How did these words affect the women who heard them? While Ezekiel's harsh words are metaphoric, and the words of Isaiah are not so terrible, how were these misogynistic passages taken by their audience? Were women reminded of the brutal fate that could await them if they too behaved so inappropriately? How do Ezekiel's words reflect the views and attitudes of the men of ancient Israel? It seems clear that rage and sexuality are integrally linked in the prophet's mind. For Ezekiel, male rage seems to serve a sexual function, providing release and even pleasure. In Ezekiel's writing, rage and sexual desire have fused. The women condemned have extraordinary sexual appetites, and the graphic, nearly pornographic descriptions of their activities are indicative of the sexual fantasies of the prophet. The rage against the women and punishment of them is the culmination of the fantasy. It seems feasible that this trend was not limited to Ezekiel alone and that the women who heard these words were aware of similar men within their own lives.
Hosea 2:1-20
Like the passages in Ezekiel, Hosea 2:1-20 reveals the harsh punishment of a city, specifically Samaria, as woman and adulteress. This passage, like Isaiah 3, combines reality and metaphor. Just as Isaiah spoke of the daughters of Zion in a real and a metaphoric sense, Hosea speaks of his wife Gomer as both a woman and, metaphorically, as Samaria. In Hosea, Samaria is accused of whoring and adultery. There is an insinuation of participation in a sexual cult. Apostasy as well as adultery is her crime. Her sexual appetites border on bizarre, and are clearly, as J.C. Exum suggests, "a male fantasy of female desire." Her punishment, as has been seen in all of these texts, is to be stripped naked; however, she will then die of thirst--a metaphor clearly related to drought in the land. He will enclose her within a wall of thorns and then leave her, alone and desolate, without the protection of a spouse. This brings to mind the daughters of Zion in Isaiah, who are left begging for just the name of a man, even willing to forfeit their rights to food and shelter.
Hosea, unlike Ezekiel, presents us with a private, domestic scene. The condemnation begins with a confrontation between the husband and wife, and his accusations of adultery. Not only is the woman accused of adultery, but as we have seen in Isaiah and Ezekiel, she is also accused of immodest dress, and thus, being stripped naked is a fitting punishment for her crime. Like the other women, both real and metaphoric, that have been the subject of this study, she has rich gold and silver, and like the others, has used her riches inappropriately, in idolatrous ways. The victim in this drama is not, however, the woman punished, but rather her husband. He is just in his rage, for what is his has been taken and used inappropriately. His wife has not obeyed the norms set by her society and his punishment of her is a simple matter of vengeance.
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