Texts in Conversation
Hosea 2 describes an unfaithful wife who resolves to return to her husband when her lovers fail her. Exegesis on the Soul, a Nag Hammadi text, quotes this sequence as part of its account of the soul’s prostitution.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Hosea 2:7
Hebrew Bible
2 “Plead earnestly with your mother (for she is not my wife, and I am not her husband), so that she might put an end to her adulterous lifestyle and turn away from her sexually immoral behavior. 3 Otherwise, I will strip her naked and expose her like she was when she was born. I will turn her land into a wilderness and make her country a parched land, so that I might kill her with thirst. 4 I will have no pity on her children because they are children conceived in adultery. 5 For their mother has committed adultery; she who conceived them has acted shamefully. For she said, ‘I will seek out my lovers; they are the ones who give me my bread and my water, my wool, my flax, my olive oil, and my wine.’ 6 “Therefore, I will soon fence her in with thorns; I will wall her in so that she cannot find her way. 7 Then she will pursue her lovers, but she will not catch them; she will seek them, but she will not find them. Then she will say, ‘I will go back to my husband, because I was better off then than I am now.’
Exegesis on the Soul 2:14
Nag Hammadi
Again, it is written in the prophet Hosea: “Come, go to court with your mother, for she will not be a wife to me, and I will not be a husband to her. I shall take away her harlotry from before me, and I shall take away her adultery from between her breasts. I shall strip her naked as on the day she was born, and I shall make her a wilderness like a waterless land, and I shall make her [yearn in childlessness]. I will not have compassion on her children, for they are children of harlotry, because their mother played the harlot and [acted shamefully to her children]. For she said, ‘I shall play the harlot to my lovers. They gave me my bread and my water, and my vesture and my garments, and my wine and my oil, and everything I had need of.’ Behold, therefore, I shall close them in so that she cannot run after her lovers. And when she seeks them but does not find them, she will say, ‘I shall go back to my former husband; I was better off then than now.’” ‒ (Hosea 2:2-7)
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Notes and References
“... Scripture is first employed, interrupting the narrative at the soul‘s prayer of penitence and petition, in a lengthy exegetical composition entitled ―On the prostitution of the soul‖ (129,5–131,13: the image of the unfaithful wife from Jeremiah 3, Hosea 2, and Ezekiel 16 is applied by the Holy Spirit to the prostitution of the soul and interpreted as the soul‘s defilement by ―the domain of the flesh and the perceptible realm and the affairs of the earth‖; Paul‘s command not to associate with prostitutes [1 Corinthians 5,9] is taken as a summons to struggle against evil spiritual powers). ...”
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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