The Syntax of the Legal Metaphor in Hosea 2: 4
In Hosea 2:4, כי should be understood as marking a noun clause that serves as the object of the verb ריבו. The text means, ‘Contend with your mother! Contend that she is not my wife and I am not her husband, so that she remove her prostitutions from before her face and her adulteries from between he...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Oxford University Press
[2016]
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| In: |
Journal of Semitic studies
Year: 2016, Volume: 61, Issue: 2, Pages: 389-402 |
| RelBib Classification: | HB Old Testament |
| Further subjects: | B
Bible. Hosea 2,4
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| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) Volltext (doi) |
| Summary: | In Hosea 2:4, כי should be understood as marking a noun clause that serves as the object of the verb ריבו. The text means, ‘Contend with your mother! Contend that she is not my wife and I am not her husband, so that she remove her prostitutions from before her face and her adulteries from between her breasts’. Divorce is threatened by the husband but has not actually been carried out. When this chronologically-coherent diatribe was uttered, the husband and wife in the metaphor were still married, the wife’s adulteries had already taken place, the husband’s threatened actions were imminent, and the husband still entertained hope of his wife’s renewed commitment to their relationship. This interpretation of the grammar of v. 4 elegantly fits the ancient Near Eastern legal imagery used throughout the poem, is consistent with the use of ריב and כי elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, and permits a reading of the oracle as rhetorically coherent and chronologically consistent. |
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| ISSN: | 1477-8556 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal of Semitic studies
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1093/jss/fgw019 |