IN T H E W I L D E R N E S S O F SPEECH:

P R O B L E M S O F M E T A P H O R IN HOSEA*

FRANCIS LANDY
University of Alberta, Edmonton

The main interest of this essay is in metaphor, in both its integra-

tive and disintegrative aspects. Metaphor, the transfer of the quali-
ties of one semantic field onto another, is usually understood as an
instrument of integration; equivalences are discovered between re-
mote terms, until eventually the world is interpreted by the text as
a set of correspondences and interchanges. Roman Jakobson, in
particular, is associated with a view of metaphor as the fundamental
constituent of poetry; for him the poetic function is defined as the
projection of the principle of equivalence into the sequence
(1981:27), superinducing similarity on contiguity (1981 -.42).1
Metaphor, however, can also be an agent of differentiation, of the
disintegration of experience. For Jakobson, quoting Hopkins, one
of the two correlative experiences in poetry is "comparison for un-
likeness' sake" (1981:40). T.S. Eliot long ago pointed out that the
success of poetic metaphor is proportional to its unexpectedness, to
the violence done to our preconceptions.2 Every metaphor involves
wrenching a term out of its context and inserting it into a new one.
A metaphor may be formally marked as disjunctive, e.g., as simile;
it may become top heavy, so that its referent becomes unclear; the
same metaphor may be used with contradictory meanings, and thus
contribute to a sense of paradox in a poem. Terms become alienated

The germ of this article was a paper delivered at the AAR/SBL Annual Meet-
ing in San Francisco, Nov. 1992.1 am grateful to my colleague, Dr. Ehud Ben-Zvi,
for generosity of his time in clarifying lexicographical points, and to my research
assistant, Mr. James Linville, for his invaluable contribution. I am grateful also to
the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada for funding the
project.
1
For an exchange on the value of Jakobson for biblical poetics, see Zevit and
Landy. An excellent introduction to Jakobson*s thought and its application to the
study of biblical parallelism is Berlin's monograph (1985).
2
See especially his essay ' 'Tradition and the Individual Talent' ' (17-19), and
his superb analyses of metaphors in Dante, in his essay, "Dante" (237-277).

E.J. Brill, Leiden, 1995 Biblical Interpretation 3, 1

36 FRANCIS LANDY

from themselves, from all conventional meanings. By bridging the

gap between phenomena, metaphor threatens to destroy the dis-
tinctions, the particularity, on which all language is based. To cite
Octavio Paz, "No one is a poet unless he has felt the temptation to
destroy language and create another one, unless he has experienced
the fascination of non-meaning and the no less terrifying fascination
of meaning that is inexpressible" (Paz 1974:68). If, according to
Lakoff (1987:68), metaphor is one of the idealized cognitive models
wherewith we construct our world, through metaphor poets are al-
ways changing it, inventing new realities. Construction and decom-
position are simultaneous processes.
Metaphors are rarely simple; modern theories of metaphor, ac-
cording to Julia Kristeva, replace the classical model with "an in-
definite jamming of semantic features one into the other, a meaning
being acted out" (1987:37). 3 Instead of the opposition of defined
terms, metaphors bring with them trains of associations, uncer-
tainty as to what is being compared, and a tendency for each term
to alter in relation to the other, that render their ultimate meaning
imponderable. Each metaphor, in Kristeva's view, is part of a
metaphorical process that serves to give the subject stability, to lo-
cate it outside itself; between and beyond the terms of a metaphor
is the search for a "unary feature" (1987:37) in the drift of disparate
phenomena and psychic states. The fragility and incompleteness of
metaphor is especially evident in Hosea, where the identities and
mutual dependencies of God and Israel are always in question. The
metaphors bridge a gap that is maintained by the elusiveness of the
parties between whom it has opened. 4 In 5:12 and 14, for example,
God compares himself to a moth 5 and a lion in his destructive rage

3
Ricoeur, on whom Kristeva largely draws, sees metaphor as a form of action
(1977:307-308), a process "that carries words and things beyond, meta" (288),
whereby the world is experienced as alive (43). Hence the title of the French original
of Ricoeur's work La Mtaphore Vive.
4
Harold Fisch beautifully describes the ghostliness of language in Hosea as an
effect of the failure of words to connect with each other. Words are isolated, discon-
tinuous, with only a memory of the time in the wilderness when coherent syntactic
and metaphoric discourse was possible (1988:144). The strangeness and estrange-
ment of the language in turn results from the absence of God (141). "The abyss
of absence . . . so to speak, threatens God himself. It is this dread prospect that ac-
counts for the tormented quality of the language" (142).
5
The word tfy is interpreted variously as "moth" (BDB 799), "larvae"
(Andersen and Freedman 1980:412) and "pus" (Jeremas 1983:78; Wolff 1974:
104, 115; Stuart 1987:105). Andersen and Freedman argue in favour of their view
 IN THE WILDERNESS OF SPEECH 37

against Israel; puzzling metaphorical connections are formed be-

tween divine and insect orders, between moths and lions, as part of
the process by which God defines himself in terms of the world. His
" I , " constantly asserted, would otherwise be without significance,
a merely empty label. However, the metaphors are conspicuous for
their inadequacy. God no sooner imagines himself as a voracious
lion ("I, I will tear, and I will go; I will carry off, and none will
deliver' ') than he decides to return to his den for the prey to seek him
(5:15, 6:1 ff.).6 The lion is overcome by pusillanimity; this is not
really what he wants. The metaphor is there to reveal its hollowness.
The problematization of metaphor in Hosea is augmented by its
theme of social and political entropy. The metaphors of the book
communicate disintegration; they can either do this mimetically,
through their lack of coherence, or paradoxically, through interpret-
ing chaos, giving it a structure. The more successful the poem would
be, as a work of integration, the less it would transmit its vision. If
all art seeks to make sense out of discordant reality, Hosea is an ex-
treme case of a work whose task is to extract meaning from the col-
lapse of meaning. The immense destructiveness with which it is
charged, and which is manifested in the shattering of language, is
framed by the hope of reconstruction. Hence every metaphor is am-
bivalent, riven by opposing agendas. This also affects the identity
of the parties to the discourse: God, Israel, and the prophet himself.
Metaphor, as Susan Stewart points out, is distinguished from
nonsense only by contextualization; we know that a metaphor is a
metaphor because it is framed as such (1979:34-35). Nonsense is
most frequendy characterised by " a radical shift to the metaphoric
pole" of language (33), the crossing of normal taxonomic bound-
aries. Highly metaphoric poetry, such as that of the surrealists,
verges most closely on nonsense. Schizophrenic language is densely
metaphoric and consequently hermetic; the patient does not recog-

that larvae grow in wounds, the subject of 5:13; the proposal "pus" is motivated
purely by a desire to assimilate the parallel terms Ety/D^l in 5:12 to Y^n/TTITD in
5:13, following a note by G.R. Driver in 1950. However, parallel usages of the
word Ety in Isa. 50:9, 51:8, and Ps. 39:12 clearly support the rendering "moth";
it seems unnecessary to hypothesize another meaning for the term in the interests
of supposed parallelistic neatness.
6
Good identifies YHWH'S "place" either with a cultic site or the scene of a the-
ophany (1966:279), in support of a cultic interpretation of the passage. Andersen
and Freedman point out that "place" is a general word, and cannot bear this
weight of specific interpretation (1980:415-16).
38 FRANCIS LANDY

nize the contextual rules that distinguish metaphor from literality

(34). 7 The gaps and difficulties of Hosea force us to read the text
metaphorically; the disruption of the baffling surface directs our at-
tention to deep structures and symbolic meanings. At the same time,
the text is highly contextualized as prophetic poetry; we recognize
its literary conventions. The context permits an exploration of non-
sense and threatens to break down. For what is at stake is the context
itself, the rules of prophetic discourse, and hence the possibility of
divine-human communication.
Metaphors fill in gaps, between self and other, between body and
thing; through metaphor God inserts himself in the human world,
just as in prophecy the human takes on a divine voice, imagines
what it is like to be God. According to Kristeva (1987:30), the
metaphorical object is the ego Ideal; metaphor is the vehicle for the
recognition of the Other and identification with it. This is a pro-
cessKristeva emphasises that metaphors are never complete, are
always "gestures" towards some ultimate metaphor or identifi-
cationthat serves to constitute the subject, provide it with a sense
of unity. For the English psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, the ob-
ject of this process of separation and identification is the mother; in
the "mirror stage" the child sees the mother as itself (1971:112).
Between mother and child develop all the possibilities of transforma-
tion of the world. Winnicott held that what he calls the "play space"
between mother and child is the locus for all culture and all creativity
(14, 100, 107); it requires a good enough mother who can hold the
play space against the child's destructive attacks, and allow it the
necessary freedom and spontaneity.
The problem in Hosea is that the metaphorical connections be-
tween God and humanity are undermined by their incommensura-
bility. This applies especially to what may be called the key
metaphor in Hosea, that of God as parent. A parent who is like a
ravening lion and who threatens to kill the child for "faithlessness,"
for claiming autonomy, does not permit the play space to open. Or
rather, the play space exists, but is always vulnerable. Israel has to
enter the play space of the land and history, and will be punished

7
Patients will often identify objects on the basis of shared qualities, e.g., fire
trucks and apples (31). A very simple form of nonsense humour consists in taking
metaphors literally, for instance, stepping into someone else's shoes (88). Cf. Bate-
son (1972:163): "the 'word salad* of schizophrenia can be described in terms of the
patient's failure to recognize the metaphoric nature of his fantasies.''
 IN THE WILDERNESS OF SPEECH 39

for doing so. The result is a double bind, 8 whereby God's demand
that Israel love him is rendered hateful by its impossibility.
The double bind is discussed by M.P. O'Connor, in an interest
ing article on pseudosorites, false logical chains, in Hosea and else
where, of the type: " H e [Israel] makes no flour/Even if he makes
(it), strangers eat i t " (8:7) (1987a:165). He prefaces his discussion
with a consideration of the social functions of paradox, for example
in therapy or in "schizophrenogenic families, in which one member
is told to love and not-love the others" (1987a: 162).9 Hosea is an
extremely good example of discourse which, for all its generic pad
ding, verges on psychosis: l^N yttfD 3 ^18, "Inane is the
prophet, insane the man of spirit" (9:7). 1 0 The failure of coher
ence, 11 especially divine coherence, is related to the breakdown of
causal links characteristic of pseudosorites. Nothing connects divine
compassion and wrath; the book alternates between the two seem
ingly without transition. There is no reason for continuance, for
maintaining prophetic/divine dialogue; yet life goes on. 1 2 The
double bind is not that Israel is told subtly not to love God, but that
it cannot love him adequately; all attempts to do so will incur re-

8
The double bind consists of three main elements: i) a prohibition or com
mand; ii) a hidden message that contradicts the first; iii) the impossibility of escap
ing from the situation (Bateson 1972:178-79). Bateson holds that the double bind
is a major precipitating factor in the development of schizophrenia in families whose
members systematically reinforce the negation of identity (212). The double bind
can take many forms: for example, the victim may be effectively silenced by the
constant eliciting of opinions which are immediately dismissed as worthless (207).
9
It is curious that an article about logical disconnection should itself be discon
nected, since O'Connor does not apply the data of the first part of the article to the
second. O'Connor's examples of schizophrenogenesis in the Bible are Elijah's
challenge on Mt. Carmel, "How long will you halt between two opinions" (1 Kgs
18:21) and Ezekiel( 1987a: 170-71, . 2). Neither is quite clear to me. In a compan
ion article (1987b), the reference to schizophrenic families and the double-bind does
not occur.
10
Most commentators understand this phrase as an unmarked quotation of the
prophet's audience. Yee (1987:202-203, 292-93) identifies the prophet here with
the unnamed colleague of the priest in 4:5 and attributes both passages to her Rl
editor. Andersen and Freedman (1980:532-33) recognize this as a possibility,
though they prefer the former interpretation. In view of the horror that the prophet
has to communicate, and the context of the ambiguity of his mission, both
hypotheses seem unnecessary. The prophet would then be referring to himself as
"mad" and "foolish."
11
Fisch (1988:138) has most clearly articulated the element of incoherence that
he thinks is germane to covenantal discourse, especially in Hosea.
12
O'Connor's examples of pseudosorites (8:7, 9:11-16) concern the interrup
tion of time, despite its unceasing progress (1987a:164-65, 166-68; 1987b:245,
250-52).
40 FRANCIS LANDY

tribution (cf. 6:1 - 6 ) . Nothing Israel can do can avert punishment,

which will breed further hatred and rejection of God. Yet the book
suggests that breach of the covenant is germane to Israel's very na
13
ture, as it is to that of human beings (6:7). The question then is
why God adopts such a refractory child.
To recap: God inserts himself in human discourse, humans im
agine themselves in God, yet the bond, the covenant, is always in
question. If God gives humans an identity, a history, humans give
God an ''other," something to speak and think with. It is not just
that humans are a metaphorical object for God, pervasive though
that idea is in the Hebrew Bible, but that they are an object that is
always slipping away, multiplying and distracting. If for humans
God is an ego Ideal, the source of life and value, for God humans
are an opportunity to explore the manifold possibilities of life, of al
ternative realities. The contradictory demands"Be like me/don't
be like me (and, in any case, who am I?)"are persecutory, since
Israel is punished for being itself, for separating itself from God, but
also for encroaching on the divine boundaries. They thus serve to
emphasize those boundaries, to preserve God's difference and tran
scendence.
The problematic metaphoric relation of God and Israel is compli
cated by the difficulty of language. God and Israel use the same
words, but we cannot know if they mean the same things. The ob
ject, according to 2:22; 4:1 etc., is knowledge of God, but that
knowledge is inaccessible to us. 1 4 God and Israel use terms such as
0, hesed, and 1, "knowledge," in contexts suggesting radically
different comprehensions (e.g., 6:3, 4, 6). If metaphor conjoins
separate realities, the ambiguation of the discourse, and our inca
pacity to know its significance for God, threatens the collapse of

13
Hence its recitals of Israel's history reinforce the point that Israel is inherent
ly evil. Most commentators reject reading D1O in 6:7 as a reference to Adam;
some hold that it refers to an otherwise unknown act of treachery at Adam, at the
ford of the Jordan (e.g., Wolff 1974:121); others see it as an abbreviated form of
, "dirt" (Stuart 1979:111; Yee 1987:280). For a full discussion of the various
options, and a succint defence of the reading "Adam" or "people," see Andersen
and Freedman (1980:438-39), though this is not the interpretation they finally
adopt.
14
Commentators endeavor to give this knowledge a specific content, e.g., his
attributes (Andersen and Freedman 1980:284) or his deeds (Jeremas 1983:61).
However, this unnecessarily limits the scope of this knowledge, which in the text
is undetermined. For an example of Israel's mistaken confidence that they possess
knowledge of God, see 8:2.
 IN THE WILDERNESS OF SPEECH 41

metaphor. The contextual frame, the divine-human speech that in-

duces us to credit even apparent nonsense in prophetic poetry with
absolute significance, is undermined by the splitting of the meaning
of the terms between the two parties, and the risks and polymor-
phism of private language.
God nostalgically imagines himself as a parent (11:1-4) and ac-
cordingly demands filial obedience from Israel, but the insistence is
compromised by two things: first, the bifurcation between father
and mother images, and the denigration of the latter in the book
(e.g., 2:4, 6; 4:5); second, the question whether God is actually a
parent. If God's fantasy does not correspond to reality, then his ca-
pacity to be a "good-enough" parent is impaired by doubt. We do
not know the meaning of God's parenthood. If God is a metaphysi-
cal parent, biological and transcendental origins are differentiated;
Israel is both human and non-human. This suggests a conflict of
loyalties on Israel's part as the cause of its alleged defection, and the
assignment of the human parental role to the mother. 15 But it also
suggests uncertainty on the part of God, between the assertion of
parenthood and the vacuity it denies.
If the metaphorical correlation between God and Israel is doubt-
ful, nevertheless God can only express himself in human language.
The metaphorical transfer from divine to human speech, in the
prophetic book, is the condition of his communication and his self-
reflection. His threat to destroy Israelor, at its extreme, the world
(4:1-3)would reduce him to silence and non-significance. The
book is thus pervaded by a paradoxical dialectic of transcendence
and immanence, exemplified by ' T o r I am God and not human, in
your midst holy" (11:9).16 God's difference is immediately quali-

15
The devaluation of the mother as the true origin of the human being is a
commonplace of patriarchal thought (Kristeva 1982; Goldenberg 1990:172-73);
Goldenberg holds that the search for transcendence is an inversion of the real search
that occupies us, for reunion with the mother as embodied in the material world
(208-09). See also Irigiray's discussion of Plato's cave as an inversion of the womb
(1985:243-68). Setel argues that the eighth century BGE was characterised by an
intensification of dichotomies of gender, class, etc.; Hosea is indicative of this tran-
sition through its objectification of women, its identification of them with the land,
and his denial of "their positive role in human reproduction and nurturance"
(1985:93-94).
16
Schngel-Straumann (1986:129-30) argues that E^K here is gender-specific.
God declares that he is not male, and exemplifies female qualities such as related-
ness and closeness (131). Lys (1975:76) likewise suggests that the insistence that he
is not VW stresses not only divinity, but maternal sollicitude. In contrast to Setel
42 FRANCIS LANDY

fied as his presence, as the guarantee that he will not destroy us,
' 'and I will not come burning" (11:9). 17 If God's inherence, as an
inner holiness, is metaphorically correlated with his otherness, then
within us is that which is not human. In 11:9, the vacillation that
prevents him from consuming us, and that is ostensibly justified by
his being not subject to human vindictiveness, holds open the gap
within us between the human and the non-human, the holy and the
profane, maintains us as fundamentally heterogeneous. So our be-
ing depends on our not-being, our self-alienation.
Metaphor mediates between God and human beings, filling the
space between their identification and separation. Concomitantly,
according to Winnicott, the potential space between mother and
child is filled with transitional objects (teddy bears, bits of blanket
etc.) that represent the mother in her absence. Metaphors are never
complete; if, as Kristeva holds, metaphors participate in a process,
and have a reference that is uncertain (1987:273), every metaphor
is provisional. Metaphors anticipate, displace and defer a final un-
ion. Metaphors, moreover, become metaphors for each other,
linked on associative chains. If metaphors are substitutes for each
other, and ultimately for the primal metaphors wherewith we estab-
lish ourselves in the world (e.g., between mother and child),
metaphors exist in, and constitute, time and space. For Winnicott,
this is an essential value of "transitional objects"; since they are ex-
ternal to the child, they are not subject to magical thinking, and have
to be manipulated. Thus the child learns spatial relations, and that
playing*'takes time" (1971:41, 109). In terms of Hosea, space is the
land, and time is history, conjoined through intricate allusions. But

(1985), Schngel-Straumann holds that Hosea precedes the dualistic split of male
and female in western consciousness. The evocation of YHWH as mother is opposed
to the phallic representation of Baal. Kreuzer effectively argues against Schngel-
Straumann thatt^Nis predominantly an inclusive term in Hosea (1989:126-27),
and that the image of God in ch. 11 is parental, rather than specifically paternal
or maternal.
17
So Wolff (1974:193), Jeremas (1983:139), and Buss (1969:23). The other
possible translation "in a city" is followed by Andersen and Freedman (1980:591),
and Yee (1987:224, 226). I do not wish to decide between these possible interpreta-
tions, which are equally plausible; the former, however, is more pertinent to my
present purposes. Andersen and Freedman hold that in, "not," in this phrase is
asserverative; hence "I, the Holy One, will certainly come into the midst of your
city" (23). This accords with their practice elsewhere of solving some of the
problems of Hosea by making negatives positives. However, it is based on an as-
sumption of non-contradiction that cannot be maintained (if God elsewhere is said
to be unchanging, he cannot here declare himself to be changing [590-91]).
 IN THE WILDERNESS OF SPEECH 43

it is also the space and time of the book itself, its deferral, through
its continued speech, of the end of the dialogue. Moreover, as a
written book, it projects the dialogue beyond its conclusion. Since
Hosea concerns the impossibility of communication between God
and Israel, communication about that impossibility, about the
breakdown of relations, subverts the finality of which it speaks. Like
the messages of hope that frame and are interspersed throughout the
book, the opening of the text to the future invites the reader to repair
the relationship and to cross the threshold of annihilation.
Silence and death are postponed, invoked and meditated upon
through the metaphors of the book; the metaphors are either meta-
phors for or counters to the end of the dialogue. Fractures of syntax,
for example, are metaphors for the disintegration of the order of the
world; in each fissure of language there is an intimation of ultimate
silence and incommunicability. But the metaphors also engage with,
translate silence and death into speech. Between the human person
and the corpse it becomes, there is the possibility of infinite displace-
ment and transformation (Owen 1989:150). Displacement makes of
the transactions between humanity and death, identification with
and incommensurable difference from God, a series of asides,
through which we are infused into the world, which is inserted be-
tween us and our demise. Correspondingly, God is perceived in the
world; his presence there permits a range of metaphorical correla-
tions and divergences with humanity, wherewith the bare identifica-
tion, Humanity is/is not God, is modified. For example, both God
and humanity are figured as dew (6:4; 13:3; 14:5).18 Through the
immanence of God in the world, the threat of divine disappearance
becomes both more tangible, as that immanence is withdrawn, and
less dependent on Israel's history; God can appear in many guises,
e.g., as an enemy; things can hold a trace or memory of God's
immanence even in his absence.
But metaphors also hold open the possibility of transformation, of
ambiguity. The same metaphor may have very different meanings
in different contexts. For example, the devouring lion of 5:14 and
13:7-8 becomes the redemptive lion of 11:10.19 The passage from

18
Fisch aptly calls this "a dialectic of denial and accommodation' ' (1988:147).
19
Most critics regard 11:10 as secondary (Yee 1987:156, and references there-
in). None remark on the contrast with 5:14 and 13:7-8, and several suggest an
intertextual link with Amos 1:2; 3:4, 8 etc. (Jeremas 1983:147; Andersen and
44 FRANCIS LANDY

person to thing is reversed, as things become animate, if the world

is experienced as alive. Death, for example, as the ultimate horizon,
the limit against which Israel's and God's experience plays, is in
troduced into the world of meanings, is an addressee in the poem.
"|*HD1 TIN, *'where are/I am your words/plagues, O Death"
20
(13:14). Personification, making the abstraction a person, turns
death into life, gives negation a language. But the phrase is totally
ambiguous. It may be God who is the words/plagues of death, or
death whose words and plagues cannot be located. On the first read
ing, God is the language that death speaks; the words of the book,
and by extension of the world, emanate from death. Or else God is
the plaguesAssyrians, lions, etc.through which death manifests
itself. In either case, God is subordinate to death, its surrogate. Cre
ation then is an uncreation, a veneer or emissary for death. Accord
ing to the second reading, ' 'Where are your words/plagues, O
Death?," death is abolished; its signs and harbingers are no longer
available to it. The personification is evoked only to be exposed as
impotent; it has no words to say, and presumably no answer to the

Freedman 1980:591). Andersen and Freedman do note, however, that 11:10 re

verses the usual effects of God's voice. Stuart suggests that the words ^^ (11:10),
TDD (5:14), and blVl (13:7), have different connotations. The former refers to
"the great maned African lion," and generally has positive significance in the
Prophets (1987:182). A quick glance at the concordance does not support his con-
tention. The suggestion that ^^ refers to the African lion goes back to a proposal
of L. Koehler in 1932; that it is the most common term for lion in the Hebrew Bible
would be a good counterargument. I am very grateful to my colleague Ehud
Ben-Zvi for providing me with considerable lexicographical information on this
subject. Andersen and Freedman say that the precise denotation of the six Hebrew
words for "lion" is not known (1980:414). For a good defence of 11:10 as integral
to the general composition of chap. 11, see Janzen (1982:41-42 n. 18).
20 VIN means "I am" in 13:7 and "where" in 13:10 (though Fisch [1988:152-
53] sees an ambiguity there too). For the ambiguity, see the excellent discussions
in Fisch (153), Andersen and Freedman (1980:639-40) and Yee (1987:255, 257-
58), who regards paronomasia as characteristic of her R2 final redactor. Further
possible readings of VIN are "alas" and the divine name Ehyeh. The first does not
add substantially to the significance of the phrase, while the second (cf. Yee 1987:
258) merely adds to the reading "I am" a hypostatic and intertextual grandeur (cf.
Exod. 3:14). Yee, moreover, understands this interpretation as complementary to
that of VIN as "where?"; Ehyeh, according to her, becomes the plague of death,
in the sense of the one who destroys death. The identification of God as the instru
ment rather than the antagonist of death conforms to the occurrence of VIN in 13:7
as "I will be like a lion . . . " (bTX&D VIN). Resolving the contradiction as Yee does
only means displacing it onto the rest of the book. It should be noted that the context
of the phrase in 13:14 only intensifies its ambiguity. No one seems to discuss the
double meaning of T,""'> "plagues/words."
 IN THE WILDERNESS OF SPEECH 45

question. For the moment, in contradiction to the rest of the book

and human experience, death has no sway. The two alternatives, the
universality of death, of which God is an agent, and its non
existence, are equal and symmetrically opposed. Their coexistence
prevents the book from having a unitary meaning, the metaphorical
process from resulting in closure. Unless they are not mutually ex
clusive. Then God's subordination to death would be equivalent to
a triumph over death. The enclosure of being by non-being, crea
tion by uncreation, light by darkness, word by silence, which the
first possibility would entail, would be compatible with, or the in
verse of, the unlocatability of non-being, the insignificance of si
lence, the repression of uncreation and darkness.
Fisch writes, " I n the tempest of contradictory meanings, the only
rock we can hold onto is the words themselves. 'Ehi alone has con
tinuity in the turbulence of its dizzily changing significations and the
discontinuities of its context" (1988:153). It is not clear to me what
Fisch means, in what sense a word is a rock. What grants continuity
is presumably the sound of the word, that subsists through the per
mutations of its meaning. But this is to assume that a word itself is
a unitary phenomenon that exists independently of the meanings
assigned to it. A word is in fact inherently unstable, tending to break
up into its component phonemes and distinctive features. Further,
Fisch specifies 'Ehi as the word par excellence round which the storm
whirls. 'Ehi cannot be dissociated from its meaning " I a m " and the
intimacy of God's self-revelation in Exod. 3:14. The rock to which
we cling would then be God. But it is surely the identity of this " I
a m " and of God himself that is in question.
From the very beginning of Hosea (1:9), the book plays on the
possibility of the reversal of the divine name Ehyeh,21 and hence the
possibility of divine non-existence, or at least God's incapacity to af
firm himself as " I . " God's personality is in doubt in the welter of
conflicting personae and wills. On the one hand, God experiences

21 See the discussions in Fisch (1988:144-45), Yee (1987:69-70, 138),

Andersen and Freedman (1980:198-99). Stuart, rather curiously, vocalises 'Ehyeh
as 'Ahyah and regards it as a first person form of the divine name YHWH (1987:33).
His reasoning is that since the Massoretes clearly regarded it as a divine name, their
vocalisation of it as 'Ehyeh, "I am," is suspect. The force of this argument is not
apparent to me. Isbell (1978:101 -02) argues that whenever the word appears
in the context of divine presence or action, it always carries with it a symbolic con
notation that far exceeds its syntactic function.
46 FRANCIS LANDY

himself as an agent of Thanatos, as a vehicle for pure destructive-

ness. On the other, that destructiveness threatens to destroy God
himself, his metaphorical attachment and investment in the world,
in other words, God as Eros. The phrase, ' 'Where are your words/
plagues, O Death," conforms to a monotheistic agenda, according
to which God subsumes death. The paradox that death is both an
ultimate reality and no reality is reflected in the passage previously
22
discussed in 1 1 : 8 - 9 in the changes of mind/compassions (DOTU)
wherewith God alternates between being an inflexible agent of death
and a saviour from death. In 13:14, the capacity to change is con
1 23
cealed: ** * , "Pity/change is hidden from my e y e s . "
The motif of concealment suggests an aspect of God that is invisible
to him, just as death is unlocatable. Changeability is changed into
a willed fixity. The problem is: what has been fixed? Is it God's will
to annihilation or the abolition of death? Unalterability is attributed
to the two opposing stances between which the book's dynamic un
folds. Nothing in it grants any confidence in God's determination
persisting. Both programs are consummated in the next two pas
sages ( 1 3 : 1 5 - 1 4 : 1 ; 14:2-9). The repressed returns; the eclipsed
side of God becomes dominant. Hence, if God represents an Ego
Ideal, as the " I a m " in person, he lacks coherence. The ideal is ever
fragmenting.
The play space between parent and child is recollected in the
poem that meditates safely on the terrors of history and the divine-
human encounter. The poem, as imaginative and verbal play,
preempts and excludes death from its magic arena. Yet death is in
troduced into it as one of the players; the poem is a meditation on
death. The play space is constructed by death, as well as the good-
enough mother. If God, as we have seen, is uncertain as a parent,
alternating personae as the death-bringer and the life-giver, repress
ing as well as appropriating the role of the mother, not only is Israel
unable to construct a coherent alter ego, a secure mirror on which
to found itself, but death becomes intermittently the maternal prin
ciple, the reality that God dissimulates. Then the words of the poem

22
Schngel-Straumann, following a proposal by Wellhausen, emends "OT
into ", and further reduces the latter to the singular, and its root metaphorical
meaning of "womb" (1986:128). For an effective critique of this procedure, see
Kreuzer (1989:125). A good discussion is to be found in Janzen (1982:40 n. 7).
23
Dtfj is a hapax, but one whose meaning is fairly clear. For the ambiguity, see
most precisely Stuart (1987:207).
 IN THE WILDERNESS OF SPEECH 47

are infused with what Derrida calls " a radical illegibility" (Derrida
1978:77).24 They cross the boundary between signification (the
Symbolic Order) and the "unreadable" (Derrida 1986:332),25 the
play of sounds, images, impulses.26 If metaphor is a gesture
towards a relationship that is impossible, it reverts to unmetaphori-
city, a narcissistic (autistic?) chaos.
Displacement, deferment, and concealment: the metaphors of the
book pursue each other in mtonymie chains, accumulating associa-
tions, cancelling each other out. Each metaphor is unstable, not only
because it will be displaced by others, but because it is implicated
in the process; each metaphor is a usurper (Owen 1989:113). This
makes the search for an original and pure language interminable,
since each word used on that search becomes ambivalent, unre-
liable. In Hosea the place of the original encounter, to which the
book turns in its longing for an ideal communion between God and
Israel, is the wilderness. Fisch writes, " I n the desert void the word
is sounded: in the fullness of Canaan it is forgotten. The prophet
Hosea seeks to mediate that word, to recall it to us in its intensity,
its ambivalence, its fugitive luminosity" (1988:144).
One should beware, however, of taking the text's own idealiza-
tions at face value. To begin with, the word of the wilderness can
only be spoken from outside the wilderness, and is prefatory to the
reentry into history. God turns to the memory of the wilderness as
a resource against the present, but also to redeem the present:
rm r W U rr by "morn Tanon rrrafrn OJK nan pb
DY01 m u a OT ntf mpn *? ronDtfD mro
p8D nvrby

24
According to Derrida, the Book, as a metaphor for Being, dissimulates a rad
ical illegibility, which is death that "does not let itself be inscribed in the book"
(1978:77), but which opens its possibility. For Derrida, moreover, Death is identi
fied with the caesuras, the fractures, that alone make meaning and writing possible
(1978:71). This illegibility consists of an erasure of self (1978:230).
25
The "unreadable" here, in an essay of Celan, is the original date and ex
perience to which a poem refers. The poem renders this date or experience read
able, but only in its unreadability. The border between the two in this essay is that
of the threshold word Shibboleth, which distinguishes between life and death.
26
This opposition is between that which Kristeva calls the "symbolic" and the
"semiotic," roughly corresponding to that between language as a set of significa
tions and language as a psychosomatic process. According to her, metaphor cons
tantly crosses this boundary, which she calls the "thetic phase," i.e., the phase
when the mind first thinks in terms of theses or propositions (Kristeva 1984: 19-
106).
48 FRANCIS LANDY

"Therefore, behold I seduce her, and I will take her into the wilder-
ness, and I will speak to her heart. And I will give her thence her
vineyards, and the valley of Achor as a gate of hope, and she will
answer as in the days of her youth, as on the day when she came up
from the land of Egypt." (2:16-17). In practice, what does this
mean? It could only refer to the destruction, stripping bare of all pos-
sessions, and exile that the book portends. 27 The "death" would
thus be an excuse for Eros. But one cannot in fact return to that
original insouciance, one cannot wipe out the traces of death and the
intervening history, turning the place of an original sacrilegethe
valley of Achorinto a gate of hope, 28 without a bad conscience.
History will not allow itself to be replayed, not for any empirical rea-
son, but because a replay is secondary. From being the place of
original speech, the forerunner of the metaphors of the book, the
wilderness becomes a place of desolation and exhaustion of those

27
Neef (1987:111) holds that the wilderness in 2:16 cannot refer to the exile,
while Jeremas considers this to be indeterminate (1983:47). Unterman (1982:544)
considers that the desert here is in reality part of the Promised Land, since the pDV
Ty is in the Judean desert. This, however, is to ignore the historical allusions, and
the association of the wilderness in Hosea generally, as well as in this passage, with
Israel's origins (cf. 13:5). Neef s only argument is that the wilderness allegorically
marks a new beginning in the relationship of God and Israel. However, this is pre-
cisely the mystification that the text itself undertakes: the mythic motif of a renewal
of time, with is paradigmatic allegorical trappings, displaces the historical referent.
28
Andersen and Freedman (1980:276) suggest an allusion here to the juxtapo-
sition of the story of Achan (Joshua 7) and that of Rahab, who was saved by a scarlet
thread or 7VpD (Joshua 6). According to them, Rahab, as a Canaanite harlot who
facilitates Israel's entrance into the land, typologically anticipates Israel's restora-
tion. I would suggest further that there is a symbolic symmetry between the two
stories. Achan's sacrilege, taking of the herem, the devoted produce of the land,
makes him an initiatory victim, a price that Israel has to pay for taking possession
of the land. Rahab, in the city that guards the entrance to the land, opens the way
for Israel's conquest; as a harlot, she represents an aspect of the land that welcomes
the invader, and thus the potential union of Israel and Canaan. The one male Israe-
lite victim of the herem corresponds to the one female Canaanite exempt from the
herem. For the story of Rahab as the first hint that the Deuteronomistic agenda will
not be fulfilled see Polzin (1980:85-91). Rowlett has recently argued that the
stories of Achan and Rahab are the reverse of each other: Rahab is the ultimate
outsider who puts herself under YHWH'S protection, while Achan is an insider who
makes himself Other. The narrative ofJoshua is in fact concerned with power rela-
tions, and the assertion that identity is less ethnic than determined by "voluntary
submission to authority structures" (1992:22). Rowlett's analysis is exemplary, but
exclusively political; to it I would add a symbolic dimension, in terms of the trans-
actions and exchanges between Israel and the land. If there is an allusion to this
symbolic nexus, it would suggest that a subtext of Hosea, as ofJoshua, is the union
of YHWH and Canaan, in contradiction to its ostensible message.
 IN THE WILDERNESS OF SPEECH 49

metaphors. It is a belated echo of the beginning, that replaces not

only that beginning, rendering it unfathomable, but all the material
incarnations and displacements of the divine-human relationship. If
divine and human meet nakedly, as the erotic image suggests, in a
wilderness where nothing interposes between them, it allows the
possibility of fusion, the closing of the metaphorical distance the
book presupposes. In the next verse, indeed, YHWH predicts that
Israel will call him ^tt^N, "my man," in remarkable contrast to
11:9.29 The dj-vu, the hallucinatory repetition, makes the wilder-
ness uncanny, in the Freudian sense of unheimlich or "homeless," as
a revisitation of a place one has been but to which one cannot actual-
ly return. According to Freud, the experience of the Uncanny is a
reexperience of the mother's body, the place of original fusion and
separation.30 This conforms to the contrary connotations of the
wilderness, as a place "homeless" in the sense of uninhabitable,
eery and deadly, yet the matrix of the relationship of God and
Israel.31
God's fantasy is a romance, a play of lovers in a wilderness that
affords freedom from social constraints and cares, and prying eyes.
The wilderness is liminal, both in time and space, and hence initia-
29
Whether or not YHWH is Israel's ttf'W is a motif in ch. 2. In 2:4, YHWH
declares that he is not Israel'stthK,and she is not his #; in 2:8 she declares that
she will return to ^ N , "her first man." Clearly the primary denotation
of ttf'W in this chapter is "husband"; it concerns Israel's confusion as to who is her
true husband, and whether she regards YHWH as Baal (2:18, cf. Wolff 1974:49-
50). But the word EhK cannot be dissociated from its more general meaning of
"man, human," especially in view of its usage in 11:9. Renaud (1983:196) cites
Andr Neher's view that the description of God as human here refers to God's par-
ticipation in the human dimension of time, whose duration provides the basis for
faithfulness; YHWH astthis identified as the God of history, in contrast to YHWH
as Baal, who is the God of the cycles of nature (195).
30
Freud (1959:397) cites the fantasy of being buried alive as a transformation
of inter-uterine existence. Sprengnether (1990:232) writes that "In 'The Uncanny'
Freud comes close to acknowledging a condition of estrangement at the heart of
being." For an excellent reading of a tale of Balzac from the perspective of the
Uncanny, see Felman (1981).
31
A fascinating application of Freud's discussion of the Uncanny to a biblical
narrative is Bal's analysis of Judges 19 (1988:186-95). Bal emphasizes the para-
doxical combination of doubleness and strangeness in the feeling of the Uncanny,
as well as the literal translation of the German Unheimlichkeit, "homelessness." The
double, for Freud, gives one a sense that one has been there before, and is thus
associated with the mother's body; however, from outside, it becomes ambiguous,
and a harbinger of death (191). The experience of the Uncanny is then one of
"regression to a pretemporal world" (194). For a fascinating application of Bal's
discussion to the dangers threatening the male critic in feminist criticism, see
Detweiler (1991).
50 FRANCIS LANDY

tory; at the threshold between childhood and adulthood (hence

", "as in the days of her youth") it effects a conjunction
of sexual awakening and death, and hence the full range of human
experience. 32 God takes her there through "seduction" or "persu
asion" (); the verb does not have the negative connota
tions of more prurient settings,33 but suggests their other side, the
magical indirectness of language, its capacity to appeal, below the
surface, to human sensuality and subversiveness. God leads Israel
through sexual and verbal enchantment to the enchanted and un
canny wilderness, with its miracles and terrors. There he "speaks
to her heart"; 3 4 whatever the content of this speech, it appeals to
the organ responsible for affective life.35 The verb 712}} in "she will
answer (^) as in the days of her youth" likewise has sexual as
well as verbal connotations, 36 reinforced by the erotic setting and
her nubility. God's fantasy then is not for marriagethe staid and
licit marriage metaphor beloved of commentatorsbut an uncondi
tioned eroticism, in the wilderness.
The wilderness, however, is immediately transformed: "And I
will give her thence her vineyards." Vineyards and wilderness are
clearly antonymical; nevertheless, Ditto, "thence," suggests that
the vineyards are native to the wilderness.37 Vineyards are the

32
In the Song of Songs ( 3 : 6 - 1 1 ; 8:5), the lovers are seen coming up from the
wilderness, which is likewise associated with death (3:8; cf. 8:6), birth (8:5) and ex
otic spices (3:6; cf. 1:14).
33
Most critics comment on the shock value of the verb here (Andersen and
Freedman 1980:207-08; Jeremas 1983:47; Wolff 1974:41).
34
Van Dijk-Hemmes (1989:84) remarks that the associations of the expression
"to speak to the heart," at least in an amorous context, are not always positive,
cf. Gen. 34:3 and Judg. 19:3. One may adduce, however, the contrary instances
of Ruth 2:13 and Isa. 40:2. Fe well and Gunn (1991) have argued convincingly for
a positive reading of Shechem's "speech to the heart" in Gen. 34:3, despite Stern-
berg's lengthy riposte (1992:476-78). One may note, incidentally, Wolffs extraor-
dinarily unreflecting comparison of YHWH to the Lvite in Judges 19: "The Lvite
in Ju. 19:3 most accurately reflects Yahweh's attitude. He speaks 'to the heart* of
his wife who has gone astray, with the intention of bringing her back" (42).
35
It is a commonplace in Hebrew Bible studies that A is the seat of intellectual
activity. It frequently, however, refers to emotional life, and it is often difficult to
distinguish the two (e.g., in Deut. 6:4). The Song of Songs abundantly illustrates
the association of the heart with sexual desire (e.g., 4:9; 8:6).
36
In Exod. 21:10, } refers to cohabitation, while H|V is a common term for
rape. Lys (1975:76) suggests that in addition to conjugal union, there may be a
mocking allusion here to the goddess Anath.
37
Commentators disagree on the precise significance of DttfD, "thence." Neef
(1987:109) holds that the wilderness is transformed into fertile land, while Wolff
 IN THE WILDERNESS OF SPEECH 51

source of intoxication, and hence the breakdown of social and erotic

boundaries. 38 If vineyards are characteristic of culture, and, in
prophetic terms, of a hedonistic society, its roots are in its opposite,
in barrenness. The point is not just that the gift threatens to repeat
the mistake of 2:4-15, whereby the products of the land are at
tributed to the gods of the land, but that wilderness and cultivation,
the escape from history and the entrance into it, are conflated.
An even more direct transformation is that between wilderness
and speech. As Fisch and others note, the words "and I will speak"
p m y n ) and "wilderness" (*OTD) are juxtaposed and duplicate
radical consonants. 39 Fisch cites the rabbis that the two are identi
cal (1988:143); the word requires absence to be heard. " I n the
desert void the word is sounded; in the fullness of Canaan it is for
gotten" (144). But they are also opposites. The wilderness is outside
human culture, organized and symbolized by language. On the sex
ual level, the wilderness suggests nakedness, the encounter with the
person without disguises. Stephen Owen writes that "nakedness is
silence" (1989:186); in poetry, all words that celebrate nakedness
conceal it. The barren place is cultivated through speaking it.
The wilderness is a place of death; in 2:5 it is a personified death
by thirst. God's fantasy of romantic fulfilment in the wilderness is
a counterpart to his murderous fantasy of making the woman like
a wilderness and destroying her. 4 0 As noted above, in real terms the
erotic encounter refers to Israel's destruction and exile. The two are
juxtaposed, just as they are by the alternative meanings of *|3 ^
\), " I am/where are your words/plagues, O Death" (13:14).
There God is both the agent of death and renders it null; death is

(1974:42) considers that the expression anticipates reentry into the Promised Land.
At any rate, the provenance of the vineyards from the wilderness is not in dispute.
In the Song of Songs, likewise, vineyards (D^DID) are found in the wilderness of
Ein-gedi (1:14), and the lovers' ascent from the wilderness is juxtaposed with the
apple tree under which the man was born (8:5).
38
Andersen and Freedman (1980:274-75) argue at length that vineyards are a
conventional literary constituent of a wedding gift, citing the Ugaritic text Nikkal
and the Moon. It seems unnecessary to go so far, since the associations of vineyards
with love and love songs (e.g., Song of Songs; Isa. 5:1) hardly needs illustration.
39
Others are Yee (1987:80), for whom the wordplay is typical of her final
redactor (cf. . 21), and Lys (1975:73), who regards it as parallel to the transforma
tion of the valley of Achor into a gate of hope. For a similar wordplay in Songs 4:3,
see Fox (1983:204, 1985:130).
40
For an excellent account of how the man imprisons the woman with his
words in this passage, see van Dijk-Hemmes (1989:83, 85).
52 FRANCIS LANDY

both universal and non-existent. The unreadable silence of death

enters the play space through language that neutralizes it.
The wilderness recurs in 13:15, recalling the word play in 2:16.
From the wilderness comes "the east of wind of Y H W H " and dries
41
up the source and spring of Israel. In the next verse, this is identi
fied with Samaria and images of reversed maternity ("her pregnant
women are ripped open"). The antithesis between the wilderness
and the spring conceals their equivalence. If uncanniness is correlat
ed with the experience of the mother's body, that from which the
wind comes is the matrix. In 2:16 YHWH takes Israel into the wilder
ness, under cover of verbal and physical enchantment, and speaks
to her heart. In 13:5 he "knows" Israel there; 4 2 the speech to the
heart is followed in 2:22 by Israel's "knowing" God. But what is
this speech and this knowledge? In 2:16, the real message is
presumably not communicated by the content of the words, but by
their tone; they amount to a verbal caress. The "knowing" in 2:22
succeeds God's plighting Israel's troth with ", hesed, D^Dm,
"compassion," etc.; it is not equivalent to, though it may presup
pose, those qualities. 43 In 13:5, God's knowledge of Israel contrasts
with his censorious knowledge of Ephraim in 5:3, and Israel's
ignorance of other gods in 13:4. If the language shared by God and
humanity suffers from the incommensurability of terms, the knowl
edge communicated in the wilderness suggests an essential connec
tion despite the problem of language, of which the use of VT as a
term for sexual union is but an instance. The knowledge carried by
the speech and its tone constructs and grows out of the play space,
the liminal and primordial wilderness; the lover knows how to talk
to the heart. If the wilderness is uncanny, eery, it is also the place
of knowledge. Israel, as the partner in the game, is a figuration of
the original partner, the mother who made the play space safe and

41
M T reads "TpD EfiS?}, "and its source will be ashamed.'' Most critics read
# 3 ; i "and will dry u p , " with a Qumran fragment (Wolff 1980:222). It is perhaps
simplest to see VftT as a byform of Efa^ (Andersen and Freedman 1974:641).
4
2 A number of critics read TTpjn, "I shepherded y o u , " for M T 7\ " I
knew you," following L X X ( Jeremas 1983:159; Wolff 1974:220; Stuart 1987:200).
Stuart argues inexplicably in favour of this that it is a lectio difficilior. For an effective
counter-argument, see Neef (1987:102) who adduces its linkage with 13:4 and its
contrast with 13:6.
43
Renaud (1983:198) suggests that through acquiring these qualities Israel
would come to know God experientially rather than rationally. Lys (1975:71) de-
nies that the primary reference is to sexual knowledge, but rather covenantal ac-
knowledgement, citing Huffmon (cf. Stuart 1987:60). This would impose over-
much formal distance, however.
 IN THE WILDERNESS OF SPEECH 53

the locus of all imaginative activity. But then there is a problem:

YHWH has no mother, or only devalued and marginalised reminis
cences of one. 4 4 Intermittently and ambiguously, as we have seen,
death is the maternal principle, from which God, as speech,
emanates. In the wilderness, all that God knows is Israel, just as
Israel knows none other. Surrounding them is the land of death, 4 5
whose emptiness and lack of nourishment make the play space inse
cure. The metaphor builds a bridge between indeterminacies, in the
difficult passage from "unbeing," as Kristeva puts it (1987:373), 4 6
outside the opposition of being and non-being, to the shared dis
course, on which divine-human existence is founded.
In 13:15, the wind/spirit of YHWH comes from the wilderness;
YHWH and wilderness are thus coordinated terms. The relationship
of the "wind/spirit" to the wilderness and YHWH corresponds to
that of the words and plagues of the previous verse to death. There
is an obvious reversal: the spirit of YHWH that normally gives life
brings death. The wind/spirit turns Samaria itself into a desert; the
two matrices cancel each other out. They represent the ambiguity
of Israel, as both native to the land and foreign to it. But this also
corresponds to YHWH's strangeness. The ascription of the desert
east wind to YHWH evokes theophanic texts which describe YHWH's
advent from the desert, especially east or south-east of the land,
(e.g., Deut. 33:2; Judg. 5:4; Hab. 3:3). The east wind of YHWH is
intertextually linked, moreover, with the deliverance from Egypt;
with it God parts the Red Sea (Exod. 14:21) and brings locusts
(Exod. 10:13). The destruction of Samaria undoes not only crea
tion, but the Exodus from Egypt.

44
Kristeva (1982:94) argues that monotheism is a strategy of exclusion of the
archaic mother; the One God is maintained in his autonomy through a process of
abjection, as exemplified in the purity laws. Van Dijk-Hemmes (1989:85-86) very
interestingly proposes that YHWH appropriates the role of the Mother/Woman-
lover in the hieros gamos, thus depriving the woman/Israel of any subjectivity; Israel
is evoked as goddess, only to be degraded and humanised. Frymer-Kensky (1992:
115-16) observes that in the Hebrew Bible the functions of the goddesses are trans
ferred to human beings.
45
In 13:5 the wilderness is specified as ^ plN. ^ is a hapax, general
ly interpreted as "drought," "stony," or "feverish" on the basis of context and
Arabic or Akkadian cognates. At any rate, it seems to reinforce the deadly connota
tions of the wilderness. Corresponding to it is 2 JHK, "land of thirst," in 2:5.
46
"Unbeing" is the Lacanian equivalent of the Freudian death drive. Winni
cott holds that "being" is the first thing the child learns from its identification with
the mother. "Being" is "the only basis for self-discovery and a sense of existing"
(1971:82). Winnicott identifies "being" as the female element in human beings
(81).
54 FRANCIS LANDY

There is another association, however. The east (D*lp), with its

double reference to a direction and to primordial time, is the loca
tion of Eden. The wilderness has edenic connotations, as a place of
origins and of harmony between God and humanity. This may be
illustrated by the woman naming YHWH t^N in 2:18, in con
tradistinction to Gen. 2:23, where the man calls the woman .
In both cases, the couple nttfN-ttf'W precedes, or is contrasted with,
the patriarchal subordination of women. To be sure, patriarchal
authority asserts itself; the woman's response is put in her mouth by
YHWH, and in the next verse he controls her speech and her
47
thought. Nevertheless, the desire to be called an tt^N, not a bV2,
6
' a master, ' ' still less a God, as well as the covenant with the animals
(2:20), suggests a subversion of patriarchy from within. The frag
mentation of relations between genders and species that began in
Eden will be mended; peace with wild creatures, animated represen
tations of the wilderness, will conform to peace between nations, and
the cessation of the patriarchal game of war (2:20). 4 8 If the hierar
chy of men and women is abolished, nations no longer struggle for
dominance, and God asserts his sameness and equality with hu
mans, the covenant with the creatures extends to them Israel's and
humanity's special relationship with God (cf. 6:7; 8:1). The
paradigm implies mutuality and complementarity, especially since
the covenant is made on behalf of humans; humans, animals and
God have a three-way relationship, instead of opposition and exploi
tation.
The wilderness and Eden are antithetical; the place of death
eclipses the garden of eternal life. Life and death images metamor
phose into each other throughout the book, for example in the des
tructive fusion of the matrices of Samaria and the wilderness. Birth
and death are insistently collapsed into each other, as in the
prophet's prayer in 9:14. 4 9 The ambivalence is typical of what

47
For a close reading, see van Dijk-Hemmes (1989).
48
Both Jeremas (1983:49) and Wolff (1974:51) describe the covenant as
' * paradisiacal' ' without eleborating. Andersen and Freedman (1980:281) see the
closest parallel as the three-way covenant with Noah and the creatures in Gen.
9:8-11, but do not assume any direct connection. They think that through it YHWH
asserts his power over the whole earth; the description of YHWH as E^N, however,
suggests to me an equality of partnership.
49
For a discussion of this verse as an example of pseudosorites, see O'Connor
(1987a: 168, 1987b:251-252).
 IN THE WILDERNESS OF SPEECH 55
50
Kristeva terms the archaic abject mother (1987:374), who is no
longer the provider of all needs, nor yet the object of desire in a
world already constituted by difference. The abject mother is a pre-
object, which the baby has to cast out, literally ab-ject, from itself, in
order to clear space for itself. The abject is then a condition attaching
to borders that are also porous, crossing points. The mother is in
vested with loathing, because she communicates the fear of aban
donment and thus death; at the same time she holds open the
promise of ultimate jouissance, of blissful union. The abject manifests
itself in disgust, and separates the human from the animal, the child
from its mother (Kristeva 1982:12-13); it is associated with the
detritus of culture, all that has to be eliminated to maintain our nar
cissistic self-esteem (3, 13). The abject is ambiguity (9), everything
that "disturbs identity, system, order" (4). In particular, religion,
morality and law are processes of abjection, that exclude the danger
ous and disturbing other. In a chapter on biblical abomination,
Kristeva suggests that the system of purity and impurity is " a
cathexis of maternal function" (91), that prevents fusion with the
mother (94), and distinguishes Israel from surrounding maternal
cults (100).
The feminine in Hosea is both abjected as the indigenous mater
nity of the land (e.g., as the source p i p o ] of Samaria), and is ideal
ized as God's partner and child outside the land, outside itself. Be
tween the two images there can only be alternation, but no
integration. This suggests an analogous incoherence on the part of
God, to which I have already alluded. God both is and is not a
parent, shares and does not share a language with Israel. The
metaphorical identifications are always unravelling. Images of nur
ture and enchantment contrast with discovery: ^ 303 DO3JQ
b*nt^, "Like grapes in the wilderness I found Israel" (9:10). The
image suggests God's own wilderness; there Israel is the object of
his greed, promising sustenance and delight.
What does this suggest for the metaphoricity of the book? A
proleptic mourning that preserves the object of grief, ancient Israel,
for us, the readers, a search through the wilderness for the hallucina-

50
One has to distinguish between the archaic mother, who is the repository of
all needs as well as the risks of existence, and the mother who presents the child to
the world, with such phrases as "Isn't he beautiful," who introduces the child to
the world of meaning and the symbolic order (Kristeva 1987:34).
56 FRANCIS LANDY

tory memory of a lost union and discovery. Depression is charac-

terised by asymbolia, a refusal to give the lost object a name and
meaning, lest it institutionalize the distance from it, and make the
loss irrevocable (Kristeva 1989:43). The intensity of metaphorical
expression in Hosea, its attempt to put a world together that is ad-
ways falling apart, to unite and cross the boundaries between sound
and meaning, seems both to break through the depressive barrier to
speech, as does much great poetry (Kristeva 1989:66), and to be de-
termined by it: to be words of life and death.

ABSTRACT

My concern in this essay is with integrative and disintegrative aspects of

metaphor. Metaphor, in current theory, is less the transfer of the properties of one
semantic field onto another than a process towards an ideal object, wherewith we
establish our sense of identity (Lakoff, Kristeva). I draw on psychoanalytic theory,
especially Kristeva and Winnicott, to discuss the origins of metaphor in the rela-
tions of mother and child, and, in particular, the growth of a "play space," com-
posed of transitional objects, as the nucleus of culture and creativity. Metaphors
are generally metaphors for others, linked on complex chains of displacement and
deferment. Hence they are unstable; each metaphor will be replaced or counter-
manded by others. Metaphor, in its integrative aspect, seeks to make sense of a
fragmented world; by connecting disparate terms, it risks nonsense. Metaphorical
language, especially in Hosea, is often fractured, baffling, and claims a status verg-
ing on madness. In Hosea, it seeks mimetically both to depict social and political
entropy, and to interpret it, thus reconstructing and repairing its world. The prin-
cipal analyses undertaken are of the ambiguous clause, "I am/where are your
words/plagues, O Death," in 13:14, and of God's nostalgic fantasy of courting
Israel in the wilderness in 2:16-17. The former either subordinates God to death,
as the all-encompassing reality of the book, or renders death unreal, inarticulate.
The latter turns on the paradoxes of speech and silence, communicated by the pun
between wilderness ("OD) and word ("13"!).

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 ^ s
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