Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Harold Holmyard <hholmyard AT ont.com>]

I apologize for sending this again, but it was 
also wrongly entitled and so would not help the 
archives.

Vadim Cherny wrote:


> > HH: Perhaps this is the source of your problem.
> > The verse does not say that the bread is in the
> > oven. It simply says there is no need to heat the
> > oven while the bread is getting ready to bake. One
> > does not knead the dough while it is in the oven
> > either.

> 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.

HH: Here is the NIV translation:

Hos. 7:4 They are all adulterers, burning like an
oven whose fire the baker need not stir from the
kneading of the dough till it rises.


HH: The baker does nothing while the kneaded dough
is rising, except that normally he heats the oven.
That's what he does not need to do in Hosea 7:4.


> 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."


HH: I have made bread. There is a kneading
process, and afterwards the dough is left to rise.
Those are two distinct steps taken before the
dough is placed in the oven. See the step about
the dough left sitting in order to rise at the end
of the following tutorial:

http://jansdough.janktheproofer.com/kneadbreaddough.htm

Yours,
Harold Holmyard