Chapter XIX: The Final Argument

HOSEA xii.-xiv. 1.

The impassioned call with which last chapter closed was by no means an assurance of salvation: _How am I to give thee up, Ephraim? how am I to let thee go, Israel?_ On the contrary, it was the anguish of Love, when it hovers over its own on the brink of the destruction to which their wilfulness has led them, and before relinquishing them would seek, if possible, some last way to redeem. Surely that fatal morrow and the people's mad leap into it are not inevitable! At least, before they take the leap, let the prophet go back once more upon the moral situation of to-day, go back once more upon the past of the people, and see if he can find anything else to explain that bias to apostasy[612] which has brought them to this fatal brink--anything else which may move them to repentance even there. So in chaps. xii. and xiii. Hosea turns upon the now familiar trail of his argument, full of the Divine jealousy, determined to give the people one other chance to turn; but if they will not, he at least will justify God's relinquishment of them. The chapters throw even a brighter light upon the temper and habits of that generation. They again explore Israel's ancient history for causes of the present decline; and, in especial, they cite the spiritual experience of the Father of the nation, as if to show that what of repentance was possible for him is possible for his posterity also. But once more all hope is seen to be vain; and Hosea's last travail with his obstinate people closes in a doom even more awful than its predecessors.

The division into chapters is probably correct; but while chap. xiii. is well-ordered and clear, the arrangement, and in parts the meaning, of chap. xii. are very obscure.

1. THE PEOPLE AND THEIR FATHER JACOB.

HOSEA xii.

In no part even of the difficult Book of Hosea does the sacred text bristle with more problems. It may well be doubted whether the verses lie in their proper order, or, if they do, whether we have them entire as they came from the prophet, for the connection is not always perceptible.[613] We cannot believe, however, that the chapter is a bundle of isolated oracles, for the analogy between Jacob and his living posterity runs through the whole of it,[614] and the refrain that God must requite upon the nation their deeds is found both near the beginning and at the end of the chapter.[615] One is tempted to take the two fragments about the Patriarch (vv. 4, 5, and 13 f.) by themselves, and the more so that ver. 8 would follow so suitably on either ver. 2 or ver. 3. But this clue is not sufficient; and till one more evident is discovered, it is perhaps best to keep to the extant arrangement.[616]

As before, the argument starts from the falseness of Israel, which is illustrated in the faithlessness of their foreign relations. _Ephraim hath compassed Me with lies, and the house of Israel with deceit, and Judah_ ...[617] _Ephraim herds the wind_[618] _and hunts the sirocco. All day long they heap up falsehood and fraud:_[619] _they strike a bargain with Assyria, and carry oil to Egypt_, as Isaiah also complained.[620]

_Jehovah hath a quarrel with Israel_[621] _and is about to visit upon Jacob his ways; according to his deeds will He requite him. In the womb he supplanted his brother, and in his man's strength he wrestled with God._[622] _Yea, he wrestled with_ the _Angel and prevailed; he wept and besought of Him mercy. At Bethel he met with Him, and there He spake with him_[623] (or _with us_--that is, in the person of our father)....[624] _So thou by thy God_--by His help,[625] for no other way is possible except, like thy father, through wrestling with Him--_shouldest return: keep leal love and justice, and wait on thy God without ceasing_.[626] To this passage we shall return in dealing with Hosea's doctrine of Repentance.

In characteristic fashion the discourse now swerves from the ideal to the real state of the people.

_Canaan!_ So the prophet nicknames his mercenary generation.[627] _With false balances in his hand, he loves to defraud. For Ephraim said_, Ah but _I have grown rich, I have won myself wealth._[628] _None of my gains can touch me with guilt which is sin._[629] _But I, Jehovah thy God from the land of Egypt--I could make thee dwell in tents again, as in the days of the Assembly_ in Horeb--I could destroy all this commercial civilisation of thine, and reduce thee to thine ancient level of nomadic life--_and I spake to the prophets: it was I who multiplied vision, and by the hand of the prophets gave parables. If Gilead_ be for _idolatry, then shall it become vanity!_ If _in Gilgal_--Stone-Circle--_they sacrifice bullocks,_[630] _stone-heaps shall their altars become among the furrows of the field._ One does not see the connection of these verses with the preceding. But now the discourse oscillates once more to the national father, and the parallel between his own and his people's experience.

_And Jacob fled to the land_[631] _of Aram, and Israel served for a wife, and for a wife he herded_ sheep. _And by a prophet Jehovah brought Israel up from Egypt, and by a prophet he was shepherded. And Ephraim hath given bitter provocation; but his blood-guiltiness shall be upon him, and his Lord shall return it to him._

I cannot trace the argument here.

2. THE LAST JUDGMENT.

HOSEA xiii.-xiv. 1.

The crisis draws on. On the one hand Israel's sin, accumulating, bulks ripe for judgment. On the other the times grow more fatal, or the prophet more than ever feels them so. He will gather once again the old truths on the old lines--the great past when Jehovah was God alone, the descent to the idols and the mushroom monarchs of to-day, the people, who once had been strong, sapped by luxury, forgetful, stupid, not to be roused. The discourse has every mark of being Hosea's latest. There is clearness and definiteness beyond anything since chap. iv. There are ease and lightness of treatment, a playful sarcasm, as if the themes were now familiar both to the prophet and his audience. But, chiefly, there is the passion--so suitable to last words--of how different it all might have been, if to this crisis Israel had come with store of strength instead of guilt. How these years, with their opening into the great history of the world, might have meant a birth for the nation, which instead was lying upon them like a miscarried child in the mouth of the womb! It was a fatality God Himself could not help in. Only death and hell remained. Let them, then, have their way! Samaria must expiate her guilt in the worst horrors of war.

Instead of with one definite historical event, this last effort of Hosea opens more naturally with a summary of all Ephraim's previous history. The tribe had been the first in Israel till they took to idols.

_Whenever Ephraim spake there was trembling._[632] _Prince_[633] _was he in Israel; but he fell into guilt through the Ba'al, and so--died. Even now they continue to sin and make them a smelting of their silver, idols after their own model,_[634] _smith's work all of it. To them_--to such things--_they speak! Sacrificing men kiss calves!_ In such unreason have they sunk. They cannot endure. _Therefore shall they be like the morning cloud and like the dew that early vanisheth, like chaff which whirleth up from the floor and like smoke from the window. And I was thy God_[635] _from the land of Egypt; and god besides Me thou knowest not, nor saviour has there been any but Myself. I shepherded_[636] _thee in the wilderness, in the land of droughts_--long before they came among the gods of fertile Canaan. But once they came hither, _the more pasture they had, the more they ate themselves full, and the more they ate themselves full, the more was their heart uplifted, so they forgat Me. So that I must be_[637] _to them like a lion, like a leopard on the way I must leap._[638] _I will fall on them like a bear robbed of its young, and will tear the caul of their hearts, and will devour them like a lion--wild beasts shall rend them._[639]

When _He hath destroyed thee, O Israel--who then may help thee?_[640] _Where is thy king now? that he may save thee, or all thy princes? that they may rule thee;_[641] _those of whom thou hast said, Give me a king and princes._ Aye, _I give thee a king in Mine anger, and I take him away in My wrath!_ Fit summary of the short and bloody reigns of these last years.

_Gathered is Ephraim's guilt, stored up is his sin._ The nation is pregnant--but with guilt! _Birth pangs seize him, but_--the figure changes, with Hosea's own swiftness, from mother to child--_he is an impracticable son;_[642] _for_ this _is no time to stand in the mouth of the womb_. The years that might have been the nation's birth are by their own folly to prove their death. Israel lies in the way of its own redemption--how truly this has been forced home upon them in one chapter after another! Shall God then step in and work a deliverance on the brink of death? _From the hand of Sheol shall I deliver them? from death shall I redeem them?_ Nay, let death and Sheol have their way. _Where are thy plagues, O death? where thy destruction, Sheol?_ Here with them. _Compassion is hid from Mine eyes._

This great verse has been very variously rendered. Some have taken it as a promise: _I will deliver ... I will redeem...._ So the Septuagint translated, and St. Paul borrowed, not the whole Greek verse, but its spirit and one or two of its terms, for his triumphant challenge to death in the power of the Resurrection of Christ.[643] As it stands in Hosea, however, the verse must be a threat. The last clause unambiguously abjures mercy, and the statement that His people will not be saved, for God cannot save them, is one in thorough harmony with all Hosea's teaching.[644]

An appendix follows with the illustration of the exact form which doom shall take. As so frequently with Hosea, it opens with a play upon the people's name, which at the same time faintly echoes the opening of the chapter.

_Although he among his brethren_[645] _is the fruit-bearer_--yaphri', he Ephraim--_there shall come an east wind, a wind of Jehovah rising from the wilderness, so that his fountain dry up and his spring be parched_. He--_himself_, not the Assyrian, but Menahem, who had to send gold to the Assyrian--_shall strip the treasury of all its precious jewels. Samaria must bear her guilt: for she hath rebelled against her God._ To this simple issue has the impenitence of the people finally reduced the many possibilities of those momentous years; and their last prophet leaves them looking forward to the crash which came some dozen years later in the invasion and captivity of the land. _They shall fall by the sword; their infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their women with child ripped up._ Horrible details, but at that period certain to follow every defeat in war.

FOOTNOTES:

[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 8_b_ 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 מועד כימי 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 נצמד עם־קדשים, _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 כתמות.

[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 וישפטוך שריך וכל.

[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, ᾴδη; 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.