Woman's Body and the Social Body in Hosea 1-2 (Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series, 338)

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 A Continuum imprint Published by Sheffield Academic Press Ltd The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX 370 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10017-6550 www.SheffieldAcademicPress.com www.continuumbooks.com All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Typeset by Sheffield Academic Press Printed on acid-free paper by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall

ISBN 1-84127-247-7 (hardback) 1-84127-285-X (paperback)

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 Index of References Index of Authors

222 244 249

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ABBREVIATIONS AB ABD AJSL ANET

Anchor Bible David Noel Freedman (ed.), The Anchor Bible Dictionary (New York: Doubleday, 1992) American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures James B. Pritchard (ed.), Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950)

ANQ AOS BA BARev BASOR BDB

BibRes BJS BTB BZ CBQ EncJud ER EvT EAR HR HTR HUCA IDBSup IEJ JAAR JB JBL JFSR JNSL JQR JSOT

Andover Newton Quarterly American Oriental Series Biblical Archaeologist Biblical Archaeology Review Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research Francis Brown, S.R. Driver and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962) Biblical Research Brown Judaic Studies Biblical Theology Bulletin Biblische Zeitschrift Catholic Biblical Quarterly Encyclopaedia Judaica Encyclopedia of Religion Evangelische Theologie Hebrew Annual Review History of Religions Harvard Theological Review Hebrew Union College Annual IDB, Supplementary Volume Israel Exploration Journal Journal of the American Academy of Religion Jerusalem Bible Journal of Biblical Literature Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages Jewish Quarterly Review Journal for the Study of the Old Testament

8 JSOTSup JTC JTS KAT KTU

LUA MT NAB

NCB NEB NRSV

OTG OIL OTS RB RelSRev RHPR RSR RSV SBLMS StudOr TDOT TQ TSK UF VT VTSup WBC WMANT

ZAW

Woman's Body and the Social Body in Hosea Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, Supplement Series Journal for Theology and the Church Journal of Theological Studies Kommentar zum Alten Testament 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. Lunds universitets arsskrift Masoretic Text New American Bible New Century Bible New English Bible New Revised Standard Version Old Testament Guides Old Testament Library Oudtestamentische Studien Revue biblique Religious Studies Review Revue d'histoire et dephilosophic religieuses Recherches de science religieuse Revised Standard Version SBL Monograph Series Studia orientalia G.J. Botterweck and H. Ringgren (eds.), Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament Theologische Quartalschrift Theologische Studien und Kritiken Ugarit-Forschungen Vetus Testamentum Vetus Testamentum., Supplements Word Biblical Commentary Wissenschaftliche Monographien zum Alten und Neuen Testament 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 consensus 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 fornication, 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 ascendancy 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 indicted Hosea for his role in advancing the patriarchal and misogynistic character of the Western religious traditions. Their point is not simply

10

Woman's Body and the Social Body in Hosea

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 spiritual (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 language and religious meanings within Western culture. The association of woman and sex with sin in this metaphor constitutes a critical movement 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 sexuality 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, materiality 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 paradigmatic 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, feminist 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 determined 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 Canaanite 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 elevating 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 assumptions regarding religion and gender work in tandem in the interpretation 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 standard 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, deviation 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).

12

Woman's Body and the Social Body in Hosea

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 scholarly 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 corporeal bases of human existence. This approach will generate an understanding 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 matters 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 cropping. At risk in this transition was not only the well-being of individuals, 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 fornication and the disintegration of one family unit offers a powerful and evocative metaphor for a situation of intensifying socio-economic, political 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 disintegration 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 misogyny 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 dominant reading through an ideological critique of the dualistic constructions of woman and religion which have determined it. There will be also a constructive dimension to this study in its interpretation of female imagery in Hosea. Instead of reading Hosea's metaphor 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 different 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.

14

Woman's Body and the Social Body in Hosea

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 marriage, 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 geographical 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 marriage 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.)

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Woman's Body and the Social Body in Hosea

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 different 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 Jeroboam's death in 745 BCE, whereas ch. 3, with its allusions to enslavement, 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 inhabitants. 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 situation. 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 children (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 children'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 children'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 strategic. 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.

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Woman's Body and the Social Body in Hosea

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 redactional 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 combination 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 expression '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 sociologically 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 foundational 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 controlled 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 terminology has followed from the implicit assumption that professional prostitution ought to be taken as the primary or basic meaning of the root (Bird 1989b: 78) This assumption is reflected in the common translation 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).

20

Woman's Body and the Social Body in Hosea

—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 conception, the prostitute 'is 'essentially' a professional or habitual fornicator' 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 forbidden activities which were considered most sinful and horrendous, such as apostasy. 11. Andersen and Freedman concur, arguing that 'the practice of English translations 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 genealogical 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 immediately paired with a semantically parallel and equally troublesome phrase—yalde zenunim. As Phyllis Bird notes, this double characterization is indeed curious, for as fornication can describe a woman's activity, 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).

22

Woman's Body and the Social Body in Hosea

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 children, 'eset zenumm and yalde zenunim, are bound up together in a single metaphoric complex, such that one cannot be understood without 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 regarding the allegorical correspondences intended here: if the mother symbolizes 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 intimate 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 country, 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 'sowing' which brings ch. 2 to its climatic conclusion (Hos. 2.23 [2.24]). But the name Jezreel is also heavily laden with political connotations; 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 distinguished 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 assigning 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).

24

Woman's Body and the Social Body in Hosea

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 discourse as an emblem of the nation's terminal illness. Rather, the invocation 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 controlling 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 dissolution 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 revolving 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 populations 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 headmen 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-Palestine in 734-732 (see below).

26

Woman's Body and the Social Body in Hosea

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 punishment 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 Israelites 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 'rallying 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 circulated 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, seeking 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 economies 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 hegemony of the Omrids found fruition in Jehu's coup, under Jehu's great grandson Jeroboam II, the same centrifugal forces of expanding monarchical 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

28

Woman's Body and the Social Body in Hosea

crown through its loyal retainers and dedicated to the production of profitable cash crops.18 Under royal directive, large areas of the countryside 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 products 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 characterized 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 economy 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 processes 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 politicaleconomic pressures in the region which followed from the introduction of the new iron technology insisted that these kings enhance their purchasing 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 terraced regions of the kingdom where oil and wine grew best, for these were the lucrative cash crops that brought high profits on the international 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).

30

Woman's Body and the Social Body in Hosea

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 Canaanite, 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 distinctive 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 between clients and their more powerful patrons had always been mediated 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 mutuality 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 precisely these codes of economic practice and land tenure. Resistance to elite encroachment upon patrimonial lands in the highland 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 encroachments 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

32

Woman's Body and the Social Body in Hosea

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 apparently takes little notice of the social abuses of his day; the plight of the poor, injustice to widows and orphans, the dispossession of the vulnerable—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 precisely 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 imagined, 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 worldview 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. Alternative 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 selfevidently as a sign for Israel's involvement in a foreign, false and feminine religion. Working in tandem with these gender determinants is a theologicallydetermined 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 'intersection 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).

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Woman's Body and the Social Body in Hosea

contrast to Canaan's nature religion. Rather, Israelite religion, like the religion of its neighbors, was characterized by a dual concern with fertility 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 concepts are really appropriate for the interpretation of Hosea's metaphor through further interrogation of our reigning assumptions about religious meaning and practice in his time and place. Together, Chapters 3 and 4 work to build an alternative framework for interpretation, suggesting 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 metaphor. 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 context 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 interpretation 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 narrow. In commentary after commentary, amidst all the myriad debates concerning fine points of the prophet's biography and the text's redaction, 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 explained 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 androcentric 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 interpretation 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 concerning the semantics of the symbol of woman in this metaphor have

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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 counterreadings (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 dominant 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 earlytwentieth-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.

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Woman's Body and the Social Body in Hosea

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 provide 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 prostitute 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 disturbed 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 visionary experience. Likewise, the medieval Jewish exegete Abraham Ibn Ezra found it 'inconceivable' that God should require such an act of his

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prophet, and therefore proposed that both the command and the marriage 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 example, 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 willingly '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 married her, but that she had a propensity toward promiscuous behavior

40

Woman's Body and the Social Body in Hosea

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 married 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 marriage until his wife commits adultery against him. In anger, he repudiates 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 theological 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).

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...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 scholars with the aggrieved husband/God, the text of Hos. 1-3 emerges selfevidently as a parable about unrelenting divine love (gendered as male) in the face of unrepentant human sin (gendered as female). This perspective is particularly appealing as it accords with a christological hermeneutic 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, feminist 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 husband 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.

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Woman's Body and the Social Body in Hosea

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 questions 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 marriage 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 syncretistic 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 sexuality. Canaanite religion is typically described in the commentaries as a 'fertility religion' or more pejoratively, as a 'fertility cult', centered in

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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 impregnates 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 orgiastic 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 literature; 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.

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Woman's Body and the Social Body in Hosea

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 religion 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 sexual mores and thus contributed to the dissolution of normative family bonds'. And beyond this, 'another, even more basic evil was the dehumanization 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

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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 elaborated 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 participation 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 promiscuity (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 followed 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 prostitution 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 submitted 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

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Woman's Body and the Social Body in Hosea

source was Herodotus' secondhand and dubious account of a ritual in Mesopotamia (not in Israel) in which unmarried young women supposedly 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 patriarchal culture (Rudolph 1963: 70). Nevertheless, despite the gaping holes in this argument, Wolffs proposal has been followed and elaborated upon by many other commentators such as Gerhard Von Rad, Klaus Koch and J. Jeremias. Koch (1983) for example, read Hos. 4.1114 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 ceremony was to help bring about a new fruitful year through the sympathetic 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 identification 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 practice 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'.

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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 infuriates 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 sexuality and fertility, then why is it that Hosea's language about Yahweh is so richly intertwined with sexual and fertility motifs? In Hosea's theological 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 Canaanite 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. However, 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 reactions to the negative passages concerning the female personification but quite sanitized characterizations of the positive one concerning the Lord1 (1992: 6).

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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 example, 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).

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Yahwistic faith. While Baal and his consort embody the seasonal repetitions 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 metaphor; 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' (Andersen 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 conceptions' 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 neighbors 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.

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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 fertility 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 sacralization 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 supplement and sometimes contradict the picture painted by the Hebrew

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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 increasingly 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, particularly 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 contention 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 couples 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.

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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 assumption 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 indicates 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 imagine 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 reconstruct how these peoples apprehended religiously the power of agricultural 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).

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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 indication of such. But such a theoretical construction, lacking in any supporting 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 regarding 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 commonplace 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 existence; 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 marriage 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 (Bostrom 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

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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 carefully 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 evidence, the longstanding confidence about the prevalence of sacred prositution 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 hypothesis 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 personel 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.

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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 prostitute (zonah). It seems that if qades carries a cultic meaning, and if qedesah appears in parallel with zonah, then qades and qedesah therefore 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: 16869; see also Gruber 1986: 135-36). Given the conventional representation 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 chronological 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 discussion in Chapter 3 in the section on "Politics, the cult and the prophet's polemic'.

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describe; his account depends upon secondary sources and lacks corroboration 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 importantly, 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 scholars, 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 motivations (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 superiority 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 stereotypical 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 contemptible and shocking' (1960: 143).

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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 certain kind of Protestant Christianity that defines religious piety in opposition to all forms of exuberance, sensualism and ritual performance. In its uncritical promotion of the sacred prostitution accusation, biblical 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 accusation, 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

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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 courtesans', 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 mothergoddess, 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).

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Similar assumptions inform Bright's report that the goddesses of Canaan are portrayed as sacred courtesans or pregnant mothers or, with a surprising 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 titillating portrayal of their primary association with sex, One might go so far as to suggest that the notion of Canaanite religion 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 experienced 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 feminine 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

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Naturally enough, it seems, the degenerate practices of sacred prostitution find their meaning in relation to the scholarly imagination of these goddesses of sex and fertility. Albright's view that sacred prostitution was 'an almost invariable concomitant of the cult of the Phoenician and Syrian Goddess, whatever her personal name' (1946: 75) is representative of a general tendency to label the generic fertility goddesses 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 divinities' 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 (conventionally 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 emphasis in scholarly discussions falls upon the female qedesah. Mays, for example in his discussion of sacred prostitutes, employs only the feminine 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 worship, also assumes that the basic ritual of their cult 'was sexual intercourse 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: 62223;Mazarl982).

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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 discussions 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 problem 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 degenerate 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 religion. 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

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Yahwi stic faith (and their own) is defined. Interpreted within a theological framework that valorizes and insists upon an absolute division between sexuality and religion, and which identifies the excluded meanings 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 superiority 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, sexuality, 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

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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 androcentric 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 dominant 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 uncritically 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 reduction 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

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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 categorization 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 reinforces 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 religion, 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 Palestine 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 general 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 particular orientation towards feminine religious imagery for the constitution 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

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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 commentary 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 superiority in collusion with a projection of the gender polarities of Western culture, which link femininity with materiality and immanence and masculinity 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 scenario 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 superiority of Israel's religion is predicated upon its successful insulation of God from any intrinsic implication in matter (nature, sexuality). Methodologically, 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 constructions 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,

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these ex-nomads had difficulty believing that their Yahweh, the austere and invisible god of the desert mountains, could also provide for agricultural 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 metaphor. 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 summer 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 seasonal 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 distinction 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

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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 punishment 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 religion, such that worship of Yahweh was perceived as a mode of guaranteeing 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 indistinguishable 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 admonition (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).

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god Baal and to the prophetic insistence that such an 'insidious confusion 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 conception of a fertility god who is himself a captive, becomes an impossibility...'(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 transcendence. Herein is the critical theological question which is assumed to undergird Hosea's sexual language: is fertility a sacred power, imminent within a cosmic continuum in which human sexuality also participates, 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 contestation 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

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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 mythohistorians 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 production 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 incipient 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 deuteronomic 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 interference from the program of the deuteronomistic editors, see e.g. Ahlstrom's Aspects of Syncretism in Israelite Religion (1963). More recently, such efforts have multiplied, 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).

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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 religion 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 presupposition of a metaphysical distinction between matter and spirit, this worldview 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 determining 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 ministers, and most of the scholars who have shaped the field have been Protestant Christians (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).

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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' (Hillers 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 situation within the material world, in all its manifold geographical, historical 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 orientation 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 religion 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 maintenance 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.

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rain, copulation and death, but about the founding of the cosmic order and acquisition of kingship in the defeat of Yam and in the construction of his 'house' or temple, the sacral center and anchor of Ugarit's political order. Baal's death and resurrection do not simply give mythological 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 integration of divine wills, all of which reflect the human activity of ordering 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 agricultural year (M.S. Smith 1985: 330), and the text's reference to a sevenyear 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 entanglement 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).

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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 ahistorical, although they may have had a different sense of history than that of the teleological paradigm which emerged out of Israel's experience 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 phenomenon 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 'historicizing' 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.

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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 history, 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 presence 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 ternpore. 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. Williams 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.

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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 consequences in the other' (Simpkins 1991: 63). For example, in Hosea, violence, deceit and corruption in the human realm results in the degeneration 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 reverberates 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 creation (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/history 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'

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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 religion 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 situation behind Hosea's rhetoric therefore, we need to adopt a methodological 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).

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speak about Hosea's religious contexts apart from consideration of the materialities constitutive of Hosea's world. In response to a reductionistic functionalism, it is necessary to question whether one may even speak about society per se prior to or apart from that society's symbolic/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 conditions 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 existence rather than from the activities of ideation (i.e. belief) in relationship 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 SyriaPalestine. 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 originally 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 contestation 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

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emergence of ancient Israel in the Palestinian highlands. A new consensus now posits the origins of Israel not in the invasion nor infiltration 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 models which are predicated upon categories such as syncretism or corruption 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 presupposition.12 11. Modes of village organization, pottery and architectural styles, and alphabetic 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 character of early Israel1 (T.L. Thompson 1987: 38). 12. For work being done on ancient Israelite religion along these lines, see the

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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 'classical 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 marginalzone agrarian economy that depended precariously upon rainfall agriculture 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 territorial 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).

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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 deconstruct 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 formation 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 ascendence 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 nonwestern 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 Mediterranean 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 eighthcentury 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.

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From the close of the Bronze Age onward, as centralized forms of political 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 throughout 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 parlance '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 discussion of the Ammonite onomasticon, where the distribution of theomorphic names follows a similar pattern to Israel's: 'from their onomasticon one might conclude that they were no more pluralistic in religion than were the Israelites' (1986: 20).

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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 disempowered 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 comparison with other religions in this region, it becomes evident that the theological 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 sociology of religion would render the point obvious. These were not simple agricultural-based tribal societies, but relatively complex and hierarchically ordered city-states, monarchic states and empires whose life and fate were tangled up not only in the land, but in the dynamics of interregional 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.

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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 economic 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 understood 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 presence 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

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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 authority from which the 'divinely' ordained laws of the land were propagated 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 construction of a grandiose palace and temple as a way of symbolically legitimating 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 reorganization. It was, for example, incumbent upon King Jeroboam I to solidify the north's political independence from Judah through the establishment 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 adminiswas 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 established 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 kingdom (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

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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 symbiotic, as 'rulers endorsed and were endorsed by endowed temple organizations 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 dynastic power struggles (e.g. 1 Kgs 1, 2 Kgs 11) and from the relationship between particular priestly parties and particular dynasties (e.g. Aaronides 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 political 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 collection 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 peasant, 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 functioned 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).

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Attacks on the national cult, its priests, and its bull icons are prominent 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 forbidden 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 certainly 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 traditional 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 idolatrous 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

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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: 1026; 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 Jerusalem. Traditionally dispersed loci of sacral-political power, which were important for maintaining the authority of the older landowning families, 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 practically 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' worship 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).

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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 circumscribed 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 household 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 figurines are found at a frequency of roughly one per household, and apparently 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 subterranean sites: 165 figurines were found at Samaria E 207 and 16 figurines at Jerusalem 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.

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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 periods, 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 pillarbased style is uniformly characteristic of Judean sites, while in the northern 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 occupation levels (i.e. destruction layers); they are rarely found in lower street accumulations 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 unwarranted. The more scanty representation of these figurines in the layers of the lower street may simply reflect religious customs concerning the disposal of broken figurines 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.

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figurines functioned as talismans to promote fertility. So too, FrymerKensky 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 symbols for a religious concern with fertility. The shape of the 'pillarbased' variety of figurines is most suggestive; Hestrin and FrymerKensky 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 probably 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).

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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 expressed 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 stylized 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 represented 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.

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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 material 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

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distinct deity, her name was more of a feminine hypostasis of the effective 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 disintegrated.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 regeneration. 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 highlanders.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 unambiguous 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 understand and affirm the orthodox position that Mary is not divine but only an intercessor, 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

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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 mistaken 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 commentators 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 scholarly 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 certain textual images in Hosea. But the clues she highlights do not add up to a convincing 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).

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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 iconography 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 probably not understood to be iconic representations of the deity, but rather images of the steed or mount upon which he might rest.45) Nevertheless, 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 denounced as treason by the priest Amaziah (Amos 7), Hosea's attack on Bethel's primary icon constituted a frontal assault upon the sacral legitimacy 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 anthropomorphic 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 themselves 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 enthronement of Yahweh on cherubim in the Jerusalem temple (1957a: 299-300). The religious 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).

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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 (Utzschneider 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 destruction 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.

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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 murdered 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 government which built them. The belief that this 'iniquity' concerns matters 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

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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 represent an attack upon the royal establishment as a whole as corrupt, deceitful and wicked. Priests too, who were not simply servants of Yahweh but government 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 teaching 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 legitimation of monarchical rule. 49. See e.g. Holt (1995: 69) who argues that the 'evil of Gilgal is of a purely cultic character...'

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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 language, 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 commentaries 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. However, 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.

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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 daughters-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 questionable 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 harlots.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

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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, derogatory 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 collaborates with unjust or illegitimate structures of political power (Halpern 1987: 95).

fornicate...seeing that they themselves [their fathers] go in the company of prostitutes' (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).

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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 agricultural 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 idolatrous 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 practices 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 acknowledge that there is precious little evidence to support the scholarly imagination 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 apostasy 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 evidence 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 patriarchal 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

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addition, Adler argues, the emotional and intimate nature of the human marriage relationship fits well with Hosea's apprehension of the intimate bond between Israel and its deity (Adler 1989: 42-92, 385-89).l Thus, as the older framework of interpretation is torn down, its foundations in covenantal theology are left undisturbed, and these foundations 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 provisional interpretative strategy has long functioned to underwrite the consensus that Hosea's metaphor about 'chasing after lovers' constitutes a polemic against cultic apostasy. By interrogating the necessary applicability 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 marriage 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 commandment 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).

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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 Pentateuch'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')—referring 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 surrounding 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 metaphorical uses ofznhterminology in the Pentateuch and throughout the Hebrew Bible.

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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 relationship between Yahweh and Israel which was conditional upon obedience 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 covenantal 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 coventantal 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 covenant 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.

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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 violence 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-Deuteronomic references to a notion of covenant as descriptive of the relationship 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 speculates, 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 circulation 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 transgressed (bagedu) against Yahweh by breaking the covenant at 'adam (6.7), so also Israel transgressed (bagadu) against Yahweh by bearing alien children (5.7). Treachery describes either the action of a wife who transgresses the marriage bond, or a covenant partner who transgresses the covenant agreement.

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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 theological concept of covenant into our reading of Hosea's eighth-century marital imagery. Hosea may have been familiar with a notion of covenant already in circulation, or Hosea might have coined the political metaphor of covenant himself as an alternative to his more familiar marriage metaphor. Either way, the reader should not uncritically assume that Hosea's understanding of bent was equivalent to later deuteronomistic 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 conditional 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 condemned in the deuteronomistic 'reform' movements).

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which the federation of diverse social units has collapsed into a singular 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 coincident with the collapse of the territories of Israel and Judah into a small territory surrounding Jerusalem. The meaning of Israel as a socio-political 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 process 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 formulation 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 relationship 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 contribution 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, tradition-historical research prompted by the methods of Smith, Durkheim, and Weber' (Oden 1987b: 440).

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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 relationship, 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 intimacies 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.

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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 laborintensive tasks of sowing and harvesting, along with the unrelenting, sunup to sundown round of daily tasks such as tending livestock, securing water and preparing food, and finally, the intermittent but backbreaking 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.

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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 inheritance 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 fission' 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: 6277) 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 inalienability (1990: 55-65). For relevant biblical texts, see Lev. 25.10, 23-28, Num. 27.111, 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 transferring 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 consumption. Where more complex, urbanized socio-economic forms predominate, land tends

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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 agricultural 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 practices of ancestor worship (Brichto 1973; Bloch-Smith 1992). The Israelite 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 blessings, 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 abundance 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 continuance 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).

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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 interdependence with other residential units within its locality or village. The labor-intensive demands of highland agriculture called for the forging 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 analysis of ancient Israelite domestic religion draws upon De Coulanges's study of The Ancient City which discusses the organic interrelationships between domestic religion, 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 particular 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 higherorder social group whose genealogical connections are posited for political purposes

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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, especially 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, symbolized 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 members 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 coterminous 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 inscriptions). As the political and social order was localized around regional and kinshipbased networks of association, so also religion was primarily a local phenomenon, and part of a more general and primary orientation to place.

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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 connection 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 religious 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 territory, 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, effective 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.

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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 orientational 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 precipitated 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 fragmentation 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 historian, there is no strong evidence to suggest that non-Yahwistic cults

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were popular in Hosea's Israel (Hayes 1990). It is certainly striking that neither Amos nor Micah, Hosea's prophetic contemporaries, exhibit concern 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 worship 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 successors. 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 practices. 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, Kaufmann 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 Kaufmann 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

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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 onomasticon (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 percentage 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 greatness 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

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'indifference' he discovers to any transnational deities of natural fertility, such as'the sun god, rain gods, and fertility gods' (1986: 38). Alongside 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 material remains from archeological excavations of Israelite and Judean shrines provides further evidence for an essentially henotheistic Yahwism in Hosea's time. While Yahweh had strong objections to iconic representation, other gods in this region did not; if worship of nonYahwistic 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 (Ahlstrom 1984; Dever 1983: 574)25 and female figurines appear stripped of any divine attributes or insignias (Tadmor 1982). This clear discontinuity in the material remains of anthropomorphic figurines lends support to the textual evidence, indicating that the prohibition on anthropomorphic 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 condemn such images, and fortell of their destruction (Mic. 1.7; Isa. 10.1011). But these images made of stone or metal are never clearly identified 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 deuteronomistic 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

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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 sanctify the power of the state; therefore in attacking these, Hosea was challenging 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 references 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 Babylon; 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.

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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 otherwise 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 perhaps 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.

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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 concerning 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 Midianites (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 perhaps 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.

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of Hosea's polemic about Israel's pursuit of the baalitn concerns a critique of the official religion of the northern kingdom (Lemche 1988: 244). The plural form baalim is often understood as an alternative expression 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 "belittling' 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 religious practice. But likewise, if there is scant collaborating biblical or extra-biblical witnessing to rampant polytheistic practice in eighth century Israel, is it safe to presume that Hosea's baalim refer to nonYahwistic 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 cultural 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 attacking Israel's patronage of the cults of a variety of deities who were each

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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. Reading 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 reminiscent 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 provocatively 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 contemporary apologetics of rape: she (Israel/Samaria/Jcrusalem) who consorts shamelessly with her lovers, gets what she deserves (i.e. rape).

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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 passage? 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 marriages 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

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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 statesupported 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 economic 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 references 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).

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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 intercourse, 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 adultery 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 fidelity 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).

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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/religious 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 referent of Hosea's extended sexual metaphor. Rather, the agrarian imagery of ch. 2 suggests a concern with structures of religious meaning embedded 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 structures 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 distribution of produce; these structures are therefore implicated in the meaning of the deity as rain god. This tradition of thinking about Baal can be traced to William Robertson 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

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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 authenticate and validate 'the whole range of economic and social relationships' 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 legalized by oaths in the name of Baal;...under this regime land came within the category of sale and exchange, and was the basis of mortgagesecurity 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, including especially systems of land tenure, remains compelling for contemporary 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) sanctified the interests of a tribal polity centered in the bet 'ab, in marked contrast to the Canaanite Baal, whose cult was associated with the hierarchial economic and political control over large tracks of tillable land." 37. Coote views the Canaanite Baal 'as the typical divine guardian of the city-

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Coote and Coote characterize the Phoenician Baal as 'the patron of commercial agriculture under royal control and conspicuous consumption 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 perspective, Coote and Coote read Hosea's marriage metaphor as an allegory for the social implications of agricultural intensification: Hosea the prophet represented Yahweh as a father shamed by the realization 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 agribusiness (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 population 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 opponent, 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. Therefore 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 projected to infinity' (1993: 5).

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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 provocative 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 interests 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 understood in terms of a conflict between different systems of religious belief and practice, 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 understood as a symbolic-ideological correlate to a socio-organizational exclusionary principle; 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 phenomenon, 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 specific 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]).

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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 foreignness 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 distinctive 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 transgression or disintegration of the symbolic boundaries that define the integrity 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 characterizes 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 interpretation 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-

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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 proclaims 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 forbidden to fornicate after the strange gods of the land (Deut. 31.16), Molek (Lev. 20.25), 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 interests to interfere with Phoenician mercantile and manufacturing activity (Postgate 1979: 270-72).

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clients. This depiction of mercantile activity as prostitution or fornication 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 metaphorical uses of the root znh has been brought to bear upon the interpretation 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, particularly the 'licentious revelry' connected with Baal worship. Likewise, Andersen and Freedman believe that the reprimand in Hos. 9.1 refers to Israel's joyful participation 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).

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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 profiteering 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; alternatively, their fate will be deportation to Assyria, where they shall eat 'unclean food'. Another passage indicative of the broader semantic range of znh language 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 subsequent 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 mentioned as a site of judicial proceedings in both biblical and other ancient Near Eastern 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 'payment', 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 'prostitute'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]).

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Woman's Body and the Social Body in Hosea 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 passage 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 knowledge of Elohim'. The object of such knowledge is not simply correct worship, but righteousness, such that its absence results in sins of violence and deception (4.1-2). There is no reason to assume that the characterization 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 violence. The wider semantic range of Hosea's sexual language is also suggested by his characterization of those who plot regicide as 'adulterers' (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.

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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 dominance of the conventional interpretation, in which Hosea's female sexual 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 satisfies, 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 patriarchal 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 marriage metaphor in sympathetic collusion with the cuckolded husband/ prophet and affronted (male) God, androcentric interpreters have produced a dominant reading of Hosea as a tale of divine/husbandly suffering 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 chapter surveys feminist readings of Hosea's marriage metaphor. In what follows, various representative feminist responses to Hosea will be considered in the context of attention to the diversity of critical approaches which characterizes this field. Throughout this chapter and the next, 1

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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 androcentric 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 biblical 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 remember 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 challenge 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).

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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 tensions 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' readers 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' hermeneutic, 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-centered 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).

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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 resistant readers such as Milne would point out that such optimistic conclusions 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, derivative and 'other'. The Hebrew Bible, they have argued, supports its overall 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 obvious evidence for this misogynistic inscription of female inferiority and otherness. In contrast, male sexuality is linked with God by the covenant 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, dangerous and dirty.

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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 fragmented and self-contradictory character suggests the need for a 'dual hermeneutic' which can encompass both poles of resistance and recuperation (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 prophetic language which has, she acknowledges, historically empowered and inspired oppressed peoples. Thus her feminist critique of the patriarchal character of Hosea's marriage metaphor is balanced by a creative effort to remain open to its continuing theological relevance as liberating 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 serious attention due to its tremendous influence in shaping Western ideologies 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 abandoned 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'

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empowers the feminist reader to resist the patriarchal text through the production of feminist counter-readings that amplify subversive countervoices 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—patriarchy'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 meaningmaking 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 conflation of ancient worlds with our own. Drawing upon the disciplinary resources of cultural anthropology, comparative sociology and the history 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

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which inevitably are vastly different from our own, rather than struggling 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 difference in feminist approaches to the Hebrew Bible: while reception-oriented 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 inferiority 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],

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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 sociopolitical 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 identified 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 condemning it (in the older text-negating mode), readers such as Balz-Cochis (1982a, 1982b), van Dijk-Hemmes (1989), Fontaine (1995) and Sherwood (1996) seek to step through the looking glass of Hosea's objectified 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 goddessworshipper, Gomer as a battered wife, and Gomer as an object of the male pornographic gaze. In each case, as we shall see below, these readings are shaped by an inception-oriented approach which reads Hosea through the lens of later developments in the history of Western religions and cultures.

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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 husband in his campaign to promote patriarchal monotheism. Hosea's objectification 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 dissolution of patriarchal hierarchies and an affirmation of women's sexual autonomy (Balz-Cochois 1982a, 1982b). Conversely, denial of the lifegiving 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 sexuality is linked to sexual temptation, sin and death, and as such, represents a threat which must be carefully controlled. Setel, Balz-Cochis and van Dijk-Hemmes present their work as a

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historical reconstruction of religious conflicts in eighth-century Israel, viewed from a feminist perspective. But, as I suggested already in Chapter 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 developments in which women became identified with carnality and temptation, 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 civilizations. 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 biblical theology (or thealogy). In theological approaches, the task is to draw upon biblical materials to articulate a vision of the divine and our

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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 misogynistic religion and their quest for a feminist alternative within the narrative 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 specter 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 degraded, 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 submission by the very threat of such violence. As Weems puts it, 'for women

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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 prophetic 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 sexuality, 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 'pornoprophetics'—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 pornography, 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

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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 perpetrator 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 obviously 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 conciliatory reader) avoids labelling Ezekiel's diatribe as overtly misogynistic (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 misogynistic 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.

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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 deviant 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 concern 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 DijkHemmes 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 violence 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 dramatic 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 patriarchal social and religious structures within ancient Israel did not necessarily 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 reception. This point is most fully developed in Sherwood's deconstructive reading of Hosea. Sherwood finds in the text's project of repression evidence for the ultimate instability of that project. Throughout, she says, the text is 'suspiciouslyanxious' to silence and subdue this woman,

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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); likewise, 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 powerlessness 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 patriarchal literature which presupposes male rights to control female sexuality, 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 imagines 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 identification 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

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the woman Israel to himself again, offer a compelling image of redemption? 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 context of two distinct 'semantic wordfields', the first relating to the excretory 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 gendered 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 instability 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 audience 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.

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An Inception-oriented Approach All of these feminist readings approach Hosea's metaphor in the relation to constructions of woman and woman's body which emerge from the contemporary feminist struggle for female self-possession and autonomy. Where the reader's concern focuses on the effect of this text as received today, this approach is legitimate and important. But modernity's constructions of human meaning can not offer an adequate template for entering into and understanding worlds of meaning which are very different from those that prevail in the modern West. The reluctance 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 Enlightenment and in the cradle of the structures of power and privilege fostered by the rise of industrial capitalism. Despite its claims to universality, 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 particularly problematic in regards to the study of meanings of self, sexuality 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

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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 liberal feminists), and most of all, women's self-possession and control of their own bodies. The struggle for these is indeed vital within the particularity 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 interests 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 conception 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 maledominated 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).

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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-dominated 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 personhood 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 counterindications 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 groupmembers. Essentially, 'since identity stems from the group, the welfare of the group is considered identical to the welfare of the individual' (1994: 21).

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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 personal 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-economic behavior' (Coote and Ord 1989: 60). Rather than sex and the society signifying two separate spheres of human activity, in biblical literature, 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 alliances 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 individualoriented 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 valuable, and not only for the labor while young; as they were married into other families, 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 accumulation of loyal supporters and therefore, of power (Coote and Ord 1989: 58, 60-63).

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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 imagination 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 authoritatively 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 context 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

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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 eighthcentury 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-symbolic 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.

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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 ideologies of female passivity, emotionality and fragility. Projecting from their experience of female disempowerment in this culture, it is not uncommon 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 production and decision-making processes revolved around the domestic family unit and more broadly, the kinship network. Comparative anthropological 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 experience 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).

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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 sociostructural 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. 5.1131). 3. The prevalent view that wives were their husband's property relies on evidence 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 critique 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 situation 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

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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 penalty, 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 character 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.

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stoning, the community as a whole acts as executioner since the 'people 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 transgression. Those who committed adultery violated the sexual order of Israelite 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 Children 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. 21.1821). 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 compounded 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 community, 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 descendants' (Bloch-Smith 1992: 128-29).

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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 sexuality 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 metaphoric 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 characteristic 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 readings of Hosea's 'esetzenumm; woman as Israel represents, quite straightforwardly 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 adultery (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 permissible 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 postexilic materials which post-dated his death by at least two or three

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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 characterize 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 relationship 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 violation 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 ambiguous in the text.

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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 rebellion 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 Israelite 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 boundaries, sexual transgression of all kinds offers a primary sign for the disruption 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 daughter, 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).

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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 literature, rape is that 'particular form of violence which is called to represent 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, violence 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 interconnections 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 transgression, 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.

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Clearly then, acts of sexual transgression and sexual violence in biblical 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 violence 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 particular 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 inscribed 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 symbolically located as the 'other' within the binary structures of patriarchal thought (1993: 85). She argues that biblical literature, like patriarchal 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-sexualizing of women, particularly of mothers, or through narrative acts of

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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 dismembering 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 husband 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 activity 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 connotations. 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).

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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 dehumanization 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 character 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 abhorrent (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 relationship 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, feminist 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).

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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 transgression 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 scenarios 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, psychologically, 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 'contempt 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 important 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

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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 disintegration. 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

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by urban Canaanite culture. In this story, Israel depicts its situation visa-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 corporate body of the royal house, and by extension, the nation itself, violated from within by treachery and deceit. In all three rape narratives, 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 controlled 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

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symbol for the community, and the violation of women offers a metonym for social dissolution. Phallocentrism and Corporate Identity The argument regarding the association of women with chaos and disunity 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 andjmssim; Leith 1989; Schwartz 1991a, 1991b; Thistlethwaite 1993: 68). Both perspectives assume phallocentrism as the symbolic locus of corporate 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 EilbergSchwartz's exploration (1990) of the Hebrew Bible's language of sexuality as a symbolic code for Israel's socio-sacral order. Eilberg-Schwartz attends closely to fecundity and sexuality as religious meanings in biblical 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 wholeness on one hand, and sin, indecency and death on the other' (1990:

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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 possibility 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 variations 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 'repulsive 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 menstrual 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 shameful 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 universe 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).

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the conclusion that this was a misogynistic culture. l2One could, instead, argue on the basis of abundant textual clues that the primary association 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 characteristic 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 community 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 reproduction' (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).

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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 occasion 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 circumcision 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).

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the possibility of friction between heterogeneous perceptions of femininity', Pardes finds that she may use their insight into the stratified character of the textual traditions in order 'to explore the tense dialogue 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 Mesopotamia 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 tetragammatron could mean not only 'equally with' but also 'together with', implying that Eve views herself as God's partner in the work of creation, 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 creation'(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 created 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).

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generativity with cosmic creation' (1992: 510). Pardes sees in this association 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 particularly 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 gynocentric 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 contained 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

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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 pornography. 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 tendencies, 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 dominant 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, hidden, 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 environments' (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).

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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 rigorous attention to the patriarchal determinants of biblical texts. Meanwhile, 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 controlled 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 sexuality. 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 cohesion and order. Ruth's story is especially interesting, argues anthropologist Gillian Feeley-Harnik (1990), as it provides a legitimating etiology

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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 narratives 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 agricultural work to their work in connecting people—as being...fundamental 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 symbolism, 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. FeeleyHarnik 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).

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Springborg argues that throughout the ancient Near East, female procreative 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 subordination 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 accomplishment 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

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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 watershed 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 attention 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 declining 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 participation out of fears of blood pollution (Archer 1990: 104). On the symbolic 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-fulfillment 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).

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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 postexilic 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 imagination 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 (conventionally '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 heightened 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.

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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 trajectory of this period that has bequeathed to us the very symbolic structures 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 elsewhere 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 everywhere 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 meaning which are at once corporate, corporeal and material. Preparing for such a rereading has required a rethinking of the symbolism 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 constrained. 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 Israelite life and literature however, has suggested a different approach: if acts of sexual transgression figure social conflict or violence in the biblical narratives, then perhaps in Hosea also, literary images of female sexual transgression may figure issues of societal disintegration and violence. But if so, then what issues of social conflict might be relevant to the interpretation of Hosea's female sexual imagery?

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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. 12 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 implication 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 exercised '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

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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 lineage networks. Such patterns of sociopolitical organization and land ownership were integral dimensions of long-standing Yahwistic traditions 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 conflict by juxtaposing an originary 'Israelite' egalitarian ethos to a creeping '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 'inhabitants', 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 socioeconomic 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 distribution 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 privileges 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

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/wJrasocietal tensions which entailed a confrontation between two systems 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 principles 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 competing 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 interstate connections, the expansion of prebendal estates, and the production 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 competition 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 contestation 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 Israelite 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.

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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 agriculture 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 precipitated 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 partisans 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;

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Lang 1983), left behind the archaic structures of family religion. But as shall be argued in this chapter, his language still was woven of metaphors and symbols rooted in ways of the hills, and especially in soil, seed and bodies, that is, in the agricultural rhythms and sexual meanings 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 partners.5 This interpretation is supported not only by Hos. 8.9 but also by other prophetic texts where 'lovers' is deployed explicitly as a metaphor 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 singular 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. 5.

See the discussion of 'The semantic range of znh terminology' in Chapter 4. See the discussion of The lovers as the nations' in Chapter 4.

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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 foreign 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 borders 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 'prostitute' 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 presupposes 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).

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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 intersecting 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 cannot adequately be discussed apart from the recognition that commercialized 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

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pushed off their patrimonial lands, forced now to scrape together a living 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 dishonest 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 ceremonials, 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 increasingly 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.

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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 proximate 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 prosperous merchant class whose ox drawn carts were well occupied shipping 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 peasantry 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 destruction. 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 fornication 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 ironware 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

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elite or was a polemical device which named their ways as antithetical to the traditions of Israelite Yahwism, Hosea's rhetoric is most appropriately situated in the context of the socioeconomic and political realities 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 Chapter 1, Jezreel is a polyvalent trope—at once a royal city, and so a synecdoche 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 champion par excellence against the apostate Omrids and their state-sponsored 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 century, it could also have served as a vehicle of protest in Hosea's time against similar policies of monarchical land grabbing. Thus the evocation 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 'command economy' under royal directive (Chaney 1989). Much, if not all, of the

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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 additional 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 largescale 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.

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by linking the royal house to the structural violence embedded in the processes of latifundialization and to the whirlwind of political violence 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 purposes 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 communicating 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 conflicts 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 levirateobliged widow (Gen. 38.24) or a prostitute (Bird 1989b: 77; Bucher 1988: 119). The Hebrew reserves another root—n'p—for terms relating 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

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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 appropriately 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 biblical 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 transformation of traditional economic systems towards agricultural intensification 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 impoverishment for many others, for the expansion of such profitable estates depended upon the dispossession of increasing numbers of small landowners, 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 prac10. 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 translation 'flax' can reinforce the impression that the main concern here is with agricultural 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).

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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 latifundialization, 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 commercialization 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 regarding a man's loss of sexual control would resonate with the anxieties of the disenfranchised or those vulnerable to disenfranchisement concerning 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 simply 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).

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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 forgiveness 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. Children 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. Therefore, 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 Familiengeschichte)(\9S7: 114).

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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 association 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 reiterated 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).

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choice of terminology at the opening of this passage may simply represent the deployment of a conventional expression, or it may be a deliberate 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 cosmopolitan values and internationalism. 'Ephraim mixes (yitbolal)himself 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 internationalism, has mixed itself up with the nations so much as to become indistinguishable 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 selfdefinition over and against these others is dissipated; geopolitical realities 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

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'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 identity as a people. Dabbling in cosmopolitan values, binding itself in foreign alliances, and increasingly dependent upon interregional market economy—all these have the effect, says Hosea, of cultural homogenization 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 language. The identity and solidarity of any human community is established 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 mythologies 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; Ephraim 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).

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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 machinations 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.

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Maternal Thinking in Hosea Like his rhetoric about Egypt, Hosea's metaphor of female sexual transgression 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 constitutive 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 intergenerational continuity was fundamental to Israel's understanding of its meaning 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 masculine 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 maternal 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 illustrated 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 procreative 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 asserting 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: 14546).

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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 consequences 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 children 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!

212

Woman's Body and the Social Body in Hosea .. .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 procreative 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 knowledge 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 society 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 tradition, 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

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proposal allows no escape from Hosea's patriarchal universe; his concern with female fidelity signals a meaning of a people defined in patrilineal succession. Whether the trope is taken as a marriage metaphor, a family metaphor or a maternal metaphor, it remains male discourse. But these reflections do suggest a need to adjust our assumptions about the location and function of female symbolism within this patriarchal 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 twosided 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 suggestion, 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.

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women preside; as they say in Sicily, 'the woman is the family' (Giovannini 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 husband 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

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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 commentators 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 understand 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-agricultural, 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).

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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 continuities 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 alternatively, as the land that turns away from Yahweh, symbolizes the negation 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).

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The specific locus of this 'adultery' is intimated in the elusive identity 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 monarchy 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 patriarchal 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, violence 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) intimate a religious apprehension of the female body as a icon and locus of

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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 blessing 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 misogynistic 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 bodydenying 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, knowing 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 completely forgotten within Judaism (1990). On maternal divine imagery in the Hebrew Bible, see especially Trible (1978) and Gruber (1983).

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individualized, the sacred is spiritualized, and human sexuality, especially 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, redeeming '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]

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gods and for other peoples, but by Yahweh alone and for Yahweh's people. The imagery in this passage is profoundly sexual; its intimations 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 communication, in all its sexual/agrarian symbolism, intimates of a religious imagination 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 fertility, 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.

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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 concerning 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 intrasocietal 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' reading 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 existence. 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.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Mullen, E. Theodore, Jr 1993 Narrative History and Ethnic Boundaries. The Deuteronomistic Historian and the Creation of Israelite National Identity (Atlanta: Scholars Press). Nash, M. 1967 The Organization of Economic Life', in George Dalton (ed.), Tribal and Peasant Economies (Austin: University of Texas Press): 3-11. Negbi, Ora 1976 Canaanite Gods in Metal: An Archaeological Study of Ancient SyroPalestinian Figurines (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, Institute of Archaeology). Neufeld, Edward 1960 'Emergence of a Royal-Urban Society in Ancient Israel', HUCA 31: 3153. Newsom, Carol A. 1989 'Woman and the Discourse of Patriarchal Wisdom: A Study of Proverbs 1-9', in Day 1989b: 142-60. Nicholson, Ernest W. 1986 God and His People. Covenant and Theology in the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press). N id itch, Susan 1979 'The Wronged Woman Righted: An Analysis of Genesis 38', HTR 72: 143-49. 1982 'The "Sodomite" Theme in Judges 19-20: Family, Community, and Social Disintegration', CBQ 44: 365-78. Noth, Martin 1960 The History of Israel (New York: Harper & Row, 2nd edn). Ochshorn, Judith 1981 The Female Experience and the Nature of the Divine (Bloomington: Indiana University Press). Oded, Bustenay 1979 Mass Deportations and Deportees in the Neo-Assyrian Empire (Wiesbaden: Reichert). Oden, Robert 1987a The Bible Without Theology: The Theological Tradition and Alternatives To It (San Francisco: Harper & Row). 1987b 'The Place of Covenant in the Religion of Israel', in Miller et al. 1987: 429-48. Olyan, Saul M. 1988 Asherah and the Cult ofYahweh in Israel (Atlanta: Scholars Press). 1992 '"In the Sight of Her Lovers": On the Interpretation of nablut in Hos 2,12', Biblische Zeitschrift 36: 255-61. Ostborn, Gunnar 1956 Yahweh and Baal: Studies in the Book of Hosea and Related Documents (LUA NF Avd. 1. Bd 51. Nr 6; Lund: C.W.K. Gleerup). Ostriker, Alicia Suskin 1993 Feminist Revision and the Bible (Oxford: Basil Blackwell).

Bibliography Pardes, liana 1992 Patai, Raphael 1990

237

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23 8 Ricoeur, Paul 1976

Woman's Body and the Social Body in Hosea

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240

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Palestinian Parties and Politics That Shaped the Old Testament (New York: Columbia University Press).

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INDEX INDEX OF REFERENCES

OLD TESTAMENT Genesis 2.8 2.22 2.23 4.1 4.17 4.1b 4.25 6.3 12 12.6-8 14.5 14.8 18 19.5 19.8 20

21.33 24.10-61 24.16 25.26 26 29.1-20 32.25 34 34.2-3 34.7 38 38.20-23 38.24

75 75 181 47 47 181 47 75 53,176 92 75 75 53 47 47 53, 167, 176 92 179 47, 188 210 176 179 210 167,168, 174, 175 168 169 49, 55, 167 55, 101 18, 19, 202

38.26 49.25 49.25b

47 91,218 75,103

Exodus 1-2 3.14 6.7 19-20 2.15b-22 20.3 20.5 20.6 21.7-11 22.15 22.16-17 23.24 32 32.1-4 32.8 32.26-28 34.14 34.15-16

185 106,209 107 110 179 106 106 106 165 188 164 93 87 123 96 86 106 106

Leviticus 17.7 18.19-23 18.29 20.2-5 20.2 20.5 20.6 20.10 20.18

135 166 166 135 166 106 135 129,163 179

20.21 20.27 21.9 24.10-16 25 25.10 25.23-28 26.1

177 166 19, 202 166 113 113 113 93

Numbers 5.11-31 5.14 5.30 14.33 15.32-36 15.39 21.6-9 25 25.1 25.5 25.6 25.7-8 27.1-11 31.17 31.18 31.35

164 106 106 106, 135 166 106, 135 93 124 44, 124 124 124 124 113 47 47 47

Deuteronomy 4.24 4.37 5.7 5.9 6.5 6.15

106 106 106 106 106 106

245

Index of References 7.13 10.12 10.15 13.6-11 13.7-12 16.21 17.2-7 17.8-13 21.10-14 21.18-21 21.18 22.13-24 22.13-21 22.21

106 106

106 129 166

23.18-19 25.5-6 25.11-12 31.16 32.8 32.16 32.18 32.21 33.10 33.1 1

92 166 86 165 166 166 129 164 19, 165, 202 163 164 164, 165 168 164 164, 168 165 166 106 106 60 55, 101 113 143 106, 135 82 106 217 106 86 85

Joshua 1 24 24.19 24.24-28 24.26-27 24.26 24.26b 24.30

166 109 106 109 92 109 109 115

Judges 2.17

135

22.22 22.23-27 22.23-24 22.24 22.25-27 22.28-29 22.29 23.3 23.5

23.6 23.17

19.24b 19.25 20-21 20.6 21 21.25

92 135 135 47 169, 173, 174 167-69, 171-75, 184 172 47 169 47 169, 175 169 54 173

5 5.1 7.13-47 9.10-14 9.26-28 10.6 11.1-8 11.7 12.27 12.28-29 12.28 12.31 13.32 15.11 16.31-33 16.32 17-21 17

Ruth 1.1 3.10-14 4.3-6 4.10 4.22

185 137 113 113 185

20.14 21

1 Samuel 1.3 1.14-15 1.19 10.2 20.6 20.29 28.13

116 99 47 115 116 116 114

6.11

8.27 8.33 11.39 19-21 19

19.2 19.22

2 Samuel 11-12 11 13

13.12 15.7 / Kings 1 1.25 1.46 2.12 4.2

21.1-4 21.8 21.17 22.10 22.26 22.47

29 127 29 29 29 201 128 87,88 85 85 60,96 88 87 55 128 128 134 128 201 99 27, 200, 201 113 191, 192 23 137 99 55

2 Kings 8.12 9-11 9-10 9.22 10.11 11 11.18 12.4-8 13.6 15.16 15.19b 16.7 17.4 17.15-17 17.29 18.4 21.7 23.5

211 201 200,201 18 201 86 128 86 93 211 25 26 27 119, 128 87 93 92 87

18

167 167 167-69, 174 169 116

86 99 192 192 99

246

Woman's Body and the Social Body in Hosea

2 Kings (cent.) 55 23.7 87 23.8 74 23.22 / Chronicles 5.25 27.25-31

135 193

2 Chronicles

23,17b 23.18a 23.3bp 27.9 28.6 35. la 42.14 49.15

135 136 135 93 192 76 217 217

Jeremiah 2 2.24 3.1-3 4.11 4.30 5.7-8 7.31 13 17.2 22.20-22 32.6-12 32.35

150 126 150 195 126 150 87 150 93 126, 195 113 87

126, 195 192

21.13 21.11

135 135

Nehemiah 13.12

86

Psalms 16.3 73.27 82.6-7 127.4-5a

114 135 83 159

Proverbs 1-9 2.16 5.18 5.20 6.24 7 7.5 31.24

166, 183 167 179 167 167 53 167 206

Lamentations 1.2 4.12

Ecclesiastes 3.1-9

183

16.17 16.29 16.35-39 17.4 20.30 23

Song of Songs 4.15 179 Isaiah 7.1-8.8 8.19 9.9-12 10.10-11 17.8 21-23 21.9b 23.8 23.16

26 114 26 121 93 135 121 206 135

Ezekiel 6.3 6.9 16

23.5-21 23.5 23.10 23.11 23.22-31 29 36.17-18

87 135 54, 126, 150, 152, 188 123 206 126 206 135 54, 126, 150, 152, 188 195 126 126 18 126 18 177

Hosea 1-3

1-2

1 1.2

1.4-5 1.4 1.10-11 1.2b 1.8c 1.9b 1.9c 2

2.1-3 2.2-15 2.2-13 2.2-3 2.2 2.3b 2.4-15 2.4-5 2.4 2.5 2.5b

14, 16,32, 36,37,41, 42, 119, 120, 146 17,22,32, 33, 35-37, 47, 66-68, 77, 110, 130, 133, 134, 151, 160, 190, 191, 197, 205,210, 212,217, 219 15-17, 205 16, 18, 214 16,23 200 15 22, 134, 205 106 209 106 15, 17,23, 76, 118, 126-30, 132, 154, 179, 196, 212,214, 216 15 22 15,22 15 40 214 15 15 40, 202 21,203, 215 67, 197, 214

Index of References 2.6 2.6a 2.6b 2.7 2.7b 2.8-9 2.8 2.8a 2.8b 2.9 2.10

2.10a 2.11 2.12

2.13 2.14-23 2.14-20 2.14-15 2.14

2.15 2.16-25 2.16-22 2.16-17 2.16

2.17

2.18

2.19 2.19b 2.20-23 2.20 2.20b 2.21-23a 2.21-23

18 199 199 21,203 67, 197 47 95, 12224,215 197, 199 199 148,214, 215 95, 123, 124, 127, 215 197 148,214 21, 127 136, 137, 148,215 122,124, 128,195 15 15,41 22,40 21, 136 137, 148, 209,215 124, 128 195,219 15 15,41 22,40 68, 12224, 133, 209 122, 124, 195,219 68, 107 123, 124 133 124,195 133 47 107 49 219 76

2.21b 2.23-25a 2.23-25 2.23-24 2.23 2.24 2.25 3 3.1 3. lap 3.5 4-14

4 4.1-3 4.1-2 4. 2-3 a 4.4-6 4.4-5 4.4 4.5 4.6-10 4.6 4.8 4.9 4.10 4.11-14 4.12-13 4.12 4.13-14

4.14 4.14a 4.15 4.17-19 4.17 4.18 4.4-12 5.1 5.3-4 5.4

133 219 76 s220 23,219 23 219 15-17,38, 39 16,17,40, 41 15 14 14, 16, 17, 32, 120, 138 138, 179 211 16,217 138 76

99 102 138 16,211 100 99, 128 211 100 100 16, 100 46 95 16, 18 16,44, 55, 100, 101 61, 101, 102 101 95,98 95 95, 121, 124 16 100 99 16, 137 18

247 5.6 5.7

5.8-6.6 5.13 5.21-24

6.1 6.6 6.7 6.9 6.10 7.2-7 7.2-3 7.4 7.7 7.7a 7.8-9 7.8a 7.9 7.9a 7.11 7.14-16 7.16 8

8.1-3 8.1 8.2 8.4-6 8.4-5a 8.4 8.4b 8.5 8.6b 8.7-8 8.8 8.9-10 8.9-1 Oa 8.9

8.13 9 9.1 9.2-3 9.3 9.5 9.6

128 108, 202, 205, 207, 208 26 195 102 128 102, 138 107, 108 99, 138 16, 138 138 99 128,202 25 202 195 207 208 207 195 99

122, 209 126 108 107, 108 128 95, 122 97 121. 124 123 60, 123 97 207 208

139 126 16, 138, 195 209

211 16,44, 136 137 209 128 209

248

Woman's Body and the Social Body in Hosea

Hosea (cont.) 9.10 44, 12224 212 9.11-12 9.11 17 9.12 17, 148 9.13 95 9.14 17, 148 212,218 98, 99, 9.15 138 10.4 107 10.5-6 95,97, 121 10.5 60, 122 10.6 95 98 10.7-8a 10.14-15 97 10.14bp-15aa 211 10.14 17 10.15 95 10.15a 98 11.1-4 17 11.1 208 11.2 95, 121, 122, 124

11.5 12-14 12.1 12.7-8 12.7 12.8-9 12.8 12.11 12.12 13.1 13.2 13.12-13 13.12 13.13 13.16 13.2 14.1 14.3 14.4 14.5-7 14.8 14.8ap 14.9 14.9ap

209 14 195 206 206 206 206 98, 102 107 122-24 95, 121, 123 17 211

211 17,211 124 211 95, 121 121

47 95, 121, 219 95 95, 121 95

Amos

1.5 1.8 1.13

2.8a 2.8b 5.5 5.21-24 5.26 7 Micah 1.7 2.2b 5.13

192 192 211 102 102

98 138 119 96

121

113 93

Nahum

1.2 3.4 3.4b

106 18 135

Zephaniah 1.11

206

Zechariah 11.7 11.11 14.21

206 206 206

INDEX OF AUTHORS Adler,E.J. 51,52,54,104,105,202 Ahlstrom, G.W. 14, 44, 54, 60, 70, 79, 82,84,86,88, 121,201 Albanese, C. 207 Albertz, R. 75, 77, 128, 134, 209 Albrektson, B. 77 Albright, W.F. 49, 58, 60, 61, 87, 96 Alter, R. 179 Andersen, F. 15, 20, 24, 37, 43, 44, 46, 47,49,77,98, 102, 120, 123, 124, 136,207 Anderson, G. 130, 196 Anderson, J.C. 141 Archer, L.J. 167, 187, 188 Astour, M. 86 Auerbach, E. 23 Bach, A. 141 Bakhtin, M.M. 183 Bal, M. 13, 144, 165, 168, 170, 174, 177, 179,188 Balz-Cochois, H. 62-64, 147, 148 Barr, J. 77 Beal, T.K. 33, 180 Bewer, J.A. 40 Biale, D. 179,218 Bird, P. 18-22, 125, 145, 202, 205 Bitter, S. 37 Blenkinsopp, J. 14, 16,40 Bloch-Smith, E. 114-16,158,166 Block, D.I. 84 Bostrom, G. 45, 53 Braaten, L.J. 22 Braudel, F. 30 Brechtel, L. 158, 159, 168, 176 Brenner, A. 141, 146, 151, 154, 182, 183 Brichto, H.C. 114, 115, 158 Bright, J. 43, 44, 59

Brueggemann, W. 68 Buccellati, G. 80 Buchanan, C.H. 13 Bucher, C. 18-20, 37, 54, 55, 104, 106, 202

Buckley,!. 178 Budde, K. 56,61 Burrows, M. 164 Buss, M.J. 101, 120 Calvin, J. 38 Camp, C. 21, 107, 145, 167, 169, 188 Carroll, R.P. 43, 151 Cassuto, U. 181 Cathcart, K.J. 39 Chancy, M. 27, 28, 132, 193, 196, 198200,203 Cogan, M. 128 Cohen, G.D. 50, 105, 106 Coogan, M.D. 73, 79, 80, 90 Coote, M.P. 88, 132, 196 Coote, R.B. 27, 86, 87, 88, 117, 131, 132, 159, 196, 198 Craghan. J.F. 41 Cross, P.M. 27,51,87 Daniels, D.R. 69,77, 108 Davies, E.W. 113 Davies, G. 14, 16, 137 Day, P.L. 52,58 de Beauvoir, S. 11 de Coulanges, F. 115 de Geus, C.H.J. 116, 117 de Moor, J.C. 51, 129 de Tarragon, J. 51 deVaux, R. 87 DearmanJ.A. 28, 31, 113, 192 Delaney, C. 158, 159

250

Woman's Body and the Social Body in Hosea

Dever, W. 70,80,87,93, 112, 121 Douglas, M. 169, 188 Downing, C. 182 Dresner, S. 60 Durkheim. 72, 110 Eilberg-Schwartz, H. 177-80 Eisler, R. 173 Elat,M. 28,206 Eliade,M. I l l , 179,216,217 Eller, C. 149 Emerton, J.A. 94 Emmerson, G.I. 19, 69, 77, 164, 167 Erlandsson, S. 18, 19, 106 Exum, J.C. 144,150-54,171-74,177, 179, 180 Feeley-Harnik, G. 184, 185 Fensham, F.C. 106 Fewell, D.N. 142, 144 Fisch, H. 48,59,210 Fishbane, M. 59 Fisher, E.J. 54 Fohrer, G. 53 Fontaine, C. 141, 147 Fowler, J. 120, 133 Frankenstein, S. 29, 135 Frankfort, H. 84 Freedman, D.N. 15,20,24,37,43,44, 46,47,49,77,93,98, 102, 120, 123, 124, 136,207 Frick, F.S. 133 Frymer-Kemsky, T. 19,54,83,90-92, 152,166 Fuchs,E. 142, 144 Galambush, J. 20 Garbini, G. 29 Gese, H. 73, 74 Geva, S. 29 Ginsberg, H.L. 49, 119,220 Giovannini, M. 186,214 Gordis, R. 16,37,40 Gordon, R.P. 39 Gottlieb, A. 178 Gottwald,N.K. 31, 116-18, 133, 191, 192 Graetz,N. 41, 150 Gruber, M.I. 54,55,101,102,218

Habel,N. 67,68 Hackett, J.A. 52, 58, 63, 64, 75 Hall, G. 105 Halpern, B. 79, 81, 82, 102, 123, 125, 134,195 Harper, W.R. 37, 38, 40 Harrelson, W. 49 Harris, K. 173, 178 Hayes, J.H. 24, 26, 27, 117, 119, 127, 128 Hendel, R. 96, 121, 129 Hestrin, R. 91 Hill, S.D. 31, 194 Hillers, D. 72 HolladayJ. 88-90 Holland, T.A. 89 Holt, E.K. 99, 108 Hooks, S. 18,54-56, 124, 172 Hopkins, D. 115, 197 Irvine, S. 24 Jacob, E. 48 Jacobsen, T. 73, 84 Jeremias, J. 41,43,46,68,77 Jobling, D. 112 Kapelrud, A. 67 Kaufmann, Y. 119 Keefe,A. 168, 169, 175 Kinet, D. 51,67 Knight, G.A.F. 136 Koch, K. 16, 22, 37, 46-48, 52, 59, 61, 75 Kolodny,A. 33 Krause, D. 218 Kristeva, J. 33 Kruger, P.A. 15 Kugel,J. 71 Lambert, W.G. 53 Landy, F. 14,37,211,215 Lang, B. 28,31,81-83,86, 107, 129, 192, 195,196 Leith, M.J.W. 154, 155, 177 Lemaire, A. 93 Lemche, N.P. 70, 72-74, 80, 125 Lenski, G. 28, 30, 192

Index of Authors Lerner, G. 129, 149, 173, 186 Levi-Strauss, C. 74 Lipschitz, A. 39 Long, C.H. 78, 111 Luther, M. 39 Magdalene, F.R. 150 Malamat, A. 117 Marglin, F.A. 156, 178 Martin, J. 194 Matthews, V.H. 137 Mauss, M. 111 May, H.G. 43,45,54 Mays, J.L. 37, 43-45, 47, 60, 68 Mazar, A. 87,90, 122 McCarter, P.K. 80,94 McCarthy, D. 110 McKay, H. 141 McKeating,H. 163 Mendenhall, G.E. 110, 124 Meshel,Z. 93,94 Meyers, C. 84,93, 112-14, 116, 145, 162, 163 Miller, P.O. 24, 26, 27,.70,.80, 82, 117 Milne, P.J. 141-43 Moran, W.L. 106, 107, 110, 127 Mosala. 133 Mulder, M.J. 67 Mullen, E.T. 70 Nash, M. 31 Negbi, O. 51, 129 Neufeld, E. 192 Newsom, C. 188 Nicholson, E.W. 70, 108 Niditch, S. 19, 21, 164, 168, 169, 175 Moth, M. 56, 175 Ochshorn, J. 143, 173 Oded, B. 25,26 Oden, R. 46,54-57,71, 110 Olyan, S.M. 92,93,215,216 Ord, D.R. 86, 117, 159 Ostborn, G. 67,68 Ostriker, A. 182, 183 Pardes, I. 180-83 Patai, R. 218

251

Pedersen, J. 124, 166 Perlitt, L. 108 Phillips, A. 163, 167, 169 Pope, M.H. 124, 130 Postgate, J.N. 135 Premnath, D.N. 28, 193,203 Pritchard, J.B. 82, 89, 90 Ramazanoglu, C. 156 Redford, D. 80 Reid, J. 78 Reinhartz, A. 141 Rentaria, T.H. 27, 29, 31, 89, 193 Richards, L.A. 22,23 Ricoeur, P. 22,23,217 Ringgren, H. 43, 118 Roberts, J.J.M. 77 Robinson, H.W. 45 Rogers, S.C. 163 Rosaldo, M. 157, 163 Rost, L. 45 Roth, W.M.W. 169 Rowley, H.H. 37-41 Rudolph, W. 40, 45 Ruether, R. 163 Sahlins, M. 112, 116 Schmid, H.H. 72 Schmidt, H. 45 Schreiner, J. 37,38,40 Schungel-Straumann, H. 17 Schiissler Fiorenza, E. 142 Schwartz, R. 168, 170, 177 Schweickart, P.P. 144 Setel, T.D. 10, 63, 148, 149, 151, 153, 154,164 Sherwood, Y. 37-39,41, 140, 145, 147, 153-55 Showalter, E. 183 Silver, M. 202 Simpkins, R. 73, 74, 76, 77 Smith, A.D. 207 Smith, G.A. 40 Smith, J.Z. 74 Smith, M. 81,83, 194 Smith, M.S. 73, 74, 80, 87, 93, 94, 128, 220 Smith, S.H. 210

252

woman's body and the social body in hosea

Smith, W.R. 40, 53, 81, 110, 130, 139 Snaith,N. 40 Soggin, J. 175 Springborg, P. 185, 186 Stager, L. 116 Staples, W.E. 53 Stuart, D. 215 Tadmor, M. 89,90, 121 Teubal, S. 53 Thistlethwaite, S. 163, 164, 174, 177 Thompson, T.L. 79,207 Tigay,J.H. 82,94, 120, 121, 127 Todd,J.A. 191, 192 Tolbert, M.A. 144 Toombs, L.E. 73 Tornkvist, R. 150, 151, 173 Trible,P. 19,142,143,173,212,218 Utzschneider, H. 87, 96, 97 van der Woude, A. S. 37, 39 van Dijk-Hemmes, F. 63, 147, 148, 151, 153,182, 183 von Rad, G. 43, 46, 49, 50 Vriezen, Th. C. 49

Wacker, M. 17, 94, 95, 147, 199, 205 Wallis, L. 130, 131, 192 Want, B.C. 47 WardJ.M. 22,43,44 Waterman, L. 37,39,40,45 Weber, M. 110, 130 Weems, R. 144, 150, 151, 153 Weinfeld, M. 105, 106 Wellhausen, J. 40,95, 108 Wenham, G.J. 86 Westbrook, R. 15, 116, 129, 163, 165 Westenholz, J.G. 54 Whitelam, K. 117 Whybrow,C. 73,77 Williams, F.E. 198 Williams, J.G. 75, 176,213 Wolff, H.W. 14,22,37,43,45,46,48, 49,61, 123, 136, 138 Worden, T. 43,48 Wright, C. 21, 113, 164, 165,204 Wright, G.E. 71 Yamauchi, E.M. 53 Yee,G. 14, 127, 150, 151,212,213 Zakovitch, Y. 172 Zeitlin, I.M. 123, 124 Zuess, E. 178