Hosea comes out as an iconoclastic prophet of fury - rejecting the use of statues and idols as representations of the divine. For the 8th century BCE - this is radically counter-cultural, as both the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the Southern Kingdom of Judah include images in their temples, some of them depicting the divine. Most famous among those artistic representations of god are the two golden bulls that were set up at either side of the Northern Kingdom by its first king, Jeroboam. Were they bulls or calves? Is there a difference - yes - a big one -- and this chapter of Hosea’s protest against the corruption of his people includes another clue to the religious-political polemics of his time. The prophet rails at the people -- when you reject the right way of our tradition, and our god - enemies will easily pursue you. And then he goes off to name one of the biggest obstructions to true faith -- the deception of the material over the spiritual:
זָנַח֙ עֶגְלֵ֣ךְ שֹׁמְר֔וֹן חָרָ֥ה אַפִּ֖י בָּ֑ם עַד־מָתַ֕י לֹ֥א יוּכְל֖וּ נִקָּיֹֽן׃ כִּ֤י מִיִּשְׂרָאֵל֙ וְה֔וּא חָרָ֣שׁ עָשָׂ֔הוּ וְלֹ֥א אֱלֹהִ֖ים ה֑וּא כִּֽי־שְׁבָבִ֣ים יִֽהְיֶ֔ה עֵ֖גֶל שֹׁמְרֽוֹן׃
“I reject your calf, Samaria!
I am furious with them!
Will they never be capable of purity?
For it was Israel’s doing;
It was only made by a goldsmith -
It is not a god.
No, the calf of Samaria shall be
Reduced to splinters!”
Hosea 8:5
This rage echoes the story of the Golden Calf in Exodus - but what came first? Some scholars claim that the elaborate epic about Israel’s transgression at Sinai by co-creating a golden calf actually echoes the reality that Hosea was dealing with - expressing the latter editors’ perspective of the problematics of such idols.
Some of Hosea’s contemporaries, including the priests at the temple would have been astonished by his attack on the use of cattle as divine imagery - this was the custom all over the ancient world, including the temple of YHWH in Samaria.
A closer look at his choice of words reveals why he and other biblical voices belittle the sacred images by calling them ‘calves’ as opposed to ‘bulls’ and how this fits into that historical moment.
Prof. Rami Arav unpacks the historical context:
“Until the end of the 18th century, before the invention of steam locomotives and a century later, internal combustion engines, bulls were the strongest power in the farmyard. Thus, bulls were considered in antiquity as symbols of a powerful god.
In Egypt, the bull Apis was the symbol of Ptah, the creator god in the Memphite theology, and the son of the goddess Hathor (who was often depicted as a cow). In the Mesopotamian epic Gilgamesh, the Bull of Heaven is the favorite animal of Ishtar and the symbol of the generator of the world, the moon-god. The crescent of the moon was viewed as the horns of the heavenly bull pushing the moon across the sky. In Crete the carnivore bull of king Minos, the Minotaur, was a mighty bull that only Theseus with his divine sword could kill. Closer to home, the head of the Canaanite pantheon, El, is referred to as Thoru El, Bull El—thor in Ugaritic is cognate to Hebrew shor—and was often symbolized by a bull. The Israelites also worshiped El, whom they identified with YHWH.
The story of the golden calf was written as a polemic against a pair of statues that, according to the Bible, were situated in the two ends of the northern kingdom of Israel. According to the book of Kings, when Israel defects from the kingdom of Rehoboam and its capital in Jerusalem, its first king, Jeroboam, creates two worship sites to compete with Jerusalem, placing a golden calf in each.”
Jeroboam’s act is presented in the Books of Kings as negative and sinful, although the Israelite priesthood would not have seen it this way. Moreover, the statues themselves would not have been described by its priests as calves, but as bulls, i.e., representations of Bull-El. The very term “calf” used by the Bible is meant to belittle this graven image...
The northern prophet Hosea also mocks the Israelite use of a bull statue by calling it a calf.”
This explains why Hosea mocks the ‘Calves of Samaria’ - reducing the mighty golden bulls to babies with no strength or sacred status. The insistence on material representation of the divine is equal in his mind to the people’s focus on accumulating wealth instead of on societal justice. The price will be the loss of all of it - the people will be left with nothing but only then cleave to the real meaning of divinity - no image or statue, not monetary gain or economic model - but simply the idea of the sacred, deep within each and every one. But by the time we get this memo, Hosea the iconoclast warns, it will be too late. He ends this chapter with a dire future projection, that indeed came true:
וַיִּשְׁכַּ֨ח יִשְׂרָאֵ֜ל אֶת־עֹשֵׂ֗הוּ וַיִּ֙בֶן֙ הֵיכָל֔וֹת וִיהוּדָ֕ה הִרְבָּ֖ה עָרִ֣ים בְּצֻר֑וֹת וְשִׁלַּחְתִּי־אֵ֣שׁ בְּעָרָ֔יו וְאָכְלָ֖ה אַרְמְנֹתֶֽיהָ׃
Israel has ignored its Creator,
And built temples
And Judah has fortified many cities.
So I will set fire to his cities,
And it shall consume their fortresses.”
Hosea 8:14
When will we ever learn to put people before property and ideas before icons?
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What do we do with fury? Our buddhistical teachings guide us away from anger, and yet a phrase like "righteous indignation" suggests that there is a place for rage in the human situation.
The range of emotional states the Hebrew Bible expresses, from God to the prophets to the players in the divine drama, invites a reader to countenance such states in him/herself.
MLK had his rage. Heschel his sharp ethical edge and his willingness to speak truth that would offend some reminds me, as it does you, Amichai, that there is a place for fury as well as compassion in our responses to man's inhumanity to man.
But the fire of anger can consume the baker not just burn down the bakery. Hot stuff. Handle with care.