Hosea 6:2 New translation and explanation

[Em3ry]

The meaning was probable crystal clear at the time he wrote it.
Only now after thousands of years is the meaning unclear

[Kenneth Greifer]

Steve,

I am not sure why you think it sounds bad to have "seas" and "day" in the same quote because they sound similar in Hebrew. I think those words are used together in a few other quotes like Ezekiel 27:27, Amos 5:8, and Isaiah 63:11. I am sure there are more. Do they sound bad to you also?

Kenneth Greifer

[SteveMiller]

Hi Em3ry,
Forum rules are that you are supposed to sign with your first and last name.
Set up your signature under User Control Panel, and it will automatically be there.

Hi Kenneth,
It's not that it sounds bad, but that it is unnecessarily hard to understand. The problem is not that yomayim and yamim sound similar, but that they are spelled the same. I'm a member of Toastmasters to improve public speaking, and in it we are taught that when we write a speech, don't use a word with multiple meanings if the audience could be confused as to which meaning is meant. Use a similar but different word to avoid the confusion. In the 3 example verses you give, it is impossible to confuse "seas" for "days" and vice versa, so there is no problem with those.

[Kenneth Greifer]

Steve,

I don't think the rules of Toastmasters or any other modern writing rules apply to the Hebrew Bible. I can't check every quote in Hebrew, but I assume that there may be many quotes with similar sounding words or confusingly similar words. I can't say you are wrong or right for certain, but I doubt the Bible follows the rule you are describing. Maybe one of the better educated people will be willing to answer you, unlike me.

Kenneth Greifer

[SteveMiller]

Kenneth,
It's a common sense rule for any language. Toastmasters has chapters all over the world in many languages. Good communication is good communication.

[Kenneth Greifer]

Steve,
I suppose G-d or Hosea or whoever people believe wrote Hosea 6:2 was not a good communicator. Maybe that speaker should have joined Toastmasters, but it is too late now. I think it sounds perfectly ok the way I translate it, but no scholar here would ever talk to me, so I will never hear one of their opinions on anything I say. I think we should just agree to disagree. Maybe if a scholar type answered you, you might listen to one of them. I don't know if they can break the rule against commenting on one of my opinions. I doubt they can.

Kenneth Greifer

[Kenneth Greifer]

Steve,

I think we are both right. Everyone has their own made up rules for truth, and whatever fits our rules is truth. You have your rules and I have mine. We both have different truths that we like and that is good enough. I know this sounds bad, but it is about human truth and not real truth. Human truth is what matters and not real truth. If you want real truth, you won't find it here on B-Hebrew.

Kenneth Greifer

[kwrandolph]

Steve,
I suppose G-d or Hosea or whoever people believe wrote Hosea 6:2 was not a good communicator.

Or another possibility—we don’t know Biblical Hebrew that well. Even though I have read Tanakh through many times, I still get new insights into the language each time I read it through. And I admit that there are verses that I still don’t understand.

Another possibility is that somewhere along the line some copyist made a mistake. However, the earliest example we have of this verse is the MT, we have no evidence of a mistake.

…I think it sounds perfectly ok the way I translate it, but no scholar here would ever talk to me, so I will never hear one of their opinions on anything I say. … Maybe if a scholar type answered you, you might listen to one of them.

Actually, your opinions are sometimes rather strange, and we don’t really know how to answer you without just saying that you need to learn more Hebrew. Other times your opinions are eisegesis, reading into the text what exegesis can’t find. For those of us who work from exegesis, the ideas concocted from eisegesis often appear strange, even weird.

… Kenneth Greifer

Steve,

I think we are both right. Everyone has their own made up rules for truth, and whatever fits our rules is truth. You have your rules and I have mine. We both have different truths that we like and that is good enough. I know this sounds bad, but it is about human truth and not real truth. Human truth is what matters and not real truth. If you want real truth, you won't find it here on B-Hebrew.

Kenneth Greifer

If there isn’t “real truth”, otherwise called “objective truth”, then why waste time here on B-Hebrew? We are here discussing difficult passages and other linguistic questions looking for the objective truth of the language. Do you suppose that the reason we have difficulty following your opinions, is because your opinions don’t follow the objective truths known of the language and Tanakh? How does one respond to what appears to be weirdness?

Karl W. Randolph.

[Kenneth Greifer]

Karl,

Eisegesis or exegesis are just opinions. That really depends on your religious beliefs usually.

Weird or strange opinions can easily be answered by saying what you think is wrong. I listen to people's opinions and I don't attack them for disagreeing. If they have a good point, then I accept that I made a mistake. (I might forget to mention that I realized that you are right, but that does not mean I ignored what you said.)

I have had many stupid and/or crazy ideas, but I think that is how you get good ideas. You have to go through stupid ones to get to the good ones. How can a person learn if people can't discuss different opinions? That is why this is called a discussion forum.

Do you only have good ideas and are all of your opinions exegesis? Some people might disagree with you, but they won't say anything because they might think your opinions are weird too. I usually just present alternatives, but I don't say they must be accepted by everyone else, and everyone must bow to me or something like that.

Kenneth Greifer

[kwrandolph]

Karl,

Eisegesis or exegesis are just opinions.

Not so.

Exegesis is using the objective linguistic tools to decipher the meaning of a sentence.

Eisegesis is giving a personal interpretation, then insisting that that’s what a sentence means. It’s reading into a sentence what a person thinks should be there, not what can be readily recognized from just an objective reading of the sentence.

Weird or strange opinions can easily be answered by saying what you think is wrong.

It’s often easier just not to answer.

Do you only have good ideas and are all of your opinions exegesis?

I have thrown out ideas that I’ve had to retract. I retract when others present good objective linguistic clues that show that I’m wrong. But because I try to be careful to use only exegesis when discussing the linguistics of Biblical Hebrew, I don’t have to retract very often.

Deciphering a language, especially an ancient one in which we have no native speakers to interview, is somewhat of an art depending on the skill of the researcher as well as a science, therefore there can be some disagreements. However, the use of basic techniques using objective linguistic tools, exegesis among them, can be agreed upon.

One of the objective tools is to look at how a word is used elsewhere and apply it to a sentence in question, with the exception when there are clues in the immediate context that indicates a different reading. In Hosea 6:2, the word מימים is used: in none of its other uses in Tanakh are seas referenced. Where I take issue is that nowhere else does it mean “after two days”. Every other use has the meaning of “days later”, which can include even many years (Joshua 23:1), and there’s nothing the immediate context that I see that indicates a different reading in this verse, so I say we should go with that.

Karl W. Randolph.