In a wider sense, the new-moons also belonged to the מועדים, although they are not enumerated among them in Lev. xxiii. on account of their subordinate character. In Num. x. 10, Is. i. 14, Ezra iii. 5, the new-moons are mentioned along with the מועדים only as the species by the side of the genus. But we are at liberty to think only of the feasts appointed by God; for, otherwise, there would be no room for the application of the _lex talionis_:--God takes from the Israelites only what they had taken from Him. The days of the Baalim are afterwards specially mentioned in ver. 15. The days of God are taken from them; for the days of the Baalim they are punished. This much, however, appears from the passage before us--and it is placed beyond any doubt by several other passages in Hosea as well as in Amos--that, outwardly, the worship, as regulated by the prescriptions of the Pentateuch, had all along continued. (For the arguments in proof of this assertion, the author's _Dissertations on the Genuineness of the Pentateuch_, vol. i., are to be compared.) Ver. 14. "_And I make desolate her vine and fig-tree, whereof she said, They are the wages of whoredom to me, that my lovers have given me; and I make them a forest, and the beasts of the field eat them._" The vine and fig-tree, as the two noblest productions of Palestine--_Ispahan_, in the "_Excerpta ex vita Saladini_," p. 10, calls them "_ambos Francorum oculos_"--are here also connected with each other, as is commonly done in threatenings and promises, as the representatives of the rich gifts of God, wherewith He has blessed this country.--אשר is often placed before an entire sentence, to mark it out as being relative in general. [Pg 249] It is the looser, instead of the closer connection, = "of which."--אתנה "wages of prostitution," instead of which, in ix. 1 and other passages, the form אתנן occurs, requires a renewed investigation. It is commonly derived from תנה, to which the signification "_largiter donavit, dona distribuit_," is ascribed. But opposed to this, there is the fact that the root תנה is, neither in Hebrew, nor in any of the dialects, found with this signification. It has in Hebrew, Arabic, and Syriac, the signification "to laud," "to praise," "to recount." But besides this תנה, there occurs another תנה, not with the general signification "to give," but in the special one, "to give a reward of whoredom;" in which signification it cannot be a primitive word, but derived from נתן אתנה = אתנה, in the passage under consideration, and in Ezek. xvi. 34. The supposition of a primitive verb תנה, with the signification "to give," is also opposed by the circumstance that the noun which is said to be derived from it never occurs with the general signification "gift," but always with the special one, "reward of prostitution." אתנה is rather derived from the first pers. Fut. Kal of the verb נתן, a "I will-give-thee," similar to our "forget-me-not." The whore asks, in Gen. xxxviii.