The text bears this interesting explanation particularly well because 8 and 9 are in superior condition for translation. However, if 3–9 is not a single complex diatribe, the irony of those who consume their judges (7) being consumed by the nations (9) is a remarkably well done addition to the original prophecy.
Since the dates of Hosea are well known, 3–7 possibly refers to a specific assassination in Israel, giving rise to speculation that the baker was a key character in an assassination, so baking was part of a sitz im leben that could be compared to lust and ambition.10 The mashal made the baker’s craft a conceit for how a plan, once it is conceived, grips the imagination while at rest and awakens the heated intention to act.
From a purely literary reading, many examples of assonance in the choice of words creates a texture of associations that can be analyzed on several levels.11 Moreover, this poetic musicality demands dramatic performance to be fully appreciated. My translation below is composed with the aim of making effective Hosea’s comparison of bread baking to vice.
(3) In their wickedness they make the king glad12, and in their deceits, princes. (4) They are all adulterous as a burning oven.13 The baker lets the dough rest, he takes it up,14, he kneads15 it until it is leavened. (5) By day16 princes enraged 17 with wine weaken18 our king; he drew to his side19 deceivers.20 (6) For in their artifice, they prepare their hearts like an oven21; within them their anger22 lies inert through the night; in the morning it 23 bursts into flaming fire. (7) They are all heated like an oven; they consume24 their judges and all their kings are fallen. None of them call upon me. (8) Ephraim is mixed among the people; he is a cake not turned. (9) Strangers eat his strength and he doesn’t know it; mold25 is scattered over him and he knows it not” (Hos 7:3–9).
Rising bread dough easily doubles its size when at rest while a hot oven is prepared to arrest its swelling. It is anything but exciting. But to coordinate this placid routine with adultery engenders a kind of horror as the hidden agenda appears. It is so well-conceived as to make its point on first hearing or reading. When the reader understands, the strange disjunction of subjects has arrested prurient interest while engaging moral reflection. Deeply indecent but avoiding indelicacy, the comparison is like acceptable but hidden crime, or social sins that move along tried and true paths of convention. The innocent image bristles with angry language that tears away the mask of innocence. Baking does not indulge the passions; but describing passion, ambition or crime as baking gives the intellect an opportunity to dissect immorality dispassionately.
The metaphor has several purposes. One is to evaluate historic human actions by a standard that elicits judgment as to their quality and merit. Another is to frame the social comment in terms that ring true for this entire class of motive and deed. The main subject, in view of Hosea’s first chapters, is adultery, itself a metaphor for idolatry and political folly.26 The auxiliary subject is the phased process of baking bread. Prurient fascination exercised over the imagination by vice is arrested by the dispassionate association of inflamed sentiments with fermenting yeast. The tendency to enjoy the subject is thus suspended. The metaphor then heightens the ability to form a moral judgment by “a novel configuration . . . by the juxtaposition of two frames of reference of which the reader must be simultaneously aware.”27 These two domains collide —two contexts that are not actually comparable each interpret the other. The reader must discern in a euphemistic setting the mental, moral and emotional states that engender and drive wrongdoing on to its bitter end.
This prophetic image uses a well-known routine of the disempowered to expose what kings and princes do. People who bake daily bread can easily understand the judgment upon a ruling class burning with enthusiasm for pleasure and power. Even a woman’s imagination is called to judge priests and rulers as she might another woman. Making these high and fine intrigues as common as bread removes the privileges that shield them from public calumny. The metaphor thus brings judgment and with it the hope of justice, for what is exposed in this way is drained of good reason to cooperate with it. Hos 7:2 and 10 however, do not leave the subject entirely open to interpretation, but direct it: the fault—of which all are guilty, whether through adultery, regicide or apostasy—is failing to turn to the LORD.
Habakkuk 1:9–12
Like Hosea (737–720 BCE), Habbakuk (606–598 BCE) employed familiar images to say extraordinary things, but this passage dreaded something not yet accomplished. Its purpose was to cause people to understand something too unbelievable to be plainly said (v. 5), or perhaps to admit the unthinkable. The failure of justice and its perversion in Judah will result in bondage to a people whose “justice and dignity proceed from themselves.” The Chaldeans who will replace a society structured by the teachings of Moses are worse than disobedient to law; their law is what their strength allows them to do; they honor only themselves. Even though Judeans were not observing their obligations in Judah’s covenant with its God, to be reduced from servants of God to slaves of Chaldeans was inconceivable.
In order to get people to imagine what their new masters were and would do, Habakkuk used a series of metaphors from amoral nature; horses, the leopard, wolves, birds of prey, and finally the metaphor of the qdym, the hot east wind, in Hab 1:9. Pursuers, predators, and at last a wind devoid of conscience “articulate a referent so new or so alien to consciousness that this referent can only be grasped within the metaphor itself.”28 The yoke of the law, even if observed more in breech than by obedience, is humane; but this oppressor can only be described as bestial, or as an elemental force.
The wind does not think; it has no moral scruples or imagination; it comes, it goes, it does not know what it does or care what it leaves; it cannot be held accountable nor can it be dissuaded. Particularly winds from the east are a biblical symbol of divine judgment. Hebrew ruach contains an inherent image associating the wind with the spirit of God, so that “In these contexts of proclaimed judgment, the hot easterly winds, which wither crops and torment people, illustrate the nature of the events to come.”29 Hos 13:15 warned Israel that the Assyrians would come like the hwhy xwr mydq easterly blast, the wind (spirit) of the Lord to end their idolatry, parching the land, stripping the storehouses. Habakkuk’s warning to Judah took up Hosea’s awful prediction of Israel’s fall, particularly if his hmydq (MT) is the Hosean eastwind mydq, leading this discussion to a text critical problem.
The text of Hab 1:9 MT contains the difficult phrase, hmydq mhynp tm%gm. The first word is a hapax legomena assigned by BDB to the root Mmg from which the adverb, Mg is derived, which has the sense of something added to, also. The Arabic cognate of the verb likewise connotes gathering, assembling. Although the exact meaning of this noun is not known, its translations often imply ranks of invaders. Alternatively, LXX translated as if from trgm megorat for fear, horror
