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Commentary on Hosea, Chapter Four
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COMMENTARY ON HOSEA, CHAPTER FOUR Listen to the word of the Lord, children of Israel, because the Lord has a judgment against the inhabitants of the land, that there is no truth or mercy or knowledge of God in the land. Cursing and falsehood, murder and theft and adultery are spread over the land, and blood is mingled with blood (vv.1–2). HERE IS NEED for us in our wish to clarify the sense of the text to recapitulate, as it were, what was said initial- ly, and summarize the whole gist of the prophecy, so to speak. As far as possible, then, this is what I have to say in summarizing : there was a “Beginning of the word of the Lord to Hosea .”1 In commenting on this we duly said that the words came to the blessed prophet Hosea from God, who was, as it were, giving him spiritual initiation and foretelling the future in types and words. Consequently, at the beginning Gomer was taken into his company, and she gave birth to Not my people and Not pitied. Then, after her a second woman, a wicked adulteress, was adopted , and the prophet was instructed in precise detail, as I said, as to the course of each relationship. As though apprised sufficiently of the force of the mystery, he then begins to predict the future for those of the bloodline of Israel, to clarify the disaster still pending for them, (91) and to explain clearly the ways in which they had offended God so that those suffering punishment would know that they were justly suffering whatever befell them. In fact, they were on the point of being captured by the enemy, and thus exposed to ridicule by people who held them in highest regard, and who thought that of all the nations Israel was the most difficult to capture. 101 1. Hos 1.2. Like Theodore at this point, Cyril feels the need to respond to the changing focus of the work, and remind the reader of the author’s overall skopos. 102 CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA Consequently, so that they should not think within themselves that the hand that assisted and saved them had lost its force, and should rather repent and choose to return to better ways in the realization that they had stupidly offended the one capable of saving them, he necessarily foretells their crimes to them as they were brought low by divine wrath even before the onset of what the future held. His words were, Listen to the word of the Lord, children of Israel, because the Lord has a judgment against the inhabitants of the land. Now, in judging human beings, God accuses, but does not sentence; to those guilty of impiety against him he exposes their crimes in keeping with the verse from the psalms, “I will accuse you, and lay before you” your iniquities,2 in case they should claim that it was to no purpose that wrath was inflicted on them and was rather by way of discharging a debt, as necessarily happens to those in the habit of committing grave sins. Now, what does he say in his judging, or accusing? There is no truth or mercy or knowledge of God in the land. He would be right to conclude, then, that there was no telling the truth, because at that time everybody was guilty of calumny, perjury, deceit, and dishonesty, the worst of all evils. The fact that they lacked love and compassion for one another, and were harsh, unbending, and hardhearted, would be implied (92) by there being no mercy . And their being in love with pleasure rather than God, and wholly devoted to the false gods, is established by his saying that there was no knowledge of God in the land. There would be nothing surprising in people addicted to such awful deviance giving the impression of not knowing God, especially if we say that we know him when we think rightly and follow his divine wishes. He goes beyond this in saying, Cursing and falsehood, murder and theft and adultery are spread over the land, and blood is mingled with blood. Do you hear how those referred to rushed headlong into every evil and surpassed the most unholy crimes, leaving none of the most outrageous untried, even what defied reason, mingling blood with blood? This would be a clear sign of their putting no halt to the vices, and of the guilty ones feeling...