Hosea 8:12

I have written to him Auth. Vers, here follows the Targum and the Peshito (the Septuagint and the Vulgate give the future), but it is more idiomatic (see p. 36, not [56] to render in the present I am wont to write. The prophet is fully conscious that the divinely given laws under which Israel lives (or ought to live) were not formulated once for all in the Mosaic age, but grew up in different ages. Thus understood, the passage is an important authority for the existence of a legal literature before the Pentateuch became canonical. But another rendering is grammatically possible, -Though I wrote unto him" (my law by myriads, i. e. in myriad precepts).

[56] te The Targum and Aben Ezra, followed by the Authorized Version, render -I have written" (better, -I wrote"). The tense is the imperfect, which is sometimes used in highly poetical passages where past occurrences are referred to; see Driver, Hebrew Tenses, § 27 (1) (β). Such a use of the imperfect would however here be isolated, nor is the passage in a poetical style. We must therefore reject the rendering of Auth. Vers., and with it the theory that the prophet refers simply and solely to a body of Mosaic legislation. In fact, when Moses is referred to by Hosea, it is as a prophet and a leader of the people, not as a legislator (Hosea 12:13).

the great things of my law The expression in the Hebrew, however we understand it, is remarkable and somewhat harsh. All difficulty would we removed if we might suppose the omission of a letter and a transposition; the phrase would then run, -the words of my law." The Hebrew Bible however gives 1, in the margin, -the multitudes of my law" (Vulg. multiplices leges meas), which is adopted by Auth. Ver., and 2, in the text, -the myriads (or, the myriad precepts) of my law." The word rendered -multitudes" is questionable, since it occurs elsewhere only in the singular, and there is here no apparent occasion for a plural. -The myriads of my law" is a bold expression, but this reading is generally preferred. -My law" may be understood to imply that, though Jehovah's will was made known -by divers portions" (Hebrews 1:1 R. V.), yet these -portions" when fitly joined together made a whole. This was certainly the feeling of those Jewish Bible-students who affixed the vowel-points; but, as Hosea is thinking of the multiplicity of the laws, rather than of their unity, some have thought that we should rather read (altering one point), -my laws." We can estimate the multiplicity spoken of from the Pentateuch, whether this work was known to Hosea in anything at all like its present form or not. We must remember, however, that the laws to which the prophet alludes are concerned, not with rites and ceremonies, but with civil justice and the applications of a plain but religiously sanctioned morality (comp. the so-called Book of the Covenant, Exodus 21-23).

they were(rather, are) counted as a strange thing As something which did (does) not concern them.