Dispute between Husband and Wife

CHAPTER THREE

3. THE METAPHORICAL PRESENTATION OF GOD AS AN AFFECTIVE BEING IN HOSEA: WBAT MAKES THE GOD OF HOSEA, AS A KIN TO THE

3.4 The binomial husband-spouse in both contexts

3.4.1 Dispute between Husband and Wife

Rebuke your mother, rebuke her, for she is not my wife, and I am not her husband. Let her remove the adulterous look from her face and the unfaithfulness from between her breasts. Therefore I will block her path with thornbushes; I will wall her in so that she cannot find her way. She will chase after her lovers but not catch them; she will look for them but not find them. Then she will say, 'I will go back to my husband as at first, for then I was better off than now.' So now I will expose her lewdness before the eyes of her lovers; no one will take her out of my hands declares the LORD. In that day, declares the LORD, you will call me 'my husband'; you will no longer call me 'my master'. I will remove the names of the Baals from her lips. I will

'Not my people,' 'You are my people'; and they will say, 'You are my God'. (Hosea 2:2-23)

There is a dispute among scholars about whether God played paradoxically the role of Husband and Father and Israel played the role of Children and Wife. Whitt (1987: 53-54) virtually puts forward this idea¹⁷⁵ but he gives no comments. Schmitt agrees with Whitt in spite of their hermeneutical dispute (cf Schimitt 1995: 120-121). Anderson and Freedman (1980:223) argue that the power of Hosea's theology is felt in this incandescent experience. Wolff (1974: 33, 39) mistakenly asserted: "Here the text concerns the allegory". It is not an allegory but a tautegory176. Wolff (1974: 32) also observes: ''Yahweh changes roles in the individual sayings, and thus a certain tension is understandable". He proceeds that

... in the vA the plaintiff addresses his children; yet the judge speaks about them in the third person (v.6ft). The entire procedure that emerges here is not a reconstruction of legal process. Rather, it is a loosely knit collection of sayings, which, according to their genre, have the same setting, and which, according their content, concentrate throughout on the subject of the court proceedings.

It seems that Wolff contradicts himself because the same Wolff (1974: 33) wrote further that "The God of Israel appears first as plaintiff against his unfaithful wife. He summons

175He argues that "the metaphor of gods as parents of humans, with gods having goddesses as their spouses and vice versa, is common to the ancient Near East; the metaphor of a people as a whole as the spouse of its

~od(s) is totally foreign to the ancient Near Eastern

76 This text of Hosea is mythic and poetical and, taking this perspective, Fernando Bastos (1992:39) correctly observes that"0OOto (poetico)para0pensador luso-brasileiro (Eudoro de Souza),MO

e

^alegoria,

mas tautegoria. Quer dizer,0 OOto relatata e expressa0que em verdade

e;

^OOtoMOrepresenta as cousas ou eventos originados, apresenta as origens. Seu relato

e

simb6lico, tendo de ser captado pela sensibilidade. E preciso queno aUos ou no outro apresente-se 0 tautos ou 0 mesmo ... [According to the Luso-Brasilian author (Eudoro de Souza), the myth is not allegory, but tautegory. This mean that the myth relate and expresses what really is true; the myth never represents things or invents events, but it reports the original reality. The way that the myth describes events or things is symbolic and its meaning has to be grasped through sensibility. It is thus important that for the interpreter of the myth to replace it in theaUos (whole)

the accusing party to the beginning of the legal dispute". It is not clear how he contradicts himself because to us, itisobvious that the text followed the legal procedure.

Tatford (1974: ), Keil and Delitzch (1968: 50-66 ), Kunstmann (1983: 15-16) and Landy (1995: 28-31) comment on text and avoid the discussion. For the feminist scholars this text probably does not make sense on the account of the excessive emphasis on patriarchalism and chauvinism.

For us, against Andersen and Freedmann, the theology of Hosea as expressed in the text is' not felt in the incandescent experience. In doing a synchronic reading of the three chapters of Hosea (1-3-2), the poem reaches its climax. Here the husband and his wife stand in the intimacy of a familial court. It is true that at first sight the text emphasises patriarchism and chauvinism, but in its tautegorical dimension, the meaning emerges differently. This is because of the ambiguity and power of the metaphor. Vanhoozer (1990), Bastos (1992: 31-44), Fretheim (1984: 5-6), Bird (1989:75-94), West (1996: 208) and others are in agreement about this problem. But let us once again analyze the text.

Rebuke your mother, rebuke her, for she is not my wife, and I am not her husband. Let her remove the adulterous look from her face and the unfaithfulness from between her .breasts. (Hosea 2: 2)

In this verse, three points are pertinent: God assumes His role as the husband. He is effectively involved with His partner Israel. God in this verse has broken one of the principal pillars of Genesis which is the conjugal bond between man and woman

i1~"~ ~, "~j~l "I:l~~ ~, ~"i)-":P

.

Kuhl (1934) and Gordon (1936) think that

"

the phrase the poet used was the Hebrew equivalent of the Akkadian divorce formula, Wolff (1974: 33-34) agrees that God expressed an ultimatum. Rudolph (1966:65) and Jeremias (1983:41) reject this possibility. Kruger (1992: 8-12) prudently approaches the texts from the perspective of other Ancient Near East documents. The old Babylonian for example reads: u-ul mu-tiat-ta; 'you are not my husband'; u-ul as-sa-ti at-ti: 'you are not my wife' (VAB 5:4:9 , 14; 5:21, 37; BRM 4,52:13; ana ittisu 7:IV:4, 10). In the Elephantine text he discerns: I' thwh Iy 'ntt: 'she will not be my wife'; I' 'hwh Ik 'ntt: 'I will not be your wife' (k 7; AP 15). It is clear that both the old Babylonian and the Elephantine documents contain the so-called divorce formula or the verba solemnia which announce the end of a relationship (Kruger 1992: 11). Gordon takes the opposite view. If Hosea 2:4b does not. contain a divorce formula, however, what does it mean?

Buss (1969:88) argues that this utterance in Hosea is the indication of the husband's desire to dissolve the relationship. It seems that Gordon's and Buss's (1969: 88) arguments are rooted in the text. In the text there is a repetitive insistent use of ~,. ^This particle of negation

(~')

expresses the idea of the end of a matrimonial relationship. It seems clear that this sentence announces a divorce. The emphasis is on the use of the personal pronoun_"~j~ and_~'iJ; this emphasis probably provides evidence of the reality of personal and affective relationship between God('~j~)and Israel~'iJ).

It is not easy to describe in simple human language, the marriage between God and human beings or between God and a people as it was in the case with Israel. This only

188

becomes possible if we understand the role of language in creating a religious reality, as Snyman (1993: 93) and Schokel (1965: 104-118) suggest. Marriage is one of the sacred rituals in the Israelite (cf Wight 1981: 131-142) and in the sub-Saharan context (cf Altuna 1974:303-355 and Mbiti 1975:114-115). The formula for instituting the marriage is always bilateral which is not the case in chapter 2 of Hosea. Anderson and Freedman (1980: 199-204) say that ''the key to the solution, we suggest, is in seeing verse 16 as alluding to God's proposal of (re) marriage-You are my wife. And 17b is the response of Israel, the bride. Presumably the bride would respond 'You are my husband"'. They (1980: 199-204) suggest that the formula of divorce is paradoxically unilateral as well as bilateral. To break the marriage link only one party is called to pronounce the formula of divorce but it must be followed by the consent of the other party. That is why in the text, the silence of the anonymous wife who can be Asherah177against the accusation

(l::l""J

Q~~~:;J.

1::l"1)

is very pertinent. The restoration of this kind of relationship, once broken, be it either in the Israelite ritualistic context or in a sub-Saharan African context, necessarily requires the sacrifice of an animal for re-establishing both the matrimonial link and the social dignity of the co-partners (cf Lumbala 1987:349-364).

We have difficulty in understanding how the poet omits this aspect.

Rebuke your mother, rebuke her, for she is not my wife, and I am not her husband. Let her remove the adulterous look from her face and the unfaithfulness from between her breasts. Otherwise I will strip her naked and make her as bare as on the day she was born; I will make her like a desert, turn her into a parched land, and slay her with thirst.

(Hosea 2: 2-3)

In theses verses of Isaiah 50,1 or 66, 7, Yahweh is presented as husband but who is the wife? Whitt

Look also at the text below:

I will remove the names of the Baals from her lips; no longer will their names be invoked. In that day I will make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field and the birds of the air and the creatures that move along the ground. Bow and sword and battle I will abolish from the land, so that all may lie down in safety. I willbetroth you to me forever; I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion. I will betroth you in faithfulness, and you will acknowledge the LORD. (Hosea 2: 17-20)

The poet only describes the consequences that the wife faces and the reverse of the divorce process by the restoration of the old marriage (Hosea 2: 17) but he never tells how the husband retracts his words without referring to an offering of sacrifice. Has the Torah failed, or perhaps the poet would like to communicate the idea that love through the

oin']

above all _i1~O~ transcends the Law? (cf Deissler in Feiner and Loehrer 1978.vol W1:236-237)178. But it deals with God, and we know that for love to be attested, concrete facts are always required (cf McGinnis 1990: 56). Here, God in Hosea broke the minimum of social law and we think that for the society of Hosea, sacrifice was the chosen way to reconcile the people with one another, and also, metaphorically to reconcile people with God. Itmeans that the absenceinthe text of a reference to sacrifice offered to Yahweh made the true value of the Torah questionable. But in trying to defend the Torah, Neher (1955: 163) says that:

Au Sinai, la revelation de Dieu etait justifiee par l' intervention prealable de Dieu en Egypte. La tora ne s'

178cf. Neher 1955:164. "L' amour est plus que le cedeq. Car le

cOOeq

conserve la lucidire del' imperfection, ilsait qu'ilyapeeheet s' appliqueale corriger. Mais l' amour est inconditionnel". [Love is greaterthan cedeq. Because the cedeq keeps the lucidity of the imperfection, cedeq knows that there is a sin (mistake) and it is determined to punish it. But love is unconditional].

imposait pas comme un joug sur la nuque d' esclaves. Elle etait l'aboutissement d' une lutte, oll Dieu avait eu raison.

Aucune reproche ne pouvait etre adresse

a

Dieu: sa victoire sur l' Egypte l'innocentait de tout soupyon.

n

^appelait

a

^la

servitude religieuse des hommes qu' il avait socialement liberes, comme pour souligner que cette nouvelle servitude ne devait et ne pouvait effacer la liberte recemment conquise. La tora s' inscrivait des le debut dans un plan de

'd . 179

re emptIOn .

Neher's comprehension of the Torah is linked to the traditional credo that informs us that God was the liberator from Egypt, and the donor of the T_orah~ thus nothing could be imputed to Him.

But observing the text from the tautegorical perspective of marriage, there is some suspicion that the innocence of God should be questioned. And even if most interpreters connive with God, for most people of sub-Saharan Africa the situation is different. The reader of this text who knows the value of marriage will consider that a husband, even if the husband is God, if he wishes to regain his social prestige or reputation ( cf. Nolan _1987:84~ Derrett 1970: 40, 42 and 73), has only two possible choices: suicide or the making of a sacrifice. The second point of our argument is that the poet courageously portrays God as an incapable man who appeals to the children to be the referee between His wife and Himself. The imperative form is repeated twice (the

179In Sinai the revelation of God was acceptable because of this previous intervention in Egypt. The Torah is not imposed like a yoke on a slave's neck. It was the conclusion of a struggle in which God was proved right.No reproach could be directed at God: His victory over Egypty exonerated Him form all suspicion.