OWNER, master, lord — and also the perfectly ordinary Hebrew word for a HUSBAND, the way 'lord' once served in English. Its range is why the same consonants name the Canaanite god Baal, 'the Lord'. ⚠ Proverbs 31 calls the woman's husband her ba'al three times (vv11, 23, 28), and this translation reads 'husband' because that is what the word normally means and 'master' would be making an argument — but the NWT is the one version on the shelf willing to print 'her owner', and a reader is entitled to know the word is there. Hosea 2:16 turns on exactly this ambiguity, where Israel is told to stop calling God ba'ali. → first discussed at Prov 31:11