Adultery,Shame,and Sexual Pollution in Ancient Israel and in Hosea: A Response to Joshua Moon

1. Divine Shame in Hosea and the Prophets

In a recent article in this journal Joshua Moon proposed to shed new light on the meaning of Hosea chs. 1–3 by linking the events of Hosea's (and Yahweh's) marriages to the notions of honour and shame. ¹ His thesis is that the main point of the narrative can be appreciated only when one takes on board the fact that in marrying ‘a woman of harlotry’ Hosea is asked to do something shameful, since in ancient Israelite/Judean society the illicit sexual behaviour of a woman brought disgrace on the household to which she belonged. Hosea then is commanded by Yahweh to bring willingly and deliberately disgrace upon himself by virtue of his continued association with a disgraced woman. This in turn symbolizes Yahweh's experience of shame as he ‘marries’ idolatrous Israel. He demonstrates his covenantal love towards his people by being willing to maintain his connection with them and thus, like Hosea, experience public humiliation. It is not the sinful actions of the wife (Gomer/Israel) but the resulting shameful status of her husband (Hosea/Yahweh) that is the basis for the parallel between the prophetic and the divine marriages.

There are two initial difficulties with Moon's proposal. First, as he himself recognizes in passing, the actual use of vocabulary related to shame in Hosea 1–3 is rather limited. It is confined to the description of the illicit sexual behaviour of Gomer/Israel as shameful (‭השיבה‬) in Hos. 2.5 (MT 7). The wife's punishment is to be stripped naked in the sight of all people (2.3 [MT 5], 10 [MT 12]) which, we can safely assume, is a means of public humiliation. There is thus a correspondence between the crime and the punishment, Gomer/Israel is shamed by her husband because of her shameful behaviour. These are all the unambiguous references to honour or shame in these chapters. There is nothing explicit to suggest that the shame of the wife is transferred onto the husband. Yahweh does not protest that his reputation has been damaged as a result of Israel's idolatry/adultery. Likewise, neither in ch. 1 nor in ch. 3 do we hear complaints from Hosea that he has been asked to do something impinging on his honour.

The second problem with this line of interpretation is that it conflicts with the way the marriage metaphor and the honour/shame motif are generally used in the rest of the prophetic literature. Whenever shame in the prophets is linked to the metaphors of sex and marriage it seems that Yahweh's honour is notthe issue. The shamefulness of a woman's illicit sexual conduct is used to convey the shameful nature of the people's transgressions (Jer. 2.23–26). Just like in Hos. 2.5 (MT 7) the disgrace belongs only to her and there is no suggestion that it is shared by her divine husband (see also Jer. 3.3). Yahweh is indeed shamed by his association with Israel but this shame stems from the military defeat and exile of his people. ² The fundamental problem is that the exile of a people is interpreted as a failure of their god. The Babylonian exile then gives the nations of the world the impression that Yahweh is powerless (Isa. 52.5; Ezek. 36.19–22). His disgrace is of the same order as the disgrace experienced by Bel (Jer. 50.2) and Chemosh (Jer. 48.13) at the defeat of Babylon and Moab respectively. On the other hand, Yahweh's willingness to maintain his relationship with his disgraced people does not seem to produce further shame for him. On the contrary, the restoration, return, and prosperity of Judah actually result in restoration of divine honour because they are a tangible demonstration of his power and annul the previous impression of weakness (Ezek. 36.21–24, 35–36; cf. Isa. 48.9–11). The use of the marriage metaphor in Isa. 54.4 is particularly interesting in this regard because it suggests that while the exile/divorce brought shame on the woman (Isa. 50.1), the remarriage obliterates this shame (Isa. 54.4). In taking back his divorced and disgraced wife Yahweh's honour not only remains intact, but in fact cancels the shame of Israel.

2. The Mediterranean Notion of Honour and Shame

The notion that Gomer/Israel's sexual promiscuity results in disgrace for Hosea/Yahweh rests on a much broader basis. Fundamentally, it is based on a particular reconstruction of the value system of ancient Israelite society and the prevailing attitudes within it to sex and marital unfaithfulness. Therefore, in order adequately to assess Moon's interpretation of Hosea one needs to look more broadly at the way shame and adultery were regarded in ancient Israel.

There is wide agreement among scholars that in ancient Israelite society a woman's sexuality was not considered her own but was thought to belong to the man under whose authority she happened to be. ³ Typically this would be the father, prior to marriage, and the husband, subsequently. While a woman was not regarded as the mere property of her husband ⁴ her sexuality was a resource in which he had a socially recognized interest and on that basis it was placed alongside his other possessions, like his house, cattle, and slaves (Exod. 20.17).

The application of insights gained from anthropological study has led scholars to postulate a link between the biblical notion of male proprietary control over female sexuality and the values of honour and shame common in Mediterranean cultures. It has been suggested that in Mediterranean societies male honour is linked to manliness, while female ‘honour’ is linked to shame and sexual modesty. ⁵ Furthermore, a man's honour is dependent on the reputation of the women of his household and could be destroyed by their lack of chastity. ⁶ ‘The manliness of a husband must be exerted above all in the defence of the honour of his wife on which his own depends. Therefore her adultery represents…the demonstration of his failure in his duty… His manliness is defiled.’ ⁷ Scholars have argued that similar notions underline the understanding of honour and shame in ancient Israelite society. ⁸ A daughter's promiscuity destroyed the reputation of her father's household and a wife's unfaithfulness brought disgrace upon her husband. Men who could not control their women could not be regarded as real men and consequently had no honour. If this were indeed true, then, Gomer's infidelity would have had a devastating effect on Hosea's reputation.

3. The Father–Daughter Relationship

There is evidence to suggest that at least some of these views had currency among ancient Israelites and Jews. According to Tob. 3.14–15, when an unmarried girl commits a ‘sin with a man’ she ‘soils’ (μολύνω) not only her own name but also the name of her father. A similar notion may underline the stipulation of Deut. 22.19. If a husband accuses his wife of not remaining a virgin prior to marriage but then fails to substantiate his claims, he is to pay his father-in-law the sum of hundred shekels. The unfounded accusations of the husband have affected the reputation of the wife's father and so now he has to be compensated for that. ⁹

On the other hand, a closer look at passages dealing with this issue shows that the notion of the father's honour is not the central, overriding concern. ¹⁰ There are other, more important issues at stake. According to the Deuteronomistic law, if the husband's allegations proved founded the girl was to be executed at the door of her father's house (Deut. 22.21). The aim of this is not to shame the household of her parents ¹¹ but to ‘purge the evil from your midst’, just like in v. 24 where we read that a betrothed woman and her lover are to be stoned at the gate of the city, and in Deut. 17.2–7, where the idolater is to be stoned at the gates. ¹² In all these cases the execution takes place at the most public spot of the location where the crime was performed. The purpose is to wipe out the impurity caused by sin from the locality where the sin was committed so as to provide protection from the resultant curse.

The concern with purity is also evident in Lev. 21.9: ‘when the daughter of a priest profanes herself (‭לחת‬) through prostitution she profanes (‭תללחמ‬) her father; she shall be burned to death’. The LXX adds το όνομα here, thereby making it clear that the damage done is primarily to the reputation of the father. ¹³ Likewise, Milgrom is inclined to follow rabbinic tradition, which understands the profanation of the priest in metaphorical terms. He is ‘shamed’ and ‘treated with disrespect’ by his colleagues ‘as though he were disqualified’ from altar service. ¹⁴ However, there is nothing in the Hebrew to suggest that the impurity is to be treated as metaphorical. ¹⁵ The priest's colleagues are not mentioned and there is no reason to suspect that the defilement of the priest here is any different to the pollution caused by contact with a dead body, which is the subject of the preceding passage. The central concern of the text is not to preserve the honour or property rights of any Israelite father, but instead to ensure that the holiness of the Israelite priests is not compromised and thus ultimately to protect the sacred space of Yahweh's temple from encroaching impurity. ¹⁶ Such impurity, as Deborah Ellens has convincingly argued, stems from the illegitimate crossing of the boundaries of the father–daughter relationship by other men and thus represents an undermining of the created order. ¹⁷

Finally, it is not clear how relevant all this is to Hosea because there are certain important differences in the way a father's reputation is affected by a promiscuous daughter and a husband's honour is injured by an unfaithful wife. A father's name is soiled because his daughter's shamelessness suggests there might be something wrong with the household she was born and raised in. She is the outward proof of the existence of hidden, corrupt tendencies running in her family. A husband's reputation, on the other hand, is damaged because his wife's unfaithfulness suggests that he is not ‘man enough’. Either there is something deficient about him which forces the wife to seek other men, or he is not strong enough to keep her under control. Therefore, to understand Hosea one has to grapple primarily with the husband–wife relationship and more specifically with the impact adultery was believed to have on the honour of the husband in ancient Israel.

4. The Husband–Wife Relationship

The most extended passage in the legal corpus dealing with the issue of adultery is the law of the sotah in Num. 5.11–31, which curiously Moon does not discuss. Matthews attempts to interpret this piece of legislation entirely through the prism of honour/shame. ¹⁸ According to him, the issue at stake is the unsubstantiated rumours about the wife which undermine the reputation of her husband. The ritual, then, is a way for the wife (and the husband) to be exonerated by means of public demonstration that she is not guilty. She submits to it in order to clear not just her own name but the name of her whole family.

This proposal manages at the same time to read too much into and too little from the text in question. There is nothing in Numbers 5 to suggest that rumours going around the village necessarily give rise to the situation described. The idea of the man's honour and possible public humiliation, plausible as it is, is entirely absent from the text. On the other hand, Matthew's interpretation manages to obscure the fact that the central concern of this passage is jealousy, which in real life can be provoked not just by village rumours. The law is called ‘the law of jealousy’ (‭תאנקה‬ ‭תרות‬; Num. 5.29), the whole procedure results from a ‘spirit of jealousy’ (‭האנק־חור‬) coming upon the husband (Num. 5.14; cf. v. 30), and the ‘grain-offering of jealousy’ (‭תאנק‬ ‭תחנמ‬) plays a central role in the ritual (Num. 5.15, 18, 25). The jealousy of the man relates not only to his reputation and standing in the community but to the broader question of his proprietary control over the wife's sexuality and the closely linked question of the ‘legitimacy’ of her (his?) children. ¹⁹ In essence, this law presents us with ritual means to alleviate the ‘malady of male jealous rage’, to use Ellens's phrase, whatever its source (private suspicion or public gossip), not primarily as a means to restore a husband's honour.

The main focus of the text is the idea that a woman who has committed adultery has polluted herself (‭אמט‬; Num. 5.13, 14, 19, 20, 27, 28, 29). Feinstein suggests that the purpose of the language of pollution here is primarily rhetorical. It seeks to shame the adulteress by evoking a feeling of disgust at her actions and thus reinforcing the social values of marital fidelity. ²⁰ There is no reason, however, to suppose that such a rhetorical function is the only, or even the primary, reason why the language of pollution is used. The impurity has destructive potentiality which is actualized through contact with the sphere of the sacred. When the holy water enters her body and encounters the pollution inside her it makes a curse effective and causes ‘her thigh to fall and her belly to swell’ (Num. 5.21–22). ²¹ It is debated whether this means miscarriage, infertility, prolapsed uterus, or something else. What is clear is that the phrase refers to a physical damage, a direct result of the impurity of the woman and the performance of the ritual.

One surprising feature of the text is that the woman is brought into the sanctuary even though she is considered potentially impure. On this basis, some would prefer to see the impurity here not as a ‘real impurity’ but as a metaphorical application of the language of ritual pollution to describe moral transgressions. ²² Others suggest that this is a real but distinct type of impurity which differs in important aspects from ritual pollution yet shares some of its characteristics ²³ and ‘is best understood as a potent force unleashed by certain sinful human actions’. ²⁴ This second approach seems to be the more reasonable one. Various kinds of licit and illicit sexual activities cause pollution which operates in different ways. Sex between a husband and wife makes them unclean and threatens disaster if they come into physical contact with the realm of the sacred (Exod. 19.15; Lev. 15.16–18). Adultery also defiles the adulterer and the adulteress (Lev. 18.20; cf. Ezek. 33.26) but the danger inherent in their pollution is not activated by them visiting the sanctuary. The land itself is polluted (Lev. 18.24–25) and the accumulation of that pollution results in exile (Lev. 18.25–30). The land in H is seen as an extension of the sanctuary ²⁵ and so its pollution by sexual and other offenses is not dissimilar to the pollution of the Holy of holies by brazen sins, envisaged by P. ²⁶ In both cases accumulated pollution leads to exile and destruction. It is best therefore to see ‘moral’ and ‘ritual’ pollution as distinct but interconnected aspects of a single, complex phenomenon. What unifies this phenomenon is the destructive consequence of pollution, if left unchecked. What distinguishes its various aspects are the variety of ways in which pollution is contracted and allowed to operate.

When the land is polluted by murder, the remedy is either the ritual of Deut. 21.1–9, if the culprit is unknown, or the execution of the murderer, if he is discovered (Num. 35.33–34). Both of these aim to preserve the community from the disastrous consequences of the transgression by dealing with its polluting effect. An analogous situation seems to exist in the laws relating to adultery. When the perpetrators are caught in the act they are to be executed (Lev. 20.10); if they have not been caught in the act the ‘law of jealousy’ (Num. 5.11–31) could be implemented. It is possible that by focusing the disastrous consequences of the offense upon adulterers in the first case (execution), or only on the woman in the second (causing ‘her thigh to fall and her belly to swell’), the laws aim to protect the community from the polluting effects of adultery on the land. ²⁷ The central issue is the common danger posed by the defiling act, not the injured honour of the cheated husband.

The same thinking seems to lie in the background of the Deuteronomic approach to this topic. The reason why both the man and the woman caught in adultery are to be punished with death (Deut. 22.22) is so that ‘you shall purge the evil from your midst’ (Deut. 22.21, 22, 24). ²⁸ It is not entirely clear whether the evil referred to here is the morally unacceptable act of illicit sex or the disastrous consequences that it will bring on the whole city, arguably it refers to both. Moreover, adultery is not treated as a private affront to the honour of the husband but as a public offense. The husband is not even mentioned in Deut. 22.22, 24 and is not given the opportunity to restore his honour by asserting his power over against his opponent. Adultery is treated as an evil which will plague the community unless appropriately dealt with and so the entire community takes part in the execution. ²⁹

The language of pollution surfaces in the Deuteronomic legislation on divorce and remarriage (24.1–4). The purpose of the law is not easy to understand and has been the object of a number of differing interpretations. ³⁰ It is likely that either the second marriage of the wife or her subsequent remarriage to her first husband is somehow linked to the notion of adultery and deemed as polluting. ³¹ The woman is said to be defiled (‭האמטה‬) and this brings guilt (‭איטחת‬) upon the land (v. 4). This law stands in the background of Jer. 3.1–5, which interprets the ‘guilt’ of the land (Deut. 24.4) as ‘pollution’ (‭ףנח‬; Jer. 3.1). ³² The passage is interesting because it also connects more generally the ‘whoring’ of the woman with the pollution of the land (3.2, 9) which in turn has disastrous consequences (drought; see 3.3). Again, here adultery is not regarded as a private matter between a man and a woman but as an issue which impacts the whole land.

Feinstein argues that the notion of sexual purity fundamentally stems from the notion of women as sexual property of men. Thus when a woman has sex with a man other than her husband, she is polluted, that is, permanently ‘ruined for him’, because she is ‘marked’ by the other ‘man's essence’. The contaminated wife becomes repulsive to her husband because of that. ³³ There is undoubtedly some truth to this theory but its main problem is that it fails to account for the strong public concerns surrounding sexual pollution. A much better overarching paradigm for understanding the issues involved is provided by the well-known idea that the concepts of purity and pollution are linked to the notions of order and chaos. Impurity, as Mary Douglas has famously argued, is ‘matter out of place’, anomaly which does not fit with the order of the world. ³⁴ The harmony of the universe requires that things be grouped into categories; when the lines of demarcation separating these categories are crossed, pollution occurs. Such pollution is a dangerous power punishing ‘the symbolic breaking of that which should be joined or joining of that which should be separate’. ³⁵ Understanding families as basic units of social order allows insight into why adultery results in pollution. When a woman sleeps with a man other than her husband, she blurs the lines separating one family from another and thus undermines the structures of the creation. ³⁶ If this is true, the primary concern here is not maintaining male proprietary control over females (even though this may still play an important role) but the protection of the community's wellbeing from the disastrous consequences of impurity.

Admittedly, not all texts in the Hebrew Bible share this precise point of view. The ‘cosmic’ aspects of marital unfaithfulness do not feature prominently in Prov. 6.24–35, which treats adultery essentially as a form of theft, and regards the husband as the main person responsible for dealing with it. Two things need to be borne in mind with regard to adultery's link to shame and pollution. First, whatever its implications for the way adultery was penalized in ancient Israel, ³⁷ this passage falls short of providing support for the Mediterranean model of honour and shame. It gives no reason to suppose that the anger of the jealous husband is provoked by the damage done to his reputation rather than by the more general outrage any person may feel when their ‘property’ has been violated. If anyone suffers disgrace it is the adulterer, not the cheated husband (Prov. 6.33). Second, as far as pollution is concerned, Proverbs does not contradict but complements the picture painted by the legal texts. The fact that adultery undermines order and endangers the community does not preclude the husband's feeling of rage and his active participation in what follows.

Another pointer in the same direction is the description of illicit sexual actions as ‘folly in Israel’ in a number of legal and narrative texts (Gen. 34.7; Deut. 22.21; Judg. 20.6, 10; 2 Sam. 13.12; cf. Jer. 29.23). This phrase indicates strong disapproval of unacceptable sexual behaviour and likely reflects conventional moral convictions. As John Barton has convincingly argued, such convictions rest on the belief in the existence of a moral order in the universe. ³⁸ Therefore sexual propriety would be behaviour which conforms to and affirms this order, while sexual offences, such as adultery, are foolish behaviour which goes against it. To go against the order of the world is to invite disaster. This is well demonstrated by the one occasion on which the phrase ‘folly in Israel’ is used to describe an offense that has nothing to do with sex, namely Achan's violation of the herem (Josh. 7.15). An act of folly brings curse on the community, and unless it is dealt with properly, it results in destruction.

5. Shame and Pollution

This brings us to the question about the relationship between shame and pollution. The two are certainly linked, as can be seen from the fact that the Hebrew Bible uses the terminology of purity and pollution to express the concept of honour and disgrace (Ezek. 36.22–30). To damage God's reputation is to ‘profane his holy name’. ³⁹ Parker argues that in ancient Greece sexual offences, like adultery, must be regarded as ‘metaphorical moral pollution’. The female adulteress, much like the deserter, was excluded from religious life not because her pollution was regarded as contagious and dangerous on the supernatural level, but because she was disgraced and consequently her standing in society was compromised. ⁴⁰ Here again the language of pollution is used to describe a state of dishonour, pointing to a possible link between these two concepts. As mentioned above, in a similar vein the daughter's defilement of her priestly father in Lev. 21.9 has been interpreted as her undermining his honour.

Despite their connections, however, purity/pollution and honour/shame are notionally distinct. Honour, to use Malina's definition, has to do with a person's ‘claim to worth along with the social acknowledgment of worth’; ⁴¹ it is, in other words, a social construct, a commodity which depends on the opinion of others (plus possibly one's opinion of oneself). It is impossible to have shame if no one realizes that a shameful act has been committed. Pollution, on the other hand, is a force which is dangerous at a supernatural level, and does not require anyone to be conscious of it in order to be operative. It has a quasi-independent effectiveness, not linked to human knowledge and convictions, precisely because it results from a violation of created order. When used metaphorically to describe shame, pollution loses its supernatural destructive quality. In those cases its potential to bring harm derives from the negative opinion of others and the resultant social isolation, not from forces that emanate from the sphere of the divine. The texts discussed above suggest that adultery in ancient Israel was believed, at least in some circles, to be capable of supernaturally generating disaster.

A good example of the connection and distinction between these two notions is provided by the ‘law of jealousy’ in Num. 5.11–31. As the curse comes into effect (Num. 5.21–22) the guilty woman's ‘thigh will fall and belly will swell’, and when others become aware of this she will become ‘a curse and an oath’ in the midst of her people (Num. 5.21, 27). The two results are linked, yet distinct just as the two concepts are different. The pollution's power is activated by contact with the holy water and results in physical suffering for the woman. The shame is an additional punishment which only comes into play when the sin of the woman has become public knowledge and consists of derision and social isolation. Likewise, the pollution of the land leads to exile, and exile results in shame, as it gives other nations grounds for derision. Pollution is not shame, but the outworking of pollution brings shame.

6. Conclusion: Hosea, Adultery and Pollution

It seems that the reading of Hosea 1–3 as depicting Yahweh taking voluntarily shame upon himself by association with a disgraced woman is not well founded. In ancient Israel adultery did indeed bring shame, yet all the texts suggest that the shame belonged to the woman and her lover, not the husband. There is no evidence that ancient Israelites believed a wife's adultery undermined the masculinity of her husband and so destroyed his honour. The concern of most texts dealing with adultery revolves around its capacity to cause pollution. Adultery was believed to defile the people engaged in it and the land on which they lived, and consequently to bring destruction.

Such ideas are not far from the textual world of Hosea. The unfaithfulness of Israel is twice described with the metaphor of defiling (‭אמט‬) adultery (Hos. 5.3; 6.10). In Hos. 5.3–7 Israel's polluting deeds seem to have an almost autonomous existence as a power which separates the people from Yahweh, prevents them from returning to him, and leads to disaster. It may not be insignificant that the opening oracles of this section of the book (4.1–3) depict the disintegration of created order as the direct result of Israel's behaviour. Defilement caused by human sin has attacked the harmony of the world, and the earth, with all its creatures, languishes under the strain of its corrupting power. While language of pollution is not prominent in the opening chapters of the book, the conceptual framework stands in the background. This can be most clearly seen in Hos. 3.4, which, as Kruger has demonstrated, depicts the disorder of a society ‘deprived of everything crucial for meaningful political-religious survival’. ⁴² Here, as in 4.1–3, the outworking of pollution occasioned by Israel's adultery leads to the disintegration of order and the reign of chaos.

The focus of chs. 1–3, however, is not on the cosmic consequences of impurity but on the personal dimension of the broken and restored marriage relationship. The interest is neither in the polluting effect of the wife's unfaithfulness, nor in the disgraced status of her husband, but in the possibility that the relationship may be resurrected. ⁴³ The emphasis throughout is on Yahweh's actions aimed at healing the marriage and on the Israelites’ positive response to those actions (2.14–23 [MT 16–25]; 3.5). Each of the three main subsections reaches its conclusion and climax with the proclamation of the future transformation in the standing and attitude of the people. They become ‘children of the living God’ (1.10 [MT 2.1]), call Yahweh ‘my husband’ (2.16 [MT 18]) and ‘my God’ (2.23 [MT 25]), and return to ‘seek Yahweh their God and David their king’ (3.5). Yahweh's efforts in exposing the shame of his wife and then bringing her back to himself are motivated entirely by the desire to elicit such a response.

This focus on the personal aspect of the marriage helps to explain why the concept of quasi-impersonal pollution does not feature more prominently in chs. 1–3. It also explains why the issue of Hosea and Yahweh's potential humiliation is of no interest to the narrator. The text in its final form is designed to challenge the reader to respond to Yahweh's actions of judgment and redemption. It also serves as an assurance that the restoration will in fact take place at some point in the future. So, even though adultery was clearly associated with pollution in ancient Israel, reading the text in the light of this concept illuminates some of its aspects but is ultimately of limited usefulness. It is even less useful to read into it a notion of honour and shame that may not have even existed in this precise form during the time of its compilation.