Hosea.

• Author: Hutton, Jeremy M.
• Position: Book review

Hosea.By EHUD BEN ZVI. The Forms of the Old Testament Literature, vol. 21A/1. Grand Rapids,Michigan: WM. B. EERDMANS PUBLISHING Co., 2005. Pp. xiii + 321. $55 (paper).

Ehud Ben Zvi's commentary on Hosea is a significant work not only on the book of Hosea, but also on the theory of literary study of the Bible. As part of the FOTL series, the stated goal of which is "the presentation and interpretation of the structure of each identified text before everything else" (p. xi), this commentary attempts a valuable and necessary revision of previous form-critical study on the present book of Hosea. Whereas previous form- and historical-critics have fractured the text into small units of the historical prophet's discourse, and attempted to find the "proper" Sitz, im Leben of those units, Ben Zvi examines the book of Hosea from the perspective of the "intended and primary audience." That is to say, Ben Zvi's concern is to situate each of the "prophetic readings" in the book of Hosea within the context of the whole-the Sitz im Buch-and to understand the text's position and function within the complete piece of scripture known as (the present book of) Hosea. This new method, argues Ben Zvi, eschews the circularity of the previous method, in that it no longer seeks to find the ipsissima verba of the prophet through a convoluted process of formulating assumptions about what the prophet would say in such historical circumstances, which are themselves reconstructions based on those assumptions. Instead, by concentrating not on the figure of the historical prophet but rather on the book's constructed character of the prophet Hosea (as well as on the text's characterization of YHWH), Ben Zvi removes the prophet's biography from consideration, and places the book within the context of the reading (and rereading) community.

This readership for which the book was written (and here as elsewhere Ben Zvi means the composition of the final form of the book of Hosea; previous interpreters have generally used the word "compiled" when recognizing a significant process of formation in the history of the present text) comprised a small group of literati who "were the only social group that held the level of literacy required to read, reread, and understand the book directly" (p. 5; see also pp. 12-13). This group, primarily males, according to Ben Zvi, shared a common historical understanding of the monarchic history of Israel and Judah and of the downfall of those two...