(Alice A. Keefe) Woman's Body and The Social Body

JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
SUPPLEMENT SERIES
338
Editors
David J.A. Clines
Philip R. Davies
Executive Editor
Andrew Mein
Editorial Board
Richard J. Coggins, Alan Cooper, J. Cheryl Exum, John Goldingay,
Robert P. Gordon, Norman K. Gottwald, John Jarick,
Andrew D.H. Mayes, Carol Meyers, Patrick D. Miller
GENDER, CULTURE, THEORY

10
Editor
J. Cheryl Exum
Sheffield Academic Press

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Woman's Body and the
Social Body in Hosea
Alice A. Keefe
Journal for the Study of the Old Testament

Supplement Series 338
Gender, Culture, Theory 10

Dedicated with much love and gratitude
to my parents,
Ann and John Keefe
Copyright © 2001 Sheffield Academic Press

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ISBN 1-84127-247-7 (hardback)

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CONTENTS
Abbreviations 7
Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION 9
Chapter 2
FEMALE FORNICATION AND FERTILITY RELIGION 36
Chapter 3
THE FERTILITY CULT REVISITED 66
Chapter 4
COVENANT AND APOSTASY 104
Chapter 5
FEMINIST APPROACHES TO HOSEA 140
Chapter 6
WOMEN, SEX AND SOCIETY 162
Chapter 7
REREADING HOSEA' s FAMILY METAPHOR 190
Bibliography 222
Index of References 244
Index of Authors 249
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ABBREVIATIONS
AB Anchor Bible
ABD David Noel Freedman (ed.), The Anchor Bible Dictionary
(New York: Doubleday, 1992)
AJSL American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures
ANET James B. Pritchard (ed.), Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating
to the Old Testament (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1950)
ANQ Andover Newton Quarterly
AOS American Oriental Series
BA Biblical Archaeologist
BARev Biblical Archaeology Review
BASOR Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research
BDB Francis Brown, S.R. Driver and Charles A. Briggs,
A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1962)
BibRes Biblical Research
BJS Brown Judaic Studies
BTB Biblical Theology Bulletin
BZ Biblische Zeitschrift
CBQ Catholic Biblical Quarterly
EncJud Encyclopaedia Judaica
ER Encyclopedia of Religion
EvT Evangelische Theologie
EAR Hebrew Annual Review
HR History of Religions
HTR Harvard Theological Review
HUCA Hebrew Union College Annual
IDBSup IDB, Supplementary Volume
IEJ Israel Exploration Journal
JAAR Journal of the American Academy of Religion
JB Jerusalem Bible
JBL Journal of Biblical Literature
JFSR Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion
JNSL Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages
JQR Jewish Quarterly Review
JSOT Journal for the Study of the Old Testament
8 Woman's Body and the Social Body in Hosea
JSOTSup Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, Supplement Series
JTC Journal for Theology and the Church
JTS Journal of Theological Studies
KAT Kommentar zum Alten Testament
KTU M. Dietrich, O. Loretz and J. Sanmartin, Die
Keilaphabetischen Texte aus Ugar it einschliesslich der
keilalphabetischen Texte ausserhalb Ugarits 1: Transkription.
Alter Orient und Altes Testament 24, Neukirchen-Vluyn:
Neukirchener Verlag, 1976.
LUA Lunds universitets arsskrift
MT Masoretic Text
NAB New American Bible
NCB New Century Bible
NEB New English Bible
NRSV New Revised Standard Version
OTG Old Testament Guides
OIL Old Testament Library
OTS Oudtestamentische Studien
RB Revue biblique
RelSRev Religious Studies Review
RHPR Revue d'histoire et dephilosophic religieuses
RSR Recherches de science religieuse
RSV Revised Standard Version
SBLMS SBL Monograph Series
StudOr Studia orientalia
TDOT G.J. Botterweck and H. Ringgren (eds.), Theological
Dictionary of the Old Testament
TQ Theologische Quartalschrift
TSK Theologische Studien und Kritiken
UF Ugarit-Forschungen
VT Vetus Testamentum
VTSup Vetus Testamentum., Supplements
WBC Word Biblical Commentary
WMANT Wissenschaftliche Monographien zum Alten und Neuen
Testament
ZAW Zeitschrift fur die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft
Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION
Sometime in the years prior to the fall of the Iron Age kingdom called
Israel, in an era of social turmoil and crisis, the prophet Hosea gave
graphic expression to the meaning of his times by depicting the nation
Israel as the adulterous wife of God. A long-standing scholarly con-
sensus reads this metaphor of female fornication as a sign for Israel's
apostate participation in a Canaanite or syncretistic 'fertility religion'.
Within this interpretation, the woman's illicit lovers are identified as
the fertility deities of Canaan who embody the powers of regeneration
immanent in nature. By labelling the worship of such deities as fornica-
tion, Hosea seeks to repudiate a religiosity which locates the divine
within nature and to recall Israel to its covenantal relationship with
'her' true 'husband' Yahweh, understood as the transcendent creator
God and Lord of History who controls nature, but who transcends any
implication therein.
This reading of Hosea's 'marriage metaphor' has long situated the
prophet as a pivotal figure in the history of Western religions, wherein
the nature and topos of God is elevated above any implication in the
realm of materiality. Hosea's refusal of any conflation between the
divine and the natural has been acclaimed by biblical theologians as the
great genius of Hosea and as his invaluable contribution to the ascen-
dancy of Western religion and the inherent superiority of Western
culture.
Of late however, many feminist scholars, being a'cutely aware of the
intimate relationship between the emergence of a dualistic religious
world-view and the increasing degradation of women, have taken quite
a different view of Hosea. Instead of lauding Hosea's attack on fertility
religion as a theological accomplishment, feminist scholars have in-
dicted Hosea for his role in advancing the patriarchal and misogynistic
character of the Western religious traditions. Their point is not simply
that Hosea's metaphor legitimates a social structure within which males

possess rights of control over female sexuality. More so, the gender
assignments of the metaphor, in which male is to God as female is to
sinful humanity, in conjunction with the denigration of the female body
as a symbol of sin, serve to articulate a dualistic split between the spiri-
tual (gendered as male) and material (gendered as female) spheres of
human experience (Setel 1985: 92).
Within this analysis, Hosea's metaphor expresses and enacts that
dichotomy between matter and spirit, and its correlative hierarchical
dualisms of God and nature, mind and body, reason and emotion, and
the like, which become so essential to construction of religious lan-
guage and religious meanings within Western culture. The association
of woman and sex with sin in this metaphor constitutes a critical move-
ment towards the gendering of this dualistic world-view as women and
women's bodies become associated with the degraded, lower pole of
the matter/spirit dichotomy, that is, with the profane, or even with evil.
Thus the metaphor of Israel as a fornicating wife is seen by feminist
critics as an originary, authoritative and influential expression of an
emerging dualistic and gendered religious vision wherein female sexu-
ality becomes the symbol of sin, evil and all that which is 'other' to the
meaning of the sacred.
Clearly, Hosea's 'marriage' metaphor stands as an important pillar in
the construction of a religious tradition which has profoundly shaped
the ways Western culture has thought about gender, sexuality, materi-
ality and the meaning of the sacred. And for precisely these reasons,
feminist scholars have rightly pointed to Hosea's metaphor as a critical
locus of engagement in the effort to critique and to rethink those para-
digmatic structures which have resulted in our self-alienation from the
body and nature, and the concomitant patterns of relentless violence
which have been characteristic of Western civilization. However, femi-
nist scholars, like virtually all interpreters of this text, have failed to
recognize that the very dichotomy between fertility religion and ethical
Yahwism within which the interpretation of this text has been framed is
itself already a function of dualist constructions of gender symbolism
and religious meanings. This study will argue that the conclusion that
Hosea's text inscribes a dualistic world-view, a conclusion shared by
traditional and feminist readers alike, is not a necessary reflex of the
text, but is rather product of an interpretative gaze that is already deter-
mined at the outset by dualistic modes of seeing and structuring reality.
1. Introduction 11
As shall be argued, the popular thesis concerning a syncretistic

fertility cult in eighth-century Israel does not rest on any firm textual
or extratextual evidence, but rather may be traced to the biases of a
theological agenda within which Canaanite religion is gendered as the
seductive and feminine 'other'1 against which biblical religion defines
itself and must defend itself. Two coordinate manifestations of the
matter/spirit dichotomy are at work in this link between the otherness
of Canaan and the otherness of woman. First, the opposition of Canaan-
ite fertility religion and Israelite Yahwism emerges from and articulates
the dualistic structures of Western religious thought wherein 'false'
religion (i.e. Canaanite religion) is predicated upon the location of the
sacred within materiality and 'true' religion (i.e. Israelite religion) is
predicated upon the transcendence of spirit over materiality. Second, as
feminist theo(a)logians have amply demonstrated, the project of ele-
vating the sacred above implication in materiality depends upon the
projection of the debased meaning of materiality on to woman, whose
corporeal implication in the processes of material existence is more
difficult to deny. Women, female bodies and female sexuality are then
linked in the androcentric Western imagination with body, nature, the
passions, sex and sin, and represent the lure away from transcendence
towards the temptations of the flesh. When these two sets of assump-
tions regarding religion and gender work in tandem in the interpreta-
tion of Hosea's marriage metaphor, it appears axiomatic that Hosea's
adulterous wife represents Israel's involvement in Canaan's fertility
religion.
After having exposed these paradigmatic determinants of the stan-
dard interpretation of Hosea's marriage metaphor, the next task will be
to establish an alternative framework for the interpretation of Hosea
which is not determined by the projection of dualistic assumptions
regarding religion and gender. Rather than reading Hosea against the
1. This use of the term 'other' to describe the symbolic location of woman
within androcentric constructions of reality is indebted to Simone de Beauvoir's
articulation of the problem in her introduction to The Second Sex. As de Beauvoir
explains, for the male self who takes his masculinity as normative for the definition
of the human, woman appears as the 'other', marking a point of difference, devia-
tion and degeneration from the masculine norm. 'She is defined and differentiated
with reference to man and not he with reference to her; she is the incidental, the
inessential as opposed to the essential. He is the Subject, he is the Absolute—she is
the Other'(1957: xvi).
background of Western androcentrism's identification of woman with

nature, sex and sin, this study will read Hosea's female sexual imagery
in light of the repeated association of sexual transgression and social
violence which is found in the biblical narratives. This intertextual clue
will suggest that sexual motifs carry social meanings in the symbolic
world of the Hebrew Bible, and further, that Hosea's language about
Israel as an adulterous wife functions rhetorically as a commentary upon
the pressing socio-political conflicts of Hosea's time.
Further, rather than reading Hosea against the background of schol-
arly fantasies concerning a Canaanite sex cult, fantasies which depend
upon the assumption of a paradigmatic opposition between matter and
spirit, we will rethink the religious situation of Hosea's day through a
methodological approach that assumes no such opposition, but rather
considers religion as a mode of orientation to the material and corpo-
real bases of human existence. This approach will generate an under-
standing of religious symbolism and practice in eighth-century Israel as
being integrally related to the dynamics of economic, social and political
life, as well as being rooted in an imagination of the body (including
the female body) as a locus of sacred meaning.
This process of reframing will suggest that one may read Hosea's
metaphor of Israel's social body as a fornicating female body in light of
a growing atmosphere of crisis in eighth-century Israel concerning mat-
ters of community identity, socio-economic practice, sacral meaning
and corporate survival. This crisis, which was at once social, political
and religious, was precipitated by the erosion of indigenous structures
of community life under the pressure of a rising market-based economy
revolving around interregional trade, land consolidation and cash crop-
ping. At risk in this transition was not only the well-being of individu-
als, but the sustainability of an order of world that was oriented around
the intimate relationship of families to land and structures of communal
solidarity based upon the bonds of proximity and kinship.
Thus, this study will argue that Hosea's language about female forni-
cation and the disintegration of one family unit offers a powerful and
evocative metaphor for a situation of intensifying socio-economic, po-
litical and religious crisis in eighth-century Israel. From this perspective,
it will appear that Hosea's trope is not really a marriage metaphor at
all, but a family metaphor, which draws upon the centrality of the
family in traditional Israelite life as a way of speaking to the disintegra-
tion and impending destruction of that way of life brought about by the
forces of economic and social change.
1. Introduction 13
The point of this exercise is not to claim to have discovered, at long

last, the 'correct' reading of Hosea, but rather to open up the possibility
of another, equally viable reading, and in so doing to demonstrate the
contingent status of the 'dominant reading'.2 This dominant reading of
Hosea has served to undergird a particular dualistic construction of
reality which is intimately related to the structures of sexism and misog-
yny within the Western religious and cultural traditions. As long as
Hosea's marriage metaphor, along with the Bible as a whole, are taken
as a compliant prooftexts for a gendered opposition between matter and
spirit, such a paradigm will retain deep roots in the soil of the Western
mind. The effort here will be to undermine the authority of that domi-
nant reading through an ideological critique of the dualistic construc-
tions of woman and religion which have determined it.
There will be also a constructive dimension to this study in its inter-
pretation of female imagery in Hosea. Instead of reading Hosea's meta-
phor as a formative expression of the dualistic metaphysics of Western
thought, wherein woman is a symbol for the degraded pole of material
existence, this study will glimpse in Hosea a religious apprehension of
a symbolic intimacy between the female body, the fertile land and the
sacred meaning of community in Israel. It is possible that this rereading
of the symbolism of woman in Hosea may contribute to the quest of
feminist scholars in religion for new ways of thinking about body,
woman and the sacred, and particularly for new ways of relating the
meaning of the sacred to the facticity of human embodiment. It is not
that Hosea's language about woman can directly contribute to this
project, for his language is, and will remain, deeply embedded in its
own ideological structures of gender asymmetry. However, the effort to
reweave 'the sacred symbolic fabric' of our culture (Buchanan 1987:
436-37) depends upon and is nourished by attentive encounter with the
symbolic shape of other worlds wherein body and woman carry differ-
ent meanings that may be placed in dialogue with our own. While there
can be no retrieval of Hosea's originary meaning, the interaction of
2. As Mieke Bal explains, 'the dominant reading' of Western culture may be

characterized as 'a monolithically misogynist view of those biblical stories wherein
female characters play a role, and a denial of the importance of women in the Bible
as a whole' (1987: 2). Presenting itself as objective and authoritative, this tradition
of interpretation has appropriated the authority of the Bible in order to naturalize and
sanctify the subordinate position of women and a hierarchical modelling of gender
in Western culture.
modern reader and ancient text in the work of interpretation admits a

creative process whereby new threads of meaning may be spun.
Hosea's Book and its Sexual Metaphors

The collected oracles that comprise the book of Hosea come to us from
the northern kingdom of Israel in its final decades before its conquest
by the Assyrians in 722 BCE. Besides Hosea, only Amos of the canonical
prophets travelled this territory in this precipitous era, and unlike Hosea,
Amos was an outsider, a Judahite. The work therefore offers a valuable
witness to the world of eighth-century Israel. While the work certainly
underwent a process of redaction in the hands of its Judean tradents
(see Yee 1987: 1-25), the stamp of its northern provenance still remains
clearly visible throughout (G. Davies 1993: 13). The oracles mention
Israel or Ephraim (Hosea's preferred name for his people) 78 times,
compared to only 14 references to Judah (G. Davies 1993: 13), and the
place names which Hosea mentions are nearly all northern or eastern;
Jerusalem is never mentioned at all and the Davidic lineage only once
(Hos. 3.5). Therefore, the book of Hosea will be considered in this study
as an essentially genuine witness to the world of eighth-century Israel.3
The book is divisible into two main sections, chs. 1-3 and 4-14.4
The first three chapters are thematically unified by their combination of
symbolic actions and metaphoric images relating to the motifs of mar-
riage, female procreation and female sexual transgression. The second
main section, chs. 4-14, is a collection of oracles dealing largely with
political and cultic issues, yet here also, sex-related imagery continues
as a leitmotif, linking the rest of the book to its first three chapters.
3. There is a potential for confusion when one uses the term 'Israel' due to the
way that biblical scholarship has deployed this single term to describe a whole
range of social phenomenon (Ahlstrom 1986). The term 'Israel' may refer to a geo-
graphical region, a particular ethnic group, a kingdom, or a theological community.
While it is sometimes difficult to avoid conflating these various meanings, in this
study, 'Israel' will usually refer to the Iron Age kingdom centered in the highlands
of Manassah and Ephraim, and to an ethnic community which preceded and
remained as roughly coterminous with that political entity, also called 'Ephraim' by
Hosea.
4. Some commentators break this second section into two parts, seeing the last
two chapters, Hos. 12-14, as a conclusion to the book, which returns again to
themes of knowledge of God, wilderness, fertility and the land (Wolff 1974: xxx;
Landy 1995: 12; Blenkinsopp 1983: 101; Yee 1992: 195).
1. Introduction 15
Chapter 1 tells of the divine command to Hosea that he take to

himself 'eset zenunim weyalde zenunim ('a woman of fornications and
children of fornications'), and proceeds through an account of his mar-
riage to Gomer and the birth of three children, who receive from their
father the ominous names of Jezreel, Not Pitied and Not My People.
This account of marriage, birthings and namings sets the context for ch.
2, where the account of symbolic actions relating to Gomer's and
Hosea's marriage shifts into a more strictly metaphoric description of a
troubled relationship between Yahweh and his adulterous 'wife'. The
oracles of ch. 2 offer a drama in two acts. In the first act (Hos. 2.2-13
[2.4-15]), we hear Yahweh's accusations against his wife and his angry
threats of punishment and/or divorce.5 The second act (Hos. 2.14-23
[2.16-25]) moves out from Yahweh's lament over being forgotten to his
decision to allure or seduce his wayward wife, to bring her into the
wilderness, and to betroth her to himself again. The drama ends with
images of marital consummation and cosmic communion, accompanied
by a symbolic reversal of the children's names. This concluding motif
of the reversal of the children's names is also found at the beginning of
ch. 2 (2.1-3 according to the MT; English version 1.10-11), such that it
forms an inclusio for the family drama of ch. 2. We can see then that
this is not simply a marriage metaphor, but & family metaphor in which
the transformation of the children plays a vital part. The often neglected
familial dimension of this metaphor will be key to the rereading of Hos.
1-2 offered in the final chapter of this study.
Chapter 3 is much briefer (only five verses), opening with another
divine command to Hosea that he must 'Go, again, love a woman who
loves another and is an adulteress' (Hos. 3.1a(3). Forests of paper have
been consumed in debates over whether this woman is Gomer or another
5. There has been a great deal of discussion as to whether Hos. 2.2-3 [2.4-5]
should be understood as a formal ritual of divorce, inclusive of a legal formula ('she
is not my wife, and I am not her husband'), stripping and expulsion. Whether or not
the historicity of such a formula or punitive acts can be established by comparative
evidence from the ancient Near East, the motif of divorce is clearly indicated by
Yahweh's promise of a new betrothal in the wilderness (Hos. 2.14-20 [2.16-22],
complete with bridal gifts and the consummation of a new marriage. Logically, there
cannot be a new marriage unless the old marriage was terminated. (For a defense of
the position that divorce is involved in these verses, see Westbrook 1990 [577-80];
for an attack on this position, see Andersen and Freedman 1980 [218-90]. For
further discussion of this problem against its ancient Near Eastern background, see
Kruger 1992.)
woman, and how this episode fits into the chronology of the prophet's
marital life. Does Hos. 3.1 tell of Hosea's second marriage, or does it
tell of a marriage that preceded the one to Gomer, or are both Hos. 3.1
and 1.2 variant accounts of the same marriage? The most viable answer
to these questions is probably that Hos. 1 and 3 each provide a distinct
account of and interpretation of the same experience, adopted to differ-
ent historical situations which Hosea faced over the course of his career
(Gordis 1954: 30; Koch 1983: 79; Blenkinsopp 1983: 102-103). Most
of ch. 1, with its prediction of the fall of 'the house of Jehu' (Hos. 1.4-5)
most likely dates from the era shortly prior to or subsequent to Jero-
boam's death in 745 BCE, whereas ch. 3, with its allusions to enslave-
ment, exile and restoration, might well have been rendered some three
decades or more later, close to or subsequent to the Assyrian conquest
of Samaria in 721 BCE, when the land was, as it were, possessed by
another and would be in need of redemption (G. Davies 1993: 88). The
prophet himself was certainly not concerned with providing posterity
with information for his biography. Rather, in presenting his family life
as a living parable of his nation's situation, Hosea was drawing upon
his life experience as a rhetorical resource which could be poetically
adapted as the historical occasion demanded.
The diverse oracles in the rest of the book—chs. 4-14—address a
range of social, political and religious issues. The tenor of these chapters
is encapsulated in the lines which open this section of the book (4.1-3)
where we read that 'the land mourns, and all who dwell in it shrivel up'
because of the violence, lies and immorality perpetrated by its inhabi-
tants. Throughout Hos. 4-14, Israel's power brokers—priests, princes
and kings—are singled out for their complicity in leading the nation to
its destruction. Unfortunately, the specific crimes alluded to are often
difficult to reconstruct with much precision; many of the events and/or
issues to which Hosea alludes have long since slipped into the crevices
of history. The difficulties of reconstructing the referents of the oracles
are further multiplied by the frequent corruptions of the text and the
obscurity of many of the expressions used.
Chapters 4-14 are linked to chs. 1-3 by the use of images of illicit
sexuality to characterize transgressive acts in the body politic (Hos.
4.10, 12, 13-14, 18; 5.3-4; 6.10; 8.9; 9.1). There is continuity also in the
use of familial and maternal imagery to portray the contemporary situa-
tion. Hosea expresses Israel's fate through images of mothers who are
destroyed (4.5), mothers whose wombs miscarry and whose breasts run
1. Introduction 17
dry (9.14), mothers who are dashed in pieces with their children (10.14),
and pregnant women whose bellies are ripped open (13.16).6 The
nation's death is evoked in images of breached birth (13.12-13) and
female infertility:
Ephraim: like a bird;
their glory shall fly away—
No childbirth, no gestation, no conception (9.11).
No children (9.12) means no nation; the imagery of bearing alien chil-

dren (5.7) carries the same implication. Clearly there is some resonance
between these images of bereaved maternity, sterility and illegitimate
children on one hand, and the metaphoric complex of the wayward
mother and her rejected children of Hos. 1-2 on the other.
Most treatments of Hosea's marriage metaphor become quickly
entangled in a dense set of arguments as to how or if ch. 3 may be
reconciled with the narrative line of ch. 1-2. At the same time, these
studies commonly do not consider the marriage metaphor in the context
of chs. 4-14, where female and familial imagery remains prominent.
My plan is to reverse these emphases, largely excluding ch. 3 from the
discussion, and stressing the clues offered in chs. 4-14, with its tropes
of sex and politics and its disturbing maternal imagery, as being critical
to the interpretation of the marriage metaphor in chs. 1-2.
The decision to focus the discussion on Hos. 1-2 to the exclusion of
Hos. 3 is motivated mainly by stylistic and thematic considerations.
Hos. 2 constitutes an integral literary unit bounded by reference to the
children's symbolic names. The prominence of the motif of the chil-
dren's names in ch. 2 links this chapter closely with chapter 1, which
tells of the births of these children and their naming. By contrast, ch. 3
stands independently of chs. 1 and 2 and the connecting motif of the
children is absent. Framing the text around the inclusio of the chil-
dren's names will highlight the motif of the children as the critical key
for a hermeneutical reorientation to the 'marriage' metaphor, so that the
symbol of woman in Hos. 1-2 will be considered in dual perspective—
as both wife and mother.
A further motive behind the decision to focus on chs. 1-2 is stra-
tegic. Hosea 3.1 is the only place in the book of Hosea where the
6. It is possible that maternal imagery also appears in Hos. 11.1-4 which

portrays the relationship of the foundling child Israel with his adoptive parent.
Schungel-Straumann 1986 and Wacker 1989 explore the possibilities for reading
this parental image as a maternal image.
woman's lovers are explicitly identified with 'other gods'. Any mystery
in the metaphor is here eliminated with a clear equation: adultery equals
apostasy. It may be that a move from metaphor to allegory is the work
of a redactor within the deuteronomistic school (as is suggested by the
reference to 'David their king' in v. 5). But without venturing any redac-
tional theories, this study claims the hermeneutical liberty to read Hos.
1-2 without any a priori closure concerning how its sexual imagery
must be read.
The Woman of Fornications

Hosea 1.2, the enigmatic verse which opens the extended metaphor,
serves as something of a synopsis for the whole. This passage presents
the reader with a command from Yahweh which marks the initiation of
Hosea into his prophetic career:
Go take to yourself a woman of fornications ('eset zenunim) and children
of fornications (yalde zenunim\ for the land fornicates greatly away from
YHWH.
The key phrase here is 'eset zenunim. This expression conjoins the
common noun 'issah (in construct form), meaning either woman or
wife, and zenunim, a rather rare form of the root znh, whose derivatives
connote acts or states of fornication and/or prostitution.7 The combina-
tion of these terms in the expression 'eset zenunim is unique to Hosea,
and the text itself offers little clarity as to what manner of woman is
indicated.
To approach the interpretation of this expression, it is necessary to
explore the socio-symbolic meanings attached to both its components,
'eset and zenunim, within the social and literary worlds of ancient
Israel, and to consider what might be implied in their conjunction.
Initially, just in noting the dual meaning of the first term of the expres-
sion 'issah as woman and/or wife, much is learned about the societal
context within which the metaphor originated. Ancient Hebrew made
no semiotic differentiation between woman and wife because socio-
logically their meanings were practically synonymous; to be a woman
7. For treatment of the literal and figurative meanings of znh terminology, see
Bird (1989b), Erlandsson (1980), Hooks 1985: 65-151 and Bucher (1988). The term
zenunim itself appears only thirteen times in the Hebrew Bible; five of these are in
Hosea (Hos. 1.2 [x2]; 2.6; 4.12; 5.4) and four are in Ezekiel (23.11 [x2], 29 [x2]).
The term also appears in Nah. 3.4 (x2), Gen. 38.24 and 2 Kgs 9.22.
1. Introduction 19
was to be some man's wife and to bear that man's children.8 Within the
structures of the male genealogical system, a female would normally
and 'properly' occupy one of two social positions; she would be either
a dependent within her father's house, or a wife and mother within the
house of her husband (Niditch 1979). This sexual structure was foun-
dational to ancient Israel's patriarchal and patrilineal world which
revolved economically and ideologically around the primacy of the bet
'ab ('house of the father') and the transmission of the patrimonial nah
a
ldh ('property', 'inheritance') from father to son across the generations.
In such a social context, it is not surprising to find that legitimacy was a
major source of male concern, that female sexuality was strictly con-
trolled by the bet 'ab in service of its genealogical imperatives, and
finally, that female sexual infidelity was a social anathema, punishable
(at least in theory) by death.
The second term of Hosea's expression, zenunim or 'fornication'
(BOB, 276), is an abstract intensive plural of the root znh, whose basic
meaning, as expressed in the verb zanah, is 'to engage in sexual
relations outside of or apart from marriage' (Bird 1989b: 76) or simply
'to fornicate' (Erlandsson 1980: 99).9 Another derivative of the root is
the qal participle zonah, which is the common term for prostitute (along
with 'issah zonah).
Some difficulty in the translation and interpretation of znh terminol-
ogy has followed from the implicit assumption that professional pros-
titution ought to be taken as the primary or basic meaning of the root
(Bird 1989b: 78) This assumption is reflected in the common transla-
tion of the expression zanah 'ah "re as to 'to play the harlot' or 'to go
a-whoring'. In like manner, the absorption of the semantic range of znh
into the specific activity of prostitution yields such commonly accepted
translations of 'eset zenunim as 'wife of harlotry' (RSV), 'a harlot wife'
(NAB) or 'a whore' (JB). This fixation upon connotations of prostitution
has also resulted in extended debates concerning whether this woman
ought to be understood as a ordinary prostitute—zonah or "issah zonah
8. For summary discussion of the social position of women in ancient Israel,

see Bird's discussion (1974), long a standard in the field, along with Trible (1976),
Emmerson (1989) and Frymer-Kensky (1992).
9. Specifically, as Bird (1989b: 77) and Bucher (1988: 119) note, the verb, when
used in this literal sense, always refers to the illicit sexual activity of an unmarried
woman, such as a dependent daughter (Deut. 22.21; Lev. 21.9) or a levirate-obliged
widow (Gen. 38.24).
—or a sacred prostitute—purportedly, qedesah—even though none of

these terms are applied to Gomer in the text.
Phyllis Bird argues that the primary meaning of the root znh is not
prostitution but fornication.10 Bird concludes that in the Hebrew con-
ception, the prostitute 'is 'essentially' a professional or habitual forni-
cator' and that the noun zonah 'represents a special case of the activity
denoted by the qal verb' (Bird 1989b: 78). The noun depends on the
verb, not vice versa, and professional prostitution is a derivative, not an
essential, meaning of the root znh. Therefore, 'the basic meaning of the
verb as describing fornication or illicit extramarital relations should be
the starting point for interpreting any given use' (Bird 1989b: 78)."
Thus the semantic key to the expression 'eset zenunim should not be
sought in relation to the activity of (professional or sacred) prostitution,
but in the activity of female fornication, and specifically the fornication
of an' 'issah, a woman/wife.
This point is important for the interpretation of the expression 'eset
zenunim. Prostitution does not carry the same meanings as fornication.
Prostitution was a legal and tolerated activity in ancient Israel because
the prostitute's sexuality belonged to no bet 'ab.u Whereas the activity
10. Cf. Galambush's treatment of znh (1992: 27-31) where she argues, against
Bird (1989b) and Bucher (1988), that the root meaning of znh concerns prostitution,
and that its verbal applications to describe non-professional and illicit sexual activity
represents a figurative extension of the root; the fornicating woman is one who acts
like a prostitute. Such an extension from a root meaning to a figurative meaning can
be seen in English, where a promiscuous woman is called a 'whore', even when she
gains no profit from her sexual activity. But Galambush's arguments for this point
are not convincing. As Galambush herself notes, the verbal forms of znh are never
used to describe the sexual activity of a prostitute, but rather always refer to the illicit
sexual activity of an unmarried woman. This lacuna would be curious if prostitution
indeed represents the basic and original meaning of the root. Further, again as
Galambush herself notes, the sexual activity of a prostitute is not condemned, but is
rather sanctioned within a patriarchal social system that has need of an available
'other woman' with whom extramarital sexual relations are permitted. If the root
znh refers originally and primarily to professional sexual activity which was licit
and legal, then it is difficult to explain its figurative applications to describe forbid-
den activities which were considered most sinful and horrendous, such as apostasy.
11. Andersen and Freedman concur, arguing that 'the practice of English trans-
lations in always rendering it [znh] by the derivatives of the words whore, harlot,
etc., fails to cover the range of its denotations, and gives a misleading connotation
in many passages' (1980: 160).
12. Prostitution was a licit and accepted institution which had a stable niche in a
1. Introduction 21
of a prostitute posed no threat to Israel's patriarchal social order, the

fornication of a woman who belonged within a bet 'ab constituted a
serious rupture of that order. Thus zenumm as descriptive of 'eset points
the reader towards the vulnerabilities and anxieties attendant within a
social system whose order was so dependent upon the male genealogi-
cal imperative. In order to highlight this semantic nuance, I prefer to
translate 'eset zenunim as 'woman (or wife) of fornications' in lieu of
such renderings as 'woman of harlotry' or 'wife of whoredom' in order
to avoid any automatic or unreflective association of Hosea's bride
with the activity of prostitution. The use of plural form 'fornications'
rather than 'fornication' (BDB, 276) is intended to highlight the sense
of habitual or repeated sexual activity which is indicated by the plural
intensive form zenunim.
This is not to deny that the imagery of professional prostitution plays
a part in the description of the woman's activity in ch. 2. She looks to
her 'lovers' for gifts (2.5b [2.7b]) and the vines and fig trees she names
as 'her hire' (etnan) (2.12 [2.14]), a specific term denoting a harlot's
wages. The point rather is to break the habitual association of zenumm
with prostitution so that its connotations of fornication can be more
clearly explored, and to distinguish at the outset the 'eset zenumm from
the professional or sacred prostitute.
The Children of Fornications

Interpreters of Hosea's marriage metaphor habitually focus upon the
sexual history of the 'eset zenunim as the critical key to unravelling the
mystery of the metaphor. However, the phrase 'eset zenunim is immedi-
ately paired with a semantically parallel and equally troublesome
phrase—yalde zenunim. As Phyllis Bird notes, this double characteriza-
tion is indeed curious, for as fornication can describe a woman's activ-
ity, it is quite unclear how may it be applied to children (1989b: 80).
society where men were sexually free, but other men's wives or daughters were
strictly 'off-limits'. But the prostitute herself was a liminal figure, for she fit into
neither of the two social categories that were 'proper' to women (Niditch 1979:
147; Camp 1985: 112-24; C. Wright 1990: 93). She belonged to no bet 'ab, for
women who bore children of uncertain paternity could not be incorporated into a
social system based upon patrilineal inheritance. Prostitution was not a crime, but
the prostitute was an marginalized person who had departed from and operated
outside of the kinship structure of Israelite society (Bird 1989b: 120).
While the characterization of the wife by zenunim might make some

sense as a literal description,
the duplicate characterization of the children must be heard as strange
and enigmatic, raising a question about the meaning of both uses (Bird
1989b: 81).
Linked together by the common term zenunim, this mother and chil-
dren, 'eset zenumm and yalde zenunim, are bound up together in a
single metaphoric complex, such that one cannot be understood with-
out the other.
There have been all manner of theories broached which hope to
make sense of these children as symbolic presences within the extended
metaphor. The perceived problem revolves around a confusion regard-
ing the allegorical correspondences intended here: if the mother sym-
bolizes Israel, then what of the children, whose names indicate that they
also symbolize Israel? Perhaps one might say that the woman is the land,
as is suggested in Hos. 1.2b ('for the land fornicates greatly away from
Yahweh'), such that the children are her offspring, that is, the land's
inhabitants.13 Yet, clearly woman in Hos. 1-2 personifies not only the
land, but also the people, who are the subjects of the transgressive
activity described as fornication (Hos. 2.2-13 [2.4-15]), and who are
the objects of divine allurement (Hos. 2.14-15 [2.16-17]). The search
for a clear set of allegorical correspondents to assign to the parts of the
metaphor ends in frustration as it is based upon the faulty premise that
the trope is an allegory, rather than a complex metaphor, which draws
upon a set of symbolic associations tied up with the intertwining images
of woman, children, land and nation.14
13. See, e.g., Wolffs influential view that the motif of the land as the wife of
God is directly indebted to Canaanite mythology: 'Hosea employs this imagery to
demonstrate that the arable land inhabited by Israel owes its fertility only to its inti-
mate relationship with Yahweh' (1974: 34; cf. Ward 1966: 11). But Wolff and
others (e.g. Koch 1983: 81) also see the bride of Yahweh as a symbol of the people,
to the conclusion that there are two different metaphors at work simultaneously in
the same text. The solution of identifying the woman exclusively with the land and
the children with the people is taken by Braaten, who resolves the ambiguity of the
woman's identity as both land and people by assigning her identification with the
people to the work of a redactor (1987: 12-17).
14. This distinction between metaphor and allegory relies upon the understanding
of metaphor as generative language set forth by I. A. Richards (1971) and P. Ricoeur
(1976). Classical rhetoric had defined a trope as simply the substitution of one word
1. Introduction 23
If there is a way to enter into the trope of the children, it lies through
the ominous names which Hosea gives to them—Jezreel, Not Pitied
and Not My People. The first of these—Jezreel—raises a special set of
problems and opportunities for interpretation. Unlike the names of his
younger siblings, Jezreel's name is not unambiguously negative. The
Jezreel was a large and fertile lowland valley in the north of the coun-
try, a breadbasket for the nation. Its name, meaning 'God sows' is rich
like the soil in agricultural and sexual connotations. This name and a
pun upon it figure in the erotic/agricultural imagery of salvation as 'sow-
ing' which brings ch. 2 to its climatic conclusion (Hos. 2.23 [2.24]).
But the name Jezreel is also heavily laden with political connota-
tions; it is, as Auerbach puts it, a name that is 'fraught with [its] own
biographical past' (1957: 17). The Jezreel was not only a fertile valley,
but also a strategic crossroads in the center of northern Palestine
through which passed the Via Maris, that vital road linking Egypt with
Asia; consequently, it was a place of battles whereupon the fate of the
nation might turn. Further, Jezreel was also the name of a royal city,
site of the summer palace of the kings of Israel; 1 Kgs tells of the
spilling of Naboth's blood in this place, a crime answered by Elijah's
curse that the dogs would lick the blood of Ahab in the valley of Jezreel
(1 Kgs 21.17). The naming speech for Hosea's first born evokes these
more ominous, political associations:
Call his name Jezreel; for soon, I visit the blood of Jezreel upon the
house of Jehu, and I will destroy the kingdom of the house of Israel. And
it will be on that day I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel
(Hos. 1.4-5).
The reference here to the house of Jehu, usurper king who disposed
the Omrids at the end of the ninth century, intrudes upon the view that
this extended metaphor of family life focuses simply upon the issue of
cultic apostasy. Jehu's murderous opposition to the Omrid's Phoenician
for another. But for Richards and Ricoeur, tropes of substitution are to be distin-
guished from tropes of invention, where the 'tension' between semantic fields elicits
a 'semantic innovation' which does not simply clothe an idea in a new image, but
reveals 'something new about reality' (Ricoeur 1976: 53). Thus the vehicle is not
dispensable, and the meaning of the metaphor may not be resolved by neatly assign-
ing the correct tenor to it. This is the case only in allegory or analogy, where a
resemblance serves to illustrate the point in a new manner, but the point remains
essentially the same. But unlike allegories, "real metaphors are not translatable'
(Rieoeur 1976: 52).
Baal cult was a critical element in his political program to justify his
coup and to consolidate his hold upon the throne. If opposition to Baal
worship were Hosea's primary obsession, it is difficult to understand
why Jehu, anti-Baal champion par excellence, would enter his dis-
course as an emblem of the nation's terminal illness. Rather, the invoca-
tion to Jezreel alerts the reader that politics are at least as much on
Hosea's mind as the problem of right worship in the articulation of this
family drama, and that to enter into Hosea's language world, it will be
necessary also to consider the turmoil and violence which characterized
the politics of his day.
The Political Situation

The house of Jehu, invoked by Hosea in Jezreel's naming speech, is the
house of Jeroboam II, king of Israel in Hosea's time. This king had
reigned for 41 years over a period of apparent national security and
expanding economic opportunity in the northern kingdom. With Israel
controlling the Levant from Hamath to the Dead Sea, and Judah con-
trolling Edom and access to the Red Sea at Elath, the twin monarchies,
in cooperation, together enjoyed swelled borders and effective control
over the lucrative transit trade which passed through the region.
But the curse in the naming speech for Jezreel anticipates the disso-
lution of political stability and the catastrophic military disasters which
hit hard in the years following the death of Jeroboam in approximately
745 BCE.15 Reference to the 'blood of Jezreel', through which Jehu
waded knee deep on his route to the throne, foreshadows the political
situation following Jeroboam's death, which was marked by a series of
royal assassinations. Within just one year of Jeroboam's death, three
successive kings sat upon the throne. Jeroboam's son Zechariah was
assassinated by Shallum six months after taking the throne, and only
one month later, Shallum was assassinated by Menahem. Menahem
managed to hold the throne for ten years, but his reign brought little
peace to the land; instead Israel seems to have been thrown into a state
of 'virtual civil war' (Hayes and Irvine 1987: 41). After his death, the
pattern of successive regicides which had ushered him into power was
15. The dating and even the correct chronological order for many of the events
of this period cannot be precisely established. The dates and chronology used in this
study follow the reconstructions offered by Andersen and Freedman (1980) and
Miller and Hayes (1986).
1. Introduction 25
repeated. His son, Pekahiah, was murdered by Pekah, who was in turn
murdered by Hoshea (732-724/23). Hosea's commentary on this revolv-
ing door of regicide is quite pointed:
All of them are heated up like an oven,
and they devour their rulers.
All their kings have fallen;
and there is none among them who calls to me.
(Hos. 7.7)
The political motivations behind these successive coups are unclear;

much of this bloody jostling for power may well have been provoked
by competing pro- and anti-Assyrian parties in Israel.16 But whatever
the motives, the resultant destabilization of the political situation left
the nation ill equipped to cope with the advancing wave of Assyrian
conquest.
The Looming Disaster

The 'Great King' Tiglath-pileser II ascended to the Assyrian imperial
throne about the same time as Jeroboam's death (745 BCE). Under his
leadership, the Assyrians began to pursue an aggressive policy of
expansion and consolidation west of the Euphrates. The empire which
now reached its hand towards Syria-Palestine was stronger and far more
threatening than anything the region had known since the collapse of
Egyptian rule at the close of the Bronze Age. The Assyrians were to be
greatly feared; their demands for tribute and corvee labor were heavy,
and their troops were renowned for their love of terror and torture. The
Assyrians pioneered the art of using atrocities against civilian popula-
tions as a deliberate strategy of war; it is said that human skulls were
used for wallpaper in Nineveh's palace. Particularly terrifying was the
Assyrian policy of mass deportation and resettlement of conquered
populations (Oded 1979).
16. Menahem, for example, is reported to have paid tribute to Tiglath-Pilesar so

'that he might help him to confirm his hold of the royal power' (2 Kgs 15.19b).
Menahem passed the cost of this heavy tribute payment along to the powerful head-
men of Israel, some of whom were perhaps disgruntled enough by the imposition to
support Pekah's insurrection against Menahem's son and successor Pekahiah. Pekah
was backed by King Rezin of Syria, with whom he embarked upon policy of
resistance to Assyria which led to the disastrous Assyrian campaign in Syria-Pales-
tine in 734-732 (see below).
The use of mass deportation as a means of consolidating Assyrian

rule over conquered peoples was carried out 'intensively and on a very
large scale' in the eighth and seventh centuries under the reigns of
Tiglath-Pileser II, Sargon II and Sennacherib (Oded 1979: 21). Under
these kings, deportation became an especially favored means of punish-
ment against a nation that rebelled against Assyrian rule after initially
bowing to it (Oded 1979: 41). In the ninth century, if a vassal king
rebelled, the Assyrians simply replaced him with a more docile ruler.
But by the second half of the eighth century, the Assyrians had adapted
a new policy. Now if a vassal rebelled, the entire population was held
accountable: deportations of entire communities followed as the nation
was summarily incorporated into the Assyrian provincial system.
For a small kingdom such as Israel, occupying a critical strategic
position for the control of trade through the Levant, the stakes in the
Assyrian game had become very high. The cost of resistance could
mean not only that the king and his court would be eliminated and
replaced, but that the nation's very existence would be eradicated. At
the same time, the Assyrian burden was very heavy, financially and
otherwise, and the temptation to rebel was as strong as ever (Miller and
Hayes 1986: 322). Thus, Rezin of Syria and Pekah of Israel together
embarked on a policy of resistance to Assyria, provoking what is
known as the Syro-Ephraimite War (733-732 BCE). When King Ahaz
of Judah refused requests that he join their anti-Assyrian coalition,
Rezin and Pekah marched on Jerusalem in hopes of deposing Ahaz and
forcing Judah into the coalition (Hos. 5.8-6.6). Acting against the
warnings of the prophet Isaiah (Isa. 7.1-8.8), Ahaz took a drastic step
and called upon the 'Great King' for help (2 Kgs 16.7). Tiglath-pileser
responded eagerly to the invitation, as it gave him a chance to crush the
rebellion in its infancy.
The prediction in Jezreel's naming speech that Yahweh will 'break
the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel' was more than fulfilled as the
armies of the 'Great King' Tiglath-pileser then devoured most of Israel's
northern territory, including Gilead and the precious Jezreel valley.17
17. An alternative view of this history is offered by Miller and Hayes who take
seriously evidence in the Assyrian chronicles that the regions absorbed by Assyria at
the close of the Syro-Ephraimite War were already considered to be a part of
'Greater Syria' (1986: 332). On the basis of this data, along with an analysis of Isa.
9.9-12, Miller and Hayes date the loss of Israel's northern territories to before the
death of Jeroboam II.
1. Introduction 27
The kingdom of Israel was reduced to a small rump state, limited to the
central hill country of Ephraim surrounding the capital of Samaria.
When Hoshea, the last king of Israel, ceased his tribute payments and
began negotiations with Egypt (2 Kgs 17.4), the Assyrians besieged
Samaria and finally took it in 721 BCE. Mass deportation served as pun
ishment for Hoshea's rebellion. It is estimated that some 27,000 Israel-
ites were deported and what had been left of Israel became an Assyrian
province (Miller and Hayes 1986: 336-37).
The Social Crisis

The name Jezreel evokes also another dimension of the socio-political
scene in Hosea's time. In the time of the Omrids, Jezreel was the 'rally-
ing cry' (Cross 1973: 222) of prophets like Elijah in their opposition to
the avaricious land-grabbing policies of the Omrid monarchy (1 Kgs
21). As the story goes, Naboth's vineyard in Jezreel was coveted by
King Ahab on account of its proximity to his palace. Invoking sacral
tradition concerning the non-alienability of patrimonial lands, Naboth
refused to sell, and then lost both his land and his life in the bargain.
Behind the intrigue was the Phoenician wife of Ahab, Queen Jezebel,
symbol of Omrid's deepening involvement in cosmopolitan values at
the expense of the Yahwistic tribal ethos. This story may have circu-
lated among anti-Omrid factions as a protest against 'the violation of
the ancient law of inheritance by the crown' (Cross 1973: 222); its plot
suggests a growing conflict between a centralizing agrarian state, seek-
ing to enhance its power through strategies of political centralization,
land consolidation and investment in interregional trade, and those
whose interests were vested in the patrimonial farms and local econo-
mies of the hill-country villages (Chaney 1989; Coote 1992; Rentaria
1992: 80).
The story would certainly have retained its appeal in Hosea's time.
Even as those forces resistant to the centralizing monarchical hegem-
ony of the Omrids found fruition in Jehu's coup, under Jehu's great
grandson Jeroboam II, the same centrifugal forces of expanding monar-
chical power and elite strategies of land consolidation were more active
than ever, creating the situation of economic oppression and juridical
corruption of which Amos speaks so forcefully. As the crown's interests
in commercial agriculture intensified, smaller patrimonial holdings were
increasingly consolidated into large prebendal estates, controlled by the
crown through its loyal retainers and dedicated to the production of

profitable cash crops.18 Under royal directive, large areas of the country-
side were devoted to specialization in one or two 'cash crops', with
viticulture and orchards in the hills and fields of grain in the lowlands
(Chaney 1989: 19). The resultant efficiency in agricultural production
generated a surplus of grain, wine and oil for export trade. These prod-
ucts from Israel's terraced highlands and fertile valleys were shipped
throughout the ancient Near East with the help of Israel's old friend
and trading partner, the maritime city of Tyre. With the profits from trade
in these commodities, wealthy Israelites could enjoy fine linen, papyrus
and gold from Egypt, imported ivory, and the purple dye produced in
Phoenicia (Premnath 1984; Elat 1975). Above all, the export trade
funded the purchase of military ironware, the staple of the state's
strength and survival.
The term 'latifundialization', familiar within social economic theory,
describes the processes of socio-economic transformation which charac-
terized Israelite society in the ninth and eighth centuries (see, e.g., Lenski
1970; Lang 1982). Latifundialization refers to a process of systematic
shifts in land use and ownership, within which small farms, dedicated
to diversified subsistence agriculture, are increasingly absorbed into
large 'latifundia' or agrarian estates, dedicated to the production of one
or more cash crops. The transition from a subsistence agrarian econ-
omy to a trade-based market economy typically results in increasing
wealth for a shrinking number of landowners, and increasing poverty
for the dispossessed peasantry. Such was apparently the case in Israel.
While an elite, royal-aligned sector of the population enhanced their
wealth and power through expanding ventures in agribusiness, the proc-
esses of economic development came at the cost of the dispossession
and impoverishment of increasing numbers of highland families, whose
lands, by customary law, were supposed to be inalienable.
While many treatments of the political economy of eighth-century
Israel present the royal house and its aligned elites as avaricious and
evil, one could also say that from their perspective, these men of power
had little choice. The monarchical hunger for land which grew sharper
under the Omrid's and again in Hosea's time was precipitated by wider
changes in the political economy of the Near East. In the ninth century
18. The political, social and economic forces at work in ancient Israel and Judah
are explored from a socio-scientific perspective in many recent studies including
Premnath (1984, 1988), Lang (1982), Chaney (1989) and Dearman (1988).
1. Introduction 29
a new and superior breed of iron tools and weapons became widely
available by virtue of the introduction of a new 'steeling' process in
iron technology; now iron could be made harder than bronze. Israel and
its neighbors in western Asia jockeyed among themselves for control of
this booming iron trade as it became the key to economic and military
power in the region (Rentaria 1992: 80). Thus, heightening political-
economic pressures in the region which followed from the introduction
of the new iron technology insisted that these kings enhance their pur-
chasing power through intensified production of foodstuffs—Israel's
primary export product—in order to stock up on military ironware. For
those who sat upon the throne, interregional trade was a thrive-or-die
game.
The nation's ability to compete in this new geo-political situation
depended upon two factors. First, the state needed products to trade,
and so it needed to extend its prebendal dominion into the hilly ter-
raced regions of the kingdom where oil and wine grew best, for these
were the lucrative cash crops that brought high profits on the interna-
tional circuit. Second, success in the foreign trade game depended upon
the forging of advantageous trading relationships with other powers,
particularly Tyre.19 Tyre provided Israel with a maritime outlet for its
exports, along with a access to Tyre's merchandise, which included
luxury goods and advanced technologies. In turn, Israel provided Tyre
with foodstuffs from its commercial estates, along with access to its
allies and dependents (Frankenstein 1979: 267). By forging a strong
trading alliance with Tyre, the state enhanced its capacity to exploit
Israel's geographical position on the north-south trading routes and to
widen its power base in Israel by providing its friends with easy access
to international markets (Rentaria 1992: 86).
Yet, while pragmatic as a response to interregional pressures, state
policies which promoted land consolidation, cash cropping and in a
deepening investment in interregional trade contravened the traditional
ethos and ideological self-identity of Israelite society.
19. The importance of the trading relationship between the Israelite nation(s)
and Tyre is suggested by 1 Kings' references to the economic alliance between
Hiram and Solomon (1 Kgs 5; 7.13-47; 9.10-14, 26-28). Even if these accounts,
which enhance the myth of Solomon's 'Golden Age', are wholly fabricated (Garbini
1988), they indicate awareness that an alliance with Tyre was critical to the wealth
and development of the highland kingdoms. Archeological evidence for active trade
between Israel and Tyre in the ninth and eighth centuries has been established by
S. Geva(1982).
On the Frontier: Israel's Highland Culture

Israelite culture had emerged in the hill country of Palestine in the
wake of the collapse of Egyptian power in the region and a general
breakdown in interregional trade throughout the eastern Mediterranean
region. While the material culture of early Israel was basically Canaan-
ite, its political and economic structures were distinctive due to its
historical and geographical situation as a 'frontier society',20 seeking to
exploit the agriculturally marginal highlands which now lay (since the
withering of Egyptian power) outside of the circumference of any
state's control. As Braudel observes of the circum-Mediterranean region
in general, the hills were always 'the refuge of liberty, democracy and
peasant "republics'" (1976: 40); this remark aptly reflects the distinc-
tive ethos of early Israel. In the Bronze Age, the walled towns of
Canaan's wide valleys and lowlands had been hierarchically organized,
politically dependent upon Egypt and economically tied to the flow of
interregional commerce along the Via Maris. But in the highlands, this
new Israelite culture was oriented not to the imperial cultures and great
gods of the ancient Near East, but turned inward to its own rural
highlands and to a god who also stood alone, claiming no kin among
the pantheons of other cultures.21
Thus, this people's very existence, and beyond that, their identity
and meaning, was predicated upon their insulation and independence
from the citied traditions and imperial powers of the ancient Near East.
But in time, this culture became a small imperium in its own right, and
by the ninth and eighth centuries, the power of Israel's royal dynasties
was linked to its international connections, and to the profits to be
reaped from the crown's participation in an active interregional trading
market. What then did it mean to be Israel, and who was its god?
20. This social typology of early Israel is offered by G. Lenski (1980). Frontier
societies arise in marginal regions that are either remote from urban power centers
or are difficult to control due perhaps to their hilly or mountainous terrain (1980:
275). Within such frontier societies, small family-owned farms tend to be the
central pillar of the social and economic system, along with a legal system which
supports such a family-based order, as was the case in early Israel (1980: 276).
21. An exception to this point about Yahweh as a god without kin may be found
in Yahweh's possible marital connection with Asherah, mother of the Canaanite
gods. For discussion of Asherah, see the section on 'fertility religion' in Chapter 3.
1. Introduction 31
Further, from its beginnings, the ethos of Israelite society had been
centered around the preservation of the integrity of its landholding
households, their continuity over the generations, and their control over
their patrimonial lands in relative equality and freedom. Israel had never
been an egalitarian or 'classless' society (cf. Gottwald 1979: 700), but
within its agrarian village-based economy, hierarchical relations be-
tween clients and their more powerful patrons had always been medi-
ated by a system of mutual obligation and reciprocity (Lang 1982:
50-52). Patrons were invested in the survival and economic well-being
of their clients because they in turn depended upon their clients for
labor exchange and defense. Relations of interdependence and mutu-
ality among extended families and regional associations, being vital to
everyone's survival, were sacral, and the traditional codes of economic
practice were directed to insure that neither capital, property rules nor
economic chance were permitted to act in ways that were disruptive of
those structures of reciprocity (Nash 1967: 8). But the enhancement of
the power of the monarchical state depended upon contravening pre-
cisely these codes of economic practice and land tenure.
Resistance to elite encroachment upon patrimonial lands in the high-
land villages crystallized around popular support for aligned prophets
or 'local heros' as Hill (1992) calls them. Explicit references to the
processes of latifundialization and attendant social abuses are found in
all of the eighth-century prophets. However, it is important to see that
prophetic references to the poor and needy are consistently found in
conjunction with protests against the disenfranchisement of previously
landed farmers (Dearman 1988: 52-53). These prophets were not simply
concerned advocates for the poor, but social actors who rallied the
power of Yahwistic language in support of the besieged values and
ethos of traditional hill country life. They stood against the encroach-
ments of a centralizing monarchical establishment, whose power was
linked to interregional commercial contacts, and promoted the interests
of the kinship-based social networks, whose power was vested in the
decentralized and agrarian-based political economies of the hill country
villages (Rentaria 1992).
Amos versus Hosea

Political treachery and violence, an international crisis tending towards
massive catastrophe, hardening structures of institutionalized economic
oppression yielding a harvest of human misery, and intensifying social

conflicts which were precipitating the disruption of a traditional patterns
of life in the central hill country—these were realities of Hosea's world
and clearly were the issues that provoked the prophetic activity of
Hosea's contemporaries, Amos, Micah and Isaiah of Jerusalem. The
oracles of Hos. 4-14 reveal Hosea's own intense involvement with the
political problems of his time; the man was clearly an astute political
observer and an uncompromising critic of the deadly power games
being played out on the international scene. But when it comes to
discerning the issues behind his adultery metaphor, most commentators
are united in the conclusion that it was not these social or political
issues that drew attention of the prophet, but rather a distinct set of
religious issues relating to rising popular participation in a syncretistic
fertility cult. This point has long perplexed biblical scholars, for it
seems as if the Hosea of chs. 1-3 walked in a separate world from that
of his fellow traveller in the north, Amos, whose prophecies focus on
the problems of social injustice and economic violence. Hosea appar-
ently takes little notice of the social abuses of his day; the plight of the
poor, injustice to widows and orphans, the dispossession of the vulner-
able—these are scarcely mentioned anywhere in the text. On the other
hand, Amos seems oblivious to any problems relating to non-Yahwistic
worship, a popular fertility cult, or practices of sacred prostitution.
Biblical scholars have sought to resolve this incongruity by positing
a sort of prophetic division of labor: Amos is designated as the prophet
of social justice in contrast to Hosea, the prophet of cultic abuse, or
alternatively, the 'prophet of love'. But this solution does not resolve
the incongruity of two acutely insightful and observant men, walking
through roughly the same time and space, turning a blind eye to pre-
cisely the problems which most worried and outraged the other.
Another possibility—which will be set forth in this study—is that
Hosea and Amos are much closer in their concerns than is usually imag-
ined, and that the appearance of incongruity results from an interpretive
gaze conditioned by ideological interests which insist that female and
religious symbolism be read in ways that conform to the dualistic world-
view typical of subsequent Western religious traditions. Therefore, the
work of challenging this dominant reading and offering an alternative
interpretive framework for Hos. 1-2 will require us to grapple with the
paradigmatic constraints of the West's dualistic worldview and from
there, to rethink the religious issues at stake in Hosea's time and the
import of his female sexual imagery in respect to those issues.
1. Introduction 33
Charting a Course
The intertextual character of texts means that meaning is never stable,
but is a production of the choices which are made concerning the lines
of influence and of boundary that delimit a text in relation to other
texts.22 And these intertextual choices, culled out of a whole range of
meaningful possibilities, are determined by particular interests and
orientations which may themselves be identified and interrogated. Alter-
native intertextual choices, motivated by a different set of concerns,
will produce a very different text, as this study will show in respect to
Hos. 1-2.
A feminist ideological critical approach will allow us to identify the
gender determinants which have shaped the dominant reading of
Hosea's 'marriage' metaphor. As Chapter 2 will argue, Hosea's foil has
been construed not simply as fertility religion, but more so as feminine
religion, such that it is not simply the exclusion of sacred sexuality but
more specifically, the exclusion of sacred female sexuality, which marks
the boundary between what is properly Israelite and what is foreign and
inferior. Hosea's female symbol of the 'eset zenunim then appears self-
evidently as a sign for Israel's involvement in a foreign, false and femi-
nine religion.
Working in tandem with these gender determinants is a theologically-
determined picture of ancient Palestinian religion. Chapter 3 draws upon
the methodological resources of a history-of-religions perspective to
deconstruct this whole scenario of fertility religion verses Yahwistic
faith and to offer an alternative picture of Hosea's religious contexts.
Israelite 'faith' was not about the transcendence of spirit over matter in
22. This understanding of intertextuality, applied as a practice of both reading

texts and reading readings of those texts, is indebted to Kristcva (1980) with help
from Beal (1992: 28). For Kristeva, a text is not a discrete closed system whose
meaning is neatly contained therein, but rather should be understood as an 'inter-
section of textual surfaces', shaped by all the intertexts which are at play in the
processes of writing and reading (Kristeva 1980: 65). This is the case whether we
arc speaking of the text of Hos. 1-2, or the text of the dominant reading of Hos. 1-2,
or the text of the rereading of Hosea's sexual imagery which this study will oiler.
Any text, including the one you are now reading, is a 'complex relational event'
(Kolodny 1985: 46), predicated upon its reference 'beyond itself to other texts and
other contexts' (Beal 1992: 30).
contrast to Canaan's nature religion. Rather, Israelite religion, like the

religion of its neighbors, was characterized by a dual concern with fer-
tility on one hand—a concern which was indigenous to this agrarian
people, not a foreign accretion—and the power of the state on the
other. From this perspective, Hosea's rhetoric about current religious
practices in Israel appears to be directed not towards a putative fertility
cult but rather towards the official cult and the political practices which
it legitimated.
Also serving as important contexts for the dominant reading of
Hosea's metaphor of marriage and adultery are the theological concepts
of covenant and apostasy. Chapter 4 will question whether these con-
cepts are really appropriate for the interpretation of Hosea's metaphor
through further interrogation of our reigning assumptions about reli-
gious meaning and practice in his time and place. Together, Chapters 3
and 4 work to build an alternative framework for interpretation, sug-
gesting that Hosea's language of female fornication is directed not
towards a critique of cultic abuses, but rather towards a critique of
particular dynamics of socio-political conflict in eighth-century Israel.
Chapters 5 and 6 more directly address the gendering of this meta-
phor. Chapter 5 will consider some of the diverse ways that feminist
readers have grappled with the offensive, patriarchal character of this
text. While successfully challenging the monopoly of the androcentric
dominant reading, these feminist readings do not take us far enough
beyond the confines of modernity's constructions of the female body
and female sexuality. Chapter 6 will take up a socio-literary approach
in hopes of penetrating further into an ancient and very different way of
imagining the symbolic relations between woman, body and society,
focusing on the presence of symbolic patterns of thought in biblical
literature which associate sexual transgression with social violence and
which take woman's body as a symbol for Israel's social body.
Chapter 7 will offer a rereading of Hosea's female sexual imagery
which begins by taking his 'eset zenunim as a symbol for the dynamics
of social and political violence rampant in Hosea's world. In the con-
text of this rereading, I will argue that Hosea's language of female
sexuality emerges not simply from cultural preoccupations with female
fidelity, but also from an apprehension of female fertility and maternity
as a symbol for the meaning and identity of the Israelite community.
In this rereading, my goal is not to claim to have discovered, at last,
the 'correct' interpretation of the text. Rather, my goal is to demonstrate
1. Introduction 35
that the hermeneutical closure which has hitherto surrounded the inter-
pretation of Hos. 1-2 is not a necessary reflex of the text, but is an
arbitrary limitation which results from a failure to appreciate the social
dimensions of sexuality and the sacral dimensions of sociality in the
world of ancient Israel.
Chapter 2
FEMALE FORNICATION AND FERTILITY RELIGION
'Woman is a mystery' goes that pithy androcentric remark, wherein the

failure to understand is located in the character of the object, rather
than in the blinkered vision of the observing subject. By holding a
mirror up to that androcentric gaze, feminist criticism can undermine
its claims to objectivity and reveal the ways that gendered interests
shape both the production and consumption of texts. This chapter holds
up such a mirror to the reception of Hos. 1-2 within the 'malestream'
of modern biblical scholarship.
Great wells of scholarly ink have been poured out over the mystery
of the woman of fornications in Hos. 1-3. Yet despite this prodigious
output, the range of questions, assumptions and conclusions which
have guided and characterized the discussion has been amazingly nar-
row. In commentary after commentary, amidst all the myriad debates
concerning fine points of the prophet's biography and the text's redac-
tion, one finds a remarkable consensus concerning the interpretation of
Hosea's female metaphor. The woman of fornications is viewed either
as an embarrassment, indeed a scandal, that needs to be quickly ex-
plained away, or else as a most obvious icon of the 'voluptuous'
fertility religion which tempted Hosea's Israel. No further investigation
or explanation of the symbolism of woman in Hosea is needed, for the
question is already neatly answered within the framework of an andro-
centric imagination which assumes that a female symbol such as this is
either empty of religious significance or marks the antithesis of true
religion.
The consensus generated by this tradition of androcentric interpreta-
tion has worked like a powerful gravitational field, pulling nearly all
readers of Hosea into the orbit of its interpretive framework. In modern
commentaries on Hosea, the same assumptions and conclusions con-
cerning the semantics of the symbol of woman in this metaphor have
2. Female Fornication and Fertility Religion 37
replicated themselves with enervating monotony.' The cumulative effect

of this 'copy-cat' mode of commentary is to create the impression that
this malestream or 'dominant' reading of Hosea's sexual imagery is not
just a reading, but is the proper and only reading, and as such, it has
become virtually synonymous with the text itself (Sherwood 1996: 22,
256). In this way, the dominant reading of Hosea illustrates the real
problem with all dominant readings, which is, as Yvonne Sherwood
explains, not simply that they are erroneous, but that they are dominant,
and that they 'legitimate that dominance with untenable claims to
"objectivity"', thereby effectively precluding the possibility of counter-
readings (1996: 38).
The following discussion will not attempt to survey all the nuances
and minor battles that have lent an appearance of ongoing debate to
what has basically been a comfortable consensus about the interpretation
of Hosea's marriage metaphor.2 Rather, by attending to the kinds of
questions and concerns which have shaped the production of this domi-
nant reading, the discussion will hopefully clarify how androcentric
perspectives combined with theological interests have determined the
way that biblical scholars approach and think about female sexual
imagery in Hos. 1-2.3
1. Two notable exceptions are recent works on Hosea by Landy (1995) and
Sherwood (1996).
2. For review of the problems and issues under debate with respect to Hosea's
marriage metaphor, see the classic essays by Rowley (1963) and Gordis (1954).
More up-to-date surveys of the literature on Hosea's marriage metaphor are offered
by Schreiner (1977), Van der Woude (1982) and Bucher (1988: 7-28). For early-
twentieth-century and nineteenth-century scholarship, see Waterman (1918: 1955)
and Harper (1905), and for an account of the pre-critical scholarship on Hos. 1-3,
see Bitter (1975).
3. Except for some initial remarks, the discussion will be largely limited to
twentieth century commentators on Hosea, with emphasis upon those readings which
remain influential today. Important resources for the following discussion will be
the major commentaries on Hosea produced in the past thirty years, including those
by H.W. Wolff (1974) and Andersen and Freedman (1980), as well as briefer but
also influential studies such as those by J.L. Mays (1969) and K. Koch (1983).
Those scholars who have produced surveys of the literature on Hosea's marriage
metaphor, particularly Gordis (1954), Rowley (1963) and van der Woude (1982)
will be frequently cited for their helpful summaries and assessments of the work of
an earlier generation of Hosean scholars.
The Scandal of Hosea's Marriage

Much of the debate surrounding Hosea's marriage metaphor has focused
around an attempt to reconstruct the biographical details of the prophet's
love life. The commentators have been keenly interested in how the
prophet's personal biography relates to the articulation of his metaphor,
assuming that a correct assessment of the biographical facts will pro-
vide the key to unlock the secrets of the metaphor. Thus, much thought
and concern has been given to questions such as: What manner of woman
was Gomer? Was she a common whore, an adulteress, a temple prosti-
tute or a worshipper in a syncretistic cult? When did she first fall into
sin? Was it before or after she married the prophet? Did Hosea really
marry a 'fallen' woman on the impetus of a divine command, or did the
metaphorical meaning of his marriage occur to him only in retrospect?
And what about the woman whom Hosea redeems in ch. 3? Is this
woman the same Gomer, or did Hosea marry two different disreputable
women?
This list of questions which have guided the debate already begins to
reveal the extent to which an attempt to wrestle with the 'scandal' of
the prophet's marriage to a 'wife of harlotry' (RSV) has been an abiding
preoccupation of Hosean commentators since antiquity (Schreiner 1977:
165-67; Sherwood 1996: 40-54, 260-61). Prior to the era of modern
biblical scholarship, most Jewish and Christian commentators found it
unthinkable that Yahweh would have commanded his prophet to have
married a woman so sullied by sexual sins and sought to resolve the
appearance of divine and prophetic impropriety by arguing that the
command and the marriage should be read as allegorical—enacted in a
dream or a vision, not in the flesh and blood (see Harper 1905: 208;
Rowley 1963: 79 n. 1). John Calvin, for example, was obviously dis-
turbed by the thought of this woman coming straight from a brothel into
Hosea's bed, for she was not 'an unchaste woman only', but a woman
who has exposed herself to all...not once nor twice, nor to a few men,
but to all... Such license could not have been borne by a teacher... If he
had married a wife such as is here described, he ought to have concealed
himself for life rather than to undertake the Prophetic office... (1984
[1567]: 43-44).
Thus Calvin concluded that Hosea's marriage must have been a vision-
ary experience. Likewise, the medieval Jewish exegete Abraham Ibn
Ezra found it 'inconceivable' that God should require such an act of his
prophet, and therefore proposed that both the command and the mar-
riage transpired 'in a vision of prophecy [or] in a dream of the night'
(Lipschitz 1988: 20).
Other Christian and Jewish commentators even dispensed with the
shadow of a shocking dream or vision by stripping the symbolic act
down to sheer allegory. In the Targum of the Minor Prophets for exam-
ple, the marriage and even Gomer herself disappear altogether:
Go speak a prophecy against the inhabitants of the idolatrous city, who
continue to sin... So he went and prophesied concerning them that, if
they repented, they would be forgiven; but if not, they would fall as the
leaves of a fig-tree fall (Cathcart and Gordon 1989: 29)
The potential disturbance which might be incited by the thought of the

promiscuous Gomer is edited out and reduced to, as Sherwood puts it,
the 'inoffensive whisper of falling fig leaves' (1996: 42). Straying less
far from the text, but just as earnest in his clean-up effort, is Luther's
suggestion that Gomer was never guilty of immorality; rather she will-
ingly 'allowed herself, her sons, and her husband to be so named' in
order to make a point about the sinfulness of the people. Thus, this
prophetic family deserves praise not censure: 'Oh, how great a cross
they suffered with those insulting names for the sake of the Word of
God!' (Luther 1975 [1552]: 4).
Allegorizing or visionary explanations have been less popular with
modern biblical scholars. The concrete specificities of the account, for
example, Comer's name (which does not lead easily to any symbolic
meaning), the details of her birthing and weaning of the children, and
the precise price paid to redeem the woman of ch. 3, resist reduction to
allegory, vision, or dream and undergird the realistic claims of the text
(Rowley 1963: 80-82). But the specter of scandal implicit in Hosea's
marriage continued to trouble twentieth-century commentators. If the
prophets were 'ethical teachers of religion', how was it possible that
God would call Hosea to 'commit himself to a life of moral pollution'
(Waterman 1918: 196; cf. 1955: 100-101)? The 'offensive character'
(Van der Woude 1982: 45) of the command therefore demanded
explanation.
Diverse interpretive strategies have been proposed designed to free
Hosea from the stigma of committing 'an ethically objectionable act'
(Van der Woude 1982: 45). The most popular of these efforts is the
position that Gomer was not actually a 'fallen' woman when Hosea mar-
ried her, but that she had a propensity toward promiscuous behavior
which only subsequently manifested itself. The marriage metaphor then

emerged retrospectively as his unhappy marital experience gave Hosea
insight into the relationship of Yahweh with Israel.4 Thus, Hosea mar-
ried a woman who was 'pure', but later fell into sin. The appeal of this
interpretation is that 'it preserves higher values and a clearer motive for
the prophet' (Waterman 1918: 197). This interpretation is also defended
as necessary within the requirements of the allegory. Only a wife who
later became faithless could truly represent the history of Israel in its
relationship to Yahweh; otherwise, insisted Gordis,
the whole point of the parable is completely blunted, for its essence lies
in the fact that Israel's original relationship to God was conceived as one
of complete fidelity and trust (1954: 14; see also, e.g., Snaith 1953: 30;
Blenkinsopp 1983: 104).
Therefore, the language of the divine command to marry an 'eset

zenumm must have been applied in retrospect, as the prophet began to
perceive in his own experience of marital betrayal a metaphor for the
experience of God with Israel.5
Around this thesis scholars have built an elaborate narrative of wifely
betrayal and unrequited love through which the experience of the
aggrieved husband is linked to that of Yahweh. In this scholarly
romance, Hosea is imagined as an ordinary man with an ordinary mar-
riage until his wife commits adultery against him. In anger, he repu-
diates her (Hos. 2.2 [2.4]), but ultimately his love prevails over his
indignation, so that he forgives her and loves her again (Hos. 2.14-15
[2.16-17]; 3.1). Looking back on this emotional experience, the man
Hosea finds insight into Yahweh's dealings with his sinful people, and
becomes a prophet with insight into the divine pathos. Thus, the theo-
logical key of the text is seen to be the way in which the husband's
unshakable love for his wayward wife offers a model of divine love. In
Waterman's words, the husband's noble suffering reveals
4. Those who have espoused this view include Lindblom, Ewald, Wellhausen,
W.R. Smith, Kuenen, G.A. Smith and Nowack; for references and discussion of
these views, see Gordis (1954: 11), Harper (1905: 209), and Rowley (1963: 95).
5. This retrospective thesis is often supported with the proposal that the critical
terms 'eset zenunim andyalde zenunim are later glosses (e.g. Bewer 1906: 120-21;
Rudolph 1966). Hosea's original report of the divine command was simply that he
'Go, and take for yourself a wife and have children'. In this way, the troublesome
image conveniently disappears into the folds of redaction history (Schreiner 1977:
168-69).
...an ethical love, a love that involved no reciprocity, a love purged of

accountability, that overlooks no imperfection in its object and yet that
will not die (1918: 198).
The androcentric character of this reading is painfully obvious.6 As

read by a guild of male interpreters, the text of Hos. 1-3 emerges as a
man's story of betrayal, whose sorrow and self-sacrificial love gives
empathetic access to God. In the sympathetic communion of male schol-
ars with the aggrieved husband/God, the text of Hos. 1-3 emerges self-
evidently as a parable about unrelenting divine love (gendered as male)
in the face of unrepentant human sin (gendered as female). This perspec-
tive is particularly appealing as it accords with a christological herme-
neutic in which the text is ultimately about grace and the aggrieved
husband is finally analogous to Christ. As Rowley concludes concerning
the man Hosea:
Like Another, he learned obedience by the things that he suffered, and
because he was not broken by an experience that has broken so many
others, but triumphed over it and in triumphing perhaps won back his
wife, he received through the vehicle of his pain an enduring message for
Israel and the world (1963: 97; emphasis added).
This androcentric reading finds the key to the meaning of the text in the
husband's experience of betrayal and enduring love. The import of
Hosea's female imagery is then simply subsidiary to the essential locus
of signification—the emotional life of the human/divine husband.
This kind of 'psychoanalyzing, sentimental, historicizing approach'
(Craghan 1971: 85) has flourished in the commentaries despite thin
textual support. Nowhere in chs. 1-3 do we hear anything about the
prophet's emotional feelings for his wife (Jeremias 1983: 28).7 One
might conclude then that this romantic interpretation emerges from a
sympathetic collusion of Hosea's male interpreters with the cuckolded
6. See especially Sherwood (1996) for the most thorough deconstructive, femi-
nist analysis of the dominant reading. See also Graetz (1992) for a focus on Jewish
commentators.
7. When the imagery shifts from judgment to reconciliation in Hos. 2.14-20
[2.16-22], the narrative subject is clearly Yahweh, not Hosea. It is the divine hus-
band who will speak tenderly to his wayward people, and who will betroth them to
himself anew. The only mention of the prophet's love for his wife is in Hos. 3.1, but
this love is an imperative commanded by Yahweh, not a spontaneous emotional
feeling.
prophet. The male commentators sympathetically project into the text

their own experience of (real or feared) betrayal by women, collapsing
the prophet's supposed experience with their own and finally with
Christ's, thus elevating their own struggles to cope with women to the
level of a redemptive drama.
As the theological significance of the text is seen as residing in the
husband's response to his wife's adulterous activity, female sexuality
as a religious symbol carries only negative import as the symbolic
locus of betrayal and apostasy. The woman is always a treacherous wife
or at best, a passive object of divine redemption; other dimensions of
the signifying power of woman found in the text, such as woman as
mother, are largely ignored within these discussions. Of all the ques-
tions which have shaped the debate over Hos. 1-3, the question of the
semantics of female sexuality in this text has scarcely been posed.
Perhaps this question is rarely asked because implicitly, its answer
appears to be so obvious. For those who have considered Hosea's mar-
riage metaphor in light of the patterns of Canaanite myth and ritual
(which is nearly all twentieth-century commentators), it is no mystery
why Hosea figures the apostate Israel as a woman: clearly the symbolism
of female sexuality points directly towards the foreign and forbidden
fertility cult that has seduced the heart of Israel.
The Fertility Cult

Behind all of the debate concerning the marital history of the prophet is
a common agreement among biblical scholars concerning the thrust of
Hosea's metaphor: as Gomer chases after other lovers, so Israel chases
after other gods. This apostasy is envisioned as a betrayal of an original
pure Yahwism, as the people yielded to the temptations of a syncre-
tistic or Canaanite 'fertility cult'.
Interpretations have varied as to whether this apostasy constituted
outright worship of the Canaanite deities, or whether in a process of
syncretistic corruption, the Yahwistic cult had become indistinguishable
from the fertility cults of Canaan. In either case, Hosea's trope of Israel
as an 'eset zenunim is set in the context of a situation of religious
contestation between the ethical and historical orientation of Yahwistic
'faith' and Canaan's sacralization of the powers of fertility and sexu-
ality.
Canaanite religion is typically described in the commentaries as a
'fertility religion' or more pejoratively, as a 'fertility cult', centered in
worship of the rain god Baal and the Canaanite goddesses of 'sex and
fecundity'. These deities are said to have represented the divinization
of the life-giving forces of procreation and regeneration immanent in
nature, its seasonal cycles and the human sexual body. According to a
common rendition of Canaan's mythology, the rain god Baal is the
husband of the earth goddess (or mother goddess), whom he impreg-
nates with his watery sperm. The sex life of the gods is thus envisioned
as the source of the land's fertility.8
Within this fertility religion, human sexual activity offered a primary
idiom for expressing and giving meaning to those forces of procreation
and regeneration upon which life depended. Ritual sex acts within this
cult were aimed to ensure fertility through acts of sympathetic magic in
imitation of the hieros gamos (sacred marriage) between Baal and his
consort. Described in this way, Canaan's worship of copulating deities
who embody the seasonal repetitions and power of nature appears
diametrically opposed to Israelite Yahwism, which imagines a singular
deity who stands above nature's rhythm as its creator and Lord.
Though the worship of nature may sound benign today in light of our
dawning ecological consciousness, biblical scholars have abhorred and
condemned this fertility religion as morally degenerate and indecent.
Canaanite religion is described by John Bright as 'an extraordinarily
debasing form of paganism...' (1981 [1959]: 118; emphasis added). Its
'debasing' character, of course, has to do with the cult's sexual rituals
which included 'sacred prostitution, homosexuality, and various orgias-
tic rites', all of which were 'prevalent' in the cult (1981 [1959]: 119).
Such confident assertions of the licentious and nefarious character of
this fertility cult are repeated over and over in copy-cat fashion in one
commentary to the next;9 as Andersen and Freedman play the tune: 'the
perversion of sex, and an excessive preoccupation -with it, are common
factors in Canaanite religion and much ancient magic' (1980: 157-58;
emphasis added). This prurient imagination of Canaanite religion as a
8. This and similar versions of Canaanite religion appear repeatedly in the lit-
erature; see e.g., May 1932: 73; Worden 1953: 273; von Rad 1962: 22; Ringgren
1966: 43; Ward 1966: 11; Wolff 1974: 15; Mays 1969: 25; Bright 1981 [1959],
118;Jeremiasl983:27-28.
9. See Carroll's scathing critique (1994) of the failure of biblical scholars to
produce a critical reading that questions both the text's representations and received
interpretations that buy into those representations.
perverse and debased sex cult has decisively shaped the interpretation
of Hosea's marriage metaphor in the twentieth century.
Speculations about the precise sexual practices involved in this 'sex
cult' vary widely. Some biblical scholars have imagined wild orgies
taking place at the shrines. Hosea 4.13-14, which speaks of daughters
committing fornication, daughters-in-law committing adultery, and the
men themselves going aside with prostitutes at the high places, has
been taken as ready evidence that 'orgiastic rites of the fertility cult'
filled the land in Hosea's time (Bright 1976: 87). Hosea 9.1—'You
[Israel] have loved a harlot's hire upon every threshing floor'—and the
prophet's references to the sin of Baal-Peor (Hos. 9.10; cf. Num. 25.1)
also are seen as witnessing to the orgiastic character of Canaanite relig-
ion which had infected the Israelite cultus (Ahlstrom 1963: 55).
Others have envisioned the sexual rituals of the Canaanite cultus as
taking more organized form. In this view, ritual sex acts involving
cultic officials associated with the shrines were performed as a ritual
enactment of the hieros gamos between the rain god Baal and his
consort, the earth goddess, who embodied the numinous fertility in the
land. In these rituals,
the men lay with sacred prostitutes, and the women as devotees of Baal
possibly made themselves available to male worshippers to receive
fertility through the cult (Mays 1969: 25).
The sexual acts of human beings, in imitation of the sexual activity of

the gods, were believed to ensure or enhance the fertility of the land
and its inhabitants.
However these sexual rituals were conceived, biblical scholars are in
agreement that widespread sexual immorality and moral disintegration
followed from the sanctification of sexual activity in the cult. Such
rituals of 'sacred prostitution' (this being the common generic for any
and all forms of sexual rituals) clearly threatened 'family values' in
Israel. As Ward puts it, 'the cult led to the deterioration of Israelite sex-
ual mores and thus contributed to the dissolution of normative family
bonds'. And beyond this, 'another, even more basic evil was the dehu-
manization of all life by a cult preoccupied in a peculiarly narrow way
with physical and sensual needs (Ward 1966: 28-29). The influence of
this degenerate and 'dehumanizing' sex cult was supposedly pervasive
in Israel; Andersen and Freedman claim that its influence undermined
the structure of the covenant and even encouraged the practice of human
sacrifice (1980: 39). No wonder then the prophets found the influence
of Canaanite religion to be so abhorrent.
Corner as a Sacred Prostitute

The symbolic import of Gomer's fornication has been accordingly elabo-
rated to fit into this lurid scenario. Gomer's adultery had long been
understood by Hosea's readers as an allegory for Israel's participation
in the fertility cult. Indeed some commentators, wishing to free Gomer
and therefore Hosea from moral opprobrium, had suggested that
Gomer's sexual transgressions were wholly allegorical and not at all
literal: her 'adultery' was her participation in the Canaanite fertility
cult. In the twentieth century, this thesis has been elaborated in a new
direction: Gomer's participation in the fertility cult was adulterous not
only in an allegorical sense as it constituted apostasy, but also was
adulterous in a literal sense because it included her willing participa-
tion in sexual activities at the shrines.
At first, Gomer was said to have participated in the orgies at the
shrines, without any sacral significance being attached to her promiscu-
ity (Waterman 1918: 199). Then, going a step further, Gomer was
imagined as a sacred prostitute who represented the mother goddess in
a ritual enactment of the hieros gamos; her 'lovers' were the sacred male
prostitutes who represented the fertility god (May 1932; see also Schmidt
1924, Robinson 1935). James Mays (1969) and many others have fol-
lowed this line of interpretation, identifying Gomer as a q edesah, one
who regularly participated in the sexual rituals at the shrines as part of
her ritual duties as a cultic functionary.
Hans W. Wolff popularized another scenario in which the sacred pros-
titution of the syncretistic cult took the form of bridal rites of initiation,
in which ordinary women, ready for marriage, consecrated their wombs
to the deities of fertility by offering up their virginity at the shrines
(Wolff 1974; see also Rost 1950; Bostrom 1935). 'Thus "the whore"
Gomer' was not an immoral or degenerate woman in the eyes of her
society; 'she was simply one of many Israelite women who had submit-
ted to the bridal rites customary among the Canaanites' (Wolff 1974:
xxii). The retort yalde zenumm then does not refer to children born to
an adulteress, but to children born of a womb consecrated to the
Canaanite gods by virtue of this bridal ritual (Wolff 1974: 15).
These 'bridal rites of initiation' in Hosea's Israel seem to be largely a
fabrication of Wolffs imagination (Rudolph 1963). His sole historical
source was Herodotus' secondhand and dubious account of a ritual in

Mesopotamia (not in Israel) in which unmarried young women suppos-
edly had to wait in the temple precincts until a passing stranger took on
the task of deflowering them.10 Moveover, Wolff offered no way to
reconcile the existence of such bridal rites in Israel with the intense
societal concern for the virginity of brides that characterized this patri-
archal culture (Rudolph 1963: 70). Nevertheless, despite the gaping
holes in this argument, Wolffs proposal has been followed and elabo-
rated upon by many other commentators such as Gerhard Von Rad,
Klaus Koch and J. Jeremias. Koch (1983) for example, read Hos. 4.11-
14 as a description of rituals of promiscuous copulation that took place
at the shrines and suggested that it was at such occasions that the
wombs of marriageable girls were opened. He further proposed the New
Year festival as the occasion for such orgiastic deflowering; the cere-
mony was to help bring about a new fruitful year through the sympa-
thetic magic of human copulation.
In 1980, Francis Andersen and David Noel Freedman published their
ambitious commentary on Hosea as part of the Anchor Bible series. In
their analysis of the marriage metaphor, they acknowledged the paucity
of the sources and cautioned that worship in Canaanite religion 'may
have involved sexual unions' (1980: 160-61; emphasis added) but
stressed that there is insufficient grounds for making a positive identifi-
cation of Gomer either as a woman who had taken part in a bridal rite
of initiation or as a cultic prostitute. But despite this reservation, they
maintained the view that Hosea's sexual imagery is related to the prac-
tice of sacred prostitution in eighth-century Israel; indeed they affirmed
'everything points to her promiscuity as participation in the ritual sex
acts of the Baal cult' (Andersen and Freedman 1980: 166; emphasis
added).
Sex and Religion

But what precisely is this 'everything' that makes this reading of Gomer
as a sacred prostitute so compelling? Despite the paucity of evidence
which Andersen and Freedman acknowledge, the thesis that Gomer
was a participant in sexual rituals has proven itself to be irresistible to
10. On the dubious character of Herodotus as a historical source, see Oden

(1987a: 144-47) and the discussion in the section below on 'the sacred prostitution
hypothesis'.
them as well as to most modern Hosean commentators. Perhaps the

appeal of this interpretation is captured in this quote from Mays:
A common prostitute would satisfy the public symbolism, but not as
eloquently as one whose sexual promiscuity was a matter of the very
harlotry of Israel in the cult of Baal (1969: 26; emphasis added).
This eloquence is found in the double entendre, whereby the whoring

of Hosea's wife represents the apostasy of Israel both figuratively and
literally. The marriage metaphor is more moving than a mere allegory,
because 'Corner's misconduct is not just like the sin of Israel that infu-
riates God and breaks his heart; it is that sin' (Andersen and Freedman
1980: 125).
However, this eloquence is disturbed by the paradox which lies at the
heart of this formulation: if Hosea's main purpose was to challenge a
syncretized cult which gave sacral significance to the powers of sexu-
ality and fertility, then why is it that Hosea's language about Yahweh is
so richly intertwined with sexual and fertility motifs? In Hosea's theo-
logical imagination, Yahweh is, like Baal, married to the land; he is too
the source of its fertility and the giver of its abundance (Hos. 2.8-9;
14.5-7). In the new marriage of Yahweh and his people, Israel shall
'know' the Lord, and in her climax the land will answer 'Jezreel' ('God
sows/inseminates') (Hos. 2.20-23). This sexual allusion is unique in the
Hebrew Bible; nowhere else is the deity imagined as engaged in sexual
activity.11 Koch goes so far as to admit that Hosea presents Yahweh to
be as much a fertility deity as the baalized Yahweh of the syncretistic
cult (1983: 89). Hosean scholars are then forced to ask, how is it that
Hosea, 'who more than any other fought against the evils of the Canaan-
ite fertility rites, does not scruple to borrow from the language they
11. 'Knowledge' is a common idiom for sexual intercourse in the Hebrew Bible
(Gen. 4.1, 17, 25; 19.5, 8; 24.16; 38.26; Num. 31.17, 18, 35; 1 Sam. 1.19; Judg.
11.39; 19.22, 25). Following upon the image of Yahweh's betrothing of the woman
to him, the sexual allusion in the woman's 'knowing' Yahweh seems clear. How-
ever, commentators generally ignore the possible implications in such imagery for
an association of Yahweh with sexual activity. This lacuna may be traced to the
theological imperative to shield Yahweh from any taint of sexuality. The result is
a skewed and incomplete assessment of the role of sexual imagery in Hos. 1-2. As
E. Cleve Want observes on this point, 'strangely we get very lurid, accusatory reac-
tions to the negative passages concerning the female personification but quite
sanitized characterizations of the positive one concerning the Lord1 (1992: 6).
used' (Worden 1953: 296)? The commentators themselves agree that

this is 'the great riddle in the interpretation of Hosea' (Koch 1983: 89).
Hosean scholars have embraced this appearance of contradiction as
essential to the rhetorical power of the trope. Edmond Jacob, for exam-
ple, describes Hosea's use of sexual imagery as 'homeopathic since it
consists in subjecting oneself to the disease in order to cure it'.12 As
Wolff puts it, Hosea developed his sexual imagery 'in dialogue with
the mythology of his day in a remarkable process of adaptation of and
polemic against this mythology' (Wolff 1974: xxvi). The image of a
marriage between Yahweh and Israel is then suggested by that which is
condemned, as the prophet effects a radical substitution: the wife of
God is not the Earth Goddess, but the people of Israel. In this new
religious vision, the fertility of the land depends not upon the rhythmic
changes of the seasons, but upon Israel's fidelity and morality. Thus
'the legal categories of covenantal thought replace the mythico-cultic
fertility concepts that are rooted in the hieros gamos' (Wolff 1974:
xxvi).
The literary transformation from the Canaanite hieros gamos to the
story of Hosea and Gomer transfers the meaning of sacred marriage
from the inevitable, cyclical movements of nature to the freedom and
moral demands of a covenant with the God of History. For Jacob,
Hosea's metaphor effected a double transformation:
.. .he transposes it [the sacred marriage rite] from the domain of nature to
that history and transforms the seasonal phenomenon into a unique event;
... we see then the suppression of the myth through its transcendence.13
Israel's sin had been in its failure 'to transcend the natural' (Fisch 1988:
137), but now the fertility myths of seasonal repetition are replaced by
a new event, a creation...Baal and Anat, we may say, cannot act freely;
they are imprisoned in nature. By contrast, Israel is through her 'divine
marriage' made free from nature (Fisch 1988: 149; emphasis added).
For Fisch, Jacob and most other biblical theologians, this freedom from
nature is the key quality which marks the inherent superiority of
12. '// [Osee] precede selon une methode que nous pourrions appeler
homeopathique puisqu'elle consiste a assumer le maipour le guerir" (Jacob 1963:
251; emphasis added in translation).
13. '...// le transpose du domaine de la nature dans celui de I'histoire et
transforme lephenomene saisonnier en un evenement unique; ...nous assistons done
a la supression du mythe par son depassemenf(Jacob 1963: 252).
2. F'emale Fornication and Fertility'Religion 49
Yahwistic faith. While Baal and his consort embody the seasonal repe-
titions and powers of nature in their copulation, Yahweh transcends
bondage to this rhythm as the creator who controls it. Fertility now
depends not upon rituals of sympathetic magic, but upon covenantal
obedience. In this way both Israel and Yahweh are freed from any
bondage to nature. Hosea's achievement then is to 'demythologize' the
myth so that the locus of the sacred is relocated from nature and
sexuality to history.
Behind this juxtaposition between nature religion and historicized
faith is the imperative to insulate Yahweh and Israelite religion from
any taint of sacral sexuality. Insisting at the outset that the ancient
Israelites possessed 'a horror of associating sexuality with YHWH'
(Ginsberg 1971: col. 1016), the erotic connotations carried by Hosea's
language of divine marriage between the deity and the people are
consequently ignored and refused by the commentators. Despite his
innuendo that Israel shall 'know' the Lord (2.20b), biblical scholars
claim that the image of Yahweh as a divine husband is strictly meta-
phor; it should not be imagined that Yahweh participates in any way in
sexuality (Wolff 1974: 16). Even as Hosea metaphorically transforms
the mythologems of the sexualized Canaanite cultus into a new sacred
marriage between God and his people, he refuses the Canaanite notion
of sex as a sacred mystery (von Rad 1962: 27; Vriezen 1963: 78). The
gods of magic, that is the Canaanite gods, are the 'gods of sex' (Ander-
sen and Freedman 1980: 366), but the God of Israel is 'without
sexuality' (Albright 1946: 116). In Gerhard von Rad's words, there can
be no blurring of the distinction between the 'mythic sexual concep-
tions' of the Canaanite world, in which copulation and procreation
were mythically regarded as a divine event, and the God of Israel, who
'stood absolutely beyond the polarity of sex' (1962: 27).
The structure of this scholarly argument is well encapsulated in the
title of Walter Harrelson's book, From Fertility Cult to Worship (1969).
Within Yahwism, 'fertility was drained of much of its numinous
power' (1969: 68); indeed says Harrelson, 'in no other respect is the
Israelite cultus more sharply distinguished from the cultus of her neigh-
bors than in the way in which fertility is dealt with' (1969: 67). The
sacral significance given to fertility had resulted in a degenerate cult
and overall moral degeneration. For Harrelson, only once fertility has
been naturalized under the control of a transcendent creator can true
worship begin.
In this resolution of the problem posed by Hosea's use of fertility

imagery, the appeal of this interpretive approach to Hosea becomes
evident. In reading Hosea's marriage metaphor in relation to the fertil-
ity religion of Canaan, Hosea's sexual imagery functions to clearly
demarcate a boundary between the sexual and the sacred. Even as Hosea
draws upon sexual imagery, he denies it any religious significance. His
'homeopathic' image of the marriage between Israel and Yahweh was
intended to cure Israel of its reverence for the natural and its sacrali-
zation of sexuality.
The Case of the Missing Fertility Cult

It was for von Rad 'an extremely bold move to transfer this idea which
belonged to a religious ideology absolutely incompatible with Jahwism
as Hosea understood it, to the covenant relationship with Jahweh'
(1965: 141; emphasis added). But how bold is too bold? Sometimes
bold may serve as another way of saying foolhardy or untenable. The
construction regarding Hosea's 'homeopathic cure' is necessary to
resolve the contradiction inherent in the thesis that Hosea's discourse is
directed against a fertility cult even while it associates Yahweh with
fertility and sexuality. But does it really make sense that a fanatical
Yahwist would have employed images of the deity so closely related to
the very structures he wished to expunge (Cohen 1966: 5)? If Hosea's
intention was to remove the Canaanite sacralization of fertility and
sexuality from the meaning of God, then his use of sexual imagery must
indeed have been 'extremely bold', or else it was extremely stupid.
Another possibility is that this entire 'fertility cult thesis', as this
dominant reading may be called, is fallacious and has prevailed due to
a compelling coincidence between a theological concern to promote the
superiority of ancient Israelite religion and a set of androcentric
associations of woman with temptation, sex, sin and nature.
Perhaps there was no syncretistic fertility cult at all in Hosea's Israel.
The scholarly reconstruction of Canaanite religion as fertility cult
emerged prior to the discovery of the Ras Shamra texts from the Bronze
Age coastal city of Ugarit; there is now a rich source of ritual and
mythological texts which provide more reliable access to the world of
ancient Canaan than the polemics of the Deuteronomist. Also, advances
in Syro-Palestinian archaeology have provided further data to supple-
ment and sometimes contradict the picture painted by the Hebrew
Bible. This data, in combination with the application of methodological

approaches which self-consciously seek to bracket the presuppositions
of biblical theology, have opened fresh perspectives on the religions of
ancient Syria-Palestine. With these advances, it is becoming increas-
ingly evident that key elements of the fertility cult thesis cannot be
substantiated by reference to the textual or extra-textual sources from
eighth-century Syria-Palestine.
One such questionable feature of the scholar's 'fertility cult' is the
mythologem of the hieros gamos, in which the fertility of the earth
depends upon the intercourse of the rain god Baal and the earth
goddess. This mythologem has been understood by biblical scholars to
be the basis of the Canaanite sex rituals and the foil for Hosea's trope
of a new 'sacred marriage' between Israel and Yahweh. But at least at
Ugarit, Baal does not even seem to have enjoyed the company of a
regular consort, much less an earth goddess,14 and his connection with
the earth's fertility seems to depend less upon his sexual activity than
upon his cosmic struggles with the personified forces of chaos, particu-
larly Mot ('Death'). According to Cross, 'the chief text falling into the
pattern of the hieros gamos concerns El's intercourse with his two
wives, who then give birth to their sons, Dawn and Dusk' (1973: 22).
Not only is the primary actor here El and not Baal, but agricultural
fertility is not an explicit concern of this text.'5
The iconographic evidence also gives little or no support for the con-
tention that the hieros gamos myth or any corresponding sexual ritual
was an important feature of Canaanite religion. Ora Negbi, in her
encyclopedic survey of Canaanite Gods in Metal, finds no figurines
which depict divine couples having intercourse (1976: 76). Divine cou-
ples are depicted standing side by side, with the female's arms around
14. Only two or possibly three brief passages from the Ras Shamra texts depict
Baal's sex life (KTU 1.96; KTU 1.10; KTU 1.11; see de Moor 1987 [109-16] for
English translations). In these passages, Anat and Baal, or the divine pair in the
form of a heifer and cow, engage in sexual intercourse. But the textual evidence
here is far too thin to support the thesis that sexual activity was a central feature of
Baal's mythology. Furthermore, Anat is not an earth goddess (see below). Both
Kinet (1977: 79-80) and de Tarragon (1980: 139) agree that there is no textual or
extra-textual evidence to support the widespread assumption of a hieros gamos
ritual connected with the Baal cult at Ugarit.
15. Another text depicting the sex life of the gods concerns the marriage of
Nikkal and Yahih, two deities associated with the moon (Adler 1989: 142-43). The
imagery here is celestial, not agricultural.
the waist of her consort. Particularly in contrast to the Egyptian art,

where copulating couples are a prominent motif, this absence suggests
that the hieros gamos was not a central theme in Canaanite mythology.
Furthermore, the putative mythologem of an earth goddess or mother
goddess who is supposed to serve as Baal's consort in this hieros
gamos is nowhere in evidence in the materials from Ugarit. The assump-
tion that there was such an earth goddess, representing the numinous
power of the earth's fertility, arises not from the textual sources, but
from the predilection of the predominantly male guild of biblical
scholars to label as 'fertility' goddesses any and all female deities they
encounter (Hackett 1989; Day 1991). Indeed, none of the goddesses of
ancient Canaan that are known to us are primarily associated with the
earth or with agricultural fertility. Asherah, for example, is the consort
of El and mother of the gods. As such, she is associated with fecundity,
but not specifically with agricultural fertility; rather she is a marine
deity, her favorite epithet being 'lady of the sea'. Astart's name indi-
cates her origin as an astral deity (Hackett 1989: 69). And Baal's lover,
Anat, is characterized primarily by her association with warfare and the
hunt (Day 1991); she can no more be referred to as an earth goddess
than can Yahweh, who incorporates many of her attributes.16
Many biblical scholars have found the logic behind Canaan's hieros
gamos to be self-evident. As Koch explains:
Because fertility depends on rain in Palestine, it seemed obvious to imag-
ine a huge Baal as husband over the mother earth, a god connected with
winds and clouds, and with rain which he let fall on the earth as his
sperm (Koch 1983: 84).
But what seems obvious to modern biblical scholars may or may not
have been obvious to the ancient Palestinian peoples they claim to know
so well. There is really only fragmentary evidence by which to recon-
struct how these peoples apprehended religiously the power of agricul-
tural fertility upon which their lives depended. Certainly it would be
16. See Adler (1989: 130-44) who surveys all the lesser known goddesses of
Canaan, but finds no likely candidate for the role of earth goddess, consort of Baal,
in the extant texts. The only possible candidate for the role of 'earth goddess' whom
she finds in the Ras Shamra pantheon is a minor deity, 'rsy bt y 'bdr whose name
indicates some connection with the earth ('rs in Ugaritic). However this goddess
appears to have played a very minor role in the myths and cultus at Ugarit, her
relationship to Baal is unclear, and it is as likely that her association with the earth
was chthonic rather than vegetative (Adler 1989: 138-42).
possible to theorize that the mythologem of a hieros gamos between

Baal and the earth goddess was present in Iron Age Syria-Palestine and
undergirds Hosea's imagery even though no extant text gives any indi-
cation of such. But such a theoretical construction, lacking in any sup-
porting data, would not have merited the kind of widespread acceptance
that this thesis has enjoyed within Hosean scholarship unless another
motive for its acceptance was present.
The Sacred Prostitution Hypothesis

This motive perhaps emerges most clearly in the scholarly theory regard-
ing the widespread practice of sacred prostitution, a theory which has
had, as seen above, a determinative influence upon interpretation of the
figure of the 'eset zenunim.
The assertion that the practice of sacred prostitution was 'widespread
throughout the ancient Near East' (Fohrer 1972: 59) has been a com-
monplace of biblical criticism for approximately the last fifty years. As
early as 1889, William Robertson Smith claimed that 'the temples of
the Semitic deities were thronged with sacred prostitutes (1972 [1889]:
455). Until the past decade, this rather lurid picture of temples 'thronged'
with sacred prostitutes, or of 'widespread' sex cult practices, has gone
largely unchallenged, despite the great scarcity of primary evidence to
substantiate it. While proponents of this belief will even admit that
'there are no explicit texts which can prove this' and that the extant
evidence is 'quite fragmentary and somewhat contradictory' (Yamauchi
1973: 222), the uncertainty of the evidence for sacred prostitution in
the ancient Near East has not shaken scholarly confidence in its exis-
tence; as W.G. Lambert proudly asserts, 'no one doubts its prevalence'
(cited in Yamauchi 1973: 215).
The sacred prostitution hypothesis has profoundly conditioned our
understanding of religious and sexual meanings in the ancient Near
East. It has not only shaped twentieth-century readings of Hosea's mar-
riage metaphor, but also has had a significant impact upon the ways in
which other biblical images of female sexuality have been read. For
example, the sexual invitations of the 'strange woman' in Prov. 7 (Bos-
trom 1935), Tamar's bedding with Judah in Gen. 38 (Astour 1966),
Ruth's night with Boaz on the threshing floor (Staples 1937), Sarah's
encounters with Pharaoh in Gen. 12, with the three mysterious visitors
at Mamre in Gen. 18 and with Abimelech of Gerar in Gen. 20 (Teubal
1984: 119-32), the rapes at Shiloh in Judg. 21 (Ahlstrom 1963: 10), and
the sensuous verses of the Song of Songs (see Pope 1977: 145-53) have
all been read as relating to rituals of sacred prostitution. Indeed, H.G.
May read virtually any reference to sexual activity outside of standard
conjugal relations as an allusion to sacred prostitution; all prostitutes
(zonof) in the Bible were assumed to be sacred prostitutes, as were
Tamar (Judah's daughter-in-law), Hannah, Manoah's wife, the woman
of Shunem who gave hospitality to Elisha, the female figures in Ezek.
16 and 23, and the female lover in the Song of Songs (May 1932:
89-91).
Yet despite the determinative influence of the sacred prostitution
hypothesis, it is only in the last decade that it has received sustained
and critical examination. And all of those scholars who have now care-
fully studied this question have reached essentially the same conclusion:
there is no solid evidence to support the claim that sacred prostitution
was practiced in ancient Syria-Palestine.17 Instead of substantive evi-
dence, the longstanding confidence about the prevalence of sacred prosi-
tution in Hosea's Israel has relied upon circuitous arguments supported
by dubious premises, as will be briefly explained below.
First, the claim that sacred prostitution was practiced in ancient Israel
rests heavily upon the assumption that such rituals were rampant in
neighboring cultures, such as among the Babylonians and Canaanites.
However, Gruber (1986), Westenholz (1989), Oden (1987a: 131-53)
and others have exposed the lack of any substantive or reliable evidence
for this picture. There is some textual evidence to support the hypothe-
sis that the hieros gamos between the king and the goddess was ritually
enacted in ancient Sumer, but that the practice apparently had ceased
by the Late Bronze Age (Frymer-Kensky 1992: 76-77). Otherwise, the
thesis about rampant sacred prostitution in the ancient Near East has
been built upon the arbitrary identification of various female cult per-
sonel mentioned in Canaanite and Mesopotamian records as sacred
prostitutes, an identification which seems to derive from little more than
the inability of scholars 'to imagine any role for women in antiquity
that did not involve sexual intercourse' (Gruber 1986: 138).
Second, the sacred prostitution hypothesis has been supported by the
assumption that the Hebrew terms qddeS (m.) and qedesah (f.) refer to
17. See, e.g., Fisher 1976; Gruber 1986, Hooks 1985, Westenholz 1989, Oden
1987a: 131-62, Bucher 1988, and Adler 1989.
male and female cult prostitutes. It is clear that qades and qedesah were
cultic personnel of some kind. Formed from the root qds, referring to
that which is holy, set apart or consecrated, and etymologically related
to the qdsm of Ugarit and the qadistu in Mesopotamia, the term most
likely designates one who is consecrated to or in the service of some
deity. In the time of King Josiah, there were houses of the qedesim in the
precincts of the temple, where the women wove coverings for Asherah
(2 Kgs 23.7). This text indicates some sort of link between the qedesim
and devotion to Asherah. Other passages, in which the qedeslm are
banned along with idols, pillars, asherim, and the like (1 Kgs 15.11,
22.47) are less specific concerning their role. None of these texts
mention sexual activity or sacred prostitution in connection with the
qedesim (Hooks 1985: 174-78).
The association of the q edesdh with sexual activity is inferred from
three biblical texts (Gen. 38.20-23; Deut. 23.18-19 and Hos. 4.13-14)
where qedesah appears in connection with the term for common prosti-
tute (zonah). It seems that if qades carries a cultic meaning, and if
qedesah appears in parallel with zonah, then qades and qedesah there-
fore must be cultic prostitutes. But the appearances of qedesah in
conjunction with zonah could be explained in a number of other ways.
For example, qedesdh could simply have served as a synonym for
zonah, as is indicated in Gen. 38, where a man searching to locate a
zonah inquires after the whereabouts of a qedesdh (Hooks 1985: 168-
69; see also Gruber 1986: 135-36). Given the conventional representa-
tion of proscribed worship as zdndh, it would not be surprising to find
its adherents pejoratively termed as zonot (Bucher 1988: 91); this usage
could have quickly found its way into common parlance. In this way
qades and qedesdh could have taken on dual meaning: proscribed cultic
personnel or 'prostitute'. Both meanings denote persons who are 'set
apart' (qdS) or separated out from the larger society either for cultic
service or extra-marital sexual 'service'.18
Third, the scholar's belief in the existence of sacred prostitution relies
heavily upon the testimony of Herodotus and other classical authors
who claim that such was the custom in Babylon, Phoenicia, Cyprus and
elsewhere. But Herodotus is a notoriously unreliable source (Oden
1987a: 141-47; I looks 1985). Herodotus wrote at a substantial chrono-
logical and geographical distance from the world he purports to
18. For discussion the parallel use of these terms in Hos. 4.13-14, see the discus-
sion in Chapter 3 in the section on "Politics, the cult and the prophet's polemic'.
describe; his account depends upon secondary sources and lacks cor-
roboration from primary sources anywhere in the ancient Near East. In
his descriptions of many other Babylonian customs, his ignorance or
tendency to exaggerate is clearly evident (Hooks 1985: 33). Most impor-
tantly, his agenda is blatently polemical; his descriptions of ancient
Mesopotamia were motivated by a concern to demonstrate the inferior
and barbaric character of Semitic cultures and their pagan religions in
contrast to the glory of Greece (Oden 1987a: 145). Other classical schol-
ars, such as Strabo and Lucien, who also describe sexual rituals in the
ancient Near East all trace their sources back, directly or indirectly, to
Herodotus' own dubious account and share his similar polemical moti-
vations (Oden 1987a: 144-47).
Clearly, the evidence for sacred prostitution in the ancient Near East
has never been particularly compelling or unambiguous. Why then was
the sacred prostitution hypothesis so widely accepted and why was the
supporting evidence left unexamined by biblical scholars for so long?
Robert Oden (1987a) suggests that their willing naivety has much to do
with the theological imperatives which have long guided the discipline.
It is also indicative, I would suggest, of the same androcentric ideology
which has determined the dominant reading of Hosea.
Oden convincingly argues that the willingness of modern, historically
trained biblical scholars to rely upon the dubious testimony of these
classical authors is indicative of a shared impetus to affirm the supe-
riority of one culture through a description of the sexual debauchery of
another. For both the classical historians and Western biblical scholars,
this 'other' is the Orient, which has traditionally suffered from stereo-
typical association with sexual license and depravity in the Western
imagination. Such inscriptions clearly inform the sacred prostitution
accusation, which has functioned among biblical scholars as the primary
sign by which Canaanite religion and culture is marked as inferior to
Israel. Thus depictions of the 'voluptuous and dissolute' character of
Canaanite religion, in which 'debauchery and sexual excesses went hand
in hand' offer an unambiguous counterpoint to the 'the healthy and
austere morality of the [Israelite] nomad', which 'revolted against these
excrescences of over-civilization' (Budde 1899: 70-71; cited in Oden
1987a: 136). Moral outrage over the imagined debauchery of Canaan
firmly establishes the moral superiority of Israel, as is evident in Noth's
claim that 'for the Israelites, who were used to the strict discipline of a
patriarchal society, [the] moral laxity [of Canaanite culture] was con-
temptible and shocking' (1960: 143).
Clearly then, the charge of sacred prostitution functions to define

Israel as distinctive, morally virtuous and in all ways superior to the
cults and cultures of its neighbors. In this way, biblical scholars work
to define not only ancient Israel vis-a-vis Canaan, but also by extension
and association, the superior virtue of their own, usually Christian (and
most often Protestant) world-view. It is probably no coincidence that
the 'strict' and 'austere' Israelites appear as the mirror image of a cer-
tain kind of Protestant Christianity that defines religious piety in oppo-
sition to all forms of exuberance, sensualism and ritual performance.
In its uncritical promotion of the sacred prostitution accusation, bib-
lical scholarship betrays the extent to which it continues to serve the
theological interests of the Christian churches (Oden 1987a). But
further, it is important to see that this mechanism for defining Israel's
superiority rests specifically upon Israel's supposed refusal of any
mixing between the categories of sex and religion.
The splintering of sexuality from the sacred is an expression of the
matter/spirit dichotomy which is fundamental to Christian theology. In
the 'fertility cult' thesis, with its lurid imagination of sexual rituals, this
dichotomy is projected back upon the religion of ancient Israel. In this
way, Christianity's struggle to maintain this boundary between sex and
religion is acted out in the scholarly program of describing Canaanite
religion as a morally degenerate sex cult.
Oden has suggested that given the tenuous character of the evidence,
perhaps 'sacred prostitution ought to be investigated as an accusation
rather than as a reality' (1987a: 132). Accusations of sacred prostitution
reveal more about the ideological positioning of those who make the
accusations than about the religious life of those accused. But even more
illuminating than discussing the sacred prostitution thesis as an accusa-
tion, is to speak of it as a myth within the faith of biblical scholarship. In
myth, what matters are not facts, but meanings, meanings which define
a world and the believer's place within it. This indeed is how the sacred
prostitution thesis functions. Sacred prostitution as the characteristic
mark of Canaanite religion situates the superiority of biblical religion
in its distance from all things sexual, and particularly, as shall be
shown below, from all things having to do with female sexuality.
Fertility Religion as Feminine Religion

In the creation of mythic and social worlds, the symbolism of gender is
always constitutive and fundamental. This is certainly the case in the
scholarly construction of ancient Israel as the arche for the religion of

the biblical scholars. In naming the sacralization of the feminine and of
female sexuality as definitive of all that Israel is not, the scholars mark
out the boundaries of the religious world which they themselves inhabit.
The gender determinants behind the mythic structures of biblical
scholarship are most clearly manifest in the stereotyping of any and all
female deities from the ancient Near East as 'fertility' deities, along
with the persistent association of these goddesses and female sacred
prostitutes with the degenerate practices of sacred prostitution.
Repeatedly in the literature, female deities are taken as the prime
embodiments of a religious world-view which sacralizes the immanental
power of fertility (Hackett 1989; Day 1991). Even though the Ras
Shamra texts clearly show Baal and El to be the Canaanite deities who
are most immediately concerned with agricultural and human fertility
respectively, the scholarly literature speaks of Baal as a 'storm' god
and El as the 'chief of the pantheon, while reserving the 'fertility'
epithet as a singular description for the female deities of Canaan, whose
association with this function is much more tangential (Hackett 1989:
74). Also, 'fertility', when applied to goddesses and their votaries within
mainstream biblical scholarship, has consistently carried connotations
of illicit sexual activity. They are called 'consorts' or 'sacred courte-
sans', terms which inevitably carry overtones of that which is illicit or
forbidden (Day 1991: 141-42).
The blanket categorization of all goddesses as 'fertility' goddesses
derives not from the mythological texts, but from a propensity to
interpret all female symbolism in relation to one of two modes: (illicit)
sexuality or fertility/maternity. According to Albright, for example, the
goddesses of the ancient Near East are either 'sacred courtesans' or
'mother-goddesses':
in Mesopotamia the plaques nearly all obviously represent a mother-
goddess, whereas in Canaan most of them just as clearly portray a sacred
courtesan. The lily and serpent are characteristically Canaanite; the
former indicates the charm and grace of the bearer—in a word, her sex
appeal—and the latter symbolizes her fertility (1946: 76).
Little more needs to be said about the function and symbolism of the
Canaanite goddesses, Astarte, Anath and Asherah, except also to note
their supposedly universal association with war:
All three goddesses were principally concerned with sex and war. Sex
was their primary function (Albright 1946: 75; emphasis added).
Similar assumptions inform Bright's report that the goddesses of

Canaan
are portrayed as sacred courtesans or pregnant mothers or, with a surpris-
ing polarity, as bloodthirsty goddesses of war (1981 [1959]; 118).
Perhaps the association with war is appealing in all these goddesses as

it adds an exciting element of violence and danger to an already titillat-
ing portrayal of their primary association with sex,
One might go so far as to suggest that the notion of Canaanite relig-
ion as a fertility religion takes shape through an imagination of its
female deities as goddesses of sensuous sexuality and/or maternal
fertility. Typical is Fishbane's schematic characterization of the divine
powers of paganism, male and female gods together, as 'the Mothers',
to signify its vision of a 'nurturant and sustaining cosmos' in which
humankind and all creation exist within the 'engendering body' of the
cosmic continuum (1989: 51). In a similar manner, Fisch speaks of the
'roundedness and closure' of the myths of nature, which are 'myths of
the Great Mother. In their ambience we know no separation or absence;
we are enclosed' (Fisch 1988: 149). Such maternal closure is experi-
enced as suffocating, and the power and achievement of the Hebrew
prophets is in their escape from the repose of the Mother's womb for
the religion of the Father god (Fisch 1988: 149). Along similar lines,
Koch argues that the gendering of Yahweh as masculine should be read
as a symbolic statement of opposition to the modalities of Canaanite
religion, which find their symbolic locus in feminine imagery. Yahweh
is masculine, he argues, not as a projection of patriarchal authority, 'but
because of an erotic connotation: he is contrasted with another power,
conceived of in feminine terms' (1983: 82-83; emphasis added). The
connection he makes between this 'other power' and 'feminine terms'
again betrays the pervasive association of eroticized religion and femi-
nine imagery which is characteristic of the scholarly literature.19
19. The difficulty with Koch's argument becomes apparent as his discussion of
Canaan's fertility religion turns to Baal. As Baal's mythology indicates, Baal was a
primary symbol in Canaan of the power of fertility; therefore according to Koch's
reasoning, Yahweh must be distinguished as much from Baal as from any feminine
imagery. Further. Koch discusses the symbol of the bull, which was thought of
within many ancient oriental civilizations as the 'quintessence of fertility' (1983:
84). Yet Koch docs not stress that Yahweh must be distinguished from all bovine
imagery. Indeed, clearly he was not, as is indicated by the presence of bovine cult
Naturally enough, it seems, the degenerate practices of sacred prosti-

tution find their meaning in relation to the scholarly imagination of
these goddesses of sex and fertility. Albright's view that sacred prosti-
tution was 'an almost invariable concomitant of the cult of the Phoeni-
cian and Syrian Goddess, whatever her personal name' (1946: 75) is
representative of a general tendency to label the generic fertility god-
desses of Canaan as the source of the licentious practices of the fertility
cult. The moral infection spread by the fertility cult is rooted in the
worship of the goddesses, who exercised 'a certain amount of aesthetic
charm' upon their followers, but 'at its worst...the erotic aspect of their
cult must have sunk to extremely sordid depths of social degradation'
(Albright 1946: 76-77). This conflation of the fertility cult with goddess
worship has remained compelling; for example, in the context of a
recent polemic against neo-pagan tendencies within Jewish feminism,
Samuel Dresner confidently informs his readers that the 'central divini-
ties' of Canaanite religion were 'power-hungry goddesses' (1988: 32).
The gender determinants behind the sacred prostitution accusation
are also evident in the way in which the rites of sacred prostitution are
particularly associated with female sacred prostitutes and female sexual
activity. Even though the Bible speaks of qades and qedesah (conven-
tionally translated male and female cult prostitutes) in the same breath
(Deut. 23.17), and even though this text is used as a primary indicator
for the presence of sacred prostitutes in monarchical Israel, the empha-
sis in scholarly discussions falls upon the female qedesah. Mays, for
example in his discussion of sacred prostitutes, employs only the femi-
nine plural term qedesot, which he translates as 'holy women'. Even as
Mays admits that 'the cult of Baal involved both men and women', he
goes on to say that in these rites,
the men lay with sacred prostitutes, and the women as devotees of Baal
possibly made themselves available to male worshippers to receive
fertility through the cult (1969: 25).
The male participants are 'worshippers', while the women serve as

'sacred prostitutes'. In like manner, Dresner, who was noted above for
his assumption that Canaanite religion was dominated by goddess wor-
ship, also assumes that the basic ritual of their cult 'was sexual inter-
course with the priestesses of local shrines' (1988: 33; italics added).
symbols in Yahwistic sanctuaries (1 Kgs 12.28; Hos. 8.5; 10.5; Ahlstrom 1993: 622-
23;Mazarl982).
And Koch, reading from the reference to qedesot in Hos. 4.14, speaks
only of female cult prostitutes and virgin girls as sexually active at the
shrines; following Wolff, Koch assumes the presence of sexual rituals
in which 'the wombs of girls of marriageable age were opened' (Koch
1983: 83; emphasis added). Note how use of the passive voice here
allows Koch to avoid mention of the male actors in such putative
rituals. This assumption that the cultic functionaries in these rites were
primarily female, and avoidance of discussion of male participation, is
characteristic of the scholarly literature. Where the male q edesim elicit
discussion, they are often assumed to be 'sodomites' (Albright 1946:
159). Rarely does male heterosexual activity emerge in these discus-
sions as intrinsically associated with the meaning of Canaanite religion.
The manner in which biblical scholars automatically associate female
deities and female cultic personages with modalities of fertility religion
and sacralized sexuality illuminates a particular orientation to the prob-
lem of the relationship between female sexuality and sacred meanings.
Female imagery is interpreted within a highly restricted semantic field
such that it automatically signifies the purportedly principle and degen-
erate characteristic of Canaanite religion—the sacralization of fertility
and sexuality.
In unpacking the gender determinants behind the sacred prostitution
accusation, it thus appears that it is not just sexuality per se, but female
sexuality in particular which serves as the marker to distinguish the
purity of Yahwistic religion from the corruptions of Canaan and the
syncretistic cult. It is fertility as a sacral meaning, embodied in these
goddesses of sex and fecundity and in their female sacred prostitutes,
which serves to define the inferiority and depravity of Canaanite relig-
ion. Feminine imagery stands for the sacralization of fertility and
sexuality in the syncretistic cult, which naturally leads to all forms of
'debauchery and sexual excesses'. As noted earlier, Budde described
Canaanite religion as 'voluptuous and dissolute'; the first adjective—
voluptuous—aptly reveals the gendering of those religious meanings
which are excluded from biblical religion. In gendering fertility religion
as feminine religion, biblical scholarship defines the boundaries of its
normative symbolic universe.
Biblical scholars find yet another sign of sacral sexuality in Hosea's
figure of the 'eset zenumm. Like the Canaanite goddesses, this feminine
sign, as interpreted through the constraints of an androcentric vision,
provides biblical scholars with their point of opposition against which
Yahwi stic faith (and their own) is defined. Interpreted within a theo-
logical framework that valorizes and insists upon an absolute division
between sexuality and religion, and which identifies the excluded mean-
ings of sexuality with feminine imagery, it becomes impossible to read
Hosea's figure of the 'eset zenunim in relation to any indigenous and
essential meanings of Israelite religion. Rather than seeking to explore
those symbolic modalities within which Israel is imagined as a woman,
the scholarly framework can only see the 'eset zenunim as a figure for
what Israel is not, or at least should not be. Within the mythology of
biblical scholarship, woman's body can only mark that which is 'other',
serving to mark a negative pole of meaning against which the superi-
ority of Israel's truth and that of the biblical scholars is clearly
delineated.
Fertility Religion as Feminist Religion

It is not surprising to find that many feminist readers have been attracted
to this putative fertility cult for the same reasons that it has repelled
more conservative commentators. In its sacralization of the body, sexu-
ality, especially female sexuality, and nature, the scholars' fertility
religion looks like a prototype of the forms of feminist spirituality
being articulated today.
The most elaborate exposition of this fertility religion as feminist
religion is offered by Helgard Balz-Cochois (1982a; 1982b) who argues
that this popular cult, celebrated at the high places, was focused on the
worship of the goddesses Asherah and Astarte. Asherah is imagined as
the 'Great Mother' who presides over the fertility of the field and womb,
while Astarte is the embodiment of the erotic power of sexuality and
cultic ecstasy (1982b: 46-47). Together these goddesses guaranteed the
fulfillment of their devotees' desires for grain, children and intimacy
with the divine. This last goal was achieved in ecstatic rites dedicated
to Astarte, in which wine, music and orgiastic sex produced ecstatic
states of consciousness which brought the worshipper into intimate
communion with the divine.
Balz-Cochois imagines that this cult was particularly attractive to
Gomer because of the special and respected role which women found
within it and the sexual freedom which it granted her. In the free play
of the erotic, patriarchal hierarchies were dissolved. The certitude of
paternity was lost, and in its place, the erotic power of Astarte's divine
sexuality was manifest in the bodies of women. As a q edesah in the

cult, Gomer was a free and autonomous agent, holding within herself the
magnetic power of the 'eternal feminine' (Ewig-Weiblichen)(1982b:
50-51).
Balz-Cochois' approach is shared by Fokkelien van Dijk-Hemmes
(1989) and T. Drorah Setel (1985) who accept the consensus of andro-
centric scholarship which explains Hosea's text against the backdrop of
a 'fertility cult' in which female sexuality plays a special symbolic role.
These readers, however, reverse the valuations which inform the domi-
nant reading, celebrating rather than condemning this fertility cult as a
form of goddess religion within which the sacrality of the body, nature
and the feminine was affirmed. These feminist readers understand their
work as part of a larger project of feminist scholarship to rewrite the
history of Western religion, recovering the lost story of women's
religions and tracing the transformations by which female and body
affirming forms of religion were eclipsed under patriarchy.
Unfortunately, this feminist reconstruction of the fertility cult as
woman-affirming depends upon a reconstruction of religion in ancient
Syria-Palestine which, as we have already shown, is based more on the
fantasies of the androcentric imagination than on any firm evidence.
The construct 'fertility religion' which feminists have appropriated is a
euphemism in the scholarly literature for ritual sex and a repository for
projections about women and sexuality which must be excluded from
the sphere of 'true' religion. Jo Ann Hackett addresses this issue quite
pointedly in her critique of the manner in which many feminists uncriti-
cally appropriate the fertility cult model:
By embracing rather than rejecting the 'fertility religion' that is presented
as the rival of the official religion of Israel, they think they are defying
the male-centered religion of Israel and of the scholars who write the
secondary literature (1989: 68).
But in actuality, what these feminists are embracing

is not ancient goddesses, ancient religions, and ancient women, but rather
the fears and fantasies of modern Western scholars in my field, many of
whom were Protestant clergymen (1989: 68).
These androcentric fears and fantasies are most apparent in the reduc-
tion of ancient Near Eastern goddesses to the dual characteristics of
fertility/maternity and erotic extra-marital sexuality. Stressing these
characteristics and ignoring all aspects of the multi-faceted personalities
and powers of these goddess, the androcentric imagination produces an

image of the 'divine feminine' which is comforting and attractive, and
most of all, nonthreatening (Hackett 1989: 75). Balz-Cochois misses
these androcentric determinants when she embraces the scholarly cate-
gorization of Canaanite goddesses as embodying either the power of
sacred maternity or erotic sexuality. While her purpose is to reimagine
a mode of piety within which female sexuality is not excluded from the
sacred, one must ask whether the construction of a feminist vision on
the foundation of a male myth can be very helpful in the long run. Is it
advisable to buy into a scholarly paradigm 'which conveniently rein-
forces the reduction of all women to the nature side of the nature/
culture dichotomy' (Hackett 1989: 75)? As Hackett argues, the feminist
imagination of fertility religion as feminist religion, just as much as the
dominant reading's imagination of fertility religion as feminine relig-
ion, rests upon a dichotomy that is 'constructed precisely of the sexist
categories we are trying to transcend' (1989: 76). Perhaps then it would
be better to begin to rethink the religious situation in Iron Age Pales-
tine in a way that is not predetermined by the operation of a dualistic
paradigm in which femaleness is inevitably and exclusively linked with
sex and nature.
Conclusion
It is obvious that the theological project of biblical scholarship in gen-
eral and the interpretation of Hosea's marriage metaphor in particular
depends upon the construction of a dichotomy between a debased and
sexualized 'fertility' religion on the one hand and the true worship of
the 'Lord of History' on the other. Less obvious, or at least less often
noticed, is the extent to which this construction depends upon a par-
ticular orientation towards feminine religious imagery for the constitu-
tion of its meaning. The goddesses of Canaan (labelled as fertility
deities), female cultic functionaries (labelled as sacred prostitutes) and
Hosea's figure of the 'eset zenunim all provide biblical scholars with
their boundary marker, figured specifically as feminine, to delineate the
great chasm that distinguishes Israel from Canaan. Canaanite religion
is imagined as a sensual and tempting 'other', teeming with fertility
goddesses and the female sacred prostitutes who serve them. Thus it is
not just the sacralization of sexuality in general, but of female sexuality
in particular which marks the meaning of a mode of immanental
sacrality against which biblical theology defines itself. In this way,

Hosea's female metaphor appears self-evidently as a sign for that which
is 'other' and which must be excluded from Israelite religion—a sacral
orientation to the powers of sexuality and fertility. Repeated in commen-
tary after commentary, this reading has become virtually synonomous
with the text itself for both scholarly and lay readers. So self-evident
has this reading become that many feminist scholars, in their eagerness
to recover a lost history of women's religions, have failed to discern
the androcentric determinants behind the fertility cult thesis.
Chapter 3
THE FERTILITY CULT REVISITED
Clearly the dominant reading situates Hosea's sexual imagery within a

scenario of religious contestation between Canaan's fertility 'cult' and
Israel's historicized 'faith'. We've seen how this scenario, and hence
the reading of Hos. 1-2 which relies upon it, is produced and supported
by theological investments in Israel's putative uniqueness and superi-
ority in collusion with a projection of the gender polarities of Western
culture, which link femininity with materiality and immanence and mas-
culinity with spirit and transcendence. It is evident therefore that paired
projects of reconstructing the religious situation in Hosea's time and
interpreting Hosea's female imagery are tied up together around the
same problem of the gendered dualisms endemic to Western thought.
This chapter teases out the snag in the knot which concerns the sce-
nario of religious contestation between Canaan and Israel by looking at
how this scenario emerges from and depends upon the presupposition
of a dichotomy between matter and spirit. Theologically, the superior-
ity of Israel's religion is predicated upon its successful insulation of
God from any intrinsic implication in matter (nature, sexuality). Method-
ologically, the materiality of the world of ancient Israel is largely
ignored as irrelevant to the reconstruction of ancient Israelite religion.
Thus both as a theological motive and as a methodological premise, the
operation of the matter/spirit dichotomy generates fallacious construc-
tions of Canaanite fertility religion verses Israelite Yahwism.
Immanence versus Transcendence

In the myth of Israel's origins which is presented in the Hebrew Bible,
the Israelites, who had been wandering in the desert for 40 years,
invaded and conquered the land of Canaan and settled there into an
agricultural life. Finding themselves in a new agrarian environment,
3. The Fertility Cult Revisited 67
these ex-nomads had difficulty believing that their Yahweh, the austere
and invisible god of the desert mountains, could also provide for agri-
cultural abundance and fertility. Consequently, they turned to Canaan's
indigenous 'fertility' religion, with its worship of the personified forces
of nature and its rituals of sympathetic magic designed to enhance the
fertility of the land (e.g. Mulder 1975; Kinet 1977: 90-92).
This story about the syncretizing of Israel's desert faith is taken by
biblical scholars as the hermeneutical key to Hosea's marriage meta-
phor. According to Hosea, Israel has sought after its 'lovers' whom
they believe give to them the gifts of 'the grain, the wine and the oil',
not understanding that these in truth could come only from her 'first
husband'. These 'lovers' are identified with the nature or fertility deities
of Canaan, and in particular Baal, or the plural form, baalim. Rejecting
Israel's worship of these Canaanite deities, Hosea insists that Yahweh
alone is the source of all abundance and fertility (2.7b [2.5b]).
A particular understanding of the meaning of Baal in Hosea figures
heavily in this reconstruction of the religious contexts of Hos. 1-2.
While our evidence concerning such an Iron Age deity named Baal is
scarce and contradictory, much has been assumed about his nature and
function. Baal is typically described as the god of rain and storm who
succumbs to Mot ('Death') in accordance with Palestine's seasonal
cycles in which the life-giving spring rains give way to the long sum-
mer dry season. Baal is also god of the vegetation, which appears again
with the return of the rains in the months and with the copulation of
Baal with his sister-spouse Anat. Hosea's Baal, from the perspective of
this interpretation, appears to biblical scholars as the fertility deity par
excellence, whose essence is bound up and inseparable from the sea-
sonal cycles of nature (e.g. Kapelrud 1952: 26-27; Ostborn 1956;
Habel 1964). Baal is said to have no sovereignty over nature, for he is a
part of it; Baal and the seasonal cycle of the rain are continuous and
inseparable realities. The purpose of cultic life may then be inferred:
In Baalism, the cult mainly intended to give fertility, having the hieros
gamos ceremony as its climax. Thus, the Baalistic cult seems, in dis-
tinction to the Yahwistic one, to have been based on magic (Ostborn
1956: 105).
Baal's creative power is in his sexual activity (Habel 1964: 96), and
human beings may participate in and manipulate this power through
rituals of'sympathetic magic'.
Biblical theologians find that the contrast between Baal and Yahweh
could not be more pronounced. The desert deity Yahweh is not bound
to the cycles of nature, but rather is the supreme power who created
and transcends nature. Thus the key distinction between Yahweh and
Baal is that 'Yahweh primarily acts in history, Baal above all in the
sphere of nature' (Ostborn 1956: 16). Yahweh is the Lord of History,
who exercises control over nature as a medium of reward and punish-
ment contingent upon human obedience. Yahweh is known
as a dispenser of fertility and not as a god of fertility, the God who lives
to give life and not a god who is but part of the cycle of life and death
(Habel 1964: 109).
Rituals of sympathetic magic which seek to manipulate the cosmic order

are meaningless to Yahweh, who demands that the Israelites transcend
their own instinctual nature and conform to a higher moral order. The
transcendence of the deity over nature finds its correlate the demand for
human transcendence over the sexual passions and conformity to a
moral order.
Not all reconstructions presuppose that the Israelites worshipped Baal
outright. Rather, many propose that through a process of syncretism,
Yahwism had become assimilated to the modalities of agricultural relig-
ion, such that worship of Yahweh was perceived as a mode of guaran-
teeing fertility and prosperity irrespective of obedience to Yahweh's
law. It therefore does not matter whether Baal was worshipped outright
in the cult, for in any event, this syncretistic cult had become indistin-
guishable all but in name from the fertility religion of Canaan. 'Since
people had set their heart on the harvest and dealt with God primarily
for its sake', no matter whether they thought of themselves as Yah wist,
'their worship was a fertility cult' (Mays 1969: 125); 'God became a
force to be manipulated' (Brueggemann 1968: 120-21). Hosea's admo-
nition (2.16 [2.18]) that the people no longer call upon Yahweh as ba 'li
('my lord/owner/husband') but instead as 'isi ('my man/husband1)'
witnesses at once to the popular melding of Yahweh with the fertility
1. Ba'al ('owner', 'lord' or 'husband') and 'is ('man' or 'husband') are both
common terms for husband in Biblical Hebrew. Presumably from the context here,
'is carried a more personal and emotional tone, evoking resonances of marriage as a
love relationship rather than as a proprietary relationship. This point is affirmed by
many Hosean commentators such as Jeremias, for whom ' "mein Mann" is die
intimere, personlichere Anrede' (' "my husband" is the more intimate, personal form
of address') (1983: 49).
god Baal and to the prophetic insistence that such an 'insidious confu-
sion of two different views of deity' is apostasy and a corruption of
Yahwistic faith (Emmerson 1984: 26). This difference between Yahweh
and Baal 'is so profound that, once grasped, any and all application of
the title "Baal", associated as it was with sexual rites and the concep-
tion of a fertility god who is himself a captive, becomes an impossibil-
ity...'(Daniels 1990: 101).
At stake then in this presumed contestation between Baal and Yahweh,
or between fertility religion and prophetic faith, is for biblical scholars
a fundamental question of religious orientation, which may be figured
through a spacial metaphor of divine immanence versus divine tran-
scendence. Herein is the critical theological question which is assumed
to undergird Hosea's sexual language: is fertility a sacred power, immi-
nent within a cosmic continuum in which human sexuality also partici-
pates, or is God other than and transcendent over nature, which is
ordered by and subject to his divine will? Nearly all biblical theologians
and commentators, Christian and Jewish alike, agree that this contesta-
tion between these two opposed visions of the relationship between the
natural world and the divine is the essential issue addressed in Hos. 1-2.
Theological Determinants
The dominant reading of the marriage metaphor as a commentary upon
a situation of religious contestation between Canaan and Israel depends
upon an uncritical acceptance of the Bible's self-presentation of the
people of Israel as a race of nomadic outsiders, whose own religious
ethos was diametrically opposed to that of Canaan's decadent agrarian
cults. But this mythological account of Israel's origins does not offer a
reliable guideline for the historical reconstruction of Israel's origins.
Rather, this story emerged as a symbolically powerful source of ethnic
identity in the context of a situation of national crisis precipitated by
successive Mesopotamian invasions and particularly by the experience
of exile in Babylon, where Judean participation in the cults of other
gods (i.e. Mesopotamian gods) represented the very real and pressing
trajectory towards the dissolution of Judean identity into Babylonian
culture. Resisting the threat of cultural assimilation, exilic theologians
and scribes reenvisioned the history of their people in terms of the
struggles with 'apostasy' and the lure of a foreign culture. In so doing,
they promoted a particular theological understanding of the history and
meaning of Israel as a people whom Yahweh separated out from 'the

nations' (Mullen 1993).
This construction of Israelite identity depended upon the retelling of
the history of Israel, within which Israel appeared as foreign to the land
of Canaan. This story of an Israelite invasion allowed the Judean mytho-
historians to present Israel as already possessing a coherent culture and
religious vision prior to their entry into Canaan, such that this originary
and 'pure' Israelite culture might be posited as completely unrelated
and opposed to the culture and religion of the indigenous people of the
land (Lemche 1988: 249). Within this opposition, Canaanite religion
was caricatured as fertility religion, and Israelite religion, in its pure and
originary form, was identified with ethical monotheism.
The deuteronomic presentation of an opposition between Israel and
Canaan was the foundational mythic structure which informed the pro-
duction and redaction of those texts which make up the core of the
Hebrew Bible. But in Hosea's time, the Yahwism of the Deuteronomists
had not yet been invented (Ahlstrom 1993: 616).2 While the influence
of Deuteronomic interests in the transmission of Hosea's oracles must
be acknowledged, these interests should not wholly determine the
manner in which we read Hosea's female sexual imagery. Hosea was
an eighth-century prophet, and while he may have influenced the incipi-
ent deuteronomist school, his thought should not be collapsed into
theirs, as is the habit of Hosean interpreters.
The willing obedience of biblical scholars to the tutelage of the deu-
teronomic school is motivated by their own congruent theological
agenda, which is to establish the absolute superiority and uniqueness of
biblical religion (and hence the religion of its heirs) over and against
'paganism'. In the twentieth century, such theological motivations were
most nakedly expressed in the biblical theology movement, which was
marked by an overarching emphasis upon the sharp contrast between
mythopoeic thought of the ancient Near East and the biblical revelation
through history. Critical to this school of thought was insistence upon
the radical discontinuity between Israelite religion and that of its
2. For an early attempt to reconstruct pre-exilic Israelite religion without inter-

ference from the program of the deuteronomistic editors, see e.g. Ahlstrom's Aspects
of Syncretism in Israelite Religion (1963). More recently, such efforts have multi-
plied, represented by e.g. Nicholson (1986b), Lemche (1988: 197-257), Dever
(1983, 1987, 1990), Ahlstrom (1984) and the essays in Ancient Israelite Religion.
edited by P.D. Miller et al. (1987).
neighbors. Israelite religion was understood as standing 'against its

environment' (as in the title of G.E. Wright's book The Old Testament
Against its Environment [1950])—as being 'so utterly different from
that of the contemporary polytheisms that one simply cannot explain it
fully by evolutionary or environmental categories' (Wright 1950: 7).
According to these biblical theologians, Israelite religion, from its sui
generis beginnings, was an essentially different and new kind of relig-
ion which was uniquely characterized by the ethical imperatives of its
covenantal theology, its consciousness of divine election, its rejection
of foreign cults and above all, by its rejection of nature as a locus and a
manifestation of divinity in favor of history. In this scenario, the 'true
faith' of Israel was distinguished from the falsity of paganism by its
insulation of the divine from any implication in materiality.
This definition of true faith emerges from and reflects the world-view
of Protestant Christianity which is predicated upon and committed to
the maintenance of a clear distinction between the transcendent and
sacred realm of spirit (God) and the non-divine or profane world of
material beings and objects (humanity and nature).3 In its presupposi-
tion of a metaphysical distinction between matter and spirit, this world-
view has profoundly conditioned the ways we in the modern West
think about religion in general as well as biblical religion in particular.
Even scholars of religion tend to define and analyze the normative
meaning of religion in terms of the relationship of human beings with
an 'other' reality that is non-material. Within this definition of religion,
the analysis of religious language and structures of meaning may
proceed independently of consideration of those dimensions of human
existence which are deeply implicated in matter—in the land and
sources of sustenance, in systems of production, exchange and power,
3. It is hardly surprising to find the world-view of Protestant Christianity deter-

mining scholarly reconstructions of ancient Israelite religion. As Oden explains, the
institutional setting for biblical scholarship has traditionally been the Christian
seminaries or other educational institutions committed to training Christian minis-
ters, and most of the scholars who have shaped the field have been Protestant Chris-
tians (Oden 1987a: 4). Out of this historical context one finds that the interests,
commitment and world-view of Prote tant Chri tianity have profoundly determined
the shape of this discipline, such that 'even well beyond the traditional confessional
setting of biblical study, its fundamentally theological direction is heeded' (Oden
1987a: 159). James Kugel makes the same point, arguing that since its inception,
biblical studies has been 'fundamentally a Protestant undertaking, one might even
say, a form of Protestant piety' (1986: 22).
in the dynamic of ocial organization, political tructure, in our human

physicality and sexuality, and so on.
This methodological exclusion of materiality from the domain of
religion makes it appear permissible and plausible to define Canaanite
religion as a fertility cult and Israelite religion as a cult of history and
ethics, as if Canaanite religion were a 'religion without a society' (Hill-
ers 1985: 267) and Israelite religion were a religion without an agrarian
environment. Such polarized caricatures depend upon a theologizing
model which dissects religion from its rootedness in the human situa-
tion within the material world, in all its manifold geographical, histori-
cal and social dimensions.
Focusing first upon the popular caricature of Canaanite religion:
clearly, there can be no 'fertility religion' in the sense of a religious ori-
entation directed exclusively towards natural phenomenon. Durkheim's
thesis, though reductionistic in isolation, nevertheless holds: religion is
in some sense always a social phenomenon. Canaanite religion could not
simply be about nature worship, because of the completely obvious
though persistently ignored fact that Canaanite religion 'was the relig-
ion of the Canaanites—a real historical people organized in societies of
certain kinds, and having religion as a means towards certain social
goals'(Millers 1985:269).
The Bronze Age Baal of the Ras Shamra texts certainly was no
simple nature deity, but 'Lord of the Earth' and specifically, lord of the
city-state of Ugarit. As Baal battles with the personified forces of
chaos—Yam, Nahar and Mot—his mythology gives expression to the
central theme of ancient Near Eastern religion as a whole: the mainte-
nance of the natural order against the disintegrating forces of chaos
(Schmid 1984; Lemche 1988: 200-202). According to the cosmogonic
interpretation of the Baal cycle,4 Baal's mythology is not only about
4. For a survey of the different interpretive approaches to the Baal cycle which
have been proposed, see M.S. Smith's essay 'Interpreting the Baal Cycle' (1985).
Aside from the seasonal interpretation, which has been widely discredited (see
remarks below), the Baal cycle has been viewed either as a cosmogony in which
Chaoskampf, Baal's kingship and temple building are all coordinate dimensions of
an overriding theme, which is the creation of order out of chaos, or as a struggle
between the forces of life and death in which Baal, embodying the power of life
struggles against Yam and Mot, who embody the chaos which threatens the world
(M.S. Smith 1985: 318-19, 321). Both interpretative approaches have merit; the
cosmological approach is highlighted here as it provides a sharp contrast to the
seasonal interpretation.
rain, copulation and death, but about the founding of the cosmic order
and acquisition of kingship in the defeat of Yam and in the construc-
tion of his 'house' or temple, the sacral center and anchor of Ugarit's
political order. Baal's death and resurrection do not simply give mytho-
logical expression to the eternal and inevitable round of the seasons;
rather than given or natural, the cosmic order in which life prevails over
death is established through conflict, arbitration, struggle and an inte-
gration of divine wills, all of which reflect the human activity of order-
ing the cosmos (Toombs 1983: 616). Rather than the cyclic processes
of nature, the unifying theme of the Baal cycle is 'the structure and
functioning of the inhabitable earth under the lordship of Baal', that is,
the establishment of an order which is not something given, but which
must be achieved through struggle (Jacobsen 1949: 139-40; cited in
Toombs 1983:614-15).5
In Hosean scholarship, Baal's supposed identification with 'nature'
serves to define the dichotomy between cyclical myth and linear history
which is critical to the construction of biblical faith as unique and
superior. Seen as embodying the meaning of Canaanite religion, Baal is
represented as the 'dying and rising' god who personifies the cycle of
the seasons and the seed. By contrast, the faith of Israel affirms divine
and consequently human self-determination and freedom from the given.
But this dichotomy finds little or no support in ancient Near Eastern
texts.6 The fictitious character of the 'dying and rising' paradigm is
clear in respect to the Baal cycle in the Ras Shamra texts. Attempts to
relate its narrative segments to the seasonal patterns of the Levant rely
upon rather tenuous interpretations of ambiguous passages (M.S. Smith
1985: 314-16). The Baal cycle is not arranged according to the agricul-
tural year (M.S. Smith 1985: 330), and the text's reference to a seven-
year interval indicates that Baal's death was not an annual event, but
had to do with the devastating effects of a seven-year drought (Coogan
1978: 84).
5. For critical discussion of the scholarly construction of the ancient Near

Eastern gods as nature deities, see Simpkins (1991: 31-34) and Whybrow (1991).
6. This point has long been recognized by a few critical scholars. H. Gese put it
this way in 1965: 'no matter how often it is repeated, a reference to the entangle-
ment of the ancient Near East in an a-historical nature-myth of the eternal cycle of
all events is meaningless in light of the fact that such a mythology simply does not
exist in the historiographic documents of the ancient, i.e. pre-Persian, Near East'
(1965:49).
The easy confidence that Baal was simply a nature deity is premised
on the naive assumption that nature is a given, rather than that nature,
as apprehended by the human, is already a function of human symbolic
activity.7 The construction of 'pagan' religions as ahistorical nature
cults is in J.Z. Smith's view 'a product of the scholar's gaze and not of
some native world-view' which implicitly denies to whole human
cultures the capacity for historical consciousness and culture creation
(1990: 108-109). Other ancient Near Eastern cosmologies were not ahis-
torical, although they may have had a different sense of history than
that of the teleological paradigm which emerged out of Israel's experi-
ence of conquest and exile (Gese 1965; see Simpkins 1991: 34-40).
Just as Canaanite religion is not just about nature, so by the same
token, Israelite religion was not just about historicized or ethical faith
to the exclusion of a religious concern with nature and the powers of
fertility. The theological paradigm in biblical studies defines Israelite
religion as that which stands 'against its environment', particularly that
is, against Canaan's supposed location of the sacred within natural phe-
nomenon such as the cycle of the seasons or the human sexual body.
But the biblical texts themselves attest to a religious concern with
agricultural and human fertility as being very much a part of Israelite
life and religion, as it was in Mesopotamia, Canaan and Egypt. Cultic
life was oriented to the seasonal round of planting, harvesting and the
birthing of livestock.8 In response to 'the human awe at the mysterious
7. As Levi-Strauss explains, 'natural conditions.. .do not exist in their own right
for they are a function of the technique and way of life of the people who define and
give them meaning by developing them in a particular direction'. Therefore, it is
always a mistake to think that 'natural phenomenon are what myths seek to explain,
when they are rather the medium through which myths try to explain the facts which
are themselves not of a natural but a logical order' (1966: 94-95). Mark S. Smith's
interpretation of the Baal's mythology incorporates this insight: rather than seeing
this myth cycle as a primitive attempt to explain the weather, Smith argues that all
the references to weather in the Baal cycle point to the essential referent of Baal's
mythology, which is Baal's kingship (1985: 316, 332).
8. The major festivals of the ancient calendar, Rosh Hashanah, the extended
New Year's festival which included Yom hakkippur and Succoth, Pesach, and the
Festival of Weeks were all tied to the cycles of the agricultural year. The 'histori-
cizing' and nationalizing of these festivals through association with the events of
the Exodus narrative came subsequent to Hosea's time, perhaps in connection with
Josiah's reorganization of the cult in the seventh century (2 Kgs 23.22; Lemche
1988: 217-19), or later.
power of fertility', the firstfruits of fields and wombs were offered to

Yahweh as Lord of the power of blessing (Albertz 1994: 102). And even
as Asherah suffered erasure from Israel's written traditions, Yahweh
remained as the one who would grant 'blessings of the breasts and of
the womb' (Gen. 49.25b). Hosea's god certainly is not only lord of his-
tory, but a fertility god, whose blessings is in 'the grain, the wine and
the oil' (2.8, 22), whose salvation is known in the coming of the spring
rains (6.3), and who promises that he shall be 'as the dew to Israel'
(14.5) or as 'an evergreen Cyprus' from which comes Israel's fruit
(14.8). This last image, which resonates with the ancient Near Eastern
motif of the 'tree of life', a motif most often associated with goddesses
and evocative of their powers of nurturance and abundance, illustrates
that Hosea imagines Yahweh and his salvation in a manner which is
continuous with the ancient Near Eastern fertility imagery. The pres-
ence of such imagery in Hosea forces even those firmly committed to
the nature versus history paradigm to admit that the distinction between
Hosea's Yahweh and the baalized Yahweh of the putative syncretistic
fertility cult is quite elusive (e.g. Koch 1983: 88-89).
It is hardly surprising to find that an Iron Age people, struggling for
survival in a marginal rainfall zone, where life was so precariously
dependent upon the rains and the harvest, would orient their religious
practices around the powers and rhythms of fertility. Indeed, as Jo Ann
Hackett observes, fertility religion is really everywhere. 'Anyone who
has ever prayed for a baby, or "thanked God" when the rain came and
the crops did not die, is practicing a form of fertility religion' (1989: 68).
This is not to say that there were no significant differences between
Canaanite and Israelite religion. Many biblical texts do evidence a
rather marked and unique historical consciousness. The story of Israel's
'creation' (the Exodus narrative) departs from the typical pattern of
ancient Near Eastern mythologies where origins are located in illo tern-
pore. Also, the genre of Israelite historiography, represented by the
Former Prophets, was a significant cultural innovation in the ancient
world. Most extraordinary is its ambiguous and self-critical historical
account of the origins of the monarchical state, by which the legitimacy
of the state's power was questioned rather than sacralized (J.G. Wil-
liams 1994). However, Israel's genius for historical thought should not
be analyzed in terms of a modern distinction between history and nature
which was itself not a part of the conceptual landscape of the biblical
world.
As Ronald Simpkins (1991) argues at length, the axis which defines

the scholar's nature/history dichotomy cuts across the grain of Israel's
own way of organizing reality. In the Hebrew Bible, nature and history
are not distinct and separate realms; rather, 'human and natural history
are integrally joined in such a way that what takes place in one has con-
sequences in the other' (Simpkins 1991: 63). For example, in Hosea,
violence, deceit and corruption in the human realm results in the degen-
eration of the natural order:
False swearing and deceiving and murdering
and stealing and committing adultery burst forth
.. .Therefore the land mourns (Hos. 4.2-3a).
So also, in Isaiah, when Yahweh redeems the people, the realm of nature
is also regenerated and will again abound in fertility:
The wilderness and the parched earth will be glad,
the desert will rejoice and blossom (Isa. 35.la).
This intimacy between human history and the natural realm can also be
seen at the conclusion of Hos. 2 in the answering ('nh) that reverber-
ates from the heavens to the earth in response to the redemption of
Israel (Simpkins 1991:63):
And it will be on that day I will answer
—oracle of Yahweh—
I will answer the heavens,
and they will answer the earth;
and the earth will answer
the grain and the wine and the oil...
(Hos. 2.21-23 [2.23-25]).
The fusion of human history and the history of nature reflected in

such passages is not merely a form of literary embellishment, but a
reflection of a religious world-view in which the solidarity of the crea-
tion (inclusive of both nature and humanity) in relation to its creator
was a fundamental organizing principle.9
9. Simpkins suggests that the attachment of biblical scholars to the nature/his-

tory dichotomy is rooted in the intellectual presuppositions of the modern age. Now
that science can explain natural phenomenon such as hurricanes, drought and famine
by reference to predictable and mechanistic forces of nature, it seems absurd to
believe that nature is the realm in which God acts. For this reason, modern biblical
theologians relocated the arena of divine activity from nature to history and have
ignored the textual evidence which belies this distinction. Further, given that 'pagan'
Serious deconstruction of the dichotomy between the pagan gods of

nature and Israel's god of history has been ongoing since Albrektson
argued that belief in history as the medium of divine activity was part
of the common inheritance of the religions of the ancient Near East and
not exclusive to Israel (Albrektson 1967; cf. Roberts 1976; Barr 1966:
65-102; Simpkins 1991; Whybrow 1991). Yet nowhere has the scholarly
mind clung so tenaciously to the nature/history dichotomy than in
regards to the interpretation of Hos. 1-2. Hosea's metaphor of Israel as
an adulteress who lusts after her lovers is still widely and uncritically
situated in the context of a religious contestation between fertility relig-
ion and ethical Yahwism even in the most careful and critical studies of
recent years.10
Clearly, the dominance of theological interests in biblical studies has
produced an idealized or spiritualized vision of Israelite religion. This
opposition between Canaan's fertility religion and Israel's 'faith' in the
transcendent 'God of History' depends upon the presumption that the
experience and expression of the sacred may be abstracted from the
body of life, that is, from the human implication in the geographical,
economic, social and political conditions within which a total mode of
life and orientation takes shape. In order to rethink the religious situa-
tion behind Hosea's rhetoric therefore, we need to adopt a methodologi-
cal approach that does not abstract religious issues from consideration
of the materiality of human existence. Unfortunately, the alternative to
a theological idealism is too often a sociological reductionism, which
subsumes cultic or sacral concerns to epiphenomena, supporting and
reflecting the structures of social organization, as if society existed apart
from the religious language which it manipulates. But as the discipline
of Religionswissenschaft teaches, religion is neither autonomous from,
nor merely derivative of, social processes and material conditions. In
response to theological idealism, we must say that religion is not about
entities other than the world, but is about a mode of orientation in the
world; it is about the constitution of worlds of meaning out of the raw
stuff of the material, geographical and historical conditions that press
upon human life in any particular time and place. Therefore we cannot
beliefs in the divine implication in nature are seen to be pathetic and childish, this
'theological emphasis on the role of history in the religion of Israel has proved to be
a convenient source for apologetics' (1991: 40).
10. See, e.g., Andersen and Freedman (1980), Jeremias (1983), Emmerson
(1984), and Daniels (1990); for an exception, see Albertz (1994: 172-77).
speak about Hosea's religious contexts apart from consideration of the

materialities constitutive of Hosea's world. In response to a reduction-
istic functionalism, it is necessary to question whether one may even
speak about society per se prior to or apart from that society's sym-
bolic/sacral foundation upon which the bonds of shared identity and
meaning are established.
Bridging this dichotomy between idealism and reductionism is
Charles H. Long's understanding of religion as a matter of coming to
terms 'with the ultimate significance of one's place in the world' (1986:
7). This place is understood not only existentially (in terms of the
problems of self-consciousness and mortality), but also in terms of the
materialities of place and practice which constitute the essential con-
ditions of any specific mode of human existence. Hence Long defines
religion as 'an imagination of materialities', wherein the articulation and
experience of sacrality is intimately bound to the activities of human
practice in relationship to the material and historical conditions of exis-
tence rather than from the activities of ideation (i.e. belief) in relation-
ship to that which is non-material (Reid 1991: 4).
From this perspective, it is clear that religions, Israel's included,
always must be examined in context, for that is how they arise, in
relation to and in response to those material conditions and exigencies
through which human existence is pressed into particular forms. Israel's
religion did not emerge against its environment; rather, it emerged
from within its environment. It needs then to be considered within its
indigenous cultural, geographic and political milieu of Iron Age Syria-
Palestine.
Israelite Religion in Context

The effort to reenvision Hosea's religious world needs to begin with a
suspicious outlook on the Bible's depiction of the Israelites as origi-
nally foreign to Canaan, as outsiders who came from the desert and
who had difficulties in adjusting religiously to an agrarian lifestyle.
This myth of origins sets up the scenario of cultural and religious con-
testation in which the religion of Canaan is posited as a foreign and
corrupting influence upon the originary and pure desert faith of the
Israelites. But it is becoming increasingly evident that the biblical story
of Moses leading a massive army of desert nomads into the settled lands
of Canaan cannot serve as a viable guideline for tracing the historical
emergence of ancient Israel in the Palestinian highlands. A new con-

sensus now posits the origins of Israel not in the invasion nor infiltra-
tion of outsiders into Palestine, but as a movement of indigenous
peoples within Palestine. While there are a variety of theories concerning
the prior social location of these highland settlers, it is clear that their
material culture was essentially Canaanite." These people were not
invaders or immigrants, but indigenous peoples who were adopting to a
new mode of life of highland dry farming in response to the unstable
political and economic conditions in Palestine. The emergence of Israel
in the highlands of Palestine at the opening of the Iron Age represents a
movement of indigenous peoples within Canaan whose ethnicity, culture
and religion could not be sharply distinguished from non-Israelite
Canaanites in its formative period.
From this recognition emerges a new perspective on ancient Israelite
religion, for the cultural continuity between Canaan and Israel implies
religious continuity also. While biblical scholars habitually speak of
Canaanite influence on Israel's religion, it is now necessary to recognize
that 'Israelite religion did not import Canaanite. Israel's religion was a
Canaanite religion' (Halpern 1983: 246). Methodologically those mod-
els which are predicated upon categories such as syncretism or corrup-
tion of an originary 'pure' form of Yahwism are inappropriate. Rather,
as Coogan points out, for methodological purposes it is essential to
consider Israelite religion as a species of Canaanite religion, and not as
a foreign import subject to corruption and degeneration (1987: 115).
Coogan does not deny that there are distinctive qualities to Israel's
religion, but insists that these must be examined from a perspective
which first situates the emergence of those qualities from within a
Canaanite matrix of religious belief and practice (1987: 115). Thus the
study of Hosea's religious language needs to be recontextualized within
an interpretive framework in which continuity between Israelite and
Canaanite cultures, rather than discontinuity, must be our basic presup-
position.12
11. Modes of village organization, pottery and architectural styles, and alpha-
betic script in the Iron Age highland settlements reveal no significant discontinuity
with late Bronze Age Canaanite culture (Ahlstrom 1986: 25-36). Indeed, the absence
of any major cultural influx into Palestinian culture, apart from the Philistines, from
at least the Middle Bronze Age, which is evident from archaeological evidence such
as pottery shards, 'is the single most influential argument for the indigenous char-
acter of early Israel1 (T.L. Thompson 1987: 38).
12. For work being done on ancient Israelite religion along these lines, see the
Israel and the other states of Syria-Palestine arose at the close of the
Bronze Age in the wake of the collapse of Egyptian hegemony in the
region. In contrast to the Bronze Age states which were organized
around and identified with an urban locus, these new 'national' states
coalesced around emergent ethnic communities or tribes, in which a
language of kinship provided the primary code of social organization.13
Situated along the major trade routes between Mesopotamia and Egypt,
and dependent upon often marginal rainfall agriculture (unlike the great
empires which they lay between), all of these new Iron Age polities
shared a similar geographic situation and ecological base, intersecting
cultural influences and a competitive militarized environment. It is
therefore not surprising to find that ancient Israelite religion under the
monarchy was structurally similar to the religions of the other cultures
in the geopolitic crescent stretching from Mesopotamia to the Levant
during the early Iron Age. The religion of monarchical Israel was a 'clas-
sical West Asiatic religion, the basic structure of which recurs from
Mesopotamia to Northern Syria and Palestine' (Lemche 1988: 239).
This pan-regional structure of religious meaning and practice offered
a mode of articulation of and response to the pressures of survival
indigenous to this context. The pressure to sustain life in a marginal-
zone agrarian economy that depended precariously upon rainfall agri-
culture conditioned an orientation to fertility as a sacred power (Dever
1987: 231). But as well, given the geopolitical position of the Levant as
a strategic land bridge between continents, social groups in this region
faced the constant threat of political domination or violent destruction,
and articulated their abiding concerns for societal survival through the
worship of a high god with martial attributes as the national deity.
collection of essays in Ancient Israelite Religion (Miller et al. 1987) particularly

essays by McCarter, Dever and Coogan. See also M.S. Smith (1990) and Lemche
(1988: 197-257).
13. This point is made by Redford (1992: 297-98) who is drawing on Buccellati
(1967). Buccellati stresses the sociological and ideological distinctions between the
'nation state' polity of Israel and neighbors such as Ammon, Edom and Moab, and
the 'territorial states' of Bronze Age Canaan and Iron Age Phoenicia. In the territo-
rial state people identify themselves as inhabitants of a given territory. But in the
nation state, group identity is based upon more than common occupation in a place,
but upon a story of a common history (which may even trace the roots of the people
to another locale), together with a conception of kin relationships and common
ancestry and the possession of a special name for the people which is not simply the
name of the territory which they inhabit (1967: 13-14).
Thus, concern with the powers of fertility and political might were dual
coordinates of religious life throughout the Syria-Palestinian region.
Attention to these two religious concerns not only serves to decon-
struct the spurious opposition between Canaanite fertility religion and
historical Yahwism, but also provides a groundwork from which to
reassess the critical religious issues which undergird Hosea's polemic
against the cult.
The Gods: Plural and Singular

William Robertson Smith once described ethical monotheism as the
product of 'an alliance of religion and the monarchy'. While the forma-
tion of what eventually became the Judaic conception of deity was
influenced by many complex processes, Smith's comment provides a
much better entree for a discussion of Yahwism in monarchical Israel
than the assumption that the critical issue in monotheism is its as-
cendence over polytheism.
The national cults of Israel and Judah were basically Yahwistic
because Yahweh was the god of these states. While Israelite Yahwism
eventually took on radical dimensions, leading to what today is
typically called 'monotheism',14 eighth-century Israel was not in fact so
wholly distinct from its neighbors in its singular devotion to one god.
14. The quotes around 'monotheism' are indicative of the problematic character
of the term: the term typically obscures more than it reveals. Most religious systems
that purport to be monotheistic actually incorporate belief in a plurality of divine
beings or powers, be they angels, saints, demons, persons of the trinity, etc. (Halpern
1987: 78-79). Use of the term 'monotheism' obscures this common belief in divine
multiplicity for the sake of generating an absolute point of difference with non-
western religious systems, i.e. those that are by contrast 'polytheistic'.
It was perhaps no accident that the term 'monotheism' was coined by Spinoza in
the seventeenth century, just at that juncture in history when Western culture found
itself forced to come to terms with a variety of cultures very different from anything
hitherto known to it. In this situation of cultural encounter, the need to clearly mark
the distinctiveness and superiority of the Western world over against these 'others'
was paramount. 'Monotheism' as a term encapsulating the essence of the Mediter-
ranean religious wo rid-view served well in the construction of this ideology of
difference. However, the term has little or no relevance for a discussion of eighth-
century religious beliefs and practices in Iron Age Syria-Palestine. Neither the
Israelites in general, nor Hosea in particular was a monotheist, for while the prophet
might insist that Yahweh alone be worshipped (Lang 1983; M. Smith 1971), the
existence of a plurality of spirits and gods was still assumed.
From the close of the Bronze Age onward, as centralized forms of politi-
cal authority coalesced in the ancient Near East, there was ongoing a
coordinate process towards 'the centralization and integration of divine
power and authority' in a single national deity (P.D. Miller, 1973: 52;
see also P.D. Miller 1987; Halpern 1987: 79-80). Everywhere through-
out this region, nations focused their devotions more and more on the
cult of their national deity, who was accorded highest rank among the
gods.
Yahweh was the god of the state and the focus of cultic life in Israel,
but in Moab, Chemosh was preeminent, in Ammon, Milkom, in Edom,
Quas (later Qos), in Tyre, Melkart, Dagon in the Philistine cities of
Ashdod and Gaza, among the Arameans, the god Hadad or Ramman,
and so on (Pritchard 1987: 101). Marduk and Assur presided over the
mighty Mesopotamian empires. What might be termed in modern par-
lance 'monolatry' was the rule rather than the exception.15 Throughout
the region 'adherence to the cult of a single high god seems to have
been taken early as the natural way of things' (Halpern 1987: 84).
None of these nations, monarchical Israel included, was so arrogant
as to think that their national god alone existed; rather each nation was
presumed to have its own god. Deut. 32.8 provides a good glimpse at
the reigning theology in Iron Age Syria-Palestine:
When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he
separated the sons of men, he fixed the bounds of the peoples according
to the number of the sons of God.
Israel of course saw Yahweh as first among the gods; He was Yahweh
Elohim, 'He who causes the gods to be' (Halpern 1987: 85) or Yahweh
Sabaoth, 'Yahweh of hosts'. But it is safe to presume that a similar
religio-national pride characterized the theology of Israel's neighbors
as well (Halpern 1987: 84; Ahlstrom 1963: 73-74). One's own high god
was always 'Most High'.
In Israel, the process of consolidation and integration of divine
powers in a singular national deity took a more radical trajectory than
15. See also Lang (1983: 21-22) and the references in Halpern (1987: 110-11
n. 34). Further evidence for this pan-regional pattern may be found in Tigay's dis-
cussion of the Ammonite onomasticon, where the distribution of theomorphic
names follows a similar pattern to Israel's: 'from their onomasticon one might con-
clude that they were no more pluralistic in religion than were the Israelites' (1986:
20).
elsewhere. Eventually, the reality of the other gods would be denied

altogether or the gods might even be condemned to death (Ps. 82.6-7),
as were their worshippers. The goddesses too, who elsewhere survived
alongside of the major male deities (though diminished and disempow-
ered as mere spouses or consorts),16 were eventually absorbed into
Yahweh or disappeared. This trajectory found further expression in the
centralization of the cult and the elimination of all other cultic icons of
the sacred, such as the asherim (see below), the bronze serpent and mas
sebot ('pillars'). Even the spirits of the dead were eventually ignored
and the ancestor cults were eclipsed (M. Smith 1952: 146).
The rise of this movement to eradicate all pluralism in the divinity's
manifestations, while not without precedent, can be dated at the earliest
to Hosea's era (especially to Hezekiah's reform), and did not really
begin to take root as a dominant or effective ideology until the late
eighth century (Lang 1983; M. Smith 1971: 15-56). Thus in compari-
son with other religions in this region, it becomes evident that the theo-
logical distinction between eighth-century Israel and its neighbors was
one of degree, rather than of kind. Yahweh's distinctiveness was in his
rather 'abnormal jealousy' in regards to the worship of other gods
(M. Smith 1952: 146), and in the prohibition of iconic representations,
not in the largely singular devotion which he enjoyed or in the main
essentials of Israel's theological structure.
The national deities of Israel's neighbors were no simple fertility
deities, but like Yahweh, were gods of the state who presided over its
social and political life. Even if we lacked the epigraphic evidence
which substantiates this thesis, an elementary knowledge of the sociol-
ogy of religion would render the point obvious. These were not simple
agricultural-based tribal societies, but relatively complex and hierarchi-
cally ordered city-states, monarchic states and empires whose life and
fate were tangled up not only in the land, but in the dynamics of inter-
regional trade, power politics and stratified socio-economic structures.
16. As Frymer-Kensky explains in her chapter on 'The Marginalization of the

Goddesses' (1992: 70-80), the prominent goddesses of Mesopotamia survived
alongside of the major deities as wives, even though now relegated to wholly
subsidiary status, for the basic polarity of male-female as a structuring principle of
the cosmic realm was not easily abandoned. Only Ishtar really maintained any power
independent of Marduk, perhaps because her nature as an embodiment of divine
sexual attraction could not be taken over very well by a male god, and because her
martial attributes took on increasing importance in the situation of incessant warfare
which accompanied state formation and empire building.
In the ancient Near East, the gods who had once been powers in nature
had long since become powers in history (Jacobsen 1970), reflecting and
embodying the political structures of the societies which served them.
The national gods gave expression to the sacrality of those modalities
of power critical to the functioning of their societies. The power of
fertility was but one of those modalities, one indeed that was subsumed
under the powers of law and governance by which access to land and
the distribution of its fruits were controlled.
In Iron Age Syria-Palestine, these national deities sometimes bore
the epithet 'Baal' meaning 'Lord'. Clearly, these baalim were no mere
nature deities, hapless manifestations of the seasonal rounds of nature,
but the high gods of their respective state cults, signifying particular
historical and cultural structures of power and production.
National Religion
Because all individual and national life was in the hands of the gods,
religion in the ancient Near East 'was at the base of all human and
national existence' (Ahlstrom 1982: 8). Modern Western thought tends
to dichotomize religion and socio-political life into distinct spheres, but
such categorizations cannot apply in the ancient world where religion
was intimately interrelated with the whole social, political and eco-
nomic fabric of any community (Meyers 1987: 359). In the complex
societies of the ancient Near East, religion was a national and territorial
phenomenon (Block 1988, Ahlstrom 1982; Frankfort 1978 [1948]), and
religious language and practice were integrally related to the meaning
of the nation and the structures of its power. The nation was under-
stood to be the territory of the god, administered by the king, who
reigned by virtue of his status as the servant or the viceroy of the land's
divine Lord (Block 1988). To rule, the king required a temple, or
control over some other symbolically powerful cultic center. The pres-
ence of such a sacred center testified to the status of the land as the
property of the deity and to the continuing, protective presence of the
deity in his land.17 But further, the temple or sacred center was the
17. Given the importance of the national temple as the manifestation of the
deity's abiding presence in the land, its destruction was seen as the greatest of
calamities which could befall a people; in essence it meant the eradication of the
nation as the territory of the god (Ahlstrom 1982: 4 n. 18). Such was the case for the
Judeans, who upon returning from exile assumed that the rebuilding of the temple
property of the king and intimately associated with his rule. Through
ritual practices of divination and sacrifice, such state sanctuaries served
as the primary locus of communication and communion between the
people and the deity. These were places charged with numinous author-
ity from which the 'divinely' ordained laws of the land were propa-
gated and enforced.
This integral relationship between king, god and sacred center defined
the relationship between cultic practice and political life in ancient
Israel and Judah just as much as it did throughout the ancient Near East.
The royal administration, its military, and the national cult were tied
closely together as tripartite arms of political organization (Ahlstrom
1982). In Jerusalem as in neighboring polities, temple and palace were
'two aspects of the same phenomenon; together they constituted the
essence of the state' (Ahlstrom 1982: 3-4). Thus Solomon's construc-
tion of a grandiose palace and temple as a way of symbolically legiti-
mating his rule was in conformity with the classical pattern of political
organization in ancient Syria-Palestine.
Because religious institutions paralleled and sustained the structures
of political power, political reorganization required cultic reorganiza-
tion. It was, for example, incumbent upon King Jeroboam I to solidify
the north's political independence from Judah through the establish-
ment of cultic independence. Any continued orientation to the cult in
Jerusalem would serve to lend legitimacy to the Davidic kings (1 Kgs
12.27). Further, offerings brought to the Jerusalem temple would siphon
off the wealth of the northern kingdom to the enrichment of Judah.
Thus one of Jeroboam's first acts as king was to install bull icons at the
shrines of Dan and Bethel (1 Kgs 12.28-29).18
Priests stationed in the royal sanctuaries were officials of the central
governmental and part of the ruling class.19 The priests who adminis-
was absolutely necessary; 'the god's domain had to be rebuilt' (Ahlstrom 1982: 4
n. 18).
18. The decentralized cult may reflect the political structure of the newly estab-
lished northern kingdom, in which power was more widely distributed among the
many powerful lineages who had supported Jeroboam's revolution and who might
have resisted the consolidation of political and sacral power in any one center.
19. The curious position of the Levites as a tribe without land or its own
identifiable geographic area leads Ahlstrom to argue that 'levite' may have been a
technical term for priests and government officials stationed throughout the king-
dom (1982: 48-50). In this view, Deut. 33.11 reflects the 'police-force function of
priests and Levites; they were soldiers for god and king' (1982: 48). The text asks
tered the cult not only had responsibility for the sacrificial cult, but also
served as legal specialists and judges (Deut. 17.8-13, 33.10). The priests
played a central and critical role in the establishment and maintenance
of the social order and as such were supported by those who enjoyed the
benefits of that order (Coote and Ord 1991: 30).20 Throughout the Near
East, the relationship between the king and the priestly class was symbi-
otic, as 'rulers endorsed and were endorsed by endowed temple organi-
zations run by hereditary priestly families' (Coote and Ord 1991: 30).
The power held in the sanctuaries of the ancient Near East was not
only ideological, but also political and financial. That the priesthood
was a locus of political power in Israel is clear from their role in dynas-
tic power struggles (e.g. 1 Kgs 1, 2 Kgs 11) and from the relationship
between particular priestly parties and particular dynasties (e.g. Aaron-
ides in the northern kingdom, Zadokites within the house of David).
Further, wealth flowed into the hands of the priests at the sanctuaries in
the form of offerings, and control of this wealth was inevitably a politi-
cal affair.21
the Lord to bless the hyl of the Levites and smote the 'loins of his enemies'.
Ahlstrom points out that hyl may be translated 'army, police force' which accords
with the militaristic function of the Levites which is visible in such texts as Neh.
13.12, 2 Kgs 11 and Exod. 32.26-28 (1982: 48).
20. Support for the priestly class took the form of priestly control over the col-
lection and use of sacrificial offerings as well as monetary tithes (2 Kgs 12.4-8).
Required offerings were in a way part of the taxation system by which this elite
cadre was amply supported, particularly with the regular provision of meat. As
Coote and Ord argue, the 'state shrine was primarily a cult of meat sacrifice. It was
a primary privilege of the priesthood as a class to eat meat in abundance, and during
some periods even to claim the privilege of having no meat slaughtered in the realm
at all except under their supervision and participation...' (1991: 31). The high meat
consumption of the priestly class contrasted sharply with that of the ordinary peas-
ant, for whom meat was 'a rare luxury' enjoyed primarily at occasional ritual feasts
(Wenham 1979: 51; cited in Coote and Ord 1991: 31). With their ample meat-based
diet, the priestly class, like the modern North American, was probably bigger,
stronger and healthier than the ordinary peasant in Syria-Palestine.
21. There are also indications that the temple in the ancient Near East func-
tioned as the state treasury and as a kind of bank in the service of creditors. Ahlstrom
claims that in Mesopotamia, the largest and most important temples 'often became
the financial centers and the large landholders of the country' (1982: 2). He argues
that the temple to Melkart in Tyre, Israel's ally in commerce, functioned as the state
treasury, receiving 'sacred offerings' from conquered colonies which were hardly
distinguishable from tribute (1982: 21; see also Lang 1983: 27; Astour 1959).
Attacks on the national cult, its priests, and its bull icons are promi-
nent themes in Hosea's oracles; the motive for these attacks will be
explored later in this chapter. For now, it is important to stress that the
national cult in the northern kingdom was essentially Yahwistic. While
the polemic of Exod. 32 condemns the golden calf (or calves) as for-
bidden and foreign to Yahwism, it is unlikely that Jeroboam would
have introduced any new deities or foreign cult objects in his effort to
divert religious sentiment and observance away from Jerusalem (Cross
1973: 73-75; M.S. Smith 1990: 51).22 The bull image was therefore cer-
tainly a traditional icon for Yahweh in the north (or at least an icon of
Yahweh's steed, that is, his mount or throne), part of the inheritance
gained in his absorption of El and Baal, both of whom were associated
frequently with bovine imagery (M.S. Smith 1990: 51; Albright 1957a:
199-200).23
In addition to the major royal sanctuaries in Israel and Judah, there
were numerous shrines, called bamot or 'high places'24 and other tradi-
tional worship sites.25 It is difficult to determine the extent to which
22. As Cross argues, the account in Exod. 32 in which Aaron forges the idola-
trous golden calves is certainly shaped by a Jerusalemite 'polemic against the Bethel
cultus and its Aaronid priesthood' (1973: 73). This polemic suggests that there was
indeed a Yahwistic cult legend attached to the Bethel sanctuary which claimed
Aaronic authority for its bull icon. Cross thus reasons convincingly 'that Jeroboam
did not invent a new cultus, but, choosing the famous sanctuary of 'El at Bethel,
attempted to archaize even more radically than the astute David had done when he
brought tent and ark and the cherubim iconography to Jerusalem, transferring the
nimbus of the old league sanctuary at Shiloh to Zion' (1973: 74).
23. See also the discussion in Utzschneider, who links the bull iconography at
Bethel specifically to the deity 'El, who is presumably the original deity worshipped
at the 'house' (betk) of'El (Bethel) (1980: 96-97).
24. The bamot, despite the translation 'high places' were found not only on
hilltops and mountaintops (1 Kgs 11.7), but in valleys (Jer. 7.31, 32.35; Ezek. 6.3),
in towns or cities (1 Kgs 13.32; 2 Kgs 17.29, 23.5, 23.8) and sometimes at the gates
of the city (2 Kgs 23.8) (de Vaux 1961: 284-85). At least some of these bamot
included an elevated platform (a sort of artificial 'high place'), upon which some
sort of temple or shrine may have been constructed (as indicated by the biblical term
beth habamot [1 Kgs 13.32; 2 Kgs 17.29]). For the archeological evidence on 'high
places' see Albright (1957b), de Vaux (1961: 284-85), Mazar (1982), and Dever
(1990: 128-34).
25. Mentioned in the biblical text are many ancient sanctuaries, including Gilgal,
Beersheba, Moriah/Shechem, Mambre, Mispah, Shiloh, Horeb/Sinai and Gilead (de
Vaux 1961: 289-311; Coote 1991: 95-101). Tombs, such as Rachel's Tomb, burial
these bamot and local sanctuaries were under state control. Some of the
larger cultic centers located in or near cities, large towns and military
installations may have been staffed by royally sanctioned priests and
patronized by the royal house; in this way the extension of the power of
the state was supported by an extension of the reach of the national cult.
The building of new shrines and control of existing ones was always an
essential component of royal administrative policy (Ahlstrom 1982: 10-
26; 1 Kgs 11.7; 12.31). Sanctuaries established by the king not only
served to sanctify the state, but were functionally visible arms of the
central government (Ahlstrom 1982: 81).
Country sanctuaries and those smaller shrines in outlying areas which
were to be found 'under every green tree and on every high hill'
probably continued during the monarchical period to function under
local control as they had for centuries, and may at times have been sites
for heterodox practices (or at least for practices that were later labelled
as heterodox).26
Subsequent to the fall of the northern kingdom, the southern kings
Hezekiah and Josiah sought to consolidate power in the capital center
by destroying outlying shrines and high places. These 'reforms' ensured
that all revenues from the cult were redirected to the temple in Jerusa-
lem. Traditionally dispersed loci of sacral-political power, which were
important for maintaining the authority of the older landowning fami-
lies, were eradicated. In this way, the power of local magnates was both
ideologically and economically damaged (Coote and Coote 1990: 62).
The official cult then, in Israel as elsewhere in Syria-Palestine at this
time, was an organ of the national government, which functioned prac-
tically as part of its administrative structure and ideologically as that
which provided the king with the sacral legitimacy necessary to rule.
This religious structure oriented the land's inhabitants to the power of
the monarchy. As we shall see below, it is this national cult which is
repeatedly attacked by Hosea, coordinate with his attack upon public
policy and the political machinations within royal circles. First though,
markers, and sacred trees were another type of holy place with importance in Israel.
These traditional sanctuaries often had a long history which may have extended
back before the establishment of Israelite culture.
26. This juxtaposition of the official cultus and popular or 'nonconformist' wor-
ship relies upon the theoretical model developed by John Holladay (1987: 266-70).
Holladay argues that 'nonconformist' religious practices were tolerated as long as
they did not compete with the established religion (1987: 269).
it is important to consider another key dimension of religious life in

ancient Israelite—its dimension of concern with the life-sustaining
power of fertility.
Fertility Religion
For the ordinary Israelite, life did not revolve around the politics of the
urban world and its royal cult, but rather was largely defined and cir-
cumscribed by the rhythms of the agricultural year and the social worlds
of the kinship network and the village. So too, the religious world of
these highland farmers, whose lives were defined by arduous labor and
a continuous struggle for survival, was centered primarily in the house-
hold and the village, which were the economic and social bases of their
lives (Rentaria 1992: 97). At this level of Israelite religious life, the
fertility of fields, flocks and families was a primary religious concern,
and the power of fertility was experienced as hierophanic, that is, as a
locus of sacred power.
In Israel, a religious concern with fertility was manifest not only in
the regular round of agricultural festivals, but also in the terracotta
female figurines found in abundance at Israelite and Judean domestic
sites dating from the monarchical period.27 These Israelite female fig-
urines are found at a frequency of roughly one per household, and appar-
ently served as the central feature of the household shrine (Holladay
1987: 278).28
Such female figurines had long been a part of the Palestinian milieu.
The 'Astarte figurines', featuring the image of a woman's naked body
27. The best sources on the Iron Age Israelite figurines are Holland (1977),
Tadmor (1982) and Holladay (1987). Pritchard's treatment (1943) is dated, but still
helpful for its convenient survey of the varieties of female figurines which appear in
Palestine from the second millennium onward.
28. These female figurines also appear in high concentrations at two subter-
ranean sites: 165 figurines were found at Samaria E 207 and 16 figurines at Jerusa-
lem Cave 1 (Holladay 1987: 259). Holladay argues that these places were cultic
sites which functioned outside the influence of the established state cultus and
suggests that female figurines may have played a part in the 'nonconformist' ritual
practices held in these places (1987: 270-71). His argument implies that female
figurines were not part of the official cultus; but even if female figurines are very
rarely found at the established shrines of the state (1987: 272), we cannot say that
their ritual use at other locations was not accepted within the 'official1 piety of the
religion.
in relief on a plaque, first appear in Canaan sometime in the middle of

the second millennium and become increasingly abundant in subsequent
centuries (Tadmor 1982: 140). There are wide variations in the style of
the figurines coordinate with different artistic influences, cultural peri-
ods, and (perhaps) ritual usages. The majority of those figurines found
in Israel and Judah dating from the beginning of the eighth century
onwards29 have an unadorned and upright form with prominent breasts,
which are often cradled by the hands, and a rounded 'pillar' base,
which appears like a long shirt covering the legs and genitals. The pillar-
based style is uniformly characteristic of Judean sites, while in the north-
ern kingdom, another form is also found which is more naturalistic,
with the arms sometimes holding a circular object (perhaps a drum).
The form of these Israelite figurines is quite distinct from the Late
Bronze Age Canaanite goddess figurines, who bear symbols of their
divinity, and also from earlier Canaanite and Israelite (pre-monarchic)
plaque-figurines, which depict a female figure in prone position. These
latter objects may have been associated with funerary rites (Tadmor
1982: 171).
Interpretation of the meaning and function of these female figurines
from eighth-century Israel is problematic. Some scholars contend that
these were household icons of an Israelite goddess, most probably
Asherah or Ashtoret, designed to enhance fertility (Coogan 1987: 119;
Holladay 1987: 278; Mazar 1990: 501). Others find this explanation
implausible because, in distinction from the Canaanite statues, these
figurines bear no conventional symbols of divinity nor any inscriptions
to indicate a definitive identity (Tadmor 1982: 170-71; Pritchard 1943:
86). Rather than a goddess, Pritchard found it more likely that the
29. The dating from the eighth century onwards is necessarily approximate. At
Lachish, the distribution of the pillar-based figurines is concentrated in the final occu-
pation levels (i.e. destruction layers); they are rarely found in lower street accumula-
tions or subfloor buildup. From this evidence, Holladay has concluded that these
figurines did not become an important part of popular piety in Lachish until the last
two or three decades prior to its destruction in wars with Assyria and Babylon
(1987: 278; cf. Frymer-Kensky 1992: 266 n. 33). However, this conclusion is unwar-
ranted. The more scanty representation of these figurines in the layers of the lower
street may simply reflect religious customs concerning the disposal of broken fig-
urines in a special place, perhaps with accompanying ritual. These figurines, if they
had religious significance, might not have been disposed of in an ordinary way like
any piece of household trash.
figurines functioned as talismans to promote fertility. So too, Frymer-

Kensky suggests that these feminine forms functioned as a kind of
visual metaphor, which show in seeable and touchable form that which is
most desired. In other words, they are a kind of tangible prayer for
fertility and nourishment (1992: 159).
Whether as talisman or as goddess, these figurines functioned as sym-

bols for a religious concern with fertility. The shape of the 'pillar-
based' variety of figurines is most suggestive; Hestrin and Frymer-
Kensky see in their bell-shaped bottoms the image of a tree trunk, as if
here the image of woman was merged into the image of 'a kind of tree
with breasts' (Frymer-Kensky 1992: 160; also Hestrin 1987b: 222).
The image of a tree with breasts (i.e. a 'lactating tree' [Frymer-Kensky
1992: 161]) appears in New Kingdom Egypt; here the tree extends a
breast, supported by an arm/branch, giving suck to the Pharaoh.30 In
nature, the tree is an expression par excellence of exuberant abundance
and fertility, and in ancient Near Eastern religions, the sacred tree, or
the tree of life, served as a symbol of those goddesses who embodied
the powers of life, fertility and nurturance.31 It is difficult to establish
whether goddess worship persisted at the popular level in Hosea's Israel,
or whether the powers and attributes of female divinity had already been
absorbed into the high god.32 But in either case, like the ancient symbol
of the tree of life, these tree-like female figurines were a reminder of or
an icon for the divine power of life, fertility and abundance in their
midst (Frymer-Kensky 1992: 160).
30. A sketch of this image is reproduced in Hestrin (1987a: 70).

31. The Ta'anach cult stand offers a striking image of the tree of life as a
symbol for a goddess in Iron Age Syria-Palestine (Hestrin 1987a). The base of this
extraordinary cult stand is divided into four registers upon which various figures are
carved. On the lowest register is a naked goddess, flanked by two lions. (Lions were
frequently associated with goddesses in Syria-Palestine and Egypt.) Two registers
above her is an image of a tree from which animals feed. Like the goddess below,
the tree is also flanked by lions. Hestrin concludes that the naked woman is proba-
bly Asherah, and that parallel representation of the tree above her indicates that the
sacred tree was an important symbol of this goddess (see also Hestrin 1987b).
32. For Frymer-Kensky. the figurines did not represent Yahweh's consort or any
other goddess, but rather represented 'a divine power, not fully articulated or
personified'. This divine power of fertility may well have been implicitly accepted
as a dimension of Yahweh, the one who grants 'the blessings of breast and womb'
(Gen. 49.25) (1992: 160-61).
This popular reverence for the power of fertility, modelled in the

sacred female form and in the sacred tree, was a deep, pervasive and
ancient religious response to the precarious conditions of life within
this arid land. The established state cult naturally embraced and ex-
pressed this religious concern for fertility; otherwise the cult would
have held little appeal or relevance to the ordinary Israelite farming
family. Asherim, bearing the name of the goddess Asherah, were
'planted' at cult sites as a type of Israelite 'tree of life', reflecting on the
public level the symbolic complex of tree-woman-fertility which was
expressed at the private level with the household figurines.33 The
presence of these cult objects was probably rooted in the ancient
association of sacred trees with holy places which can be seen in the
ancestor narratives.34 But the asherim themselves were not living trees;35
rather they were manufactured from wood, perhaps resembling a styl-
ized tree or a pole (Olyan 1988: I).36 Until the rise of the Deuteronomic
opposition, the asherim were accepted as a legitimate part of Yahweh's
33. The fact that these asherim bore the name of the goddess Asherah does not
prove that they were regarded as icons of a female deity distinct from Yahweh. It is
perhaps as likely that the goddess Asherah had been assimilated into Yahweh, and
the feminine principle of life and fertility which she had embodied was now repre-
sented by the asherim at the shrines, which bore her name and represented the
feminine face of Yahweh—the divine power of fertility.
34. Several biblical text witness to the association of holy places with sacred
trees: e.g., the theophanic appearance to Abraham at the oak (or terebinth) of Moreh
at Shechem (Gen. 12.6-8), Abraham's planting a tamarisk tree in consecration of
the cultic site of Beersheba (Gen. 21.33), Joshua's erection of an altar under an oak
at Shechem (Josh. 24.26-27) and the theophanic appearance to Gideon 'under the
oak at Ophrah' (Judg. 6.11).
35. See Frymer-Kensky (1992: 155) who deduces from Deut. 16.21, where the
verb nt1 (plant) describes the installation of asherim, that they might sometimes
have been living trees. However, most often the asherim are associated with other
verbs which suggest a process of manufacturing such as 'sh (make), bnh (build) or
nsb or 'md (erect) (Olyan 1988, 1-2). The use of the verb 'plant' is more likely a
figure of speech based upon the symbolic association of the asherim with trees.
36. The asherah may have at times been carved to resemble the image of the
goddess Asherah. Manasseh set the 'graven image of Asherah' in the Jerusalem
temple (2 Kgs 21.7). It is at least possible that the asherah may have been formed
roughly in a shape similar to that of the domestic figurines. There is, however, no
evidence to substantiate this thesis, for these asherim were made of wood and have
not survived the centuries.
cult in both Israel and Judah.37 Their removal from cultic sites, along
with other traditional Yahwistic cultic objects, in successive iconoclastic
'reforms' under Hezekiah and Josiah, was coordinate with a movement
of political reorganization and consolidation in which meanings of
sacral power were reoriented and reduced to those focused upon the
Jerusalem cultus. Despite the polemics which accompanied this cultic
revolution, the asherah had never been a syncretistic accretion, but a
native Israelite cult object,38 a kind of sacred tree at the shrines, through
which the divine and feminine power of fertility was made present to
the worshippers.
The asherim, of course, share the name of the goddess Asherah,
mother of the gods and wife of the high god El in Bronze Age Canaan.
As Yahweh had absorbed El into himself, so he also seems to have
'married' Asherah, as witnessed by inscriptions dating from the divided
monarchy which invoke blessings of 'Yahweh and his Asherah'.39
These inscriptions suggest to many scholars that the goddess Asherah
was worshipped in Hosea's Israel as Yahweh's consort (e.g. Dever 1984;
Freedman 1987; Olyan 1988). Others argue that this conclusion is
inadmissible for grammatical reasons40 and that rather than signifying a
37. Even in Jehu's violent purge of the Tyrian Baal, the asherah in Samaria was
left undisturbed (2 Kgs 13.6). In the prophetic literature, only four texts voice clear
opposition to the asherim, each of which exhibits telling signs of Deuteronomistic
influence (Jer. 17.2; Isa. 17.8; 27.9; Mic. 5.13; see Olyan 1988: 14-17). P legal mate-
rial condemns the massebah (Exod. 23.24; Lev. 26.1), but not the asherah (Olyan
1988: 5 n. 15).
38. The removal of the asherim does not indicate that they were regarded as
foreign or Canaanite in origin. In Hezekiah's reform, the high places were removed
along with the pillars (massebah), whose sacrality was legitimated in patriarchal
legends. The bronze serpent was also destroyed (2 Kgs 18.4) even though the
authority for this icon was rooted in Mosaic legend (Num. 21.6-9) and it had long
served as an icon of healing power; nowhere is it characterized as a non-Yahwistic
cult object.
39. The inscriptions were discovered on a wall of an eighth-century tomb at
Khirbet el-Qdm (Lemaire 1977) and at Kuntillet Ajrud (Meshel and Meyers 1976;
Meshel 1979). For the debate over the significance of these inscriptions for our
understanding of ancient Israelite religion, see M.S. Smith (1990: 88-94), Olyan
(1988) and comments below.
40. Requesting blessings from 'Yahweh and his Asherah', these inscriptions
seem to suggest that Asherah was a distinct deity worshipped alongside of Yahweh,
But in Biblical Hebrew, pronominal suffixes are never attached to proper names.
Some scholars therefore argue that asherah in these inscriptions must be a common
distinct deity, her name was more of a feminine hypostasis of the effec-
tive presence of Yahweh, perhaps derivative from the cult objects
themselves (McCarter 1987: 149; cf. M.S. Smith 1990: 88-94). This is
not the occasion to engage this debate; in any event, at the level of
popular practice, the distinctions of orthodoxy may well have disinte-
grated.41 What is clear is that a divine power, imagined as feminine and
connected to the fertility motif of the sacred tree, was invoked in Israel
and Judah in Hosea's time.
In the female figurines, the asherim and the goddess Asherah, female
religious symbolism in Israel evoked the power of fertility and regen-
eration. This connection between female religious imagery and the
sacred power of fertility in Iron Age Israel cannot be explained within a
paradigm of religious contestation between a masculine Israel and a
feminine Canaan. This complex of feminine imagery was no foreign
accretion, but was indigenous to the culture of these Palestinian high-
landers.42 Thus if one could speak of a 'fertility cult' in ancient Israel,
then the asherim at the cult sites, the domestic figurines and worship of
Asherah would have been its most tangible manifestations. While bovine
imagery also signified fertility in the context of Israelite Yahwism, the
golden calves at Bethel and Dan served as important symbols within
the official state cultus, signifying Yahweh not simply as the god of
fertility, but as the god of the state of Israel. But in the symbolic
complex of woman and tree, the sacred power of fertility found unambi-
guous symbolic articulation.
If a 'fertility cult' were the prime foil of Hosea's polemic, these
feminine religious forms would have been obvious targets. Yet there is
no clear indication in the text that Hosea attacks any of these.43 This
noun, referring to the wooden cult object (Emerton 1982; Meshel 1979; Tigay 1986;
26-30). Another possibility is that the name Asherah might have served in this
period as a generic term for a female deity or consort, in which case the possessive
ending would be grammatically correct (Meshel 1979: 31).
41. An illuminating analogy may be religious practices and beliefs concerning
the Mother of God within Roman Catholicism. Although Roman Catholics under-
stand and affirm the orthodox position that Mary is not divine but only an interces-
sor, prayers and piety in respect to Mary clearly invest her with divine status.
42. Nor, as will be argued in Chapter 6, does attention to this symbolic complex
lead to the conclusion that fertility exhausts the meaning of female symbolism in
biblical literature.
43. Cf. Wacker (1995) for her argument that the book of Hosea is permeated
with veiled allusions to Israel's ancient goddess traditions and that through these
point is generally avoided in the scholarly obsession with Hosea as an

opponent of fertility religion. Reverence for fertility as a sacred power
was integral to Israel's religion and is not the object of Hosea's attack.
Politics, the Cult and the Prophet's Polemic

Rather than attacking supposed fertility cult practices, Hosea's polemic
is squarely directed at the official state cult and at the structures of
royal power of which the cult is a primary sign. Hardly any of the
major shrines of the northern kingdom escape Hosea's condemnation.
Two major sanctuaries (Bethel, Gilgal) and other minor sanctuaries
(Mizpah, Tabor, Shittim) are attacked in some fashion. Special attention,
however, is given to the royal sanctuary of Bethel, polemically termed
bet 'oven ('house of iniquity'), along with its calf icon, the central cult
symbol of the northern kingdom housed at Bethel (Hos. 4.15; 10.5-6,
15; 13.2).
Most discussions of the calf focus on the issue of idolatry—the
prophet objects to the use of images, made of human hands and mis-
taken for what is divine itself. This issue is certainly present in the
book (Hos. 2.8 [2.10]; 4.17; 8.4-6; 10.6; 11.2; 13.2; 14.3, 8), and com-
mentators are correct to view this as an important theme in Hosea. But
unless one takes an apologetic position which confesses to the evils of
allusive references, the text both attacks and assimulates these traditions. Wacker's
argument advances beyond earlier attempts at text-critical restoration of the
goddesses' names or attributes in corrupt or difficult passages such as Hos. 4.17-19,
9.13 and 14.9. Wellhausen, for example, emended Hos. 14.8ap [Hos. 14.9a[3] to read
'I am his [Ephraim's] Anat and his Asherah' (cited in Wacker 1995: 224). Such
text-critical reconstructions are highly tenuous and have never accrued much schol-
arly consensus. Wacker therefore suggests that we abandon the project of finding
direct reference to any goddess in Hosea, and instead, given the literary character of
Hosea as a text which is 'energized to an unusual degree by the ambiguities of
sound and visual image', that we seek 'traces of the goddess' in Hosea in imagistic
allusions and poetic sound-play (1995: 225).
Wacker finds her clearest evidence for a goddess allusion in Hos. 4.12-13 where
sound-play between terebinth ('elah) and the feminine form of El ('elah or 'daf)
suggests a condemnation of goddess worship on the high places (1995: 227-28).
She also suggests links between other conventions of goddess iconography and cer-
tain textual images in Hosea. But the clues she highlights do not add up to a con-
vincing argument if one is not predisposed to believe that Hosea's concern is with
female-gendered religion (in the form of either goddess worship or fertility cults).
iconic representation as a matter of faith, the question remains as to the

issues which were at stake for Hosea in the matter of the use of carved
images in worship.
Hendel's analysis (1988), which connects the cultural bias against
iconic representation in early Israel44 with its decentralized political
structure, may be helpful here. Throughout the ancient Near East, the
deity was conventionally depicted as seated upon a throne; 'the iconog-
raphy of the god' was therefore 'essentially a mirror image of the
iconography of the king' (1988: 381). Hendel argues that early Israel's
rejection of sacral kingship as a fundamental orienting structure
demanded also a rejection of the divine image that symbolized the
authority of the king (1988: 378). Jeroboam's bull icons, which he
erected in the royal sanctuaries at Bethel and Dan, technically avoided
violating this cultural tradition of aniconism. (The calves were proba-
bly not understood to be iconic representations of the deity, but rather
images of the steed or mount upon which he might rest.45) Neverthe-
less, these bulls and their shrines did serve as legitimating symbols for
the power of the royal house.
Therefore, one cannot separate Hosea's attack on the calf icon at
Bethel from his critique of the royal establishment whose power the calf
legitimates. Like Amos' attack on the cult at Bethel which was de-
nounced as treason by the priest Amaziah (Amos 7), Hosea's attack on
Bethel's primary icon constituted a frontal assault upon the sacral legiti-
macy of Israel's ruling powers. Thus, Hosea's polemic against the
national cult and its symbols should be viewed as coordinate with his
attacks on the corruption of Samaria's government (Utzschneider 1980:
87).
44. The archaeological evidence indicates that a cultural bias against anthropo-
morphic divine images prevailed from the beginnings of the Iron Age culture of
Israel. As R. Hendel concludes on the basis of his analysis of the material culture,
there is 'clear discontinuity in the presence of anthropomorphic figurines between
the Late Bronze Age and the Iron Age strata in early Israelite sites' (1988: 367).
45. Albright makes this argument on the basis of comparison with iconographic
practice throughout Syria-Palestine, in which the gods are represented as standing
on the backs of animals, or seated on a throne borne by animals, but never them-
selves in animal form. In Albright's view, Jeroboam's calves were conceived as
pedestals for the deity, which conceptually is no different really than the enthrone-
ment of Yahweh on cherubim in the Jerusalem temple (1957a: 299-300). The reli-
gious establishment in Jerusalem took a different view, of course, and polemicized
the calves as the epitome of idolatry (cf. Exod. 32.8 and 1 Kgs 12.28).
In Hosea's oracles, rulers and idols are denounced in the same breath,
and for analogous reasons:
They made kings, but without my consent.
They set up princes, but without my knowledge.
Their silver and gold they fashioned into images
for themselves.
On account of this, it will be destroyed.
He rejects the calf of Samaria,
my anger burns against them...
A craftsman made it; it is not Elohim.
The calf of Samaria shall be broken to pieces
(Hos. 8.4-5a, 6b).
Kings, princes and idols are here linked together; all are illegitimate
products, creations of falsity, made by men and not Elohim (Utz-
schneider 1980: 107). The 'calf of Samaria' is false not simply because
it is an idol, but because of what it stands for: the structures of power
which are seated in Samaria.46 In the calf is embodied the meaning and
fate of the nation; the prophet warns that 'the inhabitants of Samaria
will tremble for the calves of Beth-aven ("house of iniquity")' when the
icon is carried away as tribute to Assyria (Hos. 10.5-6). Its deportation
will be a sign of the nation's imminent collapse.
Not only its calf, but the national cult as a whole functions in Hosea's
rhetoric as symbol for the royal administration and the nation; the fate
of one stands as an emblem for the fate of the other. Thus the destruc-
tion of the Bethel sanctuary and the royal house are predicted in the
same breath:
Tumult will arise among your people and
all your fortresses will be destroyed,
just as when Shalman destroyed Beth-arbel;
on the day of battle, mothers with their children
will be dashed into pieces.
So it will be done to you, Bethel,
because of your unrelenting evil.
At the dawn, the king of Israel will be no more
(Hos. 10.14-15).
46. Hosea's expression 'calf of Samaria' may refer to the bull icon at Bethel,
which legitimated the power of the monarchy whose seat was Samaria, or it may
indicate that there was a cultic installation with calf in the capital city of Samaria, as
would be expected within the theopolitical mileau of Iron Age Syria-Palestine.
Bethel stands here as a synecdoche for the ruling powers of the nation,47
whose fate shall likewise follow that of the women and children mur-
dered at Beth-arbel and elsewhere as a consequence of the power
politics and war-games played by Israel's men of power.
The destruction of other sanctuaries also is emblematic of the fall of
the royal house:
Samaria will be no more,
and her king will be like driftwood upon the face of the waters.
The high places of Iniquity ('aven),
—the sin of Israel—
will be destroyed.
Thorns and thistles will grow up over their altars (Hos. 10.7-8a).
The king and the high places will fall together; they are coordinate
realities. The sanctuaries are polemically characterized as 'the high
places of Iniquity ('aven) because of their close ties to the royal gov-
ernment which built them. The belief that this 'iniquity' concerns mat-
ters of exclusively religious concern, that is, sexual rituals for fertility
deities, depends upon a naivety concerning the symbiotic relationship
between the national cult and the national government.
It is not religious syncretism, but misdeeds in the political sphere
which have profaned the sanctuaries, as is suggested in this oracle
regarding Gilgal:
All their evil (ra 'atam) is in Gilgal;
since there I have hated them.
On account of the wickedness of their deeds
(roa' ma 'alelehem),
I will drive them from my house.
I will not love them any longer;
all their princes (sorehern) are rebels (Hos. 9.15).
Gilgal, an important cult site in Hosea's Israel (Hos. 4.15; 12.11; Amos
5.5),48 is described here as the site of evil deeds perpetrated by rebellious
47. The RSV and some commentators favor the Septuagint reading 'House of
Israel' over the MT's 'Bethel' in Hos. 10.15a, because the devastation here described
seems to refer to the fate of the entire country, and not just one sanctuary town.
However, MT stands without difficulty once the reader recognizes the symbolic
importance of Bethel as the center of the cult and its royal patronage (Andersen and
Freedman 1980: 572).
48. It was also, according to tradition, the place where Saul was made king
princes. The argument that 'their evil' (ra'dtdm)and 'the wickedness

of their deeds' (roa' ma 'alelehem) refer to political rather than cultic
transgressions49 is strengthened by comparison with the appearance of
the same terms rd 'dtdm ('their evil') and ma 'alelehem ('their deeds') in
Hos. 7.2-3 where they clearly refer to acts of violence and treachery
perpetrated within royal circles:
And they do not realize that
I remember all their evil (ra 'atam}.
Now their deeds (ma 'alelehem) surround them,
they are before my face.
They make the king rejoice
with their evil (ra 'atam)
And the princes (sarim) with their treachery.
The subjects of such acts are again, as in Hos. 9.15, the sdrim ('princes')
of the land (see also Hos. 7.14-16). The translation 'princes' may
obscure the point of Hosea's critique. These sdrim included not just the
males of the ruling family, but the ruling class as a whole, that is
government officials such as district governors (1 Kgs 20.14, 22.26),
generals (1 Kgs 1.25) and other leading men within the royal court
(1 Kgs 4.2). The invectives against the evil deeds of these sarim rep-
resent an attack upon the royal establishment as a whole as corrupt,
deceitful and wicked.
Priests too, who were not simply servants of Yahweh but govern-
ment officials and part of this chain of power, are also objects of the
prophet's polemics, and these attacks upon the priesthood should not
be naively isolated from his attacks on the socio-political structure as a
whole. Together with the 'house of the king' and the 'house of Israel',
Israel's priests are called to judgment (Hos. 5.1), and bands of priests
are likened to robbers, accused of acts of violence and villainy (Hos.
6.9).
Hosea's most sustained attack upon the priesthood and the rituals
over which they preside appears in Hos. 4.4-14. Here the prophet's
polemic begins with accusations against some particular priest (4.4-6)
who is accused of having 'rejected knowledge' and 'forgotten the teach-
ing of your God' (4.6). The oracle then moves to a condemnation of
(1 Sam. 1.14-15), and may have continued to have some association with the legiti-
mation of monarchical rule.
49. See e.g. Holt (1995: 69) who argues that the 'evil of Gilgal is of a purely
cultic character...'
priests in general and their cultic activities (4.6-10). Both people and
priests shall be punished 'for their ways (derdkdwyand requited 'for
their deeds (ma'aldldwy(4.9), because 'they have left Yahweh to
observe [or to practice] fornication (lismdr zenuty(4.10). The specific
charges here concerning their 'ways' and their 'deeds' are difficult to
determine, but outside of a particular reading of Hosea's sexual lan-
guage, there is no indication that these sinful activities relate to any
putative fertility cult practices. It is more likely that it is the official cult
of sacrifice which is condemned here. The priests are said to 'feed upon
(yo'kelu) the sin of my [Yahweh's] people' (4.8). Priests, of course,
'feed upon' the sacrificial offerings; perhaps then it is the offerings
made at the cult which are stigmatized as sinful.
All of these allusions to the sin of people and priests are difficult to
place in context, but there is little there to force the conclusion that
apostasy or syncretistic fertility worship was the intended referent of
the oracles. This interpretation, however, is assumed in the commentar-
ies as vv. 4-12 are read in light of vv. 13-14.
Hosea 4.13-14 sets forth a scathing characterization of cultic practice
at the high places:
Upon the mountain tops they sacrifice,
and upon the hills they burn offerings,
under oak, poplar, and terebinth trees,
because the shade is pleasant.
Therefore your daughters commit fornication (tiznenah),
and your daughters-in-law commit adultery.
I will not punish your daughters
when they commit fornication (tiznenah),
nor your daughters-in-law when they commit adultery;
for they (m. pi.) go aside (yeparedu) with prostitutes (zonof),
and sacrifice with qedesot,50
and a people without discernment
will be thrown down.
This text has long been taken as primary evidence for the existence of
popular participation in an orgiastic fertility cult in Hosea's Israel. How-
ever, this interpretation of the text is itself a function of the controlling
assumption that such sex rituals did exist in this era. The prophet
charges that at or near the local sanctuaries, located on hill tops and
50. I have left qedesah (conventionally, 'cult prostitute') untranslated because of

questions relating to its meaning which are discussed below.
under shady trees, male worshippers 'go aside with prostitutes(zonot)

and sacrifice with qedesof.Sexual allusions are clearly present, as they
are throughout the book of Hosea. But does Hosea here finally leave
figurative language behind and speak literally and directly of the sins of
the people, as the commentators generally assume?
The interpretation of Hos. 4.13-14 as a literal description of popular
fertility cult rituals does not make sense on its own terms. Hosea 4.14a
clearly implies that non-marital sexual relations of daughters and daugh-
ters-in-law were an anathema to the eyes of the Israelite males; how
then could they tolerate female participation in an orgiastic cult or any
kind of bridal-rites, where their wives and daughters had sex with
strangers (Buss 1984: 735)? The only other possibility is that some
numbers of female cultic prostitutes—that is, qedesot—congregated at
the shrines and were available for ritual sex with the male worshippers.
But the common translation of qedesot as 'cultic prostitutes' relies
upon a process of circular reasoning that is founded upon the very ques-
tionable assumption that rituals of sacred prostitution were practiced in
Israel and Canaan. More likely qedesim and qedesot were some kind of
heterodox cultic personnel who were polemically associated with zonot
as part of a rhetoric of execration.51 Once the lack of evidence for the
practice of sacred prostitution in ancient Israel is seriously considered,
the meaning of the sexual innuendos in Hos. 4.14 becomes an open
question.
Actual sexual intercourse is not indicated in the text. Hosea says that
the men 'go aside' (yeparedii) with harlots and 'sacrifice'(yezabehu)
with qedesot (v. 14); these are not verbs of sexual activity. In one view,
the use of the piel verb prd ('divide', 'separate') may indicate that the
men go aside, that is away from the shrines to fornicate with the har-
lots.52 Such activities would then be commercial rather than cultic in
51. On the polemical characterization of certain cultic functionaries as zonot,

leading to a situation where qedesah and zonah could function as synonyms for each
other, see the discussion in Chapter 2 in the section on 'the sacred prostitution
hypothesis'. This explanation can account for the parallel appearances of qedesah
and zonah in Hos. 4.13-14, Gen. 38.20-23 and Deut. 23.18-19. Certainly one would
expect that if the qedesdt were indeed sacred prostitutes and if these cult personnel
were active at the shrines and temples of eighth-century Syria-Palestine, other
prophets such as Amos and Isaiah would also have made mention of the matter. But
rather, Hos. 4.14 is the only text in the prophetic corpus which makes reference to
qades, qedesah, qedesim or qedesot.
52. Thus Gruber reads 'I shall not take your daughters to task because they
nature, taking place in the proximity of the shrines, these being public
gathering places where prostitutes could easily find customers.53
Alternatively, the verb prd may refer to the dividing of the sacrificial
victim among the worshippers (Andersen and Freedman 1980, 370). In
the sacrificial ritual, the offering would be boiled and then divided
between the officiant (the priest) and the one making the offering. In
this case, one might translate 'the men divide with the zdnof (Andersen
and Freedman 1980: 370), that is, they divide the meat of the victim
and share it with the zdnot. But why would the men share the sacrificial
meat with prostitutes? More likely, the men would divide the meat with
the priests, who are here polemically termed zdnot, in keeping with the
metaphorical tenor of the entire pericope. These are the same priests
with whom they sacrifice and who are also polemically termed qedesot.
Zdnot ('prostitutes') and qedesot then stand as interchangeable, deroga-
tory characterizations of the local priests, with whom male worshippers
would make sacrifices and divide the meat. Who then are the tempting
harlots and qedesot leading the people astray but the priests who preside
over the sanctuaries?
In less colorful language, Hosea elsewhere dismisses the priestly cult
of sacrifice as simply pointless (Hos. 6.6, 12.11). For Hosea as for Amos
(4.4-5; 5.21-24), the sacrificial cult only has meaning or legitimacy in
relation to the wider sphere of socio-political activity. Acts of sacrifice
are contiguous with the social and economic structures within which
the wealth offered in sacrifice is gained. The cult and the socio-political
structure are not separate but overlapping and mutually defining spheres
of socio-symbolic activity. Therefore, Hosea's repeated invectives
against the bull icons, the priests, and the sanctuaries may convincingly
be read as an attack upon a whole arena of ritual activity which col-
laborates with unjust or illegitimate structures of political power
(Halpern 1987: 95).
fornicate...seeing that they themselves [their fathers] go in the company of pros-

titutes' (1986: 134).
53. As Gruber argues, 'Hos 4:14 does not indicate that qedesot were cultic
functionaries any more than Amos' denunciation of those who "lie down near every
altar upon garments taken in pledge" (Amos 2:8a) and of those who "drink wine
from fines in the temple of their gods" (Amos 2:8b) intimates that taking garments
in pledge and imposing fines on the economically vulnerable were cultic activities'
(1986: 134).
The Object ofHosea 's Anger

Hosea was an angry man. But he was not angry because the people of
Israel sought religious assurance that their fields and bodies would be
fruitful. Cultic reverence for the sacred power of fertility, gendered as
feminine and manifest in images of the female form and the sacred tree,
was not a foreign intrusion into Yahwistic faith; the feminine had
always been known as an essential dimension of divine power. Yahweh
was not only the God of History, but he who granted blessings 'of
breasts and womb' (Gen. 49.25b). Hosea's religion too is a 'fertility
religion' in which the blessings of the deity will be manifest in agri-
cultural abundance and fertile wombs.
Hosea was angry because an avaricious orientation to power which
dominated the politics of his day had endangered the very soul and
survival of his people. Because the official cultus was an arm of the
extant structures of power and corruption, Hosea denounced it as idola-
trous and doomed for destruction. Hosea's attack upon the cult and its
'fornications' therefore is not obviously about a critique of fertility
religion practices at all, but rather more likely addresses political prac-
tices which the symbolism of the cult upholds.
Chapter 4
COVENANT AND APOSTASY
If a syncretistic, lascivious fertility cult was not the object of Hosea's

prophetic critique, then what was? As biblical scholars begin to acknowl-
edge that there is precious little evidence to support the scholarly imagi-
nation of a steamy fertility cult in eighth-century Israel, some have
begun to suggest that the older paradigm for the interpretation of
Hosea's marriage metaphor is in need of revision. But in the process of
rethinking Hosea's marital imagery, a deeper layer of the standard
interpretive framework remains largely undisturbed: that is, the paired
assumptions that marriage in Hosea is a metaphor for the covenant
between Yahweh and Israel, and that adultery is a metaphor for apos-
tasy and the breaking of that covenant.
Two dissertations from the late 1980s by Elaine Adler (1989) and
Christina Bucher (1988) illustrate the persistance of these assumptions,
even as other elements of the dominant reading fall under critique.
Adler's and Bucher's research led them independently to reject the evi-
dence for any putative fertility cult as hypothetical and dubious. Instead
each argued that Hosea's marital imagery should be interpreted solely
within the context of the structural coincidence between Israel's patri-
archal social structure and the unique demands of Yahweh for exclusive
allegiance. For Adler,
the prophetic use of marriage and adultery was primarily influenced by
the natural suitability of this metaphor, rather than by any external
factors, i.e. the mythology or cultic practices of Israel's neighbors (1989:
380; emphasis added).
The 'natural suitability' of the metaphor is ascribed to the structural

similarities between the covenant relationship, with its demand for
exclusive allegiance to Yahweh, and the marital relationship in ancient
Israel, with its demand for exclusive fidelity on the part of the wife. In
4. Covenant and Apostasy 105
addition, Adler argues, the emotional and intimate nature of the human
marriage relationship fits well with Hosea's apprehension of the inti-
mate bond between Israel and its deity (Adler 1989: 42-92, 385-89).l
Thus, as the older framework of interpretation is torn down, its foun-
dations in covenantal theology are left undisturbed, and these founda-
tions offer a convenient, ready-made site for the construction of new
(or not so new) approaches to Hosea. The continued acceptance of this
interpretive foundation as an exegetical given rather than as a provi-
sional interpretative strategy has long functioned to underwrite the con-
sensus that Hosea's metaphor about 'chasing after lovers' constitutes a
polemic against cultic apostasy. By interrogating the necessary applica-
bility and 'natural suitability' of the categories of covenant and apostasy
for the interpretation of Hosea, we can begin to free ourselves from the
constraints of the reigning theological template and find some clues for
an alternative approach to Hosea's language of marriage and adultery.
Searching for the Covenant in Hosea

Implicit in nearly all discussions of Hosea's marital imagery is the
assumption that Hosea's metaphor of marriage and adultery figures the
covenantal relationship forged upon Mount Sinai, which Israel has now
broken. This view has been supported by attention to the parallels
between Hosea's marriage metaphor and the covenant metaphors of
love, jealousy and harlotry or fornication found in the Pentateuch, which
it is argued, served as the inspiration or source for Hosea (Fensham
1984; Weinfeld 1972; Cohen 1966; Hall 1980, 1982). A review of this
argument reveals that the parallels between the covenantal language of
the Pentateuch and Hosea's metaphorical language really tell us very
1. Anticipating Adler and Bucher, Gershon Cohen (1966) denied any connection
between Canaanite myth and Hosea's metaphor and proposed instead that the mar-
riage metaphor was a 'midrashic development' from the first commandment 'you
shall have no other gods before me' (1966: 5-6). Thus he saw Hosea's marital
imagery as indigenous and essential to ancient Israel's theology, with its command-
ment of exclusive obligation to Yahweh. Further, Cohen argued that the Song of
Songs represents an effluence of this Israelite understanding of the intimate and
exclusive relationship between a deity and a people. Taking the allegorical reading
of the Song as its originary meaning, Cohen read its poems as 'a dialogue of love'
between Yahweh and Israel, and as 'the most intimate of truths and the ultimate
form of theological expression' (1966: 14).
little about the relations of dependence between these texts or about

Hosea's intended meaning.
In Exodus, the covenantal relationship between Yahweh and Israel
forged at Sinai is depicted as a relationship of love ('hb) (Exod. 20.6)
and in Deuteronomy, love language characterizes both Yahweh's care
and concern for his people (Deut. 4.37; 7.13; 10.15; 23.5 [23.6]) and
reciprocally, the people's obligation to 'love' Yahweh (Deut. 6.5; 10.12;
11.1; see Moran 1963). Of course, where there is love, there is also the
potential for jealousy. The first commandment given in the Sinaitic code
forbids the worship of all other gods but Yahweh (Exod. 20.3; Deut.
5.7). Violations of this commandment arouse the wrath of Israel's
'jealous' god (Exod. 20.5; 34.14; Deut. 4.24; 5.9; 6.15; 32.16, 21; see
also Josh. 24.19, Nah. 1.2). The same root qn' is used elsewhere to
describe a husband's jealousy for his wife (Num. 5.14, 30). This image
of the jealous or jilted Yahweh, some suggest, helped inspire Hosea's
metaphor of marriage between the cuckolded Yahweh and the faithless
Israel (Fensham 1984; Cohen 1966; Weinfeld 1972: 81).
Also seen as evidence for this line of literary influence is the Penta-
teuch's use ofzhnterminology to characterize Israel's violations of the
terms of the covenant.2 In this view, Hosea's metaphor of Israel as the
'eset zenunim was shaped by the Pentateuch's conventional expression
for turning away from Yahweh,—zdndh 'ahare ('to fornicate after', or
more commonly, 'to whore after' or 'to play the harlot after')—refer-
ring either to apostasy (e.g. Exod. 34.15-16; Deut. 31.16; Lev. 20.5) or
other failures of faith or trust in Yahweh (Num. 14.33; 15.39).
These parallels between the Pentateuch's metaphors of love, jealousy
and fornication and Hosea's marital imagery do not prove however that
the Pentateuch's language of covenant served as a literary or theological
source for Hosea. How do we know whether Hosea is indebted to the
Pentateuch's language of covenant or whether the Pentateuch is indebted
to Hosea? There are no unambiguous lines of dependence in either
direction. On one hand, Hosea never mentions Sinai or Moses. On the
other hand, he does seem to be familiar with some of the sayings sur-
rounding the Sinai tradition; he plays upon the self-naming of God
in Exod. 3.14: 'anoki Id' 'ehyeh Idkem ('I am not "I am" to you') (Hos.
1.8c [1.9c]) and the name of his third child—Id' 'ammi ('Not My
2. See Bucher (1988) and Erlandsson (1980) for their surveys of the metaphori-
cal uses ofznhterminology in the Pentateuch and throughout the Hebrew Bible.
People')—resonates with the covenant language of Exod. 6.7: 'and I

will take you for my people'. But do such echoes of language prove
Hosea's dependence upon the Pentateuchal traditions, or could one
argue the opposite—that Hosea was a source for the Pentateuch?3
This seemingly minor problem concerning the ambiguous lines of
dependence between Hosea and the Pentateuch leads to a more serious
question for the conventional, theologically-oriented reading of Hosea:
how familiar was this eighth-century prophet with the theology
associated with the Sinai covenant? In this theology, berit ('covenant')
serves as a central theological concept to express the exclusive rela-
tionship between Yahweh and Israel which was conditional upon obedi-
ence to the law given at Sinai. Interpretation of Hosea habitually begins
with the assumption that his marital imagery is a metaphor for the
covenant, defined in this particular theological sense. Yet this cove-
nantal theology only gains full expression with the writings of the
deuteronomistic school, which postdate Hosea by at least 100 years.
How then can we be confident that Hosea was familiar with this coven-
tantal theology, or that this theology should be taken as the obvious
tenor of his metaphor of marriage?
There are only five occurrences of the term berit or 'covenant' in the
Book of Hosea, and of these, three concern relationships other than the
relationship between Yahweh and Israel. Hosea 10.4 and 12.2 employ
berit simply as a political term, referring to treaties with Egypt and
Assyria. Hosea 2.18 (2.20) employs berit in reference to a covenant of
peace which Yahweh will make between humans and the animals:
I will make a covenant (b erif) for them in that day, with the wild beasts
of the field, with the birds of the sky, and the creeping things of the earth.
As Claudia Camp observes, here berit alludes 'not to the Mosaic cove-
nant of law, but rather to a new and universal covenant which will
include all living creatures in an embrace of peace' (1985: 108). If berit
or covenant as in Sinai covenant was a key concept for Hosea and the
basis of his marital imagery, it is strange that he would use bent in
such divergent ways as to refer to a covenant of peace with the animals
or political covenants with other nations.
The other two occurrences of berit are found in Hos. 6.7 and 8.1;
these passages come closer to the deuteronomistic meaning of berit as
3. The latter possibility is the thesis of several scholars, including Lang (1983:
31); for a list of others who have broached this possibility, see Moran 1963: 77 n. 3.
an exclusive relationship between Yahweh and Israel. Hosea 6.7 uses

the idiom 'ab berit (to transgress the covenant) which is a conventional
expression for acts of breaking the covenant between Yahweh and
Israel:
At Adam (ke 'adarri), they transgressed the covenant ('ab e ru berif)\; there
they betrayed me. Gilead is a city of evildoers, tracked with blood. Like a
marauding band lying in wait, priests band together to murder on the
road to Shechem. How devious their doings!
Here Hosea refers to perhaps infamous crimes of treachery and vio-

lence at particular places—at Gilead, in the vicinity of Shechem, and
perhaps 'at Adam' (if one translates ke'dddm as a locative reference)—
acts which, in Hosea's view, constitute a transgression of the covenant
(Daniels 1990: 86; Nicholson 1986: 186). Hosea 8.1 uses the same
idiom for covenant breaking—'dberu beriti—this time with the paired
expression 'al-toratipasa 'u (rebelled against my law), bringing the text
closer than anywhere else to deuteronomistic formulations. Those who
argue that the covenant as a theological concept was a relatively late
development (e.g. Wellhausen 1973 [1878]: Perlitt 1969) argue that this
text must be a deuteronomistic addition. However, there is no sense of
discontinuity in the context of Hos. 8.1-3 to indicate that this verse was
added later. It is more likely that both Hos. 5.7 and 8.1 are pre-Deuter-
onomic references to a notion of covenant as descriptive of the rela-
tionship between Yahweh and Israel (Holt 1995: 54-56).
It may well be that Hosea himself coined the political terminology of
covenant-making as a theological concept. As Ernest Nicholson specu-
lates, the political metaphor of covenant may have 'suggested itself as
an alternative to his more familiar marriage metaphor' (1986: 187).
Both metaphors (covenant and marriage) signal solemn commitment,
which Israel's 'infidelity' or 'treachery' have betrayed.4 Of course,
Hosea may well have been drawing on a metaphor already in circula-
tion when he speaks of bent, but even so, there is no sound basis for
4. On this point, Nicholson highlights the parallel use of the verb bagad, to
deal or act treacherously, in both Hos. 5.7 and 6.7, to illustrate the parallel structure
between the metaphors of marriage and covenant (1986: 187). As Israel trans-
gressed (bagedu) against Yahweh by breaking the covenant at 'adam (6.7), so also
Israel transgressed (bagadu) against Yahweh by bearing alien children (5.7). Treach-
ery describes either the action of a wife who transgresses the marriage bond, or a
covenant partner who transgresses the covenant agreement.
concluding that the covenant concept emerged long before the time of
Hosea.
If critical scholarship is accurate in dating the promotion of berit as a
theological concept to the era of the deuteronomistic school (650-500
BCE), then it may well be anachronistic to project the classical theo-
logical concept of covenant into our reading of Hosea's eighth-century
marital imagery. Hosea may have been familiar with a notion of cove-
nant already in circulation, or Hosea might have coined the political
metaphor of covenant himself as an alternative to his more familiar mar-
riage metaphor. Either way, the reader should not uncritically assume
that Hosea's understanding of bent was equivalent to later deuterono-
mistic formulations.
It is therefore dubious to assume at the outset that Hosea chooses
marriage as a metaphor for covenant because of its 'natural suitability'.
The referents of the trope, that is, Israel, its god, and their relationship,
are not already given as they are within covenantal theology, but they
are in the process of being imagined into creation through the metaphors
Hosea offers.
It is clear that Hosea's marital imagery does speak in some manner to
the relationship between Yahweh and Israel, and one might choose to
describe this relationship as 'covenantal' in some sense. But there is
not just one concept of covenant at work in the Hebrew Bible. Joshua
24 for example, describes the forging of a covenant binding together
the tribes of Israel through their common sworn allegiance to Yahweh
and to a legal code, 'the book of the teaching of Elohim' (Josh. 24.26).
Here primary axis of relationship is not the relationship between people
and deity. Rather, covenant in Josh. 24 is a principle of solidarity among
the people, a social contract constituted in exclusive worship of Yahweh
and observance of his law. This more ancient concept of covenant,5 in
which the focus of concern is upon forging intertribal unity, is distinct
from that of the deuteronomistic school, in which covenant denotes a
relationship between two parties, Yahweh and Israel, which is condi-
tional upon obedience. In the deuteronomistic vision, Israel appears as
a coherent entity, whose unity is already ideologically secure, and the
key bond of relationship is forged not among the tribes, but between a
singular Israel and its god. This vision suggests a historical situation in
5. The antiquity of Josh. 24.24-28 is indicated by its setting at Shechem 'under

the oak in the sanctuary' (Josh, 24.26b); (worship 'under every green tree' was con-
demned in the deuteronomistic 'reform' movements).
which the federation of diverse social units has collapsed into a singu-
lar entity, and intertribal solidarity is no longer the problem for which
covenant is the solution.
Not surprisingly, the rise of this new meaning of covenant is coinci-
dent with the collapse of the territories of Israel and Judah into a small
territory surrounding Jerusalem. The meaning of Israel as a socio-politi-
cal entity and as a religious community had been profoundly altered in
the Assyrian conquest of Syria-Palestine. After the Assyrians destroyed
the kingdom of Israel and reduced the territory of Judah into a small
rump state surrounding Jerusalem, all that was left of 'Israel' was a
small and relatively homogeneous political entity. Subsequently, a proc-
ess of political and cultic centralization visible in the Josianic 'reform'
marked a new meaning of Israel, characterized not as a confederacy,
but as a unitary covenant partner with Yahweh.
Focusing their attention on the deuteronomistic vision of covenant,
commentators forget that at an earlier period, the language of covenant
had to do primarily with the dynamics of social bonding and social
identity.6 As Hosea's readers read marriage as a metaphor for covenant
in Hos. 1-2, they assume the model of covenant which is proffered in
Exod. 19-20, where the primary axis of relationship is between 'Israel',
understood as a singular entity, and its god. This theological formula-
tion of covenant implies a meaning of Israel as a coherent and unitary
entity; the structures of communal identity in Hosea's Israel are then
assumed as given, rather than interrogated as a potentially critical issue
which is at stake in Hosea's metaphoric language.
This theological template has profoundly determined the way that
nearly all commentators approach Hos. 1-2. As covenant implies a rela-
tionship between two parties, Israel and Yahweh, wife and husband,
6. On this point, see Oden's review of the history of scholarly approaches to

the biblical concept of covenant (1987b). Oden highlights the often neglected con-
tribution of sociologists of religion such as Robertson Smith, Weber and Durkheim,
for whom covenant was an institution which constituted the essence of Israel's
social contract and made possible the solidarity of the diverse tribes of Israel, aligned
together as the people of Yahweh. While a sociological orientation to covenant has
continued to inform many studies (e.g. Mendenhall 1954a, 1954b; Moran 1963;
McCarthy 1978), Oden finds that most of those approaches popular today abstract
the meaning of covenant from 'any sense of mutuality, any sense of social bond' and
instead take up 'a sort of literary criticism at wide remove from the contextual, tra-
dition-historical research prompted by the methods of Smith, Durkheim, and Weber'
(Oden 1987b: 440).
scholarly interest consequently becomes fixated upon the husband-wife

relationship as the hermeneutical key of the trope. In the process, the
children disappear as critical constituents of Hosea's metaphorical
language, and the woman is restricted in the scholarly imagination to
her role as the wayward wife, thus eclipsing any possible metaphorical
resonances carried by her role as mother.
Further, as the theological concept of covenant focuses the reader's
attention upon the vertical axis of relationship between Israel and
Yahweh, it tends to divert attention away from other axes of sacred
meaning which were embedded within human networks of social rela-
tionship, material production, exchange systems, and the distribution of
social or political power in Hosea's world. These relationships were
probably more definitive of the sacral meaning of community in early
and monarchic Israel than was the theological ideal of covenant, and
must be considered as active constituents shaping the inspiration of
Hosea's metaphoric language.
As Marcel Mauss argued in The Gift(1967), systems of exchange,
mutuality and reciprocity, which are themselves productive of intima-
cies and communities and thus of human worlds, are also loci for the
sacred; that is, the sacred is manifest in the exchanges which bind
human beings together in community. Long's notion of religion as an
'imagination of matter' builds on Mauss' thesis. Matter, for Long, refers
not only to the forms of the material world (such as mountains, sky and
earth) which are generative of the forms of religious consciousness (as
was explored by Eliade [1974]), but also to 'the relationships, contacts,
and exchanges between and among human beings and between human
beings and all other forms of life and meaning' which also are the
material contexts for the apprehension and articulation of sacralities
(Long 1991: 15-16). To think about ancient Israelite religion from this
perspective, it is necessary to step back from the theological constructs
of covenant and ethical monotheism and attend instead to the ways in
which the modalities of sacrality are inextricably bound up with the
structures of human solidarity and social life, particularly with the
linked meanings of land and kinship which defined the world from which
Hosea's metaphor emerged. Such an approach, as will be tentatively
pursued below, will suggest an alternative context for thinking about
the concerns implicated in Hosea's metaphors of marriage and family
life.
Family Religion in Ancient Israel

In the decentralized, agrarian economy of Israel's highland villages,
the landowning, family household—the bet 'ab—was the basic social
unit and the primary locus of economic production and consumption.
Economic practices were embedded within the ongoing life of the
family household, and production was geared for local consumption,
not for commodity exchange on an open market. Exemplifying what
M. Sahlins has called the 'familial (or domestic) mode of production'
(1968, 1972),7 this socio-economic system provides a beginning point
for thinking about the ideological and religious constructs which made
sense of human existence in this time and place.
As may be surmised from its name, the structure of the bet 'ab—
literally, 'the house of the father'—was patrilineal and patrilocal,
giving highest ideological value to the continuity of the father's name
and 'seed' across the generations. But because the translation 'house of
the father' may allow one to imagine this social unit as analogous to a
modern patriarchal nuclear family, Meyers prefers to render bet 'ab as
'family household' which more clearly highlights its character as an
extended or compound family, inclusive of elder parents, their children,
married sons and daughters-in-law and their children, servants, animals
and property.
Such compound or extended families are not very common in human
societies, given that the potential for interpersonal strife intensifies
when many adults share the same domestic space. Thus they tend to be
found in contexts where labor requirements are so demanding that a
nuclear family can not easily survive on its own (Meyers 1997: 18).
Such was the case in the arid hill country of Iron Age Palestine, where
farmers were faced with short windows of opportunity for the labor-
intensive tasks of sowing and harvesting, along with the unrelenting,
sunup to sundown round of daily tasks such as tending livestock, secur-
ing water and preparing food, and finally, the intermittent but back-
breaking labor demands involved in the creation and maintenance of
terraces and cisterns. The labor requirements necessary for survival in
this place could only be met by the collective efforts of a sizeable
group, that is, by the extended family household (Meyers 1997: 20).
7. See Jobling (1991), Meyers (1988: 142) and Dever (1991: especially n. 20;
also 1992: 551) concerning the applicability of Sahlins's model to ancient Israel.
In this agrarian context, where survival depended upon corporate

effort and interdependence, personal identity did not coalesce around
individual goals and accomplishments, but rather was grounded in one's
participation in the shared aims of the family household (Meyers 1997:
21-22). Thus, rather than a group of related individuals, this family
household was a bonded collectivity oriented around the substantial
challenges of corporate survival in a marginal agricultural zone. The
household could best meet this challenge by harnessing and protecting
the resources essential for its survival—labor and land (Meyers 1997:
19).
The arable lands upon which family households depended were
defined not in commodity terms as a form of capital, but as nahalah
('inheritance'), inseparable from the meaning and integrity of the bet
'db itself. These lands were held within the patrilineage, with inheri-
tance passing from father to son, and their sale or transfer outside of
the immediate kinship group was prohibited.8 Biblical laws concerning
the inalienability of land, along with the supporting practices of levirate
marriage (Deut. 25.5-6; Ruth 4.10), the redemption of debts and jubilee
years (Lev. 25) are not idealized projections of a time-that-never-was,
but rather were practical customs designed 'to prevent group/land fis-
sion' and thus enhance the chances for survival of the family household
(Meyers 1997: 20).9 These practices reflect the realities of a social
8. For discussion of property rights in ancient Israel, see Dearman (1988: 62-
77) and E.W. Davies (1989: 358-63). C. Wright also provides a helpful introduction
to the topic, with emphasis upon the theological dimensions of laws of land inaliena-
bility (1990: 55-65). For relevant biblical texts, see Lev. 25.10, 23-28, Num. 27.1-
11, Ruth 4.3-6, 1 Kgs21.1-4,Mic. 2.2b and Jer. 32.6-12.
9. That these laws were honored over generations is suggested by the absence
of any reference to any sale of land outside the kinship group in the Hebrew Bible
or in the epigraphic evidence. By contrast, there are abundant epigraphic records
relating to the commercial sale of land in Canaanite and other neighboring societies
(C. Wright 1990: 56-57). Further evidence of this pattern of land use is to be found
in the absence of any legal provision in the Hebrew Bible regarding the sale of land
(C. Wright 1990: 56-57). There appears to have been no legitimate means of trans-
ferring land except by inheritance in early Israel. Whether this continued to be the
case in the monarchical period is unclear; as Nash observes, the prevailing form of
land tenure in a given society is pragmatically a geographical expression of its social
structure (1967: 8). The principle of inalienability presupposes a socio-economic
setting in which the family structure is the basic unit of production and consump-
tion. Where more complex, urbanized socio-economic forms predominate, land tends
world where the survival and identity of the family household was
inextricably linked to its possession of its patrimonial lands.
Even with the establishment of the monarchical state and the rising
power of urban centers, most Israelites continued to live within agricul-
tural communities where the bet 'ab remained the basic social unit.
While many features of social life and family law were altered by the
social transformations of the monarchical era, the basic patterns and
values of early Israel's kinship-based, agrarian, social world remained
vital and relevant (Meyers 1997, 41).
At this domestic level of Israelite social life, an orientation to lineage
and land defined a world of sacred meaning and order. This mode of
religious orientation was most clearly manifest in the beliefs and prac-
tices of ancestor worship (Brichto 1973; Bloch-Smith 1992). The Isra-
elite family was a ritual unit, centered around worship of its teraphim or
family gods (van der Toorn 1990). These gods, also occasionally called
'elohiml° were ancestral spirits, who provided protection, blessings
(including the blessing of fertility),11 and counsel (through divination)
to the living family. The happiness of the dead, and therefore their bles-
sings, depended upon their proper burial within the ancestral holdings
and upon the continuing presence of their legitimate male progeny on
that land.12
to be treated as another form of capital. Those in power and who make the laws do
not necessarily preserve now 'obsolete' inheritance rights to land in their legal code.
Thus the widespread dispossessions in eighth-century Israel may have been legal,
despite community pressures to prevent them and prophetic condemnations against
them, as Dearman suggests (1988: 63-77).
10. This term for the departed, >e'lohim ('divine ones') (1 Sam. 28.13; Isa. 8.19)
or 'elohe 'abiw ('divine ancestors') indicates the divine status of the dead. See
Bloch-Smith (1992: 109) for a full list of the many other biblical names for the
dead, which included qedosim ('holy ones')(Ps. 16.3) and yidde'onim ('knowing
ones')(Isa. 8.19).
11. The presence of pillar-based female figurines, (whose forms suggest abun-
dance in fertility and lactation), in many Judean tombs may suggest that the power
of the dead was invoked to promote the fertility of the living, and hence the continu-
ance of the family line (Bloch-Smith 1992: 97-100).
12. Brichto suggests that the biblical commandment to honor one's father and
mother may refer specifically to this obligation of children to maintain ownership of
the family property with its tomb, and to maintain the ancestral cult. The institution
of levirate marriage, wherein a man bears responsibility to provide a son for his
dead brother, may also be understood in this context (1973: 11-22).
The family's control of its nahalah was the basis for an ongoing
relationship between the living and the dead. The presence of the
ancestor's bones in the soil bound the bet 'db to its land and legally
marked the family's perpetual claim to the land.13 The land could not
be sold because it did not belong to the present generation alone, but to
the dead ancestors and unborn descendants to follow (Brichto 1973: 9).
The bond between the bet 'db and its nah aldh was therefore an intimate
and sacred relationship.14
The bet 'db did not exist in isolation, but survived in mutual inter-
dependence with other residential units within its locality or village.
The labor-intensive demands of highland agriculture called for the forg-
ing of wider sodalities based in networks of reciprocity and labor
exchange (Hopkins 1983: 191-92). Such sodalities, designated by the
term mispdhot—variously translated as 'kinship groups', 'lineages',
'extended family networks', or 'clans'15—were organized around bonds
13. The ancestral tomb or grave monument served as a physical marker of the
family's claim to its land (Bloch-Smith 1992: 111). This function of the ancestor
cult is especially clear where burial markers functioned as boundary markers
(1 Sam. 10.2; Josh. 24.30) (Bloch-Smith 1992: 132).
14. This religious orientation to the family, the ancestors and the land in early
Israel has much in common with the general pattern of domestic religion throughout
the ancient Mediterranean world and within Indo-European culture. Brichto's analy-
sis of ancient Israelite domestic religion draws upon De Coulanges's study of The
Ancient City which discusses the organic interrelationships between domestic relig-
ion, customs and laws governing the family and notions of property rights in the
ancient world (1882: 76-93). De Coulanges argues that in antiquity, the family
hearth was also an altar of fire in which offerings were made to the family's par-
ticular protective deities. The presence of the altar in a place defined that place as
the property of the familial god or gods. 'Thus the sacred fire takes possession of the
soil and makes it its own. It is the god's property. And the family, which through
duty and religion remains grouped around its altar, is as much fixed to the soil as the
altar itself. The idea of domicile follows naturally. The family is attached to the
altar, the altar is attached to the soil; an intimate relation, therefore, is established
between the soil and the family' (1882: 78-79).
15. The best translation of the term mispahah is debated. As the term clearly
designates an intermediary level of social organization between bet 'ab and tribe, it
has often been translated as 'clan', though recently many argue that the term 'lineage'
is perhaps a closer approximation. In current anthropological usage, a 'lineage' is a
descent group whose common ancestry can be traced, whereas a 'clan' is a higher-
order social group whose genealogical connections are posited for political purposes
of kinship affiliation and geographical proximity. This wider social

network provided the essential societal framework for military defense,
political administration and judicial arbitration in the highlands, espe-
cially prior to the rise of the monarchy. The root of the term mispahdh
may be spk, which in its verbal form means 'to pour out' or 'to shed'
(water, blood or semen), pointing to the bonds of social solidarity
forged through the politics of sexual alliances and the code of blood
vengeance which were essential to its meaning and structure (Gottwald
1979: 257). The language of kinship, whether real or fictive, symbol-
ized the structures of solidarity and mutuality within which the families
of the mispahdh were bound together.
At this level of Israelite social life, rituals of sacrifice to common
clan ancestors or a local manifestation of Yahweh16 served to fortify
and sacralize group solidarities within the extended kinship network.
Attendance at least some of these rituals was obligatory for all mem-
bers of the mispahdh (1 Sam 20.6, 29; Bloch-Smith 1992: 124). The
setting for such rituals was the village sanctuary or high place, located
even where they cannot be demonstrated, and may in fact be fictive (Stager 1985:
260). (Thus the English term 'clan' is closer to the Hebrew terms sebet or matteh
which designate a wider level of social organization where kinship claims were as
often as not fictive.) Yet while 'lineage' may be a better translation of mispahah
than 'clan', it still fails to specify the localized character of the mispahah; its
membership was probably defined not only by kinship affiliation (real or fictive) but
also by residence; in fact, Meyers argues that the mispahah was basically cotermi-
nous with the village community (1997: 13), and prefers such renderings as 'kinship
group' or 'protective association of families' (1997: 37).
For further discussion on the mispahah, see Westbrook (1991: 20-21), Gottwald
(1979: 257-70) and de Geus (1976: 137-44). For discussion of Israel's multi-leveled
social structure in general, see Stager (1985: 18-23).
16. This reference to 'local manifestations' of Yahweh requires explanation. On
one hand, Yahweh was certainly Israel's 'high god' whose meaning transcended
tribal boundaries and regional loyalties. As Sahlin's points out, 'the high gods are
tribal gods, spirits of everyone, and concerned with things that happen to everyone'
(Sahlins 1968: 18). However, within the cultic practice of local communities, such a
transcendent notion of Yahweh was unstable. Instead of an overarching high god,
local communities worshipped local manifestations of Yahweh, such as is suggested
from textual references to 'Yahweh of hosts at Shiloh' (1 Sam. 1.3), 'Yahweh in
Hebron' (2 Sam. 15.7) or 'Yahweh of Samaria' (from the Kuntillet Ajrud inscrip-
tions). As the political and social order was localized around regional and kinship-
based networks of association, so also religion was primarily a local phenomenon,
and part of a more general and primary orientation to place.
perhaps in proximity to a sacred tree or well. The ritual importance of

these decentralized sacred places as sites for sacrifice and gathering
suggests a mode of human significance grounded in the continuities of
communities in particular geographic locales. One might argue that the
religious life of the mispdhah was spun of the same threads of meaning
that defined the religious life of the bet 'db—kinship ties and connec-
tion to land or place. The solidarity of the immediate or extended family,
the reciprocities between the living and the dead, and the intimacies of
relationship between human groups and their lands were essential nodes
in the structures of human meaning and sacrality that defined the reli-
gious world of the Israelite villagers.
Beyond the mispahot was the broader sphere of social organization of
the tribe (sebet or matteh). The tribes functioned as regional associations
of kinship groups which shared a common culture, history and terri-
tory, and which articulated this sense of common identity through a
story of common ancestry (Miller and Hayes 1986: 92). But the tribe
itself was not a clearly defined political entity.17 In early Israel, effec-
tive political power and judicial authority resided not with the tribe, but
in the clans and lineages (Miller and Hayes 1986: 91; de Geus 1976:
156). The most fundamental structures of human orientation and social
power resided in the family and lineage associations.
Given the social and symbolic centrality of the patrilineal family in
Israel, it is not surprising to find that it provided a root metaphor or
model for thinking about the structure and meaning of all levels of
social organization (Malamat 1973).18 The term bet 'db could designate
any of the widening spheres of social organization constitutive of
17. The tribe may have been principally a territorial designation (de Geus 1976:
134, 144-45; cf. Whitelam 1979: 43), the boundaries of which were roughly denned
by geographical, linguistic and historical distinctions (de Geus 1976: 150). There is
certainly no clear evidence that the tribes were bound together in any sort of formal
federation or league, only that temporary inter-tribal alliances were formed for
defensive purposes, as the legends from Judges suggest. Extant tribal genealogies in
the biblical texts do not even agree on the identity of the twelve. The story of a
united league of the 'twelve' tribes may well have been a monarchic, perhaps even
Davidic, invention which served various political purposes (Coote and Ord 1989:
36; Gottwald 1979: 358-86).
18. The use of familial metaphors for social organization may be found in many
ancient Near Eastern societies and in tribal societies generally; see Malamat (1973)
who discusses patterns of socio-symbolic organization in the ancient Near East in
relation to the lineage systems of African tribal societies.
Israelite society—family, lineage (or clan), tribe, and even beyond this
to the idea of the people as a whole (Gottwald 1979: 287-91). The
people were called bene-Israel ('sons of Israel') or sibte-hrael ('tribes
of Israel'), Israel (Jacob) being mythically the 'father' of the whole,
and the whole nation being as it were one bet 'db.
Like the center pole that holds up the tent, the landholding 'house of
the father' was the economic, social, religious and ideological center of
the 'house of Israel'. If the reader of Hosea wishes to consider the
religious meaning of human community in eighth-century Israel, then
the central symbolism of the family seems more immediately relevant
than the possibly anachronistic concept of covenant. In Hosea's time,
the patrilineal landholding family household provided the basic orien-
tational structure within which these people defined their identity and
situated themselves in relation to sacrality. But this structure of human
orientation was vulnerable to the forces of socio-political change pre-
cipitated by the reopening of an interregional market economy and
coordinate internal transformations of highland society. And as some
have suggested, it is these forces of economic change and social frag-
mentation that merit the name 'baalim' in Hosea's oracles, as shall be
seen below.
The Case of the Missing Baalim

As marriage in Hosea is assumed as a metaphor for covenant, so also
adultery has appeared self-evidently as a metaphor for cultic apostasy.
But several clues suggest that the woman's pursuit of her 'lovers' of
Hos. 2 is not necessarily a transparent sign for the worship of deities
other than Yahweh, but rather may refer to 'illicit liaisons' of a political
and/or economic nature.
Hosea's references to the woman's 'baals' and 'lovers' have led
scholars to assume that popular polytheistic practices or Baal worship
were a prevalent phenomenon in Hosea's time; this assumed scenario
of rampant polytheism is then taken as the historical key for interpreting
Hosea's metaphor. The circular reasoning produces conclusions such
as Helmer Ringgren's that 'the entire Book of Hosea is a bitter polemic
against the worship of Baal' (1966: 267). But the picture of rampant
polytheism in Hosea's Israel lacks collaboration from other sources.
Apart from the formulaic condemnations of the deuteronomistic histo-
rian, there is no strong evidence to suggest that non-Yahwistic cults
were popular in Hosea's Israel (Hayes 1990). It is certainly striking that

neither Amos nor Micah, Hosea's prophetic contemporaries, exhibit con-
cern about or even awareness of polytheistic practices in eighth-century
Israel.19 For Amos, Isaiah and Micah, writing prior to the rise of
deuteronomistic influences, the sins of Israel and Judah which offend
Yahweh are consistently those which involve violations in the order of
human relationships.
The book of Kings also offers little evidence of rampant Baal wor-
ship in eighth-century Israel apart from the foreign imports of Ahab
and Jezebel in ninth-century Samaria. After the Jehu's coup against the
Omrids, which eliminated the worship of the Tyrian Baal, nothing
further is reported concerning 'Baalism' under Jeroboam II and his suc-
cessors. Only one text (2 Kgs 17.15-17) claims that polytheistic practices
predicated the fall of Israel, yet this catalogue of cultic offenses bears
little relation to anything else that is narrated about the northern
kingdom throughout Kings. Charges of apostasy are characteristic of the
deuteronomistic framework of historical causality and its preoccupation
with cultic matters. 2 Kings 17.15-17 therefore can hardly be taken as a
reliable indicator of religious practice in eighth-century Israel. No other
text in Kings corroborates the thesis that eighth-century Israel was rife
with polytheistic practices.20
19. Only Amos 5.26, as it reads in the MT, seems to refer to polytheistic prac-
tices. This reading arose early in the history of the transmission of this text; in the
Masoretic vocalization skt and kyn are read sikkut and kiyyun, imitating the vowels
in the words siqqtis and/or gillul, terms which mean 'detestable, impure thing' and
'idol' (Hayes 1988: 176). Thus the RSV translates: 'you shall take up Sakkuth your
king, and Kaiwan your star-god, your images, which you made for yourselves'.
Hayes proposes an alternate vocalization in which the text does not refer to
Assyrian deities, but to Israelite/Yahwistic symbols of royal and divine authority:
'And did you not bear the canopy of your king, and the palanquin of your images,
the star-standard of your God, which you have made for yourselves?' (Hayes 1988:
170, 176-78).
20. Few biblical scholars have taken seriously the lack of evidence for rampant
Baal worship to corroborate the prevailing interpretation of Hos. 1-3. Y. Kaufmann
(1960), followed by Ginsberg (1971), stand out as notable exceptions. Given his
conviction that monotheism was characteristic of Israel from its beginnings, Kauf-
mann found it impossible to believe that polytheistic practice proliferated in
Hosea's Israel. For Kaufmann, there was 'one period of Israel's history when "days
of the Baals" were publicly celebrated: the reign of Jezebel' (1960: 369). Thus Kauf-
mann sought to resolve the incongruity by separating Hos. 1-3 from the remainder
of the book, arguing that these first three chapters were the work of an anonymous
Neither does the extra-biblical evidence lend support to a scenario of

widespread polytheistic practice in eighth-century Israel. In seeking a
more objective source of information than the biblical texts for
religious practice during the monarchical period, Jeffrey Tigay (1986;
1987) studied the epigraphic evidence, and particularly the onomasti-
con (records of personal names) dating from the eighth century down
through the fall of Judah.21 Tigay reasoned that if polytheism had been
prevalent in eighth-century Israel, one could expect that a large per-
centage of non-Yahwistic theomorphic names would be extant in the
onomasticon. But in his study of these epigraphic materials, Tigay finds
that out of more than 592 extant theomorphic names, 94.1 per cent are
Yahwistic names, while only 5.9 per cent of these are derived from
names of other gods or goddesses (1986: 15).22 Baal is only lauded in 6
names (1.01 per cent of the total), and neither Asherah or Ashtoreth or
Anat appear at all (1986: 13-14).23
Other epigraphic evidence indicative of religious loyalties, such as
formulas of salutation in letters, votive inscriptions and prayers for
blessings also indicate that 'deities other than Yahweh were not widely
regarded by Israelites as sources of beneficence, blessing, protection
and justice' (Tigay 1986: 37).24 Particularly surprising to Tigay is the
ninth-century prophet. This solution however ignores the many thematic and literary
connections between Hos. 1-3 and Hos. 4-14 which suggest that the book is largely
the work of one author (see Andersen and Freedman 1980; Buss 1969).
21. In the ancient Semitic world, religious beliefs were reflected in the names
people bore. Often a name would be constituted by a construct phrase describing
their bearers as a servant of the deity, or a predicate phrase which praised the great-
ness or the graciousness of one's deity (Tigay 1986: 1).
22. These percentages culled from inscriptions are comparable to the percentage
of Yahwistic to non-Yahwistic theomorphic names found in the Hebrew Bible: 89
per cent to 11 per cent (Tigay 1986: 17-18).
23. Independently of Tigay, J. Fowler (1988) has also studied the onomasticon
and has arrived at similar conclusions. Fowler finds a total of 9 names compounded
with Baal, which are distributed among 15 persons in the Hebrew Bible and 14
persons in the extra-biblical material. Her analysis of each of these names raises the
question of whether even these few Hebrew names that are compounded with Baal
can be taken as evidence of religious syncretism in monarchical Israel and Judah
(1988: 54-63). Four of these 9 names do not even permit the definite conclusion that
they contain the theophoric element Baal (1988: 56-57) and in all of the remaining
names, it is as possible that Baal refers not to a Canaanite god, but means simply
'Lord', an alternative title for Yahweh (1988: 57).
24. These sources of epigraphic data on the religion of Israel and Judah reflect
'indifference' he discovers to any transnational deities of natural fertil-

ity, such as'the sun god, rain gods, and fertility gods' (1986: 38). Along-
side of Baal, these are the type of nature deities who are so often
presumed as the foil for Hosea's sexual imagery.
The notable absence of any anthropomorphic idols among the mate-
rial remains from archeological excavations of Israelite and Judean
shrines provides further evidence for an essentially henotheistic Yah-
wism in Hosea's time. While Yahweh had strong objections to iconic
representation, other gods in this region did not; if worship of non-
Yahwistic deities was widespread in eighth-century Israel, one would
expect more archeological confirmation of such practice in the form of
iconic images of deities. But in contrast to Bronze Age sites which
yield an abundance of male and female figurines which clearly represent
deities, in early Israelite sites, male figurines become quite rare (Ahl-
strom 1984; Dever 1983: 574)25 and female figurines appear stripped of
any divine attributes or insignias (Tadmor 1982). This clear discontinu-
ity in the material remains of anthropomorphic figurines lends support
to the textual evidence, indicating that the prohibition on anthropomor-
phic divine images was a feature of Israelite religion in its early stages
(Hendel 1988: 367-68).
Hosea repeatedly inveighs against the making and worshipping of
idols (pasil) or images ('"sabirn) (Hos. 4.17; 8.4; 10.5-6; 11.2; 13.2;
14.3 [14.4]; 14.8 [14.9]), indicating that carved images were included
within Israelite religious practice in his time. Micah and Isaiah also con-
demn such images, and fortell of their destruction (Mic. 1.7; Isa. 10.10-
11). But these images made of stone or metal are never clearly iden-
tified as representations of other gods,26 and may well have been the
primarily the beliefs and practices of the upper strata of society, i.e. those involved
in trade and interregional communication. 11 might be argued then that the presumed
polytheism was largely to be found among the lower classes. However the deuter-
onomistic condemnations of polytheism focus pointedly upon the royal court, so
that it is 'precisely among the upper classes and circles close to the royal court that
one would expect to find pagan names' and adherence to deities other than Yahweh
(Tigay 1986: 19).
25. One exception is a seated anthropomorphic deity figure with outstretched
arms (representing either Yahweh or Baal) found at Hazor under the sanctuary floor
in an undisturbed layer. This idol probably was not visible to worshippers, serving
instead as a foundation deposit under the shrine (Ahtstrom 1984: 12).
26. Cf. Isa. 21.9b where the prepositional phrase 'of her gods' follows the term
calf icons of the Yahwistic cult, as is indicated by Hos. 8.4-6 and 10.5.
Such tauromorphric icons could be found not only at Bethel and Dan,
but at high places and shrines throughout the kingdom, as is evidenced
by the splendid bronze bull statue (dimensions 17.5 cm by 12.4 cm)
unearthed at an Israelite hilltop cult place in what was Manasseh (Mazar
1982).27 Might such Yahwistic bull icons, for which we do have clear
material evidence, have been the idols to which Hosea objected? If so,
then Hosea was not attacking heterodox practices, but the golden or
bronze calf icons which stood in official Yahwistic shrines throughout
the kingdom. These shrines and the images they housed served to sanc-
tify the power of the state; therefore in attacking these, Hosea was chal-
lenging the complicity of the official cult in legitimating the political
and economic practices of the state and its ruling elites.
Baal and the Baalim in Hosea

By a process of elimination it appears that the book of Hosea remains
the only eighth-century source which apparently attests to 'rampant'
polytheism in the northern kingdom. Yet even here, there is little which
insists that polytheistic worship was Hosea's prime foil. References to
Baal or the baalim are actually relatively scarce in the book of Hosea—
the singular term Baal occurs four times (2.8; 2.16; 9.10; 13.1)28 and
the plural baalim three times (2.13, 17; 11.2)—and overall, these refer-
ences do not present a clear or compelling picture of popular Baal
worship in eighth-century Israel.
First, the supposedly sharp distinction between Yahweh and Baal
may be more apparent to later commentators than it was to Hosea's
'images' in reference to the images of the Babylonian gods: 'Fallen, fallen is Baby-
lon; and all the images of her gods (pesile 'eloheha) he has smashed upon the
ground'.
27. The association of Yahwism with bovine imagery was widespread in the
central highlands. In Judah, the bull image served as an icon for Yahweh in the
context of the royal cult, as is evidenced by a royal seal impression from a palace at
Ramat Rachel to the south of Jerusalem, dating from the Iron II period. On the stamp is
a bull figurine with a sun disc between its horns. As Yahweh had assimilated into
himself characteristics of a solar deity in Iron II Judah, it seems likely that the bull
on the stamp represents Yahweh and not Baal (Ahlstrom 1984: 16).
28. Some translators would include Hos. 7.16 in this list. E.g. the RSV reads here
'They turn to Baal...' This reading assumes that yasubu Id' 'al (the meaning of
which is unclear) is corrupt and should be restored to yasubu laba 'al.
contemporaries. One of these references to Baal indicates that in Hosea's

time, Baal could be understood as an alternative title for Yahweh: 'You
will not call me "My Baal" again', says Yahweh to Israel (Hos. 2.16
[2.18]). It seems then that his audience did not conceive of Baal and
Yahweh as two distinct and rival deities, and that Baal could be another
way of speaking about Yahweh.
Second, 'baal' in Hosea may be an idiom for 'idol', specifically a
Yahwistic bull icon. In Hos. 2.8 [2.10], the prophet condemns the use
of silver and gold, which had been given by Yahweh, 'for Baal'
(laba 'a/). This passage is often taken to mean that the people have given
silver and gold as offerings to the god Baal; however usually only
agricultural products and livestock (that which has life) were given as
oblations, not silver and gold (at least in the Yahwistic cult) (Andersen
and Freedman 1980: 244). A better interpretation is perhaps that the
silver and gold have been used for the making of a baal, that is, a god
or an idol (Andersen and Freedman 1980: 242-44; Wolff 1974: 37) as
in Hos. 8.4b: 'their silver and gold they fashioned into images ('"sabim)
for themselves' (cf. Hos. 13.2; Ezek. 16.17; Exod. 32.1-4). These idols
made of silver and gold are a cipher for 'the calf of Samaria' (Hos.
8.5), that is, the golden calf of the state cult. The point of this passage
then may well be 'an assault upon the manufacture of icons' (Halpern
1987: 113-14 n. 87; see also Zeitlin 1984: 222).
Third, where Hosea clearly uses the term 'Baal' to name a deity other
than Yahweh, the reference is not to some generic fertility or rain god,
but to the 'lord' or deity of Peor—Baal Peor (Hos. 9.10 and 13.1;
Andersen and Freedman 1980: 326). Evocation of this specific but other-
wise unnamed deity of the Midianites recalls memory of some sin in
Israel's past. In Hos. 9.10, the incident at Baal-Peor is recalled as a
time when the Israelites consecrated themselves to 'shame' (boset).29
A possible second allusion to the episode at Baal Peor may be found in
Hos. 13.1, where the prophet recalls some sin of Ephraim: 'and he
incurred guilt (wayye'sam) at Baal (baba'al) and died'. Clearly, the
sin here is something which has already transpired, after which the
nation (Ephraim) has died; but what is that sin? Many translators read
wayye 'Sam baba 'al as 'he incurred guilt through Baal', and suggest per-
haps that this text refers to Israel's worship of Jezebel's Baal under the
29. RSV reads "they consecrated themselves to Baal', on the basis that 'shame'
often serves as a euphemism for Baal.
Omrids. But Andersen and Freedman argue that the preposition b is

nowhere else used with the root 'sm ('to incur guilt') to identify an
accomplice in sin. Instead they suggest that the b in baba 'al is locative,
reading then that this guilt is incurred 'at Baal', that is, at Baal Peor
(1980:630).
Taking these two possible references to Baal Peor together, it seems
that for Hosea the episode at Baal Peor is emblematic of Israel's sin;
this sin is somehow evoked by reference to a traditional story concern-
ing an inappropriate mixing and intermarrying of peoples at the mythic
moment of Israel's origins.30 Rather than solving the question of Hosea's
sexual imagery, these references to Baal Peor extend the riddle so as to
include within it this much older episode of Israel's 'fornication'.
Thus of Hosea's four references to 'Baal', none clearly points to the
worship of Baal as a 'Canaanite' fertility deity. Hosea castigates Israel
for their participation in the cult of Baal-Peor, the deity of the Midia-
nites (Hos. 9.10; 13.1), he enjoins Israel not to use Baal as a title for
Yahweh (Hos. 2.16 [2.18]), and he condemns the use of silver and gold
for (a) baal (an idol) (Hos. 2.8 [2.10]), which may well be an assault
upon the calf image at Bethel.
This leaves for consideration the text's three references to the plural
baalim (Hos. 2.13, 17 [2.15, 19]; 11.2). Several ways of understanding
these baalim have been proposed. Given the possible use of 'baal' as a
designation for an idol, it is possible that 'baalim' refers to multiple
idols, as is suggested by Hos. 11.2, where condemnation of those who
'kept sacrificing to the baalim' appears in parallel with 'burning incense
to idols' (Zeitlin 1984: 222). These idols or baalim might be identified
as the calves which were installed at the national sanctuaries, and per-
haps specifically the ones installed at Bethel;31 in this view, the thrust
30. The episode at Baal Peor (Num. 25) is commonly interpreted through the
paradigm of sacred prostitution (e.g. Mendenhall 1973: 111-12; Pope 1977: 217;
Pedersen 1926: 473). Cf. Hooks (1985: 109-18) who argues that the expression 'to
play the harlot' (Num. 25.1) does not refer to sexual rites but to 'spiritual harlotry'
in a figurative sense (Hooks 1985: 115). The verb 'yoke' (smd) in Num. 25.5 does
not usually carry sexual connotations, and probably refers here to Israel joining or
attaching itself to an apostate cult (BDB, 855). The intercourse between an Israelite
man and a Midianite woman which Phineas so rudely interrupted (Num. 25.7-8)
appears in a context of intermarriage ('he brought [her] to his family' [25.6]) not
sacred prostitution.
31. The existence of multiple bull icons at Bethel is indicated by Hos. 13.2; see
also Hos. 4.17 and 8.4.
of Hosea's polemic about Israel's pursuit of the baalitn concerns a cri-

tique of the official religion of the northern kingdom (Lemche 1988:
244).
The plural form baalim is often understood as an alternative expres-
sion for a singular rival deity Baal, either as a 'plural of respect'
denoting the god Baal, much as the plural Elohim served as a title for
the singular El ('god'), or as diminutive, 'an intentional device for "belit-
tling' Baal, denying him a proper name and the status of rival' (Bird
1989b: 83; cf. Andersen and Freedman 1980: 230). But if the presence
of Baal proper in the text is elusive, is it safe to presume that the baalim
should be understood as a derivative designation for the singular god?
Another common approach has been to understand the plural baalim as
denoting a multiplicity of deities, that is, the fertility gods of Canaan
who together represented the 'polytheistic option' within popular reli-
gious practice. But likewise, if there is scant collaborating biblical or
extra-biblical witnessing to rampant polytheistic practice in eighth cen-
tury Israel, is it safe to presume that Hosea's baalim refer to non-
Yahwistic gods worshipped in popular practice?
The Lovers as the Nations

Who or what then are the referents of Hosea's rhetoric concerning
Israel's lovers and baalim? Baruch Halpern (1987) argues that for the
Israelite there was no Baal, in the sense of a distinct rival deity and
fertility god par excellence, and no Baal worship, but only baalim, that
is, a variety of deities who were each associated with a particular city
or culture. The title Baal (meaning 'Lord') could denote any major deity
such as Yahweh, Haddu, Melqart, Marduk, Asshur, Dagon, for each of
these was 'Lord' or master of a particular people. These 'other gods',
as seen in Chapter 3, were no simple fertility deities, but the high gods
of their respective state cults, signifying particular historical and cul-
tural structures of power and production. To make offerings to such
gods or to establish altars for them would be a symbolically political
act, analogous in our own time to flying the flag of a foreign nation. In
the theopolitical milieu of ancient Israel, rhetoric concerning 'baal'-
worship might symbolize the forging of foreign alliances or treaties
(Halpern 1987: 93). Baruch Halpern therefore raises the possibility that
in calling for the eradication of'the names of the baals', Hosea is attack-
ing Israel's patronage of the cults of a variety of deities who were each
associated with the national cults of other nations. To speak of Israel

making offerings to these baalim, or chasing after them as 'lovers'
would then be an idiom heavily laden with political implications. Read-
ing in this direction, the issue evoked in the image of chasing after such
lovers does not involve a conflict between a sexualized fertility cult
and ethical Yahwism, but the situation of Israel among the nations in a
volatile and highly dangerous militarized environment.
An explicit idiom of Israel's 'lovers' as other foreign nations is found
both in sixth-century prophetic texts (Jer. 4.30; 22.20-22; Lam. 1.2;
Ezek. 16; 23), and in the book of Hosea. In Hos. 8, sexual imagery remi-
niscent of ch. 2 refers to Israel's entanglements with foreign powers:
For they have gone up to Assyria,
Ephraim is a wild ass
wandering off on its own;
They have hired lovers.
Though they hire them (their allies)
from among the nations,
I will soon gather them up (Hos. 8.9- lOa).
The imagery of Ephraim as a woman hiring her lovers is incongruous

in terms of actual sexual practice in a patriarchal society, but is pro-
vocatively descriptive of the international situation in Hosea's era,
wherein 'lovers' like Assyria are paid in tribute.32
Particularly suggestive for a political reading of Hosea's lovers is the
prophetic motif of the transformation of the lovers into rapists. Ezekiel
proclaims that Oholah (Samaria) 'has fornicated', taking the Assyrians
as her lovers (Ezek. 23.5); in retribution for this 'sin', Yahweh delivered
her into the hands of these lovers who 'uncovered her nakedness'
(23.10; see also Ezek. 23.22-31; 16.35-39). As a punishment which is
portrayed as 'fitting' the crime,33 rape by the lovers/nations once courted
32. The homophonic comparison between Ephraim ('ephrayim) and a wild ass
(pere') sharpens the derogatory tone of the sexual punning in this passage especially
when read in light of a similar passage in Jeremiah, where Israel in her apostasy is
figured as a wild ass, 'in her heat sniffing the wind' (Jer. 2.24). Going to Assyria,
Ephraim is as a stupid animal in heat; alternatively, in searching out allies among
the nations, presumably to form a coalition against Assyria, Israel is like a pathetic
harlot who pays her lovers.
33. In the patriarchal logic of the texts which we have before us, adulterous sex is
'fittingly' punished by rape. The analogy here certainly resonates with the contem-
porary apologetics of rape: she (Israel/Samaria/Jcrusalem) who consorts shamelessly
with her lovers, gets what she deserves (i.e. rape).
serves as a sign of the capital city's conquest and despoliation. Though

explicit allusion to any foreign nations is lacking, a similar motif occurs
in Hosea:
Now I will uncover her shameful cunt before the eyes of her lovers, and
no one will rescue her (Hos. 2.10 [2.12]).
Who are the lovers who are there to see Israel's nakedness in this pas-
sage? Reading with Ezekiel's rape imagery as intertext, one might argue
that the lovers in Hos. 2 are the foreign states with which the nation has
colluded.
A political interpretation of Hosea's 'lovers' is also suggested by the
idiomatic use of 'lover' as a designation of a political vassal or ally in
the language of treaty making in the ancient Near East (Hayes 1990;
see also Moran 1963). A biblical example of the idiom is found in
1 Kings where an envoy from Tyre speaking to Solomon describes
King Hiram as 'a lover of David' (1 Kgs 5.1), thus professing Tyre to
be an ally and treaty partner. On the basis of this political meaning of
'love', John Hayes suggests that Hosea's lovers are not other gods but
other nations with which Israel has or desires treaties (1990; cf. Yee
1987:305-306).
But to take the lovers of Hos. 2 simply as other nations, and not as
other gods, such that Hosea's trope has to do with political meanings
rather than with religious meanings, would fall short of the mark. In
the context of the ancient Near East, where religion and politics were
interdependent and interreferential spheres of activity, political and
religious readings of these metaphors of Israel's baalim and lovers may
well be mutually inclusive.
To understand the inherent symbolic connections between the lovers,
the baalim and the nations, it is necessary to remember that religious
practice within the state cults throughout the ancient Near East was
predicated upon the need to give religious form to the structures of
political power. The cult in Israel was essentially Yahwistic because
Yahweh was the god of the state; other deities would be worshipped in
that cult only when royal policy so dictated (Tigay 1986: 20).
The establishment of any such foreign cults by the monarchy would
have been motivated by much the same considerations that led to mar-
riages with foreign princesses: political expediency (Tigay 1987: 179).
The strongest foreign alliances were forged through an exchange of
women and deities; in this way a covenant between two nations would
be sealed in a mingling of flesh and a sharing of gods. Exemplary of
such diplomacy was Ahab's marriage to Jezebel, princess of Tyre, and

his support for the Tyrian Baal cult in Samaria (1 Kgs 16.31-33; cf. 1
Kgs 11.1-8). Baal worship in the Omrid's state cult was the symbolic
correlate of a radical political realignment in which the Omrids sought
to forge a commercially advantageous 'theopolitical unity' between
Tyre and the northern kingdom (M.S. Smith 1990: 45).
Was then Hosea objecting, as Elijah had before him (1 Kgs 17), to a
situation of 'diplomatic syncretism' (Albertz 1994: 312) in which state-
supported shrines housed images of the gods of the nation's foreign
allies? Probably not, considering that there is little evidence that Israel's
official cult under Jeroboam II or his successors included any altars to
foreign deities.34 Jehu's revolt in the late ninth century reportedly had
eradicated the Phoenician Baal cult in Samaria, and while Israel's eco-
nomic alliance with Tyre continued in the eighth century, there is no
evidence for any reincorporation of the Tyrian Baal in the state cult.
Under Menahem, Israel became a vassal state of the Assyrian empire,
but probably did not incorporate any Assyrian gods into its cult. Assyria
did not impose worship of their god Assur upon their vassals, but only
upon annexed provinces,35 and the beleaguered Israel probably would
not have taken up the worship of Assyrian gods willingly (Hayes 1990).
Further, Hosea's own remarks indicate that his critique is directed
against native and generally accepted Yahwistic practices, not against
the intrusions of a foreign cult (Hos. 2.13 [2.15]; 4.6; 5.6; 6.1; 7.4; 8.2;
9.5; Albertz 1994: 331 n. 102).
Perhaps then there were no altars to foreign deities (or at least very
few of them) established in Hosea's Israel. In this case, Hosea's refer-
ences to Israel's baalim, like his language about Israel's lovers, might
be read metaphorically: both the baalim and the lovers may function in
Hos. 2 as coordinate and interrelated metaphors which each in their
own way, and even more so together, point to what Hosea sees as the
completely inappropriate nature of Israel's international politics.
34. The book of Kings does witness to altars to Baal in the ninth century, set up
by Ahab and Jezebel in Israel (1 Kgs 16.32) and Athaliah in Judah (2 Kgs 11.18).
By contrast, in respect to the mid to late eighth century, there is no reference to a
cult of Baal or any other non-Yahwistic deity in Israel apart from the formulaic list
of Israel's apostasies provided by the deuteronomistic historian as explanation for
the fall oflsrael (2 Kgs 17.15-17).
35. This is confirmed by the absence of any archeological or biblical evidence of
the influence of Assyria's cult within Israel prior to annexation in 722/721 BCE
(Coganl974:49).
Prohibitions against both female adultery and the worship of other

gods were deeply embedded in the value system and identity code of
Israelite culture.36 Both prohibitions had to do with the definition of
social boundaries; the prohibition against adultery protected and defined
the boundaries of the patrilineal bet 'db, Israel's most fundamental
social unit, against the encroachment of outsiders, and the prohibition
against apostasy functioned to define the boundaries of Israelite culture
as a whole. The worship of the gods of other nations and sex with a
married woman were both coded as illicit activities which transgressed
the boundaries of permissible contact that defined the integrity of the
nation or household. As metaphors, both apostate worship and illicit
sex evoke meanings of contact, exchange and intimacy; but it is contact
which has become too close, intercourse which is intimate to the point
of a blurring of identities which ought to remain distinct. Such inter-
course, figured through the language of sexual transgression or cultic
impropriety, is illegitimate, dangerous and forbidden in the prophet's
eyes.
Both adultery and apostasy, therefore, much like Hosea's references
to Baal Peor, signal a concern with issues relating to the transgression
or disintegration of the symbolic boundaries that define the integrity of
Israelite culture over and against the nations. The metaphors of adul-
tery and apostasy in Hos. 2 were rooted in the symbolism that was
constitutive of Israelite identity. A simple and univalent 'solution' to
the marriage metaphor, which might conclude that apostasy or adultery
36. The best evidence in favor of the antiquity of a cultural preference for the
exclusive worship of Yahweh is to be found in the archaeological record, wherein
iconic representations of deities sharply decline in those early Iron Age sites
identified as Israelite (Negbi 1976). If the most distinctive feature of Yahweh was
his refusal of iconographic representation (Hendel 1988), then it follows that the
aniconic character of early Israelite religion indicates that a somewhat exclusive
Yahwism was characteristic of the emergent highland culture. (For discussion and
debate about the antiquity of the commandment to worship Yahweh alone, see, e.g.,
de Moor 1990 and Lang 1983.)
Prohibitions against female adultery were characteristic of ancient Near Eastern
societies in general, and an intense concern with paternity, and hence with the fidel-
ity of wives, was a dominant feature of Israelite society from its earliest stages
(Lerner 1986; Westbrook 1990).
In the biblical laws codes, both apostasy and female adultery are listed among the
worst of sins, and both were at least theoretically punishable by death (Lev. 20.10;
Deut. 22.13-24; Deut. 13.6-11).
130 Woman's Body and the Social Body in Hose a
in Hosea is a sign for the nation's ill-advised foreign relations, would

not go far enough into this deeper resonance of Hosea's sexual/reli-
gious language.
A further difficulty reading the lovers or the baalim as the nations is
that there are no other clear indications in the text of Hos. 1-2 itself to
support an argument that the nation's international 'affairs' are the refer-
ent of Hosea's extended sexual metaphor. Rather, the agrarian imagery
of ch. 2 suggests a concern with structures of religious meaning embed-
ded in agricultural production, a point which has long supported the
'fertility cult' thesis. But as shall be shown below, another perspective
on this agrarian imagery is also possible.
The Baalim in Sociological Perspective

An alternative approach to the meaning of the baalim in Hosea may be
found in the symbolic connection between 'Baal' and particular struc-
tures of economic, social and political organization. Baal is, of course,
god of the storm and rain, and therefore the god of good crops; but he
is not therefore simply a fertility deity. The first meaning of ba 'al is
'owner', 'lord' or 'husband'; as a divine name, Baal designates the deity
who is the owner or lord of the land which he fructifies with his rain.
As the growth of crops in Syria-Palestine depended upon rainfall, the
fruits of the land were owed to its rain god Baal, the feudal lord of the
land, whose worship was 'bound to the economy of the land' (Pope
1971: col. 11). Agricultural production always takes place in relation to
particular structures of social power, land ownership and the distribu-
tion of produce; these structures are therefore implicated in the mean-
ing of the deity as rain god.
This tradition of thinking about Baal can be traced to William Robert-
son Smith ([1889] 1972: 244) and Max Weber (1952) who saw Baal
worship as correlative with particular socioeconomic structures. Weber
saw the Palestinian Baal as a territorial deity whose worship developed
on the basis of a settled urban society and economic structures of
patrician landlordism as practiced within that territory; Baal was 'lord
of the land, of all its fruit, in the nature of a patrimonial landlord' (1952:
154). Following in this tradition of biblical sociology, Gary Anderson
has argued that 'Baal was inextricably tied to the growth of agriculture
and the accumulation of tillable land by the ruling elite' (1987: 20).
Also working out of a sociological perspective, Louis Wallis (1935)
argued that the rising cult of Baal in Hosea's time was an expression of
the rising power of a wealthy landowning elite whose economic and

political power was grounded in a Canaanite system of commercial
civilization. Baal is not just a fertility god, but the sacral foundation of
Canaan's socioeconomic system and his worship functioned to authen-
ticate and validate 'the whole range of economic and social relation-
ships' which were characteristic of Canaanite culture (1935: 9-10):
In other words, while the Baalim were undoubtedly worshiped as gods

of good crops, their main function was to guarantee and legitimate the
commcrcialistic regime of private property... All contracts were legal-
ized by oaths in the name of Baal;...under this regime land came within
the category of sale and exchange, and was the basis of mortgage-
security foreclosed by legal process when the debtor failed to pay interest
or principle (1935: 10; emphasis original).
The theological distinction between Baal and Yahweh was therefore

bound up in the sociological distinction between the commercial and
mercantile orientation of Canaanite civilization, within which land was
a privately owned commodity, and Hebraic culture, which was rooted
in the communitarian and egalitarian ethos of the tribal nomad, and
which regarded land as inalienable nahalah. Baalism then stood for a
whole gamut of social and economic relationships making headway in
Israel which contravened the older tribal egalitarian ethos and system
of land tenure which had defined the essential character of Israel over
and against Canaan. Wallis then interpreted the anti-Baal polemics of
Hosea and also Jeremiah as an expression of the prophetic concern for
mispat ('justice') (1935: 155-282).
The polar opposition which Wallis envisions between egalitarian
Israel, whose ethos was rooted in bedouin culture, and mercantile
Canaan is outdated and untenable. Nevertheless, the connection Wallis
makes between Baalism and particular socioeconomic structures, includ-
ing especially systems of land tenure, remains compelling for contem-
porary biblical sociologists.
Robert Coote connects the popularity of the Baal cult in Israel with a
rising class of large landowners whose interests lay in the development
of a commercialized social polity. Yahweh (in the mold of El) sancti-
fied the interests of a tribal polity centered in the bet 'ab, in marked
contrast to the Canaanite Baal, whose cult was associated with the hier-
archial economic and political control over large tracks of tillable land."
37. Coote views the Canaanite Baal 'as the typical divine guardian of the city-
Coote and Coote characterize the Phoenician Baal as 'the patron of

commercial agriculture under royal control and conspicuous consump-
tion of trade commodities' (Coote and Coote 1990: 43), and Hosea's
Baal as the 'god of commerce', whose cult was tied to the latifundial
structures of land ownership which had come to dominate the hills of
Ephraim in Hosea's time (Coote and Coote 1990: 49-50). From this per-
spective, Coote and Coote read Hosea's marriage metaphor as an alle-
gory for the social implications of agricultural intensification:
Hosea the prophet represented Yahweh as a father shamed by the reali-
zation that his wife, the rich city-dwellers of Israel, was the mother of
children, their clients, fathered not by him but by the evil genius of agri-
business (1990: 50).
Marvin Chaney also depicts worship of Baal or the baalim in Hosea

as an elite phenomenon which sacralized exploitative economic and
political practices. Specifically, Chaney associates the baal cult in Israel
with the interests of a male elite warrior class, men of power who were
urban-based, closely allied with the crown and well positioned to profit
from a program of agricultural 'development'.38 '"Baalism" sanctioned
agricultural intensification and the powerful few who instigated it and
benefitted from it' (Chaney 1993: 5). Thus for Chaney, as for Coote
and Coote, Hosea's 'eset zenunim does not represent the Israelite popu-
lation in general, but only that elite sector of the population who were
the primary beneficiaries of commercialization of agriculture in the
eighth century. In this light, the woman's amorous desire for her lovers
in Hos. 2 may be read as a metaphor for the processes of agricultural
state and subject of such cults. Baal engaged in armed struggle, vanquished his oppo-
nent, built his palace (temple), fathered his sons, insured the productivity of the
land, and maintained and defended the established orders of society' (1991: 103).
As Israel's Yahweh was cast in the mold of such a Baal, he could sanctify structures
of opulent and oppressive power such as Israel had known under Solomon. There-
fore when Jeroboam rebelled against the house of David, he distinguished his cult
from Solomon's baalizing of Yahweh by stressing instead the attributes of Yahweh
assimilated from El, the deity who was the 'tribal chief of chiefs in Palestine' and
the 'male genius of household reproduction' (1991: 103-104).
38. As Chaney argues, 'whatever the exact identity and content of the divinity or
divinities and cults evoked by this title in Hosea's parlance, they served to grant
sacral legitimation to one class of elite men and their activities. In religious terms,
ba'al was the "lord" of land, women, and political, military, economic, judicial, and
social power and privilege writ large. Ba'al was the urban male warrior elite pro-
jected to infinity' (1993: 5).
intensification and a growing investment in interregional trade which

were promoted by this class (Chancy 1993).
Hosea's resistance to the conflation of Yahweh and Baal in his time
can be read coherently from such a sociological perspective. Yahweh
should no longer be called ba'li ('my lord/owner'), Hosea commands,
as this name implies marital qua economic structures which are based
on domination and exploitative ownership. Rather Yahweh should be
called 'isi ('my husband/man'), suggesting an alternative structure of
socioeconomic relationships which would be informed by principles
of mutuality, justice, steadfast love (hesed)and mercy (Hos. 2.19b
[2.2 lb]).39
This socioeconomic interpretation of Baal and baalism offers a pro-
vocative alternative to the prevailing scenario of popular Baal worship
in an eighth-century fertility cult as the critical context against which to
read Hos. 1-2. Even if the literal presence of Baal worship among the
elite classes in eighth-century Israel cannot be established historically,40
39. Such a sociological approach to the conflict between Yahweh and Baal in
the Hebrew Bible has been particularly appealing to biblical scholars whose inter-
ests are closely aligned with liberation theology. For Mosala, writing out of the
situation in South Africa, the struggle between Yahweh and Baal is not to be under-
stood in terms of a conflict between different systems of religious belief and prac-
tice, but as a struggle between the god of the landless peasants and slaves and the
god of the elite, landholding classes (cited in Frick 1991: 233). In a similar vein, for
Gottwald, the prohibition against the worship of other gods in Israel may be under-
stood as a symbolic-ideological correlate to a socio-organizational exclusionary prin-
ciple; as Yahweh forbids other gods, so Israel forbids other systems of economic
organization (1979: 693).
40. There is little textual or epigraphic evidence which can definitively support a
socioeconomic analysis of the baalim. Fowler, however, sees some evidence for this
view of the baalim in her survey of the onomasticon from monarchical Israel. She
notes that 11 of the 14 occurrences of the theophoric element Baal in extra-biblical
sources occur in the Samaria ostraca (1988: 60). These ostraca are records of the
movement of commodities from country estates to Samaria, and those named in
such transactions most likely represent an elite strata of Israelite society. Fowler
suggests that the religious apostasy attacked by Hosea was an upper-class phenome-
non, and that both Hosea and Amos 'were concerned with the royal court and
privileged classes which were at the core of the social and religious grievances of
the time. They were, in fact, speaking to a specific class and, in the main, to a speci-
fic area—Samaria' (1988: 63). However, as she herself notes, caution is needed
here, as the presence of theophoric names containing the element Baal do not in
themselves constitute evidence of Baal worship, especially as Baal could serve as an
epithet for Yahweh (Hos. 2.16 [2.18]).
it is still possible to suggest that baalism in Hosea may have functioned

as a symbolic meaning, pointing to particular economic and political
structures of power and wealth in eighth-century Israel. In this view,
Hosea draws upon an established association of baalism with foreign-
ness in order to deploy Baal worship as a code for Israel's deepening
implication in socioeconomic structures which he viewed as foreign
and antithetical to the meaning and structure of Israelite culture. As
Albertz argues, 'Hosea uses Ba'al as a polemic term for anything that
he declares to be "alien religion"' (1994: 332 n. 115). This coding of
baalism as non-Israelite or alien had both cultural and rhetorical roots.
Historically, the emergent ethnic identity of the Israelites as a distinc-
tive and separate people coalesced around their worship of Yahweh.
Rhetorically, baalism could figure the betrayal or compromise of this
identity, as in the narratives of the Tyrian princess Jezebel, whose
metonynmically linked sins in the narrative were her promotion of a
Baal cult in Samaria and her disdain for Naboth's patrimonial rights
(1 Kgs 17-21).
Thus this socioeconomic reading of Hosea's baalim, like Halpern's
political reading discussed above, does not depend upon the premise
that actual Baal worship in Hosea's Israel is the issue under debate.
Rather, Baal worship, like adultery and also Hosea's references to Baal
Peor, also may be functioning in Hosea as a metaphor for the transgres-
sion or disintegration of the symbolic boundaries that define the integ-
rity of Israelite culture over and against the nations.
The Semantic Range of znh Terminology

Discussion of Israel's baals and lovers would not be complete without
consideration of those terms derivative of the root znh which character-
izes Israel's activity in relation to them. The root znh appears not only
in the expressions 'eset zenunim and yalde zenumm but also throughout
the book of Hosea as evocative of the sins of Israel. Derivatives of znh
appear 7 times in chs. 1-2 and a total of 22 times in the book as a whole. In Hos.
1.2b alone, which recalls Yahweh's programmatic command to Hosea,
znh is used four times. Clearly znh is a leitmotif for Hosea, the interpre-
tation of which is critical to the interpretation of his sexual metaphors.
Hosean commentators assume that the figurative use of the root znh
in Hosea refers to sins of cultic apostasy, and interpret his female
sexual imagery accordingly. But the interpretation of znh terminology
cannot be so easily constrained, for the semantic range of the meta-
phorical uses of the root znh includes not only religious apostasy,41 but
also other forms of faithlessness to or rebellion against Yahweh. For
example, in Num. 14.33, Yahweh vents his anger at the Israelites for
murmuring against him in the wilderness, and declares to them that
'your children...shall suffer for your fornications (zenutekemy. Nahum
castigates the brutal militarism of Assyria with a personification of its
capital Nineveh as a harlot who 'betrays the nations with her harlotries
(zenunehd)' (Nah. 3.4b). So also, Hosea's contemporary Isaiah pro-
claims that Jerusalem has become a prostitute (zonah),but her sin is not
apostasy, but injustice, graft, thievery, murder and neglect of orphans
and widows (Isa. 1.21-23; see also Num. 15.39; Ps. 73.27).
Particularly interesting is Isaiah's depiction of the ruined Tyre, once
the 'merchant of nations' (Isa. 23.3bp), as a 'forgotten prostitute' (zonah
niskahdh) (Isa. 23.16) who someday will return again to her hire and
'fornicate (zdnetah) with all the kingdoms of the earth' (23.17b). Tyre
and its sister Phoenician cities were political economies dedicated to
serving the mercantile needs of regional powers such as Israel and
empires such as Assyria (Frankenstein 1979: 264).42 For Isaiah, Tyre is
like a prostitute—its income comes from serving the pleasures of its
41. Although this is certainly its most frequent application. Israel is charged
with fornicating after (zanah :ahare) other gods (Judg. 2.17), the baalim (.Tudg.
8.33), Gideon's ephod (Judg. 8.27), idols (Ezek. 6.9), 'detestable things' (Ezek.
20.30), the gods of the peoples of the land (1 Chron. 5.25). Further, Israel is forbid-
den to fornicate after the strange gods of the land (Deut. 31.16), Molek (Lev. 20.2-
5), wizards or mediums (Lev. 20.6) or satyrs (Lev. 17.7). Also, Chronicles uses znh
to characterize worship at the high places (2 Chron. 21.11, 13).
42. The seafaring Phoenicians provided links between specialized production
centers throughout the Mediterranean region, importing silver from southern Spain
and other goods that the Assyrians, for example, could not have obtained any other
way. The Phoenicians were also skilled craftsmen, whose products and technologies
were highly desired commodities throughout the region. The luxury goods supplied
by Tyre were really essential for the political economy of an empire such as Assyria,
for the dignity of the Assyrian king demanded a display of wealth, especially in the
form of the latest luxury items from the west (Postgate 1979: 199). Phoenicia in
turn was dependent upon Assyria as a wealthy market for its goods and services. It
is this symbiotic relationship between palace and trader that explains the evidence
which suggests that Assyria left the Phoenician cities virtually autonomous even as
they brutally conquered much of the rest of the Levant; it was not in Assyria's inter-
ests to interfere with Phoenician mercantile and manufacturing activity (Postgate
1979: 270-72).
13 6 Woman's Body and the Social Body in Hosea
clients. This depiction of mercantile activity as prostitution or fornica-

tion is suggestive for the interpretation of Hosea's sexual imagery in
light of the close trading relationship between Tyre and Israel. Indeed,
Isaiah's image of Tyre's merchandize or profits (sahrah [BOB, 695]) as
her harlot's hire ('etnandh) (Isa. 23.18a) offers a provocative intertext
for Hos. 2, where the wayward woman's hire ('etnah) are her vines and
fig trees (Hos. 2.12 [2.14]), the source of some of Israel's own export
merchandize—wine and figs.
Clearly, harlotry or fornication (znh) is a multivalent trope in the
Hebrew Bible, charged with resonances not only of apostasy, but also
of various forms of betrayal, deception and ill-gotten gain. However it
is rare that consideration of this broader semantic range of the meta-
phorical uses of the root znh has been brought to bear upon the inter-
pretation of the 'eset zenunim or any of the other numerous passages in
Hosea where znh terminology appears. Hosea 9.1, for example, is a text
which often presented by commentators as evidence for the debased
sexual practices of the fertility cult:
Do not rejoice Israel!
Do not exult like the peoples;
for you have fornicated (zanita) against your God.
You have loved a harlot's hire ('etnari)
upon every threshing floor heaped with grain.
Commentators commonly take this reference to fornication on the
threshing floors as an allusion to the orgies that went hand in hand with
Baal worship.43 This cultic/sexual interpretation is supported by the
supposition that the threshing floors were sites of worship in Israel.44
But the setting at the threshing floor could also suggest a reference to
corrupt economic practices in connection with the harvest. As a center
of communal activity (perhaps the only center in a small village that
lacked walls and a city gate), and the place where the seed was separated
43. E.g. for Knight (1960), the presence of znh terminology in this passage leads
to the conclusion that the reference here is to the celebration of pagan rituals, par-
ticularly the 'licentious revelry' connected with Baal worship. Likewise, Andersen
and Freedman believe that the reprimand in Hos. 9.1 refers to Israel's joyful partici-
pation in a pagan cult which included 'the donation of sexual services to the god in
sacred ritual' (1980: 515, 522, 95).
44. E.g. Wolff asserts that the threshing floors were sites of pagan fertility cult
rites which were certainly of a 'Dionysian character... There her "love of the harlot's
fee" is found, a perverse, lustful kind of love' (1974: 153-54).
from the harvested grain, the threshing floor was a natural location for
the adjudication of disputes that might arise over the distribution of the
harvest, including issues related to the settlement of debts and other
legal matters.45 Znh would then carry connotations of treacherous pro-
fiteering rather than cultic apostasy. This point leads to an alternative
reading in which this dark oracle is not about false worship at all, but
about the harvest and its distribution; it is about eating and hunger and
the costs of economic strategies which Hosea characterizes with his
favorite root—znh. Thus for Hosea, those who enrich themselves at the
threshing floor through the manipulation of the judicial system and the
ruthless collection of debts, that which Hosea deplores as fornication,
shall not enjoy the 'hire' or payments ('etnah)46 which they so love:
Threshing floor and winevat will not feed them,
and the new wine will fail them.
They will not dwell in Yahweh's land;
but Ephraim will return to Egypt,
and in Assyria they will eat unclean food (9.2-3).
Return to Egypt shall be the recompense of those who fornicate; alter-

natively, their fate will be deportation to Assyria, where they shall eat
'unclean food'.
Another passage indicative of the broader semantic range of znh lan-
guage in Hosea is Hos. 5.3-4 where the root znh appears in connection
with a denunciation of the endemic political violence of the era subse-
quent to the death of Jeroboam 11:
I know Ephraim, and Israel is not hid from me;
for now Ephraim, you have fornicated (hizneta),
Israel has become unclean.
Their deeds (ma 'alelehem) do not permit them
to return to their God.
45. According to Matthews (1987), the threshing floor (goren) was an important
center of economic and social life in Israelite villages, and is occasionally men-
tioned as a site of judicial proceedings in both biblical and other ancient Near East-
ern texts. The texts to which he refers include ANET 162, ANET 153.5-8, 1 Kgs
22.10 and Ruth 3.10-14 (1987: 29-31).
46. The Hebrew term 'etnah may be translated simply as 'hire' or perhaps 'pay-
ment', as is suggested by the use of a cognate term in Ugaritic texts (Davies 1992:
214). However, the more specific translation of 'etnah as 'harlot's hire' or 'prosti-
tute's wages' is suggested here in the light of its use in Hos. 2.12 [2.14] in reference
to payment made for sexual services (2.12 [2.14]).
For the spirit of fornication (ruah zenunim)

is in their midst,
and they do not know Yahweh.
Commentators tend to presuppose that the sexual language in this pas-

sage signals a concern with religious apostasy (e.g. Wolff 1974: 99).
But Hosea explains that this activity of fornication concerns 'their
deeds' (ma 'alelehem); the same term ma 'alelehem is used elsewhere by
Hosea to refer more explicitly to acts of violence and corruption within
royal circles (Hos. 9.15 and 7.2-7). While the vehicle in this passage is
sexual, the tenor is political.
Znh terminology is also concentrated in Hos. 4 where the 'fornication'
of the priests and the people is related to their rejection of 'the knowl-
edge of Elohim'. The object of such knowledge is not simply correct
worship, but righteousness, such that its absence results in sins of vio-
lence and deception (4.1-2). There is no reason to assume that the char-
acterization of the cult as harlotrous implies the presence of apostate
rituals, but rather like Amos, Hosea insists that sacrifice to Yahweh, in
the absence of hesed ('steadfast love') and righteousness, is vacuous
and hypocritical (Hos. 6.6; cf. Amos 5.21-24).47
Reflection on alternative readings of these texts suggests that the
meaning ofznh in Hosea is not limited to religious apostasy, but rather
carries a range of resonances related to betrayal, faithlessness and vio-
lence. The wider semantic range of Hosea's sexual language is also
suggested by his characterization of those who plot regicide as 'adul-
terers' (Hos. 4.4) and of those who seek out foreign treaties as wanton
women who hire 'lovers' among the nations (Hos. 8.9). These and the
other passages discussed above suggest that throughout chs. 4-14, the
language of sexual transgression serves as a leitmotif in the context of
an extended critique of Israel's royal administration and supporting
cultic institutions.
47. Priests are the subject of znh terminology also in connection with the
prophet's condemnation of a band of priests who have committed 'murder on the
road to Shechcm' (Hos. 6.9); this line is followed by Hosea's outcry against
Ephraim's fornication (zenut) which is in the house of Israel (v. 10). Wolff prefers
to interpret vv. 9 and 10 independently of each other, seeing murder and fornication
as references to distinct and separate crimes, one political, the other cultic (1974:
123). An alternative reading admits the possibility that priestly acts of murder and
Ephraim's harlotry' may both be evocative of an atmosphere of political violence in
which these priests are implicated.
The Telling Omission

Clearly then, multiple clues point to the possibility of interpreting
Hosea's figurative language about Israel's lusting after her baals and
lovers within the context of the political and socioeconomic conflicts of
his day; in Chapter 7, one possible attempt at such a reading will be
broached. But for now, what is most striking is that these clues have
so rarely been brought to bear on the interpretation of the marriage
metaphor. Even though a political reading of the trope finds significant
sources of textual support (e.g. Hos. 8.9-10), and even though the
socioeconomic dimensions of Baal worship have long been recognized
(e.g. by William Robertson Smith in 1889), alternative readings which
exploit such clues have been largely ignored in the voluminous history
of Hosean scholarship. In a field where every letter, verse and allusion
are meticulously considered by successive generations of scholars, this
omission might perhaps seem rather surprising. But really this omission
is quite predictable and telling, for it is evident that there is a great deal
at stake in the reading which insists that the sexual infidelity of the
'eset zenunim points to Israel's apostasy in the fertility cult. The domi-
nance of the conventional interpretation, in which Hosea's female sex-
ual imagery foregrounds a Canaanite or syncretistic fertility cult, is a
function of particular associations with female symbolism which are
deeply entrenched in the structures of Western religious thought. There
is no impetus to look beyond the fertility cult formulation when it satis-
fies, in such a compelling manner, the self-defining processes of the
Western and androcentric world-view within which woman figures sex,
nature and the temptation to sin. Within this frame, female sexuality,
like Canaanite fertility religion, represents the 'other' that must be
refused—that which is sexual, bodily and implicated in the immanence
of nature. Within Hosean scholarship, the image of the 'eset zenunim
has become so inextricably linked with the image of a sensualized
fertility cult, that no hermeneutical alternatives are easily admitted.
Chapter 5
FEMINIST APPROACHES TO HOSEA
The real problem with any dominant reading, as Sherwood reminds us,
is not simply that it is erroneous, but that it is dominant (1996: 38). As
it monopolizes the interpretive field and precludes other readings, a
dominant reading is able to cloak itself in a mantle of objectivity and
claim for itself the status of being the correct and authoritative reading
of a text. Such claims to objectivity and authority in interpretation are
pernicious in that they provide vital epistomological support for patri-
archal hierarchies of power. The task of feminist criticism is to resist
and undermine the monopolizing power of dominant readings through
the production of alternative readings which serve to remind us that all
such claims to objectivity in interpretation are illusory.
The 'malestream' of Hosean commentary clearly offers a parade
example of how a dominant reading tends to preclude other possible
readings and, through the sheer weight of mind-numbing repetition, to
conjure up the illusion of objectivity for itself. Reading Hosea's mar-
riage metaphor in sympathetic collusion with the cuckolded husband/
prophet and affronted (male) God, androcentric interpreters have pro-
duced a dominant reading of Hosea as a tale of divine/husbandly suf-
fering and relentless love in the face of human/wifely unfaithfulness
and sin. The gender assignments of the metaphor are taken for granted
or celebrated by interpreters who share in and benefit from implicit
assumptions about female moral inferiority, the sanctity of male control
over female sexuality, and—in the frame of an overarching world-view
—the value of'masculine' transcendence over 'feminine' immanence.
Seeking escape from the confines of this dominant reading, this chap-
ter surveys feminist readings of Hosea's marriage metaphor. In what
follows, various representative feminist responses to Hosea will be con-
sidered in the context of attention to the diversity of critical approaches
which characterizes this field. Throughout this chapter and the next, 1
5. Feminist Approaches to Hosea 141
will be particularly concerned with what feminist critics say about the
symbolic location of woman and female sexuality in Hosea and other
biblical texts. A key assumption of the dominant 'malestream' reading
has been the continuity between Hosea's female sexual imagery and the
symbolic location of woman as 'other' within the Western androcentric
imagination and coordinate associations of woman with sin, sex, the
forbidden and the foreign. This assumption, which serves both andro-
centric and theological interests, is, in my eyes, highly suspect. My
criticism of other feminist readers of Hosea here will be that, for all the
brilliance displayed in their many various bold and creative acts of
hermeneutical resistance, they have, by and large, been slow to discern
and challenge the androcentric determinants behind the consensus that
female sexuality in Hosea obviously and necessarily signifies that which
is 'other'.
Varieties of Feminist Biblical Criticisms

Feminist biblical critics are united by a common effort to resist and
undermine the monopolizing power of dominant readings. At the same
time, feminist biblical critics are divided by a diversity of motivating
agendas and hermeneutical approaches. Thus the field of feminist bib-
lical criticism is not a unified entity but a diverse array of interpretive
concerns, interests and methods.' The challenge feminist critics face as
we encounter the diversity and the dissensions among us is to remem-
ber the fundamental insight of feminist criticism: that there is no one
correct reading, that readers make texts, and that no reader is neutral or
objective.
This insight is hard to come by, for most of us are trained from an
early age to think in terms of the hierarchies of right or wrong, and to
view criticism as a contest, in which there must be a winner and a loser.
Breaking free of these habits of thought and argumentation requires
steady, self-conscious effort, for the desire to be 'right' is always luring
us like a siren's song with its promises of security, order and authority.
Together, feminist critics support each other to remember that the chal-
lenge and hallmark of a feminist hermeneutic is to resist the temptation
1. For surveys of and reflections upon this diversity, sec J.C. Anderson (1991,
1992), Bach (1993, 1999a), McKay (1997), Milne (1997) and Reinhartz (1997), and
especially the recent collections of essays on feminist biblical criticism edited by
Brenner and Fontaine (1997) and by Bach (1999b).
to enforce closure, and instead to seek to open up space for yet another
reading.
Feminist biblical critics have not always been at ease with the ten-
sions or conflicts between readings and approaches which characterizes
work in this field. In its early phase (the 1970s through the mid-1980s),
the field of feminist biblical criticism was characterized by a largely
polarized debate between what Dana Nolan Fewell (1987) has termed
'text-affirming' and 'text-negating' feminist approaches. On one side of
this debate have been those seeking to recuperate the authority of the
Bible for the feminist project; such text-affirming or 'recuperative' read-
ers have highlighted ostensibly positive images of women and female
sexuality in the biblical texts as a way of demonstrating the freedom of
the Bible from the misogynistic formations of later Western religion.
Exemplary of this approach is Phyllis Trible's 'depatriarchalizing' her-
meneutic, demonstrated, for example, in her famous rereading of the
Genesis story of 'Eve and Adam' as a feminist-friendly text (1973a,
1973b) and in her interpretation of the book of Ruth as a woman-cen-
tered and woman-affirming story of bravery and heroism (1978: 195).
On the other side of this debate have been those who believe that the
problem of the Bible's patriarchalism is too pervasive to support any
such mitigating efforts. Such text-negating or resistant readers follow
Schiissler Fiorenza's call for a feminist 'hermeneutic of suspicion'
(1983) which takes as its starting point the suspicion that biblical texts
and their interpretations (even ostensibly positive ones) inevitably serve
patriarchal interests. Exemplary of this approach for Hebrew Bible
studies is Esther Fuchs' effort to expose the 'patriarchal determinants'
of depictions of women in biblical narratives (1985a, 1985b, see also
Fuchs 1990). Fuchs contends, for example, with Trible's endorsement
of the book of Ruth, arguing that the strength and resourcefulness of
Ruth and Naomi are only memorialized because these virtues serve male
interests; for Fuchs, the glorification of Ruth as a heroine qua mother is
but one of the strategies which the biblical narratives deployed to
suppress 'the truth about women's subjugation within the patriarchal
framework' (1985b: 137).
The key premise behind such resistant readings is clearly articulated
by Pamela Milne, who argues that the patriarchal character of the Bible
is inscribed
in the deep structures of the texts themselves. Deep structures are not
altered by 'rereading' or reinterpreting the surface details of a narrative
(1989:31).
Therefore the project of attempting to uncover a 'depatriarchalizing'

strain in the Bible is hardly viable:
if we arc looking for a sacred scripture that is not patriarchal, that does
not construct woman as 'other' and that does not support patriarchal
interpretations based on this otherness, we are not likely to find it or to
recover it... (1989:34).
The Bible, Milne and other resistant readers argue, can in no way be
rescued from its patriarchal context because intrinsically it offers up a
male universe in which woman are located at the margins. Woman in
biblical texts always appear as an 'otherness'—signs within a system of
patriarchal objectifications through which maleness is defined.
Milne's argument seeks to refute those recuperative readings which
argue that the inscription of woman as 'other' is neither monolithic nor
total in the Hebrew Bible. Phyllis Trible, for example, in her influential
work God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality, had argued that gynomorphic
images of Yahweh may suggest that femaleness is not always an
'otherness' in respect to the divine in the Hebrew Bible, but rather is
symbolically implicated in the divine nature (1978: 31-71). But resis-
tant readers such as Milne would point out that such optimistic con-
clusions depend for their stability upon the exclusion of texts which
are decidedly less positive—Hosea's marriage metaphor, for example,
which Trible almost entirely avoids, despite her claim to be studying
the Bible's 'rhetoric of sexuality'.
While Trible avoided Hosea's 'eSet zenunim, text-negating readers
have highlighted this metaphor as an exemplary example of the Bible's
depiction of woman and female sexuality as dangerous, dirty, deriva-
tive and 'other'. The Hebrew Bible, they have argued, supports its over-
all investment in ideologies of male domination by representing female
sexuality as negative and derivative in relation to the norm of male
sexuality and as symbolically associated with pollution, sin and death.
The biblical laws on female blood pollution are seen as the most obvi-
ous evidence for this misogynistic inscription of female inferiority and
otherness. In contrast, male sexuality is linked with God by the cove-
nant in circumcision and protected in sacral law as inviolate (Deut.
25.11-12). Hosea's use of female sexuality as a 'symbol of depravity
and idolatry in the human community' (Ochshorn 1981: 181) has been
seen, from this perspective, as a logical extension of the Bible's overall
denigration of female sexuality as derivative, negative, profane, dan-
gerous and dirty.
Since the mid-1980s, feminist biblical critics have sought to move

beyond the polarized positions which characterized early work in the
field. As Dana Nolan Fewell observes (1987), the coherence of both
text-affirming and text-negating readings is produced by a selective
focus upon only those texts which support its conclusions and the
repression of those which would contradict or problematize it. For those
who read the Bible as authoritative, recognition of the Bible's frag-
mented and self-contradictory character suggests the need for a 'dual
hermeneutic' which can encompass both poles of resistance and recu-
peration (Schweickart 1986: 43-44; Tolbert 1983a). As Mary Ann
Tolbert says, we must realize that the Bible will inevitably function as
both 'friend and foe' in the struggle for human liberation.
Renita Weems' work on Hosea's marriage metaphor (1989, 1995)
offers an excellent example of such a 'dual hermeneutic' in action.
While pulling no punches in her analysis and critique of the metaphor's
depiction of female subjugation and divine spousal abuse, Weems
nevertheless stops short of wholesale rejection of a tradition of pro-
phetic language which has, she acknowledges, historically empowered
and inspired oppressed peoples. Thus her feminist critique of the patri-
archal character of Hosea's marriage metaphor is balanced by a creative
effort to remain open to its continuing theological relevance as liber-
ating word.
Other feminist critics, such as Mieke Bal and J. Cheryl Exum, have
eschewed a concern with biblical authority altogether, choosing to
approach the Bible instead as a 'cultural artifact' which warrants seri-
ous attention due to its tremendous influence in shaping Western ideolo-
gies of sexuality and gender (Bal 1987: 1; Exum 1993: 11). Yet even as
these critical readers seek to move beyond polarized views of the Bible
as either 'a feminist resource or a sexist manifesto' (Bal 1987: 1), their
interpretive strategies share much in common with earlier text-resistant
orientations. Exum, for example, shares with Fuchs the premise that
female characters and symbols in the Bible are male constructs which
inevitably serve androcentric interests, and like Milne, she finds that
'woman' in biblical literature is always inscribed as the 'other', defining
the parameters of a patriarchal universe (e.g. Exum 1993: 11, 145-47).
The difference is that this new generation of resistant readers has aban-
doned modernist notions of meaning as resident in the text, which
leave the resistant reader with few options except to condemn the text
and then flee from its demands. The insight that 'readers make texts'
empowers the feminist reader to resist the patriarchal text through the
production of feminist counter-readings that amplify subversive counter-
voices that the patriarchal ideology of the text would silence. This task
requires a transgressive hermeneutic that flaunts authorial intention and
reads 'against the grain'. How else may the feminist reader appropriate
a text where woman is inscribed as 'other'? As Yvonne Sherwood puts
it:
If 'woman' in patriarchal texts is a looking-glass for the dominant
ideology, then the task of feminist criticism is to step through the looking
glass, like Alice, and to retrieve the female character from her 'virtual'
and reflective role (1996: 255; emphasis added).
Such forays through the looking glass of the text allows the feminist
reader to give voice to the silenced female perspective in the text, and
in so doing, to reveal what the text wishes to conceal.
As we shall see below, this reader-oriented and deconstructive mode
of resistant reading characterizes much contemporary feminist criticism
of Hosea: feminist readers resituate Gomer as a subject rather than
object, valorize her assertions of sexual autonomy, and in so doing,
suggest that Hosea's reification and sacralization of the structures of
patriarchal marriage conceals—and at the same time reveals—patriar-
chy's anxiety about the threat of female sexual autonomy.
Such readings are invaluable as they effectively undermine the
hegemony of the dominant reading and empower feminist readers to
'change the rules of the game' and to claim the power of meaning-
making for themselves. At the same time, by focusing more on the
level of reception than inception, these readings can underestimate the
vast gulf which separates the gendered symbol systems and cultural
codes of the ancient worlds within which these texts emerged from
those of the modern West within which they are received today.
Another hermeneutical orientation in feminist biblical criticism
attends more carefully to that gulf, cautioning against any easy confla-
tion of ancient worlds with our own. Drawing upon the disciplinary
resources of cultural anthropology, comparative sociology and the his-
tory of religions, feminist scholars such as Carol Meyers, Phyllis Bird
and Claudia Camp work to reconstruct the social and religious worlds
of ancient Israelite women, and then to grapple with the Bible's literary
representations of women and female sexuality within the context of
these socio-historical reconstructions. Their concern is to learn more
about the inception of the text within specific socio-symbolic context
which inevitably are vastly different from our own, rather than strug-
gling with the reception of the text and its inevitable dissonance from
our own values of individual freedom and human equality.
One important contribution of this inception-oriented approach has
been to find more evidence for female agency and culture-creating voice
than either androcentric or resistant feminist readers usually assume.
This evidence suggests that women's voices and gynocentric interests
might have been more culturally influential and harder to silence than
we might otherwise imagine. This assessment makes a important differ-
ence in feminist approaches to the Hebrew Bible: while reception-ori-
ented readers tend to imagine the text as hostile androcentric territory,
into which the feminist reader must ride to the rescue of the bound and
gagged female voice, inception-oriented readers tend to see themselves
more as textual archaeologists, carefully sifting through the soil of this
textual territory, with the aim to recover female voices and perspectives
that the androcentric trajectories of textual production never entirely
silenced. This latter orientation will be important for my own rereading
of Hosea.
Feminist Readings of Hosea

From whatever critical perspective a feminist reader might approach
Hosea, the text offers offense. First, as the gender assignments of the
metaphor liken maleness to divinity and femaleness to sinful humanity,
the hierarchy of male over female is reinforced, and the natural infe-
riority of femaleness is implied. Second, the very structure of the
metaphor rests upon the socio-legal premises that males have exclusive
rights over their wives. In deploying female infidelity, that is, female
assertion of sexual independence from men, as his primary trope for the
sins of Israel, Hosea lends sacral legitimation to the patriarchal control
of women. Worse, in representing God as a righteous punisher of his
wife, the metaphor can serve to sanction wife abuse. And throughout
the metaphor, woman's voice is silenced, her actions are condemned,
and her power is suppressed. As Brenner summarizes the problem: in
Hosea, 'the 'husband' is divine, correct, faithful, positive, voiced. The
'wife' is human, morally corrupt, faithless, negative, silent or silenced'
(1996: 64).
Indeed, from the point of view of the feminist reader, Hos. 1-3 seems
to enact virtually every literary crime which an androcentric text might
commit. The 'eset zenimim is 'denied the right to name [her children],
is appropriated as a symbol [of sin], and is literally stripped, trapped,

and pressed into conformity' (Sherwood 1996: 298-99). Perhaps the
fait accompli comes in the Valley of Achor, when the woman's defiant
voice is thoroughly subdued and replaced by sentiments of submissive
love for her abusive divine spouse.
It is little wonder then that text-affirming feminist readings of Hosea
have been few and far between, and those that have been ventured have
been highly vulnerable to critique. Marie-Theres Wacker (1987), for
example, argues that despite its feminine vehicle, the tenor of Hosea's
metaphor is male violence, and that actual women in Hosea—as opposed
to the metaphorical 'eset zenumm—are exonerated from complicity in
the crimes which Hosea condemns. Wacker makes an important point
in presenting Hosea as a critic of the patriarchal power projects of his
day. Yet, as Sherwood counters, the feminist reader is hardly comforted
by Wacker's assurances that in Hosea women are 'the image but not
the substance of the problem' (1996: 273), since they are neither the
addressees of Hosea's prophecies nor significant actors on the socio-
political scene. If women are exempt from Hosea's condemnation
because they are not active partners in the covenant, then 'patriarchy is
not being subverted but only varied'; rather than woman being identi-
fied with evil or sin, woman simply becomes irrelevant and is thereby
all the more successfully subordinated (Sherwood 1996: 273).
Instead of trying to rescue Hosea or his God from implication in
patriarchy, many feminist readers choose to rescue Corner from her
objedification and silencing by giving voice to her silenced presence in
the text. Rather than simply standing outside the text and condemn-
ing it (in the older text-negating mode), readers such as Balz-Cochis
(1982a, 1982b), van Dijk-Hemmes (1989), Fontaine (1995) and Sher-
wood (1996) seek to step through the looking glass of Hosea's objecti-
fied female symbol and take up that subject position which the text
does not invite—that of Gomer, and of all women who are subject to
and silenced by the prescriptions of male dominance which are intrinsic
to the metaphor. Three strategies for 'reading against the grain' of this
patriarchal metaphor have been especially popular: Gomer as a goddess-
worshipper, Gomer as a battered wife, and Gomer as an object of the
male pornographic gaze. In each case, as we shall see below, these read-
ings are shaped by an inception-oriented approach which reads Hosea
through the lens of later developments in the history of Western relig-
ions and cultures.
Corner as a Goddess-Worshipper
As already seen in Chapter 2, some feminist readers take up Comer's
side by sympathetically reimagining and revalorizing the execrated fer
tility cult in which she supposedly participated (e.g. Balz-Cochois 1982a,
1982b; van Dijk-Hemmes 1989). In this scenario, Corner emerges as a
faithful goddess-worshipper, who is denigrated as a whore by her hus-
band in his campaign to promote patriarchal monotheism. Hosea's ob-
jectification of female sexuality as a symbol of sin and evil is seen,
from this perspective, as an attempt to repudiate the sacralization of
materiality and femaleness which had characterized the goddess and
fertility-oriented religions in the ancient Near East (e.g. Setel 1985).
This effort is served not only by the metaphor's representation of God
as male and sin as female, but also by its attribution of all the powers of
fertility and reproduction to the male god Yahweh (e.g. Hos. 2.9, 12
[2.11, 14]; 9.12, 14).
At stake in this religious struggle was not only the symbolic issue of
sacrality of the female body, but also the social issue of the rights of
women to control that body. Balz-Cochois, for example, argues that part
of Comer's attraction to the fertility cult was the sexual freedom which
it offered. In the orgiastic sexual rituals, women were free to enjoy
whomever they choose, and consequently to conceive by whomever they
choose. Thus the worship of goddesses went hand in hand with a disso-
lution of patriarchal hierarchies and an affirmation of women's sexual
autonomy (Balz-Cochois 1982a, 1982b). Conversely, denial of the life-
giving power of the Goddess(es), argues van Dijk-Hemmes (1989) was
the essential concomitant of a patriarchal order defined by the priority
of fatherhood and the re-signification of female sexual freedom as
'harlotry'.
In this reading, Hosea is seen as a key document witnessing to the
historical formation of patriarchy, marking a critical turning point in
the history of Western religions away from ancient goddess religions
which affirmed nature, sexuality and women, to dualistic patriarchal
religions in which nature, sexuality and femaleness are stripped of any
association with divine power and sacrality. This shift then leads directly
to the misogynistic character of Western religion, wherein female sexu-
ality is linked to sexual temptation, sin and death, and as such, repre-
sents a threat which must be carefully controlled.
Setel, Balz-Cochis and van Dijk-Hemmes present their work as a
historical reconstruction of religious conflicts in eighth-century Israel,

viewed from a feminist perspective. But, as I suggested already in Chap-
ter 2, there are serious historical problems with this effort to rewrite the
religious history of eighth-century Israel as a chapter in the story of the
rise and fall (or fall and rise) of an earth-, woman-, and body-affirming
feminist spirituality. Because this story is more mythic than historical
(Eller 1993), it cannot be taken as a reliable guide for the interpretation
of gender symbolism in ancient texts.
By positing a significant degree of continuity between Hosea and
later Western figurations of gender and sacrality, Setel and others who
share her reading strategy imply that the misogynistic formations of
gender and sexuality that are endemic to Western culture are visible in
their originary form in Hosea's metaphor. This assumption then invites
the reader to view Hosea through the lens of subsequent religious devel-
opments in which women became identified with carnality and tempta-
tion, and female sexuality became coded as profane and even demonic.
In a circular manner, this hermeneutic then produces the conclusion
that Hosea's metaphor of female fornication is a formative instance of
the West's dualistic metaphysics.
The anachronistic tilt inherent in this approach is most obviously
manifest in the argument that female sexual autonomy was one of the
issues at stake in the face-off between Hosea's patriarchal monotheism
and Comer's goddess religion. Even if goddesses were worshipped in
Hosea's Israel, the assumption that female sexual autonomy was the
socio-ideological correlate of goddess worship is romantic and naive.
There was, as Gerda Lerner observes, 'a considerable time lag between
the subordination of women in patriarchal society and the declassing of
the goddesses'; the presence of goddess worship in an ancient Near
Eastern society does not offer evidence of social structures of female
freedom and bodily autonomy (Lerner 1986: 141 and passim). Rather,
patriarchal control of female sexuality, backed by the laws of the state,
was a formative and foundational feature of ancient Near Eastern civili-
zations. Control of female sexuality was not an innovation of ancient
Israelite culture, but was rather a pervasive and long-established feature
of ancient Near Eastern culture which was hardly subject to negotiation
in eighth-century Israel.
Rather than a socio-historical investigation into the contexts of the
text's inception, this approach more closely resembles an effort at bib-
lical theology (or thealogy). In theological approaches, the task is to
draw upon biblical materials to articulate a vision of the divine and our
relationship to it which is relevant for a contemporary community of

readers. By celebrating Gomer as a proto-neopagan goddess-worshipper,
modern feminist readers can locate their own experience with misogy-
nistic religion and their quest for a feminist alternative within the nar-
rative of the biblical story. Though this reading claims to reconstruct
the historical contexts of the text's inception, it is largely determined
by issues located at the juncture of the text's reception in contemporary
feminist circles; it is therefore of little help in the effort to reconstruct
the specific discourses in which this metaphor was originally conceived.
Gomer as a Victim of Spousal Abuse

Reading against the grain and identifying with Gomer has led feminist
critics in another direction as well: it renders visible in their eyes that
which was invisible in androcentric interpretation—the disturbing spec-
ter of God as a perpetrator of sexual violence. In Hosea, as well as in
several other prophetic texts (Jer. 2, 3.1-3, 13 and 5.7-8; Ezek. 16 and
23), women are subject to male violence, stripped naked, publicly de-
graded, depicted as 'vile whores', and are reduced to objects with no
power of their own, all according to this God's command. The image of
God as an abusive husband, threatening his wayward wife Israel with
violence and rape as punishment for her sins, is correctly seen to be
theologically dangerous and ultimately unacceptable in the context of a
culture where male violence against women runs rampant (e.g. Weems
1989,1995; Exum 1995; Graetz 1992; Magdalene 1995; Tornkvist 1998:
64; Yee 1992: 100). Hosea's image of redemption, in which the wife
submissively returns to her abusive husband, seduced by his promises
of love, is also troubling, for it mirrors the real experience of women
'who remain in abusive relationships because periods of mistreatment
are often followed by intervals of kindness and generosity' (Yee 1992:
100).
This approach to Hosea's metaphor clearly showcases the importance
and power of a reception-oriented feminist hermeneutic. Androcentric
interpreters have been quite comfortable with a metaphor that likens
God to a husband afflicted by an unfaithful wife and presents images of
abuse and sexual degradation as fitting punishment for this woman's
sexual sins. But feminist readers have asked 'to whose experience does
this metaphor speak' (Exum 1996: 119)? Surely not to women who
have suffered abuse themselves, or who have been cowed into submis-
sion by the very threat of such violence. As Weems puts it, 'for women
who have been victims of domestic and sexual violence, the image of
God as ravaging husband may be intolerable' (1989: 101; see also Yee
1992: 100).
Given that this metaphor implicitly models and condones violence
against women, Weems, Setel and others therefore raise the question of
whether Hosea should any longer be taken as sacred scripture. This is a
serious and important issue for biblically-based religious communities
to consider, but not one that is the focus of this discussion.
Hosea's Metaphor as Prophetic Pornography

Some readers take the focus on divine sexual violence a step further by
likening Hosea's sexual imagery, along with that found in other pro-
phetic texts, to pornographic literature (e.g. Brenner 1995b, 1996; Exum
1995, 1996; Setel 1985; Tornkvist 1998: 26; van Dijk-Hemmes 1995).
They find that, like pornography, these prophetic metaphors depict
female sexuality as deviant and negative in relationship to male sexual-
ity, exhibit images of female degradation and public humiliation, and
portray female sexuality as an object of male possession and control
(e.g. Setel 1985: 87; Brenner 1995b: 265; van Dijk-Hemmes 1995:
248). The function of both genres—pornography and biblical 'porno-
prophetics'—is also similar; such images are not innocent erotica, but
rather serve to maintain the structures of male domination through the
representation of women as degraded objects of male possession and
control (Setel 1985: 87; van Dijk-Hemmes 1995: 248). Like pornogra-
phy, prophetic metaphors of marriage and fornication are products of
an androcentric imagination which denigrates female sexuality and
degrades women, and for both genres of literature, the root motivation
behind such representations is a 'fear of female sexuality and the need
to control it' (Exum 1995: 112 n. 30).
A reception-oriented approach clearly informs the comparison of Hos.
1-2 and other prophetic texts with modern pornographic literature. This
point is explicitly made in Exum's response to Robert Carroll's charge
that this comparison constitutes a case of 'aggressive anachronism'.
Carroll warns that 'without knowing the psychological make-up of the
biblical writers it is not possible to evaluate the degree to which their
writings may be characterized as misogynistic or otherwise' (cited in
Exum 1996: 103 n. 3; see also Carroll 1995). In reply, Exum states flatly
that she is not interested in questions of authorial intention. Rather she
says, 'I am more interested in the effect on the reader, and I experience
this material as defamatory, insulting, and, ultimately misogynistic'

(Exum 1996: 103; emphasis added).
Exum is correct that it is imperative, for ethical and political reasons,
to deal with the reception of texts in which images of God as a perpe-
trator of violence against naked female bodies can serve, implicitly and
explicitly, to legitimate structures of male dominance and male violence
against women. This work is important, indeed healing, given a culture
that is built upon phallocentric violence.
Yet it is important to remember that this orientation to reception
shapes our view of Hosea is specific ways. Within these studies of
biblical 'pornoprophetics', Hosea is read alongside of other prophetic
images from Jeremiah and Ezekiel which also use marital or sexual
imagery, including violent sexual imagery, to depict the relationship
between the nation and its deity. Read as a set, more attention is given
to the commonalities between Hosea, Jeremiah and Ezekiel and less
attention to the differences. But there are important differences. The
language of the sixth-century texts, especially Ezek. 16 and 23, is laden
with a tone of disgust concerning female sexuality which is not obvi-
ously present in Hosea. In his extended allegory of the two sisters
Oholah and Oholibah (Samaria and Jerusalem), Ezekiel's language is
lurid and disturbing; he obsessively dwells upon images of virgin
breasts being 'pressed' and 'handled', of lust being poured out upon
their bodies, of women being stripped naked and gang raped by their
former 'lovers'. While Frymer-Kensky (who tends to be a rather con-
ciliatory reader) avoids labelling Ezekiel's diatribe as overtly misogy-
nistic (she wants to blame later Greek influences for the misogyny
within Judaism), even she admits that the ' intensity of these passages
and their sexual fantasies of nymphomania and revenge seem to be
fueled by unconscious fear and rage' (1992: 151). By setting Hosea
side by side with Ezekiel, Hosea's female imagery appears as being in
continuity and complicity with texts which date from a different time
and place and which are (in my eyes, at least) more obviously misogy-
nistic than Hosea's. The result is that Hosea's female imagery appears
more pornographic and more misogynistic than it might otherwise.
Points of Agreement
Amidst all the diversity which characterize the approaches surveyed
above, there appear to be some key points of agreement; even if not all
these readers explicitly make these points, nowhere are they challenged.
First, the resistant readers surveyed above generally agree that the
metaphor depends upon a misogynistic inscription of female sexuality
as negative and threatening, and that it is motivated by the desire to
assert patriarchal control over that threat. Few have argued with
T. Drorah Setel's claim that female sexuality in Hosea functions as a
'symbol of evil' (1985: 86). Renita Weems, for example, even as she
seeks to remain open to the revelatory potential of the marriage
metaphor, nevertheless finds that it reflects a view of the female body
and female sexuality as 'disgusting' and 'threatening' and needing to be
controlled; it is based on a way of thinking that 'sees women's bodies
as mysterious and dangerous and perceives women's sexuality as devi-
ant and threatening to the status and well-being of men' (1995: 30, 41).
Accordingly, Weems and others argue, this metaphor is motivated, on
some level at least, (conscious or unconscious), by the patriarchy's con-
cern to subdue the threat of this dangerous and deviant female body.
The theme about control of female sexuality is amplified by those
who view Hosea's metaphor as 'pornoprophetic' literature. Van Dijk-
Hemmes argues, for example, that the metaphorical women in these
prophetic texts are degraded and publicly humiliated 'in order to stress
that their sexuality is and ought to be an object of male possession and
control' (1995: 253). For Exum also, images of divine sexual violence
in Hosea and other prophetic texts appeal 'to female fear of male vio-
lence in order to keep female sexuality in check' (Exum 1996: 110).
This argument—that the text seeks to subdue the threat of female
sexual autonomy—does not necessarily rest upon the assumption that
the patriarchal control of women was a contested issue in Hosea's
Israel. Most critical readers do not accept the romantic scenario of a dra-
matic conflict between repressive patriarchal monotheism and liberative
goddess traditions as the historical context behind Hosea's rhetoric.
But readers such as Exum do argue that the outward solidity of patri-
archal social and religious structures within ancient Israel did not nec-
essarily ease or erase male fears about female sexuality and female
sexual autonomy. At a latent or subtextual level, such fears may prevail
as active determinants in the processes of textual production and recep-
tion.
This point is most fully developed in Sherwood's deconstructive
reading of Hosea. Sherwood finds in the text's project of repression evi-
dence for the ultimate instability of that project. Throughout, she says,
the text is 'suspiciouslyanxious' to silence and subdue this woman,
and in this anxiety, betrays its fears that she cannot be controlled. For
example, the text's determined effort to silence or control the woman's
voice betrays a certain 'fear of what she might say' (1996: 306); like-
wise, the text's relentless effort to confine and contain the woman
suggests a fear of woman's autonomy and the loss of male control over
her (1996: 306). Indeed, Sherwood argues, 'every sign of female power-
lessness in this text, and every offence to the feminist reader, can be
read deconstructively as evidence of woman's power' (1996: 306).
While it is indisputable that the marriage metaphor emerges from
social attitudes which view female sexual freedom as deeply
threatening, many resistant readers take the argument a step further. It
is not just the threat of female sexual transgression which motivates the
power of the metaphor, but the threat of female sexuality itself (e.g.
Setel 1985; Exum 1996; Brenner 1996). Hosea, then, is not only patri-
archal literature which presupposes male rights to control female sexu-
ality, but it is misogynistic literature which assumes and depends upon
a view of female sexuality as something intrinsically negative, inferior
and symbolically 'other' to the identity of the Israelite community.
Woman as 'the other'

The point about identity is key, and takes us to another key point of
implicit or explicit agreement among the feminist readings discussed
above. The metaphor is seen to 'work' in relation to a symbolic coding
of Israelite identity as male such that woman serves as a symbol of the
'other' (e.g. Leith 1989; Tornkvist 1998: 170-73). If Israel always imag-
ines itself as male, then a metaphor which depicts the 'sons of Israel' as
female effects a negation of that identity. The metaphor calls the men
of Israel, accustomed to their privileged social and semantic position,
to identify themselves with the degraded, lowly female. Such an identi-
fication is intended not only to induce an experience of shame, but to
attack the very symbolic foundations of communal identity. As Mary
Joan Winn Leith argues, by calling the Israelites 'women', Hosea 'plays
upon male fears of woman as "other"' (1989: 98) as part of his strategy
'to augment his negation of Israel's identity' (1989: 104).
The difficulty with Leith's argument is that by the end of Hos. 2, the
redeemed Israel is still a woman. But if it is intrinsically shameful for
Israel to be woman due to the symbolic location of woman as the
denigrated 'other', how can the last verses of ch. 2, where God betroths
the woman Israel to himself again, offer a compelling image of redemp-

tion? Leith herself acknowledges this problem—'no sex change has
occurred to restore Israel's manhood' (1989: 104). She attempts to
explain the incongruity by placing Hosea's female metaphor in the con-
text of two distinct 'semantic wordfields', the first relating to the excre-
tory connotations of harlotry language, and the second relating to
connotations of social legitimacy attached to proper marriage relations.
She argues that
by the time the woman has undergone her punishment, there is an entirely
new context in which to view the woman, centered on ideals of social
legitimacy and moral rectitude. It is now acceptable for Israel, if only
metaphorically, to be a woman (1989: 104).
But can the incongruity be so easily resolved? If the metaphor rests

upon the pejorative inscription of female 'otherness' to the male gen-
dered community, then how can it ever be acceptable, and indeed
redemptive, for Israel to be a woman?
Yvonne Sherwood's deconstructive approach seeks to resolve this
problem by taking the contradiction as further evidence of the instabil-
ity of the text's patriarchal project. Building on Leith's argument,
Sherwood argues that the text's seemingly 'stable equations' of 'male'
equals 'God' and 'female' equals 'sinful Israel', which seem on the
surface to blatantly sanctity' male dominance, are 'profoundly disturbed
by the fact that the man is also part of Israel' (1993: 313). Thus,
alongside the identification of divine power and patriarchy stands the
deconstructive challenge of the text that audaciously forces a male audi-
ence into identification not with God but with a promiscuous woman
(Sherwood 1996: 313).
The 'otherness' of woman, upon which the rhetorical offense of the
metaphor depends, is therefore subverted by the metaphor's use of a
female symbol for the (male) community of Israel.
Sherwood argues that the identification of Israel as female disturbs
the closure of identity which patriarchy would like to enforce; she
posits a normative and conscious gendering of Israel as male which is
then disturbed by a subversive and unconscious gendering of Israel as
female. Another possibility however, which will be explored in the
following chapters, is that the gendering of the corporate body of Israel
was more fluid than we usually assume, and that this fluidity is obscured
when we apply the univalent label 'patriarchal' to the complex and
distinct symbolic formations characteristic of the world of ancient Israel.
An Inception-oriented Approach
All of these feminist readings approach Hosea's metaphor in the rela-
tion to constructions of woman and woman's body which emerge from
the contemporary feminist struggle for female self-possession and auton-
omy. Where the reader's concern focuses on the effect of this text as
received today, this approach is legitimate and important. But moder-
nity's constructions of human meaning can not offer an adequate tem-
plate for entering into and understanding worlds of meaning which are
very different from those that prevail in the modern West. The reluc-
tance among many feminist readers to acknowledge and come to terms
with this limitation is, I think, inherent in the project of feminist theory
itself.
The assumption of the universal applicability of feminist categories
of analysis has been intrinsic to the feminist project since its inception.
Beginning with the construction of 'women's common sisterhood in
oppression', feminism was conceived as a theory and a political practice
which could be universally applied to the situation of women in all times
and places (Ramazanoglu 1989: 3, 13). But feminism did not in fact
begin with the common experience of all women in oppression, but
rather with the experience of a particular class of women at a particular
historical juncture. Feminism arose in the ideological wake of the En-
lightenment and in the cradle of the structures of power and privilege
fostered by the rise of industrial capitalism. Despite its claims to uni-
versality, feminism is a 'cultural product', whose interpretive categories
are conditioned by the values of Western culture and the need to battle
against those ideologies of male dominance which are particular to that
culture (1989: 21).
The assumption that modernity's constructions of meaning and value
are adequate templates for the interpretation of ancient texts is parti-
cularly problematic in regards to the study of meanings of self, sexu-
ality and society in cultures radically different from our own. Feminist
thought is rooted in the Enlightenment's redefinition of the human in
terms of individual autonomy and rationality. Within this redefinition,
the body is situated as an object and possession of the individual and
rational self or mind (Marglin 1992).2 Emerging within this framework,
2. As F.A. Marglin argues, this definition of the body arose as an essential

concomitant to the formation of a modern capitalist economy. If labor was to be a
feminist thinkers concluded that female empowerment and dignity in

this society depended upon the achievement of personal autonomy, the
severance of the meaning of woman from her biology (at least for lib-
eral feminists), and most of all, women's self-possession and control of
their own bodies. The struggle for these is indeed vital within the par-
ticularity of the social world of Western feminism. However, their
application as the determinative categories of analysis for other cultural
formations is problematic. As Rosaldo insists, the story of women in
world history can not be adequately understood as an 'endless and
essentially unchanging fight to keep men from making claims to female
bodies' (1980: 392).
If we are going to read ancient texts in an effort to discern in them
symbolic formations of gender and sexuality which are distinctive from
our own, it is important for us to remember that feminist critics read not
simply as women, but as Western-educated, modern women (indeed
most often as white, middle- or upper-class Western women), and that
only in recognizing the particularity of our presuppositions and inter-
ests can we begin to make an attempt to bracket them. Our efforts as
feminist readers to bring female experience to bear upon the questions
we ask of ancient texts should not be confused with assessing these texts
solely in terms of our own modern values and convictions. As Peggy
commodity available for sale, it must be 'free'; in other words the body must be
owned by and under the control of a rational and autonomous self. This new con-
ception of a proprietary relationship between self and body rendered obsolete a
mode of thinking and knowing indigenous to the structures of craftsmanship and
agriculture in which knowledge was 'lodged as it were in the body' (1992: 24), in
favor of a monopoly of reason over knowledge, in which the body, like some dumb
ass. must be obedient to the demands of the will and to the demands of labor
capitalism and industrial production.
But to extend this ideology to women would have meant that women would own
their own bodies, and by extension, would control the products of their labor (i.e.
their babies). Thus the commodification of the body, so necessary to the capitalist
economy, was inherently problematic for patriarchal society when applied to the
female body. Fleeing from the implications of modernity's definition of the body as
applied to the female body, a variety of ideologies and controls, such as the male-
dominated science of gynecology, served to define female sexuality as an object of
male control, rather than as an object of female self-possession. Women's bodies
were inscribed as peculiarly subject to externalized natural forces of female fertility.
While women's bodies were controlled by nature, nature was controlled by men's
scientific knowledge and thus the female body was subjugated to the obj edification
of male medical technology (1992: 24-25).
Day points out, 'we need to ask feminist questions, but we must be
prepared to obtain answers that do not directly confirm the values we
hold in the modern world' (1989a: 3).
Ancient Israelite women certainly did not enjoy personal autonomy
or self-possession over their own bodies, but were largely defined by
their procreative potential and were constrained within a male-domi-
nated social system. A modern, liberated person may respond to this
lack of personal, bodily autonomy with horror, and conclude that ancient
Israel was a misogynistic society which allotted women little more
status than that of cattle or any other property a man might control. But
in a social context where the individual is not the primary locus of
human meaning and value, body, sex and gender will carry meanings
which are quite distinct from our own and the equations most central to
feminist analysis will not necessarily hold. In ancient Israel, the basic
social unit was not the individual but the kinship group, and person-
hood was defined in terms of one's place within the corporate structure
and by one's contributions to those structures.3 Individual existence was
intimately tied to corporate welfare and survival, both in the immediate
temporal context and over the course of generations. Even beyond death,
one's existence and happiness depended upon continuing ties to the
family and its land through burial in ancestral tombs (Brichto 1973;
Bloch-Smith 1992). In such a social formations, personal autonomy
was not definitive to the structures of human meaning, and therefore
should not be taken as the normative criteria upon which to evaluate
woman's status and ascribed worth within ancient Israelite society.
Feminist readers tend to cull ancient texts for evidence or counter-
indications of women's autonomy, working under the assumption that
such autonomy would be 'a mark of a kind of freedom of women or
status of women' (Delaney 1989: 163). But as anthropologist Carol
3. See Brechtel's discussion (1994) of the characteristics of group-oriented

societies. As Brechtel explains, in group-oriented societies such as ancient Israel's,
'most people derive their identity externally from the strongly bonded group to
which they belong' (1994: 21). This group-orientation involves a total orientation of
behavior and value, or what Brechtel calls a overall 'thinking pattern' which molds
an individual's approach to all aspects of life. The individual internalizes an ethic of
automatic allegiance, obligation and attachment to the group which is expressed in
relations of reciprocity, mutual aid and interdependence among and between group-
members. Essentially, 'since identity stems from the group, the welfare of the group
is considered identical to the welfare of the individual' (1994: 21).
Delaney suggests, sexual freedom can not necessarily be equated with

autonomy and empowerment in a culture such as ancient Israel, for
within a world-view in which communal orientations are fundamental,
autonomy might mean alienation, not dignity.
Another construct that we need to identify and bracket in reading
ancient representations of sexuality is modernity's compartmentalization
of sexual behavior and sexual meanings within the sphere of the per-
sonal and the private. In a kinship-based society, sexual reproduction,
material production and the maintenance of social power constitute
intersecting and coordinate dimensions of a unitary sphere of cultural
activity. Sexuality was not simply a private matter, but was 'conceived
of in broad terms spanning all the way from the sexual act itself to the
extended family as its result, to the extended family's political-eco-
nomic behavior' (Coote and Ord 1989: 60). Rather than sex and the
society signifying two separate spheres of human activity, in biblical lit-
erature, sexual activity carries profoundly social and political meanings.
The social character of sex in ancient Israel relates to the pragmatics
of survival in a marginal agrarian frontier zone such as the highlands of
ancient Palestine, where the survival and strength of the family group
depended upon its size, and its size was a function of marriage alli-
ances and female fertility.4 Such a culture would not likely abstract
concerns with group strength and survival from its symbolic constructs
about woman's body and female sexuality. Indeed, as Lyn Brechtel
argues, in such a group-oriented culture, (as opposed to an individual-
oriented culture such as the modern West), the very notion of salvation
is intimately tied up with the meaning of woman and sex. In worlds
like ancient Israel's,
4. In the Palestinian highlands, those families with the most children could
terrace and cultivate the most land, protect their interests, perpetuate and expand
their lineages, and forge crucial relationships of alliance with other families through
intermarriage, thereby securing and expanding their power base. As the Psalmist
sings: 'Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, are the sons of one's youth. Happy is
the man who has his quiver full of them' (Ps. 127.4-5a). Daughters were also valu-
able, and not only for the labor while young; as they were married into other fami-
lies, crucial relationships of alliance, mutual obligation and solidarity between
families were forged. Even with the emergence of more complex and centralized
social structures, the kinship network remained the primary site for the accumula-
tion of loyal supporters and therefore, of power (Coote and Ord 1989: 58, 60-63).
salvation from the finality of death comes from the biological continua-
tion of life through children from one generation to another... Marriage
and the family are highly valued, and women, the producers of children,
are the producers of continued life, the producers of salvation. Therefore,
women have significant power and value within the society... Women
create salvation; there is no greater power, no greater functioning in this
kind of society (1994: 22).
When feminist (and other) readers look at the inscription of female

sexuality in the book of Hosea and see the female body only as an
individual body sexually constrained by the powers of patriarchy, they
overlook the corporate and corporeal dimensions of human meaning
which were constitutive of the fabric of life in ancient Israel and which
are at work in Hosea's imagery. This limitation in interpretive vision
may be traced to the indebtedness of feminist theory to the world-view
of the Enlightenment with its inscription of the body as an object and
possession of the autonomous and rational self. For feminist theory,
embodiment has to do with individual bodies, and its thinking about
the body is primarily concerned with the systems of ideology and power
by which these individual bodies are signified and constrained. The
female body then means the individual body, which occupies one of two
subject positions: either liberated or oppressed (sexually and socially)
within the structures of patriarchy. But in Hos. 1-2 one finds an imagi-
nation of the female body as a sign for the body social; this symbol
needs to be read within the context of a world-view in which corporate
rather than individual meanings of the human and human embodiment
are primary.
An approach which analyzes the figure of the 'eset zenunim in terms
of feminism's effort to secure the freedom of the individual bodies is
relevant for countering our culture's own patriarchal codes that authori-
tatively ground themselves in such texts. But such a restricted view of
the signification of the body is inadequate for the interpretation of a
text where we are confronted with the image of a female body as a sign
for the body social, or alternately, the land, which emerges in the con-
text of an Iron Age agrarian society undergoing particular forms of
societal stress and transformation.
Conclusion
While challenging the cabal of male solidarity with Hosea which has
shaped the 'malestream' reading, feminist readers have tended to concur
with its view that Hosea's metaphor of Israel as the 'eset zenunlm
depends upon a symbolic location of woman as 'other' with respect to
the meaning of sacrality and community. This chapter has argued that
this conclusion, along with the concomitant position that Hosea's
imagery reflects misogynistic cultural attitudes, is shaped by the choice
of particular reading strategies which focus on the reception of the text
within contemporary communities of interpretation rather than upon
the inception of the text within conventions of language and thought
very different from our own. The following chapter will seek to situate
Hosea's metaphor in relation to structures of thought and conventions
of language which are more closely approximate to the social and
symbolic world of eighth-century Israel. Closer attention to the corporate
meanings of sex and sexuality in ancient Israelite society and literature,
and particularly to the way woman's body may figure as a symbol for
the social body, will help to disturb the widely shared consensus, that
an inscription of woman as 'other' defines the logic of Hosea's female
sexual imagery.
Chapter 6
WOMEN, SEX AND SOCIETY
In an attempt to mitigate the determination of modernity's projections

upon our reading of Hosea, we need to search after those figurations of
gender and sexuality which were indigenous to the world of eighth-
century Israel and then situate the text within them. Such an effort is, of
course, always tenuous, approximate, and in some measure, inventive,
for we can never neatly shed the influence of our own social locations
and world-views; the unfamiliar worlds we perceive always remain in
some measure a refraction of our own. Nevertheless, the effort is well
worthwhile, as new perspectives open when we strive to see through
another's eyes.
Seeking some glimpse into the world of difference implicated in
Hosea's metaphor, this chapter will take up a socio-literary approach,
attending both to the sexual and gender codes definitive of Israelite
society, and to related symbolic patterns discernable in its literature.
Sexual Transgression in Ancient Israel

Foundational to the orientational structures of meaning and value which
defined Israelite society was the 'house of the father', and the highest
social value was attached to ensuring its patrilineal integrity and
continuity across the generations. This integrity and continuity were
precariously dependent upon the family's control of its patrimonial
lands and its women's reproductive potential. Within this socio-sym-
bolic context, Israelite women were defined largely by their role as
child bearers and were valued above all else for their service in fertility
to the genealogical imperatives of the patrilineal family. Yet this was
not a monolithically androcentric world; the bet 'ab or 'father's house'
could also be called the bet 'em, or 'mother's house' (Meyers 1991),
indicating that mothers too were important loci of social definition.
Nevertheless, gender relations were not symmetrical.
6. Women, Sex and Society 163
Though not all women were wives and mothers, maternity was
definitive of female identity, much as gibbor ('strong man', 'warrior') as
a synonym for 'man' expressed a root value definitive of male identity.
Within the modern West, the restriction of women to the role of mother
has been concomitant with political marginalization justified by ideolo-
gies of female passivity, emotionality and fragility. Projecting from their
experience of female disempowerment in this culture, it is not uncom-
mon for feminist writers to characterize the situation of ancient Israelite
women as one of virtual 'enslavement' (Ruether 1985: 119), their status
being essentially that of male 'sexual property' (Thistlethwaite 1993:
64). But the socioeconomic determinants of women's status in ancient
Israelite society were quite distinct from that of modern industrial
capitalist society (Meyers 1988: 24-71). Ancient Israel was dominated
by an agrarian subsistence economy, within which economic produc-
tion and decision-making processes revolved around the domestic family
unit and more broadly, the kinship network. Comparative anthropologi-
cal studies show that in such contexts, women may 'wield significant
amounts of power' and 'control at least the major portion of important
resources and decisions' (Rogers 1975: 728-29; see also Rosaldo 1974;
Meyers 1988). Thus to characterize ancient Israelite women as male
'sexual property' or 'virtual slaves' is to efface their historical experi-
ence as empowered social actors and contributors to the domestic
economy. But ancient Israelite women were not free agents, especially
where sexual matters were concerned.
Because female sexual transgression constituted a serious threat to
the order of a world whose social and symbolic structures were founded
upon patrilineal continuity, control of female sexuality was a cultural
priority. Extant biblical laws dictate the death sentence for adultery,
specifically defined as consensual sexual intercourse between a married
woman and a man other than her husband (Westbrook 1990: 543).' A
betrothed woman, who lay with another man 'in the city' (and therefore
presumably willingly) also faced the death penalty, as did her male
1. Note that a married man did not commit adultery by sleeping with a woman
who was not his wife, unless that woman was herself married (Lev. 20.10; Deut.
22.22). On adultery laws in ancient Israel and the ancient Near East, see especially
Westbrook (1990), and also Phillips (1973, 1981) and McKeating (1979).
On the question of whether the mandated death penalty in biblical law should be
read as a literal description of normative practice or as a symbolic statement, see
Westbrook (1990); cf. McKeating (1979) and Phillips (1981).
partner (Deut. 22.23-24). The young bride who failed the virginity test
on her wedding night was to be stoned to death (Deut. 22.13-21). The
crime in these cases did not concern immorality as we understand it,
but rather a breach in a socio-symbolic order which strictly delineated
between the unmarried virgin and the married non-virgin. That social
order and not morality is the concern behind these laws can be seen
clearly in the case of the rape or seduction of an unbetrothed woman.
Whereas a man who raped or seduced a betrothed woman faced the
death penalty (Deut. 22.25-27), the rape or seduction of an unbetrothed
girl was deemed a minor offense. In the latter case, no man's marital
rights had been violated, and the rupture in the social order caused by
such a sex act could be 'repaired' by forcing the offending man to marry
the young woman (Exod. 22.16-17; Deut. 22.28-29). That the law in
this case makes no distinction between rape and seduction (cf. Deut.
22.23-27) is revealing; at stake in sexual offenses is not the rights or
feelings of the woman involved, but the maintenance of'the neat socio-
structural categories whereby each patriarchal line is kept pure' (Niditch
1979: 146). No ambiguity in the arena of sexual contact could be
tolerated.2
Many commentators analyze adultery as essentially a property offense,
and use the adultery laws to illustrate the chattel status of wives within
the patriarchal household. Thistlethwaite, for example, defines sexual
crimes as relating to 'the female as sexual property' (1993: 63; cf. Setel
1985: 89). But even if one accepts the problematic view that ancient
Israelite marriage was a proprietary relationship,3 it is clear that adultery
2. Thus if a man even suspected his wife of adultery but lacked concrete
evidence of any crime, he could force her to undergo the ordeal of drinking bitter
waters, in which her life or at least her health were seriously threatened (Num. 5.11-
31).
3. The prevalent view that wives were their husband's property relies on evi-
dence such as the inclusion of the wife in a list of her husband's property in the
tenth commandment, the use of terms of purchase to describe marriage, and the use
of the term ba'al ('lord', 'owner') for husband. A comprehensive review and cri-
tique of these arguments is offered by C. Wright (1990: 183-221); see also Burrows
(1938) and the briefer treatment by Emmerson (1989: 382-85). Clearly, women
were subject to male sexual control in ancient Israel. But the analysis of the situa-
tion of ancient Israelite women as objectified male 'sexual property' is based upon
the projection of contemporary categories of individualism and commodity relations
which are inapplicable to the study of human relationships within a kinship-based
agrarian society. Wives in Israel were not purchased (Wright 1990: 193; cf. Burrows
was not a property offense. Damage to property could be compensated

through the payment of a fine, and never merited the death penalty. Also,
property issues, unlike adultery, could be settled privately. But adultery
commanded the death penalty, and therefore clearly 'stands in a quite
distinct category of law' (C. Wright 1990: 205).
The stipulation of the death penalty, while not always applied in
actual practice (Westbrook 1990), was reserved for those crimes which
constituted a serious breach in the sacral-social or cosmic order, such
as murder or blasphemy. This valence of sexual offenses can be seen
particularly clearly in the punishment of stoning allotted in the case of
the non-virgin bride (Deut. 22.21, 23-24). Stoning was a special pen-
alty, reserved for those crimes which upset the order of creation and
which thus constituted a serious danger to the entire community. In
1938: 28-29). The mohar (usually translated 'bridcprice') was not a purchase price,
but rather a customary gift from the groom's family to the father of the betrothed
girl which at once compensated the family for the loss of a valuable laborer and
sealed a bond of mutual obligation between the family of the bride and the family of
the groom. A marriage was not a contractual relationship between two men in
which the woman constituted a commodified object of trade; rather a marriage was
constituted in the establishment of a bond or alliance between two families, with
attendant obligations of exchange and support.
The husband did have lordship over his wife, in the sense of rights of exclusive
access to her sexuality as is signified by the use of the term ba'al ['owner', 'lord']
for husband, but that docs not mean that her legal status was akin to that of a slave.
If wives were their husband's property, whose status was little different than that of
slaves, then it would be difficult to explain the distinction between wives and
female slaves which is implicit in biblical law. The legal texts make clear that a
man could acquire a woman over whom he had rights of sexual access through
means other than marriage. (This latter category of woman is probably identifiable
with the pileges, usually though poorly translated as 'concubine' [Bal 1988: 81]).
Such a woman might be a slave of the wife, a girl purchased for conjugal purposes,
or a captive. That the social position of such a woman was distinct from that a wife
is witnessed by a series of laws designed to protect her from abuse or neglect (Exod.
21.7-11; Deut. 21.10-14). No such laws exist to protect a wife proper, leading to the
inference that her legal relationship to her husband's house was of a different char-
acter than that of a slave or pileges. It may be that the strength and prevailing
influence of the marriage alliance gave a wife some measure of protection against
abuse and divorce. An offense against her was also an offense against her natal
family, threatening vital relations of support and exchange. This may explain why
divorce was specifically prohibited in certain cases where the husband had already
alienated the wife's family at the outset (Deut. 22.21, 29); in such cases, lacking
relations of mutuality with his wife's family, he would have little to lose by divorce.
stoning, the community as a whole acts as executioner since the 'peo-

ple as a whole and the world-order on which they depend have been
endangered' (Frymer-Kensky 1983: 406).4
Levitical law, though probably dating from a later period, gives
expression to the socially alienating effects of acts of sexual transgres-
sion. Those who committed adultery violated the sexual order of Isra-
elite society were, by law, to be 'cut off (nikretu)from among their
people' (Lev. 18.29), along with perpetrators of other forbidden sexual
acts such as incest, bestiality and homosexuality (Lev. 18.19-23).5 Chil-
dren of adulterous unions were excluded from the assembly of Israel
unto the tenth generation; such a child was not properly an Israelite
(Deut. 23.3).
These social codes and attitudes are reflected in the literary figure of
the adulteress of Prov. 1-9 who is called 'issahzarah ('foreign woman')
4. The only other offenses which incurred this particular punishment in the
legal code were apostasy, including idolatry (Deut. 13.7-12, 17.2-7), child sacrifice
to Molech (Lev. 20.2), necromancy (Lev. 20.27) and filial rebellion (Deut. 21.18-
21). In addition, three stories also portray crimes that incurred a sentence of stoning:
Achan's violation of the herem (Josh. 7), blasphemy (Lev. 24.10-16) and violation
of the Sabbath (Num. 15.32-36). Frymer-Kensky argues that all of these crimes
merit death by stoning because they strike at the very basis of Israel's relationship
with God (1983: 406) and thus endanger the entire community. The community
must corporately take responsibility for the danger in their midst and rid themselves
of it.
Frymer-Kensky speculates that stoning was specifically prescribed in the case of
betrothed girls and not married women because 'sex with a betrothed girl is com-
pounded adultery: the rights of the future husband have been violated, and the girl
has offended against her obligations to her father' (1989: 93). It is, however, still
not clear why the multiple character of the offense would elevate it to a different
category.
5. In a world where personal identity derived from one's place in the commu-
nity, to be 'cut off was to become a non-person, no longer included in the order of
world. The gravity of such a punishment is perhaps lost to the modern reader, but
not to the Israelite who knew that 'no human being can exist except as a member of
an 'am ["people"]' (Pedersen 1926: 56). To be cut off from one's community was
to experience 'absolute alienation' (Pedersen 1926: 55). This point is made even
more pointedly in light of family religion, where, as Bloch-Smith explains, 'being
cut off meaning 'severing family ties with the consequent loss of inheritance and
place in the family tomb'. Also, inability to perform required ancestral rites may
have incurred the wrath of the dead, and worse of all, this punishment 'may have
precluded the possibility of future nourishment and honor from [one's] own descen-
dants' (Bloch-Smith 1992: 128-29).
and nokriyyah ('alien') (Prov. 2.16; 7.5; also 5.20; 6.24), not because
she is literally a foreigner, but because she acts in ways which are alien
to those family structures that are definitive of that which is 'properly'
Israelite (Camp 1991: 22, 26-27). Such a woman and her deviant sexu-
ality is in Proverbs a sign of chaos, embodying 'the forces deemed
destructive of patriarchal control of family, property and society' (Camp
1991: 27). Thus, the 'strange woman' figures in Proverbs as 'a meta-
phoric vehicle for the disruptive and chaotic forces that threaten the
shalom of individual and society' (Camp 1985: 120).
The book of Proverbs probably dates from the post-exilic period,
when the symbolic valances of adultery as fundamentally alienating and
as that which makes one an alien clustered around the female partner in
adultery. This move is coordinate with the rising influence of a new key
symbol within Judaic culture—that 'of the Evil Woman, of Wickedness
personified in the female form' (Archer 1990: 105), whose main char-
acteristic was her sexual promiscuity by which she would lure righteous
men to perdition and defile the land (Archer 1987: 11; cf. Camp 1985).
It is these latter texts, buttressed by the Christian emphasis upon woman
as temptress and source of sin, that has long conditioned Western read-
ings of Hosea's 'esetzenumm; woman as Israel represents, quite straight-
forwardly it seems, Israel in its condition of sin, tempted by the
sensuous pleasures of Canaanite religion.
In comparison, in many of the biblical narratives whose composition
is usually dated to the pre-exilic period, it is the male partner in adul-
tery (e.g. David in 2 Sam. 11-12 and Abimelech in Gen. 20) who is
held accountable for the crime (Phillips 1973: 353; cited in Emmerson
1989: 386). It is indeed striking that there is no biblical narrative which
depicts an Israelite woman willingly engaging in an act of adultery.
Israelite women are generally depicted as the victims of men's sexual
transgression, not as the seducers or the perpetrators (Gen. 34; Judg.
19; 2 Sam. 11, 13). (The exception to this rule are two cases of widows
—Tamar of Gen. 38 and Ruth—who stretch the boundaries of permis-
sible sexual behavior in order to effect the socially approved end of
restoring a patrilineal line. Because of their motives, these women are
honored rather than condemned for their sexual daring.) It is far more
likely that Hosea was familiar with these pre-exilic narratives of rape
and adultery (and perhaps also with other non-extant narratives which
participated in a related set of narrative conventions), than with the post-
exilic materials which post-dated his death by at least two or three
centuries. How might our perspective on Hosea shift if we read him

with these narrative traditions as intertexts?
Sexual Transgression and Social Conflict

In Hosea and other prophetic texts, fornication functions as a primary
trope for national sin, and in the legal codes, verbal forms of znh char-
acterize acts of betrayal, apostasy and faithlessness to Yahweh. Such
sexual troping is consistent with the use of sexual language in biblical
narratives, where societal and political issues are refracted through
stories of licit and illicit sexual encounters (Niditch 1982; Bal 1984,
1988; Schwartz 199la, 1991b; Keefe 1993). Of particular interest here
for a fresh perspective on Hosea's marriage metaphor is the literary rela-
tionship between sexual violation and social violence which is evident
in biblical narratives of rape and war.
2 Samuel 13, Gen. 34 and Judg. 19 are the only narratives in the
Hebrew Bible where the rape of a woman is the focus of narrative
attention, and in each of these narratives, this rape provides the catalyst
for escalating violence and war between men. In Gen. 34, the violation
of Dinah by Shechem,6 prince of the city that bears his name, is avenged
6. Cf. Brechtel (1994) who raises the question 'What if Dinah is not raped?'
Brechtel argues that there is no definite textual indication that Shechem rapes
Dinah; according to vv. 2-3, Shechem sees (r 'h), takes (Iqh), lies with (skb), and
violates ('nh) Dinah. The difficult verb here is 'nh which in the qal means 'to
humble' or 'put down', and in the piel, as here, 'to humiliate intensely', 'to violate'
or, as Brechtel translates, 'to shame'. Whereas most commentators read this verb as
a clear indicator for rape, its basic meaning has to do more precisely with the viola-
tion of sexual boundaries, an act which may or may not involve physical coercion.
Brechtel explains that in the context of a group-oriented society such as that reflected
in this text, extra-marital intercourse, whether forced or consensual, shames a
woman, and it is this shaming or humiliation which is signalled by the use of the
verb. The verb is clearly used in this way in Deut. 22.24, where a man lies with a
betrothed virgin in the city and violates her. Here the law assumes that because the
woman did not cry out, she was a willing participant in the act, and therefore merits
stoning along with the man.
As the law in Deut. 22.28-29 suggests, this distinction between acts of sexual
violation and sexual violence were less important to the ancient Israelites than they
are to us. Although I will continue to refer to Dinah's 'rape' in what follows, it is
with the recognition that the status of Dinah's consent or lack thereof is left ambigu-
ous in the text.
with a massacre and the pillaging of the city by her brothers. In Judg.
19, 'the outrage at Gibeah' (as the commentators like to call the brutal
gang rape of the unnamed woman) precipitates a civil war between the
tribe of Benjamin and all of the other tribes of Israel, a war which is
ludicrously violent and is only resolved with massacre and more rapes
(Judg. 20-21). And in 2 Sam. 13, Tamar's tragedy sets in motion events
leading to Absalom's murder of his brother Amnon and his war of rebel-
lion against his father. The parallel relation between rape and war in
these three narratives suggests the presence of a common convention of
narrative expression in which sexual transgression—specifically rape—
appears as a metonym for social conflict (Keefe 1993).
This repeated relationship between rape and war has been observed
by Susan Niditch (1982), who argues that in the biblical narratives,
'inappropriate or forced [sexual] alliances always lead to larger societal
disintegration' (1982: 368). Drawing upon Mary Douglas' work on Isra-
elite cosmology, Niditch explores how inappropriate and violent sexual
encounters transgress the categories and boundaries by which Israel
defines its world, and thus are experienced as threatening to the order
of that world. Because the sexual code is the foundation of the social
structure, defining its internal structure and marking its external bounda-
ries, sexual transgression of all kinds offers a primary sign for the dis-
ruption of the order of a given social world. As Claudia Camp puts it,
within the world of biblical literature, 'sexual misconduct both induces
and represents social disorder' (1985: 120).
In each of these rape narratives, the repeated cry against rape ( 'innah)
as nebalah connects the meaning of sexual violence to that of social
disorder.7 While folly or senselessness is the common translation of
nebalah (BOB, 615), this rendering misses the full significance of its
meaning. Nebaldh is a term was reserved for 'extreme acts of disorder
or unruliness' (Phillips 1975: 238; cf. Roth 1960: 406), which not only
rendered the perpetrators outcast, but resulted in a dangerous breakdown
7. In Judg. 19-21, nebalah refers both to the threat of homosexual rape, 'but to
this man, do not do this thing, this nebalah' (19.24b), and to the gang rape of the
woman, 'they have committed licentiousness and nebalah in Israel' (20.6). So too,
it is said that Shechem 'had wrought nebalah in Israel by lying with Jacob's daugh-
ter, for such a thing should not be done' (Gen. 34.7). Tamar pleads with Amnon to
turn from his passion of violence: 'No, my brother, do not rape [or humiliate] me,
for such is not done is Israel, do not do this nebalah> (2 Sam. 13.12).
in the order of social relationships.8 The use of the term nebalah in these
stories suggest that the semantic valences attached to rape in these
narratives have less to do with rape as a violation of female individuals,
than with rape as a social meaning, indicative of the transgression of
boundaries and the rupture of the order and cohesion of community life.
Thus the narrative connection between rape and war suggests that in
the world of biblical literature, sexual violation is symbolically (as it is
often literally) generative of disorder, chaos and the disintegration of
shalom within a community. As Mieke Bal remarks, in biblical litera-
ture, rape is that 'particular form of violence which is called to repre-
sent chaos in general' (Bal 1988: 28). Further, as the violence which
spirals around David's act of adultery reveals, it is not rape alone, but
sexual transgression in general which is linked to political chaos, vio-
lence and war.
In the Davidic succession narratives, not only is Amnon's rape of
Tamar metonymically linked to Absalom's rebellion, but also David's
adultery with Bathsheba resonates against the backdrop of Israel's war
with Ammon. Seeking to account for this 'figuring of national politics
sexually', Regina Schwartz is led to consider the symbolic interconnec-
tions between these military struggles for Israel's national definition
and the episodes of sexual transgression:
Simply put, Israel is threatened from without and within and in the very
midst are acts of adultery, rape and incest. This is no accident: Israel's
war with the sons of Ammon is a war of definition, the sexual violations
are tests of definition, for in both, Israel's border—who constitutes Israel
and who does not—are at stake (199la: 45).
As 'proper' sexual relationships define the internal shape of the social

order, and mark its outer boundaries, transgressive sexual activity as a
literary motif serves as a symbol for the violation of societal boundaries
and for threats to societal identity.
8. Related to nebalah is another noun, nabal, which means, 'not only fool, but
also outcast, someone who has severed himself from society through a moral trans-
gression, someone who has forfeited his place in society by violating taboos that
define the social order' (Schwartz 199la: 48). Nabal can also mean corpse, which in
the symbolic world of biblical purity laws, represented another kind of violation of
the proper order of things, 'this time not only from the social order, but from the
order of life itself (Schwartz 199la: 48). Both sexual transgression and dead bodies
are dangerous sources of pollution, because both violate the boundaries which
define the primary categories of world.
Clearly then, acts of sexual transgression and sexual violence in bib-

lical narrative have social and political meanings, relating to acts or
forces which are disintegrative of social coherence and order and which
transgress the boundaries that define the identity of this community.
This literary connection between sexual transgression and social vio-
lence suggests an alternative approach for the interpretation of Hosea's
marriage metaphor; rather than cultic apostasy, Hosea's language of
female sexual transgression may be considered as a metaphor for par-
ticular forms of social violence. In the final chapter, we will pick up on
this intertextual clue and read Hosea's metaphor in light of the dynamics
of social conflict and violence which were endemic in his time.
Women and Chaos

But first, there is a crucial difference between Hosea and these biblical
narratives which needs to be explored: in these narratives of sexual
transgression and social violence, the perpetrators of acts of sexual
transgression are male, in contrast to Hosea where the culprit is a
woman. In Hosea, the trope involves not only sexual transgression, but
female sexual transgression. This difference demands that we think
carefully not only about the meaning of sexual transgression, but also
about the meaning of woman in the context of this literature. What then
is the symbolic location of woman within this narrative pattern that
links sexual violence and social violence?
Several leading feminist biblical critics answer this question in ways
that presuppose and reinforce the premise that woman is always in-
scribed as 'other' within the symbolic world of biblical literature. For
example, in her book Fragmented Women, Cheryl Exum reads Judg. 19
in light of her controlling premise that in the Hebrew Bible, symbolic
production is controlled by men and that its female characters are to be
apprehended at the outset as 'male constructs' (1993: 11) who are sym-
bolically located as the 'other' within the binary structures of patriar-
chal thought (1993: 85). She argues that biblical literature, like patriar-
chal literature in general, apprehends female sexuality as both powerful
and dangerous, and therefore in need of being controlled (1993: 86,
89). Thus, she sees two coordinate attitudes towards female sexuality in
the Bible: fear of woman's reproductive power, and an 'equally strong
desire to appropriate it' (1993: 127). Favored strategies to mediate these
attitudes are the suppression of female sexuality through the de-sexual-
izing of women, particularly of mothers, or through narrative acts of
sexual violence against women, especially against those who attempt to

assert their sexual autonomy. It is this latter strategy that Exum sees at
work in Judg. 19.
In Exum's reading of Judg. 19, the critical moment in the story occurs
in the first verse, when the woman 'zn/zed' from her husband by leaving
him. The verb zanah here does not refer to adultery (there is no support
for such a reading in the story), but rather simply to the act of leaving
her husband; this was essentially an act of female-initiated divorce.9
Exum sees this assertion of sexual independence on the part of the
pileges as providing the implicit motivation for the horrendous acts of
violence which are committed against her.
By leaving her husband the woman makes a gesture of sexual autonomy
so threatening to patriarchal ideology that it requires her to be punished
sexually in the most extreme form. The symbolic significance of dis-
membering the woman's body lies in its intent to de-sexualize her...
Because it has offended, the woman's sexuality must be destroyed and its
threat diffused by scattering (1993: 181).
The rape and dismemberment of the unnamed woman in Judg. 19 is

seen as a 'fitting' punishment for the woman's crime of asserting her
9. This usage of znh in Judg. 19.2 may reflect an archaic meaning of the root.
The pileges (or 'secondary wife' [see n. 5 above]) is said to have 'zw/zed' against her
husband (watizneh 'alaw) and to have departed from him to the house of her father.
There is no indication in this text that the woman was sexually unfaithful; the hus-
band seeks not to punish her, but rather chases after her to 'speak to her heart'. The
difficulty here is that the root znh refers elsewhere (in its literal applications) to
illicit sexual activity. Seeking to resolve this incongruity, the Septuagint amended
the text to read 'she became angry with him' (eporeuthe ap' autou), assuming znh
to be a corruption from znh (to reject, spurn). But Zakovitch argues that the
appearance of the root znh in this text is no corruption, but rather reflects an archaic
usage in which znh describes the woman's action simply of leaving her husband—
basically, female-initiated divorce (1981: 39; cited in Exum 1993: 178). She leaves,
thereby breaking the marriage bond. The application of znh in Judg. 19.2 supports
the suggestion of S. Hooks that behind its extant connotations of illicit sexual activ-
ity may be an older meaning of the root as 'departure', 'going away from', 'going
outside of or 'being outside of (1985: 71). Because deviance from the normative
sexual code that defined the bet 'ab was a primary and exemplary mode by which
one went 'outside of the social structure, znh came to have primarily sexual conno-
tations. In her reading of Judg. 19.2, Exum repeats Zakovitch's argument that 'the
verb simply means that she dared to leave her husband, a phenomenon which was
frequently connected with immoral behavior' (Zakovitch 1981: 39; cited in Exum
1993: 178).
sexual autonomy, which is absolutely threatening to patriarchy. The

moral of the story then is 'a warning to women about the consequences
of sexual independence' (1993: 182; see also Tornkvist 1998: 114-15).
Exum does not claim, as some other feminist readers have, that Judg.
19 is an overtly misogynistic text which sanctions the rape and dehu-
manization of women which it depicts. This is the view, for example, of
the popular writer R. Eisler, who writes that Judg. 19 reveals the 'gross
immorality' (1987: 99) of a world in which women can be 'raped,
beaten, tortured, or killed without any fear of punishment—or even
moral disapproval' (1987: 100). In a similar vein, Trible's reading of
Judg. 19 (1984: 65-91) is a lengthy indictment of the biblical narrator,
who 'cares little about the woman's fate' (1984: 76) and whose story
'justifies the expansion of violence against women' (1984: 83).10 Some
argue further that this violent story reveals the inherently sexist char-
acter of the biblical god. While Trible's exegesis (1984) strives to
exonerate Yahweh from the crime perpetrated by the narrator, Judith
Ochshorn reads Judg. 19 as canonizing a God who is concerned only
with justice for men, and who has no divine compassion for unnamed
rape victims (1981: 154-58). Exum, however, recognizes that on the
surface level at least, the text censures the rape and violence as abhor-
rent (1993: 181-82); the narrator offers this horror story as a graphic
sign of Israel's social disintegration in a time when 'there was no king
in Israel and each did what was right in their own eyes' (Judg. 21.25).
Instead, Exum sees misogynistic views operating in more subtle ways
at the sub-textual level.
Exploring the connection between sexual transgression and social
violence in biblical narratives, Exum discusses Judg. 19-21 in tandem
with the David and Bathsheba narrative, noting how in both stories,
'episodes involving women seem to trigger a chain of violence, as if
the women had disrupted things' (1993: 192). She explains this rela-
tionship between women and violence in the context of the patriarchal
positioning of women at the boundaries of the social order. Situated at
10. Similar interpretations of Judg. 19 are not difficult to find. For example, femi-
nist historian G. Lerner (1986: 171-76) is angry that 'nowhere in the text is there a
word of censure toward him [the Levite] for his action or toward the host, who
offers up his virgin daughter to save his guest's life and honor' (1986: 174). So also
K. Harris reads Judg. 19 as witnessing to biblical misogyny and to the status of
ancient Israelite women as 'sub-human creatures' and as sex objects who can 'be
rightfully given over...for the sexual use and abuse of others' (Harris 1984: 66, 61).
the margins, as 'the dangerous and seductive other', woman is then

depicted as the metaphoric vehicle for the introduction of disorder
(1993: 192). Thus the narrative relationship between sexual transgres-
sion and social violence is explained by 'the tendency of phallocentric
texts like ours to attribute the introduction of disorder to women' (1993:
192).
Exum is not alone in seeing a symbolic link between women and
social disorder at work in biblical narratives. Along similar lines, Mieke
Bal has argued that in Judges, sexually mature young women are
'disruptive of the social structure as well as the narrative' (Bal 1986:
1). Further, Bal argues that rape in biblical narratives—as in real life—
works to correct or subdue that threat which is for men implicated in
women's sexuality. So also, Thistlethwaite argues that in biblical texts
'women, symbolizing chaos, are a logical choice for playing out sce-
narios of control' (1993: 68). This connection between women and
chaos also explains for Thistlethwaite Hosea's depiction of Israel as the
'eset zenunim: 'the disruption of political events is referred, psychologi-
cally, to the threatened chaos the female body already symbolized for
the community' (1993: 68); here again, the connection between sexual
transgression and social violence in biblical narratives is explained by
reference to a symbolic association within patriarchal ideology between
women and chaos.
And yet, in these narratives of rape and war, it is not women per se,
but rather the sexual violation of women which serves as a metonym
for social chaos. As Mieke Bal herself suggests, in Judg. 19-21 'con-
tempt for women's lives and bodies.. .may very well be the cause rather
than the consequence' of chaos in the land (1988: 28). This point is im-
portant because it opens an interpretive possibility that something more
is at work in these figurations of sex and the female body than simply
patriarchy's fears about uncontrolled, autonomous female sexuality.
Woman's Body as the Social Body

In a society structured around patrilineality, it is not difficult to see how
female sexual trangression could be taken as a symbol for social chaos;
by association, woman herself may come to symbolize chaos. But these
symbolic equations do not neatly apply to an analysis of these biblical
narratives of rape and war (Gen. 34, Judg. 19 and 2 Sam. 13). In these
stories, it is rape, the violation of women's bodies, which is disruptive
and which signifies chaos, not women themselves. Undercovering the

semantic foundations of this narrative convention requires that we dig
beyond patriarchy's fears and desires concerning the control of female
sexuality. As I have argued elsewhere (Keefe 1993), rape signifies war in
biblical narratives not only because the sexual transgression of women
induces and therefore aptly represents a disintegration of relations
between men, but also because the female body, as the generative source
of the life of the community, metonymically represents the social body.
Rape, the violation of woman's body, signifies the violation of the
cohesion and the continuity of the social body.
The presence of a symbolic convention in which woman's body is a
sign for the social body is most clearly visible in Judg. 19, where the
gruesome division of the woman's body into twelve pieces appears as a
metonym for the national community of the twelve tribes as they are torn
apart by civil war (Judg. 20-21). As Niditch points out, the woman's
divided body is a 'radical symbolization of Israel's "body politics", the
divisions in Israel' (1982: 371). But Niditch errs in concluding that this
last episode in Judges is about 'community, cooperation and unity
among Israelites' (1982: 373). This conclusion reflects the weight of
received opinion which viewed the narrative of tribal cooperation in
the war against Benjamin as an illustration how the tribal federation
ideally ought to work (e.g. Noth 1960: 104-106; Soggin 1981: 300).
But the story of this farcical, bloody and pointless conflict, which yields
nothing but slaughter and more rape, hardly provides an exemplary
model of community cohesion or inter-tribal cooperation. Rather, when
a reader focuses on the semiotics of the female body, he or she will
more likely conclude that this story is not about solidarity, but disinte-
gration. The dismembered body of the concubine stands contiguous
with the civil war, a metonym for a bloody and divided Israel. The
point of the war narrative emerges as it is refracted through the image
of the woman's tortured and broken body, so that the rape becomes the
interpretive key for assessing the true meaning of Israel's internecine
violence. Rape figures war in Judg, 19-21 not because the narrative is
motivated to authorize violence against women, but because the sexual
violation of women provides a powerful and graphic representation of
the real meaning of internecine war as the dissolution of all forms of
community coherence and order.
The female body represents the social body in Gen. 34 also, where
Dinah's body figures as the site for the expression of early Israel's
historical experience of vulnerability to being dominated and absorbed
by urban Canaanite culture. In this story, Israel depicts its situation vis-
a-vis outsiders by figuring itself as a woman who is sexually violated
by a non-Israelite. Whether one reads the sexual encounter between
Dinah and Shechem as a rape or a seduction, the point remains the
same: Shechem's sexual appropriation of Dinah violated the sexually
defined boundaries of the Jacob group and therefore constituted, at
least in the perception of Dinah's brothers, an act of aggression against
the group and a threat to its cohesion (Brechtel 1994: 31 and passim).
A similar figuring of the situation of Israel through female imagery
may be discerned in the thrice repeated wife/sister tales (Gen. 12, 20,
26), where anxiety about the nation's vulnerability to stronger powers
is expressed in stories of the matriarch being taken sexually by foreign
rulers (J.G. Williams 1982: 47). In these stories, the hostile reality is
'male', and Israel is a woman—the arche-mother (J.G. Williams 1982:
55).
So too, the sexual violence Amnon inflicts on Tamar functions not
simply as a narrative catalyst for fratricide and civil war; the incestuous
rape itself is a primary sign of the disorder and fracturing of royal
family and nation. Tamar's violated body is a metonym for the corpo-
rate body of the royal house, and by extension, the nation itself,
violated from within by treachery and deceit. In all three rape narra-
tives, sexual violence is not just a cause of nebalah in the community;
it is the primary symbol of its meaning.
Some feminist readers have read these narratives of rape and adultery
as manifestations of the evident contempt for women's bodies that was
intrinsic to the male-defined structures of Israel's patriarchal society.
But if one does not assume that women were irrelevant in the process
of symbol formation in ancient Israel, either as creators of meaning or
loci of value, then the possibility arises that the appearance of rape as a
symbol of social chaos in these narratives could be grounded upon a
reverence for the female body as a site of the sacred power of life.
These narrative motifs involving men's sexual transgression upon
women's bodies might then be said to reflect a double consciousness
about women within the world of ancient Israel. This was a society
which was indeed male-dominated, where women's bodies were con-
trolled by men, and yet which, as is typical in agrarian cultures, named
as sacred the essential materiality of life as generated from woman's
womb and sustained in the context of human interdependence. The
bodies of women, source of the community, then come to stand as a
symbol for the community, and the violation of women offers a meto-
nym for social dissolution.
Phallocentrism and Corporate Identity

The argument regarding the association of women with chaos and dis-
unity depends upon the view that the literary world of the Hebrew
Bible reflects a monolithically androcentric vision in which the female
sexual body signifies in one of two interrelated ways: either as a locus of
male control and competition, marking relationships of power between
men (Schwartz 199la, 1991b), or as a symbol of the 'other' and of
chaos, bearing the meaning of that which is foreign or threatening to
the order of things (e.g. Bal 1986: 1; Exum 1993: 84-93, 181 andjms-
sim; Leith 1989; Schwartz 1991a, 1991b; Thistlethwaite 1993: 68).
Both perspectives assume phallocentrism as the symbolic locus of cor-
porate identity in ancient Israel and this assumption has a determinative
effect upon the way biblical representations of female sexuality are read.
This hermeneutical effect can be clearly seen in Howard Eilberg-
Schwartz's exploration (1990) of the Hebrew Bible's language of sexu-
ality as a symbolic code for Israel's socio-sacral order. Eilberg-Schwartz
attends closely to fecundity and sexuality as religious meanings in bib-
lical texts, but finds that it is not human sexuality and fertility in general,
but male sexuality and fertility exclusively which positively signify the
meaning of community and continuity in Israel: 'In this community the
male organ is viewed as the primary vehicle by which reproduction and
intergenerational continuity are ensured' (1990: 148). Therefore, as 'the
male organ is the instrument which establishes kinship' (1990: 170),
the penis serves in the circumcision ritual as 'a natural place' to display
themes relating to fertility, procreation, lineage, kinship and covenant
(1990: 177).
By contrast, Eilberg-Schwartz argues, in the Hebrew Bible, female
sexuality signifies primarily as a dangerous source of pollution.
Woman's blood is not only a source of ritual pollution, but further, in
his reading, it is symbolically linked to bloodshed in murder (Ezek.
36.17-18), to the depravity of incest, and to the violation of the kinship
code (Lev. 20.21). Therefore, 'while circumcision is a symbol of a
man's belonging to Israelite lineage, menstrual blood is associated with
the violation of kinship laws' (1990: 181). Thus the 'gender of blood'
signifies 'the opposition between covenant, righteousness, and whole-
ness on one hand, and sin, indecency and death on the other' (1990:
181). In this analysis, only male sexuality marks the meaning of Israel
as a community ('covenant, righteousness, and wholeness'), while
female sexuality, as a vessel of pollution, signifies the dangers than
threaten to undo that identity ('sin, indecency and death').
Absent from Eilberg-Schwartz's analysis is reflection upon the pos-
sibility that in Israel the maternal body might also be considered a
'natural place' to display themes relating to fertility, procreation,
lineage, kinship and covenant and as a 'vehicle by which reproduction
and intergenerational continuity are ensured'. I would suggest that his
controlling assumption about phallocentrism as the exclusive symbolic
locus of Israelite identity precludes the discovery of any gynomorphic
symbol of Israelite identity in the Hebrew Bible. This possibility will
be explored further below.
Also absent from his analysis is discussion of the cross-cultural varia-
tions in the symbolic meanings which are attached to female blood. It is
common for modern exegetes to assume that the presence of menstrual
taboos alone signals cultural attitudes towards menstruation as 'repul-
sive and repugnant' and that these taboos are indicative of a profound
'ambivalence towards women in the Bible' in which women need to
bear children to fulfill themselves, and yet their sexual attributes by
which childbearing is possible are denigrated (Harris 1984: 102). But
there are tremendous cross-cultural variations in the symbolic coding
of female blood, which in some cultures takes on distinctively positive
valences as relating to the power of life and regeneration (Buckley and
Gottlieb 1988; Buckley 1988; Marglin 1992)." The presence of men-
strual taboos alone in ancient Israel is not sufficient evidence to warrant
11. E.g. in his analysis of the taboo system among the Lele people of Africa,
anthropologist Evan Zuess (1979: 60-73) proposes that the Lele women seclude
themselves during menses not because they are perceived to be in a lower or shame-
ful condition, but because during their periods they manifest a particular charged
condition of power, which could be dangerous in contact with other powers which
impact upon the routine of their households. Women seclude themselves 'out of
concern for the well-being of their husbands, children, neighbors and even the uni-
verse itself (1979: 66). The males of the Lele do not impose these restrictions upon
the women, according to Zuess; 'if anything the taboos themselves indicate women's
power over men rather than the reverse' (1979: 66). Rather than a denigration of
women, the system of female ritual impurity affirms that women 'are central to the
culture, imply divinity and precisely for this reason they must restrain themselves'
(1979:68).
the conclusion that this was a misogynistic culture. l2One could, instead,
argue on the basis of abundant textual clues that the primary associa-
tion of woman's body in ancient Israel was not with pollution or death,
but with fertility, lineage continuity and life. 13 Woman's fecund body is
symbolically associated with water,14 another essential source of life,
and also with the fertility of the land—an association which is charac-
teristic of agrarian societies.15
Eilberg-Schwartz finds that sexual symbolism serves in the Hebrew
Bible as a code for social meanings, and specifically, that the symbolic
structure defining Israelite identity is constituted within a polarity of
gender. On one hand, the positive pole of male sexuality signifies com-
munity and covenant, and on the other, the negative pole of female
sexuality signifies shame, pollution and the site of male competition
and hence disintegration. This view of the fundamental 'otherness' of
female sexuality in biblical literature is accepted by many feminist
12. Cf. M. Bal's remark on this question: 'it is obvious that ancient Hebrew
society.. .was thoroughly misogynist—for anyone to who this is not self-evident, the
books of Laws provide useful reading in their evident contempt for the female
body...' (1987: 110). Presumably, the laws to which Bal refers are laws concerning
female purity and pollution.
13. This is not to deny an association of female sexuality and death in the
Hebrew Bible, which both Bal (1987) and Exum (1993) have explored, but to argue
that these associations are not so pronounced as they seem to claim. As Biale points
out, while Bal's theme of 'lethal love' is persuasive, it makes 'the biblical view of
woman's sexuality too one-sidedly negative' (1992: 235 n. 14).
14. As Alter notes in commenting on betrothal scenes which repeatedly take
place at wells (Gen. 24.10-61; 29.1-20; Exod. 2.15b-22): 'the well at an oasis is
obviously a symbol of fertility and, in all likelihood, also a female symbol' (1981:
52). This connection appears also in the Song of Songs, where the beloved woman
is described as 'a garden fountain, a well of living water' (4.15). In Leviticus, the
source of menstrual blood, i.e. the womb, is called a fountain or a spring (maqor):
'the fountain of her blood' (20.18); this same term maqor in Prov. 5.18 appears as a
metaphor for wife (Biale 1992: 241 n. 66).
15. There are several texts in the Hebrew Bible witnessing to the symbolic
association of female fertility and agricultural fertility. To cite just one example, the
activity of Ruth, from her 'gleaning in the fields to her probable seduction of Boaz
on the threshing floor, connects the harvest of grain with sexuality and reproduc-
tion' (Biale 1992: 14). This connection between woman's body and the fertile land
can also be found in Hos. 2 and 4; see discussion below in Chapter 7, pp. 214-20.
For a cross-cultural perspective on the symbolic complex linking woman, land and
fertility, see Eliade (1974: 239-64, 332-35).
biblical critics,16 and tends to undergird much contemporary feminist

interpretation of Hosea, as was suggested in the previous chapter. But,
as the rabbis taught, 'there is always another reading', and if there is
another reading of the signification of female sexuality in biblical
literature, there might be another reading of Hosea's sexual imagery as
well.
Textual Archaeology
Clearly, the processes of textual production in ancient Israel were
largely controlled by patriarchal interests and ideologies. Resistant
readers have addressed this situation by exposing the 'dominant (male)
voice, or phallogocentric ideology' at work in these texts (Exum 1993:
17). And yet, as even the most resistant readers recognize, the project
of inscribing patriarchal ideology is only imperfectly executed; traces
of that which is repressed remain dimly visible, like the ghosts of words
on a chalk board that have not been thoroughly erased.17 Thus, along
with the work of exposing the dominant male voice in a text, a feminist
reader may seek after the 'submerged strains' of voices and perspectives
which that patriarchal ideology would cover over or erase. This latter
critical strategy is well exemplified in the work of liana Pardes, who, in
her book Countertraditions in the Bible (1992), attends closely to 'the
marks of patriarchal modes of censorship' in 'an attempt to reconstruct,
in light of the surviving remains, antithetical undercurrents which call
into question the monotheistic repression of femininity' (1992: 2). While
her method of exegesis is literary-critical, her overarching perspective
is diachronic, taking the heterogeneity of the biblical texts as an occa-
sion to discover remnants of older layers of tradition in which the
domination of patriarchal interests is not so monolithic. While Higher
Criticism 'did not dream of dealing with...the gender code, or rather
16. E.g. in Fragmented Women, Exum repeats Eilberg-Schwartz's argument to a

similar conclusion: the contrast between the positive value attached to male circum-
cision and 'the designation of menstrual blood and the blood of parturition as unclean
and polluting...points to patriarchy's fear of women's reproductive power, its need
to suppress it, and its equally strong desire to appropriate it...' (1993: 126-27).
17. The text then is like a palimpsest—a writing surface which is used, scraped
clear, and then used again; the older story, though long erased, still remains faintly
visible in the new story which was written over it. For an instructive application of
this concept to the book of Esther, see (Deal 1997: 29-39).
the possibility of friction between heterogeneous perceptions of femi-

ninity', Pardes finds that she may use their insight into the stratified
character of the textual traditions in order 'to explore the tense dia-
logue between the dominant patriarchal discourses of the Bible and
counter female voices which attempt to put forth other truths' (1992:
4).
Pardes' 'archaeological dig' into buried layers of biblical texts yields
discovery of heterogeneous figurations of femininity which suggest the
lingering influence of mythologies of divine femininity from Mesopo-
tamia and Egypt. One such trace of the divine feminine in the Bible,
according to Pardes, is Eve's naming speech for Cain in Gen. 4.1b:
qantti 'is 'et YUWH ('1 have created a man with YHWH'). Common
translations like that of the RSV—'I have gotten a man with the help of
the Lord'—attempt to cover up the theological scandal lurking in a
more literal translation. The verb qnh 'to create' is used elsewhere only
in reference to God's creation of the world and to God's creation of
human beings in the womb, and the participle 'et before the tetragam-
matron could mean not only 'equally with' but also 'together with',
implying that Eve views herself as God's partner in the work of crea-
tion, and/or that Eve esteems her generative power to be approximate
to the divine power of creation (Cassuto 1961: 201-202; cited in Pardes
1992: 44). The root qnh (qny or qnw) also appears in the epithet of the
Ugaritic mother goddess Asherah—qnyt 'ilm, 'the creatress/bearer of
the gods'—further suggesting to Pardes that 'Eve's naming-speech may
be perceived as a trace from an earlier mythological phase in which
mother goddesses were very much involved in the processes of crea-
tion'(1992: 45).18
While Pardes does not deny patriarchy's use of the institution of
motherhood to repress women, her point is to highlight the presence in
the Genesis account of a counter-tradition which associates 'female
18. Also intriguing is Pardes' reading of Gen. 4.1b as Eve's subversive response
to Adam's parturient fantasy in his naming of woman (1992: 47-48). This text reads:
'she shall be called woman ('issah), because she was taken out of man ('«')' (Gen.
2.23) The repetition of the term 'is in Eve's naming speech for Cain—'I have cre-
ated a man ('is) with the Lord' [Gen. 4.1b])—offers an mtertextual bridge between
the two passages. Whereas Adam claims that he ('is) created Eve ('issah), Pardes
sees Eve presenting herself as bearer to Adam ('is) and maybe even as consort to
Yahweh. In this, Eve's voice counters 'Adam's displacement of the generative
power of the female body' (1992: 48).
generativity with cosmic creation' (1992: 510). Pardes sees in this asso-
ciation an imagination of woman which is not pervasively informed by
male fears about female sexuality and female sexual autonomy, but
rather is informed by an intimation of an imagination of woman as a
generative source of life and power. This fragment of a clue is par-
ticularly intriguing in light of what we know of religious practice in
eighth-century Israel, where the woman's body (in the form of the
female figurines and the goddess Asherah) was a symbol of the sacred
power of life.
Pardes also explores the presence of 'antithetical female voices'
(1992: 5) in other places in the Hebrew Bible, such as in the traditions
about Miriam and Zipporah, in the book of Ruth and the Song of
Songs, and in the 'female subplot' about Rachel and Leah, where the
reader may glimpse the elusive presence of female voices and gynocen-
tric perspectives in the Hebrew Bible which escape or exceed service to
patriarchal interests. Such explorations challenge, or at least, suggest
that we need to qualify, the hermeneutical assumption that symbolic
production in the Hebrew Bible is pervasively controlled by a dualistic
perspective that excises woman from the realm of the sacred and
inscribes woman as the quintessential 'other' within a monolithically
androcentric cosmos.
Clearly, these are texts transversed by fault-lines which mark their
implication in a 'moment of transition from a world in which women
were humanly and socially powerful because divinity was in part female,
to a world in which that divinity and power were repressed' (Ostriker
1993: 49). Often, however, resistant readers overlook the ambiguity
implicit in the transitional character of these texts and see in them only
an investment in male experience and in a religious world wholly con-
tained within an androcentric vision. Christine Downing expresses well
the reasoning behind this view: 'the underlying matrifocal world whose
subordination plays such a central role in other mythologies is so deeply
obscured in the [biblical] tradition as to be—almost—eliminated' (1988:
107-108). Pardes' work however explores that 'almost' in Downing's
remark, seeking after fragments of gynomorphic symbols and metaphors
echoing from a world that predates the triumphant hegemony of
androcentric and misogynistic forms of Western religion.
Recognizing that the patriarchal character of the biblical texts is not
monolithic and that the male voice is not omnipresent, Brenner and van
Dijk-Hemmes (1993) have sought to 'gender' texts according to their
6. Women, Sex and Society \ 83
authorship, the attribution of authorship, or the presence of female or

male voices operating within and behind a text (1993: 6). Thus, for
example, Brenner discusses the possible presence of a female voice in
Prov. 1-9 and reads Eccl. 3.1-9 as a male 'love lyric'. As seen earlier,
both Brenner and van Dijk-Hemmes read Hosea in conjunction with
female sexual imagery in Jeremiah and Ezekiel, likening all to pornog-
raphy. Hosea's text is then unambiguously denned as a 'male' text,
which on one level seems apparently obvious.
However, this methodological approach of situating texts neatly
under the categories of 'male' or 'female' obscures the complexities of
language as a synthesis of diverse layers of traditions and diverse
voices within a culture. As Bakhtin explains, language
at any given moment of its historical existence.. .is heteroglot from top to
bottom: it represents the co-existence of socio-ideological contradictions
between the present and the past, between differing epochs of the past,
between different socio-ideological groups in the present, between ten-
dencies, schools, circles and so forth, all given a bodily form (1981: 291;
cited in Pardes 1992:4).
To attend to the 'heteroglot' character of language is not to deny the

distinctive contribution of a 'muted' women's culture within the domi-
nant culture (cf. van Dijk-Hemmes 1993: 25-29).19 But the strands of
language emitting from male and female circles are not always neatly
separable threads. Rather these strands might be better compared to bits
of flax, which have been spun tightly into threads and woven into a
richly hued and dense fabric of signification.
Perhaps it might be best to say that feminist critics do need to adopt a
'dual hermeneutic', but this duality must be understood as operating not
only among texts, but within texts. As Alice Ostriker observes, 'inside
the oldest stories are older stories, not destroyed but hidden' (1993: 19).
This observation might (and will) be applied to Hosea's image of Israel
as an adulterous woman: inside the metaphor lie other metaphors, hid-
den, yet actively signifying meanings of woman other than those which
19. Van Dijk-Hemmes' discussion of'women's culture' draws on Showalter's

argument that 'the ways in which women conceptualize their bodies and their
sexual and reproductive functions are intricately linked to their cultural environ-
ments' (Showalter 1985a: 259). Within their worlds of female activities and female
spaces, 'women (re)define "reality" from their own perspective' in ways that are
distinctive from, but which impact upon, the dominant culture (Brenner and van
Dijk-Hemmes 1993: 27).
are most obviously manifest in the patriarchal double standard affirmed

by the text.
Since the text-affirming approach has been discredited for its naivety,
the field of feminist biblical criticism has been characterized by a rigor-
ous attention to the patriarchal determinants of biblical texts. Mean-
while, less energy has been expended to discern gynocentric modes of
imagining working their way through patriarchal figurations of world.
The assumption that symbolic production in ancient Israel was con-
trolled by patriarchal interests is useful for exacting a critical outlook
on the ideological investments of these texts. Yet at the same time,
when applied monolithically, this assumption can work to enact closure
upon the range of interpretive possibilities which are present in biblical
images or motifs involving women, women's bodies and female sexu-
ality. This assumption, for example, eclipses from view the possibility
that woman's body might be read as a sign for the social body in
narratives of rape and war such as Judg. 19 where the division of the
raped woman's body into 12 pieces represents the fragmentation of the
community of the 12 tribes in civil war. So too, under the assumption
of the totalization of androcentrism, it does not occur to the reader of
Hosea that his metaphor of Israel as a woman might be rooted, at least
in part, in gynomorphic figurations of corporate identity indigenous to
his world.
The Problem of Anachronism Once Again

The possibility that woman's body could have a symbolically positive
and central location as a sign for the social body in ancient Israel does
not easily occur to the modern reader, whose access to the text is filtered
through some 2500 years of intensifying misogyny within which woman
comes to signify the temptation to sin, the threat of chaos, and all that
which is 'other' to the realm of the sacred. But it is a meaning of woman
that is not unfamiliar within the symbolic patterns of the ancient Near
East, including ancient Israel.
For example, Ruth's union with Boaz, initiated in the dark upon the
threshing floor, like Tamar's union with the unwitting Judah, results
in the blessings of fertility and lineage continuity coming forth from
woman's womb; female sexual activity effects a state of communal cohe-
sion and order. Ruth's story is especially interesting, argues anthropolo-
gist Gillian Feeley-Harnik (1990), as it provides a legitimating etiology
for the rule of the House of David. The woman Ruth is hardly a symbol
of the threat of chaos in this story; rather, the parallels between Moses
and Ruth, who also goes up to the land of Israel out of Moab, show that
the establishment of the Davidic monarchy is akin to the event of the
Exodus in effecting a new creation (Feeley-Harnik 1990: 165-67).20
Feeley-Harnik also discusses Ruth in relation to Exod. 1-2. Both narra-
tives display a structural emphasis upon women's perspectives, women's
activities and the social connections among women; at the same time,
both are stories of creation, in the sense of the creation of a people
(Exodus) or the creation of a royal lineage (Ruth). She argues that 'these
creation scenes portray women's work—from their travail to their agri-
cultural work to their work in connecting people—as being...funda-
mental in reproducing Israelite society (1990: 175; emphasis added).21
Women's work, women's worlds, and especially, women's procreative
power give 'birth to communities of Israel' (1990: 178), or in the case
of Ruth specifically, to kingship.
The association of female procreative power with the guarantee of
social continuity and the genesis of royal power resonates with the
inscription of the feminine principle that was deeply embedded within
the mythology and cosmology of the ancient Near East. As Patricia
Springborg observes in the context of her study of the prominence of
the feminine principle in ancient Egyptian cosmology and royal sym-
bolism, the theogonies of the ancient Near Eastern depict
the creation, the emergence of all living things above the earth and under
the earth, as a birth struggle. Creation ends with the creation of kings, and
although from the beginning there is no doubt that the first monarchies
20. Most commentators have tended to interpret the reference to the Davidic
monarchy, which concludes the book of Ruth, as incidental to the main plot. Feeley-
Harnik argues otherwise. She attends to the frame of the narrative, which begins
with reference to its setting in the era of the Judges (Ruth 1.1) and ends with a
prospective look to the era of the monarchy with the mention of David (Ruth 4.22),
and argues that this movement from judges to kings is 'grounded in the relations of
Naomi, Ruth and Boaz' (1990: 165). She makes a case that the story of Ruth 'is as
central to the monarchy as the beginning chapters of Exodus are to Exodus as a
whole and for similar reasons. Exodus 1-2 explains the birth of the Israelites out of
Egypt; Ruth explains the birth of Israelite monarchy out of Moab' (1990: 165).
21. At the conclusion of her essay on Ruth, Feeley-TIarnik refers to ethnographic
materials which are suggestive by way of comparison. E.g. in Melanesia, 'woman's
work is considered to be as essential to the reproduction of social life as men's
work'(1990: 180).
were patriarchal, the processes of empowerment are female.The awe-

some power of the first women, Hathor and Isis, Tiamat, Ishtar and Anath,
resides in their reproductive capacities, as powers of creativity of which
the social power of kings is merely imitative (1990:3-4; emphases added).
Springborg argues that throughout the ancient Near East, female pro-
creative powers are the archetype in terms of which the 'birth of the
state' was conceptualized (1990: 5). Her study focuses upon ancient
Egyptian royal symbolism which she illuminates against 'a background
of notions of empowerment, sustenance and regeneration' that revolve
around the symbolism of female procreative power. Patterns of'cosmic
renewal and the renewal of power' are represented in the royal cult
through 'symbols of the placenta, birth, suckling, food more generally,
and procreation' (1990: 90).
While it is true that the enslavement of women and the sexual sub-
ordination of wives were essential concomitants to the development of
the citied traditions of the ancient Near East (Lerner 1986), Springborg
argues that 'subordinate histories, which it has been the very accom-
plishment of the male warrior state to suppress, tell a different story'
(1990: 5). Another mode of imagining the relation of cosmos to body,
and society to gender symbolism, persists within which woman's fecund
body is a primary symbol for the continuity and life of the body politic.
Such a mode of imagining is discernable in the pages of the Hebrew
Bible too, at least in the material composed primarily in the pre-exilic
period, as has been suggested above. The symbolic status of woman as
a symbol for the family, or by extension of the nation, persists in the
narratives of the Hebrew Bible, as it does even to this day in certain
Mediterranean cultures, where the 'woman is the family'.22 As they
22. The quote is from anthropologist Maureen Giovannini's discussion of

'Woman: A Dominant Symbol within the Cultural System of a Sicilian Town'
(1981: 410) which explores the symbolic status of women as representatives of the
family in Sicilian peasant culture. Other analysts of the honor-shame complex
(which is a dominant cultural feature in this Sicilian town) have also observed how
female physiology symbolizes societal boundaries and/or identities. For example,
the physical intactness of the virgin's hymen serves as a synecdoche for the strength
and inviolability of the family. She is a metaphor for the ideal family unit, 'one
whose boundaries have remained intact' (1981: 412). Contrariwise is the symbol of
the whore, a synecdoche for the family that fails to keep its boundaries intact.
Giovannini's contribution goes further than this by situating the symbolism of the
virgin and the whore within a total symbolic complex within which woman
symbolizes the family, such that 'woman' is seen as functioning as a 'dominant
establish their dominance, androcentric modes of thinking do not erase,

but rather incorporate and transmute, older and more gynocentric forms
of human imagination.
The traumatic events of the sixth and fifth centuries mark a water-
shed in the development of the hebraic tradition, which included a
profound shift in attitudes relating to the female body (Archer 1987;
1990: 103). As the cause of defeat and exile was attributed to divine
wrath for sin, Israel's response was to rid itself of all impurity. To this
end, older legal codes were extensively reworked, with particular atten-
tion given to those laws concerned with ritual purity, family life, and
sexual relations (Archer 1990: 103-104). The exilic legislators were
particularly obsessed with ritual cleanness, and fears concerning the
defilement of the body politic were projected on to the bodies of women
as the carriers of ritual contamination. Ezekiel's disturbing imagery and
the purity laws of Leviticus, dating from the exilic or post-exilic
periods, both reflect this rising cultural obsession with female purity and
defilement.
This shift had serious consequences for woman's social and symbolic
position in this community. On the social level, women's already declin-
ing social position was deepened by the requirements of the Priestly
Code, which led to women being unclean for much of their adult lives,
and thus restricted women's freedom of movement and public partici-
pation out of fears of blood pollution (Archer 1990: 104). On the sym-
bolic level, if woman was the source of so much impurity, and if contact
with her was so threatening, it was inevitable that woman should come
to be regarded as 'a constant stumbling block to man's improvement';
this view led by extension, to the defamation of women as the root of
all evil in the world. Strict laws of ritual purity, working in concert with a
deepening and overt patriarchal orientation, gave rise to a variety of
symbol' wivhin this cultural system. For example, she argues that the mother, in her
biological attributes, also constitutes a metaphor of the family. Her mother's milk
parallels the family's role in food procurement. Physiologically, the mother gives
life and guards it in her womb. Like the ideal family, the womb is an enclosed and
hidden place, which is safe, nurturing and protective for those within it. Thus the
mother's body symbolizes the ideal family—a bastion of security and need-fulfill-
ment in an otherwise unsafe world (1981: 414). Further, by giving birth, the mother
creates intcrgenerational continuity and by extension, the family itself (1981: 414).
Thus, through 'the medium of female body imagery", woman in her generative and
nurturing aspects serves as a vehicle of meaning to represent the family unit (1981:
409-10).
misogynistic themes regarding women's 'natural' propensity for evil,

her insatiable lust and her seductive nature, and the need to ever guard
against her seductions (Archer 1990: 105). It is in the exilic and post-
exilic period that a new key symbol takes root within Judaic culture—
that 'of the Evil Woman, of Wickedness personified in the female form'
(Archer 1990: 105; cf. Camp 1985).
The image of the evil woman was accompanied by a new obsession
with virginity.23 The virgin image reflected the community's concern
for its purity and physical integrity, just as the harlot or evil woman
embodied the threat of chaos. There emerged then a polarized imagina-
tion of woman—'either as obedient wives and unsullied virgins or as
treacherous and sexually promiscuous creatures'—which served as the
'pivotal point' of societal definition in the Second Temple period
(Archer 1987: 3). Female sexuality from the exilic period onward comes
to serve as a primary signifier to mark the boundaries of a male-defined
community.24 As Carol Newsom has argued, the polarity between the
virgin/good wife and the evil woman/harlot came to define 'the inner
and outer linings' of the symbolic order in post-exilic texts such as the
book of Proverbs (1989: 158).
In Hosea also, women's body and her sexual activity signifies the
social body, and it is therefore not surprising that interpreters conflate
Hosea's language of female sexuality into the misogynistic symbolism
of the Second Temple period, which is, of course, the context in which
his texts were received and redacted. The tradents of the Second Temple
period probably viewed Hosea's sexual imagery in a manner rather
similar to the majority of modern commentators, taking Ezekiel and the
whole 'evil woman' complex as their implicit (or perhaps explicit)
23. Pre-exilic texts show little concern with virginity. The term betulah (con-
ventionally 'virgin') appears only twice in the biblical texts dating prior to the
production of the book of Deuteronomy in the seventh century (Gen. 24.16; Exod.
22.15; Archer 1987: 4). Further there is some question as to whether betulah in this
earlier period might simply have meant a young woman, 'i.e., indicative of age
rather than of virgo Intacta' (Archer 1987: 4; see also Bal 1988: 46-52).
24. According to Mary Douglas (1966), cultural anxieties concerning bodily
boundaries and bodily purity often correspond to sociological situation of height-
ened cultural anxieties concerning group boundaries. Given the preoccupation with
group boundaries that characterized the exilic and post-exilic period, Douglas' thesis
reinforces the point that priestly laws and prophetic texts dating from the exilic or
post-exilic eras (such as Leviticus and Ezek. 16 and 23) cannot be transposed as
evidence for cultural attitudes towards female sexuality in the pre-exilic period.
intertexts for interpreting Hosea. When modern readers look to Hosea

as the progenitor of this mode of representing female sexuality as a
symbol of evil, they enact our indebtedness to the misogynistic trajec-
tory of this period that has bequeathed to us the very symbolic struc-
tures within which we are conditioned to think about the meaning of
woman's body. In light of these intertexts and this history, the specificity
of Hosea's language of female sexuality as a product of an earlier
milieu has been obscured.
Towards a Rereading of Hosea

Two important clues for a reinterpretation of Hosea's metaphor of
female fornication have emerged from the foregoing discussion. First,
attention to the symbolic relation between sexual transgression and
social violence in biblical narratives suggests that Hosea's metaphor of
sexual transgression might be interpreted in light of the dynamics of
social conflict and violence which he addresses more explicitly else-
where in his oracles. Second, hints of gynocentric modes of imagining
sacrality and community discernable in biblical literature suggest that
there might be another context in which to read Hosea, one which
departs from both androcentric and reigning feminist assumptions that
woman in biblical literature always marks out a locus of 'otherness'.
Some biblical texts hint at an implication of woman in the meaning of
the sacred due to woman's biological role as procreator; from her womb
emerges the people and thus her body may represent the corporate body
of the people. We may venture therefore to reread Hosea in light of
such intimations that woman and her sexuality is not always and every-
where inscribed in biblical literature as a threatening 'other' which is
symbolically situated in opposition to sacrality and community. Rather,
it is possible that Hosea's metaphor draws upon submerged layers of a
cultural imagination within which woman's procreative body figures
the corporate body, and as such, may stand as an symbolic embodiment
of the sacred meaning of the people.
Chapter 7
REREADING HOSEA'S FAMILY METAPHOR
The dominant reading of female fornication in Hosea as a metaphor for

religious apostasy in a fertility cult is hardly obvious or objective,
despite the popularity it has enjoyed. Rather, as the foregoing chapters
have shown, this reading proceeds from an interpretative framework
that spiritualizes the meaning of religion, uncritically imports Western
assumptions about gender meanings, and presupposes the individual as
the basic unit of human meaning. Reading within this interpretive
frame, commentators generally agree that the great point of Hosea's
female sexual imagery is the articulation of a theological position in
which spirit is raised above matter. But once Hos. 1-2 is set within an
interpretive frame that does not presuppose a dualistic modelling of
gender or religion, an alternative reading comes into view in which
Hosea's female sexual imagery expresses dimensions of religious mean-
ing which are at once corporate, corporeal and material.
Preparing for such a rereading has required a rethinking of the sym-
bolism of woman in Hosea, dispensing with those projections of
Western thought which construct Hosea's 'woman of fornications' as
an emblem for sacred sexuality and the lure of the natural. We have
also noted the limitations of a feminist hermeneutic which figures the
woman in Hosea as an individual whose autonomy is unjustly con-
strained. Within both approaches, woman in Hosea is considered within
a conceptual framework that is devoid of any strong notion of family or
kinship networks as definitive of the meaning and structure of human
existence. Attention to the social meanings of sexuality in ancient Isra-
elite life and literature however, has suggested a different approach: if
acts of sexual transgression figure social conflict or violence in the bib-
lical narratives, then perhaps in Hosea also, literary images of female
sexual transgression may figure issues of societal disintegration and vio-
lence. But if so, then what issues of social conflict might be relevant to
the interpretation of Hosea's female sexual imagery?
7. Rereading Hosea 's Family Metaphor \ 91
Certainly, multiple forms of violence characterized the situation in

the northern kingdom in the era during which the prophet was active
(roughly 760s-720s). The years subsequent to the death of Jeroboam II
(745 BCE) were stained by the blood of regicide, internecine strife, war
with Judah and finally, the devastation of Assyrian conquest. But even
prior to these disturbances, when the nation was ostensibly enjoying a
period of relative peace and apparent security, there was a deep fault
line running through the Israelite community which involved issues
relating to land use, the distribution of wealth and power, relations with
other peoples, and Israel's corporate identity. The rereading of Hos. 1-
2 which follows will situate Hosea's metaphor of woman's body as the
social body within this context of socio-religious conflict and crisis.
The New 'Command' Economy versus Yahwistic Tradition

This situation of conflict and crisis was precipitated by the economic
and political policies of Israel's monarchical establishment during and
subsequent to the reign of Jeroboam II. While Israel's deepening impli-
cation in interregional trade and commercial agriculture brought much
profit to the royal house and aligned elite power brokers, it transformed
the socioeconomic order in ways which contravened older traditions
and values. Under the pressure of a rising market economy and the
crown's deepening investment in cosmopolitan orientations, land came
to be treated more and more as a commodity, human relationships were
governed more and more by profit motives, and the solidarity of society
in general disintegrated.
This social conflict can not be explained simply a matter of wealthy
elites oppressing the poor. Even large landowners, whose power was
aligned with clan interests rather than with Samaria's royal house,
probably experienced the transgression of their patrimonial rights. The
threat to this wealthy landed class is indicated by the Naboth story
(1 Kgs 21.8); Naboth was evidently no peasant, but a member of a class
of landowners or ruling men (hayyosebim) who had traditionally exer-
cised 'political or judgmental authority' at the local level (1 Kgs 21.8;
Todd 1992: 8).1 The power of men of Naboth's class was rooted in the
1. 1 Kings 21.8 reports that Jezebel gave false evidence to 'the elders
(hazeqHmrri) and the nobles (hahorim) who were the ruling men (hayyosebim) wit
Naboth in his city'. In translating hayydsebim as a reference to those with political
authority, Todd is relying upon Gottwald's extended discussion of yoseb (Gottwald
land and the clans, that is, in a mode of social organization which
revolved around systems of agrarian production on patrimonial estates
and systems of exchange and interdependence within regionalized line-
age networks. Such patterns of sociopolitical organization and land
ownership were integral dimensions of long-standing Yahwistic tradi-
tions that were rooted in the geographical and historic conditions of
early Israel's highland culture.
It would also be inaccurate to account for the roots of this social con-
flict by juxtaposing an originary 'Israelite' egalitarian ethos to a creep-
ing 'Canaanization' of the socioeconomic system, as was the fashion
with an earlier generation of biblical sociologists.2 Rather, the escalating
transition from a reciprocal, redistributive village economy to a royal
'command economy'3 based on interregional trade was the outcome of
1979: 512-34). Although the term is usually and appropriately translated 'inhabi-
tants', Gottwald argues that it sometimes carries a more specialized political
meaning deriving perhaps from such expressions as yoseb 'al-hammispat ('he who
sits in judgment') (Isa. 28.6) and yasab 'al-kisse' hamm elukah ('he who sits on the
royal throne') (1 Kgs 1.46; 2.12). Gottwald argues that this political usage is evident
in such passages as Amos 1.5, 8 where yoseb appears in parallel construction with
'him that holds the scepter' and Lam. 4.12 where malke 'e'res ('kings of the earth')
appears in parallel construction with yosebe tebel ('rulers of the world'). From the
evidence from these and other passages, Todd translates yasab in 1 Kgs 21.8 as a
political term, referring to those who exercised political authority 'with Nabotrf
('et-naboi) in the city and concludes that 'Naboth was one of the land holders that
formed the upper class in Jezreel' (Todd 1992: 8).
2. E.g. Wallis (1935) and Neufcld (1960). In this view, the simple, rural and
egalitarian Israelite agrarian society was progressively subjected to the corrupting
influences of Canaan's urban-based, commercialized and hierarchical socioeco-
nomic ethos. Under this model, 'egalitarian Israel versus Canaanite classes provided
the key to almost everything in Israel's social development' (Lang 1982: 48). This
simplistic appeal to an external source of corruption, complete with its idealized
picture of early Israelite egalitarianism breaks down in light of more current models
of societal conflict and change provided by the disciplines of social anthropology
and comparative economic history.
3. A 'command economy' differs from a capitalist economy in that the distri-
bution and flow of wealth are determined more by the mandates of the royal
administration than by the forces of supply and demand (Lenski 1970: 263-72).
Those who controlled large estates did so by virtue of a monarchical land-grant
system in which royal servants and officials received land-grants and taxation privi-
leges from the crown in return for their loyalty and continued support (Dearman
1988: 108-27). A certain percentage of the taxed yield would, of course, go to the
crown. Also, the king himself directly controlled estates so large that they required a
7. Rereading Hosea 's Family Metaphor 193
/wJrasocietal tensions which entailed a confrontation between two sys-

tems of land tenure and two correspondingly distinct worlds of social
organization, value and identity.
The roots of this conflict stretched far back into Israel's history to the
establishment of the monarchy and the emergence of a new class of
military retainers and administrators who were granted lands in return
for their royal service. The interests and loyalties of this class were
vested in the crown upon whose power they depended, rather than in
the regionalized kinship networks (Premnath 1988: 53). So too, this
class of urban-based landlords had little investment in traditional prin-
ciples of land inalienability, viewing land rather as a commodity to be
exploited, along with its peasant tenants, for maximum profitability.
The result was that there was now a conflict in Israel between two com-
peting systems of land tenure which were the material bases for two
fundamentally different understandings of society and its proper values
(Chaney 1986: 68). On one side of this conflict was the monarchy and
its aligned urban elites, whose power was closely linked with its inter-
state connections, the expansion of prebendal estates, and the produc-
tion of cash crops for export. On the other side was a way of life
centered in the hill country villages, identified with 'a tradition of
Yahwistic history', whose structures of power and meaning were based
upon a local systems of patrimonial land tenure and the ties of mutual
obligation and interdependence (Rentaria 1992: 80).
Commentaries on the other eighth-century prophets readily locate
their oracles in the context of these socioeconomic transformations and
conflicts. But Hosea's overtly religious language about the baalim,
festivals, high places, and the like has typically led commentators to
believe that Hosea is concerned more with religious issues than with
these social issues, and specifically with a historical situation of com-
petition between Yahwistic 'faith' in a transcendent Lord of History
and a debased fertility 'cult' which conflates divinity with nature and
sexuality. But, as has been argued, this scenario of religious contesta-
tion presupposes and serves to reinforce a theological paradigm in
which 'true' religion is that which maintains the transcendence of spirit
over the human implication in materiality. In seeking to rethink Israel-
ite religion in a way that is not conceptually and methodologically
minor bureaucracy to administer them; 1 Chron. 27.25-31 illustrates this point in

regards to the situation in Judah.
dependent upon the assumption of a metaphysical dualism between

matter and spirit, we have come to see that religion is not just a matter
of belief and practice in relation to immaterial realities, but has to do
with modes of human orientation in relation to material realities, such
as land and food, systems of production and exchange, and structures
of social organization. Religion has to do with orientation in the world,
and hence with identity: how one understands who one is and where
and how one stands in the world. From this understanding of religion,
it becomes clear that religious issues, as well as social and economic
issues, were very much at stake in this social conflict.
In the religious world of the highland villages, the meaning of the
sacred had been bound up in the continuity of the bet 'ab across the
generations, in the relationship of these bet 'abot to their patrimonial
lands, and in the sense of community and identity generated within local
networks of exchange and solidarity. The expansion of commercial agri-
culture and latifundial estates in the highlands came at the cost of the
disintegration of these systems of interrelationship through which these
people defined the meaning and significance of their existence. The
commodification of the processes of production and exchange and the
rupture in the intimate relationships between household and land pre-
cipitated by the forces of agribusiness meant the loss of much that had
defined the sacred fabric of life for this highland people.
The eighth-century prophets we know of, Hosea included, were parti-
sans for the traditional values of highland society with its localized
systems of land tenure, agriculture, governance and cult (Hill 1992:
73). Authority and holiness were attributed to such men and women,
enabling them to speak the truth about the forms of exploitative power
that cloaked themselves in the sanctity of the national shrines. Of these,
those prophets whose words were preserved through the Babylonian
Exile were also religious radicals in that their visions did not merely
replicate the religious world of the village, but were generative of 'new
religious worlds' (Martin 1991: 685) that could sustain some form
of human significance in and through the midst of cultural disruption
and the dissolution of traditional forms of religious meaning. Like the
prophets of crisis in more recent times, the power of these prophets,
born of visions, ecstatic experience and intimacy with divine power,
was a power for transformation and re-creation which broke out amidst
the chaos and confusion of a turbulent era. Thus Hosea's religious
vision, as it called for the worship of Yahweh alone (M. Smith 1971;
Lang 1983), left behind the archaic structures of family religion. But as
shall be argued in this chapter, his language still was woven of meta-
phors and symbols rooted in ways of the hills, and especially in soil,
seed and bodies, that is, in the agricultural rhythms and sexual mean-
ings indigenous to hill country life.
Israel's Lovers and Baalim

Several clues suggestive of an alternative reading of Hosea's sexual
metaphor have already been introduced. The metaphorical uses of znh
terminology in the Hebrew Bible, for example, refer not only to the
sin of cultic apostasy, but also to matters of socioeconomic or political
transgression.4 Further, the lovers after whom this wife of Yahweh
zandhs may be interpreted as Israel's foreign allies and trading part-
ners.5 This interpretation is supported not only by Hos. 8.9 but also by
other prophetic texts where 'lovers' is deployed explicitly as a meta-
phor for Israel's supposed allies (e.g. Jer. 4.11; 22.20-22; Lam. 1.2;
Ezek. 23.5-21). But the metaphor in Hosea is complex; the lovers are
also named as baalim (Hos. 2.13, 17 [2.15, 19]). A reiigio-political
reading of these lovers in Hosea as allied nations and foreign gods fits
well in the context of ancient Near Eastern theopolitics, where a singu-
lar national god and his cult undergirded the meaning and power of that
state (Halpern 1987: 93-94). Rather than fertility deities, these national
gods or baalim ('Lords') can be understood as the high gods of their
respective nations, signifying particular historical and cultural structures
of power and production. From this perspective, Hosea's image of the
woman Israel chasing after her lovers or baalim does not involve a
conflict between fertility religion and orthodox Yahwism, but rather,
the legitimacy of Israel's international 'liaisons', an issue which the
prophet addresses elsewhere more directly (Hos. 5.13; 7.8-9, 11; 12.1).
Another clue for rethinking the metaphor of Israel's desire for its
baalim and lovers is suggested by the symbolic correlation between the
Palestinian deity Baal and particular hierarchical forms of economic
and social organization in the Levant. Baal's status as rain god does not
limit his meaning and activity to the realm of fertility. As the one who
fructifies the earth with his rain, Baal was 'Lord' of the land and owner
of its produce; as such, his worship validated the power of the land's
4. See the discussion of 'The semantic range of znh terminology' in Chapter 4.

5. See the discussion of The lovers as the nations' in Chapter 4.
human lords who presided over latifundial estates of Bronze and Iron
Age Palestine. Contemporary biblical sociologists therefore argue that
the worship of Baal was tied to the accumulation of tillable land by an
elite class and to the ascendancy of a commercial economy (G.A.
Anderson 1987: 20; Coote and Coote 1990: 49; Chaney 1993). Baal
was the 'patron of commercial agriculture under royal control' who
gave religious significance to the 'conspicuous consumption of trade
commodities' (Coote and Coote 1990: 43). From this perspective,
Israel's pursuit of such baalim/lovers becomes a metaphor for Israel's
intimate involvement with forms of social organization that are based
upon the commercialization of agriculture and the centralization of
land ownership and economic power in urban centers (Coote and Coote
1990: 49-50). Such socioeconomic structures are in Hosea's eyes for-
eign and antithetical to traditional forms of social organization and
sacral meaning based upon the bet 'ab's control of its patrimonial
lands.
There is no need to choose between a political and a socioeconomic
interpretation of Israel's love affairs, for they complement rather than
compete with each other. Political alignments in the ancient Near East
were motivated not only by considerations of national security, but also
by the lure of the profits to be gained through the establishment of strong
interregional trading networks. Jeroboam's Israel, with its swelled bor-
ders and alliance with Judah, was geopolitically positioned to control
the vital north-south trading routes which traversed Palestine. But the
ability to exploit the profit potential in this transit trade depended upon
the forging of strategic alliances with foreign powers such as the 'pros-
titute' Tyre. Clearly, political alignments were integral to elite strategies
of profiteering; a commercial economy was necessarily an international
economy in which goods flowed back and forth across national borders.6
Further, neither the theopolitical nor the socioeconomic reading pre-
supposes that Hosea's references to Israel's pursuit of the baalim
should be taken literally as evidence of rampant polytheism, any more
than Hosea's language about Israel's 'lovers' should be taken literally.
Rather, both the baalim and the lovers in Hos. 2 may be seen as
coordinate and interrelated metaphors which each in their own way,
6. This point is supported by comparative study of economic history in the Near

East which shows a consistent correlation between the opening of interregional
trade and the transition from a subsistence to a market economy, in which capital
and landownership are increasingly concentrated in the cities (Lang 1982: 52).
and even more so together, point to what Hosea sees as the betrayals
that are implicit in the contemporary situation. The worship of other
gods and fornication with other lovers serve as alternating and inter-
secting tropes for inappropriate alliances or commercial 'intercourse',
and point towards the situation of Israel in the midst of a booming
international market economy, in which the body of the nation, that is,
the social body, is politically and economically deeply implicated in
structures of exchange and trade with other powers.
The Grain, the Wine and the Oil

The body of the nation in Hos. 1-2 is the body of a woman, the 'eset
zenumm, whose desire is for her lovers, because, as she says, it is they
'who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my linen, my oil
and my drink', (Hos. 2.5b [2.7b]). In response, the aggrieved husband
Yahweh laments that she does not remember that it was he who 'gave
her the grain, the wine, and the oil', which now he threatens to take back
in their seasons (Hos. 2.8a [2.10a]). Within the fertility cult thesis, the
woman's mistake is theological, as she attributes the power of fertility
to divine powers immanent in nature and subject to ritual manipulation,
rather than resting in the hands of the one transcendent Lord of History.
But this theological interpretation divorces the prophet's rhetoric from
the specific meanings which grain, wine and oil and other agricultural
products carried in this particular socioeconomic context. The issue of
the religious meaning attached to fertility in eighth-century Israel can-
not adequately be discussed apart from the recognition that commer-
cialized agribusiness had come to dominate the terraced slopes of the
Palestinian highlands, and the fruits of the land were in the hands of an
urban elite. The grain, wine and oil were the 'commodities of choice'
(Hopkins 1983: 196) within a burgeoning market economy based on
international trade; the woman's desire for these and other goods reflects
the desire of the powerful and wealthy for the profits and pleasures
which this trade produced.
The local agricultural systems of highland culture had depended upon
diversified production of cereal grains and vegetables, supplemented
with pastoralism, as their subsistence base. But in Hosea's time, fields
once used to produce subsistence crops were being increasingly lost to
dispossession and consolidated into larger estates, whose produce was
dedicated to luxury consumption and export. Small landowners were
pushed off their patrimonial lands, forced now to scrape together a liv-
ing tilling or pasturing on marginal lands and/or by working for wages
upon the latifundial estates owned by absentee urban landlords. Grain
needed for survival had to be purchased in the market, often at inflated
prices that could easily outstrip a laborer's ability to pay. Also, it was
not uncommon for merchants to enhance their profits by the use of dis-
honest weights and measures and the sale of adulterated grain (Chaney
1989: 73). Many highland peasants were now more dependent for their
survival upon the mercies of those who allocated their meager wages
and who controlled the price of grain in the marketplace than they were
upon the fertility of the soil. Where then was the popular 'fertility cult'
denounced by the biblical commentators?
Living in a marginal rainfall zone where the harvest was tenuous, the
highland villagers had probably long enacted propitiatory rituals to a
variety of gods, goddesses and local spirits who were perceived to have
a more direct influence upon the capricious elements than did Israel's
distant and lofty high god. These subsistence farmers had little to do
with the gods as the lords knew them, or for that matter, as biblical
scholars today imagine them. Rather for the villager, 'the world of the
gods and spirits was the world of the village', with its seasonal rounds
and its rhythms of unceasing work (Coote 1991: 96). Village ceremoni-
als, designed to propitiate minor deities and local powers in hopes of
timely rain, fertile fields and flocks, and good harvests, were performed
as a hedge against disaster and starvation, and had been ongoing for
centuries. But without one's own land to till, these traditional rituals of
village life no longer would have held the same vital meaning, and may
even have been neglected.7 The pressing religious issue was no longer
fertility in and of itself, but justice and communal survival in an increas-
ingly market-driven economy.
7. It is possible that the traditional ceremonials would have been neglected,

discarded, or significantly transformed by those sectors of the population affected by
encroaching latifundialization and dispossession. This hypothesis is suggested by
comparative study with the millenarian movements which arose among colonized
people during the era of European expansion. See, e.g. F.E. Williams' report on the
Vailala Madness and its coordinate destruction of native ceremonials (1923). This
case, arising from extreme forms of cultural disruption, supports the general thesis
that forms of religious practice are intricately interwoven with the total fabric of
social and economic practice; the unravelling of the latter gives rise to the need for a
(sometimes radical) religious reorientation.
The threat from Yahweh to the woman that he will 'block her road
with thorn-bushes' (Hos. 2.6a [2.8a]) is not a punishment designed to
halt localized religious practices among hill country farmers. These
could be easily performed at the family altar, in the fields, or at a proxi-
mate shrine, and did not necessitate travel upon the open roads. Rather,
this threat, along with the parallel one which follows—that he will
'wall up her wall, so that she will not be able to find her paths' (Hos.
2.6b [2.8b]),—is more likely addressed to the doings of Israel's pros-
perous merchant class whose ox drawn carts were well occupied ship-
ping the agricultural produce of the highland terraces off to Israel's
urban centers and beyond to Tyre, where they could be traded among
the nations.
When Hosea proclaims that Israel has become an 'eset zenumm—a
woman/wife of fornications—he is not speaking of the landless peas-
antry or those small landowners who were able to hold out against debt
and dispossession. Nor is he speaking of the leading men of those
powerful bet 'abot who played the role of patrons and protectors within
the village-based economic systems. Rather, he is speaking of a class
of powerful men aligned with the interests of the monarchical state,
whose mercantile dealings threatened to precipitate the dissolution of a
traditional way of life in Israel, and whose 'deadly games' of power
politics (Wacker 1989) would in time bring the nation to total destruc-
tion. Thus while the profile of the metaphor is female, its point is
directed not at women, but at the powerful males of Israel.
Those who commit the sins to which Hosea attaches the label of for-
nication are not then the people in general, but an elite class, inclusive
of the royal house, whom Hosea identifies as Baal worshippers. Marvin
Chaney describes this class as 'Israel's male warrior urban elite' (1993).
The power of this class was urban based, aligned with the crown and
economically invested in the expansion of latifundial estates. So too, its
values and orientations were structured around the politics of exchange
within the interregional market, from whence came their precious iron-
ware and luxury goods. The meaning of their world therefore had little
to do with the rhythms of highland village life, defined by its systems
of obligation and exchange and its concern for generational continuity
upon patrimonial lands. Perhaps the god of this elite warrior class was
Baal, and this is the baalism to which the prophet Hosea objects in his
extended metaphor of Hos. 2, as Chaney suggests. But whether this
accusation about baalism reflected actual practice among the urban
elite or was a polemical device which named their ways as antithetical

to the traditions of Israelite Yahwism, Hosea's rhetoric is most appro-
priately situated in the context of the socioeconomic and political reali-
ties of his day.
Jezreel
Hosea's invocation of 'Jezreel' lends further weight to the argument
that the marriage metaphor is addressed to transgressions precipitated
by an elite class aligned with monarchical interests. As noted in Chap-
ter 1, Jezreel is a polyvalent trope—at once a royal city, and so a synec-
doche for monarchical power, and a fertile valley, indeed, the most
abundant breadbasket of Israel. Further, the name itself is a pun:
Jezreel means 'God sows', which is a good name for rich farmlands,
but which also carries the double-entendre of God sowing destruction,
as he warns in the naming oracle: 'for yet a little, while I will punish
the house of Jehu for the blood of Jezreel, and I will put an end to the
kingdom of the house of Israel' (Hos. 1.4). This puzzling name is
indeed fraught with history evoking a rich set of associations that
cannot be reduced to a single meaning.
Clearly, the import of 'the blood of Jezreel' does not fit neatly into a
hermeneutics of apostasy, for according to 2 Kings, Jehu was a cham-
pion par excellence against the apostate Omrids and their state-spon-
sored Phoenician Baal cult in Samaria (2 Kgs 9-10). Rather, the name
Jezreel carries a mix of political and socioeconomic allusions which
evoke the pressing political and social conflicts of Hosea's time and
place.
Firstly, the name of Jezreel brings to mind the story of King Ahab's
appropriation of Naboth's vineyard which lay so temptingly proximate
to his summer palace in Jezreel (1 Kgs 21). While this story originally
circulated as propaganda against Omrid oppression in the ninth cen-
tury, it could also have served as a vehicle of protest in Hosea's time
against similar policies of monarchical land grabbing. Thus the evoca-
tion of Jezreel links this seat of royal power to the matter of the stolen
land and the fate of the nation; in this way Hosea squarely lays the
blame for the current crisis at the foot of the throne.8
8. In this regard, it is important to remember that the economic system in

eighth-century Israel was not a nascent free-market economy; rather this was a 'com-
mand economy' under royal directive (Chaney 1989). Much, if not all, of the
Hosea's outcry against the 'blood of Jezreel' also evokes memories

the copious blood of Jezreel which Jehu spilled in the establishment of
his dynasty and thus functions as an emblem for the degeneracy of the
present political order.9 The violence by which Jehu overthrew the
Omrids was reaping its bloody harvest in Hosea's own time, to the
effect that the monarchy was unstable and vacillating in its policies at a
time when the Assyrian threat required far-sighted leadership. Jezreel
as a rhetorical device in Hosea names the degenerate, blood-soaked
royal house as the first born 'son of fornication'; in other words, these
kings are 'bastards' (double-entendre intended).
It is probably no coincidence that this name of Gomer's firstborn son
Jezreel sounds so hauntingly like Israel, firstborn son of Yahweh. The
name bespeaks a meaning of the royal house, and by extension, of the
nation, as bastardized, and explains the reason for this sorry condition
commerce and trade was initiated and controlled by the crown, who used the profits
not only to support an opulent royal establishment, but for the purchase of addi-
tional national insurance in the form of military hardware. The royal house and its
retainers were therefore the ones ultimately responsible for the social evils of
Hosea's time.
9. Hosea's take on Jehu clearly differs from the account in 2 Kgs 9-11 which
sanctions Jehu's violence with prophetic authorization, justifying the coup through
a depiction of King Ahab and Queen Jezebel as evil rulers who promoted large-
scale cults of Baal and Asherah while persecuting the prophets of Yahweh (1 Kgs
18) and flagrantly violated covenantal law (1 Kgs 21). Hosea, by contrast, condemns
the 'blood of Jezreel' which flowed in Jehu's coup: among the dead were two kings,
Queen Jezebel, over 100 royal princes of Israel and Judah, and an untold number of
worshippers and priests of Baal (2 Kgs 9—10).
Hosea's denunciation of Jehu's coup probably represents the more historically
accurate view. Ahlstrom argues that 'Jehu's revolt was nothing else but a politically
motivated military coup d'etat which lacked any real popular support' (1977: 58).
He also suggests that Jehu had Assyrian support for his usurpation of the throne.
One indication of Jehu's collusion with the Assyrians is the fact that he ordered the
elders of Samaria to kill all members of the royal family and to send their heads in
baskets to him at Jezreel (1 Kgs 10.6), a practice which was in accordance with
Assyrian custom (Ahlstrom 1993: 594-95).
Jehu's opposition to the Baal cult was probably not motivated by any ardent
Yahwistic piety. It was standard procedure for usurpers to exterminate all members
of the royal house and the leaders of the administration, including all of the priests
(2 Kgs 10.11; Ahlstrom 1993: 595). Not only Baal priests, but also Yahweh priests
who had served the former administration were also exterminated in Jehu's purge.
The crime of the victims was not apostasy, but being on the losing side.
by linking the royal house to the structural violence embedded in the

processes of latifundialization and to the whirlwind of political vio-
lence which tore through the nation in its final decades.
The 'eset zenunim Again

But the pressing question remains as to why Hosea chooses a female
metaphor to name the sins of men. Would not the image of a rapist, for
example, or that of a male adulterer, have served his rhetorical pur-
poses better? Occasionally, he does choose a male metaphor, as when
he charges that
they have fathered (yaladu [masc. pi.])
alien children (Hos. 5.7).
So also, Hosea denounces the politics of regicide in his time with a

metaphor of male sexual transgression:
They are all adulterers;...
All of them are hot as an oven,
and they devour their rulers (Hos. 7.4, 7a).
These examples suggest that metaphors of male sexual transgression

were, in Hosea's view, a viable and effective rhetorical device for com-
municating a message of condemnation and shame to his (presumably)
male audience. Why then does he so persistently favor metaphors of
female sexual transgression? To answer this question, closer attention
still is needed to Hosea's image of the 'eset zenumm, the woman/wife
of fornications, and the manner in which this metaphor figures the con-
flicts within the social body.
The image of the 'eset zenunim is itself incongruous, as the root of
e
z numm, znh, does not ordinarily describe the adulterous activity of a
married woman, but the illicit sexual activity of an unmarried woman,
such as a dependent daughter (Deut. 22.21; Lev. 21.9), a levirate-
obliged widow (Gen. 38.24) or a prostitute (Bird 1989b: 77; Bucher
1988: 119). The Hebrew reserves another root—n'p—for terms relat-
ing to the illicit sexual activity of a married woman. It is therefore
somewhat surprising that Hosea usually avoids use of the verb nd 'ap
('to commit adultery') or the nouns ni'up and na'apup ('adultery') in
the articulation of his 'marriage' metaphor (cf. Hos. 2.4); instead he
prefers zandh and related terms which usually do not refer to sexual
activity which transgresses the marriage bond (Bird 1989b: 77; Adler
1989: 309). Unusual as it is, the trope successfully combines the image
of adultery, that is, the sex act as betrayal of a fundamental social bond,
and the image of prostitution, that is, the sex act as performed for the
sake of profit. Both resonances, of betrayal and profiteering, are appro-
priately descriptive of the situation in Israel as Hosea sees it.
We know that the lively export trade in grain, wine and oil had
ushered in an era of prosperity and luxury for Israel's landowning class
and elite establishment in eighth-century Israel. Rising levels of wealth
are well documented in both the archeological record and in the bibli-
cal texts; the well-to-do in Israel enjoyed pleasant housing, complete
with ivory-trimmed furniture, more meat and whiter bread, abundant
fruit, quality olive oil for cooking and as skin lotion, good wine, fine
linen and woolen clothing, and cosmetics (Silver 1983: 83-119). Such
luxury consumption depended upon the profits gained through the trans-
formation of traditional economic systems towards agricultural intensi-
fication and interregional trade. Indeed, the 'eset zenunim knows from
whence comes her wool (semer) and linen (peset),10 her oil and drink—
they are supplied by her lovers (Hos. 2.5 [2.7]); they are hers by virtue
of her dalliances/alliances with the nations.
Morris Silver has argued that the transition to cash cropping and a
trade-dependent market economy raised the standard of living of the
average Israelite (1983). But Silver's analysis ignores the shifting
patterns of social stratification which were integral to the development
of an economy dependent upon international trade (Chaney 1989: 18;
Premnath 1984: 108). Prosperity for some came at the cost of impover-
ishment for many others, for the expansion of such profitable estates
depended upon the dispossession of increasing numbers of small land-
owners, whose patrimonial holdings were then absorbed into these new
and more efficient latifundia. Such dispossessions, whether managed
legally or illegally, constituted a betrayal of traditional highland prac-
10. The Hebrew term peset can be translated either 'flax', indicating the raw
material, or linen, the finished product (BDB, 833). The usual translation 'flax' pairs
well with 'wool'; both are raw materials needed for making cloth. But the transla-
tion 'flax' can reinforce the impression that the main concern here is with agricul-
tural fertility, rather than with a whole economic system geared to production and
trade in luxury items. Linen, on the other hand, was not a local product, whose
production might be imagined as dependent upon the whim of any rain god, but was
an import commodity, which was produced mainly in Egypt and also in Edom
(Silver: 1983, 88).
tice, which forbid the sale of patrimonial lands outside of the family
lineage.
Amos addresses the shifting socioeconomic conditions of Israelite
life with direct accusations regarding the corruption of justice and the
situation of the poor. But Hosea's rhetoric is not focused upon the
suffering of individuals, but upon another consequence of latifundializa-
tion, the disintegration of traditional structures of Israelite identity and
meaning. Family, land and communal solidarity were the critical nodes
in a matrix of relationships that constituted the prevailing forms of
human meaning and identity in this Iron Age agrarian society. Kin,
work, religion—these did not designate separate areas of life, but were
part of a seamless fabric of lived experience, which was now being
pulled apart, thread by cultural thread, by the accelerating commer-
cialization of the processes of production and exchange in Israel.11
At the heart of this traditional socio-symbolic structure was the bet
'ab itself, which served as a symbolic foundation for the meaning of
the nation as a whole. The continuity and integrity of the bet 'ab
depended upon its control of its patrimonial lands, by which its
sustenance was ensured and the father's name was preserved, and its
control of its women's sexuality, by which the certain legitimacy of the
patrilineage was ensured. In this context, a prophetic metaphor regard-
ing a man's loss of sexual control would resonate with the anxieties of
the disenfranchised or those vulnerable to disenfranchisement concern-
ing the loss of control of their land. Read from this perspective, Hosea's
metaphor of sexual transgression offers a commentary upon the forms
of structural violence intrinsic to his contemporary situation as elite
strategies of economic development forced the alienation of ancestral
lands.
11. In a more theological vein, C. Wright (1990) proposes a very similar idea.
Wright argues that the religious meaning of Israel as a community of Yahweh was
'earthed and rooted in the socio-economic fabric of the kinship structure and their
land tenure, and it was this fabric which was being dissolved by the acids of debt,
dispossession, and latifundism' in the eighth century (1990: 109). The abuse of
political, economic and juridical power by the elite classes were therefore not sim-
ply a 'symptom' of Israel's spiritual degeneracy as some assume; these processes of
land accumulation and dispossession 'constituted in themselves, in fact, a major
"virus" which threatened the stability of society and thereby also the relationship
with Yahweh'(1990: 109).
The Alien Children

Attention to the symbolic centrality of the bet 'db throws new light
upon Hosea's parabolic self-representation as one who takes to himself
'a woman of fornications and children of fornications' (Hos. 1.2b).
Theological reflection on the trope assumes marriage as an allegory for
the covenant; the husband's pain at his wife's betrayal and his forgive-
ness of her become a model of divine pathos and grace. In this view,
the children are somewhat extraneous to the allegory. However, the
parallelism between the two terms—'eset zenunim and yalde zenunim
—and the lack of an intervening verb between them suggest that the
children of fornications are as much a key to the meaning of the
metaphor as the mother's activity (Bird 1989: 80). Indeed, the children
with their symbolic names offer leitmotifs binding together the whole
of Hos. 1-2. The meaning of Israel is carried not only by the mother,
but also by the children, Jezreel, Not Pitied and Not My People. This
trope then is not really a marriage metaphor, but a family metaphor.12 It
is a parable of a bet 'db irrevocably disrupted. The children are yalde
zenunim—children of fornications—of whom the divine father
proclaims 'Not My People'. The point about the children's illegitimacy
is reiterated later in ch. 5 in Hosea's ominous declaration that
They have acted treacherously against Yahweh;
for they have fathered
alien children (banlm zarlrri) (Hos. 5.7).
These two expressions yalde zenunlm ('children of fornications') and

bdnim zdrim ('alien children') are variations on the same theme. Chil-
dren born outside of the patriarchal ordering of sexual relations were
not only illegitimate; they were outsiders, aliens to the community, as
were their mothers who 'zdnahed' away from father or husband. There-
fore, to be a child of fornications is to be an alien child, that is, one
who falls outside of the boundaries of the structures of meaning and
continuity that defined patrilineal Israel.
In a social system in which the patrilineal family formed the essential
social unit and sacral locus of Israelite society, and in which the
12. The suggestion that Hosea's metaphor is more a family metaphor than a
marriage metaphor is made also by Wacker, who finds in Hos. 1 no marriage drama
(kein Ehedramd) but rather an unhappy family story (eine ungluckliche Familien-
geschichte)(\9S7: 114).
integrity of this unit rested upon the assurance of paternal legitimacy,

Hosea's imagery of a fornicating wife and her illegitimate children
signifies the disintegration and end of that society. The metaphor is
thoroughly patriarchal, but does not rest on the stereotypical associa-
tion of female sexuality with sin, evil or 'the natural' so familiar in
later Jewish and Christian symbolism. Rather, for Hosea's world, at
stake in female sexuality is social reproduction—the continuity of the
bet 'ab across the generations. Thus the imagery of wifely fornication
leads immediately to the children of fornication. The house of Israel is
now a house of full ofyalde zenunim, alien children; Israel has become
alien unto itself.
Devoured by Aliens
The illegitimate or alien character of these children expresses Hosea's
critique of Israel's deepening implication in cosmopolitan orientations,
interregional trade and commercial agriculture. This critique is reiter-
ated in Hosea's deployment of an alternate but related image; Ephraim
is denounced as a kena 'an, playing upon the double meaning of the
term as 'Canaan' (that is, a foreign nation, Israel's 'other') and 'trader':
kena 'an (a 'Canaanite' or a 'trader'), in whose
hands are rigged scales—
he loves to defraud.
Ephraim says, 'Look, I have become rich,
I have gained wealth for myself;
and all my ill-gotten gains
will never catch up to me'.
Oh, the guilt which he incurs.
(12.7-8 [12.8-9]).
The use of kena 'an as a designation for trader or merchant derived

from the cultural experience of an earlier period in which trade was an
occupation dominated by those of Canaanite or foreign origin, and
hence was coded as a Canaanite activity (Elat 1979: 529-30). The
expression is first attested in the eighth century in the oracles of Hosea
(12.7 [12.8]) and Isaiah (23.8) at a time when many native Israelites
were profiting from involvement in mercantile activities.13 Hosea's
13. The use of the term 'Canaanite' to designate a trader or a merchant also
appears in several other biblical passages (Zeph. 1.11, Ezek. 16.29; 17.4, Zech. 11.7,
11; 14.2l;Prov. 31.24).
choice of terminology at the opening of this passage may simply repre-

sent the deployment of a conventional expression, or it may be a delib-
erate and rhetorically potent choice of words whereby the thriving
mercantile activity in Israel is labelled as activity which is intrinsically
non-Israelite. In this latter view, Ephraitn, in becoming so deeply
implicated in a system of commercial agriculture and mercantile trade,
has become, in Hosea's eyes, like a Canaanite, that is, a treacherous
alien.
In other ways too, Hosea expresses his concern with the cultural and
historical consequences of the nation's deepening involvement in cos-
mopolitan values and internationalism. 'Ephraim mixes (yitbolal)him-
self with the peoples' (Hos. 7.8a), he warns. The hithpael form here of
the verb 'to mix' (bll) is a culinary term, meaning to make a mixture, to
take elements that were separate and to make them homogenous. The
implication is then that Ephraim, in its mercantilism and international-
ism, has mixed itself up with the nations so much as to become indis-
tinguishable from them and therefore has lost its distinctive and separate
national identity (Andersen and Freedman 1980: 465). So mixed, the
nation is now like a tasty morsel which other nations may consume;
'aliens have devoured his strength' but 'he [Ephraim] does not know it'
(Hos. 7.9a). Becoming like them, the ideological power of Israel's self-
definition over and against these others is dissipated; geopolitical reali-
ties will soon swallow them.
The image of devouring aliens (zarim) recurs in Hos. 8.7-8, again in
close connection with Israel's deepening internationalism:
Because they sow the wind,
they will reap the whirlwind.
The stalk may grow, but it will produce no grain.
it shall yield no meal;
even if it were to yield,
aliens would swallow it up (zarim yibla'uhu).
Likewise, Israel is swallowed up (nibla');
now they are among the nations,
like an empty vessel that contains no pleasure.
Even if there were grain to harvest, aliens would devour it, and like the
grain, Israel itself is swallowed up, due to its condition of being 'among
the nations'. Thus, they are likened to an 'empty vessel'—a storage jar
perhaps, empty of grain.
The connection between the motifs of becoming alien and being
devoured appears once more in Hos. 5.7 where the announcement that
'they have fathered alien children (bdnim zarim)1 is followed by the

warning: 'Now the new moon shall devour them with their fields'. As
the fields are devoured, so is the nation. In all, the motif of aliens
(zarim] or alien children (banim zarim} occurs three times in Hosea
(5.7; 7.9; 8.8), and each time in connection with the motif of Israel
and/or its agricultural yield (its fields or its grain) being devoured or
swallowed up.
Attention to the related images of devouring aliens and alien children
highlights Hosea's persistent concern with the question of Israel's iden-
tity as a people. Dabbling in cosmopolitan values, binding itself in for-
eign alliances, and increasingly dependent upon interregional market
economy—all these have the effect, says Hosea, of cultural homogeni-
zation with 'the nations'. Such homogenization leads to the dissolution
of Israel's own identity, and ultimately, warns the prophet, to literal
destruction.
The language of identity is, of course, a symbolic and religious lan-
guage. The identity and solidarity of any human community is estab-
lished upon a common fund of myths, memories, values and symbols
by which that community defines its own essence to itself, situates
itself in the cosmos, and marks the boundary between itself and that
which is foreign to itself (A.D. Smith 1986: 42). Participation in this
prism of myths and symbols allows human beings to 'stake out a claim
on the landscape of identity' (Albanese 1981: 5), and thus to define their
lives as religiously significant.
A particularly important ingredient in the glue of identity are mytholo-
gies of origins.14 Israel's myth of its origin out of Egypt articulated a
common identity for the highland tribes as a people ideologically
positioned over against the urban/imperial structures of control and
exploitation which were appropriately symbolized under the emblem of
'Egypt'. This symbolism of identity is important for Hosea too; Eph-
raim is Yahweh's adopted child, called forth out of Egypt (Hos. 11.1).
But throughout Hosea's oracles, those myths and symbols of identity
related to the Exodus event are relentlessly reversed. Those who were
Yahweh's people, upon whom he had pity in their oppression in Egypt,
now are 'Not My People' and 'Not Pitied'. Reversing even the divine
name ('ehyeh) by which he announced his presence to them (Exod.
14. As T.L. Thompson observes, the question of origins is not a historical

question; 'it is rather a question of the essence and meaning of a people' (1987: 40).
3.14), the deity now says, 'I am not 'I am' to you' ('anoki lo'-'ehyeh
ldkem)(Ros.1.9b).
The omen in the children's names is echoed in the repeating promise
that now 'Ephraim shall return to Egypt' (Hos. 9.3; cf. 7.16; 8.13; 9.6;
11.5). This return to Egypt serves as a primary sign for the meaning of
Assyrian conquest and the ensuing deportation of the propertied class:
They will not dwell in the land of Yahweh;
but Ephraim will return to Egypt,
and in Assyria they will eat unclean food
(Hos. 9.3).
He will return to the land of Egypt,
and Assyria will be his king,
because they have refused to return [to me]
(Hos. 11.5).
As the creation of Israel finds mythic expression in a coming forth out
of Egypt, so the threat of the nation's decreation in Assyrian conquest
is figured in this specter of a return to Egypt. It is a return which is
absolute; unlike the bones of Jacob and Joseph, which in being returned
to the land of Canaan foreshadowed the nation's eventual return, not
even the bones of this generation will return:
Egypt will gather them,
Memphis will bury them (Hos. 9.6).
Egypt was a powerful symbol for Hosea's audience. The story of the
exodus from Egypt signified freedom from all exploitative machina-
tions of imperial and monarchical power. This myth was especially
meaningful for the tribes of the northern kingdom, whose rebellion
against Jerusalem was prompted by the heavy demands of Solomonic
corvee, a mode of oppression aptly mirrored in the demands of Pharaoh
(Albertz 1994: 141-43), and nearly replicated it seems in the rising
hegemony of urban lordlordism in Hosea's own time. Thus, one might
say that for Hosea, Ephraim is sliding towards a 'return to Egypt' even
without the help of Assyrian conquest.
The force of this symbolism of Egypt is such that the mention of
Egypt alone, or more optimistically, of the wilderness experience (Hos.
2.14 [2.16]), is enough to bring to mind a whole complex of mythic
associations which would have resonated deeply in the collective psyche
of this people. Such is also the case, as shall be argued below, with
another dimension of Israel's symbolism of identity which is at work in
Hosea.
Maternal Thinking in Hosea

Like his rhetoric about Egypt, Hosea's metaphor of female sexual trans-
gression offers a powerful and disturbing image for the negation of
Israel's identity. The adultery metaphor works in this way because it is
also a maternal metaphor, and as such, it participates in and effects a
reversal of another important dimension of the symbolism that is con-
stitutive of Israelite identity—Israel as generative mother, symbol of
the ongoing life of the people.
It is clear from the ancestor narratives of Genesis that intergenera-
tional continuity was fundamental to Israel's understanding of its mean-
ing and identity, figuring as a critical locus for the inflow of divine
blessings into this people's sacred history. But in these narratives, it is
male procreative power, lodged in the male genitals, which appears
most obviously as the locus of this generative meaning of the people;
that is, Israel (the people) is the seed of Israel (Jacob).15 Such mascu-
line symbolism certainly dominates in biblical literature; it is evident
for example in Hosea's preferred name for Israel, Ephraim ('fruitful
one').16 But nevertheless, there are hints in Hosea of another dimension
to this symbolism of identity which is rooted in the procreative power
of female bodies.
Such hints are given in the maternal imagery which is characteristic
not only of chs. 1-2, but of the entire book of Hosea; throughout, the
condition and fate of the nation are figured in graphic images of mater-
nal bereavement, the loss of female fertility, and the death of mothers.
The destruction of the nation is figured metonymically in mothers who
15. The interest of Genesis in the procreative power of the patriarchs is illus-
trated by the sexual allusions in the Jacob-Esau narratives (S.H. Smith 1990). The
tension in that story revolves around Jacob's attempt to appropriate Esau's procrea-
tive power for himself and thereby inherit El's promise to Abraham of countless
descendants. Smith reads Esau's 'aqeb ('heel'), which the unborn Jacob seizes
(Gen. 25.26), as a euphemism for genitals, the seat of Esau's procreative power.
Fittingly, in the encounter with the divine stranger at the Jabbok River, Jacob is
struck 'in the palm of his thigh' (bekap-yereko) (Gen. 32.25 [25.26]), which Smith
likewise reads as a euphemism for genitals; by striking Jacob here, 'God was assert-
ing his sovereign power over [Jacob's] procreative power' (S.H. Smith 1990: 469).
16. See Fisch, who explores Hosea's frequent punning upon the name Ephraim
as indicative of the prophet's persistent interest in the theme of fertility (1988: 145-
46).
are 'dashed in pieces with their children'; 'so', the prophet warns, 'it
will be done to you Bethel' (10.14bp-15aa). The same theme is sounded
again near the end of the book:
Samaria has become guilty,
because she has rebelled against her God.
They will fall by the sword;
their little children will be dashed into pieces,
and their pregnant women will be ripped open (13.16 [14.1]).
Such graphic images are certainly rooted in the realities of war which
eagerly claims women and children as victims (see also 2 Kgs 8.12;
15.16; Amos 1.13). But more so, as a metonym for the devastation of
war, the slaughter of children and mothers and especially, the slitting
open of pregnant women, bespeak the more far-reaching corporate con-
sequences of Assyrian invasion: the end of Israel. Mothers with their
children figure the nation as a whole, such that their destruction is the
nation's. Yahweh's threat to the priest of ch. 4—'I will destroy your
mother' (4.5) and 'I will also forget your children' (4.6)—is a threat
which signifies a total erasure of meaning and existence; this is also
Yahweh's threat to the entire people.
Another play on maternal symbolism is found in the image of the
nation as an unwise fetus: though the 'pangs of childbirth come for
him...he does not present himself at the place where children break
forth' (Hos. 13.13). In this fatal situation, both mother and fetus will
die, not because of enemy swords, but because the nation's iniquity is
'bound up' (Hos. 13.12). While birth would offer an image of passage
and the continuity of social life, the image of a breached birth stands as
a symbol of the negation of the future possibilities of this world.
In all of these images of 'ravaged maternity' (Landy 1995: 19), it is
not the death of fathers with their sons, but of mothers with their chil-
dren that reverses that symbolism of national identity which is rooted
in procreativity and lineal continuity. The most extended metaphor of
this type is found in Hos. 9:
Ephraim: like a bird,
their glory (kebodam)shall fly away
—no childbirth, no gestation, no conception.
Even if they do raise up children,
1 will bereave them—not one will be left.
Woe to them indeed when I turn away from them!
.. .Give to them, Yahweh—what will you give?

Give to them a miscarrying womb and dry breasts
(Hos. 9.11-12, 14).
Ephraim's glory (kabod)—a word often used of the divine presence—

is their children, which Yahweh will take away. The bereavement is
thoroughgoing, reaching to the corporeal source of that glory—the pro-
creative power of women. Women's wombs will miscarry and be made
barren; breasts will run dry; children will die until none are left.
From the perspective of this female reader, it seems as if these are
images wrung out of the heartbreak of women's lives as mothers. Even
though these words come from a male prophet speaking the word of a
masculine god to a patriarchal society, they carry resonances of a knowl-
edge of loss born of maternal experience. The maternal, corporeal locus
of this oracle suggests the presence of gynomorphic modes of imagining
corporate experience in which woman's fecund body, generative of the
generations, provides a root metaphor, or better metonym, for the life
of this people. Conversely, woman's barrenness and the death of mothers
and children is a powerful image for their destruction; as Trible puts it
in her reading of this passage, 'signs of female fertility have become
symbols of corporate sterility' (1978: 62).
Reading Hos. 1-2 in relation to these passages suggests that Hosea's
language of female sexuality emerges from cultural preoccupations that
have to do not simply with female fidelity, but also with female fertility
and maternity as definitive of the meaning and identity of this people.
Israel is a woman in Hosea's metaphor not simply because women are
wives, whose conjugal obligations to their husbands in patriarchal soci-
ety are analogous to the demands of a jealous god, but because women
are mothers, whose procreativity functions symbolically as a locus
of intergenerational continuity, and hence of national identity.17 This
17. Cf. Yee's interesting proposal that at the earliest stage of the Hosean tradi-
tion, the whoring woman of Hosea 2 was understood to be Rachel, the ancestress or
'mother' of the northern tribes, Ephraim and Manasseh. her 'children of harlotry'
(1987: 124-25). Yee is not suggesting that Hosea represented Rachel as Yahweh's
wife; her proposal depends upon a redactional analysis that assigns the development
of the metaphor of the woman as the 'wife' of Yahweh to a later stage of the text's
transmission. Although this study has avoided redactional arguments, chosing
instead to consider the book of Hosea as largely a literary unity, Yee's proposal is
nevertheless intriguing for two reasons. First, if the whoring woman is Rachel, one
could say that Ilosea's figuration of Israel as a woman drew for its inspiration on
proposal allows no escape from Hosea's patriarchal universe; his con-

cern with female fidelity signals a meaning of a people defined in
patrilineal succession. Whether the trope is taken as a marriage meta-
phor, a family metaphor or a maternal metaphor, it remains male dis-
course. But these reflections do suggest a need to adjust our assumptions
about the location and function of female symbolism within this patri-
archal world. It may be that inside the adultery metaphor lies another
metaphor, which once glimpsed, suggests that the meaning of this
people Ephraim, the 'fruitful one', is not entirely bound up in masculine
imagery. Rather, maternal imagery also serves, as does the imagery of
Exodus from Egypt, as a religious language for speaking about the
generative meaning of this people. And the reversal of that gynomorphic
symbolism of identity in Hosea serves, as does his prophecies about a
return to Egypt, as a powerful rhetoric of judgment, forecasting total
doom.
The Woman as the Land

It is not difficult to see how the mythology of the exodus from Egypt
was deeply rooted in and expressive of the historical experience of
early Israel. But what meanings and values, generative of a collective
sense of identity, were carried by maternal symbolism in Israel? On one
hand, the procreative power of woman offers a compelling metonym
for the meaning of a world bound up in the centrality of family, born
forth from woman's wombs, and centered in the home, over which
Israel's tribal traditions, in which the matriarchs, along with the patriarchs, serve to
represent the meaning of the people (see J.G. Williams 1982: 60-66). If Rachel, the
matriarch, stood as a symbol of national identity, then her literary transformation
into an adulteress would have carried tremendous rhetorical impact: how shocking
for the revered matriarch Rachel, national icon, to be depicted as a whore! Second,
Yee's proposal is intriguing because it presents the adulterous woman as a two-
sided figure. The image of Rachel as an adulteress is shocking precisely because the
image of Rachel as mother/ancestress is part of the sacral traditions of Israel. Rather
than female sexuality serving simply as a symbol of negation, under Yee's sugges-
tion, female sexuality, embodied in the maternal dimension of Rachel's character,
has sacral significance as the embodiment of the people; when this symbolism is
reversed by characterizing the ancestress as an adulteress, the result would have
been symbolically powerful for an Israelite audience. In a context in which kinship
metaphors define communal identity, to call the national mother an adulteress would
be to undo the social meaning and identity of the nation itself.
women preside; as they say in Sicily, 'the woman is the family' (Gio-
vannini 1981: 410). But further, the extension of the metaphoricity of
woman into the matrix of lived experience, collective identity and
sacred meaning in ancient Israel cannot be fully understood without
discussion of yet another dimension of the symbolism of woman in
Hosea—the identification of woman with the land.
This identification between the woman and the land is implied at the
outset in Yahweh's initial command to Hosea:
Go take to yourself a woman of fornications ('eset zenunim) and children
of fornications (yalde zenimim\ for the land fornicates greatly away from
Yahweh(Hos. 1.2).
The woman of fornications represents at once the wayward people and

the land itself, the land then serving as a congruent metaphor of the
corporate body.
The identity between the woman and the fertile land is suggested
again in Hos. 2, when the husband's threat to strip his wife naked fades
into images of drought and desolation upon the land. The divine hus-
band rages that the children had better plead with their mother to cease
her fornications,
lest I strip her naked
and expose her as in the day she was born;
and I will make her bare like a desert,
and I will set her like a parched land,
and I will kill her with thirst (Hos. 2.3b [2.5b]).
In this passage, the image of the stripping of the woman intertwines
with that of the once fertile land turned into a desert. Like the woman,
the land is made naked; the promise of fertility held in both woman's
womb and the fertile soil is negated, and is replaced by the threat of
barrenness, devastation and death.
These intersecting images of the nakedness of the woman and the
devastation of the land also appear when the divine husband again
threatens retribution upon his wife for her wayward ways:
Therefore I will turn and I will take back
my grain in its time,
and my wine in its season;
and I will snatch away my wool and my linen,
which were to cover her nakedness (Hos. 2.9 [2.11]).
The reference to wool and linen (or flax) in the second half of this
verse perhaps more strongly suggests the image of a woman's body
which is covered by clothing than that of the land, covered by growing

things. But the threat of Yahweh taking back the grain and the oil, that
is, the whole of the land's produce,18 intimates the specter of barren
fields and famine. Here the image of the fertile land becoming a
wasteland and the fertile wife being stripped naked and abandoned by
her husband are tied together; both the woman and the land will be
denuded and left barren (Olyan 1992: 258).19
This metaphor of the woman as the land is implicit also in the graphic
and disturbing threat found in Hos. 2.10 (2.12):
Now I will uncover her shameless cunt (nablutah)
in the sight of her lovers,
and no one shall rescue her out of my hand.
The key word here is nablut, often translated 'lewdness', but here more
graphically as 'shameless cunt'. The term is a hapax legomenon which
has elicited several different and conflicting interpretations from com-
mentators and translators (Olyan 1992: 255). Some argue that nablut
shares the same root nbl with nabal, a verb meaning 'to be foolish',
and with nebdlah, a noun which refers to the extreme folly and social
disorder wrought in acts of sexual misconduct. If nablut is related to
nebalah and carries a sexual connotation, then the reader might under-
stand that it is the woman's sexual misconduct, shame, nakedness or
even her genitals which are being exposed in the sight of her lovers
(Stuart 1987: 51; Landy 1995: 32). This is the basis for my deliberately
offensive translation of the term. But Biblical Hebrew also has another
root nbl which in its verbal form means 'to languish' or 'to wither'; this
semantic connection has led some commentators to suggest that it is
18. D. Stuart argues that grain, wine and oil in v. 8, or alternatively grain and oil
in v. 9 are 'a synecdoche for the full range of agricultural blessings given by
Yahweh'(1987: 50).
19. This theme of the loss of the land's capacity to produce its bounty is found
also in Hos. 2.12 [2.14]: 'And I will lay waste her vines and her fig trees... I will
make them a forest, and the beasts of the field will consume them'. Rather than being
made into an arid wilderness through drought as in v. 5, here cultivated fields will
be overgrown and become a forest or thicket (ya 'ar), home only to wild animals. At
the intersection of these two images, the connection between the metaphors of the
woman and the land is again suggested; as the land is returned to its pre-agricul-
tural, wild condition, as it was in the time when Israel emerged or was 'born' in the
highlands, so also, the woman being stripped naked, returned to the condition she
was in on the day she was born (v. 5) (Olyan 1992: 258).
the withering away or the ruin of the land's vegetation which is implied.
Rather than entering into an argument over which derivation is the
'correct' one, it is more illuminating to see both connotations—shame/
nakedness and withering/languishing—working together at once. This
polyvalence of nablut resonates with the interconnecting images of the
exposure of the woman's nakedness and the devastation or 'nakedness'
of the land in Hos. 2 (Olyan 1992: 257).
The homology between woman and land is a well-known feature of
the religious imagination of agrarian peoples, for whom the powers of
fertility in womb and soil are congruent hierophanies.20 Israel was also
an agrarian society, wherein the procreative power manifest in women's
bodies was experienced as hierophanic, as is evidenced by the place of
the female figurines, the asherim and Asherah within its ritual practices.
But further, reflection on Hosea's female imagery suggests that the
religious significance of woman's body also concerned the way in which
this people staked out a claim for themselves upon the 'landscape of
identity'. In Hosea, woman's body as maternal body, productive of the
generations, evokes the meaning of a community bound up in the con-
tinuities of families across the generations. Woman's body as the fertile
land, productive of sustenance, evokes the meaning of a community
bound up in the intimate relatedness of these families to their lands,
which yield their life-sustaining bounty. Thus woman in Hosea is an
integrative symbol for those meanings of human community invested
in the structures of family and kinship and in the intimate relationship
between families and their lands.
In Hosea, the image of woman as an adulterous mother or alterna-
tively, as the land that turns away from Yahweh, symbolizes the nega-
tion of this symbolism of identity. As the woman receives the seed of
other men into her womb and bears children who are yalde zenunim,
alien children, so also the land itself commits fornication and becomes
guilty of betrayal as it takes into itself seeds sown by strangers, thus
yielding a bounty that is alien. Now the fruit of the land is not of Israel,
but is produced by forces of commercial agriculture that are alien to the
structures of highland culture. So also, the fruit of the land is now not
for Israel, but rather is destined to be given to others, shipped off the
urban centers and beyond to the nations.
20. As Eliade notes, 'one of the salient features in all agricultural societies is the
solidarity they see between the fertility of the land and that of their women' (1974:
256).
7. Rereading Hosea's Family Metaphor 217
The specific locus of this 'adultery' is intimated in the elusive iden-

tity of the woman's lovers/baalim, who signify both the nations who
are Israel's trading partners and the commercialized forms of agrarian
production which expanded with Israel's deepening investment in the
interregional market economy. The locus of guilt is also intimated in
the name of the firstborn of her children of fornications, Jezreel, a name
which sounds so much like Israel but which evokes the royal house and
the violence and corruption which had become endemic there. In Hos.
1-2, the female body, the body politic and the fertile land intertwine in
a dense symbolic complex that yields no unambiguous correspondences,
but which evokes the reality of the contemporary situation as one of
betrayal, bloodshed and 'adulterous' political and commercial liaisons.
Like the motif of the return to Egypt which reverses the meaning of a
people constituted in resistance to all forms of elitist and imperial
domination, Hosea's metaphor of female adultery effects a reversal of
the symbolism that expresses the meaning of a world bound up in the
continuities of lineage and land. And like his polemic against the mon-
archy and its idolatrous cult, this imagery offers a rhetoric of protest
against the forces that would sunder the meaning of the human from
the land and the solidarities of community life.
Although the metaphor is predicated upon the legitimacy of patriar-
chal control of female sexuality, there is a depth dimension in this
symbolism of woman that exceeds those determinants. A symbol is more
than a play in language. As Paul Ricoeur puts it, 'symbols have roots.
Symbols plunge us into the shadowy experience of power' (1976: 69).
Fertility, the land, the female body and human sexuality mark 'so many
centres of sacred power' (Eliade 1974: 334); they manifest sacralities
that are rooted in the regenerative powers of the cosmos, and in turn
they offer loci of orientation in relation to which human beings can
construct and inhabit a religiously significant world. The negation of
such sacralities reveals a dark, devastated world in which 'the land
mourns' like a bereaved mother and is emptied of life—'all who dwell
in it shrivel up [and become sterile]'—because of the bloodshed, vio-
lence and treachery committed upon it (Hos. 4.1-3).
All this is to suggest that the symbolism of woman in Hosea and
indeed in the Hebrew Bible as a whole is more complex and nuanced
than is usually granted by either androcentric or feminist readers.
Despite the eclipse of the goddesses in the Hebrew Bible, scattered
images of divine maternity (e.g., Deut. 32.18; Isa. 42.14, 49.15) inti-
mate a religious apprehension of the female body as a icon and locus of
sacrality which could not easily be forgotten.21 The sacral signification

of female procreativity is visible in an ancient blessing formula from
the Song of Jacob:
.. .by El Shaddai who will bless you
with blessing of heaven above,
blessing of the deep that lies down below,
blessing of breasts and of womb (Gen. 49.25).
This poetic fragment, with its 'word play between the epithet sadday
('mountains') and the noun sadayim ('breasts')', intimates of a more
ancient religious world in which female body imagery—breasts and
womb—symbolizes the divine source of blessing (Trible 1978: 61; cf.
Biale 1982). But Hosea starkly reverses this ancient formula of bless-
ing and transforms it into a curse (Krause 1992: 197):
Give to them Lord, what will you give?
Give to them a miscarrying womb and dry breasts (Hos. 9.14).
The terror in this curse emanates from its rootedness in and reversal of
traditional language of the female body as a symbol for the divine
source of life and blessings.
It is important to stress that Hosea effects a reversal, not a negation,
of this language of the feminine. Unlike commentators from the misogy-
nistic worlds that were to come, for whom the female sexual body was
symbolically located in opposition to the realm of the sacred, Hosea's
eighth-century audience would have heard Hosea's female sexual
imagery as deeply disturbing precisely because in their world, woman's
body was still apprehended as a positive religious symbol. This is not
to excuse Hosea for his overreliance upon masculine metaphors for God,
but to urge that his female imagery not be assimilated into the body-
denying and misogynistic theology of another era.
Most modern readers will doubtless remain uncomfortable with
Hosea's representation of female fornication as a symbol of sin, know-
ing too well where such figurations of the feminine will lead in the
history of Western religion. It is indeed difficult for the modern reader
to read Hosea's female sexual imagery any other way, inhabiting as she
or he does a religious world where the meaning of human sexuality is
21. Patai argues that the power of feminine symbolism never would be com-
pletely forgotten within Judaism (1990). On maternal divine imagery in the Hebrew
Bible, see especially Trible (1978) and Gruber (1983).
7, RereadingHosea's Family Metaphor 219
individualized, the sacred is spiritualized, and human sexuality, espe-

cially female sexuality, is coded as profane. But in Hosea's religious
universe, human sexuality had to do first and foremost with generativity
—the production of children—and female sexuality was not just
something to be controlled by men, but was at the same time a sacra, a
form of the power of life within which the world is continually created
and regenerated. Hosea's sexual imagery does not sever the sacred
from its matrix within the sexual body and the fertile land. Rather, for
Hosea, the sign of salvation is the abundance of fertility: vineyards in
the dry wilderness (2.15 [2.17]), fruit from the tree of life (14.8), and
the blossoming forth of the once devastated land, an image which
brings Hos. 1-2 to its resounding conclusion:
And it will be on that day, I will answer
—oracle of Yahweh—
I will answer the heavens
and they will answer the earth;
and the earth will answer
the grain, the wine and the oil,
and they will answer Jezreel;
and 1 will inseminate her for myself in the land (Hos. 2.21-23a [2.23-25a]).
Here the consummation of the restored union between Yahweh and the
woman/land reverses the symbolism of fornication, betrayal and the
devastation of the land. Indeed, all the key elements of Hos. 1-2 are
drawn together here, their dire connotations transformed into symbols
of blessing. In this 'answer' to Jezreel and to all the violence intimated
in that name, blessings and rain pour forth from the heavens, redeem-
ing 'the grain, the wine and the oil' for the people of the land. The
agrarian/sexual imagery of God's promise to 'inseminate her (or sow
her) for myself in the land' effects reversal of the destruction intimated
in the name Jezreel ('God sows') and replaces images of barrenness
with that of insemination.22 Now the land will be sown not by other
22. This sexual connotation is clear in the Hebrew: uzera 'tiha li ba 'ares ('And I
will inseminate or sow her for myself in the land') (Hos. 2.23 [2.25]). Emendation
of the feminine pronoun to masculine (as in, e.g., the RSV) is without justification,
and serves to obscure the intersection of sexual and agricultural imagery in this text.
See Landy, who is one of the few commentators to work seriously with the sexual
language of this passage and its enigmatic female pronoun 'her'. Taking the pronoun
'her' as a reference to God's seed/semen, Landy suggests that this is a 'metaphor of
sexual inversion. The seed which God sows is feminine; at the center of the [divine]
gods and for other peoples, but by Yahweh alone and for Yahweh's
people. The imagery in this passage is profoundly sexual; its intima-
tions of a hieros gamos between Yahweh and the woman/land are
underscored in the announcement that 'you [the woman Israel] will
know Yahweh' which introduces this cosmic climax to Hosea's extended
metaphor. Such language belies the commentators' assumption that
Hosea shared their prurient 'horror of associating sexuality with God'
(Ginsberg 1971: 1016). Rather, this cacophony of cosmic communica-
tion, in all its sexual/agrarian symbolism, intimates of a religious imagi-
nation which admits no such sundering of spirit from matter.23
The Symbolism of Female Sexuality in Hosea

For Hosea, female sexuality was not a sign for the foreign 'other' of
Canaanite fertility religion. While Hosea does associate woman with
nature in linking her procreativity with the land and its powers of fertil-
ity, his female imagery is far removed from that symbolic complex of
nature, woman, sex and sin which is so much a part of the dualistic
metaphysics of Western religion. Rather, in ancient Israel, the fertile
female body was a locus and symbol for the life and meaning of the
social body. In this setting, Hosea's imagery of Israel as the woman/
land, who sells her body to multiple lovers and bears alien children, is
no simple allegory for apostasy, but a complex symbol of the death of
the nation.
Hosea was indeed an angry man. But he was not angry because the
people of Israel performed rituals in hopes of fertility and survival.
Rather, Hosea was angry because elite strategies of land accumulation
phallus, and hence of the devine creative potential, is the female matrix' (1995: 19).
It is also possible to read the pronoun 'her' as a reference to Jezreel, which, as a
metonomy of the whole of Israel, has now undergone a sex change—the body social,
now redeemed, is a female body. This is the reading I suggest with the translation 'I
will inseminate her [i.e. Jezreel] for myself...'
23. This point is further suggested by the resonance between Hos. 2.23-24 and a
mythological fragment from Bronze Age Ugarit. In this Canaanite poem, a message
of 'cosmic communication' between the Heavens and the Deeps is passed from
Baal to Anat: 'For I have a word I will tell you / A message I will recount to you / A
word of tree and whisper of stone / Converse of Heaven with Earth / Of Deeps to
the Stars' (M.S. Smith 1990: 46). Mark S. Smith takes this 'converse of Heaven
with Earth' as 'an image for cosmic fertility' (1990: 46), which surely also is the
point of Hosea's cosmic 'answering' that reverberates from the heavens to the earth.
7. RereadingHosea's Family Metaphor 221
and coordinate power politics had transgressed and profaned the sacred
nexus of relationship among and between the people and their land.
The transformation to a market economy, within which land, produce
and people had been commodified, constituted a religious crisis con-
cerning the meaning and identity of this people. Hosea's metaphor of
the nation as a woman of fornications bearing children of fornications
bespeaks his contemporary situation in which the realities of intra-
societal violence and the transgression of traditional communal values
had irreparably ruptured the order of the world as known by these
people.
The goal of this study has not been to establish a new 'correct' read-
ing of the text. This reading, like all others, is predicated upon the
selection of a particular set of intertexts which are not inevitably related
to the text under study. Rather, I have hoped to demonstrate that the
traditional interpretation of adultery as a trope for cultic apostasy
is neither necessary nor even adequate to account for Hosea's use of
female sexual imagery. The general consensus that Hosea's great point
is to define an opposition between sex and the sacred is less a function
of the text itself than it is a function of an interpretative approach
which is at the outset burdened by implicitly dualistic modes of
thinking about sexuality, gender and religion.
However, if one does follow the path charted in this work, it appears
in the end quite ironic that Hosea is understood as the champion of a
dualistic religious vision in which spiritual meanings are elevated above
and opposed to the human involvement in materiality and corporeality.
For at stake in Hosea's discourse is the loss of the sacred as it was
manifest in the relationships of people to the land, its produce, and to
each other, that is, in their relationships to the materiality of their exis-
tence. Read in this context, Hosea's dark and disturbing language of
female sexuality does not symbolize an otherness that must be rejected,
but points to that which was most essential to the meaning of his world,
and which has now been lost.
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INDEX
INDEX OF REFERENCES
OLD TESTAMENT
Genesis 38.26 47 20.21 177

2.8 75 49.25 91,218 20.27 166
2.22 75 49.25b 75,103 21.9 19, 202
2.23 181 24.10-16 166
4.1 47 Exodus 25 113
4.17 47 1-2 185 25.10 113
4.1b 181 3.14 106,209 25.23-28 113
4.25 47 6.7 107 26.1 93
6.3 75 19-20 110
12 53,176 2.15b-22 179 Numbers
12.6-8 92 20.3 106 5.11-31 164
14.5 75 20.5 106 5.14 106
14.8 75 20.6 106 5.30 106
18 53 21.7-11 165 14.33 106, 135
19.5 47 22.15 188 15.32-36 166
19.8 47 22.16-17 164 15.39 106, 135
20 53, 167, 23.24 93 21.6-9 93
176 32 87 25 124
21.33 92 32.1-4 123 25.1 44, 124
24.10-61 179 32.8 96 25.5 124
24.16 47, 188 32.26-28 86 25.6 124
25.26 210 34.14 106 25.7-8 124
26 176 34.15-16 106 27.1-11 113
29.1-20 179 31.17 47
32.25 210 Leviticus 31.18 47
34 167,168, 17.7 135 31.35 47
174, 175 18.19-23 166
34.2-3 168 18.29 166 Deuteronomy
34.7 169 20.2-5 135 4.24 106
38 49, 55, 20.2 166 4.37 106
167 20.5 106 5.7 106
38.20-23 55, 101 20.6 135 5.9 106
38.24 18, 19, 20.10 129,163 6.5 106
202 20.18 179 6.15 106
7.13 106 6.11 92 5 29

10.12 106 8.27 135 5.1 127
10.15 106 8.33 135 7.13-47 29
13.6-11 129 11.39 47 9.10-14 29
13.7-12 166 19-21 169, 173, 9.26-28 29
16.21 92 174 10.6 201
17.2-7 166 19 167-69, 11.1-8 128
17.8-13 86 171-75, 11.7 87,88
21.10-14 165 184 12.27 85
21.18-21 166 19.2 172 12.28-29 85
21.18 166 19.22 47 12.28 60,96
22.13-24 129 19.24b 169 12.31 88
22.13-21 164 19.25 47 13.32 87
22.21 19, 165, 20-21 169, 175 15.11 55
202 20.6 169 16.31-33 128
22.22 163 21 54 16.32 128
22.23-27 164 21.25 173 17-21 134
22.23-24 164, 165 17 128
22.24 168 Ruth 18 201
22.25-27 164 1.1 185 20.14 99
22.28-29 164, 168 3.10-14 137 21 27, 200,
22.29 165 4.3-6 113 201
23.3 166 4.10 113 21.1-4 113
23.5 106 4.22 185 21.8 191, 192
23.6 106 21.17 23
23.17 60 1 Samuel 22.10 137
23.18-19 55, 101 1.3 116 22.26 99
25.5-6 113 1.14-15 99 22.47 55
25.11-12 143 1.19 47
31.16 106, 135 10.2 115 2 Kings
32.8 82
20.6 116 8.12 211
32.16 106 20.29 116 9-11 201
32.18 217
28.13 114 9-10 200,201
32.21 106
9.22 18
33.10 86
2 Samuel 10.11 201
33.1 1 85
11-12 167 11 86
11 167 11.18 128
Joshua
1 13 167-69, 12.4-8 86
166
174 13.6 93
24 109
13.12 169 15.16 211
24.19 106
24.24-28 109 15.7 116 15.19b 25
24.26-27 92 16.7 26
24.26 109 / Kings 17.4 27
24.26b 109 1 86 17.15-17 119, 128
24.30 115 1.25 99 17.29 87
1.46 192 18.4 93
Judges 2.12 192 21.7 92
2.17 135 4.2 99 23.5 87
2 Kings (cent.) 23,17b 135 Hosea

23.7 55 23.18a 136 1-3 14, 16,32,
23.8 87 23.3bp 135 36,37,41,
23.22 74 27.9 93 42, 119,
28.6 192 120, 146
/ Chronicles 35. la 76 1-2 17,22,32,
5.25 135 42.14 217 33, 35-37,
27.25-31 193 49.15 217 47, 66-68,
77, 110,
2 Chronicles Jeremiah 130, 133,
21.13 135 2 150 134, 151,
21.11 135 2.24 126 160, 190,
3.1-3 150 191, 197,
Nehemiah 4.11 195 205,210,
13.12 86 4.30 126 212,217,
5.7-8 150 219
Psalms 7.31 87 1 15-17,
16.3 114 13 150 205
73.27 135 17.2 93 1.2 16, 18,
82.6-7 83 22.20-22 126, 195 214
127.4-5a 159 32.6-12 113 1.4-5 16,23
32.35 87 1.4 200
Proverbs 1.10-11 15
1-9 166, 183 Lamentations 1.2b 22, 134,
2.16 167 1.2 126, 195 205
5.18 179 4.12 192 1.8c 106
5.20 167 1.9b 209
6.24 167 Ezekiel 1.9c 106
7 53 6.3 87 2 15, 17,23,
7.5 167 6.9 135 76, 118,
31.24 206 16 54, 126, 126-30,
150, 152, 132, 154,
Ecclesiastes 188 179, 196,
3.1-9 183 16.17 123 212,214,
16.29 206 216
Song of Songs 16.35-39 126 2.1-3 15
4.15 179 17.4 206 2.2-15 22
20.30 135 2.2-13 15,22
Isaiah 23 54, 126, 2.2-3 15
7.1-8.8 26 150, 152, 2.2 40
8.19 114 188 2.3b 214
9.9-12 26 23.5-21 195 2.4-15 15
10.10-11 121 23.5 126 2.4-5 15
17.8 93 23.10 126 2.4 40, 202
21-23 135 23.11 18 2.5 21,203,
21.9b 121 23.22-31 126 215
23.8 206 29 18 2.5b 67, 197,
23.16 135 36.17-18 177 214
2.6 18 2.21b 133 5.6 128

2.6a 199 2.23-25a 219 5.7 108, 202,
2.6b 199 2.23-25 76 205, 207,
2.7 21,203 2.23-24 s220 208
2.7b 67, 197 2.23 23,219 5.8-6.6 26
2.8-9 47 2.24 23 5.13 195
2.8 95, 122- 2.25 219 5.21-24 102
24,215 3 15-17,38, 6.1 128
2.8a 197, 199 39 6.6 102, 138
2.8b 199 3.1 16,17,40, 6.7 107, 108
2.9 148,214, 41 6.9 99, 138
215 3. lap 15 6.10 16, 138
2.10 95, 123, 3.5 14 7.2-7 138
124, 127, 4-14 14, 16, 17, 7.2-3 99
215 32, 120, 7.4 128,202
2.10a 197 138 7.7 25
2.11 148,214 4 138, 179 7.7a 202
2.12 21, 127 211 7.8-9 195
136, 137, 4.1-3 16,217 7.8a 207
148,215 4.1-2 138 7.9 208
2.13 122,124, 4. 2-3 a 76 7.9a 207
128,195 4.4-6 99 7.11 195
2.14-23 15 4.4-5 102 7.14-16 99
2.14-20 15,41 4.4 138 7.16 122, 209
2.14-15 22,40 4.5 16,211 8 126
2.14 21, 136 4.6-10 100 8.1-3 108
137, 148, 4.6 99, 128 8.1 107, 108
209,215 211 8.2 128
2.15 124, 128 4.8 100 8.4-6 95, 122
195,219 4.9 100 8.4-5a 97
2.16-25 15 4.10 16, 100 8.4 121. 124
2.16-22 15,41 4.11-14 46 8.4b 123
2.16-17 22,40 4.12-13 95 8.5 60, 123
2.16 68, 122- 4.12 16, 18 8.6b 97
24, 133, 4.13-14 16,44, 55, 8.7-8 207
209 100, 101 8.8 208
2.17 122, 124, 4.14 61, 101, 8.9-10 139
195,219 102 8.9-1 Oa 126
2.18 68, 107 4.14a 101 8.9 16, 138,
123, 124 4.15 95,98 195
133 4.17-19 95 8.13 209
2.19 124,195 4.17 95, 121, 9 211
2.19b 133 124 9.1 16,44,
2.20-23 47 4.18 16 136
2.20 107 4.4-12 100 9.2-3 137
2.20b 49 5.1 99 9.3 209
2.21-23a 219 5.3-4 16, 137 9.5 128
2.21-23 76 5.4 18 9.6 209
Hosea (cont.) 11.5 209 Amos

9.10 44, 122- 12-14 14 1.5 192
24 12.1 195 1.8 192
9.11-12 212 12.7-8 206 1.13 211
9.11 17 12.7 206 2.8a 102
9.12 17, 148 12.8-9 206 2.8b 102
9.13 95 12.8 206 5.5 98
9.14 17, 148 12.11 98, 102 5.21-24 138
212,218 12.12 107 5.26 119
9.15 98, 99, 13.1 122-24 7 96
138 13.2 95, 121,
10.4 107 123 Micah
10.5-6 95,97, 13.12-13 17 1.7 121
121 13.12 211 2.2b 113
10.5 60, 122 13.13 211 5.13 93
10.6 95 13.16 17,211
10.7-8a 98 13.2 124 Nahum
10.14-15 97 14.1 211 1.2 106
10.14bp-15aa 211 14.3 95, 121 3.4 18
10.14 17 14.4 121 3.4b 135
10.15 95 14.5-7 47
10.15a 98 14.8 95, 121, Zephaniah
11.1-4 17 219 1.11 206
11.1 208 14.8ap 95
11.2 95, 121, 14.9 95, 121 Zechariah
122, 124 14.9ap 95 11.7 206
11.11 206
14.21 206
INDEX OF AUTHORS
Adler,E.J. 51,52,54,104,105,202 Brueggemann, W. 68

Ahlstrom, G.W. 14, 44, 54, 60, 70, 79, Buccellati, G. 80
82,84,86,88, 121,201 Buchanan, C.H. 13
Albanese, C. 207 Bucher, C. 18-20, 37, 54, 55, 104, 106,
Albertz, R. 75, 77, 128, 134, 209 202
Albrektson, B. 77 Buckley,!. 178
Albright, W.F. 49, 58, 60, 61, 87, 96 Budde, K. 56,61
Alter, R. 179 Burrows, M. 164
Andersen, F. 15, 20, 24, 37, 43, 44, 46, Buss, M.J. 101, 120
47,49,77,98, 102, 120, 123, 124,
136,207 Calvin, J. 38
Anderson, G. 130, 196 Camp, C. 21, 107, 145, 167, 169, 188
Anderson, J.C. 141 Carroll, R.P. 43, 151
Archer, L.J. 167, 187, 188 Cassuto, U. 181
Astour, M. 86 Cathcart, K.J. 39
Auerbach, E. 23 Chancy, M. 27, 28, 132, 193, 196, 198-
200,203
Bach, A. 141 Cogan, M. 128
Bakhtin, M.M. 183 Cohen, G.D. 50, 105, 106
Bal, M. 13, 144, 165, 168, 170, 174, 177, Coogan, M.D. 73, 79, 80, 90
179,188 Coote, M.P. 88, 132, 196
Balz-Cochois, H. 62-64, 147, 148 Coote, R.B. 27, 86, 87, 88, 117, 131, 132,
Barr, J. 77 159, 196, 198
Beal, T.K. 33, 180 Craghan. J.F. 41
Bewer, J.A. 40 Cross, P.M. 27,51,87
Biale, D. 179,218
Bird, P. 18-22, 125, 145, 202, 205 Daniels, D.R. 69,77, 108
Bitter, S. 37 Davies, E.W. 113
Blenkinsopp, J. 14, 16,40 Davies, G. 14, 16, 137
Bloch-Smith, E. 114-16,158,166 Day, P.L. 52,58
Block, D.I. 84 de Beauvoir, S. 11
Bostrom, G. 45, 53 de Coulanges, F. 115
Braaten, L.J. 22 de Geus, C.H.J. 116, 117
Braudel, F. 30 de Moor, J.C. 51, 129
Brechtel, L. 158, 159, 168, 176 de Tarragon, J. 51
Brenner, A. 141, 146, 151, 154, 182, 183 deVaux, R. 87
Brichto, H.C. 114, 115, 158 DearmanJ.A. 28, 31, 113, 192
Bright, J. 43, 44, 59 Delaney, C. 158, 159
Dever, W. 70,80,87,93, 112, 121

Douglas, M. 169, 188 Habel,N. 67,68
Downing, C. 182 Hackett, J.A. 52, 58, 63, 64, 75
Dresner, S. 60 Hall, G. 105
Durkheim. 72, 110 Halpern, B. 79, 81, 82, 102, 123, 125,
134,195
Eilberg-Schwartz, H. 177-80 Harper, W.R. 37, 38, 40
Eisler, R. 173 Harrelson, W. 49
Elat,M. 28,206 Harris, K. 173, 178
Eliade,M. I l l , 179,216,217 Hayes, J.H. 24, 26, 27, 117, 119, 127,
Eller, C. 149 128
Emerton, J.A. 94 Hendel, R. 96, 121, 129
Emmerson, G.I. 19, 69, 77, 164, 167 Hestrin, R. 91
Erlandsson, S. 18, 19, 106 Hill, S.D. 31, 194
Exum, J.C. 144,150-54,171-74,177, Hillers, D. 72
179, 180 HolladayJ. 88-90
Holland, T.A. 89
Feeley-Harnik, G. 184, 185 Holt, E.K. 99, 108
Fensham, F.C. 106 Hooks, S. 18,54-56, 124, 172
Fewell, D.N. 142, 144 Hopkins, D. 115, 197
Fisch, H. 48,59,210
Fishbane, M. 59 Irvine, S. 24
Fisher, E.J. 54
Fohrer, G. 53 Jacob, E. 48
Fontaine, C. 141, 147 Jacobsen, T. 73, 84
Fowler, J. 120, 133 Jeremias, J. 41,43,46,68,77
Frankenstein, S. 29, 135 Jobling, D. 112
Frankfort, H. 84
Freedman, D.N. 15,20,24,37,43,44, Kapelrud, A. 67
46,47,49,77,93,98, 102, 120, Kaufmann, Y. 119
123, 124, 136,207 Keefe,A. 168, 169, 175
Frick, F.S. 133 Kinet, D. 51,67
Frymer-Kemsky, T. 19,54,83,90-92, Knight, G.A.F. 136
152,166 Koch, K. 16, 22, 37, 46-48, 52, 59, 61, 75
Fuchs,E. 142, 144 Kolodny,A. 33
Krause, D. 218
Galambush, J. 20 Kristeva, J. 33
Garbini, G. 29 Kruger, P.A. 15
Gese, H. 73, 74 Kugel,J. 71
Geva, S. 29
Ginsberg, H.L. 49, 119,220 Lambert, W.G. 53
Giovannini, M. 186,214 Landy, F. 14,37,211,215
Gordis, R. 16,37,40 Lang, B. 28,31,81-83,86, 107, 129, 192,
Gordon, R.P. 39 195,196
Gottlieb, A. 178 Leith, M.J.W. 154, 155, 177
Gottwald,N.K. 31, 116-18, 133, 191, 192 Lemaire, A. 93
Graetz,N. 41, 150 Lemche, N.P. 70, 72-74, 80, 125
Gruber, M.I. 54,55,101,102,218 Lenski, G. 28, 30, 192
Index of Authors 251
Lerner, G. 129, 149, 173, 186 Pedersen, J. 124, 166

Levi-Strauss, C. 74 Perlitt, L. 108
Lipschitz, A. 39 Phillips, A. 163, 167, 169
Long, C.H. 78, 111 Pope, M.H. 124, 130
Luther, M. 39 Postgate, J.N. 135
Premnath, D.N. 28, 193,203
Magdalene, F.R. 150 Pritchard, J.B. 82, 89, 90
Malamat, A. 117
Marglin, F.A. 156, 178 Ramazanoglu, C. 156
Martin, J. 194 Redford, D. 80
Matthews, V.H. 137 Reid, J. 78
Mauss, M. 111 Reinhartz, A. 141
May, H.G. 43,45,54 Rentaria, T.H. 27, 29, 31, 89, 193
Mays, J.L. 37, 43-45, 47, 60, 68 Richards, L.A. 22,23
Mazar, A. 87,90, 122 Ricoeur, P. 22,23,217
McCarter, P.K. 80,94 Ringgren, H. 43, 118
McCarthy, D. 110 Roberts, J.J.M. 77
McKay, H. 141 Robinson, H.W. 45
McKeating,H. 163 Rogers, S.C. 163
Mendenhall, G.E. 110, 124 Rosaldo, M. 157, 163
Meshel,Z. 93,94 Rost, L. 45
Meyers, C. 84,93, 112-14, 116, 145, 162, Roth, W.M.W. 169
163 Rowley, H.H. 37-41
Miller, P.O. 24, 26, 27,.70,.80, 82, 117 Rudolph, W. 40, 45
Milne, P.J. 141-43 Ruether, R. 163
Moran, W.L. 106, 107, 110, 127
Mosala. 133 Sahlins, M. 112, 116
Mulder, M.J. 67 Schmid, H.H. 72
Mullen, E.T. 70 Schmidt, H. 45
Schreiner, J. 37,38,40
Nash, M. 31 Schungel-Straumann, H. 17
Negbi, O. 51, 129 Schiissler Fiorenza, E. 142
Neufeld, E. 192 Schwartz, R. 168, 170, 177
Newsom, C. 188 Schweickart, P.P. 144
Nicholson, E.W. 70, 108 Setel, T.D. 10, 63, 148, 149, 151, 153,
Niditch, S. 19, 21, 164, 168, 169, 175 154,164
Moth, M. 56, 175 Sherwood, Y. 37-39,41, 140, 145, 147,
153-55
Ochshorn, J. 143, 173 Showalter, E. 183
Oded, B. 25,26 Silver, M. 202
Oden, R. 46,54-57,71, 110 Simpkins, R. 73, 74, 76, 77
Olyan, S.M. 92,93,215,216 Smith, A.D. 207
Ord, D.R. 86, 117, 159 Smith, G.A. 40
Ostborn, G. 67,68 Smith, J.Z. 74
Ostriker, A. 182, 183 Smith, M. 81,83, 194
Smith, M.S. 73, 74, 80, 87, 93, 94, 128,
Pardes, I. 180-83 220
Patai, R. 218 Smith, S.H. 210
252 woman's body and the social body in hosea
Smith, W.R. 40, 53, 81, 110, 130, 139 Wacker, M. 17, 94, 95, 147, 199, 205
Snaith,N. 40 Wallis, L. 130, 131, 192
Soggin, J. 175 Want, B.C. 47
Springborg, P. 185, 186 WardJ.M. 22,43,44
Stager, L. 116 Waterman, L. 37,39,40,45
Staples, W.E. 53 Weber, M. 110, 130
Stuart, D. 215 Weems, R. 144, 150, 151, 153
Weinfeld, M. 105, 106
Tadmor, M. 89,90, 121 Wellhausen, J. 40,95, 108
Teubal, S. 53 Wenham, G.J. 86
Thistlethwaite, S. 163, 164, 174, 177 Westbrook, R. 15, 116, 129, 163, 165
Thompson, T.L. 79,207 Westenholz, J.G. 54
Tigay,J.H. 82,94, 120, 121, 127 Whitelam, K. 117
Todd,J.A. 191, 192 Whybrow,C. 73,77
Tolbert, M.A. 144 Williams, F.E. 198
Toombs, L.E. 73 Williams, J.G. 75, 176,213
Tornkvist, R. 150, 151, 173 Wolff, H.W. 14,22,37,43,45,46,48,
Trible,P. 19,142,143,173,212,218 49,61, 123, 136, 138
Worden, T. 43,48
Utzschneider, H. 87, 96, 97 Wright, C. 21, 113, 164, 165,204
Wright, G.E. 71
van der Woude, A. S. 37, 39
van Dijk-Hemmes, F. 63, 147, 148, 151, Yamauchi, E.M. 53
153,182, 183 Yee,G. 14, 127, 150, 151,212,213
von Rad, G. 43, 46, 49, 50
Vriezen, Th. C. 49 Zakovitch, Y. 172
Zeitlin, I.M. 123, 124
Zuess, E. 178

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JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

GENDER, CULTURE, THEORY

Sheffield Academic Press

Journal for the Study of the Old Testament

Gender, Culture, Theory 10

Copyright © 2001 Sheffield Academic Press

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Typeset by Sheffield Academic Press

ISBN 1-84127-247-7 (hardback)

that Hosea's metaphor legitimates a social structure within which males

As shall be argued, the popular thesis concerning a syncretistic

background of Western androcentrism's identification of woman with

The point of this exercise is not to claim to have discovered, at long

2. As Mieke Bal explains, 'the dominant reading' of Western culture may be

modern reader and ancient text in the work of interpretation admits a

Hosea's Book and its Sexual Metaphors

Chapter 1 tells of the divine command to Hosea that he take to

No children (9.12) means no nation; the imagery of bearing alien chil-

6. It is possible that maternal imagery also appears in Hos. 11.1-4 which

The Woman of Fornications

8. For summary discussion of the social position of women in ancient Israel,

—or a sacred prostitute—purportedly, qedesah—even though none of

of a prostitute posed no threat to Israel's patriarchal social order, the

The Children of Fornications

While the characterization of the wife by zenunim might make some

The Political Situation

The political motivations behind these successive coups are unclear;

The Looming Disaster

16. Menahem, for example, is reported to have paid tribute to Tiglath-Pilesar so

The use of mass deportation as a means of consolidating Assyrian

The Social Crisis

crown through its loyal retainers and dedicated to the production of

On the Frontier: Israel's Highland Culture

Amos versus Hosea

oppression yielding a harvest of human misery, and intensifying social

22. This understanding of intertextuality, applied as a practice of both reading

contrast to Canaan's nature religion. Rather, Israelite religion, like the

'Woman is a mystery' goes that pithy androcentric remark, wherein the

replicated themselves with enervating monotony.' The cumulative effect

The Scandal of Hosea's Marriage

The potential disturbance which might be incited by the thought of the

which only subsequently manifested itself. The marriage metaphor then

Therefore, the language of the divine command to marry an 'eset

...an ethical love, a love that involved no reciprocity, a love purged of

The androcentric character of this reading is painfully obvious.6 As

prophet. The male commentators sympathetically project into the text

The Fertility Cult

The sexual acts of human beings, in imitation of the sexual activity of

Corner as a Sacred Prostitute

source was Herodotus' secondhand and dubious account of a ritual in

Sex and Religion

10. On the dubious character of Herodotus as a historical source, see Oden

them as well as to most modern Hosean commentators. Perhaps the

This eloquence is found in the double entendre, whereby the whoring