In this concise but wide-ranging commentary, Joshua Moon has hit the rare mark of simultaneously making contributions to Hosea scholarship, theological interpretation, and pastoral insights for the church.
Introductory matters are handled succinctly in 28 pages. The introduction is comprised of the sections “Historical Backdrop,” “Hosea among the Prophets,” “The Book of the Prophet Hosea,” “Hosea and the Covenant,” and “Theology and Hearing Hosea.” Moon quite ably handles a wide variety of evidence and arguments with clear-thinking and logical analysis, questioning many “self-evident” methodological presuppositions, while not ignoring important questions and cogent arguments. He concludes that the prophet was well-integrated with the southern kingdom as well as the northern, that most of the book is traceable to the prophet’s oracles, and that they were collected into a book in Judah after the fall of Samaria. The final section (“Theology and Hearing Hosea”) justifies the theological approach taken by this self-described...
