The covenant between Israel and God is imagined as a marriage and focuses on the relationship between a husband and a wife. In Ezekiel 16: 59-60 “Yes, thus says the Lord God: I will deal with you as you have done, you who have despised the oath, breaking the covenant; yet I will remember my covenant with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish with you an everlasting covenant.” The use of marriage as an analogy for the covenant provides a concentrated emphasis on the personal dimension, on the relation itself, which transcends the cultic and legal. This husband is not preoccupied with his legal rights to separation or the punishment of his guilty wife. He wants her back. He demands that the wife strip from herself the embellishments
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Hosea is often cited as the source of the Old Testament marriage metaphor, but Hosea’s use of the metaphor is notoriously subtle and difficult to explicate. Though Hosea, especially in Hosea 1-3, makes extensive use of the metaphoric vehicle of “marriage,” the metaphor’s tenor is virtually impossible to follow. The metaphoric vehicle (adultery) is consistent, but the tenor is extraordinarily fluid, consistent only as a general accusation of infidelity, and apparently mutable in it referent. The sign-act of the prophet’s own marriage as the basis for the metaphor is unique to Hosea and may help account for Hosea’s equally unique combination of a clear and forcible vehicle with an elusive tenor. Rather than basing the metaphor of Yahweh’s marriage on a personification of the capital city, Hosea takes an action, marriage to a “woman of infidelities,” as the starting point for his prophecy and his metaphor. The vividness of this initial symbolic action guarantees the clarity of the metaphoric vehicle and establishes the general sense of the tenor as infidelity; and infidelity equivalent to that of an adulterous wife has been committed. Hosea’s use of the sign-act actually allows the infidelity of the nation to be doubly signified: Hosea depicts Israel’s relationship to Yahweh using both his symbolic action and his symbolic language (metaphor), rather than depending on the use of metaphor alone. This combination of symbolic action with metaphoric speech strengthens the impact of Hosea’s prophecy while increasing its
Hosea is often cited as the source of the Old Testament marriage metaphor, but Hosea’s use of the metaphor is notoriously subtle and difficult to explicate. Though Hosea, especially in Hosea 1-3, makes extensive use of the metaphoric vehicle of “marriage,” the metaphor’s tenor is virtually impossible to follow. The metaphoric vehicle (adultery) is consistent, but the tenor is extraordinarily fluid, consistent only as a general accusation of infidelity, and apparently mutable in it referent. The sign-act of the prophet’s own marriage as the basis for the metaphor is unique to Hosea and may help account for Hosea’s equally unique combination of a clear and forcible vehicle with an elusive tenor. Rather than basing the metaphor of Yahweh’s marriage on a personification of the capital city, Hosea takes an action, marriage to a “woman of infidelities,” as the starting point for his prophecy and his metaphor. The vividness of this initial symbolic action guarantees the clarity of the metaphoric vehicle and establishes the general sense of the tenor as infidelity; and infidelity equivalent to that of an adulterous wife has been committed. Hosea’s use of the sign-act actually allows the infidelity of the nation to be doubly signified: Hosea depicts Israel’s relationship to Yahweh using both his symbolic action and his symbolic language (metaphor), rather than depending on the use of metaphor alone. This combination of symbolic action with metaphoric speech strengthens the impact of Hosea’s prophecy while increasing its