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  • From: Gabe Eisenstein <gabe AT cascadeaccess.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [b-hebrew] Hosea 5:2
  • Date: Wed, 20 Aug 2008 13:56:04 -0700

I have several problems with Hosea 5:2.
W$X+H &+YM H(MYQW W)NY MWSR LKLM

The first is the word &+YM, or perhaps $+YM, that is, shin/sin-teth-yod-mem.
With a shin, it would be identical to the shitim of the Torah which is: a) a kind of wood (acacia); b) a place in Moab where Israel sinned, and where they were still encamped as of Joshua 2-3.
English translations mostly favor the Masoretic rendering &A+|M, assuming a derivation from &W+, to turn away, thus getting "rebels"or "revolters". The Oxford translation sticks with the consonantal text and renders "Shitim" ("I have made deep the pit of Shitim.") (I guess "pit" is just thrown in to go with "made deep"; but I don't know what happened to shachatah in this translation. Maybe it is loosely translated as "pit"?)
What say you?

I am also confused about the grammar involving shachatah and he'miqu, the two verbs in the first clause, which is verb-noun-verb. Some translations seem to take shachatah as a gerund: "the revolters deepen the slaughter(ing)". JPS takes it as infinitive and has "they were profound to kill the revolters". My main question is: How can we decide what is the subject and what is the object here? Are the satim/shitim killers or killed?

Finally, I am puzzled by the word MWSR. It always seems to mean "correction, rebuke, instruction" in other contexts, where it is derived from YSR. But the Jewish Publication Society translations render "removed" and "rejected" ("I have been rejected by them all"), which must be derivations from MSR, to deliver or hand over. (Certainly it can't mean "rebuked" if God, the speaker, is the object rather than the subject of the sentence.) But in that case is it a participle or rather present-tense, as my verb-book has it? In the latter case it would be something more like "I give myself to them all."

If the second word is "revolters", who are they? All of Israel ever since Jeroboam? The rebels under Jehu? Or the Jehuid kings of Hosea's time who turned away from the righteous path of Jehu? (Of course this is related to the question about "Jezreel" and Hosea's attitude toward Jehu. I still assume Hosea condemns Jehu, as he condemns the Jehuids.)
If the second word is "Shitim" the place-name, then that which has been "deepened" must be the violence that occurred there. You could associate it with the sin of Peor, but the actual "slaughter" we find there was committed by Phinehas. In this case the "deepening" would just be a coninuation of Phinehas' ethnocentric zeal. Then the first clause might be praise rather than condemnation (although this wouldn't fit the context); or it might be condemnation for being too zealous, that is, Hosea might not take Phinehas as a moral exemplar (I know I don't!). The ambiguity of zealousness or stringency in this connection is brought out by R.Yochanan at Sanhedrin 102a, who connects he'miqu with the stringency of laws about attending or not attending festivals. (Jeroboam was "deeper", i.e. more stringent than the Torah.)

If any of these points could be pinned down, the others would get easier.


Gabe Eisenstein




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