AN
EXPOSITION,
WITH
PRACTICAL OBSERVATIONS,
OF THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET
HOSEA.
We have now before us,
I. The twelve minor pi-ophets; which some oi the ancients, in reckoning up the books of the Old Testa-
ment, put all together, and reckon but as one book. They are called the lesser prophets, not because
their writings are of any less authority or usefulness than those of the greater prophets, or as if these
prophets were less in God's account, or might be so in ours, than the other, but only because they are
shorter, and less in bulk, than the other. We have reason to think that these prophets fireached as
much as the others, but that they did not write so much, nor is so much of their preaching kept upcn
record. Many excellent prophets wrote nothing, and others but little, who yet were very useful m their
iiy. And so ui the Christian church there have been many burning and shining lights, who are not
known to posterity by their writings, and yet were in no way inferior in gifts, and graces, and service-
ableness, to their own generation, than those who are; and some who have left but little behind them, and
make no great figure among authors, were yet as valuable men as the more voluminous writers. These
twelve small prophets, Josephus says, were put into one volume by the men of the great synagogue in
Ezra's time, of which learned and pious body of men the three last of these twelve prophets are sup-
posed to have been themselves members. These are what remained of the scattered pieces of inspired
writing. Antiquaries value the fragmenta veterum — the fragments of antiquity ; these are the frag-
ments of firofihecy, which are carefully gathered up by the Divine Providence and the care of the
clmrcli, that nothuig might be lost; as St. Paul's short epistles after his long ones. The son of Sirach
speaks of these twelve firofiheta with honour, as men that strengthened Jacob, Ecclus. xlix. 10. Nine
of these prophets prophesied before the captivity, and the three last after the return of the Jews to their
own laud. Some difference there is in the order of these books. We place them as the ancient Hebrew
did; and all agree to put Hosea first; but the ancient Septuagint places the six first in this order — Hosea,
Amos, Micah, Joel, Obadiah, and Jonah; the thing is not material. And if we covet to place them
according to their seniority, as to some of them We shall find no certainty.
II. We have before us the prophecy of Hosea, who was first of all the writing prophets, somewhat before
Isaiah. The ancients say. He was of Beth-shemesh, and of the tribe of Issachar. He continued very
lung a prophet; the Jews reckon that he prophesied near fourscore and ten years; so that, as Jerom
observes, he prophesied of the destruction of the kingdom of the ten tribes, when it was at a great dis-
tance, and lived himself to see and lament it, and to improve it when it was over, for warning to its sister
kingdom. The scope of his prophecy is to discover sm, and to denounce the judgments of God against
a people that would not be reformed. The style is very concise and sententious, above any of the pro-
phets; and in some places it seems to be like the book of Proverbs, without connexion, and rather to be
called Hosea's sayings than Hosea's sermons. And a weighty adage may sometimes do more service
than a laboured discourse. Huetius observes that many passages in the prophecies of Jeremiah and
Ezekiel seem to refer to, and to be borrowed from, the prophet Hosea, who wrote a good while befoi-e
them. As jer. vii. 34. — xvi. 9. — xxv. 10. and Ezek. xxvi. 13. speak the same with Hos. ii. 11. so
Ezek. xvi. 16, 8cc. is taken from Hos. ii. 8. And that promise of sennng the Lord their God, and
David their king, Jer. xxx. 8, 9. Ezek. xxxiv. 23. Hosea had before, ch. iii. 5. And Ezek. xix. 12. is
taken from Hos. xiii. 15. Thus one prophet confirms and corroborates another; and all these worketh
that one and the self-same Spirit.