The metaphors in Hosea are rich and varied, comprising both gendered and non-gendered image fields. This book examines the use of metaphor in Hosea through the lens of masculinity studies, which provides a means to elucidate connections between the images and to analyze their cumulative rhetorical effect. The rhetoric of both the gendered and non-gendered imagery is analyzed using a model from cognitive anthropology, which divides social space along three axes: activity, potency, and goodness. People use metaphors to position and to move one another within this space. These axes reveal how the metaphors in Hosea rhetorically relate the audience, represented by Ephraim/Israel, and YHWH to a particular construction of masculinity. Hosea uses the imagery of Assyrian treaty curses to reinforce YHWH's masculinity and dominance, while undermining the masculinity of the audience. The rhetoric of the text attempts to bring the audience into an appropriately subordinate position with respect to YHWH and to shape its members' actions and attitudes accordingly.

Sharon Moughtin-Mumby explores the complex, and potentially subversive, power of metaphor as a tool of persuasion in the prophetic books of the Hebrew Bible. Often such language is used to speak of the worship of gods other than Yhwh, of undesirable cultic practices, or of political alliances with foreign nations. Evaluating several schools of language and biblical criticism, including a Traditional approach, a Feminist critique and a Literary-historical investigation, Moughtin-Mumby brings lucid new readings with a fresh perspective to these dramatic texts. The study emphasises the importance of context for understanding metaphorical meaning and challenges previous scholarship which has read such language in terms of the traditional concept of 'the marriage metaphor' and the hypothetical background of cultic prostitution.

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The book of Hosea is a labyrinth of juxtaposed images for God and God’s people, with such disparate metaphors as God the devouring lion and God the reviving dew. In Hosea’s God: A Metaphorical Theology, Mason D. Lancaster demonstrates that recent advances in metaphor theory help untangle these divergent portrayals of God. He analyzes fifteen metaphor clusters in Hosea 4–14 individually, then discerns patterns and reversals between the clusters. Finally, respecting the ancient value for emphasizing individual aspects of a depiction over a homogenized picture of the whole, the book identifies five characteristics of God prominent among the metaphors of Hosea. Based on this analysis, Lancaster asserts that Hosea’s metaphorical depiction of Yahweh ultimately derives from the primacy of Yahweh’s fidelity to Israel.

The study of the images in the book of Hosea has always been dominated by a single semantic field - family life. Nwaoru adopts a more comprehensive approach which points to the conclusion that all Hosea's images (metaphors and similes) are essentially functional literary devices and, therefore, indispensable for the overall understanding of Hosea's message. More than other aspects of Hosea's language and style his images succinctly define Jahweh's mood and Israel's behaviour. They set the dynamism of the oracles and the complications along which the prophetic message develops.This study also challenges the view that Hosea uncritically draws his images from other traditions. Close observation shows that Hosea not only creates most of his images but also introduces them into biblical tradition.

Keefe's analysis dismantles the androcentric and theological assumptions which have determined the dominant reading of Hosea's metaphor of Israel as the adulterous wife of God. It shows how the projection of symbolic associations of women with nature, sexual temptation and sin have anachronistically determined this metaphor as referring to Israel's apostasy in a lurid 'fertility cult'. Against this reading, Keefe's study considers Hosea 1-2 in the context of the association of sexual transgression and social violence in biblical literature; in this light, Hosea's symbol of Israel as an adulterous woman is read as a commentary upon the structural violence in Israelite society which accompanied the eighth century boom in 'agribusiness' and attendant processes of land consolidation.

Highly regarded Old Testament scholar John Goldingay offers a substantive and useful commentary on Hosea through Micah and explores the contemporary significance of these prophetic books. This volume, the first in a new series on the Prophets, complements the successful series Baker Commentary on the Old Testament: Wisdom and Psalms (series volumes have sold over 55,000 copies). Each series volume is both critically engaged and sensitive to the theological contributions of the text. Series editors are Mark J. Boda and J. Gordon McConville.