10. Francis I. Andersen and David Noel Freedman, Hosea (AB 24; Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, 1980), 459, 448. Isa 28 and 29 contain a similar lament for the wickedness and drunkenness of the ruling classes, suggesting a specific historic event behind both compositions.
11. Gerald Morris, Prophecy, Poetry and Hosea (JSOTSup 219; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), 93–95, notes word play on P) in P) anger, P)n adultery, hp) baker, myrp) Ephraim—all sharing some consonants. Then also r( ‘r — in r(b burn, rw( awake, or ry(m stir which puns with ry( city. mbr)b their ambush sounds like r(b burn, which also similar to ry( city.
12. BHS suggests wxms rejoice should properly be wx#$m anoint so that “the day of our/their king” in v. 5 would be his inauguration.
13. Andersen and Freedman, Hosea, 447–8, 455–6, redivide -m hr(b rwn@t wmk to get they are all adulterers, like a burning oven Mh r(b rwn@tk.
14. ry(m BDB Hiphil masculine singular participle: rouse from sleep; or qal: stir up to activity (against), awake, arouse the dawn, stir up a fire. Does the baker keep coals low while the dough rises and then fires the oven up for baking, or was the oven kept hot during the process of kneading and rising? LXX, the most ancient witness of how bread was made indicates that the oven is kept “glowing with flames for hot-baking, on account of the kneading of the dough until it is leavened.”
15. Three verbs in succession: twb#$y rest, ry(m awake, #$wlm stir, well correspond to the three stages of setting dough to rise, pounding it down and kneading it the second time.
16. MT has ywm mlknw “day of our king,” but the BHS apparatus (Stuttgart Electronic Study Bible, Edition for Logos Software Users [Stuttgart: German Bible Society; Haarlem: Netherlands Bible Society, 2006) for Hos 7:5 suggests bywm mklm “on the day of their king” indicating an inaugural day, cf. Tg Jonathan for the Minor Prophets: “The day they appointed their king over them” (K. J. Cathcart and R. P. Gordon, The Targum of the Minor Prophets [ArBib 14; Wilmington, Del.: Glazier, 1989], 43.)
17. tmx can mean “hot rage” in its usual sense, but also poison in this context.
18. hlx is ordinarily intransitive, but Ibn Ezra thought the hiphil form could be transitive (cf. Prov 13:12), hence “the princes have made the king sick” (The Commentary of Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra on Hosea [ed. and trans. Abe Lipshitz; New York: Sepher-Hermon, 1988], 72–73, nn. 13, 14, and 76, n. 15). Versions differ greatly. LXX, Syr, Tg derive from llxh, begin, rather than MT, hlxh be sick, be weak. LXX: In the days of our kings, the princes began to be inflamed with wine: he stretched out his hand with pestilent fellows. Vg: dies regis nostri coeperunt principes furere a vino extendit manum suam cum inlusoribus, “On the day of our king, the princes began to be furious with wine; he extended his hands with the insolent.” Tg: The day they appointed their king over them, the princes began to drink wine with him. He drew to his side (mshk ydw) a troop of deceivers. Also, j. Avodah Zarah 1:1 reads MT myrs wlxh “the princes killed” (cf. Cathcart and Gordon, Targum of Minor Prophets, 43).
19. K#$m is read in parallel to dy xl#$ stretch forth the hand, or dy Ntn lit. gave the hand, often warlike acts. K#$m is used for military lines or forming ranks in Job 21:33 and Judges 4. dy K#$m is not found elsewhere. Of the weakened or sickened king it might be said that he unwittingly admitted to his presence people whose real intentions were concealed, so Tg interpreted “he drew to his side” (Cathcart and Gordon, Targum, 43).
20. The parallel of Ccl with Cr( ruthless in Isa 29:20 makes the former a very strong word, even deadly deception.
21. Adultery is compared to an oven in v 4; and although BHS conjectures that the second use of rwnt here is missing its parallel to adultery, the verb brq indicates a metaphoric shift to warlike heat, or anger.
22. Tg and Syr have anger instead of MT baker. Douglas K. Stuart, Hosea-Jonah (WBC 31; Waco, Tex.: Word, 1987) translated “All night their fury slumbers, in the morning it blazes up like a roaring fire” (114, 116). Andersen and Freedman, Hosea (449–50) take it to be a description of an assassination in which a baker participated.
23. Andersen and Freedman take )wh to mean the oven (Hosea, 459).
24. This is a Janus or double faced image: Those who devour their judges are devoured by the nations in 8, 9.
25. Tanakh boldly stretches hby#, a word for old age indicated by grey hair, into mold for old bread, thus deciding that the baking metaphor should still govern interpretation of this verse.
26. Jer 9:2, “they all commit adultery, an assembly of treacherous men.” Cf. dgb in Mal 2:15.
27. Ian G. Barbour, Myths, Models and Paradigms: A Comparative Study in Science and Religion (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), 13.
28. John Dominic Crossan, In Parables: The Challenge of the Historical Jesus (New York: Harper & Row, 1973).
29. Wilf Hildebrandt, An Old Testament Theology of the Spirit of God (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1995) 10. Cf. Hos 12:1; 13:15; Jer 18:17; Ezek 13:11; 17:10; 19:12; Jonah 1:4, 4:8.
30. Textual variations include MT: hmydq mhynp, feminine, facing eastwards or conjecture by BHS, hmdq forward facing, but Habakkuk Pesher from Qumran has masculine, mydq east wind, cf. LXX, Tg, Syr: “The appearance of their faces”; Vg: “their faces move forward.”
31. lwxi sand.
32. rp( dust is parallel to lwx sand, so still possibly a metaphor for captives or victims heaped against the city walls as a berm to scramble over.
33. Mdqm meqedem.
34. rwc is a double entendre in this context because it often refers to utter reliability of Israel’s God, but it can be used of foreign gods actually hewn from stone, and by extension, their worshippers become the inflexible instrument of chastisement.
35. John Dominic Crossan “Parable