HOSEA, BOOK OF. Hosea, the son of Beer!, is assigned in the Old Testament the first place among the Minor Prophets (q.v.). He was a prophet of the Northern Kingdom. The book of Hosea falls into two parts. The first part (chaps. 1.-111.) recounts the unhappiness of his domestic life. He had married a wife who proved self to be unfaithful. And he came afterwards to realize " that his own tragic domestic experiences had opened his eyes to the appreciation of those supreme truths garding Jehovah's character and will which constituted his message and made him a prophet " (C. F. Kent). The second part of the book (chaps. iv.-xiv.) contains a series of addresses or sermons. The superscription to the book would seem to have been added by a later editor. References in the book itself seem to many scholars to suggest that Hosea's work must have begun before 740 and ended before 735 B.C. The background of chaps. it is thought, reflects the closing years of the reign of Jeroboam II. Afflictions and punishment seem to be thought of as still in the future. The background of chaps. iv.-xiv., it is thought, "agrees precisely with what we read in IT. Kings xv. of the internal dissensions which rent the northern kingdom after the fall of the house of Jehu, when Menahem called in the Assyrians to help him against those who challenged his pretensions to the throne " (Encycl. Bibl.). See Hosea vii. 3-7, 16; x. 15; v.
13; vii. 11; viii. 9; xii. 2. There seems to be no allusion, on the other hand, to the events of the Syro-Ephraimite war (735 B.C.) or to the first invasion of Tiglath-pileser iv. (734 B.C.). O. C. Whitehouse, however, thinks that a careful examination of Hosea's book gives a different result. The " utter social of the Northern Kingdom," as depicted, points, he thinks, to " a period subsequent to rather than before the invasion of 734-2." Such passages as vi. 1, 2, S-9, vii. 9. viii. 4, ix. 15, xii. 12 "are best explained when Tiglath Pileser's campaign is placed in retrospect." The pathetic appeals in x. 12-14, xi. 5-S are best understood if they are assigned to the date 726-5 B.C. And xii. 1 refers, he thinks, to the double-dealing of King Hoshea (II. Kings xvii. 4). According to Prof. Whitehouse, " 725, rather than 735, is the closing date of Hosea's oracles." C. Cornill describes the book as " individual and subjective in character to a degree that is hardly paralleled in the case of any other prophetic writing." Variations of metre have been noted, but these may well be explained as due to the quickly-changing moods of the prophet. See Eneyel. Bibl.; C. Cornill, Intr.; G. H. Box; O. C. Whitehouse: C. F. Kent, The Sermons, Epistles, and Apocalypses of Israel's Prophets, 1910.