Canter Bridge

The review that follows was originally published in The Churchman, 1999.

HOSEA. The International Critical Commentary
A.A. Macintosh
Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark. 1997 600pp ISBN 0 567 08545 7

Andrew Macintosh’s Hosea offers its reader the judiciously critical stance, the attention to detail, and the craftsmanship which have characterised the ICC in its best moments. It then adds to this package a reverent dialogue with an ancient interpretative tradition that rarely finds a voice in the circles frequented by readers of such commentaries, that of Medieval Jewish exegetes like David Kimchi, Rashi, and Nachmanides. The result is extraordinarily rich.

Hosea challenges its interpreter with one of the more difficult texts of the Hebrew Bible. Macintosh does not explain the idiosyncrasies of that text by facile recourse to massive textual corruption. Rather, he strains to discern in them the strangeness of the prophet’s northern dialect. Macintosh is not opposed to textual reconstruction, but—happily—neither is it his first instinct.

Macintosh envisages a work that was “more or less complete” by the time it went south to Judah following Israel’s collapse in 722 B.C. Though its circulation and transmission in southern circles will have moved the language in the direction of standard Biblical Hebrew, traces of its less-well-understood northern provenance remain. Macintosh leans appreciatively upon the linguistic prowess of the Medieval interpreters to exegete what remains a challenging prophetic work.

It is Macintosh’s appreciation for the prophet’s literary voice (“He is simply a master of language”, lxi) together with his awareness that no modern student successfully approaches a text like this except by way of a long path of tradition and interpretation that gives this commentary its depth. Its author cares deeply about what the prophet Hosea meant, spoke, and did. Furthermore, he believes that this legacy is largely accessible to the modern exegete, and can comment quite lyrically upon it. Yet he approaches such ancient treasure with constant reference to the earliest Jewish interpretation—in Septuagint and Targum—as well as by learning from those who spoke much later, in medieval times. The Christian reader will also be delighted by Macintosh’s knowing gestures in the direction of the New Testament, often when one least expects them!

Hosea’s life is uniquely and painfully bound up with the work that bears his name. For Macintosh, the prophet’s famous marriage to unfaithful Gomer and the unforgettably named children which it produced, “constitute a parable or sign of the nation’s apostasy together with its inevitable results. The marriage is not contracted in order to illustrate the message; it constitutes the beginning of the message itself; for it is an outward sign or representation of the relationship between God and his people, and it is the means by which God began to communicate to Hosea his message to the nation” (9). Because the emphasis is on the fate of the nation rather than on Hosea’s domestic tragedy, “there is lacking the precise biographical detail about Hosea’s wife and the circumstances of his marriage which are so avidly desired by modern commentators and which by much ingenuity they seek to supply” (9, emphasis added).

One mentions this detail in a short review not only because Hosea’s marriage and the identify of his wife represent a crux for comment on this book, but also because Macintosh’s language here exemplifies the reserve with which he approaches methodological excess of many kinds. After close examination of various points, a scholar’s enthusiastic historical or textual reconstruction will here or there be put to rest as “far-fetched”, “ingenious rather than plausible”, or “pressed to extremes”. The impression that this represents caution rather than timidity is reinforced by the eclectic and occasionally original path which Macintosh himself cuts through the welter of exegetical possibilities that a complicated text like Hosea’s generates. Even if one does not always finish a paragraph persuaded that Macintosh’s judgement is indisputable, one enjoys the repeated assurances that neither does Macintosh himself think so.

The commentary is thick with philological detail and presumes not only a knowledge of Hebrew and Greek, but also the willingness to tolerate if not revel in Targumic Aramaic. To those who will invest the energy required, Macintosh and the ICC editors have provided a sturdy exegetical companion plus a bonus. Rare is the commentary that pays such reverent attention not only to what a biblical text said, but also to how it has been heard to speak by avid listeners across the centuries and into our own. There are Hosea commentaries that will come more quickly to the point. There is none that will find its way there—respectfully, delightfully—by such a satisfying path.