This is a substantial work on a most difficult prophetic book Pentiuc probes carefully and thoroughly into the many problems of interpretation Hosea poses, grammatical and textual, historical, literary, and theological And he does so drawing on a very wide acquaintance with the ancient sources, both Biblical and non Biblical, and with classical and modern scholarship, alThis is a substantial work on a most difficult prophetic book Pentiuc probes carefully and thoroughly into the many problems of interpretation Hosea poses, grammatical and textual, historical, literary, and theological And he does so drawing on a very wide acquaintance with the ancient sources, both Biblical and non Biblical, and with classical and modern scholarship, all in a variety of languages Particularly valuable, indeed a distinctive contribution of Pentiuc s work, is the extensive use of the commentaries of the ancient Church Fathers on Hosea As Pentiuc shows, these remain fresh and provocative, offering readers a rich array of insights, especially into the meaning of Hosea for the nature of God and His ways with humanity Peter Machinist