. To all forms of Horus the falcon was sacred; the name
Hor, written with a standing figure of that bird, [Hieroglyph] is
connected with a root signifying "upper," and probably means "the
high-flyer." The tame sacred falcon on its perch [Hieroglyph] is the
commonest symbol of divinity in early hieroglyphic writing; the
commonest title of the king in the earliest dynasties, and his first
title later, was that which named him Horus. Hawk gods were the
presiding deities of Poi (Pe) and Nekhen, which had been the royal
quarters in the capitals of the two primeval kingdoms of Upper and Lower
Egypt, at Buto and opposite El Kab. A principal festival in very early
times was the "worship of Horus," and the kings of the prehistoric
dynasties were afterwards called "the worshippers of Horus." The
Northern Kingdom in particular was under the patronage of Horus. He was
a solar divinity, but appears very early in the Osiris cycle of deities,
a son of Isis and probably of Osiris, and opponent of Seth. On monuments
of the Middle Kingdom or somewhat later we find besides Hor the
following special forms: Har-behtet, i.e. Hor of Beht, the winged solar
disk, god of Edfu (_Apollinopolis Magna_); Har-khentekthai, god of
Athribis; Har-mesen (whose principal sacred animal was a lion), god of
the Sethroite (?) nome; Har-khentemna, i.e. the blind (?) Horus (with a
shrew-mouse) at Letopolis; Har-mert ("of two eyes") at Pharbaethus;
Har-akht, Ra-har-akht, or Har-m-akhi (Harikakhis, "Hor of the horizon"),
the sun-god of Heliopolis.
As a sun-god Horus not only worsted the hostile darkness and avenged his
father, but also daily renewed himself. He was thus identical with his
own father from one point of view. In the mythology, especially that of
the New Kingdom, or of quite late times, we find the following standing
epithets applied to more or less distinct forms or phases: Harendotes
(Har-ent-yotf), i.e. "Hor, avenger of his father (Osiris)"; Harpokhrates
(Har-p-khrat), i.e. "Hor the child," with finger in mouth, sometimes
seated on a lotus-flower; Harsiesis (Har-si-Esi), i.e. "Hor, son of
Isis," as a child; Har-en-khebi, "Hor in Chemmis," a child nursed by
Isis in the papyrus marshes; Haroeris (Har-uer), i.e. "the elder Hor,"
at Ombos, &c., human-headed or falcon-headed; Harsemteus (Har-sem-teu),
i.e. "Hor, uniter of the two lands," and others.
In the judgment scene Horus introduces the deceased to Osiris. To the
Greeks Horus was equivalent to Apollo, but in the name of Hermopolis
Parva (see DAMANHUR), which must have been among the first of the
Egyptian cities to be known to them, he was apparently identified with
Hermes. Although the falcon was the bird most properly sacred to Horus,
not only its varieties, but also the sparrow-hawk, kestrel and other
small hawks were mummified in his honour in late times.
See EGYPT: section _Religion_; Meyer, art. "Horos" in Roscher,
_Lexicon der Griech. und Rom. Mythologie_. (F. Ll. G.)
HORWICH, an urban district in the Westhoughton parliamentary division of
Lancashire, England, 4 m. W.N.W. of Bolton, on the Lancashire and
Yorkshire railway. Pop. (1901) 15,084. It lies beneath the considerable
elevation of Rivington Pike, where formerly was a great forest. It has
extensive locomotive works, and there are large stone quarries in the
district. Bleaching and cotton-spinning and the manufacture of
fire-bricks and tiles are carried on.
HOSANNA, the cry of praise or adoration shouted in recognition of the
Messiahship of Jesus on his entry into Jerusalem (Matt. xxi. 9, 15; Mark
xi. 9 sq.; John xii. 13), and since used in the Christian Church. It is
also a Jewish liturgical term, and was applied specifically to the
"hosanna" branches carried in procession in the Feast of Booths or
Tabernacles, the seventh day of which was called the Hosanna-day (so
also in Syrian usage; cf. "Palm" Sunday). This festival (for which see
Lev. xxiii. 39 sqq.; 2 Macc. x. 7; Jos. _Ant._ xii. 10. 4, xiii. 13. 15;
and the Talmudic tractate _Sukkah_) already suggested a Dionysiac
celebration to Plutarch (_Symp._ iv. 6), and was associated with a
ceremonial drawing of water which, it was believed, secured fertilizing
rains in the following year; the penalty for abstinence was drought (cf.
Zech. xiv. 16 seq.). The evidence (see further _Ency. Bib._ cols. 3354,
4880 seq.; I. Levy, _Rev. des Et. juives_, 1901, pp. 192 sqq.) points to
rites of nature-worship, and it is possible that in these the term
Hosanna had some other application.
The old interpretation "save, now!" which may be a popular etymology,
is based on Ps. cxviii. 25 (Heb. _hoshi'ah-nna_), but this does not
explain the occurrence of the word in the Gospels, a complicated
problem, on which see the articles of J. H. Thayer in Hastings's
_Dict. Bib._, and more especially T. K. Cheyne, _Ency. Bib._ s.v.
HOSE (a word common to many Teutonic languages; cf. Dutch, _hoos_,
stocking, Ger. _Hose_, breeches, tights; the ultimate origin is
unknown), the name of an article of dress, used as a covering for the
leg and foot. The word has been used for various forms of a long
stocking covering both the foot and leg (see HOSIERY), and this is the
usual modern sense. But it also formerly meant a kind of gaiter covering
the leg from the knee to the ankle only, of the long tight covering for
the whole of the lower limbs, and later of the short puffed or slashed
breeches worn with the doublet--at this period, from the early part of
the 16th century onwards, comes the distinction between the "hose" or
"trunk hose" and the stocking (see COSTUME). The term is applied to
certain objects resembling such a covering, as in its application to
flexible rubber or canvas piping used for conveying water (see
HOSEPIPE), and in botany, to the "sheath" covering, e.g. the ear of
corn. The term "hose-in-hose" is thus used in botany for a flower in
which the corolla has become doubled, as though a second were inserted
in the throat of the first; it occurs sometimes in the primrose.
HOSEA, the son of Beeri, the first in order of the minor prophets of the
Old Testament. The name Hosea ([Hebrew: Hoshea], LXX. [Greek:, Osee],
Vulg. _Osee_, and so the English version in Rom. ix. 25) ought rather to
be written Hoshea, and is identical with that borne by the last king of
Ephraim, and by Joshua in Num. xiii. 16, Deut. xxxii. 44. Of the life of
Hosea[1] we know nothing beyond what can be gathered from his
prophecies. That he was a citizen of the northern kingdom appears from
the whole tenor of the book, but most expressly from i. 2, where "the
land," the prophet's land, is the realm of Israel, and vii. 5, where
"our king" is the king of Samaria. The date at which Hosea flourished is
given in the title, i. 1, by the reigning kings of Judah and Israel. He
prophesied (i) in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings
of Judah; (2) in the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel.
The dates indicated by the title, which may be regarded as editorial,
are, for the four kings of the southern kingdom, 789-740, 739-734,
733-721 and 720-693 B.C. respectively; and, for Jeroboam II., 782-743
(cf. _Ency. Bib._ col. 797-798). The book itself, however, plainly
belongs to the period prior to 734 B.C. since, in that year, (a) the
Syro-Ephraimitic war began, to which there is here no reference, nor is
Assyria yet the open foe it then became; (b) Gilead became
Tiglath-Pileser's (2 Kings xv. 29), whereas it is here described as
still part of the territory of Israel (vi. 8; xii. 11; cf. the included
place-names of v. 1). On the other hand, the prophet connects with the
birth of his eldest child the approaching fall of the house of Jehu (i.
4), thus anticipating the death of Jeroboam II. in 743, and the period
of anarchy which followed (2 Kings xv.). Thus the prophetic work of
Hosea may be dated, with practical certainty, as beginning from some
point previous to 743 and extending not later than 734.[2] This is
corroborated by the general character of the book. Of its two parts,
i.-iii. reflects the wealth and prosperity of the reign of Jeroboam II.,
whilst iv.-xiv. contains frequent references to the social disorder and
anarchy of the subsequent years.
The first part of Hosea's prophetic work, corresponding to chs. i.-iii.,
lay in the years of external prosperity immediately preceding the
catastrophe of the house of Jehu in or near the year 743. The second
part of the book is a summary of prophetic teaching during the
subsequent troublous reign of Menahem, and, perhaps, that of his
successor, Pekahiah, and must have been completed before 734 B.C. Apart
from the narrative in chs. i.-iii., to which we shall presently recur,
the book throws little or no light on the details of Hosea's life. It
appears from ix. 7, 8, that his prophetic work was greatly embarrassed
by opposition: "As for the prophet, a fowler's snare is in all his ways,
and enmity in the house of his God." The enmity which had its centre in
the sanctuary probably proceeded from the priests (comp. Amos vii.),
against whose profligacy and profanation of their office our prophet
frequently declaims--perhaps also from the degenerate prophetic gilds
which had their seats in the holy cities of the northern kingdom, and
with whom Hosea's elder contemporary Amos so indignantly refuses to be
identified (Amos vii. 14). In ch. iv. 5 Hosea seems to comprise priests
and prophets in one condemnation, thus placing himself in direct
antagonism to all the leaders of the religious life of his nation. He is
not less antagonistic to the kings and princes of his day (vii. 3-7,
viii. 4, viii. 10 Septuagint, x. 7-15, xiii. 11).[3] In view of the
familiarity shown with the intrigues of rulers and the doings of
priests, it has been conjectured that Hosea held a prominent position,
or even (by Duhm) that he was himself a priest (Marti, p. 2).
The most interesting problem of Hosea's history lies in the
interpretation of the story of his married life (chs. i.-iii.). We read
in these chapters that God's revelation to Hosea began when in
accordance with a divine command he married a profligate wife, Gomer,
the daughter of Diblaim. Three children were born in this marriage and
received symbolical names, illustrative of the divine purpose towards
Israel, which are expounded in ch. i. In ch. ii. the faithlessness of
Israel to Jehovah (Yahweh), the long-suffering of God, the moral
discipline of sorrow and tribulation by which He will yet bring back His
erring people and betroth it to Himself for ever in righteousness, love
and truth, are depicted under the figure of the relation of a husband to
an erring spouse. The suggestion of this allegory lies in the prophet's
marriage with Gomer, but the details are worked out quite independently,
and under a rich multiplicity of figures derived from other sources. In
the third chapter we return to the personal experience of the prophet.
His faithless wife had at length left him and fallen, under
circumstances which are not detailed, into a state of misery, from which
Hosea, still following her with tender affection, and encouraged by a
divine command, brought her back and restored her to his house, where he
kept her in seclusion, and patiently watched over her for many days, yet
not readmitting her to the privileges of a wife.
In these experiences the prophet again recognizes a parallel to Yahweh's
long-suffering love to Israel, and the discipline by which the people
shall be brought back to God through a period in which all their
political and religious institutions are overthrown. Throughout these
chapters personal narrative and prophetic allegory are interwoven with a
rapidity of transition very puzzling to the modern reader; but an
unbiassed exegesis can hardly fail to acknowledge that chs. i. and iii.
narrate an actual passage in the prophet's life. The names of the three
children are symbolical, but Isaiah in like manner gave symbolical names
to his sons, embodying prominent points in his prophetic teaching
(Shear-jashub, Isa. vii. 3, comp. x. 21; Maher-shalal-hash-baz, viii.
3). And the name of Gomer bath Diblaim is certainly that of an actual
person, upon which all the allegorists, from the Targum, Jerome and
Ephraem Syrus downwards, have spent their arts in vain, whereas the true
symbolical names in the book are perfectly easy of interpretation.[4]
That the ancient interpreters take the whole narrative as a mere parable
is no more than an application of their standing rule that everything in
the Biblical history is allegorical which in its literal sense appears
offensive to propriety (comp. Jerome's proem to the book). But the
supposed offence to propriety seems to rest on mistaken exegesis and too
narrow a conception of the way in which the Divine word was communicated
to the prophets.[5] There is no reason to suppose that Hosea knowingly
married a woman of profligate character. The point of the allegory in i.
2 is plainly infidelity after marriage as a parallel to Israel's
departure from the covenant God, and a profligate wife ([Hebrew: eshet
znunim]) is not the same thing with an open prostitute ([Hebrew:
zonna]). The marriage was marred by Gomer's infidelity; and the struggle
of Hosea's affection for his wife with this great unhappiness--a
struggle inconceivable unless his first love had been pure and full of
trust in the purity of its object--furnished him with a new insight into
Yahweh's dealings with Israel. Then he recognized that the great
calamity of his life was God's own ordinance and appointed means to
communicate to him a deep prophetic lesson. The recognition of a divine
command after the fact has its parallel, as Wellhausen observes, in Jer.
xxxii. 8.
It was in the experiences of his married life, and in the spiritual
lessons opened to him through these, that Hosea first heard the
revealing voice of Yahweh (i. 2).[6] Like Amos (Amos iii. 8), he was
called to speak for God by an inward constraining voice, and there is
no reason to think that he had any connexion with the recognized
prophetic societies, or ever received such outward adoption to office as
was given to Elisha. His position in Israel was one of tragic isolation.
Amos, when he had discharged his mission at Bethel, could return to his
home and to his friends; Hosea was a stranger among his own people, and
his home was full of sorrow and shame. Isaiah in the gloomiest days of
Judah's declensions had faithful disciples about him, and knew that
there was a believing remnant in the land. Hosea knows no such remnant,
and there is not a line in his prophecy from which we can conclude that
his words ever found an obedient ear.
As already stated, this prophecy falls into two clearly distinguished
sections,[7] the former (i.-iii.), already dealt with, accounting for
the general standpoint of the latter (iv.-xiv.). It is not possible to
make any convincing subdivisions of this latter section (cf. G. A.
Smith, i. p. 223) which is best regarded as a series of separate
discourses on certain recurrent topics, viz. (a) the cultus, (b) the
social disorder and immorality, (c) political tendencies (alliance with
either Assyria or Egypt sought).[8] In regard to each of these topics,
the attitude of the prophet involves the discernment of present guilt,
and the assertion of future punishment. For him the present condition of
the people contained no germ or pledge of future amendment, and he
describes the impending judgment, not as a sifting process (Amos ix. 9,
10) in which the wicked perish and the righteous remain, but as the
total wreck of the nation which has wholly turned aside from its God. In
truth, while the idolatrous feasts of Ephraim still ran their joyous
round, while the careless people crowded to the high places, and there
in unbridled and licentious mirth flattered themselves that their many
sacrifices ensured the help of their God against all calamity, the
nation was already in the last stage of internal dissolution. To the
prophet's eye there was "no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God in
the land--nought but swearing, and lying, and killing, and stealing and
adultery; they break out, and blood toucheth blood" (iv. 1, 2). The root
of this corruption lay in total ignorance of Yahweh, whose precepts were
no longer taught by the priests, while in the national calf-worship, and
in the local high places, this worship was confounded with the service
of the Canaanite Baalim. Thus the whole religious constitution of Israel
was undermined. And the political state of the realm was in Hosea's eyes
not more hopeful. The dynasty of Jehu, still great and powerful when the
prophet's labours began, is itself an incorporation of national sin.
Founded on the bloodshed of Jezreel, it must fall by God's vengeance,
and the state shall fall with it (i. 4, iii. 4). This sentence stands at
the head of Hosea's predictions, and throughout the book the civil
constitution of Ephraim is represented as equally lawless and godless
with the corrupt religious establishment. The anarchy that followed on
the murder of Zachariah appears to the prophet as the natural decadence
of a realm not founded on divine ordinance. The nation had rejected
Yahweh, the only helper. And now the avenging Assyrian[9] is at hand.
Samaria's king shall pass away as foam on the water. Fortress and city
shall fall before the ruthless invader, who spares neither age nor sex,
and thistles shall cover the desolate altars of Ephraim.
In our present book of Hosea, this condemnatory judgment on
contemporary Israel culminates in a chapter of appeal for penitence,
with promise of divine forgiveness. The question of the authenticity
of this and of other "restoration" passages[10] forms the chief
problem for literary criticism presented by the book.[11] Amongst the
more recent commentators, Davidson, G. A. Smith and Nowack regard
Hosea xiv. as written by the prophet, though the second admits its
chronological misplacement and the third its later expansion. On the
other hand, it is altogether rejected by Cheyne, Wellhausen, Marti and
Harper. These claim that the passage reflects the later standpoint of
completed punishment, and is therefore inconsistent in the prophet who
anticipates that punishment. But the case is different from that of
the epilogue to Amos, since Hosea's personal experience covers
forgiveness as well as discipline (Marti consistently, though without
ground, rejects this experience also). There seems, therefore, to be
no sufficient evidence for denying thoughts of restoration to Hosea,
whilst it is highly probable that such passages would be amplified in
a later age. Indeed, the importance of these passages for the
interpretation of Hosea is apt to be overrated, for, as one of those
rejecting them remarks, though Hosea "promised nothing," yet he
"contributed a conception of Yahweh which made such a future not only
possible but even probable" (Harper, p. cliii.). We may therefore read
the closing chapter as, at least, the explicit statement of a hope
implicit in Hosea's teaching.
Hosea could discern no faithful remnant in Ephraim, yet Ephraim in all
his corruption is the son of Yahweh, a child nurtured with tender love,
a chosen people, whose past history declares in every episode the
watchful and patient affection of his father. And that father is God and
not man, the Holy One who will not and cannot sacrifice His love even to
the justest indignation (chap. xi.). To the prophet who knows this love
of Yahweh, who has learned to understand it in the like experience of
his own life, the very ruin of the state of Israel is a step in the
loving guidance which makes the valley of trouble a door of hope (ii.
15), and the wilderness of tribulation as full of promise as the desert
road from Egypt to Canaan was to Israel of old. Of the manner of
Israel's repentance and conversion Hosea presents no clear image--nay,
it is plain that on this point he had nothing to tell. The certainty
that the people will at length return and seek Yahweh their God rests,
not on any germ of better things in Israel, but on the invincible
supremacy of Yahweh's love. And so the two sides of his prophetic
declaration, the passionate denunciation of Israel's sin and folly, and
the not less passionate tenderness with which he describes the final
victory of divine love, are united by no logical bond. The unity is one
of feeling only, and the sob of anguish in which many of his appeals to
a heedless people seem to end turns once and again with sudden revulsion
into the clear accents of evangelical promise, which in the closing
chapter swell forth in pure and strong cadence out of a heart that has
found its rest with God from all the troubles of a stormy life.
The strongly emotional temperament of Hosea suggests comparison with
that of Jeremiah, who like himself is the prophet of the decline and
fall of a kingdom. The subsequent influence of Hosea on the literature
of the Old and New Testaments is very marked. Not only is it seen in the
conception of the relation between God and His people as a marriage,
which he makes current coin (cf. Marti, p. 15), but still more in the
fact that his conception of the divine character becomes the inspiration
of the book of Deuteronomy and so of the whole canon of Scripture. "In a
special degree, the author of Deuteronomy is the spiritual heir of
Hosea."[12]
RECENT LITERATURE (where references to older works will be found):
Cheyne, "Hosea" in _Cambridge Bible_ (1884); W. R. Smith, _The
Prophets of Israel_,^2 with Cheyne's introduction (1895); G. A. Smith,
"The Book of the Twelve," i., in _The Expositor's Bible_ (1896);
Nowack, _Die Kleinen Propheten_ (1897); Wellhausen, _Die Kleinen
Propheten_^3 (1898); Smend, _Alttest. Religionsgeschichte_,^2 pp. 204
f. (1899); Davidson, art. "Hosea" in Hastings' _Dictionary of the
Bible_, ii. pp. 419 f. (1900); Marti, art. "Hosea" in _Ency.
Biblica_, ii. c. 2119 (1901) (a revision of the original article by
W. R. Smith, in the _Ency. Britannica_, partially reproduced above);
Marti, _Dodekapropheton_ (1903); W. R. Harper, "Amos and Hosea" in
_Inter. Critical Commentary_ (1905) (with copious bibliography).
(W. R. S.; H. W. R.*)