PREFACE,

&.c.

HOSEA began to prophecy so early as in the days of the great-grandson of Jehu, Jeroboam, the second of that name, king of Israel; and he continued in the prophetic office in the successive reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah. Since he prophecied not before the days of Uzziah, king of Judah, it must have been in the latter part of Jeroboam's reign, that the word of the Lord first came to him. For Jeroboam reigned in Israel forty-one years in all ;* and the accession of Uzziah, king of Judah, was in the 27th year of Jeroboam. We must look, therefore, for the commencement of Hosea's ministry within the last fourteen years of Jeroboam; and it cannot reasonably be supposed to have been earlier, than a year or two before that monarch's death. For the interval from Jeroboam's death to the commencement of the reign of Hezekiah in Judah, upon the most probable supputation of the corresponding reigns in the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel, seems to have been no less than sixty-eight years. If we increase the interval by the last year only of Jeroboam's reign, and the first of Hezekiah's (in the days of both which kings he prophecied,) we shall make a space of no less than seventy years, for the whole duration of Hosea's ministry. And since he was of age to chusc

Archbishop Usher makes it no more than 57 or 58. But I am perswaded the death of Jeroboam was seven years earlier, and the accession of Hezekiah three years later, than according to Archbishop Usher's dates.

a wife for himself and to marry, when he first entered upon it, he must have lived to extreme old age. He must have attained his hundredth year at least, if he saw the accomplishment of the judgment, he had been employed to denounce against the kingdom of Israel. But it is probable that he was removed, before that event took place. For, in all his prophecies the kingdom of Samaria is mentioned, as sentenced indeed to excision; but as yet subsisting, at the time when they were delivered.

Inasmuch as he reckons the time of his ministry, by the succession of the kings of Judah, the learned have been induced to believe, that he himself belonged to that kingdom. However that may be, for we have no direct information of history upon the subject, it appears, that whether from the mere impulse of the divine Spirit, or from family connections and attachments, he took a particular interest in the fortunes of the sister kingdom. For he describes, with much more exactness than any other prophet, the distinct destinies of the two great branches of the chosen people, the different judgments impending on them, and the different manner of their final restoration; and he is particularly pathetic, in the exhortations he addresses to the ten tribes. It is a great mistake, however, into which the most learned expositors have fallen, and it has been the occasion of much misinterpretation, to suppose, that "his prophecies are almost wholly against the kingdom of Israel;" or that the captivity of the ten tribes is the immediate and principal subject, the destiny of the two tribes being only occasionally introduced. Hosea's principal subject is that, which is the principal subject indeed of all the prophets; the guilt of the Jewish nation in general, their disobedient refractory spirit, the heavy judgments that awaited them, their final conversion to God, their re-establishment in the land of promise, and their restoration to God's favour, and to a condition of the greatest national prosperity, and of high pre-eminence

among the nations of the earth, under the immediate protection of the Messiah, in the latter ages of the world. He confines himself more closely to this single subject, than any other prophet. He seems, indeed, of all the prophets, if I may so express my conception of his peculiar character, to have been the most of a Jew. Comparatively, he seems to care but little about other people. He wanders not like Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, into the collateral history of the surrounding heathen nations. He meddles not, like Daniel, with the revolutions of the great empires of the world. His own country seems to engross his whole attention; her privileges, her crimes, her punishment, her pardon. He predicts, indeed, in the strongest and the clearest terms, the ingrafting of the Gentiles into the church of God. But he mentions it only generally; he enters not, like Isaiah, into the minute detail of the progress of the busi

Nor does he describe, in any detail, the previous contest with the apostate faction in the latter ages. He makes no explicit mention of the share, which the converted Gentiles are to have in the re-establishment of the natural Israel in their ancient seats; subjects which make so striking a part of the prophecies of Isaiah, Daniel, Zachariah, Haggai, and, occasionally, of the other prophets. He alludes to the calling of our Lord from Egypt; to the resurrection on the third day; he touches, but only in general terms, upon the final overthrow of the antichristian army in Palestine, by the immediate interposition of Jehovah; and he celebrates, in the loftiest strains of triumph and exultation, the Saviour's final victory over death and hell. But yet, of all the prophets, he certainly enters the least into the detail of the mysteries of redemption. We have nothing in him descriptive of the events of the interval between the two advents of our Lord. Nothing diffuse and circumstantial, upon the great and interesting mysteries of the incarnation, and the atonement. His country, and his

kindred is the subject next his heart. Their crimes excite his indignation; their sufferings interest his pity; their future exaltation is the object, on which his imagination fixes with delight. It is a remarkable dispensation of providence, that clear notices, though in general terms, of the universal redemption, should be found in a writer so strongly possessed with national partialities. This Judaism, if I may so call it, seems to make the particular character of Hosea as a prophet. Not that the ten tribes are exclusively his subject. His country is indeed his particular and constant subject; but his country generally, in both its branches, not in either taken by itself.

That this is the true view of his prophecies, appears from the extraordinary manner of the opening of his ministry. As an expositor of his prophecy, I might decline any discussion of the question about his marriage; whether it was a real transaction, or passed in vision only. I have indeed no doubt, that it was a real occurrence in the prophet's life, and the beginning of his prophetical career. I have no doubt, that he was really commanded to form the connection; and that the commandment, in the sense in which it was given, was really obeyed. But this is, in truth, a question of little importance to the interpretation of the prophecy. For the act was equally emblematical, whether it was real or visionary only. And the signification of the emblem, whether the act were done in reality or in vision, will be the same. The act, if merely visionary, will admit the same variety of circumstances in vision, as the real act would admit in reality. The same questions will arise, what those circumstances were. And the import of each circumstance, attending the act, will be the same, though not of the same public notoriety. The readiest and surest way therefore of interpreting the prophecy will be to consider the emblematical act as really performed. The emblem was interpreted by the Holy Spirit when he gave the

command. The incontinent wife, by the declaration of the spirit, and by the general analogy of the prophetic imagery, was an emblem of the Jewish nation, polluted with spiritual fornication, i. e. with idolatry; but of the nation generally, in both its branches, for in both its branches it was equally polluted. If there was any difference between Judah and Ephraim, it was not in the degree of the pollution. For in different periods of her history Judah had defiled herself with idolatry, in a degree that Ephraim could not easily surpass. But it was, indeed, an aggravation of Ephraim's guilt, that it was the very foundation of her polity. Her very existence, as a distinct kingdom, was founded on the idolatry of the calves, which was instituted by Jeroboam for preventing the return of the ten tribes to their allegiance to the house of David. These calves of Jeroboam's, by the way, seem to have been mutilated imitations of the cherubic emblems. Thus they were very significant symbols of a religion founded on misbelief, and upon the self-conceit of Natural Reason, discarding revelation, and, by its own boasted powers, forming erroneons notions of the Godhead.* This corrupt worship, as an essential part of their civil constitution, the ten tribes superadded to the guilt of a total defection from their allegiance to the house of David; the

*The Cherubim of the Temple, and the calves of Dan and Bethel, were both hieroglyphical figures. The one, of God's institution; the other of man's, in direct contravention of the second commandment. The cherub was a compound figure; the calf, single. Jero. boam therefore and his subjects were Unitarians. And when his descendants added to the idolatry of the calves, the worship of Baal, they became Materialists. For the most antient Pagan idolatry was neither more nor less, than an allegorised Materialism. The deification of dead men was the corruption of later periods of idolatry, when idolaters had forgotten the meaning of their original symbols, and their original rites. It was not therefore without reason, that the antient fathers considered the nation of the ten tribes as a general type of heresy.