Hosea 2:7-8

2:7 Then she will pursue her lovers, but she will not catch ¹  them;

she will seek them, but she will not find them. ² 

Then she will say,

“I will go back ³  to my husband, ⁴ 

because I was better off then than I am now.” ⁵ 

Agricultural Fertility Withdrawn from Israel

2:8 Yet ⁶  until now ⁷  she has refused to acknowledge ⁸  that I ⁹  was the one

who gave her the grain, the new wine, and the olive oil;

and that it was I who ¹⁰  lavished on her the silver and gold –

which they ¹¹  used in worshiping Baal! ¹² 

¹ tn Heb “overtake” (so KJV, NAB, NASB, NRSV); NLT “be able to catch up with.”

² tn In the Hebrew text the accusative direct object pronoun אֹתָם (’otam, “them”) is omitted/elided for balanced poetic parallelism. The LXX supplies αὐτους (autous, “them”); but it is not necessary to emend the MT because this is a poetic literary convention rather than a textual problem.

³ tn Heb “I will go and return” (so NRSV). The two verbs joined with vav form a verbal hendiadys. Normally, the first verb functions adverbially and the second retains its full verbal sense (GKC 386-87 §120.d, h). The Hebrew phrase אֵלְכָה וְאָשׁוּבָה (’elkhah vÿ’ashuvah, “I will go and I will return”) connotes, “I will return again.” As cohortatives, both verbs emphasize the resolution of the speaker.

⁴ tn Heb “to my man, the first.” Many English translations (e.g., KJV, NAB, NRSV, TEV) take this as “my first husband,” although this implies that there was more than one husband involved. The text refers to multiple lovers, but these were not necessarily husbands.

⁵ tn Or “because it was better for me then than now” (cf. NCV).

⁶ tn Or “For” (so KJV, NASB); or “But” (so NCV).

⁷ tn The phrase “until now” does not appear in the Hebrew text, but is supplied in the translation for the sake of clarity and smoothness.

⁸ tn Heb “she does not know” (so NASB, NCV); or “she does not acknowledge.”

⁹ tn The 1st person common singular independent personal pronoun אָנֹכִי (’anokhi, “I”) is emphatic, since the subject of this verbal clause is already explicit in the verb נָתַתִּי (natatti, Qal perfect 1st person common singular: “I gave”).

¹⁰ tn The phrase “that it was I who” does not appear in the Hebrew text here, but is supplied in the translation for the sake of clarity.

¹¹ sn The third person plural here is an obvious reference to the Israelites who had been unfaithful to the Lord in spite of all that he had done for them. To maintain the imagery of Israel as the prostitute, a third person feminine singular would be called for; in the interest of literary consistency this has been supplied in some English translations (e.g., NCV, TEV, CEV, NLT).

¹² tn Heb “for Baal” (so NAB, NIV, NRSV); cf. TEV “in the worship of Baal.”