the prophetic
office, which was sometimes entered upon even in early youth. The
inscription has the same authority in its favour as every other part of
the book; and it is hardly possible to understand the levity with which
it has, in recent times, been pretty generally designated as spurious,
or, at least, suspicious. [Pg 173] It is altogether impossible to sever
it from the other parts of the book. There must certainly have been
some object in view when, in ver. 2, it is expressly remarked, that
what follows took place at the _beginning_ of Hosea's ministry. But
such an object it will be possible to point out, only in the event of
its being more accurately determined at what time this beginning took
place--viz., still under the reign of Jeroboam, when the state of
things as it appeared to the eye did not yet offer any occasion for
such views of the future as are opened up in the first three chapters.
Ver. 1 cannot, therefore, be regarded as an addition subsequently made,
unless the words in ver. 2, from [Hebrew: tHlt] to [Hebrew: bhvwe] be
so likewise. But these again are most closely connected with what
follows by the _Future_ with _Vav convers._, which never can begin a
narrative. There remains, therefore, only this alternative:--either to
regard the whole as having been written at a later period, or to claim
for Hosea the inscription also. We cannot agree with the view of
_Simson_, that the remark by which the beginning of the book is
assigned to the beginning of the prophet's ministry, originated from a
chronological interest only; and we can the less do so, because the
prophet does not pay any attention to chronology in any other place,
but is anxious to give only the sum and substance of what he had
prophesied during a series of years. The only exception which he makes
in this respect must have originated from strong reasons; and such do
not exist, if the inscription in ver. 1, or the mention of the kings in
it, be spurious. The mention of the beginning in ver. 2 would, in that
case, be so much the more groundless, as we could know nothing at all
regarding the length of his ministry.

Much more fruitful, certainly, than all such vain doubts, are the
reflections of Calvin on the long duration of the prophet's ministry:
"How grievous is it to us when God requires our services for twenty or
thirty years; and, especially, when we have to contend with ungodly
people, who would not willingly take upon them the yoke,