328 JILL MIDDLEMAS statements are included in a rhetorical arsenal that rejects idolatry as well as the manufacture of an image of the deity. Moreover, the state- ments about the lack of divine equivalence form an inclusion around themes important within the first section of Second Isaiah. These statements are concerned with the inability of other deities fashioned as lifeless idols to do anything, and with the idolatry of human beings in making images of God contrasted with the creating activity of an- cient Israel’s deity — who is Creator, Redeemer, and the God of His- tory. Many of these themes resonate with those found in the Creation account in Genesis, but Second Isaiah’s incomparability represents an alternative to the bestowing of the divine image in the priestly pas- sages. This raises a question of comparability. If nothing can be con- structed physically to be compared to the divine, what can be said of comparable mental images? Although the prophetic literature reveals a reluctance to fixing the image of God, the use of comparison does suggest, paradoxically, that various images can represent the deity. How the concepts of incompa- rability and comparability interrelate to resist the stabilization of the divine image requires more thought. We will concentrate our attention on the use of modelling similes found in conjunction with God (as yHWH or ~yhla) or the divine first person, where the deity is said to be like something else. Divine similes in the prophets, where the comparative appears in conjunction with the deity, occur with the tetragrammaton (yHWH) in Isa 40,10-11 and 42,13-14, with visions of the presence of the deity (hwhy dwbk or larfy yhla dwbk) in Ezek 1,26, 28; 8,2, and by the divine first person “I” (yna, ykna) in Hos 5,12.14; 14,9[8], or through the expressed use of the verb hyh “to be” as in Hos 13,7; 14,6[5] 34. The rarity of comparative expressions of the deity and the Cf. S.J. DILLE, Mixing Metaphors. God as Mother and father in Deutero-Isaiah (JSOTSS 398; London 2004) 108-112; H. CLIffORD, “Deutero-Isaiah and Monotheism”, Prophecy and the Prophets in Ancient Israel (ed. J. DAy) (LHBOT 531; New york 2010) 267-289. 34 There are other similes used of the deity in Hosea, but those chosen here are distinguished by their rhetorical form. Other similes compare God’s appearing to the dawn, showers, spring rains (6,3), or the expression is slightly different as in 11,10; 13,7b-8. Arguably, the examples from 11,10; 13,7b-8 add to the evi- dence being gathered here in that the verbs express the comparison of the deity with an animal who roars like a lion (11,10) and who delivers recompense like a leopard who lurks at the roadside, with a she-bear robbed of her cubs, with a lion that devours, and with a wild animal that mangles (13,7b-8). Hos 11,10 and 13,7b-8 also appear in anti-idol contexts; see 11,2.5.7.9 and 13,1-3. for