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Is there any possibility that בַּעְלִּי can be read as NOT being masculine?

Posted: Mon Feb 10, 2020 11:05 am
by Ruminator
[Hos 2:16 NLT] (16) When that day comes," says the LORD, "you will call me 'my husband' instead of 'my master.'

Is it remotely possible that "mistress" was intended instead of "my Ba'al/Master"?

Is the Hebrew form explicitly masculine? (I don't read Hebrew at all).

בַּעְלִֽי

Re: Is there any possibility that בַּעְלִּי can be read as NOT being masculine?

Posted: Mon Feb 10, 2020 2:30 pm
by talmid56
No possibility whatsoever, Ruminator. “Mistress” would be בַּעֲלָה, for starters (The feminine occurs in 1 Kgs. 17:17, in the construct), while the form in Hosea is from בעל. In his discussion of the declension of feminine nouns ending in qamatz-he ָ, Mansoor notes: “The pronominal suffixes are the same as those used with masculine nouns. In the singular, the ה is changed into ת before the suffixes are added.” (Menahem Mansoor, Biblical Hebrew Step by Step, Vol. 1, 149; 2nd ed., 1988) Thus, “my mistress” would be בעלתי, not בעלי.

Just out of curiosity, and meaning no offense, but why are you here if you don’t read any Hebrew? Are you studying Hebrew at all? If not, you would benefit more from the forum if you started.

Re: Is there any possibility that בַּעְלִּי can be read as NOT being masculine?

Posted: Sun Mar 01, 2020 2:32 pm
by ducky
There is also a pun here

1. He will be called אישי and not בעלי
since the usage of אישי has the meaning of affection and love while the usage of בעלי has the meaning of "master"
And comes to say that the people would worship God not from fear but from love

2. the בעלי fit the usage of the foreign god בעל which the people used to worship as well, and that the people would remove it from their speech (as in their worships).
and that is linked to the context when it talks about this kind of forbidden worships.

Re: Is there any possibility that בַּעְלִּי can be read as NOT being masculine?

Posted: Sun Mar 01, 2020 2:53 pm
by Ruminator
Thank you Dewayne and David for the helpful responses.

I posed this question in pursuing a rather odd, even for me, line of inquiry on Quora:

https://www.quora.com/Does-Hosea-2-16-t ... ll-Ross-22

I still think there may be something to the idea but the responses I received here don't affirm it so I've dropped it for now.

Re: Is there any possibility that בַּעְלִּי can be read as NOT being masculine?

Posted: Sun Mar 01, 2020 3:13 pm
by ducky
I just read the question in the title
and the answer is No.

They didn't call God "Ba'al"
(Notice that this sentence is a pun which goes in two ways)

The people used to worship God and also worship the "ba'als" (a few foreign gods)
And so, it is said that the people would leave their forbidden worship so much that they would not even put its name on their mouth
As it is said in the next verse.

reminding an example that ירבעל was called ירבשת as the word בעל was changed to בשת

Re: Is there any possibility that בַּעְלִּי can be read as NOT being masculine?

Posted: Sun Mar 01, 2020 3:19 pm
by Ruminator
ducky wrote:I just read the question in the title
and the answer is No.

They didn't call God "Ba'al"
(Notice that this sentence is a pun which goes in two ways)

The people used to worship God and also worship the "ba'als" (a few foreign gods)
And so, it is said that the people would leave their forbidden worship so much that they would not even put its name on their mouth
As it is said in the next verse.

reminding an example that ירבעל was called ירבשת as the word בעל was changed to בשת
So did they address Yah as "my master (ba'al)"? In my post I wonder if he doesn't mind them calling him "my master (ba'al)" but he does mind the other names of Ba'al. But he's going to have them call him "my Husband" in the future so there will be no overlap with Ba'al at all.

Re: Is there any possibility that בַּעְלִּי can be read as NOT being masculine?

Posted: Sun Mar 01, 2020 3:47 pm
by ducky
You need to understand the full context and style

the allegory that is presented here is about husband and wife
(it appears a few times in the bible, when God is the husband and Israel is His wife)

And you can see it in Hosea too
(read the previous verses)

And this is how the relationship in allegory.

And so this verse (which continues this allegory) define the relationship terms of אישי and אשתי instead of בעלי and אשתי

(both terms are Hebrew terms for "husband and wife"
only that the אישי has a softer and more positive connotation

(by the way, a little note, decades ago, in the beginning of the state of Israel, there was a letter to the prime minister to make the form of אישי and אשתי as the formal term for husband and wife, instead of the more common בעלי - and that is because of the more positive connotation (it was rejected)

anyway, the בעלי in this verse touched two things
first, it refers to the relationship between God and Israel (in the allegory of husband and wife)

and then, by a "ricochet," it touches also the context of the next verse that talks about the foreign gods which are titled בעל

So you need to look at that verse in that dual way

1. the relationship
2. the case of them worshipping the Ba'al together with God up to the point that even when they worshipped God, they also did it in the same rituals that the Ba'al was worshipped

But they didn't call God in the name "ba'al"

Re: Is there any possibility that בַּעְלִּי can be read as NOT being masculine?

Posted: Sun Mar 01, 2020 3:52 pm
by talmid56
Bill, at the end of your Quora query you said:
Hosea 2:8 and Zephaniah 1:4 are both feminine forms of ba’al:

[Hos 2:8 NLT] (8) She doesn't realize it was I who gave her everything she has--the grain, the new wine, the olive oil; I even gave her silver and gold. But she gave all my gifts to Baal.

[Zep 1:4 NLT] (4) "I will crush Judah and Jerusalem with my fist and destroy every last trace of their Baal worship. I will put an end to all the idolatrous priests, so that even the memory of them will disappear.
In the Hebrew, neither passage used a feminine form of Ba'al. Both used בעל. Neither has a He on the end, which would be needed to make it feminine.

(Note: in the Hebrew text there is a difference in verse numbering. Hos. 2:8 is verse 10 in the Hebrew.)

Yes, the Septuagint passage you quoted used a feminine article with Baal, but this is just a construct of grammar. The Septuagint often does things in an odd way.

Re: Is there any possibility that בַּעְלִּי can be read as NOT being masculine?

Posted: Sun Mar 01, 2020 9:07 pm
by ducky
in those verses, that you quoted above, the Ba'al is not referred to as a feminine form.

The "She" in that verse is Israel.
it is part of the allegory of husband and wife (it starts in the previous verses)
and the text is written in that manner

and the "she" that gives everything to the Ba'al is the people who left God (the first husband) and cheated on Him with another man (Ba'al)

start reading from verse 4 - ריבו באמכם

and it is a continuation from chapter 1 which God compares His people to a cheating wife

*
The difference between the Septuagint and the MT is that the MT switches the "she" to "they" in the middle (and that happens sometimes in the Bible when there is a change like that)

and the Septuagint keeps it "she"

but it is not linked to the object Ba'al, but it is linked to the subject (the people/wife)

Re: Is there any possibility that בַּעְלִּי can be read as NOT being masculine?

Posted: Tue Aug 03, 2021 3:17 pm
by Ruminator
Perhaps because of the site being down, I never saw your response, David, so I apologize for not responding sooner. Thank you for your response.

I just reread the thread and am going to drop the whole thing. It appears that the Greek, which doesn't accurately reflect the Hebrew, threw a monkey-wrench into my already muddled mind.