eBookNew Edition (New Edition)
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
The Minor Prophets is a collection of expositional essays on each of the twelve prophets. Dr. Feinberg's work illuminates the life, times, and major emphases of these men of God.
Dr. Feinberg brings to this work an unusual combination of talents and background. He has a thorough knowledge of biblical Hebrew, having trained for the rabbinate. That, combined with his scholarship in New Testament Greek, qualifies him for an expert study of the Scriptures in the original languages. In this work, he carefully presents his own views as well as dissenting views of other biblical scholars.
These studies include full treatment of the historical and cultural settings of each of the twelve prophets and their writings.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781575676319 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Moody Publishers |
| Publication date: | 01/08/1990 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 360 |
| File size: | 802 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
The Minor Prophets
By Charles L. Feinberg
Moody Press
Copyright © 1952 Charles Lee FeinbergAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-57567-631-9
CHAPTER 1
HOSEA, THE PROPHET
The Man
The Book of Hosea itself is our sole source of information for the life and ministry of the prophet. His name, occurring in the Bible as Hosea, Joshua, and Jesus, means salvation. He was a contemporary of the Judean prophets Isaiah and Micah (cp. Ho 1:1 with Is 1:1 and Mic 1:1). Whereas the ministry of the latter two prophets was directed to the Southern Kingdom of Judah, the labors of Hosea were centered in the main upon the Northern Kingdom of Israel, founded by Jeroboam the son of Nebat.
Our prophet ministered during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah of Judah, and during that of Jeroboam II, son of Joash of Israel. A comparison of dates will reveal that Hosea long outlived Jeroboam II. However, it is far from necessary to hold that he ministered from the first year of Uzziah's reign to the last of Hezekiah's, a period of about a century. (We must remember that Jotham's reign overlaps Uzziah's, his father, who was a leper; the illness of the latter made imperative a coregency, 2 Ki 15:5.) The prophet probably prophesied somewhat over a half-century, some maintaining seventy or even eighty years.
DOMESTIC LIFE
The home life of no prophet is told forth more fully than that of Hosea, because therein lay the message of God to His people, as we shall see later. Both the wife of Hosea and his children were signs and prophecies to Israel, Judah, and the coming reunited nation. If Isaiah could say, "Behold, I and the children whom Jehovah hath given me are for signs and for wonders in Israel from Jehovah of hosts, who dwelleth in mount Zion" (Is 8:18), Hosea could say as much with equal right. Because this fact has been overlooked, all too often the force of the message of the book has been dissipated by symbolizing the transactions recorded. The message was real because the acts noted were actually lived out in the life of the prophet.
HIS MESSAGE
Chapters 1 to 3 form a distinct section of the book, giving the prophet's own domestic experiences. In chapters 4 to 14, we are given the prophetic discourses proper. Amos had preached repentance to lead Israel back to God; Hosea preaches love. Amos had told forth the unapproachable righteousness of God; Hosea, the unfailing love of God. Our prophet presents the Lord as the God of the loving heart. Someone has well said, "He is the first prophet of Grace, Israel's earliest Evangelist." Just as Luke presents the prodigal son, so Hosea portrays the prodigal wife. Nowhere in the whole range of God's revelation do we find more beautiful words of love than in Hosea 2:14-16; 6:1-4; 11:1-4, 8, 9; 14:4-8.
HIS TIMES
Every prophet's message, in order to be understood properly, must be studied against the background of his times. Hosea lived in a time of outward prosperity. Uzziah's reign was marked by repeated successful wars, increased building projects in the land, the multiplication of fortifications, and the promotion of agriculture (see 2 Ch 26). The kings who followed him, though not to the same degree, prospered also. As for Jeroboam II, he recovered (2 Ki 14:25) for Israel a larger sphere of rule than it had ever enjoyed since the disruption of the Solomonic kingdom, annexing even Damascus, which had been lost already in Solomon's day (1 Ki 11:24).
In spite of the prospering of God, the people substituted outward forms (see Is 1 and 58) for the inward reality; they were committing all manner of sin; and they were in great moral and spiritual decline. Jeshurun had waxed fat and kicked (Deu 32:15). Against this low spiritual state the prophet Hosea, as well as his contemporaries, inveighed.
The Introductory Word
The first three chapters of the book give us a kind of summary of the whole message of the prophet and are introductory in character. (For the sake of space we shall omit the text of the prophecy, but the reader must have it at hand in order to get the most out of the study.) Hosea begins his prophecy by dating it. Though a prophet of Israel, he marks his message by the names of Judean kings for the most part, because the promises of God were centered in the line of David.
The first word from God to the prophet was an order for him to marry a woman who would later become a harlot. This command of God to the prophet has been the occasion of much discussion and disagreement. It is held that if this were literally so, God was enjoining upon Hosea an unseemly, not to say sinful deed. This line of reasoning is difficult to understand, because the prophet could not become personally defiled just because he married a woman who later proved to be a harlot, or rather an adulteress, for her crimes are committed after she is married. It is only when the transaction is seen in its literal character as pointing to the relationship existing between God and Israel, that the full meaning of the prophet can be grasped.
In other words, God chose Israel and brought her into a most blessed relationship with Himself, likened to the marriage bond, and while in this state she committed harlotry. Her sin is explained as departing from the Lord. Just as harlotry and adultery, sins of the deepest dye and utterly abhorrent, are the result of infidelity, so spiritual harlotry (a case where the physical is transferred into the realm of the spiritual, as many times in Scripture) is the outcome of spiritual defection from God. God had entered into an eternal covenant with Abraham and desired to be bound to His people. But in all fitness He expected His people to remember their bond to Him. This they did not do, and God portrays their infidelity to Him through the domestic life of the prophet. (See Ps 73:27. Any good concordance will show the reader how many times the natural figure of harlotry is transferred to the spiritual realm. It will be illuminating to see how many times God's messengers use this comparison.)
Need we say how much the heart of the prophet was wounded over the shameful conduct of his wife? Of how much greater wounding was the conduct of Israel toward God? The children of Gomer are called "children of whoredom," not because they were not the children of Hosea. Nor were they some already begotten but rather those yet to be born. In other words, the marriage of the prophet was normally to issue in children, who are so named ("children of whoredom") because their mother was unfaithful in marriage. The mother represents Israel corporately, while the children speak of the nation individually, although the transaction in the home of Hosea was literal and historical.
THE CHILDREN AS SIGNS
The first child of this union of the prophet and Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim, was a son. God commanded his name to be called Jezreel, for in a short time God was to avenge the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu, and was to bring an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel. What did God mean by the name? The long, sad story of Jezreel begins back in the days of vacillating and weak Ahab and his wicked and designing wife, Jezebel (1 Ki 21). Naboth the Jezreelite, who owned a vineyard near the palace of Ahab, was murdered through the infamous plotting of Jezebel in order to dispossess him of his father's heritage. For this atrocity God pronounced doom upon Ahab, Jezebel, and their descendants, this doom to overtake them in Jezreel in the very place where Naboth was slain. The sentence on Ahab was executed first, when he fought at Ramoth-gilead (1 Ki 22); then the blow fell upon Jezebel and Jehoram through Jehu the son of Jehoshaphat the son of Nimshi (2 Ki 9).
Jehu was the instrument of God to execute His judgment upon the house of Ahab. But he came to the throne through dastardly crimes of bloodguiltiness (2 Ki 9:14 and following). True, his act was commended (2 Ki 10:30), for it was such in itself, but later events showed the motivating causes in Jehu's life had been pride and ambition. The prophet Hosea's pronouncement had point here, for Jeroboam II then reigning was of Jehu's house. God would not only visit that house because it had gone into idolatry, but all Israel with the destruction of their kingdom because of their gross departure from the Lord.
A DISTINCTION WITH A DIFFERENCE
We must digress here for a moment, because a great governing principle of God is here being enunciated. It is clear that although Jehu was the instrument of God for a visitation upon punishment-deserving Ahab and his dynasty, nevertheless God required it of him because his own heart was not right and because he had personal ambitions contrary to the mind of God. Can we not learn a lesson here with regard to Israel and the nations of the earth? Though God prophesied the Egyptian bondage and it was in a sense a chastisement upon Jacob's seed because they left the land of blessing, nevertheless God judged the Egyptians for their oppression of His people.
It is clear from the prophet Habakkuk that Israel was ripe for judgment because of evil on every hand, and God foretold that the Babylonians would be that instrument of visitation. But the same prophet reveals the wrath of God upon these enemies of Israel, because they were not executing the will of God in their acts, but were directed of their own wicked hearts. No man, Hitler or any other, can oppress God's people with selfish motives and expect reward from God because they claim to be instruments in the hands of God. God requires truth in the inward parts, and He wants such in the hearts of others as well as Israel. Some one has well said, "So awful a thing is it, to be the instrument of God in punishing or reproving others, if we do not, by His grace, keep our own hearts and hands pure from sin." No nation nor individual has accomplished it thus far, so the safest path and the one with the approval of wisdom upon it, is to lay no violent hand upon Israel under any condition or circumstance.
THE FULFILLMENT
Though the Northern Kingdom was prospering at the time and all seemed well, Hosea forewarned of the end of Jehu's dynasty and the destruction of the Northern Kingdom with its military power in the valley of Jezreel, verse 5. These events took place, though at least forty years apart, just as foretold. (See 2 Ki 15:8-12 and chap. 18.) The valley of Jezreel is the great plain of Esdraelon in central Palestine. Hosea lived to see this prophecy realized in Shalmaneser's victory at Beth-arbel (10:14). It was the last dread admonition from God before the fall of Samaria.
Not Pitied
The second child of Hosea and Gomer was called Lo-ruhamah, "not compassionated or pitied." The word in the original expresses great depths of love and tenderness. The hour for Israel, the Northern Kingdom, has struck and her punishment is inevitable. She is ripe for judgment and it draws on apace. But God promises at the same time that His wrath will not go forth against Judah at the same hour. For them He had reserved mercy yet, a deliverance to be brought about by no human agency, but solely by the power of God. The defeat of Sennacherib before Jerusalem at the end of the eighth century BC, when 185,000 were slain by the Angel of Jehovah in one night (see 2 Ki 19 and Is 37), was a glorious fulfillment of this prediction, but the prophecies of all the prophets are luminous with promises of the future complete deliverance (physical) and salvation (spiritual) of Israel.
NOT MY PEOPLE
When Lo-ruhamah had been weaned (in the East this takes place two or even three years after birth), the wife of the prophet conceived and bore him a second son, Lo-ammi. God was thus saying to Israel they were not His people and He was no longer their God. How can this be true? Has God scrapped His unconditional covenant with Abraham? Does not Paul still call Israel "His [i.e., God's] people" in Romans 11:1? The difficulty is resolved if we realize that the Abrahamic covenant stands fast and sure, no matter what Israel does. First and last it is an unconditional covenant. This makes Abraham's seed always God's chosen people. But they must be in obedience and following the will of the Lord before they can have this experimentally realized in their lives. When they depart from the way of the Lord and are dealt with by God in chastisement, they appear for all intents and purposes to be "Not My People," Lo-ammi. When they return to God through Christ in a coming day, they will be in fact what they have always been in the counsels of God.
This same principle is seen to operate with the believer in Christ today, whether from Israel or from the Gentiles. Through faith in Christ and His finished work on Calvary, any soul, Jew or Gentile, is born again of the Spirit of God unto eternal life. However, that child of God can possibly live in lack of separation from the world and appear as though he knew nothing of the Father care of God and enjoy none of the blessings of intimacy with the heart of God.
For this reason, Paul exhorts the Christians of Corinth to separate from the world so that God may be their Father and they may be His sons and daughters (2 Co 6:14-18). But were they not already such, for they were believers? Yes, but Paul wants them to realize in daily experience what they are in actual standing before God. The situation is similar with regard to Israel, and we stress this great truth, because there is so much error abroad on this vital feature of God's relationship to Israel. In short, Israel, having lightly esteemed the privilege she sustains toward God (a veritable Gomer), will not enjoy the blessing and reality of it. The patriarchal blessings and promises are never abrogated, for Israel nationally is "beloved for the fathers' sake" even while they are enemies of the gospel for the sake of the Gentiles (Ro 11:28-29).
PROMISE OF BLESSING
Just as no other prophet pronounces doom alone upon Israel without a promise of future blessing, so Hosea follows his dark predictions with words of great comfort. In verses 1:10 through 2:1 the prophet promises five great blessings to Israel: (1) national increase (1:10a); (2) national conversion (1:10b); (3) national reunion (1:11a); (4) national leadership (1:11b); (5) national restoration (2:1). In view of the unspeakable decimation of Israel in Europe through the Nazi criminals, the promise of national increase is a bright hope indeed.
Do the words not remind one of the very assurance given to Abraham of a great progeny? Not only so, but they will then live up to their heritage, by His grace, as sons of the living God. See Romans 9:25 and 1 Peter 2:10 where the expression is applied to both redeemed Gentiles and Jews, because they stand alike before God in grace. The reunion of the divided nation will manifest the restored favor of God to His people. (See Eze 37:15-23.) The one head over them will be their glorious Messiah King, David's greater Son, in whom they shall trust. (Cp. Ho 3:5; Jer 23:1-5; Eze 34:23; 37:15.)
Their going up from the land has been interpreted as their going up to Esdraelon to the battle which will be decisively victorious for them, but it is perhaps better to see in the prediction the going up of the people from all parts of the land to celebrate their solemn feasts. (Of the many references see Is 2:1-4; Zec 14.) "Great shall be the day of Jezreel" for in that day God will in Christ rout the enemy once for all when Israel's Messiah stands upon the Mount of Olives to espouse their cause in person. Then will they be Ammi (My People) and Ruhamah (Pitied). Thus all three names have reappeared, but now in blessing.
THE BLIGHT OF DISOBEDIENCE
In verses 2 to 13 of chapter 2, we have the declaration of God concerning the judgment to fall upon Israel for her many sins. God disowns Israel: this is the valley of Achor. In the latter part of the chapter (vv. 14-23) the blessings of obedience and restoration are set forth. God reclaims Israel: this is the door of hope (see 2:15 which is the key of the entire chapter).
Those addressed in verse 2 are Israel, not the children of the prophet. Israel as a whole is viewed as the mother; the children are the individual members of the nation. The purpose of such a distinction is to bring upon the mother the reproach she merits for her sinful acts and to dissuade her from her continued unfaithfulness.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Minor Prophets by Charles L. Feinberg. Copyright © 1952 Charles Lee Feinberg. Excerpted by permission of Moody Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
TABLE OF CONTENTSPart 1-HOSEA: GOD'S LOVE FOR ISRAEL
1. Hosea, the Prophet
2. The Importance of the Prophecy
3. "I Know Ephraim"
4. Multiplied Altars
Part II-JOEL, AMOS, AND OBADIAH
5. Joel: The Day of the Lord
6. Amos: The Righteousness of God
7. Obadiah: Doom upon Edom
Part III-JONAH, MICAH, AND NAHUM
8. Jonah: God's Love for All Nations
9. Micah: Wrath upon Samaria and Jerusalem
10. Nahum: Judgment on Nineveh
Part IV-HABAKKUK, ZEPHANIAH, HAGGAI, AND MALACHI
11. Habakkuk: Problems of Faith
12. Zephaniah: The Day of the Lord
13. Haggai: Rebuilding the Temple
14. Malachi: Formal Worship
Part V-ZECHARIAH: ISRAEL'S COMFORT AND GLORY
15. Comforting Words
16. Sin Removed
17. War and the Prince of Peace
18. Israel's Day of Atonement