The Message of Hosea (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1921 edition. Excerpt: ...confusion which they introduce into the text, and by their manifest inferiority to their environment. They are the work of mere bunglers; but if this passage be regarded as an interpolation, it must yet be acknowledged as a work of real genius, being not merely beautiful in itself but a most skilful imitation of an author possessed of a most original and unusual style. Such an attempt at imitation is quite absent from previous interpolations, they are manifestly inferior, and are easy of detection. There is no comparison between their merit and the merit of this final chapter. It may also be urged that there was a reason for the previous interpolations, which is absent from the present case. These interpolations are mainly concerned with Judah. They are, it would seem, the work of a pious editor, who desired that his contemporaries should take to heart the stern warnings given in a previous age to the sinful kingdom of Israel, hence he endeavours to make his readers suppose that these warnings were meant for themselves, and inserts " Judah " in place of Israel. Another, or perhaps the same, hand, is concerned with orthodoxy. It hurts him to hear such harsh treatment meted out to the holy patriarch Jacob, and he is not without excuse, for the history which tells of Jacob's deceit also tells of his rehabilitation after repentance. The interpolator tries to convey this lesson in the words, " Therefore turn thou to thy God," etc. He draws a quite legitimate lesson from Jacob's repentance, in place of the lesson which Hosea had drawn from Jacob's sin, but in so doing he throws the whole passage into almost inextricable confusion. His excuse is that he meant edification. But what edification for the men of two centuries later could be conveyed by the...