Commentary on Hosea, Joel and Amos 3.3.1–3.4.6

Verses 1, 2. “Hear the word that the Lord has spoken concerning you, children of Israel, concerning your whole kindred, saying: You only have I known of all the kindreds of the earth; therefore I will visit upon you all your iniquities.” “Surely,” he says, “you rejoice above all in this distinction, that I, who am the Creator of the world, made myself known to no nation in the whole world but to you alone; and although I formed all nations with the same goodness as you, yet I chose to be called and to be your God alone, and I went before all the services of your devotion with gifts and miracles, destroying the strong kingdoms of the Egyptians and the Philistines in your honor, so that a glorious departure and a rich possession might be proved in you. Nor was I content to have bestowed joys by driving away servitude; I added the lights of spiritual teaching too, showing by all these things that I had chosen you out of all nations, whom I would also teach by holy instructions, so that those who had received many things without merits might learn how they might also deserve them. But this generosity did not make me a more negligent judge of your conduct; rather I punish your misdeeds the more for having preferred you to all nations. For it follows that what is valued more highly is inspected more carefully. So the honor of your nation, obtained either by my indulgence or by the virtues of your fathers, lets no fault be left unpunished; for nobility granted grows cheap if it is not taken from the unworthy. So acquired nobility commends not impunity for crimes but the keeping of commandments.” But let us see the rest.

Verses 3–8. “Will two walk together unless they have agreed? Will a lion roar in the forest unless it has prey? Will a lion’s whelp give voice from its den unless it has caught something? Will a bird fall into a snare on the earth without a fowler? Will a snare be taken up from the earth before it has caught something? If a trumpet sounds in a city, will the people not be afraid? If there is evil in a city, has not the Lord done it? For the Lord God does nothing without revealing his secret to his servants the prophets. The lion will roar: who will not fear? The Lord God has spoken: who will not prophesy?” There have been various opinions of some on this passage, but not agreeing well enough with the sense of the examples; it will now be given by us with a necessary distinction. For the speech touches various sentences. The first verse teaches that the rejection of the ungrateful nation was necessary, that is, just, the nation he had declared above to have been taken as the one out of all nations. Since by changing its pursuits to perverse ones it had kindled the anger of the judge, he explains why such a separation came about for the rejected nation that was being subjected to destruction. “Will two walk together,” he says, “unless they have agreed?” That is: “Why do you wonder that you have been stripped of the defense of our company, when a fair partnership of travelers cannot last long except between those in agreement? You, then, who chose to have wills contrary to my laws, see that it followed that you should be stripped of the help of my company, since you began to walk apart and not on my roads. I will not be content to have abandoned you, nor will our indignation end there, but from your protector I will be turned into a raging lion, which, walking through vast wild haunts, is moved to roar not by levity but by prey seen from afar; and when it has won what it longed for and brought back the hunted prey to its den, it will make the very caves resound with its growling; it never murmurs in this way when empty, but only when it has taken its prey.” By these two verses he expressed the bearing of one who avenges. Then follows: “Will a bird fall into a snare on the earth without a fowler? Will a snare be taken up from the earth before it has caught something?” Having finished with the part of the avenger, he addresses those on whom vengeance is taken, whom he judges to be crushed with such ease that they seem like a bird that has entered a snare. “Will a bird fall,” he says, “into a snare on the earth without a fowler?” as if he said: “Even if all the prophets were silent alike, the very voice of events could teach you enough that these calamities by which you are worn down could not have come together for your ruin of their own accord or by some chance, unless the hand of the fowler, that is, of the judge, had brought them.” By the prophetic announcement, then, miseries are shown to be set out like a snare, so that all who leave the path of justice fall into them. “So let no delay that often intervenes comfort you. For the snare once set, that is, the sentences published by the mouth of the seers, will not be taken away until they have filled their hands with their catch.” “If a trumpet sounds in a city, will the people not be afraid? If there is evil in a city, has not the Lord done it? For the Lord God does nothing without revealing his secret to his servants the prophets.” He made known by what follows that your explanation agrees with itself: the snare, the trumpet, and the evil, that is, the affliction by which the cities of the sacrilegious would perish, would not have been set in motion except by divine indignation. Here, however, he commends at once both his purpose of goodness, by which he intended to spare if they allowed it, and reverence for the holy judgment, which he shows cannot be despised with impunity. As often elsewhere, he calls “evil” not sins but torments, by which the guilty are tormented, not the innocent defiled. “For the Lord does nothing without revealing his secret to his servants the prophets.” Very opportunely is the dignity of the saints commended after the contempt for the guilty had been made public, lest the very fact that they seemed held cheap (since they were to be overwhelmed by so many punishments) should be referred to the condition of nature rather than to the reproach of wicked conduct. By God’s plan it was added, therefore, what served the honor of men, namely of the prophets, who, standing in the same nature as all others, yet differed so far by the worth of their conduct that God could say of those, “Nor will I remember their names by my lips,” and of these, that he would do nothing that he had not first brought to their knowledge. “As, then,” he says, “no calamity will arise in these cities except what the divine sentence has stirred up, so no punishment will be brought on you that has not first been made known to the saints.” He bound together what he had done with greater brevity, saying: “The lion will roar: who will not fear? The Lord God has spoken: who will not prophesy?” Since above he had expressed his indignation by the image of a lion, he then resolved what he had signified, saying, “The lion will roar,” that is, when God threatens and makes public the punishment that hangs over them, what mortal is there whom fear does not undo? But let us now see what is the kind and display of the threats.

Verses 9, 10. — “Make it heard in the houses of Ashdod and in the houses of the land of Egypt, and say: Gather on the mountains of Samaria, and see the many madnesses in its midst, and those who suffer oppression in its inner rooms. And they did not know how to do right, says the Lord, storing up iniquity and robbery in their houses.” The divine word keeps its custom of marking with what difficulty it is moved to punish. So now, after setting out the figure of terror, it repeats and goes over its complaints, and commands that the neighboring peoples be called together to see with what filth that once people of God is squalid and with what crimes it rages. “Announce it to the Philistines,” he says, “and to the Egyptians, that they gather as if to a spectacle on the mountains of Samaria, that is, look down from that height on its valleys and cities, and consider that there is no outrage or crime which does not, I do not say approach their pursuits, but stand as on a firm seat in their midst. For if you turn your eyes to those who are pressed down by false accusation, you will find the gates of the cities, where they were accustomed to judge, and their inner rooms crowded, so that no other voice seems heard but that of the afflicted. For all who had undertaken the office of judging have fallen, through greed or pride, into such forgetfulness of the right that they seem not only not to love but not even to know what is right. Let no one, then, reproach my severity, who showed such long patience to sinning servants that censure itself came to be forgotten by them. You, I say, nations whom I had crushed for their liberation and glory, you, I say, gather again, so that with yourselves as witnesses both the greatness of my indulgence and the ungodliness of Ephraim may be uncovered.”

Verse 11. — “Therefore thus says the Lord God: The land shall be troubled and surrounded, and your strength shall be brought down from you, and your houses shall be plundered.” Often, as we have said, he complained of crimes and outrages so that at last he could promulgate the sentence, and he answered, by way of elaboration, the sense he had set at the beginning: that is, “For three crimes of Israel, and for four, I will not turn him back.” “Since, then, justice requiring it, a reversal has been decreed for Israel and Judah, so that they slip from joy into sorrow, yet do not perish by slaughter, hear in what manner the ravager will rage.”

Verse 12. — “As if a shepherd should rescue from the mouth of the lion two legs or the tip of an ear, so shall the children of Israel be rescued who dwell in Samaria, in the corner of a bed and on the couch of Damascus.” Because our God was chastising the Israelites with the purpose of correcting them, he showed this by the voices of his dispensations as well as through the recommendations of the prophets. For although their beloved profanity always made them hateful, the Almighty varied their state, now afflicting them with sorrows, now comforting them with prosperity. The Syrian, then, who was nearer, that is, the inhabitant of Damascus, harried the ten tribes, as the history of Kings shows, with frequent incursions, so that at one time the Samaritans came by a long siege to such want that mothers ate the flesh of their children, and in the whole army scarcely ten horses could be found. But when blessed Elisha had sent word to King Joram that on the next day the greatest abundance would be seen in the gates of Samaria, so sudden a change took place that, as the Syrians who had besieged them fled, the Israelites not only escaped but even took rich spoils as of a triumph (2 Kgs 6 ff.). In this way we read that safety and joys often came to them. So our God, sparing in punishing and rich in mercy, announces that, although he has taken up the office of judge, he has not abandoned the office of shepherd; but that he would deign to snatch their remnants from the couch of Damascus, by which they were held as if by bonds and fevers, and which, by its very nearness, brought them a very long sickness, and to pull out, as from the jaws of lions, that is, of kings, the limbs of the people that had been torn.

Verses 13, 14. — “Hear, and testify in the house of Jacob, says the Lord God of hosts. For on the day when I begin to visit the transgressions of Israel, I will visit upon him and upon the altars of Bethel; and the horns of the altar shall be cut off and fall to the ground.” As regards the context of the reading, he promises an enemy devastation, and says that the horns of the altar which Jeroboam had placed in Bethel will be broken. For of the two calves he is read to have put one in Dan and the other in Bethel. So in the present passage the sense is this: “Although I will not let you be destroyed by slaughter, but am ready to draw the remnants of your nation out of captivity, and the neighboring enemy, that is, the ruler of Damascus, will not consume you, yet I will not let what you are doing pass unpunished.” It could be said that under the name of Jacob he wished Judah to be understood, were it not that the course of the speech rather marks and expresses Israel, that is, the ten tribes. Of this destruction of the altar we also read in the books of Kings: a prophet had come to Jeroboam, who had made the heifers, and as he was sacrificing promised this to him under threat. When Jeroboam stretched out his hand and commanded him to be seized, he felt the power of the seer as his right hand at once withered; and, immediately broken into prayers, he recovered the use of his hand, but heard that Josiah would arise to avenge that sacrilege (1 Kgs 13). So things that long times, either the chastisement of the people or the final long captivity, would include are indicated alike in the present prophecy, though they were to be inflicted at different times.

Verse 15. — “And I will strike,” he says, “the winter house with the summer house, and the ivory houses shall perish, and many houses shall be scattered, says the Lord.” Attacking not one vice only of the profane nation, he touches also on the sins of greed and luxury, and complains that they built various dwellings suited to the pleasure of different seasons of the year, as instruments of luxury. Although they were wrapped in manifold faults, they gave no thought at all to settling their account or to amendment, but, anxious only to pursue pleasantness, they prepared some houses for the heat and others for the cold; and these will be taken away alike in the time of vengeance, and their various structures burned by enemy fire.

Verses 1–3. — “Hear this word, you fat cows who are on the mountain of Samaria, who oppress the needy and crush the poor, who say to your lords, Bring, and we will drink. The Lord God has sworn by his holiness that, see, days will come upon you, and they will lift you up on poles, and your remnants in boiling pots. And you will go out through the breaches, one against another, and you will be cast into Armon, says the Lord.” Although the profanity of the whole nation was to be rebuked, yet because he directed his rebuke chiefly at the rich and opulent, who used not single houses but dining rooms to be changed according to the season, and adorned them with the gleam of ivory, he rightly gives them the name of fat cows too, because their voice was fit for lowing, and their belly was their god, and their glory in their shame. It can also fittingly be added that they are said to be called so not only from their vices but from the very kind of their ungodliness: those who had taken up the worship of calves are marked with the name of cows. They are noted as fat, according to what blessed David charges: “Their iniquity came forth as from fatness; they passed into the affection of the heart; they thought and spoke wickedness; they spoke iniquity on high.” “So, standing on the mountain of Samaria, that is, in the royal city, and swollen with the familiarity of the court, you wore down the poor, to seek from their spoils the instruments of your luxury.” What he says, “who say to your lords, Bring, and we will drink,” is to be taken so that either they called the idols their lords, from whom they earnestly prayed for abundance of goods, since they had placed all their happiness in untimely and lavish banquets; or else that all the lesser people, hiring out their services to the nobles for their crimes, now asked a wage from those for whose gain they often sinned, so that they would not lack drink. What do they obtain for this insolence? “The Lord has sworn,” he says, “by his holiness”: that is, he has decreed, by a holiness that knows not how to violate the state of its judgment, that the time is coming, indeed is already approaching, when your flesh will be lifted up on poles and your remnants in boiling pots. He took the likeness from cows, which are set before feasting barbarians or soldiers. And since he had marked the profane by the name of these, he again declares that they are to be subjected to their destruction. He put “poles” here for spits, that is, skewers, on which the flesh of cows is usually stuck and roasted over the heat of coals; take the “remnants” as either the entrails or the portions that, cut smaller, are boiled in pots rather than on skewers. And since he had said that, forgetful of all honor and fear, they measured even the wages of crimes by the greed of the belly, he rightly added that they themselves, seized by the fire of captivity, would be exposed to luxurious and, as it were, devouring enemies. “And you will go out through the breaches, one against another, and you will be cast into Armon, says the Lord.” In the earlier verses he had completed the metaphor taken from cows and a banquet; in the last he returns to plain judgment, and says that they will be dragged out through broken walls, which indicates the overthrow of the city. “One against another,” according to Hebrew idiom, shows the captives meeting one another or following one another, who are to be carried to the mountains of Armenia when the Assyrian conquers. But let us see the rest.

Verses 4–6. — “Come to Bethel and act ungodly; to Gilgal, and multiply transgression; and bring your victims in the morning, your tithes every three days. And sacrifice praise from what is leavened, and proclaim freewill offerings, and announce them; for so you have wished, children of Israel, says the Lord God. Therefore I too gave you dullness of teeth in all your cities and lack of bread in all your places; and you have not returned to me, says the Lord.” The whole text of the rebuke shows that the chief, indeed the only, reason for announcing through the prophets what calamities hung over sinners was that fear might produce correction in them; and since they resisted this counsel of a judge readier to forgive by their impudence in sinning, a kind of contest seemed to arise between God and men. But since it was not an equal struggle, he deciding and they undergoing harsh things, he at times addresses them with mockery, reproaching them with the very contest they were waging. “Come,” he says, “to Bethel, and act ungodly.” In the imperative mood, but by irony and taunt, he declares the things by which he is offended: a figure celebrated in liberal letters too. So he taunts the profaned Israel to press on in the pursuits it has chosen, and not to stop frequenting Bethel and Gilgal, cities that the preceding prophets also showed to swarm with idols, but to add increase to transgressions: to [offer] morning victims, devote themselves to the offering of victims, and set leavened loaves on the altar, which were called (so to speak) of praise, or of freewill offering. All this is to be understood thus: they had enslaved to idols the orders and rites of ceremonies that they had received from the holy law, things they had decreed to be venerated in place of God; but as they had impiously transferred these same observances to idols, so they often varied them freely as well. He reproaches both alike: that they had enslaved the legal institutions to the idols to which they had defected, or had corrupted them at their own pleasure; both of which served the same ungodliness, either transferring to impious shrines the observances that God had commanded to be shown to himself, or changing something of what had been instituted as if with the pride and mind of a corrector. Then, heightening this crime of a proud mind, he says: “For so you have wished, children of Israel, says the Lord God. Press on, then,” he says, “in the pursuits you have chosen, so that fitting wages may accompany you, of which you have already for the most part tasted. For I gave you dullness of teeth in all your cities and lack of bread in all your places; and you have not returned to me, says the Lord.” He placed lack of bread after dullness of teeth so that the sense would be this: that the teeth seemed brought to forget their work, had become unused to cutting or grinding food, and after a long interval suffered a kind of dullness. “But when so harsh a chastisement struck you, you have not returned to me, says the Lord.” By this verse he indicated two things together: their obstinacy in sinning and his kindness in counseling, since he had inflicted those blows not to punish but to correct. Resisting this counsel unhappily, they entered into a kind of contest, as we said above; and so let us hear what he adds.

Verses 7–8. — “I also withheld the rain from you when there were still three months to the harvest; and I rained on one city, and on another city I did not rain; one part was rained on, and the part on which I did not rain dried up. And two or three cities came to another city to drink water, and were not satisfied; and you have not returned to me, says the Lord.” Having shown above that the abundance of crops perished by a sudden plague, and that, since no amendment followed, he gave clearer testimonies of his indignation and smothered the shoots in the first sprouting of the grass by refusing rain, he consequently added that he did not withdraw the comfort of rain from all in common, lest they ascribe what had happened to chance rather than to indignation. “But so that you might feel,” he says, “that the drought came by judgment, I rained on one city and did not rain on another, so that at the same time, O people, with comfort refused you, you might be stung by the example nearby. The rain was so slight that it did not satisfy even the places it seemed to have sprinkled. Yet you, who ran like cattle at the rumor of rain, would not return to me by amending your will; and so it came about that calamities were fixed on you and my dispensations were made most fruitless for me.”

Verse 9. — “I struck you with burning wind and with mildew; the caterpillar ate the multitude of your gardens and your vineyards, your olive groves and your fig orchards; and you have not returned to me, says the Lord.” “This heap of your iniquities will rightly be judged, because, though I so often took up the work of severity, I achieved nothing toward your correction. So I list whatever hardships you have drunk instead of benefits, and I confess that I have as it were forgotten my kindness while I strive to overcome your obstinacy in sinning, so deadly to you. Therefore I did not delay to double the blows, indeed to multiply them; and when men were deprived of the support of crops, I took away the comforts of fruits and gardens too, so that, as long drought consumed the hope of harvest, so pestilent air or frequent caterpillars consumed the goods of autumn and winter: and you have not returned to me, says the Lord.”

Verse 10. — “I sent death among you on the way of Egypt; I struck your young men with the sword, even to the capture of your horses; and I made the stench of your camps go up into your nostrils; and you have not returned to me, says the Lord.” His mention of Egypt can be understood in two ways. Since that people, which is said to have numbered six hundred thousand from twenty years old and upward, perished in the wilderness, except Joshua and Caleb, God rightly says here that those whom he declares are to be destroyed by slaughter fell in the likeness of the departure from Egypt. Or else, since, when the Assyrians threatened, the Israelites asked help of the Egyptians, as blessed Hosea teaches, and yet obtained no remedy, the prophetic word consequently announces that the death of the way of Egypt was sent upon them, through which, that is, not allied arms but a more angry enemy broke in on them. The following words fit this sense better: that he judges both young men and horses to have been corrupted in the camps by siege or worn down by captivity. “But when,” he says, “the stench of the camps tormented you shut in, and you saw that the evils of captivity were about to be brought on you, not even so did you return to me, says the Lord. How do you think I bear the loss through you of the fruit of so many chastisements?”

Verse 11. — “I overthrew you,” I say, “as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and you became like a brand snatched from the burning; and you have not returned to me, says the Lord.” Who is wise and knows these things? Then he will understand the mercies of the Lord, which he never ceases to commend in all his dispensations. Hence he shows that in the present passages too, although the speech proceeds with great display of severity, they so abound and overflow that he teaches that the blows he inflicted seem to him much heavier than to those who suffer them. “I overthrew you,” he says, “as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah.” That this certainly did not happen to the peoples of Israel the hope of promised liberation also affirms. The sense, then, is this: “The calamities I inflicted raged so much against your blood that it seems to me the Sodomites themselves did not suffer greater things. For, according to the measure of kinship, since I had taken you to myself, this heaping of hardships is to be put on a level with those fires in which the obscene crowd burned up with its houses and lands. For although I have granted you hope of recovering freedom, you seem to me rather like a half-burnt brand pulled out of the fire than standing in green firmness.” Verses 12–13. — “Therefore thus will I do to you, Israel; and after I have done this to you, prepare to meet your God, Israel. For see, he who forms the mountains and creates the wind, and declares to man his word, who makes the morning mist and treads on the heights of the earth: the Lord God of hosts is his name.” “And since,” he says, “you have resolved to contend with my kindness by shameless obstinacy, and impose on me the necessity of putting forth severity, I will do to you what the very order of chastisements demands. For it is not fitting that your impudence should seem to have had more strength than our censure, and that this should cease as if tired before either your iniquity or your life comes to an end. As far as I am concerned, I will continue the purpose of healing; it will rest with you whether this manifold chastisement leads to amendment or rather to vengeance. Since, then, I lately listed those troubles (the scarcity of crops and rains, and the abundance of locusts and caterpillars, a plague consuming whatever green was left and ravaging the shoots of the year and bodies, and finally the evils of an enemy siege turning whole camps to corruption, and the sword raging within and without); which I, out of compassionate mercy, compared to that destruction by which Sodom perished, so that captivity seems to leave your remnants like burnt brands; since all these, I say, were ineffective for correction, I will do this to you with the same purpose, so that, driving out your deadly ungodliness, you may take up the disposition of amendment. And therefore, after you see what I announce brought upon you, gird yourself, made of better hope, to meet your Lord; and, though struck by part of the sentence, do not despair of salvation or fear to appear before the eyes of the judge. For you have to do with one who by no means desires the death of the dying, but who helps even the condemned if he sees them repent of what they have committed.” Some thought this passage where he says, “Therefore thus will I do to you,” should be taken so that they said the form of the threat was deliberately concealed, so that the hearer would believe that whatever most atrocious thing he could suspect had been promised. But it may be observed that the matter was not promised to the suspicions of the terrified; rather, he made public a little later what he said he would do. For after inserting things that serve the power of the Creator, there is added, as by repetition: