Hosea (Heb. Hōshē'a; LXX. Osée; Vulg. Osce), the first in order of the twelve minor prophets, is nowhere mentioned in the Old Testament except in the book which bears his name. From this source we learn that he was a citizen of the kingdom of Israel (see i. 2, where 'the land' is plainly the northern kingdom, and vii. 5, where 'our king' is the king of Samaria), that his father's name was Becri, and that he prophesied during, and apparently also after, the reign of Jeroboam II.—i.e. from about the middle of the 8th century B.C. The fourteen chapters which preserve to us all that we know of what must have been a long period of prophetic activity may plausibly be believed to have been edited by himself and given to the world in writing towards the close of his life. The first three derive a special interest from their autobiographical element. The remaining eleven consist of a series of prophecies, mostly of a threatening character, relating to the kingdom of Israel. The details of these present many exegetical difficulties, and it is impossible to determine with any certainty what may have been the precise circumstances under which each oracle was originally delivered. Some relate to the still outwardly prosperous times of Jeroboam II., and others, most likely, to the troubled years that immediately followed. They point generally to an exceedingly dissolute internal condition of society, which ultimately drove the prophet to the verge of despair, and out of which he saw no escape save in the destruction of the kingdom, to be followed by a final restoration brought about in some unexplained way through the sovereign love and mercy of Jehovah. The question of greatest interest to interpreters of the Book of Hosea is that connected with the narrative of the first three chapters, in which the prophet relates how the experiences of his married life furnished him with his prophetic message. In the opening words we read of his marriage to Gomcr bath-Diblain, by whom he had three children to whom he gave the significant names, Jezreel ('Jehovah shall sow'), Lo Ruhamah ('not pitied'), and Lo Ammi ('not my people'). Her profligate conduct after marriage led to a separation, but, in obedience to a divine call, he took her back; and in the ultimate victory of marital love over a wife's infidelity he saw the token and the promise of the final triumph of Jehovah's grace over Israel's sin. According to the modern view, first suggested by Ewald, further elaborated by Wellhausen (in 4th ed. of Bleek's Einleitung) and Robertson Smith, and now adopted by most scholars, Hosea, i. 2, is to be interpreted in the light of such a passage as Jer. xxxii. 8, where we have a clear instance of recognition of a divine command only after the deed has been accomplished, and there is therefore no necessity for supposing that Hosea was aware of the profligate character of Gomcr bath-Diblain when he married her, or indeed that her profligacy had declared itself at that time. Earlier interpreters either took the passage literally and argued that a marriage which otherwise would have been contrary to all sound moral feeling was justified by a divine command, and that the repulsive elements in it magnified the obedience of the prophet; or they treated it as an allegory, without much attempt to explain how a proceeding which would be objectionable in fact ceases to be so in the realms of fiction.
For a full discussion of Hosea and his prophecies, see W. R. Smith, Prophets of Israel (1882). There are special commentaries on the book by Simson (Hamburg and Gotha, 1851), Wünsche (Leip. 1868), Nowack (Berlin, 1880), and Cheyne (new ed. Cambridge, 1889). See also the commentaries on the minor prophets generally—Ewald (Propheten, vol. i.; Eng. trans. 1876), Hitzig, Keil (Eng. trans. 1868), Reuss (Bible, 1876), Pusey (1860); and, for homiletical purposes, Schmoller in Lange's Bibelwerk (Eng. trans. 1874).