Biblical Hebrew Forum

["stoneyb" <stoneyb AT touchwood.net>]

>
 They are all adulterers, like an oven heated by the baker who ceaseth
to  stir from kneading of the dough until it is humtzato.  "adulterers
like an oven" surely makes no sense. More plausibly, here is  poetic
transposition, and Hosea means, "they are adulterers like the baker."
The baker does nothing while the dough is in the oven, and Hosea accuses
the  people of similarly abandoning their duties.  In any case, the
dough is in the oven, and does not leaven anymore, but is  baked. (Any
woman here on the list who ever tried to bake?) "from kneading  until
humtzato" cannot mean "from kneading until leavening", that's absurd.
It could only mean, "from kneading until being baked."
>
 Vadim Cherny
>
The image, I think, is of a smouldering fire, generating heat even when
apparently quiescent. The baker starts his fire as a vigorous "stirred"
flame, but then banks it so the heat will spread throughout the oven and
be absorbed into its walls - this allows the heat to be released evenly
when the actual baking takes place. As the oven "preps" he kneads the
bread and allows it rise, and THEN puts it into the oven to bake. 

Stoney Breyer
Writer/touchwood
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