In this section, LJ [Leonard Jayawardena] took the position that "the blood of Jezreel" could not mean the bloodshed or massacre at Jezreel. In so doing, he arrogantly proclaimed himself more knowledgeable in biblical Hebrew than the various translators who so rendered it in Hosea 1:4. The following quotations from reputable versions clearly show that the Hebrew scholars who worked on these translations understood that the word דּם [blood] in this passage did mean bloodshed or massacre or some equivalent.

NKJV: For in a little while I will avenge the bloodshed of Jezreel on the house of Jehu....

NIV: (B)ecause I will soon punish the house of Jehu for the massacre at Jezreel....

NASB: (A)nd I will punish the house of Jehu for the bloodshed of Jezreel....

GNB: (B)ecause it will not be long before I punish the king of Israel for the murders that his ancestor Jehu committed at Jezreel....

NAB: I will punish the house of Jehu for the bloodshed at Jezrel....

HCSB: (F)or in a little while I will avenge the bloodshed of Jezreel on the house of Jehu....

REB: (F)or in a little while I am going to punish the dynasty of Jehu for the blood shed in the valley of Jezreel....

NWT:(F)or yet a little while and I must hold an accounting for the acts of bloodshed of Jezreel against the house of Jehu....

GOD'S WORD: In a little while I will punish Jehu's family for the people they slaughtered at Jezreel....

COMPLETE JEWISH BIBLE: (B)ecause in only a short time I will punish the house of Yehu for having shed blood at Yizre'el....

THE NEW JPS TRANSLATION: (F)or I will soon punish the house of Jehu for the bloody deeds at Jezreel....

I also checked two French versions (Segond and Bible du Semeur), and they rendered, respectively, the Hebrew expression blood of Jezreel as le sang versé à Jizreel [the blood shed at Jezreel] and des meurtres commis à Jizréel [murders committed at Jezreel]. As we go through LJ's attempt below to "prove" that "the blood of Jezreel" could not have meant bloodshed or massacre, readers have a choice: they can believe someone with an obvious inerrancy agenda or they can believe the many Bible scholars, like those quoted above, who dispute his claim. For me, the choice is a no-brainer.

As I continue through LJ's article, I will follow my previous procedure of coding his comments in blue so that readers can more easily determine who is saying what.

We just noticed that many scholars knowledgeable enough in Hebrew to work on translations of the Old Testament obviously thought that the blood of Jezreel did mean what LJ is now claiming that it couldn't have meant.

When concrete nouns are used idiomatically or figuratively, they are not "concrete" in those contexts. This should be obvious even to LJ if he would bother to read, say, the Psalms, where concrete words are often used figuratively in metaphoric expressions. In Psalm 18:2, for example, the writer said, "Yahweh is my rock." Although the word rock is a concrete noun, it was not being used concretely here but figuratively to convey the idea that Yahweh was his refuge or protector. Grape is a concrete word, but it was not used concretely in Julia Ward Howe's Battle Hymn of the Republic, which speaks of the Lord "tramping out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored." The song went on to speak of "the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword. Both lightning and sword are concrete nouns, but Howe obviously used them figuratively in this song to symbolize abstract ideas. Canaan was often referred to as "a land of milk and honey" (Ex. 3:8,17; 13:5; Num. 13:27; Deut. 6:3; etc.), but although milk and honey are both concrete nouns, they were being used figuratively in these passages, not to mean literal milk and honey, but fertility or abundance, which are abstract concepts. If concrete nouns like the ones in my examples could be used figuratively to mean something other than their literal meanings, then there is no reason why the Hebrew word for blood could not have also been used figuratively. Even LJ himself admitted earlier that blood was used figuratively in biblical passages that referred to "the blood of the grape," so if blood can be used figuratively in this way, why does he think that it could not have been used figuratively or idiomatically to mean murders or massacres?

Once again, then, we see that LJ's linguistic ignorance has forced him to grasp straws to try to find some kind of textual support for his far-fetched interpretation of Hosea 1:4. Although he has repeatedly shown his linguistic obtuseness, he apparently expects us to think that he is more knowledgeable in biblical Hebrew than those who translated the various versions of the Old Testament.

But the "physical place," as we have already seen in the case of Jerusalem, can be figuratively used to denote the people who were massacred there. If not, why not?

But it is certainly possible to murder people who lived in Jezreel, and that is exactly what Jehu did. We have noted above and in earlier sections of my replies to LJ, that the Hebrew word blood was used idiomatically to mean murder or massacre or bloodshed, so if a massacre occurred in a place named Jezreel, why could it not be referred to as "the blood of Jezreel"? As I showed above in quoting various translations of Hosea 1:4, many biblical scholars, far more knowledgeable in Hebrew than LJ, obviously did think that "the blood of Jezreel" meant the massacre at Jezreel.

In Part (3), I analyzed Isaiah's reference to "the blood of Jerusalem" to show that he clearly was referring to the blood of people who had been murdered in Jerusalem and not, as LJ absurdly claimed, to the "menstural blood" of the women of Jerusalem. According to what he said above "the blood of Jezreel" could have meant "the massacre that took place at Jezreel" only if it meant the massacre of a person called Jezreel, but that spin applied to Isaiah's reference to "the blood of Jerusalem" would have to mean the massacre of a person called Jerusalem. My analysis just linked to, however, clearly shows that Isaiah, who had made previous references to murders committed in Jerusalem was referring to the blood that had been shed in those murders.

"The blood of..." used in reference to a place could obviously mean blood that was shed in that place. The fact that the Old Testament used this expression only twice in reference to locations, i. e., Jezreel and Jerusalem, would mean only that biblical writers had seen no other needs to use the expression in this way. It certainly wouldn't mean that the expression could not be used to locate the place where blood was shed.

I will end this point with another reference that Hosea made to blood. In 6:8, he said, "Gilead is a city of evildoers, tracked with blood." The KJV says "polluted with blood." Either way, these are obvious references to blood that had been shed, undoubtedly by murder, in Gilead, so maybe LJ wouldn't mind answering a question for us. Since there had been widespread murder committed in Gilead, could the writer have referred to this as "the blood of Gilead" without meaning the murder of a person named Gilead?

If not, why not?

I will let LJ argue that with the many translators of the versions quoted at the beginning of this article, because they obviously did think that "the blood of Jezreel" meant the massacres or murders committed by Jehu at Jezreel. They, of course, had no agenda or bias to protect; they were just translating the Hebrew text. Furthermore, the fact that the KJV, ASV, and other versions translated "the blood of Jezreel" literally does not mean that the translators who worked on them did not think that דּם [blood] in this context meant bloodshed or massacre. Their desire for literalism could well have influenced their choice of words in English.

Is that so? And what is LJ's evidence of that "implied possessive genitive"? Hosea was obviously referring to blood that had been shed in Israel on a large scale. The REB, for example, translates the expression LJ is quibbling about as "one deed of blood after another." Even "bloodshed follows bloodshed" or "murder follows murder" in the versions that LJ quoted convey the idea of widespread bloodshed throughout the land, so it would hardly have been possible for Hosea to list in "genitives of possession" all of the people who had been murdered in Israel. If there is an "implied genitive of possession" in the text, it would mean only "the blood of all the people who have been murdered in Israel," so what substantial difference would there have been in saying that and what was actually written: And blood touches blood? Either one would have just been ways of saying that murder was running rampant in the land. That Hosea was making reference here to murder on a large scale in Israel is evident from the first verse of this chapter: "Hear the word of Yahweh, O people of Israel; for Yahweh has an indictment against the inhabitants of the land." These were not just isolated cases of bloodshed but bloodshed that was being committed by enough people in the land for a general indictment to be made.

Well, not exactly, for when language has to be inserted into a text, as LJ just did, it is no longer literal but rather an interpreter's attempt to explain it. Furthermore, "blood touches blood" is obviously an idiomatic and not a literal expression. It seems to have meant that murders had been committed in Israel one after the other. The murders were so frequent that one would follow on the heels of others, and in that sense one murder would "touch" the ones that had preceded it. In other words, a whole lot of blood had been shed.

No, Jezreel, as I have now noted several times in wading through LJ's desperate nonsense, was a place, not a person. The only persons named Jezreel were a descendent of Judah listed in 1 Chronicles 4:3 and Hosea's firstborn child, but there is no basis at all to think that the prophet was saying that the house of Jehu would be brought to an end for having shed the blood of Judah's descendant or of Hosea's son Jezreel. That leaves only the place called Jezreel as the point of reference, and its association with Jehu in the infamous massacre that occurred there is the most likely reason why Hosea said that "the blood of Jezreel" would be avenged on the house of Jehu. Understanding the reference in this way requires no verbal gynastics to grasp what the prophet meant.

Let LJ tell that to the translators of the many versions that I quoted at the beginning of this article to show that people very knowledgeable in Hebrew did think that "the blood of Jezreel" in Hosea 1:4 meant the shedding of blood in Jezreel.

No "conceivably" about it; that, as I have previously shown, is what it obviously did mean, except that it was an idiomatic expression and not a "short form." All LJ has accomplished in his endless rantings about "genitive possessives" and "concrete nouns" is to paint the prophet Hosea as a nincompoop who couldn't clearly communicate what he wanted to say.

We see LJ's desperation in this silly quibble. I know of no examples of where biblical writers ever referred to individual body parts in this way, probably because no such idioms existed in Hebrew, but there are numerous examples, as previously noted, where blood was used idiomatically to denote murder. Even LJ recognized this above, where he admitted that "substitution of 'murder' or 'massacre' for 'blood' in the expression 'the blood of …'" would be appropriate in the cases of "the blood of Naboth" and "the blood of all the servants of Yahweh." He has yet to give a sensible explanation for why the Hebrew idiom "the blood of..." could not mean the massacre of or murder of inhabitants when the term was applied to places like Jezreel and Jerusalem. As I previously showed in Part (3), "the blood of..." did have this meaning when Isaiah applied it to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. There is no reason, then, why LJ should think that it didn't mean the massacre of the inhabitants of Jezreel when the prophet so used it in Hosea 1:4.

Well, I will have to modify that statement. There is a reason why LJ would think that it didn't have that meaning in Hosea 1:4. He wants this verse to be compatible with 2 Kings 10:30, where Jehu was praised for having done what was right in the eyes of Yahweh when he destroyed the house of Ahab at Jezreel, so LJ has had to twist himself into a verbal pretzel to try to find some way to "explain" the discrepancy.

I am not at all sure what LJ meant here. If he were saying that I don't understand "the blood of Jezreel" to mean the blood of the inhabitants of Jezreel, i. e., the massacre at Jezreel, then he is very wrong, because that is exactly what I think it means. He should know that by now.

Oh, indeed I could, and I have, in fact, already done so. I explained here in my very first reply to LJ that Jezreel was the name of a valley as well as the name of the city within that valley, so "the blood of Jezreel" would have had reference to those who were killed outside of the city, such as the servants of Ahaziah, who were killed at Beth-eked, a shearing house located on the road from Jezreel to Samaria (2 Kings 10:12-14). Since they were in the valley of Jezreel at the time, they could appropriately be included in "the blood of Jezreel" that Hosea said would be avenged on the house of Jehu.

This view is reflected in some Bible versions, which referred to the blood shed in the valley of Jezreel rather than just to the blood of Jezreel.

NEB: (F)or in a little while I am going to punish the dynasty of Jehu for the blood shed in the valley of Jezreel.

REB: "The LORD said to Hosea, "Call him Jezreel, for in a little while I am going to punish the dynasty of Jehu for the blood shed in the valley of Jezreel, and bring the kingdom of Israel to an end."

CEV: Then the LORD said, "Hosea, name your son Jezreel, because I will soon punish the descendants of King Jehu of Israel for the murders he committed in Jezreel Valley."

NET: (I)n a little while I will punish the dynasty of Jehu on account of the bloodshed in the valley of Jezreel.

These versions show that some translators understood "the blood of Jezreel" in this verse to mean more than just the blood that was shed by Jehu within the city proper, and they also show that LJ was wrong in saying above that no one would extend "the blood of Jezreel" to include "Jehu's killings elsewhere."

LJ, of course, will say that these are not translations but interpretations, and he would be right in so saying, but Jezreel was sometimes used in the Bible to mean not the city but the valley of Jezreel. In 1 Samuel 29:1, for example, Saul, prior to the battle with the Philistines in which he was killed, "camped by the fountain in Jezreel," but this fountain was the spring of Harod, which was located on the eastern border of the valley of Jezreel on the north side of Mount Gilboa. The facts that Mount Gilboa in Hebrew meant "mountain of the bubbling fountain" and that the Philistines killed Saul in a battle at Mount Gilboa (1 Samuel 31:1-9) are rather clear indications that this spring on the eastern border of the valley was the place where Saul had camped prior to the battle. The writer of 1 Samuel, however, in putting its location in Jezreel, shows that the valley itself was sometimes referred to as just Jezreel and not the valley of Jezreel.

After the death of Saul, David was made king over Judah, but a splinter group opposed him and made Saul's son Isboshet king over Gilead, the Ashurites, Jezreel, Ephraim, and Benjamin (2 Samuel 2:8-9), but it is unlikely that Jezreel here meant only the city, because the others in the list of places were regions and tribal areas, not cities. Since, then, Jezreel was sometimes used to mean the whole valley region and not just the city, the translators of the versions quoted above understood that it had this meaning in Hosea 1:4. The fact that the prophet referred to "the valley of Jezreel" immediately after referring to "the blood of Jezreel" would give support to that opinion.

LJ, then, cannot say with any degree of certitude that "the blood of Jezreel" in Hosea 1:4 could not have referred to those whom Jehu had massacred outside of the city as well as those he had killed inside it. I will say more about translation vs. interpretations when I address below LJ's attempts to disregard the various Bible versions that clearly indicated that "the blood of Jezreel" referred to the people whom Jehu had massacred at Jezreel.

This "very simple and basic objection" comes much later in LJ's book-length attempt to salvage his spin on Hosea 1:4, so I will reply to it point by point later on when I come to it in my replies. Here, I will be brief and warn readers to look forward to more quibbling from LJ. He argued that "the blood of Jezreel" can't be appropriately applied to Jehu's massacre, because some victims of his massacre were not in Jezreel when they were killed. He tried to press this quibble far enough to excude even the murder of king Ahaziah of Judah, who had been visiting his uncle in Jezreel at the time of the massacre. The biblical account says that Ahaziah tried to flee from the massacre but was overtaken and wounded by Jehu's men at the ascent of Gur, after which he fled to Megiddo, where he died (2 Kings 9:27). In so doing, he even said that Megiddo wasn't in the vally of Jezreel, but when I come to his "very simple and basic argument," I will show that it is located on the western side of the valley and provide readers with links to maps that will verify this.

Since he lives in Sri Lanka, I assume that English is LJ's second language, so that would explain the vaguesness of his statement in bold print. I guess he meant to say that the blood of Jezreel belonged to a person called Jezreel, and so it is Jezreel's own blood. If not that, I don't know what he meant. The problem with his only possibility for the meaning of "the blood of Jezreel" is that Jezreel was a place, a city, and not a person. Hosea, of course, named his first child Jezreel, but saying that "the blood of Jezreel" in Hosea 1:4 meant the blood of this child would put a ridiculous meaning onto the expression. It would have Hosea saying that Yahweh was going to avenge on the house of Jehu the blood of a newborn child whose blood had not been shed. In his desperation, LJ has leaned over backwards to try to find some way to explain away the discrepancy in Hosea 1:4 and 2 Kings 10:30, but making "the blood of Jezreel" in the first of these verses refer to the blood or death of Hosea's recently born son, if that is what he intended, would be, quite frankly, ridiculous.

I see two possible meanings in LJ's ambiguous comments above. He may have been saying that Hosea's son Jezreel would someday in the future be killed because of the idolatry of the nation that Jehu's dynasty had presided over, and, in that sense, the dynasty would be responsible for the blood of Hosea's son Jezreel when he was killed, or he may have been stretching the name Jezreel to make it a person who symbolized the people of Israel who had been killed by the Syrians, but that too, as I have repeatedly pointed out, also puts a ridiculous spin onto the verse, because there is no contextual reason to think that Jezreel was being so used. If LJ would cite just one example of where the name Jezreel was unequvocally used to symbolize or represent the people of Israel, that would help his case, but despite my challenges here and here and here and here and elsewhere that he produce such an example, he has yet to do so.

This would mean nothing more than similar examples in the Bible, where the juice of grapes was figuratively referred to as "the blood of grapes" for probably no other reason but that the juice was red. Besides that, the passage that LJ cited makes no reference to "the blood of grapes"; it referred instead to the royal blood of the nobleman Lysias, whom Antiochus had put in charge of his kingdom from the Euphrates River to the border of Egypt. This was probably a mistake that LJ made, because 1 Maccabees does refer to "the blood of grapes" (6:34) in the context of training elephants to fight by showing them grape juice [the blood of grapes], but, as I just noted, this would have no more significance than the same expression that was figuratively used in the Bible.

Long before now, I began to wonder if LJ thought that he could strengthen his case by citing irrelevant information in order to drag his article out to a length that might induce some to confuse quantity for quality. The more his article drags out, the more I suspect that this was exactly why he has taken us into so many irrelevant tangents.

So what? By now, LJ has driven this point into the ground in order to prove nothing. I have repeatedly shown, and most recently here, that his understanding of the so-called genitive case is seriously flawed, because it does not always indicate possession or ownership. Rather than rehash my rebuttals, I will ask readers to go to Part 1 of my replies to review where I showed that the so-called genitive has a much broader function than the limited one that LJ has tried to put onto it. Here is just part of what I said.

In a prepositional phrase beginning with of, the object of the preposition can be the "owner" of the noun that is modified by the prepositional phrase. For example, in a phrase like "the wealth of John Doe," the object of the preposition, i. e, John Doe, would be the owner of "the wealth." When we examine LJ's "blood of..." chart in the next section of my reply, we will see him claiming that in all "blood of..." phrases in the Old Testament, the blood "belonged" to the noun that the phrase modified, and that it was almost always a "person," but that is simply not the case. I just used an example involving the noun wealth in which the "wealth" belonged to John Doe, the object of the proposition of, but if I had written, "John Doe is a man of wealth," no one, except maybe LJ, would argue that "the man" belonged to the noun "wealth." LJ's so called "genitive" expressions can be used to denote characterization or description as in, "He is a reader of books." The meaning here is certainly not that "the reader" belongs to the books; it simply describes an activity that the person habitually engages in. These expressions can sometimes denote the source, in the sense of where the object of the preposition originates, as in "the wrath of God." Here "God" doesn't belong to "the wrath"; the phrase simply means that the wrath came from or emanated from "God." I could cite other examples, but these are sufficient to show that LJ is certainly no authority on how what he calls "the genitive" is linguistically used. I will have more to say about this when I reply to LJ's chart in the third part of my reply.

Throughout his book-length article, then, LJ has been arguing from the false premise that the so-called genitive will always denote possession and that the objects of of in these phrases will own whatever the of-phrase modifies. That just isn't so. Jerusalem, for example, was not a living entity that had blood, and neither was Jezreel. "The blood of Jerusalem" and "the blood of Jezreel," then, could not have referred to blood that had emanated from these cities but rather to the blood of the people who had been killed in these places.

Well, actually, there are more than 10 that support my view. I just didn't quote all of them that rendered דּם as "bloodshed" rather than just the word blood. At the beginning of this article, I added the NASB, HSCB, God's Word, the Complete Jewish Bible, the New JPS, and two French versions, which all rendered "the blood of Jezreel" to mean the massacres or murders or some such at Jezreel. I could have quoted more.

As for the versions that support my view being interpretations and not translations, that just isn't so, for if the Hebrew word דּם [blood] could mean murder or killing, which it sometimes obviously did, as LJ himself admitted above, then it would be correct to so render it whenever the context indicated this meaning. I assume that LJ is at least bilingual, so he should know that literal translations don't always convey the same meanings in other languages. In English, for example, the word croak denotes the sound that a frog makes, but it can also be used idiomatically to mean to die. If one should literally translate into French the word croak in a context that meant to die, it would not make any sense to those who speak French. Likewise, in French the word crever, meaning to burst or break, can also be used in the sense of dying, but if one literally translated crever into English from a French context meaning to die, English speakers wouldn't understand it. First Samuel 24:3 tells of a time when Saul went into a cave to "cover his feet." English readers unfamiliar with Hebrew idioms will not understand this, but in Hebrew this expression meant "to defecate," undoubtedly because the robelike garments worn at that time would drop around the feet when one squatted to defecate. More sensible versions of the Bible recognized the problem here and translated the Hebrew with euphemistic expressions in English that would convey the same idea. The RSV, NRSV, NIV, NASB, and REB for example, says that Saul went into the cave "to relieve himself." The NKJV says that he went into the cave "to attend to his needs," and the NAB says that he entered the cave "to ease nature." Other modern translations use equivalent terms to express to English readers the meaning of the Hebrew idiom. These are not literal translations, but because they convey the meaning that would otherwise not be understood by most English readers, they are appropriate translations.

So it is with the many Bible versions that used "massacre," "murders," "bloodshed," or some such in Hosea 1:4. The context justifies these renditions in order to make the meaning clear to English readers not familiar with Hebrew idioms, so LJ is wrong to label them "interpretations," because translations that convey the intended meaning in another language are also appropriate, even though they are not literal translations.

And this proves what? LJ seems to think that if he copies the html codes for Hebrew alphabetic characters, this will dupe some readers into thinking he is an expert in Hebrew.

Instead of reinventing the wheel, I will refer readers to this section of Part 1, where I replied in detail to LJ's attempt to present himself as an expert on the nonexistent Hebrew genitive case. There is no need for me to keep beating a dead horse. I have repeatedly shown that his claim that the so-called genitive, i. e., prepositional phrases that begin with of, always shows possession or ownership is incorrect. The link above will show that it can describe or locate, among several other uses. Hence, "the blood of Jezreel" or "the blood of Jerusalem" locates the place where the blood was shed.

Ho, hum! The word blood was used idiomatically in Hebrew to convey the idea of murder. In the eye-for-an-eye society of ancient Israel, even if a person accidentally killed another person, the nearest of kin to the dead person was legally entitled to avenge the death by killing the "killer," so a system of refuge cities was established so that those who accidentally killed could flee there to take refuge. In establishing these cities, Numbers 35 warned that the person fleeing from the avenger of blood was safe only as long as he remained within the borders of a city of refuge. If he strayed outside and the avenger of blood killed him, the avenger would "not be guilty of blood" (v:27). Obviously, this text was saying that under these circumstances the avenger of blood would not be guilty of murder, so versions like the NIV and REB, which rendered דּם [blood] as murder in this verse, or the NAB, RSV, NRSV, and others, which used "bloodshed" or "bloodguiltiness" or some such, were correct in their translations, because all of these convey what the word דּם [blood] in Hebrew meant in this context.

There are therefore good reasons to translate "the blood of Naboth" as "the murder of Naboth" and "the blood of Jezreel" as "the massacre at Jezreel," because that is what the terms meant in the Hebrew contexts that LJ referred to.

I have shown repeatedly that it is a legitimate translation because the context justfies translating idioms into other languages with words that will be more understandable. Jehu massacred many people at Jezreel, so if the Hebrew language referred to that as "the blood of Jezreel," there would be nothing at all wrong with using "massacre" to translate it into English, because the word massacre will more accurate convey to English readers the idea of a massive slaughter than would the word blood.

Translators do not become interpreters when they use appropriate expressions to translate idioms into other languages in which the literal translations would not be understood, or when the meanings of the idioms are more accurately conveyed by using appropriate terms to translate idioms that may otherwise be misunderstood or inaccurately interpreted.

And readers should see from my detailed, point-by-point replies to LJ's gymnastic contortions that translators who used "bloodshed" or "murder" or "massacre" to translate דּם [blood] when the Hebrew contexts indicated these meanings acted responsibly in trying to make the meanings clear to English readers.

I may be wrong in this, but I suspect that LJ's credentials in Hebrew are very limited. If I am wrong, he can correct me on this and let us know where and when he studied Hebrew well enough to speak with authority on it. The fact that he is reproducing the Hebrew text in places is no indication of scholarship. Anyone can go to websites like Hebrew Keyboard and copy the alphabetic characters into html codes that will then print as Hebrew letters.

That aside, I find it rather ironic that he would say that "(s)cholarship should be appealed to only for purely technical matters, not for interpretation," when he himself has made frequent appeals to the Hebrew text and now even to the Greek text as he has done below.

I suspect that LJ's purpose in writing the paragraph above was to make readers think that he is also an expert in Koine Greek, when in reality he probably just copied the html codes for Greek letters from a website like ASCII Codes for the Greek Alphabet, but I see no need at all to waste time on his irrelevant reference to how a verse in New Testament Greek may be translated, especially since it isn't at all parallel to the problem in Hosea 1:4. In this verse, the problem centers on whether the Hebrew word for blood was at times used idiomatically and figuratively. If it could be--and there is no doubt at all that it could be--the problem about its translation would involve whether it was being used in a literal sense or in a idiomatic/figurative sense. The fact that blood was sometimes used figuratively is evident in such passages as Genesis 4:10, which has Yahweh telling Cain that "the blood of [his] brother cries to me from the ground." Blood, however, is not a living entity with a voice that could make any kind of noise that could be considered a "voice," so obviously the word was being used figuratively here. Even LJ can't argue that blood should have been translated literally in Hosea 1:4, because his spin on the verse centers around a claim that the word blood in this verse symbolically meant the blood of the children of Israel who had been killed by the Syrians. How the Greek text in James 1:17 should be translated isn't at all parallel to this.

I have said enough already to show that blood often meant murder or killing, so there is no need for me to rehash those arguments here. What LJ needs to do is show us just one example of where Jezreel was ever used symbolically to represent dead Israelites. Despite numerous appeals for him to do this, he has yet to do so.

Rather than analyze Isaiah 4:4 again, I will refer readers to my previous contextual analysis of this verse to show that the prophet had referred to the blood of Jerusalem in a broader context in which he had condemned the inhabitants of Jerusalem for various acts of immorality, which included the adoption of foreign customs, witchcraft, idolatry, lascivious conduct of females, and murder. The lascious conduct of women was referred to as "the filth of the daughters of zion," with no indication at all that it meant their uncleanness during their menstrual period. The blood, then, undoubtedly had reference to the "hands that were full of blood" (1:15), the murderers who were lodged in the city (1:21). Later references were made to "hands defiled with blood" (59:3) and "feet that rush[ed] to shed innocent blood" (59:7). There is no doubt at all that the author(s) of Isaiah thought that blood shed in murder was a serious moral problem in Jerusalem, so there is no reason at all to think that he was primarily concerned with the menstrual uncleanness of the women in Jerusalem. Women everywhere go through their menstrual cycles, so why would a biblical prophet have been more concerned with the uncleanness that it caused in Jerusalem than he would have been with menstrual cycles in all the other towns and cities of Israel?

Just a little bit of common sense should tell even LJ that his spin on Isaiah 4:4 is a preposterous distortion, for if he is right, the verse was saying something like this: And it shall come to pass that everyone who remains alive in Jerusalem will be called holy after Yahweh has washed away the filth of the menstrual uncleanness of the women in the city. If LJ is correct in saying that "the filth of the daughters of Zion" and "the blood of Jerusalem" were the same thing, i. e., menstrual uncleanness, then this is what the verse would have to mean, because these were the only two things that the verse said that Yahweh would wash away and purge from the city. I think any reasonable reader can see from Isaiah's constant raving about the sins of the people that LJ's spin is too unlikely to give even passing consideration to.

Yes, the superstitious Hebrews had this hangup about female menstrual cycles, which are a perfectly normal part of the reproductive cycle, but as I asked above why would Isaiah have been any more concerned about the ceremonial uncleanness of women in Jerusalem than he would have been about the same uncleanness in the other towns and cities of Israel? The fact is that he wasn't at all upset about the menstrual cycles of the women of Jerusalem. It was their sexual promiscuity that he prophesied against.

I suppose that readers noticed how LJ is now trying to play both sides of the street. He previously insisted that blood in Isaiah 4:4 was a concrete noun, but now he wants us to think that it "symbolized spiritual uncleannness." So which was it, a concrete noun or a symbol? If the latter, then he must acknowledge that blood in Hebrew was sometimes used figuratively, but once he admits this, all of his previous talk based on his blood chart when he rambled on and on about the concreteness of the word blood has been seriously compromised. Furthermore, his admission that blood was sometimes used figuratively in Hebrew punches some huge holes in his claim that translating דּם [blood] as "bloodshed" or "murder" or "massacre" is interpretation and not translation.

At best, it would have had to be women who personified Jerusalem, because the "proof text" LJ cited made reference to "the filth of the daughters of zion." As I have shown in my earlier analysis of the context of Isaiah 4:4, Isaiah was concerned with the profligacy of the "daughters of Jerusalem," who flaunted their beauty by "walking along with outstretched necks, flirting with their eyes, tripping along with mincing steps, with ornaments jingling on their ankles" (3:16), and it was the filth of the sexual promiscuity of "the daughters of Jerusalem" that he said would be removed along with the bloodshed, idolatry, witchcraft, and other "sins" of the people of Jerusalem.

Isaiah simply listed "the filth of the daughters of Jerusalem" and "the bloodstains of Jerusalem" as "sins" that Yahweh would remove from the city. The fact that they were both listed in this verse doesn't make them "parallel." In verse 4, he listed "bread" and "clothes" together in the appeal that women would make in their search for husbands during a time when males were scarce in the city.

In that day seven women will take hold of one man and say, "We will eat our own food and provide our own clothes; only let us be called by your name."

Does the listing of "food" and "clothes" together make them "parallel," i. e., the same thing?

In verse 2, Isaiah listed "the branch of Yahweh" and "the fruit of the land" that would become "the pride and glory" of Israel.

In that day the Branch of Yahweh will be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the land will be the pride and glory of the survivors in Israel.

Does the listing of these two together make them parallel or the same thing?

I could cite numerous other examples like these in the book of Isaiah, but these are sufficient to show that LJ is grabbing straws again in his frantic search for some way to support his spin on Hosea 1:4. The filth of the daughters of Zion was simply their promiscuity that Isaiah was obviously very upset about, and the bloodstains of Jerusalem were the murders that he spoke about often in his prophetic ranting.

The filth of the daughters of Zion was their sexual promiscuity, which Isaiah had ranted against at length in 3:16-24 (already quoted), and "the blood of Jerusalem" was the bloodshed of the people that he had also raved against in chapters 1 and 2. As I have said before, a fundamental principle of literary interpretation says that the words of a written text should be interpreted literally unless there are compelling reasons to assign figurative meanings, and as I have also pointed out, the desire to have inerrancy in the text is not a reason compelling enough to justify figurative interpretations.

In analyzing below LJ's attempt to make a passage in Lamentations a parallel reference to Jerusalem under the symbol of a menstruous woman, I will show that the superstitious Hebrews considered many things, such as bodily secretions, dead bodies, certain kinds of animals, etc., unclean and used the same word טמאה [tum'âh] to describe them. Readers should keep this in mind as LJ tries to base an argument on the fact that the "filthiness" that clung to the skirt of the city in Lamentations is the same word that was used in the book of Leviticus to denote menstrual uncleanness.

LJ apparently thinks that he can just cite a verse or two without even trying to show its content and readers will shout in admiration: Oh, wow, he cited a passage of scripture, so he must be right! Here is this passage in its broader context. I will italicize the two verses that LJ cited, and readers should be able to see that they in no way support his claim that "the filth of the daughters of Zion" in Isaiah 4:4 was menstrual blood.

How deserted lies the city, once so full of people! How like a widow is she, who once was great among the nations! She who was queen among the provinces has now become a slave. ² Bitterly she weeps at night, tears are upon her cheeks. Among all her lovers there is none to comfort her. All her friends have betrayed her; they have become her enemies. ³ After affliction and harsh labor, Judah has gone into exile. She dwells among the nations; she finds no resting place. All who pursue her have overtaken her in the midst of her distress. ⁴ The roads to Zion mourn, for no one comes to her appointed feasts. All her gateways are desolate, her priests groan, her maidens grieve, and she is in bitter anguish. ⁵ Her foes have become her masters; her enemies are at ease. Yahweh has brought her grief because of her many sins. Her children have gone into exile, captive before the foe. ⁶ All the splendor has departed from the Daughter of Zion. Her princes are like deer that find no pasture; in weakness they have fled before the pursuer. ⁷ In the days of her affliction and wandering Jerusalem remembers all the treasures that were hers in days of old. When her people fell into enemy hands, there was no one to help her. Her enemies looked at her and laughed at her destruction. ⁸ Jerusalem has sinned greatly and so has become unclean. All who honored her despise her, for they have seen her nakedness; she herself groans and turns away. ⁹ Her filthiness clung to her skirts; she did not consider her future. Her fall was astounding; there was none to comfort her. "Look, O Yahweh, on my affliction, for the enemy has triumphed." ¹⁰ The enemy laid hands on all her treasures; she saw pagan nations enter her sanctuary--those you had forbidden to enter your assembly. ¹¹ All her people groan as they search for bread; they barter their treasures for food to keep themselves alive. "Look, O Yahweh, and consider, for I am despised." ¹² "Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look around and see. Is any suffering like my suffering that was inflicted on me, that Yahweh brought on me in the day of his fierce anger? ¹³ "From on high he sent fire, sent it down into my bones. He spread a net for my feet and turned me back. He made me desolate, faint all the day long. ¹⁴ "My sins have been bound into a yoke; by his hands they were woven together. They have come upon my neck and the Lord has sapped my strength. He has handed me over to those I cannot withstand. ¹⁵ "The Lord has rejected all the warriors in my midst; he has summoned an army against me to crush my young men. In his winepress the Lord has trampled the Virgin Daughter of Judah. ¹⁶ "This is why I weep and my eyes overflow with tears. No one is near to comfort me, no one to restore my spirit. My children are destitute because the enemy has prevailed." ¹⁷ Zion stretches out her hands, but there is no one to comfort her. Yahweh has decreed for Jacob that his neighbors become his foes; Jerusalem has become an unclean thing among them. ¹⁸ "Yahweh is righteous, yet I rebelled against his command. Listen, all you peoples; look upon my suffering. My young men and maidens have gone into exile. ¹⁹ "I called to my allies but they betrayed me. My priests and my elders perished in the city while they searched for food to keep themselves alive. ²⁰ "See, O Yahweh, how distressed I am! I am in torment within, and in my heart I am disturbed, for I have been most rebellious. Outside, the sword bereaves; inside, there is only death. ²¹ "People have heard my groaning, but there is no one to comfort me. All my enemies have heard of my distress; they rejoice at what you have done. May you bring the day you have announced so they may become like me. ²² "Let all their wickedness come before you; deal with them as you have dealt with me because of all my sins. My groans are many and my heart is faint."

The "lamentation" in this passage was obviously over the plight of Jerusalem after it had been conquered by the Babylonians and "the cream" of its citizenry taken into exile. In typical fashion, the writer, who was probably Jeremiah, couldn't just say that the conquest had happened for no apparent reason except that the Babylonian empire was more powerful geopolitically than Judah, because the mentality of that time, as I have previously noted, was that Yahweh pulled the strings in every little piddling thing that happened to people. If Judah had fallen, then, there had to be a reason for it, and the writer fixed that blame on the "sins" of the people, which he frequently referred to in references to the "many sins" of Jerusalem (v:5), "sins that had been bound into a yoke" (v:14), rebellion against the commands of Yahweh (v:18), and yet more "sins" of the final verse. In this lamentation Jerusalem was personified as a widowed wife (v:1), and the two verses that LJ cited referred to "her nakedness" and "filthiness," which "clung to her skirts," but these were merely figures of speech consistent with the writer's imagery of a widow who had been an unfaithful wife. The nakedness of a woman would represent her shame, which in this case had followed Jerusalem's conquest by the Babylonians, and the filthiness clinging to her skirts would be the wickedness and "sins" of the people in the city, which to the superstitious mind of the writer were responsible for its downfall. We will soon see LJ trying to make this "filthiness" menstrual blood, but that is a spin that is not justified by the language of the broader context. It is merely the reading into a passage of what he wants it to say. We have seen that he is good at doing that, and we will see him verbally straining even more in his comments immediately below to make "the blood of Jerusalem" not mean what its context clearly indicates that it meant.

Isaiah did foresee a restoration of the glory of Israel, which he symbolically described as "a pavillion" that would provide shade from heat in the daytime and a refuge and shelter from the storm and rain (v:6), but he also foresaw all sorts of desolation for Egypt (chapter 19), Syria (chapter 17), Assyria (chapter 10), and other enemies of Israel, but these passages are filled with prophecies that never happened. He also predicted the return of "a remnant" of the Israelites in Assyrian captivity (10:20-23), but that never happened. The Israelites taken captive then are referred to today as "the ten lost tribes of Israel," because they lost their national identity through assimilation by the nations they were exiled to. As for the blood of Jerusalem, as I have repeatedly noted, it was not a symbol of "the spiritual filth of the inhabitants of the city" but was a reference to the blood that the inhabitants had shed in the frequent murders that the prophet claimed had happened in the city.

Here is an example of what I meant above when I said that LJ reads into biblical passages what he wants them to say. I defy LJ to produce a single passage in Isaiah that makes any unequivocal reference, even by implication, "to the water of the word of God." In citing Ephesians 5:26, LJ undoubtedly assumed that what it said is inerrant, and so he reached out a country mile to try to make some connection between this verse and Isaiah 4:4. He probably thought that it would sound impressive to make this connection, but his statement is eisegesis [reading meaning into a text], not exegesis [extracting meaning from a text]. Now watch as LJ's eisegesis continues.

Well, actually the NT doesn't teach that baptism is symbolic; it teaches that baptism washes sins away in that it is an act of obedience to a command necessary for "salvation," a position that many Christians have tried to deny in attempts to make baptism merely symbolic, but this has nothing to do with the meaning of either "the blood of Jezreel" or "the blood of Jerusalem," so I will try to get the discussion back on track and let LJ believe what he wants to believe about baptism. I, of course, think that regardless of what the NT teaches about its purpose, baptism is simply a part of a larger body of nonsensical superstitions, but if LJ wants to think that there is some connection between baptism and the blood of Jerusalem in Isaiah 4:4, let him believe it. I assume that Sri Lanka is a free country that allows people to voice their personal beliefs.

Now LJ is preaching, possibly because he has no real evidence to support his position on the meaning of "the blood of Jezreel," and so he wants to rant about nonsensical biblical passages to drag out his article in the apparent hope that some of our readers will confuse quantity with quality. Whatever the passages he quoted in Isaiah meant, however, they were obviously symbolic, because people cannot be "purified" or "refined" by fire. The process would kill them, a fact that even LJ recognized in his reference to burning the nation with "the flame of war."

Now here is a question for LJ. How do any of his comments about symbolic fire in other texts in Isaiah in any way prove that the "filth of the daughters of Zion" in 4:4 was their menstrual blood? LJ seems to have great difficulty recognizing when his comments are relevant to the issue being discussed.

Here is another example of LJ's reading into texts what he wants them to say.

Malachi 3:1 "See, I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come," says Yahweh Almighty. ² But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner's fire or a launderer's soap. ³ He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver. Then Yahweh will have men who will bring offerings in righteousness, ⁴ and the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be acceptable to Yahweh, as in days gone by, as in former years.

This passage says nothing at all about Jerusalem's being "a type of the eternal dwelling place of the people of God." Malachi was another biblical prophet who ranted in the postexilic age about the apostasy of the people, which he thought was evident in corrupt priests who despised Yahweh's name and offered polluted sacrifices (1:6-14) and the foreign wives of the Israelites (2:10-16). He urged a restoration or a return to the law of Moses (4:4) and foresaw the return of Elijah, who would restore the hearts of the people (4:5-6), but he said nothing about Jerusalem's being "a type of the eternal dwelling place of the people of God." That's LJ's spin on the text he cited, and we have already seen how he will twist himself into verbal knots to make the Bible say what he wants it to say. Matthew saw Malachi 3:1 and 4:5 as prophecies of the coming of John the Baptist (Matt. 11:7-14), which just goes to show that one can make the Bible mean whatever he wants it to mean. If LJ, however, wants us to think that Malachi said that Jerusalem was "a type of the eternal dwelling place of the people of God," he is going to have to do better than the two-verse passage that he cited above.

He also cited Galatians 4:26, which referred to a "mother" Jerusalem "that is above and free," but anyone with any familiarity with the NT knows that its writers saw types and prophecy fulfillments all through the OT where the Hebrew texts gave no indication at all of meaning what the NT writers distorted them to say. I could fill an entire article with examples of such distortions in the NT, but I will limit myself to just two of the many that I could cite. After Herod's alleged plot to kill the infant Jesus by ordering the massacre of all male children under two years of age, Joseph took his family to Egypt and then returned after he had heard that Herod had died. Matthew claimed that the return of Jesus fulfilled a prophecy in Hosea 11:1, which says, "When Israel was a child, I loved him and called my son out of Egypt." The obvious meaning here was that Yahweh had called the young nation of Israel out of Egypt and had no reference at all to a journey that Joseph and his family would make some 1500 years later. In this same chapter, Matthew claimed that Herod's massacre of the children of Bethlehem had fulfilled a prophecy that Jeremiah had made in 31:15, which referred to the voice of Rachel heard in Ramah, weeping for her children. This verse read in its context, however, will clearly show that Jeremiah was referring to Rachel's crying figuratively over her descendants who had been taken into Babylonian captivity. Matthew's application of it was an obvious distortion.

As I said and will be glad to verify if LJ wishes to challenge me on this, the NT is riddled with claims of prophecy that were based on obvious distortions of the original Hebrew texts, so it would not be at all surprising that the apostle Paul would distort the city of Jerusalem into a type of heaven that he superstitiously thought that faithful believers in Jesus would be taken into. The same symbolic usage of the city of Jerusalem was also made in Hebrews 12:22; Revelation 3:12 and 21:2,10, but the fact that some NT writers made Jerusalem a type of a "heavenly Jerusalem" in no way proves LJ's claim that "the blood of Jerusalem" in Isaiah 4:4 was the menstrual blood of women. That is simply LJ's spin, which, as I showed above, isn't contextually supported.

LJ has a habit of translation mining. He consistently quotes the KJV except when he wants to put a spin on a verse that will help his case; then he shops around for a translation that can be construed to his advantage. The NIV did translate verse 8 to say that Jerusalem had become "an unclean thing," but the KJV says that "she [Jerusalem] is removed," putting the same meaning to the word נידּה as Leviticus 15:20-25 did to נדּה (a variation), where the duration of a woman's "uncleanness" during her menstrual period is called a "separation." The KJV's implication in its translation of Lamentations 1:8, then, is that Jerusalem's "sins" were responsible for its separation, either the loss of its people to Babylon or perhaps just the loss of its former glory. Darby's translation also rendered the verse to say that the city had been "removed," as Webster's translation did too. The Message version says that it had become an "outcast," and the HCSB says that Jerusalem had become "an object of scorn." The JPS version says that Jerusalem had become a "mockery." Moffatt's version says that Jerusalem had been "flung aside," and the CEV says that it has been made "a joke." Besides not even implying the menstrual impurity that LJ is so desperately looking for, these various readerings show that the intended meaning of the first sentence in Lamentations 1:8 isn't as certain as LJ wants us to believe.

Without any contextual evidence to support his claim, LJ asserted that the passage cited in Lamentations compared Jerusalem to a menstruous woman, but as I showed above, Jeremiah was comparing the fate of the city to a widow who had no one to care for her. The very first sentence in Lamentations says, "How like a widow she [the city] has become" (1:1), and at no time in the entire book did the writer make any recognizable reference to menstrual uncleanness. I suppose that LJ is trying to argue that the word טמאה [tum'âh=impurity or filthiness] in Lamentations 1:9 was equivalent to נדה [niddâh=unclean or impure] in verse 17, but he gave no reason besides his mere assertion why we should think so. They do appear to be synonyms in that they were infrequently used interchangeably, but he failed to tell his readers that even though נדה [niddâh=unclean or impure] was used a few times to denote ceremonial uncleanness, the word טמאה [tum'âh=impurity or filthiness] was the one most often used (over 100 times in Leviticus alone) to denote ceremonial uncleanness. On the other hand, I know of only a few examples, such as Leviticus 15:20,25-26 and Ezekiel 18:6, where נדה [niddâh=unclean or impure] was used in reference to the female menstrual cycle. LJ will no doubt claim that Jerusalem was called a "menstruous [נדה] woman" in Lamentations 1:17, but he will have to appeal to a dubious translation in the KJV to make this argument. The Hebrew text does not even contain the word woman in this verse. It literally reads that Jerusalem has become an impurity נדה [niddâh=unclean or impure], and other translations, including the NKJV, so render it. The ASV, RSV, NRSV, NASB, NAB, REB, and several others have rendered this verse to read that Jerusalem had become "an impure thing" or some equivalent expression. As far as I can tell, the KJV stands alone in using menstrous woman in this verse, so before LJ tries to base a counterargument on the KJV reading of this verse, he should review first what he said earlier about Bible versions that interpret instead of translating.

In contrast to the limited usage of נדה [niddâh=unclean or impure] in reference to ceremonial uncleanness, the word טמאה [tum'âh=impurity or filthiness] or its derivatives were used 110 times in the book of Leviticus in reference to various types of uncleanness. Here are just a few examples. Italic print will be used where the word tum'âh appeared in the Hebrew text.

Leviticus 5:2 Or if a person touches anything ceremonially unclean--whether the carcasses of unclean wild animals or of unclean livestock or of unclean creatures that move along the ground--even though he is unaware of it, he has become unclean and is guilty. ³ Or if he touches human uncleanness--anything that would make him unclean--even though he is unaware of it, when he learns of it he will be guilty.

In this two-verse passage, the word טמאה [tum'âh] was used seven times in reference to all kinds of ceremonial uncleanness, and the last time it was used in a catch-all "anything that would make him unclean" clause. Obviously, then, this word was used to denote various kinds of ceremonial uncleanness besides female menstrual impurity (as if a perfectly natural function of the reproductive cycle would make a person "unclean"). To save time, I will quote without comment more examples of where this word was used in reference to different types of "uncleanness." The contexts will show what kinds of uncleanness were meant.

Leviticus 12:2 When anyone has a swelling or a rash or a bright spot on his skin that may become an infectious skin disease, he must be brought to Aaron the priest or to one of his sons who is a priest. ³ The priest is to examine the sore on his skin, and if the hair in the sore has turned white and the sore appears to be more than skin deep, it is an infectious skin disease. When the priest examines him, he shall pronounce him ceremonially unclean.

Leviticus 15:2 Speak to the Israelites and say to them: 'When any man has a bodily discharge, the discharge is unclean. ³ Whether it continues flowing from his body or is blocked, it will make him unclean. This is how his discharge will bring about uncleanness: ⁴ Any bed the man with a discharge lies on will be unclean,, and anything he sits on will be unclean. ⁵ Anyone who touches his bed must wash his clothes and bathe with water, and he will be unclean till evening. ⁶ Whoever sits on anything that the man with a discharge sat on must wash his clothes and bathe with water, and he will be unclean till evening. ⁷ Whoever touches the man who has a discharge must wash his clothes and bathe with water, and he will be unclean till evening. ⁸ If the man with the discharge spits on someone who is clean, that person must wash his clothes and bathe with water, and he will be unclean till evening. ⁹ Everything the man sits on when riding will be unclean, ¹⁰ and whoever touches any of the things that were under him will be unclean till evening; whoever picks up those things must wash his clothes and bathe with water, and he will be unclean till evening. ¹¹ Anyone the man with a discharge touches without rinsing his hands with water must wash his clothes and bathe with water, and he will be unclean till evening. ¹² A clay pot that the man touches must be broken, and any wooden article is to be rinsed with water. ¹³ When a man is cleansed from his discharge, he is to count off seven days for his ceremonial cleansing; he must wash his clothes and bathe himself with fresh water, and he will be clean.

There are just too many examples to quote all of the places where טמאה [tum'âh] was used in reference to various kinds of ceremonial uncleanness, but here is a passage that indicates the consistent usage of this word in reference to menstrual impurity.

Leviticus 15:19 When a woman has a discharge of blood that is her regular discharge from her body, she shall be in her impurity for seven days, and whoever touches her shall be unclean until the evening. ²⁰ Everything upon which she lies during her impurity shall be unclean; everything also upon which she sits shall be unclean. ²¹ Whoever touches her bed shall wash his clothes, and bathe in water, and be unclean until the evening. ²² Whoever touches anything upon which she sits shall wash his clothes, and bathe in water, and be unclean until the evening; ²³ whether it is the bed or anything upon which she sits, when he touches it he shall be unclean until the evening. ²⁴ If any man lies with her, and her impurity falls on him, he shall be unclean seven days; and every bed on which he lies shall be unclean. ²⁵ If a woman has a discharge of blood for many days, not at the time of her impurity, or if she has a discharge beyond the time of her impurity, all the days of the discharge she shall continue in uncleanness; as in the days of her impurity, she shall be unclean. ²⁶ Every bed on which she lies during all the days of her discharge shall be treated as the bed of her impurity; and everything on which she sits shall be unclean, as in the uncleanness of her impurity. ²⁷ Whoever touches these things shall be unclean, and shall wash his clothes, and bathe in water, and be unclean until the evening. ²⁸ If she is cleansed of her discharge, she shall count seven days, and after that she shall be clean.

As I said above, טמאה [tum'âh] was used to describe animals, dead bodies, foods, diseases, and about every other thing that the superstitious Hebrews thought was taboo, so LJ could just as well have said that the author of Lamentations was comparing Jerusalem to a dead body or a disease, because the same word [tum'âh] used in reference to the "filthiness in her skirt" was used elsewhere many times in reference to the uncleanness of dead bodies and those afflicted with skin diseases. Also, the fact that Ezekiel and the author of Leviticus used נדה in reference to menstrual uncleanness doesn't mean that another writer, i. e., the author of Lamentations, had menstrual impurity in mind when he used the same word to refer to the uncleanness of the city of Jerusalem, because this word was also used in reference to other kinds of impurity, such as committing adultery with one's sister-in-law (Lev. 20:21) and having idols in the holy place of the temple (2 Chron. 29:5). It was sometimes used in reference to the land of Judah (Ezra 9:11) and to "uncleanness" in general (Zech. 13:1). LJ is apparently unfamiliar with the logical axiom that says what proves too much proves nothing at all.

Another fly in LJ's "menstrual blood" ointment is that the word that Isaiah used in 4:4 in reference to "the filth" of the daughters of Jerusalem was neither טמאה [tum'âh] nor נדה [niddâh] but [צאה tsôw'âh=filth or human excrement], which was the same word that he used in 28:8 in reference to tables that were "full of vomit and filth [צאה]." I doubt that even LJ would argue that the filth that Isaiah referred to here was menstrual blood that covered the tables.

LJ's problem is one that has plagued him thoughout this discussion. He just can't seem to grasp the very fundamental principle of literary interpretation that says that the meanings of words must be determined by the contexts in which they are used. The fact that נדּה [niddâh=uncleanness] was sometimes used in reference to female menstrual "impurity" doesn't mean that it always was, and the fact that טמאה [tum'âh=unclean] was also used sometimes in reference to female menstrual "impurity" doesn't mean that it always was. In fact, as I showed above, the latter was used most often in reference to various other kinds of ceremonial uncleanness. LJ is arguing that the "filth" [צאה] of the daughters of Zion in Isaiah 4:4 was menstrual blood, but the context just doesn't support this claim. This word was used only a few times in the OT, and its principal meaning, according to Brown, Driver, and Briggs) was "filth," but filth doesn't have to mean menstrual blood. In Proverbs 30:12, for example, the word was used to convey the idea of "filth" in the sense of the moral imperfections that people in general were guilty of.

Proverbs 30:11 There are those who curse their fathers and do not bless their mothers. ¹² There are those who are pure in their own eyes yet are not cleansed of their filthiness. ¹³ There are those--how lofty are their eyes, how high their eyelids lift! ¹⁴ There are those whose teeth are swords, whose teeth are knives, to devour the poor from off the earth, the needy from among mortals.

LJ is arguing that the "filth" [צאה] of the daughters of Zion in Isaiah 4:4 meant menstrual blood, but analysis of how this word was used in the OT just doesn't support his line of reasoning. The passage just quoted from Proverbs was obviously using this word in a broad sense that was intended to cover a wide range of human failures, but LJ's spin on the word would require him to claim that verse 12 was saying that some who are pure in their own eyes have not cleansed themselves from the filth of their menstrual blood. This would limit the statement to females, but the writer was obviously condemning those of both sexes who cursed their fathers and didn't bless their mothers, who were pure in their own eyes but had not cleansed themselves of their moral failures, etc.

I discussed this word at length above and showed that it was used over 100 times in Leviticus alone in reference to all types of ceremonial uncleanness, including, among others, contamination by bodily secretions, touching dead bodies, eating improper foods, etc. The fact that it was used in 2 Samuel 11:4 in reference to uncleanness from menstruation would not prove that it meant this in Lamentations 1:9 any more than usage of the same word in Leviticus 5:2 in reference to uncleanness caused by touching dead bodies or unclean animals would mean that the passage in Lamentations was comparing Jerusalem to a person who was unclean from having touched corpses or forbidden animals. As I have said before, a major part of LJ's distortion of biblical passages, aside from his frantic desire to make Hosea 1:4 inerrant, is his failure to recognize that the meanings of words must always be determined from the contexts in which they are used.

I have had debating opponents split hairs before, but LJ deserves first prize. When blood is shed intentionally, someone, regardless of where it is shed, is guilty of what would be called "bloodguiltiness" in the biblical sense. If the killing occurred in Jezreel, in Hebrew it could have been referred to as the blood of Jezreel, and the person responsible for the bloodshed would bear the responsibility or guilt for it. In the infamous case recorded in 2 Kings 9-10, that would have been Jehu. Hence, the blood was shed in Jezreel, and Jehu was guilty of the bloodshed. The bloodshed in Jerusalem was not committed by or ordered by just one individual but, as the broader context indicates, seems to have been committed by many inhabitants of the city, so Jerusalem was the place where the blood was shed, and the inhabitants who had committed the bloody deeds were guilty of the bloodshed.

The text says that Yahweh would "wash away" or "purge" or "cleanse," depending on translations, Jerusalem of the blood. These are redemptive expressions that indicate forgiveness, so this certainly supports the view that "the blood of Jerusalem" meant the guilt of blood that had been shed there, because certainly Isaiah wasn't saying that Yahweh would wash away or cleanse or purge the blood of Jerusalem in the sense that he would undo the murders that had been committed there. Does LJ actually think that Isaiah was saying that Yahweh would resurrect the ones who had been killed and that this is the sense in which the blood would be cleansed or washed away?

If Yahweh was going to wash away or cleanse or purge the blood of Jerusalem, then he was going to forgive those who had shed the blood. Is this just too complicated for LJ to understand?

By golly, I think LJ has finally made a breakthrough! Now why can't he apply the principle stated here to "the blood of Jerusalem" that Yahweh was going to cleanse or wash away? Jerusalem itself had no guilt of bloodshed, just as the land of Israel could not sin, so Jerusalem the city had nothing to be washed away or cleansed of, but the people who had committed the murders had a guilt that could be washed away.

LJ's quibbling continues. He seems to be saying that just because the inhabitants of Jerusalem were guilty of shedding blood doesn't mean that they had shed the blood in Jerusalem, because they could have done it somewhere else. I suppose he expects us to think that if "the blood of Jerusalem" refers to murders that were committed by the people of Jerusalem, then they went outside of the city to commit the murders. However, his quibble overlooks the fact that the word blood in the sense of murder could just as well locate the murders. In other words, they were not the murders of Gibeon or Bethlehem or Bethany, etc., which had been committed by inhabitants of Jerusalem visiting those places, but they were the murders of Jerusalem in the sense that this was where the killings or bloodshed occurred. Before LJ can sustain his quibble, he will have to show that "the blood of Jerusalem" did not mean the murders that had been committed in Jerusalem.

FT's understanding of "the blood of Jerusalem" allows for its meaning to be parallel to "the blood of Jezreel" in the sense that both identify the locations of murder or bloodshed. "The blood of Jezreel" was blood that had been shed in Jezreel; "the blood of Jerusalem" was blood that had been shed in Jerusalem. In both cases, the idea of "bloodguilt" was necessarily present in an implied sense, because if blood was deliberately shed, i. e., murders intentionally committed, then someone had to have done the bloodletting. That, however, would not alter the locations that are identified in the expressions.

Depending on the writers' intended meaning, they would not be the same. If, for exsample, "the blood of Jerusalem" was used in the sense of the murders of Jerusalem, then the phrase would locate the place where the murders were committed. If the phrase was intended to mean the blood guilt of those who committed the murders, i. e., the inhabitants of Jerusalem, then it would identify the murderers rather than locate the place of the murders. If LJ intends to argue that "the blood of Jerusalem" could not have meant the bloodguilt of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, I will let him argue with the translators of the Holman Christian Standard Bible, who did exactly what LJ contends cannot be done, i. e., make the blood of Jerusalem and the bloodguilt of Jerusalem the same.

HCSB: When the Lord has washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion and cleansed the bloodguilt from the heart of Jerusalem by a spirit of judgment and a spirit of burning.

Other versions, such as the NKJV, RSV, NRSV, NASB, NAB, JB, REB, and others, used "wash away" or "purge" or "cleanse" the blood or bloodstains of Jerusalem. These translations, as I noted above, would imply that "the blood of Jerusalem" conveyed a guilt of murder, which Yahweh intended to wash away or purge or cleanse.

Well, actually, Jezebel, Ahab's wife, was the one responsible for the murder of Naboth (1 Kings 21:5-15), so "the blood of Naboth" would imply the bloodguilt of Jezebel. At any rate, if "the blood of Naboth" implied Ahab's or Jezebel's guilt for having shed his blood, then the blood of whomever or wherever would imply the guilt of whoever had shed that blood, so any reference to blood that had been shed would, according to LJ's argumentation, imply the guilt of whoever had shed it. Hence, "the blood of Jezreel" would imply the guilt of Jehu, who was responsible for this massacre, and "the blood of Jerusalem" would imply the guilt of the inhabitants of Jerusalem who had shed the blood. If not, why not?

LJ apparently doesn't bother to read the contexts of verses that he cites or quotes, because, as I will notice more in detail below, this passage in Deuteronomy pertained not to a murder that had been committed within a city but to the question of guilt when a body was found outside the city and the identity of the killer was unknown. Otherwise, my only disagreement with what LJ said here is that I would say that the NASB's usage of bloodguiltiness would be a correct translation and not a "correct paraphrase," because, as I noted earlier, the purpose of translation is to communicate in another language what was meant in the original language. If a word used idiomatically in one language will not be understood if translated literally into another language, then the translators have an obligation to translate with a word or expression that will be understood in the other language. Goldbrick in English can convey the sense of a loafer or someone who shirks his duties, but if this word were translated literally into, say, French, it would not be understood. Brique d'or in French would convey the sense of a brick made of gold and not a loafer or shirker. As I said before, LJ, who is a native of Sri Lanka, is no doubt at least bilingual, so I would think that he should understand this.

When I explicate the passage below, readers should see that LJ's text was not saying that the inhabitants of the city would be "forgiven" of guilt that arose from having shed the blood of an innocent person but that guilt for the blood shed would not be imputed to them since they had had nothing to do with the killing. If LJ would read the broader contexts of passages before he cites or quotes them, he wouldn't make mistakes as glaring as this one. That aside, I assume readers noticed that LJ had to insert parenthetical expressions before and after the word blood to explain the meaning of this word, which does not have the same idiomatic meanings in English. Hence, translators who are aware of the way blood was used idiomatically in Hebrew would be translating correctly if they use bloodguiltiness and murder to translate דּם [blood] in the verse LJ quoted from Deuteronomy.

The verse that LJ quoted is in the context of a passage giving instructions on what to do when the body of a person is found when its killer is unknown. An analysis of the context will show the extent of LJ's quibbling to try to find some way to justify his interpretation of the blood of Jezreel in Hosea 1:4.

Deuteronomy 21:1 If, in the land that Yahweh your God is giving you to possess, a body is found lying in open country, and it is not known who struck the person down, ² then your elders and your judges shall come out to measure the distances to the towns that are near the body. ³ The elders of the town nearest the body shall take a heifer that has never been worked, one that has not pulled in the yoke; ⁴ the elders of that town shall bring the heifer down to a wadi with running water, which is neither plowed nor sown, and shall break the heifer's neck there in the wadi. ⁵ Then the priests, the sons of Levi, shall come forward, for Yahweh your God has chosen them to minister to him and to pronounce blessings in the name of Yahweh, and by their decision all cases of dispute and assault shall be settled. ⁶ All the elders of that town nearest the body shall wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the wadi, ⁷ and they shall declare: "Our hands did not shed this blood, nor were we witnesses to it. ⁸ Absolve, O Yahweh, your people Israel, whom you redeemed; do not let the guilt of innocent blood remain in the midst of your people Israel." Then they will be absolved of bloodguilt. ⁹ So you shall purge the guilt of innocent blood from your midst, because you must do what is right in the sight of Yahweh.

In a time when the primitive Hebrews, like the tribes around them, thought that killing required punishment, even if the killing had been an accident, this passage was describing a ceremony that was superstitiously performed to absolve of responsibility the people living closest to a body that had it been found near their village. The context shows that the meaning of blood in its first usage in verse 7 was used literally: "Our hands did not shed this blood." In its second usage, translated literally in the KJV, which LJ quoted first, the word blood was used idiomatically: "(L)ay not innocent blood unto Thy people of Israel’s charge." In other words, this was a ceremonial request that Yahweh not hold the people of the village guilty of the killing of the person whose body had been found; hence, the NASB correctly translated it to mean, "(D)o not place the guilt of innocent blood in the midst of thy people Israel," even though the word guilt is not in the Hebrew text. As I just explained above, the translation of idoms sometimes requires translators to go beyond literal, word-for-word translations. In its third usage, in verse 8, the Hebrew text literally reads, "And the blood shall be forgiven them," but the NASB used bloodguiltiness to convey to readers an idiomatic usage of blood for which there is no parallel in English.

Obviously, then, whether דּם [blood] meant blood or murder or bloodguilt, etc. would always depend on its context, and the context of the verse that LJ quoted in Deuteronomy 21:8-9 shows that the NASB translators rendered it correctly with English terms that conveyed the intended meaning of the Hebrew text.

Well, of course, that would depend on whether "the blood of Jerusalem" in Isaiah 4:4 meant blood that had been shed in Jerusalem or whether it meant blood that had been shed by the inhabitants of Jerusalem. If the latter, then, as I showed above, the Holman Christian Standard Bible was correct in rendering the verse to read that Yahweh would "cleanse the bloodguilt" of Jerusalem. The fact that the translations cited above rendered this verse to read that Yahweh would "wash away" or "purge" or "cleanse" the "blood" or "bloodstains" of Jerusalem is a rather clear indication that these translators understood the verse to mean that Yahweh would forgive the people of Jerusalem for the blood that had been shed there. If LJ disagrees, then I suppose he thinks that Isaiah was saying that Yahweh was going to take buckets of water and mop away the blood that had been shed in Jerusalem. That meaning is highly unlikely, because we could hardly imagine that literal bloodstains from those who had been killed in Jerusalem would still be visible on the streets.

As I explained earlier, the fact that "blood of..." was apparently used only twice in the OT in reference to places or locations where blood had been shed would not mean that this expression could not be used in Hebrew to identify places where blood had been shed. It would mean only that biblical writers had felt a limited need to use the expression in this way. I referred earlier to the infamous massacre committed at My Lai by American troops in the Vietnamese war. If someone writing in Hebrew today should say something like, "The blood of My Lai still weighs heavily on the American conscience," would LJ argue that this was an incorrect way to refer to this atrocity? Would he claim that "the blood of My Lai" didn't mean blood that had been shed in and around the village of My Lai on that occasion but instead symbolically referred to the blood of all Vietnamese citizens who had been killed by foreign intrusions into their country?

If either, then why? Why is he so bent on claiming that rather clear language does not mean what it says? Well, the answer to that is simple. For some reason, even though he admits that errors are in the Bible, he wants Hosea 1:4 and 2 Kings 10:30 to be consistent. Why he has this obsession completely escapes my comprehension. I can only conclude that he is doing this because he wants readers to think that he has insights into the meaning of Hosea 1:4 that had eluded readers of the Bible until he came along. If that should be his motivation, all he has actually accomplished is to make himself look rather silly.

It would help LJ's case if he would show that it is "very poor exegesis" rather than just assert that it is. I think I have shown throughout my replies to LJ that my exegesis of the texts in dispute are more reliable than his. He wants to read into texts what he wants them to say, and as I have said before, that is not exegesis; it is eisegesis.

When I come to this section, I will reply point by point to LJ's "more on this topic." When I do, I will point out that his blood in this verse has been rendered by most versions as his bloodguilt or his bloodshed or some equivalent. Here I will just ask readers to keep in mind when they come to the section that LJ just referred to that even if he is right about the meaning of "his blood" in Hosea 12:14, that wouldn't prove that "the blood of Jezreel" in Hosea 1:4 meant the blood of Israelites who had been killed by Syrian attacks.

2. Now to the second objection.

Here, under the guise of answering what he calls my "second objection," LJ recycles material that I answered in detail in the first round of my replies to his spin on "the blood of Jezreel" in Hosea 1:4. Because my replies were detailed, I will link readers back to them rather than rehashing them again. I have already devoted too much time and space to LJ's book-length quibbling, which contained no contextual evidence at all that Hosea used "the blood of Jezreel" in a figurative sense intended to mean the blood of the children of Israel who had been killed in Syrian raids into Israel.

2. (continued) In FT’s exegesis, Jezreel symbolizes two different things.

In typical form, LJ just waved at my two possible interpretations of the name Jezreel as if he had no need to show that they were incorrect. Here in Part One, I explained that the name Jezreel meant "God sows." From there, I went on to analyze the rest of chapter one to show that Yahweh's purpose in naming Hosea's son Jezreel could have been to help Hosea's wife of "whoredom" understand that Yahweh and not Baal was the source of her fertility. I went on to support this interpretation by analyzing chapter 2 to show that Hosea's children were told to tell their mother that Yahweh had given "the grain, the new wine, and the oil" that the Israelites had given to Baal, but the interpretation was given only as a possible purpose in naming the child Jezreel. It was not stated dogmatically in the way that LJ does when he cites a verse and says that it has to mean thus and so.

After presenting this possible interpretation, I analyzed the second half of chapter 2 where the prophet predicted that Judah and Israel would be reunified under one king, which reunification he referred to as "the day of Jezreel" (1:11). This prediction, which, by the way, was never fulfilled, was an indication that Hosea was also using the name in reference to the restoration of a united kingdom. Hence, the name seemed to have multiple meanings to Hosea: (1) it signified Yahweh as the source of the land's fertility with the implication that he and not Baal was the source of Gomer's fertility. (2) It represented the destruction of the kingdom of Israel, which would begin with a strategic military defeat in the valley of Jezreel. (3) It represented a reunified kingdom that would rise from the ruins of Israel in this valley. This would all seem very sensible even to LJ if he could just lay aside his preconceived notion that Hosea 1:4 is consistent with 2 Kings 10:30. Jehu's actions at Jezreel brought shame to the nation of Israel. Yahweh was going to extract vengence for this shameful deed by destroying both the house of Jehu and the nation this dynasty had reigned over. Since Israel was his chosen nation, however, Yahweh was not going to let it all end with Israel's destruction; he would raise from the ruins of Israel a chosen nation in which Judah and Israel would be reunified.

This is an analysis of Hosea 1 and 2 that LJ needs to reply to. He can't just dismiss it by saying, "In FT’s exegesis, Jezreel symbolizes two different things." He needs to show our readers good reasons why they should think that this exegesis is wrong, but he has shown himself incapable of answering an opponent's arguments. He finds it much easier to ignore them and to "reply" with assertions.

2. (continued) I showed in my article that when a child, like Jezreel, who is to serve as a sign is given a name, that name always signifies some one aspect of God’s dealings with the nation of Israel. Isaiah’s sons Shearjashubsheh (Isaiah 7:3, cf. 10:20-23), Mahershalalhashbaz (8:1-4), and Immanuel (7:10-16, cf.8:5-10), all symbolize some one thing that God was going to do for Israel.

I replied to all of this in detail in Part 4 of my first series of replies to LJ's spin on Hosea 1:4, so a click of this link will show that I discussed the ancient Hebrew custom of giving children names that had meanings. Jacob, for example, meant "he takes the heel," a name probably derived from the unlikely story of his birth in which he came from his mother's womb holding onto the heel of his twin brother who had preceded him in birth (Gen. 25:24-26). Abraham meant "father of a multitude"; Moses meant "to draw out," a reference to his retrieval from the river by Pharaoh's daughter; and Joshua meant "Yahweh saves." In this respect, the Hebrews were like other ancient societies around the world in that they gave names that had meanings to their children, somewhat like the custom of American Indians who named their children "Running Bear," "Sitting Bull," "Crazy Horse," etc. The fact, then, that Isaiah told Ahaz that a "virgin" (actually a young woman) was going to give birth to a son and name him Immanuel was nothing unique to the times. In my detailed analysis linked to above, I pointed out good reasons to believe that traditional versions like the KJV had put too much significance to the so-called "name" ‘Immânûw‘el, which meant "God with us," by transliterating it instead of translating it. In its usage in Isaiah 8:8, for example, the JPS, REB, and other versions translated it rather than transliterating it, and this resulted in a reading much more sensible than the transliterated versions.

Isaiah 8:7 It [floodwaters] shall rise above all its channels, and flow over all its beds, ⁸ and swirl through Judah like a flash flood reaching up to the neck. But with us is God [‘Immânûw‘el], whose wings are spread as wide as your land is broad! ⁹ Band together, O peoples--you shall be broken! Listen to this, you remotest parts of the earth: Gird yourselves--you shall be broken! ¹⁰ Hatch a plot--it shall be foiled; agree on action--it shall not succeed. For God is with us [‘Immânûw‘el].

LJ is making far too much of an ancient custom of giving children names that had meanings. Further along from the link I cited above, I gave the examples of other children, like Isaac, Samson, and Samuel, who were all said to be children born by the divine intervention of Yahweh, so LJ is indeed seeing much too much in an ancient superstition about children born through divine intrusions. Ancient mythology is filled with examples of such children. This superstition aside, LJ has yet to explain why giving names with meanings to Hosea's children would somehow prove that the prophet meant for "the blood of Jezreel" to represent the blood of Israelites who had been killed in Syrian raids.

2. (continued) (Immanuel was apparently born to a virgin who became Isaiah's wife and so Isaiah was the foster father of the child, much as Joseph was the foster father of Jesus.)

This statement reveals a lot about LJ's motivation. He wants to believe in Jesus mythology, so he has swallowed hook, line, and sinker the distortions of NT writers who desperately wanted to find prophetic references to Jesus in the Hebrew scriptures. One of those distortions was Isaiah 7:14, but this verse did not predict the birth of Jesus to a "virgin" mother. I explained in Part 4 of my first series of replies that a more accurate translation of this verse would be that a "young maiden" was at that time with child.

This has been verified by translations that had no Jesus-myth axes to grind.

NRSV: Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.

REB: A young woman is with child, and she will give birth to a son and call him Immanuel.

GNB: (A) young woman who is pregnant will have a son and will name him Immanuel.

JB: (T)he maiden is with child and she will soon give birth to a son whom she will call Immanuel.

MOFFAT's: There is a young woman with child, who shall bear a son and call his name Immanuel.

JPS: Look, the young woman is with child and about to give birth to a son. Let her name him Immanuel.

As I explained in more detail here this verse did not mean what NT writers and subsequent Christian apologists have spun it to mean, and the link will show that the New American Bible admitted in a footnote to Isaiah 7:14 that it had translated ‘almâh with virgin only to follow Matthew's example of associating the "prophecy" with the birth of Jesus. The statement was made as a sign to king Ahaz to assure him that the Syrian-Israelite alliance against Judah would not succeed, so it is nonsensical to think that Isaiah reassured him with a sign that would not happen till 800 more years. To be a "sign," it would have necessarily referred to something that would soon happen. Furthermore, Isaiah did not say that a virgin would give birth to a son in the distant future but that a "young woman" [‘almâh] was with child at that time and would soon give birth to a son. Brown, Driver, and Briggs define ‘almâh to mean "young woman (ripe sexually; maid or newly married" (Hendrickson, 1999, p. 761). They do not give virgin as a meaning of the word, so LJ would do well to save his preaching of Jesus-mythology to those who are gullible enough to swallow it.

2. (continued) In the book of Hosea itself, Lo-ruhamah and Lo-ammi, both half-siblings of Jezreel, each symbolizes again one thing.

Here LJ is repeating his assumption that the child Jezreel had been sired by Hosea but that his wife's second and third children were bastards, who had been born as a result of her "whoredom." I also replied to this in detail, but in typical fashion LJ has ignored it and simply recycled what has already been refuted. He apparently thinks that our other exchanges were too long for readers to remember everything, and so he has adopted a strategy of ignoring rebuttals to his previous arguments and then recycling them as if they have not been answered. My reply to LJ's assumption about the parentage of Hosea's children is too detailed to rehash here, so I will just ask readers to click the link just given and see for themselves that LJ's recycled assumption was indeed rebutted in detail when I cited the examples of Cain's wife, Leah, Jochebed, Hannah, and other Old Testament women whose births to sons were simply reported as having borne sons without any references to who the fathers of these sons were. I doubt, however, that LJ would say that these sons were bastards because the records of their births didn't specifically say that the mothers had borne the sons to their husbands.

We have, then, another example of how LJ will read into texts what he wants them to say rather than just accepting the face-value meaning of the textual language.

2. If Jezreel signified two different things, he would be the odd man out.

Well, if that is the case, then LJ would have to say that the son that Isaiah said would be born to a "virgin" as a "sign" to Ahaz had to have referred only to Jesus of Nazareth, because if the sign had a "double application," as most biblicists believe, and referred also to a child who would be born in Ahaz's time, then that would play havoc with LJ's statement immediately above. If, however, LJ accepts that Isaiah's "prophecy" referred both to Jesus of Nazareth and to a child who would be born in Ahaz's time, then he needs to explain why Jezreel could not have "signified two different things." If he attempts this, I would like for him to explain to us why he thinks that Jezreel signifies the same thing each time it appears in the passages quoted below from just the book of Hosea.

Hosea 1:4 And Yahweh said to him, "Name him Jezreel; for in a little while I will punish the house of Jehu for the blood of Jezreel, and I will put an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel. ⁵ On that day I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel."

Hosea 1:11 The people of Judah and the people of Israel shall be gathered together, and they shall appoint for themselves one head; and they shall take possession of the land, for great shall be the day of Jezreel.

Hosea 2:21 On that day I will answer, says Yahweh, I will answer the heavens and they shall answer the earth; ²² and the earth shall answer the grain, the wine, and the oil, and they shall answer Jezreel....

The name obviously didn't "signify" the same thing in all of these verses. Its first usage referred to the name that Hosea was to give to his firstborn son; the second and fourth references are in dispute, but LJ doesn't think that two and four signified the same thing as number one; and the third one refers to a geographical location where LJ thinks that a battle was fought to break the military might of Israel, so even LJ recognizes that Hosea used the name to signify different things. His odd-man-out "argument," then, is just another quibble.

2. (continued) Any interpretation that sees significance in the etymological meaning of Jezreel in Hosea 1:4 plainly ignores the fact that the text itself provides no support for it.

Here is another unsupported assertion that is so typical of LJ's style of argumentation by assertion. I did an analysis of Hosea 1 here based on the etymology of the name Jezreel, which meant "God sows" or "God scatters." I showed that the meaning of the name in the context in which it was used, i. e., giving the name to the prophet's son who was borne of "whoredom," lends support to a widely accepted interpretation of this chapter to mean that Yahweh wanted to demonstrate to Gomer that he and not Baal was the source of her fertility, just as he had been the source of the fertility that had produced the grain, wine, and oil that had been used in sacrificial offerings to Baal (2:8). Despite the detailed contextual analysis of this section of Hosea, LJ just dismissed it all with his unsupported assertion above: "Any interpretation that sees significance in the etymological meaning of Jezreel in Hosea 1:4 plainly ignores the fact that the text itself provides no support for it."

That is so typical of his style of "apologetics." If he can't answer an argument, he just dismisses it in passing. If, however, my analysis of the context of Hosea 1:4 "plainly ignore[d] the fact that the text provides no support for it," why didn't LJ show us specific reasons why there is no contextual support for it?

I will answer that question. It is so much easier for him to argue by assertion rather than contextual analysis.

2. An analysis of 1:4-5 reveals the following structure (Young’s Literal Translation used):