The Book of Osee (Hosea)

The Book of Osee stands first among the twelve minor prophets, after Daniel and before Joel. Its Latin title in the Vulgate is Liber Osee; modern English Bibles spell the prophet's name Hosea. The name means "salvation"; it was the first name of Josue, for of the spies sent by Moses we read that "he called Osee the son of Nun, Josue" (Numbers 13:17). In fourteen short chapters God speaks of His people as a husband speaks of an adulterous wife he cannot stop loving; Our Lord, St Matthew, St Paul and St Peter all quote it. Below this guide, every chapter is given in the Latin Vulgate beside the Douay-Rheims.

Who wrote the Book of Osee (Hosea)?

The book names its author in its first line: "The word of the Lord, that came to Osee the son of Beeri, in the days of Ozias, Joathan, Achaz, and Ezechias kings of Juda, and in the days of Jeroboam the son of Joas king of Israel" (Osee 1:1). The Church has always received it as the work of this prophet. The New Testament cites the book under his name: "As in Osee he saith: I will call that which was not my people, my people" (Romans 9:25).

Of Osee himself we know only what the book tells us. He was a subject of the northern kingdom of Israel, which he calls "the land" and whose ruler he calls "our king" (Osee 7:5); he speaks of Juda only in passing. He is not the King Osee, son of Ela, under whom Samaria fell (4 Kings 17), though the two bear the same name. The Roman Martyrology commemorates "the holy prophets Osee and Aggeus" on 4 July.

The Pontifical Biblical Commission issued no decision on this book, whose authorship is not seriously disputed. Some modern critics hold that the promises of salvation were added later; the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia answers that they share Osee's style and fit his whole teaching.

When was the Book of Hosea written?

Osee prophesied in the eighth century before Christ. The first verse places his ministry under Jeroboam II, who reigned forty-one years in Samaria (4 Kings 14:23), and under the kings of Juda from Ozias to Ezechias, that is, roughly from 750 to 725 BC. He was a younger contemporary of Amos, who also preached to the north, and of Isaias and Micheas in Juda. Because the book's allusions stop before the Syro-Ephraimite war, the Catholic Encyclopedia places most of the oracles between about 750 and 735 BC.

These were the last decades of the northern kingdom. Under Jeroboam II Israel was prosperous and full of altars, but its worship had been corrupted since Jeroboam I set up the golden calves at Bethel and Dan, and the worship of Baal had crept in beside them. After his death kings were murdered one after another, and the court turned now to Egypt, now to Assyria. Osee foretold the end, which came when "the king of the Assyrians took Samaria, and carried Israel away to Assyria" in 722 BC (4 Kings 17:6).

What is the Book of Osee about? A summary

The book is about the covenant between God and Israel, described as a marriage. Israel has run after Baal and trusted in Egypt and Assyria; God threatens her with exile, yet cannot give her up, and promises to espouse her "for ever." The book falls into two parts: the prophet's marriage in chapters 1–3, and the oracles against Israel in chapters 4–14.

The prophet's marriage and the three children (chapters 1–3)

God commands Osee: "Go, take thee a wife of fornications, and have of her children of fornications: for the land by fornication shall depart from the Lord" (Osee 1). He marries Gomer, the daughter of Debelaim, and the names of the three children become prophecies: Jezrahel, for the blood Jehu shed at Jezrahel; a daughter called "Without mercy" (Lo-Ruhamah); and a son called "Not my people" (Lo-ammi). At once the sentence turns into a promise: "in the place where it shall be said to them: You are not my people: it shall be said to them: Ye are the sons of the living God."

Chapter 2 is a lawsuit against the faithless wife, who says "I will go after my lovers" and does not know that it was God who gave her "corn and wine, and oil." God will hedge up her way with thorns, and then win her back: "I will allure her, and will lead her into the wilderness: and I will speak to her heart." In chapter 3 the prophet buys back an adulteress for fifteen pieces of silver and makes her wait many days, a sign that Israel "shall sit many days without king, and without prince, and without sacrifice," and afterwards "shall seek the Lord their God, and David their king."

No knowledge of God in the land (chapters 4–7)

The oracles begin with God's charge: "there is no truth, and there is no mercy, and there is no knowledge of God in the land" (Osee 4). The priests are blamed first, for "my people have been silent, because they had no knowledge," and the result is "like people like priest." In chapter 5 Ephraim, sick, goes to the Assyrian for a cure that will not come. Chapter 6 opens with the people's hope, "Come, and let us return to the Lord," which God finds as shallow as "the dew that goeth away in the morning," and ends with the great word: "I desired mercy, and not sacrifice." Chapter 7 shows a court burning with intrigue "like an oven heated by the baker" and an Ephraim "become as a dove that is decoyed, not having a heart."

Sowing the wind (chapters 8–10)

In chapter 8 Israel has made kings "but not by me" and idols of its silver, and "the calf of Samaria shall be turned to spiders' webs," for "they shall sow wind, and reap a whirlwind." Chapter 9 announces the exile. In chapter 10 Israel is a luxuriant vine that multiplied its altars; its calf will be carried to Assyria, and the people "shall say to the mountains: Cover us; and to the hills: Fall upon us."

The love of God that will not let go (chapters 11–13)

Chapter 11 is the tenderest page of the prophets. God remembers Israel's childhood, "I called my son out of Egypt," and how He carried him in His arms and drew him "with the cords of Adam, with the bands of love." The ungrateful son deserves the fate of Adama and Seboim, destroyed with Sodom, but God cries out: "my heart is turned within me... I will not execute the fierceness of my wrath... because I am God, and not man." Chapter 12 recalls Jacob, who wrestled with the angel and "wept, and made supplication to him," and calls his children to "hope in thy God always." Chapter 13 pronounces the final sentence on Ephraim, who "sinned in Baal and died," and then breaks into the promise: "I will redeem them from death: O death, I will be thy death."

Return, O Israel (chapter 14)

"Return, O Israel, to the Lord thy God... Take with you words, and return to the Lord, and say to him: Take away all iniquity" (Osee 14). God answers: "I will heal their breaches, I will love them freely... I will be as the dew, Israel shall spring as the lily." The last verse seals the book: "the ways of the Lord are right, and the just shall walk in them."

Gomer and the meaning of the book

Was Osee's marriage real?

Did God truly command the prophet to marry "a wife of fornications"? St Irenaeus took it as a real marriage: Osee "took a wife of whoredoms, prophesying by means of the action" (Against Heresies IV, 20, 12). St Augustine, answering the Manichaean Faustus, defended it as a good act, for the prophet's marriage amended the woman's life and signified the mystery (Against Faustus XXII, 80). St Jerome took it as an allegory, and the Catholic Encyclopedia observes that "the doctrinal meaning is identical in either case." Bishop Challoner explains that the marriage was "to represent the Lord's proceedings with his people Israel, who, by spiritual fornication, were continually offending him."

The Catholic reading: Christ and the Church

The marriage of God and Israel, which the Canticle of Canticles sings and St Paul completes in "Christ and the church" (Ephesians 5), is first spelled out by Osee. Challoner's note on "I will espouse thee to me for ever" (Osee 2:19) reads: "This relates to the happy espousals of Christ with his church: which shall never be dissolved." Because God's covenant is the model of marriage, faithful, exclusive and lasting, Osee stands behind the Church's teaching on Catholic marriage and on what God says about marriage.

The Fathers read the promises of the book of Christ. St Augustine opens his chapter on the prophet in The City of God (XVIII, 28) with a warning: "Osee the prophet, the more profoundly he speaks, the more laboriously he is penetrated." He takes "Ye are the sons of the living God" of the calling of the Gentiles, as St Paul does (Romans 9:26) and St Peter (1 Peter 2:10): "Who in time past were not a people: but are now the people of God." He reads "one head" (1:11) of Christ, the corner-stone who joins the two walls, Jews and Gentiles; "David their king" (3:5) of Christ, the Son of David; and "on the third day he will raise us up" (6:3) of the Resurrection.

The last chapter is the great prophecy of conversion: the penitent's words, "Take away all iniquity," and God's answer, "I will love them freely," foreshadow the sacrament of Penance.

Famous verses of Osee

Osee 6:6. "For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice: and the knowledge of God more than holocausts" (Osee 6). Our Lord quoted it twice: to the Pharisees who murmured at His eating with sinners, "Go then and learn what this meaneth, I will have mercy and not sacrifice" (Matthew 9:13), and to those who blamed His disciples on the sabbath (Matthew 12:7). God rejects not sacrifice, which He commanded, but sacrifice without love.

Osee 6:3. "He will revive us after two days: on the third day he will raise us up," read by St Augustine of the Resurrection.

Osee 11:1. "Because Israel was a child, and I loved him: and I called my son out of Egypt" (Osee 11). St Matthew says it was fulfilled in the Child Jesus (Matthew 2:15), for, as Challoner notes, the calling of Israel out of Egypt "was a figure of the calling of Christ from thence."

Osee 13:14. "I will deliver them out of the hand of death. I will redeem them from death: O death, I will be thy death; O hell, I will be thy bite" (Osee 13). St Paul takes it up in his hymn on the resurrection: "O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?" (1 Corinthians 15:55). The Church sings its Latin, O mors, ero mors tua, as an antiphon at Lauds of Holy Saturday, while Our Lord lies in the tomb.

Osee 10:8. "They shall say to the mountains: Cover us; and to the hills: Fall upon us" (Osee 10). Our Lord spoke them on the way to Calvary (Luke 23:30), and St John hears them at the end of the world (Apocalypse 6:16).

Osee 8:7. "For they shall sow wind, and reap a whirlwind" (Osee 8), the origin of the proverb.

Osee 14:2. "Return, O Israel, to the Lord thy God: for thou hast fallen down by thy iniquity" (Osee 14).

A note on numbering: the Douay follows the Vulgate, which differs slightly from most modern Bibles at the end of the book. "Let Samaria perish" is 14:1 in the Douay but 13:16 elsewhere, so "Return, O Israel" is 14:2 in the Douay and 14:1 in the King James and most modern versions.

The Book of Osee in the canon and the liturgy

Osee is a protocanonical book, in Catholic and Protestant Bibles alike. In the Hebrew Bible the twelve minor prophets formed a single book, "the Twelve," and Osee has always stood at its head, most likely, as the Catholic Encyclopedia notes, because of its length. Ecclesiasticus 49:12 already praises "the twelve prophets," who "strengthened Jacob." The Council of Trent (Session IV, 1546) lists among the sacred books "the twelve minor prophets, to wit, Osee, Joel, Amos, Abdias, Jonas, Micheas, Nahum, Habacuc, Sophonias, Aggaeus, Zacharias, Malachias." On the Douay names, see our guide to the Douay-Rheims Bible, and on St Jerome's Latin, the Latin Vulgate.

On Good Friday, the first lesson of the solemn afternoon liturgy in the 1962 Missal is Osee 6:1-6, "In their affliction they will rise early to me." On Ember Friday of September, the lesson is Osee 14:2-10, "Return, O Israel." The Alleluia of the common Mass of a Confessor not a Bishop, Justus ut palma, adapts Osee 14:6: Justus germinabit sicut lilium, "The just shall spring as the lily, and shall flourish for ever before the Lord." In the Roman Breviary the twelve minor prophets are read at Matins in November, after Ezechiel and Daniel, with Osee first among them. Follow these days in our liturgical calendar and pray the Office in the Breviary.

How to read the Book of Osee

Read chapters 1–3 first and slowly: the rest of the book is their commentary. Keep the history of the last kings of Israel at hand (4 Kings 14–17). St Jerome called Osee commaticus, "speaking as it were in sentences": do not hunt for a thread from verse to verse, but listen to the heart of God passing from anger to tenderness. Finish with chapter 14 as a prayer before Confession, and our guide on how to go to Confession will take you the rest of the way.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who wrote the Book of Hosea?

The prophet Osee (Hosea), the son of Beeri, as the first verse of the book states. He lived in the northern kingdom of Israel in the eighth century before Christ, and the Church has always received the book as his work, and St Paul quotes it under his name (Romans 9:25).

When was the Book of Hosea written?

Osee prophesied under Jeroboam II of Israel and the kings of Juda from Ozias to Ezechias, roughly 750 to 725 BC, shortly before the fall of Samaria to Assyria in 722 BC. He was a contemporary of Amos, Isaias and Micheas.

What is the Book of Hosea about?

It is about God's covenant with Israel, described as a marriage. The prophet's marriage to the unfaithful Gomer and the names of their children show Israel's idolatry and the punishment it deserves, while God's undying love promises a new covenant, the calling of the Gentiles and the conversion of the penitent. Chapters 1 to 3 tell the marriage; chapters 4 to 14 are the prophet's oracles.

Who is Ephraim in the Book of Hosea?

Ephraim was the younger son of Joseph, whom Jacob blessed above his elder brother Manasses (Genesis 48), and his tribe became the most powerful of the ten northern tribes. Osee uses "Ephraim" as a name for the whole northern kingdom of Israel, whose capital was Samaria, in contrast with Juda: "How shall I deal with thee, O Ephraim?" (Osee 11:8).

How many chapters are in the Book of Hosea?

The Book of Osee has fourteen chapters and stands first among the twelve minor prophets.

Is the Book of Hosea in the Catholic Bible?

Yes. Osee is a protocanonical book of the Old Testament, found in Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant Bibles alike. In the Douay-Rheims it is called the Prophecy of Osee, the name taken from St Jerome's Latin, and modern English Bibles call it Hosea.

What does the Book of Hosea teach us?

It teaches that sin against God is a kind of adultery, that God desires "mercy, and not sacrifice" and the knowledge of Him more than empty ritual, and that His love is stronger than our infidelity. It foretells Christ, the calling of the Gentiles and the Resurrection on the third day.

What airline takes its name from the Book of Hosea?

The Israeli airline El Al. Its name comes from two Hebrew words in Hosea 11:7, el al, "upward" or "to the Most High." The Douay, following St Jerome's Latin, renders the verse "And my people shall long for my return: but a yoke shall be put upon them together" (Osee 11).

Read the whole Book of Osee verse by verse, in Latin and English, in the Iter Fidei Catholic Bible app.

Sources. Holy Scripture, Douay-Rheims (Challoner) and Latin Vulgate: Osee; Genesis 48; Numbers 13; 4 Kings 14 and 17; Ecclesiasticus 49; Matthew 2, 9, 12; Luke 23; Romans 9; 1 Corinthians 15; Ephesians 5; 1 Peter 2; Apocalypse 6. St Irenaeus, Against Heresies IV, 20, 12. St Augustine, The City of God XVIII, 28, and Against Faustus the Manichaean XXII, 80. St Jerome, Preface to the Twelve Prophets. Council of Trent, Session IV (1546). Bishop Challoner's notes to the Douay-Rheims. Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), "Osee." Roman Martyrology, 4 July. Missale Romanum and Breviarium Romanum (1962).