the jaw or cheek: the side of the face at the jaw, whether the bone itself, the flesh over it, or the whole hinge of an animal's mouth
Hebrew uses one word here where English uses two. It names the side of the face at the jaw: the bone underneath, the soft cheek stretched over it, and the working hinge that opens and closes the mouth. So the bone Samson picked up off the ground and the cheek a tear runs down are, in Hebrew, the same thing. When the word appears in the doubled form for a pair, it is the two cheeks or the two jaws together.
Because it covers all of that, the word moves easily between the animal world and the human one:
- the bare bone of a donkey, solid enough to swing as a club
- the jowls of a slaughtered ox or sheep, a cut of meat set aside for the priests
- the jaws of a river beast, where a hook or a bridle takes hold
- the cheek of a woman, hung with ornaments, or of a man, fragrant as a garden bed
- the cheek of the grieving and the beaten, wet with tears or struck by a rod
The most loaded use is the blow to the cheek. In these texts such a blow is not mainly about pain; it is a public shaming, delivered to someone who is not free to hit back. A prophet is slapped in front of the king, the ruler of Israel is struck with a stick, a sufferer is told to give his cheek to the man who beats him. That is the world behind the New Testament saying about turning the other cheek (σιαγών).
The same word carries some of the Bible's strongest pictures of power. To take hold of an empire, God puts hooks in its jaws and hauls it out of its river like a landed crocodile, or lays a bridle across the jaws of the nations. To rescue, he lifts the weight off the jaw. And when he defends his people, he strikes the enemy on the jaw and breaks the teeth (שֵׁן) in it.
Nuances
Whether Hosea 11:4 pictures a farmer lifting the yoke from a work animal's jaws or a parent lifting a small child to the cheek. The received Hebrew text has a word for yoke resting on their jaws, which suits the harness and cords of the surrounding lines. Reading the same consonants with a different vowel gives a word for a suckling child, and the image becomes a parent raising the child to the face, which suits the fostering language of the chapter. The choice decides whether this occurrence belongs with the animal jaw or the human cheek.
- majorityThe received Hebrew text is sound: the word is yoke, the picture is a farmer easing the yoke up off the animal's jaws, and the noun here means the jaw; Koehler and Baumgartner, HALOT, s.v. לְחִי; A. A. Macintosh, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Hosea (ICC, T&T Clark, 1997)
- minorityRevocalize the word for yoke as a word for infant: God is like one who lifts a small child to the cheek, and the noun here means the cheek; Hans Walter Wolff, Hosea (Hermeneia, Fortress, 1974)