The first germs of the representation of God's relation to Israel under the figure of marriage, are found so early as in the Pentateuch, Exod. xxxiv. 15, 16; Lev. xx. 5, 6, xvii. 7; Num. xiv. 33--where idolatry, and apostasy from the Lord in general, are represented as whoredom--Deut. xxxii. 16, 21; compare the author's _Dissertations on the Genuineness of the Pent._ vol. i. p. 107 ff.; and commentary on the Song of Solomon, S. 261. But it was only through the Song of Solomon that it became quite a common thing to represent the higher love under the figure of the lower. It is not through accident that this representation appears so prominent just in Hosea, where it not only pervades the first three chapters, but returns continually in the second part also. Hosea, being one of the oldest prophets, was specially called to fit, as a new link, into the Song of Solomon, which was the last link in the chain of Sacred Literature. There are, moreover, in the details, other undeniable references to the Song of Solomon, which coincide with this connection with it, as regards the fundamental idea. The basis, however, for this whole figurative representation is Gen. ii. 24, where marriage appears as the most intimate of all earthly relations of love, and must, for this very reason, have a character of absolute exclusiveness.
The section chap. i.-iii. is distinguished from the other prophecies by this,--that, in it, the relation of the Lord to the [Pg 198] people of Israel Is represented, _throughout_, under the figure and symbol of marriage, whilst this same mode of representation is soon relinquished wherever else it occurs in the book. By this closer limitation, the objections of _Böckel_ and _Stuck_ to the common division of the collection into two parts, are set aside. This first portion may be divided into three parts, which are, in one respect, closely connected, as is shown by the _Fut._ with the _Vav Conv._ in iii. 1, and likewise by the fact that this chapter requires to be supplemented from the two preceding ones, while, in another respect, they may be considered as wholes, complete in themselves. They do not, by any means, so distribute the contents among themselves, as that the first describes the apostasy; the second, the punishment; and the third, the return and restoration; but each of them contains all these three features, and yet in such a manner, that here the one feature, and there the other, is more fully expanded; so that the whole description is complete, only when all the three parts are taken together. In the portion now before us, the covenant relation into which the Lord entered with Israel is typified by a marriage which the prophet contracted at the command of the Lord; the apostasy of the people, and especially of the ten tribes, to whom the prophet was sent in the first instance, is typified by the adultery of the wife, by the divine punishment, and the unpropitious names which he gives to the children born by the adulterous wife. In chap. ii. 1-3, there follows the announcement of salvation more directly, and only with a simple allusion to the symbol.