Hosea

An insightful and influential scholarly resource on Hosea. While Wolff writes from a critical perspective, he asks many pressing questions of the text and handles them with delicate rigor. [Full Review]

 

My favorite commentary on Hosea. What is particularly useful is his outline of the nature of God as demonstrated through images, listed in the introduction. This helps organize the book in a useful manner, bringing it more to the level of the layman. Highly technical. Highly recommended.

Hans Walter Wolff's Hermeneia (1974) was the scholarly standard until Andersen and Freedman's Anchor Bible. Wolff is theologically adept from a mainstream critical perspective. Works in this series are pretty expensive and very detailed and technical, and this commentary is no exception. I would suggest that it's not worth a purchase by someone who just wants to teach the book in sermons or a Bible study, but scholars ought to pay attention to Wolff. Wolff is especially noted for his textual, form-critical, and tradition-critical work. He thinks much of the book was added to Hosea's original prophecies by other people. He is widely praised for his thoughtful theological discussion, and he does relate the message of Hosea to the New Testament, which might be worthwhile for Christians who are teaching this book, but his main focus might be a distraction for such purposes. Wolff has written commentaries on several other minor prophets most of the minor prophets, so this is something of a specialty for him. [Full Review]

A detailed form critical commentary. [Full Review]