Commentary on Hosea, Joel and Amos 1.2.1–1.2.9

Verse 2. — “Judge your mother, judge her, for she is not my wife, and I am not her husband.” “Your liberation,” he says, “stands as a great bulwark of my kindness; and therefore the deserts of your foul mother are laid bare, for which she was driven from my partnership: so foul that she cannot be acquitted even with you as her judges. But since in this assessment we are taxing not one person but the whole nation, we hope that there will be some whom the severity announced will move to better pursuits; and therefore wait to see what I expect.” “Let her put away her immoralities from her face, and her adulteries from between her breasts.”

Verse 3. — “Lest I strip her naked and set her as on the day of her birth.” That is, she had driven from her face the modesty that usually hinders obscenity, and had hardened her face by professing shamefulness. Now let her take on the opposite feelings, clothe with shame a brow stripped of impudence, and know that she must not be content to have done this only with her lips, as on the surface, but must cast out the poison she has drunk from between her breasts, so as to be cleansed at once in her whole heart. “If she neglects to do this, I will gird myself for the works of severity, such as I exercised at the time when she was being born to me as a people.” He points to the departure of the synagogue from the land of Egypt, a time when it had received none of the ornaments or garments of the institutions of the law, nor was strong in any distinction of clothing, but, as far as the worth of its conduct went, stood in the same worthlessness as the Egyptians, and yet was preserved by great miracles solely for the honor of its fathers. Then, because they resisted the commandments of God now by insolence, now by cowardice, all of them are read to have perished in the solitude of the desert, and of six hundred thousand men marching of military age none except two men, Joshua and Caleb, entered the land of promise. This is what the Lord of all now threatens through the prophet: unless that nation cleanses the secrets of its heart and makes progress by a change for the better, nothing it has done through so many ages, set apart from the other nations, and nothing in which it has flourished through the institutions of the law and spiritual gifts can provide it with any help, while the sentence presses on its crimes. Just as, he says, in that age when it came out of Egypt and was rejoicing as if in a fresh adoption, nothing helped the wretches, but they perished as if they had been stripped of all privileges. The apostle Paul, knowing this sense, carefully set it out to the Corinthians. All of them, he says (1 Cor 10), were freed by the same miracles, used the same spiritual food, drank from the same springs bursting from the rock; and yet of these, he says, not all, nor many, pleased God, but in that age of exile they bristled with various sins and perished by various torments. And showing why they should be remembered, he says, “These things were written for our instruction,” so that we should not imitate the pursuits of those whose ruin we read. Through this prophet, then, our Lord opens the feeling of his care, and warns that people to help itself by speedy amendment and to drive out from between its breasts, that is, from its heart, the ungodliness that is called sexual immorality, so that it may not experience that severity whose execution only reluctance delays. For whether he goes on to consume the ungodly in vengeance, the multitude of those struck will not be able to resist; or whether he commits the children of those punished to safety for the honor of their innocence or the merits of their amendment, the heap of earlier calamity will be able to create no obstacle. To indicate all this briefly, the prophet kept the same order in the example as in the prophecy. Just as in the title itself he marked the whole age in which he prophesied by naming the kings, so also he showed what matters his preaching would contain: first the captivity of Israel, then that of Judah; then the concord of those same peoples when the captivity was ended, and their gathering to the worship and temple of the true God when freedom was restored. Yet the grandeur of that return would be described in a way that would serve to signify a greater matter, that is, it would sound out the freedom and the generosity of the Gospel, which, surpassing prayers by its gifts, would call those it had freed from deadly servitude not only a people but children of God. Running briefly over these things, then, he returned to an address fitting those times, and, as if to children, he assigns the task of reproving and teaching their mother, so that she who had not cared at all about keeping holiness might at least care about taking up repentance, and not think herself defended, against the worth of her conduct, by nobility of blood alone, since adoption would be of no use to those whom devotion did not also strengthen. To gather the future from the past, she should think of the end of those columns that had been wonderfully led out of Egypt: their iniquity was not defended, as we said, by the dignity of their fathers, and their slaughter created no obstacles for their children, who were to be led to the promised joys. “This order of judgments, then,” he says, “will be kept in your reckoning now too: those who are filthy with sacrileges will be overwhelmed by destruction, and their descendants who have differed from the purpose of their parents by better pursuits will either obtain freedom beyond hope or be increased more abundantly by successes and prosperity.” “Since these alternations of times,” he says, “of sorrow as well as of joy, show the reason of divine providence and just government, let us now carry out what the present case demands.” So he warns them to anticipate the weight of condemnation hanging over them by zeal for amendment as well as by the groaning of repentance, lest, when he once begins to rage, this whole nation perish by slaughter as though it had never been marked by any privileges. “Lest I strip her naked and set her as on the day of her birth, and make her like a wilderness, and set her like a pathless land, and kill her with thirst. [Verse 4.] And I will not have mercy on her children, for they are children of sexual immorality, because their mother committed sexual immorality; she who conceived them is put to shame.” Having once brought in the memory and likeness of the departure from Egypt, he ran through a description of those same places, naming the wilderness and the pathless land deprived of the comfort of springs; and again, taking his words from the circumstances, after mentioning the waste of the desert he added the danger of thirst too. “I will kill them,” he says, “with thirst”: not that the people led out of Egypt were destroyed by want, but because, as the apostle says, “they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them” (1 Cor 10), that is, it was the power of their leader, not the condition of the region, that supplied the camp with drink. If that had failed, the people would have perished in the first danger of thirst. Announcing the same thing, that the wicked will be brought into like straits, and that his mercy will not come to meet them, since even the offspring of such people show by imitating their vices that their parents are obscene, so that children blush for their parents and parents for their children, he promises that they will perish of thirst.

Verses 5, 6, 7. — “For she said, [I will go] after my lovers, who give me my bread and water, my wool and my linen, my oil and my drink. And because of this, see, I will hedge up your way with thorns, and I will hedge it with a wall, and she will not find her paths; and she will pursue her lovers and not overtake them, and she will seek them and not find them.” He who from the beginning of the book fitted the person of a prostitute to the profaned nation continues the rest with a lofty description, and brings in the speech of a harlot, which that nation is convicted of having carried, if not on its lips, then in its works. So, according to the custom of the Scriptures, the ungodly are charged with having said aloud whatever they can be said to say by the consequence of their perverse life. “So this shameless woman,” he says, “holds up a face of usefulness over her pursuit of outrages, and pretends that she follows her lovers for their generosity rather than for shameful ends; for she praises them for having provided her with bread, wool and linen, oil and drink, that is, food and clothing overflowing into luxury.” Although by these words he adds the crime of an ungrateful mind to the sins of sacrilege, he also seems to bring in what is still on the lips of the profane even now: that among various opinions there is no stronger testimony to a sure religion than what the voice of prosperity brings. So she too declares that she is going in pursuit of her lovers, keeps silent about the outrage, and invents more respectable reasons, as it were, to entice her. He calls “lovers” either the leaders of the Gentiles, by imitating whom she was profaned, or the very gods of the nations, more worthy of laughter than of veneration, to whom this synagogue submitted, forgetting the law of her fathers and the true and only God. “Let adversity follow on her hopes,” he says, “and let her be entangled in unforeseen anguish. First, let her have no means of entering into a covenant with the Gentiles she most desires, and let her not use, in her adversities, the help of those whose example she followed into sin in her prosperity. So I will hedge up her way with thorns, and not only with briars but also with walls, so that she cannot thereafter enter the tracks she had worn before.” All this he consistently added with an eye to the person of the woman he brought in, who frequents the author of her outrage by secret paths, as it were. Not that the people of Israel mingled with the profane nations in secret, but because the likeness drawn from a woman, as we have often said, required this order of description. “When avenging severity has begun to confront her, and all whom she loved can bring no help in her anguish, she will begin to remember her former happiness, moved now not by reason but by anguish. And she will say, I will go and return to my first husband, for it was better for me then than now. [Verse 8.] And she did not know that I gave her grain, wine and oil, and multiplied silver for her, and gold, which they made into Baal.” If, aroused at least by the dangers of her situation, she resolves to return to her first husband, how is it consistently added, “And she did not know that I gave her grain and wine and oil”? The sense, then, is this, by which agreement with the prophetic sentences is maintained. At the first sight of chastisement this woman experiences what all who pursue vain things experience: terrified by the frustration of her wishes, she tries to seek what she had rejected, not by an amendment of mind but by fickleness of judgment, and she promises to submit to God only so as to escape the losses of prosperity that hang over her, as it were; according to what blessed David reproaches: “When he slew them, they sought him, and they turned and came to him before dawn; but their heart was not right with him, nor were they held faithful in his covenant.” “Therefore, since the guilt of her nation remains, which like cattle was roused not by the teaching of the word but under the action of the whip, my anger will not be softened because she said, I will go and return to my first husband. Rather, I will lead her into a long experience of blows, because she neglected to know and to declare that all these things can be given by no one but me, by whom they were also created.” So when he says, “And she did not know that I gave her grain and wine and oil,” he regards the reproach of willful slowness, according to the word of David, “He would not understand, that he might do good.” “She will begin, then, amid the dangers of hardship to confess what she had earlier neglected to know: that I am the only one by whom nourishment is provided, who also created the very substance of human beings. For I gave her grain and wine and oil, and the gold which they made into Baals. Not only furnished but even enriched, she was misusing my gifts for crimes, and to insult me she was fashioning idols from the wealth she had received from me. Therefore I too,” he says, “whose government the prophet praised and wisely sang, ‘With the holy you will be holy, and with the innocent man you will be innocent, and with the perverse you will be perverse,’ will at last take up the office of censure, so that I may take away from the ungrateful what had been bestowed on them, and the very riches may obtain a kind of benefit of liberation when they are withdrawn from the use of the profane.” He says distinctly [Verse 9], “I will take back my grain in its season and my wine in its season,” because there is not one harvest of crops, but each is gathered at different seasons of the year: summer will refuse the harvest, autumn the vintage, winter will take away [?]; and “the creatures,” he says, “will obtain a kind of liberation if they do not serve the undeserving: and I will free my wool and my linen, which covered her shame.” He alluded elegantly to women’s adornment, which so covers the whole body, in which there are some parts that call for modesty, that it also beautifies it. Yet he seems to show sharply that the foulness of the guilty often lies hidden under prosperity; if fitting want comes upon them again, the deserts that had lain hidden are also exposed.

Verse 10. — “And now I will uncover her folly before the eyes of her lovers.” That is, the course of events will force those very people who were the instigators or sharers of the crime to confess that nothing is more stupid than this nation, which neither counsels set straight nor dangers corrected, but which provoked with the crimes of an ungrateful mind that Lord whose power, holding all things together, it had experienced in its adversities as well as in its prosperity. “I will uncover her folly, then, before the eyes of her lovers, and no man will rescue her from my hand.” That is, there will be none of the princes whose profanity she followed who can defend her from my indignation. Not that anyone would have dared to do so; but because the speech is woven on the likeness of a woman and her men, he says that when divine indignation has struck her, her lovers will not be able to help her or bring any comfort for the miseries by which she is to be overwhelmed.

Verse 11. — “I will take away all her joy, her feast, her new moon, her sabbath, and all her festal seasons.” He has set down the names of the holidays on which she rejoiced most, when the whole region reveled in dances, songs, and banquets: luxury that certainly flourished only when the people enjoyed deep peace. “All these,” he says, “will be changed into their opposites: when [joy] ceases, mourning will be brought in; captivity will take over the times of the festivals; the toil of a wretched servitude will fill the leisure of the sabbath; and not only will freedom be changed into so great a captivity, but the fruitfulness of the land into mournful barrenness.”

Verse 12. — “For I will ruin her vine and her fig tree, of which she said, These are my wages, which my lovers gave me; and I will make her a forest, and the beast of the field shall eat her.” He has described what the losses of these parts would bring about: when constant frustration has followed the diligence of cultivation, the fields will lose their former pleasantness as neglect sets in, and the whole region will become more like wild haunts than farmland, that is, it will be judged fitter for beasts than for men. Since the scarcity of cultivators would give it this appearance, he elegantly expressed it by saying that the beasts would feed on the fruits of its land. “Of her own will,” he says, “she threw away the light of reason; after being filled and fattened the beloved kicked; and the most shameless nation so favored its own error that it dared to ascribe to its corrupters the joys of peace and the abundance of goods, whose continuance I had promised it if it were chaste and devoted. Therefore, as I said, this will be the first part of the punishment: she will be stripped of the joys and the riches she did not use well, and will know that he who earlier bestowed these things in his kindness was able afterward in anger to take them away.” “I will make her a forest,” he says, “and the beast of the field shall eat her. I will allow her to be consumed by the inroads of the enemy, and she will be defended by no barrier of my providence, just as a farmer does not enclose forests and wild haunts with carefully made hedges.” And because he seemed to have pronounced a true sentence, he adds once again the cause of this warning, to show that whatever he roared out he did for the sake of justice rather than of anger.

Verse 13. — “And I will visit upon her,” he says, “the days of the Baals, on which she burned incense, and adorned herself with her earrings and her necklace, and went after her lovers, and forgot me, says the Lord.” “She is not now,” he says, “at the beginnings of sin, so that she might be thought likely to blush as time goes on. Long has our patience contended with her wickedness, and yet we have achieved nothing toward her amendment, since she has grown old in her profanity. Lest, then, long impunity should also stain the reputation of the judge, and I should seem to favor what I have let flourish so long, I will at last, though late, gird myself for the work of vengeance, so as to settle the account even for those days on which she served the Baals, that is, the idol of shamefulness, adorned besides with necklaces.” As for his mentioning not only necklaces but earrings, we could indeed say that he named a few of the many things with which women adorn themselves. Yet the passage allows us to offer something subtler: that by the name of earrings obedience is shown. Since at that time the Jewish people alone had received the commandments of the law to obey, it rightly wore, as it were, the ornaments of earrings. But after it was deceived by a deadly error into submitting to the rites of idols, let us think that this especially is what is now reproached; as if he said: “The gold and silver which the earth had brought forth by my creation, and which the synagogue had received by my generosity, along with abundance of everything else, she impiously diverted to the worship and adornment of idols; and that mark of obedience in which she alone excelled among the peoples she handed over to shameful rites. And thinking that she remained in the beauty she once had, she followed her lovers with such confidence that she fell into complete forgetfulness of our divinity.”

Verses 14–17. — “Therefore, see, I will nurse her, and lead her into the wilderness, and speak to her heart; and I will give her her vinedressers from that same place, and the valley of Achor to open hope; and she shall sing there as in the days of her youth, and as in the days when she came up from the land of Egypt. And it shall be in that day, says the Lord, she shall call me My Husband, and she shall no longer call me Baalim. And I will take away the names of the Baals from her mouth, and she shall no longer remember their name.” The order of prophetic speech should be carefully noted. Wherever there is need to announce torments and show what divine severity deserves, he at once adds the causes that deserved it; and not content with having counted up the faults of mortals, he goes on to the joys of the prosperity to follow, showing that our God in a sense takes up that brief withholding of pardon as preparation for reconciliation. By this argument divine mercy is praised, and human iniquity is abased: its greatness causes the Lord of such great goodness to be stirred at times to anger. After announcing, then, that all joys were to be brought to a sad end, and that no one would come to bring the wretches help or comfort, he at once set out the people’s crimes, that is, the causes of his indignation; and recalling their greatness and their long duration, he showed that his censure ought to be suspected by no one of excess, since, compared with the quantity or the duration of the crimes, it would need excuse rather for its sparingness and its slowness. But not by this one manner only, I say, does he commend the mercy that is sweet and natural to him: he marks the same thing by bringing in prosperity close upon the blows, and describes it with all the greater fullness, like one who wished not only to compensate but even to excuse what he had struck. So when he had said that he would make her a forest so that the beasts of the field would eat her, that is, that with all the defenses of kingdom and cities cut away she would be handed over to the power of her enemies (a censure bringing, as once in Egypt, the insult and hardship of servitude in clay), since by following idols she had forgotten her God; yet because he acts as one compassionate and merciful, he announces after the end of captivity the joys of return. And because above he mentioned the liberation from Egypt, declaring that this too would be granted to the people of Israel on its model, he now runs through the same example more fully. “See,” he says, “I will nurse her and speak to her heart; and I will give her vinedressers from that same place, and the valley of Achor to open hope.” Since he calls the time of the liberation from Egypt the birth of the synagogue, the nursing seems to point to the food of the manna. Speech directed to the heart indicates the giving of the law, which shaped the hearts of its hearers. As for the meaning of “I will give her vinedressers from that same place, and the valley of Achor to open hope,” take it thus. Before the people entered the land of promise, the spies who were sent carried back an outstanding fruit of the vine, a cluster of such size that one bearer could not carry it. After they had taken the very wealthy city of Jericho by a wonderful victory, a man of the tribe of Judah named Achar, son of Carmi, stole something from the spoil that had been devoted to burning. When the victors’ good fortune was checked by sudden reverses, lots were cast and the thief of the devoted things was tracked down; and when he had brought out everything he had hidden, he is read to have been stoned by the people and killed and buried in the valley of Achor. This expiation so served to please God better that thereafter they won bloodless triumphs. So that valley showed to those taking possession of new fields a hope of happiness that guilt had shut off from those before them. Having recalled these things, which are known to have been done at that time, he promises that the return of the Jews from the Babylonian captivity will be just as joyful. Then follows: “And she shall sing there as in the days of her youth, and as in the days when she came up from the land of Egypt.” For as then, when the waves were cut through, they crossed the sea on a dry path, and Miriam the sister of Moses, taking up musical instruments, led the praises of God with choirs following, so those coming out of the Assyrian captivity sang: not that they would destroy some Jericho or find a cluster again, but that times of rejoicing would follow for them such that they would seem to have attained the glory they had had under Moses and Joshua. Consider, though, how fitting is the memory of this history, serving as an example both of sorrows and of joys. For he had said above, “Lest I strip her naked and set her as on the day of her birth, and make her like a wilderness, and set her like a pathless land, and kill her with thirst,” in the likeness of those whose bodies, as the apostle Paul says, “were laid low in the wilderness.” But now, when he was promising that the servitude would be ended and joys would come from freedom, he recalled just as many of those same times, namely those in which a glorious liberation had been praised in holy songs. The sweetness of this happiness, to be felt after the Babylonian captivity, consoled the Jews, while its greatness signified the peoples to be gathered by the preaching of the Gospel. They sing a new song to God (“for he has made known his salvation to the world, and has revealed his righteousness in the sight of the nations,” Ps 97:2), and he has loosed by free pardon and sanctification the servitude by which we were subject to sins and unclean spirits, so that, freed from iniquities, we might serve righteousness, and, made a people of his own possession, might shine with the marks of a divine lineage, having from our own body, from our own people I say, vinedressers who either hand on to us in the mysteries the grace of the great cluster or show the very art and industry by which God’s vineyard is cultivated. At that time, then, when the hoped-for things we have listed came to pass, the amendment of their conduct also made known how useful the earlier chastisement had been. “For she will be joined to me,” he says, “with her whole heart, so that she will no longer worship me with interruptions, but will give me continual worship and continual affection; she will call only me her husband and Lord, and will no longer ascribe my name to the Baals, that is, to idols.” The tradition of the Jews tried to devise some meaning for the word Baalim. But it is clearly more solid to take what runs through the whole sequence: that he promises the names of idols will be taken from the mouth of the corrected nation, and that he alone will be called God and Lord. When he says, “She shall no longer remember their name,” he has either marked a full amendment, or looked back to what he had set down above: “She went after her lovers and forgot me, says the Lord.” Shutting out this vice by chastisement, she will pass over to the opposite affection, so as to lay aside the pursuit of profanity in complete forgetfulness.

Verses 18–20. — “I will make a covenant for her in that day with the beast of the field, and with the bird of the air, and with the creeping thing of the earth; I will break the bow and the sword and war from the land, and I will make them sleep in confidence. I will betroth you to me forever; I will betroth you to me in judgment and righteousness, and in mercy and compassion. And I will betroth you to me in faithfulness, and you shall know that I am the Lord.” “It follows,” he says, “that she who lay wounded by blows should, once corrected, be polished with every good thing. And so, just as our indignation had made all creatures not only hostile but even dangerous to her, so in turn our reconciliation makes them kindly and helpful. I will make a covenant for her, then, with the beast of the field, so that the savagery of wild beasts may not lay waste the crops of her fields, nor a multitude of birds snatch her vintage or her olives, nor serpents spread their poison through the limbs of the weary.” Since all these are said to cease at the time of liberation, they are shown to have been brought on in the days of the blows. Along with these disasters, wars too will cease, so that they can sleep in their ancestral lands and rest confidently, fearing neither raids nor ambushes. “I will betroth you to me forever”: that is, “taught by events themselves, you will recognize that the separation by which you were afflicted came about not by my fault but by yours. For the rest, I am ready for you to remain my bride forever; that is, if you are such as the chastising judgments have now made you, the ancient covenant will be kept for you forever. For I make this agreement, that you remain in our partnership in such a way that judgments applied to you test your righteousness. Or if negligence creeps upon you and wounds you, and yet you ask me for a remedy with all the earnestness of weeping, I will nonetheless betroth you to me in mercy and compassion; and when you have felt them to be faithful and constant (this is what he means by ‘I will betroth you in faithfulness’), you will proclaim with fitting eagerness that I am the Lord.” All this, set out thus, will be seen to be fulfilled more clearly if we transfer it to the calling of the Gospel. For he who is “fairer in form than the sons of men,” from whose lips grace poured out and gave salvation to the world, took to himself the queen whom he betrothed to share his bridal chamber in honor of virginity: he took her in righteousness, which he gave by justifying her; he took her in judgment, when he chose her who would labor lawfully; he took her in mercy and compassion, when he forgave her past debts; and he betrothed her in faith, by which “with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation”; or else in the faith that does not doubt that “for those who love the Lord all things work together for good.” Verses 21–24. — “And it shall be in that day, I will hear, says the Lord, the heavens, and they shall hear the earth, and the earth shall hear the wheat, the wine, and the oil, and these shall hear Jezreel. And I will sow her for myself in the land, and I will have mercy on her who was Without Mercy. And I will say to Not My People, You are my people; and he shall say, You are my Lord.” He extends the series of the longed-for promise, and through various images composes a figure familiar in the holy books: the elements desire to serve one another in their work for the support of human frailty, and yet they cannot unless the Creator consents. He promises that at that time, when in his kindness he has driven away adversity, he will provide everything abundantly; for happiness would begin to limp if freedom, sought for so many ages, lacked plenty. This sweetness of joys, as we have said, shone out in that age too, when the Babylonian captivity was ended; and it was given back more fully in the time of the apostles, when the whole multitude of believers used the goods of the world so soberly that they had one soul and one heart. Then for the first time the equality preached by all wise men shone forth, so that in so great a gathering of disciples no one was raised up by riches, no one pressed down by poverty; but as there was one agreement of all in virtue, so possession was by a common right. For none of them said that anything he possessed was his own; but since all things were common to them, even the prices of fields were laid at the apostles’ feet, so that distribution might be made according to each one’s need. And because the state of the spiritual people was contained within the history of the Jewish people, he returns to the names with which the prophecy began, and says: “The earth shall hear the wheat, the wine, and the oil, and these shall hear Jezreel,” that is, the people, called by the name of the valley in which it was defeated. It is shown that the very nation whose sins, which he was going to punish, he described above (that nation, I say, continuing not in the same persons but in the same tribes, and purified by the strokes of the blows) he takes back into his partnership when he is reconciled, and entrusts to it, as to good soil, the various seeds of his commandments, so that through the abundance of the prosperity that follows, even that day of Jezreel on which the calamity was brought in may be counted precious and desirable. “For I will now have mercy on her whose very name I shrank from a little while ago, and I will call my people the one who had deserted me and fallen away into the side of my adversaries. And to him in turn will be granted the confidence to call me his true and only Lord.” Having carried the announcement of prosperity this far, he brings the discourse back again to the state of the present time. For there follows: