Hos 7:14:
they gashed themselves.
The Masoretic Text has yitgoraru, meaning uncertain. This translation
reads, with the Septuagint, yitgodadu, the shape of the Hebrew letters
for r and d being quite similar. Gashing oneself was a form of
imprecating the gods, as in the story of the prophets of Baal at Mount Carmel
in 1 Kings 18. (Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible, 3 vols. [New York: W. W.
Norton & Company, 2019], 2:1222)
Hos 7:15:
I braced. The received
text says “I afflicted,” yisarti, but this translation, like that of the
New Jewish Publication Society, reads instead yisadti, which can mean
“to make firm.” (Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible, 3 vols. [New York: W.
W. Norton & Company, 2019], 2:1222)
Hos 7:16:
to what is worthless. The
Hebrew has two unintelligible monosyllabic words, lo’ ʿal (not above?).
The translation reads with the Septuagint and the Syriac labliyaʿal. (Robert
Alter, The Hebrew Bible, 3 vols. [New York: W. W. Norton & Company,
2019], 2:1222)
