Jehovah and Faithless Israel (Chs. 4-14). 

        A foremost place is given to the priests’ disregard of the law of which they were made custodians (4:6), as a result of which “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” Instead of restraining the iniquity of the people, they wel­comed it for the sake of the resultant sin offerings — this is the meaning of sin in 4:8; Hebrew used the same word for sin and sin-offering, cf. IICor. 5:21, Rom. 8:3. When we remember that the priests were also judges, we can understand better how terrible was their leadership in highway robbery (6:9).

        A very old Jewish tradition maintains that the original reading in 4:7 — changed by the scribes themselves out of motives of reverence — was, “They have exchanged My glory for shame,” i.e. for Baal worship.

        Beth-aven (4:15; 5:8; 10:5, 8) was a village near Beth-el (Joshua 7:2, ISam. 13:5). Hosea transfers its name, mean­ing House-of-vanity, or House-of-iniquity, to Beth-el, which had ceased to be the House-of-God.

        There are two references to contemporary happenings which we cannot now interpret. Harper (I.C.C). gives no fewer than eleven interpretations of king Jareb of Assyria (5:13; 10:6) none of which carry real conviction — the R.S.V. is almost certainly correct in rendering with a different division of consonants, “the great king,” i.e. the king of Assyria. There is also no certainty whether Shalman (10:14) is short for Shalmaneser IV (782-773 B.C.) or even Shalmaneser V (726-722 B.C.), or whether he was an Assyrian king at all; nor do we know where Beth-arbel was. It is references like these that remind us that we possess no more than the barest outline of Israelite history.

        One of the most tragic features of Israel’s history is her frequent superficial repentance. 6:1-3 gives us a picture of one example. This section (5:8-6:6) is taken from the time of Israel’s attack on Judah (Isa. 7:1, 2; IIKings 16:5).

        Though he does not develop the thought, it would seem that Hosea’s conception of Israel’s history is much the same as that in Ezek. 20, for he stresses that Israel’s corruption began already in the wilderness at Baal-peor (9:10, Num. 25) to continue from then on.

        Even as in Hosea’s own life love triumphed over sin and degradation, so his prophecy closes with the picture of Jeho­vah’s love triumphant over Israel’s sin (ch. 14). Few chapters in the Bible suffer more from the lack of inverted commas, for there are three speakers in it:

The division of ver. 8 is doubtful and difficult. If the above is correct, then “Ephraim” merely indicates the speaker of the following words, and “shall say” should be omitted.

        How far this hope has been or will be fulfilled we cannot say, but Paul quotes Hos. 2:23; 1:10 as one of his proofs of the triumph of the grace of God (Rom. 9:25f) and goes on to the vision of the day, when “all Israel shall be saved” (Rom. 11:26).