HOSEA, litezr•'71 (Heh. Hosr. a, deliverance). One of (lie prophets. whose discourses, forming the Book of Hosea, come first in the group of minor prophets. Of his life we know nothing except. what may lie inferred from references in the discourses. His father's name is Beeri and his home is in the Kingdom of Israel. In the first three chapters he uses as an illustration a strange incident in his own life. lie had taken to wife a woman, Comer, the daughter of Diblaim, who bore him three children, but who turned out to lie a faithless and worth less woman. This personal experience, the sub stantial reality of which there is no reason to question, appears to the prophet as typifying the faithlessness of the people of Yahweh to their Cod. It is not necessary to go so far as to suppose that the prophet actually gave his chil dren the symbolical names .1m-eel, Lo-ruliamah (`not beloved'I, Lo•ammi (`not my as indicated in chapter i. This feature is clearly allegorical, but llospa's divorce from his wife and his•subsequent reunion with her (chapter iii., unless, indeed, another wife is meant) are prob ably incidents in his own life. According to the present heading of the book, his activity extended over the reigns of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah of Judah (about 790-690 n.c.) and the reign of Jeroboam II. of Israel (c.782-743 n.n.). Scholars think that these indications cannot be correct, the former being too long a period, and the latter too short. Internal evidence points to the beginning of Ilosea's activity as represented in his discourses at some time before the death of Jero boam and ending before the attack of Tiglath Pileser on the northern kingdom in B.C. 734. Hosea addresses himself chiefly to Israel, the northern kingdom, and the burden of his message is the people's infidelity toward Yahweh as exem plified by their adoption of foreign rites.by politi
cal alliances that subjected the people to foreign influences, and by the general neglect of moral standards in public and private life. These con ditions were brought about by the energetic political policy inaugurated by the dynasties of Ahab and Jelm, and the prophet fairly exhausts the vocabulary in his denunciation of this policy and in predicting the dire destruction, not only of the dynasty, but of the people. The book may be divided into two parts: ( I) Chapters i.-iii., detailing his personal experience of marriage to faithless woman, and the application of the ex perience to conditions existing in the northern kingdom; (2) chapters iv.-xiv., in which (a) the Canaanite features in the Hebrew cult are de nounced and the attendant moral degradation of the people; (h) the misrule of the Kings, the riot ous life of the Court, and the fondness for foreign alliances are pictured in vivid colors. Scholars are agreed in recognizing a number of later addi tions and interpolations to the original text of the discourses. In these additions (1) refer ences are supplied to the Kingdom of Judah with which it appeared the prophet did not concern himself at all; and (2) the gloomy outlook is modified by holding out the hope that a remnant at least, uncontaminated by the prevailing reli gious and political conditions, will escape the awful doom and form the nucleus for the recon stitution of the people on the basis of true Yah weh worship and with obedience to Yahweh's laws as the corner-stone. Consult: the commentaries mentioned in the article MINOR PROPHETS; Cheyne, in the Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge. 1889): Valeton, A /nos and Hosea (London, 1894) ; W. R. Smith, The Prophets of Israel (London, 1895).