CONCERNING Hosea's occupation and social standing, we are able only to draw inferences of a more or less uncertain character. Was he a member of the prophetic society? Nothing is to be found which would point in this direction. Was he a priest, and for this reason was he enabled to speak against the evil practices of his class as no one else could have done? This is an interesting conjecture, with perhaps as little evidence in its favor as against it. His intimacy with life of every kind, in nature and among men, those of the country as well as those of the city, does not oppose this view. His acquaintance with life in general, and especially with that of the priests, taken in connection with his familiarity with the plans of both political parties, and his intimate knowledge of his country's history, may reasonably warrant us in the opinion that he occupied a "distinguished position" as a citizen in his native land. . . .
In an examination of Hosea's ministry let us prepare ourselves for something as different as possible from that of Amos. It will be the ministry of a poet, not a philosopher; of a man dealing with his own home and country, not a foreigner; of a man living and working largely in privacy, rather than in connection with rulers; of a mystic, not a moralist. His call, together with the message which he was to preach, came not in a vision, but in an experience, one of the saddest known in life. . . .
The fact . . . that Hosea's teaching forms the basis of subsequent Hebrew prophecy, the fact that these utterances produced so great an impression as to find preservation, the additional fact that they were so strongly felt as to require for their elucidation and interpretation the comments and amendments of later generations, prove an efficiency of service and a permanency of character of the highest order.
