My Husband

Scholars seem to disagree on whether verses 18-25 go with what comes before.  Hans Walter Wolff, who I'm using for the detail-oriented view, says there's a break before verse 18, and that we begin a new (and much later) oracle today--but he quotes others who say it's a continuation.  I'll let you be the judge:

18. And on that day

        -- This is a saying of YHWH --

                    you will call me "my man."

    And you will not call me "my Ba'al" anymore.

19. And I will remove the name of the Ba'als from her mouth,

    And they will not be remembered by their names anymore.

A strict translation of verse 18 would really begin, "And it shall be on that day..."  This is a common Hebrew expression that doesn't really belong in English, so accordingly most translations dispense with it.  But if you're peeking at a King James version, you'll find it there.  In any case, it's a way the prophets proclaim something that will happen in the future.

To understand what Hosea is saying here takes a bit of explanation.  We have a few words in our society that we use for "husband."  One is, obviously, "husband," and it is the most common one.  But we also could say "spouse" or "significant other," or in this generation, "partner," or even "hubby" as a diminutive form indicating a closeness and casualness of the relationship.  In particular situations we could also say "groom" or even "bridegroom."  The meaning of each of these is slightly different, one from the other, some used for only certain situations but not others, some carrying connotations, some (either simply or pointedly) avoiding the gender of the person.  But they all have the same denotation, "husband."

The same is true in Hebrew, though of course the connotations don't line up in the same way that they do in English.  One word that can be used for husband is 'ish.  This is the simple, common noun for "man" or "male."  It's paralleled by 'ishah, which means "woman," but is used for "wife."  You can see that this terminology sets the spouses on equal footing.  Wolff says that it further shows a closeness in the relationship, though I'd like to see more evidence of that before I buy fully into it.

The other, and much more common, word for husband--at least in modern Hebrew, though I suspect this was true in the ancient world as well--is the Hebrew word for "master."  I hope that ruffles your feathers a bit.  The same word that a slave would use to address his master is used by a woman to address her husband.  You can see the striking power imbalance in this usage.  (Honestly, if you think about where the English words "husband" and "groom" come from, you'll find something similar there.)  Here, the man would still call his wife simply, 'ishah, "woman."  Imagine a justice of the peace saying, "I now pronounce you Master and woman."  Sit in that feeling of discomfort for a moment.

And so God says, "You won't call me 'My Master' anymore.  'My man' will do."  Or to put it another way, God says, "I won't be lord over you anymore.  I will be your equal partner."  Well, mostly equal, in ancient Hebrew thought, anyway.  God places Israel on a more equal footing with himself.  This is a marriage characterized by love and partnership, rather than power and obedience.

Which should be no real surprise.  After all, Israel clearly doesn't obey.  And this is true whether we're thinking of the historical ancient Israel, back in the 8th century, or by the historical Israel at the turn of the first millenium, or the figurative Israel of the Church of Jesus Christ, or by us today.  As Christians, we call Jesus our "Lord" or "Master," yet we can hardly say we do a thorough job of obeying him.  Slaves of a master get punished for their disobedience.  Equals of a partner work together to accomplish a goal.

How else should we understand the meaning of the incarnation of Jesus Christ?  Jesus is God, come to dwell among us, giving up the fullness of his power in order to walk by our side.  The Second Person of the Trinity becomes fully human so that we are set on equal footing.  If we call him Lord, it is by our own choice that we do so, which choice we are able to make only because of the freedom he gives us and the partnership into which he invites us.  Christ is Lord.  But not because he lords it over us.  Instead, it is because we choose to offer ourselves to him, he who offered himself first to us.

We're still one step short of understanding the translation.  Here's the other piece:  The word for "master" in Hebrew is ba'al.  That's right; the word for "husband" is the same as the word for "master," which is also the same as the name of the primary foreign god, "Ba'al."  It makes sense.  We usually call our deity by a description, rather than a name.  We almost never pronounce the name YHWH in the Christian churches, and absolutely never in Judaism.  We simply call God, "God."  There is only the one, and so the description is enough.  The Muslims call him Allah, which is a contraction of the word "the," al, and the word "God," ilah.  Allah is not a personal name; it's just exactly the same thing we call God:  "The God."

So it makes sense that some of the nations around Israel would call their god, "Master."  That's what the god was supposed to be.  It's a descriptive term.  In fact, it should not surprise us, as I noted a few weeks ago, that there were many "ba'als."  There was the god, the master, of Carmel, Ba'al-Carmel.  Then there was the god of Zebub, Ba'al-Zebub.  Each place had its own.  It was less of a name than it was a description.

And that description, then, could apply to the Israelites' God as well.  Ba'al-Yisra'el, perhaps?  Or maybe, since there's only the one, just "Ba'al" will do.  As the neighboring peoples' ways of experiencing and worship God seeped into Israel, the name "Ba'al" was applied to the God of the Israelites as well.  At the very least, Ba'al-Samaria is an attested name, and Samaria was the capital of the Israelites' northern kingdom.

For God to say that "you will no longer call me Ba'al" means a whole host of things.  First, I won't be your master, but your partner.  Second, it is a deliberate reference to the gods of other nations; you will turn away from them and turn toward me.  And third, God says you won't call me "Ba'al" anymore; you're going to stop importing foreign ideas into your theology.

I thought this was going to be a short one, but it's just as long as ever, and we haven't even gotten to the next verse!  We'll just have to save it for next time.  Here's today's questions:

1) What happens to our relationships when we choose certain terminology over others to describe each other?  For example, what is it like to call your spouse, "Wife," and how is that different than calling her, "Partner" or "Woman?"

2) I've always thought that the biggest false god in our world today is money--particularly in an ultra-capitalist society like ours.  What names do we use to refer to our money, and how does that shape the way we think about it?

3) What names do we use for God?  Make yourself a list, and then look them over.  Which ones work best for you?  What does that say about your understanding and view of God?

4) As we're plunging forward with this, what do you think?  Is this verse (and those that come after) connected to what comes before?  Or is it something different?  Go back to the full translation (which you can find at the Translation link at the top of the page).  Look at the subject matter of each verse in Chapter 2, starting with verse 4.  Ignore the blank lines/new paragraphs I've left in the translation.  Look also at the pronouns, and what happens with them.  Who is God/Hosea speaking to in each verse?  Does this change the way we should read this?  What belongs together, and what doesn't?

See you next week!