Hosea 1

If in the explanations of all the prophets we need the coming of the Holy Spirit, so that they may be opened by the revelation of him by whose prompting they were written; and if in Isaiah and in the Apocalypse we read of a sealed book, which the scribes and Pharisees, who boast that they know the letters of the law, cannot read, because it is sealed, and no one could be found who could unlock its mysteries except the lion of the tribe of Judah, whom God the Father has sealed: how much more, in the explanation of the prophet Hosea, must the Lord be prayed to, and must we say with Peter: Explain this parable to us. Especially since he who wrote it himself testifies at the end to the obscurity of the volume: Who is wise, and he will understand these things, understanding, and he will know them? This we ought to take not as something impossible but as something difficult, according to that saying of the Gospel: Who, do you think, is the faithful and prudent servant whom the Lord has set over his household? For who would not at once, at the very front of the book, be scandalized and say: Hosea, first of all the prophets, is commanded to take a harlot as his wife, and he does not object? He does not even pretend to be unwilling, so as to seem to do a shameful thing against his will; but he carries out the command gladly, as though he had longed for it, as though he regretted having given himself to chastity for a long time; whereas we read that holy men, at the Lord's command, refused things more honorable and without sin. Moses is sent to Pharaoh and appointed leader of the Israelite people; and yet, not from weakness but from humility, he answered: Provide another whom you may send. Jeremiah says that he is a boy, so as not to rebuke Jerusalem in her sin. Ezekiel is commanded to make one loaf baked under the ashes from every kind of pulse and seed, and to cook it in human dung; and he says: By no means, Lord, for nothing unclean has ever entered my mouth. And Hosea, hearing from the Lord: Take a fornicating wife, does not knit his brow, does not testify to his grief by pallor, does not show his shame by a changed blush on his cheeks; but he goes to the brothel and leads the harlot to his bed. And he does not initiate her into the chastity of a matron; rather he proves himself a voluptuary and a profligate. For he who cleaves to a harlot becomes one body with her. Hearing these things, then, what can we answer except that prophetic word: Who is wise, and he will understand these things, understanding, and he will know them? Hence we too must say with David: Unveil my eyes, and I will consider the wonders of your law, so that the king may bring us into his chamber, and take away from us the veil which was placed before the eyes of Moses in the reading of the Old Testament. For as soon as the Lord had said: Father, into your hands I commend my spirit; and saying this he breathed his last, the veil of the temple was torn, and all the secrets of the Jews lay open. And the fountain that went forth from the house of David entered the sea of the wilderness; and the true Elisha seasoned the barren and deadly waters with the salt of his wisdom and made them life-giving. And the Marah of the law, which is interpreted bitterness, was sweetened by the wood of the gibbet. For we understand who Judah the patriarch is, chosen to be king, and we do not wonder why a holy man goes in to Tamar as to a harlot; why Samson, which is interpreted sun, loved Delilah, which is translated poor, and, mocked on her account and dying, slaughtered thousands of his adversaries; why Salmon begot the just man Boaz from Rahab the harlot, Boaz who, covering Ruth the Moabitess with the wing of his cloak, carried her over from lying at his feet to the head of the Gospel. What reason there is that, though David had so many wives, he made no other the successor of his kingdom except the one who was born of Bathsheba; so that not only harlots but even adulteresses seem to please God. Hence in this very prophet too we read that, joined first to a harlot, he is coupled secondly to an adulteress, the Lord saying to him: Go again, love a woman beloved of a friend, or loving evil things, and an adulteress. This is the woman, harlot and adulteress, who in the Gospel washed the Lord's feet with her tears, wiped them with her hair, and honored them with the ointment of her confession; and when the disciples were indignant, and above all the betrayer, that it had not been sold and its price distributed for the food of the poor, the Lord answered: Why do you trouble the woman? She has done a good work on me; the poor you will always have with you; but me you will not always have. And lest we should think what she had done a light thing, and that the pistic nard, that is, the most faithful ointment, was to be referred to something else and not to the Church, he gives us an occasion for understanding; and he promises great rewards to great faith, saying: Amen, amen I say to you, wherever this Gospel is preached in the whole world, what she too has done will be told in memory of her. This is the harlot of whom the Lord speaks to the Jews: Amen I say to you, harlots and publicans will go before you into the kingdom of God. For you were unwilling to receive the Son of the householder, the Lord of the vineyard, who planted it, when he was sent to you. This harlot received with kindness my two spies, most valiant young men, of whom I sent one to the circumcision and the other to the Gentiles; she hid them with zeal, lifted them up onto the roof, and covered them with stalks of flax. That flax, cut down by persecutions and washed in baptism, changes its color, and from dark is turned to white. Nor is it surprising if we recall that these things were done as a figure of the Lord Savior and of the Church gathered from sinners, since he himself says in this same prophet: I will speak to the prophets; I have multiplied visions, and in the hands of the prophets I have been likened; so that whatever the prophets are commanded to do is to be referred to my likeness. His wife is an Ethiopian, against whom Aaron and Mary, the carnal priesthood of the Jews and the prophecy that serves the letter, murmur and offend God; she it is who says in the Song of Songs: I am dark and beautiful, daughters of Jerusalem. Otherwise, if we contend that all the things which are commanded for a reason, to be done as a likeness, really happened, then Jeremiah too, girded with a loincloth, a woman's garment, went among innumerable nations, the Assyrians and the Chaldeans, the peoples most hostile to the Jews, to the Euphrates, and there hid his loincloth, and, returning after a long time, found that it had rotted so as to be of no use. How could he go out and travel so far when Jerusalem was besieged, with siege works built all around it, ditch, rampart and forts? He who, when he once wished to go out to Anathoth, his little village situated at the third milestone from the city, was both seized at the gate and led back to the princes, and, beaten as a traitor, was thrown into prison. If that was in figure, because it could not happen, then this too is in figure, because if it happened, it would be most shameful. But you will answer: When God commands, nothing is shameful; and we will say: God commands nothing except what is honorable, nor by commanding shameful things does he make honorable what is shameful. But because we know that God wills nothing except what is honorable, he commanded this, which is honorable. I have spoken of these things at greater length at the beginning, so as first to solve the most difficult question, and, passing with God's help the rock set in the very mouth of the passage, to run down into safe waters. For the rest, I am not unaware, dearest Pammachius, that it has been passed over by many churchmen; and of those who attempted to expound it, among the Greeks I found Apollinaris of Laodicea, who, though in his youth he had left brief little commentaries both on this prophet and on others, touching the senses rather than unfolding them, was asked afterwards to write more fully on Hosea; that book has come into our hands, but he too, through excessive brevity, cannot lead the reader to a perfect understanding. Origen wrote a small book on this prophet, to which he gave this title: Περὶ τοῦ πῶς ὠνομάσθη ἐν τῷ Ὠσηὲ Ἐφραΐμ; that is: Why Ephraim is so called in Hosea, wishing to show that whatever is said against him is to be referred to the person of the heretics. And another volume, ἀκέφαλον καὶ ἀτέλεστον, which lacks both head and end. I have also read a very long treatise of Pierius, which he poured out on the opening of this prophet on the day of the vigil of the Lord's passion, in an extempore and eloquent discourse. And Eusebius of Caesarea, in the eighteenth book of the Εὐαγγελικῆς ἀποδείξεως (the Demonstration of the Gospel), discusses certain matters concerning the prophet Hosea. Hence about twenty-two years ago, when, at the request of your holy and venerable mother-in-law, or rather your mother, Paula (for the one is the name of the flesh, the other of the spirit; she always burned with love for monasteries and for the Scriptures), I was at Alexandria, I saw Didymus, the most learned man of his time, and heard him often; and I asked him to complete what Origen had not done, and to write commentaries on Hosea; and he dictated three books to me, at my request, and five others also on Zechariah. For on that prophet too Origen wrote only two volumes, expounding barely a third part, from the beginning of the book up to the vision of the four-horse chariots. I say these things so that you may know whom I have had as forerunners in the field of this prophet; whom, however, to confess it to your prudence simply and not proudly — as a certain one of my friends is always hissing — I have not followed in everything; so that I might be a judge of their work rather than its translator, and might say what seemed right to me on each point, and what I received from the teachers of the Hebrews, barely one or two of them. Such a one is now a rare bird even among themselves, since all devote themselves to pleasures and money, and take more care of the belly than of the breast; and they think themselves learned in this, if in the shops of physicians they disparage the works of everyone. But now it is time that, setting down the words of the prophet, we discuss what is written.

The word of the Lord which came to Hosea son of Beeri. LXX: likewise. The Word of the Lord (which in the beginning was with God the Father, and the Word was God) came to Hosea son of Beeri, so as to make the prophet too a god, as the Savior says: If he called them gods to whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken, him whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world you tell: You blaspheme; because I said, I am the Son of God. So that, just as God makes gods, and stands in the synagogue of gods, and in the midst he judges between gods; and, though he himself is the true light, which enlightens every man coming into this world, says to the apostles: You are the light of the world, so too the Savior himself may make his prophet a savior. For Hosea, in our language, means savior, a name which Joshua son of Nun also had before his name was changed by God. For he was not called — as is wrongly read in the Greek and Latin manuscripts — Ause, which means nothing at all; but Hoshea, that is, savior; and Lord was added to his name, so that he might be called savior of the Lord. This savior, then, is the son of Beeri, that is, of my well; such wells Abraham, Isaac and Jacob dug, and the foreigners were always trying to fill them in. Between a well and a pit, that is, a cistern, there is this difference: a well has perpetual waters, flowing from a living spring; a cistern, which keeps water cool, holds waters that are external and brought in from outside. Hence God speaks through the prophet Jeremiah: They have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and dug for themselves cisterns which cannot hold water. Of this fountain the psalmist cries out to God: With you is the fountain of life; in your light we shall see light. Hence some think that Beeri is interpreted my light; but the former is the true translation.

In the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah, kings of Judah; and in the days of Jeroboam son of Joash, king of Israel. LXX: likewise. Azariah, who is also called Uzziah, of the stock of David, reigned in Jerusalem over the two tribes, which were called Judah, for fifty-two years; his son Jotham succeeded him in the kingdom, and he too reigned for sixteen years; after him his son Ahaz reigned, likewise for sixteen years. After Ahaz his son Hezekiah reigned for twenty-nine years, in whose sixth year the ten tribes, which were called Israel, were captured by Shalmaneser king of the Chaldeans and settled in the mountains of the Medes. From this it is evident that, while Hosea, Isaiah and Joel, and Amos and Obadiah, and Jonah and Micah were prophesying, who were his σύγχρονοι (contemporaries), the kingdom of the ten tribes came to an end, which from the first king, Jeroboam, to the last, Hoshea, lasted two hundred and fifty years. At the time when Uzziah began to reign over Judah, Jeroboam, the great-grandson of Jehu, was reigning over Israel, Jehu to whom the Lord had promised that his offspring would reign to the fourth generation, because he had struck down the two impious kings of Judah and of Israel. We say this to show you briefly that the prophet Hosea prophesied both before the captivity of Israel and after its captivity, and that, treating it as near as well as present and past, he both announced it as coming, and mourned it as it fell upon them, and, for the correction of Judah, went back over it once past; and this we shall try to prove in the prophet himself according to the history. Uzziah is interpreted strength of the Lord; Jotham, consummation and perfection of the Lord; Ahaz, power; Hezekiah, command of the Lord. These reigned among the people of Judah, whose name is confession. Moreover, in Israel, which had made idols for itself and had been separated from the people of God, reigned Jeroboam son of Joash, which is interpreted χρονισμός, that is, temporality, or delay; because he loved the world and thought that to linger long in it was eternal life, delighting not at all in things to come but in things present.

Against conjugal chastity it is objected: every act and movement that alienates from God is foreign to virtue: but the act of conjugal continence is such: therefore it is foreign to virtue. Proof of the middle term: Hosea 1; the Gloss: "Just as wine intoxicates a man and alienates him from the state of his mind, so the law of marriage alienates a man from the things that are of God."

To this it must be said that something is said to alienate from God in two ways: either simply, or with respect to some act or state. In the first way it cannot be without sin: in the second way it can be through the punishment of sin and also through an act of virtue: just as the exercise of action retards and for a time impedes the act of contemplation, just as also sleep impedes the exercise in virtue.

It is asked why Ezekiel refused easier things, while Hosea was at once joined to a harlot and did not object, or rather reply, that he had a chaste body and ought not to be stained by union with a prostitute, as the Apostle says: He who cleaves to a prostitute becomes one body with her; from this it is shown that it was a figure of the Synagogue or of the Church, not truly carried out according to the letter, as we discussed more fully when expounding that prophet himself.

The beginning of the Lord's speaking in Hosea. LXX: The beginning of the word of the Lord to Hosea. Because, as we said above, Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, in whose reigns they prophesied, are set at the head of the title of other prophets too, he therefore now says that among all these the Lord spoke first in Hosea, and afterwards to the rest. But it is one thing for the Lord to speak in Hosea, another to speak to Hosea. In Hosea, he does not speak to Hosea himself, but through Hosea to others; but when he speaks to Hosea, he is signified to address his discourse to Hosea himself. Others, however, do not want Hosea to have been the first of all the prophets on the ground of what is said: The beginning of the Lord's speaking in Hosea; but hold that it shows that the Lord spoke these things which follow first to Hosea.

And the Lord said to Hosea: Go, take for yourself a wife of fornications and children of fornications, for the land, fornicating, will commit fornication away from the Lord. LXX: And the Lord said to Hosea: Go, take for yourself a wife of fornication and children of fornication, for the land, fornicating, will commit fornication behind the Lord. The Hebrew word zanunim means not a fornicating woman and fornication, as most suppose, but many fornications. From this it is shown that this woman, whom the prophet takes in marriage, had committed fornication not once but quite often, so that the more sordid she is, the more patient is the prophet who married such a wife. And as for what is added: Take for yourself also children of fornications; for it is understood ἀπὸ κοινοῦ (from what is common, i.e. understood with both parts): Take for yourself a wife of fornications, and take for yourself children of fornications. Both can be understood: that he both receives the children whom the fornicating woman had earlier conceived from fornication, and himself begets offspring from the harlot, who are therefore to be called children of fornication, because they were begotten of a harlot. Nor is the prophet to be blamed, to follow the history for the moment, if he converted a harlot to chastity, but rather praised, because he made a good woman out of a bad one. For he who remains good is not himself polluted if he is joined to one who is bad; but he who is bad is turned to good if he follows the examples of the good. From this we understand that the prophet did not lose his chastity by being joined to a fornicating woman, but that the fornicating woman took on the chastity which she did not have before; especially since blessed Hosea did not act for the sake of luxury, nor of lust, nor of his own will, but obeyed the command of God, so that what we read done carnally in him we might show to have been done spiritually in God, who took to himself the Synagogue, that is, the people of the Jews, enslaved to fornication and lust. To her the Lord speaks through Ezekiel: And you, harlot, hear the word of the Lord. For her breasts were broken in Egypt, and she was wallowing in blood, and had been polluted up to the crown of her head, so that there was no part of her body and limbs which did not bear the stain of shame. Such a woman the Lord covered with his cloak and joined to his embraces; he gave her honey and oil and fine flour to eat, and clothed her in the most precious garments; he placed ornaments of gems on her neck; he adorned her ears with gold and most precious stone; he also furnished bracelets for her arms, so that she might practice good works. And nevertheless, despising this generosity and goodness of her husband, forgetful of her former shame, she followed her lovers, the Chaldeans and Assyrians and Egyptians, who are of great flesh. Of the type of the Savior and the Church we spoke in the little preface: that he took for himself a fornicating wife, who previously served idols. But if anyone contentious, and especially of the Gentiles, refuses to accept that it is said figuratively, and mocks the prophet for being joined to a fornicating woman, let us set against him what Greece is wont to praise and the schools of the philosophers sing in chorus. On what ground do they extol that most learned man Xenocrates, who made Polemon, a most dissolute youth, drunk and crowned with ivy among harp-girls and pipers and shameless women, obey wisdom, and changed a most shameful young man into the wisest of philosophers? Why do they raise Socrates to heaven, who transferred Phaedo, after whose name a book of Plato is called, from a brothel, where through the cruelty and avarice of his master he served the lust of many, into the Academy? And whatever they answer about these masters of philosophy, we apply to the defense of the prophet. Let this be said against the heathen and those who are like the heathen. But to our own, who nevertheless wish to accept the truth, let us briefly show this, from what is said: For the land, fornicating, will commit fornication away from the Lord: that it is not so much that the prophet was joined to a harlot as that the whole human race withdrew from fellowship with the Lord. Also, since "all the earth" is not added, it can be taken here as Judea, or properly Samaria and Israel, that is, the ten tribes, which, at the time when these things were being said, had withdrawn from the Lord.

By the law the prophet was allowed to take a woman into the marriage relationship, and on marrying her he probably brought her to chaste ways. In fact, while everyone could not but be surprised that a man who was very conscious of propriety should pass over women who enjoyed a good reputation and choose to take a prostitute into the marriage relationship, the novelty of the event provided the prophet with the occasion of telling them their duty. In addition [Hosea's marriage demonstrated] the greater marvel of God's condescending to choose such ungrateful people for special attention by the powerful example—namely, the remarkable prophet's doing his duty by entering into association with a prostitute.

Likewise the Lord of all had bade Hosea also, therefore, marry a loose woman so as by the event to charge the people with impiety and give evidence of his characteristic longsuffering. If the God of all put up with the loose and adulterous synagogue, however, and the fount of holiness was not defiled by that loathsome and abominable thing, neither did the prophet incur any defilement from that licentious woman. Without being in thrall to lust, and instead carrying out a command from on high, he put up with that awful relationship. Now one must realize how judgment is made between good and bad by the purpose involved: on that basis marriage is distinguished from adultery, and though intercourse involves no difference, the difference emerges in the purpose and the law, and on the same basis what is lawful is distinguished from what is lawless.

Gomer is interpreted τετελεσμένην, that is, consummated and perfected; others think that θώρακας, that is, breastplates, is signified. There are some who suppose it means measure, or bitterness, which they would say rightly if it did not have the letter gimel. Diblaim means παλάτας (cakes of pressed figs), of which there is a very great abundance in Palestine, and which the prophet Isaiah is commanded to apply to the ulcer of king Hezekiah. It is a mass of rich dried figs, which they shape after the manner of bricks, tread and press together, so that they may remain long unspoiled.

And he went and took Gomer daughter of Diblaim; and she conceived and bore him a son. And the Lord said to him: Call his name Jezreel, for yet a little while and I will visit the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu; and I will cause the kingdom of the house of Israel to cease. LXX: And he went, and took Gomer daughter of Diblaim; and she conceived and bore a son. And the Lord said to him: Call his name Jezreel, because yet a little while and I will avenge the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Judah; and I will cause the kingdom of the house of Israel to cease. The prophets make their promises about the coming of Christ and the calling of the Gentiles many ages later in such a way as not to neglect the present time, lest they seem not to teach an assembly called together for another purpose about the things that are at hand, but to trifle about things uncertain and future. And so this Gomer too, daughter of Diblaim, who is taken as wife by Hosea, and conceives by him, and bears him a son named Jezreel, which is interpreted seed of God, in vengeance for whose blood he overturns the kingdom of Jehu (or, as an error has wrongly prevailed, of Judah), is to be referred to the calling of the nations in such a way as to fit that time in which she is recorded to have borne a son. And not to keep the reader's eagerness waiting with a long treatment: these two women, of whom one is called Gomer and is a harlot, and bears three children, first Jezreel, second, a girl, who is called: Without Mercy, and third a male, who is himself also called: Not My People; and the other woman, who is hired for fifteen pieces of silver, and a cor, and half a cor of barley, and is called an adulteress, are referred to Israel and to Judah, that is, to the ten tribes which were in Samaria under king Jeroboam, who was of Ephraim, and to Judah, which reigned in Jerusalem from the stock of David. These are the two women who in Zechariah are said to have the wings of a hoopoe, or of a kite, or of a heron, and to go into the land of Shinar, where Babylon was founded. These women Oholah and Oholibah signify under the name of two sisters; these are shown in the two rods which Ezekiel joins into one rod. And because we are writing commentaries, not broad volumes, reserving for each section its own explanation in its place, let us now discuss only the present section.

Therefore Israel too, consummated and perfected in fornication, a daughter of pleasure, which seems sweet and pleasant to those who enjoy it, is taken as wife by Hosea as a type of the Lord Savior; and from her a son of God is first begotten, that is, Jezreel; and this is the metropolis of the ten tribes, in which Naboth was killed, on account of whose blood Jehu is raised up, who destroyed the house of Ahab and Jezebel. But because Jehu himself too, the avenger of just blood, walked in the ways of Jeroboam son of Nebat, who made Israel commit fornication and set up golden calves in Dan and Bethel, his kingdom too is said to be overturned; under his great-grandson Jeroboam Hosea began to prophesy; when he died, his son Zechariah succeeded to the kingdom; and in the sixth month of his rule Shallum, born of another stock, killed him. For this reason it is now said: Yet a little while and I will visit the blood of Jezreel, that is, the slaughter of my people, upon the royal house of Jehu, which at that time ruled over Israel. Nor is it surprising if the house of Jehu is overturned, since even the kingdom of the house of Israel, that is, of the ten tribes, was to be utterly destroyed after not many years. For from Zechariah son of Jeroboam, whose ancestor was Jehu, to the ninth year of Hoshea, under whom the ten tribes were led into captivity, forty-nine years are counted. And once Zechariah, who was the last of the stock of Jehu, was killed, the kings of Assyria at once took Reuben and Gad and the half tribe of Manasseh, which were beyond the Jordan; and then many cities of Samaria, and then all Naphtali, and at the last all the remaining tribes. In place of Jehu, in the common edition Judah is read; but this seems to me to have grown up not through the fault of the Seventy translators but through the ignorance of the copyists, who, not knowing Jehu, wrote Judah, which was more familiar. The type of the seed of God, and the vengeance for his blood, is referred to the Lord's passion, on account of which both the house of Judah and the kingdom of all Israel are said to be overturned.

And on that day I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel. LXX: likewise. When I have avenged the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu, and have destroyed the kingdom of Israel through the victory of the Assyrian, then on that day and at that time I will break all the strength of the army of Israel in the valley of Jezreel. We said above that Jezreel, which is now near Maximianopolis, was the metropolis of the kingdom of Samaria; near it are very broad plains, and a valley of exceeding vastness, which stretches for more than ten thousand paces. In this valley, when battle was joined, Israel was cut down by the Assyrians, that is, the ten tribes, which, on account of Jeroboam of the tribe of Ephraim, who first made a schism among the people, were called Ephraim. Sometimes, on account of Joseph, who was the father of Ephraim, it is called Joseph; sometimes Samaria, which was itself the other metropolitan city of the ten tribes, and which was afterwards called Augusta by Augustus Caesar, that is, Σεβαστὴ; in it the bones of John the Baptist are laid to rest. After the division, then, of the two and the ten tribes, because of the very great part of the multitude which followed Jeroboam, the ancient name Israel remained with the ten tribes. And on account of the tribe of Judah, which reigned in Jerusalem, the other tribes were called Judah; and at the same time the truth of the type is also unfolded. For just as, on account of the blood of Naboth, which was shed in Jezreel, the house of Ahab was destroyed, so that the prophecy of Elijah might be fulfilled; so, on account of the blood of the true Jezreel, that is, of the seed of God, the kingdom of the Jews was destroyed. In all the prophets indeed, but especially in Hosea, the ten tribes are referred to the heretics, whose multitude is very great; but the two tribes, which are called Judah, hold the person of the Church, and reign under the stock of David. The bow of the heretics, therefore, of whom it is written: The sons of Ephraim, bending and shooting the bow, turned back in the day of battle, will be broken in the valley of the seed of God, about whom they held lowly and earthly opinions.

And she conceived again and bore a daughter; and he said to him: Call her name: Without Mercy; for I will no more have mercy on the house of Israel, but with forgetting I will forget them. And on the house of Judah I will have mercy; and I will save them in the Lord their God; and I will not save them by bow and sword, and by war, and by horses, and by horsemen. LXX: And she conceived again and bore a daughter, and he said to him: Call her name: Without Mercy; for by no means will I any more have mercy on the house of Israel, but opposing I will oppose them; but on the sons of Judah I will have mercy, and I will save them in the Lord their God; and I will not save them by bow, nor by sword, nor by war, nor by horses, nor by horsemen. After the bow of Israel was crushed and broken in the valley of Jezreel, and the kingdom of the ten tribes was forsaken, so that they were led into captivity, there is no longer born a Jezreel, that is, the seed of God, nor a son of the male sex; but a daughter, that is, a woman, of the frail sex, and one exposed to the insults of the victors; and she is called: Without Mercy. For she was led away captive for this reason, because she did not have the mercy of God. And the indignation of the Lord must be considered, in that he says he will by no means have mercy any more on the house of Israel, but will blot them out of his memory with an eternal forgetting; for to this day they serve the kings of the Persians, and their captivity has never been released.

According to the type, we say that those who, on account of the blood of the seed of God, are called: Without Mercy, and dared to say: His blood be upon us, and upon our children, serve the Romans to this day; but that the house of Judah, namely those of the Jews who confessed the Lord, were saved not by the strength of an army but by the preaching of the Gospel. What we have interpreted of Israel and Judah, both according to the history and according to the type, let us refer to the conventicles of the heretics and to the Church of the Lord Savior: that, while they are left without mercy and lose their kingdom, the Church has prevailed by the power of her God.

For οὐκ ἠλεημένη, that is, without mercy, in some copies is found οὐκ ἠγαπημένη, that is, not beloved. But the truer copies are those which have without mercy; especially since, to distinguish it from Israel, on whom he has no mercy, God adds: But on the house of Judah I will have mercy.

For He says to Hosea the prophet, "I will no more have mercy upon the house of Israel, but will altogether be their enemy. But I will have mercy upon the children of Judah, and will save them in the Lord their God." Here God the Father gives the name of God, without any ambiguity, to the Son, in Whom also He chose us before countless ages. "Their God," He says, for while the Father, being Unoriginate, is independent of all, He has given us for an inheritance to His Son. In like manner we read, "Ask of Me, and I will give Thee the Gentiles for Thine inheritance." None can be God to Him from Whom are all things, for He is eternal and has no beginning; but the Son has God, from Whom He was born, for His Father. Yet to us the Father is God and the Son is God; the Father reveals to us that the Son is our God, and the Son teaches that the Father is God over us. The point for us to remember is that in this passage the Father gives to the Son the name of God, the title of His own unoriginate majesty.

But to the house of Judah he promises mercy, and says that he saves them in the Lord their God, either in himself who speaks; or the Father saves in the Son, according to what is written: The Lord rained from the Lord. For when Israel was handed over to the Assyrians, he saved them from the hand of Sennacherib, not by bow and sword and war and by a multitude of horsemen, but by his own strength, when he sent an angel and struck down from the army of Sennacherib king of the Assyrians in one night one hundred and eighty-five thousand.

Why, then, should we hesitate to say what Scripture does not hesitate to say? Why should the truth of faith waver where the authority of Scripture has never faltered? For behold, the prophet Hosea says in the person of the Father, "I will not save them by bow nor horses, but I will save them by the Lord their God." If God says that he will save them by God and if God does not save except by Christ, then why should people hesitate to call Christ God when they realize that the Father declares, through the Scriptures, that he is God? In fact, if God the Father cannot save except by God, no one can be saved by God the Father, unless one has acknowledged that Christ is God, in whom and through whom the Father promises to grant salvation.

And she weaned her who was Without Mercy; and she conceived and bore a son; and he said: Call his name Not My People, for you are not my people and I will not be yours. LXX: likewise. He who was called the seed of God, turned into a female and, because of the weakness of his strength and the offense of God, led into captivity, since he did not have the mercy of the Lord, is said to have been weaned not as a son but as a daughter; for the man had already lost his vigor. Whoever is weaned withdraws from the mother, no longer feeds on the parent's milk, and is sustained by food from outside. So also Israel, cast off by the Lord, hemmed in by the straits of captivity, and in Babylon sustained by unclean foods, is called not the people of God, and is struck with the eternal sentence of a foreign nation, so that he is called Not My People and is disowned forever. This we can rightly understand both of the whole people of the Jews, which, handed over to captivity because of the offense against the seed of God, lost its kingdom and its province and is called not the people of God, and also in the person of the heretics. But if some contentious interpreter will not accept what we have said, but understands that the harlot named Gomer, daughter of Diblaim, bore the first and the third as males and the second, the middle one, as a female, wanting the Scripture to mean just what is read, let him answer how he explains that passage in Ezekiel where he is commanded by the Lord to bear the iniquities of the house of Israel, that is, of the ten tribes, and for three hundred and ninety days to sleep continually on one side, the left, although in the LXX one hundred and ninety are written, and to sleep so that he never wakes nor changes his side, unless perhaps, sated with sleep, he opened his eyes a little to take the most filthy food of ash-baked bread, made of wheat and barley, and bean and lentil and millet, and baked on human dung. For the nature of things does not allow that any man should sleep always on one side for three hundred and ninety days. And again he says: You shall take up the iniquities of the house of Judah, and for forty days you shall sleep on the right side. These days, however, will be reckoned as years, during which Israel and Judah will be pressed down by siege and a very long captivity, so that, conquered and motionless, they cannot turn themselves from one side to the other. If he cannot prove that these things, and others like them which we read in the holy Scriptures, were done, but contends that they signify something else, then this harlot woman too, and the other woman, the adulteress, who were either joined to the prophet or kept by the prophet, indicate not a shameful union of lust but the mysteries of things to come.

"For he proclaims peace to his people, and to his faithful ones, and to those who turn to him from their hearts." I note here a threefold classification: his people, his loyal servants, and those who come back to him in hope. He proclaims peace to his people, not to the Jews of whom in Hosea he says, "You are not my people."

For this reason, our God spoke elsewhere about the Hebrew people to the prophet, saying, "Call his name Not Beloved," and again to the Jews, "You are not my people, and I am not your God." But he himself showed clearly elsewhere why he said this about them, for he said, "They have forsaken the Lord, the vein of living waters," and again, "For they have cast away the word of the Lord, and there is no wisdom in them."