The Background. 

        The general background of the book is much the same as that in Amos, except that the social collapse which the earlier prophet foretold is now an accomplished fact. In addition the long shadow of Assyria now falls dark across the doomed land.

        When we come to the religious background that which was only implicit in Amos here becomes explicit and domin­ating. It would be difficult here to give a satisfactory outline of Canaanite religion, the more so as much detail is still un­certain, but fortunately it is not necessary; only a few main points need to be grasped for the understanding of Hosea’s message.

        When the Israelites entered Canaan, they will have been struck at once by certain aspects of the religion of those they conquered. While Jehovah was the God of the people of Israel, the gods of the Canaanites were rather the owners of the land, and the gods of the people mainly because they lived in the land. While the interests of Jehovah and His demands from the people were chiefly ethical, the gods of the Canaanites were fertility gods governing the growth of vege­tation and the crops with mainly ritualistic demands on their worshippers. While Jehovah stood uniquely alone in the worship of Israel, the minimum for the Canaanite was three, the chief god (a sky god), his wife (an earth goddess) and their son.

        The prophetic writers never give us details of this religion. All the male gods are normally lumped together under the general name of Baal (plural Baalim), which can be a proper name, but generally means lord or owner, cf. Baal-peor (Num. 25:3,R.V.mg.), Baal-zebub (IIKings 1:2), Baal-berith (Judges 8:33) and a number of place-names compounded with Baal. Equally the goddesses are referred to by the name of the most popular Ashtoreth or Ashtaroth (Babylonian Ishtar, Greek Astarte) or occasionally by that of Asherah (plural Asherim or Asheroth — Asherah refers more commonly to the sacred pole in the Canaanite sanctuaries and is consistently mis­translated grove in the A.V.), cf. Judges 2:11, 13; 3:7 (An interesting picture of Canaanite religion has been given by the Ras Shamra, see Finegan, p. 147f., Kenyon, p. 158ff.).

        The first sign of declension after the death of Joshua was probably the admitting to honour of the old gods of the land to secondary honour beside Jehovah. This will have been followed by the far more serious step of worshipping Jehovah, as though He were merely a super-Baal, with the character, interests and claims of a Baal. For the prophets the wor­shipping of one’s own conception of Jehovah is the worshipping of a false god, and so no distinction is ever drawn between the worship of the local Baalim beside Jehovah and the worship of Jehovah as a Baal. We can seldom be certain which is meant, the more so as they will have gone hand in hand, but probably the majority of mentions of Baal worship in the earlier books are really the worship of a Canaanized Jehovah. So far as the people were concerned they were probably never conscious of having forsaken Jehovah (cf. Jer. 2:33).

        Samuel and his sons of the prophets were probably the men who broke this religious degeneration, but how far it had gone may be seen by the names given in the families of Saul and David, who were certainly never Baal worshippers: Eshbaal, Saul’s son, and Meribbaal his grandson (IChron. 8:33f; 9:39f, cf. also 8:30), Beeliada, David’s son (IChron. 14:7) — cf. also Baal-perazim (IISam. 5:20), where Baal must mean Jehovah. Later scribes transmogrified these names to avoid the name of Baal, but the less read genealogies of Chronicles have preserved them for us.

        With the division of the kingdoms, Canaanite influence increased in the North, especially during the attempt to in­troduce the worship of Melkart, the Baal of Tyre. Though this was defeated by Elijah and Elisha, it seems clear that the religion of the North became swamped by the Canaanite out­look. This is the background of Hosea, for while the worship of the Baalim he denounces probably included the worship of other gods, beyond a doubt it was primarily Baalized Jehovah worship, cf. 2:16. As a result Jehovah was supposed to be interested in sacrifice, not in conduct though the prophets never mention it for very shame, Canaanized Jehovah must have been provided with a wife (!) and part of the worship will have been prostitution (!) at the shrines, designed magically to increase the fertility of the land (cf. 4:14, where harlot= qedeshah, a holy woman, cf. Gen. 38:21f, Deut. 23:17, both R.V. nig.). This led in turn to wide-spread immorality (4:14) (An interesting picture of debased popular religion has been given by the Elephantine Papyri, Finegan, p. 201, Kenyon, pp. 229, 275, Clarendon Bible, O.T. IV, p. 218.).