THE PROPHETS, THE PRIESTHOOD, AND THE IMAGE Of GOD 335 carefully in conjunction with the deity in the Book of Hosea 59. Whereas ancient Israel is said to be something as well as to be like something, it is never said that “God is something” except when that idea is vague: “yHWH is the god of hosts, yHWH is [God’s] name” (12,6). However, on five occasions the deity is directly compared to some- thing with the comparative particle. These similes are not used to de- scribe, in the first instance, the deity’s actions as found in other pas- sages in which the appearance of the divine is likened to the dawn, the rain, and spring showers (6,3), where the divine voice is likened to the roaring of a lion (11,10), and where divine judgment is likened to the lurking of a leopard, a she-bear robbed of her cubs, a lion devouring its prey, or mauling by a wild animal (13,7b-8). Instead of describing the actions or exclusively the actions of God, the modelling similes by their rhetorical form suggest that they project an image of the divine. The five comparative expressions of the divine image in Hosea are: “I am like a moth/pus/maggots 60 [...] like a festering wound/ decay” (5,12); “I am/will be like a lion [...] like a young lion” (5,14); “I will become like a lion” (13,7a); “I will be like the dew” (14,6[5]); “I am like an evergreen cypress/ juniper tree” (14,9[8]). A verb estab- lishing the relationship between the vehicle and the tenor is found only twice in these descriptions (13,7; 14,6). Otherwise the relationship be- tween the deity and the vehicle or descriptor is made by apposition and the simile k. The form, “I like x” is a modelling simile and thus invites the interpreter to analyze the deity in conjunction with the sourcing concept or vehicle. As with metaphor, new thinking about the divine is generated by the expressions. All of the similes convey that God is something other: an illness of some sort, decay, animal preda- tors, a meteorological phenomenon, and flora/fauna. Some of these comparisons even stress that the deity is outside of human comprehen- sion altogether. In addition, all of the divine comparatives are consis- tent with yHWH’s statement that the deity is not human! In sharp con- referred to as male in the Book of Hosea except in negation or in the direct speech of the wife in chapters 1–3. 59 LABuSCHAGNE, “Similes”, observes that yHWH is never spoken of as directly equivalent to anything concrete, and this observation has been followed by many. 60 The MT has “moth” here, but others have seen different meanings or emendations. See, for example, G.R. DRIVER, “Difficult Words in the Hebrew Prophets”, Studies in Old Testament Prophecy (ed. H.H. ROWLEy) (Edinburgh 2 1957) 66-67; f.I. ANDERSEN – D.N. fREEDMAN, Hosea (AB 24; Garden City, Ny 1980) 412; SEIfERT, Metaphorisches Reden, 150-151.