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 s...

  “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 Aramea...

  “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 its...