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, 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)
Rev. Dr. Eugen J. Pentiuc is Assistant Professor of Old Testament and Semitic languages and Chair of the Religious Studies Department at Hellenic College/Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, Brookline, MA. He has earned a ThD from Bucharest University and a PhD from Harvard University. He has authored five books, including West Semitic Vocabulary in the Akkadian Texts from Emar (Eisenbrauns, 2001) and Jesus the Messiah in the Hebrew Bible (Paulist Press, September 2005).