God warns of the punishment for Israel, symbolized by the punishment for an unfaithful wife. Normally adultery was punished by fire or by stoning (see, for example, Lev 21.9; Deut 22.23-24), but in this allegory the land is punished by a killing drought.

Lest I strip her naked: Part of the punishment of an adulterous woman was the removal of her clothes, described in Ezek 16.39. Moreover, Exo 21.10 lists providing clothing for his wife as one of the duties of the husband. Stripping her naked showed that the husband no longer provided for her. Stripping naked was considered a curse and shame in the culture of the Ancient Near East. Depending on the receptor culture, this point may have to be clarified, either in translation or in a footnote. Lest is a somewhat archaic conjunction, meaning “so that not.” This conjunction applies to all five lines in this verse. Possible models for this clause are “so that I will not strip her naked” and “Or else I will strip her naked.”

And make her as in the day she was born is parallel in meaning to the previous line. Good News Translation combines these two lines since it changes the text from poetry to prose: “If she does not, I will strip her as naked as she was on the day she was born.” Translators should choose a stylistically and poetically appropriate way for rendering these parallel lines. A repetition of identical grammatical structures in consecutive lines may generate a poetic effect. In the prose translation of Good News Translation this effect is no longer present.

And make her like a wilderness and set her like a parched land: In this allegory the features of the woman are sometimes emphasized in one statement, with the next statement emphasizing features of the land. These two parallel lines speak more directly of God’s punishment of the land. Wilderness and parched land are two ways of saying the same thing. A wilderness is an uninhabited place with little vegetation because there is little rainfall. In both expressions there is the notion of infertility, possibly an allusion to Baal who is supposed to bring fertility. Good News Translation combines them in a single statement, saying “dry and barren land.” Translators should again consider the option of a more poetic rendering.

Set her like a parched land is a literal rendering of the Hebrew. New Revised Standard Version provides a more natural translation in English with “turn her into a parched land.”

And slay her with thirst: Here the allegory returns to the figure of the woman. In this threat Israel is compared both with a dry land and with a woman who dies of thirst in that dry land. If it is difficult to change the figures that quickly, it may be better to retain one of them, as in Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch (1982), which renders the last three lines of this verse as “I will let it happen to her as in the desert, where there is no water; I will let her die of thirst.” Bible en français courant has “I will change her land into a desert, into an arid land; I will make her die of thirst.”

A translation model for this verse is:

• If not, I will strip her naked in humiliation,
expose her as on the day of her birth.
I will make her like a wilderness,
turn her into barren land.
I will kill her with thirst.

Quoted with permission from Dorn, Louis & van Steenbergen, Gerrit. A Handbook on Hosea. (UBS Helps for Translators). Miami: UBS, 2020. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .