This prophet lived and exercised his ministry during one of the darkest periods of Israel's history—a period extending through the reign of several sovereigns (Hos. 1:1). He was contemporary, or at least partly so, with the prophets Isaiah, Micah, Joel, and Amos. The kingdom of Israel (or ten tribes) was rapidly drawing to its end. Idolatry, murder, and usurpation were crimes exceedingly prevalent in Israel during the reigns of the kings noted in Hos. 1; and the Assyrians were becoming as troublesome to the ten-tribed kingdom by their repeated invasions, as the Babylonians subsequently to the house of Judah. Hosea, Amos, and Jonah prophesied when Assyria was in the very zenith of its glory. Our prophet anticipates the ruin of Israel by the Assyrian, as later the ruin of Judah by the Babylonian. "He is filled with the afflictions and the guilt of Israel as a whole, and more than any other of the twelve shorter prophets breaks forth into passionate and renewed grief over the people."
For about 60 years Hosea energetically warned of sure and coming judgments upon Israel, upon Judah, and also upon the whole nation as such, but omits all prophetic mention of the Gentiles either for blessing or for judgment. There are many exceedingly bright predictions of Israel's glorious future, such as in Hos. 2:14-23. Ephraim, or the ten tribes, and Samaria, the capital, are particularly specified as the objects of Divine judgment.
The quotations of Paul and Peter from this book are extremely interesting. The Gentile Apostle (Rom. 9:25,26) quotes Hos. 1:10, and applies it to vindicate God's sovereign call of the Gentiles to grace and blessing, while the Jewish Apostle (1 Peter 2:10) quotes Hos. 2:23, in proof that the believing Jewish remnant in his day entered into blessing alone by the sovereign call and choice of God.
GENERAL DIVISIONS.
1.-The dispensational ways and dealings of God with His earthly people set forth under striking prophetic symbols. Hos. 1.-3.
2.-Moral appeals to the conscience of the nation as a whole, to Israel and to Judah severally, in view of their sins. Hos. 5.-14.