Once a commentary is in print, the opinions and judgments contained therein take on a certainty and finality which at places exceeds the confidence felt by the exegete who wrote them. The demands of a manuscript rob one of the luxury and honesty of remaining tentative and undecided before ambiguous problems. That is particularly true for a commentary on Hosea. The book is notorious for the difficulties of its text, and the way in which Hosea's sayings were committed to literature raises formidable problems for literary analysis.