JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SUPPLEMENT SERIES
219 Editors David J.A, Clines Philip R. Davies Executive Editor John Jarick Editorial Board Robert P. Carroll, Richard J. Coggins, Alan Cooper, J. Cheryl Exum, John Goldingay, Robert P. Gordon, Norman K. Gottwald, Andrew D.H. Mayes, Carol Meyers, Patrick D. Miller
Sheffield Academic Press
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Prophecy, Poetry and Hosea
Terald Morris
hhJournal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 219
Dedicated with their father's love, to William, Ethan and Grace
Copyright © 1996 Sheffield Academic Press Published by Sheffield Academic Press Ltd Mansion House 19 Kingfield Road Sheffield SI 19AS England
Printed on acid-free paper in Great Britain by Bookcraft Ltd Midsomcr Norton, Bath
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 1-85075-599-X
CONTENTS
Preface Acknowledgments Abbreviations
7 9 10
Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION: GENRE AND INTERPRETATION
11
Chapter 2
RHETORIC AND POETRY
18
Chapter 3
REPETITION AND VARIATION
45
Chapter 4
LANGUAGE FALLING ON LANGUAGE: WORDPLAY AND HOSEA
74
Chapter 5
HOSEA AND THE LYRICAL PLOT
101
Chapter 6
CONCLUSION: GENRE AND THE PROPHETS
132
Appendix Bibliography Index of References Index of Authors
148 152 160 165
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PREFACE This study of the literary genre of biblical prophecy was first written in 1993-1994 as my doctoral dissertation at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville Kentucky. That form (dissertation) is itself a genre, with its own potential weaknesses (e.g. plodding recitation of past scholarship) and strengths (e.g. freshness of insight and skepticism toward the 'assured results' of earlier study). As I wrote the dissertation, I tried to avoid the weaknesses and amplify the strengths of my genre. Since the text that follows is essentially unchanged from the resulting work, I can only hope that I have succeeded. My desire to offer fresh insights was assisted by the method I chose to follow. I decided to examine the literary qualities of the book of Hosea and to place little stress on the book's historical underpinnings. I studied Hosea as art, not as artifact. In so doing, I have aligned myself with a much larger trend, of course. The 'Bible as literature' movement is surely one of the fastest growing currents in biblical scholarship. Nevertheless, while this trend has produced many excellent studies of biblical narrative, very little has been attempted with the books of the latter prophets. Thus, nearly everything that I could try was in fact a fresh approach. There are dangers in such a study. To write an informed analysis of the literary nature of Hosea required that I supplement my research in my own academic field, biblical criticism, with research in the world of secular literary theory. Such an interdisciplinary analysis, if it is to be managed in a single book, must greatly compress the two discrete worlds of scholarship, and thus it runs the risk of oversimplification. The advantages of such an approach—such as new perspectives and different interpretations of long-recognized data—make the effort well worth the risk, however. One more prefatory matter remains. In three chapters of the book of Hosea, the Hebrew verse numbers differ from the English. These are: 2.125 (English 1.10-11,2.1-23), 12.1-15 (English 11.12; 12.1-14), and 14.1-10 (English 13.16, 14.1-9). Where I refer to these chapters—and I refer to
8
Prophecy, Poetry and Hosea
these chapters perhaps more than to any others—I have eschewed the awkwardness of listing both versifications and have used only the Hebrew reference. Gerald Morris
Arkadelphia, Arkansas April 1996
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS As I conclude this study of the poetry of Hosea, I acknowledge my debt to several who either inspired my interest in the subject or who assisted my study. My love for poetry and interest in wordplay began at home, where my family often read and quoted poetry—or doggerel, at any rate—and even more often experimented with puns. I take considerable satisfaction in having converted the pastimes of childhood into the scholarship of adulthood (or, given my biblical subject, the scholarship of adultery). To my parents, whose love of language I absorbed, I offer my thanks. I am no less grateful to those whose assistance was more immediate, those who aided me in the labor of research, writing, and writing again. Throughout my doctoral studies at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, Drs Gerald Keown and John D. W. Watts supported my desire to use literary theory in biblical interpretation and guided that study. I was further encouraged in this effort by Dr Herbert Marks of Indiana University, for whose 'Prophecy and Poetry' seminar some portions of this study were first written. Drs James Nogalski and Thomas Smothers, both of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, have placed their expertise in prophetic interpretation at my disposal, and because their approaches differ somewhat from mine, have provided perspective. Finally, my father, Russell A. Morris, has been an invaluable critic. His sense of appropriate written style has helped me to clarify many obscure passages and to make at least some effort to rid this work of jargon. The places where the obscure and arcane still appear are doubtless places where I ignored his advice. To my wife Rebecca I could not say enough and so will say only, Thank you.
ABBREVIATIONS
AB AnOr ARM Bib BHS BR BSac BZAW EvT HUCA IDBSup Int JANESCU JAOS JBL JNES JNSL JPOS JQR JSOT JSS KAT LCL OTL PL RHPR SBLDS SBLSP SEA UF VT VTSup WBC ZAW
Anchor Bible Analecta orientalia Archives royales de Man Biblica Biblia hebraica stuttgartensia Biblical Research Bibliotheca Sacra BeiheftzurZW Evangelische Theologie Hebrew Union College Annual Supplementary Volume to Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible Interpretation Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society of Columbia University Journal of the American Oriental Society Journal of Biblical Literature Journal of Near Eastern Studies Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages Journal of Palestine Oriental Society Jewish Quarterly Review Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Journal of Semitic Studies Kommentar zum Alten Testament Loeb Classical Library Old Testament Library ]. Migne (ed.), Patrologia Latina Revue d'histoire et de philosophie religieuses Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Swiss Society of Biblical Literature Seminar Papers Svensk exegetisk arsbok Ugarit-Forschungen Vetus Testamentum Vetus Testamentum, Supplements Word Biblical Commentary Zeitschrift fur die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft
Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION: GENRE AND INTERPRETATION You then, whose Judgment the right Course wou'd steer, Know well each Ancient's proper Character, His Fable, Subject, Scope in ev'ry Page, Religion, Country, Genius of his Age: Without all these at once before your Eyes, Cavil you may, but never Criticize. —Alexander Pope1
To understand any utterance, let alone to interpret it for others, requires a certain amount of shared prior knowledge. Communication, as Saussure and others have spared no pains to demonstrate, consists at least to some extent of learned codes, and if either the sender or the recipient of a message has not learned the codes, then communication fails. This is true of all communication, from gestures to mathematical notations to the entire range of verbal messages. In a verbal communication, an utterance, the most basic level of required foreknowledge is linguistic. The recipient must understand the grammar and vocabulary of the sender. After language, though, an equally basic and often overlooked prerequisite knowledge concerns the utterance's type. What sort of speech is this? Is it a question? A command? A plea? In other words, what is the genre of the utterance? In his essay, 'The Problem of Speech Genres', Mikhail Bakhtin argues that these genres are every bit as natural and as important to understanding as language. Indeed, 'we are given these speech genres in almost the same way that we are given our native language'.2 In many respects, 1. A. Pope, 'An Essay on Criticism', in A. Williams (ed.), Poetry and Prose of Alexander Pope (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1969), p. 41, lines 118-23. 2. M.M. Bakhtin, 'The Problem of Speech Genres', in C. Emerson and M. Holquist (eds.), Speech Genres and Other Late Essays (trans. V.W. McGee; Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1986), p. 78.
12
Prophecy, Poetry and Hosea
the genre of the utterance expresses the purpose of that utterance even more than the actual words or sentences used.3 To misunderstand the genre of an utterance is invariably to misunderstand the utterance itself. Imagine a person who mistakes the polite but semantically empty greeting 'How do you do?' for an invitation to discuss his or her recent operation. The error is not grammatical but generic. Nevertheless, identifying the genre of an utterance is quite as important to understanding as recognizing its grammar and vocabulary. What is true of all communication is at least as true for literary communication. Following the same reasoning as Bakhtin, E.D. Hirsch describes all communication, but especially literature, as genre-bound: 'A verbal meaning is a willed type.'4 Further, 'The willed type must be a shared type in order for communication to occur'.5 This shared type provides the boundaries of valid interpretation; the reader must recognize the intended genre of the text and restrict interpretative hypotheses to the parameters of that type. If the reader does not recognize the genre, it is no longer a shared type, and the text becomes incomprehensible to that reader. 'Understanding can only occur if the interpreter proceeds under the same system of expectations [as the author], and this shared generic conception, constitutive both of meaning and of understanding, is the intrinsic genre of the utterance.'6 For Hirsch, the process of reading is a drama of generic hypothesizing. From the first line, the reader seeks to categorize the text according to learned genericcategories. As the text continues, the first hypothesis is confirmed, contradicted or refined by further information. Each successive hypothesis represents a narrowing of the class. For instance, the successive hypotheses for a given text might be as follows: narrative, fictional narrative, novel, mystery novel, English manor house mystery novel, English manor house mystery novel featuring Inspector Hemingway of Scotland Yard and so on. The earliest, most general, steps in the process are so obvious that they are taken almost unconsciously; the later, most specific, steps require the most extensive prior knowledge (even among those who read mysteries, for instance, many will not recognize Georgette Heyer's Hemingway), but also provide the most 3. Bakhtin, 'Speech Genres', pp. 84-85. 4. E.D. Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967), p. 51. 5. Hirsch, Validity, p. 66. 6. Hirsch, Validity, pp. 80-81.
1. Genre and Interpretation
13
complete, most significant, comparisons.7 Thus, for Hirsch, genres are always heuristic, always subject to further revision or even to rejection as reading continues. No canonized list of universal genres interests him. Hirsch's reasoning is compelling, and various biblical scholars have applied his work to biblical texts. Mary Gerhart uses Hirsch to make some interesting observations on the New Testament, notably on the genre 'Gospel'. She says nothing of the Old Testament.8 Indeed, the Hebrew Bible seems to resist this type of analysis, perhaps because generic identification depends on prior familiarity with analogous texts, and such analogues to the Hebrew Bible are few and of uncertain applicability. The difficulty of generic analysis in the Hebrew Bible is evident when one considers a book like Hosea. It is, of course, a prophetic book; but what is that? How can one describe the books called 'Latter Prophets'? What kind of text is a prophetic book like Hosea? The simplest answer, presupposed by more writers than would admit it, is that prophecy is prophecy, a law and genre unto itself.9 If this is all that one can say, however, then the whole investigation is a dead end. The primary purpose of determining a genre is to suggest comparisons. To say that prophecy is its own genre is to say that a prophetic book may be profitably compared only with another prophetic book. No outside analogues exist, as if this type of writing were created ex nihilo. Surely this is too restrictive. New genres may and do appear regularly, but never from thin air. They come into being in relation to existing genres, perhaps by an extension or a new use of an earlier form, perhaps by combination of two or more.10 To be content with such a designation—prophecy is prophecy and nothing more— is to suggest that the purpose of generic classification is correct filing. Thomas Overholt proposes that the prophetic books be classed under the generic title 'anthology'.11 The description is hardly new. Critics have long acknowledged that the prophetic books seem to consist of 7. Hirsch, Validity, pp. 179-89. 8. M. Gerhart, 'Genric Competence in Biblical Hermeneutics', Semeia 43 (1988), pp. 29-44. 9. See G.M. Tucker, 'Prophetic Speech,' Int. 32 (1978), p. 44, where he describes the basic genre of prophecy as 'the prophecy'. He does go on to specify two elements of that genre: that the prophecy is a divine communication and that it foretells future events—but this adds little. 10. Hirsch, Validity, pp. 105-106. 11. T.W. Overholt, 'Prophecy in History: The Social Reality of Intermediation', JSOT 48 (1990), pp. 23-24.
14
Prophecy, Poetry and Hosea
many short, often disparate, units which were combined into the present books long after at least some of the units were composed.12 The value of this description as a title, however, is much less firmly founded. One may, indeed must, still ask, 'Anthology of what?' The mere fact of being a collection is not itself enough to offer any comparative insights. Is it useful to compare prophecy simply to other anthologies, regardless of content? Overholt himself uses this generic designation only to make a historical point: that the prophetic books really were written by prophets.13 He draws no interpretative conclusions, which may indicate how little interpretative value this classification holds. The fact is, it is not easy to decide where the Latter Prophets fit or to what they should be compared. Certain portions of the individual books do invite some specific comparisons with non-prophetic books: curses, hymns, laments, parables and lawsuits all may be extracted from their prophetic settings and compared with examples from other texts.14 But these provide no real help. Any text may borrow elements from other genres for limited purposes, but these borrowed forms may easily be unrelated to the genre of the text itself. A lyrical passage in a novel does not make the novel a poem. Many compare the prophetic books of the Hebrew Bible to prophetic writings from surrounding ancient Near Eastern nations, most frequently to the prophetic letters discovered at Man.15 Certainly many genuine insights have come from the comparison, 12. For one well executed and influential summary of this description, see J. Lindblom, 'The Work and Methods of the Collectors', in Prophecy in Ancient Israel (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg, 1962), pp. 239-78. See also the discussion in Chapter 5 of this work. 13. This really is Overholt's argument. How he arrives at this historical conclusion by way of Hirsch (whom he cites extensively) is a puzzle which would confound Hirsch as much as anyone. At any rate, it puzzles Robert Carroll in his response article, 'Whose Prophet? Whose History? Whose Social Reality? Troubling the Interpretative Community Again: Notes towards a Response to T.W. Overholt's Critique', JSOT4Z (1990), pp. 33-49. 14. For a survey of borrowed forms in prophetic literature, see C. Westermann, Basic Forms of Prophetic Speech (trans. H.C. White; Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1967), pp. 194-204. 15. The bibliography is extensive. See J.-M. Durand, 'Les textes prophetiques' (Archives epistolaire de Mari, I/I; ARM, XXVI; Paris: Editions Recherche sur les Civilisations, 1988), pp. 377-412; F. Ellermeier, Prophetic in Mari and Israel (Theologische und Orientalistische Arbeiten, I; Herzberg: Erwin Jungfer, 1968); A. Malamat, 'A Forerunner of Biblical Prophecy: The Mari Documents', in P.D. Miller, Jr, P.D. Hanson and S.D. McBride (eds.), Ancient Israelite Religion (Festschrift
1. Genre and Interpretation
15
particularly as regards the role of the so-called messenger formula ("Thus says...') in prophecy. However, none of the prophetic letters from Man can compare with even the shortest or simplest prophetic book of the Hebrew Bible in length or complexity. As striking as it may be to many to find a few examples of similar formulas at work in Mari and Israel, it is asking too much of these brief epistles that they should define the genre of Isaiah. In the end, one cannot help sympathizing with those who say that prophecy is prophecy, and that is the end of it. No truly analogous extrabiblical text appears to exist. What then can be done? Generic analysis of the prophets appears impossible, or worse, pointless, but only at the most specific level. As Hirsch says, the most significant generic comparisons are made at the most specific level—one will understand an English manor house mystery better by comparing it to another English manor house mystery than to an American tough guy private eye mystery— but if no analogies exist at that specific level of similarity, then one must retreat to more general categories (e.g., mystery) until some basis for comparison is discovered. Eventually, as the process continues, one arrives at a foundational level inhabited by a very few universal genres, than which nothing more basic can be conceived. As already noted, Hirsch has no interest in 'universal' genres, preferring to focus on the 'intrinsic' genres represented by individual works. But that such universal forms exist is difficult to deny. By way of example, one need only consider the proverb. From the Hebrew ^00 to the Chinese four-character saying to the French medieval proverb to the wisdom of Poor Richard's Almanack, proverbs are present in every age and every language and are amazingly similar in form and substance. The same could be said of such universal sub-genres as folk tales, love songs and fables. No more useful list of the most general genres has been made than that of Aristotle. Drawing from the Poetics and adding the one verbal genre to which he devoted a whole volume, one has a brief list: (1) epic, (2) drama, (3) lyric and (4) rhetoric.16 Others might P.M. Cross; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987), pp. 33-52, among scores of others. 16. Aristotle, On Poetry and Music (trans. S.H. Butcher; New York: Macmillan, 1956), I, p. 3 and throughout; see also Aristotle's Treatise on Rhetoric (trans. T. Buckley; London: George Bell & Sons, 1894). For a twentieth-century analysis which updates but essentially leaves unchanged these Aristotelian categories, see N. Frye, "Theory of Genres,' in Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (Princeton: University Press, 1957), pp. 243-337.
16
Prophecy, Poetry and Hosea
easily be added—prose narrative, for instance, has much in common with epic but really deserves its own place—but these are enough for now. These genres are indeed very general, perhaps so general as to have limited comparative use, but before any more specific comparison may be made, these at least must be recognized. One must identify a work as a poem before the specific genre 'pastoral elegy' has any meaning. Returning to the original question, the genre of prophecy, particularly of Hosea, one discovers that in fact interpreters cannot agree even at this most basic level. To put briefly what will soon be expounded upon in greater length, prophecy is generally identified as either rhetoric or poetry or both. An interpreter who has not resolved even this most basic of questions—what type of communication is the prophetic book— begins at a considerable disadvantage. Before proceeding with the analysis of the basic generic disagreement between rhetoric and lyric, a few parameters must be set. First, as should already be apparent from the foregoing, the concern here is with the prophetic book, not with the individual prophetic oracle (or poem). Even granting that each prophetic book consists.of various separate units, at some point in its history those units were arranged according to some principle or other and shaped into the discrete book, at least close and perhaps identical to the book as it now appears in the canon. The study of the individual units remains a valid and useful endeavor, but as is now frequently acknowledged, the study of the whole is at least equally valid and useful.17 This is not to suggest that no analysis of individual passages will be done here, only that all such analyses will be used to draw conclusions about the entire book. The second qualification stems from the first. Where the focus is on the completed book, no emphasis need be put on the distinction between oral and written literature. The book is, by definition, a written document. Many have laid considerable stress on the originally oral nature of the prophetic books. Such an emphasis is by no means unwarranted or without interpretive value for the exegesis of individual units within the books. No matter how many oral stages may have preceded a book, however, if that book is studied as a whole, as the total compilation of the individual speeches or poems, it must be read as a written, not an oral, composition. The editorial attention which has given shape to the 17. For a representative statement of this thesis from its most influential proponent, see B.S. Childs, 'The Canonical Shape of the Prophetic Literature,' Int. 32 (1978), pp. 46-55.
1. Genre and Interpretation
17
book is the attention of a writer, not a speaker. For this reason, among others, Michael O'Connor's comment that 'orality does not help or hinder the close reading of the text' is correct.18 Dealing with a book as a whole necessarily precludes some of the attention to minutiae in which so much prior research has immersed itself. For instance, much of what follows will have to do with poetry, but it is not our purpose here to describe every device or pattern of Hebrew verse, except insofar as those devices help to define the genre. Enumerations of Hebrew poetic devices have been done and will prove useful, but they are not the concern here.19 Indeed, at least at the start, very little will be said of prior research into the prophetic books. A basic premise of this investigation is that most of that study has skipped a step, has gone right to micro-analysis without first understanding the genre of the books, even at the most basic level. That initial step, with which too few deal seriously before diving into the many individual complexities of the prophets, is where I shall begin.
18. M. O'Connor, Hebrew Verse Structure (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1980), p. 42. 19. The most exhaustive listings of Hebrew poetic devices are in W.G.E. Watson, Classical Hebrew Poetry: A Guide to Its Techniques (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1983) and L. Alonso-Schockel, A Manual of Hebrew Poetics (trans. A. Geoffrey; Subsidia Biblica, 11; Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1988).
Chapter 2
RHETORIC AND POETRY Music and poetry, which are.. .examples of sentiment, have not much to do with Truth, which is the main object of Religion. —John Henry Cardinal Newman1 The nature of art is poetry. The nature of poetry, in turn, is the founding of truth. —Martin Heidegger2
From Aristotle's brief list of foundational genres—epic, drama, lyric and rhetoric—two may be dealt with quickly. Few if any would identify prophecy as epic or prose narrative. Though many of the prophetic books contain narrative sections of various lengths, and though Jeremiah and Ezekiel may even be outlined biographically (and biography is one sub-genre of narrative), narrative is by no one's estimate the controlling element of the Latter Prophets. Few also would hesitate long over the possibility that prophecy is drama. John D.W. Watts, indeed, proposes that Isaiah should be read as a divine drama in twelve acts, and his student Paul House has made similar claims about Zephaniah, but these hypotheses have yet to prove convincing.3 They are certainly interesting, but the various shifts that have been found necessary to make the books conform to the notion of drama soon make it difficult to suspend disbelief. Watts, for instance, assigns Isa. 11.1-10 to no less than five speakers—the chorus, an 'interlocutor', Yahweh, a 'spokesman' and a 1. J.H. Newman, The Idea of a University: Defined and Illustrated (repr.; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976 [1852]), p. 42. 2. M. Heidegger, 'The Origin of the Work of Art', in Poetry, Language, Thought (trans. A. Hofstadter; New York: Harper & Row, 1971), p. 75. 3. J.D.W. Watts, Isaiah 1-33 (WBC; Waco, TX: Word Books, 1985), pp. xxviixxxiv; P.R. House, Zephaniah: A Prophetic Drama (Sheffield: Almond Press, 1988), pp. 44-51.
2. Rhetoric and Poetry
19
'monarchist'—dividing between verses where no apparent division exists (e.g. vv. 2 and 3).4 Much can be learned from these endeavors, particularly from their stress on reading the book as a whole and from their attention to the different speakers within the prophetic books, but the larger argument remains tenuous. After all, various voices and dialogue are not unique to drama. As Harold Fisch argues concerning the Song of Solomon, also often called drama, 'The poem manifestly lacks the shape of a drama... What we really have are impassioned voices rather than characters'.5 Fisch identifies the Song of Solomon as a lyric poem. His reasoning fits the prophets as well: though often dramatic, they lack the shape of drama. Prophecy as Rhetoric Perhaps one reason that such experiments as Watts's fail to capture much support is that most interpreters have long since accepted the last of the above genres as correct: rhetoric. The Latter Prophets are collections (Overholt's 'anthologies') of discursive speeches: sermons.6 To a large extent, this way of reading the prophetic books is founded in the nineteenth-century critical stress on history. One exemplar, the great Abraham Kuenen, argued in 1877 that the traditional Christian reading of the prophets as foretellings of Christ, pure and simple, was no longer acceptable. Instead, the appropriate study of the prophetic books would center on the historical study of the prophets themselves in their historical settings. That being the case, the primary resource for such study is not the prophetic writings but rather the autobiographical and biographical narratives about the prophets. Since the historical accounts of prophets in the Hebrew Bible stress their role as oral messengers, the prophetic books should be seen as the prophets' own collections of 'prophetical preaching' or 'discourse intended to admonish or arouse'.7 The first question to ask when interpreting a prophetic passage is not its context in the book in which it appears but its historical context: When 4. Watts, Isaiah 1-33, pp. 167-68. 5. H. Fisch, 'Psalms: The Limits of Subjectivity', in Poetry with a Purpose: Biblical Poetics and Interpretation (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University, 1988), p. 104. 6. See above, pp. 15-16. 7. A. Kuenen, The Prophets and Prophecy in Israel: An Historical and Critical Enquiry (trans. Adam Milroy; repr.; Amsterdam: Philo, 1969 [1877]), p. 26.
20
Prophecy, Poetry and Hosea
and to whom did the prophet preach this sermon? All interpretation proceeds from this historical basis. The method is this: (1) To understand the prophetic books requires that one understand the historical prophets; (2) to understand the historical prophets requires that one begin with the narratives about the prophets, not the prophetic passages which dominate the books; (3) these narratives describe the prophets as divine messengers and often show them addressing individuals or groups; therefore, the prophetic books are collections of such speeches. Kuenen hardly originated this historical method, but he represents it as well as anyone. Since his time, the method and its presuppositions have become so commonplace that few writers bother to defend or even acknowledge them. Virtually anything written about prophets in the past century shares these assumptions. A few brief examples should suffice. Lindblom, in his survey of ancient Israelite prophecy, finds three general types of discourse in the prophetic books: oracles (which he never fully defines), sermons the vast majority of prophetic literature) and songs.8 Later, though, he describes only two sorts of material in the prophetic books: narratives and speeches. The latter category evidently encompasses all the types of discourse he had earlier listed. His chosen model of this category is Jeremiah's prose temple sermon as it appears in Jeremiah 7 and 26, and like Kuenen, he argues that the first step to interpretation of the prophetic speech is the recovery of its historical context.9 Form criticism, to which one would expect to turn for generic analysis of biblical prophecy, reaches the same conclusions. Claus Westermann, in his Basic Forms of Prophetic Speech, discovers the central form of all prophecy by analyzing the prophetic speeches as they appear in the Former Prophets, in the historical narratives. This form—the 'Judgment Speech to Individuals'—is, he admits, much less common in the Latter Prophets, at least in the pure form that he describes, but he nevertheless considers it the form on which all other prophetic forms are grounded.10 Gene Tucker, another prominent form critic, disagrees somewhat with Westermann's conclusion, but he reaches his own by a similar method. He too begins with narrative—in his case, prophetic call accounts—and, though he feels that the basic prophetic form is a different sort of speech 8. J. Lindblom, Prophecy in Ancient Israel (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg, 1962), pp. 152-53. 9. Lindblom, Prophecy, p. 223. 10. C. Westermann, Prophetic Speech, pp. 142-47.
2. Rhetoric and Poetry
21
than Westermann describes, he agrees that the prophetic passages are speeches." This is generic classification by default. That is, the category 'rhetoric' adheres to the prophetic books almost secondhand, as a result of historical study, sometimes historical study in other books entirely, such as Kings. The historical prophets being preachers, the prophetic books must be records of their preaching. Nevertheless, by whatever method, rhetoric has become the established paradigm. Before examining the value of the generic designation, one must ask: What exactly is rhetoric? What are its features? Having begun with Aristotle, there is no reason not to continue with him to understand rhetoric. Defined by purpose, rhetoric is discourse for the sake of persuasion, though Aristotle says true rhetoric will not try to persuade an audience of a falsehood—that is sophistry—but will make plain the inherent persuasiveness of each proposition.12 Even accepting this ethical qualification, the goal of rhetoric is persuasion. For this reason, rhetoric depends on proof. Aristotle describes two kinds of proof used in rhetoric: example and enthymem, by which latter term he means rhetorical syllogism (I.ii.8). In short, then, rhetoric may proceed either inductively (by example) or deductively (by enthymem). In terms of definition, the type of proof is less important than the fact that rhetoric and proof are inseparable (see also Ill.xiii). Where there is no proof—or, at least the appearance of proof—admitting sophistry into the larger category), there is no rhetoric. One more feature of rhetoric must be treated, though this requirement is less a defining element of rhetoric itself than a defining element of good rhetoric: rhetoric requires clarity. 'Let excellence of [rhetorical] style be defined to consist in its being clear' (III.ii.1). Thus good rhetoric will use only words which are in general use, eschewing exotic words (yAATToc) and neologisms (III.ii.5).13 The rhetorician must avoid equivocation (III.ii.7), and perhaps most of all must 'not appear to speak in a 11. Tucker, 'Prophetic Speech', pp. 31-45. Similar conclusions are drawn by other form critics. See R.R. Wilson, 'Form-Critical Investigation of the Prophetic Literature: The Present Situation' (SBLSP, 1; 1973), pp. 100-127, and W.E. March, 'Prophecy', in J.H. Hayes (ed.), Old Testament Form Criticism (San Antonio, TX: Trinity University Press, 1974), pp. 143-57. 12. Aristotle, Rhetoric, I.i.14. Subsequent references in this chapter will appear in the text.) 13. Contrast the Poetics, XXH; Aristotle, Poetry and Music, pp. 29-32.
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Prophecy, Poetry and Hosea
studied manner' (III.ii.4). In other words, rhetorical language calls attention to its subject matter, never to itself. What is true of diction is true also of syntax: words must be arranged in the least ambiguous fashion (III.v), The same strictures apply to the devices used. Rhetoric may use metaphors, for instance, but these must be tightly controlled so as not to confuse or to draw too much attention to themselves (III.ii.9-13). There can be no persuasion except where hearers understand (or believe they understand) the message. Aristotle wrote of oratorical rhetoric, but his basic definition and most of his other comments apply to written discourse as well. Indeed, Northrop Frye, after discussing the literary genres, concludes his generally Aristotelian essay "Theory of Genres' with a section on "The Rhetoric of Non-Literary Prose', which freely mixes oral and written discourse.14 Frye divides rhetoric into more sub-categories than Aristotle did: Aristotle found only three sub-genres (I.iii) whereas Frye ranges expansively from oratory to bureaucratic double-speak. Moreover, Frye allows for more types of 'proof, including such sophistic devices as attack and invective.15 Nevertheless, the defining features remain the same in both oral and written rhetoric. Both intend to persuade; both require proof; and the purposes of both are best served by clarity. Aristotle and Frye make specific mention of one characteristic device of rhetoric: repetition. The verbatim repetition of a word or phrase serves, above all, the purpose of clarity. Careful not to let a central idea fade from the audience's memory, the rhetorician repeats it. Repeated often enough, at significant moments, the phrase may serve a structural purpose as well. Thus Frye speaks of 'the emphatic patterns of repetition...characteristic of rhetorical prose'.16 In many cases, the repetition becomes a part of the persuasive strategy, as occurs in Antony's funeral speech in Julius Caesar, where 'Brutus is an honorable man', begins as a tribute and grows in ironic power until it becomes a condemning mantra. Aristotle correctly observes that such repetitions are more evident and thus more effective in oration than in writing (III.xii.34), but the difference is one of degree only. This, in brief, is rhetoric, to which category so many automatically assign the prophetic books. As presented here, 'rhetoric' is a relatively limited category of utterance, and as such must be distinguished from two 14. Frye, Anatomy, pp. 326-37. 15. Frye, Anatomy, pp. 327-31. 16. Frye, Anatomy, p. 327.
2. Rhetoric and Poetry
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more general uses of the term. Following the lead of James Muilenburg, biblical interpreters tend to speak of any stylistic analysis of a text as 'rhetorical analysis', without regard to whether the text has persuasion as its end.17 Muilenburg's own stylistic analyses are always insightful; his nomenclature is regrettably imprecise.18 In secular literary study too, 'rhetoric' is often used in a more general sense. Wayne Booth speaks of the 'rhetoric of fiction', referring to the persuading that is necessary in a novel—persuading the reader to like a hero and dislike a villain, for example.19 While these broad uses of the term have evidently proved useful, rhetoric as a genre—describing an utterance whose entire purpose is persuasion—is a much more restrictive category. Analysis of prophecy as rhetoric in this limited sense must wait until later chapters. For now, it is worth noting that many recent interpreters have begun to question this traditional classification. First, some are no longer satisfied with its historical basis (the biblical narratives show prophets preaching, and so the prophetic books must be rhetoric). F.E. Deist argues that the old Romantic historicism has played out. If it was ever valid to begin all interpretation with history and to pursue it solely for historical goals, it is so no longer.20 Graeme Auld, in a study of the eighth-century prophets, attacks an intermediate step in the usual thesis. Without arguing about what historical prophets were like, he wonders whether the authors of those books were prophets.21 Surveying two 17. 'Rhetorical criticism' was auspiciously inaugurated by Muilenburg's presidential address to the Society of Biblical Literature: 'Form Criticism and Beyond', JBL 88 (1969), pp. 1-18. The term first appears on p. 8. 18. Another who finds Muilenburg's use of the term to be too broad is Y. Gitay, Prophecy and Persuasion: A Study of Isaiah 40-48 (Forum Theologiae Linguisticae, 14; Bonn: Linguistica Biblica, 1981), p. 36. As Gitay eventually defines rhetoric as communication whose words are chosen 'to appeal to the audience' (p. 36), he is hardly a model of precision himself. 19. W.C. Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2nd edn, 1983). M. Sternberg uses rhetoric in this sense in The Poetics of Biblical Narrative: Ideological Literature and the Drama of Reading (Bloornington, IN: Indiana University, 1987), pp. 441-515. This wide sense of the word might be what is meant in such books as DJ.A. Clines, D.M. Gunn and A.J. Hauser, Art and Meaning: Rhetoric in Biblical Literature (JSOTSup, 19; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1982). 20. F.E. Deist, 'The Prophets: Are We Heading for a Paradigm Switch?', in V. Fritz, K.-F. Pohlmann and H.-C. Schmitt (eds.), Prophet und Prophetenbuch (Festschrift Otto Kaiser; BZAW, 185; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1989), pp. 1-18. 21. A.G. Auld, 'Prophets Through the Looking Glass: Between Writings and Moses', JSOT27 (1983), pp. 3-23.
24
Prophecy, Poetry and Hosea
representative terms for prophet, R*1?] and nfn, he finds little sympathy for prophets or seers among the writers of Amos, Hosea, Micah, and Isaiah 1-39. He concludes that the early 'prophets' did not claim that title but instead were 'inspired men' who had the title assigned to them later by others. Thus, 'sound method requires us to start our quest from [the texts], and not from any institution or office'.22 Auld's argument by way of word study is hardly persuasive, as H.G.M. Williamson demonstrates in his response,23 but Auld nevertheless asks valid questions: Do we really know that these books are by prophets such as appear in Kings? Is it valid to assume that Hosea, for instance, is a book of rhetoric just because Elijah was a preacher? More and more, critics have begun to doubt the historical conclusions so long taken for granted in the study of the prophets.24 This alone might cast doubt on the traditional generic designation of the prophetic books as rhetoric. The conclusion was reached by means of history; if that history is dubious, then so is the conclusion. An even better reason to doubt the conclusion, however, is methodological: no genre should be decided by means of external information. To decide a book's genre on the basis of externally derived information about its author sounds reasonable but is methodologically suspect. Would anyone argue that D.H. Lawrence's Selected Poems must be a novel because all prior information about Lawrence indicates that he was a novelist? To do so is to ignore the work itself. Auld is right: sound method begins with the written words, not with the assumed role of the writer. When we turn to the words themselves, other doubts arise. The prophets frequently violate the rules of rhetoric, most thoroughly the precept that good rhetoric should always be clear. Even those who argue that the books are collections of rhetorical prose admit that the prophets are often extremely wnclear. Lindblom, for instance, notes that prophetic oracles—the heart of the prophetic preaching—are 'often intentionally obscure or ambiguous'.25 Prophetic passages leap from idea to idea with22. Auld, 'Prophets', p. 14. 23. H.G.M. Williamson, 'A Response to A.G. Auld', JSOT27 (1983), pp. 33-39, especially pp. 33-34. 24. See, for instance, R.P. Carroll, 'Prophecy and Society,' in R.E. Clements (ed.), The World of Ancient Israel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 204-205,207, where Carroll systematically argues that no reliable historical data exist regarding the Hebrew prophets. 25. Lindblom, Prophecy, p. 152.
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out discernible transitions, contradict themselves willy-nilly and make bald assertions without proof. If this is rhetoric, it appears to be very poor rhetoric. The opinion of one classically trained rhetorician, the young Augustine, that the Scriptures were 'unworthy of comparison with the grand style of Cicero' and filled with 'absurdities' is particularly true of the prophetic books.26 The difficulties can be resolved by neither textual nor cultural answers. While certain obscure words and phrases may perhaps be clarified by slight textual emendation (e.g., Hosea 4.4; 8.6), such means can hardly explain every difficulty, certainly not such anti-rhetorical peculiarities as direct contradictions within a passage (e.g., Hosea 2.9, 14). The cultural answer—that rhetoric in Ancient Israel was just different from rhetoric in Aristotle's Greece or in Augustine's Milan or in modern society—is just as weak.27 Jeremiah, after all, preserves examples of perfectly acceptable Aristotelian rhetoric (Lindblom's paradigm example of prophetic rhetoric, the prose temple sermon of Jeremiah 7 and 26) side by side with more typically turgid, truncated and altogether puzzling prophetic writing. There is no way to avoid the conclusion that on both external (historical) and internal grounds, the normal generic designation of the prophets as rhetoric is suspect. It may not be wrong, but it is certainly worth re-evaluating, and other generic designations are thereby worth exploring. Prophecy as Poetry One need not look far for another generic label that has been applied to the prophetic books: poetry. If most interpreters tacitly assume that prophecy equals rhetoric, those same interpreters will almost invariably speak of most prophetic passages as poems, or at least as 'poetic'. As commonplace as it is now, however, this designation has not always been an option. For most of the history of biblical interpretation, the idea that divine revelation could be expressed in lyrical form has seemed vaguely blasphemous. The assumption, baldly stated by Cardinal Newman in the passage used as an epigraph to this chapter, was that poetry's goal was to give pleasure and expressed only 'sentiment'. Truth, on the other 26. Augustine, The Confessions of St. Augustine (trans. R. Warner; New York: New American Library, 1963), p. 57 (ffl.v.l) and p. 118 (VI.v.2). 27. See, for instance, Lindblom, Prophecy, p. 156; Kuenen, Prophets and Prophecy, p. 62; and Tucker, 'Prophetic Speech', p. 34.
26
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hand, was best expressed by didactic prose, preferably that of Paul, Augustine or Aquinas. Consequently, prophets were never called poets; instead, poets were called prophets.28 In 1753, Bishop Robert Lowth presented his justly celebrated lectures De sacra poesi Hebraeorum, in which he identified and gave names to several different types of poetic parallelism. It is often overlooked in the ubiquitous summaries and restatements of Lowth's categories that Lowth pursues the topic in the context of arguing that the prophetic books are poetic.29 He so argues on several grounds, first by etymology, pointing out that the word for prophet, K'33, also refers to the temple singers in 1 Chronicles 25.1, and that Kto, 'oracle' is used for various poetically arranged sets of proverbs (Prov. 30.1; 31.1).30 Next he introduces his often reproduced discussion of parallelism as a Hebrew poetic device at work in the prophetic books (Lecture XIX). Finally he describes the poetic obscurity and ornamentation of the prophetic poetry.31 In two hundred years of interpretation since then, Lowth's assessment of the prophets as poetry has remained as enduring and as essentially unchanged as his description of parallelism. The prophets, all Lowthians agree, are frequently poetic. If it should appear oddly contradictory that most exegetes agree that the prophets are rhetoric and yet nevertheless add that they are poetic in form, this is because, by any reasonable standard, it is in fact oddly contradictory. Rhetoric and poetry are, after all, two distinct genres: two genres, moreover, which even upon casual consideration appear different to the point of being irreconcilable. How exactly do rhetoric and poetry differ? Rhetoric we know; what is poetry? To attempt a definition of poetry is daunting, even to a specialist. Still, much of what is known about poetry is known by all, unconsciously perhaps, but known all the same. Nearly everyone feels able to distinguish between poetry and prose, and usually will agree with the specialists. Poetic speech seems to be one of 28. An exhaustive survey of interpreters' attitudes towards the phenomenon of biblical poetry in general, specifically of biblical parallelism, comprises the final five chapters of J.L. Kugel, The Idea of Biblical Poetry: Parallelism and Its History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981). 29. R. Lowth, Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews (trans. G. Gregory; ed. C.E. Stowe; Andover: Codman, 1829), pp. 157-59 (Lecture XIX, 'The Prophetic Poetry Is Sententious'). 30. Lowth, Sacred Poetry, p. 149 (Lecture XWI, 'Of Prophetic Poetry'). 31. Lowth, Sacred Poetry, pp. 168-70 (Lecture XX, "The General Characteristics of the Prophetic Poetry').
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those genres which all acquire along with their native languages.32 Perhaps the discussion here, relying as much on intuition as on research, may not be too far off the mark. One preliminary comment may be useful. As every communicative act has both a sender and a receiver, the message may be described from either perspective, and the two descriptions may differ considerably. A speech might be described by the orator in terms of its outline, its chosen diction, the devices used and so on; and described by the audience in terms of its persuasiveness, or lack thereof. To define poetry from the former perspective only would be to commit what Wimsatt and Beardsley have called 'The Intentional Fallacy', the notion that the sole determinant in either classifying or understanding a work is the mind of the author.33 At the same time, to concentrate solely on the latter would be to commit 'The Affective Fallacy', the idea that only the reader's response to a work counts.34 Both perspectives must be admitted to the discussion.
Poetry Defined by Content A few recurrent, almost traditional, themes appear in the various attempts to define poetry. Whereas in most academic discussions, traditional notions are mentioned so that their apparent plausibility may be shown to be false, these recurrent themes generally appear implausible, even absurd, but upon closer examination disclose grains of truth. Not least among these is the idea that poetry may be defined in terms of its subject matter. At various times in history, when poetic practice was more rigorously controlled than it is now, some themes were deemed 'poetic' and others were not. As Roman Jakobson puts it, 'The traditional requisites—the moon, a lake, a nightingale, a cliff, a rose, a castle, and the like—are well known'.35 Even now, many sense that a poem is, or at least ought to be, about nature, beauty or romantic love. Such a view 32. M.M. Bakhtin, 'Speech Genres', p. 78. See above, pp. 13-14. 33. W.K. Wimsatt, Jr, and M.C. Beardsley, 'The Intentional Fallacy', in W.K. Wimsatt, Jr (ed.), The Verbal Icon: Studies in the Meaning of Poetry (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1954), pp. 3-18. 34. W.K. Wimsatt, Jr, and M.C. Beardsley, The Affective Fallacy', in Wimsatt (ed.), Verbal Icon, pp. 21-39. 35. R. Jakobson, 'What Is Poetry?', in K. Pomorska and S. Rudy (eds.), Language in Literature (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1987), p. 368.
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is undoubtedly absurd, at least as an attempt to define the genre of poetry. Not only may poems deal with subjects which taken by themselves seem distinctly non-'poetic' (a leech-gatherer, ajar in Tennessee), but the 'poetic' themes may quite easily be treated in other genres (a French neo-classical essay on Love, a scientific treatise on a flower). Nevertheless, the identification of poetry with certain subjects can hardly be dismissed. Why are such subjects as beauty and romantic love so often treated in poetry? What is the common element? For a host of writers, the common element is strong emotion, or as many put it: Feeling. Certain subjects tend to evoke stronger feelings than others, and these subjects are best described by a genre which they consider to be feeling incarnate. Wordsworth's famous dictum in his 'Preface' to Lyrical Ballads in 1802—'For all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings'—comes immediately to mind.36 Wordsworth's sometime collaborator Coleridge, a more rigorous theorist than Wordsworth, agrees in this. He frequently speaks of poetry as the language of 'excitement'.37 Writers as diametrically opposed in other respects as John Stuart Mill and Ezra Pound concur. Mill, the rationalist, describes the very best poetry as that in which feeling is central and thought often obscured by the fragmented exuberance of the emotion.38 Pound distinguishes prose from poetry in this manner: You wish to communicate an idea and its modifications, an idea and a crowd of its effects, atmospheres, contradictions. You wish to question whether a certain formula works in every case, or in what percentage of cases, etc., etc., you get the Henry James novel. You wish to communicate an idea and its concomitant emotions, or an emotion and its concomitant ideas, or a sensation and its derivative emotions, or an impression that is emotive, etc., etc., etc. You begin with the
36. W. Wordsworth, 'Preface to Lyrical Ballads', in M.H. Abrams et al. (eds.), The Norton Anthology of English Literature (New York: W.W. Norton, 4th edn, 1979), II, pp. 163-64. Wordsworth actually argues that the subject of the poem is unimportant so long as it is imbued with proper poetic feeling (p. 165), but the essential point, that poetry is defined by emotion, remains unchanged. 37. S.T. Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, in J. Engell and W.J. Bate (eds.), The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Bollingen Series, 75; Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983), II, p. 65 and often. 38. J.S. Mill, 'Thoughts on Poetry and Its Varieties', in Dissertations and Discussions: Political, Philosophical, and Historical (repr.; New York: Henry Holt, 1873 [1859]), I, pp. 109-10 (Originally two essays—'What Is Poetry?' and 'The Two Kinds of Poetry'—both written in 1833.)
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yeowl and the bark, and you develop into the dance and into music, and into music with words, and finally into words with music, and finally into words with a vague adumbration of music, words suggestive of music... 39
Certainly more than one definition of poetry is implied here, but for now it is enough to note that for Pound, poetry begins with emotion. To define poetry in terms of its emotive content is less obviously absurd than to define it in terms of its referential content. Still, feeling alone is equally unsuitable as a definition of poetry. To begin with, to stress feeling above all is to commit the Affective Fallacy, to define the written text solely in terms of its effect on the reader. Poetry is that which inspires deep emotion. Wordsworth, of course, argued that poetry begins with the emotions of the poet, but even he added that the poem itself was not written during the heat of emotion but rather after the poet 'had also thought long and deeply'.40 In other words, poetry is the calculated attempt to communicate 'the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings' to the reader. Any useful definition of poetry should also consider that calculating. To describe the emotion alone is insufficient. The affective focus is insufficient for simpler reasons as well. In fact, not all poetry lives up to Wordsworth's emotional demands. In English, much twentieth-century poetry and virtually all eighteenth-century poetry are marked rather by restraint than by emotion. Are these then less poetic? Some Hebrew psalms resound with exuberant praise, others offer calm and measured moral advice. Moreover, other genres may express a great a deal of feeling. Poetry and feeling are neither the same nor are they inseparable. But the identification of poetry with feeling does help to set some parameters for a definition: a satisfactory definition of poetry should explain why the genre is so frequently chosen to describe deeply felt objects and to communicate deep emotion. Poetry Defined by Indifference to Content Another traditional argument in the effort to define poetry stands at the opposite extreme from the first. For many, poetry is that which may deal with any content at all, or none. What is important, the argument goes, is not what is presented or if anything is presented, but rather the way the presentation is made. Art, and poetry in particular, does not
39. E. Pound, "The Serious Artist', in T.S. Eliot (ed.), The Literary Essays of Ezra Pound (Norfolk, CT: New Directions, 1954), p. 51. 40. Wordsworth, 'Preface', p. 164.
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have to present any external subject at all, but rather by calling attention to its own techniques, its manner of presenting that subject matter, ultimately presents itself as a work of art. In Archibald MacLeish's frequently quoted comment, 'A poem should not mean, but be'.41 A poem does not exist to communicate some external idea but exists rather for its own purposes. 'Art for art's sake' goes the call, trumpeted especially by poets themselves, frustrated by polite inquiries of 'What does it mean?' and frustrated still more by well-meaning critical apologists (such as J.S. Mill in the essay cited) who seek to show that in spite of appearances poetry really does serve some social or moral purpose. In Pound's astringent words, Art never asks anybody to do anything, or to think anything, or to be anything. It exists as the trees exist, you can admire, you can sit in the shade, you can pick bananas, you can cut firewood, you can do as you jolly well please.42
Certainly Pound's prose is enlivening, as certainly as it is hyperbolic. Still, despite the probable excesses of such rodomontade—and the still worse artistic excesses which have been committed by some of those who cry 'Art for art's sake'—one cannot help feeling that some truth lies beneath it all. To the extent that a poem seeks seriously to discourse on any external subject, the poem seems less of a poem. Dr Johnson's 'Vanity of Human Wishes' may contain much of interest, but when one compares it to Poe's virtually subject-free poem, 'The Bells', one inevitably senses that the latter is somehow more 'poetic'. Psalm 8, not Psalm 15, represents the usual ideal of Hebrew poetry. What is it about poetry that shuns external purposes? One aesthetic theorist who describes this self-referential, as opposed to externally referential, action of poetry is Martin Heidegger. In his 1936 essay, 'The Origin of the Work of Art', Heidegger writes that the function of the art work, including the poem, is to set up a world. By that, Heidegger means that through the art work the object presented reveals its essential character, but also that the art work reveals itself, its own essential character. 'Towering up within itself, the work opens up a world and keeps it abidingly in force. To be a work means to set up a world.'43 41. A. MacLeish, 'Ars Poetica'. Anthologized frequently, here taken from A.W. Allison et at. (eds.). The Norton Anthology of Poetry (New York: W.W. Norton, 3rd edn, 1983), pp. 1027-28. 42. Pound, 'The Serious Artist', p. 46. 43. M. Heidegger, 'The Origin of the Work of Art', p. 44.
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This reflexive action of art stands in stark contrast to the action of equipment, that is, to everything that exists for an external purpose. Because it is determined by usefulness and serviceability, equipment takes into its service that of which it consists: the matter. In fabricating equipment—e.g. an ax—stone is used, and used up. It disappears into usefulness. The material is all the better and more suitable the less it resists perishing in the equipmental being of the equipment. By contrast the [art]-work, in setting up a world, does not cause the material to disappear, but rather causes it to come forth for the very first time and to come into the Open of the work's world.44
To extend the analogy, not only does the material of the ax disappear into the ax, but the completed ax itself disappears into its function. The woodcutter consciously considers the ax only when it grows blunt or in some other way resists its purpose, just as one thinks of one's shoes only when they pinch. But the art work, having no external function, does not hide but rather calls attention to its material and to itself. At the same time, though, the art-work 'sets forth the earth'. The 'earth', in Heidegger's idiosyncratic terminology, represents the perpetually hidden properties of a thing, those features which are sensed but never fully disclosed: the burden of a stone, the brightness of a color. 'The earth is essentially self-secluding. To set forth the earth means to bring it into the Open as the self-secluding.'45 Heidegger's argument is, for better or worse, more complex and certainly more abstruse than this summary, and to elaborate further would very likely only increase confusion, Heidegger's style of expression being rather self-concealing in its own right. One simple but profound point may be gleaned from this: the art work operates by means of an interplay between self-disclosure and self-concealment. On the one hand, it brings itself and its constituents to light, often in a startling way. On the other hand, even while the art work reveals its hidden self, themore obvious properties both of its subject and of itself are hidden and obscured. This reversal is what Heidegger means in the quote used as an epigraph to this chapter, that the nature of art, specifically the nature of poetry, is the founding of truth. "The setting-into-work of truth thrusts up the unfamiliar and extraordinary and at the same time thrusts down the ordinary and what we believe to be such.'46 44. Heidegger, 'The Origin of the Work of Art', p. 46. 45. Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art', p. 47. 46. Heidegger, 'The Origin of the Work of Art', p. 75.
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The self-revelation of art does not mean that the only proper subject of art is art itself. A poem after all may have some external referent— love, beauty, a leech-gatherer. The point is that the poem is not defined by that referent. The subject matter is irrelevent, as far as definition goes. One recognizes the poem by how it presents that subject and by the fact that in the process it presents itself as well. Heidegger writes from the perspective of the receiver, the one who beholds the work of art. The issue for him is above all how the art-work is experienced, not how it is executed. The argument may nevertheless be made from the sender's perspective as well. The Russian Formalist Victor Shklovsky does so in 'Art as Technique' (1917). The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they arc perceived and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects 'unfamiliar', to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged. Art is a way of experiencing the artfulness of an object; the object is not important.47
The artist, then, creates art by 'defamiliarizing' its subject matter so that it may be experienced as if for the first time. The techniques of defamiliarization include unexpected juxtapositions or novel perspectives (Shklovsky's own example is Tolstoy's story 'Kholstomer', in which a horse explains human behavior), and unfamiliar names for familiar things or familiar names shown to bear unfamiliar meanings.48 All of these techniques call attention to themselves, force the reader to acknowledge the presence of the unexpected. In the process, the technique becomes an end in itself. The work's devices are laid bare, and this laying bare, not any external referent, defines the art work. There remains only to narrow the focus from art as a whole to poetry. Heidegger and the Russian Formalists (and, for that matter, the AngloAmerican New Critics) all find poetry to be particularly representative of art defined this way. After all, a play or novel without any referents— that is, without characters or plot—is inconceivable, but poems without subject matter are not even surprising. Poe's poem 'The Bells' noted above, could be summarized as to content with something like, 'different bells make different sounds', but the poem itself, an extravagant clamor 47. V. Shklovsky, 'Art as Technique', in L.T. Lemon and M.J. Reis (trans. and eds.), Russian Formalist Criticism: Four Essays (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1965), p. 12 (Shklovsky's emphasis). 48. Shklovsky, 'Art as Technique', pp. 13-15.
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of rhythms and tones, is a clinic on verbal technique. Unlike rhetoric, in which language is equipmental in the sense that it should disappear behind its referent, poetry is not shy. The poem, more than any other form of verbal utterance, calls attention to itself in every word and to every word within itself. This calling of attention to itself; this self-disclosure defines poetry. Poeticity is present when the word is felt as a word and not a mere representation of the object being named or an outburst of emotion, when words and their composition, their meaning, their external and inner form, acquire a weight and value of their own instead of referring indifferently to reality.49
Poetry Defined by Its Devices When an English-speaking schoolchild begins to study poetry, the first and perhaps most difficult lesson to learn is that poetry is not defined as something that rhymes. Whether it be rhyme or meter or another 'poetic' scheme, the temptation is always strong to identify a poem by a device or class of devices. Among those most likely to succumb to temptation are critics of biblical poetry. Beginning with Lowth, biblical poetry has always been identified as writing marked by parallelism. Lowth, indeed, felt that biblical poetry had two distinguishing marks—to parallelism he added meter, since all poetry is written in numbers—but he conceded that the original meter was unrecoverable, and generations of his disciples have accepted his judgment.50 More recent writers added many poetic devices to the known repertory of the Hebrew poet, but parallelism has remained for most the essential identifying mark of biblical poetry. A moment's reflection is all that is necessary to reject any definition of poetry which depends solely upon any one device, or even any group of devices. None of the usual devices work. However characteristic rhyme might be in the history of English poetry, not all English poetry rhymes, nor is rhyme restricted to poetry. However characteristic parallelism is in Hebrew poetry, not every Hebrew poetic line is parallel,51 49. Jakobson, 'What Is Poetry?', p. 378. 50. Lowth, Sacred Poetry, pp. 31, 35-36 (Lecture III, 'The Hebrew Poetry Is Metrical'). The most complete discussion of parallelism, as noted above, is Lecture XIX, 'The Prophetic Poetry Is Sententious', pp. 154-66. 51. Witness the almost desperate efforts of the editors of the Biblia hebraica stuttgartensia, Lowthian to the core, to make difficult passages conform to Lowth's categories, typographically if possible, by emendation if not. For instance, Hosea 4.10 begins with a clearly parallel phrase:
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nor is parallelism confined to poetic passages.52 J.S. Mill writes, 'It has often been asked, What is Poetry? And many and various are the answers which have been returned. The vulgarest of all...is that which confounds poetry with metrical composition',53 His argument, and perhaps his scorn, applies just as well to all definitions of poetry in terms of devices. But if poetry is too broad a genre to be restricted to any one device or class of devices, it is nevertheless difficult to separate poetry from its tropes. Rhyme and meter are characteristic of most poetry in English; parallelism is even more characteristic of biblical Hebrew poetry. Although no one could seriously demand that all poetry contain any single device, one may be able to argue that all poetry is distinguished by devices which serve a single distinctly poetic purpose. What then is that purpose? Gerard Manley Hopkins provides the answer in a fascinating university essay called 'Poetic Diction'. He says, 'The artificial part of poetry, perhaps we shall be right to say all artifice, reduces itself to the principle of parallelism'.54 Hopkins's 'principle' of parallelism, we must note, is distinct from the device of parallelism. Though he makes passing reference to the Hebrew poetic device, his own use of the term is much broader.
They will eat but they will not be satisfied; Fornicate but not give birth.
The end of v. 10, though, seems as unparallel as it is syntactically baffling: For the LORD they have forsaken to keep.
Elliger, the BHS editor, proposes first to do away with the offending final clause, then tries to force it typographically into (parallel) line by grafting part of v. 11 onto the end as the object of ~\®lfo. Some lines are born parallel, some achieve parallelism, and others have parallelism thrust upon them. 52. J.L. Kugel has demonstrated how often parallel forms occur in both narrative and in direct speech in the Hebrew Bible. He speaks of 'middle-ground' utterances, midway between poetry and prose, which are elevated by parallelism but which never presume to be poetry. The phrase appears in 'Poets and Prophets: An Overview', in J.L. Kugel (ed.), Poetry and Prophecy: The Beginnings of a Literary Tradition (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990), p. 4, but the argument is most clearly presented as the second chapter of his Idea of Biblical Poetry. 53. Mill, 'Thoughts on Poetry', p. 89. 54. G.M. Hopkins, 'Poetic Diction', in H. House (ed.), The Note-books and Papers of Gerard Manley Hopkins (London: Oxford University Press, 1937), p. 92.
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For Hopkins, the parallelism which distinguishes poetry is an answering rhythm incorporated into the fabric of the poem. One element, a word or a phrase or even a sound, having been presented, demands an answering word or phrase or sound. All the devices of poetry serve this function: the meter of one poetic line, for instance, must be answered by an equivalent or a dissonant meter in another line. If it is not, then the meter is pointless and will not even be noticed. One need only consider the usual list of poetic devices—alliteration, assonance and rhyme among many others—to recognize that all of them depend on at least two parts, one beginning the relation and another concluding it. The relation between the parallel elements may be either one of similarity (rhyme, for instance, or metaphor) or one of contrast (antithesis, for example). Hopkins did not originate this line of thought. Lowth himself, whose poetic insight should never be underestimated, comments that Hebrew poetry (or perhaps all poetry?) may have begun with antiphonal chanting, and he notes the use of the Hebrew root ms, 'answer', to refer to poetry.55 Hopkins, nevertheless, gave the notion its clearest exposition, both in the essay cited and in his platonic dialogue 'On the Origin of Beauty', and the idea that the 'principle of parallelism' is the denning element of poetry surely begins with Hopkins. One writer whose thought often corresponds to Hopkins's is the Russian Formalist Yuri Tynianov. In his book The Problem of Verse Language, Tynianov also notes the answering pattern of most poetic devices. For him the distinguishing feature of poetry is 'rhythm', which he defines as broadly as Hopkins defines parallelism. Indeed Tynianov's rhythm and Hopkins's parallelism are not easily distinguishable. Tynianov names the basic parts of the answering pattern: the initial element is the 'progressive' factor because it forces the reader to look ahead for the response, and the answering element is 'regressive' because it refers back to the initial element.56 As a description of how a poet may guide a reader, this analysis is profound beyond its simple expression. By far the most influential exponent of Hopkins's suggestion is Roman Jakobson. After giving credit to Hopkins, Jakobson writes, 'In poetry one syllable is equalized with any other syllable of the same sequence...Equivalence [is] the constitutive device
55. Lowth, Sacred Poetry, pp. 156-57 (Lecture XIX). 56. Y. Tynianov, The Problem of Verse Language (trans. M. Susa and B. Harvey; Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1981), pp. 53-54 and 120.
36
Prophecy, Poetry and Hosea
of the sequence'.57 This equivalence, or similarity 'superimposed on contiguity', may be achieved by any individual poetic device the poet chooses.58 The device does not matter so much as the purpose to which it tends, an answering, parallelistic rhythm. Without question, this underlying macro-device helps to explain why such micro-devices as alliteration, assonance and rhyme have always been so frequent and effective in poetry and so relatively rare in other genres. Other genres, after all, follow very different rhythms from this twice-gaited answering rhythm of poetry. All narrative and most drama must be denned in terms of plot, and plot, however tortuous it may be, however disjointed its presentation, has at heart a progressive motion, based on chronological time. Rhetoric, leading toward the decisive proof of a thesis, follows a controlled and usually logical forward motion. Poetry is unique in its back-and-forth, antiphonal, general rhythm. Poetry Defined as the Meeting of Sound and Sense By far the most frequently proposed definition of poetry, and in many ways the most persuasive, is that poetry represents a middle ground between music (sound without verbal meaning) and discourse (meaning without attention to sound). In poetry, both the sound (the 'rhythmic aspect') and the sense (the 'semantic aspect') are important.59 At different historical periods, one aspect would be elevated above the other, but both elements are necessary, or the work is not poetry. On the one hand, this means that the semantic meaning of the poem is alone insufficient. The poem's meaning should be reflected by the rhythmic aspect as well. Alexander Pope writes: True Ease in Writing comes from Art, not Chance, As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance. 'Tis not enough no Harshness gives Offence, The Sound must seem an Eccho to the Sense.
57. R. Jakobson, 'Linguistics and Poetics', in Pomorska and Rudy (eds.), Language in Literature, p. 71. 58. R. Jakobson, 'Poetry of Grammar and Grammar of Poetry', in Pomorska and Rudy (eds.), Language in Literature, p. 127. 59. The terms belong to O.M. Brik, 'Contributions to the Study of Verse Language', in L. Matejka and K. Pomorska (eds.), Readings in Russian Poetics; Formalist and Structuralist Views (trans. C.H. Severens; Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1971), p. 119.
2. Rhetoric and Poetry
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Then the virtuoso demonstrates at length. For instance: When Ajax strives, some Rock's vast Weight to throw, The Line too labours, and the Words move slow, Not so when swift Camilla scours the Plain, Flies o'er th'unbending Corn, and skims along the Main.60
This correlation of the 'rhythmic aspect' with the literal semantic meaning of the poem has been noted by many critics. Northrop Frye refers to it as 'imitative harmony' and describes its use in poetry from Homer to Milton.61 Wimsatt's book The Verbal Icon takes its title from a similar picture of poetry. An icon in semiotics, he writes, is used 'to refer to a verbal sign which somehow shares the properties of, or resembles, the objects which it denotes'.62 Poetry is the verbal icon: words which resemble in sound the external referent of their semantic meaning. A recent book, Joseph Graham's Onomatopoetics, restates this basic thesis, giving it a thorough grounding in current grammatical and linguistic theory. For Graham, the defining feature of all literature, but primarily of poetry, is 'exemplification'. The words of a poem somehow exemplify—indicate similarity in form to—their referents.63 This picture of the equivalence of sound and sense is perhaps true of most poetry, especially that of Pope, but in one sense it is only half correct. On some occasions, the rhythmic aspect does not coincide with the semantic meaning of the poem, but is rather in clear opposition to it. If this discord is accidental, it is a sign of poor poetry (as for instance when Longfellow tries to present a tragic moment in the dog-trot tetrameter of Hiawatha), but the dissonance is often intentional. When it is, the effect may be poetic irony: the semantic meaning is cast into doubt, and the reader must backtrack to revise earlier presuppositions. More frequently, the effect is simple ambiguity. Two diverse meanings are present, and the reader must simply read with both in mind. Thus, the 60. A. Pope, 'An Essay on Criticism', in Williams (ed.), Poetry and Prose of Alexander Pope, lines 362-65, 370-73; pp. 47-48. (All emphases are Pope's own.) 61. Frye, Anatomy, pp. 258-62. 62. Wimsatt, Verbal Icon, p. x. 63. J.F. Graham, Onomatopoetics: Theory of Language and Literature (Literature, Culture, Theory, 4; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 225-28. Graham's great contribution to the discussion is not his conclusion, which he admits himself has a familiar ring, but rather his theoretical grounding of that conclusion in generative grammar and his generalises gift of drawing all theories unto himself and fitting them into his own puzzle.
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Prophecy, Poetry and Hosea
truth is not that in poetry the sound must 'echo' the sense, but rather that poetry is built upon two different orders of meaning, which often coincide but may diverge as well. Thus in poetry, uniquely among verbal genres, simple grammatical and syntactic laws cannot be automatically accepted. They are complicated by rhythmic requirements. A simple example of such complication is the poetic enjambment. The basic unit of syntax is the sentence, and syntax requires a pause after each sentence. The basic unit of poetic rhythm is the line, and poetic custom demands a pause after each line. Often syntactic pauses occur at the ends of lines, but when they do not, the reader is forced to decide where to pause. Paradise Lost begins: Of Man's First Disobedience, and the Fruit Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste Brought Death into the World, and all our woe.. , 64
Syntax demands that there be no pause at the end of the first line, and the phrase be read 'and the Fruit of that Forbidden Tree.' Poetic custom, however, demands a pause after 'Fruit.' Read so, the first line seems to speak of the first disobedience and its fruit, or results. The most adept reading of the lines is not one which rejects poetic custom in favor of syntax, but rather one which assimilates both meanings.65 Wimsatt, indeed, seems in one place to regard the enjambment as the essence of poetry.66 Jakobson writes that the reader of a poem is more or less aware of two rhythms running concurrently: the rhythm of the verse and the rhythm which the same sentences would have in conversational prose. In a recitation, the reader must choose one rhythm to adhere to in each case of dissonance, but in the written poem both rhythms remain suspended.67 The rhythm of verse 'deforms' normal syntax.68 In Hebrew verse, for instance, normally adjacent words in construct relationships may be divided up between two lines. Thus the phrase 'the spirit of counsel' (HSI? !Tl~l) in Isaiah 11.2 appears in two lines in 19.3:
64. J. Milton, Paradise Lost, in M.Y. Hughes (ed.), John Milton: Complete Poems and Major Prose (New York: Macmillan, 1957), Book I, lines 1-3, p. 211. 65. Brik, 'Contributions', p. 122. 66. W.K. Wimsatt, Jr, 'Verbal Style, Logical and Counter-logical', Publications of the Modem Language Association 65 (1950), pp. 9-10. 67. Jakobson, 'Linguistics and Poetics', pp. 79-81,87. 68. The term comes from Tynianov, Verse Language, p. 40 and elsewhere.
2. Rhetoric and Poetry
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The spirit of Egypt will pour from his belly, And his counsel I will swallow up.
A skilled reader notes the broken construct phrase and thus reads two syntactical constructions: the literal sentence and also an implied sentence about 'Egypt's spirit of counsel'.69 Or one word or phrase may be marked by its poetic placement as playing two different syntactic roles, perhaps the object of one sentence and the subject of the next. Again, Hebrew poetry provides numerous examples. In Psalm 31.12, the psalmist says he is a reproach to his enemies: And terror to my acquaintances those who see me on the street They flee from me.
The central phrase, 'those who see me on the street', has two different syntactical functions. It stands in apposition to 'my acquaintances', and it provides the subject for 'they flee'. Ungrammatical and thereby unacceptable in other genres, this is unexceptionable in verse.70 The rhythm of verse also deforms normal emphasis. Any word, however syntactically insignificant, becomes a key word when placed at the end of a line or cesura or when highlighted by being rhymed. When this happens, the poem actually impedes the word, calls attention to it by its incongruous stress. By combining the rhythmic aspect with the 'syntactico-semantic' aspect, words are 'dynamatized' within the poem.71 "The semantic significance of the word in verse [is] defined by the significance of rhythm.'72 Finally, dynamatization may deform meaning. 'The severence of the intonational line, defined by verse, results in occasional distinctions of meanings of words in verse, as compared with their prosaic doubles.'73 In the example from Paradise Lost, for instance, 'Fruit' bears two different meanings: the literal meaning and the metaphorical. A poem sets up a word's field of meaning, consisting of all the meanings, 69. The example comes from M. Dahood, 'Hebrew Poetry', in K. Crim et al. (eds.), IDBSup (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1976), pp. 669-70. The bibliography on this device is considerable; M. O'Connor gives a suitable summary, including bibliography (Hebrew Verse Structure, pp. 112-15). 70. Dahood calls this device the 'double-duty modifier' or the 'two-way middle,' 'Hebrew Poetry', p. 670. 71. Tynianov, Verse Language, pp. 58-59. 72. Tynianov, Verse Language, p. 88. (Tynianov's emphasis.) 73. Tynianov, Verse Language, p. 79. (Tynianov's emphasis.)
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Prophecy, Poetry and Hosea
deformations and connotations (by means of rhyme, for instance, or wordplay) which it assumes during the course of the poem. A dynamatized word has what Tynianov calls 'oscillating signs', various shades of meaning through which the word flits.74 No wonder, then, that Empson feels that ambiguity is 'among the very roots of poetry'.75 Poetry defined as utterance which partakes of two orders of meaning, rhythmic and semantic, has several significant implications. The first, already discussed, is that poetry is not averse to obscurity of meaning. Any poem may be clear, but an unclear poem is not therefore less 'poetic'. Having two different 'rhythms' at work at the same time, poetry almost insists on a certain ambiguity. Secondly, a poem may contradict itself without diminishing itself as a poem. The so-called 'Law of NonContradiction' appears to a poet to be just the sort of thing a philosopher would come up with. The poet, by contrast, says that poetry is 'the one permissable way of saying one thing and meaning another' ;76 or more stridently declares, 'Do I contradict myself? / Very well then I contradict myself. / (1 am large, I contain multitudes.)'77 Finally, having more than one order of meaning, a poem has a doubled weight of meaning. One word in a poem may bear the weight of both syntactic and rhythmic stress, may be elevated by alliteration, assonance or rhyme, and in a generic context in which all of this bears equal weight, may acquire a significance to which no word in another genre may attain. Poetry, says Graham, is not less verbal but more than usually verbal; it is hyper-verbal. Its words are charged with extra significance and extra relevance. They are heavy with meaning, and so they require more attention than usual for their 7R interpretation.
To pull all this together into one simple but comprehensive definition of poetry is perhaps futile and probably foolish. Poetry will inevitably exceed its definitions and confound its defmers. A few general points arise, though. From the perspective of the deviser of the poem, poetry is a 74. Tynianov, Verse Language, p. 97. 75. W. Empson, The Seven Types of Ambiguity (New York: New Directions, 2nd edn, 1947), p. 3. 76. R. Frost, quoted in L. Untermeyer, Play in Poetry (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1938), p. 4. 77. W. Whitman, 'Song of Myself, in Leaves of Grass (repr.; New York: Mentor, 1954 [1855]), section 51, p. 96. 78. Graham, Onomatopoetics, p. 244.
2. Rhetoric and Poetry
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form of writing which follows two different sets of rules and contains two different orders of meaning simultaneously. The first order of meaning is provided by simple grammar and syntax. Complicating the semantic meaning of the words of the poem, however, poetry also derives meaning from their sound, or rhythm. Many devices may contribute to the 'rhythmic aspect' of poetic meaning, but at heart all poetic devices operate to give the poem an 'answering rhythm'. A word rhymes with its rhyme-fellow, or alliterates with another word, or plays on it, or compares it to something else. When this comparatively static answering rhythm coincides with the linear, progressive rhythm of grammar, when (in Jakobson's words) similarity is 'superimposed on contiguity', then meaning is either heightened by correlation or obscured by self-contradiction. Poetry, therefore, is the ideal form for communicating the highlycharged but obscure world of emotions, particularly ambivalent emotions, and for expressing unfamiliar interpretations of familiar objects. The reader must also be aware of much of the above, such as the coincidence of the two separate orders of meaning, but the reader's perspective is slightly different. To the reader, poetry is more likely to evoke a deep response or to exorcise hidden emotions than any other verbal genre. Difficult subjects like love, trivialized by other forms of discourse, find suitable expression. Mundane matters appear in a startling new light, with new significance. At the same time, poetry is tremendously difficult, seems to dig itself further into hiding at each turn, and remains frastratingly unattainable even upon repeated readings. Incongruities must be dealt with and heightened emphasis must be weighed and evaluated. A poem, well read, is cathartic; catharsis, at all times, is exhausting. Not all of these defining features of poetry are unique to verse; only the convergence of all constitute the definition of poetry. Poetry is distinguished from drama primarily by its manner of presentation: drama is presented by actors, lyric by a teller. Poetry differs from narrative especially in terms of its larger rhythm: narrative by definition includes a plot, an underlying chronological ordering of events, whereas poetry uses the answering, parallelistic and far more static rhythm described above.79 79. This is true even of narratives in which the events are unfolded in nonchronological order. A novel like Tristram Shandy may skip back and forth in its order of presentation, but in theory at least a chronological order of events can be recovered at the end. See V, Shklovsky, 'Sterne's Tristram Shandy; Stylistic Commentary', in L.T. Lemon and M.J. Reis (trans, and eds.), Russian Formalist Criticism, pp. 55-57. The best discussion I know of the issue of plot is M. Sternberg,
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Prophecy, Poetry and Hosea
T.H. Robinson captures the distinction between poetry and narrative with rare insight when he comments that the Hebrew Bible demonstrates the barest forms of both: the device of parallelism in Hebrew poetry exemplifies the parallelistic rhythm of verse in general, and the forwardpressing motion of Hebrew verb sequences using the 1-consecutive that characterizes biblical narrative equally represents the progressive action of narrative in general.80 More than anything else, though, poetry is distinct from rhetoric. Rhetoric and Poetry
Those who identify biblical prophecy as rhetoric and then add blithely that it is poetry, have not perhaps considered how very odd such a connection really is. In terms of purpose especially, the two types of communication stand utterly opposed to each other. Rhetoric is equipmental language: it exists for an external purpose. Rhetoric seeks to persuade an audience of a proposition or course of action. A poem does not seek to persuade, but to reveal. The poem tries to call attention to the unnoticed and to conceal or confound the obvious. Moreover, while the poem reveals the hidden nature of whatever external referent it may have, it also always reveals itself. The poem may call attention to a proposition or course of action, but it always first calls attention to itself as a poem, by complicating sense with sound, by using incongruous words or expressions, by deforming expected emphases or by deliberately obscuring or even contradicting itself. The respective audiences of rhetoric and poetry undergo equally opposite experiences. The ideal audience of rhetoric, which responds as the rhetorician intends, first understands then agrees with the purpose of the speaker or writer. If either understanding or agreement is lacking, then rhetoric has failed. The reader of a poem, however, need not understand the poem entirely or agree with it at all. Some understanding is necessary, of course, if anyone is to care enough to finish reading the poem after beginning, but beyond this basic level of comprehension, it is enough for the reader to be engaged by the poem—positively or negatively—in such a way as to lead to some revelation. A reader may Expositional Modes and Temporal Ordering in Fiction (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971). 80. T.H. Robinson, The Poetry of the Old Testament (London: Duckworth, 1947), p. 19.
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be persuaded of some external purpose by a poem, but the persuasion is of a different order from that of rhetoric. Rhetoric persuades by communicating a purpose and proving its validity; poetry, if it persuades at all, does so by showing its referent in an unsuspected light and leaving the reader to infer some purpose from that. This indirection is what lies behind Mill's famous dictum: 'Poetry and eloquence are both alike the expression or utterance of feeling: but, if we may be excused the antithesis, we should say that eloquence is heard; poetry is overheard.'81 Rhetoric is understood; the meaning of poetry, inferred. To summarize, then, rhetoric and poetry are in many ways diametric opposites. Rhetoric exists for some external purpose; poetry for its own ends. Rhetoric seeks to persuade; poetry to reveal. Rhetoric offers proof; poetry, implication. Rhetoric follows either an empirical or a logical outline; poetry connects its units willy-nilly, here making a logical connection (If... then...), there grouping words according to sound ("The color is almost the color of comedy'82). Rhetoric demands clarity; poetry is at least indifferent to clarity and often delights in ambiguity. Rhetoric uses words which its audience should understand; poetry uses archaic words, foreign words and neologisms. Rhetoric tries to disappear into its message so that its words and devices remain hidden; poetry lays bare its words and devices, brazenly calling attention to them. Last of all, the two genres require very different critical and interpretative methodologies, particularly by those studying historical samples of the genres. Because rhetoric always has an external purpose, the first step for its interpreters is the recovery of its external context. In other words, to understand a historical oration, one must first understand the situation which prompted it, the audience to which it was addressed and the authority or role of the orator. Often this information may be gleaned from the text of the utterance. Frequently it cannot be, and study of the text must be supplemented by external investigation. Poetry, with its self-referential nature, requires much less historical study. Once an utterance is recognized as a poem, the next step is always the study of its words, not its historical context. Almost any poem may be read well and appropriately by a person unfamiliar with the circumstances of its composition. Historical study may add a useful dimension, but hardly 81. Mill, 'Thoughts on Poetry', p. 97. 82. Chosen at random from W. Stevens, 'An Ordinary Evening in New Haven', in The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens (repr,; New York: Vintage Books, 1982 [1954]), p. 477.
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ever a necessary one. Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and Winston Churchill's great radio addresses mean little or nothing unless one knows their respective wartime contexts and their respective honoured speakers. Keats's icy verse 'This living hand, now warm and capable' may inspire any number of surmises as to its proper historical context, but its chilling power comes from the text itself, not its background or author.83 The proper study of rhetoric begins with context; of poetry, with the text. The description of proper interpretation of rhetoric should sound familiar. These, after all, are the techniques used by virtually all interpreters of the biblical prophetic books. The early historical critics like Kuenen demanded history first; the form critics of this century strive to establish the Sitz im Leben of each 'speech'; even more recent scholarship into the anthropological and sociological context of prophecy begins with historical research.84 Insofar as the prophetic books are collections of orations, this historical methodology, however inconclusive its results have proven, is appropriate. To the extent, however, that the books are poetry—whether anthologies of separate poems or carefully edited, booklength poems—then this emphasis on recovering their historical context is at best irrelevant and at worst misleading. To Hosea, then, and to the question of the genre of prophecy I turn next.
83. J. Keats, "This living hand, now warm and capable', in J. Barnard (ed.), John Keats: The Complete Poems (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1973), p. 459. 84. See, for instance, R.R. Wilson, Prophecy and Society in Ancient Israel (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980). A more recent discussion, including sharp criticism of Wilson, is in Carroll, 'Prophecy and Society', pp. 215-21.
Chapter 3
REPETITION AND VARIATION There is sometimes force and in other cases charm in iteration of words, in slightly changing and altering a word, and in sometimes repeating the same word several times at the beginning of clauses and sometimes...at their end. —Cicero1
The foundational categories of rhetoric and poetry, the two genres most frequently assigned to the prophetic writings, are in many respects sharply distinct. The extent of that contradistinction, made evident in the foregoing analysis, might surprise some, but the basic fact that these genres are in tension is nothing new. Interpreters have frequently had difficulty treating the prophets as 'poetic rhetoric'. Some have felt that the two genres are mutually exclusive and so have identified the prophets as one or the other. Exegetes before Lowth generally treated the prophetic writings as rhetoric and nothing else; more recently, Robert Carroll, as noted above, has argued that the prophetic writings are poetry only. Carroll says, "The speakers of the anthologies we call 'prophetic' literature were clearly poets. That is indisputable. All other descriptions are highly debatable'.2 A better approach to the problem than this exclusivism, though, is that of Stephen Geller. Frankly noting the apparently irreconcilable tension between rhetoric (7tpo(pT]ci<;, forth-telling) and poetry (Ttoiriau;, creation), he nevertheless concludes that both categories contribute to an understanding of the prophetic writings, and somehow the texts must be
1. M.T. Cicero, De oratore, 3 (trans. H. Rachham; LCL; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1942), ni.liv. 2. R.P. Carroll, 'Poets Not Prophets: A Response to "Prophets Through the Looking Glass'", JSOT21 (1983), p. 26.
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Prophecy, Poetry and Hosea
read with both genres in mind, suspended in contrasting simultaneity.3 Robert Alter's discussion of prophetic poetry operates on the same assumption; he notes that the poetry of the prophets 'invites a wealth of interpretation that would not seem appropriate for political speeches or mere oral exhortation'.4 Alter refuses to treat the poetic nature of prophetic speech as 'a simple rhetoric aid', but rather, like Geller, takes seriously the coincidence of incompatible genres.5 In his Poetry with a Purpose, Harold Fisch argues that both those who discover great poetry in the Hebrew Bible and those who deny it are right. The Bible both exemplifies and transcends poetry, he argues: 'If the Bible is literature, even supreme literature, it is also anti-literature.'6 The result is that prophetic writings are indeed 'poetry [which resists external purposes] with a purpose.' Rhetoric and poetry co-exist in prophecy, and the question is not if but how this can be. Such a co-existence has precedent. In its own way, narrative is quite as antithetical to poetry as is rhetoric, and yet the narrative poem has a long and honorable history. From the Iliad to Barrack Room Ballads, writers have been forcing together narrative (with its temporal movement) and poetry (with its parallel, antiphonal gait). In no case, though, have the two genres blended into one. Instead, every narrative poem partakes of a different measure of each genre. One narrative poem stresses the narrative at the expense of more uniquely poetic elements (Thayer's 'Casey At the Bat'—a fine tale, but great poetry?), and another stresses the poetic at the expense of the narrative (Keats's 'Eve of St. Agnes'— brilliant poetry, but what actually happens?). Narrative poetry covers a wide spectrum, from tales with a vague rhythmic element (end rhyme, for instance) to poetry with a marginal connection to some story (some of the historical psalms, for instance, from which only one familiar with the Exodus could hope to construct a coherent account). Thus narrative and poetry cohabit but never wed. The same is true of the co-existence of rhetoric and poetry in the Latter Prophets. In every prophetic book except Jonah, a narrative, elements of rhetorical persuasion appear alongside elements of poetic self-revelation. Moreover, every prophetic book occupies a unique place on the spectrum from mostly rhetorical (parallelistic orations) to mostly poetic (rhythmic 3. 4. 5. 6.
S.A. Geller, 'Were the Prophets Poets?' Proof Texts 3 (1983), pp. 211-21. R. Alter, The Art of Biblical Poetry (New York: Basic Books, 1985), p. 141. Alter, Biblical Poetry, p. 140. H. Fisch, Poetry with a Purpose, p. 2.
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divine disclosure with an implied consequence or exhortation for the audience). A skilled reading of Hosea calls for some basic understanding of where that book rests on this measure. If it is largely rhetorical, then one should read first for logical connections and should assume an intended clarity.7 If it is mostly poetic, then different features of the book (e.g. sounds, rhythms) become more significant. How does one place Hosea, or any book, on such a spectrum? Ideally, one should examine every trope, every device and its function. Of course, as previously noted, neither rhetoric nor poetry has sole claim to any device; however, each uses its devices in its own way, and a thorough examination of every verbal trope or feature in the book would resolve the question. Such an examination would also exceed the limits of both this book and my capacities. One alternative is to choose one trope and trace its occurrence and function in Hosea. Among the possible avenues of study might be Hosea's vocabulary and syntax, Hosea's use of metaphors or allusions, or the sub-genres that appear in Hosea, but instead of these, I have chosen to examine Hosea in light of a simple trope, common to every genre: verbal repetition. In general terms, repetition serves a few very basic purposes: emphasis, continuity or closure.8 In other words, a word or phrase may be repeated to underscore its importance, to stress its continuing significance, or to mark the boundary of the utterance. The rhetoric of repetition goes much deeper, though. While a repeated word may gain strength, a repetitive utterance may lose it. Sometimes repetition provides a sense of growing importance, sometimes a sense of weary stasis.9 Moreover, much of the effect of repetition depends on whether the repetition is exact or slightly variant. Though words and phrases may be repeated in any genre, and though these general features may apply anywhere, each
7. This, in brief, is how Y. Gitay reads Deutero-Isaiah in his study of it as a rhetorical document, Prophecy and Persuasion: A Study of Isaiah 40-48. It is significant that in his quest to demonstrate the rhetoric of the prophet he gives scant attention to its justly celebrated poetry. See also Gitay, 'The Effectiveness of Isaiah's Speech', JQR 75.2 (October 1984), pp. 162-72. 8. J. Muilenburg, 'A Study in Hebrew Rhetoric: Repetition and Style,' in G.W. Anderson et al. (cds.), Congress Volume (VTSup 1; Leiden: Brill, 1953), p. 99. 9. B.F. Kawin, Telling It Again and Again: Repetition in Literature and Film (Ithaca, NY; Cornell University Press, 1972), pp. 4-6, and throughout; also, in a more general discussion, S. Kierkegaard [Constantin Constantius], Repetition (trans, and ed. H.V. Hong and E.H. Hong; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), p. 150.
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genre varies the function of repetition according to its own idiom.10 How do rhetoric and poetry use verbal repetition? How does Hosea? Repetition in Rhetoric As noted above, both Aristotle and Northrop Frye single out repetition as a useful device in rhetoric.11 This is hardly surprising. Repetition of key points can clarify a discourse, and clarity is essential to good rhetoric. Moreover, a repeated sentence may convey all the complacent comfort of familiarity, particularly if the sentence was previously known to the audience, a formulaic utterance. Such comfort is invaluable to the rhetorician. Some discourses may seek to inspire discontent about some external subject matter; no discourse wishes to make its audience discontented with the discourse itself. So useful is repetition that classical rhetoric, which has categories for everything, abounds in fine distinctions between different uses of repetition: enumeratio, the collection and reiteration of main points; iteratio, the repetition of the original proposition just before ending; perseverantia, the repetition of a clause as a refrain; reduplicatio/anadiplosis, the use of a word at the end of one point and the beginning of the next; repetitio/anaphora, the beginning of several consecutive points with the same word or phrase; and so on.12 Nevertheless, even as it categorizes the many uses of repetition, classical rhetoric has a word of caution: be sparing with it. Too much repetition will irk an audience more than help it. Aristotle warns against such excess,13 and the classical classifiers, true to their lights, offer nugatio, a technical term for excessive or wearisome repetition.14 One final distinctive of repetition in rhetoric concerns that which is 10. Two recent examinations of repetition in biblical narrative are in R. Alter, The An of Biblical Narrative (New York: Basic Books, 1981), pp. 88-113 and, in exhausting detail, in M. Sternberg, The Poetics of Biblical Narrative: Ideological Literature and the Drama of Reading (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), pp. 365-440. Both writers stress the importance to biblical narrative of slight variation, for instance between two characters' accounts of an event. 11. Aristotle, Rhetoric, HI.xii.3-4; Frye, Anatomy, p. 327. 12. For these and other examples, see L.A. Sonnino, A Handbook to SixteenthCentury Rhetoric (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1968). The devices listed are discussed on pp. 85,124, 141-42,157-58 and 161 respectively. 13. Aristotle, Rhetoric, Ul.xii.3. 14. Sonnino, Sixteenth-Century Rhetoric, p. 134.
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repeated. Whereas the foundation of a poem may be as basic as a word, or even one phoneme within a word, the basic unit of a rhetorical discourse is the proposition, expressed most clearly in the syntactical unit, the sentence.15 In rhetoric, the most significant repetitions are repetitions of sentences. A summary of repetition's general features in rhetoric, the enumeratio, would be: (1) some repetition may be useful, especially for the sake of clarity; (2) too much repetition, especially verbatim repetition, is counterproductive, eliciting more boredom than understanding; and (3) rhetoric tends to repeat whole propositions, rather than smaller units, such as words or sounds. External Repetitions: The Formula Some repetitions restate a word or group of words previously stated in the same discourse, what one could call an internal repetition. Frequently, however, a phrase is recognized as a repetition even the first time it appears in an utterance, because that phrase has entered into a common stock of such phrases. In rhetoric, these external repetitions, or formulas, most often serve an introductory purpose. Every type of discursive utterance has its own stock of introductory formulas, each one indicating not only the beginning of the address but also something about the context: 'Ladies and gentlemen', 'My fellow Americans', 'It is a great honour to be here today', 'Thank you, choir. Turn in your Bibles to...' In this respect, biblical prophecy could stand as the paradigm example. Even the most cursory reader of the Latter Prophets will notice the frequent introductory and concluding formulas. Most famous among these is the so-called 'messenger formula': mrr "10K i"D, 'Thus says the LORD'. While the formula appears to have been an accepted introduction to any reported speech (see Gen. 45.9, 'Hurry, go up to my father and say to him, "Thus says [~IQK PD] your son Joseph..."'), its appearance in prophetic literature, including that of the Mari letters, is so frequent that the formula invariably evokes the prophetic oracle.16 Though it often introduces prophetic utterance that is marked with 'poetic' parallelism, the formula nevertheless stands outside that structure, an independent rhetorical feature. Remaining outside of a parallelistic pattern, however, by no means makes the formula extraneous. It is frequently integral to 15. Y. Tynianov, The Problem of Verse Language, p. 54. 16. See Westermann, Basic Forms of Prophetic Speech, pp. 36-40, 149-50. A more recent study, which stresses the variety of roles the formula plays, is C. Rottzoll, 'Die kh 'mr... -LegitimationsformeF, VT39 (1989), pp. 323-40.
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an oracle's structure. Consider Amos's famous oracles against the nations in chs. 1 and 2: Thus says the LORD, For three trespasses of Damascus And for four, I will not withhold it. For their threshing Gilead with iron threshers. 1 will send fire on the house of Hazael, And it will consume the storehouses of Ben-Hadad. I will break the gate-bar of Damascus, And I will cut off the inhabitant from the Valley of Aven And the one who wields the scepter from Beth-Eden, And the people of Aram shall go into exile in Kir. Says the LORD. Thus says the LORD, For three trespasses of Gaza ... Amos 1.3-6
So it continues. Each one of the mini-oracles begins with 'Thus says the LORD'. Four of them end with the truncated version, miT ~)QK (or a variant of this). The rhetorical effect of this introductory uniformity is to grant each oracle an equivalent authority, so that when the final oracle arrives in 2.6-16, the cumulative effect of seven denunciations rests on Israel itself as soon as the audience hears, 'Thus says the LORD. For three trespasses of Israel...' The formula, though outside the actual text of the oracle, bears the weight both of its calculated repetition within the passage and of its numerous repetitions throughout prophetic literature. The messenger formula is hardly the only external repetition in the prophetic books. An even broader introductory formula, used at the beginning of some entire books is ~^& HTI "ItiN mrP~~m, 'The word of the LORD which came about to [prophet's name]'.17 Like the messenger formula, this introduction serves primarily to establish the context, but may easily do more. Other formulas introducing smaller units include: K2JQ, 'burden, oracle',18 miT ']«-in ro, "Thus the LORD showed me',19 17. Hos. 1.1; Joel 1.1; Mic. l.l;Zeph. 1.1; Mai. 1.1. 18. For example: Isa. 13.1; 15.1; 17.1; 19.1; 21.1,13; 22.1; 23.1; 30.6; Nah. 1.1;
3. Repetition and Variation
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and many variations of a simple summons to pay attention, all beginning with 1UQ2J, 'Hear!'20 All of these introductory formulas, beyond their semantic meaning, serve a contextual function, making clear to the audience, at least in a general way, the sort of utterance that is to follow. These introductory formulas may appear in the middle of the prophetic books, but can be called introductory because they point ahead to a new section. Other formulas look back at what preceded them. Foremost among these is mrr~DK3, 'utterance of the LORD', usually translated 'says the LORD', which almost invariably occurs at the end of a passage. In Amos 4, for instance, this tag-line formula occurs no fewer than seven times, always at the end of a short passage.21 Here, rather than indicating what is to come, the formula marks closure, either the end of a passage or of a portion of a passage. One formula, or family of formulas, which may mark either the beginning or the end of a passage—which indeed may occur anywhere in a passage—is the day formula. The formula takes many different, but nevertheless easily identifiable, forms. In Amos, one finds in a single, fairly restricted space, Kinn DV3 mm 'And it shall occur in that day' (8.9); D'KD D^D1 nn, 'Behold the days are coming' (8.11; 9.13); and «inn DVD, 'In that day' (8.13; 9.11). In all these cases, the day formula introduces a passage, but it need not. Amos 2.16 says, KirrrrDTQ oir ni~iu cr~rn:a inb •paw mrr~DtW, 'And he whose heart is strong among the mighty men will flee naked in that day. Utterance of the LORD'. In any case, whether these formulas begin or end a unit of discourse, they serve purely rhetorical functions. Some, such as lUQtD and ~IQK PD miT, introduce and mark a general beginning point. Others specify the coming speech as being of a distinct type, as mrp ']fcnn ro indicates a vision report.22 Still others mark divisions within a unified passage Hab. 1.1; Zech. 9.1; 12.1; Mai. 1.1. 19. At the beginning of a vision report. See Amos 7.1,4,7; 8.1; Jer. 24.1. On this and other formulas related to visions, see F. Horst, 'Die Visionsschilderungen der alttestamentlichen Propheten', EvT2Q (1960), pp. 193-205. 20. The variations are so disparate that in most cases the differences in the introductory formula probably say less about the ensuing speech than they do about the prophetic speaker. Thus Amos generally says HTH -QTTTIK IJJQtC, 'Hear this word' (3.1; 4.1; 5.1; 8.4; but see 3.9,13), andMicah often appends the particle of entreaty, W-BJOtf (3.1,9; 6.1). 21. Verses 3,5, 6,8,9,10 and 11. 22. Westermann argues that mrp "1QK TO, too, originally indicated a particular form of prophetic speech, the announcement of judgment (Westermann, Basic Forms,
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Prophecy, Poetry and Hosea
(miT'DM in Amos 4). All these functions have the common goal of clarity: by removing some initial questions as to context and form, they make the passages easier to understand. Moreover, by following speech patterns with which the audience was well familiar, the books provided the audience with a sense of comfort. Form critics have used these formulas to isolate and name dozens of minor sub-genres, but they also facilitate the prior inquiry, the identification of the larger genre. These formulas are signs of rhetoric, not of poetry. What of Hosea, then? Few references to Hosea appeared in the foregoing discussion. This is no accident. Compared to other prophetic books, Hosea is remarkably non-formulaic. The comparison with Amos is particularly telling. If their superscriptions are to be believed, the prophecies were composed at about the same time, during the reign of Jeroboam II in Israel, and they certainly deal with many of the same Israelite problems (e.g. shrines at Gilead, Gilgal and Bethel and their false priests). Yet where Amos overflows with formulaic introductions and text divisions, Hosea has very few. Setting aside the inaugural oracles of Hosea 1 and 2, formulas are even more rare: twice, passages begin with the summons to hear 0DQtD; 4.1; 5.1); once, with a less frequent call to attention, ~)E1S? lUpn, 'Strike up the trumpet!' (5.8; cf. Joel 2.1,15; Amos 3.6); and one time in these chapters, only once, a section closes with mrr DW (11.11). miT IQK rD does not appear in Hosea at all. Only in the first two chapters do prophetic formulas appear with any noticeable frequency, and even there only one fairly brief passage uses them in any purposeful way. In 1.5 Rinn DVD FTTH appears, and in ch. 2, a few truncated hints of formulas crop up—Till, 'And it shall come about', at the beginning of a clause (2.1 twice), and pb, 'therefore', marking a transition (2.8,11,16)—but only the passage beginning with 2.18 uses formulas in any systematic way.23 p. 149). If this was ever the case, the messenger formula soon outgrew this specific use, and by the time the earliest prophetic books were compiled, it had become a general introduction. See also Rottzoll, Legitimationsformel, pp. 324-32. 23. Identifying a single word like p*P as a formula is tenuous at best. Westermann argues that it is a formulaic introduction to the 'announcement of judgment' section of the typical judgment speech (Westermann, Basic Forms, p. 149). The word does frequently appear in that function, but as its synonym, p~^JJ, and the messenger formula, miT HDK PD, do as well, the formulaic status of pb seems dubious. Given the fact that the announcement of judgment is the result of the preceding 'accusation' section, one must ask what other word the writer was supposed to use here.
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And it shall come about in that day —utterance of the LORD— You shall call me My husband, And you shall no longer call me My Baal. I will turn aside the names of the Baals from her mouth, And they shall be remembered no more by name. I will make a covenent with them in that day With the beasts of thefield, With the birds of the heavens, And with the creeping things of the ground. The bow and the sword and war I will break from the earth, And I will make them lie in safety. I will betroth you to meforever. I will betroth you to me with righteousness and justice and loyalty and mercy. I will betroth you to me with truth, And you shall know the LORD. And it shall come about in that day, I will answer—utterance of the LORD— I will answer the heavens, And they will answer the earth. The earth will answer the grain and the new wine and the new oil, And they will answer Jezreel. Hosea2.18-24
This exhausts the formulaic speech of the passage. The three-fold use of Sinn DTD and the double use of mrP~DK3 indicates a certain pattern of formula here, giving some structure to the oracle as a whole, but by the standard set in Amos 1-2 and 4, this is not much. If the use of formulaic introductions and structural signposts is a sign of the genre of rhetoric, Hosea barely qualifies, if at all. Internal Repetitions When one considers repetition in rhetoric, formulaic speech is not what first comes to mind. Instead, one thinks of great speeches in which a
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Prophecy, Poetry and Hosea
single sentence or phrase is introduced in the speech, then repeated at critical moments throughout, usually with growing emphasis. Among these are Mark Antony's great funeral oration with its repetition and slight variation of the refrain 'Brutus is an honorable man'24 and Winston Churchill's wartime radio addresses (e.g. 'We will fight them on the beaches. We will fight them... We will fight them... '). Sometimes, of course, the speaker can use a formula in this way, as in Amos 1-2, where mi"P "1DN HD acts not only as an introductory formula but as a part of the litany of repetitive sin and judgment. Generally, however, such repetitions are solely internal repetitions, where the repeated text was first given in the speech and was not recognizable as significant from the start. Once again, such repetitions serve primarily to express emphasis (as in the Churchill example above) and to provide structural cohesion (as in anaphora, where the same phrase or clause begins each successive point in a speech). Insofar as repeated phrases provide structure, they serve the rhetorical imperative of clarity. Clarity being the ultimate goal, these repetitions must be overt and easily recognized. Variation must be kept to a minimum, for fear the audience might miss the connection. One type of rhetorical repetition is somewhat less overt than most: syntactical repetition. In this type of repetition, the repeated element is not the word(s) but the syntactical structure—a conditional sentence using 'If...then', for instance. Syntactical repetition may not be as frequent (or at least as frequently recognized) as verbal repetition, but it is in one way particularly suited to rhetoric and particularly unsuited to poetry. The sound of the words used is irrelevent. This is perhaps what W.K. Wimsatt means when he argues that where poetry uses rhyme (similarity of sound without regard to syntactic or semantic function), prose uses homoeoteleuton (similarity of case ending, a purely syntactical matter).25 Examples of internal repetition of phrases, clauses and syntactical patterns are by no means difficult to find in the Latter Prophets. Once again, Amos could well serve as a paradigm of rhetorical repetition. In the example quoted above from Amos 1, not only does the introductory 24. W. Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, in D. Bevington (ed.), The Complete Works of Shakespeare (Glenview, IL: S. Foreman, 3rd edn, 1980), IH.ii.84, 89,96, 101, 126, 129. 25. W.K. Wimsatt, Jr, 'One Relation of Rhyme to Reason', in Wimsatt (ed.), The Verbal Icon, p. 154.
3. Repetition and Variation
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formula mrr ~!QN rD reappear in each successive oracle against the nations, but so do many of the following sentences. Each of the eight oracles follow the messenger formula with the pattern... 'JJO'S no'?!!?"'?!) 13T50N vb nmntr^in ('For three trespasses of... and for four, I will not withhold it.' [1.3,6,9,11,13; 2.1,4,6]). All of the oracles except the final one against Israel, predict judgment by fire (rrDIST... -3 C7K Tin^ttil ...ni]Q~lK, 'I will send fire against... and it will devour the storehouses of...' [1.4,7,10,12,14; 2.2,5]). Here, one should note, the controlling element is the repeated syntactical structure rather than the repeated words. When 1.14 varies the wording slightly, using TlJiiTl ('I will kindle') instead ofTirfaDI ('I will send'), it makes no discernible difference. From the introductory and concluding formulas to its very syntax and wording, this long passage is tour deforce of rhetorical repetition. The effect, in the end, is to stress continuity. As each oracle follows the same pattern, so each nation follows the same pattern of sin and will meet the same judgment at the hands of the same God. In Amos 4.6-11 appears another example of internal repetition for rhetorical effect. Describing Israel's stubbornness, God recounts his past judgments on the land and people, then adds mrr DK2 HI? DrQGTK1?1), 'But you did not return to me—utterance of the LORD' (4.6,8,9,10,11). Again, the repetitions indicate continuity, this time on a chronological axis: time after time Israel has ignored God and his rebukes. Even the five vision reports in Amos 7-9 depend to a great extent on internal repetitions. Beyond the formulaic repetition of mrp '3S~in HD, 'Thus the LORD showed me', which marks the first four reports (7.1,4,7; 8.1), the reports themselves contain a remarkable degree of syntactical and verbal regularity. After the first two visions, the prophet intercedes on behalf of Israel, calling 'O Lord GOD, forgive [cease, v.5]! How can Jacob stand? For he is small' (7.2,5), and God revokes (Dm) the promised judgment. Another pattern emerges in the next two visions. After each vision, God catechizes the prophet, 'What do you see, Amos?' He receives a brief reply, then explains the judgment which the vision portends for 'my people', adding 'I will not pass over them again' (7.8; 8.2). The fifth vision, in 9.1-4, follows a different pattern from that of the first four, but nevertheless is equally dependent on internal repetitions. No one will escape the coming judgment, the report declares: If (D8) they dig into Sheol, from there (DtDQ) my hand will take them. If (DK) they go up to the heavens, from there (OOQ) I will bring them down.
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Prophecy, Poetry and Hosea If (DK) they hide at the top of Carmel, from there (BDQ) I will seek them out and take them. If (D») they conceal themselves from my eyes at the bottom of the sea, from there (DtDD) I will command the serpent, and it will bite them. If (QK) they go into captivity before their enemies, from there (DEQ) I will command the sword, and it will slay them. Amos 9.2-4
The syntactical repetition here not only underscores how far-reaching God's vengeance shall be, but also gives a sense of the fugitives' futile casting about for some hiding place, here and there, this way and that. Indeed, this repetition is so important that its markers are retained even against normal usage. Strictly speaking, DtiD ('from there') is inappropriate in the last two sentences, where sense would seem to demand simply nd ('there'), but the demands of the repeated pattern outweigh those of syntax.26 Amos is remarkably full of such rhetorical repetitions, but other prophets use them as well. Two or three examples from the dozens available should make this clear. The otherwise loosely connected (or even unconnected) oracles of Isaiah 9 and 10 are given structure by a refrain picked up from 5.25: mo] IT T)in IBK nSTKb n»r^3, Tor all this, his anger has not returned, and his hand is still outstretched' (9.11,16,20; 10.4).27 Jeremiah is a treasure trove of internal repetitions, some of which are called 'doublets' and explained away as the accidental effects of haphazard editing of oral traditions.28 Isaiah 40-48 abounds with 26. The LXX makes this logical change, using e^ei in vv. 3b and 4a instead of EKEiBev. Though this slightly obscures the repeated structure, it is preferable to attempts to find some elliptical meaning in the anomolous preposition ]D—'chase them from there by biting at them' and 'chase them from there by killing them' (H.W. Wolff, Joel and Amos [trans. W. Janzen et al.; Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1977], p. 336.) 27. J. Lindblom calls the passage from Isa. 9.7-10.4 a 'refrain song,' which is his way of saying that only this refrain binds these oracles together (Lindblom, Prophecy, p. 225). The pattern may extend further and may be concluded by a reverse repetition in 14.27: n£T2r "01 mOTI m, 'And his hand is outstretched, and who can turn it back?' 28. So Lindblom, Prophecy, pp. 225-27. Much would be gained by treating these repetitions as intentional (at least on the part of the book's editor). For instance, the almost perfect repetition of 15.14 by 17.4 requires that their divergences be taken seriously. Why does 15.14 begin with 'I will cause to pass over' (Traun) where 17.4 has 'I will cause you to serve' CplTOBn)? Is the confusion of 13a and 1313 a textual problem (cf. LXX, Syriac and most commentators) or an intentional wordplay?
3. Repetition and Variation
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repeated divine self-declarations: 'I, I am the LORD, and there is no savior apart from me [HitaD]' (43.11); 'Apart from me [Hlteo] there is no God' (44.6); 'Is there a God apart from me [HU^an]?' (44.8); 'I am the LORD, and there is no other [111? j'K]. Besides me [Tl'TlT] there is no God' (45.5); Tor there is nothing apart from me [Hy^n]. I am the LORD, and there is no other [112 ]'«]' (45.6); 'Surely God is with you, and there is no other [TIP ]'«], no other God' (45.14); 'I am the LORD, and there is no other [TIP f K]' (45.18); 'Am I not the LORD, and there is no other [TIP ]'«] God apart from me [HP^O]? A righteous, saving God and there is none besides me [Tl'TIT]?' (45.21); and 'For I am God, and there is no other [TIP ]'K]; God, and there is none like me' (46.9). This repetition is primarily syntactical and semantic instead of verbal, but the instances of corresponding syntax and equivalent meaning are nevertheless marked with the repetition of a few significant words and phrases. To multiply examples from the prophetic books as a whole still would not exhaust the supply—only the reader. It is enough to say that such examples appear throughout the prophets and clearly support the view that prophecy is rhetoric. What, then, is the case in Hosea? Although Hosea contains several examples of rhetorical repetition, they are less frequent than in such other prophetic books as Amos. Perhaps more importantly, where these repetitions occur it is more difficult to discern their rhetorical purpose than it was in Amos. Hosea 4.9 and 12.3 provide an instructive example. The former verse reads, TD~n vbp TlTpai "b l1!^ T^POI, 'I will visit his ways upon him, and his deeds I will turn back on him'. The line comes in the context of an oracle against false priests. In 12.3, several minor changes appear. The Lord will contend V? 3'EP T^POD TDTD npP^P Tpa*7) 'to visit according to his ways on Jacob; according to his deeds he will turn back to him'. The verbal and syntactical similarities are enough to argue for a connection, but the differences are enough to make that connection difficult to identify, especially since the two are placed so far apart in the book. The same is true of other repetitions in Hosea which one feels ought to have some clear rhetorical purpose, and which would certainly have such a purpose in Amos or Jeremiah. The rhetorical purpose is not clear. There is surely some connection between 5.4-6 and 7.9-10, but exactly what that connection may be is difficult to say:
58
Prophecy, Poetry and Hosea Thek deeds will not permit [them] To return to their God. For a spirit of harlotry is within them, And the LORD they do not know. The pride of Israel answers for him. Israel and Ephraim will stumble in thek iniquity. Judah too has stumbled with them. With their flocks and herds, they will go, To seek the LORD, But they will not find [him]; He has withdrawn from them. 5.4-6 Foreigners devour his strength, And he does not know. Indeed, grey hairs sprinkle him, And he does not know. The pride of Israel answers for him They do not return to the LORD thek God, And they do not seek him for all this. 7.9-10
The repeated clause 'the pride of Israel answers for him', which most clearly joins these two passages, is the first problem. In neither passage does the sentence have a clear purpose, or even appear connected with its context. Whom does Israel's pride answer? Concerning what? Wolffs suggestion that 'answer' here is legal language, may help place the saying in the larger context of Hosea's legal themes, but it hardly explains its placement in these two verses. Indeed, he considers the occurrence in 7.10 to be a late gloss, based on 5.5.29 A closer examination of the two passages reveals other, less clear, connections. In both cases, 'the pride of Israel answers' is directly preceded by a statement concerning Israel's lack of knowledge: 'they do not know' in 5.4 and 'he does not know,' emphatically repeated, in 7.9. The normal word order is even reversed in 5.4, perhaps so that 1JJT $b might conclude the line, as DT $b does twice in 7.9. Both passages speak of how Israel either cannot or will not return to their God (5.4; 7.10), and either will not seek (Ep3) God (7.10) or will seek him in vain (5.6). Expanding the field slightly, the beginning of 7.9, D'lT "tott, 'Foreigners 29. H.W. Wolff, Hosea (trans. G. Stansell; Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1974), pp. 100, 126.
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will devour', is foreshadowed by 5.7: 'They have dealt treacherously with the LORD; Indeed, they have borne children of foreigners (DHT). Now the new moon will devour them (D^Dtf1) with their portions.' Unless one assumes a great deal of fortuitous accident, these must be read as companion passages; nevertheless, their web of verbal connections does not clarify, but complicatesinterpretation. Despite the one exactly repeated clause, which seems comparable to repeated clauses in rhetorical contexts, this is not rhetorical repetition as described by Aristotle and practiced by Amos, Jeremiah and Winston Churchill. Other examples of clausal and phrasal repetition in Hosea fit the expected rhetorical patterns better, but are still occasionally difficult to classify. They are: Your loyalty is like the morning mist, And the dew which goes away early. (6.4) Thus, they will be like the morning mist, And the dew which goes away early. (13.3)
Judgment sprouts like poison, On the furrows of the field. (10.4) Indeed their altars will be as heaps, On the furrows of the field. (12.12)
I am the LORD your God, from the land of Egypt. (12.10) I am the LORD your God, from the land of Egypt. (13.4)
The first of these examples, 'like the morning mist and the dew which goes away early', is indeed a close repetition in wording, if not in placement. Some significant differences occur, however, which make this a curious instance. In 6.4, the phrase refers to Israel's love for God and sadly disparages that love. In 13.3, however, it refers to Israel itself and is a part of the nation's judgment. From Gunkel on, commentators have distinguished between prophetic reproach (accusation) and threat (announcement of judgment).30 Here one phrase describes both. The 30. For a brief survey of these terms' use, see W.E. March, 'Prophecy', in J.H. Hayes (ed.), Old Testament Form Criticism (San Antonio, TX: Trinity University Press, 1974), pp. 159-61.
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punishment not only fits the crime, it equals the crime. The concluding phrase of both 10.4 and 12.12—"12J 'Qbn "%>, 'on the furrows of the field'—is at least noticeable, but once more no manifest rhetorical function appears. The phrase marks neither the beginning nor the end of a passage; the separate contexts bear no remarkable similarity, and nothing is clarified. If they are meant to fulfill any of the rhetorical purposes discussed above, they are remarkably poorly handled. In the end, only two repetitions act as one would expect of a repetition in a rhetorical context. The repeated clause of 12.10 and 13.4— Dn^Q pSQ "pn'PK niiT oa^l, 'I am the LORD your God, from the land of Egypt'—is at last somewhat more rhetorically defensible. It appears in both cases at a significant transition, serving the rhetorical function which in another book might have been served by an introductory formula. Both times, the passage so introduced has to do with God's past relationship with Israel, specifically in the wilderness. This is the sort of repetition which appears in Isaiah 40-48; in fact, after the repetend in 13.4 appears a line which could easily have been lifted entirely from those chapters: 'A God besides me (Ti'TlT) you will not know, and a savior there is none apart from me (Tta ]'«)*. Without being concerned at this point about the redactional history of these verses, it is worth noting that the clearest example of rhetorical repetition in Hosea sounds more like a different book altogether. The other repetition which fits the criteria of rhetoric is not a verbal repetition at all; it is syntactical. In three different passages, four times in all, sentences appear with the pattern 'According to... even thus...' All three passages describe Israel's escalating apostasy. The first comes in 4.7: '"?~MDn p D3~D, 'According to their increase, even thus they sinned against me'. Prosperity and its proportionate rebellion also figure in the next two examples, both from 10.1. According to the increase of hisfruit, He increased altars. According to the goodness of his land, They made good their sacred pillars.
One final instance is considerably less certain, since the preposition D, which marks the pattern, must be provided on the dubious authority of the Septuagint, but no other reading fits the context so well. Chapter 11 begins 'When Israel was a boy, I loved him, / And from Egypt I called to [named?] my son.' Then 11.2 says 'BD ID^n p ud~? "SIpD, 'According
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to my calling to them, even thus they went away from me'.31 Israel's rebellion grows not only in proportion to its prosperity but also to God's calling to it. Though the three passages which follow this pattern appear in three different chapters, the syntactical and thematic similarities justify reading them as an emphatic repetition, suitable for a rhetorical work. In the end, at least in terms of repetitions, Hosea fits the genre of rhetoric only very occasionally. By the standards of Amos, where repetition is rigorously and skillfully used to tremendous rhetorical effect, Hosea seems lame. One example, the verbal repetition in 8.13 and 9.3, may be a fitting conclusion. It should perhaps be excluded, since the only close repetition appears solely in the Septuagint, but that fact may make this the most revealing of all. They will return to Egypt, [And in Assyria will eat defilements]. 8.13
Ephraim will return to Egypt, And in Assyria will eat defilements. 9.3
If, as most assume, the Septuagint added 'and in Assyria they will eat defilements' to 8.13 under the influence of 9.3, then it was because the translators felt the need to make more explicit the questionable repetition already in these verses. The idea of return (DID) to Egypt is present in both, but the syntax and explicit subject differ enough that many might miss the connection. The repetition is simply not as rhetorically clear as one might wish, and so someone emended it accordingly.
31. MT reads Oman ID^n p Erf? "imp, They called to them; thus they went away from them'. The LXX, Ka8u><; ueteKaXeaa CCX>TOTL>I;, oihtoi; OOTWXOVTO £K Ttpoaamow u,ot>, not only adds the preposition (mSax; = D) but reads the 1 of 1R~lp as a % which makes the verb an infinitive ('my calling') instead of a perfect ('they called'). Finally, the LXX understands D!TSQ (before them) as two words, the second one being the beginning of v. 3, Oil '3SC ('before me. They...'). Though the number of alterations makes the reading seem improbable, all but the added preposition are commonplace variants. The admittedly free translation found in the Syriac also provides the word 'like' (or 'when'), giving this reading slight support.
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Repetition in Poetry How does poetry use repetition? Or, more to the point, how does poetry's use of repetition differ from rhetoric's? To begin with, the basic unit of poetry is not the sentence-length proposition that defines rhetoric, but a much smaller unit. Tynianov argues that the foundation of poetry is the phoneme, the single syllable,32 and devotes much space to the discussion of 'sound repetitions' (povtory),33 Nevertheless, given that a part of poetry's distinctiveness lies in its two competing orders of meaning—semantic and rhythmic—and given that individual phonemes bear no specific semantic value, in most cases the basic unit of the poem would be the single word, the smallest speech unit which bears both meaning and sound. That being so, one should expect repetition in poetry to be primarily repetition of individual words, without any necessary regard for syntax. Wallace Stevens's poem 'Jumbo' begins: The trees were plucked like iron bars And jumbo, the loud general-large Singsonged and singsonged, wildly free. Who was the musician, fatly soft And wildly free, whose clawing thumb Clawed on the ear these consonants? The companion in nothingness, Loud, general, large, fat, soft And wild and free, the secondary man.. .34
Here the repetends are neatly gathered, in order, but their syntactical and even lexical character has altered in the process. The words reappear stripped of their previous syntactical context. Moreover, because a word in a poem derives its meaning from both its lexical definition and from its sound, words repeated in a poem are placed with regard to the sound of the repetition as well as to its meaning. Sometimes, sound simply reinforces the effect of the meaning as occurs in T.S. Eliot's line, 'For I have known them all already, known them all,' where the repeated phrase and its sense of weary immobility is reinforced 32. Tynianov, Verse Language, p. 54. 33. Tynianov, Verse Language, pp. 113-17. 34. W. Stevens, 'Jumbo', in The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens, p. 269.
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by a third repetition of the sound al in 'already'. An identical effect occurs later in the same poem: 'I grow old... I grow old... / 1 shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.'35 At other times, the sound of the repeated word does not complement its meaning. Because of changes in its sound or rhythm, by the time a word is repeated, it may differ considerably from the same word used earlier. In Pope's 'The Rape of the Lock', the French word 'billet-doux1 (love-letter) appears at the end of line 118, where it rhymes with 'true' in line 117. In line 138, the same word rhymes with 'rows' (line 137), indicating an English mispronunciation. By forcing an ignorant pronunciation, Pope has stripped the word of whatever sense of continental romance it may have had in its first appearance. The repetition, or the variation in the repetition, contributes to the ironic tone of the poem.36 The differences between repetition in rhetoric and poetry are best summarized in terms of function. In rhetoric, repetition serves an external function: to emphasize or clarify the subject matter. Poetry, however, has its own methods for giving emphasis—by placing a word at the beginning or end of the line, for instance—and has little need of repetition for this very straightforward purpose. Moreover, as noted above, poetry may or may not have any interest in clarity. Indeed, poetry often uses repetition to complicate, not to clarify. When this happens, when repetition intrudes itself between the reader and simple understanding, then it is not wholly serving an external purpose but is at least in part calling attention to itself as a conscious device and to the poem as a poem. Such self-consciousness of verbal device is characteristic of poetry, and it accounts for two crucial features of poetic repetition. The first of these is simple to explain. Whereas Aristotle and Cicero had to warn their rhetorical students against too much verbatim repetition, since that would be too obvious a device and might call attention away from the subject, poets have no such scruples. An obvious repetition in rhetoric is an indication of sloppy style. In poetry it is an invitation to inquire more deeply as to the purpose of such a device.37 Such lines as Gertrude Stein's 'A rose is a rose is a rose' and E.A. Robinson's 35. T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock', in A.W. Allison et al. (eds.), The Norton Anthology of Poetry, pp. 994-97, lines 55,120-21. 36. A. Pope, 'The Rape of the Lock', in Williams (ed.), Poetry and Prose of Alexander Pope, p. 83. 37. L. Magnus, The Track of the Repetend: Syntactical and Lexical Repetition in Modern Poetry (New York: AMS, 1989), pp. 13-14.
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'Miniver Cheevy thought and thought and thought about it' would be simply silly in rhetoric, but in poetry are at least potentially significant. And if such lines fail as poetry, it would not be because they are too obviously repetitious, as critics of both lines have alleged, but because their repetitions are poetically ineffective. At the same time, poetic repetition is fascinated by variation. Aristotle advised some variation in rhetoric, but only so as not to be too blatant. The poem, however, delights in the variant repetition. When this happens in a poem, Tynianov argues, the repeated element retreats into the background, and the variant element advances more clearly.38 For instance, the English mispronunciation of billet-doux in the example from Pope is boldly highlighted by the simple fact that the French pronunciation had appeared twenty lines before. The same word has occurred, but with a variant pronunciation; the repetition calls attention to that variant and makes it more significant than it would otherwise have been. So pervasive in poetry is variant repetition that one writer on repetition, Veronique Foti, describes 'the language of difference', which is 'a poetic language'.39 This language of difference uses repetition and its implication of resemblance, and by variation explodes that implication. 'It would be a language of multiple resonances rather than of the proton and eskhaton, a language of dispersion rather than of the circle.'40 A variant repetition, calling attention to 'alterity' as it does, may expand a word's field of meaning and foster poetry's intentional ambiguity. Laury Magnus writes, 'If repetition exists in the context of poetry, it is there to some creative end' .41 Does this sort of repetition ever characterize the prophetic books? One sensitive twentieth-century exegete, James Muilenburg, evidently felt so. Some thirty years before Magnus described this 'creative' end to poetic repetition, Muilenburg wrote, 'Wherever the [biblical] writer shows any inclination to employ the iterative style, he does so in a variety of ways, i.e., he uses repetition as a creative device'.42
38. Tynianov, Verse Language, p. 117. 39. V.M. Foti, 'Repetition/Subversion: Derrida, Jabes, and the Language of Difference', Soundings 68.3 (Fall 1985), p. 287. 40. Foti, 'Repetition/Subversion', p. 381. 41. Magnus, Repetend, p. 9. 42. Muilenberg, 'Repetition and Style', p. 103.
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External Repetitions: The Formula Though the repetition of formulas is particularly suited to rhetoric and, because of poetry's usual stress on innovation, particularly unsuited to verse, there are still certain kinds of poetry which make extensive use of formulas. A great deal of Homeric scholarship this century has focused on Homer's use of formulas, a focus that builds on Albert Lord's comparative work among Serbo-Croatian oral poets, particularly on his description of their formulas,43 For Lord, the use of formulas stems entirely from the demands of oral composition: the poet must satisfy the metrical requirements of each line, and when necessary fills in the gaps from a store of learned formulas.44 Such a use of formulas is clearly poetic, centered as it is on the rhythm of the verse line, but it would seem to inhibit the linguistic creativity which characterizes poetry. Lord agrees, saying of the oral poet: 'Expression is his business, not originality, which, indeed, is a concept quite foreign to him and one that he would avoid, if he understood it... There are periods and styles in which originality is not at a premium.'45 Lord's is a hugely insightful study to which, nevertheless, two qualifications should be added. First, his statement that originality is 'foreign' to the oral poet should not be taken to mean that the Serbo-Croatian singers—and Homer—are not creative: only that their creativity is expressed within more restrictive verbal parameters, their goal not being to 'Make it new!' as Ezra Pound is supposed to have demanded of young poets but rather to say 'What oft was Thought, but ne'er so well Exprest'.46 The second qualification is that whereas Lord assumed that his discussion applied uniquely to oral literature, some later students of oral literature have argued that this formularity is really a mark of all traditional poetry, of which oral literature is only one type.47 This conclusion presents a simple, yet important, distinction. Some poetry is 43. A.B. Lord, The Singer of Tales (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960), pp. 30-67. 44. Lord, Singer of Tales, p. 65. 45. Lord, Singer of Tales, pp. 44-45. 46. A. Pope, 'An Essay on Criticism', in Williams (ed.), Poetry and Prose of Alexander Pope, p. 46, line 298. 47. L. Russo, 'Homer's Formulaic Style', in B.A. Stolz and R.S. Shannon, III (eds.), Oral Literature and the Formula (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1976), p. 39.
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traditional, in which many techniques and even specific phrases may appear as familiar friends and do not call for any particular interpretative investigation; and some is individual, in which every technique or phrase is potentially significant and anything resembling formularity is either eschewed entirely or introduced only to be reversed or reinterpreted in some original way. Individual poetry's use of repetition, as Michael Riffaterre puts it, seizes 'the first opportunity to break the cliches neck' ,48 Certainly the Hebrew Bible contains its share of traditional poetry. Without denying the great beauty and frequent poetic brilliance of the Psalms, few doubt that as a whole they reflect traditional (usually oral) poetry. R.C. Culley has done a fascinating and still unsurpassed study of the formula and its distinctive Hebrew character in the Psalms. For Culley, the Hebrew formula by definition comprises at least a half-line, occasionally an entire parallel line.49 The study of Ugaritic literature has directed attention to another traditional feature of much biblical poetry: the so-called 'word pairs', stock pairs of words which match each other across the parallel line division. Some have suggested that there existed 'a whole dictionary of paired words' ,50 but a mechanical sort of composition such as this suggests is hardly consonant with the technical virtuosity displayed everywhere in even the most traditional biblical poetry.51 Instead, all that may be said is that these word pairs are the sort of device which traditional poetry, where familiarity is a virtue, might make much use of and which individual poetry might rather avoid. Into which category should one place the prophets, specifically Hosea? Is their poetry traditional or individual? In almost every case, the prophetic books have to be considered individual poetry. To begin with, prophetic formulas do not fit the pattern of poetic formularity. Where Lord and Culley stress that the poetic formula is a part of the poetic 48. Paraphrased by P. Aspel, 'I Do Thank Allah' and Other Formulae in Fulani Poetry', in Stolz and Shannon, III (eds.), Oral Literature and the Formula, p. 188. 49. R.C. Culley, Oral Formulaic Language in the Biblical Psalms (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1967), p. 10. Examples given in Chapter 5, 'Formulas and Formulaic Systems', pp. 32-101. 50. M. Dahood and T. Penar, 'Ugaritic-Hebrew Parallel Pairs', in L.R. Fisher (ed.), Ras Shamra Parallels (AnOr, 49; Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1972), I, p. 74; Watson, Classical Hebrew Poetry, pp. 138-39. 51. See O'Connor, Hebrew Verse Structure, who says that such lists do exist, but are used by 'beginners and hacks', p. 102; Lord, it should be noted, says much the same thing about the formulas of the Balkan poets, that no set list of formulas exists. Formulas are different region by region, poet by poet (Singer of Tales, p. 49).
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line—indeed that the requirements of the poetic line are the reason for the formula—in the prophets, the most frequent formulas, most notably mrr "O* ro, stand outside the parallel clauses. Other formulas, Ninn DTQ and mrr CUC, may be incorporated into lines, but just as frequently remain outside. Of all the formulas discussed above, only the summons to 'Hear', lUDttf, is always part of the line it introduces, which may explain why it is the only one of these formulas which appears in the Psalms.52 As for the parallel word pairs, there seems to be no accurate way to determine their relative frequency and distribution in the Bible—even if such a list would be useful, which is debatable—but one cannot help feeling that these pairs are characteristic of the Psalms, less so of the prophets, particularly of Hosea.53 Much more important than the frequency of formulaic word pairs, though, is the particular use to which they are put in individual books such as Hosea. For instance, most interpreters agree that in the traditional pattern one of these word pairs, usually the most common of the two, appears in the first half-line, and the other in the second half.54 That being so, what is one to make of Hosea's tendency to divide the pairs into different lines or to lump them together in a single half-line? For instance, 9.1-2 contains two clear word pairs, ]~U // 3p' (threshing floor // wine-press) and ]n // OITD (grain // new wine). Joel uses both of these word pairs in the expected way, split between line halves (2.24; 1.10). Hosea does not. You have loved harlot's hire, On every threshing floor of grain— Threshing floor and wine press will not feed them, And new wine wDl deceive them.
Here the expected patterns are shuffled around (Should it not be 'Grain will not feed them, and new wine will deceive them'?), leaving no sense of familiarity, however familiar the words themselves may be. The same disconcerting effect is achieved by the several lengthy lists in the early chapters of Hosea, in which as many as three or four recognizable word pairs are lumped together into a single impossibly long line (e.g. 2.13, 21; 4.2). Such passages, though they use the traditional forms and words, 52. See Culley, Oral Formulaic Language, pp. 36-38. 53. Watson, Classical Hebrew Poetry, p. 130. 54. Dahood and Penar, 'Ugaritic-Hebrew Parallel Pairs', p. 174.
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are not formulaic but rather counter-formulaic, and it is individual poetry and not traditional poetry (and certainly not rhetoric) that uses the formula in order to break it. In terms of formulas, Hosea fits most closely the genre of individual poetry.55 Internal Repetitions If the book of Hosea uses external repetition individually, its use of internal repetitions is at least equally 'creative*. These are most frequently repetitions of single words, always for some specific effect, always intended to be noticed and questioned by the careful reader. Often, what is supposed to be questioned is not so much the appearance of the repeated word but rather some variation which appears in its repetition. Harold Fisch writes, 'Throughout Hosea words re-echo, the second occurrence often providing an antithesis, or else...a momentary flash of meaning to clarify what would otherwise be totally obscure'.56 The most systematic investigation of repetition in Hosea is that of Martin Buss. In his thorough and insightful study, The Prophetic Word of Hosea, Buss takes particular note of repetitions in the book. Indeed, in his own translation of the text, he italicizes significant repeated words, and the effect is startling: every page is liberally bestrewn with italics, about one italicized word appearing every two lines.57 Buss himself uses these repeated words to delineate the separate units of the book (though he admits to some doubt as to the necessity of such an exercise). Frequent and systematic repetitions within a section, he feels, mark an original, continuous unit; 'superficial, mechanical' repetitions he assumes are redactional, late attempts to link together otherwise disparate passages.58 Although the distinction between an intrinsic and a superficial repetition is hardly clear, Buss's resulting outline is interesting and at least based solidly on a feature within the text. Unfortunately, Buss's emphasis on 55. I can hardly claim to have proved this point by means of my few examples. All I can say is that in my own study of Hosea I have found counter-formulaic language to be characteristic and traditional language to be rare. A great deal could be discovered if the investigation of parallel word pairs concentrated less on compiling catalogues of the pairs and of Ugaritic analogues and more on the analysis of how the pairs are used in individual passages and books. 56. H. Fisch, 'Hosea: A Poetics of Violence', in Poetry with a Purpose, p. 139. 57. M. Buss, The Prophetic Word of Hosea: A Morphological Study (Berlin: Alfred TOpelmann, 1969), pp. 6-27. 58. Buss, Prophetic Word, p. 29. See Chapter 5 for more examination of this question.
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finding the repetitions which mark units and sub-units of the text lead him to ignore other important facets of repetition in Hosea. Buss is uninterested in repetitions which cross more than a chapter or two. Moreover, Buss, like the cataloguers of parallel word pairs, simply notes the existence of repetitions, paying no attention to the way they are used. Are they identical or variant? Are they used in expected or incongruous contexts? The data that Buss collects as to the extent of repetition in Hosea are more valuable than the structural conclusions to which he limits himself. So how are these generally single-word repetitions used in Hosea? While examples of every type of repetition could surely be found in the book, an extraordinary number of them are variant in one way or another. Frequently, the variation involves simply the tone of the word's context. Hosea is, if anything, a book of widely contrasting tones. A sentence of harsh and seemingly irrevocable judgment is followed by a tender appeal for Israel's return. Indeed, two of the most bitter announcements of punishment (10.14-15 and 14.1; connected, incidentally, by a repetition of the root 2JETI, 'rip open'), immediately precede God's most tender speeches to his beloved Israel (chs. 11 and 14). In this book then, many repetitions are notable for appearing in one kind of speech first, then surprisingly in an utterly different sort of speech later. The effect has already appeared here, in fact. When God vows that Israel will be 'like the morning mist, like the dew which goes away early' (13.3), the significant point of comparison is the differing context. In 6.4 the phrase bemoans Israel's fickleness; in 13.3 it punishes it. To that contrast should now be added a third repetition, this time not of the whole phrase, but of its key word: 'wifcr'? "?CO iTTTO, 'I will be like the dew to Israel' (14.6). Again, the context is radically altered. God offers to take Israel back, and this key word, traveling through sorrow to anger to forgiveness is one of many microcosms of the book. Hosea's tendency, at least in the opening chapters, to cram significant words and word pairs together in lists also belongs in this category. Even a cursory reading of the first few chapters reveals a more than ordinary number of lists. A list is presented, after which some or all of the elements of the list are picked up in a later passage, often a passage markedly different in tone from the original list. For instance, in 2.10 God lists three fruits of the land which his unfaithful nation had attributed to her 'lovers': BJ'Tnm |nn Hnirm, 'grain, new wine and new oil' (all three of the possible combinations of these words are formulaic word pairs). The next verse lists ]H and 2?lTn again, and then 2.24
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repeats the original list in the original order, in^1 will not reappear, but the attentive reader, alerted by the doubling of the list, will notice when elements of the list crop up throughout the book. First, tfrrn appears in 4.11, then jn and tflTn together in 7.14 and 9.1-2. Finally, in an effect similar to the repetition of ^Q, 'dew,' ]H reappears in the concluding oracle, in 14.8, by this time recognized by both Israel and the reader as representative of the gifts of God. But whereas most of the previous appearances had been unequivocally negative, speaking of Israel's ingratitude or of her vain search for God's gifts among the Baals, 14.8 offers a new fruitfulness. Or again, in 1.7 God declares that he will save Judah by the Lord and not by bow or sword or war or horses or riders, a list representing all human means of salvation. In the betrothal speech of 2.20-24, God vows to break bow and sword and war from the earth. The missing elements, horses and riders, are at least noticeable. In 7.16 the people are 'a treacherous bow' and 'their princes will fall by the sword', and in 10.14 all of the people's strongholds will be destroyed 'in the day of war'. Bow-sword-war has now appeared three times, in order. But now 'sword' appears twice more, alone (11.6 and 14.1), and one senses that the pattern has been broken, until abruptly the people are directed to say in 14.4, 'Assyria will not save us [root JJ2T, used twice in 1.7, the original list]; upon horses let us not ride'. The list has been completed at last, and though the meaning is unchanged—human means of salvation are inadequate—this time Israel, not God, speaks.59 Through repetition has come closure and, for Israel, hope.60 Sometimes, where a word has more than one meaning, the variation builds on definition. Tynianov describes how poetry characteristically plays off a word's 'principal sign', or expected lexical meaning, against its 'secondary signs'.61 Sometimes the effect is ambiguity; other times a definition is reversed. In Hosea, for instance, the root NEtt, 'to lift up', appears in many lexical guises. In 1.6 the word has one of its secondary meanings, 'to forgive': 1 will never again pity the house of Israel, that I should forgive them at all.' God accuses the false priests in 4.8 of fattening themselves on the people's sin, so that 'their souls yearn [iKitT, 59. At any rate, a hypothetical Israel. 60. Hosea's use of lists is distinctive, but not unique. Another example appears in Jeremiah, Hosea's most devoted imitator. Jeremiah's commission 'to root up and to break down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant' (1.10) becomes a refrain throughout the book (cf. 18.7-9; 24.6; 31.28; 42.10; 45.4 and 52.4). 61. Tynianov, Verse Language, pp. 97-102.
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in an even rarer usage] toward [Israel's] guilt'. God describes himself in 5.14 as a lion who 'takes up' Israel as prey, and in 13.1 Ephraim 'exalts' himself in Israel. After denying forgiveness in its first appearance, RD3 has since described the priests' greed, the people's pride and God's impending punishment. But when the word appears one last time— where else but in ch. 14?—the people say 'All iniquity you will forgive'. Not only does this definition recall and reverse the first chapter's emphatic denial, one of many verbal connections between the opening chapters and the last, but it reverses the intervening usages.62 One final type of variant, particularly significant for Hosea, is a repetition of sound with variant spelling and meaning—in simple terms, wordplay. Fisch's example of verbal repetition in Hosea is from 5.2 and 9.9. In 5.2 appears the difficult sentence ip'oan D'CDO norTOl, 'And in slaughter, the rebels have gone deep'. It is difficult not only because of the abnormal syntax but because the forms na~lC and D'pto are hapax legomena. The Septuagint, evidently not recognizing either, has o 01 dypeuovTeq tf]v 6n,pav mTercri^av, 'Those who ensnare have made a deep pit', reading nrKD, 'pit', instead of rran$, from Qnti, 'slaughter'. After all, a 'pit' seems to fit the verb 'make deep' better than does 'slaughter'. Then, in 9.9 comes rmntznp''Qi?n, 'They have gone deep; they have corrupted'. Fisch seems to feel that this repetition clarifies the otherwise obscure 5.2.63 Evidently he believes, along with most editors of the text, that 5.2 has been 'corrupted', and that 9.9 provides a key to reconstructing the original reading. It is hard to see how. Far from clarifying, the repetition in 9.9 only complicates matters. Where 5.2 presented one reading (nontd from onti, 'slaughter') and perhaps implied a second (nntf, 'pit', from rrffij, 'sink down'), 9.9 adds a third Onnti from nntf, 'go to ruin'). The effect of taking these two—and perhaps three—readings together is not to enable one to find the single correct meaning, but rather to open a broad field of meanings. The exact repetition of Ip'QUn serves to highlight the more significant variant, punning, repetition of ntprjEj/nro. 62. An even better example of this effect, using the same root, appears in Isa. 53. In v. 4 the servant 'carried' [root Kt03] our affliction, and in v. 6 the iniquities of us all are 'laid on' [root 225] him. In v. 12, both words are lexically reversed. NfM takes on the secondary meaning 'forgive' and P3S its more common meaning 'intercede': And he himself forgave the sins of many, And for transgressors he interceded.
63. Fisch,'Poetics of Violence', p. 139.
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Such repetition, using single-words and building on significant variations, must be called poetic instead of rhetorical, and attempts to explain Hosea's use of repetition in terms of oratory inevitably fall flat. For instance, Jack Lundbom examines two repetitions as marks of rhetorical 'inclusios': the repetition of 'people' (DU) in 4.12 and 4.14 and the repetition of 'they' (ilDn) in 8.9 and 8.13. To Lundbom, these repetitions enclose a rhetorical unit and thus serve a structural purpose, besides serving the more basic rhetorical function of maintaining the audience's interest. He compares these to several inclusios that appear in the rhetoric of Deuteronomy.64 In identifying these repetitions, Lundbom demonstrates his acuity; in calling them rhetoric like that of Deuteronomy, he misses their point. In both cases the repetitions demonstrate significant variation and serve less to maintain interest and provide structural signposts than to reverse or reinterpret what has gone before. In 4.1112, for instance, we read 'Wine and new wine have taken the heart of my people ('QU D^np"1)', a phrase which is turned around in v. 14 to become the appropriate punishment for this, 'A people without discernment will be thrust down (QDL?'' ^T'K1? DU)', and the single-word connection between the two sentences (DP) is furthered by the consonantal repetition of D^"D'^ in v. 14. The sin described in v. 11, the people's loss of heart (or mind, 3*P) reappears in God's judgment on that people. A repetition less like the sentence-length inclusios that Lundbom notes in Deuteronomy would be difficult to imagine. The provisional hypotheses with which this chapter began—that the prophetic books represent some combination of rhetoric and poetry and that each prophetic book partakes of a different measure of the two basic genres—has received considerable support from the ensuing investigation. Though verbal repetition occurs in every foundational genre, each genre uses the device in its own distinct manner. Rhetorical repetition delights in familiar formulas, tends to involve whole phrases or clauses, requires restraint so as not to annoy an audience with excessive repetition and, by marking the structure of speeches, serves the basic rhetorical goal of clarity. Such repetition appeared throughout the prophets, to a marked degree in Amos, but relatively infrequently in Hosea. By contrast, poetic repetition, at least in individual poetry as opposed to traditional, might as easily build ambiguity as clarity, tends to avoid the formulaic, generally occurs at the level of single words, and delights perhaps most distinctively 64. J.R. Lundbom, 'Poetic Structure and Prophetic Rhetoric in Hosea', VT29 (1979), pp. 300-308.
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in repetition with fine but highly significant variations. Such repetition also appears throughout prophetic literature, but in this case it was unnecessary to range so far afield for examples. Hosea, so spare of rhetorical repetition that every possible example could be discussed in a few pages, abounds in poetic repetition. Indeed, so numerous are examples of poetic repetition in Hosea that it will require a whole chapter to discuss only one type: repetition varied by means of wordplay.
Chapter 4
LANGUAGE FALLING ON LANGUAGE: WORDPLAY AND HOSEA Be subtle, various, ornamental, clever, And do not listen to those critics ever Whose crude provincial gullets crave in books Plain cooking made still plainer by plain cooks, As though the Muse preferred her half-wit sons; Good poets have a weakness for bad puns. —W.H. Auden1
Conscious verbal repetition behaves differently in rhetoric and poetry. In rhetoric, repetition serves the sober goal of clarity, marking logical divisions and stressing key points; in poetry, particularly in individual (as opposed to traditional) poetry, repetition tends to stress divergence and variation instead of similarity. Often, poetic repetition calls attention not to the evident similarity but to some subtle, or not-so-subtle, variation between repetends. Poetic repetition is more likely to expand meaning than to expound it, to enliven than enlighten. As already illustrated from Hosea (5.2 and 9.9), variant repetition is perhaps most effectively exemplified by the wordplay or pun. Wordplay, after all, requires both repetition (the similarity of sound that acts as the bait) and variation (the difference in meaning that springs the trap). In wordplay, the crucial element is variation. Freud describes wordplay's technique as 'condensation accompanied by slight modification'.2 So 1. W.H. Auden, 'The Truest Poetry Is the Most Feigning', in E. Mendelson (ed.), Collected Poems of W.H. Auden (New York: Random House, 1976), pp. 47071. 2. S. Freud, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious (trans. J. Strachey; The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, 8; London: Hogarth, 1960), p. 25.
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much does wordplay stress variation instead of similarity that some would exclude it entirely from discussions of repetition.3 However, as the various attempts to categorize wordplay discussed below make clear, it is not always easy to decide where repetition ends and wordplay begins. For instance, how can one say that a polysemous pun—based on different definitions of a single word—is not repetition? Wordplay is not a different category, but a subset of repetition, one which stresses a semantic variation between repetends. Perhaps one reason that some wish to exclude wordplay from discussions of verbal technique—particularly wordplay in the Bible—is that whereas repetition is an eminently respectable verbal device, wordplay has fallen into ill repute. From Samuel Johnson's complaints about Shakespeare's 'quibbles' to modern sneers at this 'lowest form of wit', critics have often tried to discredit wordplay as pointless ornamentation, extraneous to the text.4 And, assuming that puns were disreputable, critics have often been 'desensitized to their presence'.5 No intellectual fashion lasts forever, and in this century many critics have rediscovered wordplay. William Empson's frequently cited book The Seven Types of Ambiguity led the way in taking wordplay seriously, and many poststructuralists have used punning as the organizing feature of some of their works6 and sometimes as the organizing principle of reality.7 This growing acceptance in secular literary circles of wordplay as a significant device has inspired much theoretical work that will prove useful in examining the function of wordplay in the prophets and Hosea. Of course interpreters had noticed wordplay in Scripture even before it became fashionable. Jewish medieval exegetes such as Rashi and ft>n Ezra commented on wordplay, usually called ]1tD!7"!?U ^3] }12f?, 'language 3. See, for instance, I. Eitan, 'La repetition de la racine en Hebreu', JPOS 1 (1921), p. 186. 4. 'Although puns are a fact of life, moral majoritarians have ever wanted to abort them.' W. Redfern, Puns (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984), p. 4. (See pp. 4-10 on intellectual disdain for wordplay). 5. F. AM, 'Ars est ccelare artem (Art in Puns and Anagrams Engraved)', in J.D. Culler (ed.), On Puns; The Foundation of Letters (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), p. 25. 6. See, for instance, J. Derrida, Cinders (trans, and ed. N. Lukacher; Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991), in which the phrase feu la cendre and various plays on it become the heart of the book. 7. See G. Ulmer, The Puncept in Grammatology', in Culler (ed.), On Puns, pp. 164-89.
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falling on language', and established their own rules for identifying and interpreting it.8 John Calvin was able to identify puns in the Bible and once, at his most magisterial, to pronounce 'I do not disapprove of this supposed [device]'.9 Bishop Lowth, always insightful, added to his Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews an appendix on wordplay in prophetic literature;10 and the most extensive, and still most useful, listing of biblical puns was collected a hundred years ago, by Immanuel Casanowicz.11 Building on this foundation, even those indifferent to recent literary currents, have studied wordplay, with the result that puns have been discovered thoughout the Hebrew Bible, in passages from widely varying times and places12 and in very different genres.13 One genre, though, seems to display the device more than others. Several interpreters have described wordplay as 'especially frequent in
8. See the discussion in M. Garsiel, Biblical Names: A Literary Study of Midrashic Derivations and Puns (Ramat Gan: Bar-Han University Press, 1991), pp. 20-22. 9. J. Calvin, Hosea (trans. J. Owen; Calvin's Commentaries on the Twelve Minor Prophets, 1; Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1846), p. 118. His comment is on Hosea 2.25. 10. R. Lowth, Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews (trans. G. Gregory; ed. C.E. Stowe; Andover: Codman, 1829), p. 384. 11. I.M. Casanowicz, Paronomasia in the Old Testament (Boston: Norwood, 1894), pp. 44-92. See also Casanowicz, 'Paronomasia in the Old Testament', JBL 12 (1893), pp. 105-67. 12. Albright, it should be noted, suggests that wordplay is a late development in biblical poetry and can be used as a dating device—early poems being marked by repetitive parallelism and late by wordplay (W.F. Albright, Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan [Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1967], pp. 18-19). D.N. Freedman, however, rejects the assumption that wordplay is necessarily late, preferring to date poems by the names they use for God ('Divine Names and Titles in Early Hebrew Poetry', in P.M. Cross, W.E. Lemke and P.O. Miller, Jr (eds.), Magnolia Dei: The Mighty Acts of God [Festschrift G.E. Wright; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1976], pp. 55-107). 13. Rather than provide an unreadably complete bibliography on biblical wordplay, annoyingly hidden away in a footnote, I have chosen to give complete bibliographical references as I refer to these books and articles in the ensuing pages. Nevertheless, a few useful works, not otherwise noted, are: S. Gevirtz, 'Of Patriarchs and Puns: Joseph at the Fountain, Jacob at the Ford', HUCA 46 (1975), pp. 33-54; D.F. Payne, 'Characteristic Word-Play in "Second Isaiah": A Reappraisal', JSS 12 (1967), pp. 207-29; D. Schmidt, 'Critical Note: Another Word-Play in Amos?' Grace Theological Journal 8 (1987), pp. 141-42; W.G.E. Watson, 'An Example of Multiple Wordplay in Ugaritic', UF 12 (1980), pp. 443-44.
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the prophets'.14 One explanation for this predominance could be the inherently cryptic nature of oracular utterance—the oracle at Delphi occasionally spoke in puns, too—but the Old Testament prophetic books contain more than just cryptic predictions, and wordplay appears throughout the books.15 Instead, it is worth asking whether puns occur so frequently in the prophets because these books so often use individual poetry, the genre of discourse most open to variant repetitions. Several statistical features from Casanowicz's study support this connection.16 First, narrative books use less paronomasia than do poetic books. For instance, by his computations, Exodus has 0.24 cases per page, 1 Samuel 0.17 and Jonah 0.29; by contrast, Joel has 3.25, Micah 2.73 and Habakkuk 2.80. Moreover, individual poetry uses puns more than traditional poetry. The usual example of traditional poetry, Psalms, has the lowest proportion of puns-per-page of any poetic book.17 Finally, prophetic books, of which a high proportion is recognized as poetic (e.g. Isaiah, Hosea, Joel), have higher proportions of wordplay than those which use more narrative or prose rhetoric (e.g. Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Zechariah). If Casanowicz's listing and proportions have any validity, then wordplay appears to have a special affinity for individual poetry. What of Hosea? The analysis in the preceding chapter of Hosea's use of repetition indicated that the book used more poetic repetition and less rhetorical repetition than other prophetic books. The implication was that Hosea should perhaps be read primarily as poetry, and only incidentally 14. Casanowicz, Paronomasia, p. 42. J.M. Sasson even specifies the Book of the Twelve as excelling in the art of wordplay (J.M. Sasson, 'Wordplay in the OT', in Crim et al. (eds.), IDBSup, p. 970). To these should be added those who have felt that wordplay in the prophets deserved special mention (Lowth, Sacred Poetry, p. 384; R.B. Chisholm, Jr., 'Wordplay in the Eighth Century Prophets', BSac 144 [1987], pp. 44-52) and those who have written on wordplay in the entire Old Testament but have nevertheless felt compelled to draw all or most of their examples from the prophets (L. Alonso-Schokel, Manual of Hebrew Poetics, pp. 29-31; M. Delcor, 'Homonymie et interpretation dans 1'ancien testament', JSS 18 [1973], pp. 40-54; JJ. Glilck, 'Paronomasia in Biblical Literature', Semitics 1 [1970], pp. 50-78.) 15. Redfern, Puns, pp. 35-36. 16. Casanowicz concludes his list of Old Testament wordplays by giving the 'proportion of cases of paronomasia to the page' for each book (Paronomasia, p. 93). Certainly Casanowicz's list of cases of paronomasia is incomplete and idiosyncratic, but on the provisional assumption that his techniques for identifying the device were consistent for each book, then his proportions, at least, should be valid. 17. Casanowicz, Paronomasia, p. 42. The exact figure on his chart is 1.19 cases per page, p. 93.
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as rhetoric. Is Hosea especially paronomastic? Opinions vary. Casanowicz says that Hosea has 2.11 puns-per-page, more than any non-prophetic book, but behind Joel, Habakkuk, Micah, Zephaniah and Nahum. Sasson, perhaps working from Casanowicz's figures, describes Hosea as having fewer than most minor prophets.18 Garsiel, writing specifically of puns on proper names, says that these occur with only moderate frequency in Hosea.19 By contrast, one modern commentator on Hosea, W. Rudolph, argues that wordplay is so distinctive a feature of Hosea's discourse that an understanding of wordplay is essential to any understanding of the book. Then he cites pages of examples, easily twice the number listed by Casanowicz.20 Moreover, Rudolph's list barely scratches the surface. Putting all the wordplays noted by the major commentators into a single list, Casanowicz* s figure, eighteen puns in the whole book, burgeons into a much more impressive number—at least seventy (see appendix). While this hardly proves that Hosea has more puns than other books— Casanowicz could have overlooked just as many wordplays in Micah, for example—it clearly supports Rudolph's view that wordplay is a central and intrinsic element of Hosea's language. However Hosea compares to other prophetic books in terms of its puns-per-page, it is hard to imagine another book in which wordplay is such a pivotal device. Before dealing with Hosea, a general discussion of the nature and effect of wordplay will be helpful. Catalogues and Categories Perhaps because of wordplay's ill reputation, a great deal of the work on wordplay has disregarded the effect of puns on their particular contexts. Instead, many writers have been content simply to list various types of wordplay, according to various external criteria. Then, as if classifying a pun were the same as interpreting it, many have stopped there. The oddest and easily the most pointless organization of wordplay is proposed by J. Brown, who begins with a few random insightful comments on puns, but soon degenerates into hermeneutically irrelevant distinctions between puns whose primary and 'variable' meanings are literal 18. Sasson, 'Wordplay in the OT, p. 970. 19. Garsiel, Biblical Names, p. 254. 20. W. Rudolph, 'Eigentiimlichkeiten der Sprache Hoseas,' in Studia Biblica et Semitica (Festschrift T.C. Vriczen; Wageningen: H. Veenen en Zonen, 1966), pp. 313-17.
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to the sense' but 'metaphorical to the syntax' (or vice versa), or metaphorical to both sense and syntax, and so on.21 Brown seems to feel it important to understand whether the double meanings of wordplays are semantically and syntactically literal or metaphorical, and in the excitement of sorting this out to his satisfaction, pays no attention at all to the question of how an individual pun may affect the interpretation of its context. Other divisions are no more functional. W.K. Wimsatt distinguishes between puns 'where the ambiguous sound occurs only once' and puns on two or more different occurrences, the point of this distinction never being made clear.22 Sigmund Freud, the most influential literary theorist never to write literary theory, offers a classification of wordplay which corresponds to Brown's in a few particulars. Under the larger category of 'double-meanings' in jokes, Freud catalogues wordplays according to several ill-assorted criteria: their grammatical nature (puns on proper names), their specificity (double-meaning proper as opposed to wordplay where the secondary meaning is obscure), and like Brown according to whether the secondary meaning is literal or metaphorical.23 Freud's analysis, which he surely never intended to be a systematic description of wordplay, illustrates how difficult it is to classify the pun, or even to decide by what criteria that classification is to be accomplished. In any case, though many of his individual comments are characteristically acute, Freud's categories are no more hermeneutically useful than Brown's. Other systems of cataloguing puns are less detailed and correspondingly more useful. Redfern, after expressing some doubt as to the utility of classifications, notes a few helpful distinctions. He distinguishes between polysemous puns, based on two or more possible meanings of one word ('The difference between men and women? Madam, I can't conceive. Can you?'); homophones, based on two different but identicalsounding words ('Get close to him; you're sure to get an I-full.'); and what Redfern calls off-puns, based on similar, though not identical, sounds (such as the connection noted below between Jezreel and Israel in Hosea 1.4).24 These distinctions help to clarify wordplay's relationship 21. J. Brown, 'Eight Types of Puns', Publications of the Modern Language Association 71 (1956), pp. 20-22. His complete schematic must be seen to be understood, or believed. 22. W.K. Wimsatt, Jr, 'Verbal Style, Logical and Counter-logical', p. 11. 23. Freud, Jokes, pp. 36-41. 24. Redfern, Puns, pp. 17-19.
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to the larger trope of verbal repetition. Polysemy is repetition with a fairly restricted range of variation (how many meanings of 'conceive' are there?). Homophony, with less stringent standards of similarity, has a greater range of semantic variation (T, 'eye', 'aye'). Off-puns may range even more widely for material and may be that much more semantically variant. This basic distinction between high correspondance (polysemy) and lower correspondance (homophony and off-puns), appears also in Jonathan Culler's essay on puns, under the labels 'homonymy' (one grapheme, two meanings) and 'paronomasia' (the larger class, puns based on similar sounds regardless of etymology and spelling). He adds a few specific cases to his classification, such as anagrammatic puns, but for the most part wisely stops at this basic two-fold division.25 Studies of wordplay in the Hebrew Bible have been no less concerned with categorizing the types of puns. Such categories form the largest part of the articles on Old Testament wordplay by Gliick, Sasson and Watson, and even a sizable portion of Casanowicz's monograph.26 Gliick, Sasson and Casanowicz multiply these categories by using an extremely broad definition of wordplay, one which includes such devices as alliteration, assonance, farrago (a strong, rhythmic beat of phonic repetitions27) and rhyme, but even when they deal with puns as such they continue to stress correct cataloguing. Casanowicz, for instance, would organize puns mechanically, according to the types of graphic variation used: variations in vowels and syllables, for instance, or substitution or reversal of consonants.28 Chisholm's categories use the divisions that appear in Redfern and Culler, except that he distinguishes (exactly how is not clear) between polysemy and homonymy.29 Watson follows a similar plan, with a few specific refinements, as when he separates direct etymological 25. J. Culler, 'The Call of the Phoneme: Introduction', in Culler (ed.), On Puns, p. 5. An even better discussion of anagrams as wordplay appears in the essay by Ahl, cited earlier, which appears in this same collection. 26. Gliick, 'Paronomasia in Biblical Literature', pp. 50-78; Gliick's categories are reproduced unchanged in Sasson, 'Wordplay in the OT, pp. 968-970; see also Watson, Classical Hebrew Poetry, pp. 239-245; Casanowicz, Paronomasia, pp. 3336. 27. Gliick, 'Paronomasia in Biblical Literature', pp. 70-71; Sasson, 'Wordplay in the OT, p. 969. 28. Casanowicz, Paronomasia, p. 35. 29. Chisholm, 'Wordplay in the Eighth Century Prophets', pp. 44-45. It is possible, but never certain, that when Chisholm writes 'homonym' he means 'homophone', which would at least make sense.
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puns from less direct varieties, and creates a special category for anagrammatic puns ('rootplay').30 Almost everyone places puns on proper nouns in a separate category. The best, and certainly the most detailed, examination of name puns in the Hebrew Bible is that of Garsiel, whose insight and literary skill nevertheless do not keep him from doing his own categorizing. First he classifies puns (which he calls MNDs—Midrashic Name Derivations) according to their objects, dealing separately with puns on personal names, national or ethnic names, geographical names and so on.31 A few pages later, he organizes puns mechanically, as Casanowicz does, separating such types as homonyms, puns using vowel changes, puns using consonant changes and anagrams.32 In summary, many and diverse are the different listings of puns, and with great weariness is the cataloguing thereof. Wordplay has been classified: (1) by utterly idiosyncratic criteria (Brown); (2) by how many words are involved in the wordplay (Wimsatt); (3) by which parts of speech are played upon (Garsiel and everyone who puts puns on proper nouns in a separate category); (4) by what specific orthographic differences separate the words played on (Garsiel, Casanowicz and everyone who puts anagrams into a separate category); and (5) by how alike are the punned words (Culler, Redfern, Chisholm). Perhaps some of these criteria work better than others; none can claim to supercede the rest. In the end, one can only conclude that wordplay 'eludes all attempts at definition and classification' .33 Furthermore, none of these classifications, except perhaps Brown's, are completely pointless; some even help to clarify some theoretical matters, the connection between wordplay and verbal repetition as a whole, for instance. Nevertheless, the interpreter who wishes to understand a text that makes use of wordplay finds little or no value in these efforts to pigeonhole the puns. Look where one will, the listings will not answer the basic hermeneutic question: 'What does a wordplay do to a text?' For this reason, the remaining discussion of wordplay, particularly as it appears in Hosea, will use different presuppositions and a different method of classification. First, it assumes that wordplay is intentional and 30. Watson, Classical Hebrew Poetry, p. 239. 31. Garsiel, Biblical Names, pp. 43-76. 32. Garsiel, Biblical Names, pp. 83-93, 33. L. Peelers, Tour une interpretation du jeu de mots', Semitics 2 (1971-72), p. 142.
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intrinsic to its context, that Hosea uses wordplay because the device serves his purposes, not because he was an inveterate punster who should have abstained but could not control himself. Next, it does not distinguish between puns on the basis of their subject matter, their mechanics, or their degree of similarity. These distinctions may be helpful in identifying a wordplay, but once it is identified, they have nothing to say about how the wordplay acts. Instead, the puns of Hosea will be divided simply into two categories, corresponding to the two major ways that wordplay may function in a text. The Working of Hosea's Wordplay Before explaining these two functions, a few alternative proposals concerning the work of wordplay must be considered. First, many who write on wordplay evidently assume that the obvious effects of homonymy have no internal function at all. Instead, they examine homonyms only in order to decide which of the two implied meanings is the correct reading. To these scholars, homonyms are tools not of interpretation but of textual criticism. For instance, Shakespeare scholars differ on whether Hamlet says to Ophelia, 'So you mistake your husbands' (Folio and 2 Quarto) or 'So you must take your husbands' (1 Quarto).34 The scholars who puzzle over which reading Shakespeare really intended have assumed, consciously or not, that he did not intend both. Such an approach characterizes a great deal of biblical scholarship. M. Delcor, for instance, provides a remarkable list of biblical homonyms, but examines them solely so as to clear up textual difficulties.35 Moshe Held, also writing on homonyms, uses the same hear-no-ambiguity-see-no-ambiguity approach, and individual examples could be multiplied ad infinitum from commentaries on specific cases.36 Without denying that the text of the Hebrew Bible is frequently difficult and has occasionally been muddled in transmission, perhaps because of some confusion of homonyms, this approach seems fairly shortsighted. For instance, the odd expression in 34. Shakespeare, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, in Bevington (ed.), Complete Works of Shakespeare, HI.ii.250. The example is discussed in J. Zat^cki, Communicative Multivocality: A Study of Punning, Metaphor, and Irony (Krakow: Nakfedem Uniwersytetu Jagiellonskiego, 1990), pp. 24-25,57. 35. Delcor, 'Homonymie', pp. 40-54. 36. M. Held, 'Studies in Biblical Homonyms in the Light of Akkadian', JANESCU 3 (1970-71), pp. 46-55.
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Isaiah 48.1, "They will go out from the waters of CQQ) Judah', has tempted many to read it as its homophone 'from the loins of C4?QQ) Judah' (cf. lQIsa). Delcor concludes that the Masoretic Text is the better reading here, which is a reasonable conclusion, but he never considers whether the alternative reading might be implied by means of wordplay, a possibility supported by the appearance of 'iJIpD in 49.1 and two cognate forms in 48.19.37 Given the repetition of the form, is not the possibility of an intentional double-meaning (a wordplay) at least as likely as the possibility of textual corruption? Related to this notion that a homonym serves no rhetorical function, but merely signals a textual difficulty is the idea that the sound-repetitions which signal a wordplay are accidental. Sometimes, of course, they must be. Surely not every wordplay which has ever been identified is the result of conscious authorial intent. Casanowicz struggles with this question, disallowing wordplays which he feels resulted from 'unavoidable coincidence'.38 Yet how does one demonstrate such accidents? All of Casanowicz's examples of these 'unavoidable coincidences' work at least as well read as intentional wordplays. In the end, most devoted readers of texts grow sceptical of so-called 'coincidences', regardless of conscious authorial intention. This is as true of wordplay as it is of every other device. 'If we maintain that the generation of puns and other wordplays is accidental unless proved otherwise, we are following the popular tendency to exaggerate the power of chance.'39 It is at least as defensible and immeasurably more rewarding to assume the opposite. A final, and a curious, example of one who feels that wordplays serve no purpose at all is Franz Bohl. In his article, 'Wortspiele im Alten Testament', which deals primarily with narrative texts, he does not doubt that wordplays are intentional. Nevertheless, he assigns those passages which contain wordplays to older, more 'primitive', redactional layers that, to his evident relief, have been superceded by a later, more sophisticated, prophetic redaction.40 Bohl's examples are astute and well-presented, but his conclusion, so characteristic of its time, only seems quaint today. Few still accept the presupposition that old equals unsophisticated, or that unsophisticated equals negligible. In any case, Bohl's view of wordplays as insignificant to their final context places him in the same 37. 38. 39. 40.
Delcor, 'Homonymie', p. 42. Casanowicz, Paronomasia, p. 26. AM, 'Ars est ccdare artem', p. 25. F.M.T. Bohl, 'Wortspiele im Alten Testament', JPOS 6 (1926), p. 212.
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group as those who see puns as either textual errors or accidents, and none of these views has much to recommend it to an interpreter. If some have seen wordplay as serving no purpose at all, others may see it as serving a negligible purpose. It should be obvious, but evidently is not and must be specified: wordplays are not necessarily meant to be funny. To assume that all puns are jokes is to apply to every text the modern prejudice against puns as 'a low form of humor', in which case 'a serious pun becomes a contradiction in terms'.41 Such an assumption not only makes a joke of the text but also of the interpretation. For instance, the normally reliable Watson notes that wordplay is common in Hebrew laments and suggests that these puns were to provide comic relief at funerals, 'to turn sorrow to laughter'.42 It is perhaps better to accept that wordplay need not be humourous than to postulate such macabre ceremonies. Indeed, puns are frequently used in deadly earnest. Some of the greatest punsters in English poetry used wordplay in their most devout verse; Donne and Herbert to name two.43 In the Hebrew Bible, some wordplays may have had at least a secondary comedic intent (for instance the equation of ^33 and ^3 in Genesis 11), but generally speaking, wordplay is a more serious matter for the biblical writers. This is particularly true of the prophets, and perhaps among the prophets particularly true of Hosea.44 Harold Fisch writes: Hosea plays in earnest; if he turns images and words inside out, it is because he has a purpose... Wordplay is in this case a matter of life and death, for the prophetic function itself operates through and by the engagement with language.45
So, having argued that wordplays are neither accidental nor irrelevant but rather have distinct and serious functions in their contexts, what are these purposes? Simply put, wordplay has one of two rhetorical goals: it either connects two or more otherwise distinct ideas or it complicates and makes ambiguous one idea by suggesting alternative meanings. Gliick writes that wordplay acts 'to imply a meaning and draw an image 41. Ahl, 'Ars est ccelare artem', p. 32. 42. Watson, Classical Hebrew Poetry, p. 246. 43. See L. Untermeyer, Play in Poetry (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1938), p. 51. 44. F.C. Tubbs, The Nature and Function of Humor and Wit in the Old Testament Literary Prophets' (PhD dissertation, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1990), p. 215. 45. H. Fisch, 'Poetics of Violence', p. 146.
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other than the one expected in the context [i.e. to make some surprising connection], or in addition to it as a secondary or tertiary idea [i.e. to multiply semantic possibilities]'.46 Redfern calls these two different, even opposite, functions the centripetal (cohesive) and centrifugal (disjunctive) workings of the pun.47 The exact distinctions between the two tendencies will be better explained by examples than by labels. Connective Wordplay Theodore Vischer defines humor as 'the ability to bind into a unity, with surprising rapidity, several ideas which are in fact alien to one another both in their internal content and in the nexus to which they belong'.48 While wordplay need not be humorous, it is easy to see why puns can and so frequently are used as jokes: bringing together alien ideas is precisely what puns do better than any other verbal device. Derek Attridge defines the working of the pun thus: 'Two similar-sounding but distinct signifiers are brought together, and the surface relationship between them is invested with meaning through the inventiveness and rhetorical skill of the writer.'49 In other words, a wordplay uses a shallow and probably coincidental similarity in sound to invent a connection between two words that would otherwise not be connected. In many cases, the connective wordplay takes the form of a creative etymology, hinting at or baldly asserting the true meaning of this word or that. The puns on names noted by almost every writer on Old Testament wordplay function in this way. Here it is essential to distinguish between the creative etymologies that occur throughout the Hebrew Bible and the scientific etymologies that appear in modern lexicons. These latter studies, based on the Hebrew triliteral root and replete with comparative material from Ugaritic, Akkadian and Arabic, would be utterly foreign to the Hebrew mind.50 The creative etymology seeks not to find the linguistic origin of a word or name (a signifier), but rather to 46. Gliick, 'Paronomasia in Biblical Literature', p. 50. 47. Redfern, Puns, p. 24. 48. Quoted in Freud, Jokes, p. 11. 49. D. Attridge, 'Language as History/History as Language: Saussure and the Romance of Etymology", in Peculiar Language: Literature as Difference from the Renaissance to James Joyce (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, 1988), p. 108. 50. Indeed, it is debated whether the notion of root-meaning had any place in the Hebrew consciousness. For a brief survey of the debate, see J.F.A. Sawyer, 'RootMeanings in Hebrew', JSS 12 (1967), pp. 37-38.
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suggest a personal or theological explanation for the signified, regardless of whether the etymology is philologically valid. Indeed, often the biblical writer willfully uses etymologies which are patently false. Guillaume, noting the attribution of the name Reuben (pitn) to some form of HR~i, 'he saw' (Gen. 29.32), comments, 'Everyone must have known that Reuben meant 'lion', and was not an exclamation ['Look! A son!'].'51 The writers did not care about the actual origin of the word, only about the origin they were creating, which ought to abolish the curious assumption still to be found in biblical criticism that scientific etymologies are somehow more significant than the quaint 'folk etymologies' preserved by the text. These 'folk etymologies' are conscious and creative devices, and yield more interpretative significance than do connections arising from accidents of philology.52 In Hosea, as in the rest of prophetic literature, one of the most characteristic punning connections is between a sin and its punishment. The example noted in the preceding chapter already illustrates this type of connection. In 5.2, Hosea describes the sin: Ip'QOT CTtDfo nianch, 'And (in) slaughter, the rebels have gone deep'. The result, given in 9.9, is TTO~lp'1QiJn, 'They have gone deep; they have corrupted' (or, 'gone to ruin'). The effect of the wordplay (OntD/TTO) is to tie the sin to its result, not logically but no less inevitably. This example is complex, involving several words over several chapters, but other examples are simpler. One such example comes in 2.13: 'I will put an end to CFQtpn) all her rejoicing, her festivals, her new moons and her sabbaths (nrnttf).' Here, of course, the well-known etymological connection is reversed, the defiled day of rest becoming a day of arrest. In another instance, Casanowicz argues that 8.11 is a polysemous pun: 'For Ephraim has multiplied altars for sinning (KtDrf7), they shall be altars for punishment (Ktanb) for him', based on the dual meaning of the verb NQn.53 Chisholm suggests a similar example, noting that the sin described in 7.13 ('Woe to them, for they have wandered [1TT3] from me') receives its appropriate punishment in 9.17—'They shall be wanderers (Dm]) among the nations'.54 When the punishment equals the sin, justice—at least poetic justice—is served. 51. A. Guillaume, 'Paronomasia in the Old Testament', JSS 9 (1964), p. 282. 52. On 'folk etymology' in general, see Attridge, 'Language as History', p. 112; on 'folk etymology' in biblical literature, see Garsiel, Biblical Names, pp. 17-19. 53. Casanowicz, Paronomasia, p. 55. 54. Chisholm, 'Wordplay in the Eighth Century Prophets', p. 46.
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Two more complex examples illustrate how carefully Hosea used the sin/punishment connection. In 7.14-15, God says: 'They have turned against me ('2 ITlO^). But I, I instructed Cn~lD'), I strengthened their arms.' As it stands, this wordplay expresses a mournful irony (I raised them [root ID'], but they have turned away [root 110]) but an additional play is implied by the alternative meaning of the root ~10\ 'chastise'. This implication becomes explicit in 10.10, where the root recurs, in yet another wordplay: 'I will chastise them (n^OKl). Peoples will be gathered against them, because of their tying on (DnplJO) their double iniquity.'55 The two passages, connected by the repeated root ~1D\ draw together the ideas of turning aside from God, God's past instruction, his future chastisement, and the people's double iniquity. Another example, something of a tour deforce of the punster's craft, appears in ch. 12. In v. 9, Ephraim boasts of his wealth, ^ ]iK TIK^D, 'I have found wealth for myself, then claims to be innocent of wrongdoing, or at least unindictable: ]!£> ''TIKira'' *b, 'They cannot find my guilt'. The repetitions of N2iQ and "b make clear the punning connection of ]iK and ]i#, the implication that Ephraim's wealth is inseparable from his iniquity and guilt. Ephraim is hoist with his own petard.56 If the wordplay which connects sin and punishment is characteristic of the prophets, it is nevertheless not the only punning connection that they make. In salvation oracles, for instance, the connection is likely to be between either the sin or the punishment and God's forgiveness. Hosea again supplies several useful examples. One such example even reverses a sin/punishment pun on the same word. In 11.5 God says, 'They will return (312T) to the land of Egypt, and Assyria will be his king, for they have refused to repent plto'?)'.57 The punishment, return to captivity, 55. This translation is tenuous, trying to make sense of the anomalous verb "IDS, 'bind'. The LXX, either mistaking the verb root or consciously correcting it, translates this word EV T£> reaiSeueaOai amovi;, as if it were also from ~!0\ A fascinating study, unfortunately beyond the reach of this paper, would be the examination of the LXX and wordplay. Frequently the translation corrects the wordplay, as in this verse, but other times it actually calls attention to a pun by translating not the literal but the implied meaning. 56. The pun is noted by Rudolph, 'Eigenttimlichkeiten', p. 316. The larger context of this pun, both in ch. 12 and in the book as a whole will be explored in the next chapter. 57. The Hebrew text actually begins with the negative particle vh>, reading "They will nor return...' The LXX understands this word as I4? (otmca, 'to him'), which would clear up the sense somewhat, but the LXX is hardly a reliable witness on this
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reflects the sin, refusal to return. Then in 14.5 God says: 'I will heal their apostasy (DraiSta); I will love them freely; for my anger has turned (UtD) from him.' 312? appears first in Israel's sin (turning away), then in God's forgiving response.58 The same root, 312J, figures in another salvific wordplay. In 12.7, the prophet appeals to Jacob 'And you, you must return to your God' (inon ^rfPtQ). God's response to such a return is described three verses later with an intriguing quasi-anagrammatic pun. 'Again I will cause you to dwell in tents (D^n^n ^|3'0iN), as in the former days' (12.10).5" Another, marvellously subtle, example is the word Lebanon in 14.6-7. The word appears three times in this chapter, conveying an exotic touch to a passage more like the Song of Songs than like a prophetic poem, but only the third time does it make sense in its context. Verse 6 says, 'And he shall strike his root like Lebanon Qin'pS)'. Then v. 7 adds, 'His aroma will be like Lebanon Qto"??)'. These two sentences are odd, but easily understood in terms of wordplay. 'Lebanon' in v. 6 implies a similar word: H3I1'?, 'poplar'. In the same way, v. 7 implies Hp1?, 'frankincense'. The wordplays connect this passage to an earlier oracle, where the poplar appears in a list of trees under which the Israelites had offered idolatrous incense (4.13), Reading these two passages together, one sees a fascinating connection: God's offered re-covenanting of 14.6-7 reverses and negates the idolatry that had severed the original relationship. As already noted, the wordplays on names, duly noted by so many scholars, generally fall into the category of wordplays that draw connections. Garsiel's comments to the contrary, Hosea includes more than his fair share of name puns as well. Indeed, the reader's first clue that wordplay will be significant in the book as a whole is the flurry of name plays in the first chapter. These are, for the most part, puns of the most patent variety. For instance, 'Call her name Lo-Ruhamah (HDm tib), for I will not again pity (DrPN) the house of Israel' (1.6). The names of Hosea's and Comer's other children, Jezreel and Lo-Ammi, are even passage, reading ^V for •»» in v. 4 and 3I01 for TIB in v. 5. (Sec H.-D. Necf, 'Der Septuaginta-Text und der Masoreten-Text des Hoseabuches im Vergleich', Bib 67 [1986], p. 206.) In any case, the wordplay remains whether the sentence is negative or positive. 58. Casanowicz, Paronomasia, p. 80. 59. Suggested by Rudolph, 'Eigentumlichkeiten', p. 317. In fact, the requirements of the wordplay may explain the otherwise anomalous preposition 2 ('in', not 'to', as the context seems to demand) in 12.7; it would not be the only case in Hosea where spelling was altered to make a wordplay more evident (see 13.15, below).
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more obvious, so much so that it stretches the definition to call these basic repetitions wordplay at all. The puns lie deeper than the basic repetition, however, as the name Jezreel illustrates. At the most obvious level, the name Jezreel refers to 'the bloodshed of [the valley of] Jezreel' (1.4), but it also sounds suspiciously like the name 'Israel'. The two words are juxtaposed in both v. 4 and v. 5: 'I will visit the bloodshed of Jezreel (^Ninr) on the house of Jehu, and I will bring an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel (^tOD'). And it will be in that day that I will break the bow of Israel (^NntB1!) in the valley of Jezreel (^Kinr).' The name refers to the sin of Jehu at Jezreel, to the place of punishment, and to the guilty party all at once. Then, in 2.24-25, this name (along with the names of Hosea's other children) reappears, only reversed: And the land will answer the grain, And the new wine and the new oil, And they will answer Jezreel. And / will sow her for myself in the land, And I will pity Lo-Ruhamah, And I will say to Lo-Ammi, 'You are my people'.
Here, in addition to the simpler reversals of Lo-Ruhamah and Lo-Ammi (by the expedient of removing the negative particle), Jezreel is reversed by reducing it to its verbal root, int 'sow', and turning the oracle of punishment in 1.4-5 into a promise of new fertility. Much more will be said in the next chapter about these names and about the deceptively simple plays on them; for now it is enough to note that these name puns set the tone for the rest of the book. Wordplay, especially on names, will be significant in what follows. The wordplay on Jezreel connects the name (and Israel) to both judgment and salvation, in different passages. Most name puns in Hosea stress the former connection, indicating insulting etymologies. Israel, for instance, becomes a stubborn cow: 'For like a stubborn (rn~ld) cow, Israel is stubborn (^SOST 110)' (4.16). Ephraim (cnEMSi), no better off, is a wild ass (N~i?), 8.9.60 Predictably, in a book as concerned as Hosea is with cultic shrines, place names receive their due notice, as when 12.12 60. This play on D'"1?S and K^l? is partly anagramrnatic and by no means the clearest example of wordplay in Hosea. Inexplicably, it is perhaps the most frequently noted pun in all the book. See, among others, Buss, Prophetic Word, p. 39; Fisch, 'Poetics of Violence', p. 146; Rudolph, 'Eigentiimlichkeiten', p. 315; Watson, Classical Hebrew Poetry, p. 244.
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neatly disposes of both Gilead and Gilgal with a single pun: 'Though Gilead (IP1??) be wicked, surely they are vain. In Gilgal (^3^3) they sacrifice bulls. Indeed their altars shall be as heaps (Qll?J5).' As Rudolph points out, this verse forms a neat paronomastic pattern of gil-gil-galgal.61 Of course, not every name pun indicates punishment. Ephraim (DHSN), already punningly called a wild ass (among many other things), is offered redemption in 13.15, which promises that 'he will bear fruit' (R'~)S'_, a peculiar variant spelling of the root rns, evidently so as to make the pun on DHSK more clear).62 The pun reappears in 14.9, where Ephraim (D'HSK) plays against God's promise to be 'your fruit (^['"12).' Ephraim, like Jezreel, makes his last appearance in a connective wordplay indicating new fertility. So one function that a wordplay may have in a text is to make a connection. This connection, it should be noted, is non-rational, which may help to explain the low status which wordplay continues to have in Western society since the scientific revolution. In a world ruled by logic (if such a world could exist), wordplay would not only be ineffective, it would be impossible. The connective wordplay derives its power, not from rational proof and demonstration, but rather from an incantational effect of the words. The words themselves bear the power. Thus to say that Gilead and Gilgal will be like gallim is not to make a logical argument but to invoke a type of imitative magic, to force a connection based on the similarity of words. This is not to denigrate the power of the punning connection, but to explain it. Only in that impoverished society where words have lost their instrinsic power and become mere signifiers of external realities does the connective wordplay seem insignificant and the pun appear to be a mere 'quibble'. Ambiguous Wordplay Regardless of where it derives its force, the connective wordplay facilitates understanding of a text. Disparate words and passages suddenly click together when the connecting pun becomes clear. For instance, understanding the two different wordplays helped to explain the curious use of 'Lebanon' in 14.6-7, and by forcing an intertextual link to 4.13 enriched the meaning of that passage. Nevertheless, while one might 61. Rudolph, 'Eigentiimlichkeiten', p. 317. 62. Buss, Prophetic Word, p. 39; Casanowicz, Paronomasia, p. 72; Rudolph, 'Eigentiimlichkeiten', p, 315; Watson, Classical Hebrew Poetry, p. 244.
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argue that wordplays always enrich meaning, one cannot say that they always make that meaning more clear. Sometimes a pun complicates and muddies meaning, often irretrievably. This action of a pun, Redfern's 'centrifugal' working, points inward. Instead of tying two discrete words together, the ambiguous wordplay draws within, loading a word with multiple meanings, sometimes until it collapses. To put it another way, by giving words double or triple meanings, sometimes even contradictory meanings, this sort of pun works against clarity, even against communication itself. It is 'a sin against linguistic convention'.63 No wonder that great prose stylists like Samuel Johnson had reservations about wordplay. Acting in this way, the pun hinders 'what is taken to be the primary function of language: the clean transmission of a pre-existing, self-sufficient, unequivocal meaning'.64 The ambiguous pun is designed, 'to render impossible the choice between meanings, to leave the reader or hearer endlessly oscillating in semantic space'.65 The effect is to disconcert the reader, especially the reader who seeks tidy communication, simple and easily understood speech with no unresolved questions. R.A. Shoaf's comment on Chaucer's wordplay applies to all ambiguous puns: 'the pun is a device for delaying, interrupting, or otherwise frustrating closure'.66 Some of Hosea's most interesting puns act in this way. Chapter 10 begins, ib'mtD' '"IS ^IST ppia |S], 'Israel is a luxuriant vine; he bears fruit for himself'. Taken by itself, this statement is indeed a favorable evaluation of Israel, surprisingly so for Hosea. However, two anomalies in the verse stand out and demand further examination. First is the rare word pp"Q. Although its definition as 'luxuriant' is well supported by the versions and by cognate languages, it is still a hapax legomenon in this sense. The same root occurs in the Hebrew Bible with a different meaning: to make empty or void.67 The insidious implication by means of polysemous wordplay is clear. Then, perhaps sensitized by the first ambiguity, the reader might wonder about mtZT. Again, while this verb 63. Peeters, 'Pour une interpretation du jeu de mots', p. 128. 64. D. Attridge, 'Unpacking the Portmanteau: Or, Who's Afraid of Finnigan 's Wake', in Culler (ed.), On Puns, p. 189. 65. Attridge, 'Unpacking the Portmanteau', p. 190. 66. R.A. Shoaf, 'The Play of Puns in late Middle English Poetry: Concerning Juxtology', in Culler (ed.), On Puns, p. 45. 67. See especially Isa. 24.3 and Jer. 19.7. Discussed in R. Gordis, 'Studies in Hebrew Roots of Contrasted Meaning', JQR 27 (1936-1937), p. 49.
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clearly can mean 'make, produce', it rarely does. The usual Hebrew verb for the producing of fruit is the root HE?P, which is used in exactly this sense just two verses earlier in 9.16. Why, then, does 10.1 use the unlikely verb root TO? The answer is not difficult. This is a pun on the similar-sounding noun K1IO, 'emptiness, vanity'. Indeed, doubtless to make the identification more certain, the implied noun appears in 10.4, K15D r\"b$, 'swearing falsehood'. So, by means of two ambiguous wordplays, the positive evaluation of Israel in 10.1 has been partially, though not wholly, undercut by a secondary, accusatory, evaluation. Israel is both a fruitful and an empty vine, an ambiguity which describes not only the reality of Israel's sporadic obedience but also God's ambivalence toward his people. The secondary meanings do not always contradict the primary. Often the double meanings implied by wordplay only contribute a new nuance. For instance, 14.3 calls to Israel: 'Take with you words (D'~12"I) and return to the LORD. Say to him (v'PK Tins), "Forgive all iniquity. Receive what is good (31CD), and we will offer the bulls (D'~IS) of our lips.'" Here the subject is words, and the phrase 'the bulls of our lips' seems a jarring metaphor. One sympathizes with the Septuagint translators who chose to translate DHS, 'bulls', with KccpTtov = '"is 'fruit'. Reading 'bulls', however, forces one to identify those 'words' as sacrifices, not just supplementing but replacing the old sacrifices. This secondary meaning receives support from two possible wordplays in the verse. Gordis notes that the word 310, which often means 'material prosperity' and is generally so read in this verse, can also mean 'words' (see Ps. 39.3; Neh. 6.19), being parallel to the word m~t, 'whisperings' (cf. Ps. 31.14).68 Given this alternative meaning, one is tempted to take the interplay between speech and sacrifice a step further and wonder if the verb not* might also hint at "IQK the standard Aramaic word for 'lamb' (Ezra 6.9,17; 7.17).69 The result would be an extended double meaning. The primary sense tells Israel to bring words; the secondary meaning identifies these words as sacrifice. Words, not the usual offerings, are to be rendered to God. Harold Fisch notes another extended ambiguity, having to do with the word 'rig, 'I will be', in 13.7, 10 and 14. In v. 7 the word is unequivocal: 'And I will be (TIKI) to them as a lion, as a leopard lying in wait along 68. R. Gordis, 'The Text and Meaning of Hosea 14.3', VT5 (1955), pp. 89-90. 69. This possibility is equally tempting in 13.2, another passage concerning sacrifice.
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the way.' In v. 10, another possibility appears, via the versions. The Masoretic Text says, 'I will be CHN) your king now, and he will save you in all your cities', but the Greek translates Tl^ withrcot>= !TN, 'Where is your king now?'70 Fisch argues persuasively that Hosea intends both meanings, so that v. 10 is really saying, 'Where is your king now, the one you caused to reign in defiance of me? / I will be your King. / I will not be your King for you have brought destruction on yourselves. /1 will be your king in a way you little expect or desire.' All these meanings somehow seem to be in the verses, lurking behind the potent ambiguity.71
The same variation in the versions occurs twice in v. 14, so that the Greek and Syriac change the Hebrew 'I will be your pestilence, O Death; I will be your sting, O Sheol' to 'Death, where is your pestilence? Sheol, where is your sting?' Again, Fisch argues that both meanings apply, even adding a third possibility: 'Alas!' CIS, spelled iTpN once, in Ps. 120.5). Thus Fisch reads, Alas / Where are /1 will be / thy plagues, O death! Alas / Where is /1 will be / thy destruction, O Sheol! .. .The same signifiers bring all these meanings together. In the tempest of contradictory meanings, the only rock we can hold onto is the words themselves. 'Eht alone has continuity in the turbulence of its dizzily changing significations and the discontinuities of its context.72
In terms of technical virtuosity, the most interesting examples of ambiguating wordplay in Hosea are the extended cases, passages in which pun after pun hints at a secondary level of meaning. When the passage focuses on a single word or phoneme, the effect is to create a specific undercurrent of meaning, which may either undercut or supplement the literal meaning. Hosea 7.3-7, for instance, plays intensely on two phonemes, ^K and ~M3, ultimately creating wholly new meanings beneath the surface. By their evil, they make the king rejoice, And princes by their lies. All of them are adulterers, Like a burning oven are they.73 70. Neef, 'Der Septuaginta-Text', p. 207. Also Vulgate and Targums. 71. Fisch, 'Poetics of Violence', p. 153. 72. Fisch, 'Poetics of Violence', p. 153.
73. Reading ngK /dn -isi -ran -IDD for the MT n?to rnjji -ran. This slight
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Prophecy, Poetry and Hosea The baker ceases from stirring [thefire?], From kneading the dough until it is leavened. In the day of our king, The princes are sick, heated from wine. He draws out his hand with scoffers.
For their heart burns74 like the oven, While they lie in wait. All the night, their baker75 sleeps, In the morning, it [the oven?] burns like a flaming fire. All of them smolder like the oven, And they devour their judges. All of their kings have fallen; Not one of them calls to me.
The first wordplay using the phoneme *)« appears in v. 4: 'All of them are adulterers (D11?^).' The word, while a frequent and significant word in the book as a whole, seems out of place in this passage. By anagrammatic pun, however, it implies a different participle, D1?^, 'angry men', from the root *]]£, which is the verbal root of the noun *]$, 'anger',76 Then the extended metaphor of the passage begins, with pictures of a careless baker (HSfc, v. 4) and his burning oven. Then in v. 6 reappears the word DHS&, 'their baker' (Masoretic Text), which some versions read as an?**, 'their anger'. Whether one treats this as a textual correction or not, the effect of the passage as a whole is to create a sub-text regarding anger—implying both the verb root ""pN and the noun ^K. The other phoneme ~\V takes various forms. It occurs first in the participle 1453, 'burning' (v.4). The 'burning' oven belongs to a baker who ceases 'from stirring' (Ti?Q, root ~fltf) the fire (the dough?), leaving the dough half-leavened. In v. 6, the heart of the princes is like an oven 'in their lying in wait' (Dinta). This involves a homophonic pun, indicated emendation not only clears up the syntax but also the grammar: nan is elswhere masculine and should take the masculine participle.
74. Reading 1K3, supported somewhat by the LXX av£Ka\>6riaav, instead of the MT "I31p, 'they bring near'. Such emendation is very dubious and I have resorted to it only because I cannot make sense of the MT. 75. The Syriac and Targums read DrjSN, 'their anger', instead of the MT DrjSVi, 'their baker'. 76. Elliger, the editor of Hosea for BHS, suggests this alternative reading as a textual emendation. Such suggestions, based as they are on perceived incongruities, are almost as useful as translation variants for identifying wordplays.
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by the prefixed 2, which makes this clause sound like the verb "UJ2, which appears again in this verse. The result of all this repetition is to imply a word not even mentioned here: 'city' (Ti), plural Q"~1.U). The connection is supported by a similar but more specific pun in 8.14: 'Tin'PS&JK TH1Q. This literally is 'I will send fire on his cities', but the reader who does not catch the implied verb ~iiH, 'he burned', has not been paying attention.77 And so, noting all the puns in these verses, one can construct the subtext: the sin of the princes is anger, connoted by puns on the phoneme *]$, and the place of the sin is the city, connoted by puns on the word TI>. In this passage, the paronomastic sub-text only supplements and does not contradict, the literal meaning. In another case, the sub-text is more elaborate and complete and eventually takes on life of its own. Hosea 10.11 reads: And Ephraim is a trained heifer, Loving to thresh. And I, I have passed by her fair neck. I will harness Ephraim; he will plow, Judah will harrow Jacob for himself.
On the surface, this is an extended agricultural metaphor. Ephraim is a heifer pulling a plow, threshing under God's yoke (*?&, implied by and perhaps a better reading for *?J? in the third line). That some secondary meaning might be involved here is implied immediately by two thematically significant words in the first sentence. First, in a book as concerned with idolatry as Hosea, any reference to a calf (*?JJJ) might refer, however obliquely, to Israel's calves at Dan and Bethel. Secondly, the root 2i"JK, 'he loved', appears repeatedly in the rest of the book, usually referring metaphorically to Israel's idolatrous 'lovers',78 and in Ugaritic texts several times signifies Baal's love, in one case physical love with a heifer.79 This secondary thread concerning idolatry is resumed and 77. Hosea 8.4 is, one should note, a formulaic sentence which occurs elsewhere in the prophets, notably in the introductory oracles of Amos discussed in the preceding chapter. Still, while the basic pattern is easily identifiable, Amos has God sending fire on walls and houses and on proper names, but never on 'cities'. Even when he uses formulaic sentences, Hosea places his individual, paronomastic stamp on them. 78. See 3.1 (three times); 4.18; 8.9; 9.1, 10; 11.1; 12.8; 14.5. 79. Noted by A.D. Tushingham, *A Reconsideration of Hosea, Chapters 1-3',
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confirmed by the verb BVirP 'he will plow' later in the verse. The root tznn has a basic meaning of 'engrave, cut in' from which the meaning 'plow' may be easily extrapolated. Indeed, it seems likely that 'plow' was the most frequent meaning of this root in common speech. In prophetic speech, however, the root more frequently refers to the engravers and artisans who make idols. Hosea himself uses the root in this second sense in 8.6 and 13.2.80 Significantly, in 10.13 Hosea says, JJEhTinehn, 'they plow wickedness'. The wickedness behind the agricultural scene of 10.11 is idolatry. Still another subtext undergirds this verse. God says, 'I will harness (ZTDIH) Ephraim', using a verb that speaks most frequently of military might. A noun from this root, IDT, 'chariot', often appears alongside 'horses' (D'DIO) or 'horsemen' (D'GHS), in a metonymous evocation of all sorts of martial array.81 In any case, this is certainly how Hosea uses 'horses' and 'horsemen' in 1.7 and 'horse' and 'they shall ride' (IGT) in 14.4. Thus the harnessing in 10.11 almost certainly implies warfare.82 A few words farther in 10.11 occurs another wordplay: 'Judah will harrow (THD") Jacob for himself.' The choice of this rare word may perhaps be explained by its similarity to another violent verb, "HiS, 'ruin, destroy', which has appeared in Hosea as recently as 10.2.83 The effect of the two wordplays is to create a secondary scene behind the agricultural one, a scene of violence and desolation. This one verse bears the weight of two different subtexts. The heifer and the plowing imply idolatry, and the harnessing and harrowing imply war and destruction. Other prophets speak of swords beaten to plowshares; Hosea of the sin and destruction that lie behind plowshares. To do this, to force words and passages by wordplay to bear more than one meaning, is to release those words from their conventional JNES, 12 (1953), p. 151. The texts referred to are, in Cyrus Gordon's numbering system, '«MII.4and67.V.18. 80, See also Isa. 44.11,12,13; 45.16; Jer. 24.1; 29.2. 81, See, umong many otter passages, Exod. 14.9,17,18,23; 15.21; Dcut. 20.1; Jer. 17.25 and Ezek. 26.7. 82. This martial verb root seems to reappear, interestingly, in most texts of the LXX, where 10.13, 'You trust in your way (13113)', appears as 'You trust in your chariots (ev TOII; apjiaoi coi>, evidently reading "]DD13)'. See Neef, *Der Septuaginta-Text', p. 208. 83. The Syriac and LXX read Tltt? in v. 11. See A. Gelston, The Peshitta of the. Twelve Prophets (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), p. 123; Neef, 'Der SeptuagintaText', p. 206.
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moorings and to allow meaning itself to spin free. Meaning becomes unstable, and discourse breaks through the normal limits of discursive speech. A word that can mean anything is dangerously close to a word that means nothing, or rather to a situation in which a word (the signifier) is more dependable than its meaning (the signified). Wayne Booth speaks of 'stable' and 'unstable' irony, the former being irony 'which may be understood with some precision by other human beings' and the latter irony which only points toward endless and irretrievable alternate meanings.84 In some ways the two functions of wordplay parallel this distinction. Connective wordplay may complicate meaning (as does irony), but meaning is still wholly recoverable; ambiguous wordplay, however, permits meaning to play against meaning in such a way as to put all meanings in question. Is Ephraim a luxuriant vine or a vain and empty fruit (10.1)? Will Ephraim plow and reap its harvest, or will it reap war and desolation for its idolatry (10.11)? Is God the protection against or the source of death and Hell (13.14)? The answer to each of these questions remains suspended in paronomastic limbo. In Hosea, meaning is frequently ambivalent, and what could be more appropriate in a book where Israel's fate remains unresolved at the end (see 14.9) and where God's own thoughts and feelings are turned over within him (11.9)? Wordplay and Poetry Wordplay is characteristic of Hosea and particularly appropriate to a book with Hosea's themes and motifs. But how is all this connected with the original question concerning Hosea's genre? If, as proposed above, prophecy uses both rhetoric and poetry, and each book defines its own proportion of each, what does Hosea's punning indicate? In theory, wordplay is like every other verbal device in that it may appear in any genre. For instance, a wordplay can play a significant role in a narrative; witness the foreshadowing achieved in the early pages of The Red and the Black when Stendhal's young cleric Julien Sorel reads about the execution of a criminal named Louis Jenrel, whose name is a perfect anagram of his own. In the Hebrew Bible, wordplay is frequent enough in narrative that some studies of Hebrew wordplay focus entirely on wordplays in narrative (Bohl, Gevirtz, Guillaume). Still, although wordplay may appear in any genre, including both rhetoric and poetry, 84. W. Booth, A Rhetoric of Irony (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), p. 5.
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it seems much better suited to the latter type of discourse. When wordplay acts according to its first (connective) function, it might serve some rhetorical purpose—to mark the beginnings of sections, for instance, or to connect two related units.85 Even used thus, wordplay is of dubious value for rhetoric. The connections made by means of wordplay are not intrinsically persuasive; they are, in Wimsatt's terminology, 'counterlogical'. They are 'not irrational—but at least extra-rational'.86 And when wordplay functions primarily to complicate a passage, the ambiguating function discussed above, it is anathema to rhetoric. Aristotle refuses to admit equivocation and ambiguity to rhetoric; these are the devices of sophists and poets, not of orators.87 Rhetoric demands clarity for the sake of convincing arguments; wordplay usually offers neither. On the other hand, wordplay fits the definition of poetry perfectly. First, exactly like poetry in general, wordplay builds on two orders of meaning, a literal meaning and a meaning implied by sound. The result, for both poetry in general and wordplay in particular is ambiguity. Wordplay rebels against simple, unequivocal meaning, and this 'insubordination revealed by the pun is, of course a feature of all poetic language'.88 Tynianov describes how poetry sets up 'oscillating signs' of meaning: he could easily have been speaking specifically of wordplay.89 Second, like all typically poetic devices, wordplay follows a parallelistic pattern, in which the first word looks ahead ('the progressive element') to an expected counterpart, which looks back at the first word ('the regressive element').90 Indeed, wordplay is very like and is frequently associated with rhyme, which also exemplifies this parallel movement of verse: 'Rhyme and pun are twins.'91 Thirdly, the tendency of poetry to 85. Aristotle grudgingly admits these functions of wordplay. See Aristotle, Rhetoric, IH.ix.9 and HI.xi.7. 86. Wimsatt, 'Verbal Style', p. 11. 87. Aristotle, Rhetoric, MI.ii.7 and UI.v.3-4. 88. Attridge, 'Unpacking the Portmanteau', p. 192. 89. Tynianov, Verse Language, p. 97. 90. The terms come from Tynianov, Verse Language, pp. 53-54. See the more detailed treatment in Chapter 2, above p. 42. 91. D. Fried, 'Rhyme Puns,' in Culler (ed.), On Puns, p. 83. See also W.K. Wimsatt, Jr; 'Rhetoric and Poems: Alexander Pope,' in Wimsatt, Jr (ed.), The Verbal Icon, p. 182 'Poetry is both sense and sound, and not by parallel or addition, but by a kind of union—which may be heard in onomatapoeia and expressive rhythm and in various modes of suggestion, extension, and secret verbal functioning. Of these the pun and its cousin the rhyme are but the most extravagant instances.'
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'lay bare' its devices and present itself also fits the pun. Wordplay, too, presents not only the words and their referents, but also the action of playing, not just an ambiguity, but ambiguity itself.92 While wordplay might be possible in any genre, it appears most intrinsically appropriate to poetry. Indeed, even when puns appear in other genres, they bear more affinity to poetry than to the genre which surrounds them. Wordplay in biblical narrative appears as a rale in two contexts: in name-origins and in incantational passages, such as blessings or curses.93 Both contexts bear close affinity with poetry. In everyday speech, only names bear the sort of semantic weight that words tend to have in verse. A street where I once lived was Lyndon Lane—not Lyndon Road or Street—evidently because of the poetic functioning of language in names.94 In fact, the poetic nature of names is even more pronounced in Hebrew. After his unsurpassed presentation of the basic constriction of Hebrew verse, O'Connor comments, almost as an aside, that Western Semitic proper names 'are shaped in the same ways that lines of verse are'.95 As for the use of wordplay in blessings and curses, many would say that such incantational speech is the origin of poetry. 'The radical of [lyric] is charm: the hypnotic incantation that, through its pulsing dance rhythm, appeals to involuntary physical response, and is hence not far from the sense of magic, or physically compelling power.'96 It is no accident that the extended blessings in biblical narrative, such as Genesis 49, are universally acknowledged to be poetic in form. Again, wordplay can hardly be divorced from poetry. In terms of the larger category of verbal repetition, Hosea better fits the definition and requirements of poetry than it fits the genre of rhetoric. Now the same conclusion appears from an examination of the smaller category of wordplay: this device, so frequent and so prominently displayed in Hosea, is at heart a poetic device. No conscientious rhetori92. Peelers, 'Pour une interpretation du jeu de mots', p. 127. 93. This includes all of the the examples cited by B6hl, Gevirtz and Guillaume. 'Most cases [of paronomasia] in prose involve false etymologies of proper names', M. O'Connor, Hebrew Verse Structure, p. 143. On wordplay in narrative incantations, see Peeters, 'Pour une interpretation du jeu de mots', p. 140. 94. On the 'poetic functioning' of language outside poetry proper, see R. Jakobson, 'Linguistics and Poetics', in Pomorska and Rudy (eds.), Language in Literature, pp. 72 and 89. 95. O'Connor, Hebrew Verse Structure, p. 161. 96. Frye, Anatomy, p. 278 (Frye's emphasis).
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cian, concerned first with clarity and logical proof, would have used wordplay with such abandon; no book which so displays wordplay ought to be understood primarily as rhetoric. And so, understanding the book of Hosea first and foremost as a poem, different details take precedence, different criteria define its structure and movement, and a fuller understanding of the book's shape emerges. It remains only to make a preliminary foray toward mis fuller, poetic understanding of Hosea.
Chapter 5
HOSEA AND THE LYRICAL PLOT
Don't destroy the idols in anger, break them up in play. —Marquis de Sade1
In its appropriation and distinctive use of repetition and wordplay, the book of Hosea clearly fits the definition of poetry better than that of rhetoric. The reader who has been seeking the interpretative value of this generic designation, however, may be understandably impatient. To this point, most of the analysis has tried to classify the book, without drawing any interpretative conclusions. What interpretation has been essayed has dealt with relatively small portions of the text and not, as promised in Chapter 1, with the book as a whole. Thus this genre study is incomplete. It is not enough simply to categorize a work. If it were so, genre designation would indeed be a pointless exercise, as is clear from the example of those who have so assumed. For instance, the biblical critic W. Lee Humphreys, writing on the Joseph narrative of Genesis 37-50, argues that 'The essential issue is... the presence...of material that essentially fits the descriptive criteria that define a specific genre designation'.2 This belief permits Humphreys to conclude that the best description of the Joseph narrative is the nineteenthcentury Jamesian title 'novella', thus giving this most complex and, by biblical standards, quite lengthy narrative a label that implies relative simplicity and brevity. Genre designation undertaken for its own sake thus appears at least irrelevant and perhaps misleading; taxonomy is not
1. This remark of de Sade's is translated by W. Redfern and quoted in his Puns, p. 14. 2. W.L. Humphreys, Joseph and His Family: A Literary Study (Columbia: University of South Carolina, 1988), p. 18.
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the goal of genre study.3 The point instead is for the reader to ask, while reading, what if this text is read according to this set of generic expectations?4 Precisely here lies the interpretative value of generic competence, for a text read as one genre differs widely from the same text read as a different one. E.D. Hirsch writes, 'Without helpful orientations like titles and attributions, readers are likely to gain widely different generic conceptions of a text, and these conceptions will be constitutive of their subsequent understandings.'5 Devices, techniques and details have different uses and values in different genres. For instance, the detail that a character in a novel is ambidextrous bears a different significance depending on the kind of novel. In many novels of the more serious and less frequently read types, where symbolism might be expected, it might represent some inherent moral conflict or ambiguity. In a detective novel, the detail may be essential in determining if the character could have accurately fired the silenced revolver while jotting down scores at Lady Whitmore's bridge party. In a work of nineteenth-century French realism, a la Balzac, the detail may serve no purpose at all except to be one of the thousand carefully transcribed details that characterize this sub-genre. The determination of the genre determines whether the detail contributes to the symbolic texture, the plot or the tone of the book, and whether the detail is of vital or minimal significance. Hirsch provides a similar illustration. John Donne's 'A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning' may be read either as a temporary farewell from lover to lover or as a final statement from one near death. Read one way, specific words and images become essential; read the other way, peripheral.6 In this way the interpretative value of my generic analysis to Hosea becomes apparent. The devices and techniques examined here—verbal repetition and wordplay—in a rhetorical text would be merely (and probably distractingly) ornamental. Proper reading of such a text might recognize the existence of a wordplay, but it would almost certainly do so only in passing. Such elaboration could hardly be an essential part of the book as a whole. Almost without exception, this is precisely the 3. See A. Fowler, Kinds of Literature: An Introduction to the Theory of Genres and Modes (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 255. 4. A. Rosmarin, The Power of Genre (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985), pp. 46-47. 5. Hirsch, Validity, p. 75 (my emphasis). 6. Hirsch, Validity, pp. 73-74.
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attitude of Hosea's interpreters. On the other hand, if the text is read as a poem, these details are foregrounded and rhetorical devices (e.g. formulas, clear logical transitions) recede to the background. 'One should guard against reasoning about poetry as one does about prose. What is true of one very often has no meaning when it is sought in the other.'7 Read poetically, the book takes on a very different shape, and patterns and structures hitherto unnoticed or ignored become keys to understanding the book. Before examining this poetic shape of Hosea, it is worth noting that the method used here is evidently and demonstrably circular. Certain techniques used in a certain way (repetition and wordplay) were cited as evidence that Hosea was primarily poetic; now that genre designation is being used as justification for giving particular emphasis to these same techniques. This circle, in fact, is nothing less than the so-called 'hermeneutic circle', which describes the interplay of the part and the whole.8 If interpretation were a deductive process, the circularity of this method would make it invalid; however, interpretation, perhaps particularly as it relates to making generic hypotheses, is at heart an inductive trial-and-error procedure, to which circularity is perhaps inevitable, and if so, irrelevant.9 In the end, the identification of Hosea as a poem and not as a book of rhetoric stands not upon syllogistic proof but on whether the interpretation of the book as if it is poetry ultimately works, ultimately proves meaningful, ultimately answers more questions than it raises. The Structure of Hosea Perhaps the most puzzling and least adequately answered question concerning the book of Hosea has to do with its disjunctive arrangement. Jerome's famous and frequently cited summary of the book—'Osee commaticus est et quasi per sententias loquens' (and Hosea is halting, as if speaking in maxims)10—summarizes most interpreters' frustration with Hosea's sudden turns and gaps. T.K. Cheyne wrote in the last century that 'systematic order [is] more alien to Hosea than perhaps to any other 7. P. Valery, 'Poetry and Abstract Thought', in The Art of Poetry (The Collected Works of Paul Valery, 7; New York: Viking Press, 1958), p. 71. 8. Hirsch, Validity, pp. 76-77. 9. Rosmarin, Power of Genre, pp. 29-33. 10. Jerome, 'Praefatio S. Hieronymi in Duodecim Prophetas', in J.-P. Migne (ed.), Hieronymi, Opera Omnia (PL, 28; Paris: J.-P. Migne, 1846), col. 1015.
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prophet'.11 This disorder is particularly apparent in chs. 4-14 of the book. In 1966, Rudolph wrote of these chapters, 'Ein Ordnungsprinzip ist schwer zu erkennen,'12 and one recent commentary remarks, 'The major literary problemencountered in chs. 4-14 is its apparent incoherence'. 13 If the book—or even this one section of it—is incoherent, it is a significant literary problem indeed. Interpreters have dealt with Hosea's 'apparent incoherence' in various ways. Many have simply concluded that no conscious structure exists, that the book is simply a random collection of disparate parts. Cheyne, cited above, takes this view. Some suggest that an original organizing principle has somehow been lost. Martin Buber writes that Hosea seems to include 'only a few remnants of the original corpus, saved from the destruction of Samaria and bound up together'.14 Without this 'original corpus', one gathers, the true order cannot be recovered. Assuming this level of disarray in the book, scholars have agreed on only one organizing principle: a sharp division exists between chs. 1-3 and 4-14. The first three chapters present Hosea's marital and family situation, including the long but relatively coherent poem of ch. 2. In ch. 4, however, narrative discourse and all explicit reference to Hosea's family disappear. This 'contrast between the connected discourse and smooth flowing style of ch. 2 and the isolated paragraphs and exclamatory sentences of 4—14' represents the only clear sign of structure that many critics can discover in the book.15 Others are slightly less pessimistic, finding a few signs of intelligent life behind the book in its current form. Without exactly calling the book tightly and clearly organized, some discover at least some loose, artificial, probably externally applied, structure. These critics picture someone— either the prophet himself or perhaps a group of his disciples—editing a collection of short, individual sayings and oracles.16 Some then add 11. T.K. Cheyne, The Book of Hosea (repr.; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1905 [1884]), p. 22. 12. W. Rudolph, Hosea (KAT, 13.1; Gutersloh: Mohn, 1966), p. 26. 13. F.I. Andersen and D.N. Freedman, Hosea: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB, 24; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1980), p. 69. 14. M. Buber, The Prophetic Faith (trans. C. Witton-Davies; New York: Harper & Row, repr. edn, 1960 [1949]), p. 111. 15. C.H. Toy, 'Note on Hosea 1-3', JBL 32 (1913), p. 75. 16. Andersen and Freedman suggest that the prophet was responsible for most of the book, a disciple for chs. 1-3 (Andersen and Freedman, Hosea, pp. 57-58). H.S. Nyberg argues that the source of the book in its present form is a school of Hosea's
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various redactional layers to this. R.E. Wolfe discerns no less than thirteen different redactions of Hosea, beginning with a 'Judahistic editor', whose fell hand Wolfe identifies in every passage which strikes Wolfe as more applicable to Judah than to Israel.17 Wolfe's thirteen redactions might seem excessive to most, but the notion is nevertheless widely held that any structure which the book might contain was applied after the fact.18 That being so, by what principles are the disparate sayings thought to have been ordered? Lindblom's summary of these principles of arrangement in the prophetic books is representative. Oracles and sayings were connected in the prophets, Lindblom says, because of (1) similarity of subject matter, (2) antithetical ideas (e.g. a woe connected to a salvation oracle), (3) similarity of form (e.g. a concatenation of woe speeches), (4) catchwords, (5) history or chronology, (6) desire for emphasis (e.g. a more emphatic oracle at either the beginning or the end) and (7) logic.19 Considering the mutual exclusivity of many of these principles (antithesis of form versus similarity of form; emphasis versus chronology), this general list does not seem especially useful; it appears that one can discover any principle that one can imagine. Lindblom's analysis of Hosea, however, is more restrained. Lindblom finds three principles in particular working there: (1) cognate content, (2) catchwords and (3) similarity of form (e.g. the speeches in ch. 5 beginning with 'Hear O...').20 Although some of these principles might appear to involve internal connections— catchwords, for instance—Lindblom's practice is to assume that they are all externally applied. Two oracles are juxtaposed simply because they both seem to be about priests, or they both include the key word 'adultery', or, most superficially of all, they begin with similar-sounding calls to attention. Two more recent commentaries ascribe rather more internal coherence to the book. H.W. Wolff astutely points out that the thematic pattern of chs. 1-3 (specifically of the poem in ch. 2), from divine condemnation to divine nostalgia to proffered restoration, recurs twice more in the book, followers (Studien zum Hoseabuche [Uppsala: Universitets Arsskrift, 1935], pp. 6-7). 17. R.E. Wolfe, 'The Editing of the Book of the Twelve', ZAW 53 (1935), pp. 91-92,126. 18. See, for instance, the discussion in G.A. Yee, Composition and Tradition in the Book of Hosea: A Redaction Critical Investigation (SBLDS, 102; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1987), pp. 5-6. Yee's summary in her first chapter of critical inquiry into Hosea's structure is exemplary, and I have relied on it more than I could footnote. 19. Lindblom, Prophecy, p. 278. 20. Lindblom, Prophecy, pp. 143-44.
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in chs. 4-11 and 12-14.21 This insight not only adds a second major division, between chs. 11 and 12, but also assumes a great deal of care given to the arrangement of the smaller oracles. Woe oracles are juxtaposed not just because they happen to be woe oracles, as Lindblom's principles might imply, but because it is crucial to the thematic movement of the book that the woe oracles appear here and not elsewhere. To this general outline I shall return in more detail. Douglas Stuart suggests another large structure for the book. He says that the oracles of Hosea constitute a series of covenant blessings and curses. This suggestion, like Wolffs, seems to imply an intrinsic organization, but Stuart somewhat spoils the effect with his ambivalent comment that the series is arranged either extremely skillfully or very nonchalantly.22 The two most interesting and certainly most useful proposals among those who feel that Hosea's structure is externally applied and not intrinsic to the text are those of Edwin Good and Martin Buss. Good separates chs. 1-3 and 4-14, and then divides the latter section into five complexes. He divides primarily by theme (e.g. 4.4-5.7 is a complex on 'Knowledge and Harlotry'; 9.1-10.15 a complex on 'Food and Farming' and so on), but he gives considerable attention to catchwords as indicators of those themes.23 Each complex is linked to those before and after, again usually by verbal repetition, and some repetitions may be traced though the entire book.24 His specific arguments may be debated—he hopes they will—and his stress on demonstrating that Hosea was transmitted orally detracts somewhat from his structural insights, but his reading shows great sensitivity to the book's interrelatedness. As Good puts it, "The entire poem is a masterly construction of interwoven motifs and metaphors'.25 Buss accepts most of the general proposals of both Lindblom and Wolff, but applies them in a distinctively rigorous fashion. First, he acknowledges the three-part division (chs. 1-3, 4-11, 12-14).26 Within these three sections, however, he distinguishes several 'cycles', by means
21. Wolff, Hosea, p. xxxi. 22. D. Stuart, Hosea-Jonah (WBC; Waco: Word Books, 1987), p. 8. 23. E.M. Good, 'The Composition of Hosea', SEA 31 (1966), p. 33. 24. Good, 'Composition', pp. 54-55. 25. Good, 'Composition', p. 38. 26. Buss, Prophetic Word, p. 33. Good, it should be noted, dislikes Wolff's division, 'Composition', pp. 48-49.
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of content, like Good.27 Buss further describes how these cycles cohere by means of verbal repetition, each section having some characteristic vocabulary. Buss suggests these 'tight or rich connections' within cycles are authorial.28 Moreover, the cycles tend to be connected one to another by means of some 'non-stylistic, secondary' repetitions, with some key word concluding one cycle and then appearing early in the next cycle.29 These connections, appearing to be more artificial, Buss assumes to be editorial. Both authorial and editorial repetitions, however, Buss regards as intentional, giving the book a distinct and purposeful verbal texture. This is some distance from Lindblom's discussion of 'catchwords' as a superficial structural feature. Good and Buss venture as far toward a belief in an intrinsic, coherent order as may be possible among scholars who regard the book as a collection of original sayings upon which a secondary, wholly extrinsic, order has been imposed. Not every scholar accepts this presupposition, however. An interesting and by no means out-dated early response to such critical assumptions appears in a comparatively obscure essay by Thomas Howes in 1783, a response to Robert Lowth's edition of Isaiah.30 Howes freely admits that the individual oracles do not always appear in the prophetic books in the order which most seem to expect, according to the chronology of their deliverance to the prophet, but he nevertheless denies that this indicates disorder (pp. 128-29). Instead, he argues that the exegete should seek out the 'still better order' (p. 139), which attends more to the internal connections and echoes of the text than to such external matters as chronology. Of Isaiah, for instance, he writes, 'This presumption [of unified composition]...will be found so confirmed by the connexion throughout the body of the work, that we shall be able to discover no good reason for supposing...that this was collected at random by others' (p. 132, my emphasis). In this at least, 27. Buss, Prophetic Word, p. 31. 28. Buss, Prophetic Word, p. 29. 29. Buss, Prophetic Word, p. 31. Buss's most impressive evidence of this type of verbal transition appears not in these pages (pp. 29-31) describing the theory but rather in his own translation of the book (pp. 6-27), in which he italicizes significant repetitions. 30. T. Howes, 'Doubts Concerning the Translation and Notes of the Bishop of London to Isaiah, Vindicating Ezekiel, Isaiah, and Other Jewish Prophets from Disorder in Arrangement', in Critical Observations on Books, Antient and Modern (repr.; New York: Garland, 1972 [1783]), II, pp. 109-449. Subsequent references will be in the text itself.
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Howes shows great discernment: just because a prophetic book does not appear to be arranged as one might expect does not mean that it has no arrangement at all. Recent Old Testament theory has returned to some of the principles espoused by Howes two centuries ago. Canonical criticism as practiced by Brevard Childs, has surrendered the assumption of disorder and begun searching for a 'still better order', working on at least a provisional premise that even the sharpest disjunction in a book should be treated as intentional and theologically motivated.31 As regards Hosea, the best expression of this tendency is the book by Gale Yee, Composition and Tradition in the Book of Hosea. Yee discovers in previous scholarship on the structure of Hosea several untenable presuppositions, perhaps the most significant being the idea that the 'original' is the most valuable. While Yee by no means rejects the study of the literary history and redaction of Hosea, she makes that investigation secondary. The proper first object of study should be the text in its current form; only after this should the critic inquire as to previous forms the book or its parts may have had.32 This current form has come from an editor, Yee agrees, but the editor is little short of an author. By the conscious selection and placement of the traditions preserved in the book, the editor has crafted the book at least as much as the writer of the individual parts. 'In the end, the redactor creates a new tradition out of the old.'33 If Yee's practice does not always live up to theory, if her study tends to get bogged down in questions regarding the mechanics of the redaction process, this statement of purpose alone is groundbreaking, preparing the critic for the possibility that the book of Hosea is as carefully arranged as any prophetic book, structured according to some subtle but perhaps 'still better' order. As Andersen and Freedman tentatively write, 'We have sometimes wondered if the whole of chs. 4-14 is really a single sustained discourse...the deliberate result of an artistry far more sophisticated than anything previously suspected'.34 Where could this previously unsuspected artistry be sought? One need only return (at last) to the question of genre. Those critics who have found Hosea to be structurally incoherent are invariably applying to this poetic text the structural standards of rhetoric. Rhetoric, in order to persuade 31. 32. 33. 34.
See Childs, 'The Canonical Shape of the Prophetic Literature', pp. 46-55. Yee, Composition and Tradition, pp. 31,41 and throughout. Yee, Composition and Tradition, p. 44. Andersen and Freedman, Hosea, p. 70.
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with clarity, requires coherence and logical transitions, standards which these same interpreters would not dream of imposing on a long lyric poem such as Whitman's 'Song of Myself or the Bible's Song of Songs. As Thomas Howes astutely noted in 1783, if a book is read as poetry, then sharp disjunctions and gaps become insignificant—such abruptness is only to be expected in lyric (p. 153). Indeed, Howes refers to his 'still better order' as 'poetic arrangement' (p. 293). These stumbling blocks then become pebbles, and other features, previously ignored as rhetorically irrelevent, become the new milestones and directional markers. The Lyrical Plot How are poems ordered, if not by logic and the demands of clarity? By what principles? The question is not as easy as it might appear. Long poems are frequently organized by the principles of other genres (epics by narrative conventions, satires by rhetorical); sustained lyrics are rare. This perhaps explains why the investigation of all poetry, and particularly of Hebrew poetry, focuses on smaller units. Other than easily identifiable acrostics, 'there is no commonly accepted understanding of poetic units larger than the line in Canaanite [and by extension Hebrew] poetry'.35 A few general observations can be made. First, given that poetry presents two orders of meaning, sound alongside sense, one should expect the ordering elements of poems to depend to some extent on sound. This, in essence, is what Yuri Tynianov says in The Problem of Verse Language. There Tynianov describes povtory (sound repetitions), which serve to link the poem's parts, even widely disparate parts.36 These repetends, being connected by sound, tie the poem together more loosely than do the structural features of other genres, and more significantly, in a less linear fashion. Rhetorical structures tend to follow a line of logic; narrative structures follow chronology. Poetry, as discussed above in Chapter 2, follows a different pattern. Gerard Manley Hopkins writes, 'Verse is distinguished from prose as employing a continuous structural parallelism'.37 In practice, this means that every repeated phoneme either points forward to an implied answering phoneme or responds to a previous sound; Tynianov calls these elements 'progressive' and 35. O'Connor, Hebrew Verse Structure, pp. 141-42. 36. Tynianov, Verse Language, pp. 113. 37. G.M. Hopkins, 'On the Origin of Beauty', in House (ed.), The Note-books and Papers of Gerard Manley Hopkins, p. 83.
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'regressive' ,38 When the sound is repeated more than once, or is scattered widely throughout the poem, the effect is to create a distinct pool of meaning.39 'The scattering of sound repetitions at a considerable distance may be considered as a preparatory factor, establishing a particular phonetic base, or as a factor of "dynamic preparation.'"40 The structure of an extended lyric, then, is most likely to be provided by sound repetitions, each of which calls attention to the antecedent sound and adds to the pool of meaning surrounding that sound. Such repetitions may take the form of a repeated end-rhyme, for instance, but in Hebrew verse, particularly in Hosea, it is more likely to appear as extended wordplay or simply as verbal repetition. By tracing significant words and puns through the book as a whole, one uncovers what Tynianov calls 'the lyrical plot'.41 Patterning by Repetition The structural bases of poetry being concerned with sounds and, at the outside, with single words, it may seem odd to describe them with the word 'plot', which usually refers to actions. Nevertheless, some correspondences exist. First, every extended verbal arrangement—whether lyrical, oratorical, dramatic or narrative—seems to require an introduction and a conclusion. In a narrative or drama, one finds the exposition (the presentation of those events or relationships which precede and shed light on the actual temporal sequence) and the conclusion in which loose ends are gathered together (e.g. the detective's long speech at the end in which is explained how the silenced gun was fired at the bridge party and concealed in the Ming vase). In an extended lyric, the exposition is simpler. It consists of the first presentation of the significant words and phonemes which will be repeated, perhaps marking that importance by some rhythmic device. These first appearances need not occur at the beginning of the poem—any more than narrative exposition must appear at the beginning of a novel—but such an arrangement is certainly one of the most straightforward and is perhaps the most frequent.42 In any case, it is what one finds in Hosea. 38. Tynianov, Verse Language, pp. 53-54, 120. 39. See above, Chapter 4, on the working of ambiguous wordplay. 40. Tynianov, Verse Language, pp. 113-14. 41. Tynianov, Verse Language, p. 111. 42. See the impressive discussion of exposition distributed variously in different narratives in Sternberg, Expositional Modes.
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As noted above, scholars have universally recognized a division between chs. 1-3 and the rest of the book. The most frequent scholarly conclusion drawn from this division is that chs. 1-3 represent a separate source, perhaps written by a disciple of Hosea's, added to an original corpus after the fact.43 Though widely accepted, this view is not without problems. For instance, Hosea 3 hardly follows neatly upon chs. 1-2, being told in the first person instead of in the third. Moreover, the vocabulary of Hosea 2 actually corresponds more closely to that of Hosea 4-14 than to that of either ch. 1 or ch. 3.44 These incongruities, along with the recent understanding by Childs and others of redaction as an art and not simply a necessary evil, have led many to bypass the source critical question of where these chapters came from and ask instead why they are here. The usual answer is that chs. 1-3 serve as an introduction to the book. Lindblom writes, There is nothing to suggest that the man who collected the revelations of Hosea contained in iv-xiv was not also the collector of the various units in i-iii, who placed them as an introduction at the head of the whole collection.45
Childs calls Hosea 1-3 'the exegetical key in the framework from which the entire book is to be read' ,46 And without question the most significant way that these chapters serve as an introduction is to present the key words that will be repeated and reinterpreted in what follows. One characteristic manner of presenting these Leitworter, already noted in the discussion of repetition and variation in Hosea, is in a list. These early chapters abound in lists. For instance, as described in some detail earlier, 1.7 includes a list of human means of salvation [root U2T, used twice in this verse]: bow, sword, war, horses and riders. The first three items on this list reappear in 2.20 and then separately several times in the main body of the book. The last two items, a formulaic word pair, disappear until 14.4, where 'horse' reappears, again in conjunction with the verb root DtD\ What is important here is that in chs. 1-3 the list changes significantly. The usage in 1.7 describes doomed human efforts, but that in 2.20 foretells God's ultimate victory, at which time these things will be abolished. This turn recurs exactly in 4-14, where the elements 43. See Wolfe, 'Editing', p. 92. 44. Yee, Composition and Tradition, p. 3. 45. Lindblom, Prophecy, p. 242. 46. B.S. Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1979), p. 381. See also Childs, 'Canonical Shape', pp. 49-50.
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of the list describe human violence and doom (7.16; 10.14; 11.6; 14.1), only to be reversed in the repentance speech of 14.4, 'Assyria will not save us; on horses let us not ride'. Chapters 1-3 introduce the list, indicating not only that these words are important but also how they will be reinterpreted. The introduction here serves as a microcosm of the whole. The introductory chapters act similarly with the lists of God's gifts given there. Again, these lists were noted earlier, but a more complete discussion will be useful. Four times in ch. 2, God lists the good gifts he has given Israel and which Israel has used in its idolatry. In 2.7 the gifts are bread (OH1?), water (D'D), wool (103), flax (ntOS), oil (]QO) and drink ClptD). Verse 10 lists grain QH), new wine (SZJTVn), new oil ("HIT), silver (^DD) and gold (3HT); then the next verse combines the two catalogues, listing ]rr, tirrn, irrcr and riEJS. In 2.7 and 10, God mentions these gifts as being abused, and in v. 11 he vows to take them back in retribution for this abuse. In v. 24, the judgment is reversed. When God betroths his people to himself again (2.21-22), he will answer the heavens, who will answer the earth, who will answer the grain (]n) and the new wine (ffllTH) and the new oil (TTCr). Again the introduction, this time restricted to ch. 2, is a microcosm of ens. 4—14. Chapter 2 having drawn repeated attention to these gifts of God, the reader naturally takes note when they reappear, particularly when they appear in pairs. This happens in 7.14 (pi and CtfVTn), 8.4 (^DD and 2HT, very similar in both form and content to 2.10) and 9.1-2 Qrt and EJrrn). All of these passages, along with 13.2 (rpD), refer to Israel's sin of idolatry. Again, God reverses the accusation, promising new gifts in 14.8 in the form of revived grain Cp~i). Again, the introductory section of the book has not only provided the significant words but also their forthcoming pattern in the lyrical plot. In both of these cases, a single word from the antecedent list recurs in the final chapter, serving as a representative of the whole list and of its ultimate reversal. Other lists follow a similar pattern, but the single items of those lists which remain in ch. 14 function as more than just metonymic reminders. The betrothal speech of 2.21-22 lists several marks of God's faithfulness: 'I will betroth you to me forever, and I will betroth you to me with righteousness (p~Ei) and with justice (CDS2JQ) and with love (ion) and with pity (D'nm), and I will betroth you to me with faithfulness (rmDK), and you will know (root 1TP) the LORD.' Each of these words, or some cognate form, reappears in chs. 4-14. Once again, the most striking cases are when several elements of the list occur together, as in
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4.1: 'There is no truth (DON, related to ilTIQN) and there is no love (ion) and there is no knowledge (Pin, from the root irr) of God in the land.' The covenant is not being followed. The same point is made in 6,4-5: 'Your love (IDPt) is like the morning mist, and like the dew that goes away early. Therefore I have hewn by the prophets; I have killed by the words of my mouth, and my judgment (QS27Q) goes out like light.'47 Here Israel's rejection of covenant faithfulness results in a variant repetition, QSEra meaning 'judgment' instead of 'justice' (cf. also 5.1,11; 10.4). The covenant words never appear in a truly positive sense, but not every repetition is a condemnation either. Three times elements of this list occur in exhortations addressed to Israel: in 6.6 ("ion and nin), 10.12 (np-llS, p~re and ion) and 12.7 (BSSJai ion).48 God has not given up all hope of that renewed covenant described in ch. 2. In the final exhortation, only one word from the original list appears, a last resort for Israel. The verse ('In you the orphan finds pity [root Dm, as in D*Qm]' [14.4]) no longer offers righteousness, justice, love or faithfulness. Only pity, as to an orphan, remains. The same thing happens with the cycle of words connected with harlotry. Though these words do not actually appear in an introductory list, there can be no question of their importance in the book, if only because of their frequent, 'hammering' repetition in these early chapters.49 In 1.2, for instance, the root H3V appears no less than four times in some form or another. The root occurs three times in 2.4-7, where it is linked to the other two major words in this cycle: ^KJ, 'commit adultery', (2.4) and 3n«, 'love' (2.7). These latter two roots appear together again in 3.1, where 3HK occurs four times. The three words are clustered thickly together in ch. 4, especially in vv. 10-18,50 but then begin to decrease in frequency. Most remarkably, the words which express unambiguous condemnation soon disappear entirely: ^ appears last in 7.4 and rut in 9.1, where it parallels HHK. This latter word, remains, becoming almost as characteristic of the late chapters as the other two were of the early. Most of its appearances refer to Israel's 47. Reading rcr "11*9 '03$?} for the MT KIT ~I1K 'f'gs^tol, 'And your judgments, light goes out'. 48. The fact that these words occur together frequently enough to be called formulaic word pairs does not change the fact that their introduction in the early chapters has drawn particular attention to them and given them particular significance. 49. Buber speaks of 'the hammering style' of Hosea, Prophetic Faith, p. 112. 50. rtJT, ten times; ^ twice; 2HK twice.
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tendency to give its love to unworthy objects (8.9; 9.1,10; 10.11; 12.8), which parallels the early emphasis on harlotry and adultery, but 3riK is not so restrictive in its definition. The first hint that this word will be transformed and rediscovered comes in 11.1: 'When Israel was a child, I loved him.' The word no longer refers to Israel's promiscuous love, rather to God's true, but ignored, love for Israel. The theme reappears powerfully in ch. 14. God offers Israel another chance to repent and, with that repentance, the promise that 'I will love them unconditionally' (14.5). As the book begins, Israel's relationship with God is characterized as harlotry, adultery and unworthy love; by the end, harlotry and adultery have been forgotten, and the love that remains is not Israel's diverse infatuations but God's enduring and forgiving love. Not every motif presented in the introduction appears in the conclusion, of course. Just as harlotry and adultery, the unambiguously negative descriptions of Israel's love, disappear by ch. 10, other patterns also fade away. For example, 2.13 lists the celebrations defiled by
idolatry: m:na ^ nrozfi ntznn run nioi&a'^D tntim, 'I will put an end to all her rejoicing, her festivals, her new moons and her Sabbaths, and all her appointed times'. This list draws attention to itself by the pun, already noted, of 'I will put an end to' (root mtZ?) and Sabbath (nap). Festivals, new moons and appointed times all reappear in chs. 4-14, notably in 9.5 where 30 and 1JJ1Q appear together, and the root mfi shows up again in 7.4, but none appears after 12.10 (IITO).51 Similarly, the counter-decalogue of 4.2—'Swearing and lying and murdering and stealing and committing adultery'—introduces another extended pattern: every element returns in the later chapters.52 Nevertheless, the pattern disappears after 12.1. These two lists, unrepresented by even one word in the conclusion, seem to counter the larger pattern, but this is not necessarily so. These defilements and sins are not only missing from God's final appeal, they are conspicuously so. Like harlotry and adultery, these sins are forgotten in God's appeal. These patterns of verbal repetition resoundingly confirm the idea that chs. 1-3 act as an introduction to the book. Pattern after pattern is introduced in these chapters, sometimes even temporarily resolved, fore51. Unless the line in 14.6, iTJtZflBH ITS)', 'he shall bloom like the lily', contains a pun on nirop, 'her rejoicing' in the list in 2.13. This is doubtful but always possible, for Hosea. 52. if?!* 4.2; 10.4; ETO 4.2; 7.3; 10.13; 12.1; nin 4.2; 6.9; 3J3 4.2; 7.1; and -|ta 2.4; 3.1; 4.2,13,14; 7.4.
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shadowing the pattern that the word or words will take in the remaining chapters. To this identification of chs. 1-3 as introduction one must add the identification of ch. 14 as resolution. Again and again the final speech of 14.2-9 reinterprets, reverses and resolves the lists and motifs begun in the early chapters. Thus the first three chapters and the last are in a sense companion pieces, bound together by shared vocabulary. Still more connections between introduction and conclusion appear. The prophet's name—and it is always worthwhile to pay attention to names in Hosea— is explored only in these two sections. ^EJIH is from the root U2T, 'he saves or delivers'. The name occurs twice in the first two verses and never reappears, but the verb root appears twice in 1.7 and then disappears until 13.10 and 14.4, in almost identical contexts. Or again, in Hosea the root K2?3, 'lift up', twice has the secondary meaning 'forgive'. The two instances are 1.6 and 14.3. Fisch notes that the curious phrase 'I answer him and look out for him' (!"!]!?, 'answer') in 14.9 recalls the five-fold use of mu in 2.21-22.53 Moreover, chs. 2 and 14 appear to allude to Israelite wedding songs, as exemplified by the Song of Songs. Hosea 2.7-8 recalls Song 3.1-4, and the lush imagery and many of the specific terms of Hosea 14 are characteristic of the metaphors of that book.54 The passages are thus correlated and the book is enclosed not only by verbal repetition but by allusions to marriage festivities. In the larger poetic parallelism of the book, chs. 1-3 form the progressive element, looking ahead at seemingly inevitable doom, and ch. 14 the regressive element, responding to the earlier assertions by gathering those strands, reversing them and reinventing the covenant. Hosea's patterns of verbal repetition confirm not only the basic outline of introduction-body-conclusion, long recognized by scholars, but also the three-part structure described most effectively by Wolff. Indeed, Wolffs identification of the three sections relies on verbal cues as well as on the general thematic arrangement. Each of the three sections (chs. 1-3, 53. Fisch, 'Poetics of Violence', pp. 156-57. The root occurs only two other times in the book, in identical clauses in 5.5 and 7.10. 54. See F. van Dijk-Hemmes, 'The Imagination of Power: An Intertextual Analysis of Two Biblical Love Songs: The Song of Songs and Hosea 2', JSOT44 (1989), pp. 75-88; L. Alonso-Schokel and J.L. Sicre Diaz, Profetas: Commentario, vol. 2 (Madrid: Ediciones Cristiandad, 2nd edn, 1987), II, p. 920, quoted and translated by G. Light, 'Theory-Constitutive Metaphor and Its Use in the Book of Hosea' (PhD dissertation, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1991); Wolff, Hosea, pp. 36, 234; Yee, Composition and Tradition, pp. 138-40.
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4-11 and 12-14) follows the same pattern: Israel is judged by a wrathful God who suddenly relents and offers his apostate people a renewed relationship with him. All three sections include a lawsuit marked by the term T1 (2.3; 4.1; 12.3), which begins either the section as a whole or a significant part of that section.55 Each section concludes with a harsh announcement of doom (in the second and third sections by the promise that the helpless will be 'dashed in pieces' pDDI; 10.14,14.1]) just before God has a change of heart. Thus the larger progression from judgment to possible redemption that the patterns of verbal repetition have made clear in the book as a whole appears on a smaller scale in these three sections. Moreover, the judgment passages which begin each section pointedly draw much of their vocabulary from those preceding. The key word of ch. 4, beginning the judgments of the second section, is i~l]?, 'commit harlotry', which also introduced the judgments of the introductory section. In the same way, ch. 12, the beginning of the final section, includes several direct correspondences to ch. 4. As noted earlier, 4.9 appears with only slight modifications in 12.3.56 Furthermore, ch. 12 is second only to the cumulative ch. 14 as a gatherer of loose ends. List after list makes its appearance in ch. 12, in many cases a final appearance. In 12.1, for instance, appears the last representative of the sin catalogue of 4.2 (2JPD), and in 12.10 the last direct connection to the festival list of 2.13 OU1Q). In 12.7, IDSDD1 "TOPI, 'covenant love and justice', marks the last time any element from the covenant faithfulness list of 2.21-22 will appear until pity (Dm) in 14.4. So, not only do the three sections follow the same thematic pattern, they are interconnected verbally. The characteristic vocabulary of part one appears in ch. 4, the start of the second part. Chapter 12, the start of the third part, refers both to the lists of part one
55. The literature on this lawsuit form is extensive. A good survey may be found in K. Nielsen, Yahweh as Prosecutor and Judge: An Investigation of the Prophetic Lawsuit (Rib-Pattern) (trans. F. Cryer; JSOTSup; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1978). It should be noted that some scholars deny the existence of the lawsuit as a distinct prophetic form, see D.R. Daniels, 'Is There a "Prophetic Lawsuit" Genre?' ZAW 99 (1987), p. 339-60—but this does not affect the direct verbal connection between chs. 2, 4; and 12 of Hosea. 56. ft TDK V'ftyai VD-n lft<J ^rnpsi, 'I will visit his ways on him, and his deeds I will turn back on him' (4.9); ft 3'ET lft"?l>03 TDTTJ apirfty IpaVl, 'To visit on Jacob according to his ways, and according to his deeds he will turn back on him' (12.3).
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and to the language of Hosea 4. Each introduction echoes all the preceding introductions. Another pattern that supports this threefold division is a case where the word introduced as significant in the early chapters is echoed not at the end of the book, in the tightly packed ch. 14, but rather in the forgiveness passage which concludes the second part of the book, in ch. 11. Three times in Hosea 2 the root ]ro, 'give', refers to the gifts that God had given Israel and that Israel had thought were the gifts of her lovers the Baals: 'For she has said, I will go after my lovers, who gave C3P3) my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink' (2.7); 'For she does not know that I, I gave to her the grain and the new wine and the new oil, and I increased her silver, and gold they made into the Baal' (2.10); 'I will destroy her vine and her fig-tree, for she said, "They are my hire (rnnN), which my lovers gave (']ra) to me'" (2.14). In 2.17, God's forgiveness is signalled by his willingness to give again: 'I will give (Tiro) her vineyard to her.' These are all the occurrences of the root in the introduction. The next significant concatenation of the word comes in 9.14, in the prophet's bitter call, 'Give them (Dil^'in), Lord— what shall you give CfPin)? Give them (Dn*7"|n) a miscarrying womb and dry breasts'. Again the word signifies punishment and disgrace, but two chapters later, hi the great salvation oracle of ch. 11, God asks, 'How can I give you up ("[]DK), Ephraim? How can I surrender you, Israel? How can I make you CpnR) like Admah? How can I set you like Zeboiim?' (vv. 8-9). God is reluctant, after all, to give Israel what Israel deserves. ]ro does not appear in the final chapter, but the pattern is clear.57 To argue that verbal repetition in Hosea presents both an introductionconclusion structure and a three-part judgment to salvation structure may seem contradictory, or at least confusing. A spatial representation of these various verbal connections may be useful. Using only the examples already mentioned, by no means all the examples in Hosea, the patterns can be charted along three overlapping lines, read from left to right.
57. This pattern is noted by D. Krause, 'A Blessing Cursed: The Prophet's Prayer for Barren Womb and Dry Breasts in Hosea 9', in D.N. Fewell (ed.), Reading Between Texts: Intertextuality and the Hebrew Bible (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1992), pp. 195-96.
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Judgment (Chs. 1-3) (Verbal connections:
SPIN OT' RiCJ Dm 010 mi?
Hope (Ch. 14) Wedding Songs)
Chapters 1-2 (3) Verbal connections:
*]M rm fro Links from 1-3 to 12: T~l -U?TD (2.13; 12.10) ton CaaaJD (2.21; 12.7)
Chapters 4-11 Verbal connections: Sin list (4.2; 12.1) 4.9 = 12.3 ttfcn (10.14; 14.1) Chapters 12-14
Figure 1. The Structure of Repetition in Hosea
Two clear conclusions arise from the foregoing. First, it is not enough to suggest that these three sections are merely different 'transmission units', originally separate and then pasted together willy-nilly.58 There is too much verbal interweaving here for that assumption to be satisfying. Secondly, and this should not even be necessary to specify, one must read the units in sequence. It is no accident that the book contains three different offers of repentance, any more than it is an accident that every offer of repentence until the final chapter is immediately followed by a renewed description of Israel's sin. God has a change of heart and offers repentance, only to see Israel return not only to sin but to the same sins: in ch. 4 Israel continues the harlotry inveighed against in chs. 1 and 2, and in 12.1, Israel continues the falsehood (ttirD) listed in 4.2, receiving the same condemnation (4.9; 12.3). The effect is to create a cycle of repeated sin, analogous to the narrative cycle followed in the book of Judges (see Judges 2.11-23). So, when God offers repentance one more time, in ch. 14, it is with more urgency and lower expectations than in ch. 11, which had itself demanded less of Israel than did the appeal in ch. 2. Chapter 14, offering pity only and no longer even asking covenant love or justice, is in a way a last resort for Israel. In Hosea, this final appeal remains unanswered, but in the larger context, the Book of the Twelve, it receives its response. In the very next chapter, Joel 1.10-12, appears this summary: 58. Wolff, Hosea, p. xxx.
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The field is destroyed, The land mourns. For the grain is destroyed, The new wine withered, The new o/7 wastes away. Be ashamed, farmers; wail, vinedressers; For the wheat and the barley, For the harvest of the field has perished. The vme withers, And the/ig-rree wastes away. Pomegranate, also palm and apple, All the trees of the field wither. Indeed, joy withers, From the sons of men.
The words emphasized are all characteristic of Hosea, and connect directly with Hosea 14. The list in Joel 1.10, 'grain, new wine and new oil', appears twice in Hosea 2 and is recalled by the recurrence of 'grain' in 14.8. The word pair 'vine' and 'fig-tree' (Joel 1.12) appears in Hosea 2.14, then 'vine' alone in 14.8. To this should be added the hammering wordplay in these verses of Joel, the interplay between 'wither' (ETIlin, v. 10; nETIlin, ran;, and IZTIirT, v. 12) and 'be ashamed' Ccran, v. 11), which recalls not only Hosea's typical language but a specific Hoseanic pun (cf. 13.15). The same care and verbal artistry which distinguishes the arrangement of the individual poems of Hosea has been equally applied to the arrangement of the books within the Twelve, and Joel answers the question left open in Hosea. The people of Ephraim did not repent and accept God's renewed covenant, and their prophesied fate ultimately came to them.59 Patterning by Wordplay The lyrical plot of Hosea thus proceeds largely by means of verbal repetition, especially of words used frequently or highlighted by their appearance in a list. By tracing how these significant words are applied in Hosea, one finds a comparatively complex arrangement: sin is followed 59. A more complete examination of the connections between Hosea and Joel in the context of the Twelve may be found in J. Nogalski, Literary Precursors to the Book of the Twelve (BZAW, 217; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1993), pp. 69-73; Redactional Processes in the Book of the Twelve (BZAW, 218; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1993), pp. 1322.
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by surprising forgiveness, which is followed by sin again (and so on), all framed by the larger correspondence between Hosea 1-3 and 14. The divisions which appear from this examination (1-3 and 14 serving to introduce and conclude the whole; 1-3, 4-11 and 12-14 forming discrete sections) are nothing new. They have all been noticed before. Nevertheless, the closely interrelated verbal patterns give these standard divisions much more depth and significance than previously suspected. And by turning to wordplay we find depths yet unexplored. Some of the patterns set out by wordplay correspond to and reinforce those based on simple repetition. For instance, as described above, the book begins with the three symbolic names of Hosea's children: ^Ninr, 'Jezreel'; itnm $b, 'Not Pitied'; and -ay $b, 'Not My People'. All of these names indicate God's judgment on Israel, Jezreel being a metonym for the sin committed there, and the other two names describing God's response to sin. The negative focus of these names is reversed as early as 2.1-3, especially at the end of the passage, 'For great will be the day of Jezreel. Say to your brothers, "My People" OD#), and to your sisters, "Pitied" (nom)' (2.2b-3). A second, more sweeping reversal, concludes Hosea 2: 'And I shall sow her (rpnmtl, using the verbal root of the name ^yir) for myself in the land, and I shall pity (Tiarrn) Not Pitied, and I shall say to Not My People, "You are my people" ('QJJ), and he shall say "My God"' (2.25). Hosea resumes castigating 'my people' in ch. 3 (vv. 6, 8, 12). The word occurs elsewhere in the book only to note the people's refusal to return to God (6.11; 11.7, both in conjunction with the root TltD, 'return'). The name 'Jezreel' appears nowhere after 2.25, and the root of 'pity' makes only one appearance, in the prophet's angry call for God to 'Give them a miscarrying womb (DO"))' (9.14), until the pattern is resolved in 14.4, 'In you the orphan finds pity (Dn"!1!)'. This word, already noted as the resolution of the list of covenant attributes in 2.21-22, serves also as a final reversal of the names of judgment in the first chapter. As so frequently happens, the pattern in the first chapters acts as a microcosm of the pattern in the whole book. These names will bear more paronomastic fruit soon, but this superficial examination is adequate to demonstrate the strategy, and the fact that these three names are dealt with so prominently in chs. 1 and 2 may indicate their function as a paradigm. The reader is expected to make these simple connections and to conclude that in the chapters to follow, proper names will be significant and the patterns in which they appear should be taken seriously.
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Although most patterns of name-puns do not follow the introductionconclusion or the three-part structures of the book as closely as do the patterns described above, they are no less structurally significant and, if anything, shed more light on the sort of care given to the arrangement of Hosea. Hosea appears almost incapable of using a name without playing on it. Place names are frequent subjects. In a list in 4.15, Israel is told, 'Do not enter Gilgal, do not go up to Beth-Aven, do not swear "As the LORD lives'". The word 'swear' (linen), recalls the city Beer-Sheba, which appears in a similar three-item list in Amos 8.14, where the pun on the verb form is explicit.60 A few verses later, another three-item list appears: 'For you have been a snare at Mizpah, a net spread out on Tabor, and rebels have gone deep in slaughter' (5.1-2). Again, the third item seems out of place, but the unusual word 'rebels' (D'tpto) here is virtually identical to the place name Shittim (D'CSD), and understanding the line as a wordplay connects it to the same pattern in 4.15 (two place names followed by an indirect reference to a third).61 The town of Gibeah (mo;) is mentioned four times in Hosea (5.8; 9.9; 10.9,9); the last time clearly in a wordplay with 10.8, 'They will say to the mountains, "Cover us!" and to the hills (rmn;i'7), "Fall on us!'". 'Hill' only appears in Hosea in 10.8 and 4.13, where it refers to pagan altars. Gibeah is condemned by association. These examples are simple and can hardly be called extended wordplays. More complex is the name Beth-Aven (]}£ PPS), literally 'house of wickedness', here evidently referring to Bethel as implied by Amos 5.5. The name appears three times in Hosea (4.15; 5.8; 10.5). The Septuagint, one should note, transliterates the name OIKOC; i2v, evidently reading the word jiK instead of |]K, a curiosity which may be significant. In 10.15, though, the circumlocution stops, and Bethel is named instead of BethAven.52 While the reader is still wondering what to make of this shift, Bethel is again named in 12.5, where the reference is not to the Bethel of Israel's idolatry but the Bethel of Jacob's encounter with God. The Septuagint, however, still has oiKCp Qv, which is especially curious in 60. Noted by J. Wellhausen, Die kleinen Propheten (Berlin: de Gruyter, 3rd edn, 1963), p. 112. 61. See 9.9 and the discussion above, pp. 73-74, of its punning interplay with 5.2. See also Y. Mazor, 'Hosea 5.1-3: Between Compositional Rhetoric and Rhetorical Composition', JSOT45 (1989), p. 120. Mazor also reads 'Shittim' here, but along with most commentators, emends the text rather than reading a wordplay. 62. The Septuagint has neither one. It reads 'house of Israel.'
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light of the word ]iK 'vigor,' in 12.4. Somehow, ]]K has become ]i«; Israel's wickedness has become the strength of Jacob's manhood in his struggle with the angel. It is not surprising, then, to encounter ]i« again just a few verses later: 'Ephraim said, "Surely I am rich; I have found wealth for myself (^ fl« TlKiJD)'" (12.9). But a more startling development follows: 'None of my gains will find my iniquity Cpl? ^"INIiD''), which is sin.' Wickedness, by punning, became strength; now strength becomes iniquity; Bethel, by association, is judged. Neither Bethel nor Beth-Aven is named again. More complicated patterns await. More frequent than any place name are the names Israel and Ephraim. As early as 1.4 Israel is associated by assonance with Jezreel, a sign of judgment, and so Israel appears from the start in an unpleasant light. Two chapters later, Israel figures in another wordplay, equally indicative of judgment: 'For many days, the sons of Israel (bwiCT) will abide without king or prince ("lit?)...' (3.4). The pun on ")&? is significant and will appear again, but first the reader encounters a multiple wordplay in 4.16-18: 'For like a stubborn (rn~10) cow, Israel (*?tnfc7') is stubborn (110)...their drinking turns (them) aside ("10, from the root "110).'63 The tribes of Israel are judged alongside the princes C~12?) of Judah in 5.9-10, and in 6.10 God proclaims, 'Pfcncr TOH IT'H'niJO TPR"I ('In the house of Israel I have seen an abomination') a line which is too perfectly shaped to be anything but a calculated wordplay. Israel not only contains an abomination: the pun implies that Israel is an abomination. Israel, like bloody Jezreel, will be made destitute because of its stubbornness and abominable actions. The next direct pun on the name comes in ch. 8, but in the meantime a new element is introduced. God laments in 7.14-16: They do not cry to me in their hearts; they do not wail on their beds. Over grain and new wine they sojourn. They have turned aside plio1, root TO] against me. And I was the one who instructed ['FlIO', root TO'], I strengthened their arms, and they devise evil against me...Their princes [DIT"lto] will fall by the sword.
Turning aside from God and judgment to the princes have already been associated with the name Israel, but God's memory of having instructed them himself adds a pathetic new touch. The Israel/prince wordplay returns in 8.3-4, where Israel is associated 63. Rudolph, 'Eigentiimlichkeiten', p. 316, notes this extended wordplay, even adding "HS (he binds) from v. 19 to the list, but he does not connect it all to the name Israel.
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with the verb "HD, 'to rule as prince', which is of course a cognate of the noun "ID. The passage is a curious reversal of the same pun in 3.4. There Israel would be left without king or prince; here God recalls how Israel established kings and princes but did so without God. Then, in 8.6, arrives what may be the most startling wordplay of all. The verse is almost incoherent as it stands. 'For from Israel (^NH^'D '?) and he, an artisan made him, and he is No-God. / For he shall be splinters, the calf of Samaria.' The first phrase is the problem, and most solutions involve considerable emendation of the text. The text becomes perfectly intelligible, however, if one simply spaces the offending phrase differently, to read *?« "ID" 'D "?, 'For who is the bull 'El?' The Canaanite God 3El, often associated with the figure of a bull (Ugaritic tr, Hebrew "ID), has frequently been identified as the inspiration for Jeroboam's calves, worshiped in the Northern Kingdom, so the ensuing lines fit perfectly (cf. also 8.5). Even more significant here is the realization that if this suggestion is valid, then the line is a brilliant wordplay on the name Israel, using the same consonants both to deride the false god and to link it with Israel.64 After such a paronomastic triumph, the next few wordplays seem fairly tame. God moans that 'all their princes (niT'lfe) are stubborn (D'~nb)' (9.15) and threatens 'When I come, then I will rebuke them (CHO^, root HO11), and peoples will be gathered against them / By their binding [being bound?] (cnOKZl, root ION) for their double iniquity' (10.10). Neither of these puns explicitly involves the name Israel, but by this time the members of the playing-field are familiar, and one registers the plays almost automatically. The larger picture has become clear. Israel and its princes have been thoroughly entwined (bound?) with stubbornness, abomination, idolatry and turning aside from God. Before, God instructed ("ID11) and strengthened them (7.15), but now he will rebuke (also "ID"1) and bind them. The pattern concludes with a bewildering flurry of wordplays in ch. 12. In v. 3 the prophet declares a lawsuit with Judah (Israel?) and with the patriarch Jacob for his ways and deeds.65 The prophet then illustrates 64. This reading of the line is noted and admired by M. Pope in ' "Pleonastic" Waw before Nouns in Ugaritic and Hebrew', JAOS 73 (1953), pp. 96-97 and in 'El in the Ugaritic Texts (VTSup, 2; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1955), p. 35. Pope ultimately finds this re-division of the text too clever and thus unlikely. His own explanation, however, based on the premise that one may simply ignore the conjunction after these words, is hardly more convincing. 65. The name Judah here is one of the most widely accepted instances of a
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those ways and deeds with a brief survey of Jacob's career. That wordplay is significant in the passage is signalled early by the juxtaposition of the name Jacob and its apparent etymology Dpi?', v, 3; Dpi!, v. 4; see Gen. 27.36). This is followed immediately in v. 4 by: DTfttriTK rnfo 1]1«D, 'in his vigor he struggled with God'. The verb rno, 'he struggled', is the etymology given in Genesis 32.28 for Jacob's new name, Israel—he struggles with God. The text continues in 12.5, And he ruled as prince to the angel, and he prevailed; He wept and sought favor for himself. At Bethel he found him, And there he spoke with him.
Perhaps the most important wordplay of all appears here, in 'he ruled as prince to the angel'. The verb is from "TIE?, the verbal form of the noun "ICO, 'prince', which has already been closely tied to the name Israel; here the connection is inescapable. As in 8.6, the same consonants spell different words: 'rule to', (^ ~2T), is Israel (biOST). But this is gibberish. The pun cannot be avoided, but what does it mean? Part of the difficulty comes from the ambiguous pronouns of the passage. Jacob evidently 'ruled as prince to the angel', but which of the two prevailed? Which of the two wept? Which sought favor? Genesis 32 has Jacob prevailing (or at least holding his own) and seeking favor, but it says nothing about anyone weeping, so one may not rely completely on that account. Here the field of meaning established by the Israel wordplays may help: 'to rule as prince' in Hosea is almost certainly a rebuke. Princes in Hosea are hardly admirable: notice their drunken fever in 7.3-7. What if here it is the angel who prevailed?66 Then Jacob's ruling as prince is comparable to the nation Israel's ignorant setting up of princes in 8.4, the only other place in Hosea where this verb is used. In both verses, Israel's princedom is without God. And in ch. 12 God will eventually prevail and meet Israel again. This interpretation is dubious for the same reason that it is possible: the text is ambiguous. And, since the name Israel is never again the subject 'Judahistic' redaction, the text being assumed originally to have read Israel. See, among many others, Wolfe, 'Editing', p. 91. No extant text has anything but Judah, however, and the wordplay works either way. 66. Suggested to me by Dr T. Smothers, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, in an interview. In Dr Smothers's view, this passage is Hosea's radical revision of the Genesis tradition.
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of a wordplay, the issue is never resolved. Israel's association with sin and princely pride has been affirmed, but what God will do with Israel remains unspoken. The meaning of the wordplay has not so much been discovered as exhausted. But a corresponding thread of wordplays presents a much less bleak, or at any rate less ambivalent, message. Israel's companion name in passage after passage is Ephraim (cf. 5.3,5,9; 6.10; 10.6; 11.8; 12.1; 13.1). Indeed the name Ephraim first appears tied up in a network of puns on Israel. Significantly, the two names overlap in the center of the book but not at the ends. Israel begins its paronomastic career in ch. 1 and ends in ch. 12; Ephraim begins in ch. 4 and does not disappear until the final oracle. If there is a resolution of the pattern begun by Israel, it may be in Ephraim. For decades, as already noted in passing, interpreters have observed the many puns on the name Ephraim (n'"]?K), but no one has examined the arrangement of the wordplays.67 The first appearance of the name in the book, in 4.17, has already been prepared by a wordplay: 'For like a stubborn cow (rns), Israel is stubborn' (4.16).68 In the next chapter, the pun is a reversal of consonants. Wounded Ephraim (D'HSN) will go to Assyria, which will be unable to heal (BE"!*?) him (5.13; cf. 6.1,4). The complex cycle of puns on anger (*]£) in ch. 7, described in the last chapter, drags Ephraim along with it. Verses 3-7 pun wildly on this phoneme: drawing together D'DR]!? ('adulterers', v. 4), HSR ('baker', v. 4), and *]K ('anger', implied in v. 6, read by the Syriac and Targums). Verse 8 then concludes, 'Ephraim (CH?**) among the peoples, he is mixed together. Ephraim is an unturned cake'. Thus concludes the image of the baker who left his dough half-kneaded (7.4) and his cake half-baked. In terms of metaphor and wordplay, Ephraim is inextricably linked to all the impotent drunken anger and licentiousness described in these verses. In 8.9, DH?$ is a wild ass (iOB) and in 9.11 may be connected with other members of the animal kingdom. Wellhausen suggests that the image of the flying birds in this verse is used because of the similarity of the word DH3$, 'wings or pinions', to the name D^SK.69 Since the word QH3K does not actually appear in the passage—or the book—this seems a bit far-fetched, but it is difficult to settle on a kind of wordplay that would be impossible for this prophet. In 9.16 CH?$ will not produce 67. See Wellhausen, Die kleinen Propheten, p. 133; Rudolph, Hosea, p. 315; Buss, Prophetic Word, p. 39; Fisch, 'Poetics of Violence', pp. 145-46, 68. Rudolph, Hosea, p. 315. 69. Wellhausen, Die kleinen Propheten, p. 124.
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fruit (HE). Several of these wordplays are used again in chs. 11 and 13. Ephraim did not know that God healed them (11.3), but God says, 'I will not execute the fierceness of my anger 038); I will not return to destroy Ephraim' (11.9). Nevertheless, God mentions his anger again in 13.11 (Ephraim is named in 13.12) and reminds him that only with God's help can he be fruitful (using the verb root tos, spelled uniquely with a final K, perhaps to accentuate the wordplay).70 In the final oracle of the book (14.2-9) all the strands are brought together. In this oracle, already so packed with significant vocabulary, the prophet resumes and reinterprets every pun except the wild ass of 8.9. The people promise to present to God the bulls (D'HS) of their lips (v. 3),71 and God will heal their apostasy, for 'my anger CSK) has turned away' (v. 5), the name Ephraim appears in an explosive vocative in v. 8, in which verse he is promised fruit CHS) from God.' The arrangement of the Ephraim puns, as charted below, is striking. In chs. 4-9, all the associations made by the wordplays are negative. The puns are reorganized and though still largely condemnatory seem less forceful in chs. 11 and 13. By ch. 14, the puns have been redeemed: every negative connotation has been wiped away, and Ephraim, the chameleonic name, yields a blessing after all. The nation may only be redeemed when it ceases to be the one who struggles with God (Israel, the etymology of Gen. 32.28) and begins to bear fruit (Ephraim, the etymology of Gen. 42.52). A. Ephraim is a stubborn cow (!"I~ID) 4.16-17 B. Ephraim seeks vain healing (KSH) 5.13 C. Like an oven, Ephraim burns with anger (*}$) 7.4-8 D. Ephraim is a wild ass (N~IS) 8.9 E. Ephraim bears no fruit (*~ID) 9.16 B. Ephraim does not understand its healing (KS~1) 11.3 C. God recants his anger (fjK) with Ephraim 11.9 C. God recalls his anger (*]») with Ephraim 13.11-12 E. Ephraim cannot bear fruit CHS) 13.15 A. Ephraim should render the bulls (D'"1S) of their lips 14.3 B. God will heal them (ten) 14.5 C. God's anger (*•)«) has turned 14.5 E. Ephraim will bear fruit ("IS) 14.9 Figure 2. Wordplay on DHSl* in Hosea 70. So Buss, Prophetic Word, p. 39. 71. The Septuagint has Kcxpnov, evidently reading '"IS instead of CHS.
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Geographical and ethnic names are thus arranged into progressive patterns of paronomasia. A third category yields, if anything, even more impressive results: divine names. Earlier, the pattern involving the names of Hosea's children was referred to as 'simple', and on one level it certainly is. The negative force of the second and third names, for instance, is removed in ch. 2 by the simple expedient of dropping the negative particle. But 'simple' is not Hosea's forte, and closer analysis seems warranted. H.G. May, in an insightful essay, notes a connection between the first name and the latter two: ^RJTir, literally 'God (*7K) sows', ends with the same consonants with which the next two names begin: yfr, 'not'. The connected portions imply t?tTN''?, 'Not-God'.72 This phrase, significantly, appears in Deuteronomy 32, a chapter with which Hosea frequently corresponds, in the sentence, 'They have incited me to wrath by Not-God'.73 Who this 'Not-God' may be is implied by a further connection between the three names: all contain the name of a Canaanite deity. ^NiTir, of course, contains 'El, which may be either a general term for God or the proper name of the Canaanite chief god (see 'the bull 'El' in 8.6, discussed above, p. 125). 'DJ? vh recalls the name of the Canaanite god Amm (as in the name Jeroboam, the king in Hosea's day), and Horn $b is related to the Ugaritic goddess Racham.74 The indigenous pantheon is the Not-God with which Israel has sinned, and God's response at the end of ch. 1 is to say, 'And I (am) "I will not be" (rrriN N1?) to you.' Here rpnR recalls the theophany on Sinai, when God first revealed his own name to Moses, saying irriK ~)dN rrnK (Exod. 3.14).75 Because Israel has called on the name of Not-God, the true God withdraws his sacred name from them. At the end of ch. 2, in the redemption passage that closes the first section of the book, God tries to return his name to its true place in Israel. Verses 18-19, pivotal verses by anyone's estimation, read:
72. H.G. May, 'An Interpretation of the Names of Hosea's Children', JBL 55 (1936), pp. 289-90. 73. For more detail on these many correspondences, see Buss, Prophetic Word, pp. 75, 82, 85-86. 74. E. Jacob, 'L'Heritage cananeen dans le livre du prophete Osee', RHPR 43 (1963), p. 253. On 'El in Hosea, see Pope, 'El in the Ugaritic Texts, pp. 12-13, 35. 75. Buber, Prophetic Faith, p. 117-18; see also Fisch, 'Poetics of Violence', p. 144.
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Prophecy, Poetry and Hosea And it shall be in that day, Oracle of the LORD, You shall call out 'My husband', And you shall no longer call me 'My Baal'. And I shall remove the names of the Baals from her mouth, And they shall be remembered no more by their name.
God who has sworn to remove his special name from his special people relents and offers instead to remove the names of the Baals. In the process, he reminds them once more of the great moment when he gave them his name. After giving the name !TnR "IBJR ITnR in Exodus 3.14, he concludes, "11 "ll4? "HDT HD rbxh 'Qfirnr, 'This is my name forever, and this my remembrance generation to generation' (Exod. 3.15). The final line of Hosea 2.19 offers to give the Baals 'No-remembrance by name': No-Name for Not-God. The offer concluding the pattern in the introduction does not appear to be accepted, because the motif of Not-God continues. It may appear in 7.16, where the difficult text seems to read, '[Ephraim] will return not upon (?V flfr); they are like a treacherous bow.' Nyberg argues that "71? here is neither a preposition nor a textual error but rather a reference to a Canaanite god named 'Al, perhaps a short form of jV^l?, 'Most High'.76 The text is still difficult, but if Nyberg's idea is valid, then the appearance of another divine name with the negative particle parallels the implied ^K'N1? of ch. 1. In any case, the theme is certainly continued in the reconstructed 8.6: 'For who is the bull 'El? / For an artisan made him, and he is Not-God (DT^tTK^).' In ch. 11 the theme swells to a climax. A hint of a positive resolution conies in v. 4, where God says, 'I will be (iTTTK) to Israel like one who lifts a yoke'. Has God restored his name to the people? Perhaps, but two verses later, God moans, 'My people ('131?) is hung up for apostasy / And they call to 'Al (*7irl7N)' (11.7).77 At last, God gives in and in v. 9 turns 76. Nyberg, Studien zum Hoseabuche, pp. 60-61. 77. Again tentatively reading the divine name 'Al with Nyberg, Studien zum Hoseabuche, pp. 60-61, largely to make sense of what otherwise has none ('to upon'). It is interesting that in this verse Ibn Ezra also understood a divine name, a short form of 'Most High', although he assumed that the referent is the God of Israel. See A. Lipshitz, The Commentary of Abraham Ibn Ezra on Hosea (New York: SepherHerman, 1988), p. 104.
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the "^Tfa motif inside out, along the way reversing the connection made in 2.18 between 'My Husband' pETtf) and 'My Baal'. God says that he cannot give up Ephraim and Israel, 'For I am God, and not man' (^K "D aftr^ 'ZCK). While 11.9 is certainly a climax, it does not end the story. In ch. 13, TIN, a short form of iTTlN, appears four times: '/ will be like a lion to them' (13.7), 7 will be your king' (13.7), 'Death, / will be your pestilence' and 'Sheol, I will be your sting' (both 13.14). As described earlier, this short form puns on both V1» ('Alas!') and on the interrogative iTK ('Where?').78 The divine name 'I will be who I will be' has been restored, but exactly what 'I will be' is still in doubt. Here, God promises that he will be punishment. In ch. 14, however, God promises 'I will be (iTnN) like the dew to Israel'. The true divine name, taken away in 1.9, has been restored, and it is once again a name of blessing. And what has become of the pagan names? The people are urged to say, 'We will no longer say "Our God" to the work of our hands' (14.4), but God no longer promises to remove the names of the Baals. Instead, the names of the Baals remain and are incorporated into God's blessing. Verse 8 says, 'They will cause grain (|H) to revive'. But ]T\ is not just the word for grain; it is Dagan, the Semitic god. God appears to be assuming the responsibilities usually allocated to Canaanite fertility figures. Indeed, the word most frequently linked with ]T\ in Hosea, EhTn ('new wine') is another indigenous divine name. Verse 8 continues, 'His remembrance (1~DT, often used of God's name; cf. Exod. 3.15; Hos. 2.19, 12.6) like wine (]") of Lebanon'. Or is the word 'wine' another divine name: Yayin of Lebanon? The form does appear twice in the Ugaritic texts as a proper name, where interestingly enough it is spelled yyn, like the Hebrew word but distinct from the Ugaritic yn, 'wine'.79 Then comes the coup de grace. In v. 9, God says, 'Ephraim! What more have I to do with idols? I myself will answer and will watch out for him'. This last line falls rather flat until one reads Wellhausen's ingenious suggestion: For irffitf^l Tni? ••]», 'I myself will answer and I will watch out for him', Wellhausen emends the text to read irnfiftjfl in]!) "•]$, 'I am his Anat and his Asherah'.80 As an emendation, it requires some imagination; as an 78. Cf. the Septuagint reading,TO>T>.The wordplay is explored in more detail by Fisch, 'Poetics of Violence', pp. 152-53. 79. C.H. Gordon, Ugaritic Handbook (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, rev. edn, 1947), p. 234. (The text references are 16.10 and 309.25). 80. Wellhausen, Die kleinen Propheten, p. 134.
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intentional wordplay, it is no more than one should expect from Hosea. Wolffs judgment that Wellhausen's proposal is too 'audacious' may be correct if Wolff means that it is too audacious for Wolff, but what criteria can be imagined to determine what is too audacious for Hosea?81 What is too audacious for the God which this amazing prophet proclaims? Israel would not let God remove the Not-Gods from their mouth. They returned to sin even after God negated the Not-Gods by declaring himself God and Not-Man. So God gives Israel a final chance. If Israel must worship the gods of Canaan, then 'I Will Be' will become the gods of Canaan. The interpreters who for generations have considered the book of Hosea to be a collection of rhetoric must be forgiven for finding no structure in the book. Indeed, little or no rhetorical structure exists. Logic and chronology are impossible to discern, and transitions between passages are sharp, choppy and bewildering. Jerome is right: 'Osee commaticus est' (Hosea is halting). The structure that appears in Hosea can hardly be called a structure at all. The different passages of the book are not so much constructed as they are interwoven by verbal and phonetic echoes. It is worth noting, too, that such verbal patterning in no way precludes the book's being put together by an editor. The traditional wisdom about the book's being an edition of original oracles and poems, perhaps having undergone several different redactions, still answers many questions. Ch. 3, with its first person presentation and largely unique vocabulary, still stands out starkly and, to me at least, inexplicably. Certain incongruous mentions of Judah may still indicate a 'Judahistic' redaction (e.g. 1.7; 5.5; 6.11; 8.14). The chapters of the book's envelope structure (1-2, 14) may indeed have been added late to the book. The verbal patterns of Hosea do not contradict any of these redactional hypotheses; they do, however, emphatically deny that any such redaction was done carelessly. Words, even wordplays, have been selected and arranged with such meticulous care in this book that it no longer appears reasonable to assume that anything is haphazard in Hosea. Moreover, the care that has been given to Hosea is not the care of the rhetorician, but the care of a poet. Though the book contains some vestiges of the rhetoric that appears in the other prophets, Hosea is not primarily a book of rhetoric. It is above all a poem, a sustained lyric devoted less to persuasion than to the revelation of a startling and unfamiliar (defamiliarized?) God. Some words and wordplays connect 81. Wolff, Hosea, p. 233.
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the introductory section to the last chapter, so that these parts become companion salvation songs. Other verbal patterns indicate how God has repeatedly sought to redeem his people, only to be spurned—'I would redeem them, but they speak lies against me!' (7.13). In three extended passages God gathers together the terms that have described the people's sin and judgment, then reverses them to offer restoration (2.16-25; 11.111; 14.2-9). After each offer, the people resume their sin, taking up the same practices, described by the same words (in chs. 4 and 12). Other patterns—constructed from puns on Israel, Ephraim and the names of foreign gods—reveal God's wrath, remorse and willingness to overturn his own judgments, as his own heart is overthrown by love. This progressive revelation of God's heart, much more than any listing of 'structures' (as if it were enough to identify a structure without ever discussing the effect of that structure on the development of meaning) is the point of the poetic reading of Hosea.
Chapter 6
CONCLUSION: GENRE AND THE PROPHETS
The prophet is a fool; the inspired man, a lunatic. —Hosea 9.7
Beginning with an examination of the foundational genres that are usually attributed to the book of Hosea, I have uncovered new meaning there. Puzzling words and phrases have been rediscovered as parts of intricate patterns, each connection contributing to the book's meaning, not haphazardly scattered editorial leavings. Getting to this point has been a long process. I began by noting that few, if any, interpreters of the prophetic books have demonstrated any clear understanding of the prophetic genre. Most have assumed that prophecy is a species of rhetoric, but at the same time have recognized the prevalence of poetry in prophetic books. My examination of these two foundational genres revealed them to be sharply distinct, almost mutually exclusive. So I asked: Can these two incompatible genres coexist in the prophetic books? And if so, how? To answer this would have required a complete examination of every distinctive feature of every prophetic book, clearly a task beyond the scope of this investigation, or perhaps of a life's work. So I limited myself in two significant ways. First, I chose to examine only one verbal trope, verbal repetition, stressing one significant subset of that device, wordplay. Next, I chose to concentrate on only one prophetic book, Hosea, although some attention has been given to Amos as a contemporary foil. The results did much to clarify the question of genre in the prophets. Verbal repetition takes a distinctive form in rhetoric, generally being the repetition of sentences or propositions and usually serving the rhetorical goal of clarity. Such repetition I found often in the book of Amos, but seldom in Hosea. In poetry, repetition is less coherent, the repetend usually being a single word or syllable, not a complete thought,
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and the goal more often being to complicate than to clarify. The poem typically achieves this complication by varying a repetition in some way. Such variant repetition is remarkably characteristic of Hosea. Most notably, Hosea extensively uses wordplay, the clearest example of variant repetition. Given the choice between rhetoric and poetry, Hosea is primarily poetic. Assuming then that Hosea's distinctive use of verbal repetition and wordplay indicates poetry, I next tried to read through the book with a poetic consciousness. Such matters as logic and chronology, both frequently the despair of Hosea's interpreters, I deemed irrelevant, preferring to concentrate on poetic structures such as variant repetition and echoic sounds. It was this shift of focus that led to my new understanding of the book. I found clear verbal arrangements, authorial or editorial or both, offering new depths of meaning, often in startling ways. By utilitarian standards, my experiment has been a success. My brief poetic reading uncovered much meaning in the book, meaning that generations of rhetorical analysis have missed or ignored. Still, why go through all this to arrive here? Why, for instance, was it necessary to spend an entire chapter defining rhetoric and poetry? Could I not have demonstrated the verbal patterns mentioned in Chapter 5 without spending so long in the preliminaries of Chapter 2? At one level, of course, this was certainly possible, and various close readers throughout the history of interpretation have noted such interwoven meanings in the prophetic books.1 Nevertheless, these interpreters have been the exception instead of the rule, and I had to examine the genre presuppositions of most prophetic criticism to understand why such insights have been so rare. The echoic sounds of carefully arranged wordplays have been overlooked quite simply because most interpreters have assumed that Hosea is a book of rhetoric, and rhetoric does not behave like that. Seeking the marks of classical rhetoric, critics have found only disorganization and incoherence; indifferent to the 'rhythmic aspect' of poetry, they have entirely missed the striking and meticulous orchestration of Hosea's language. There is another reason for going so carefully through the whole process: once the method is established, the analysis done here may work also with other tropes and other prophets. Since the best conclusion to a 1. Such instinctive sensitivity to the distinctive nature of this text has always characterized the best commentaries on Hosea, from J. Wellhausen's short notes in Die kleinen Propheten to H.W. Wolffs insightful analysis in Hosea.
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study like this is not a final, undeniable proof, but a map for further work, let me sketch some of these extended applications. Other Verbal Devices In theory, an analysis of almost any verbal device would have served my purpose and demonstrated the distinctively poetic nature of Hosea. I chose to examine verbal repetition and wordplay, and they have proven very productive, but other devices could have served as well. For instance, the book of Hosea is noted for its powerful use of metaphors. Again, although many might associate metaphorical language with poetry, metaphors and similes may appear in any genre. The presence of metaphors does not itself indicate the genre of the book; instead, the way that each type of literature uses metaphors must be stressed. Each genre uses them somewhat differently. Aristotle devotes an entire section of the Rhetoric to the appropriate rhetorical use of metaphors. He says that in rhetoric, metaphors should always be appropriate (not contrary to the intended sense), should be from the suitable class (an elevated subject should be compared to something from an equal or higher class), should not be far-fetched and should be euphonic and beautiful in either sound or meaning.2 In effect, rhetorical metaphors should clarify the text. Failing that, they should at least not distract, for instance by being from an inappropriate class or by being unlikely. In poetry, metaphors may at any time intrude into the sense by being elaborate or strikingly inappropriate, and such striking metaphors are more likely to be praised than scorned. In Hosea, two simple examples among many indicate in which direction this prophet's metaphors tend. The baking metaphor of Hosea 7.3-9 is long and impossibly involved, rich in meaning but terribly difficult to use to illustrate any single point. In short, it is more a metaphysical conceit than a rhetorical metaphor, more like John Donne's sonnets than his sermons. An even better example comes in 5.12, where in two short metaphors God succeeds in breaking every one of Aristotle's instructions: 'But as for me, I am as pus to Ephraim, and as a worm grub to the house of Judah.'3 Rhetorical canons find little place in Hosea. The book appears to be poetry. 2. Aristotle, Rhetoric IH.ii.9-13. 3. This translation, so particularly illustrative of the point, is taken from G. von Rad, Old Testament Theology. II. The Theology of Israel's Prophetic Traditions (trans. D.M.G. Stalker; New York: Harper & Row, 1965), p. 144.
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More important than these Aristotelian strictures on metaphors is the fact that metaphors in rhetoric tend to be of limited scope. By contrast, many poems are dominated by their metaphors, which may extend from the beginning of the poem to the end. Thus metaphors may dictate a poem's arrangement as much as repetition and wordplay. Indeed, this may be true of the whole of the book of Hosea. Gary Light argues that Hosea should be studied in terms of what Paul Ricoeur calls the 'theoryconstitutive' metaphor, a single metaphor around which a whole text revolves. Light suggests that the marriage metaphor, most simply expressed in 2.18 ('You will call [me] "My husband", and shall no longer say to me 'My Baal"'.) informs the book as a whole, and he tries to draw all of the book's similes under this umbrella.4 Not everything fits, but the result is revealing enough to support the view that the poetic reading of Hosea holds out more promise than the rhetorical.5 Another possible course of study would be Hosea's use of words, phrases and traditions from other books. The study of intertextuality, one text's use of another, has been a hot topic of late, both in secular and in biblical interpretation.6 One facet of the study which has been only indirectly addressed is the question of genre. How do different genres use other texts? Rhetoric uses citation and allusion primarily for the sake of evidence and authority. Thus Paul and the author of Hebrews use the Old Testament. Poetry, however, never concerned with any authority beyond its own inspiration, uses allusion very differently. A poetic allusion evokes the imagery and tone of the text referred to, often to revise or reverse that tone. The first line of Eliot's 'The Waste Land', 'April is the cruellest month', is both an allusion to and a denial of Chaucer's merry beginning of The Canterbury Tales, 'Whan that April 4. G. Light, 'Theory-Constitutive Metaphor and Its Development in the Book of Hosea' (PhD Dissertation, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1992), pp. 63-65. 5. In addition to Light's work, a few beginning references on metaphor in Hosea are: C.F. Fensham, The Marriage Metaphor in Hosea for the Covenant Relationship between the Lord and His People (Hos. 1.2-9)', JNSL 12 (1984), pp. 71-78; J.G. Janzen, 'Metaphor and Reality in Hosea 11', Semeia 24 (1982), pp. 7-44; P.A. Kruger, 'Prophetic Imagery: On Metaphors and Similes in the Book of Hosea', JNSL 14 (1988), pp. 143-51; J.J. Schmitt, 'The Wife of God in Hosea 2', BR 34 (1989), pp. 5-18. 6. The best study of intertextuality in the Hebrew Bible is M. Fishbane's Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985). One collection of essays on the subject is Fewell (ed.), Reading between Texts.
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with his showres soote...' Poetic allusion, like poetic repetition, tends to complicate rather than confirm meaning. Many allusions have been noted and explored in Hosea. One of Buss's most interesting chapters, for instance, details Hosea's connections to other texts, especially to Deuteronomy 32.7 The most evocative connection to this chapter in Deuteronomy is that noted by H.G. May in the article discussed above: Hosea's use of the ^N'tf1?, Not-God, motif.8 This four-letter theme, going through all of its gyrations and reversals in Hosea, could be a paradigm example of poetic, as opposed to rhetorical, intertextuality. Or again, God says in Hosea 11.8, 'How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I surrender you, Israel? How can I make you like Adman, or set you like Zeboiim?' This reference to the cities overthrown (root ~[Dn) along with Sodom and Gomorrah (cf. Deut. 29.22), is promptly reversed in the next verse. God adds, 'My heart is overthrown ("[SH]) against me!'9 The allusion is not made in order to illustrate or lend authority to the present text, as a rhetorical discourse might have done. Instead, the allusion is summoned in order to twist it apart: this time God, not the cities, is overthrown. This is poetry. Other examples must be considered, but at a surface reading, Hosea's other allusions appear to be similarly complicating.10 Again, Hosea appears to be poetic rather than rhetorical, and a fascinating study would be to read through the book examining the texture of Hosea's intertextuality, as we have read it through with repetition and wordplay in mind. This is a task for another study, but the method is same as that proposed here. Other Prophetic Books By far the greatest value that this investigation could have would be to contribute to the study of biblical prophecy as a whole. How might the procedure applied here to Hosea work when applied to other prophetic books? To answer that, I return to the idea that prophecy represents a 7. Buss, Prophetic Word, pp. 81-115. 8. May, 'Names of Hosea's Children', pp. 289-90. 9. Noted by Fisch, 'Poetics of Violence', p. 142. 10. See P.R. Ackroyd, 'Hosea and Jacob', VT 13 (1963), pp. 245-59; M. DeRoche, 'The Reversal of Creation in Hosea', VT31 (1981), pp. 400-409; van Dijk-Hemmes, 'Imagination of Power', pp. 75-88; L.M. Eslinger, 'Hosea 12.5a and Genesis 32.29: A Study in Inner Biblical Exegesis,' JSOT 18 (1980), pp. 91-99; Krause, 'A Blessing Cursed', pp. 191-202.
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mixture of genres. It is neither rhetoric nor poetry alone; it is both.11 Trying to read any prophetic book as wholly one or the other genre can only cause confusion, whereas recognizing the mixture resolves a world of difficulties and allows the books to appear less muddled than often thought. As Thomas Howes wrote in 1783, The union then in these prophetic works of admonitions and exhortations, concerning moral, religious, civil, and historical subjects, all delivered in poetic diction, and in a regular and harmonious arrangement of the words...which the more subtilizing Greeks, in later ages, separated into several different species of composition... according as it was of a poetic, or of an oratorical, or historic kind; this aboriginal union, I say, here of what was not separated until later ages... [exhibits] no other marks of disorder, than what become at the same time marks of the originality, authenticity, and antiquity of these works.12
The model of a spectrum, proposed at the beginning of Chapter 3, is still a useful way to understand the combination of genres in prophecy. There, I suggested that each prophetic book partook of a different proportion of each genre, and that as a book's portion of the one genre increased so its portion of the other decreased. Hosea partook liberally of poetry but only sparingly of rhetoric, at least as compared to Amos. Other books, however, might represent different mixtures of these foundational genres. The task is provisionally to determine where each book fits on this spectrum. Poetry in Amos In the chapter on verbal repetition, I used Amos as a foil, an example of how rhetorical repetition should appear but does not in Hosea. The best examples of Amos's rhetorical repetition remain his use of oratorical 11. Indeed, some prophets add also the temporal consciousness that characterizes narrative. Ezekiel's prophecies are arranged at least partly in terms of chronology, as is clear from the temporal designations with which most of the sections begin. Jeremiah, too, seems interested in a narrative structure, especially in chs. 26-45, but in neither of these books is a narrative scheme actually carried through. Ezekiel departs from chronology when it suits the thematic needs of the book (e.g. 29.17), and Jeremiah's sequencing of material is even more incomplete. (See R.E. Clements, 'Jeremiah 1-25 and theDeuteronomistic History', in A.G. Auld (ed.), Understanding Poets and Prophets [Festschrift G.W. Anderson; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993], p. 93.) In the end, these books too are most productively interpreted in terms of rhetoric and poetry. 12. T. Howes, 'Doubts concerning the Translation and Notes', pp. 446-47.
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formulas and the sentence-repetitions in the introductory oracles against foreign nations, but I noted other examples as well. The analysis remains accurate, but it is incomplete. Though Amos's rhetorical repetition is so clear as to serve as a paradigm, the book is by no means devoid of poetic consciousness. The largest part of the book appears to be arranged in a chiastic pattern marked by the repetition of single words, not of clauses such as appear in Amos's rhetorical repetitions. This pattern may be schematized thus.13 1.1 Earthquake 1.2 ^rron m~\ (the head of Carmel), ^3« (mourn) 2.14 013 (flee), <±<0 (escape) 4.6 nrfr (bread, 4.6), 1M1 (they will stagger), D'Q (water, both 4.8), and lira (youth, 4.10) 5.1 nrp (lamentation) 5.18,20 DV (day), -jOTT (darkness), TIK (light) 6.8 JOB3 (he has sworn), ]1&O (pride), Zips' (Jacob)
8.7 ion, pw, npjr 8.9 or, itcn, -n« 8.10 nrp 8.11 DP6,1OT andD^q (from the sea, both 8.12), ITO (8.13) OO.D'PD 9.3 'TDlDn Bin 9.5 Earthquake, b3«. 9.1
Figure 3. A Poetic Structure in Amos
While chiasmus is by no means foreign to rhetoric, this outline betrays its poetic consciousness in several ways. First, while the connections are so consistent as to make this chiasmus undeniably present, it is by no means immediately apparent. Poetry, not rhetoric, delights in such subtlety. Furthermore, this plan depends on one-word repetitions, which are more characteristic of poetry than of rhetoric. Indeed, in at least one case the connection is made by means of wordplay. Among the repetitions which connect 4.6-10 and 8.11-13 are the consonants D ' D. But in 4.8 these consonants spell D'Q (water), and in 8.12 they become D^p (from the sea). Finally, none of the passages that I treated as examples of rhetorical repetition in Amos have any part in this outline. The entire chapter and a half devoted to the oracles against the foreign nations is 13. This outline is proposed by E. Bosshard, 'Beobachtungen /um Zwolfprophetenbuch', Biblische Notizen 40 (1987), p. 33.
6. Conclusion: Genre and the Prophets
139
missing (1.3-2.13), as are the prose portions of the vision reports in Amos 7 and 8. If these passages that so prominently feature rhetorical repetition were removed, not only would this outline flow much more smoothly, but the pattern would appear quite as poetic as anything in Hosea. As it stands—and whatever the redactional history of the book of Amos—the book appears to be fairly evenly divided between rhetoric and poetry.14 Indeed, a second chiasm, much more rhetorically inclined, appears to be superimposed over this poetic pattern, concluding the book. 8.11-12 miT TTK OtC Ds«n my nsn, Behold the days are coming, utterance of the Lord GOD. [Key idea: famine] 8.13-14 Ninn era, In that day. [Key idea: falling] 9.1 The shaking the Lord's house. 9.2-4 Israel's captivity. 9.5-6 The Lord's might. 9.7-8 Israel's and the nations' deliverance from captivity. 9.9-10 The shaking of Israel among the nations. 9.11-12 Kinn Dm, In that day. [Key idea: raising the fallen] 9.13-15 m!T~QK] D*tQ D'Q* rnn, Behold the days are coming, utterance of the LORD. [Key idea: abundance] Figure 4. A Rhetorical Structure in Amos
If the first chiasmus demonstrated the poetic use of language in Amos, this one just as clearly avoids poetic patterning. For instance, there seems to be little concern with direct verbal correspondence here. The paired sections 9.1 and 9.9-10 both speak of a shaking, but they use different words (tfm and JM]). Israel goes into captivity in 9.2-4, and 9.78 tells how God has brought the nations out of bondage, but no direct repetitions connect these passages. The only clear verbal repetitions in this chiasmus are the carefully placed introductory formulas 'Behold, the days are coming' (8.11; 9.13) and 'In that day' (8.13; 9.11). Even these are not always exact: 8.11 concludes 'utterance of the Lord GOD' and its companion in 9.13 with 'utterance of the LORD'.15 Perhaps most importantly, this chiasmus is relatively easy to discern and simple in its motion. The first half of the pattern describes judgment in terms of 14. See Nogalski, Literary Precursors, pp. 80-82 for a redactional analysis of this structural data. 15. A similar variation exists between the otherwise formally identical vision reports in 7.7 and 8.1.
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(1) famine, (2) falling down, (3) shaking and (4) captivity. Nevertheless, the power of God at the heart of the pattern permits the introduction of (4) return from captivity, (3) Israel's preservation through its shaking, (2) the raising of ruins and (1) abundance. If the latter pattern is no less profound than the former, it is far less elaborate in its presentation, and to the extent that it is clear and has a clearly identifiable purpose, it is better described as a rhetorical chiasmus. The current form of Amos must be described as alternating between rhetoric and poetry, partaking almost evenly of each genre. This means that the usual critical analysis of prophecy in terms of its rhetoric is neither so misleading nor so ineffective with Amos as the same sort of analysis is with Hosea. It also means that at least some attention should be given to Amos's poetic aspect. May not at least some verbal arrangements of the type I traced through Hosea occur in Amos? In fact, one fascinating interwoven motif in Amos could serve as a companion piece to the most exciting pattern of Hosea. Where Hosea spoke of Not-God ("WK*?), Amos speaks of Not-Prophet (»'33 »*?). The pattern begins in ch. 2, at the end of the oracle against Israel that concluded the repetitive pattern of 1.3-2.13. In 2.11-12 God says, 'I raised up prophets from your sons / And from your youths, Nazirites... But you made the Nazirites drink wine / And to the prophets you commanded, "Do not prophesy" ON3TI N1?)'. The sin of Israel is at least partly the sin of refusing prophecy. The theme continues in 3.7-8, where the root 83] appears twice, both times parallel to the root "131 (speak, word). Verse 7 declares that God has continued speaking to the prophets: 'Has the Lord GOD indeed done a thing (131), without revealing his plan to his servants the prophets (Q'^'On)?' Then Amos adds in v. 8, 'A lion roars; / Who will not be afraid? / The Lord GOD speaks ("131); / Who will not prophecy (K'3311 vb)T Amos, at least, cannot decline, and he continues to prophecy through ch. 6, introducing these prophecies with the formula 'Hear this word (131)' (3.1; 4.1; 5.1). As the oracle section ends with ch. 6, however, no one is listening. Instead, the people proclaim their own self-sufficiency, rejoicing in the city of LoDebar, 131 K1?, 'No-Word' (6.13). The prophet Amos grows less vocal in the ensuing chapters. In the first two vision reports of ch. 7 he manages to utter two progressively weaker pleas for mercy for Jacob (7.2,5). In the third vision, he can only answer God's questioning monosyllabically (7.8). Amos will answer God with similar terseness in the fourth vision report (8.2), but before arriving
6. Conclusion: Genre and the Prophets
141
there the reader encounters the heart of the theme in the Amaziah narrative (7.10-17). Amaziah the priest begins the account with a complaint to King Jeroboam that Amos is spreading dissent and that the earth can no longer endure all his words (T~Q~rl7D). To Amos, Amaziah says to go to Judah and prophesy there. Then he says, 'At Bethel do not again prophesy' (VQXfo 11V ^'OTrtf?). But Amos replies, 'I am not a prophet (V?3TVb), and not a prophet's son (R'Zirp tib) am I, for I am a herdsman and a dresser of sycamores. But the LORD took me from behind the flock, and the LORD said to me, "Go, prophesy (tOJil) to my people Israel". And now, hear the word of the LORD (mn*~"m), you who say, "Do not prophesy (K3TI tit?) to Israel, and do not discourse Fpon tib, literally 'do not drip words,' from the root ^CM] against the house of Isaac"...' (7.14-16)
The acknowledged prophets of Israel have obeyed Israel's command not to prophesy; the only one who dares prophesy is Amos, the Mot-Prophet, but his prophecies are growing shorter and fainter. Amos proclaims a relatively brief and very personal judgment on Amaziah, adds that Israel will surely go into captivity, then lapses into silence. This silence becomes more emphatic after the fourth vision report (8.1-2), as the oracle concludes: 'And the songstresses of the temple will wail in that day, utterance of the Lord GOD; many the corpses, they are cast everywhere. Hush!' (8.3). Amos refused to obey the people's demands—The LORD speaks; who will not prophesy?—but at last the Not-Prophet has grown quiet, not because of the people or Amaziah, but because God himself has silenced him. In 8.11-12 appears the striking result of the people's command: there is a famine of the hearing of the words of the LORD. Then they will seek his words, but they will not find them. They have achieved their perverse goal: No-Prophecy and No-Word. The picture is bleak, but a hint of restoration concludes the book. In 7.16 a new element had been added to the pattern. Alongside the frequent pairing of the roots K33 and ~131 has been introduced the root ^133 (drip with words), in 7.16 parallel to R33. This word appears a second, and final, time in the picture of renewed abundance in 9.13: 'And the one who plows will overtake the one who reaps / And the one who treads grapes the one who scatters the seed. / And the mountains shall drip (lETOn) sweet wine...' The famine is over, perhaps even the famine of hearing God's words, the famine of No-Prophecy. While the center of this motif, or at least the most concentrated working of it, occurs in a narrative passage, the pattern is poetic by
142
Prophecy, Poetry and Hosea
nature. It involves single words, variant repetition, even two distinct wordplays: the pun on the name of the town Lo-Debar and the polysemous wordplay on the root ^Dl Reading only the rhetorical side of this double-edged book would never bring this theme to light. Amos's poetic side is a part of the mystery, and of the majesty, of the book. Rhetoric in Ezekiel On the spectrum between rhetoric and poetry Hosea represents one extreme: poetry at the expense of rhetoric. Amos, in its present form at least, appears to combine the two genres more or less evenly, giving each genre equal representation. To round out the picture, it will be useful to examine a third book, one representing rhetoric at the expense of poetry. Such a book is Ezekiel. Few interpreters, if any, would deny this designation. Since Ezekiel has been productively studied as rhetoric through the generations, my identification of Ezekiel as primarily rhetorical is unlikely to provide any new insights. What such a study will provide, however, is a useful foil against which to view the other prophets. Ezekiel exemplifies the use of rhetoric, relatively free of poetry, in the prophets. It is certainly true that no prophetic book seems less influenced by poetic concerns. The poetic passages that occur in Ezekiel are short (e.g. 21.14-20) and appear extraneous to their contexts, purple passages that serve their purpose and then disappear quickly. Indeed, one may question whether all of Ezekiel's poetry should be so described. James Kugel writes of a sort of semi-poetic speech in the Hebrew Bible, prose discourse marked by poetic parallelism.16 This description seems to fit much of Ezekiel's 'poetry', notably that of chs. 7 and 17, in which the only genuinely poetic feature is a sort of general parallel movement. But I need not rely on such a subjective analysis to determine Ezekiel's genre; I need only apply to this book the same criteria I used to examine Hosea. How does Ezekiel use repetition? To begin with, no prophetic book is so laden with prophetic formulas, referred to above as external repetitions. Ezekiel seems to be unable to begin an oracle, or even a paragraph, without using the messenger formula, HIIT ~1D» HD, 'Thus says the LORD'. Using introductory formulas, as noted above, generally serves such rhetorical goals as clarity 16. See J.L. Kugel, 'Poets and Prophets: An Overview', in J.L. Kugel (ed.), Poetry and Prophecy: The Beginnings of a Literary Tradition (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, 1990), pp. 1-2.
6. Conclusion: Genre and the Prophets
143
and so indicates rhetoric rather than poetry. This is generally true of Ezekiel's use of formulas, although there are some interesting exceptions. On occasion the messenger formula appears to have been inserted automatically, even inappropriately. In 39.17, for instance, we read 'And now, son of man—thus says the LORD—say to all types of birds and to all the beasts of the field, "Be collected and come..." '. The normal place for the formula would be after 'beasts of the field', but here it interrupts God's instructions to the waiting prophet.17 In addition, in the fascinating ch. 36, this formula and others seem not to enable but to block prophetic speech, standing between the prophet's message and its deliverance. In the passage below, all typical formulas have been emphasized. And you, son of man, Prophesy to the mountains of Israel and say, 'Mountains of Israel, hear the word of the LORD. Thus says the Lord GOD, 'Because the enemy has said of you "Aha!" and "The heights of old have become our possession'", therefore prophesy and say, 'Thus says the Lord GOD, "Because, indeed because they have desolated and crushed you round about so that you became the possession of the remnant of the nations and you became the talk and whispering of the nations'", therefore, mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord GOD, Thus says the Lord GOD to the mountains and to the hills, to the ravines and valleys, and to the deserted wastes, and to the forsaken cities that have become a spoil and taunting to the remnant of the nations that are round about; therefore Thus says the Lord GOD, "In the fire of my zeal I swear that I speak to the remnant of the nations and to all Edom, to whom I have given my land as a possession that they might drive out and plunder it with whole-hearted joy and utter contempt"; therefore, prophesy to the land of Israel and say to the mountains and to the hills, to the ravines and to the valleys, Thus says the Lord GOD, "Behold I in my zeal and in my wrath I have spoken because you have suffered the reproach of nations"; therefore, Thus says the Lord GOD...
At last, after seven verses of stammering preliminaries, a brief oracle arrives. This is more than a formulaic introduction; this is rhetoric gone mad. As such, it deserves closer scrutiny than I can offer in this brief investigation.18 For my purposes, all I can say is that Ezekiel's use of 17. The Syriac and most modern commentators move the formula to the more logical position, in fact. As a rule, I prefer to seek stylistic explanation of such anomalies and to avoid correcting the text like this. In this case, however, I have sought in vain. 18. One essay that takes seriously the rhetoric of excess in this chapter and attempts to explain it in terms of the Bible's prophetic traditions is H. Marks's, 'On Prophetic Stammering', Yale Journal of Criticism 1.1 (Fall 1987), pp. 1-20.
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Prophecy, Poetry and Hosea
prophetic formulas exceeds anything previously seen. His speech is rhetoric—rhetoric redefined, but rhetoric nonetheless. The second type of repetition discussed above was internal repetition: repetition of key details introduced for the first time in the text itself. Again, such repetitions characterize almost every line of Ezekiel. Some repetitions are so frequent as to acquire almost an internal formulaic status. Chief among Ezekiel's peculiar repetitions is the so-called 'recognition formula': mrp ']« "O [ITP], 'You [either singular or plural] will know that I am the LORD'. By my count, this clause occurs in this form 63 times in Ezekiel 1-39. From 5.13, its first appearance, it marks the conclusion of virtually every major passage and many of the smaller ones. If it sometimes disappears briefly (e.g. it occurs nowhere in ch. 27), it always returns emphatically (no less than four occurrences in 28.2226). Another formulaic internal repetition is the clause Tl~m miT "*]&*, 'I the LORD have spoken'. This appears seventeen times, again beginning with 5.13 and concluding in ch. 39. These two formulas join once, in 17.21, in the sentence, Tl"m mrr ']K 'D DDim, 'And you shall know that I the LORD have spoken'. In Ezekiel formularity, whether external or internal, is the rule. One need not look far for other examples of internal repetition. Every chapter has its own repeated phrases. The portion of ch. 36 quoted above demonstrates not only the frequent use of formulas but also such specific internal repetitions as: 'prophesy...and say' (3 times); '[become] as a possession (HtJniQ1?)' (3 times); 'remnant of the nations' (3 times, twice modified with 'round about'); 'ravines and valleys' (twice) and 'as plunder (0*7)' (twice). If one were to remove all repeated phrases from this passage, virtually nothing would remain. But as already noted, this is a remarkable passage. Does such repetitiveness characterize the rest of Ezekiel? Chapter 20, chosen at random, describes the elders of Israel coming to seek God and continues thus: And the word of the LORD came to me saying, 'Son of man, speak to the elders of Israel and say to them, Thus says the Lord GOD: Do you indeed come to seek me? As I live, I swear I will not be sought of you, utterance of the Lord GOD. Shall you judge them? Shall you judge them, son of man? Make known to them the abominations of their fathers. Say to them, Thus says the Lord GOD: In the day when I chose Israel and I vowed to the seed of the house of Jacob and I revealed myself to them in the land of Egypt, then I vowed to them saying, "I am the LORD your God'". In that day I vowed to them to bring them out from the land of Egypt, to the land which I had searched out for them, a land flowing with milk and honey,
6. Conclusion: Genre and the Prophets
145
more glorious than all the lands. And I said to them, "Each one cast away the detestable things of his eyes and do not defile yourselves with the idols of Egypt, I am the LORD your God"'. But they rebelled against me and did not wish to listen to me. Each one did not cast away the detestable things of their eyes, and they did not forsake the idols of Egypt. And I chose to pour out my wrath on them and to complete my anger against them in the midst of the land of Egypt, but I acted for my name's sake so as not to defile (it) in the eyes of the nations in whose midst they were, to whose eyes I revealed myself by bringing them out from the land of Egypt. (Ezek. 20.2-9)
In addition to the frequent introductory formulas here, several internal repetitions have already developed. First is the three-fold repetition of 'I vowed' (literally 'I lifted my hand'; also vv. 15,23,28,42), then the phrase 'to bring / by bringing them from the land of Egypt' (twice), then God's self-identification 'I am the LORD your God' (twice; also vv. 19,20), then the doubled pair 'the detestable things of his / their eyes' and 'the idols of Egypt' (cf. vv. 18,24,30,31,39). Nor does this exhaust the internal repetitions in these verses. Clauses introduced in this passage that are repeated in the rest of the chapter include: 'But they rebelled against me' (vv. 13,20), 'And I chose to pour out my wrath upon them... and to complete...' (vv. 13,21), 'But I acted for the sake of my name so as not to defile (it) in the eyes of the nations in whose eyes I brought them out' (vv. 14,22,44), and 'a land flowing with milk and honey, more glorious than all the lands' (v. 15). Even this does not complete the list of internal repetition, but it should be more than enough to make the point. First, Ezekiel uses internal repetition with amazing frequency. Secondly, Ezekiel uses internal repetition rhetorically rather than poetically: he repeats whole sentences or phrases, generally for the sake of structure and clarity, without much evident concern for significant variation between repetends. In summary then, although Ezekiel may occasionally adopt some poetic language (such as the anagrammatic wordplay on ^Dtf? / *?2D in 36.13-14), this is always a departure from the typical phrasing of the book. The book of Ezekiel represents prophecy at the rhetorical end of the spectrum just as Hosea represents prophecy at the poetic extreme. This does not mean that Ezekiel is easy, by any means. Ezekiel deserves a great deal of study concerning its peculiar use of the conventions of rhetoric. Its pounding, almost senseless, repetition of introductory formulas, for instance, surely constitutes a dramatic revision of prophetic rhetoric and should be analyzed against that generic background.
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Prophecy, Poetry and Hosea
Ezekiel's rhetoric must be examined as carefully as Hosea's poetry. The point is not that Ezekiel, as rhetoric, is easily understood and Hosea, as poetry, understood only with difficulty; the point is that neither book can be understood at all unless it is read in the most appropriate generic context. I conclude with an appeal for interpreters to read the Latter Prophets more conscious of questions of genre. To do this they must first recognize prophecy as a hybrid of various basic genres, primarily a mixture of rhetoric and poetry. Secondly, they must learn to identify the tendencies and distinctives of these basic genres in order to understand which genre is at work both in smaller passages and in the book as a whole. And lastly, having identified a genre, interpreters must read with that genre and its demands in mind, not trying to find in poetry the distinctive features of rhetoric or vice versa. If this appeal to generic consciousness has any force at all, that force stems from the results of my study of Hosea. The revelations, in terms of both structure and meaning, that I found in the book only became visible when I read the book as poetry instead of as rhetoric. My recognition of the book of Hosea as poetry does not depend on how the prophet saw himself, but it is nevertheless interesting to wonder if he viewed his work as a work of Koir\aic, rather than as a work of jtpocpf|ai<;. It is at least possible. As Graeme Auld points out, most of Hosea's references to prophets (D^'Dl) are negative, castigations of unworthy servants of God, but one appearance of this word is distinct.19 In 9.7 Hosea says, 'The prophet is a fool; the inspired man, a lunatic'. While this could be another criticism of the unworthy servants, most commentators assume that here Hosea refers to himself and to his insulting reception by the people.20 If the verse does refer to Hosea, then in a sense it is ironically accurate: a poet is indeed in some ways and to some people a fool. As Wimsatt says, poetry is 'counterlogical'.21 Moreover, the word used in Hosea 9.7 for 'lunatic', ilKSZJD, may imply more than just dementia. Its cognate root in Arabic, saf, refers not to ravings but rather to a type of poetry.22 If Hosea indeed meant this line as an oblique self-reference to his work as a poet (and what biblical 19. Auld, 'Prophets through the Looking Glass', p. 5. 20. See, for instance, Wolff,Hosea, pp. 156-57; J.L. Mays, Hosea: A Commentary (OTL; Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1969), pp. 128-30. 21. W.K. Wimsatt, Jr, 'Verbal Style', pp. 9-10. 22. O'Connor, Hebrew Verse Structure, p. 154.
6. Conclusion: Genre and the Prophets
147
author is more likely to refer to his own work in a punning doublemeaning?), it is all the more unfortunate that the book has so frequently been regarded as slipshod rhetoric and all the more important that it be understood for what it is: a stark, full-length poem of inexhaustible power.
APPENDIX Wordplay in Hosea Key To Sources Although no interpreter has ever compiled a comprehensive list of puns in Hosea, or indeed has acknowledged that so many puns could exist in the book, almost all of the puns listed here have been noted by at least one commentator. In order to demonstrate how many interpreters have noted individual wordplays in the book without ever recognizing either the frequency of those wordplays or the patterns in which they are arranged, I have supplied a short-form bibliography for possible wordplays. The abbreviations used above refer to the following books and articles, the full references to which may be found in the final bibliography: Al-Scho Buss Bohl Calvin Cas Chis Fisch Gars Gord Lowth Pope Rud Watson Well
L. Alonso-Schockel, A Manual of Hebrew Poetics M.J. Buss, The Prophetic Word of Hosea F.M.T. Bohl, 'Wortspiel im AT' J. Calvin, Hosea I. Casanowicz, Paronomasia in the Old Testament R. Chisholm, 'Wordplay in the Eighth Century Prophets' H. Fisch, 'Hosea: A Poetics of Violence' M. Garsiel, Biblical Names R. Gordis, 'Studies in Hebrew Roots of Contrasted Meanings' R. Lowth, Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews M. Pope, '"Pleonastic" Waw Before Nouns in Ugaritic and Hebrew' W. Rudolph, 'Eigentiimlichkeiten der Sprache Hoseas' W.G.E. Watson, Classical Hebrew Poetry J. Wellhausen, Die kleinen Propheten
References to BHS are to suggestions made in the textual apparatus of the Biblia hebraica stuttgartensia. The abbreviation LXX refers to the Septuagint, not to places where the Septuagint recognizes a wordplay—the Septuagint is uniformly oblivious to puns—but to places where a variant reading in the Greek might indicate a paronomastic double meaning.
Appendix
149 Noted by
Passage Chapter 1
1.5 1.6 1.9
implies mrr(Exod. 3.14)
Fischl44,Rud315 Cas 77, Fisch 144 Fisch 144
Chapter 2 Rud315 Gars 75, Rud 3 15
2.13 2.14 2.16 2.17
(Josh. 7.24-26) (Josh. 2.18)
2.24-25
Fisch 143 Al-Scho 30, Gars 142 Gars 142, LXX Calvin 118, Cas 55, Gars 67
Chapters 3.4-5
Chapter 4 4.4-5 Rud 3 16 LXX Rud 3 15 Buss 40, Cas 34, Gars 194, Well 1 12 Gars 180, Rud 3 15 Rud 316
4.7 4.11 4.14 4.15 4.16-17 4.16-19 Chapter 5
Fisch 139 Well 113 Buss 39; Gars 101,171
5.2, 9.9 5.2 5.13
Chapter 6 6.1 6.8
implies implies
(cf. 5.13)
Gars 171 Bohl 208
Prophecy, Poetry and Hosea
150 Chapter 7
7.1 7.3-6 7.4 7.4-6 7.11-12 7.13,9:17 7.14-15
Fisch 145, Gars 171 LXX BHS, Fisch 145 BHS, Rud 316 (LXX E
Chapter 8
8.6 8.7 8.9 8.11 8.14
implies implies the root
(sin / punishment) (implies
Pope 96 LXX Cas 75, Rud 315, Watson 244 Buss 39, Fisch 146, Rud 315, Watson 244 Cas 55, LXX
Chapter 9
9.3 9.11 9.12 9.13 9.15 9.16 9.17
implies root
LXX Rud 315, Well 124 evokes Rud 317 Rud 316, LXX Cas 79, Lowth 384, Rud 316 Buss 39, Cas 72, Fisch 146, Rud 315, Watson 244
(see 7.13)
Chapter 10
10.1 10.2 10.5 10.6 10.10 10.13
(be luxuriant / be vain) implies (10.4) (slippery / portion)
(implying
Gord 49
Rud 3 16 Rud 316 Cas 47, Rud 3 16, LXX Gars 180
Chapter 11
11.3 11.4 11.5 11.8
Buss 39, Gars 171, Rud 315 LXX (return geographically / repent) Rud 316 (of God's heart, reverses Deut. 29.22) Fisch 142
Appendix
151
Chapter 12 Buss 39, Cas71 , Watson 244 Buss 39 Gars 201,Gord46
12.3-4 12.4-5,9 12.5 12.7,11 12.9-10 12.11 12.12
implies implies by way of implies
Rud317 Rud316 (compare / destroy) Buss 40, Cas 51, Gars 178,Rud317
Chapter 13
13.2
13.7, 14.9 13.7,10,14 13.15
(rams / words) implies (lie in wait for / watch over) (5.13,7.11,10.6) implies implies (13.12) implies implies (or should be) implies
Chis 47 Fisch 152 Fisch 153 Buss 39, Cas 72, Rud 3 15 LXX
LXX
Chapter 14
14.1 14.5 14.6 14.7 14.8 14.9
implies (apostacy / forgiveness) (4.13) implies implies
Gars 82 Fisch 146, Gars 171 Cas 80
Fisch 146 Buss 39, Cas 72, Watson 244
(See 13.7) implies
Well 134
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INDEXES
INDEX OF REFERENCES
OLD TESTAMENT
Genesis 11 27.36 29.32 32 32.28 37-50 42.52 45.9 49
84 124 86 124 124, 126 101 126 49 99
Exodus 3.14 3.15 14.9 14.17 14.18 14.23 15.21
127, 128 128, 129 96 96 96 96 96
Deuteronomy 96 20.1 29.22 136 32 127, 136 Judges 2.11-23
118
Isaiah 1-39 5.25 9 9.7-10.4 9.11
24 56 56 56 56
9.16 9.20 10 10.4 11.1-10 11.2 11.3 13.1 14.27 15.1 17.1 19.1 19.3 21.1 21.13 22.1 23.1 24.3 30.6 40-48 43.11 44.8 44.11 44.12 44.13 45.5 45.6 45.14 45.16 45.18 45.21 46.9 48.1 48.19
56 56 56 56 18 19, 38 19 50 56 50 50 50 38 50 50 50 50 91 50 56,60 57 57 96 96 96 57 57 57 96 57 57 57 83 83
49.1 53 53.4
53.6 53.12 2
83 71 71 71 71
Jeremiah 7 15.14 17.4 17.25 18.7-9 19.7 24.1 24.6 26 29.2 31.28 42.10 45.4 52.4
70 20, 25 56 56 96 70 91 51, 96 70 20, 25 96 70 70 70 70
Eiekiel 1-39 5.13 7 17 17.21 20 20.2-9 20.13 20.14 20.15
144 144 142 142 144 144 145 145 145 145
1.10
161
Index of References 20.18 20.19 20.20 20.21 20.22 20.23 20.24 20.28 20.30 20.31 20.39 20.42 20.44 21.14-20 26-45 26.7 27 28.22-26 29.17 36 36.13-14 39 39.17 Hosea 1-3
1-2 1
1.1 1.2 1.4-5 1.4 1.5 1.6 1 11.7 1.9 2
145 145 145 145 145 145 145 145 145 145 145 145 145 142 137 96 144 144 137 143, 144 145 144 143
104-106, 111, 112, 114, 115, 118, 120 111, 118, 130 52, 111, 118, 120, 125, 127, 128 50 113 89 79, 89, 122 52, 89 70,88, 115 70,96, 111, 115, 130 129 52, 104, 105, 1 11lS, 115-20, 127
2.1-3 2.1 2.2-3 2.3 2.4-7 2.4 2.7-8 2.7 2.8 2.9 2.10 2.11 2.13
2.14 2.16-25 2.16 2.17 2.18-24 2.18-19 2.18 2.19 2.20-24 2.20 2.21-22 2.21 2.24-25 2.24 2.25 3 3.1 3.4 3.6 3.8 3.12 4-14
4-11 4-9 4
4.1
120 52 120 116 113 114 115 112, 113, 117 52 25 69, 112, 117 52, 112 67, 86, 1 14, 116, 118 25, 117, 119 131 52 117 53 127 52, 129, 135 128, 129 70 111 112, 115, 116, 120 67, 118 89 69, 112 120 111, 118, 120, 130 95, 113, 114 122, 123 120 120 120 104, 106, 108, 111, 112, 114 106, 116, 118, 120 126 104, 113, 116-18, 125, 131 52, 113, 116
4.2
4.4-5.7 4.4 4.7 4.8 4.9 4.10-18 4.10 4.11-12 4.11 4.12 4.13
4.14 4.15 4.16-18 4.16-17 4.16 4.17 4.18 4.19 5 5.1-2 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4-6 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7 5.8 5.9-10 5.9 5.11 5.12 5.13 5.14 6.1 6.4-5 6.4 6.6 6.9 6.10 6.11
67, 114, 116, 118 106 25 60 70 57, 116, 118 113 33, 34 72 34, 70, 72 72 88, 90, 114, 121 72, 114 121 122 126 89, 125 125 95 122 105 121 52, 113 71,74, 86, 121 125 57, 58 58 58, 115, 125, 130 58 59 52, 121 122 125 113 134 125, 126 71 125 113 59, 69, 125 113 114 122, 125 120, 130
162
1 7.1 7.3-9 7.3-7 7.3 7.4-8 7.4 7.6 7.8 7.9-10 7.9 7.10 7.13 7.14-16 7.14-15 7.14 7.15 7.16 8 8.3-4 8.4 8.5 8.6
8.9
8.11 8.13 8.13 (LXX) 8.14 9.1-10.15 9.1-2 9.1 9.3 9.5 9.7 9.9 9.10 9.11 9.14 9.15 9.16 9.17 10
Prophecy, Poetry and Hosea 125 114 134 93, 124, 125 114 126 94, 113, 114, 125 94, 125 125 57, 58 58 58, 115 86, 131 122 87 70, 112 123 70, 112, 128 122 122 95, 112, 124 123 25, 96, 123, 124, 127, 128 72, 89, 95, 114, 125, 126 86 61,72 61 95, 130 106 67,70, 112 95, 113, 114 61 114 132, 146 71, 74, 86, 121 95, 114 125 117, 120 123 92, 125, 126 86 91, 114
10.1 10.2 10.4 10.5 10.6 10.8 10.9 10.10 10.11 10.12 10.13 10.14-15 10.14 10.15 11
11.1-11 11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 11.5 11.6 11.7 11.8-9 11.8 11.9
11.11 12-14 12
12.1 12.3
12.4 12.5 12.6 12.7 12.8
60, 92, 97 96 59, 60, 92, 113, 114 121 125 121 121 87, 123 95-97, 114 113 96, 114 69 70, 112, 116, 118 121 60, 69, 106, 117, 118, 126, 128 131 95, 114 60 126 88, 128 87, 88 70, 112 120, 128 117 125, 136 97, 126, 128, 129 52 106, 116, 118, 120 87, 106, 116, 118, 123-25, 131 114, 116, 118, 125 57, 116, 118, 123, 124 122, 124 121, 124 129 88, 113, 116, 118 95, 114
12.9 12.10
12.12 13 13.1 13.2 13.3 13.4 13.7 13.10 13.11-12 13.11 13.12 13.14 13.15 14
14.1 14.2-9
14.3 14.4
14.5 14.6-7 14.6 14.7 14.8
14.9
Joel 1.1 1.10-12 1.10 1.12
87, 122 59, 60, 88, 114, 116, 118 59, 60, 89 126, 129 71, 125 92,96, 112 59,69 59, 60 92, 129 92,93, 115 126 126 126 92, 93, 97, 129 88,90, 119, 126 69,71, 112, 114-20, 126, 129, 130 69,70, 112, 116, 118 115, 126, 131 92, 115, 126 70, 96, 11113, 115, 116, 120, 129 88, 95, 114, 126 88, 90 69, 88, 114 88 70, 112, 119, 126, 129 90,97, 115, 126, 129
50 118 67, 119 119
163
Index of References 2.1 2.11 2.15 2.24
Amos 1-2 1 1.1 1.2 1.3-2.13 1.3-6 1.3 1.4 1.6 1.7 1.9 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 2 2.1 2.2 2.3 (LXX) 2.4 2.4 (LXX) 2.5 2.6-16 2.6 2.11-12 2.14 2.16 3.1 3.6 3.7-8 3.7 3.8 3.9 3.13 4 4.1 4.3 4.5 4.6-11 4.6-10 4.6
52 119 52 67
50, 53, 54 54 138 138 139, 140 50 55 55 55 55 55 55 55 55 55 55 140 55 55 56 55 56 55 50 55 140 138 51 51, 140 52 140 140 140 51
51 51-53 51, 140 51 51 55 138 51,55, 138
4.8 4.9 4.10 4.11 5.1 5.5 5.18 5.20 6 6.1 6.8 6.13 7-9 7 7.1 7.2 7.4 7.5 7.7 7.8 7.10-17 7.14-16 7.16 8 8.1-2 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.7 8.9 8.10 8.11-13 8.11-12 8.11 8.12 8.13-14 8.13 8.14 9.1-4 9.1 9.2-4 9.3 9.5-6 9.5 9.7-8 9.9-10 9.11-12
51, 55, 138 51, 55 51, 55, 138 51, 55 51, 138, 140 121 138 138 140 51 138 140 55 139, 140 51, 55 55, 140 51,55 55, 140 51,55, 139 55, 140 141 141 141 139 141 51, 55, 139 55, 140 141 51 138 51, 138 138 138 139, 141 51, 138, 139 138 139 51, 138, 139 121 55 138, 139 56, 139 138 139 138 139 139 139
9.11 9.13-15 9.13
51, 139 139 51, 139, 141
Micah 1.1
50
Nahum 1.1
50
Habakkuk 1.1
51
Zephaniah 1.1
50
Zechariah 9.1 12.1
51 51
Malachi 1.1
50, 51
Psalms 15 31.14 39.6 120.5
30 30 92 92 93
Proverbs 30.1 31.1
26 26
8
Song of Songs 115 3.1-4 Ezra 6.9 6.17 7.17
92 92 92
Nehemiah 6.19
92
1 Chronicles 26 25.1
164
Prophecy, Poetry and Hosea CHRISTIAN AUTHORS
Augustine Confessions III.v.l VI.v.2
25 25
Jerome Hieronymi Opera Omnia col. 1015 103
Classical Aristotle Poetics XXII
21
Rhetoric I.ii.8 I.i.14 I.iii III.ii.1 III.ii.4
21 21 22 21 22
III.ii.5 III.ii.7 III.ii.9-13 III.ix.9 III.v III.v.3-4 III.xi.7 III.xii.3-4 III.xii.3 Ill.xiii
21 21, 98 22, 134 98 22 98 98 22,48 48 21
INDEX OF AUTHORS Ackroyd, P.R. 136 Ahl, F. 75, 83, 84 Albright, W.F. 76 Alonso-Schonkel, L. 17, 77, 115 Alter, R. 46, 48 Andersen, F.I. 104, 108 Aristotle 15, 18, 21, 22, 25, 48, 63, 98, 134 Aspel, P. 66 Attridge, D. 85, 86, 91, 98 Auden, W.H. 74 Augustine 25, 26 Auld, A.G. 23, 24, 146
Coleridge, S.T. 28 Culler, J. 80, 81 Culley, R.C. 66, 67
Bakhtin, M.M. 11, 12, 27 Beardsley, M.C. 27 Bohl, F.M.T. 83, 97, 99 Booth, W.C. 23,97 Bosshard, E. 138 Brik, O.M. 36, 38 Brown, J. 78, 79, 81 Buber, M. 104, 113, 127 Buss, M. 68, 69, 89, 90, 106, 107, 12527, 136
Eitan, I. 75 Eliot, T.S. 62, 63, 135 Ellermeier, F. 14 Elliger, K. 34, 94 Empson, W. 40, 75 Eslinger, L.M. 136
Calvin, J. 76 Carroll, R. 14, 24, 44, 45 Casanowicz, I.M. 76-78, 80, 81, 83, 86, 88,90 Chaucer 91, 135 Cheyne, T.K. 103, 104 Childs, B.S. 16, 108, 111 Chisolm, R.B. Jr 77, 80, 81, 86 Churchill, W. 44, 54, 59 Cicero, M.T. 25, 45, 63 Clements, R.E. 137 Clines, D.J.A. 23
Dahood, M. 39, 66, 67 Daniels. D.R. 116 DeRoche, M. 136 Deist, F.E. 23 Delcor, M. 77, 82, 83 Derrida, J. 75 Dijk-Hemmes, F. van 115, 136 Donne, J. 84, 102 Durand, J.-M. 14
Fensham, C.F. 135 Fisch, H. 19, 46, 68, 71, 84, 89, 92, 93, 115, 125, 127, 129, 136 Fishbane, M. 135 Foti, V. 64 Fowler, A. 102 Freedman, D.N. 76, 104, 108 Freud, S. 74, 79, 85 Fried, D. 98 Frost, R. 40 Frye, N. 15,22,37,48,99 Garsiel, M. 76,78,81,86,88 Geller, S.A. 45, 46 Gelston, A. 96 Gerhart, M. 13
166
Prophecy, Poetry and Hosea
Gevirtz, S. 76, 97, 99 Gitay, Y. 23, 47 Gliick, J.J. 77, 80, 84, 85 Good, E.M. 106, 107 Gordis, R. 91, 92 Gordon, C.H. 129 Graham, J.F. 37, 40 Guillaume, A. 86,97,99 Gunkel, H. 59 Gunn, D.M. 23 Hauser, A.J. 23 Heidegger, M. 18, 30-32 Held, M. 82 Herbert, G. 84 Hirsch, E.D. 12-15, 102, 103 Hopkins, G.M. 34, 35, 109 Horst, F. 51 House, P.R. 18 Howes, T. 107, 109, 137 Humphrys, W.L. 101 Ibn Ezra 75, 128 Jacob, E. 127 Jakobson, R. 27, 33, 35, 36, 38, 41, 99 Janzen, J.G. 135 Jerome 103 Johnson, S. 75, 91 Kawin, B.F. 47 Keats, J. 44, 46 Kierkegaard, S. 47 Krause, D. 117, 136 Kruger, P.A. 135 Kuenen, A. 19, 20, 25, 44 Kugel, J.L. 26, 34, 142 Lawrence, D.H. 24 Light, G. 115, 135 Lincoln, A. 44 Lindblom, J. 14, 20, 24, 25, 56, 105, 111 Lipshitz, A. 128 Lord, A.B. 65, 66 Lowth, R. 26, 33, 35, 45, 76, 77, 107 Lundblom, J.R. 72
MacLeish, A. 30 Magnus, L. 63, 64 Malamat, A. 14 March, W.E. 21, 59 Marks, H. 143 May, H.G. 127, 136 Mays, J.L. 146 Mazor, Y. 121 Mill, J.S. 28, 30, 34, 43 Milton, J. 38, 39 Muilenberg, J. 23, 47, 64 Neef, H.-D. 88, 93, 96 Newman, J.H. 18,25 Nielsen, K. 116 Nogalski, J. 119, 139 Nyberg, H.S. 128 O'Conner, M. 17, 39, 66, 99, 109, 146 Overholt, T.W. 13, 14, 19 Payne, D.F. 76 Peelers, L. 81, 91, 99 Penar, T. 66, 67 Poe, E.A. 32 Pope, A. 11, 36, 37, 63-65, 123, 127 Pound, E. 28-30, 65
Rad, G. von 134 Rashi 75 Redfern, W. 75, 77, 79-81, 85, 101 Ricoeur, P. 135 Robinson, E.A. 63, 64 Robinson, T.H. 42 Rosmarin, A. 102, 103 Rottzoll, C. 49, 52 Rudolph, W. 78, 87-90, 104, 122, 125 Russo, L. 65 Sade, M. de 101 Sasson, J.M. 77, 78, 80 Sawyer, J.F.A. 85 Schmidt, D. 76 Schmitt, J.J. 135 Shakespeare, W. 22, 54, 82 Shklovsky, V. 32, 41 Shoaf, R.A. 91 Sicre Diaz, J.L. 115
Index of Authors Smothers, T. 124 Sonnino, L.A. 48 Stein, G. 63 Stendhal 97 Sternberg, M. 23, 41, 48, 110 Sterne 41 Stevens, W. 43, 62 Stuart, D. 106 Thayer, E.L. 46 Tolstoy, L. 32 Toy, C.H. 104 Tubbs, F.C. 84 Tucker, G.M. 13, 20, 21, 25 Tushingham, A.D. 95 Tynianov, Y. 35, 38-40, 49, 62, 64, 70, 98, 109, 110 Ulmer, G. 75 Untermeyer, L. 40, 84
167
Valery, P. 103 Vischer, T. 85 Watson, W.G.E. 17,66,67,76,80,81, 84, 89, 90 Watts, J.D.W. 18,19 Wellhausen, J. 121, 125, 129, 130, 133 Westermann, C. 14, 20, 21, 49, 51, 52 Whitman, W. 40, 109 Williamson, H.G.M. 24 Wilson, R.R. 21,44 Wimsatt, W.K. Jr 27, 37, 38, 54, 79, 98, 146 Wolfe, R.E. 105, 111, 124 Wolff, H.W. 56, 58, 106, 115, 118, 130, 133, 146 Wordsworth, W. 28,29
Yee, G.A. 105, 108, 111, 115 Zalecki, J. 82
