FROM FORGETFULNESS TO KNOWLEDGE

The specific contribution of this volume consists in having identified in the Hebrew root škh “to forget”, the connecting thread that runs through the entire book of Hosea. The four key occurrences of the verb, analysed in a precise and contextual way, allow us to grasp how forgetting God is not a marginal accident, but the very synthesis of Israel’s sin. To forget YHWH is to refuse knowledge, to lose the memory of one’s origins, to disregard the election and to break the bond of the covenant. In close dialogue with this negative category, the volume highlights the central role of the root yd’ “to know”, which in Hebrew, as is well known, takes on an eminently relational meaning.