The verb zanah means to engage in sexual immorality or prostitution. Both literally and figuratively, it describes the act of abandoning a committed covenant relationship for illicit pursuit. The figurative use — Israel's spiritual unfaithfulness to YHWH as prostitution — is one of the most powerful and devastating metaphors in all of Hebrew prophecy.
Hosea's entire marriage becomes a living parable of zanah: God commands him to marry a woman who will be unfaithful (Hos 1:2), so that Israel can see in Hosea's heartbreak a mirror of God's own grief over their spiritual adultery. Ezekiel 16 is the most sustained and graphic use of zanah: Jerusalem is depicted as a foundling girl whom God raised, adorned, and married — who then used His gifts to 'play the harlot' with every nation. The prophetic indictment always links zanah to idolatry: to worship another god is to sleep with another lover. The resolution is God's relentless pursuit of restoration — Hosea 2 and Ezekiel 16:60-63 end not in condemnation but in covenant renewal, pointing to the cross where God's betrayed faithfulness is finally vindicated.