Word: hosea
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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...every biblical book that opens with God commanding his prophet to go marry a prostitute. But this is exactly what the prophet Hosea is told to do at the outset of his biblical career. “The Lord said to Hosea: ‘Go get yourself a wife of whoredom and children of whoredom; for the land will stray from the following of the Lord.’” Few readers of this story have ever taken it literally, especially given that in the ensuing fourteen chapters of the book, Hosea’s problematic marriage...
...title is something of a misnomer in that it doesn’t reflect which character the book actually follows. Though Steinberg gives his due to Gomer, the wayward wife of Hosea, the book takes place within the mind of Hosea himself. “The Prophet’s Wife” thus follows the prophet from a contemplative childhood, through his apprenticeship as a scribe, and into his troubled marriage and adulthood. Ironically, and most unfortunately, due to the book’s arrested development, the story never does get to Hosea’s actual prophetic career...
...breathing literary life into Hosea, Steinberg asks several basic questions: What makes a person into a prophet? What character traits would one possess, and what sort of life would lead to such a calling? In Hosea’s case, the Bible is silent on his personal formation, allowing Steinberg a canvas upon which to freely project his own answers...
...Prophet’s Wife” uses an intriguing traditional character as the starting point for a meditation on the religious experience. For the protagonist of “As a Driven Leaf,” the conundrum is whether faith is possible in a rational world. For Hosea in “The Prophet’s Wife,” the question is how to live that life of faith, once one has chosen it. In both books, Steinberg adeptly uses tradition to pose contemporary questions...
...does not speak in this retelling of the Bible. Hosea’s words and actions stem from his own personal inclinations. In the Bible, God orders him to marry Gomer; in Steinberg’s book, the marriage comes about naturally. Likewise, Steinberg’s Hosea preaches from experience, not divine ecstasy. This is the story as a modern writer—uncomfortable with the idea of a too personal God and drawn to a materialistic understanding of human affairs—would tell it. Thus, even as Steinberg draws upon the Bible for his inspiration, he distances...