Study

We said in yesterday’s Lecture, that God ordered his Prophet to take a wife of whoredoms, but that this was not actually done; for what other effect could it have had, but to render the Prophet contemptible to all? and thus his authority would have been reduced to nothing. But God only meant to show to the Israelites by such a representation, that they vaunted themselves without reason; for they had nothing worthy of praise, but were in every way ignominious. It is then said, Hosea went and took to himself Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim גמר, Gomer, means in Hebrew, to fail; and sometimes it signifies actively, to consume; and hence Gomer means consumption. But Diblaim are masses of figs, or dry figs reduced to a mass. The Greeks call them παλαθας. The Cabalists say here that the wife of Hosea was called by this name, because they who are much given to wantonness at length fall into death and corruption. So consumption is the daughter of figs, for by figs they understand the sweetness of lusts. But it will be more simple to say, that this representation was exhibited to the people, that the Prophet set before them, instead of a wife, consumption, the daughter of figs; that is, that he laid before them masses of figs or παλαθας, representing Gomer, which means consumption and that he adopted a similar manner with mathematicians, when they describe their figures, — “If this be so much, then that is so much.” We may then thus understand the passage, that the Prophet here named for his wife the corrupt masses of figs; so that she was consumption or putrefaction, born of figs, reduced into such masses. For I still persist in the opinion I expressed yesterday, that the Prophet did not enter a brothel to take a wife to himself: for otherwise he must have begotten bastards, and not legitimate children; for, as it was said yesterday, the case with the wife and the children was the same.

We now then understand the true meaning of this verse to be, that the Prophet did not marry a harlot, but only exhibited her before the eyes of the people as though she were corruption, born of putrified masses of figs.