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NASB | Hosea 4:12 My people consult their wooden idol, and their diviner's wand informs them; For a spirit of harlotry has led them astray, And they have played the harlot, departing from their God. |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | Hosea 4:12 My people consult their [lifeless] wooden idol, and their [diviner's] wand gives them oracles. For a spirit of prostitution has led them astray [morally and spiritually], And they have played the prostitute, withdrawing themselves from their God. |
Bible Question (short): an injurious effect on the people ? |
Question (full): see TYRE and ZIDON. Phœnicia is now a land of ruins. It is in reference to this siege that the prophecy against Tyre in Isaiah, ch. 23, Ezek. 28:2–12 was uttered. See References below: Astarte was actually a warrior goddess of Canaan and Syria who is a Western Semitic counterpart of the Akkadian Ishtar worshipped in Mesopotamia. In the Egyptian pantheon to which she was officially admitted during the 18th Dynasty, her prime association is with horses and chariots. On the stela set up near the sphinx by Amenhotep II celebrating his prowess, Astarte is described as delighting in the impressive equestrian skill of the monarch when he was still only crown prince. In her iconography her aggression can be seen in the bull horns she sometimes wears as a symbol of domination. Similarly, in her Levantine homelands, Astarte is a battlefield goddess. For example, when the Peleset (Philistines) killed Saul and his three sons on Mount Gilboa, they deposited the enemy armor as spoils in the temple of "Ashtoreth" Like Anat, she is the daughter of Re and the wife of the god Seth, but also has a relationship with the god of the sea. From the woefully fragmentary papyrus giving the legend of Astarte and the sea we learn that Yamm, the sea god, demanded tribute from the gods, particularly Renenutet. Her place is then taken by Astarte called, in this aspect, "daughter of Ptah". The story is lost from that point on but one assumes this liaison resulted in the goddess tempering the arrogance of Yamm. It should also be noted that outside of Egypt, as well as being a warlike goddess, Astarte seems to have had sexual and motherhood attributes. http://www.touregypt.net/godsofegypt/astarte.htm The religion of the Phœnicians, opposed to Monotheism, was of the forces of nature, and in its most philosophical shadowing forth of the supreme powers it may be said to have represented the male and female principles of production. In its popular form it was especially a worship of the sun, moon, and five planets, or, as it might have been expressed according to ancient notions, of the seven planets—the most beautiful and perhaps the most natural form of idolatry ever presented to the human imagination. Their worship was a constant temptation for the Hebrews to Polytheism and idolatry— Because undoubtedly the Phœnicians, as a great commercial people, were more generally intelligent, and as we should now say civilized, than the inland agricultural population of Palestine. When the simple-minded Jews, therefore, came in contact with a people more versatile and apparently more enlightened than temselves, but who nevertheless, either in a philosophical or in a popular form, admitted a system of Polytheism, an influence would be exerted on Jewish minds tending to make them regard their exclusive devotion to their own one God, Jehovah, however transcendant his attributes, as unsocial and morose. The Phœnician religion had in other respects an injurious effect on the people of Palestine, being in some points essentially demoralizing. For example, it sanctioned the dreadful superstition of burning children as sacrifices to a Phœnician god. Again, parts of the Phœnician religion, especially the worship of Astarte, tended to encourage dissoluteness in the relations of the sexes, and even to sanctify impurities of the most abominable description. William Smith; revised and edited by F.N. and M.A. Peloubet, Smith’s Bible dictionary electronic ed., Logos Library System, (Nashville: Thomas Nelson) 1997. |