Hosea 2:3

Lest I strip her naked So far the punishment of the adulteress agrees with that customary among the Germans (Tac. Germ.§§ 18, 19). But the punishment of the Hebrew adulteress is not intended to stop here; death was the penalty she had to fear death by strangling, according to the Rabbinical explanation of Leviticus 20:10; Deuteronomy 22:22, death by stoning, according to Ezekiel in a passage which alludes to the present (Ezekiel 16:39-40, comp. John 8:5). But the prophet speaks here of neither form of punishment, but of death by thirst in the desert. The meaning of the allegory is, that the people of N. Israel shall be put to open shame, and deprived of the rich temporal blessings vouchsafed to them. At the beginning of Israel's history, we see her, as it were, a homeless wanderer in the wilderness, with nothing either in her nature or in her surroundings to promise a longer existence than was enjoyed by many another of the Semitic pastoral tribes (comp. Ezekiel 16:5), and the close of her history, says the prophet, shall present an exactly similar picture. Observe in passing how nearly the ideas of -land" and -people" cover each other in the mind of Hosea. In fact, in the mythic stage of religion (from which Hosea's countrymen had not as yet for the most part emerged), it was the land which was imagined as in direct relation to the deity, the people being only so related in virtue of their dwelling in the land. They were in fact the children of the land (comp. Ezekiel 14:15 -bereave it," viz. the land); nationality, land, and religion were three inseparable ideas. Hence, though Hosea begins with the figure of disclothing, he glides insensibly into forms of expression appropriate to a land. -Lest I make her as the wilderness, and set her as a dry land, and slay her with thirst." The latter expression could of course be used of a wanderer in the desert, but was also allowable of a desolate region (see Ezekiel 19:13, and comp. Koran 30:18).