BOOK OF HOSEA: PROPOSALS FOR ITS ORGANIZATION

Many have commented on the difficulty of discerning the pattern behind the book of Hosea, most notably after ch. 3.

“Whereas the outline of Amos' prophecy jumps out at us, for Hosea's we have to search closely.” (LaSor)

            “Hos 4-14 does not exhibit any overall design.” (Ward)

            “[Hos. 4-14] shows little superficial evidence of careful composition or organization.”(Andersen and Freedman)

            “The Book of Hosea does not display a sophisticated microstructure; it appears to be a loose anthology of speeches rather than a tightly structured collection.” (Chisholm)

            “...specially for chs. 4-14 even the effort to establish broad lines of divisions evokes much debate.” (Childs)

            “[T]he editorial arranging of Hosea's oracles...is either so skillful or so nonchalant...as to result in a relative absence of sharp delineations between pericopes. In fact, deciding where one passage in Hosea leaves off and another begins has been a major consideration for every commentator and critic.” (Stuart)

            “Identification of the larger units making up the Book of Hosea is exceedingly difficult.” (Dorsey)

Davies has perhaps best pinpointed the reasons behind this difficulty: “The sub-division of the book into separate sections is much more difficult in Hosea than in other books, partly because of the general absence of introductory and concluding formulas, such as 'Thus says the Lord,' and partly because even within sections that have a generally similar theme there are often frequent shifts of subject or mood.” Dearman echoes these complicating factors, which are only compounded by the many textual uncertainties that exist for this book, said to be the most numerous of any OT book outside of Job.

For those scholars who do see a pattern to the book, there are two basic ways in which it is viewed. The majority opinion considers the first three chapters as a discrete section followed by the rest of the book, which is predominantly poetic. Blenkinsopp analyzes this first section as a simple ABA pattern of autobiography-biography-autobiography. A slightly more detailed symmetrical scheme is pictured below:

A. Hosea and Gomer (Hosea 1) (prose)

B. God and His People: Condemnation (Hosea 2:1-13) (poetry)

                                    B'. God and His People: Redemption (Hosea 2:14-23) (poetry)

A'. Hosea and Gomer (Hosea 3) (prose)

There is definite support for this organization in that A and A' share great verbal affinities as do B and B'. The latter correspondence is so strong that Davies argues for the unity of 2:1-23 while recognizing that most commentators designate a break around v. 13, as pictured above. Kruger notes that the ideas in B and B' “correspond in reverse order,” good evidence that the two sections should be kept separate as mirror images of one another. Dorsey’s more elaborate seven-part chiasm proposed for chs. 1-3 has as its centerpiece Hosea 2:14-15, closely corresponding to the focus of the above pattern.

An attractive expansion of this ABBA structure is proposed by Bullock:

                A. Hosea's marriage (1:2-9)

B. Renewal of covenant, cancellation of judgment (children's names changed)

(1:10-2:1)

C. Yahweh's judgment on Israel (harlotry imagery) (2:2-4)

D. Indictment and judgment (2:5-8)

C'. Yahweh's judgment on Israel (fertility cult terminology) (2:9-13)

B'. Renewal of covenant, cancellation of judgment (children's names changed)

(2:14-23)

    A'. Reunion of Hosea and his wife (3:1-5)

The most unsatisfactory aspect of the above views is that they leave the remaining eleven chapters of the book dangling with no strong ties to the opening section. One weak piece of evidence unifying the whole book is the interesting pattern to the word ba'al, which appears exactly seven times in chs. 2-13 alternating between singular and plural usages. In addition, ruah, or spirit, also occurs seven times in the book; and 'awon (“iniquity”) is found ten times. Another indication of unity is the possible inclusio formed by the two appearances of nasa in the book at 1:6 and 14:2 with their contrast between not forgiving and forgiving, respectively. (Dearman) A similar inclusion may be found in the references to horses in 1:7 and 14:3.

An alternative view should be considered that makes better sense of the whole book. Let us assume that, taking Childs' words somewhat out of context, “the first section now provides the exegetical key in the framework from which the entire book is to be read.” Thus, the beginning chapter of the book concerns Hosea's personal history related in prose. This is followed by two mainly poetic passages with the respective themes of condemnation (2:1-13) and redemption (2:14-23). If we look for this same threefold pattern elsewhere in Hosea, it is obvious that ch. 3 is another biographical section and that the final chapter of the book has the salvation of Israel as its theme. This reasoning leads to the following overall structure:

Figure 1

Two-Cycle Structure of Hosea

Cycle I: Hosea 1-2

A. Hosea and Gomer (Hosea 1) (prose)

B. God and His People: Condemnation (Hosea 2:1-13)

C. God and His People: Redemption (Hosea 2:14-23)

Cycle II: Hosea 3-14

A. Hosea and Gomer (Hosea 3) (prose)

B. God and His People: Condemnation (Hosea 4-13)

C. God and His People: Redemption (Hosea 14)

This scheme is basically that of E. B. Pusey who, however, views chs. 4-14 as an expansion of the theme of ch. 3 (God's mercy and love) just as ch. 2 expands on the theme of Israel's idolatry presented in the first chapter. As Bullock states, this thematic characterization is a gross oversimplification. However, Pusey was certainly on the right track in regarding the role of ch. 3 as introducing the following passages of the book. This two-cycle organization would, however, ignore the role of the other passage in Hosea that dwells on Israel's future salvation: ch. 11.

Sweeney presents an entirely different “two cycle” approach with the first cycle consisting of the prose account of Hosea 1. He then divides the remaining body of the book into four parts, which can be seen to possess a certain sense of chiasmus:

        A. Hosea's appeal to his children for their mother's return (2:1-3:5)

                    B. YHWH's basic charges against Israel (4:1-19)

                    B'. Specifications of YHWH's basic charges (5:1-13:16)

        A'. Appeal for Israel's return to YHWH (14:1-8)

This analysis suffers from not recognizing the strong parallels between the two prose passages of Hosea 1 and 3.

Others such as Childs see a two-fold division to Hosea with a break either between chs. 3 and 4 or after 1:11. In my opinion, these various two-part divisions should be abandoned in favor of a three-part scheme described in my post titled “Book of Hosea: Introduction to Literary Structure.”