Hosea: An Introduction and Commentary

Tyndale Old Testament Commentary

by David Allan Hubbard

A wanton and adulterous woman repeatedly spurns the love of her youth. Her betrayed and grieving husband offers forgiveness and seeks to restore the intimacy of their first love.Bold imagery indeed for telling the story of God and his people. Bolder still when God calls a prophet to enflesh this divine suffering and redeeming forgiveness in his own marriage. Yet this remarkable story sets the stage for Hosea's message of God's enduring love, his righteous judgement and his persistent offer of reconciliation.This commentary explores the historical, cultural, literary and theological dimensions of the book of Hosea. Distilled from a career of biblical scholarship, theological reflection and masterful teaching, David Hubbard has been studying, teaching and thinking about Hosea for a long time. He frankly admits he can't imagine himself "as a human being, let alone as a believing person, without the deposit of Hosea's political, moral and spiritual insights." Find out why.

Genres: Reference, Biblical Studies, Christian, Theology, Old Testament

234 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

David Allan Hubbard was the President of Fuller Theological Seminary between 1963 and 1993.

Reviews

[Joe Stevens · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm in the minority as scholars love this book, but I really struggled grasping sentences which were cut into pieces with endless references to other scriptures or books and asides about Hebrew language matters. A five-word sentence could run a hundred words with an interjection between each word in the sentence. I would have to block out the bits in brackets and concentrate on the sentence just to make sense of what he was saying and then read each bracketed statement separately. This is no way to write an introductory commentary.
Part of the problem is most intro commentaries maybe run 2-1 or 3-1 commentary to text, this book runs 15-1. Ezekial is 8 times longer and the commentary is virtually the same length. There is just too much for the intro student of the book to digest as the commentary often becomes endless single word study and half a dozen different responses to the same question.
"Judah's crimes (cf. Moffat; JB; Ward, p. 207; Wolff, p. 206; Mays, p. 161; Jacob, p. 85)"
"language found almost verbatim in 4:9: for punish, literally 'visit', cf. on 1:4; 2:13; 4:9; 8:13; 9:9; for ways i.e. 'wicked ways' in this context, cf. 4:9; for deeds, i.e. the most general and encompassing description of the evil acts of all sorts, cf. on 4:9; 5:4; 7:2; 9:15; for requite, literally 'cause to return', cf. on 4:9; 12:15; as in Amos 1:3." Is this English?

[Logan Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really like how this series balances depth with brevity. This one mostly gets that balance right, with a bit more emphasis on the original Hebrew than some of the others I've read. Sometimes that made it a bit of a slog, but mostly it added additional insight that I appreciated.

[Sam Sinclair · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really solid commentary. I found it as helpful on technical matters as the NAC/WBC/NICOT but more readable and straightforward, particularly in discerning the structure of Hosea 4-14. Some of the proposed historical backgrounds for various oracles were plausible, but ultimately conjectural.

[Jill · Rating 2 out of 5]

This commentary wasn't organized quite as well as the others in the Tyndale series. The content was good, just hard to navigate.