015. I. The Prophet, And The Conditions Confronting Him

I THE PROPHET, AND THE CONDITIONS CONFRONTING HIM

Five or ten years after Amos the Judean delivered his stirring sermons at Bethel, Hosea began to preach to his countrymen. The geographical and historical allusions, and the intense sympathy for northern Israel, which appear in his every utterance, leave no doubt that he was a northerner, and probably a Galilean. Love for Israel’s fair fields and hills, for her people, as well as for her God, was his master-passion. Although the obscure broken sentences, which burst from his lips, almost conceal the fact, Hosea was at heart a poet Sometimes shutting his eyes to the conditions which confronted him, he gave expression to his poetic insight, and projected into the distant future the ideal of perfect harmony and love between Jehovah and his creation which filled his soul and dominated his every word and act. His fate it was, however, to stand by and see that ideal ruthlessly trampled upon by his perversely unappreciative countrymen. When he entered upon his prophetic activity, a little before 740 B. C., the social, political, and religious evils which Amos pointed out so plainly were already beginning to sap the strength of the state; but the strong hand of Jeroboam II (Hosea 1:4) still held the kingdom together, and the Israelites did not realize how near was the national ruin, which Hosea repeatedly proclaimed in his sermons, preserved in Chapters 1–3. The two or three years immediately following the death of Jeroboam II revealed Israel’s fatal weakness. The inefficient son who succeeded the old king was murdered by Menahem, who maintained his position on the tottering throne by purchasing with heavy tribute, wrung from his unwilling subjects, the support of Israel’s most dreaded foe, Assyria. By this act, Israel’s prestige and that of its king were forever forfeited. With an unprincipled assassin on the throne, all law and order were relaxed. The body politic became corrupt from top to bottom. In this atmosphere the social evils which Amos denounced increased rather than abated.

Private as well as public honor was lost Immorality was openly practised unrebuked. The debasing customs of the Canaanitish neighbors of the Israelites were eagerly adopted. The hollow ceremonial worship of Jehovah, which had served well enough as a national religion in time of prosperity, broke down under the test of adversity. The nation, which had lost faith in itself and had begun to seek support in foreign alliances, also began to lose faith in the Jehovah, whom, in their thought, they had degraded almost to the level of a heathen deity. Israel presented the sad example of a nation in the state of moral, political, and religious collapse, while slowly the irresistible, insatiable foe, Assyria, was advancing to crush it. Its condition arouses to-day our contempt and pity. In imagination it is possible to appreciate, in part, at least, what must have been the anguish of the inspired poet, patriot and prophet, who was forced to witness the suicide of his beloved nation. In the light of these facts we understand why the extracts from his sermons, delivered during these tragic days and preserved in Chapters IV-XIV, are impassioned—often obscure—cries, now of denunciation, now of anguish, now of entreaty. Before the final blow came, which ended Israel’s life in 722 B. C., Hosea’s voice apparently was silenced either by heartbreak or martyrdom; for throughout these later chapters there are no allusions to the closing scenes in the great tragedy. Gilead and the territory about the Sea of Galilee, which, in 734 B. C. were conquered and annexed to Assyria, were still a part of the northern kingdom (Hosea 5:1; Hosea 6:8; Hosea 12:11); so that these sermons were delivered between the years 740 and 734 B. C., probably during the profligate, degenerate reign of Menahem. The other tragedy, which darkened Hosea’s life, and which laid bare the very depths of his soul, is alluded to in his earlier sermons, and can best be presented as he hesitatingly tells his own sad story.