The way of imagination

“I will not punish your daughters when they play the whore,     nor your daughters-in-law when they commit adultery; for the men themselves go aside with whores,     and sacrifice with temple prostitutes; thus a people without understanding comes to ruin. Though you play the whore, O Israel,     do not let Judah become guilty.” (Hosea 4.14-15)   “The Lord said to me in the days of King Josiah: Have you seen what she did, that faithless one, Israel, how she went up on every high hill and under every green tree, and played the whore there? And I thought, “After she has done all this she will return to me”; but she did not return, and her false sister Judah saw it. She saw that for all the adulteries of that faithless one, Israel, I had sent her away with a decree of divorce; yet her false sister Judah did not fear, but she too went and played the whore. Because she took her whoredom so lightly, she polluted the land, committing adultery with stone and tree. Yet for all this he

  “How can you say, “I am not defiled,     I have not gone after the Baals”? Look at your way in the valley;     know what you have done— a restive young camel interlacing her tracks,       a wild ass at home in the wilderness, in her heat sniffing the wind!     Who can restrain her lust? None who seek her need weary themselves;     in her month they will find her.” (Jeremiah 2.23-24)      From the time that the Israelites entered the Promised Land under the leadership of Joshua until the days of Jeremiah, Yahweh had a forbidding rival to contend with for the affections (i.e., loyalty) of the people He claimed as his own – “Baal”, the chief god of the Canaanite pantheon, who controlled rain and fertility.   The cult of Baal involved sacred prostitution (cf. Judges 2.17; Jer. 7.9; Amos 2.7) and even child-sacrifice (Jer. 19.5).   In Aramean sculptures, Baal stands upon a bull, which may connect with the calf-images made by Aaron and King Jeroboam I (cf. Ex. 32.4; 1 Kings 12.2

  “How can you say, “I am not defiled,     I have not gone after the Baals”? Look at your way in the valley;     know what you have done— a restive young camel interlacing her tracks,       a wild ass at home in the wilderness, in her heat sniffing the wind!     Who can restrain her lust? None who seek her need weary themselves;     in her month they will find her.” (Jeremiah 2.23-24) Which god?   Yahweh & the idols.      The Bible is very aware of the fact that the word “god” [1] is not univocal; i.e., during the biblical period, just like today, the word “god(s)” means different things to different people.   Every tribe/nation/civilization throughout history has had its own pantheon of divinities, [2] most of whom represented different aspects of the natural world; e.g., the goddess of fertility, the god of thunder – the Sun itself was sometimes worshipped as being divine.   Monotheism – the belief that there is only one God (capital “G”) – developed gradually duri