Hosea 9:2

the winepress Rather, the vat (within the press) into which the grape-juice or the oil flowed; comp. Joel 2:24.

shall fail in her Rather, shall fall her (lit. -shall lie unto her", as Habakkuk 3:17). There is a good various reading (supported by the versions and by the Babylonian codex) -in them", but the same interchange of pronouns occurs in Hosea 4:19. Idolatrous Israel is personified as a harlot. Wine-drinking was, in fact, so closely connected with the customs of idolatry (comp. Judges 9:27; Amos 2:8), that the Nazirites bound themselves by a vow of -total abstinence" (Numbers 6:3).