Abstract

AbstractThis article is a materialist analysis of Hosea 1-2, involving an investigation of the eighth-century mode of production operative during Hosea's time (extrinsic analysis) and how this mode of production is ideologically embedded in Hosea's marriage metaphor for the God/Israelite relationship (intrinsic analysis). Hosea denounces a mode of production that involved a royal agribusiness and foreign policy, which exploited the peasantry, and was embodied in the public state veneration of the baals. Hosea directs his condemnation against the ruling élite, feminized in a metaphor of an adulterous wife who runs after her lovers (the foreign nations). Through this metaphor, Hosea theologically proclaims a polemical monolatry that places him in continuity with the YHWH-Alone movement that will become normative for Israel during the exilic and post-exilic periods.

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