The Gifts Have Been Credited to the Wrong Giver

In Hebrew Bibles this is 2:3. The children now address one another without the “Lo”, the not: brothers are told to say “my people”, sisters to say “pitied”. The names given in chapter 1 are spoken back, reversed, by the family itself.

“Plead” is riv, a courtroom verb, to bring a case, as in Micah 6:1–2. “She is not my wife, neither am I her husband” reverses the formula spoken at a wedding, known from marriage contracts found at Elephantine. The children are summoned as witnesses against their mother.

Stripping was a known punishment for an adulteress; Ezekiel 16:37–39 pictures it for Jerusalem. “As in the day that she was born” recalls Ezekiel 16:4–7, Israel as a newborn left in the open field. Midway through the verse the woman becomes the land: a wilderness, dry ground, thirst.

“Children of whoredoms” is the phrase of 1:2, and “I will not have mercy” is the verb in Lo-ruhamah’s name. The children who in verse 1 were told to call each other pitied are here named for the old judgment. The chapter holds both.

“Lovers” is an intensive plural, eager lovers, and “go after” is the verb Deuteronomy 6:14 uses for going after other gods. The six gifts come in three pairs: bread and water to live on, wool and flax to wear, oil and drink for comfort. She calls every one of them “my”.

The Hebrew jumps from “her” to “thy” and back, from speaking about the woman to speaking to her. A thorn hedge was how a field or path was closed to animals. Job 19:8 and Lamentations 3:7–9 use the same picture of being walled in by God.

“Follow after” is radaf in an intensive form, to chase hard. Deuteronomy 24:1–4 forbade a woman who had remarried to return to her first husband, and Jeremiah 3:1 raises that very law. Hosea has God offer what the law itself did not allow.

Corn, wine and oil are dagan, tirosh and yitshar, the fixed triad of covenant blessing in Deuteronomy 7:13 and 11:14. “Prepared for Baal” is literally made for Baal, which 8:4 explains: “of their silver and their gold have they made them idols.”

“In the time thereof... in the season thereof” means at harvest, the moment the grain and wine are due. “Recover” is natsal, to snatch away, the verb that will turn up in verse 10 as “deliver”. The wool and flax were given “to cover her nakedness”; taking them back leaves her as verse 3 threatened.

“Discover” is the 1611 word for uncover. “Lewdness” is navlut, a word found only here, meaning disgrace or genital shame. Natsal from verse 9 returns: none shall deliver her out of mine hand. The lovers watch and do nothing.

The list runs down the calendar: annual pilgrim feasts, monthly new moons, weekly sabbaths, then every appointed time. Leviticus 23:2 calls them “my feasts”; here they are all “her” feast days. Amos 8:5 shows merchants in the same kingdom impatient for the new moon and sabbath to be over.

“Rewards” is etnah, a prostitute’s fee, the word Deuteronomy 23:18 uses for the hire of a harlot. It sounds very like te’enah, fig tree, in the same sentence. The cultivated vines and figs go back to thicket, and the beasts of the field graze them.

The Baalim are plural: the local Baals, like Baal-peor and Baal-berith. “Earrings” is nezem, the word for the gold rings Aaron collected to make the calf (Exodus 32:2–3). “Saith the LORD”, the prophetic ne’um, is heard for the first time in the book, sealing the charge.

“Allure” is patah, to entice or seduce, the verb Exodus 22:16 uses for a man who seduces a virgin; Hosea uses it without embarrassment of God. “Speak comfortably” is to speak to her heart, the phrase Isaiah 40:2 later uses: “Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem.”

“A door of hope” is petach tiqvah, the name taken in 1878 by a settlement that became the Israeli city Petah Tikva. “She shall sing” is anah, which also means to answer: she will respond there. The same verb carries the chain of answering in verses 21 and 22.

Ba’al was the ordinary word for a husband as owner (Exodus 21:3), and ish the word for a man, a husband as partner. Later scribes did to names what this verse promises: Saul’s son Esh-baal (1 Chronicles 8:33) appears in Samuel as Ish-bosheth, with baal replaced by the word for shame.

Exodus 23:13 had commanded, “make no mention of the name of other gods, neither let it be heard out of thy mouth.” Here the law becomes a promise: God himself will take the names out of her mouth, so that obedience is a matter of memory as well as will.

The beasts that ate her vines in verse 12 are now under covenant. Beasts, birds and creeping things are the classes of Genesis 1 and of the covenant after the flood (Genesis 9:10). “Lie down safely” echoes Leviticus 26:5–6: “ye shall lie down, and none shall make you afraid.”

“Betroth” is aras, the binding stage of marriage sealed by paying a bride-price. The Hebrew “in” here is the preposition of price, as when David claimed Michal “for an hundred foreskins” (2 Samuel 3:14): the groom pays with righteousness, judgment, lovingkindness and mercies. Jewish men recite these lines while winding the tefillin strap on the finger.

“Faithfulness” is emunah, the last of the gifts. “Know” is yada, the verb used for marital intimacy in Genesis 4:1, and the knowledge of God is the book’s theme: “no knowledge of God in the land” (4:1), “the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings” (6:6).

“Hear” is anah again, to answer. Baal was worshipped as the storm god who sent rain; in this verse the LORD answers the sky, and the sky answers the ground with rain. The chain of provision now has its true starting point.

The corn, the wine and the oil are the triad of verse 8 that she credited to her lovers and that God took back in verse 9. Here they return as participants in the chain, answering, and what they answer to is a name, Jezreel.

The people’s reply is one Hebrew word, Elohai, “my God”. In a chapter where the woman’s own speech was “I will go after my lovers”, these are the people’s last words. 1 Peter 2:10 takes up the verse: “which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God.”