Devotional Commentary on Hosea 14
God prophecied to Hosea the fall of
Samaria. "Samaria shall become desolate
for she is the one who rebelled against her God. They shall fall with the
sword. Their infants shall be dashed in pieces and their pregnant women shall
be ripped up." (verse 1). The Targum translated that Samaria
"rebelled upon the word of God". Otherwise the translation is very
close to the Hebrew text. The word is translated by the Targum and by the
Syriac. The interesting phenomenon here is the close proximity in the letters
although different between the last two translations. In this verse Hosea is explaining what
is going to happen to Samaria and why it is happening. The siege of Samaria
took three years between 723-721 BCE. The actions of the enemy against the
women of Samaria would be gruesome. But there is still hope and God is
making the best of it. He calls again on the wayward of spiritual Israel to
return to Him (verse 2). "Return Israel unto the Lord your God for you
have fallen in your iniquity." Here Hosea calls to the people of
Israel to repent. "Turn around Israel" he says to the Lord your God.
Israel is with their back to the Lord in their actions. This is seemingly the
part that God cannot do. It is the old saying that you can lead a horse to the
water but you cannot make it drink. The sinner turns around and God will then
takes over and do the rest. It is the willingness that He wants to see. Their language of worship needs to
change and they individually and corporately needed to go to the Lord and say
to HIm that He is the great peacemaker, the forgiver of iniquity. They should
say that God should take whatever is good and they will give to him the
language of their lips in worship. Instead of idol calves, they will give their
lips as worshipping God. A total return is requested. "Take with you words and return
to the Lord. Say to Him: you carry all iniquity and take good and we will give
the calves of our lips" (verse 3). The Jewish Targum later interpreted it
as follows: "Draw near with you the words of confession and return to the
worship of the Lord. Say before me: drawing near to you to dismiss upon evils
and we receive that which is like good and utterances are the removal of that
which is given before you like oxen to be decided upon the altar". The Syriac translated that they should
"return to your Lord". It also added a copulative "and" to
the next word which is not in the original. The translation is furthermore:
"and say to him: we leave to you your iniquity and they will receive the
good and we shall render you the fruits of your labor." This is of course
an interpretation of the original and is a bit different than the original. The
Targum interpreted: "Take with you words of hope and return to the religion
of the Lord. Say: I am first to approach, you are first to leave upon
iniquity". There is almost a liturgical excursus here, a kind of recipe
what should be said exactly. Hosea wants them to turn around but
with words on their lips. They are to pray a simple prayer. The theology of the
prayer is astounding. It is atonement theology at its best! "You take our
iniquities" means that God is asked to take away the iniquities by taking
the responsibility for them and suffer the consequences for them, even unto the
second death or eternal death. That is what Christ came for, namely to die the
second death for every one and been resurrected He is able to save unto the
uttermost. The kind of conversion that will be
true conversion is mapped out by Hosea further here: It wil be when they say:
"Assur shall not save us. Upon horses we will not ride and not shall we
say any longer: "Our God" to the work of our hands. The fatherless
shall find mercy which is in you" (verse 4). The translation of the Syriac in this
verse is more free than in chapter one. It translates: "and say: Assyria
shall not save us. And upon horses we shall not ride. And not shall we say
again 'God' to our works because you show mercy [to] your students". The
number of changes of the original are so many in this chapter that we are
concluding that another translator in the Syriac worked here than in chapter
one. This Syriac translator was not so conservative as the one in chapter one. We interpreted the phrase as "the
fatherless shall find mercy which is in you". This theology is also
fundamental namely that mercy is from the Lord and found in Him. One has to
turn to His mercy if one is in the wrong. No longer will idols and terracottas,
and images of stone and wood be used as a solemn reminder of God. The image
will no longer take the place of God. They will not dress the images with
clothes for winter and place food for it at the heathen festivals in spring and
other times. They will not visit and pray or eat with the ancestors any longer.
No longer will they say to the work of their hands "God". If they return to the Lord with their
full heart then healing can start: "I will heal their backsliding, love
them freely for My anger turned away from them" (verse 5). The anger of
God can turn away and is not fatalistic. There is a recipe to follow. The Jewish Targum understood the
process here: "I will accept them in their conversion and I will forgive
to their sins. I will love them when they return in the will because turned is
my wrath from them." In this verse the Syriac is very close
to the original. It introduced a copulative "and" which is absent in
the original. The Targum interpreted that "I will accept them in their
conversion and forgive their sins". The Targum again supply some kind of a
recipe that should be followed. In essence this is not wrong because that is
what is happening in this verse. How does God heal people's
backsliding? Who takes initiative first? God or man? If it is always God then
we are just computers or puppets on a string. If the initiative must come from
man then one can say that even if the initiative comes from man, the healing is
a miracle from the Lord. Forgiveness is from the Lord and also is love from the
Lord. The Targum understood something in this verse that is probably on the
right track. The will to convert is the spark that fires up the flame of grace
to forgive and set right the sinner with Him. If the conversion is totally by
God then again it renders man a mere puppet not responsible for the good nor
the bad. The plea by Hosea and other prophets for repentance places the onus on
man to be willing to take a step and then grace is at hand and complete nearly
the whole race. All that is asked from man is just the spark of willingness. A
mere sigh "Yes, I want". The whole economy of heaven is then at the
disposal of such a person. It is then God that heals, not man. It is God who
forgives, not a human agency. God will be refreshing to Israel and
dew is to vegetation in the Lebanon. "I will be as dew to Israel. He shall
grow as a lily. And he shall cast forth his root like the Lebanon" (verse
6). It may not be clear to the reader in
this verse but if one looks at Hosea 14:10 then one see that Hosea is recasting
Psalm 1 in a different form here. In verse 10 he is telling of the two ways of
the righteous and the wicked. The growth of the righteous in verse 6 is
compared to a lily that receives it's dew from the Lord. They will cast roots
like the lilies in the Lebanon. The description of this plant that grows and
spread its roots reminds one of the dream of Nebuchadnezar had as described in
Daniel 4:7-13. The tree of Nebuchadnezar grew big המורו (verse 7c). Nebuchadnezar had his dream
nearly 130 years later than Hosea. Daniel would have been familiar with the
imagery of Hosea 14 and in a way is Daniel's interpretation in line with the
theology of Hosea 14. The promises of restoration of mankind
converting to Him is pleasant to see. It is filled with metaphors of a garden.
"His branches shall spread and his beauty shall be as an olive tree and a
smell to him like the Lebanon." (verse 7). Hosea was a farmer for his
wife. He knows fauna and flora very well. Jerome did not translate the word lw
"to him" in his translation. He rendered it et odor eius ut Libani
"and his smell as the Lebanon". The Old Latin (190 CE) also did not
translate the word. The imagery of Psalm 1 is continued
here with the righteous that will grow as a lily of the Lebanon. His branches
shall spread and his beauty shall be as an olive tree in the Lebanon. For Hosea
to make these comments about the trees of the Lebanon means that he visited
there some time during his life. Hosea had a clear understanding of the
beauty of nature as far as the sense of seeing and smell is concerned. The
branches of the tree of Nebuchadnezar were also beautiful (Daniel 4:9a). Eschatology is slowly taking its
proper place in this end chapter of Hosea. The Utopia to come is mapped out
with metaphors from the garden trees. "The inhabitants that dwell in
its shade shall revive the corn, and grow as the vine, its scent as the wine of
the Lebanon" (verse 8). In this verse Hosea imagine a big tree
so big that inhabitants could dwell in its shade and revive the corn and grow
as the vine with a nice smell similar to that in the Lebanon. In Daniel 4:8 in the dream Nebuchadnezar had
nearly 130 years later, that big tree supplied the whole world with food. This
tree of Nebuchadnezar had a shade for all created animals "under its shade
were all created animals". Since Nebuchadnezar was not righteous the dew
of heaven (Daniel 4:12) fell on him and he had to eat with the animals. Here in
Hosea 14:6 the Lord will be as dew לטכ to the righteous. The righteous of Psalm 1
is planted "upon streams of waters". In the Wisdom Literature of
Amenope dating to ca. 650 BCE one can find a similar image of the wise as a
tree planted near waters. There are differences though since the water supply
system in Egypt differs from that in Palestine. In lines 96-101 and lines 102-109 of
the Wisdom literature of Amenmope are two units that portrays the life and
end-result of the bad and good in a well known old ancient Near Eastern
metaphor of the fruitbearing tree. Moses already used this metaphor pertaining
to the wicked in Job 21:18 referring to the agricultural phenomenon of chaff in
the wind. The classical pre-text for the 650 BC text of Amenmope is Psalm 1.
Notice how Psalm 1 is the shorter more complicated of the two parallels
implying seniority over Amenmope. Psalm 1:3 describes the righteous as a
tree by the waters that bears fruit in its season while the wicked is not
described in elaboration of the metaphor explicitly. Implicitly, the intention
of the words: 1:4 not so with the wicked. Amenmope starts off with the metaphor
pertaining to the hot-tempered man but described in equal parallelism the Ger
Maa as the exemplary with a positive side of the same metaphor. Whereas the tree in Psalm 1 is planted
next to the streams of water for the righteous, here in Amenmope the noisy
hotheaded man (pɜ-šmm)
is planted in the courtyard of the house of the god (m-ḥt-nṯr).
As in Psalm 92:13 he comes to an end and his unripe fruit drops off and is of
no use. He is thrown into the watercourse, cast in, carried away to the place
to be used for firewood (line 101). The Ger Maa is like a large leafy tree
planted not in the courtyard () but in shining ground or m-thnt (line 103).
Whereas the hotheaded temple burocrat comes to an end line 98 (kmt [Budge] pɜjf-ḫɜc)
but the mobile school (next to the road) blossoms = ɜḫɜḫ
(see line 104). It doubles its yield of fruit in Summer. The difference between
the metaphor of the righteous as a tree in Psalm 1 and here in Amenmope will be
outlined below. The Ger Maā has his
place before the lord (owner). His foilage or fruit is sweet, his shadow is
pleasant (here an additional elaboration by the scribe of Amenmope of an older
cryptic consonantal text of the Masoretic tradition presumably serving as
pre-text). At its end it is carried into the parks of the god. The god is not
explicit as elsewhere but an ideogram added inside (m-mnw). It appears that
what existed in the consonantal text as separate pieces of literature in the
wisdom genre of the Hebrew tradition is pieced together as a mosaic in the
Egyptian literature under discussion almost as if the Egyptian scribe was well
versed in Hebrew Wisdom literature of not only the book of Proverbs but also of
Psalm 1. Father L. Griffith indicated (JEA 12
[1926]: 191-231, especially 202 footnote 2) that the scribe who wrote the
unpublished pages of proverbs at the verso of the papyrus turned it around and
at column 6.4-6 smudged the word and rewrote or corrected it in coarser writing
with very black ink. Why would the scribe do that? Why was he busy working on
something and then turn the page around, read other literature and then
corrected it? Why the correction? The Ger Maā
is like a large leafy tree that is planted in shining ground. The wisdom
analogy of this comparison is in Psalm 1:3 where the tree is planted by living
waters. The topography and geomorphological differences between Egypt and
Israel demanded a different ideal image for the former. The Utopia
thought-pattern of the author is moulded by the needs and desires of the
audience. Each author lives under different circumstances. The composer of
Psalm 1 and the scribe of Amenmope lives under two different settings. In
Egypt, trees are planted in shining grounds. Could it be that there was more
water in Palestine than in Egypt so that the wisdom thinker of Israel hoped for
a certain quality of water but the Egyptian wisdom thinker 300 years later
could only imagine a certain quality of ground? Father L. Griffith indicated:
"The teaching of Amenmophis the son of Kanacht. Papyrus B.M. 10474," JEA 12 (1926):
191-231 at page 202 that in Egypt the pit in which a tree has been planted in a
garden is surrounded by a raised rim to retain the water. In line 103 the word
tḥnt
was etymologically confusing to Budge and even Griffith was baffled and
suggested pit. However, compare the lines 103 and 97. The only difference is
the last word tḥnt
and ḫntj-š. Griffith also recognized the
connection to the simile in Psalm 1.
Wisdom Text of Amenmope 650 BC Column VI
line 96 IR_A }jMO# N *TTpz [Egyptian Hieroglyphic Fonts to visible to
the reader, apology] transliteration: ir-pɜ-šmm
m-ḫt-nṯr translation: Now, the noisy, hotheaded man of the house
of the god (temple) line 97 \3 FI ZT
RDj oNTpz transliteration: sw-mj-šɜ-rdw
m-ḫntj-š translation: He is like a large, leafy tree planted
in the courtyard line 98 BjT@
_[II3F 4Aaq S"VD" K[ transliteration: km-ɜt pɜjf-ḫɜc
-srdm translation: Its [leaves] come to an end, his unripe
fruit drops off line 99 NT33 9T3F N m kRmG:p transliteration: in-tw-pḥ-f
m-ḫrm translation: Brought when its end has come to the
watercourse(? line 100 \3 Eh3G OA3"B R XTTp3F transliteration: sw-mḥ
wɜw
r-st-f translation: It is [cast] into the water, and carried
away ffrom its place line 101 TASTVAO# TAII3F @RIS4{T3F transliteration: tɜ-stɜ tɜjf-ḳrst translation: The fame of fire is its winding-sheet line 102 GR#$ NJjF\3 j LIja transliteration: gr-mɜc
dj-f-sw m-rwjɜ translation: The Ger Maā
who sets himself by the side (of the road) line 103 \3 FI ZT RDj
khNTT: transliteration: sw-mj-šɜ-rdw
m-tḫnt translation: He is like a large, leafy tree planted
in shining ground line 104 \3 [k[kz QB3R }jGHF transliteration: sw-ɜḫɜḫ
ḳɜb-f-šmw-f translation: It blossoms, it doubles its yield of
fruit in the summer line 105 \3 N kFT w N nRFR transliteration: sw-n-ḫft-ḥr
n-nb-f translation: It has its place before the face of
its lord line 106 DGA.F BINR, 4[B3 b&F hjj transliteration: dgɜ-f-bnr
ḫɜb-f-nḏm translation: Its fruit is sweet, its shadow is
pleasant line 107 NT3 93TF M mNM3R transliteration: in-tw-pḥ-f
m-mnw translation: and it is carried at its end into the
parks of the god
Scholars are trying to implicate that
the wisdom passages in Proverbs 22-24 is derived from this wisdom literature of
Amenmope but Proverbs antedate this literature in Egypt to c. 940 BCE which is
approximately 300 years. Furthermore, there are no other texts in Late, Middle
or Old Egyptian that could substantiate the exact tradition as it is found in
Amenmope in order to claim Egyptian originality over this literature.
The Papyrus BM 10474 was brought to the British Museum by Sir Ernest
Budge in 1888 from his first mission to Egypt.
1. First publications E. Budge published one page of it in
1920 in his By Nile and Tigris. It was referred to by Lepage Renouf. In 1922 an
account of the text was given in the Recueil Champollion with large extracts in
transcription and translation.
2. The first official publications In 1923 the official publication
appeared in the Second Series of Facsimiles of Egyptian Hieratic Papyri in the
British Museum, where the whole text was photographed, transcribed into
hieroglyphics and translated by E. Budge. After another year in August of 1924,
a transcription and translation of the text, mostly the same as the one that
accompanied the facsimile, was issued by the same scholar in a separate work in
which he also included other proverbial writings that have come down to us from
Ancient Egypt. At this stage, Budge was already drawing attention to the
resemblances of certain passages to sentences in the Book of Proverbs.
Translations into Danish, German, English followed soon.
DATING THE WISDOM OF AMENMOPE
1. The orthography Lange collected on pp. 14-16
orthographical evidence for a late dating of the text under discussion. To
these examples, F. Ll. Griffith added the spellings of grs.t in 6.6; phd in
16.21 and sdw(?) in 21.1 which he recognized as been connected with usages
first introduced into hieroglypic in the Twenty-sixth Dynasty (c. 650 BCE).
2. Division into numbered chapters The division of the teaching into
numbered chapters is described by Griffith as "unique in a hieratic
text" although it is found in a demotic text of the Leyden Moral Papyrus
which contained twenty-five lessons of moral sayings.
3. Arrangement of the text in separate lines The arrangement of the text in
separate lines is unusual but an example is known as old as the Twelfth Dynasty
in the Kahun Hymn to Sesostris III.
4. The onomasticon, Amen(em)ope