Mixing Metaphors: God as Mother and Father in Deutero-Isaiah
While
most treatments of biblical metaphor examine individual metaphors in
isolation, Sarah J. Dille presents a model for interpretation based on
their interaction with one another. Using Lakoff and Johnson's category
of "metaphoric coherence," she argues that when nonconsistent or
contradictory metaphors appear together in a literary unit, the areas of
overlap (coherence) are highlighted in each. Using the images of father
and mother in Deutero-Isaiah as a starting point, she explores how
these images interact with others: for example, the divine warrior, the
redeeming kinsman, the artisan of clay, or the husband. The
juxtaposition of diverse metaphors (common in Hebrew prophetic
literature) highlights common "entailments," enabling the reader to see
aspects of the image which would be overlooked or invisible if read in
isolation. Dille argues that any metaphor for God can only be understood
if it is read or heard in interaction with others within a particular
cultural context.
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