to become someone's lord and owner: to take a woman as one's wife (and so be her husband), or to hold people under one's rule
This verb is built from the noun בַּעַל, which means an owner, a lord, or a husband. To do this verb to someone is to become their master in exactly that sense, to take them as your own. In the Bible it runs in two directions, marriage and rule, and both are the same act of claiming ownership.
By far the most common use is marriage. When a man does this to a woman he takes her as his wife and becomes her husband and master; she is then a married, owned wife (Genesis 20:3; Deuteronomy 22:22). The prophets turn the picture toward God: the LORD is Israel's husband (Jeremiah 3:14; Isaiah 54:5), and a land once deserted is spoken of as "married" again (Isaiah 62:4-5).
A smaller group of verses uses the same word for political mastery, as when Israel confesses that "other lords besides you have ruled over us" (Isaiah 26:13). What ties marriage and rule together is ownership: to do this verb is to hold someone as your own, whether a wife or a subject people.
Because a husband was reckoned his wife's master, this is not the modern picture of marriage as a partnership of equals. The everyday Hebrew word for husband, אִישׁ, simply means "man," and the prophets sometimes preferred it precisely because the word for husband in this family carried the heavier note of ownership.
Nuances
Whether the verb here is the Hebrew "I was their master/husband" or a different verb, since the Septuagint rendered it "I turned away from them," the form quoted in Hebrews 8:9.
- majorityFollow the Hebrew text: God says he was Israel's master and husband, so their covenant-breaking is the betrayal of a marriage bond.; HALOT, s.v. בעל I; Jack R. Lundbom, Jeremiah 21-36 (Anchor Yale Bible)
- minorityFollow the Greek reading reflected in Hebrews 8:9, "and I turned away from them," often traced to a different Hebrew verb meaning to loathe or reject rather than to master.; Septuagint of Jeremiah 38:32; quoted in Hebrews 8:9; William L. Holladay, Jeremiah 2 (Hermeneia)