Observations on the Marital Metaphor of YHWH and Israel in its Ancient Israelite Context: General Considerations and Particular Images in Hosea 1.2

Abstract

The marital metaphor became for the (mostly, if not exclusively, male) literati of ancient Israel—and for those who accepted their discourses—a way to shape, imagine, express, and communicate their understandings of the nature and story of their relationship with YHWH. This article addresses systemic aspects of this metaphor within this social and ideological setting and deals with the interplay of these aspects with the worldview and world of knowledge of these literati. A brief consideration of a particular instance of this metaphor, Hos. 1.2, serves to illustrate ways in which the actual use of the metaphor brought about matters that were related but clearly go beyond the ‘generic’ issues that the metaphor evoked in the readership of books in which it was used. Among them, one may mention the nature of Israel, its election by YHWH, explanations that served to solve or attenuate the cognitive dissonance between the status of the literati (and of Israel as a whole) in worldly affairs and their perceived place in the divine economy, and the importance of education.