Vacillating

Last week, we talked about God as if he were a jilted lover who keeps providing for his beloved anyway.  He walled off his beloved's paths so she could not get to her lovers, but kept offering her the new wine, and fresh oil, and grain that provided for her life.  Such is God's grace-filled providence.  And then we get this:

11. Therefore I will return

    And I will take back my grain at its time,

    And my new wine at its appointed time,

And I will snatch away my wool and my flax

    That cover her nakedness.    

Do you remember what we said a last week about the word "therefore" in the midst of a prophetic oracle?  The prophet declares what is wrong, and then with the word "therefore," turns to the punishment that God promises to impose.

Back in verse 8, we noted that the "punishment" imposed there for Israel's (Gomer's) chasing after lovers is simply to cut off the path to those lovers, so that she has no other place to go than back to God (her husband).  God has been faithful all along, and will continue to be faithful even now.  Would that this oracle would come to an end there.

Instead, however, there is more punishment, now for not recognizing God as the true source of all that Israel has.  What she has will be taken away from her.  The grain and new wine (from verse 10) will be taken away.  The wool and flax (from verse 7) will be taken away.  And she will be left naked, exposed, as punishment for her transgressions.

Hosea seems to be taking us on an emotional roller coaster.  Yes, I love you.  No, I'll punish you when you chase after other lovers.  Yes, I will provide for you, even if you don't know it's me.  No, I'll take it away when you don't know it's me.  There's some cognitive dissonance at play here.  Perhaps God is turning out to be an emotionally manipulative spouse for Israel.  He's bordering on abusive.  And then, even that border falls.

12. And now I will uncover her [shamelessness] in the eyes of her lovers.  And not one shall deliver her from my hand.

Verse twelve seems somewhat innocuous, at least in the context of what comes before it.  The word "shamelessness" is put in brackets here because it needs some discussion.  Brown-Driver-Briggs (or "BDB"), the only Biblical Hebrew dictionary currently available in English, lists "nabluth" as "immodesty, shamelessness, lewdness," relating it to similar words in Hebrew:  "nabal" meaning "foolish," and "nebalah" meaning "senseless" or "disgraceful."

The problem with this is twofold.  First, BDB was published in 1907.  It is now 109 years old.  And in the last 109 years, we've learned a great deal about Hebrew.  BDB has been a wonderful tool for the English speaking world as we've tried to make sense of the Hebrew Bible, but it's now quite out of date.  Unfortunately, unless you're fluent in German, it's really your only option.  Two semitic scholars from Harvard University, Jo Ann Hackett and John Huehnergard, are working on updating the dictionary, but you can imagine how big a task that will be.

The second problem is that this little Hebrew word, "nabluth," is found only once in the entire Hebrew Bible.  Moreover, BDB, which usually excels in finding similar words in other languages that are related to Hebrew, lists no possible etymology here.  One cannot help but wonder exactly where this definition comes from.  Why did the authors of this dictionary think it means "shamelessness?"  For a dead language, one needs to have some evidence, since we cannot go ask a native speaker.  And BDB gives us no answers.

The major commentary on Hosea that I'm using to give some guidance to our study is one by Hans Walter Wolff; you'll recognize at least the last name because I keep saying it.  It was published in German in 1965 and translated into English in 1974.  Which is to say that it might be good for me to find something a little more modern sometime soon.  In the meantime, Wolff's commentary remains a classic, and his thoughts are worth hearing.  He translates our word "nabluth" as "genitals," citing a similarity between it and the Akkadian word for genitals, "baltu," getting the idea from a French scholar.  It's not a big stretch of the imagination to accept this idea, and in the long run, it simply makes clear what feels "smoothed over" in the usual translations.

12. And now I will uncover her genitals in the eyes of her lovers, and not one shall deliver her from my hand.

Except, of course, that this is one step too far.  It's not the first time we've talked about this in Hosea, but the ancient world's legal system allowed a cuckold husband to dismiss his faithless wife, publicly stripping her to show that even the clothes which he provided her are now no longer hers.  We'll leave the discussion of the severity, and even abusiveness, of this to our previous discussion on this point.

What I do want us to notice, today, is how extreme this is--and how greatly it seems to differ from what we just read a verse or two ago.  Why the radical vacillation?  We are not used to God our provider flaring up in anger like this.  God is constant, steadfast, unchanging, transcendent.  God ever the same, more stoic than the best Swede, in perfect coolness from time immemorial to time eternal.  This emotional God is the deity of ancient Hebrew religion, the God who walks in the garden and throws brimstone on Gommorah and tells Moses he's going to destroy the Israelites and create a new people for himself.  This is not the unchanging crystalline perfection of the God of rational Protestantism.

And the question that results from this disconnect is:  Will the real God please stand up?  Which do you think God is?  What has been your experience of God?  Is He more like the God of Hosea, or more like the God of Pauline theology?

Questions for thought:

1) Think about the following pairs of words.  Which one is more like God?  Why?

     Transcendent (beyond all things), Immanent (in the midst of things)

     Human-like, Completely Other

     Unchangeable, Vacillating

     Stoic, Emotional

     Passive, Active

     

2) Which of the two ways of talking about God seems more correct?

     Which seems more faithful to the Bible?

     Which seems more faithful to the Christian tradition?

     Which seems more faithful to your experience of God?

     Which do you like more?

3) How do you feel after reading a protracted discussion on how the Hebrew dictionary works?  What does it mean for our understanding of the scriptures if we don't even know the basic meaning of words in the Bible?  If we can't trust the dictionary, what CAN we trust?

It's important to cite references.  Here's where I got the information on how BDB is being updated:

Hackett, Jo Ann and John Huehnergard.  "Chapter 11:  On Revising and Updating BDB."  Foundations for Syriac Lexicography III:  Colloquia of the International Syriac Language Project. Ed. Janet Dyk and W. Th. van Peursen. PSL 4. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias. Pages 227–33.