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In his view, this concept is generally related to the prophetic metaphorical description of the covenant as a marriage relationship, and more specifically to the prophetic metaphorical comparison of religious infidelity with adultery and harlotry.4 Elaine R. Follis alternatively has proposed that phrases such as ... reflect the Hellenistic concept of the holy city as the divine daughter of the high god, for which the personification of Athens as Athena, daughter of Zeus, is the basic model. The Hebrew Bible's use of analogous phrases of the type ... should be understood as a metaphorical adaptation of this literary convention.7 Other recent studies have dealt with the figure of ... as one of several female personifications of Jerusalem, further exploring what such characterization implies for the construction of gender in various texts, particularly Isaiah.8 This approach is appropriate in the sense that any and all of the female roles in which Jerusalem has been cast may be relevant to how Scripture generally views the feminine dimension of the divine-human relationship.