will not be pleased, or your
thank-offerings of fatted calves, I will not look at them. Let cease
from me the noise of thy songs: to the playing of thy viols I will not
listen. But let justice roll on like water, and righteousness like an
unfailing stream.

[Footnote: This translation is in the main that of George Adam Smith
in the "Expositor's Bible."]

{363}

HOSEA

(Hosea belonged to the same generation as Amos, and meets the same
social sins and oppressions of the poor by the rich. He emphasizes the
religious side of the difficulties. Sin is treachery against God, and
peculiarly mean treachery; for God loves his people. Hosea's emphasis
on the love of God is almost the beginning of the greatest idea about
God that man ever conceived. It grew out of a very sad part of his own
life. His wife had left him, and yet he could not forget her. He still
loved her, and could not cease loving her. This experience showed him
what God must be like. God loved Israel. When Israel sinned, God was
hurt and saddened. Could God cease to love Israel? Never! If he, a
man, still loved his wife, could Jehovah, being God, love less? Must
not his love be greater than man's? So it comes about that Hosea gives
a very vivid and wonderful picture of the sad and terrible results of
sin, and of the tender, compassionate love of God. The book is more
disconnected than many of the prophecies. It is a series of
independent sections, nearly all of which express, in different
language, much the same ideas of Israel's sin and God's love.)

I

SOWING THE WIND; REAPING THE WHIRLWIND

When I would heal Israel, then is the iniquity of Ephraim discovered,
and the wickedness of Samaria; for they commit falsehood: and the
thief entereth in, and the troop of robbers spoileth without. And they
consider not {364} in their hearts that I remember all their
wickedness: now have their own doings beset them about; they are
before my face. They make the king glad with their wickedness, and the
princes with their lies. They are all hot as an oven, and devour their
judges; all their kings are fallen: there is none among them that
calleth unto me. Ephraim, he mixeth himself among the peoples; Ephraim
is a cake not turned. Strangers have devoured his strength, and he
knoweth it not: yea, gray hairs are here and there upon him, and he
knoweth it not. And the pride of Israel doth testify to his face: yet
they have not returned unto the Lord their God, nor soug