Book Review: Hosea, Joel and Amos [NCBC]

Reviewing commentaries is a tricky business – particularly for me as a generalist, and an in-publisher editor of commentaries! I tend to offer my review based on the format and content of the volume, and its utility or otherwise to preachers and pastors. Occasionally I’ll digress into particularly theological or stylistic quirks.

As I continue my read-through of the Bible in canonical order, I have reached the latter part of the Old Testament, the Minor Prophets, in July 2024. I’ve been using MIchael Shepherd’s interesting single-volume-commentary-on-all-Twelve in the Kregel Exegetical Library series, but supplementing at times with other volumes. Having mostly enjoyed Bird and Gupta’s Philippians contribution to the NCBC, I was glad to see how this series would handle an Old Testament book (or three). My comment about pricing is similar – even at just over 400 pages, £85 for a hardback commentary aimed at ‘a wide range of intellectually curious individuals’ is surprising – the paperback is closer to £30, with CUP selling it for £26.99. To sum up my review before you read it: it probably isn’t worth it, unless you are doing serious work on one or more of these Prophetic books and simple must have/read everything.

19 pages of front matter give way to 376 pages or so of commentary, followed by just under 20 pages of indices – Author, Scripture and Subject. Hamborg reads the text carefully – helpfully (though the inner cynic in me is always interested to see in how many different ways commentators can make the theological point) noting that “The term ‘minor’ may be taken to refer to their length rather than to their importance” (p. 1). His introduction to the volume as a whole (About 12 pages) is followed by a helpful reading list to give a sense of where he’s coming from in terms of ‘Redaction Criticism’ (p. 12-13), and also the lay of the land regarding the recent focus on ‘The Book of the Twelve’. This section has added a few things to my wishlist. For those interested, Hosea gets 173 pages of commentary, Joel 71 pages, and Amos 116. Given the relative lengths of the books, this felt about right, and I certainly couldn’t fault the balance Hamborg struck in terms of delving into detail whilst not getting bogged down. In terms of the commentaries I work on for IVP, it felt pitched somewhere between a Tyndale Old Testament Commentary (Hamborg references Routledge on Hosea and Hadjiev’s on Joel/Amos positively), and an Apollos Old Testament Commentary (he appeared unaware of Moon’s 2018 Hosea commentary, the volume on Joel and Amos isn’t out yet). I trust that comparison is useful to some readers of this review. It is also worth noting that this volume contains the NRSV text of the books it comments on – alongside regular use of transliterated Hebrew.

Hamborg’s introduction to Hosea is even-handed – even if one doesn’t always agree with him, it was easy to see that he’d fairly engaged other views, and this set the tone for much of the commentary. The harshness of Hosea – and it’s presence in some of the most textually complex parts of the book – are recognised by Hamborg as “an essential part of the portrayal of YHWH as holding an internal dialogue between his anger and his mercy” (p. 57); he goes on to note that “The tension between the two, however, is left unresolved” (p. 59). I felt that Hamborg let the text speak for itself, for the most part – he is a nuanced reader: “A rounded reading of the text will acknowledge the marriage metaphor as a dominant, but not the only, image that contributes to the text’s understanding of YHWH’s relationship with Israel.” (p. 71). The passion and complexity of the relationship between YHWH and Israel is well summed up by Hamborg towards the close of the commentary: “There can be no promise of a secure future while Israel’s behaviour is as it is” (p. 175).

The commentary on Joel is in a similar vein – useful, but not particularly exciting. Hamborg notes somewhat clinically in his introduction that “Its themes, the compilers believed, were relevant to any period” (p. 197) – this somewhat demonstrates the slightly odd balance between a technically correct comment that lacks a certain ‘x factor’ of excitement, interest or devotion. The discussion of Joel 2:28-32 and its relation to the New Testament was also somewhat underwhelming – being largely relegated to a grey box under the title ‘Bridging the Horizons’. Hamborg’s comments here perhaps hold at arms length the supernatural aspects of what is going on, and seem to make it more theologically dry than either Joel or Luke do, in this reviewers opinion. The closing section of the commentary on Joel brings the opening comment full circle, as Hamborg notes “Ultimately the book brings hope to God’s people after times of trial and difficulty, hope derived from the belief that in the Day of YHWH he will act to bless his people and judge those who have wronged them” (p. 255-256). Here we see some of the common themes of The Twelve.

The commentary on Amos was, in my view, probably the strongest of the three. Early on Hamborg notes that “Central is the judgement of YHWH upon Israel, and upon the nations in Chapters 1-2” (p. 268), and he is careful in interpreting the Oracles Against Nations that occur throughout the book. Two grey boxes (beginning on page 294 and 295 respectively – a slightly offputting formatting decision) deal carefully with ‘Bridging the Horizons: Atrocities and War Crimes’ and ‘A Closer Look: Oracles Against the Nations’, the latter of which pushes back against some post/Christian readers who want to strip the Old Testament of some of it’s difficulty and complexity: “More recent scholarship has recognised that, when read in their literary contexts, they form an integral part of the prophetic corpus, and are not devoid of theological insight” (p. 295). Hamborg’s intent to read the whole text, with good questions honestly, is perhaps on best display in his commentary on Amos, on both the text and the secondary literature, in my opinion. And with regard to the Oracles Against Nations, and some of the particular themes of The Twelve, he goes on to write “It can be a perennial danger for religious believers to imagine that words of judgement are for people other than themselves” (p. 338). Amen. Hamborg’s closing words also bear repeating: “In the final form of the text the challenge to practise justice remains strong, and in the time of promised future blessing it is undiminished” (p. 376).

Overall, then, my summary on Twitter stands – this is a competent but over-clinical and critical commentary. It is quite readable and had some useful additional information for those of us wanting to dig a little deeper. The lack of running heads makes navigation a little tricky – for the more regular reader, who unlike me is probably not reading it through as a book – but the inclusion of footnotes means you tend to be able to stay on the page you need. A common problem – less present in the commentary on Amos than on Hosea/Joel – for me as a reader/reviewer thinking of preachers, is that by and large there is not much application or practical insight here, and often there is a relatively (Even-handed, to be sure) uninteresting rehearsal of the current scholarly consensus. That isn’t to say that this is a bad book, or even a bad commentary, but it isn’t one that I’d warmly recommend to anyone beyond those particularly interested in the highest level of study of Hosea, Joel and Amos.

3/5