Commentary on Hosea, Joel and Amos 1.4.1–1.4.12

Verses 1, 2. — “Hear the word of the Lord, children of Israel, for the Lord has a judgment with the inhabitants of the land; for there is no truth, and there is no mercy, and there is no knowledge of God in the land. Cursing and lying and murder and theft and adultery have overflowed, and blood has touched blood.” I have pointed out more than once why, in the very onrush of his threats, he also spoke of the prosperity that was to come after a long time: either so that the nation about to go into exile might have comfort, or so that the mercy of its Maker might be plain, who comes to punishment as if unwillingly. With this purpose, then, having spoken of the future too, he returns, as he did above, to the age of the present, and examines the deserts of the people to be punished, so as to resolve the question that the plea for divine kindness had raised. For a thought of this kind might fitly arise, if the sentence stood fixed that the captivity inflicted would be ended and a glorious return would come about: “Why was freedom not continued? Or how great could the faults have been to kindle the mind of our governor to such severity?” Necessarily, therefore, a list of the crimes is added, so that the gravity of the one who punishes may be seen. “Hear, then,” he says, “the word of the Lord, children of Israel”: for he does not refuse to enter into contest with you and to give an account of his judgments and of your deserts, he to whom blessed David says, “That you may be justified in your words and prevail when you are judged” (Ps 50). “Hear, I say, the word of the Lord, children of Israel; you yourselves, whose case is being tried, be the judges; and seeing what pursuits of the people we complain of, if you have any sense left, fly to confession and repentance. For there is no truth, and there is no mercy, and there is no knowledge of God in the land.” “They do not sin,” he says, “only now and then, so that there might seem to be some mixture of misdeeds and virtues; but things worthy of praise have so given way to the worst that no trace of uprightness appears anywhere: no faith, I say, has remained in testimonies, no justice in judgments, no piety in rites. Why do I say that hearts are empty of the fear of God, when forgetfulness even of his name has seized all, and cruelty and lust vie with one another, since, as outrages rush in and crimes overflow, they refrain from no breach either of modesty or of blood, but join curses to lies, murders to frenzies, adulteries to sacrileges?” They filled all the places of a once holy region with slaughter, so that through the multitude of the slain blood was mingled with blood. History shows that this was said not by exaggeration but in truth. For these are the times in which blessed Elijah, asked by God what he was doing in the wilderness, answered with grief: “Lord, they have killed your prophets, they have torn down your altars, and I alone am left, and they seek my life” (1 Kgs 19). The people, then, was corrupted by such profanity that they strove to destroy all the godly, that is, the worshipers of God, in a final slaughter. Since this abominable corruption of religion had no reward of pleasure for which it might be sought, yet it promised impunity for deeds both shameful and savage. Therefore the worshipers of the Baals and of the heifers served Jezebel’s fury by shedding the blood of the godly.

Verse 3. — “Therefore the land shall mourn, and all who dwell in it shall languish, with the beast of the field and the bird of the air; and even the fish of the sea shall be gathered.” Having set out the causes of his indignation, he consistently cries out that the land itself is to be covered with mourning as it was covered with crimes. If such many and great crimes had gone unpunished, even providence would be denied. Every cultivator of the region, then, shall languish, with the beast of the field and the bird of the air. Divine speech is accustomed to call herds and flocks “beasts of the field.” “So when want of grain and fruit has come upon them,” he says, “failure and scarcity of cattle will follow too.” Nor indeed will that be the end of the anguish: “even the fish shall be gathered,” that is, they will fail so as to be lacking, so that food cannot be found even in the waters.

Verses 4, 5. — “Yet let no one judge, and let no man be reproved; for your people are like those who contradict the priest. And you shall fall [today], and the prophet also shall fall with you.” “If, while the commonwealth was standing,” he says, “some guilty men perished by the sentence of judges, one man would surely be reproved and another would reprove: censure would exercise its proper office on those within.” This shows at the same time that the plague of crimes had not taken hold of the whole people at once, like a disease or pestilence, but that while some pursued shameful things, many pursued honorable ones. But when iniquity, as if by conspiracy, has taken hold of almost the whole gathering, as the prophet Hosea laments had happened in his own times, then rightly both teaching and censure will cease, so that the punishment poured out may rage against the ungodly. So under the appearance of a command the force of a judgment is expressed. “Yet let no one judge, and let no man be reproved”: that is, “no one will judge, nor will anyone be reproved; for you are to be laid waste by the fury of enemies, not punished by the sentences of judges. For your people are like those who contradict the priest; you shall fall, and the prophet also shall fall with you.” The prophet set this “like” as a judgment, not as a comparison. “So you will see nothing new in the vengeance, but what you practiced in your faults you will recognize in your punishments. For your people resisted the priest, that is, you withdrew from the true priesthood by following idols. You contradicted the priest,” he says, “when you rejected sound ceremonies, when you spurned saving warnings and commands that shape conduct, and handed yourself over to profane seers as to ungodly leaders. Rightly, then, the sentence now sent will entangle both, so that you collapse together with your prophets, that is, with your soothsayers.”

Verse 6. — “I have made your mother silent by night. My people has fallen silent because it had no knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I also will reject you, so that you shall not serve me as priest; and you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children.” It is an idiom of the Scriptures, as I often point out, that when speech is directed to a nation it seems to address it now by its own name, now by the name of the parent whose daughter it is. And so, when he had said, “You shall fall today, and the prophet shall fall with you,” that is, “the time of your devastation has come, and you who long ago ceased to learn and speak justice will now cease even from profane speech,” he added, “I have made your mother silent by night.” This is not to be taken as if he allowed her to speak by day and made her silent only at night. He wished to express the fullness of the silence imposed, and so, to show that she fell dumb when ruin rushed in, he mentioned night; as if he said: “I will so clothe her with overflowing grief, as night is wont to cover the earth, that, just as the condition of the dark time brings a general and common silence, so this crowd of elders, which I have called your mother, and which a little before was clamoring with chattering profanity, may fall silent under the night of adverse times.” Then, following his established order, once he has sounded the alarm he adds the cause of his anger: “My people has fallen silent because it had no knowledge. It was just,” he says, “that the lips of my people should be closed in mournful silence, since they would not learn in speaking.” Next, lest you should ascribe to some necessity his saying that knowledge was lacking to the people, he at once showed what he was accusing: “Because you have rejected knowledge, I also will reject you, so that you shall not serve me as priest; and you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children. You would not understand,” he says, “that you might do good, but devising iniquity on your bed you dared at your own pleasure to split the members of my law within yourself, so that, neglecting the part that is justice, you kept the institutions of sacrifices. Therefore a fitting frustration will go to meet your perversity, so that she who had no care to pursue virtues will have no freedom to offer sacrifices; a hard silence will hang over you who drove saving warnings from your ears. You have forgotten me; I also will forget your children, so that you who suffered a willful blindness in your duties may experience the bitterest loss of your offspring.” This must certainly be understood in such a way that we do not think that people, enslaved to idols, served the true God even by the offering of sacrifices, since the chief reason for consecrating calves in the region was that they should be given no occasion to go to the temple to offer sacrifices. A twofold understanding should therefore be adopted. Either it is stated as a condition, as if we were to say, “Even if you carried out the duties of the priesthood seriously, it would certainly be no defense for you whom the foulness of your conduct accused; and you would consequently lose even these narrow and laughable comforts of your superstition, since you have lost the help of merits.” Or else, because there were prophets and lawful priests living scattered among those tribes, and some of the people too were accustomed to offer the same small gifts and believed that by this they could obtain impunity for their crimes, he threatens these too, under the person of the people, that when open captivity rushes in they will be stripped even of the props of the opinion by which they thought themselves generous toward the Lord, at least now and then.

Verse 7. — “According to their multitude, so they sinned against me; I will change their glory into shame.” “As if by deliberate effort and earnest zeal, the people set out to contend against my benefits, so that the more lavish I was in giving, the more insane it showed itself in misusing. When I had so raised it up by the increase of its offspring that it spread out and filled vast stretches of land, it matched its deeds with crimes aimed at insulting me, so that it seemed to fear that the members of the people might be more numerous than its crimes. Therefore, since they placed their glory in a multitude of crimes as well as of soldiers, I will change that glory into the shame that follows, so that, worn down by hardships, it is brought to the utmost fewness.”

Verse 8. — “They shall eat the sins of my people, and lift up their souls to their iniquity.” The whole should be read as a reproach. That is, the priests, or those who were ministers of the idols and claimed thereby to sacrifice to God, or the princes with the people who had taken up the pursuit of deadly error, among the other punishable things they did, also borrowed terms that came from the tradition of the law. For just as the Samaritan tribes kept circumcision and the sabbaths although they served idols, so it must be believed that the soothsayers themselves also borrowed some institutions of the law. By the institution of blessed Moses there were various kinds of offerings, among them the one offered for sin. From it, after the fat parts had been consumed by fire, the remaining parts went to the priests for food. And because God was propitiated by these rites, the priests were said to eat, that is, to consume, the sins of the people for which they prayed. In the same manner the soothsayers, to promise impunity for various offenses for the sake of their own profit, said that they consumed the people’s sins. This, then, God now attacks through the prophet with the voice and face of indignation, as if he said: “See what monsters, seeking fame not from any fine deeds but only from outrages, have defiled the institutions of the venerable law by usurping its words, so as to promise the deceived people that if they offered sacrifices by their hands they would at once become innocent and obtain [pardon] for their sins. So they lifted up, that is, comforted and made proud, the souls of the guilty, in whom they let no compunction remain. Therefore, since the teacher was not used to speaking, nor the disciple to hearing, what pertains to salvation, but the guilt that defiles made both equal, the sentence that followed will rightly put them together, so that they receive the fruit of their works without deceit, and priest and people suffer one slaughter.” We can, however, make the understanding of this passage easier if we bring in the person of Judah too, whom he names a little later. Since he chastens that tribe also with serious warning, although it was still less guilty but not cleansed in every part, he may be thought to have mentioned here that the priests eat the sacrifices offered for sins, and the sense will be this: “What wonder is it that the tribes which withdrew from the worship and fear of God and were enslaved to the worship of idols are filthy with various crimes, when even that part of the people which seems still to keep the mystical ceremonies is maddened by a similar error, and corrupt priests flatter sinners that impunity comes to them through the offering of sacrifices which the priests themselves devour?” With these consolations they lifted up the minds that the consciousness of their crimes was weighing down; and what the priests most shamelessly promised the people most gladly heard. Therefore, in the time of calamity there will be no distinction between people and priests, but those who lived promiscuously will also perish basely.

Verses 9, 10. — “I will visit upon him his ways, and I will repay him his thoughts. They shall eat and not be satisfied; they have committed sexual immorality and have not ceased.” “When the censure of vengeance begins to act,” he says, “these measures of pain that they themselves made in their sins will be filled up, so that they experience in punishments what they carried out in their desires. For they committed sexual immorality by following either obscenities or profanities, and they were not ashamed of the foulness they took up, so that, having fallen from the first station, they might at least think of the second remedies, and cease at least to repeat what ought never to have happened, and so stopping would imitate abstaining from error. But when they had committed sexual immorality, they did not cease. Therefore let them experience in punishments what they practiced in vices, so that they eat and are not satisfied”: that is, they are filled with afflictions, but they do not cease to drink them in, so that they seem to bear a kind of hunger. When you hear of sexual immorality, do not think of a small indulgence in that bodily pleasure; rather, he says, violating the pacts of the holy covenant, they abandoned the almighty Lord into whose partnership they had been taken. And so they were deprived of the light of understanding, not considering to what lots of rites they had fallen after the marks of true religion. Such stupidity of opinion would never have crept into their minds unless drunkenness and debauchery had won it over; and so, “saying they were wise, they became fools,” to the point of seeking the office of prophets from dry sticks, so that a staff would show what would happen to each: a kind of profanity the Greeks call rhabdomancy. So the spirit of profanity, which they call sexual immorality, deceived them, so that they departed from the true God and joined themselves to many and various demons, with the mouth and brow of adulterers.

Verse 13. — “They sacrificed on the tops of the mountains, and on the hills they burned incense, under the oak and the poplar and the terebinth, because its shade was good.” “Not content to have erred in one way only,” he says, “those who despised the divine institutions followed old women’s fictions, so that they were moved not only by staffs smoothed for some deceit, but now by hillocks a little higher than others, or by the shade of trees a little denser, and believed that divinity was most present wherever they saw some pleasantness.” So they sacrificed on the tops of mountains, which history often charges when it says of kings, “He did this or that; yet he did not take away the high places, but the people still sacrificed on the high places.” Here he adds that they also burned incense under the oak and the poplar, and, explaining the cause of their admiration, he added, “because its shade was good.” Rejecting the Maker of light and lamp, truly like children of darkness, they were captivated by the shade of the grove. Let us hear, then, what punishments this madness deserves.

Verse 14. — “Therefore your daughters shall commit sexual immorality, and your brides shall be adulteresses. I will not visit upon your daughters when they commit sexual immorality, nor upon your brides when they commit adultery.” “You committed shameful things,” he says, “and did not desist from the deed, so as to feel, if not the feelings of the innocent, at least those that the guilty usually have, that is, that violators of honor should be ashamed of what they had done; but you strengthened your boldness in harmful works, pursuing shameful things so far that you preferred the shade of stumps and stones to the Creator of all the elements. Let the bringing on of final calamity, then, settle the account for this ungodliness, so that by a wonderful kind of vengeance the punishment is shaped to the likeness of the faults, and is the bitterer in that it will not have experienced censure: your brides and daughters will lie subject to the lust of the victors, and neither husbands nor parents will accuse this disgrace before any judges. The whole outrage will be spent in dishonor, so that nothing of it remains to be charged.” Sharply, then, by denying any rebuke of the outrage, he concluded that nothing is bitterer than to be placed in such a condition of servitude, in which you go on seeing the utmost outrages against your kin and dare not accuse them. Having foreseen that this would be the last of miseries, since nothing but captivity could inflict it, he at once added the cause of so great an anger by repeating what he had said before: “Because they themselves consorted with harlots and sacrificed with the effeminate, the people that does not understand shall be beaten.” “They do not know,” he says, “how much pain I feel from the perversity of her who once lived in my partnership; so they will recognize the greatness of their former crimes in the dishonor of their own kin, so that those who followed the effeminate and the prostitutes from whom they had received the worship of demons will be dragged off by obscene enemies who abuse them, feeling the fruit of their willful folly in the insults that the conquering tyrants inflict.”

Verse 15. — “If you commit sexual immorality, Israel, at least let Judah not sin. Do not enter into Gilgal, and do not go up to Beth-aven, nor swear, As the Lord lives; for like a wanton heifer Israel has turned aside: now the Lord will feed them like a lamb in a wide place.” Although the censure of his prophecy shows that all the tribes were filthy with the worship of idols, he declares that the state of Israel is worse, and seems capable of condemnation rather than of correction. For it did not keep the boldness of its profanity within its own borders and customs, but sought the contamination of its brother too as if it were some gain. The prophet convicts this zeal of one who solicits others to crime when he tells Israel that at least Judah should not sin. For the care of compassion for a brother had not been laid on one who is warned to be diligent; but under this form of command he attacks this crime too, that Israel had preferred to make Judah more like itself rather than think of any amendment of its own. The sense is this: “O you, Israel, who followed the author of your error, that is, Jeroboam, and withdrew from the fellowship of your brother, that is, Judah, for no other reason than that you might have no occasion to breathe again and return to better things through the honor of the temple and the celebration of the holy days, [now] keep the pact of your race or of your crime: you who would not keep a praiseworthy concord, hold to the separation you once took up, and do not creep by a corrupter’s cunning into the profession of the brotherhood you repudiated; but, content at least with your own plague, let your partner’s innocence remain, and stop inviting him into the state into which you will weep to have come. For now your folly runs riot all the more if with those whose separation you chose for fear of a remedy you enter into fellowship for love of sacrilege. Keep at least that feeling which is usually born in sinners, namely to be ashamed of an ugly deed. Why do you shut yourself out from the slight comfort of seeming deceived? For such a defense will not escape guilt; yet it shows that there is some distinction between the incautious and the insolent, in that boldness makes some hateful, fear makes others pitiable. But you, when you let no one be free of your foulness, what else do you confess but that you are most guilty, not by error but by willful and detestable judgment? If you commit sexual immorality, Israel, at least let Judah not sin. Why, I say, do you add this error to the former ones, as if you thought you would perish with less pain if you perished with many rather than with few? Why, prodigal of your own goods, do you pollute your brother’s rights too? Why do you want the whole race wrapped in one tomb? Let some portion of your blood survive, by whose intercession you may be helped and by whose example you may be reformed.” “If you commit sexual immorality, Israel, at least let Judah not sin: do not enter into Gilgal, and do not go up to Beth-aven, nor swear, As the Lord lives.” How he had commanded Israel that Judah should not sin he made plain by what follows: by forbidding them to go up to Gilgal and Beth-aven, places adjoining the tribe of Judah, with the aim of mixing religion, and to swear, “As the Lord lives.” This is to be understood thus: in those same places, as in Samaria, they had consecrated calves, and had ascribed to them the name of the true God, and swore by their name and divinity. So he now commands that, since the people flocked there from the neighborhood of Judah, to Beth-aven and Gilgal, they should stop going up there and swearing, “As the Lord lives,” in those places consecrated by the consent of the people, lest Judah, deceived by this familiarity of words, should first cease to shudder at the calves and then begin also to swear by them. It also seems to show what the ungodliness of the people was confusing: those who served the calves also adjured by the true Lord, whom Judah worshiped, in all sorts of business, and bound their oaths by calling on him, as if judging it best to venerate both names with equal honor; and they persuaded even those who had remained in the faith to worship in this way, and to take up the worship of the calves while their reverence for their former religion remained, so that it would seem not so much a change of devotion as a kind of addition. This, undertaken against the commands of the law, no doubt defiled the wretches with heaped-up profanity. “Do not, then, frequent these places, which you have made most famous by sacrilegious rites, with such zeal that even the hearts of Judah are poisoned by your crime. Let Judah, if it has not yet wholly withered, look at the state that has seized Israel; and then it will recognize what hangs over itself too unless it takes care.”

Verse 16. — “For like a wanton heifer Israel has turned aside; now the Lord will feed them like a lamb in a wide place.” The likeness is very aptly taken from a heifer, to mark the kind of sin itself, the arrogance of the sinners, and the bellowing of those who perish. “In the worship of the calves,” he says, “the boldness of Israel sinned, shaking off the yoke of my law, and turned aside from the paths of virtue, believing it would enjoy its rich goods without interruption. But such frustration of their wishes followed the ungodly that they came down from the bulk of a bull, as it were, to the smallness of a lamb.” So the whole nation, which trusted in its strength, saw its glory changed into the shame that followed, and placed under the shepherd’s staff to be restrained with all the ease with which a lamb is. Nor is this all: just as a lamb led into vast places, weak and alone, deprived of the comfort both of its mother and of the flock, fears whatever it sees and whatever it hears, so the nation, subjected to savage enemies, will be forced to walk through a wilderness. Yet divine providence did not abandon it altogether, which is why he says, “Now God will feed them”; but he adds this so that, taught by the calamity laid on it, it may understand and confess that the commands of the holy law were not to be despised, and that its crimes were neither unpunished nor its desires fruitful.

Verses 17–19. — “Ephraim is a partner of idols: let him alone. Their banquet is separated; they have committed sexual immorality; his protectors loved to bring shame. The spirit has bound him in its wings, and he shall be put to shame by his sacrifices.” After the prophetic word had addressed Israel about its desolation and announced its end, because it had not listened to his words, he turns to Judah to warn it in turn. Lest, while his censure was intent on Israel, he should seem to have exempted Judah from guilt (Judah would never have been corrupted except by willing consent), he addresses it too with similar force. “You have seen,” he says, “that Ephraim, withdrawing its ungrateful and unhappy neck from the yoke of my law, has determined to be a partner of idols. Do not join yourself to him by any covenant, but let him alone, and separate yourself from him entirely in pursuits as in places. For if any fellowship binds you to him, an equal calamity will surely seize you too. Do you want to lick off the contagion of profanity? Surround yourself with the rampart of continual separation; never enter with the sacrilegious into either public treaties or private banquets. For what fellowship has light with darkness (2 Cor 6:14)? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? They have committed sexual immorality. And lest you think this happened to men deceived by error: his protectors loved to bring shame. They follow profanities with deliberate zeal and burning love; and not only do they sin among the common people, but from the nobles to the lowest they are pervaded by deadly profanity. Therefore never mix with their mind or their gatherings, if the sacraments of chaste faith delight you. For, O tribe of Judah, the hastened condemnation of such men has been provided to help your judgment, lest, seeing the destruction of the guilty delayed, you should also become uncertain of their deserts. While you are still unharmed, a sudden wind, as it were, will seize Samaria, and they shall be put to shame by their sacrifices,” that is, they will blush and confess the emptiness of the hope of those who promised themselves freedom and security in the sacrifices they offered to idols. He spoke of the wings of the spirit by which the nation was bound and carried off according to the popular opinion, which usually furnishes images of the winds with feathers. So he says: “Those who followed sacrileges will be overthrown and carried off to various exiles by the whirlwind of captivity, so that they seem to have ridden on the wings of the winds.” When we read these things, we ought to think how lightly the frenzied people valued the voices of the prophets. For when priests and kings and even the common multitude had conspired in open error, the few spiritual and poor men were given no opportunity to rebuke or preach; but, as another Scripture testifies, they were called madmen and were held up to public derision as if they were monsters. Yet these men, lacking wealth and goods alike, were found worthy to enter into conversation with God, and to pronounce sentence, as if from the throne of heaven, on souls stretched out and clinging to the ground.