A Kingdom for a Stage: Political and Theological Reflection in the Hebrew Bible (Forschungen Zum Alten Testament) 9783161555053, 9783161555060, 3161555058

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Forschungen zum Alten Testament Edited by Konrad Schmid (Zürich) · Mark S. Smith (Princeton) Hermann Spieckermann (Göttingen) · Andrew Teeter (Harvard)

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Mark W. Hamilton

A Kingdom for a Stage Political and Theological Reflection in the Hebrew Bible

Mohr Siebeck

Mark W. Hamilton, born 1964; 2000 PhD (Harvard University); since 2000 professor at Abilene Christian University, currently the Robert and Kay Onstead Professor of Old Testament.

e-ISBN PDF 978-3-16-155506-0 ISBN 978-3-16-155505-3 ISSN 0940-4155 (Forschungen zum Alten Testament) The Deutsche Bibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliographie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2018  by Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen. Germany. www.mohr.de This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that permitted by copyright law) without the publisher’s written permission. This applies particularly to reproductions, translations, microfilms and storage and processing in electronic ­systems. The book was printed by Gulde-Druck in Tübingen on non-aging paper and bound by Buchbinderei Spinner in Ottersweier. Printed in Germany.

For Samjung, Nathan, and Hannah

Foreword This book has evolved over several years. It began, as most projects begin, with a set of questions, in this case about how Israelite thought had developed and how both its conclusions and the processes of reaching them might prove significant for contemporary reflections on political life. In our era of discontent with inherited institutions and their apparent inadequacy in addressing the great challenges of climate change, economic disparities between the Global South and North, the persecution of and by religious communities, and all the rest, uncovering the histories of the ideas that informed our ancestors and through them, us, seems imperative. Hence this study. No one writes a book by himself or herself, and this one is certainly no exception to that oft-stated but little heeded truth. I have profited from discussions about these texts from many colleagues at Abilene Christian University, my home institution, and other places. My graduate assistants over the years, especially David Skelton, Morgan Philpott, Matt Fredrickson, and Josiah Peeler have made my work easier by finding odd references, raising good questions, and listening indulgently to my ­pontifications. Special thanks go to Shaun Casey for always being ready to share his vast expertise and critical insight about religion and politics and to listen to my ideas as well. In addition, a debt of gratitude is owed to the American Schools of Oriental Research, which provided the honor of an appointment as Seymour Gitin Distinguished Professor at the Albright School of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem during the fall of 2014. Matthew Adams and his magnificent staff at the Albright helped provide the greatest luxury a scholar can want: time to think. I am grateful to him, to his predecessor Sy Gitin, and to the marvelous fellows of the Albright with whom I shared many happy dinners and conversations. Melissa Rosenzweig was particularly helpful because of her work on the Assyrian Empire’s impact on daily life, and Kate Birney for her extraordinarily insightful methodological questions. The librarians of the Ecole Biblique also offered a quiet place to work during my sojourn in Jerusalem. I also profited greatly from interactions with scholars in Seoul, Korea during a semester-long sojourn there in the spring of 2015. In particular, I thank Professor Ha Kyung Taek of the Presbyterian University and Theological Seminary and his splendid doctoral students Choi Han Woo, Kim Sujie, and Kim Do Hyun, with whom I shared a pleasant seminar on the subject of divine kingship. Thanks also go to Professor Hong Koog Pyeong of Yonsei University and to the Korean Society for the Study of the Old Testament for their generous hospitality and feedback on aspects of this

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Foreword

work. Moreover, my hosts at Korea Christian University deserve special thanks for their countless acts of generous hospitality. The greatest debt is owed, as always, to my family. Nathan and Hannah have grown up to be outstanding thinkers on their own, and they have been willing to talk about my work while sharing their ideas about music and physics respectively, making an intellectual life possible in our home. And most of all, my inimitable wife Samjung has not only read and trenchantly commented on this work, but has confirmed in our life together St. Paul’s assertion, “Faith, hope, and love abide. These three. But the greatest of these is love.” The possibility that it might indeed conquer all, even the political, seems the greatest discovery of all.

Table of Contents Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VII Chapter 1: The Limits and Promise of Israelite Political Reflection . . . . . The Key Questions and Concerns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Current Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Materials for Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Methods and Approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ars Rhetorica . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Onward, Then! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

3 6 12 15 19 21 25

Chapter 2: Kingship in Chiaroscuro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Narratives of Kingship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rituals of Kingship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Case of King Uzziah . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Case of King Ahaz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Findings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Monumentalism and Political Reflection . . . . . . . . . . . . . Selected Major Sites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Temples in Jerusalem and Elsewhere as Monuments to Legitimacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

26 27 30 30 32 38 39 40

Chapter 3: Finding order in history: The Case of the Deuteronomists . . . The Aims and Processes of the Deuteronomistic History . . . . The Story Behind the Narrative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ancient Historiography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Reception History, or the Relecture of the Deuteronomistic History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Periodization and the Deuteronomistic History . . . . . . . The Meaning of the Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

44 48 49 50 53 54 55 56 65 66

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Chapter 4: The Rhetoric of Adventure: Lessons from Deuteronomy and Gilgamesh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Gilgamesh III as Political Rhetoric . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Deuteronomy 1:19–46 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Speeches in the Wilderness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Speech on the Plains of Moab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Implications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

68 70 76 78 81 85

Chapter 5: Elites and Social Climbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Dossier on Nabal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . David as Rhetor during a Gift-exchange . . . . . . . . . . . . Nabal as Rhetor and Gift-refuser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Abigail as Arbiter of Male Contestation . . . . . . . . . . . . The Narrator as Reporter on Elites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Dossier on Barzillai . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

87 87 88 94 97 98 100 103

Chapter 6: Lost Kings and Lost Fields in Isaiah 32 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Reflections on Kingship in the Ancient Near East . . . . . . . . Kingship in the Isaiah Tradition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The King Who Reigns in Righteousness (32:1–8) . . . . . . . . Is the text coherent? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . How the text works as rhetoric . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Imagined Monarchy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . On the Reclamation of Words (32:9–14) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Coherence and argumentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Ethos of the Prophet Calling to Lament . . . . . . . . . On the Reclamation of Life (32:15–20) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Arguments for a Post-destruction State . . . . . . . . . . . . An Argument for Royal Reclamation, in Both Senses . . . . Conclusions and Prospects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

104 107 111 113 114 117 119 120 122 124 125 127 129 132

Chapter 7:

134 137 138 142 143 150

Yhwh’s Cosmic Estate: Politics in Second Isaiah . . . . . . . . . The Politics of Display as Identity-Formation . . . . . . . . . . . Narrative-making . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Gaze . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mental Geography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Chapter 8: Elite Lives: Job 29–31 and Traditional Authority . . . . . . . . . 152 The Social Location of the Character Job . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154 A World of Order, Status, and Legitimacy . . . . . . . . . . . . 156

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A World of Disorder, and Illegitimacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161 Seeking New Legitimacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167 Chapter 9: Prosperity and Kingship in Psalms and Inscriptions . . . . . . 170 Ginsberg and Miller Revisited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 Prosperity as a Trope in Selected First-Millennium Inscriptions 174 Kilamuwa of Samᵓal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174 The Case of the Kings of Suḫu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 The Case of Mesha of Moab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178 Royal Benefaction in the Israelite Psalms . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 The Case of Psalm 72 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186 Chapter 10: 11QTemple 57–59, Ps.-Aristeas 187–300, and Second Temple Period Political Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Aims of Kingship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The King as Moral Exemplar and Wise Man in Ps.-Aristeas The King as Warrior Under Restraint in Temple Scroll . . . . . Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

188 190 191 193 197

Chapter 11: Retrospects and Prospects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202 Works Cited Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203 Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207

O for a Muse of fire that would ascend The brightest heaven of invention, A kingdom for a stage, princes to act And monarchs to behold the swelling scene! William Shakespeare, King Henry V, Prologue

You learn from the past about the past, and that is not necessarily a good guide to the future, however fascinating it may be to ponder the reasons why the past turned out in the way it did. To be sure, history provides a rich, almost inexhaustible, source of examples, precedents, and potential analogies. But that does not get round the problem of determining which are the ones that are relevant to the case in hand. Indeed, the very variety of exemplars may confuse as much as illuminate. Selection is inevitable and there is no algorithm for success.1 Despite constant urgings to the contrary, humanity has not been, is not now, and should not be best or solely understood in terms of simple, unified homogeneous collectivities locked in perpetual confrontation and conflict across a great chasm of hatred and an unbridgeable gulf of fear…. For it is in the very range, complexity, and diversity of our multifarious and manifold identities, and in the many connections we make through them and across them, that we each affirm and should all celebrate the common humanity which is the most precious thing we share.2

1  G.E.R. Lloyd, “Epilogue,” in The Oxford History of Historical Writing, vol.  1: Beginnings to ad 600, eds. Andrew Feldherr and Grant Hardy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 606. 2  David Cannadine, The Undivided Past: Humanity Beyond Our Differences (New York: Knopf, 2013), 9–10.

Chapter 1:

The Limits and Promise of Israelite Political Reflection As I write these pages, I am sitting in East Jerusalem, not far from the Old City, in the relative quiet of a library reading room. Outside along the storefronts stand merchants, mostly middle-aged or younger men working for their families. They greet their wives and daughters who walk by wearing hijabs (often texting as they stroll), offering a smile here, a word of encouragement there, perhaps a stern correction. Cars weave in and out of the traffic, and sometimes policemen and women walk by, usually in small groups, usually well armed. In some ways, the city resembles every other one in the world as men and women live their lives preoccupied with the tasks of raising a family and supporting aged parents and enjoying what human pleasures they can. Who is Christian or Jew or Muslim or secular? Who espouses which political opinion? That is not always easy to tell, and a good thing too, for the obscurity of identities reminds the observer – even the calm, cozened academic – that political commitment is not everything, even in an environment rife with hierarchy, exertions of power, and resistance. And biblical scholars, working in an academic cloister in which words like power, subalternity, violence, aggression, and a dozen other now shopworn terms blow through the air, must heed this reminder. Even in an environment that seems (falsely) to outsiders to be defined solely by its conflicts and rivalries, not everything is about politics, or religion for that matter. We must not exaggerate the importance of the topic, especially as it applies to the Hebrew Bible. Still. … Still, many aspects of the Hebrew Bible do address aspects of political life, sometimes from a sociologically or historically distant vantage point, but more often with a grittiness and everyday-ness that bespeak the assumptions and experiences of the traditional states that Israel and Judah were. Nowhere does the Hebrew Bible spend time thinking about the nature of “politics” in the abstract, a move that entered Western intellectual life only through Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Constitutions. Nor does it offer much detailed information about the administrative practices of bureaucracies or policymaking decisions of leaders, despite the access to those circles that some, perhaps many, biblical writers must have enjoyed.1 Rather, the emphasis in 1  It is possible to reconstruct some aspects of Israelite and Judahite bureaucratic practices, however, from such things as the pattern of distribution of the so-called lam-melek store jars, which were connected to the collection and distribution of materials for the state apparatus and its dependents; see, e.g., H. Mommsen, I. Perlman, and J. Yellin, “The Provenience of the lmlk Jars,” IEJ 34 (1984): 89–113; Nadav Naʾaman, “Hezekiah’s Fortified Cities and the LMLK Stamps,” BASOR 261 (1986): 5–21; Andrew G. Vaughn, Theology, History, and Archaeology in the Chronicler’s Account of Hezeki-

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Chapter 1:  The Limits and Promise of Israelite Political Reflection

a range of biblical texts of multiple origins and genres lies on the actions and motivations of leaders and on the consequences of their actions, as well as the connections between the human and divine realms. In a sense, this feature of the biblical material should not surprise us, for while it often ends up in the tangle of policies and programs, politics also always assumes notions of legitimate norms and warrants and their impact on structures. There is no escaping such concerns, even in the modern world, whether one argues that abortion should be illegal because it destroys the most vulnerable human lives (so it’s an issue of justice) or that the U.S. should intervene in Afghanistan because the Taliban oppresses women and children (so it’s an issue of justice), among a thousand other possible positions one might take. Even approaches rooted entirely in Realpolitik assume that the interests of a given country have moral merit and thus, by definition, deserve preservation. Nor is the political life always agonistic or riddled with conflict and struggles for power. It may sometimes be true, as Henry Kissinger once averred, that “[T]he art of policy is to create a calculation of the risks and rewards that affect the adversary’s calculations,”2 but it is also true that in the life of a society or even a network of societies and the states that represent them, not everyone is an adversary, not even in a so-called honor-and-shame society in which the aspiration for honor is a zero-sum game. One must also find allies and supporters in order to survive.3 The building of alliances, and not merely the acquisition of foes to be dominated, occupies far more of the political life in a healthy society than we like to recognize. Accordingly, Sir David Cannadine’s stricture, cited at the head of this book, speaks clearly of political life as well: “For it is in the very range, complexity, and diversity of our multifarious and manifold identities, and in the many connections we make through them and

ah (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999), esp.  81–167; Nahman Avigad and Gabriel Barkay, “The LMLK and Related Seal Impressions,” in Jewish Quarter Excavations in the Old City of Jerusalem, vol.  1: Architecture and Stratigraphy: Areas A, W and X-2 (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society/Institute of Archaeology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2000), 243–66; Joseph Yellin and Jane M. Cahill, “Provenance of the lmlk Stamp Seal Impressions,” in Jewish Quarter Excavations in the Old City of Jerusalem, vol.  2: The Finds from Areas A, W and X-2, ed. Hillel Geva (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society/Institute of Archaeology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2003), 107–12. As Vaughn notes, however, the jars were primarily used in a few urban centers and involved the storage of wine (and possibly oil). Therefore, I would argue, their usefulness for understanding Judahite bureaucratic practices at the end of the eighth century bce is limited. For the Achaemenid period and later, when both innovative practices and older ones intertwined, see the foundational study of Oded Lipschits and David S. Vanderhooft, The Yehud Stamp Impressions: A Corpus of Inscribed Impressions from the Persian and Hellenistic Periods in Judah (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2011), esp.  31–41. 2  Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), 481. 3  On contestation and cooperation in the Hebrew Bible’s stories of honor and shame, see the discussion in Philip F. Esler, “Ancient Mediterranean Monomachia in the Light of Cultural Anthropology: The Case of David and Goliath,” in Menschenbilder und Körperkonzepte im Alten Israel, in Ägypten und im Alten Orient, eds. Angelika Berlejung, Jan Dietrich, and Joachim Friedrich Quack (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012), 125–59.

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across them, that we each affirm and should all celebrate the common humanity which is the most precious thing we share.”4 To this point, then, I have used the words “politics” and “political” enough times to prompt the engaged reader to ask the question, “what do we mean by Israelite politics and political thought, especially for an ancient traditional society lacking not only elections, political parties, news media outlets, and other features of the world since the eighteenth century, but even the most basic apparatuses of state that arose in the late medieval period in Europe (and earlier in China) through which bureaucracies administered the decisions of the policymakers in accordance with agreed-upon norms and goals?” This question is particularly pressing for biblical scholars because a survey of our literature over the past two decades would quickly reveal a bewildering array of uses of the term “politics,” mostly intermeshed with a confusing (and confused) set of notions about power and coercion (often eliding the two). Even when it is possible to isolate the modern political agendas driving analyses of ancient texts, as often it is not, a lack of clarity prevails in our field’s burgeoning use of terms such as “empire” and of course politics more generally. In this book, then, politics refers first to the operations of the state and its functionaries as they carry on the administration of the polities of ancient Israel and Judah. The state includes the king, the small (by twenty-first century standards) but nevertheless significant professional bureaucracy around him (scribes, tax agents, surveyors, and some prophets and diviners, among other functionaries), as well as office-holders, who were, as I will argue, sometimes drawn from the hereditary landed gentry and sometimes elevated to it (a model that is widely attested all over the world before nineteenth- and twentieth-century reforms sidelined the class allegedly born to rule).5 Second, politics denotes the structures and practices carried out by traditional leaders and their followers embedded within the states of the Iron Age, with or without reference to the functioning of the state proper. Since centralization of obedience and domination ebbs and flows in most polities over time, and especially so in ancient ones, an excessive focus on the state would present a false picture, leading to the sort of anachronism that unfortunately spoils some studies of Israelite thought. Third, politics refers to intellectual reflections either underlying or reflecting upon the behaviors of the various strata of leadership in a society. With reference to the Greek world, one would not hesitate to label such reflections “political philosophy,” but there remains an assumption about the Near East’s alleged “primitivism” that perhaps makes such a label less acceptable to some scholars, even today. Certainly the biblical texts do not systematically speculate about an ideal polity, but they do reflect detailed examination of real political structures. In particular, the texts examined 4 Cannadine,

Undivided Past, 9–10. David Cannadine, Aspects of Aristocracy: Grandeur and Decline in Modern Britain (New Haven: Yale, 1994). 5 

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Chapter 1:  The Limits and Promise of Israelite Political Reflection

here, by no means an exhaustive sample, engage in sophisticated description and/or analysis of the work of several levels of state leaders, from the king to local officials. While, again, ancient Israel did not articulate political theories in the ways we have come to expect in Hobbes or Locke or Weber or Walzer – indeed this lack of systematization marks a major boundary between their intellectual work and ours in a host of fields – it certainly did think a great deal about the political, in all the senses I have named. There is a subtext to this book, which must be declared at the outset. For me, understanding the political thought of ancient Israel takes on a special urgency in our contemporary setting as we try to retrieve resources useful for constructing a viable future. It seems quite clear that the modern democratic state with its all-encompassing, but quite contradictory, emphases on negative liberty and national identity, struggles to articulate reasons for its own existence in the absence of any agreed upon telos or of socially expected emotions and commitments.6 (More repressive states, in some ways, enjoy an easier time of finding ideological clarity, though at much too high a price in the loss of human dignity.) It is equally clear that a politics progressive enough to deal well with global warming, significant disparities in wealth and poverty around the world, the increasing fraying at the borders of the various world empires (China, Russia, the United States, Japan, and the European Union), intra- and international immigration, and other factors, all interrelated, have made the viability of humanity itself a concern going forward. As so often before in times of crisis, a look backward at resources that underlie our culture, but also operate at odds with what it has become, offers an important set of correctives, challenges, and visions of hopefulness that human beings will need in the emerging world of experience-driven (rather than goods-driven) capitalism, in whatever shape it will take. In a period of revolution, as ours surely is, one must look to the past in order to imagine the future, even if the past’s capacity to guide in detail is limited. At a minimum, the return ad fontes can illuminate the path that brought us to current tragedies and opportunities. The common humanity that we wish to celebrate does not come to us as a finished product, a fact of nature, but as a vision always existing in potential as much as in reality. To realize its possibilities requires careful thought and vigorous action.

The Key Questions and Concerns While this study does not attempt a systematic presentation of the political thought of ancient Israel, an endeavor essayed with varying degrees of success by others 6  A point brilliantly made by Martha Nussbaum, Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013); cf. Margaret R. Somers, “The Narrative Constitution of Identity: A Relational and Network Approach,” Theory and Society 23 (1994): 605–49; and especially Quentin Skinner, “A Third Concept of Liberty (Isaiah Berlin Lecture),” PBA 117 (2002): 237–68.

The Key Questions and Concerns

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whose work will be discussed below, a partial sketch of the whole should be possible. In truth, I think that such a comprehensive understanding of Israelite political thought is not yet possible in our current state of knowledge. Indeed, the task at hand requires the surfacing of new questions as much as new answers. However, it is possible to say a great deal, beginning with some basic observations: 1. Ancient Israel was a traditional society in which leadership was ascribed on the basis of heredity, in part, but also of conformity to socially accepted norms of behaviors in leaders. The power of leaders was not, with rare exceptions, charismatic in the Weberian sense, nor was it localized in technical skill, but was patrimonial, with a relatively thin overlay of bureaucratic technicians.7 At the same time, merely to label the state as patrimonial does not explain given practices, beliefs, or values at play in a given time, for labels can mask as well as reveal. 2. Parallel cases of state bureaucracies in the ancient Near East demonstrate an adaptation of family structures for the purposes of the state, as well as a sense among interested parties of a distinction between the two, especially the difference between a family’s interests and property and those entrusted to them as officers of the state.8 The bureaucratic practices of Israel and Judah are best understood through the very limited collections of administrative texts from Lachish,9 Arad, 7  On patrimonialism, see J. David Schloen, The House of the Father as Fact and Symbol: Patrimonialism in Ugarit and the ancient Near East,SAHL 2 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2001); Eraste Nyirimana, “Patrimonialism in the Cases of the Division of the Kingdom in Israel: A Reading of the Division Narrative from the Perspective of the Rwandan Context of Social Conflict,” OTE 24 (2011): 708–30. An interesting case presents itself from the Ur III period, which is often represented as a period of heavy bureaucratic control (in part because of the large size of the corpus of administrative tablets that have survived). However, as Steven J. Garfinkle has argued, the Ur III administration does not meet the Weberian definition of bureaucracy, which requires that administrative practices have the minimum possible regard for persons, with a strong bias toward processes that eliminate differentiated experiences based on rank. The Ur III texts, Garfinkle shows, exhibit many ways in which rank mattered, hence his argument for a patrimonial substrate to the state. The Ur III kings co-opted rather than suppressed the older social structures of power and submission, but their co-optation also meant that the older elites exerted significant power in the state. See Steven J. Garfinkle, “Was the Ur III State Bureaucratic? Patrimonialism and Bureaucracy in the Ur III Period,” in The Growth of an Early State in Mesopotamia: Studies in Ur III Administration, eds. Steven J. Garfinkle and J. Cale Johnson, BPOA 5 (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2008), 55–61. 8  A thorough study of such practices appears in Nicholas Postgate, Bronze Age Bureaucracy: Writing and the Practices of Government in Assyria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), esp. the summary statements on 327–42. Frankly, the Weberian sharp distinction between patrimonial rule and bureaucratic rule (picked up by Schloen and others) seems anachronistic for most periods before the late nineteenth century ce in Western Europe (i.e., Weber’s own lifetime). Even there, the elite levels of state, business, educational, and religious bureaucracies were often occupied by the same individuals and families. They still are. 9  For the texts discovered in Room E18.C, the so-called guardroom of the Level II gatehouse, see the edition in André Lemaire, “Hebrew Inscriptions, Section A: Ostraca and Incised Inscriptions,” in The Renewed Archaeological Excavations at Lachish (1973–1994), ed. David Ussishkin, 5 vols., TAUNIAM 22 (Tel Aviv: Yass Publications in Archaeology, 2004), 4:2099–2113; on the stratigraphy, see the clarifications of David Ussishkin, “The City-Gate Complex, Section A: A Synopsis of the

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Chapter 1:  The Limits and Promise of Israelite Political Reflection

and Samaria, as well as the evidence of the lam-melek seal impressions on jars used in the royal provisioning system (as already noted above). But these artifacts represent only the surface of the social interactions that made them usable by their owners. These remains of the bureaucratic culture both reveal and conceal their creators’ intentions. 3. The Israelite king sat (literally, was enthroned) at the center of a complex nesting of leadership structures, including clan heads, village elders, large landholders, and a state apparatus or bureaucracy, with various players undoubtedly operating in more than one arena of society and thus reinforcing their power and expanding their responsibilities in those several spheres. The king was never able to control all aspects of society (in spite of fears of such control, as stated, for example in the warnings of 1 Sam 8), but was able to collect and redistribute material and social goods for purposes that he perceived as advantageous to his regime and/or society as a whole. 4. Reflection on, and display of, political power occurred through various media, including oral traditions and songs (now accessible only indirectly through written texts), written texts of various genres, rituals, and architecture. But the concomitant of power is legitimacy, as Weber pointed out long ago. Thus one must understand these media of power also as attempts at seeking or reinforcing legitimacy. As Norman Yoffee has argued for so-called “early states” (i.e., states that arose where none had existed before), States emerged as part of the process in which … differentiated and stratified social groups were recombined under new kinds of centralized leadership. New ideologies were created that insisted that such leadership was not only possible, but the only possibility. The earliest states were made natural, that is, legitimized, through central symbols, expensively supported and maintained by inner elites who constituted the cultural and administrative core of the state. Ideologies of statecraft also set the rules for how leaders and would-be leaders

Stratigraphy and Architecture,” in The Renewed Archaeological Excavations at Lachish (1973–1994), ed. David Ussishkin, 5 vols, TAUNIAM 22 (Tel Aviv: Yass Publications in Archaeology, 2004), 2:504–24. For Ostraca 1–18 (the Elyashib archive proper) plus numbers 24, 40, and 88, see the edition of Yohanan Aharoni and Joseph Naveh, eds., Arad Inscriptions (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1981), and especially the synthetic discussion on 142–48. On the Samaria ostraca, the editio princeps of G. A. Reisner, C. S. Fisher, and David G. Lyon, eds. Harvard Excavations at Samaria 1908–1910 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1924), 227–46 remains useful. See also the economically oriented study of Baruch Rosen, “Wine and Oil Allocations in the Samaria Ostraca,” TA 13–14 (1986–1987): 39–45; and the chronological discussion of William H. Shea, “Israelite Chronology and the Samaritan Ostraca,” ZDPV 101 (1985): 9–20. All these texts give glimpses of bureaucratic systems involved in gathering and redistributing foodstuffs, as well as some traces of the social interactions in those systems, which seemed to involve not just hierarchical relationships but clear personal connections now unrecoverable except by inference. Moreover, the scale of the redistribution as a percentage of the overall economies of Judah or Israel is unclear, but may have been small, certainly by modern standards in which one-third to one-half of developed post-industrial economies are funneled through governmental structures.

The Key Questions and Concerns

9

must guard these symbols and perpetuate the knowledge of how to main, display, and reproduce them.10

Several aspects of this working definition of the processes of state-development deserve comment: states incorporate preexisting social groups within their communication systems, but the incorporation also changes the groupings and the content of that communication. I will return to this point in time. 5. The study of Israelite leadership is, then, a study of those media of communication that are extant, with an emphasis on their rhetorical approaches to building solidarity (epideisis) as well as subordination. 6. Such a study reveals kingship as a performance, in which the king as warrior, builder, progenitor of the dynasty, and giver of prosperity to his land becomes real not only through administrative action or policymaking, but through ritual action and reflection on ritual. In stressing the importance of the practices by which rulers built solidarity among themselves, the ruled, and the overarching divine realm one need not go as far as, say, Clifford Geertz in his study of the Balinese kingdoms as entities designed for ritual, to recognize the inadequacy of a functionalist approach to kingship, according to which ritual was epiphenomenal.11 We are not far from the pioneering idea of the fourteenth-century intellectual Ibn Khaldûn, who located the success of states in the “social feeling” (ᶜas.abîyah) of their leading tribal units.12 7. To understand the media of communication around kingship and the state requires attention to the rhetorical strategies that rulers employed, as well as those by which other political players resisted or cooperated with or analyzed from a distance the communicative acts of the rulers. Here, I have focused chiefly (though not exclusively) upon texts, but a fuller accounting of the Israelite experience must stretch beyond those texts to architecture, glyptic, and even decorated pottery (as at Ramat Raḥel). Indeed, the rhetoric of political power predated the invention of writing, emerging in Egypt and probably Mesopotamia in the fourth millennium at the latest (and possibly much earlier in oral traditions, dance, and other media now difficult to recover),13 and survived alongside it as a complemen10  Norman Yoffee, Myths of the Archaic State: Evolution of the Earliest Cities, States, and Civilizations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 42; of great value also are the studies in Rai­ ner Kessler, Walter Sommerfeld, and Leslie Tramontini, eds., State Formation and State Decline in the Near and Middle East (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2016). 11  Clifford Geertz, Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth-Century Bali (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980). 12  Ibn Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History, trans. Franz Rosenthal, 3 vols. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958), 1:261–86. 13  See the discussion of Egyptian fourth-millennium bce palettes in Ludwig D. Morenz, “Texts Before Writing: Reading (Proto-)Egyptian Poetics of Power,” in Experiencing Power, Generating Authority: Cosmos, Politics, and the Ideology of Kingship in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, eds. Jane A. Hill, Philip Jones, and Antonio J. Morales (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, 2013), 121–49. For the larger context of Egypto-Levantine relations during the late-fourth to early-third millennia bce, a valuable survey of the material culture evi-

10

Chapter 1:  The Limits and Promise of Israelite Political Reflection

tary system.14 Access to these latter media remains more fragmentary owing to the accidents of preservation and excavation, and they have accordingly received much less study than the biblical texts and inscriptions themselves.15 Accordingly, the choices made here in media for study owe less to a principled approach to the subject than to the nature of the evidence that has survived and to the expertise that one person can bring to bear. One may hope that other scholars with expertise in the archaeological realia will also join this discussion in earnest. 8. To understand the rhetorical strategies of rule (and dissent against rule) embedded in the Hebrew Bible, it is important to be aware, at some level, of alternative rhetorics of rule extant in the first millennium bce. These rhetorics included those of the great empires (and especially of Neo-Assyria, which is arguably best understood) and of the smaller states that formed the political system that dominated the Fertile Crescent between the dissolution of the Late Bronze Age imperial system (Egypt, Hatti, Mitanni, Assyria, Babylonia) and the rise of Assyria in the eighth century.16 Indeed, the practices of warfare and statescraft fashioned under the Egyptian New Kingdom and mediated to Late Bronze Age Canaan during the 19th Dynasty continued to bear fruit well into the Iron Age since Israel and Judah redence appears in the fourteen essays on Trans- and Cisjordan published in Felix Höflmayer and Ricardo Eichmann, eds., Egypt and the Southern Levant in the Early Bronze Age, OrAr 31 (Rahden: Leidorf, 2014). 14  On the complementarity of writing and visual art, see, e.g., Dominik Bonatz, “Bild, Macht und Raum im neuassyrischen Reich,” in Organization, Representation, and Symbols of Power in the Ancient Near East, eds. Gernot Wilhelm (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2012), 51–71; Joan Oates and David Oates, Nimrud: An Assyrian Imperial City Revealed (London: British School of Archaeology in Iraq, 2001), esp.  49–50; Irene Winter, “Royal Rhetoric and the Development of Historical Narrative in Neo-Assyrian Reliefs,” Studies in Visual Communication 7 (1981): 2–38; reprinted in eadem, On Art in the Ancient Near East, vol.  1: Of the First Millennium B.C.E., CHANE 34.1 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 3–70. 15  For example, remains of royal monumental inscriptions for the Iron Age Israelite polities exist, but in such fragmentary form as to defy meaningful study. See, e.g., the Inscription E2/1816 from Jerusalem (four words on three lines) published by Joseph Naveh, “Hebrew and Aramaic Inscriptions,” in Excavations at the City of David, 1978–1985, vol.  6: Inscriptions, ed. Donald T. Ariel, Qedem 41 (Jerusalem: Institute of Archaeology/Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2000), 1–2; J. W. Crowfoot, Grace M. Crowfoot, and Kathleen M. Kenyon, Samaria-Sebaste III: The Objects from Samaria (London: PEF, 1957), pl. iv # 1. 16  For the northern half of the system, see the historical surveys of Hélène Sader, “History,” in The Aramaeans in Ancient Syria, ed. Herbert Niehr, HdO 106 (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 11–36; eadem, “The Aramaean Kingdoms of Syria: Origin and Formation Processes,” in Essays on Syria in the Iron Age, ed. Guy Bunnens, ANESSup 7 (Louvain: Peeters, 2000), 61–76; Stefania Mazzoni, “Syria and the Periodization of the Iron Age: A Cross-Cultural Perspective,” in Essays on Syria in the Iron Age, ed. Guy Bunnens, ANESSup 7 (Louvain: Peeters, 2000), 31–59; and Horst Klengel, “The ‘Crisis Years’ and the New Political System in Early Iron Age Syria: Some Introductory Remarks,” in Essays on Syria in the Iron Age, ed. Guy Bunnens, ANESSup 7 (Louvain: Peeters, 2000), 21–30. Among other factors, the trade patterns shifted toward the Mediterranean coast and away from the Amuq, Habur, Euphrates triangle, with major material cultural implications throughout the region. See also Moshe Elat, “Phoenician Overland Trade within the Mesopotamian Empires,” in Ah, Assyria: Studies in Assyrian History and Ancient Near Eastern Historiography Presented to Hayim Tadmor, eds. Mordechai Cogan and Israel Eph’al (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1991), 21–35.

The Key Questions and Concerns

11

mained in the Egyptian orbit in many respects until the late eighth century bce.17 The ideational lives of these smaller states are less well attested, to be sure, but increasing research has made clear certain patterns of political presentation that bear on the Israelite situation as well.18 And of course the larger empires and their propaganda bore directly on the formation of biblical texts in a great many ways, not just or primarily in the Achaemenid period, but earlier. 9. Understanding the Israelite texts about politics must account for the emic understanding of the world of empire that emerged from the eighth century bce in both Israel and other, previously independent but now subordinated states. For example, responses to Assyrian rule could differ in the North Syrian Aramaic-, Phoenician-, and Luwian-speaking kingdoms, ranging from slavish imitation of Assyrian political models to reclamation of older symbols and discourses.19 As texts like Isa 7–8 make clear, discussions within the Israelite polities considered several possible responses to empire as well. The crucial point for considering empire is this, however: we must exercise caution about using “empire” as a moral category instead of a political one. To clarify, all states and the societies to which they are attached embed moral considerations within their discourses. Empires are moral zones, just as other kinds of polities are, and resistance to empire was (and is) one viable political approach. But the biblical traditions do not understand imperial states as a special category that uniquely instantiates repression or cruelty. Not only does biblical Hebrew have no word for “empire,” opting instead to brand the great multicultural states with the standard lexemes ‫ מלכות‬and ‫ממלכה‬,20 but more importantly, they understand all 17  For example, note the practices of warfare during the Ramesside period, which continued to shape political thought for a long time thereafter. See the study of Michael G. Hasel, Domination and Resistance: Egyptian Military Activity in the Southern Levant, ca. 1300–1185 B.C., PÄ 11 (Leiden: Brill, 1998). 18  Note the helpful surveys of the literature by the contributors to Herbert Niehr, ed., The Aramaeans in Ancient Syria, HdO 106 (Leiden: Brill, 2014), esp. the essays on literature (Paolo Merlo), art (Dominik Bonatz), and architecture (Mirko Novák). 19  As argued by Giovanni B. Lanfranchi, “The Luwian-Phoenician bilinguals of Çineköy and Karatepe: an ideological dialogue,” in Getrennte Wege? Kommunikations, Raum und Wahrnehmung in der Alten Welt, eds. Robert Rollinger, Andreas Luther, and Josef Wiesehöfer, Oikumene 2 (Frankfurt: Verlag Antike, 2007), 179–217. The varying political responses to empire must derive both from internal stimuli (practical problems and the weight of older traditions, as well as the acts and attitudes of individual actors now no longer recoverable), as well as from the varying activities of the Assyrians (and later rulers) themselves. On the use of monuments in the communication of Assyrian propaganda in their provinces and subject kingdoms, see Ann Shafer, “Assyrian Royal Monuments on the Periphery: Ritual and the Making of Imperial Space,” in Ancient Near Eastern Art in Context: Studies in Honor of Irene J. Winter by Her Students, eds. Jack Cheng and Marian H. Feldman, CHANE 26 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 133–59; Alessandra Gilibert, Syro-Hittite Monumental Art and the Archaeology of Performance: The Stone Reliefs at Carchemish and Zincirli in the Earlier First Millennium bce, TBSAW 2 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2011). 20  Some texts steadfastly refuse to admit to an imperial hierarchy, as in Ps 83, which lists the old neighbors and traditional enemies and caps the list by describing (v. 9) Assyria as accompanying them and being “the right arm for the sons of Lot” (‫) היו זרוע לבני לוט‬. The psalm couches the opposi-

12

Chapter 1:  The Limits and Promise of Israelite Political Reflection

political structures, practices, and personnel to be susceptible to a range of failings, as well as a range of potential virtues. A due consideration of all these dimensions of political reflection in ancient Israel and Judah, as preserved in the biblical tradition and other media, should reveal a very complex history of ideas and practices that developed in response to a set of experiences with rulers as these kingdoms developed as so-called secondary states at some point after the collapse of the Late Bronze Age polities and continuing through the gradual sorting out of life that followed in the Iron I period. The consolidation, maturation, and then collapse of the Israelite states and their neighbors from the tenth or ninth21 through the sixth centuries bce and the reworking of their literary productions by later tradents during the Achaemenid period have all left marks on the biblical material that still persist.22

Current Research Not surprisingly, given the prominence of the Bible and its interpretive afterlife in Western thought, several contemporary studies of Israelite political thought have ad-

tion to Israel as a coalition of states, clearly a picture owing more to the older Zion ideology, in which “earth’s kings stand up and plot together against Yhwh and his anointed one” (Ps 2:2), than to an accurate assessment of the political structures of those confronting them in the late eighth or early seventh century, which must be the period of the psalm’s composition. The collectors of the socalled oracles against the nations in Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Amos also assume a club of roughly equal nation-states, despite the knowledge they must have had of the relative inequalities among the powers. Conceivably, the odd story of the impossible coalition in Gen 14 may reflect a similar conception. Since many scholars have argued that the story is late, even though it assumes a polycephalic political situation such as the one predating the Assyrian expansion in the late eighth century bce, it may be that the idea persisted for a long time despite changing political realities. See, e.g., Volker Glissmann, “Genesis 14: A Diaspora Novella?” JSOT 34 (2009): 33–45 (though tellingly, all of the elements that he identifies as characteristic of a Diaspora novella appear in Near Eastern literature as early as Sinuhe); Gard Granerød, Abraham and Melchizedek: Scribal Activity of Second Temple Times in Genesis 14 and Psalm 110, BZAW 406 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2010), esp.  130–32. The cautionary notes sounded some time ago by J. A. Emerton remain valuable; see J. A. Emerton, “Some False Clues in the Study of Genesis XIV,” VT 21 (1971): 24–47. Moreover, while he does not attempt to date the Melchizedeq episode, Elgavish’s arguments for placing it within a distinct political context of treaty-making argue for an understanding of political reality predating the Assyrian conquests (even if the text might be later); see David Elgavish, “The Encounter of Abram and Melchizedeq King of Salem: A Covenant Establishing Ceremony,” in Studies in the Book of Genesis: Literature, Redaction and History, ed. A. Wénin, BETL 155 (Leuven: Peeters, 2001), 496–508. 21  I do not wish to enter here into the complex questions surrounding the so-called Low and High Chronologies for the tenth century. The precise dating of most of the traditions is not critical to my argument, except possibly in the case of the David-Zion tradition now preserved primarily in the Psalter. 22  As noted by inter alia, Eckart Otto, Die Tora des Mose: Die Geschichte der literarischen Vermittlung von Recht, Religion und Politik durch die Mosegestalt, BSJJGW19/2 (Hamburg: Joachim Jungius-Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften/Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2001).

Current Research

13

dressed important questions, and this book interacts with a number of them at strategic points, while still going its own way. In a recent survey of key literature on Israelite politics, especially in the German linguistic world, Wolfgang Oswald has surveyed works that focus on “die in politiktheoretischer oder politikgeschichtlicher Absicht über das Alte Testament bzw. die Hebräische Bible oder über das Alte Israel… also Arbeiten aus der Politikwissenschaft und aus anderen geisteswissenschaftlichen Disziplinen….”23 The survey, which I will not replicate here, illustrates if nothing else the lively interest in Israelite political thought in contemporary biblical scholarship, as well as the methodological ferment surrounding the subject. What we are studying and how we are studying it remains an important question. Without trying to retrace Oswald’s survey, one should nevertheless note a few major book-length studies that are very important for this discussion. Some of them are cited below, and some are not, but all have proven formative in my own thinking about Israelite thought. Thus Daniel Fleming has discussed the “democratic” impulses in ancient states that interacted with tribes, the quasi-kinship based units that have often coexisted with states as well as other political forms such as chieftainships.24 Fleming’s study of Mari points to an important aspect of the substructure of the mental world of those producing biblical texts, who after all sublimated tribalism or, in the case of P, resuscitated the tribe as a notional organizational form distinct from, and even replacing, the state. Similarly Joshua Berman has argued that the Pentateuch’s non-monarchialism paved the way for a significant break from the wider Near Eastern association between the king and the gods and led to later Western democratic developments.25 While the discussions of Job and Isaiah below will argue that the delinking of monarchy and the divine realm occurred in several circles in Israel, not just in those that created the Pentateuch, and that “democracy” as a label for any period in ancient Israelite thought is an anachronism, still much of Berman’s case stands up to scrutiny and merits careful consideration. Certainly the Israelite proposal to link the major ideas of a national god, a legal tradition dependent for its validity on a narrative of national salvation, and a mechanism for critiquing the coherence of political actions in light of that narrative, as worked out both in Pentateuchal traditions and previously (?) in the prophets (e.g., Amos 2:6–16), has no known parallel in the ancient Near East. This combination of ideas, not their individual parts, marks Israel’s true measure as an innovative intellectual community. 23  Wolfgang Oswald, “Das Alte Testament und die Politikwissenschaft – eine einführende Sondierung,” TRu 79 (2014): 135–60; quotation from 135. 24  Daniel Fleming, Democracy’s Ancient Ancestors: Mari and Early Collective Governance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 25  Joshua Berman, Created Equal: How the Bible Broke with Ancient Political Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). On the sublimation of monarchical ideas in the Moses stories, see the discussion in Danny Mathews, Royal Motifs in the Pentateuchal Portrayal of Moses, LHBOTS 571 (London: Bloomsbury/T. & T. Clark, 2012).

14

Chapter 1:  The Limits and Promise of Israelite Political Reflection

In the meantime, Dale Launderville has explored the dynamics of Israelite kingship in its Near Eastern environment.26 He examined the practices of kingship and their interpretation, including the divine sanction of kingship, royal rhetoric, the centralization of the community in the person of the king, the role of memory and tradition in legitimating power, the means of criticizing the court’s rule, and the role of visions of the ideal king in three traditions, two from the first and one from the second millennium bce. While the appropriateness of such comparisons across both temporal and physical boundaries might be debatable in principle, Launderville demonstrates the existence of parallel solutions to parallel problems, if not necessarily genetic connections. As such, his study marks a real advance over prior work. From a more deconstructive, and to my mind less satisfying angle, Stuart Lasine studied what he called “royal narcissism.”27 His literary-critical study of the Saul, David, Solomon, and Job stories takes account of ancient Near Eastern royal stories, but primarily focuses on the deconstruction of the Israelite stories. The work raises many interesting questions, even though its understanding of the royal gathering and use of knowledge seems anachronistic, and its focus on royal irresponsibility one-sided. On this account, it remains hard to explain the ancient ascription of legitimacy to kings and the states built around them, for example. A more useful, because more careful, ideologically-oriented study of Israelite political thought appears in the late work of Norman Gottwald, who argued that the Yahwism that emerged in the tribal period never shaped the life of the Israelite and Judahite states sufficiently strongly to overcome their tendency to make subjects rather than citizens. Gottwald’s understanding of “political power” as something not unique to the state but “practiced and legitimated through an institutional network that claims and enforces its authority in specified jurisdictions of the corporate life,”28 is not very far from my viewpoint, though I see more complexity in the operations of the state itself than he seems to allow for. Or rather, I am less confident than he that the “tribal Yahwism” contrasts sharply with the state religion, to the detriment of the latter. Wolfgang Oswald, likewise, worked out his readings of the Hebrew Bible in terms of six paradigms (the Davidic, Mosaic, ancestral, Abrahamic-Mosaic, Persian, and new Davidic models) of statehood and legitimacy as seen in a wide range of biblical texts.29 While useful and deserving of careful examination in detail, this model seems more complex to me than is really necessary, for not only did the final editors of the Bible feel free to combine these views into a form that allowed them to coexist 26  Dale Launderville, Piety and Politics: The Dynamics of Royal Authority in Homeric Greece, Biblical Israel, and Old Babylonian Mesopotamia (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003). 27  Stuart Lasine, Knowing Kings: Knowledge, Power, and Narcissism in the Hebrew Bible (Atlanta: SBL, 2001). 28  Norman Gottwald, The Politics of Ancient Israel, LAI (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 2001), 7. 29  Wolfgang Oswald, Staatstheorie im Alten Israel: Der politische Diskurs im Pentateuch und in den Geschichtsbüchern des Alten Testaments (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2009).

Materials for Research

15

in a creative, if sometimes uneasy, conversation, but the various individual texts often reflect complex conversations about power and legitimacy that cannot easily be reduced to “models.” Finally, a very helpful study of royal apologetic from Andrew Knapp has shown that the biblical texts about David and Solomon, in particular, share many features in both thought and technique of presentation with texts both older and later, indicating that among the rhetorical needs of new dynasties or challenged members of old ones was the obligation to respond to charges of illegitimacy in various forms. The rhetorical skills employed in such apologetics receive due consideration throughout his important work.30 Unlike these and some others, I have not attempted a synthesis of Israel’s political thought because a comprehensive picture seems out of reach. Rather, I have initiated a number of soundings in the biblical texts in order to get a sense of the issues animating Israelite thought at various periods and in several circles. Nevertheless, previous attempts at synthesis remain profoundly stimulating even if one cannot accept every aspect of any of them.

Materials for Research In considering, then, how Israelite thinkers explored the moral and ideational world of their politics, one immediately recognizes the pervasiveness of the concern in almost every part of the Hebrew Bible. The interaction of indviduals and groups with the state and its rituals and administrative procedures shaped many texts even when their primary concerns lay elsewhere. However, with due allowance for varieties of detail, it should be possible to identify basic models of political thought that have survived. In fact, there are two that appear in robust form and a third that is obscured but nevertheless present in significant ways. One might begin with that third one first, because it is the one that appears most visibly in other ancient Near Eastern cultures, i.e., the culture of the monarchy. Because of the survival in the archaeological record of texts from courts and bureaucracies and the prominence of palaces and fortresses in the remains of some ancient sites, the political discourses of monarchy have gained prominence in the study of the ancient Near East. Evidence of that research will appear everywhere in this work, especially in the following chapter.31 Yet one should be clear: the Bible itself contains only fragments of the Israelite/Judahite royal ideology, mostly in the form of liturgical texts in the Psalter and, in more refracted form, in the stories of kings in 1 Samuel-2 Kings and in some of the prophets. Except in the Psalter, no biblical writer es30 

Andrew Knapp, Royal Apologetic in the Ancient Near East (Atlanta: SBL 2015). See also my earlier work, Mark W. Hamilton, The Body Royal: The Social Poetics of Kingship in Ancient Israel and the Levant (Leiden: Brill, 2005). 31 

16

Chapter 1:  The Limits and Promise of Israelite Political Reflection

pouses the sort of adulation of kingship, the almost rococo exuberance for the deeds of the king as builder, ritualizer, warrior, and progenitor that appears everywhere in inscriptions throughout the Near East. This does not mean that such attitudes did not exist in Israel and Judah, for clearly they did, and they were exhibited in a range of media from texts to architecture (note for example the massive palaces at Samaria, Jezreel, Lachish, and probably Jerusalem). The obscuration of this political model in the Hebrew Bible was not an accident of survival, but the result of deliberate choices on the part of various intellectual groups both before and after the destruction of the dual monarchies. The surviving texts take a nuanced view of monarchy, skeptical yet not gainsaying. The other two models can be described this way. First, one approach, which I will call the realistic model for lack of a better term, accepted the basic structure of society, including the state, but sought to distribute power along a series of axes, especially with traditional landowners and local dignitaries. This approach appears in otherwise quite disparate texts such as Deuteronomy, Job, Qohelet, various prophets, and in the so-called Deuteronomistic History. Second, a priestly model sought to center all life around the practices of the temple. This model appears most obviously in P, but also in a different way in Ezekiel. It combines a utopian vision of the future with nostalgia for the allegedly stateless tribalism of the past.32 In this model, kingship does not disappear: it is sublimated to Torah through narratives in which Moses exercises kingly prerogatives but has no successor except interpreters of Torah and the community that embraces the selfsame views that the P creators ascribed to Moses as the revealer of Torah.33 While the texts presenting this model survive in documents completed during the Persian period, parts of some of the texts themselves seem to come from the First Temple period and the ideas they contain are often quite ancient. So one should be cautious about assuming that this model arose after the previous two. This modeling seems to break down at two points, though I think the problems are not fatal but rather confirmatory. Put bluntly, where do the utopian visions embedded in various strata of Isaiah and other prophets fit? And what about the role of the great empires in these models? To my mind, the Isaiah tradition’s radical pursuit of peace and its distrust of all earthly power actually accords well with the first model precisely because the prophetic poetry’s lack of obvious referentiality to real-world polities allows it to exist in a dialectical relationship with all sorts of political realities, as Chapter 6 will argue below. In other words, one who thinks that all state structures 32  Whether that tribalism was in fact stateless is a different question. On the problems of the label “tribe,” and its references to breeding, linguistic, political, and military units relating to states (or not), see in addition to the extended discussion in Ibn Khaldûn’s Muqaddimah, Morton H. Fried, The Notion of Tribe (Menlo Park, CA: Cummings, 1975); Jeffrey Szuchman, ed., Nomads, Tribes, and the State in the Ancient Near East, University of Chicago Oriental Institute Seminars 5 (Chicago: Oriental Institute, 2009); Adam E. Miglio, Tribe and State: The Dynamics of International Politics and the Reign of Zimri-lim, GSANE 8 (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias, 2014). 33  See the discussion in Mathews, Royal Motifs in the Pentateuchal Portrayal of Moses.

Materials for Research

17

must be evaluated by their capacity to bring about peace and the fitting worship of Yhwh will find the precise structure of that state to be much less relevant. To illustrate the point, one may consider the exchange between Isaiah and Ahaz in Isa 7:1–17, and especially the oracle in Isa 7:7–9: ‫כה אמר אדני יהוה לא תקום ולא תהיה‬ ‫כי ראׁש ארם דמׁשק וראׁש דמׁשק רצין‬ ‫ובעוד ׁשׁשים וחמׁש ׁשנה יחת אפרים מעם‬ ‫וראׁש אפרים ׁשמרון וראׁש ׁשמרון בן רמליהו‬ ‫אם לא תאמינו כי לא תאמנו‬ Thus says the Lord Yhwh, “It will not happen; it will not be. For the head of Aram is Damascus, and the head of Damascus Rezin – And within sixty-five years Ephraim will be bereft of people – Yes, the head of Ephraim is Samaria, and the head of Samaria is Remaliah’s son. If you are not firm, you will not be firmed up!

Whatever the precise meaning of the cryptic temporal reference in v. 8b, the overall point is unmistakable. Isaiah counsels Ahaz to avoid alliances with either Assyria or its opposing coalition, preferring instead the complete abdication of political choice in favor of a confidence in the deity to intervene in some unspecified way at an unspecified time. Isaiah’s approach is thus not public policy advice at all, but the refusal to derive a course of action from narrow experience in favor of a mythological viewpoint in which the deity will intervene without political intermediaries. In its utopianism lie both its fragility (hence Ahaz’s refusal to accept Isaiah’s “advice”) and its power.34 The problem of utopianism thus has a near complement in the problem of empire. Israelite political thought had to come to grips with imperialism, which it did in several ways. Accordingly, some texts understand the encounter with Assyria, Babylonia, and to a lesser extent Persia as divine punishment or at least expression of Yhwh’s unbridled wrath (e.g., 2 Kings; Lamentations; Esther; Dan 1–6; Tobit); other traditions understand the empires as more benign (Jeremiah; 2 Chronicles); and still others ignore them altogether while constructing a vision of a post-imperial world (P; Ezekiel). In other words, the texts offer different, often radically different, solutions to the problem of empire, partly reflecting the complexity of imperial repertoires of rule in which individual players and groups might experience a kaleidoscope of relation34  On the reaction of the Isaiah tradition to political life more generally, especially in the eighth century bce, see Chapter 7 below. Assyrian impacts in Israel-Judah can be overstated, however, as has been argued by Ariel Bagg, “Palestine Under Assyrian Rule: A New Look at the Assyrian Imperial Policy in the West,” JAOS 133 (2013): 119–44; but see David Ben-Shlomo, “Tell Jemmeh, Philistia and the Neo-Assyrian Empire during the Late Iron Age,” Levant 46 (2014): 58–88; more broadly, Federico Manuelli, “Assyria and the Provinces: Survival of Local Features and Imposition of New Patterns in the Peripheral Regions of the Empire,” Mes 44 (2009): 113–27; and for the specific example of Tell Tayinat, Timothy P. Harrison and James F. Osborne, “Building XVI and the Neo-Assyrian Sacred Precinct at Tell Tayinat,” JCS 64 (2012): 125–43.

18

Chapter 1:  The Limits and Promise of Israelite Political Reflection

ships with the power structures, depending on economic and administrative factors, and even individual attitudes. Getting to a thick description of such experiences and reflections on them is very daunting, but must be tried. A consideration of Israel’s reflections on empire from the eighth century bce onward would profit from postcolonial studies, if one takes a fine-grained enough approach.35 Rather than assuming, as biblical scholars sometimes do, that empire lies behind every rock and olive tree in the biblical text and that every discussion in the Bible is about one or another empire rather than its ostensible subject, we should nevertheless recognize (1) that most biblical texts originated during a period when outside domination was a fact of Israel and Judah’s life; (2) the everydayness of empire could express itself in multiple ways in the social experiences of people, especially in a world of slow transportation and communication, and therefore incomplete and inconsistent political surveillance and control; (3) empires exist as parts of even larger socioeconomic units that may impinge on the lives of individuals and every level of social organization from village to state; and nevertheless (4) individuals and groups must find ways to negotiate the realities of empire in order to survive. Intellectuals may employ a range of strategies to do so. It is perhaps helpful here to consider research along these lines in New Testament studies, a related discipline for which empire serves as a backdrop. As Warren Carter has argued in his study of the Gospel of John, the early Christian communities worked out ways of “negotiating empire” by responding to, and drawing on, the traditions of the synagogue and the propaganda of the empire as it was instantiated in written texts, architecture, coinage, and other media. Often this “negotiation” occurred amid a clash of values and beliefs that left no room for accommodation to the imperial ideology, as in the book of Revelation’s portrayal of Rome as “whore Babylon” and its expectation that the earthly city with its structural evil will give way to a new city that encases within itself Paradise. The early church’s negotiation can be understood as an “intertextual” phenomenon in which persons and groups made choices about which “texts” (including, again, a range of artistic media) to use and how to use them.36 Without going into the details of Carter’s analysis, which in fact are impressive in their explanatory power, one should note the care with which he 35  One must, however, be careful not to map a binary moral system atop a study of colonialism and its aftermath, since to do so risks reinscribing the colonized as the “noble savage” and thus eliminating their agency in the very act of seeking to surface their stories. In other words, the preference should always be for historical analysis that surfaces complex motivations of social actors and the structures of which they are part. Note the cautions of Martin J. Wiener, “The Idea of ‘Colonial Legacy’ and the Historiography of Empire,” Journal of the Historical Society 13 (2013): 1–32; see also the discussion of politics in Second Isaiah in Chapter 7 below. As a rule, it seems to me that the postcolonial studies that have influenced work on the Hebrew Bible reflect an older level of scholarship, in which “colonial” equaled morally flawed, and “colonized” equaled innocent victim. See, however, some of the studies in Musa W. Dube, Andrew M. Mbuvi, and Dora R. Mbuwayesango, eds., Postcolonial Perspectives in African Biblical Interpretations, SBLGPBS (Atlanta: SBL, 2012). 36 Warren Carter, John and Empire: Initial Explorations (New York: T. & T. Clark, 2008), esp.  3–18.

Methods and Approaches

19

proceeds and yet the sweeping conclusions to which he comes. Perhaps a model for studies of the Hebrew Bible may be found here, lest our discussion of empire become reduced either to a sterile analysis of administrative forms and their ideological underpinnings or, as more commonly happens at a semipopular level of discourse, to a kind of moralism in which “imperial” stands in for the older terms “sinful” or “iniquitous” without further analysis. As Carter puts it, however, we should also avoid false dichotomies, for religious and political claims intertwined in ancient texts, biblical and otherwise, in ways that deserve close attention.37

Methods and Approaches In studying the Israelite tradition as it emerged, then, I wish to attend to a concern classically articulated by Max Weber, in his posthumously edited work Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. His work has influenced a number of contemporary scholars of Israelite and Levantine history, with his understandings of patrimonialism playing a major role (see above). But, for Weber, patrimonialism was part of a larger sociological reality that he described as the relationship between order and legitimacy, which is in turn an example of social action. Weber understands social action, then, as a condition in which “the acting individual attaches a subjective meaning to his behavior – be it overt or covert, omission or acquiescence. Action is ‘social’ insofar as its subjective meaning takes account of the behavior of others and is thereby oriented in its course.”38 Sociology, for Weber, studies actions that have a meaning that is intersubjective, simultaneously particular to an individual, and yet worked out in negotiation with other actors. Legitimation is a species of social action through which actors assign a valuation of rightness or fittingness to displays of power. This valuation may be internal to the actor based on emotional, value-rational, or religious concerns, or it may result from a calculation of interest, or some combination of all these factors.39 The power of Weber’s analysis probably needs no illustration here, given the enormous influence of his work as one of the founders of social sciences. But a few observations are in order even at this point. First, the distinction that he makes between legitimacy and power is extremely important for biblical studies, not least because it seems so often to be lost upon us. The ways in which states exercise power, what Burbank and Cooper nicely call repertoires of rule,40 deserve careful consideration because they too must engage a range of 37 

Ibid., x-xi. Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, eds. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich, 2 vols. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 1:4 39  Ibid., 1:33. 40  Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper, Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010). 38  Max

20

Chapter 1:  The Limits and Promise of Israelite Political Reflection

social actors and their subjective experiences if they are to succeed. States, imperial and multicultural or not, seek to legitimize power, by obscuring or celebrating it, by involving subjects in their rule or marking them as outsiders, by standardizing administrative practices or leaving in place old differences – in short by exercising a creative, experientially derived, often provisional approach to governance. No state survives for long by enforcing a rigid coercion. Successful states recognize that, as Isaiah Berlin put it in a somewhat different context, paraphrasing Immanuel Kant, “out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.”41 Weber’s cautions against reifying social phenomena certainly apply at this point.42 This is why we should be highly skeptical of readings of Israelite political life that emphasize power at the expense of legitimacy or that downplay the roles of cooperation and alliance-building as part of the state’s operations. This caution applies even to modern dictatorial states. A range of studies have shown that citizens of such polities adopt attitudes of studied cynicism, or what Paul Anderson has felicitously called the “politics of scorn,” as they carry out rituals or other behaviors that appear to bolster the state’s power.43 Sometimes such attitudes lead to open revolt under the right conditions, but not always, and certainly mere comedic send-ups of the state may not alter its basic coercive practices and may even strengthen them by providing a false catharsis.44 Even here, resistance and cooperation intertwine in rich ways. Shared scorn, after all, is a form of alliance building, if one that reveals the dysfunctionality of the social structure that births it. How different would be the negotiations of power in ancient, tradition-oriented states! Second, then, the key to studying any social action lies in understanding how actors relate to one another. Politics in particular involves a spectrum of agonistic actions, the construction of rivalries and alliances with an aim toward some perceived good. What values, attitudes, bodies of knowledge, and rules for behavior shape such activity? How are they learned, negotiated, altered? Since social interactions are performative, they are amenable to rhetorical analysis. The task, then, is to understand the rhetorics of ancient Israelites and the texts they wrote. While Weber did not concentrate on how societies communicate understandings of reality, the concern fits his overall approach fairly well. His nuanced understanding of the intersubjectivity of human society seems especially congenial. But in marrying two discrete disciplines, we must proceed cautiously, again not reifying the phenomena under consideration, while still allowing for the possibility that actors 41  See Isaiah Berlin, The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas, ed. H. Hardy (New York: Knopf, 1991). 42 Weber, Economy and Society, 1:13–19. 43  Paul Anderson, “The politics of scorn in Syria and the agency of narrated involvement,” JRAI 19 (2013): 463–81. 44  As argued by Michael Herzfeld, “Irony and power: towards a politics of mockery in Greece,” in Irony in Action: anthropology, practice and the moral imagination, eds. J. Fernandez and M. T. Huber (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 63–83; more broadly idem, Cultural Intimacy: Social Poetics in the Nation-State, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2005).

Methods and Approaches

21

with different interests could, and did, persuade each other, and building solidarity across communities. Ars Rhetorica How, then, did ancient Near Eastern rhetors persuade audiences? What rules did they follow? Although rhetorical criticism of their texts has received much attention over the past century, especially for biblical studies since Muilenburg’s programmatic 1969 essay,45 much remains to be done, especially when we think of the rhetorical event as something more than the structure of texts or their aesthetic dimensions.46 Unlike students of the New Testament or Greco-Roman antiquity in general, who may draw on ancient handbooks and monographs culminating in the works of Cicero47 or Quintilian,48 we must resort to mirror reading of texts. Still progress can occur. In our own era of rhetorical profusion created by older media such as newspapers and now television and radio as well as newer media that blurs the boundary between creator and consumer of messages, it is easy to forget that for most of the past few thousand years, human beings have believed great speaking to be a rarely acquired art, and one on a plane with painting or sculpture in its capacity to elicit emotion and thought, to open the human psyche to new possibilities and imagined worlds. The wonder of it all may be lost on us because of the contemporary surfeit of words. Indeed, this loss of wonder takes its most pronounced forms in the common Western loss of confidence in political rhetoric, which too often seems tawdry or trivial, self-serving or disengaged from the complexities of mundane life. Not only are the rhetorical excesses of skilled speakers such as a Hitler or a Mussolini discredited by their abandonment of ethics and their appeal to the worst in human nature, but even the great speeches of liberation – “I have a dream,” “let us judge not, that we be not judged,” or “we shall fight them on the beaches” – often seem distant or unappealing. They are noble in their own way, to be sure, but survive as curiosities from a lost past. At least that is one, perhaps overly jaundiced view. On the other hand, the Hebrew Bible contains many stories of speech making as political event. Arguably the most 45 

James Muilenburg, “Form Criticism and Beyond,” JBL 88 (1969): 1–18. For a criticism of the tendency of biblical scholars to think of rhetoric in structural and aesthetic terms, that is, to work primarily as literary critics, see the handbook of Phyllis Trible, Rhetorical Criticism: Context, Method, and the Book of Jonah (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994), 48–52; but Alan Hauser, “Rhetorical Criticism of the Old Testament,” in Rhetorical Criticism of the Bible: A Comprehensive Bibliography with Notes on History and Method, eds. Duane Watson and Alan Hauser, BibInt 4 (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 4; Mark Gray, Rhetoric and Social Justice in Isaiah, LHBOTS 432 (New York/London: T. & T. Clark, 2006), 4–10. 47 Cicero, De oratore, ed. and trans. H. Rackham, LCL, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959–60); idem, Orator, ed. and trans. H. M. Hubell, LCL (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988). See also the convenient survey of Roman rhetoric in M. L. Clarke and D. H. Berry, Rhetoric at Rome: A Historical Survey (London/New York: Routledge, 1996). 48 Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, ed. and trans. Donald A. Russell, LCL, 5 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001). 46 

22

Chapter 1:  The Limits and Promise of Israelite Political Reflection

notable, or at any rate the longest, speech appears in 1 Kings 8, in which Solomon addresses the human and, especially divine party attending the dedication of the Jerusalem temple. The rhetorical strategies he employs in his prayer seem calculated not only to persuade the Almighty to undertake a course of action that might seem undesirable in some respects, but also to comment to the reader on a whole series of actions, past and future, that they too should judge. The Deuteronomistic composers of the speech plot a mental map of the world that encapsulates their understanding of Israel’s history and therefore its political (d)evolution, including the destruction of the twin monarchies by the Assyrian and Babylonian empires. This much is widely known and historically secure. Much less clear, however, is just what aim such a speech might have. Why did the Deuteronomistic editors, who composed the speech and set it in Solomon’s mouth, do so? Kings, even in dedications of great temples, did not need to speak at length in the hearing of human beings, nor did they need to offer long explanations to the deity. Or if they did, they could rely on traditional prayers and ritual movements, often ancient or at least believed by their users to be so, to bring about the desired effect. Why speech-making? In asking such a question, we find that others immediately follow. How did ancient Israelites (or their neighbors) learn to make speeches? What were the curricula for learners? What rules applied to speech-making itself? How did speakers and audiences assess the success or failure of speeches? What were the rhetorical rules in play? What about argument, arrangement of figures, uses of metaphor and simile and word play, length or brevity, and all the other elements that rhetorical theorists since the ancient Greeks thought were important? What made a speech good or bad, according to the ancient people assessing them? For the Greek-speaking world, answers to these sorts of questions are readily available, even if many details remain obscure or debated. The Greeks and their Roman successors left handbooks and monographs that still repay study. Aristotle’s Rhetoric, which will appear now and again in this volume, set the terms for discussion that have persisted almost to the present.49 Quintillian’s discussion of the ethics of rhetoric in his own treatises raise, again, important questions that help us distinguish between the brilliant, but immoral speechmaker and the vir bonus, the good person who speaks well. For the Greeks and their Latin-speaking successors, much is clear, as I say. For the ancient Near East, the picture is much fuzzier. No handbooks have come down from anywhere in the region. As far as we know, none ever existed. Just as the Mesopotamians understood the Pythagorean theorem and quadratic equations but never developed a full-fledged system of formula notation,50 so also the very common 49 Aristotle, Rhetoric, ed. John Henry Freese, LCL (1926; reprint ed. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000). 50  See e.g., M. Ossendrijver, “The Powers of 9 and Related Mathematical Tables from Babylon,” JCS 66 (2014): 149–69; Eleanor Robson, “More than Metrology: Mathematics Education in an Old Babylonian Scribal School,” in Under One Sky: Astronomy and Mathematics in the Ancient Near

Methods and Approaches

23

practice of speech-making never attracted a theoretical treatment. Perhaps this difference can be attributed to a deep difference in mental processes, or perhaps the Near Eastern “failure” to theorize and systematize derives from a more utilitarian approach to life. Speculation on the innovativeness or otherwise of Greek thought is not crucial at this point (and is, in any case, somewhat overrated). What is critical is that those interested in rhetoric before the Greeks must work with the surviving speeches (whether real or, much more common, literary creations) and reconstruct from them the underlying ideas, attitudes, beliefs, and practices that made them what they were. In spite of the ministrations of Muilenberg and his students and admirers, the interest in Israelite rhetoric has not delivered on its promise of being a way of assimilating historical and literary concerns by fostering attention to audience, audience creation, selection and structuring of argumentation and metaphor (or argumentation through metaphor), and other elements that together create an event of textual encounter. One might argue that the interest in rhetoric has been a dead end, but I do not think so. Rather, it has been sidetracked by an overly narrow conception of what constitutes rhetoric and how attention to ancient methods of persuasion might reveal both sociocultural assumptions in the texts (as well as in us scholars!) and the artistry of the texts and their creators. By failing to attend to the multidimensional nature of persuasion, we find ourselves in a methodological cul-de-sac. Arguably, a second source of diversion has derived from the ways in which rhetorical study of the Bible has gotten caught up in our contemporary ideological battles, though such a claim would need far more careful consideration than I can give it here. Less controversial should be the goal of cataloguing and analyzing the speeches – though discovering what constitutes a speech (as opposed to some other oral exchange) is a far more difficult task than it seems at first – of ancient Near Eastern rhetors (whether flesh and blood or “simply” literary characters), discerning their roles in the texts in which they are embedded, and moving from words to ideas. One thinks of a Near Eastern version of George Kennedy’s histories of Greco-Roman rhetoric, for example.51 Such a study could, if properly attentive to both text and audience, both history and literature, help us grow in our understanding of how policymakers and prophets calculate risk and reward (as Kissinger has it) in a world that, as Braudel reminds us for a much later period than ancient Israel’s, that of Philip II’s Mediterranean, was borne on the back of peasants toiling at age-old tasks, who nevertheless were people with ideas and dreams. Such a rhetorical emphasis allows us to see both East, eds. John M. Steele and Annette Imhausen, AOAT 297 (Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2002), 325–65; Marco de Odorico, The Use of Numbers and Quantifications in the Assyrian Royal Inscriptions, SAAS 3 (Helsinki: Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 1995); O. Neugebauer and A. Sachs with A. Goetze, eds., Mathematical Cuneiform Texts, AOS 29 (New Haven: AOS and ASOR, 1945). 51  George Kennedy, A New History of Classical Rhetoric (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994); idem, Classical Rhetoric and Its Christian and Secular Tradition from Ancient to Modern Times (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1999).

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Chapter 1:  The Limits and Promise of Israelite Political Reflection

the visions of the literati and glitterati and the humbler passions of the great mass of human beings and the deity they believed themselves to serve. True, studies of Israelite rhetoric remain in their infancy or at best early childhood, and they often focus heavily on the aesthetic dimensions of texts. This is certainly true of the most influential works such as the handbooks of Trible and Lundbom.52 Such an approach certainly offers valuable insights into biblical texts, as Lundbom’s commentary on Jeremiah amply demonstrates, just to take one massive example.53 However, another set of concerns needs addressing, the ways in which textual and non-textual media construct arguments or build solidarity among their audiences. For argumentation, I am heavily dependent on the classic work of Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, which will appear often below.54 Perelman and his student Olbrechts-Tyteca together worked out a system of argumentation that corrected an overly narrow understanding of it deriving from the analytical philosophy that dominated the early twentieth century, especially in Anglophone circles. With their near contemporary J. L. Austin and others, they moved the discipline of rhetoric studies out of the impasse of assuming that statements can only be meaningful when they are either tautological (“a green flower is green”) or empirically verifiable (“Jupiter is the fifth planet from the sun”) with the recognition that humans make all sorts of arguments that persuade and are thought reasonable at some level.55 In addition to this understanding of persuasion in texts, which I think also extends to other media though with some caution necessary, one must add another dimension. At the beginning of rhetorical studies as an intellectual discipline, Aristotle famously distinguished among three types of rhetoric: forensic, deliberative, and epideictic.56 While this categorization works well as a heuristic device for some rhetorical traditions, even Aristotle himself recognized the limits of the distinctions. In particular, epideictic seems a highly expansive category. As Dale L. Sullivan has argued, following Aristotle and the Ciceronian tradition, the speech-acts in this mode use argumentation but do so in order either to praise or blame.57 Similarly, Gerard Hauser interprets Aristotle to mean that epideictic holds before an audience a vision of their community’s moral vision, because it assumes the competence of the audience to pass judgment and therefore its capacity for proper character formation. Or in other words, “epideictic offers instruction on recognizing virtue and thereby on re52 Trible, Rhetorical Criticism; Lundbom, Jeremiah: A Study in Ancient Hebrew Rhetoric, SBLDS 18 (Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1975; reprint ed. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1997). 53  Jack R. Lundbom, Jeremiah, AB 21A–C, 3 vols. (New York: Doubleday, 1999–2004). 54  Chaïm Perelman and L. Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1969). For a critical analysis, see Christopher Tindale, Rhetorical Argumentation: Principles of Theory and Practice (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2004), esp.  66–69. 55  J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words, 2d ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975). 56 Aristotle, Rhet. 1.3 and infra. 57  Dale L. Sullivan, “The Epideictic Character of Rhetorical Criticism,” RRev 11 (1993): 339–49.

Onward, Then!

25

taining persuasion as an alternative to authority or force in the public domain.”58 Much of the biblical material under consideration here is best understood as epideictic rhetoric, as will become clear. How did it work to build group solidarity, then? This remains to be seen.

Onward, Then! As the reader may have gathered, and as will become clear in the following pages, the view of Israelite political thought that emerges here highlights its performative aspects, moving away from an emphasis on the simplistic pairing of power and coercion toward considerations of the intersubjective roles of a range of actors whose “position” in the political “structure” could vary. A rhetorical approach to Israelite politics helps reveal the subtleties of interaction evidence in texts and, undoubtedly differently, in life itself. A congenial conversation partner here would be Bruce Routledge’s sophisticated study of Moabite statehood during the Iron Age. Routledge’s approach to the problem marks a significant advance over most works about ancient Israel, which have tended to concentrate either on the texts imagined as a hermetically sealed world of their own or on the material culture as expressions of power and subordination rather than as objects put to variegated social uses. Routledge proposes a move away from “structuration theory,” i.e., the emphasis on political hierarchies as the true nature of the state toward an idea of state as imagined reality, or a “bounding effect” that explains the relationships among various practices, beliefs, and values. As he puts it, … if nothing else, polities are recognizable as named entities with an overt symbolic identity that constitutes the “thinglike” existence of any particular state. Being named, they present the possibility of a narrative presence, one that is generated by and for people, but which also presents itself as external to people. It is also a presence that is transmittable through time and across space in the form, for example, of texts, symbols, and specific acts.59

This understanding of a state as a performed entity in which various actors play roles, rather than as a static “thing” that coerces some and empowers others in rigid, deterministic ways, can be readily mapped onto my own study of the rhetorical nature of Israelite understandings of political action and thought. The center around which that thought revolves, and eventually frees itself, is the bundle of practices we call, and the ancient Near Easterners of many cultures also called, kingship.

58  Gerard A. Hauser, “Aristotle on Epideictic: The Formation of Public Morality,” RSQ 29 (1999): 5–23; quotation from p.  16. 59  Bruce Routledge, Moab in the Iron Age: Hegemony, Polity, Archaeology (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 14.

Chapter 2:

Kingship in Chiaroscuro The most obvious place to begin a study of Israel’s notions of political life is, again, with its ongoing engagement with the older idea of kingship as performed by both monarch and subject, ally and foe. Certainly the Hebrew Bible speaks frequently of Israelite and foreign kings, comments on their just and unjust acts, and, more comprehensively, and more generally reflects upon the nature of monarchy as a fixed point in their society’s (and other societies’) mental universe in its various zones – human, animal, and divine.1 However, the texts that must have functioned in the royal establishments of Israel and Judah, either in the royal capitals or other locales, survive only in altered forms, if at all. Some biblical texts contain material that seems close to royal circles, but even in these cases, the description of kingship appears in highly refracted form. Or perhaps one may better speak of kingship in chiaroscuro, a portrayal in light and shade that obscures the subtleties of color. The texts preserved in the Bible present an image of Israelite kingship as a political phenomenon, a set of bounded social practices with a single individual as its iconic representation but not its only agent or the sole determiner of its meaning. Rather, “king” was a symbol in which a range of social actors invested their aspirations and frustrations. For some, the state’s capacity for redistribution of goods meant a new posting in the bureaucracy and various perquisites of authority, while for others this fact prompted sober reflections or even resistance. Both of their concerns appear in biblical texts, such as in the famous depiction of the ironically named ‫ מׁשפט המלך‬in 1 Sam 8:11–8, a text that is often read too literally with the result that its window onto real processes of fluctuating social contestation and alliance-building is clouded over. As a sort of prophylactic text designed to prevent the abuses it names,2 that depiction of kingship points to the institution’s 1 On the animal “kingdom,” note Job 41:25–26, which says, “A story like his is not on the dust, made without fear. He sees everything lofty. He is king over all the big game” (‫אין על עפר משלו‬ ‫)העשולבלי חת׃ את כל גבה יראה הוא מלך על כל בני שחץ‬. In order to delimit the power of the uncont­ rollable ruler of the animal kingdom, Job must appeal to the greater ruler, the divine master of animals. 2  As argued in part by Mark W. Hamilton, “The Creation of Saul’s Royal Body: Reflections on 1 Samuel 8–12,” in Saul in Story and Tradition, eds. Carl Ehrlich and Marsha White, FAT 47 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), 139–55. I would add two points to my earlier arguments. First, 1 Sam 8 must be understood as part of a literary complex spanning chapters 8–12, not simply “on its own” (whatever that would mean) or as part of a putative antimonarchic source. I do not deny that the pre-Deuteronomistic editor of this material had sources, arguing instead that they are not accurate-

Narratives of Kingship

27

capacity to engender both gratitude and resentment and thus the need of the culture to manage potential abuses through various media of communication. Since symbols are multivalent phenomena whose meanings must be negotiated – managed – by social actors, understanding the processes of management remains highly important for the historian of ideas. How, then, do the biblical texts talk about kingship as a symbol, and what do the varied modes of this talk indicate about the political understanding of Israelites as it developed during the late monarchy and later? Here I wish to address three media that social actors used to communicate kingship, narrative, ritual, and monumentality.

Narratives of Kingship The first medium of communication is narration, a whole bundle of practices of storytelling around the deeds of a given monarch as he instantiates “kingship.” The most familiar repositories of narrative for ancient monarchs were, of course, the numerous royal inscriptions that offered running annals of a reign or, alternatively, reported singular events such as the dedication of a temple or palace, the subjugation of a region or people, or perhaps the birth or impending succession of an heir. Various aspects of royal narrative will be discussed below, so a few remarks on what does and does not appear in the Bible should suffice for now. First, to begin at a secure place, the Bible does not contain unedited annalistic or summary inscriptions from any Israelite or foreign king. This fact seems so obvious as to need no repeating, but it often misleads us into false conclusions, for many biblical texts allude to annalistic material and assume that a studious reader will refer to it in some form. While a number of scholars have argued that such cross-references reflect the text’s fictionality,3 this position seems very difficult to credit, not only because annals existed in the ancient Near East and there is no prima facie reason to ly characterized as pro- or antimonarchic and that they are not continuous. Significantly, the textual complex about Saul’s rise to power pointedly does not make him out to be the tyrant of 1 Sam 8. If anything, his failure results from a lack of drive, a neglect of the “proper” use of power. Second, one should avoid understanding the obviously negative depiction of monarchy as an objective description of social realities. Rather, the depiction makes an argument in order to blame practices that it sees as excessively redistributive of social and material goods. Not only was redistribution not the only economic mechanism operative in most ancient societies, as has recently been shown for the palatial societies of the Aegean Late Bronze Age, but also the biblical text obviously simplifies administrative practices and processes for enlisting elites in the state’s service. For broader historical issues, see the collections of articles entitled “Redistribution in Aegean Palatial Societies” especially Dimitri Nakassis, William A. Parkinson, and Michael L. Galaty, “Redistributive Economies from a Theoretical and Cross-Cultural Perspective,” AJA 115 (2011): 177–84. 3  For a careful version of such an approach, see John Van Seters, In Search of History: Historiography in the Ancient World and the Origins of Biblical History, reprint ed. (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1997), 296–302; Jakob Wöhrle, “So Many Cross-References! Methodological Reflections on the Problem of Intertextual Relationships and their Significance for Redaction-Critical Analysis,” in Perspectives on the Formation of the Book of the Twelve: Methodological Foundations – Redaction-

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assume their absence in Israel and Judah, but also because the biblical texts themselves show many traces of the incorporation and reworking of sources. Texts lay behind texts, and their intertextual relationships emerged out of the larger conversations about the meaning of the past of which they constitute the only now surviving parts. Whether the cited texts came from the royal palaces or minutely recorded events surrounding the monarchy are different questions, answerable case by case. In short, then, the dichotomy “transcript of historical material” vs. “fictional recreation of events” does not really address the issues at hand.4 Second, to state another obvious point, the biblical text does contain numerous edited reports about kings that reflect the various commitments of those creating and transmitting them, as well as the views of the biblical authors who put them in their final form. Sorting through the narratives of kings to find official and unofficial views of their actions offers some insight into the Israelite development of political ideas, but the fact that the literary material with which we must work comes to us in a repeatedly reworked form makes this endeavor challenging at times. We are saved only by the fact that many of the biblical editors took a highly conservative view of their sources, incorporating them and their perspectives even while questioning them. However, this conservatism is inconsistent and not to be taken for granted. Third, to the material of the biblical narratives about kings: by and large, monarchs in the stories of both the Deuteronomistic and Chronistic histories do mostly what kings in the ancient Near East were expected to do. They fight wars, build public works, acquire wives and have sex, father children, and engage in religious acts of several sorts. In a very general sort of way, nothing in these texts thus seems out of the way in terms of their understanding rulers except for two things, both well known. Not only is it difficult to find an ancient Near Eastern parallel to the DH’s assumption that all the kings of northern Israel were sacrilegious and tyrannical (and often incompetent) root and branches, but the suppression of possible exculpatory evidence has a very pointed focus in a particular dynasty, the Omrides. To clarify, while the ideas of a wicked king who ended a dynasty, the succession of dynasties owing to divine disfavor,5 and even the incompetence of a series of kings are known ideas in Mesopotamian and Syrian traditions, the idea of a centuries-long chain of evil monarchs is unexampled. The closest parallel seems to occur (as far as I can tell) in numerous royal inscriptions depicting the enemy monarch as foe, but while those cases do correctly name the monarchical foe and thus ascribe to him subjectivity, that inal Processes – Historical Insights, eds. Rainer Albertz, James D. Nogalski, and Jacob Wöhrle, BZAW 433 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2012), 3–20. 4  See the overall discussion of the attitudes and approaches of ancient historians in Peter Machinist, “The Voice of the Historian in the Ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean World,” Int 57 (2003): 117–37. 5  Peter Machinist, “The Transfer of Kingship: a Divine Turning,” in Fortunate the Eyes that See: Essays in Honor of David Noel Freedman in Celebration of his Seventieth Birthday, eds. Astrid B. Beck, Andrew H. Bartelt, Paul R. Raabe, and Chris A. Franke (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 105–20.

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29

dividuality is completely subsumed under the role of “enemy king.” So ultimately the similarity is not very close.6 The most telling part of the DH’s critique of the northern Israelite monarchy (which the Chronicler takes even further, if anything) concerns the Omrides. The historical importance of the dynasty hardly needs defending, since they led what was for a time the greatest state in Syria-Palestine. Their commitment to monumental urban architecture, for example, bespoke the might of their rule and their capacity to extract obedience, if not necessarily affection, from their subjects. Yet the biblical tradition not only famously fails to celebrate the military victory over the Assyrians at Qarqar in 853 bce, but also carefully smudges over the chronology of events (note the famous problem of the identity of the “king of Israel” in 1 Kgs 22) and chooses precisely this moment to place in the narrative sequence now embedded in 1–2 Kings the prophetic legends of Elijah and Elisha. Whether the so-called Prophetic History entered the developing narrative before or during the final stages of explicitly Deuteronomistic/Deuteronomizing editing seems less than clear to me.7 Yet its location in the DH has the effect of displacing the monarch from the center of the story and placing the prophet there instead, again creating a sort of negative space around kingship so that any positive accomplishments (however conceived) fall into the darkness, with the light of the picture shining upon the king (Ahab and then his sons) in his tyrannical moments.

6  A number of studies of the enemy king in Mesopotamian texts have appeared, and they shed light to some degree on the biblical material. In the Assyrian texts, to take the most fully developed example, the enemy king was a stereotype, a morally defective ruler who irrationally opposed the will of the gods (identical to the policies and movements of the Assyrian ruler). Note Frederick Mario Fales, “The Enemy in Assyrian Royal Inscriptions: ‘The Moral Judgement’,” in Mesopotamien und seine Nachbarn: Poliitische und kulturelle Wechselbeziehungen im Alten Vorderasien vom 4. bis 1. Jahrtausend v. Chr., eds. Hans-Jörg Nissen and Johannes Renger (Berlin: Reimer, 1982), 425–35; Gerd Steiner, “Der Gegensatz ‘Eigenes Land’: ‘Ausland, Fremdland, Feindland’ in den Vorstellungen des Alten Orients,” in Mesopotamien und seine Nachbarn: Politische und kulturelle Wechselbeziehungen im Alten Vorderasien vom 4. bis 1. Jahrtausend v. Chr., eds. Hans-Jörg Nissen and Johannes Renger (Berlin: Reimer, 1982), 633–64; Carlo Zaccagnini, “The Enemy in the Neo-Assyrian Royal Inscriptions: The ‘Ethnographic Description’,” in Mesopotamien und seine Nachbarn: Politische und kulturelle Wechselbeziehungen im Alten Vorderasien vom 4. bis 1. Jahrtausend v. Chr., eds. Hans-Jörg Nissen and Johannes Renger (Berlin: Reimer, 1982), 409–24. 7  Note, e.g., the arguments for a post-Deuteronomistic addition of the prophetic material in Steven McKenzie, The Trouble with Kings: The Composition of the Book of Kings in the Deuteronomistic History, VTSup 42 (Leiden: Brill, 1991), esp.  81–101; but contrariwise, the assignment of these very chapters to an apologia for the Jehu dynasty probably during its time in power by Baruch Halpern and André Lemaire, “The Composition of Kings,” in The Books of Kings: Sources, Composition, Historiography, and Reception, eds. André Lemaire and Baruch Halpern, VTSup 129 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 137–40.

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Rituals of Kingship The abiding characteristic of historical narrative as a dance between the historian and sometimes intractable facts points to the difficulty of understanding the motives of characters from so long ago. Recovering Israelite royal ritual from the biblical material also poses serious challenges, this time for the simple reason that some of the biblical tradents occluded such material in various ways. The P material of the Pentateuch and the closely related traditions in Ezekiel, for example, present a ritual world without the monarch, owing in part to the fact that the monarchy had ended before the final editing of these works, but perhaps also for other reasons. A more complex priestly view appears in the Chronicler, who envisions David and Solomon, as well as later model kings such as Hezekiah and Josiah, as the sponsors of the Jerusalem cult, but not as participants in some aspects of it. The Case of King Uzziah So far, this view reflects an enhancement of the traditions inherited by the Chronicler rather than an innovation. However, 2 Chron 26:16–23 inserts a story about King Uzziah of Judah which clarifies a priestly view of the limits of royal participation in the cult. The text sets the scene: And as he grew stronger, he became arrogant ( ‫ )גבה לבו‬to the point of destructiveness, and he trespassed against Yhwh his God by coming to Yhwh’s temple to burn incense on the incense altar. Azariah the priest, along with 80 priests of Yhwh, strong men all, pursued after him. They stood against King Uzziah and said to him, “Uzziah, it is not your place to burn incense to Yhwh – rather for the consecrated priests, Aaron’s sons, to burn incense. Go from the sanctuary, for you have trespassed. The glory (‫ )כבוד‬from Yhwh your God does not belong to you.”

The use of the technical priestly theological language of Yhwh’s ‫ כבוד‬and the designation of the priests as “Aaron’s sons” probably speak to the story’s origins in the postexilic era. However, the fact that the text takes pains to fault one of its “good” kings – 2 Chron 26:4 says that “Uzziah did the right in Yhwh’s eyes” ( ‫)ויעׂש היׁשר בעיני יהוה‬ – is a counter-indicator of the king’s portrayal, which must indicate that the traditions behind the Chronicler about Uzziah contained various kinds of material that demanded attention (rather than suppression), unless the story was invented as a sort of midrash on the original report in 2 Kgs 15:5.8 8  Various explanations might be given for the origins of the story, including varying opinions of its existence in traditions predating the Chronicler. Most agree, for example, that the story of the king’s skin disease owes something to 2 Kgs 15:5’s notice of such an event, even if the Chronicles version seems to go its own way and uses language characteristic of the book rather than its sources. Note the brief observations of Wilhelm Rudolph, Chronikbücher, HAT 21 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1955), 287; William H. Barnes, “Non-Synoptic Chronological References in the Books of Chronicles,” in The Chronicler as Historian, eds. M. Patrick Graham, Kenneth G. Hoglund, and Steven L. McKenzie, JSOTSup 238 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), 124–25; and Sara Japhet, From

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In any case, the most striking part of this exchange between the king and his priests lies in the rhetoric employed by the latter. They address the king by name, without the polite customary circumlocutions (usually addressing the monarch in the third person), but with strong arguments against the royal practice. Azariah and his companions offer two warrants for denying incense burning to the king: (1) it belongs to the Aaronide priests (‫)כי לכהנים בני אהרון המקדׁשים להקטיר‬, a claim that radically reconfigures cult practices throughout Persian-era Yehud and, for the Chronicler, norms ways of understanding cult practices in the past; and (2) a barrier must exist between the king and the divine ‫כבוד‬, a barrier constructed and maintained by the priesthood’s monopoly on incense-offering (and e minore ad maiorem, other kinds of gift-giving to Yhwh in the Jerusalem sanctuary). In other words, the Chronicler understands kingship as a zone of behavior distinguished from, and in some respects inferior to, the priesthood. This view finds graphic confirmation when Yhwh afflicts the king with a skin ailment (‫)צרעת‬, a punishment for lèse majesté (cf. Num 12:10–15). As an unanswerable argument for the inappropriateness of the king’s action, his new skin condition simply reinforces the opinions of the priests themselves by indicating that the unmediated presence of the deity posed a danger to the one removing the barriers around the divine ‫כבוד‬. So far, the interpretation of the story is quite straightforward. However, another dimension of it deserves examination. Simply, why did Uzziah, in the narrative logic of Chronicles, wish to burn incense in the first place? One might answer this question in three ways, at least: (1) from a sociohistorical point of view, the royal participation in the cult was a commonplace in antiquity, though rules existed for insuring that sacrilege did not occur;9 (2) a literary-critical reading might emphasize the Chronicler’s need to explain a problem in his source by constructing a two-phased reign for Uzziah similar to, but the reverse of, the two-phased reign of Manasseh; and (3) a sociohistorical reading might ask what a story of a king engaging in cult would signify to the book’s implied reader. All of these seem legitimate approaches at some level. In attempting the third sort of reading, which embraces findings from the other two, I draw on Arjun Appadurai’s discussion of the social use of commodities.10 With Marx’s work on commodities in Kapital as his starting point and foil, Appadurai defines a commodity as anything that can be exchanged but refines this definition by understanding the “thing” as a social phenomenon, not an inert object. He writes, “I the Rivers of Babylon to the Highlands of Judah: Collected Studies on the Restoration Period (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006), 386–87. 9  For example, see Steven W. Cole, “The Crimes and Sacrileges of Nabû-šuma-iškun,” ZA 84 (1994): 220–52; moreover, as Maria deJong Ellis pointed out, the Cuthean Legend of Naram-Sin points to the role of hepatoscopy in good government; see Maria deJong Ellis, “Observations on Mesopotamian Oracles and Divinatory Texts: Literary and Historiographic Considerations,” JCS 41 (1989): 146 n.  92. 10  Arjun Appadurai, “Introduction: commodities and the politics of value,” in The social life of things: Commodities in cultural perspective, ed. Arjun Appadurai (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 3–63.

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propose that the commodity situation in the social life of any ‘thing’ be defined as the situation in which its exchangeability (past, present, or future) for some other thing is its socially relevant feature.”11 For him – and this is an important point – gift-giving is a particular form of commodity exchange, not its antithesis, and so the commonly posited contrast between calculated (economic) and uncalculated (gifted) transfers of goods or services is overdrawn and ideologically loaded. Now how is this idea relevant to the story of King Uzziah? The answer surely is that, in the story, the king intends to transfer an expensive object (incense) for which he has traded something else (precious metals, most likely) at a location of heavy symbolic freighting (the temple)12 in a process full of social meanings that were not only multilayered, but highly contestable. He does so in order to achieve an end. Whether this end was a specific military or economic objective (which would fit the logic of the Chronicler’s reference to his building and military achievements in 2 Chron 26:15), or more generally an expression of loyalty to Yhwh and thus a bid for divine support, remains unclear. Whatever his goal, which the CH does not state because it understands the king’s motives as pure hubris (‫ )גבה לבו‬and therefore unworthy of further explanation, Uzziah fails miserably because his commodity cannot be exchanged in the unmediated way he intends. Kings cannot give to the deity without the aid of the priesthood, at least not within the temple proper. The Case of King Ahaz The question arises, then, of when removal of the king from the cult occurred, a question that points back to the Chronicler’s principal source, the DH. There the connections between monarch and temple are manifold: in both the northern and southern kingdoms, the ruler sponsors temple building and sacrifice. At a macroscopic level, the DH’s depictions differ little in principle from those of other ancient Near Eastern cultures, if one allows for many small distinctions in practice. At a few points, however, important differences do emerge. Perhaps the most significant ones appear in the curious story of Ahaz’s adoption of an Assyrianizing altar in 2 Kgs 16:10–18. Reporting that king’s alteration of the cult according to his reflections on his encounter with Assyria, the text reads, So King Ahaz went to meet Tiglath-pileser, the king of Assyria, at Damascus. And he saw the altar that was in Damascus. Then King Ahaz sent a message to Uriah the priest about the altar’s likeness (‫ )דמות‬and its construction technique (‫ )תבנית‬with respect to all its work. Uriah the 11 

Ibid., 13. Whether the Chronicler and his circles would have permitted incense offerings in other settings (physical or temporal) is unclear to me. See the studies of Seymour Gitin, “Incense Altars from Ekron, Israel and Judah: Context and Typology,” ErIsr 20 (1989): 52*-67*; idem, “The Late Iron Age II Incense Altars from Ashkelon,” in Exploring the Longue Durée: Essays in Honor of Lawrence E. Stager (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2009), 127–36. 12 

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priest made the altar as King Ahaz’s letter instructed. So the priest Uriah did until King Ahaz came from Damascus. When the king came from Damascus and the king saw the altar, then the king drew near the altar and went up on it. Then he incinerated his ʿôlâ and his minḥâ and poured out his libation. And then he sprinkled the blood of his šĕlāmîm upon the altar. As for the bronze altar that was before Yhwh – he moved it in front of the house [i.e., temple] between the altar and Yhwh’s house and placed it north of the [new] altar. Then King Ahaz commanded Uriah the priest, “Upon the great altar, incinerate the morning ʿôlâ and the evening minḥâ and the king’s ʿôlâ and his minḥâ and the ʿôlâ of the land’s entire people and their minḥâ and their libations, and you should pour all the blood of the ʿôlâ and all the blood of the zebaḥ on it. But the bronze altar will be for me to baqqēr.” So Uriah the priest did according to all that King Ahaz commanded him. Then Ahaz cut away the frameworks and the cult stands (‫)מכנות‬ and removed them. Then he removed the laver (‫ )כיר‬and the sea from the bronze oxen beneath it (which he put on stone supports). He also removed from Yhwh’s house the Sabbath covering that had been built in the house [palace? temple?], and the king’s outer entrance13 – on account of the king of Assyria.

This story has been the subject of considerable scholarly interest, with questions revolving around whether Ahaz’s cult reforms were “pagan” and the degree to which specifically Assyrian religious and political practices informed them. The conviction that 2 Kings intended to portray Ahaz as an idolater, pure and simple, is widespread in the secondary literature.14 Does this analysis adequately explain the DH’s understanding of this story and what it says about Judahite kingship? The difficulty lies in understanding precisely what Ahaz did that could be construed as offending Yhwh, especially when the text does not pass moral judgment directly (in keeping with a narrative strategy of reticence). It is easier to say what was not the source of a problem: giving away part of the temple treasures (cf. 2 Kgs 12:18–19; 18:14–16); copying foreign cultic items (since Solomon is alleged to have copied Phoenician and north Syrian art);15 worshiping 13  V. 18 is extremely problematic, but the rendering here, which depends on that of Cogan and Tadmor to a considerable extent, is at least possible, if far from certain. See Mordechai Cogan and Hayim Tadmor, II Kings, AB 11 (New York: Doubleday, 1988), 185, 189–90. 14  See Otto Thenius, Die Bücher der Könige, 2d ed., KEHAT 9 (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1873), 374–78 (citing earlier sources); for Rudolf Kittel, Die Bücher der Könige, HKAT 5 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1900), 270, the text originated with a priestly author who wished to depict “das heidnische Gebahren des Königs” and then was revised by a redactor who preserved the text’s emphasis on offerings; for James A. Montgomery and Henry Snyder Gehman, The Books of Kings, ICC (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1951), 459–460, Ahaz’s action reflected obedience to Assyrian commands in parallel with similar actions in other client states (especially Sam’al). On the inadequacies of this last claim, see the discussion in John McKay, Religion in Judah Under the Assyrians, SBT 2/26 (London: SCM, 1973); Mordechai Cogan, Imperialism and Religion: Assyria, Judah and Israel in the Eighth and Seventh Centuries B.C.E., SBLMS 19 (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1974). 15  For an older synthesis of the evidence, see F. Briquel-Chattonet, Les relations entre les cites de la côte phénicienne et les royaumes d’Israël et de Juda, StPh 12 (Leuven: Peeters, 1992). On various aspects of Phoenician trade, note the studies in Claude Doumet-Serhal, Anne Rabate, and Andrea Resek, eds., Networking Patterns of the Bronze and Iron Age Levant: The Lebanon and Its Mediterranean Connections (Beirut: Lebanese British Friends of the National Museum, 2011); Carol Bell, The Evolution of Long Distance Trading Relationships Across the LBA/Iron Age Transition on the Northern Levantine Coast: Crisis, continuity and change, BARIS 1574 (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2006). On

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deities other than Yhwh (which the text does not mention, surely a silence speaking volumes); or imitating Assyrian cult practices (since that did not occur).16 Cogan and Tadmor are surely right to state that “Ahaz’s innovations, by no means idolatrous or syncretistic, are criticized, it would seem, because they upset the order of things in the Temple as established by Solomon,”17 but this statement does not go far enough toward explaining the story or its lessons for interpreting the DH’s understanding of royal ritual. So perhaps one should ask how the DH (and its sources?) understands the social transactions of the ritual event occurring here. Since many examples of ancient Near Eastern kings carrying out cultic reform exist, and some of these reforms elicited divine approval, while others did not, one should ask why Ahaz’s failed.18 The most obvious omission is his failure, according to the story, to seek divine guidance on a cultic change.19 However, the text does not expatiate on this point, confining itself to the details of the ritual change. Strikingly, Ahaz in the story carefully lays out the cultic practices to be carried out on the old and new altars, implying an intention on his part to carry on the traditional sacrificial system without altering its basic temporal rhythms. The alterations consist in the use of space, and this in two ways. First, the older configuration of the temple courtyard with three major objects (altar, laver, “sea” atop cows) gives way to a new configuration, also of three cult locations (two altars and the “sea”). And second, the architectural features connecting the royal palace and the temple are modified, apparently indicating some now unrecoverable change in the ways in which worshipers processing from the palace to the temple the importation of wood, see Nili Liphschitz, Timber in Ancient Israel: Dendroarchaeology and Dendrochronology, TAUNIAM 26 (Tel Aviv: Yass Publications in Archaeology, 2007), 116–31 (for many periods); Hans-Günter Buchholz, Der Werkstoff Holz und seine Nutzung im ostmediterranen Altertum (Weilheim: CIP, 2004), 24–26; Françoise Briquel-Chattonet, “Texts relatifs au Cèdre,” in Decade: A Decade of Archaeology and History in the Lebanon, eds. Claude Doumet-Serhal, Anne Rabate, and Andreas Resek (Beirut: Beirut National Museum, 2005), 464–71. 16  On the last point, see Cogan and Tadmor, II Kings, 193. 17 Ibid. 18  Several notorious examples of the latter exist for the first millennium bce, such as Sennacherib’s transfer of features of the Marduk temple in Babylon to the Aššur temple in the old capital of Aššur, and the already cited case of Nabu-šūma-iškun. The former was part of the larger Neo-Assyrian elevation of Aššur to supreme status under the cryptogram AN.ŠAR and the deity’s assumption of attributes of several other major gods. The court of his successor Esarhaddon apparently attributed Sennacherib’s murder by his sons to this and other acts of hubris that needed ritual corrections of various sorts. On various aspects of this problem, see Ann M. Weaver. “The ‘Sin of Sargon’ and Esarhaddon’s Reconception of Sennacherib: A Study in Divine Will, Human Politics and Royal Ideology,” Iraq 56 (2004): 61–66; for the larger issues of Sennacherib’s building programs as instruments of royal display, see Eckart Frahm, “Sanherib und die Tempel von Kuyunjik,” in Festschrift für Rykle Borger zu seinem 65. Geburtstag am 24. Mai 1994, ed. Stefan M. Maul, CunMon 10 (Groningen: Styx, 1998), 107–21. 19  A facile connection could be made at this point between Ahaz’s behavior here and in Isa 7:1–17, where he actively declines divinely originated information on political decisions facing him. However, the connections between 2 Kings and Isaiah at this point remains difficult to show, especially since the priest Uriah seems to behave in contrary ways in the two traditions.

Rituals of Kingship

35

encountered the sacred space. Because the DH (and perhaps its sources) had no interest in spelling out these changes in detail or explaining Ahaz’s intentions with regard to them, the full extent and purpose of the alterations remains obscure. However, since the remodeling of sacred space is a common occurrence at many times and places, these particular changes were susceptible of innocent interpretation, even if 2 Kings does not take that route. Such remodeling serves a community as it reconceives its place in ritual and thus its relationships to the divine realm.20 Three other elements of this story prove more revealing. The first and most obvious is that Ahaz’s new altar serves for the “normal” cyclical rituals of the temple, while the old bronze altar is given over to explicitly royal rituals. In other words, Ahaz undergirds his innovations in the cultic activities of the ancestors (since Solomon built the bronze altar), thus seeking legitimation for them. He does not simply erase the past. At the same time, he proposes to use the old altar for what is apparently a new ritual (though the novelty remains a guess), perhaps involving hepatoscopy or some other form of divination.21 However, the text’s refusal to explore the king’s agenda in a detached way means that the precise nature and purpose of the intended “new” ritual remain unclear. What is clear is that Ahaz’s actions create a new system of binary oppositions in the cultic ritual, foregrounding the presence of the king in both altars. 20  For Zençirli and Carchemish as examples of such remodeling in their sacred precincts, see Gilibert, Syro-Hittite Monumental Art, esp.  115–31; on Carchemish, see Elif Denel, “Ceremony and Kingship at Carchemish,” in Ancient Near Eastern Art in Context: Studies in Honor of Irene J. Winter by her Students, eds. Jack Cheng and Marian H. Feldman, CHANE 26 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 179–204, who argues that “the manipulation of the monumental urban infrastructure at Carchemish – the creation and installation of monumental inscriptions and visual representations and the configuration of public spaces – constituted an integral part of elaborate rituals or ceremonies of kingship that were designed to legitimate individual rule, maintain local and regional power 21  As argued by Sigmund Mowinckel, Psalmenstudien 1: Ǡwän und die individuellen Klagepsalmen (Kristiania: Dybwad, 1921), 146; Julian Morgenstern, “The Chanukkah Festival and the Calendar of Ancient Israel (Continued),” HUCA 21 (1949): 423–25 (who connects baqqēr to bōqēr [“morning”] and assumes, on the basis of little or no evidence, a ritual at the dawn of the fall equinox, the first day of the new year); HALOT 151. But for a more skeptical view, see Cogan and Tadmor, II Kings, 189. The verb biqqēr appears several times in the Hebrew Bible: in Lev 13:36 and 27:33, it appears to mean “to distinguish” one thing from another, a usage that also makes sense in Ezek 34:11– 12. In Ps 27:4, it parallels ḥāzâ and so must been “to discern” or something similar, a related but different meaning. Cf. Prov 20:25; Sir 11:7. The root b-q-r does not seem to have a related meaning in Ugaritic or Akkadian, but in the Persian-period Aramaic texts from Egypt, it can be used for the inspection of ships. See texts in Bezalel Porten and Ada Yardeni, eds., Textbook of Aramaic Documents from Ancient Egypt, vol.  3: Literature, Accounts, Lists (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1993), C.3.7.AR.2:19; 3.7.AR.3:4 (reconstructed); 3.7.BR.1:7, 15; 3.7.DR.1:4, 11; 3.7.DR.3:1, 8; 3.7.DR.1:14; and 3.7.DR.2:11. (These texts all come from the reverse of the Ahiqar palimpsest.) In none of these cases is a divinatory meaning required, though it may be possible for 2 Kgs 16, since Ahaz plans to “inspect” or “distinguish” something on an altar. The argument of Cogan and Tadmor (II Kings, 189) for the meaning, “to frequent,” seems very strained, unfortunately. So we are left with uncertainty as to Ahaz’s precise intention for his new altar. The fact that the Deuteronomistic school had a vocabulary for divination (see Deut 18:10–11) but does not employ it in 2 Kgs 16 seems prima facie to point toward some other explanation for Ahaz’s altar, but even the text’s silence does not completely obviate the viability of Mowinckel’s proposal.

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Chapter 2:  Kingship in Chiarascuro

Second, the DH editor understands this entire cultic reform as somehow “foreign.” Although it is difficult to see why the Assyrians would have cared whether Ahaz retained the old architecture or cult objects or reconfigured them both, the DH editor explains the king’s actions as inspired by the contact with Assyria. References to ‫ מלך אשור‬in 2 Kgs 16:10 and 18 form an inclusio defining the political horizons of Ahaz’s actions. By marking them as foreign, the DH and (possibly its sources) offers a rhetorical argument by which to blame the king, surfacing the suspicion (at best) of Assyria that any reader of the work would surely have felt. Whether Ahaz made these innovations as an Assyrianizing move matters less than how his activities were perceived. As has often been noted (with various terminology used), the story does reveal differing attitudes in Judah toward cultural hybridity. We know, for example, that subject kings in the Neo-Assyrian Empire frequently spoke of their links with the empire, either highlighting or downplaying them as the need arose.22 A striking example of this phenomenon comes from Ahaz’s contemporaries Panammu(wa) and his son Bir-rākib, kings of Sam’al (Zençirli). In a stele commemorating his father, Bir-rākib speaks of Tiglath-pileser III’s intervention in an internal Sam’alian political crisis and his deposition of an unnamed king in favor of Panammu(wa). As a consequence of Assyrian rule, the people of Sam’al enjoyed new prosperity, with access to animal protein, while the king himself became an owner of gold and silver (biᶜl kasp hūᵓ waluh biᶜl zahab).23 Since this funerary inscription comes from the royal court and aims to celebrate the achievements of the honored ancestor, it speaks of Panammu(wa)’s “wisdom” (ḥukmatihū) and “fidelity” (s.idqihū), attributes that the son also claims for himself.24 In all of Bir-rākib’s extant inscriptions (KAI 215–217), Tiglathpileser III figures as the Sam’alian dynasty’s savior and protector, always with the title “lord” (mariᵓ).25 In short, then, the rulers of that subordinate state made no effort to hide their connection to the imperial center but embraced a rhetorical strategy that celebrated that connection as the foundation of the kingdom’s prosperity and success. Presumably, not all Sam’alians agreed with this assessment, hence the crown’s need to defend it. On the other side of the equation, moreover, we also know that the empire itself drew to its center artisanal and religious traditions from several directions, creating an artistic oikumene on which various client kings, such as Ahaz, might depend.26 22 

See, e.g., the case study in Lanfranchi, “Luwian-Phoenician Bilinguals.” KAI 215, l. 11. 24  KAI 215, ll. 11, 19; and 216, ll. 4–5. The inscriptions come from the Northern Portico of the citadel of Zençirli and were therefore part of the monumental display of that palatial precinct. 25  KAI 215, ll. 12, 13; 216, ll. 3, 5; 217, l. 2. The texts also add an important title of Tiglath-pileser’s, “king of the four (corners) of the world” (mariᵓ rābᶜî ᵓarṣaᵓ; KAI 215, l. 15; 216, ll. 3–4; 217, l. 1–2). 26  Note the Phoenician and Egyptian influences in Assyrian art, especially in smaller artifacts. A useful survey of relevant data appears in a series of volumes on the Nimrud ivories, published by Max Mallowan, Georgina Herrmann, et al. See most recently, Georgina Herrmann, Stuart Laidlaw, and Helena Coffey, Ivories from Nimrud VI: Ivories from the North West Palace (1845–1992) (Lon23 

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The monarch, that is, might draw on some of those artistic traditions as part of his efforts at self-legitimation, while other forces in his kingdom might resist their adoption, calling them “foreign” or contrary to the divine will as justifications for the aforesaid resistance. Some sort of complex reaction to cultural hybridity seems to be in play in the DH’s reportage here. If this is correct, then we should consider the third point from this text. To return to his analysis of commodity exchange, Appadurai describes large-scale exchanges of goods in which the giver and the gift become conceptually merged (i.e., the exchanges are not market-driven). These “tournaments of value,” as he names them, are complex periodic events that are removed in some culturally well-defined way from the routines of economic life. Participation in them is likely to be both a privilege of those in power and instrument of status contests between them. The currency of such tournaments is also likely to be set apart through well understood social diacritics…. [W]hat is at issue in such tournaments is not just status, rank, fame, or reputation of actors, but the disposition of the central tokens of value in the society in question. Finally, though such tournaments of value occur in special times and places, their forms and outcomes are always consequential for the more mundane realities of power and value in ordinary life.27

Just such a tournament of value would have occurred at Damascus as Tiglath-pileser took booty from defeated foes and redistributed it to his retainers and perhaps new clients.28 As a participant in, or observer of, such an event, Ahaz became a client of the Assyrian empire, entering its political and therefore intellectual orbit. He undoubtedly would have offered tribute to Tiglath-pileser and received in return, at a minimum, assurances of protection and thus participation in the new imperial order (as well as taking on the commitment of future tribute). He thus exchanged goods for a new social position. Does Ahaz’s new altar, then, iconize this new status of Judah as a properly secure client state within the Assyrian orbit? Given the possible alternatives of annexation or subordination to Israel, or worse, the destruction of Judah in the manner of Israel, don: British Institute for the Study of Iraq, 2009); closer to home, a useful, if cursory, discussion of the adoption and adaption of Egyptian (and other) artistic traditions in Iron IIB Israel appears in Othmar Keel and Christoph Uehlinger, Gods, Goddesses, and Images of God in Ancient Israel (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998), 177–281. Very relevant also are the cautions of Pirhiya Beck on the local art in Judah as contrast to the more cosmopolitan traditions accessed in Israel; see Pirhiya Beck, “The Art of Palestine during the Iron Age II: Local Traditions and External Influences (10th–8th centuries bce),” in Images as Media: Sources for the Cultural History of the Near East and the Eastern Mediterranean (1st millennium bce), ed. Christoph Uehlinger, OBO 175 (Fribourg/Göttingen: University Press/Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000), 45–83. 27  Appadurai, “Commodities and the politics of value,” 21. 28  Tiglath-pileser III’s inscriptions report just such collections of tribute from Damascus, Samaria, and the Phoenician city-states; see Hayim Tadmor and Shigeo Yamada, eds., The Royal Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III (744–727 BC) and Shalmaneser V (726–722 BC), Kings of Assyria, RINAP 1 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2011), 11.1’-10’, 20.13’-17’, 32.1–12, 35.iii.1–23. These synoptic texts list essentially the same sorts of goods, especially luxury materials such as precious metals, elephant hides, and rare birds.

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Ahaz might well have taken comfort from the outcome of his submission to the great superpower. More than that, he may have understood his altar to point to (be an icon of) the empire in which Judah now existed in a semi-autonomous state, an understanding that would mirror the already ancient Mesopotamian idea of inscriptions and other sacred objects signifying the overlay of the divine realm upon the human empire (and vice versa).29 He might even have understood his cultic reform as an act of thanksgiving to Yhwh for deliverance, much as the rulers of Tell Tayinat apparently believed the construction of a new temple on the acropolis in imitation of preexisting temples but with a place for displaying the Assyrian treaty tablets before the deity to be an appropriate religious move30 or, again, the kings of Sam’al celebrated their relationships to their Assyrian overlords. However, Ahaz’s motives are unknowable because the DH and its sources, drawing kingship in chiaroscuro, aspire to damnatio memoriae by casting the innovation as both foreign and inexplicable.31 Findings So far in the examination of the royal rituals, I have focused on acts of sacrilege as depicted in texts from two different periods of Israelite literature, the mid-Achaemenid period and, at the latest, the sixth century bce (though almost certainly from an earlier source). Several things seem clear: (1) the exclusion of the king from the temple was a late construct, not a reflection of the practice of the Israelite and Judahite states; (2) yet discomfort with some royal practices in the cult was much earlier, and indeed accords with a widespread ancient Near Eastern conviction that some things just were not done, even by kings. Moreover, I have tried to leave behind the older questions of whether the criticized royal practices were “idolatrous” since such terminology bundles within itself a set of assumptions not always present in the texts themselves. That is, while the DH does tell stories of kings worshiping gods other than Yhwh, not all ritual infractions involve such acts. The customary practices of the Jerusalem temple (and presumably other temples, which however remain less well known) involved the king in prescribed ways, the alteration of which could invoke opposition from at least some persons (if not all). To say, therefore, that the temple simply validated royal rule or that religion mapped neatly atop the royal ideology misstates the more complex reality on the ground. To understand that reality better, let me turn to the third medium of royal self-display, the erection of monuments.

29  For the earliest history of this idea, see the study of Beate Pongratz-Leisten, “Sacred Topography of the Empire: Inscribing Social Order into the Cosmic Order,” in Redefining the Sacred: Religious Architecture and Text in the Near East and Egypt, 1000 bc-ad 300, eds. Elizabeth Frood and Rubina Raja, BAKLUH 8/1 (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2014), 49–74. 30  Harrison and Osborne, “Building XVI.” 31  It is noteworthy that 2 Chron 28:22–24 interprets the story of its source as an unambiguous example of Ahaz’s idolatrous, even reckless, behavior.

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Monumentalism and Political Reflection A fascinating feature of the portrayal of kingship in Israelite texts is what it says and does not say about the use of monumental architecture (including inscriptions) to display the power of the monarchy and to argue for, or perhaps better, narrate and celebrate, its legitimacy. The rhetorical function of architecture probably needs no defense, as anyone who has seen the pyramids or Number 1 World Trade Center knows. Such structures proclaim the significance of the cultures that built them and the perceived rightness of the social arrangements that make them possible. Monuments are a form of epideictic speech, in short. In her recent study of the summi viri of the Forum of Augustus in Rome, Josephine Shaya argues that this assemblage of the ancestors of the Julian house (and thus a portrayal of the rightness of the Principate) enjoyed a public life as “a commemoration, as a destination, and as a set of images and texts that moved through space and time.”32 As she shows, the monument inspired similar ones throughout Italy and Spain, indicating that imperial elites found the narrative of the ancestors a fitting one for constructing what it meant to be “Roman.” Whatever the details of early Roman imperial monumentalism, the categories Shaya provides are useful for studying an earlier period. Monuments serve to mark human mental space as well as physical space, and in many respects the former is more important than the latter. Architectural complexes, especially palaces and temples, create worlds for those using them. And while it is quite possible to overemphasize monumentality in the life of ancient or modern people – an understandable mistake frequent in older archaeology33 – recognizing that such structures fill the lives of all persons in a culture, and not just elites, deserves historical examination simply because the uses of such space change over time and vary with the social location of the users.34 For Israel, there is still much to say in this direction as well. Yet what is known about the use of monumental architecture and inscriptions in ancient Israel? 32  Josephine Shaya, “The Public Life of Monuments: The Summi Viri of the Forum of Augustus,” AJA 117 (2013): 83–110, quotation from 106. 33  The move in contemporary archaeology toward the study of built-up urban areas as well as their rural hinterlands is of course well known. A good example of the range of questions now available can be seen in the first volume of papers from the 2012 International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East (ICAANE): Piotr Bieliński, Michał Gawlikowski, Rafał Koliński, Dorota Ławecka, Arkadiusz Sołtysiak, and Zuzanna Wygnańska, eds., Proceedings of the 8th International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, vol.  1: Plenary Sessions, Township and Villages, High and Low, the Minor Arts for the Elite and for the Populace (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2014). 34  Problems remain with the oft-used distinctions between high and low, elite and non-elite, art forms (including architecture, presumably). For a helpful discussion of the issues, see Silvana di Paolo, “Concepts of ‘High’ and ‘Low’ Art in Ancient Near Eastern Art Theory and Methodology,” in Proceedings of the 8th International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, vol.  1: Plenary Sessions, Township and Villages, High and Low, the Minor Arts for the Elite and for the Populace, eds. Piotr Bieliński, Michał Gawlikowski, Rafał Koliński, Dorota Ławecka, Arkadiusz Sołtysiak, and Zuzanna Wygnańska (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2014), 443–51; Laura Battini, “Can the Definition

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Selected Major Sites One might begin the answer to the question with a simple catalogue. Imposing public buildings appear in Israel at any rate by the early ninth century bce and arguably slightly earlier. Without entering the complex debate about the High and Low Chronologies of Iron IIA,35 it is clear that monumental gateways, military facilities (whether stables or not), and palaces appeared at Megiddo, Jerusalem, Khirbet Qeiyafa (briefly),36 and slightly later at Lachish and Samaria. The precise process of state formation during this period must have been quite messy, with some sites such as Bet Shemesh shifting among Israelite, Canaanite, and Philistine polities,37 and sites such of ‘Popular Versus Official’ be Applied to Ancient Near-Eastern Production,” in Proceedings of the 8th International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, vol.  1: Plenary Sessions, Township and Villages, High and Low, the Minor Arts for the Elite and for the Populace, eds. Piotr Bieliński, Michał Gawlikowski, Rafał Koliński, Dorota Ławecka, Arkadiusz Sołtysiak, and Zuzanna Wygnańska (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2014), 453–66; and Davide Nadali, “Categorizing Images and Objects: Where and How Ancient Artefacts Might Be Evaluated,” in Proceedings of the 8th International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, vol.  1: Plenary Sessions, Township and Villages, High and Low, the Minor Arts for the Elite and for the Populace, eds. Piotr Bieliński, Michał Gawlikowski, Rafał Koliński, Dorota Ławecka, Arkadiusz Sołtysiak, and Zuzanna Wygnańska (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2014), 466–76. 35  For the traditional (“high”) chronology, see inter alia the work of Amnon Ben-Tor and D. BenAmi, “Hazor and the Archaeology of the Tenth Century BCE,” IEJ 48 (1998): 1–37; Zvi Gal, “The Iron Age ‘Low Chronology’ in Light of the Excavations at Ḥorvat Rosh Zayit,” IEJ 53 (2003): 147–50; David Ben-Shlomo, “The Iron Age Sequence of Tel Ashdod: A Rejoinder to ‘Ashdod Revisited’ by I. Finkelstein and L. Singer-Avitz,” TA 30 (2003): 83–107; H. J. Bruins, J. van der Plicht, and A. Mazar, “14C Dates from Tel Reḥov: Iron Age Chronology, Pharaohs, and Hebrew Kings,” Science 300 (2003): 315–18; Amnon Ben-Tor, Anabel Zarzecki-Peleg, and Shlomit Cohen-Anidjar, Yoqneʿam II: The Iron Age and the Persian Period, Qedem Reports 6 (Jerusalem: Institute of Archaeology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2005), esp.  90–168 (the city was apparently fortified in Strata XIV and XII, which the authors date to the tenth and mid-ninth centuries bce respectively); Amihai Mazar, “From 1250 to 850 b.c.e.: Remarks on Some Selected Archaeological Issues,” in Israel in Transition: From Late Bronze II to Iron IIa (c. 1250–850 b.c.e.), vol.  1: The Archaeology, ed. Lester L. Grabbe (New York: T. & T. Clark, 2008), 86–120. On the “low” chronology, see the many articles of Israel Finkelstein and his students and colleagues, as well as the items associated with Megiddo noted below. See also Israel Finkelstein and Eli Piasetzky, “Wrong and Right; High and Low: 14C Dates from Tel Reḥov and Iron Age Chronology,” TA 30 (2003): 283–95. On the bearing of Aegean imports on the discussion, see Nicolas Coldstream, “Some Aegean Reactions to the Chronological Debate in the Southern Levant,” TA 30 (2003): 247–58 (however, Coldstream notes, in an appendix, a comment by Ussishkin to the effect that the Aegean pottery under consideration does not come from a stratigraphically secure context; this fact creates a severe problem for Coldstream’s case, which he does not fully acknowledge). 36  Yosef Garfinkel and Saar Ganor, eds., Khirbet Qeiyafa, vol.  1: Excavation Report 2007–2008 (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society/Institute of Archaeology, Hebrew University, 2009); Yosef Garfinkel, Saar Ganor, and Michael G. Hasel, “The Iron Age City of Khirbet Qeiyafa after Four Seasons of Excavations,” in The Ancient Near East in the 12th–10th Centuries BCE: Culture and History, eds. Gershon Galil, Ayelet Gilboa, Aren M. Maier, and Dan’el Kahn, AOAT 392 (Münster: Ugarit, 2012), 149–74. 37  Shlomo Bunimowitz and Zvi Lederman, “A Border Case: Beth-Shemesh and the Rise of Ancient Israel,” in Israel in Transition: From Late Bronze II to Iron IIa (c. 1250–850 b.c.e.), vol.  1: The Archaeology, ed. Lester L. Grabbe (New York: T. & T. Clark, 2008), 21–31.

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as Khirbet Qeiyafa apparently demonstrating activities of an Israelite polity (Judah?) positioning itself against the emerging Philistine cluster of city-states. Particularly telling, from the point of view of Israelite and Judahite kingship are the sites at Megiddo and Lachish, which were not royal capitals, and Samaria and Jerusalem, which were. First, Megiddo. Discussion of this famous site, a crossroads of armies and empires, has, again, tended to revolve in recent years around issues of the so-called high and low chronologies concerning the tenth and ninth centuries bce, a problem whose resolution is not critical for the discussion at hand. What is crucial is that under the kingdom of Israel, at least by the end of the ninth century and lasting until the end of that polity during the Assyrian conquest of the 720s, Megiddo figures as a major military and governmental installation, with little else to commend it. The impressive public buildings of the site must have created in the minds of both the local population interacting with the city and any foreign travelers or spies the impression of the might and legitimacy of the Israelite state capable of such constructions.38 38  For the history of the site see Baruch Halpern, “Centre and Sentry: Megiddo’s Role in Transit, Administration and Trade,” in Megiddo III: The 1992–1996 Seasons, eds. Israel Finkelstein, David Ussishkin, and Baruch Halpern, TAUNIAM 18 (Tel Aviv: Yass Publications in Archaeology, 2000), 2:551–63; Israel Finkelstein and David Ussishkin, “Archaeological and Historical Conclusions,” in Megiddo III: The 1992–1996 Seasons, eds. Israel Finkelstein, David Ussishkin, and Baruch Halpern, TAUNIAM 18 (Tel Aviv: Yass Publications in Archaeology, 2000), 2:595–602; Israel Finkelstein. “Archaeological and Historical Conclusions,” in Megiddo V: The 2004–2008 Seasons, eds. Israel Finkelstein, David Ussishkin, and Eric H. Cline, TAUNIAM 31 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2013), 3:1329–40. On the stables themselves, see Deborah O. Cantrell and Israel Finkelstein, “A Kingdom for a Horse: The Megiddo Stables and Eighth Century Israel,” in Megiddo IV: The 1998–2002 Seasons, eds. Israel Finkelstein, David Ussishkin, and Baruch Halpern,TAUNIAM 24 (Tel Aviv: Yass Publications in Archaeology, 2006), 2:643–65; and Lawrence A. Belkin and Eileen F. Wheeler, “Reconstruction of the Megiddo Stables,” in Megiddo IV: The 1998–2002 Seasons, eds. Israel Finkelstein,

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Second, meanwhile, in Lachish IV–III the massive stone podia A–C, which now so dominate the site and originally covered about 2700 square meters, supported a monumental structure (the so-called “palace fort”) which contained both storage space, apparently for goods taken in taxation, and reception space for public events. Certainly in its original configuration, the building would have been a landmark visible for kilometers around and thus a standing witness to the presence of the monarchy.39 Since the floor plans of the palaces built in succession atop the podia are not fully understood, it would be difficult to work out the ways in which the structures functioned as buildings. However, studies of monumental complexes elsewhere allow one to ask questions of the remains. Notably, studies of palaces in the Neo-Assyrian capitals, admittedly larger structures with more complex (or at least better preserved) aesthetic programs, have deduced a number of important ways in which these monumental structures functioned as in terms of human movement, access to space, and interaction with imagery. So McMahon has recently argued from the architecture of the palace of Khorsabad that the asymmetry characteristic of Neo-Assyrian palaces and so distasteful to our sensibilities, conditioned as they are by Greco-Roman conventions of art and architecture, actually served to create spaces that appealed to the senses of sight, smell, and sound. By playing with light and shadow, quietness and noise, the architects of this and other palaces “used asymmetry, space compression, and changes in sound and light to create dramatic and variable experiences for users and to reproduce more nuanced and reflexive themes of political control.”40 Her study marks an advance over earlier work that concentrated on movement about the palace, an approach that itself marked an advance over earlier work focusing simply on floor plans.41 In such a view, it is easy to imagine moving in and out of the Lachish palace soldiers, merchants, drovers, and craftspersons, not to mention supplicants seeking reDavid Ussishkin, and Baruch Halpern, TAUNIAM 24 (Tel Aviv: Yass Publications in Archaeology, 2006), 2:666–87. 39  Published in David Ussishkin, “Area Pal.: The Judean Palace-Fort,” in The Renewed Archaeological Excavations at Lachish (1973–1994), vol.  2: The Iron Age Stratigraphy and Architecture, ed. David Ussishkin (Tel Aviv: Yass Publications in Archaeology, 2004), 768–870; the original but now out of date publication of the “Iron Age citadel” appears in Olga Tufnell, Margaret A. Murray, and David Diringer, eds., Lachish III (Tell ed-Duweir) (London: Oxford University Press and Wellcome Trust, 1953), 78–86. 40  Augusta McMahon, “Space, Sound, and Light: Toward a Sensory Experience of Ancient Monumental Architecture,” AJA 117 (2013): 177. 41  For other recent studies on art as the display of power, see Bonatz, “Bild, Macht”; Paolo Matthiae, “Subject Innovations in the Khorsabad Reliefs and their Political Meaning,” in Leggo! Studies Presented to Frederick Mario Fales on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday, eds. Giovanni B. Lanfranchi, Daniele Morandi Bonacossi, Cevizia Pappi, and Simonetta Ponchia, LAS 2 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2012), 477–97; Janusz Meuszyński, Die Rekonstruktion der Reliefdarstellungen und Ihrer Anordnung im Nordwestpalast von Kalḫu (Nimrud), BaghFor 2 (Mainz: von Zabern, 1981); idem, “The throne-Room of Aššur-naṣir-apli II: Room B in the North-West Palace at Nimrud,” ZA 64 (1975): 51–73. Useful research on the floor plans and therefore space usage of the palaces appears in Geoffrey Turner, “The State Apartments of Late Assyrian Palaces,” Iraq 32 (1970): 177–213.

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lief from some legal burden or permission to undertake some enterprise. In short, it is possible to imagine (though not to recover as historical fact) activities similar to those revealed in the Lachish Letters or hinted at in the small finds.42 Third, Samaria. While much of the lower city of the Israelite period remains unexcavated and therefore poorly understood, and the stratigraphy from the Crowfoot and Kenyon expeditions problematic in certain respects,43 it does seem clear that the city functioned as a capital for Israel comparable in its magnificence to others in the region. It may be, as Ron Tappy has argued, that the city “always lacked a quantitative urban aspect and served primarily as the private habitation of the kingdom’s secular leaders,”44 but even this conclusion remains uncertain pending further excavation. Fourth, arguably the most complex site of all is Jerusalem, since the probable location of the first temple and the Davidides’ palace lie somewhere under, or just south of, the Haram as-Sharif, and excavations all over the city are entangled with political implications at every turn. Nevertheless, it is possible to speak not only of major fortifications erected during the late eighth century bce,45 but apparently of public buildings from the tenth, during which time the massive Middle Bronze Age wall may still have been in use.46 Whether tenth-century Jerusalem included a royal palace, much less the palace of David as Eilat Mazar has argued, matters less than the fact that the texts originating in Jerusalem (i.e., much of the Hebrew Bible) presuppose a desire for, and understanding of, monumentality in their creators and audiences. This presupposition of monumentality would have grown over time so that by the late monarchic period, use of large-scale architecture as “a commemoration, as a destination, and as a set of images and texts that moved through space and time” (to quote Shaya again) would have seemed a matter of course to both elite and subaltern 42  The most up-to-date edition of the texts appears in André Lemaire, “Hebrew Inscriptions, Section A: Ostraca and Incised Inscriptions,” in The Renewed Archaeological Excavations at Lachish (1973–1994), vol.  4: The Iron Age and Post-Iron Age Pottery and Artefacts, ed. David Ussishkin (Tel Aviv: Yass Publications in Archaeology, 2004), 2099–2132. 43  See the study of Ron E. Tappy, The Archaeology of Israelite Samaria, vol.  1: Early Iron Age through the Ninth Century BCE, HSS 44 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992), esp.  213–16; idem, The Archaeology of Samaria, vol.  2: The Eighth Century bce, HSS 50 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2001). For the original reports, J. W. Crowfoot, Kathleen M. Kenyon, and E. L. Sukenik, Samaria-Sebaste I: The Buildings at Samaria (London: PEF, 1942); J. W. Crowfoot and Grace M. Crowfoot, Samaria-Sebaste II: Early Ivories from Samaria (London: PEF, 1938); and Crowfoot, Crowfoot, and Kenyon, Objects from Samaria. 44 Tappy, Eighth Century, 578. 45  On the so-called “Broad Wall,” see Nahman Avigad and Hillel Geva, “Iron Age II Strata 9–7,” in Jewish Quarter Excavations in the Old City of Jerusalem, vol.  1: Architecture and Stratigraphy: Areas A, W and X-2, ed. Hillel Geva (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society/Institute of Archaeology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2000), 44–82. 46  As published in a series of brochures by Eilat Mazar, The Complete Guide to the Temple Mount Excavations (Jerusalem: Shoham, 2002); eadem, Preliminary Report on the City of David Excavations 2005 at the Visitors Center Area (Jerusalem: Shoham, 2007); eadem, The Palace of King David: Excavations at the Summit of the City of David (Jerusalem: Shoham, 2009); eadem, Discovering the Solomonic Wall in Jerusalem (Jerusalem: Shoham, 2011).

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members of society. Indeed, this presupposition appears frequently in the Hebrew Bible as an unexceptionable part of its mental furniture. Temples in Jerusalem and Elsewhere as Monuments to Legitimacy This brief survey indicates to some extent the scope of the monumentality in ancient Israel and Judah. These states, though different in scale from each other, did not consist merely of undifferentiated villages with domestic architecture, but also of urban centers organized around large-scale buildings. The existence of state apparatuses led to the use of public architecture to communicate messages of the monarchy’s close relationship to the divine realm and therefore to “the way things ought to be.” Here we return to a point by Gilibert in her study of Carchemish and Zençirli: Ritual performances and monumental art are two facets of a complementary communication strategy. Ritual spectacles are powerful means by which to negotiate and reinforce power, but their pathos and effect tend to fade rapidly once the event is over: monumental art, surrounded by an aura of permanence, counters the ephemeral nature of ritual performances, anchoring them in space and time.47

Despite problems with too narrowly defining ritual and architecture as about “power” and the debatability of the ephemeral nature of ritual (since it can be repeated), her basic points stand. Monumental architecture serves as a stage for ritual, and ritual enlivens the architecture so that it can communicate to a human community. What about Solomon’s temple, then? The point is not whether the depictions in 1 Kgs 6–7 accurately describe a tenth-century bce temple or a later one on the same site,48 although the sort of skepticism that would dismiss the historical nature of the text more or less entirely seems misguided at best.49 Better questions are, what do the 47 Gilibert, Syro-Hittite Monumental Art, 133; cf. Michael Roaf, “Mesopotamian Kings and the Built Environment,” in Experiencing Power, Generating Authority: Cosmos, Politics, and the Ideology of Kingship in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, eds. Jane A. Hill, Philip Jones, and Antonio J. Morales, PMIRC 6 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, 2013), 331–59. 48  Note the claims of Lipiński that 1 Kgs 6–7 contains material from Ahaz’s remodeling of the temple. While possible, the case seems less than airtight, for while he may be right that 1 Kgs seems to assume a level of control by Hiram of Tyre difficult to square with tenth century realities, the specific connection with Ahaz is quite tenuous; see Eduard Lipiński, Itineraria Phoenicia, StPh 18 (Leuven: Peeters, 2004), 505–7. As Gershon Galil has recently argued, however, the later reworking of the temple-building story was not extensive. Even if one does not accept his view that the text’s core came from the reign of Solomon (since it does not sound like a royal inscription, in fact), his argument that it predates the fall of Jerusalem and therefore reflects a building known to its author seems sound. Gershon Galil, “Solomon’s Temple: Fiction or Reality?” in The Ancient Near East in the 12th–10th Centuries BCE: Culture and History, eds. Gershon Galil, Ayelet Gilboa, Aren M. Maier, and Dan’el Kahn, AOAT 392 (Münster: Ugarit, 2012), 137–48. 49  Contra e.g., Clifford Mark McCormack, Palace and Temple: A Study of the Architectural and Verbal Icons, BZAW 313 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2002). McCormack, to be fair, does not deny the existence of a temple in Jerusalem during the Iron Age, but notes that since no physical evidence of that structure remains, one should be content with “built environment analysis” (89) and understand

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texts about the temple say about how the Judahite polity used the temple to speak to the legitimacy of certain actions of the monarch and how did other actors in that state (not least the ones passing on the story and its eventual editors, the Deuteronomists) engage the same space to accept, modify, or reject the claims of the state. Architecture may be relatively permanent, but the meanings assigned to it do not escape negotiation, whether through cooperation or contestation. To speak of negotiation is to speak, then, of performance, of several social actors using monumental space as “a commemoration, as a destination, and as a set of images and texts that moved through space and time,” but in different ways. Without moving walls or altering iconography, these actors may use the space in question (or its memory, but that is another problem) for rhetorics of praise or blame (epideictic) that either reinforce or counteract each other. Let me explain. To clarify, take first the speeches of Solomon in 1 Kgs 8:12–21 and 23–66.50 The second, in particular, comes from the Deuteronomistic editors, while the first may be earlier, in part. Many aspects of the speeches’ roles in the entire DH have been studied, and there is no point in rehearsing their connection to Deuteronomi(sti)c theology. One should ask, however, what it means to portray a king using monumental space to speak of the nation’s history (prospectively from the narrative’s point of view, retrospectively from the readers’), especially when the speeches contain both positive and negative evaluations of the monarchy? A number of features of the speech seem relevant to a study of kingship in chiaros­ curo. First, the Deuteronomistic authors, though relying throughout the Solomon cycle on multiple sources, some of which may date back to the tenth century bce,51 nevertheless employ the king as a spokesperson for their view of Israelite history as how it functions as a symbol in a set of texts. In short, the biblical material reveals nothing reliable about the use of such a building in the real world. However, this skepticism rests on at least some errors of fact, as well as debatable judgments. McCormack argues, for example, that 1 Kings’s use of the internal dimensions of rooms only shows the unreliability of the text. However, measuring only the interiors of room was the normal practice in Babylonian architectural texts; see A. R. George, “Measurement of the Interior of the E-sagil Temple,” in Cuneiform Texts in the Metropolian Museum of Art, vol.  2: Literary and Scholastic Texts of the First Millennium B.C., eds. Ira Spar and W. G. Lambert (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art/Brepols, 2005), 267–77. 50  On the reworking of this material in 2 Chronicles, see the commentaries and the discussion in Mark W. Hamilton, “Solomon,” NIDB 5 (2009): 317–26; John Van Seters, “The Chronicler’s Account of Solomon’s Temple-Building: A Continuity Theme,” in The Chronicler as Historian, eds. M. Patrick Graham, Kenneth G. Hoglund, and Steven L. McKenzie, JSOTSup 238 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), 283–300 (who, correctly in my view, argues that the Chronicler revised 1 Kgs 5–8 in the interests of emphasizing continuity with early Second Temple practice). On the literary techniques of revision, see Isaac Kalimi, The Reshaping of Ancient Israelite History in Chronicles (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2005), with frequent references to these chapters scattered throughout. In other words, the Chronicler had historiographic, literary/stylistic, and religious reasons to modify his source in 1 Kings; it is not always easy to separate those motivations in given cases. 51  On the historical issues, see the essays in Rüdiger Lux, ed., Ideales Königtum: Studien zu David und Salomo (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2005); Lowell K. Handy, ed., The Age of Solomon: Scholarship at the Turn of the Millennium (Leiden: Brill, 1997); as well as Lawrence E. Stager, “The Patrimonial Kingdom of Solomon,” in Symbiosis, Symbolism, and the Power of the Past: Canaan,

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Chapter 2:  Kingship in Chiarascuro

one of repeated failures to keep the covenant (cf. Deut 28; 30). The king, that is, becomes a sort of historian-in-chief. At one level, such a role was commonplace in royal inscriptions of many traditions. There the kingly “I,” the implied narrator, presents a version of events to which the reader or hearer of the text (or the less than literate viewer of the art accompanying the text) is expected to give his credence.52 However, the speech(es) of Solomon alter the expectation in certain ways: they speak of the past as glorious and the future as fraught with troubles (though from the point of view of the readers, both periods are past), and they erase future monarchs from key moments in the nation’s life, preferring to speak to Yhwh of “your people” (‫ )עמך‬as the group that goes to war or suffers from famine or drought or, at last, petitions for divine help and forgiveness. The future kings, whether Davidic or not, do not enter into the picture in the prayer that Solomon speaks, a paradoxical fact given the emphasis on his succession from David and the connection between the Davidic past and the more remote, and normative, past of the exodus.53 The absence does fit the DH’s overall conviction that kingship is optional while peoplehood is not. In contrast to the “tribal” period, which the DH contrasts with the monarchy in ways that have misled modern scholars for a long time,54 the new monarchy takes its legitimacy from the divine promise now concretized (so to speak) in a temple as the icon of the dynasty, a pointer to its existence. However, the relationship between icon and what it signifies is complex, for the monument really points beyond the king and even “kingship” to the deity making the promise. In other words, by placing Solomon at the center of the story as the royal speaker who does not speak of future royalty, the Deuteronomists have radically circumscribed the king’s role as mediator of the divine will. This fact raises a second point about the temple dedication story in 1 Kings: the iconography of the temple both connected it to extra-Israelite artistic traditions and formed a new way of conceiving of Israelite political identity. Art serves a higher purpose. To justify this claim, one should note that it has long been argued that the temple described in 1 Kgs 6–8 closely resembles northern Syrian examples at both ʿAin Dāra Ancient Israel, and Their Neighbors from the Late Bronze Age through Roman Palaestina, eds. William G. Dever and Seymour Gitin (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2003), 63–74. 52  On this point, the discussion below, as well as Matthew James Suriano, “The Historicality of the King: An Exercise in Reading Royal Inscriptions from the Ancient Levant,” JANEH 1 (2014): 95–118. 53  As has often been noted, the text connects three theological loci: the exodus, the election of David and his “house” (‫ ;בית‬cf. 2 Sam 7), and the temple (Yhwh’s ‫)בית‬. This triad is laid out in the incipit of the initial prayer in 1 Kgs 8:15–16: ‫ברוך יהוה אלהי ישראל אשר דבר בפיו את דוד אבי ובידו מלא לאמר מן היום אשר הוצאתי את עמי את ישראל ממצרים‬ ‫“( לא בחרתי בעיר מכל שבטי ישראל לבנות בית להיות שמי שם ואבחר בדוד להיות על עמי ישראל‬Blessed be Yhwh, Israel’s God, who spoke orally to David my father and fulfilled his promise, i.e., “from the day I brought up my people, Israel, from Egypt, I had not chosen any city of all Israel’s tribes for building a temple in which to put my name, but I have chosen David to be over my people Israel”). 54  See the discussion of tribalism on above.

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and Tell Tayinat (though each differs from the others). Tripartite buildings surrounded by storage rooms and fronted by columns, all these structures presuppose a common understanding of the usages to which temples could be put.55 They seem to presuppose a sort of graded holiness, with the innermost room being less accessible to the community and therefore more holy, more closely connected to the divine. Moreover, the artistic conventions attributed to the Jerusalem temple – the alternation of sphinxes, palm trees, and calyxes (‫ ;כרובים ותמרת ופטורי צצים‬1 Kgs 6:29) closely resembles the North Syrian repertoire and is usually understood to evoke the primordial garden of God.56 The temple functions as both commemoration of the primeval past and destination for a community. Since the temple in Jerusalem adjoined the palace and dominated the cityscape (at least in the memory of those responsible for the literary tradition about Zion and probably in fact), its evocation of the deity’s parkland home suggests an identification between the state and the very structure of the cosmos itself. The destination commemorating a world beyond ordinary human experience offered a potent symbol of an imagined world in which the human king and his retainers and supporters (i.e., the state) had an intimate connection to the divine polity at whose center sat the divine king, Yhwh.57 The perception that Yhwh and the human king live side by side in both physical space and in the minds of their subjects becomes not merely a projection of royal power and control, but a landmark for a community’s way of navigating the shoals of history. In the royal-divine linkage lies security for all. Or at least such security is a possibility. Thus architecture, ritual, and other forms of meaning-making intertwine to create a space in Israel’s mental map called kingship. 55  For the ʿAin Dāra temple, see the major publication of Ali Abū ʿAssāf, Der Tempel von ʿAin Dārā, DamFor 3 (Mainz: von Zabern, 1990); idem, “Zwei neue Stelenfragmente aus ʿAin Dara,” in Beiträge zur altorientalischen Archäologie and Altertumskunde, eds. Peter Calmeyer, Karl Hecker, Liane Jakob-Rost, and C. B. F. Walker (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1994), 1–5; idem, “Zur Bedeutung der Fußabdrücke im Tempel von ʿAin Dara,” in Beiträge zur Vorderasiatischen Archäologie, eds. Jan-Waalke Meyer, Mirko Novák, and Alexander Pruß (Frankfurt: n.p., 2001), 20–23; Robert Alexander, “The Storm-God at ʿAin Dara,” in Recent Developments in Hittite Archaeology and History: Papers in Memory of Hans G. Güterbock, eds. K. Aslihan Yener and Harry A. Hoffner, Jr. (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2002), 11–19. On Tell Tayinat, Harrison and Osborne, “Building XVI.” For the similar artistic schemata at the Aleppo temple to the weather-god, see Kay Kohlmeyer, Der Tempel des Wettergottes von Aleppo (Münster: Rhema, 2000). On the historical usefulness of the account in 1 Kings, see Erhard Blum, “Der Tempelbaubericht in 1 Könige 6,1–22: Exegetische und historische Überlegungen,” in Temple Building and Temple Cult: Architecture and Cultic Paraphernalia of Temples in the Levant (2.–1. Mill. b.c.e.), ed. Jens Kamlah, ADPV 41 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2012), 291–316. 56  Note, e.g., Lawrence Stager, “Jerusalem and the Garden of Eden,” in ErIsr 26 (1999): 183*–94*. 57  Note also the critique of the association of palace and temple in Ezek 48:8, which denounces the Judahite kings’ practice of “their abominations” (‫ )תועבותם‬so near the sanctuary. Such practices may have included the obviously ideationally loaded custom of burying the deceased rulers near the palace and temple complex, as well as other unspecified matters. For Ezekiel, the severance of crown and temple, at least architecturally, made possible his renewed and greatly augmented sanctuary as the center of his utopian vision.

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Conclusions To reach a preliminary conclusion, then, varying portrayals of kingship appear in Israel’s artistic media (text, architecture, texts about architecture, ritual, texts about ritual, and so on). No single medium can give a complete picture. No single artifact or text even tries to do so. The historian examining these remains of the past must also fill in the outline to complete the picture. And yet our eyes do not wander except in directions that the ancient portrait-makers (most notably the literary creators of the DH or other biblical texts) indicated. We follow their traces or we go nowhere at all. So what do their sketches indicate? Not just that the term “kingship” signifies a large bundle of relationships, social exchanges, systems of symbols, and processes of negotiation that do not easily fit the simple binary oppositions (pro- or anti-monarchic) so common in biblical scholarship. This much should be obvious, even if the details deserve much more extensive investigation. The larger point is that the ancient depictions of kingship do more than explore notions of power and submission. Rather, since the monarch stands between Yhwh and Israel, discussions of kingship become opportunities for exploring theology in a strict sense as well as moral commitments by human beings. The next chapters attempt to understand some of those exploratory attempts.

Chapter 3:

Finding order in history: The Case of the Deuteronomists One such voyage of discovery, so to speak, was undertaken sometime in the middle of the sixth century bce, when one or more survivors of the Babylonian dismantling of Judah revised a document we have come to know as Deuteronomy and the Former Prophets (or more recently, the Deuteronomistic History).1 The work had possibly taken its basic shape several decades earlier as a story of Israel’s life from its emergence as a recognizable people down to the end of the Assyrian empire, plausibly as a meditation on the opportunities awaiting the nation if it kept the terms of the covenant with Yhwh. It apparently underwent later revisions as well. Drawing on earlier sources, but receiving the impress of recent experiences and reflections, the resultant work took on an unprecedented scope and power. Interweaving laws, hymns, and narratives of varying types and origins, the DH established a benchmark for history writing that broke with older forms and set a model that influences us until this day. While much remains disputed about the nature and extent of these sources and their revisers’ activity – and scholars use Noth’s label in different ways, with Americans usually meaning Joshua-2 Kings in its more or less extant form and Europeans often meaning a prior stage of the text with the same basic structure – the resulting work has exerted enormous influence on the history of Western culture and, in particular, its sensibilities regarding the use of power, the distribution of wealth and status, and above all, the nature of the interaction between God and human beings who seek to be just. *** Scholars who read the preceding paragraphs will immediately recognize that they mask a group of almost mind-numbingly complex issues. Not only is it unclear just what sources the Deuteronomistic Historian(s) put to use, and by what methods he or she or they did so, it is not totally clear to what end these historians wrote. Some of the creators of these works may have intended them as a warning to potential rulers, 1  On the appropriateness of the terminology, see Raymond F. Person, Jr., The Deuteronomic School: History, Social Setting, and Literature (Atlanta: SBL, 2002), 1–9; by implication, the studies in Mark Leuchter and Klaus-Peter Adam, eds., Soundings in Kings: Perspectives and Methods in Contemporary Scholarship (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2010). Here, I use the term Deuteronomistic to refer to the work as a whole and the viewpoints of the editor(s) that gave it shape. I avoid the term Deuteronomic and refer to material in Deuteronomy as such. I also use the term author and editor interchangeably, whether in the singular or the plural, because the boundary between one and the other seems impossible to delineate for the texts at hand.

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Chapter 3:  Finding order in history: The Case of the Deuteronomists

a sort of large-scale Fürstenspiegel. Certainly, unlike earlier chronicles of royal deeds and perhaps unlike some of its own sources, this work did not seek to legitimate a living monarch’s work. Indeed, those responsible for it entertained the suspicion that monarchy offered at best a rocky road to the goal of a just humanity under a just God. The evidence of older sources and of the catastrophic end of the states of Israel and Judah confirmed that suspicion. Nor were these authors mere entertainers, nor preachers, nor theologians, much less presenters of history for history’s sake, whatever that would mean. The best guess is that they were scribes, perhaps from the priesthood, who sought to recover a usable past for a hopeful future of a nation that must rediscover itself in order to survive in a hostile world. Such a pursuit was not unique to them, for the same general goals animated contemporary and later tradents of the biblical prophetic books as well as the narratives and laws that other scribal circles assembled in the P source of the Pentateuch and of the final Pentateuch itself. Thus we have before us in Joshua-2 Kings the legacy of scholars who used considerable literary skill to tell a story of Israel’s past in order to reclaim its future. Like all historians, ancient or modern, they worked on the basis of particular assumptions and with an audience of some sort in mind, the recovery of which has occupied our guild for the past few decades and will continue to do so. To understand the achievement of the DH, then, we must search out those assumptions, recover that audience, and ask to what extent the literary creation before us still matters.

The Aims and Processes of the Deuteronomistic History To discern a text’s goals, it is prudent to start with its statements on the subject. One should not assume that such statements can always be believed, or that they reflect a sufficient level of authorial self-awareness. But Edward Said is surely correct to claim It is argued that, since all reading is misreading, no one reading is better than any other, and hence all readings, potentially infinite in number, are in the final analysis equally misrepresentations. A part of this has been derived from a conception of the text as existing with a hermetic, Alexandrian textual universe, which has no connection with actuality. This is a view I do not agree with, not simply because texts in fact are in the world but also because as texts they place themselves – one of their functions as texts is to place themselves – and indeed are themselves, by soliciting the world’s attention. Moreover, their manner of doing this is to place restraints upon what can be done with them interpretively.2

The sorts of material a work contains or omits, the seemingly gratuitous authorial asides, the portrayal of characters, the choice of language – all these features help a text “solicit the world’s attention.” For the DH to have been intelligible to its earliest audiences, it must have addressed issues of concern to them in ways intelligible to 2  Edward Said, The World, the Text, and the Critic (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983), 39–40.

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them based on prior conventions of discourse. In short, as Said says, interpreters face “restraints” in reading them, both then and now. When turning to the DH, we must face certain challenges not merely restraining, but stimulating interpretation. The first is the work’s use of sources, some perhaps very extensive.3 Although scholars debate the date, extent, and nature of these sources and the degree to which the Deuteronomists reworked them, it seems clear that the book as we have it is the result of several stages of literary growth, some of which are more or less recognizable, even if their dates are highly controverted and perhaps unknowable. The final text thus results from a series of compositional decisions to retain material in toto, to reshape it according to some plan, to omit it (which, of course, means that we cannot recover it), or to overwrite it in some way. It follows from this observation that the final work must include material that does not easily fit, or whose meaning may shift by its inclusion in a setting other than its original one. Conversely, it follows that the final composer or author believed that such material did fit to some degree. Unlike Herodotus, who sometimes recounted tales he only half believed,4 the Deuteronomists seem to have tried to make all the many scraps of material with which they worked fit together, sometimes in spite of themselves. If a story, law, poem, or speech is in the work, it makes sense to assume that it reveals something of the final author’s inclinations, even if the material comes from an earlier hand, unless good reasons to the contrary interpose. This is particularly true when the text includes editorial fussiness about an included element (see below). The second challenge is that the DH is a work of narrative seeking theological and moral insights on more than half a millennium of a nation’s life. For the moment, it does not matter what we, with the tools of modern archaeology and literary analysis, think about the accuracy of this narrative. It does matter that this work passes itself off as a record and analysis of events of the sometimes distant past. Yet, though the use of history as moral exemplum has a long and honorable pedigree, it poses many serious problems. The trouble with history is that, to cite a brilliant essay by Herbert Butterfield, “we can never assert that history has proved any man right in the long run.”5 The facts simply do not fit a theory of history. Clio knows her own mind and her own, often inscrutable, ends. Reading Deuteronomy through 2 Kings makes it clear, moreover, that the Deuteronomists were keenly aware of this truth. Even as the work seeks to explain why the dual Israelite monarchies at last fell to the Mesopotamian empires, it takes many de3  On various attempts to trace out these sources, see Antony F. Campbell and Mark A. O’Brien, Unfolding the Deuteronomistic History: Origins, Upgrades, Present Texts (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000); Thomas Römer, The So-Called Deuteronomistic History: A Sociological, Historical, and Literary Introduction (London: T. & T. Clark, 2007); cf. Frank Moore Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973), 274–89. 4  Hence his frequent use of “they say” (λέγουσι) or “it is said” (λέγεται) in contexts in which different versions of stories exist (a feature present throughout his work). 5  Herbert Butterfield, The Whig Interpretation of History (1931; New York: Norton, 1975), 75.

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tours that demonstrate a refusal to seek cardboard villains and heroes or easily resolvable, and therefore unreal, problems. For example, although the editorial comments on, say, the “apostasy” of Jeroboam leave no doubt as to the book’s view of that king as a blackguard, still we read of the tyranny of Solomon, the blind stupidity of Rehoboam, and the initial divine election of the insurgent Jeroboam as an answer to Davidic malfeasance. The Deuteronomistic composers retained material that makes their history messy, because they apparently recognized the messiness of history itself. Again, this feature of the work creates a challenge, but it also offers an opportunity because those comments on the tale, the analytical summaries woven through the text, reveal a struggle to wrestle history to the ground, so to speak. Our historian seeks to find a lesson in the past, but is sophisticated enough to know that such lessons must be hard won. To quote Butterfield again, “An important aspect of the historical process is the work of the new generation for ever playing providence over even the disasters of the old, and being driven to something like a creative act for the very reason that life on the old terms has become impossible.”6 This truism about history writing certainly applies to the work we consider here, for its author must salvage from repeated disasters resources for understanding and, if possible, revival. To restate briefly my major thesis, then, the DH records a sweeping narrative of the past in order to explore the possible dynamics of a society that enjoys a covenant with the liberating God, Yhwh. This work has in mind a set of interrelated religio-political questions, which it investigates from several angles, testing now one solution and now another, without overtly deciding precisely which will work best. In short, we have here a work of political philosophy, but not in the tradition that begins with Plato, in which a philosopher constructs an ideal society that offers a foil to his or her own experience. Thankfully so, for that latter tradition has latterly fallen on hard times due to the ultimate incoherence of utopian ideals.7 Rather, the work at hand does not imagine an ideal society or seek to resolve the contradictions in human nature. It describes a society as it was – or as the Deuteronomists thought it was, at any rate – in order to salvage from reality clues for the improvement of reality.8 The fact that moderns may doubt the theological claims of the work does not gainsay this basic insight into the mindset of the DH. The mindset of the DH becomes clearer when viewed from several angles. Three significant ones involve the nested nature of the narratives revealed by the texts (and behind them), practices of ancient historiography, and the earliest layers of the reception history of the text. Each deserves attention, at least in a suggestive way.

6  Ibid.,

77. On which see the famous essay of Sir Isaiah Berlin, “The Decline of Utopian Ideas in the West,” in idem, Crooked Timber of Humanity, 20–48. 8  Similarly, Leslie J. Hoppe, “The Strategy of the Deuteronomistic History: A Proposal,” CBQ 79 (2017): 1–19. 7 

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The Story Behind the Narrative9 To understand how this work uses history as a vehicle for political philosophy, then, one should first ask what it knows about Israel’s past (apart from its overtly theological claims). At the most basic level, the text remembers a structure of the past that has proven to reflect, in part, accurate information about that past. Thus Deuteronomy in its present form opens with homiletical reflections on the Mosaic period, when Israel emerged as a nation in response to turmoil in the Egyptian empire. Joshua and Judges describe a period when Israel had no monarch but consisted of shifting tribal entities led on occasion by charismatic leaders. Later, the northern tribes coalesced around a monarch. Soon thereafter, the thinly settled area of Judah joined this entity, and the city-state of Jerusalem became part of it, and took on an increasingly thick ideological resonance in the Israelite imagination. The two monarchies, Israel and Judah, coexisted for several centuries before falling successively to the Mesopotamian empires of Assyria and Babylonia. Again, this basic narratival structure seems to correspond, albeit in a rough way, to what actually happened. Iron I chieftainships gave way (albeit not all at once) to two states that eventually fell to outside conquerors. The subsuming – not elimination – of traditional tribal structures and their gradual transformations in response to larger economic and political forces did occur. It does not follow, of course, that the DH creators or their sources accurately reported particular events or knew the correct sequence of judges or kings, much less that their religious and political theories about the events they record reflect more than their own judgments. We do not know, for example, that Moses really lived, though his possibly Egyptian name and the verisimilitudinous details of some parts of the exodus tradition make that scenario at least plausible.10 Yet it is significant that, at the level of the basic flow of Israel’s past and its relationships, often stormy, with its neighbors, the tradition behind the DH contains a historically authentic structure, at least in part. Such an awareness must have entered the consciousness of Israelite intellectuals well before the creation of the DH itself. The burden of proof thus lies on anyone who would turn the work into a piece of late fiction.11

9  For a helpful distinction between story (“the ordered series of events which forms the basis for various possible narrations”) and narrative (“explicitly articulated narrations”), without a sharp distinction between the content and the performance of each, see Richard B. Hays, The Faith of Jesus Christ: The Narrative Substructure of Galatians 3:1–4:11, 2d ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 18–19. 10  For a judicious survey of the issues, see William H. C. Propp, Exodus 19–40, AB 2A (New York: Doubleday, 2006), 735–54. 11  A point well argued, if perhaps in an overly polemical way, by William G. Dever, What Did the Biblical Writers Know & When Did They Know It (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001); I find Dever’s discussion of the functioning of texts (esp.  10–17) not to engage seriously enough modern literary theory or, indeed, the complexity of the biblical texts themselves. But his overall conclusions seem justified. The biblical writers were not ignorant of their own past.

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At the same time, it is quite clear that, like any historian, the Deuteronomists shaped their material. Indeed, they inherited material already shaped by earlier tradents. Again, if we think about the entire work Deuteronomy through 2 Kings, we see that it begins with speeches set in the mouth of the lawgiver Moses (including older law codes) then proceeds to a life of Joshua and short tales of warlords (Judges; most of 1 Samuel). It ends with an intricately interwoven portrayal of two monarchies. Such a structure reflects deliberate choices of the use of both source material and new composition. These choices must be made according to some underlying understanding of how the narrative “should” unfold. That is, a story underlies the narrative. One person who recognized this basic insight some time ago was Gerhard von Rad, who identified a series of creedal statements in Deuteronomy 6 and 26 and Joshua 24 as Deuteronomic reworkings of ancient liturgical prayers.12 Von Rad’s assessment of the antiquity of the underlying texts has proven untenable, and in any case his focus lay on their illumination of the stories preceding them in the Pentateuch (or Hexateuch, as he understood the work). But his basic insight that, “if there is evidence in comparatively early times for the custom of making a cultic confession of this sort, this presupposes the existence of a form of the story of redemption which has already become fixed by usage, and must therefore be older still”13 seems unassailable, even if we might reject von Rad’s dates for these texts. In other words, the DH’s strategically placed theological summaries, and also the long homily-like speeches from prominent characters in the work, offer fairly elaborate reflections on the underlying story, which the overall work has narrativized in one of several possible ways. As Christos Tsagalis has shown for Greek epic poetry, a composer working up traditional material may employ numerous complex literary devices for both interacting with and attempting to displace alternative versions of the same story.14 While the DH does not use the same forms as Greek epic poetry, it does reflect similar approaches to storytelling in a grand style. Ancient Historiography A second way to get at the compositional process of the work at hand comes from recognizing that our author stood in a historiographic tradition, on the basis of which he, she, or they innovated new techniques. Recordkeeping predated writing and ap12  Gerhard von Rad, “The Form-Critical Problem of the Hexateuch,” in The Problem of the Hexateuch and Other Essays, trans. E. W. Trueman Dicken (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966), 3–8 (the essay first appeared in 1938). See the comments of Timo Veijola, “Das alte Wort in einer neuen Situation,” in Recht und Ethik im Alten Testament, eds. Bernard M. Levinson, Eckart Otto, and Walter Dietrich, ATM 13 (Münster: LIT, 2004), 45. 13  Ibid., 5. 14  Christos Tsagalis, The Oral Palimpsest: Exploring Intertextuality in the Homeric Epics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008), esp.  1–90.

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parently gave birth to it,15 to be sure, but a self-reflective historiographic literature emerged in the first millennium in Mesopotamia, spreading in time to Israel. The Deuteronomists thus drew on a preexisting approach to representing reality. However, neither the length nor the sophistication of Deuteronomy through 2 Kings has a clear parallel in the ancient Near East. M. Dijkstra is correct to eschew a goal “to discuss annals and chronicles in Israel and the ancient Near East in order to find evidence for greater credibility, accuracy or factuality for either of them, or to show that the biblical authors were more authentic and genuine historians than their Babylonian colleagues,”16 for such is not the case. Yet, on the other hand, it is not invidious to note both the similarities and the differences between the DH and parallel ancient Near Eastern texts. The DH is much longer than its Babylonian antecedents, contains a wider range of literary genres, and more often states intentional reflections upon the material it records. In short, it is more a sophisticated intellectual product and as such it both stands in continuity with its intellectual environment and innovates within it. Part of this innovation derives from the DH’s violation of a cardinal rule of earlier storytelling about rulers especially in annals, i.e., that the narrative should have clear villains and a clear hero, the king under consideration. While some of its sources also violated this rule (e.g., much of 1–2 Samuel), the DH makes the debunking of kingly self-glorification into a habit. Not that it embraces cynicism about power either. Rather, the work takes the view that power is complex, and that actors on the historical stage, especially the starring ones, often embody the most glaring contradictions within their own lives. While one easily associates such a view of the multilayered psyche of the hero with epic, a mode of fiction, often such complexity appears in real life as well, as such disparate figures as Alexander the Great and Lyndon Johnson illustrate. This is why the modernist attempt to distinguish sharply between historiography and fiction ultimately fails when it confuses the modes of literary presentation with the real life that those modes imitate, modify, and sometimes suborn. History writing in antiquity, as well as today, remains firmly in the category of art rather than science. The texts “solicit the world’s attention,” as Said puts it, in ways that the “world” finds intelligible. Reception History, or the Relecture of the Deuteronomistic History A third angle from which to understand this work derives from a consideration of its earliest known interpreter, namely the composer of 1–2 Chronicles. The Chronicler, as is well known, reworked the earlier DH in more or less its current form, seeking to 15  Note the studies of D. Schmandt-Besserat, Before Writing (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1992); J.-J. Glassner, The Invention of Cuneiform: Writing in Sumer (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003); Jacob L. Dahl, “The Marks of Early Writing,” Iran 50 (2012): 1–11. 16  Meindert Dijkstra, “‘As for the other events …’: Annals and Chronicles in Israel and the Ancient Near East,” in The Old Testament in its World, eds. Robert P. Gordon and Johannes C. de Moor, OtSt 52 (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 39.

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Chapter 3:  Finding order in history: The Case of the Deuteronomists

improve its literary style, theology, or basic logic in various ways. To some degree, retracing 1–2 Chronicles’s patterns of revision helps reveal not only the core ideas of its creators, but also the ways in which they understood their sources. In particular, Chronicles has disrupted the DH’s carefully laid-out periodization and its subtle balancing of opposites in the depictions of major characters. On the first point, the Chronicler at once extended the scope of “Israelite” history back to the beginning and forward to the Persian period, and simultaneously dissolved that history into the era prior to the first Jerusalem temple and the era after it, apparently in order to depict the Persian-era temple as simply a continuity of the one built by David and Solomon – both! – and thus the interlude of the sixth century bce as just that, an interlude. On the second, the Chronicler’s recasting of David (no adultery or murder, no questions of cui bono surrounding the dead bodies of his enemies) and of Solomon, and of their relationship as the dutiful father and son working in tandem rather than figures in tension with each other marks a different conception of Israel’s history, as well as of the nature of the historian’s task. The DH’s careful balancing of opposites disappears. While the relationship between the DH and 1–2 Chronicles is bookish in that it involves rewriting of fixed material in (probably) a single direction, it bears an interesting analogy to the relationship between the Greek oral materials in the Cypria and the Iliad, in that in both pairs of texts, the same characters appear (or the same names at any rate) and cross-references to the separate depictions of them also exist. So Achilles in the Cypria is both the same as and different from the Achilles of the Iliad, for example. The David of Chronicles is both the same as and different from the David of 1–2 Samuel, to take another example. The complicated question of the relationship between the oral and written texts in both the Israelite and Greek traditions aside, in both cases we have different versions of the “same” story or perhaps, better, different performances of the same characters.17 Attending to the interrelationships of the performances allows us to understand how each text talks about a range of issues, including their understanding of politics. Periodization and the Deuteronomistic History Perhaps the best way to illustrate the reading of the DH from these complementary vantage points is to consider a few cases that reveal its reflections on the history it narrates and its reflections on its own methods. Prior to considering two such cases, one more idea must enter the conversation. That idea is the Deuteronomistic History’s efforts at periodization. In brief, if one includes Deuteronomy within the ambit of the History work, the circles responsible for this work understood that history to fall into several major periods: 17 

111.

On the “mutual referentiality” of the Cypria and the Iliad, see Tsagalis, Oral Palimpsest, 93–

The Aims and Processes of the Deuteronomistic History

57

1.  The era prior to Moses 2.  The Mosaic era (summarized in Deuteronomy) 3.  The era of Joshua (recounted in Joshua) 4.  The cycle of deliverers responding to crisis (Judg 1–1 Sam 7) 5.  The monarchy (1 Sam 8–2 Kgs 25) The final stage consists of several substages, with the reigns of Saul, David, and Solomon receiving treatments differing from each other and different from those following. (The later, unfortunate label “United Monarchy” does not capture that variety of presentation successfully.) Whether a sixth era will follow is an open question for the DH, though several texts presuppose such an era (notably Deut 30:1–10; 1 Kgs 8:46– 50). No text offers details about the shape of that longed-for time, however, indicating that the Deuteronomistic History cannot find a place for Israelite life within the structures of its world (unlike the slightly later Second Isaiah or, in a different way, 1–2 Chronicles). This absence is surely relevant to debates about the dates of the DH’s final layers of development. Each period is, in any case, recounted in a different way that bespeaks not only the variegated nature of the sources available to the editor but more significantly a differing conception of the era’s nature within Deuteronom(ist)ic circles. The endless cycle of deliverers in Judges may well reflect the fragmentary nature of the book’s underlying sources as well as the need for national ecumenicity, but this literary device also rests upon a historiographical conception according to which Yhwh as history-maker responds both to Israel’s sinfulness and its penitence. Similarly, the reign of Solomon deliberately constructs a two-sided picture of the ruler in order to underscore the work’s deep ambivalence about his legacy and that of kingship in general. This variety, and many other examples, demonstrate a high order level of reflection upon the available material, even if the text does not contain Herodotus-like meditations on the historiographic art. Nor does the extended sociopolitical reflection belong only to the latest levels of Deuteronomy-2 Kings. As Eckart Otto and others have shown, such reflection goes back at least to the seventh century period when the D movement flourished.18 It may be earlier. The use of regnal years in 1–2 Kings, though presenting well-known problems in some details, can hardly reflect a post-exilic situation, as Halpern and Lemaire have recently convincingly argued.19 It is difficult to know when the final structure of the history took shape – its basic conformity to the shift of Israel’s history from a pre-monarchical era during the late second millennium bce to a monarchical one ending with the serial invasions by the Mesopotamian powers during the eighth-sixth centuries would support the supposition that the periodization came 18  Eckart Otto, Das Deuteronomium: Politische Theologie und Rechtsreform in Juda und Assyrien, BZAW 284 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1999). Otto confines his study to Deut 12–26, but indeed the sort of systematic reflection he envisions for the Josianic period or slightly earlier goes back further into the material embedded in the Deuteronomistic History. 19  Halpern and Lemaire, “Composition of Kings,” esp.  134–35.

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into the historiographic traditions of the Deuteronom(ist)ic circles quite early or was perhaps inherited by them from earlier tradents of the older stories. Again, certainty is difficult, but there is no reason to posit a late date for this basic conception. Even firmer ground surfaces at another location: at each transitional moment in the DH appears an extended discussion of political theory (if one may speak so loftily). Thus Josh 23–24 links national survival to monolatry and adherence to the Deuteronomic vision of the just society. 1 Sam 7 (and perhaps more extensively 1 Sam 8–12) covers much the same ground, attributing reform to a non-royal leader, a point to which I will return momentarily. At the ends of the larger work Deuteronomy-2 Kings, the Mosaic speeches in the editorial framework around the D law code and the descriptions of the destructions of the Israelite and Judahite kingdoms in 2 Kgs 17 and 25 respectively, though in different ways, seize the moment of transition as an opportunity for reflections on what the authors conceive of as a well-functioning society under the aegis of Yhwh. Two of these transition points seem particularly revealing (and less studied). Let us consider them, then. Example 1: 1 Sam 7. The first is 1 Sam 7:2–17, a story meant to represent Samuel’s entire career as not only a triumph after the Elide debacle earlier in the narrative, but as a model for non-royal reform much like that of Joshua at the end of the period of initial “settlement.” First Sam 7:2–17 closes off the era of the so-called “judges” while also serving as a prophylactic against the sort of over-confidence in monarchy revealed and opposed by the cri de coeur in 1 Sam 8:1–22. While 1 Sam 7:2–17 seems to flow together in a relevantly coherent way, that narrative congruity masks a process of rewriting. Thus Campbell and O’Brien attribute vv. 3–4 to their “national focus revision,” and the rest of the unit to “the ‘royal’ focus of the later dtr revision.”20 Meanwhile, Dietrich finds at least four layers in the text, with vv. 3–4 coming from DtrN and the rest reflecting DtrH’s reuse of older material and then subsequent revision.21 There are other possibilities, but whatever the precise position of the various lines of this pericope within the literary strata of the DH, it does seem clear that the material in 1 Sam 7:2–17 reflects basic Deuteronom(ist)ic viewpoints but not necessarily the same hand. The text thus represents the fruit of a discussion among those circles about the theological activities of a model leader. Now the details. First Samuel 7:3–4 reports that ‫ויאמר שמואל אל כל בית ישראל לאמר אם בכל לבבכם אתם שבים אל יהוה הסירו את אלהי הנכר מתוככם‬ ‫והעשתרות והכינו לבבכם אל יהוה ועבדהו לבדו ויצל אתכם מיד פלשתים ויסירו בני ישראל את הבעלים ואת‬ ‫העשתרת ויעבדו את יהוה לבדו‬

20  Campbell and O’Brien, Unfolding the Deuteronomistic History, 231–32. Similarly, P. Kyle McCarter, 1 Samuel, AB 8 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1980), 142–43. 21  Walter Dietrich, Samuel, vol.  1: 1 Sam 1–12, BKAT 8.1 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 2011), 310.

The Aims and Processes of the Deuteronomistic History

59

So Samuel said to all the house of Israel, “If you are turning with all your heart to Yhwh, eliminate the foreign gods from your midst (i.e., the Aštorot) and commit your hearts to Yhwh and worship him alone. Then he will rescue you from the Philistines’ grasp.” So Israel’s children eliminated the Baalim and the Aštorot and worshiped Yhwh alone.

The abundant Deuteronomic slogans point toward a view of divine kingship in which all competition from the rest of the divine realm must be eliminated, not by Yhwh but by the worshipers themselves. In an anticipation of the portrayal of Josiah’s “reform” in 2 Kgs 22–23 and echo of Joshua’s call for religious purity in Josh 24, both stories central to the DH, a political leader here brings about religious reform that leads to triumphant application of political aims. Unlike Josiah, Samuel need not resort to bureaucratic power to carry out the plan, but simply rhetorical skill. Samuel the rhetor will reappear in 1 Sam 12, as well, as the text works out an elaborate set of speeches situated at the transition of epochs, just as in Deuteronomy and Joshua. The beginning and end of the career of the final premonarchic “judge” thus provides an occasion for discussion of the politics of monarchy and non-monarchy, with the shared values that the various voices in the conversation believe should underwrite politics regardless of the precise governmental structure involved. While 1 Sam 7–12 contains material from several literary strata and from several viewpoints, the constituent stories share an interest in well-functioning leadership and the rhetorical dimensions of such leadership. In 1 Sam 7, then, the rhetor Samuel argues from the nature of reality: the divine king Yhwh can protect subjects from foreign foes but requires allegiance; the other gods (and their symbols) represent Samuel’s audience’s conflicted loyalty and thus their inability to escape the the Philistine domination, safeguarded as it is by the very gods (or those like them) whom Yhwh opposes. In this logic, Yhwh-alone monolatry has a political dimension, not simply because of the Philistine domination in political matters but because the politico-military leader makes speeches aiming at reconfiguring the group’s behavior, leading to a new political arrangement. Most significantly, since Samuel is a literary character and the text does not engage in journalistic reportage, the later audience(s) of the book must imitate their ancestors’ repudiation of the gods if they wish to share the positive outcomes of the new politics in whatever structural form it may assume. In short, then, the story prefaces the description of the creation of the monarchy not so much to offer an alternative to kingship, which in any case the narrative ultimately accepts despite certain misgivings, but as a way of reframing the discussion.22 22  Many scholars read 1 Sam 8 too literally, in my opinion, failing to take seriously enough (1) its literary placement within a larger complex stretching as far as chapter 12; (2) the rhetorical interplay of its various voices (Samuel, Yhwh, the narrator, the people); and (3) the obvious fact that kingship wins divine approval in the end. While the contextualization of the ‫ משפט המלך‬within a larger discussion risks portraying Samuel as an unreliable narrator of future events (neither Saul nor David lived up to the dire warnings given), the overall effect is to trigger an engaged discussion of the nature of Israelite kingship even within this narrative. For an earlier attempt of mine to discuss this same point, see Hamilton, “Creation of Saul’s Royal Body.”

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Chapter 3:  Finding order in history: The Case of the Deuteronomists

The political question for the creators of these texts was not, “shall we have a king or not?” but “what sort of communicative and behavioral structures should animate our society?” Such a question – if perhaps pretentiously put! – lifts the text out of the immediate historiographic concerns of its narrative to a plane of discourse around which further reflection can occur. Example 2: 2 Kgs 17. An even more telling example of the Deuteronomists’ conceptions of the capacity of power structures for good or ill appears in the complex obituary for the Northern Kingdom in 2 Kgs 17:1–23, a multilayered text if ever one was: Beginning in the twelfth year of King Ahaz of Judah, Hoshea ben Elah took the throne in Samaria over Israel for nine years. He did evil in Yhwh’s eyes, though not to the extent of the other kings of Israel preceding him. Shalamaneser (V), king of Assyria, campaigned against him, so Hoshea became his vassal and paid him tribute. In time, the king of Assyria took offense at Hoshea when he sent envoys to Soᵓ, the king of Egypt and declined to send his tribute to the king of Assyria year by year. Accordingly, the king of Assyria invested him and besieged him at Beth Keleᵓ. Then the king Assyria campaigned throughout the land including Samaria and besieged it three years. In Hoshea’s ninth year, the king of Assyria captured Samaria and deported Israel to Assyria. He then sent them to Kalhu, the Habur river [valley], Gozan, and the cities of Media. This happened because Israel’s children sinned against Yhwh their God – the one who brought them from Egypt’s land, from under the control of Pharaoh, Egypt’s ruler. But they revered other gods. And they followed the customs of the nations that Yhwh dislocated before Israel’s children – and the kings of Israel with respect to what they did.23 Moreover, Israel’s children ascribed words that were not so to Yhwh their God, i.e., they built for themselves open-air sanctuaries in all their cities (from watchtowers to fortified cities). They also erected standing stones and asherahs atop every high hill and beneath every luxuriant tree, as well as sacrificing at every open-air sanctuary like the nations that Yhwh had deported before them. Thus they did evil things to annoy Yhwh. Moreover, they worshiped idols that Yhwh had spoken to them about by saying “you shall not do this thing.” So, Yhwh testified to Israel and Judah by the agency of all his prophets – every seer – saying, “Turn from your evil ways and keep my commands, my statutes according to all the Torah that I commanded your ancestors, which I sent to you by the agency of my servants, the prophets.” Yet they did not listen but, rather, stiffened their neck like their ancestors’ neck, i.e., those who were not loyal to Yhwh their God. They rejected his statutes, his covenant that he contracted with their ancestors, and his testimonies that he testified to them. And they followed emptiness and became empty – that is, they followed the nations around them though Yhwh had commanded them not to act like those people. They abandoned all the commands of Yhwh their God and made libations to the two calves. They made an asherah and did obeisance to all the hosts of heaven, as well as serving Baal. They passed their sons and daughters through the fire and engaged in divination. Thus they sold themselves in order to do evil in the eyes of Yhwh, to annoy him. Consequently, Yhwh was extremely angry with Israel and drove them from his presence. (Only the tribe of Judah was left. Even Judah, however, did not keep the commands of Yhwh 23  Second Kings 17:8b is a crux interpretum. The anacoluthon ‫ ומלכי ישראל אשר עשו‬has no obvious reference point earlier in the text. Perhaps a line has dropped out, though any conjectural reading must remain pure guesswork.

The Aims and Processes of the Deuteronomistic History

61

their God but rather followed the customs that Israel did.) And Yhwh rejected all Israel’s offspring and punished them and consigned them to oppressors until he sent them from his presence. (For Israel had torn away from the Davidic dynasty and crowned Jeroboam ben Nebat, but then Jeroboam led Israel away from Yhwh and made them sin a great sin. So Israel’s children imitated all the sins Jeroboam did without deviating from them until Yhwh drove Israel from his presence just as he had promised though the agency of his servants the prophets. So Israel was deported from its land to Assyria until this day.

As at other major transitional points in Joshua-2 Kings, the text shows signs of rewriting.24 Thus Sweeney understands the unit to consist of a Hezekian layer (i.e., one roughly contemporary with the events) in 2 Kgs 17:1–21 and 34–40, a Josianic expansion (17:24–33, 41), with the key lines of vv. 22–23 perhaps later, though this last point is unclear in Sweeney’s reconstruction.25 Fritz, meanwhile, finds a preexilic core in vv. 3–6, a Deuteronomistic expansion vv. 21–23, a later addition in vv. 7–12 and 18, and a still later one in vv. 13–17, 20, and 19. He does not explain how such analysis is arrived at, however.26 Differently still, Campbell and O’Brien identify a pre-DH layer in 2 Kgs 17:2–6 and 21–23a, c, expanded by the “Josianic DH” in vv. 1 and 22b, and a later, undated expansion in vv. 7–20.27 And Brettler finds four layers in the text as well as various minor glosses.28 Penetrating this redaction-critical uncertainty poses difficulties, but a few observations are in order, especially for vv. 1–23. First, Sweeney is surely right to say that nothing in 2 Kgs 17:1–23 points unequivocally to a postexilic (i.e., sixth-century bce or later) date of composition. Even the references to Judah in vv. 13 (‫ )וביהדה‬and 19 (‫ )גם יהודה לא שמר את מצות יהוה אלהיהם וילכו בחקות ישראל אשר עשו‬do not speak of the Babylonian debacle directly, and in any case interrupt the narrative flow in a way that points to their status as an afterthought. Second, the narrative consists of several distinct sorts of material, all intertwined: (1) a regnal summary in the recurring style of 1–2 Kings (17:1); (2) detailed information on Hoshea’s insurrection and defeat by Shalmaneser V (though not the ultimate conqueror of Samaria, Sargon II) (17:2–6); (3) homiletical material attributing the destruction of Israel to Yhwh’s ultimate loss of patience with idolatry (17:7–12, 18); (4) an oracle in Yhwh’s voice rehearsing many of the same charges alongside extended comment on their refusal to listen (17:13–17); and (5) a final summary rehearsing Israel’s imitation of Jeroboam ben Nebat and Yhwh’s consequent punishment, a recur24  One should be sensitive to the arguments of Hartmut N. Rösel, “Why 2 Kings 17 Does Not Constitute a Chapter of Reflection in the Deuteronomistic History,” JBL 128 (2009): 85–90. However, part of the problem disappears when one realizes that the phrase “Deuteronomistic History” means different things in German and Anglophone scholarship (see above). Even if much of the reflection on the Northern Kingdom’s demise comes from prophetic hands rather than the final creator(s) of the DH, the latter seem to have accepted the analysis on offer in their sources. 25  Marvin Sweeney, I & II Kings, OTL (Louisville: Westminster, 2007), 392. 26  Volkmar Fritz, 1 & 2 Kings, CC, trans. Anselm Hagedorn (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), 349– 51. 27  Campbell and O’Brien, Unfolding the Deuteronomistic History, 441–42. 28  Marc Brettler, “Ideology, History and Theology in 2 Kings XVII 7–23,” VT 39 (1989): 268–82.

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Chapter 3:  Finding order in history: The Case of the Deuteronomists

ring theme in the work as a whole (17:21–23). The question is, how do these elements relate to each other? The answer to that question must begin with the observation that the beginning and ending of the section 2 Kgs 17:1–23 comes in the style of the introductory and concluding formulae recurring in 1–2 Kings, though without notice about Hoshea’s unfinished reign. The key points do not come to light here, then. The matter-of-fact summary in vv. 2–6 does, on the other hand, offer a political answer to the question of why Israel failed. The text accepts the Assyrian view, or rather the more generally believed ancient Near Eastern assumption, that the violation of a treaty as instantiated by the withholding of tribute (‫ )לא העלה מנחה‬and diplomacy with a rival power (‫ )שלח מלאכים אל סוא‬deserves divine punishment. The bland annalistic style masks a series of moral assumptions whose neglect by the advisors of Hoshea led to their downfall. Here again, the key answers do not lie in this material. More instructive are the two larger sections that follow, both of which attribute Israel’s demise to its insistence on idolatry. Or in other words, vv. 1–6 depict a vassal breaking its vows by refusing tribute to an imperial power, but vv. 7–23 depict a similar treasonous act directed toward a deity, Yhwh. There is thus a consonance between the two explanations of Israel’s fall. In the longer and more fussy homily on Israel’s rebellion against Yhwh in vv. 7–23, the multiple digressions and side-comments repeat some of the same ideas, yet the vocabulary does not remain the same throughout, and so it is too much to argue that all of this material comes from the same hand. For this reason, Pauline Viviano raises an important point in noting the differences within the text but, in my view, draws the wrong conclusion. She rejects the idea that v. 19 is a gloss, arguing that the succeeding litany of abuses applies to Judah more fully than to Israel itself.29 This understanding of the indictment of one kingdom as a disguised comment on another may not take seriously enough the DH’s focus on the transitional, epochal nature of this plot point in the narrative. More to the point, the specifications of the charge of apostasy in vv. 7–23 were descriptors of Israelite religion writ large. The elements that Viviano identifies as specifically southern – incense burning, passing children through the fire, and bowing to the “hosts of heaven”30 – in fact apply also to the north as well. Incense altars appear from various regions of the land of Israel, human sacrifice occurred in other cultures besides Judah, and worshiping sky gods is hardly a uniquely Judahite practice. In other words, whether or not the references to Judah in vv. 13 and 19 are later glosses, the focus remains on the northern kingdom. The presumably southern audience could draw the proper conclusions without disguises. The larger point is this, however: the elaborate theological rationale for Israel’s destruction shows close attention to argumentation, and therefore attention to the 29  Pauline

552.

30 Ibid.

A. Viviano, “2 Kings 17: A Rhetorical and Form-Critical Analysis,” CBQ 49 (1987):

63

The Aims and Processes of the Deuteronomistic History

motives of the key characters (Yhwh and Israel), as well as the nature of their actions. In particular, a direct window into the text’s rhetorical structure comes from its deliberate choice of verbs for each of the two characters. All of the verbs with Israel as a subject involve the worship of other deities or some violation of the relationship with Yhwh. All of the verbs with Yhwh as the subject involve either speech or actions dispossessing foreign rulers or peoples, as the following table illustrates. Verbs with Israel as the subject Verbs of conduct or attitude: ‫חטאו‬ ‫ילכו‬ ‫יחפאו‬ ‫להכיעס‬ ‫לא שמעו‬ ‫יקשו‬ ‫לא האמינו‬ ‫ימאסו‬ ‫ילכו‬ ‫יהבלו‬ ‫יעזבו‬ ‫יעבירו‬ ‫ינחשו‬ ‫יתמכרו‬ ‫לא שמר‬

Verbs of manufacture or construction: ‫יבנו‬ ‫יצבו‬ ‫יעשו‬ ‫ישתחוו‬

Verbs of worship ‫ייראו‬ ‫יעבדו‬ ‫ישתחוו‬ ‫יקסמו‬

Verbs with Yhwh as the subject Verbs of action ‫מעלה‬ ‫הוריש‬ ‫גלה‬ ‫סור‬ ‫מאס‬ ‫ענה‬ ‫נתן‬ ‫שלך‬

Verbs of speech ‫אמר‬ ‫עוד‬ ‫צוה‬ ‫שלח‬ ‫כרת‬ ‫דבר‬

Verbs of emotion ‫אנף‬

The theologically motivated analysis thus constructs two disparate characters, one of whom ought to obey the other because of the other’s right to command. Like other biblical traditions (e.g., Amos 2:6–16), the text merges the story of exodus with the ongoing divine communication through prophecy. Such a view is thus not uniquely Deuteronom(ist)ic. But its rhetorical force is striking.

64

Chapter 3:  Finding order in history: The Case of the Deuteronomists

Part of this force comes from the depiction of the divine actor. The construction of the character Yhwh follows a clear pattern, or rather two patterns juxtaposed. The first subsection, 2 Kgs 17:7–12 speaks of the deity’s actions as past events that laid the groundwork for Israel’s very existence (‫המעלה אתם מארץ מצרים מתחת יד פרעה מלך מצרים‬ [“who had brought them from the land of Egypt, from the control of Pharaoh, Egypt’s king”]). The emphasis lies upon Israel’s separateness from foreign powers (‫“[ וילכו בחקות הגוים אשר הוריש יהוה‬they followed the customs of the nations that Yhwh had dispossessed”]), perhaps an implied critique of dalliance with Egypt (cf. v. 4; Deut 17:16) but of more general applicability. The statements in vv. 7–12 mark Israel’s religion as somehow foreign inspired and thus a repudiation of the nation’s core origins story. While the use of such modifiers, as always, opens the door to alternative viewpoints,31 the text carefully chooses descriptors of the deity’s actions that were indisputable. The second subsection, 2 Kgs 17:13–18, acknowledges that such apostasy sprang not just from blind acceptance of foreign customs (‫)חקות‬, but from the approval of the ancestors, thus removing a potential defense of various religious practices opposed by the Deuteronomists as concessions to international relations. Most significantly, however, the second subsection expatiates on a theme briefly hinted at in the conclusion of the previous unit. Verse 12’s subordinate clause, “concerning which Yhwh had said to them, ‘you shall not do this thing’” (‫אשר אמר יהוה להם‬ ‫)לא תעשו את הדבר הזה‬, prefaces the announcement of a divine speech in v. 13. This latter sentence seems to me to be the key to the whole. A text proceeding from v. 12 to v. 18 or even v. 20 makes perfectly good sense, and vv. 13–17’s repetition of the general tone, if not specifics, of the charges and specifications of vv. 7–12 seem to reflect a process of ongoing reflection and perhaps even a process of rewriting. Yet the more central point emerges from the pivotal statement about Yhwh’s rhetorical activities: ‫ויעד יהוה בישראל וביהודה ביד כל נביאו כל חזה לאמר שבו מדרכיכם הרעים ושמרו מצותי חקותי ככל התורה‬ ‫ם‬ ‫אשר צויתי את אבתיכם ואשר שלחתי אליכם ביד עבדי הנביאי‬ And Yhwh testified against Israel and against Judah, by the agency of all his prophets (every seer), “Turn from your evil ways and keep my commands, my statutes according to all the Torah that I commanded your ancestors, and which I sent to you by the agency of my servants the prophets.”

What does the portrayal of the deity as rhetor imply about the text’s conceptions of Israel’s collapse? Beyond the obvious point that the practice of portraying the deity as a communicator of weal and woe lies deep within ancient Near Eastern conceptions of the divine-human relationship – think of Enki warning Atrahasis of the impending flood or Ninurta commissioning Assurnaṣirpal for war or Shamash imparting laws to 31 

For this point, see the discussion in Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, New Rhetoric, 126–27.

The Aims and Processes of the Deuteronomistic History

65

Hammurabi as part of the divine court’s selection of Babylon as the axis mundi, according to the preamble to the Code of Hammurabi – the portrayal of God as maker of arguments reflects a conception of justice and therefore legitimate political structure. Certainly the idea that a just deity must warn persons of impending doom resulting from that deity’s judgment underwrites many biblical stories, from the exchange between Yhwh and Abraham in Gen 18 to the “ten blows” of the exodus tradition to the metareflections on the prophetic word in Isaiah and Amos. The entire Israelite intellectual tradition presupposes such a view. Yet one can say more. First, the divine speech in v. 13 sits at the center of a web of arguments from reciprocity (Situation A is like Situation B).32 Deliverance from foreign subjugation (Situation A) should have created fealty toward the deliverer, but it did not. Therefore Yhwh must return Israel to the subjugation of a foreign power (Situation B). Without the intervening disloyalty, Yhwh’s allowance of Assyrian domination would have been unjust. The display – and proof – of Yhwh’s justice comes through the sending of the prophets as bearers of memory and reflection, which both the narrator and Yhwh recount. The destruction of Israel thus flows from the people’s refusal to follow sound argumentation pointing them to appropriate behavior rooted in a commitment to reciprocity toward a beneficent deity. Yhwh’s speech (2 Kgs 17:13) reinforces the overall effect of this search for a justification for divine action by laying out several layers of the argument: So Yhwh bore witness against Israel and Judah by the agency of all his prophets (every seer) saying, “Turn from your evil ways and keep my commands, my statutes, according to all that I commanded your ancestors, and which I sent to you by the agency of my servants the prophets.”

Apart from the strange appearance of Judah in the line, which refocuses the text briefly on the end of the DH rather than the plot point at hand (and may come from a later writer), the text consists of several discrete parts, including the call to repentance (‫ )שבו‬and obedience (‫)שמרו‬, and the twofold historical appeal to past communications, first to the ancestors and then, apparently separately, through the prophets. Yhwh as orator speaks of a steady practice of oratory. Prophecy thus becomes selfreferential, recursive, as divine speech reinforces divine speech. The Meaning of the Examples These two examples, among others, illustrate options available to the storytellers responsible for the DH and its sources as they considered the intellectual challenges posed by reflection on Israelite politics, with or without the monarchy. Such reflections assume geopolitical, rhetorical, and theological dimensions of such politics. Neither God nor the foreign king ever lives far from the throne room of Samaria or Jerusalem, or the more local politics of the remembered past. 32 

On such arguments, see Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, New Rhetoric, 221–27.

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Chapter 3:  Finding order in history: The Case of the Deuteronomists

Yet memory is a difficult concept. The texts at hand remember various spokespersons (Samuel or the prophets) for the deity invoking memory. What does it mean to have a memory of a memory? What does it mean to evoke a memory in order to point out a practice of forgetting, so as to avoid further forgetting? These sorts of concerns seem to underlie both texts, especially 2 Kgs 17, and indeed much of the DH. Here a claim by Paul Ricoeur in his critique of Roland Barthes’s critique of narrative history bears fruit. Barthes had argued that such history was a big dodge, a masquerading of political agendas behind claims to describe something with a real referent. For Ricoeur, however, the postmodernist move rests upon an inappropriate linguistic theory in which the referent is less important than the structure of the discourse itself. In arguing against such a nihilistic view of historiography, Ricoeur argues that the historian must work through “the documentary proof, the causal and teleological explanation, and the literary employment. This threefold frame remains the secret of historical knowledge.”33 The historians who created the texts at hand do not cite sources at every turn (not in the examples given here at any rate), but do show keen interest in such source material and in informing readers of its existence. They also seek causes for effects, and of course attend to literary shaping and careful writing. The texts aim at shaping memory in order to pave the way for a viable future.

Conclusions To summarize, then, it seems clear that the DH crystallizes a running tradition of political reflection centered on historical concerns. The work resulted from both a long process of preserving and retelling old stories and bringing them together into a coherent form that can be read straight through. The final creators of the work did not begin from scratch but operated in an evolving intellectual tradition whose successive developments left marks on the DH itself, not just in the shaping of individual stories but in the overall structure and aims of the work. As the text “solicits the world’s attention,” it must offer plausible explanations of events otherwise known to its audience (the rise and fall of monarchies, the behaviors of major rulers) even as it introduced many details that were perhaps less familiar except to intellectuals. The work must appeal to the unexamined codes of storytelling and ritualizing that potential audiences would find comprehensible, even if controversially interpreted. In short, the work must seek intelligibility. Obviously, the DH succeeded in that pursuit since its readership has persisted uninterrupted for two and a half millennia. How it succeeded is the interesting bit. Through careful construction of characters that made arguments, through presenting even inconvenient data in ways that provoked further conversation, through a clear sense of both history’s progression of 33  Paul Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, trans. Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 250.

Conclusions

67

history and the unity of each epoch within it – in these and other ways, the DH commends its vision of the political life to readers. The work relentlessly calls upon the reader to interpret its story, risking rejection (since all interpretation invites disagreement) on the assumption that its version of the story will compel assent based on its own merits. Such assent derives from the curious mix of familiarity and surprise that the story must evoke. The ancient readers of the DH must find within its oft discouraging stories a door to possible futures.

Chapter 4:

The Rhetoric of Adventure: Lessons from Deuteronomy and Gilgamesh Often the path to such futures lies through reconsideration of the past, real or imagined, mundane or heroic. The DH stands at a turning point in a long road of reflection on kingship that began in the third millennium bce or perhaps even earlier (before the invention of writing). If all the world could be a stage with kings as actors and audience, as Shakespeare’s Henry V would have it, the dream of making it so began millennia ago in tales of semilegendary heroes who embodied the fears and aspirations of the singers bringing them to life. History is epic’s prize pupil, so to speak. This ancient habit of celebrating royal heroes emerged first in the traditions around Gilgamesh, sometime in the third millennium bce. More relevantly for the study of ancient Israel’s political thought, this traditional story of Uruk’s semilegendary ruler played its role in the Neo-Assyrian period in particular, as the rulers of that empire portrayed themselves in the heroic vein. That configuration of the hero influenced storytelling far beyond its original homeland as well.1 Conversely, at least in part as a response to the politicization of the heroic tradition in the first millennium, texts like the book of Deuteronomy deliberately and decisively questioned that tradition, seeking to replace it with something else. One way of understanding the contrast between the heroic and the antiheroic approaches to the narration of kingship and people, then, is to examine texts pursuing each strategy. Therefore, I offer the following comparative study of two texts: (1) parts of the Standard Babylonian Tablet III of the Epic of Gilgamesh, which recites speeches by Gilgamesh to the elders of Uruk, who must, at some level, approve of his and Enkidu’s mission to slay the giant Ḫumbaba; and (2) Deut 1:19–46, which recounts a speech by the character Moses2 detailing the failure of Israel to take the land from “a great people, one taller than we, with cities great and fortified in the sky, yes sons of the Anaqim” (‫ ; עם גדול ורם ממנו ערים גדולות ובצורת בׁשמים וגם בני ענקים‬1:28). While no 1  On the influence of the epic in the Homeric material, see the discussion in Tzvi Abusch, Male and Female in the Epic of Gilgamesh: Encounters, Literary History, and Interpretation (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2015), 119–26. On the influence of the Gilgamesh tradition on Neo-Assyria, see the studies in Joseph Azize and Noel Weeks, eds., Gilgameš and the World of Assyria: Proceedings of the Conference Held at Mandelbaum House, The University of Sydney, 21–23 July 2004, ANES 21 (Leuven: Peeters, 2007). 2  It goes without saying that reference to Moses as speaker in Deut 1 is a literary device of a much later author.

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known genetic relationship between the stories exists, and in many respects they breathe different atmospheres (one the world of epic and heroism, the other of moral instruction), nevertheless they share narrative elements (a hero contemplating a fight with giants, the search for divine approval, the validation of other humans of their quest), as well as the notion of its hero as a scholarly author,3 and they illustrate different options for politically-oriented speech-making in the ancient Near East. While the precise extent of Israel’s knowledge of Gilgamesh remains disputed, the epic was known throughout the Levant and did have some measurable impact upon the biblical tradition.4 Moreover, Deuteronomy knew, if not the epic itself, then the Mesopotamian literary traditions more generally. Both texts interact with widespread ancient Near Eastern conceptions of heroism and kingship,5 if in radically different ways. Both texts rework older traditions (respectively JE or the Old Babylonian version of the epic and even older discrete stories). Thus a comparison of the two texts, identifying both points of similarity and of contrast, is an appropriate way of studying the rhetorical options of the ancient Near East as well as approaches to political life. Each document includes several speeches, which might be defined as oral communication events involving more than two persons and addressing issues of public interest. The following analysis of these texts draws on classics in argumentation theory, especially as articulated by Toulmin6 and Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca and some of their successors.7 By examining the nature of the arguments on offer and their sequencing, it is possible to understand more fully ancient speech making about political matters. As Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca noted, the ordering of arguments can help or hurt an audience’s acceptance of them when “the self-evidence of the axiom is a preoccupation, and where, in the choice of steps, one is preoccupied with the relative intelligibility of particular orders of demonstration.”8 Arguments must move from the accepted to the disputed, at least in principle, if the audience is to accept them. In addition to the hoary Aristotelian categories of ethos, logos, and 3  On Gilgamesh as author, note the comments of Niek Veldhuis, History of the Cuneiform Lexical Tradition (Münster: Ugarit, 2014), 379–80. 4  See, e.g., the discussion in Alexander Heidel, The Gilgamesh Epic and Old Testament Parallels (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949); Tzvi Abusch, “The Epic of Gilgamesh and the Homeric Epics,” in Mythology and Mythologies, ed. R. M. Whiting, MelSym 2 (Helsinki: Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 2001), 1–6; Hans-Peter Münster, “Parallelen zu Gen 2f und Ez 28 aus dem Gilgamesch Epos,” ZAH 3 (1990): 167–78; but Karel van der Toorn, “Echoes of Gilgamesh in The Book of Qoheleth? A reassessment of the Intellectual Sources of Qohelet,” in Veenhof Anniversary Volume, ed. W. H. Van Soldt (Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten, 2001), 503–14. 5  On the world of the hero, see Gregory Mobley, The Empty Men: The Heroic Tradition of Ancient Israel, ABRL (New York: Doubleday, 2005). 6  Stephen Toulmin, The Uses of Argument (1958; rev. ed.; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). See a survey of the literature in Frans H. van Eemeren, “Argumentation Theory: An Overview of Approaches and Research Themes,” in Rhetorical Argumentation in Biblical Texts: Essays from the Lund 2000 Conference, eds. Anders Eriksson, Thomas Olbricht, and Walter Übelacker (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2002), 9–26. 7  Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, New Rhetoric. 8  Ibid., 490.

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pathos (and the concomitant focus upon the character of the rhetor culminating in Quintilian),9 a study of the content, shape, and ordering of arguments reveals the rhetor’s perception of the shifting moods of audiences (even literarily constructed ones as in the texts at hand) and the needs of the speaker himself or herself.10 This is especially true when a speech event can be situated in a network of such events, or, in other words, when a particular speech demonstrably draws upon, recasts, reuses, or otherwise engages with an identifiable tradition of ideas, beliefs, or literary motifs, as is the case with the two texts at hand. Let us examine first Gilgamesh and then Deuteronomy.

Gilgamesh III as Political Rhetoric The Standard Babylonian11 edition of Gilgamesh was edited in the late second millennium bce and circulated widely in Mesopotamia throughout the first millennium, where it was apparently a popular text in both Assyria and Babylonia. Tablet III includes a number of speeches, if, again, we define “speech” as an oral communication event involving one or more speakers and an audience of more than a handful of persons (although even here the boundary between conversation and speech is fluid). Unsurprisingly, Gilgamesh himself is usually the speaker, though Enkidu, Ninsun, Ḫumbaba, and the officials of Uruk also sometimes make orations. These speeches concentrate in the first five tablets, though perhaps others have not survived because of the loss of some parts of the epic in the manuscript tradition. The audience of the speech may include large crowds, or sometimes a deity. On one occasion, Enkidu addresses a door, though of course his “real” audience is the audience of the epic itself. The catalogue of speeches embedded in the narrative impressively demonstrates the storytellers’ ability to construct characters and scenes through speechmaking: Text Speaker Audience I. 84–91(?) the gods Anu I.94–98 the gods Aruru

Subject pleading for Gilgamesh’s subjects against him Fashion Enkidu!

9  See especially the discussion in Quintilian, Inst., Book 12, including his famous claim that “Not only do I say that an orator must be a good man, but that no one can be an orator except a good man” (Neque enim tantum id dico, eum qui sit orator virum bonum esse oportere, sed ne futurum quidem oratorem nisi virum bonum [Inst. 12.1.3]). His argument is that it would be irrational to choose the evil when offered the good, and that oratorical training exposes rational persons to the good. Hence choosing evil is an act of the will in defiance of education and thus a vitiation or even betrayal of that education. 10  See Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, New Rhetoric, 494. 11  On the relationship of the Standard Babylonian edition to the Old Babylonian version, see A. R. George, The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 1:192–216.

Gilgamesh III as Political Rhetoric

II.260–71 Gilgamesh Young men (eṭlūtu)12 of Uruk II. 274–86 Enkidu Elders (šibūtu) Senior advisors Gilgamesh II.289–99 (malikē rabbūtu) III.1–1213 Enkidu(?), elders(?) Gilgamesh III.24–3414 Gilgamesh Ninsun Ninsun Shamash III.35–99 III.202–11 Gilgamesh Officials of Uruk III.215–27 Officials Gilgamesh (šakkanakkū etc.) V.86–94 Ḫumbaba Gilgamesh/Enkidu V.145–55 Ḫumbaba Gilgamesh/Enkidu Ḫumbaba Gilgamesh/Enkidu V.175–80 VI.172–78 Gilgamesh Serving girls of palace (muttabilātiša bītišu) VII.39–6315 Enkidu A door VIII.3–56 Gilgamesh Men of the city VIII.67–91 Gilgamesh Call to all the land

71

boasting of trip Advice against Gilgamesh’s trip Advice against Gilgamesh’s trip Let Enkidu go first A prayer A prayer for Gilgamesh’s success Charge to protect Urukians Repeating old advice Taunt of friends Plea for life Plea for life Boasting of prowess Reverse of building dedication Obsequy for Enkidu Call to people to mourn

Here I wish to examine part of the deliberations surrounding Gilgamesh’s decision to hunt down Ḫumbaba, the giant in the Cedar Forest, a section beginning in II.260 and extending to the end of Tablet III. The section consists of eleven recognizable units as well as two significant breaks (one of two lines and the other of sixty-six):



A. B. C. D. E. F.

A speech by Gilgamesh advocating the assault on Ḫumbaba (II.260–71) A speech by Enkidu opposing the adventure (II.272–86) An identical speech by the elders of Uruk first opposing and then supporting the adventure II.287–III.12)16 A request by Gilgamesh asking Enkidu to join him in appealing to Ninsun (III.13–22) A prayer by Gilgamesh to Ninsun (III.23–34) A prayer/speech by Ninsun to Shamash (III.35–99)

12  The distinction between youths and elders is an old feature of the Epic, possibly reflecting third millennium realities, yet it also figured in political structures in the first millennium; Abraham Malamat, “Kingship and Council in Israel and Sumer: A Parallel,” JNES 22 (1963): 247–53. 13  The speeches at the end of Tablet II and beginning of Tablet III culminate in a speech to Ninsun. 14  Note that Gilgamesh makes to Ninsun the same arguments as he made to the elders. But here his promise to celebrate the Akitu, for example, has different rhetorical force than earlier since it comes as the oath of a votary, not the boast of a warrior. 15  The speech envisions tearing down the door, and thus the speaker reverses many of the conventions of building inscriptions, which is why Gilgamesh in the next lines calls the speech “profanities” (šanātī). 16  While Ronald T. Ridley (“The Saga of an Epic: Gilgamesh and the Constitution of Uruk,” Or 69 [2000]: 341–67, esp.  365) may be right to posit a distinction between the elders and the younger men in older stages of the epic, the SB edition seems to use the two groups in parallel. The precise function of the council remains obscure in the SB version, though apparently Gilgamesh must win their approval for his mission.

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G. H. I. J. K. L. M.

A second prayer/speech by Ninsun to Shamash (III.100–10) Lacuna (III.111–12) A blessing by Gilgamesh and Enkidu by Ninsun (III.113–35) Extensive lacunae (III.136–201) A farewell address by Gilgamesh to the elders of Uruk (III.202–11) A speech in response by the elders to Gilgamesh (III.212–27) A speech by Enkidu (III.228-end [broken])

Sections B and C, A and D, and D and L correspond closely, often verbatim, although the repetition of lines does not imply a lack of rhetorical movement. The second appearance of given lines may bear a significantly different meaning and suasory impact than the first appearance. Although many lines are missing from the manuscripts of Tablet III, enough survives to give a sense of the rhetorical strategies used in the (fictive) speeches employed. Since a full analysis of the tablet would takes us far afield, let us focus chiefly on Gilgamesh’s opening and closing speeches advocating the adventure against Ḫumbaba and then the arguments against his trip. First, II.260–71 and III.23–34 contain the same speech with only minor variations: “I will face an unknown battle, ride an unknown road. … I will return and perform the akitu festival twice in a year. …” The repetition of the speech, first to Gilgamesh’s subjects in Uruk and then to his mother the goddess Ninsun, recognizes his need to persuade both human and divine stakeholders. Gilgamesh boasts of his passion for the trip (agdapuš allak) and then of his future actions. He will begin the adventure by taking the trip to the Cedar Forest by dangerous roads and battle the giant. Indeed, as the fragments of Tablet V discovered in 2011 in Suleimaniyah show, the epic celebrated the Cedar Forest as a place of extraordinary beauty as well as danger, a paradise whose devastation by the triumphant Gilgamesh and Enkidu was the source of regret and not just celebration.17 Then the hero will return home to celebrate the Akitu festival, a recurring (if sometimes irregular) celebration in which the monarch played an important role.18 Gilgamesh promises that he will return home and carry out the duties of kingship, thus making his adventure not an escape from his responsibilities, but the carrying out of them on a higher plane. He highlights those elements of his exploit that most bear upon his subjects’ needs, selecting aspects that will make his case most persuasive, or, 17  The text and a synoptic edition of Tablet V appears in R. N. H. Al-Rawi and A. R. George, “Back to the Cedar Forest: The Beginning and End of Tablet V of the Standard Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh,” JCS 66 (2014): 69–90. 18  For the first millennium evidence, which mutatis mutandis bears on the older situation, see Beate Pongratz-Leisten, Ina Šulmi Īrub: Die kulttopographische und ideologische Programmatik der akītu-Prozession in Babylonien und Assyrien im 1.Jahrtausend v. Chr. (Mainz: von Zabern, 1994), 109–11. Chronistic texts correlate royal inactivity with the gods’ immobility and the noncelebration of the Akitu; see e.g., Chronicle 16.4 (BM 86379); Chronicle 17.ii.1–5 (BM 35968) mentions a royal celebration of the Akitu in Babylon, though with apparent ritual abnormalities. For the texts, see the critical edition of A. K. Grayson, Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles repr. ed. (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2000).

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as Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca put it, the rhetor displays “certain elements on which” he “wishes to center attention in order that they may occupy the foreground of the hearer’s consciousness.”19 Gilgamesh downplays the very thing that the Urukians highlight, i.e., the adventure’s danger to him and implicitly to themselves (since they risk losing their king and thus social order). He emphasizes instead the glory that will accrue to himself, his city, and his gods. Although the speeches to the Urukians and to Ninsun are essentially identical, they have different purposes. The first functions as deliberative speech (to use Aristotle’s terminology), i.e., it seeks to persuade a skeptical audience of the validity of the speaker’s proposed actions. The second, however, functions both to persuade Ninsun to appeal to the higher deity, Shamash, for aid (which Ninsun obligingly does), but also to celebrate in advance appropriate rituals, which would honor both Ninsun and Shamash. Thus the second speech is epideisis. It is a prayer for one deity to pray to another on the assumption that the solidarity within the patrimonial structure of the divine realm can also be transmitted to the human sphere, at least for a hero such as Gilgamesh. The repetition of the speech, even after the hearer/reader of the epic has come to accept, along with the Urukians, the appropriateness of the hero’s actions, serves less to persuade the gods to take a course of action than to celebrate that action as something of which the gods would perforce approve. While the rhetoric of prayer in the ancient Near East is largely unexplored territory,20 such a prayer as Gilgamesh’s seems to function much like the offer to praise at the conclusion of many psalms of lament in the Bible in that both sorts of speech return the hearer to a state of affairs rightly ordered by the divine realm. The repetition of the various arguments for Gilgamesh’s trip to a series of increasingly significant audiences both leverages the sensory networks of the characters’ world of the epic, and makes those arguments more persuasive to the implied hearers of the Epic itself. Since the two audiences (the Urukians and Ninsun) will experience the Akitu differ19 

Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, New Rhetoric, 142. A rare study of the rhetoric of Israelite prayer is by Patrick Miller, “Prayer as Persuasion: The Rhetoric and Intention of Prayer,” in Israelite Religion and Biblical Theology, JSOTSup 267 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), 337–44; cf. Daisuke Shibata, “Ritual Contexts and Mythological Explanations of the Emesal Šuilla-Prayers in Ancient Mesopotamia,” Orient 45 (2010): 67–85; Margaret Jacques, “Metaphern als Kommunkationsstrategie in den mesopotamischen Bußgebeten an den persönlichen Gott,” in Klagetraditionen: Form und Funktion der Klage in den Kulturen der Antike, ed. Margaret Jacques, OBO 251 (Fribourg/Göttingen: Academic Press/Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011), 3–19. Shibata, in particular, has shown the relationship of the šuilla prayers to festivals greeting the deity and seeking to manage the deity’s emotions, either by calming or rousing the god as the needs of the human supplicants required. The collocation of text and ritual, i.e., the employment of multiple communication media in one event is particularly important for understanding how ancient persons thought about the speech-event and should caution modern interpreters against taking texts by themselves as sufficient windows into the “meaning” of their messages. Still more recently, Christopher Frechette has examined the šuilla (“lifting of the hands”) prayers embedded in various Mesopotamian rituals. See Christopher Frechette, Mesopotamian Ritual-prayers of “Hand-lifting” (Akkadian Šuillas): An Investigation of Function in Light of the Idiomatic Meaning of the Rubric, AOAT 379 (Münster: Ugarit, 2012). 20 

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ently, and since these characters embody different histories and capacities, the mention of the festival functions differently in the two iterations of these (identical at a surface level) speeches. Moreover, as Pongratz-Leisten points out, the mythological elements of the Akitu concretized the antecedent ritual.21 Prayers in such a literary setting have a recursive nature, with the content of a petition playing out in story, and the events of the story shaping the interpretations of the petition by both the characters of the narrative and their readers. In the Gilgamesh Epic, the movement becomes still more complex, as narrative underwrites ritual, which in turn gives meaning to the narrative. Second, Ninsun’s speeches to Shamash (III.46–99 and 101–10) seek his approval for an action that will anger some deities, thus threatening the solidarity of the divine realm, and will pose danger to Gilgamesh and Enkidu themselves.22 Moreover, as god of justice, Shamash has some stake in Gilgamesh’s actions as a king, since the monarch must guarantee justice. An unjust monarch reflects badly on the divine realm, necessitating divine intervention. Ninsun opens by blaming Shamash for giving Gilgamesh an “unsleeping heart” (libbu lā ṣalālu; l. 46), arguing that the deity must take responsibility for her son’s rashness, so shifting responsibility from the human to the divine realm. She then cites her semidivine son’s earlier speech about traveling unknown paths and fighting Ḫumbaba, whom, however, she marks as “something wretched that you hate” (mimma lemnu23 ša tāzerru; l. 54), thus labeling the hero’s intended victim as one deserving death and implying an enthymeme: the god of justice hates Ḫumbaba; the giant must therefore be evil; the role of the king (Gilgamesh) is to destroy evil (cf. Psalm 101; DT 124); therefore Gilgamesh is justified in killing Ḫumbaba. As a royal hunter,25 Gilgamesh must portray himself as one whose pursuit of a sentient being has moral justification recognized as such by both divine and human audiences. Ninsun’s second speech adds a further argument, i.e., that Gilgamesh is destined to share heaven with Shamash (ll. 101–10). The precise theological point is unclear,26 21 Pongratz-Leisten,

Ina Šulmi Īrub, 109–11. In the Old Babylonian version, Gilgamesh speaks directly to Shamash. The introduction of an intermediary in the Standard Babylonian version arguably fits the later move to question the hero’s ability to master the world (see the general discussion, not of this text, in Thorkild Jacobsen, The Treasures of Darkness: A History of Mesopotamian Religion [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976], 223–26). But rhetorically, the introduction of Ninsun introduces a voice that can make arguments for the adventure that Gilgamesh himself cannot make, since he is not privy to certain information or relationships. In intermediation in prayer, see also Shibata, “Ritual Contexts,” 77. 23  George (Gilgamesh Epic, 2: 812) notes that mimma lemnu is a technical term for an unknown evil entity in exorcistic and medical texts. 24  This is the late Neo-Assyrian text that W. G. Lambert (Babylonian Wisdom Literature [Oxford: Clarendon, 1960], 110–15) calls “Advice to a Prince,” a manifesto for low taxation and the honoring of ancient customs in southern Babylonia. This is the closest Mesopotamian equivalent to the Fürstenspiegel of Ps 101. 25  As argued for by Abusch, Male and Female, 166–76. 26  See George, Gilgamesh Epic, 2: 814. 22 

Gilgamesh III as Political Rhetoric

75

but the statement clearly states an implied enthymeme: since a deified Gilgamesh is fated to work alongside Shamash, the deity ought to protect him. Ninsun also assumes what all Mesopotamians assumed, viz., that, as Benjamin Foster puts it in another context, “useful knowledge was transmitted vertically, from above to below.”27 Persuasion in this context is merely reminder; Shamash, at least notionally, persuades himself. Third, the final extant speech in Tablet III (ll. 215–27) comes from the Urukians, who have granted Gilgamesh permission to leave them in order to play the hero, with certain conditions. Their advice draws inspiration from Ninsun’s appointment of Enkidu to the leadership of the expedition (ll. 124–33), even if we do not know how they knew what she had done (the text is broken). In any case, they begin by counseling Gilgamesh to return home in safety (ina šulmi), the unstated assumption being that his return will further his rule. They then insist that he should allow Enkidu to lead the fight, making several arguments: a warrior should not rely only on himself, but (to quote an apparent proverb), “He who goes in front (ālik māḫri) rescues a colleague; let him who knows the way protect (liṣṣur) his companion.” Here the Standard Babylonian edition recasts its Old Babylonian antecedent while following the basic structure of the older speech. The Old Babylonian proverb (OB III.255–56) makes more sense: “He who goes in front brings his colleague safety (tappa ušallim); the one whose eyes gleam (šuwura)28 guards his own life (pagaršu iṣṣur).” The Old Babylonian version of the Urukian’s speech is much longer and more elegant than the Standard Babylonian version and deserves more attention than I can give it here. Yet the Standard Babylonian revision at this point, while preserving the structure and many of the words of the older version, underscores more saliently Enkidu’s role as companion on the road. The Standard Babylonian aphorism, because it states a commonplace that needs no warrant, serves as a warrant for the Urukians’ argument (even though in a different context, it might argue for Gilgamesh’s going first to save Enkidu). In other words, the later version of the text interprets the older text in a way that upgrades the role of a major character (a process similar to the changes in such synoptic texts as the DH and CH). The Urukians’ argument continues, in any case, with a description of Enkidu. Although the text’s celebration of his warriorly prowess applies equally to Gilgamesh, and logically could warrant the king undertaking the adventure alone, the speakers do not allow for the possibility that their argument could be subverted. Enkidu is at once his friend’s rival and model for evaluation. Gilgamesh needs such an equal and potential challenger as a traveling companion in order to keep him on the right path. 27  Benjamin R. Foster, “Transmission of Knowledge,” in A Companion to the Ancient Near East, ed. Daniel C. Snell (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005), 245. 28  George (Gilgamesh Epic, 1:205) more idiomatically renders the phrase “the one whose eyes were peeled.”

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In other words, then, the final speech in Tablet III does not function as deliberative oratory, but as epideictic oratory, to use Aristotle’s terminology. That is, the narrative has moved from portraying Gilgamesh persuading his audience to allow him to go fight Ḫumbaba, as though they have a real choice in the matter, to a situation in which all have agreed on the appropriateness of the fight and are now celebrating it in advance. The skill with which the epic shifts the rhetorical ground reveals some of the options in Babylonian speech making and speech hearing and shows a second-order sort of reflection on such options. Not only can the tradents of the epic assume that their audience understands speeches at multiple, subtle levels, but the speechmakers must have thought about how to make such speeches in ways that fostered these sophisticated responses from hearers. In other words, just as the Mesopotamians had an advanced understanding of mathematics and astronomy (being able to predict eclipses and measure plane geometric figures with such notions as the Pythagorean theorem), even though they did not write formulas or otherwise reduce their knowledge to principles, they were also able to think sophisticatedly about rhetoric, even though they did not produce handbooks comparable to those of Aristotle, Cicero, or Quintilian. These speeches reflect the epic storytellers’ ability to create (1) rhetors who skillfully arrange arguments broadly conceived, using language and imagery effectively, and (2) an audience that attends to such arrangements to make “right” decisions. This is heroic speech. Here the hero and his audience align in their basic conceptions of the world and therefore arrive at a shared conclusion after deliberating on future actions. Their alignment results from careful attention to argumentation, the latent expectations and even fears or frustrations of hearers, shared conceptions of the divine-human nexus, and even appeal beyond the human audience to the divine realm. Agreement is thus hard won, but ultimately proves sustainable. This harmonious rhetorical environment is precisely the sort of thing that Deuteronomy deliberately deconstructs by demolishing the various elements that constitute it.

Deuteronomy 1:19–46 How does the demolition occur? To begin, if such self-awareness and ability to create elaborate rhetorical products was true of Mesopotamia, it was also true of ancient Israel. A fictive rhetorical event comparable to the Epic of Gilgamesh on at least that point, Deuteronomy presents itself as a series of speeches by Moses on the Plains of Moab addressing the Israelites about to enter the promised land. Although the composition history of the text is complex and debatable at various points,29 the fictive 29  See the discussion in, e.g., Moshe Weinfeld, Deuteronomy 1–11, AB 5 (New York: Doubleday, 1991), 9–13; Jeffrey Tigay, Deuteronomy (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1996), xxiv-xxvi; Richard Nelson, Deuteronomy, OTL (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2002), 3–9.

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nature of the rhetorical setting is clear. Given the porous boundary between written and oral texts,30 and this text’s self-presentation as a speech, the author must have had reason to believe that an ancient audience would have judged his speech verisimilitudinous, and thus we can derive from it a sense, however imperfect, of what an ancient Israelite speech should be. An audience in the exilic era or perhaps earlier in the late monarchy heard “Moses” arguing for contested beliefs and behaviors, using their historical experiences as warrants.31 The text reshapes (resequences, supplements, deletes, rephrases) older material and fits it into larger argumentation structures in order to persuade its audience. Without reviving Gerhard von Rad’s conjectures about Levitical preaching,32 or thinking of Deuteronomy as a transcript of a real speech,33 we can examine speeches within the book for clues to rhetorical strategies. The pericope at hand serves this purpose well. Indeed, it contains one speech event within another, and we should examine the text on at least two levels. At one level, Moses and the Israelites in the wilderness deliberate on a possible invasion of Canaan, a story that also appears in a P account with JE elements in Numbers 13–14.34 The genetic relationship among these versions of the story is far from clear, however, and the final version of the P story may presume Deuteronomy.35 On a second level, 30  See the discussion in William Graham, Beyond the Written Word: Oral Aspects of Scripture in the History of Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). 31  See the remarks of Timo Veijola, “Principal Observations on the Basic Story in Deuteronomy 1–3,” in A Song of Power and the Power of Song: Essays on the Book of Deuteronomy, ed. Duane L. Christensen (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1993), 137–46; on the place of these chapters in the DH, see Martin Noth, Überlieferungsgeschichtliche Studien (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1967), 14; Lothar Perlitt, “Deuteronomium 1–3 im Streit der exegetischen Methoden,” in Das Deuteronomium: Entstehung, Gestalt und Botschaft, ed. Norbert Lohfink (Leuven: Peeters, 1985), 149–63; Antony Campbell and Mark O’Brien, Unfolding the Deuteronomistic History, 43–46. 32  Gerhard von Rad, “The Levitical Sermon in I and II Chronicles,” in idem, The Problem of the Hexateuch and Other Essays, trans. E. W. Trueman Dicken (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966), 267–80; see the remarks of Bernard Levinson and Douglas Dance, “The Metamorphosis of Law into Gospel: Gerhard von Rad’s Attempt to Reclaim the Old Testament for the Church,” in Recht und Ethik im Alten Testament, eds. Bernard Levinson and Eckart Otto, ATM 13 (Münster: LIT, 2004), 103–9. 33  Marc Brettler, “A ‘Literary Sermon’ in Deuteronomy 4,” in “A Wise and Discerning Mind”: Essays in Honor of Burke O. Long, eds. Saul Olyan and Robert Culley (Providence, RI: Brown Judaic Studies, 2000), 33–50. 34 Ludwig Schmidt (“Die Kundschafterzählung in Num 13–14 und Dtn 1,19–46,” ZAW 114 [2002]: 40–58) has recently attempted to isolated the JE elements, but it is difficult to know precisely the direction of dependence between P and JE, nor is a direct line between JE and Deuteronomy readily discernible. Also, Norbert Lohfink, Darstellungskunst und Theologie in Dtn 1,6–3,29,” Bib 41 (1960): 107–10; Siegfried Mittmann, Deuteronomium 11–63 literarkritisch und traditionsgeschichtlich untersucht, BZAW 139 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1975), 42–64. (who envisions a multistaged, backand-forth process of development, JE to D to JEDPR); and Itamar Kislev, “Joshua (and Caleb) in the Priestly Spies Story and Joshua’s Initial Appearance in the Priestly Source: A Contribution to an assessment of the Pentateuchal Priestly Material,” JBL 136 (2017): 39–55. 35  Even this is difficult. See the detailed analysis of David Frankel, The Murmuring Stories of the Priestly School, VTSup 39 (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 119–201, esp.  145–60. On the broader issues, Cees Houtman, “Zwei Sichtweisen von Israel als Minderheit inmitten der Bewohner Kanaans: Ein Dis­ kussionsbeitrag zum Verhältnis von J und Dtr(G),” in Deuteronomy and Deuteronomic Literature, FS Brekelmans, eds. M. Vervenne and J. Lust (Leuven: Peeters, 1997), 213–31.

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Moses many years later (in the world of the narrative) rehearses this episode for different rhetorical purposes. The rhetorical (and temporal) levels interlock at a third level, that of the book’s argument for its view of Israelite communal norms. Yet it is possible to separate the various levels of argumentation, and here I wish to focus on the first two.

The Speeches in the Wilderness The first level consists of an interchange of addresses, not set speeches but excerpts of them set in the wilderness, cited by the speech on the Plains of Moab for different purposes. Verses 20–21, after a travelogue notice in v. 19, introduce Moses’ two arguments for taking the land: Yhwh is giving the land to Israel (‫[ אׁשר יהוה אלהינו נתן לנו‬20] and ‫[ נתן יהוה אלהיך לפניך את הארץ‬21]), and Yhwh has told (‫ )דבר‬Israel to go. A further backing of these warrants appears when v. 21 calls Yhwh ‫“( אלהי אבתיך‬God of your ancestors”), thus alluding to Deuteronomy’s memorial culture and the recurrent theme of the promise to the ancestors.36 The call to take the land rests on a long-standing divine promise. This argument resumes in v. 29 with what Nelson calls a “sacral war sermon”37 after an interlude in which Israelites contest the easy claims to divine protection. Moses must shore up his argument by both repetition and extension. V. 29 thus charges Israel not to fear the inhabitants of the land, while vv. 30–31 offer several warrants38 for this position: ‫יהוה אלהיכם ההלך לפניכם‬

“Yhwh your God is going before you” ‫“ הוא ילחם לכם ככל אׁשר עׂשה אתכם במצרים לעיניכם‬He will fight for you just as he did with you in Egypt in your sight” “and in the desert, where you have seen Yhwh ‫ובמדבר אׁשר ראית נׂשאך יהוה אלהיך‬ your God carry you” ‫כאׁשר יׂשא איׁש את בנו‬ “just as a man carries his son”

The sequencing of arguments shows authorial care. “Moses” does not mention warfare until the people have first objected to his call to take the land by mentioning fortifications and the prowess of the autochthonous population in v. 28. Moreover, the claim that “Yhwh your God goes before,” though a rare locution in the Pentateuch (Exod 13:21; Deut 31:6, 8) both frames this section (see also v. 33) and sets the 36  On which see Georg Braulik, The Theology of Deuteronomy (North Richland Hills, TX: BIBAL, 1994), 183–98. Deuteronomy mentions the ‫ אבות‬in 1:8, 11, 21, 35; 4:1, 31, 37; 5:3, 9; 6:3, 20, 18, 23; 7:8, 12, 13; 8:1, 18; 9:5; 10:11, 15; 11:9, 21; 12:1; 13:7, 18; 18:8; 19:8; 24:16; 26:3, 7, 15; 27:3; 28:11, 36, 64; 29:12, 24; 30:5, 9, 20; 31:7, 16, 20 (in addition to several instances of ‫ אב‬in the singular). See the study of Norbert Lohfink, Die Väter Israels in Deuteronomium, OBO 111 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1991). 37  Richard Nelson, Deuteronomy, 28–29. 38  On warrants and backing, see Toulmin, Uses of Argument, 89–100.

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stage for the next two arguments, which necessarily flesh it out. The second and third warrants draw the imagined audience’s attention to the stories of the exodus and wilderness wanderings. Moses refutes the Israelites’ arguments by appeal to accepted notions about the divine warrior, culminating in an emotional appeal to divine benevolence. The fourth warrant is perhaps the most interesting, because the commonplace of parental care appears to clinch the argument for divine benevolence by an appeal to pathos. If presented earlier, this warrant would have begged the question: Israel questions Yhwh’s caring instincts, not His warriorly prowess. Yet the immediately preceding warrants foreclose distrustful analyses of divine activity. Thus the appeal to emotion – pathos – works rhetorically because it surfaces emotions properly grounded in a certain way of receiving the Israelite tradition. The audience “should” feel toward Yhwh the trust and love characteristic of a happy family. As Perelman and OlbrechtTy­teca put it, ad hominem arguments work with particular audiences because such arguments share the audience’s assumptions about the structure of reality.39 To put things differently, the arrangement of arguments in vv. 29–31 fashions an audience, so to speak, by appealing to two semiotic planes simultaneously, the tradition of wilderness and exodus on the one hand, and the sentiments of family relations on the other. Neither layer of emotional appeal can stand alone, but their juxtaposition creates something larger than the sum of the parts. The appeal to emotion in the Hebrew Bible deserves far more attention than it has received,40 even though ancient Greco-Roman rhetorical theorists topicalized the emotional aspects of speech giving and speech hearing as a factor in persuasion.41 Here the appeal to pathos serves character development by painting Yhwh as the benevolent parent and, conversely, Israel as the recalcitrant child. The figure thus accomplishes something new in the argument, the creation of sentiment for the rightness of the call to conquest.

39 

Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, New Rhetoric, 110–14. On emotional display in general, see Gary Anderson, A Time to Mourn, a Time to Dance (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991); Mayer Gruber, Aspects of Nonverbal Communication in the Ancient Near East, StPohl 12/1–2, 2 vols. (Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1980); Mark Smith, “The Heart and the Innards in Israelite Emotional Expression: Notes from Anthropology and Psychobiology,” JBL 117 (1998): 415–26; M. L. Barré, “‘Wandering About’ as a Topos of Depression in Ancient Near Eastern Literature and the Bible,” JNES 60 (2001): 177–87; J. S. Kselman, “’Wandering About’ and Depression: More Examples,” JNES 61 (2002): 275–77; Paul Kruger, “Depression in the Hebrew Bible: An Update,” JNES 64 (2005): 187–92. 41 Aristotle Rhet. 1.10; see the discussion in Simo Knuuttila and Juha Sihvola, “How the Philosophical Analysis of Emotions was Introduced,” in The Emotions in Hellenistic Philosophy (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1998), 1–19; Simo Knuuttila, Emotions in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon, 2004), esp.  1–110; Thomas H. Olbricht, “Pathos as Proof in Greco-Roman Rhetoric,” in Paul and Pathos, eds. Thomas H. Olbricht and Jerry L. Sumney, SBLSymS 16 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2001), 7–22. 40 

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Israel, of course, has contested this call. The counterarguments in vv. 27–28, which vv. 29–31 refute, push in the opposite direction. The people refuse to enter the land on four grounds, matching the quadripartite structure of the previous argumentation: ‫בׂשנאת יהוה אתנו הוציאנו מארץ מצרים‬ ‫לתת אתנו ביד האמרי להׁשמידנו‬ ‫אנה אנחנו עלים אחינו המסו את לבבנו‬ ‫עם גדול ורם ממנו ערים גדלת ובצורת בׁשמים וגם בני‬ ‫ענקים ראינו ׁשם‬

“in hatred Yhwh brought us from the land of Egypt” “to give us into the hand of the Amorites to slaughter us” “Where can we go? Our brothers have melted our heart” “there are a people greater and taller than we, large cities fortified to the sky – and we even saw the children of the Anaqim”

The first warrant, unsubstantiated by the tradition and perhaps, as Tigay argues, calculated to “display the people’s perversity and ingratitude,”42 nevertheless serves rhetorically to state a controversial thesis. The absence of the substantive ‫“( אלוהנו‬our God”) with ‫ יהוה‬pointedly rejects the Israelite tradition and thus Moses’ original arguments. The second, third, and fourth warrants build cumulatively to form an enthymeme: the might of the indigenous population and the power of their fortresses will necessitate at best massive bloodshed and risks defeat; thus a deity who leads us to such pain must wish to destroy us; thus he must hate us. The argument seems all the more perverse once we recognize that for ancient Near Easterners, gods were typically understood to call peoples to warfare and to guide them to its successful conclusion.43 The rebels thus subvert a widely accepted cultural assumption, not just an intra-Israelite or intra-Deuteronomic one. The third warrant, meanwhile, shifts the blame for cowardice onto the spies, while the fourth justifies the spies’ report as plain common sense, even though it removes the divine warrior from political calculation and exaggerates the power of the cities and their inhabitants. By highlighting the inhabitants’ gigantism44 and claiming that their fortifications reached the sky and thus the realm of the gods,45 the Israelites contest Moses’ notion of space and thus of divine activity and competence. Presum42 Tigay,

Deuteronomy, 16. For examples, see Bustanay Oded, “‘The Command of the God’ as a Reason for Going to War in the Assyrian Royal Inscriptions,” in Ah, Assyria…: Studies in Assyrian History and Ancient Near Eastern Historiography Presented to Hayim Tadmor, eds. Mordechai Cogan and Israel Eph’al, ScrHier 33 (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1991), 223–30. 44  On gigantism, see Lothar Perlitt, “Riesen im Alten Testament: Ein literarisches Motiv im Wirkungsfeld des Deuteronomismus,” in idem, Deuteronomium-Studien, FAT 8 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1994), 205–46; more generally, Cristiano Grottanelli, “The Enemy King is a Monster,” in idem, Kings and Prophets: Monarchic Power, Inspired Leadership, & Sacred Text in Biblical Narrative (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 47–72. 45  Tigay (Deuteronomy, 17) cites an Assyrian parallel, but the rhetorical function in Deuteronomy is different. See the study and photographs in David Ussishkin, The Conquest of Lachish by Sennacherib (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, Institute of Archaeology, 1982). 43 

The Speech on the Plains of Moab

81

ably the author has in mind Iron Age fortifications and not the reused Middle Bronze fortifications that survived into the Late Bronze Age46 and even beyond and were recalled by Iron I Israelites, and thus the elaborate system of gatehouses, solid city walls, and battlements that probably lay in ruins at the time of the chapter’s composition in the postexilic period. If so, then the Israelites’ argument serves to recast their entire history from “settlement” to “exile” as one in which fortifications could not determine history in ways an audience might think beneficial.

The Speech on the Plains of Moab Yet the audience of the speech of Deut 1–3 of which 1:19–46 is a segment cannot accept this argument because, at the second level of speech event, Moses has already prepared them to reject the Israelites’ arguments. As early as Deut 1:4, the text highlights the vulnerability of the Amorites. The pericope at hand can be outlined in several ways, none entirely convincing.47 Structural complexity does not imply confusion, however, but a careful layering of argumentation in the form of storytelling. The stories include such elements as: travelogue; quoted speech of Moses, Israel, and Yhwh; third person narration of the characters’ emotional state (e.g., ‫ותרגנו באהליכם‬ [“and you sulked in your tents”; v. 27] or ‫“[ יקצף‬and he was angry”; v. 34]); confession; and curses. The piling up of such literary devices not only creates an interesting story, but it also winds a skein of arguments supporting Moses’ argument for entering the land, and conceivably the postexilic author’s plea for a repetition of that event after the imperial invasions of the eighth-sixth centuries bce. Since figures frequently serve as arguments in speeches,48 it does make sense to identify some that contribute to the flow of argument in Deut 1:19–46, without however giving a complete analysis of the rhetorical moves of the speech at this point. First, notice the use of the second person address to Israel.49 Yet the speech’s imagined audience identifies with them both genetically (they are their descendants) and emotionally (they also fear entry into the land), while the actual audience of the 46  See the survey in Ze’ev Herzog, “Fortifications: Bronze and Iron Ages,” OEANE 3 (1997): 324– 25; Shlomo Bunimovitz, “The Middle Bronze Age Fortifications in Palestine as a Social Phenomenon,” TA 19 (1992): 221–34; Israel Finkelstein, “Middle Bronze Age ‘Fortifications’: A Reflection of Social Organization and Political Formations,” TA 19 (1992): 201–20; on the gate as a locus of royal (and thus state) power and justice (thus monopolization of violence), see Rüdiger Schmitt, “Der König sitzt im Tor: Überlegungen zum Stadttor als Ort herrschaftlicher Repräsentation im Alten Testament,” UF 32 (2002): 475–85. 47  E.g., Christensen (Deuteronomy 1:1–21:9, WBC 6A [Nashville: Nelson, 2001], 30) finds two examples of the Numeruswechsel (1:21–31 and 1:32–2:1), while Nelson (Deuteronomy, 26–31) finds a series of narrative scenes (1:19–21, 22–25, 26–28, 29–33, 34–40, 41–44), and Lohfink (“Darstellungs­ kunst,” 120–23) identifies concentric circles of speeches. 48 Tindale, Rhetorical Argumentation, 59–87; Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, New Rhetoric, 167–83. 49  Deuteronomy, unlike P, does not assume that all the participants in the Wilderness wander-

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final form of the book of Deuteronomy (in the exile) can make the same identifications. Therefore, the use of the second person verbs constructs the audience’s selfview. ‫“( תקרבון‬and you drew near”; v. 22) ‫“( ותאמרו‬and you said”; v. 22) ‫“( ולא אביתם‬but you did not agree”; v. 26) ‫“( ותמרו‬but you embittered”; v. 27) ‫“( לא תערצון‬but you should not tremble”; v. 29) ‫“( ותיראון‬nor should you fear”; v. 29) ‫“( ראית‬you have seen”; v. 31) ‫“( אינכם מאמינם‬are you not rejecting?”; v. 32) ‫“( תלכו בה‬you should go in it”; v. 33)

The verbs in which Israel acts are uniformly negative, while those by which they experience are universally positive. The stark contrast between their actions and attitudes on the one hand, and Yhwh’s on the other thus creates a rhetorical environment in which their arguments against conquest cannot be convincing. They become cowards in the presence of the ever-victorious divine warrior, and quarrelsome speakers before a rhetorically virtuous deity. Second, this rhetorical rigging, so to speak, continues in the description of Moses’ response and Yhwh’s final judgment on him. Moses accedes to the plan to send the spies because the Israelites’ apparently innocuous and commonsensical request to investigate the cities and the land (v. 23) met his approval (‫)וייטב בעיני הדבר‬. Although Deuteronomy does not share P’s conviction that Yhwh planned for the spies (Num 13:1–2), neither does it object to the arrangement on principle. Yet when Israel refuses to see the land’s prosperity as warrant for belief in Yhwh’s beneficence and thus the plan for conquest, but rather focuses only upon the perils facing them, Moses finds that Yhwh is angry with him (‫ ;גם בי התאנף יהוה בגללכם‬v. 37) and forbids him to enter the land. Unlike the P story of murmuring in Num 20, Deuteronomy does not identify Moses’ sin, leading many interpreters to explain his punishment as substitionary for the people.50 Yet this interpretation poses problems, as others have noted, not least because it posits a role for Moses difficult to find elsewhere in the Pentateuch. Indeed, Moses, in sharp contrast to Gilgamesh in a parallel assault on a giant, remains passive in this story, functioning merely as the intermediary between Yhwh and the people. Another possibility arises when we consider the shaping of the divine decree in vv. 35–40. Yhwh’s sentence of Moses sits in the center of a chiasmus:51 ings died there. Thus Deuteronomy’s construction is less a non sequitur than it became when the book was incorporated into the Pentateuch as a whole. 50 Christensen, Deuteornomy, 32; Weinfeld, Deuteronomy, 150; Nelson, Deuteronomy, 29–30; Tigay, Deuteronomy, 19–20, 425 (with some rabbinic references); JSB. 51  On concentric circles as structural patterns throughout Deut 1:19–46, see Christensen, Deuteronomy, 31. On the theology of the decree, see Patrick Miller, “The Wilderness Journey in Deuteronomy: Style, Structure, and Theology in Deuteronomy 1–3,” in Israelite Religion and Biblical Theology: Collected Essays, JSOTSup 267 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), 576–78.

The Speech on the Plains of Moab

A. B. C. B’. A’.

83

The present generation will not see the land (v. 35) Caleb will inherit the land (v. 36) Moses will not enter the land (v. 37) Joshua will enter the land (v. 38) The next generation will enter the land (v. 39)

V. 40 adds a final element, a command. The condemnation of Moses thus stands in contrast to the fate of Caleb and Joshua as he identifies with one instantiation of the nation rather than another. Moreover, the references to Caleb and Joshua contain explanations for their destinies. While the text may assume the JE account,52 it is still necessary to read the rationale for their good spies’ entries in the context of Deuteronomy. Thus Caleb may enter the land ‫“( יען אׁשר מלא אחרי יהוה‬because he was utterly loyal to Yhwh”), while Joshua can be counted on to appropriate the land (‫)ינחלנה‬. In other words, as warriors they form an inseparable pair (much like Enkidu and Gilgamesh, though the biblical text downplays the heroic nature of their actions by reporting no derring-do of theirs except their speech to the recalcitrant Israelites). Moses, in contrast, accedes to the people’s plans and then, despite his best efforts, fails to persuade them to take the land. Thus his rhetorical flops, inevitable as they are given the audience’s perverseness, account for his failure to enter Canaan. Third, the preparation for this verdict on Moses’ earlier speech begins with Deut 1:19, which introduces the setting of the deliberative speeches in the Wilderness. The excerpts of those speeches serve the second speech event level as a series of figures leading to the conclusion in which Israel may take the land only after a forty-year probation. Moses bears some responsibility for the end result because he allows a reconsideration of his own speech in vv. 21–22. Though Weinfeld is technically right to point out that v. 22 proposes only that the spies find the best road into the land and toward its principal cities,53 in the context of the entire speech in 1:19–46, the counsel proves susceptible to multiple interpretations. The people’s apparent sagacity and bravery, at first glance so similar to the Urukians’ advice to Gilgamesh and Enkidu, in the end highlights the Israelite congregation’s rebellion, as they reject divine leadership and thus undercut any viable notion of heroism for themselves. This multivalence of meaning must be deliberate, for it allows the narrator to prepare us for the wild-eyed description of those cities in v. 28 and thus the ultimate rejection of Moses’ charge to them to take the land. Unlike Gilgamesh, Moses cannot persuade his audience to defeat the giants, nor does he lead them there himself. The deconstruction of the hero (whether Moses or Israel) goes well beyond the widespread reconfiguration of the heroic tradition that Israelites often practiced, and of which many texts give evidence.54 52 Nelson, Deuteronomy, 26. Certainly Deuteronomy does not prepare for his appearance in 1:36. But Deuteronomy does not distinguish among the spies as Numbers does. 53 Weinfeld, Deuteronomy 1–11, 145. 54  See Mobley, Empty Men, 48–74.

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All of these data raise the question of genre for the speech on the Plains of Moab. The speeches in the Wilderness fit nicely into Aristotle’s category of deliberative rhetoric, i.e., speech that exhorts to or dissuades from (Συμβουλῆς δὲ τὸ μὲν προτροπὴ τὸ δὲ ἀποτροπή) particular actions in the audience’s future (ὁ μέλλων).55 Yet the larger speech in 1:19–46 describes past events. Nor is it obvious that the rhetorical aim of the unit in its role at the beginning of the DH is the resettlement of the land either in the sixth century or earlier (depending again on how one dates this material). Rather, the speech in the Plains of Moab seems to fit better Aristotle’s category of epideictic speech, i.e., speech that praises or blames present realities (τὰ ὑπάρχοντα). Or rather, the speech in Deut 1 seeks to praise or blame (epideisis) by reporting an occasion of deliberative oratory. Reading the text this way explains several curious aspects of the story, including the fact that Yhwh does not make speeches except through his intermediary Moses. On the one hand, Deuteronomy distances the deity from the events, and goes to great lengths to show that the failure of Moses’ rhetoric (and thus of Yhwh’s!) was due to the obstinacy of the audience who could not accept reasonable arguments and only to a much lesser extent to Moses’ inability to persuade. Far from compromising the supernal speaker’s ethos, as one might expect, for the composer of these chapters, Israel’s reaction in the Wilderness only enhances Yhwh’s standing for his actual (exilic or postexilic) audience. God, or rather the author portraying speeches about God, uses absence and even non-persuasiveness as ceremonial, which, as Perelman and Ol­brechts-Tyteca put it, is “a technique that enhances a speaker’s glamour by emphasizing rank [and] can promote persuasion if the listeners consider it a ritual in which they themselves also take part.”56 Perelman and Olbrecht-Tyteca criticize an overly aesthetic orientation toward epideictic oratory, seeking to place it instead within the realm of argumentation. For them, the orator in an epideictic speech seeks to “establish a sense of communion centered on particular values recognized by the audience.”57 Their notion of communion is not beyond criticism,58 but its value lies in the recognition that speakers operate from an assumed knowledge about the thought world of their hearers. If one applies such a viewpoint to Deuteronomy, it seems clear that that work does not need to persuade its audience of the rightness of its basic positions on all sorts of issues, but rather the book (hence the speech in Deut 1:19–46) shares a set of views with the implied audience. That is, the speech serves not to persuade Israel to do anything, but rather to confirm it in its basic self-understanding. Deliberative speech at the first level of discourse (the period of the speeches in the Wilderness) becomes epideictic speech at the second and third levels (the speech on the Plains of Moab and the final version of Deuteronomy). 55 Aristotle

Rhet. 1.3.3–4 (1358b). Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, New Rhetoric, 321. 57  Ibid., 51. 58 Tindale, Rhetorical Argumentation, 66–69. 56 

Implications

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Implications Connecting the heroic giant-pursuing tale of Gilgamesh with the unheroic giantdodging tale of Deuteronomy may seem at first glance both counterintuitive and irrelevant to an exploration of Israelite political thought. However, on closer examination of the two texts’ approaches to persuasion and celebration of common values, it seems clear that the two traditions behind these texts share much in common, especially in their conceptions of both the rhetorical aspects of leadership and the place of the leader in the larger social networks of the whole society. Deuteronomy deconstructs an older tradition, in which a rhetor-hero shares with an audience assumptions and predilections toward actions that they find praiseworthy. Or rather Deuteronomy reaffirms it while denying that the Israelites participate in it or can do so. Doubtless much remains to be said about these texts and about ancient Near Eastern rhetoric more broadly, the study of which is in its infancy. Still it is possible to identify some features of rhetoric in these texts that may deserve further study in other texts. First, these texts pay careful attention to the audience and its assumptions about the nature of reality. In building argumentation, both Gilgamesh and Moses (or rather the composers of their literary speeches) seek to understand their hearers’ plausibility structures and to interact with them. The interaction may be critical, even astringent, but it is nevertheless careful and emphasizes common values as the rhetor seeks agreement. Second, argumentation takes multiple forms. Syllogism is comparatively rare but enthymeme is not. Pathos serves argumentation, as does appeal to character. And for the most part, the arguments made are clear and readily understandable once one seeks them out. Third, the ethos of the speaker, though contestable in both of these texts, figures significantly in the argument. The character of the speaker is itself a part of the argument for and against the deliberations of the audience. For Gilgamesh, the errand into the wilderness allows his transformation from a tyrant to a more sympathetic character. For Moses, the failure to persuade, though owing to the obstinacy of his audience, marks the end of his heroic quest. Fourth, attention to the human audience does not exclude the divine audience. This factor deserves far more attention than I can give it here, but we should not assume that ancient persons forgot the transmundane in their speechmaking. Certainly Assyrian letters to the gods and other forms of ancient Near Eastern prayer (as in both Gilgamesh and to a lesser extent in Deuteronomy) are rhetorical forms. Fifth, both texts offer versions of events that are otherwise well-known in their respective contexts, and thus offer contestable interpretations of those events. The Ḫumbaba/Ḫuwawa story reflects third millennium (or earlier) notions of the hero, just as Deuteronomy’s giants were thought to have lived long before the real audience of the book.

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Finally, as Frans van Eemeren has noted, argumentation is (1) a “complex speech act” that occurs in a (2) particular social setting with (3) “commitments created by the performance of this speech act” that (4) aims at rectifying differences of opinion.59 Whatever one’s view of van Eemeren’s overall program, surely he is correct that a rhetorical analysis of any speech-event, in this case of two ancient texts, must pay attention to both the surface structure of the text itself and to its social setting, or in other words, the complex network of symbols of which it is a part. Despite, that is, numerous differences in the worldviews of first-millennium Israel and second-millennium Mesopotamia, it is possible to identify patterns of persuasion common to both. Gilgamesh’s speech succeeds because he can bend the notion of the hero in his culture in his own favor. Moses, or rather Yhwh, fails to persuade because Israel cannot imagine itself in a heroic position. The arguments they make are not dissimilar, but they are similarly contestable. Israel’s refusal to accept the heroic possibility, based on its failure to reason correctly, leads to its downfall, whereas the Urukians’ embrace of the heroic life leads to their sharing vicariously in a glorious experience. Attending to the “correct” arguments makes all the difference. These similarities reflect the fact that inasmuch as all acts of communication make a bid for influence, political speech in particular must engage an audience’s conceptions of reality. Such conceptions crossed time and space in the ancient Near East, and even as radical a book as Deuteronomy must take account of them.

59 

Van Eemeren, “Argumentation Theory,” 18.

Chapter 5:

Elites and Social Climbers Part of the bid for influence occurs on more intimate scales as well. In the course of David’s adventures in 1–2 Samuel, he encounters two characters whom the narrator describes as an ‫ איׁש גדול‬, a “magnate” (1 Sam 25:2; 2 Sam 19:33; cf. 2 Kgs 5:1; Job 1:3). The first, Nabal, appears as a major landowner in the hill country of Judah just southeast of Hebron.1 The second, Barzillai, lives in the northern part of Israelite Transjordan, near Mahanaim. Taken together, they thus figure as a rank – one hesitates to use the anachronistic term “class” – of personage that lives in various parts of the land of Israel, and offer evidence of both a literary and a sociological nature, opening a window onto a feature of Israelite society, the lifeways of the landed elite. Several aspects of these stories deserve more attention than they have received. In considering first the story of Nabal and then that of Barzillai, I wish to proceed at two levels. The first offers an analysis of each story’s depiction of a literary type, the male member of the landed elites, concentrating on the character as rhetor,2 as a dispenser of goods, and as a participant in male contestation. The second level concerns the relationship of these literary depictions to life outside the texts, asking what the stories of Nabal and Barzillai say about a layer of the social structure of ancient Israel and conventions for recording it in literature.

The Dossier on Nabal To begin, 1 Sam 25:1–43 tells the story of David’s encounter with Nabal and Abigail. Recent scholarship has examined the story from several angles, emphasizing (1) Da1  On Maon, the location of his estate according to the LXX, see LaMoine F. DeVries, “Maon,” ABD 4 (1992): 512–13; cf. Zvi Ilan and David Amit, “Maon (in Judea),” NEAEHL 3 (1993): 942–44. For the reading, see Karl Budde, Die Bücher Samuel, KHC 8 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1902), 164; McCarter, 1 Samuel, 392; but the ingenious solution in Dominic Rudman, “The Patriarchal Narratives in the Books of Samuel,” VT 54 (2004): 241–42. 2  For an important essay on rhetoric as a practice of elites in Greece – a comparable study is much needed for Israel – see Frances Pownall, “From Orality to Literacy: The Moral Education of the Elite in Fourth-Century Athens,” in Orality and Literacy in Ancient Greece, vol.  6: Politics of Orality, ed. Craig Cooper (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 235–49. Pownall shows that elites often sought oral performance as a primary medium of communication, rather than written texts. The cultivation of rhetorical skill is thus part of the lifeways of elites in many cultures. The narratives under consideration here demonstrate, I think, that Israelite storytellers believed that their own dignitaries shared such values. Presumably, those storytellers read their audience correctly.

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vid’s marital politics,3 (2) the literary contrasts between Nabal and Abigail and the connection of both to proverbial literature,4 and (3) the function of the story as gendered politics in which the woman, Abigail, is the dominant figure.5 In its present literary context sandwiched between two stories about David’s sparing of Saul, moreover, the narrative adds texture to David’s politics of generosity, thus aiding in the construction of his image as a king worth emulating.6 In short, with allowance for the variety of details in exposition of the text, a consensus has emerged that 1 Samuel 25 concerns politics in some fashion. What has not received enough attention, in my view, is the fact that three, not one or two, political actors play a role in the story, namely, David, Nabal, and Abigail. Each stakes out a position on the proper relationships of elites and subordinates. Their interactions allow the narrator to construct a conversation about the ethics of leadership and subalternity. To understand the levels of this conversation, let us begin by examining the speeches of the three key characters and then the narrator’s comments on them. David as Rhetor during a Gift-exchange The traditions about David frequently portray him as a rhetor, i.e. someone whose verbal addresses to an audience of more than a few persons aim to persuade them to take action or confirm them in their views of reality. His ability to speak persuasively and appropriately is a significant tool in his rule.7 Accordingly, it should be possible

3  Jon Levenson and Baruch Halpern, “The Political Import of David’s Marriages,” JBL 99 (1980): 507–18. 4  Jon Levenson, “1 Samuel 25 as Literature and as History,” CBQ 40 (1978): 11–28. 5  Ellen van Wolde, “A Leader Led by a Lady: David and Abigail in I Samuel 25,” ZAW 114 (2002): 355–75; Robin G. Branch, “Women who win with words: Deliverance via persuasive communication,” In die Skriflig 36 (2003): 271–87. 6  Recent synchronic readings have understood the placement of the story in diverse ways. See, e.g., Antony F. Campbell, “Diachrony and Synchrony: I Sam 24 and 26,” in David und Saul im Widerstreit: Diachronie und Synchronie im Wettstreit: Beiträge zur Auslegung des ersten Samuelbuches, ed. Walter Dietrich, OBO 206 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004), 226–31; Walter Dietrich, “Die zweifache Verschonung Sauls (ISam 24 und 26). Zur ‘diachronen Synchronisierung’ zweier Erzählungen,” in David und Saul im Widerstreit: Diachronie und Synchronie im Wettstreit: Beiträge zur Auslegung des ersten Samuelbuches, ed. Walter Dietrich, OBO 206 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004), 232–53; Barbara Green, “Enacting Imaginatively the Unthinkable: 1 Samuel 25 and the Story of Saul,” BibInt 11 (2003): 1–23; Robert Polzin, Samuel and the Deuteronomist: a Literary Study of the Deuteronomic History, part 2: 1 Samuel (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989), 210–12; more generally, J. P. Fokkelman, Narrative Art and Poetry in the Books of Samuel, vol.  2: The Crossing Fates (I Sam. 13–31 & II Sam. 1) (Assen/Maastricht: Van Gorcum, 1986), 435– 551 (his Act Seven). 7  E.g., 1 Sam 17:45–48 (see also LXX); 24:8–16; 26:15–20 (where the nominal addressee Abiner stands in for all of Saul’s retinue); 2 Sam 1:17–27; 3:33–34, 35, 38–39; 22:1–51; and 23:1–7. A more expansive rhetorical role falls to Solomon, as well as to the Chronicler’s David. On the king as rhetor, see Launderville, Piety and Politics, 60–69; Hamilton, Body Royal, 216–18.

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to trace out the character David’s arguments in his speech and thus to discern the basic assumptions he makes.8 David sends a message to Nabal requesting a relationship (‫ ; ׁשלום‬v. 6).9 He seeks to persuade Nabal of the appropriateness of this overture by reminding him of his goodwill during a time of danger: ‫עתה הרעים אׁשר לך היו עמנו לא הכלמנום ולא נפקד להם מאומה כל ימי בכרמל‬ Now your shepherds were with us. We did not harass them or bother them in any way all the days they were in Karmel.

Since the shearing of Nabal’s flocks of 3000 sheep and 1000 goats would have required many person-days of work, and would have yielded a significant portion of Nabal’s capital for the year, the safety of the shearers was not a small matter. Moreover, the size of his flocks would demand a distribution system for surplus wool or skins and thus a series of commercial relationships beyond the locale of Maon.10 In protecting these relationships, David has given Nabal something valuable, for which he anticipates some form of reciprocity. Moreover, naming his act of benevolence establishes David’s ethos as a potential friend. David supports his argument in two ways. First, in v. 7 he prefaces it by noting

8  Here I use the term “argument” broadly to include all techniques of persuasion without violence. As Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca put it, “all argumentation aims at gaining the adherence of minds, and, by this very fact, assumes the existence of an intellectual contact” (Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, New Rhetoric, 14). Arguments can take numerous forms, and the persuasive rhetor must pay attention to metaphor, story, sequencing of claims, and many other factors. 9  On ancient Near Eastern parallels to this overture, see D. J. Wiseman, “‘Is it Peace?’ – Covenant and Diplomacy,” VT 32 (1982): 311–26, esp.  318. 10  We know little of wool distribution in Iron Age Israel, although the widespread survival of loomweights indicates the equally widespread existence of both domestic and larger-scale production of textiles, for which the wool must have come from somewhere. On loomweights and the techniques of textile production, see Deborah Cassuto, “Weaving Implements,” in Tell es-Safi/Gath I: The 1996–2005 Seasons, vol.  1: Text, ed. Aren M. Maier, ÄAT 69 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2012), 467–79 (with extensive bibliography); similarly, Serena Maria Cecchini, “The Textile Industry in Northern Syria During the Iron Age According to the Evidence of the Tell Afis Excavations,” in Essays on Syria in the Iron Age, ed. Guy Bunnens, ANESSup 7 (Louvain: Peeters, 2000), 211–33; eadem, “Loomweights and the textile industry in north Syria in the Early Iron Age,” in On Cooking Pots, Drinking Cups, Loomweights and Ethnicity in Bronze Age Cyprus and Neighboring Regions: An International Archaeological Symposium held in Nicosia, November 6th-7th 2010, eds. Vassos Karageorghis and Ourania Kouka (Nicosia: Leventis, 2011), 195–202. For general observations about the economy of this period, see Robert D. Miller, Chieftains of the Highland Clans: A History of Israel in the 12th and 11th Centuries B.C. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 62–67. An interesting ancient Near Eastern parallel comes from Kültepe (Old Assyrian Kanesh), where familial and quasi-familial relationships underwrote a primitive form of capitalistic trade in metal and wool. The Anatolian situation shows both similarities and dissimilarities with that of the Nabal story. The Israelite situation does not assume long-distance trade or financial instruments, though it may not exclude them. If it does include them, then we must see the Nabal story as fairly late. On Kanesh, see recently Mogens Trolle Larsen, “Individual and Family in Old Assyrian Society,” JCS 59 (2007): 93–106.

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‫ועתה ׁשמעתי כי גזזים לך‬11 And now I heard that you had shearers.

The statement highlights the fact that David, the leader of a small ragtag army, chose one of several options available to him, the one most beneficial for Nabal. The second support of his argument appears in v. 8 when David asks Nabal to appeal to his own servants for testimony. David is aware, however, of the unreliability of such testimony, in the minds of some judges at least, for he expresses the hope that the “young men will find favor in your [Nabal’s] eyes” (‫)וימצאו הנערים חן בעיניך‬. Since the previous clause speaks of Nabal’s young men, the “young men” in the clause in question should refer to the same persons (contra NRSV). As Nabal’s own speech will make clear, he has a low regard for the testimony of those further down the social ladder, and David seeks to forestall a dismissal of his case by asking for a benevolent attitude toward the testimony of those whose word Nabal and others like him may not find reliable. Having appealed to Nabal’s good will through references to testimony to his own behavior, David then makes his request for an unspecified gift. He employs a series of polite constructions that highlight the generosity of the giver as well as his own subordination and dependence on the gift. (1) He does not name a specific gift but allows its content to reflect Nabal’s own will. (2) He refers to his own retainers as “your servants” (‫)עבדיך‬. (3) He uses the request form ‫ נא‬albeit with an imperative verb.12 And (4) he calls himself “your son” (‫)בנך‬, a term of subordination and dependence, if not necessarily of affection. Before turning to Nabal’s reaction, a rhetorical disaster if ever one existed, we should consider several aspects of David’s speech and the transaction it seeks to bring about. First, the speech reflects a careful rhetorical strategy. A superficial analysis would assume that David seeks to wheedle a gift from Nabal, and thus the former’s reference to his protection of the latter’s shepherds would be a form of deliberative oratory, in Aristotle’s terms, i.e., rhetoric that led an audience to a course of action. This view would lead naturally, if not inevitably, to the conclusion that David’s request was simple extortion.13 However, there are clues within David’s message itself that we should understand it as epidictic oratory, the aim of which would be to “defend the traditional and accepted values…. to appeal to a universal order, to a nature, or a god that would vouch So MT and 4QSama; LXX adds ἰδοὺ = ‫הנה‬. ‫ נא‬ordinarily marks the speaker as subordinate to the addressee, though exceptions exist (e.g. Gen 22:2; the particle follows an imperative verb in such texts as Gen 27:21, 26; 38:16; Num 22:6, 17; 23:13, 27; Judg 19:11; 1 Sam 16:17; 2 Kgs 4:22; and Eccl 2:1). The form in such cases, and perhaps in 1 Sam 25:8, may indicate that the speaker recognizes the difficulty of the request and thus the potential for its rejection by the addressee. Still, the form is a polite one. See, more broadly, Stephen Kaufman, “An Emphatic Plea for Please,” Maarav 7 (1991): 195–98. 13  A view hinted at in Antony F. Campbell, 1 Samuel, FOTL 7 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 259. 11 

12 

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for the unquestioned, and supposedly unquestionable, values.”14 This sort of oratory does not seek to move the audience to a new way of thinking but to confirm the beliefs that the speaker believes it already has. Under this reading, David would assume that an ‫ איׁש גדול‬would routinely engage in bequests to properly deferential subordinates. Such a man would disdain work that was purely economic in aim and would practice a lifestyle of leisure, intellectual pursuits, and conspicuous benefaction (albeit funded by the appropriation of the surplus labor of others).15 David thus uses the polite, quasi-familial speech we have already seen and emphasizes that his request falls on a “festival” (‫ ;יום טוב‬v. 8), a normal time of benefactions.16 This reading finds support in this story itself, for other characters express dismay at Nabal’s refusal to offer a gift. In v. 14, a member of Nabal’s household corroborates David’s arguments by noting that “the men were good to us” (‫)האנׁשים טובים לנו‬, possibly an echo of the “goodness” (‫ )טוב‬of the day itself, and characterizing David’s rapprochement as an effort at “blessing” or at least “greeting” ( ‫ )לברך‬his master, whose actions he characterizes as “screaming in anger” (‫)ויעט‬. The servant does not see his master’s reaction as poor political calculation, but as a breach of etiquette. If we thus understand David’s message as a rhetorical event taking its meaning from a particular set of social conventions, we must ask just what social setting explains his words and actions. The answer seems clear enough. It is the whole situation of gift giving. In the story, David expects a gift, and others, especially those dependent on the largesse of the magnate, agree that he is right to do so. This means, however, that we must seek to understand ancient Israelite and Levantine notions of gift giving. Two examples may suffice. First, an interesting parallel to this story appears in Gen 32–33, in which Jacob seeks to build an alliance with Esau by means of a gift. The actual exchange comes only after sustained “negotiation,” in which Esau forestalls any notion that he would receive a gift owing to need (“I have much” [ ‫ ;]יׁש לי רב‬Gen 33:9) or willingness to be subordinate (hence calling Jacob “my brother” [‫)]אחי‬.17 The exchange can only occur 14  Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, New Rhetoric, 51. The disjuncture between David and Nabal occurs because the latter understands the former’s request as deliberative oratory, and thus they miss each other’s cues. 15  See the discussion on the sociological patterns of aristocracy and wealth-creation in John H. Kautsky, The Politics of Aristocratic Empires (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1982), 177–97. Admittedly, Kautsky and his sources speak of aristocracies in developed pre-modern states, but his remarks ring true for aristocracies up through the end of the nineteenth century, and they seem to fit, to some extent, features of the biblical stories, as well. This fit makes sense if we consider that the stories in question apparently come from the period of the Israelite monarchies. 16  See, e.g., Neh 8:10–12. Gift giving during festivals has been a characteristic behavior of many elite groups. For the first millennium bce, however, most surviving evidence relates to the monarchy. See, e.g., for Persia: Pierre Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire, trans. Peter Daniels (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2002), 302–23; for Neo-Assyria: L. Kataja and R. Whiting, Grants, Decrees and Gifts of the Neo-Assyrian Period, SAA 12 (Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 1995); for Greece during the so-called Dark Age, see Walter Donlon, The Aristocratic Ideal and Selected Papers (Wauconda, IL: Bolchazy-Carducci, 1999), 321–44. 17  Perhaps Westermann is right to state that Esau “can do without the substantial gift represent-

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after each states his own self-sufficiency or surfeit and Jacob contextualizes the gift in a highly flattering way that recognizes Jacob’s subordinate status with respect to Esau, but still appeals to the affections of family life (“I have seen your face, which is like seeing the face of God” [ ‫ ;]ראיתי פניך כראת פני אלהים‬Gen 33:10). The rhetorical dance of gift giving comes to an end only when the parties work out the nature of their reciprocal relationship as one either of equals or of rulers and subalterns. It seems virtually certain that such a conversation as that between Jacob and Esau drew on carefully worked-out conventions for forming relationships, in which stylized refusal, and then acceptance, of the gift occurred.18 Owing to the careful rhetorical strategy of Jacob and its acceptance by Esau, their families become related (or in this case, their genetic relationship is reinforced in an alliance of shared interest in mutual nonviolence). Second, the Ugaritic tale of Kirta (KTU/CAT 1.14.III. 20–49) reports Kirta’s dream of taking a wife as tribute from one King Pabilu of Udmu. The dream, conveniently, gives him the rhetorical strategy by which he persuades Pabilu to surrender the lovely Ḥuraya. Kirta should refuse the offer of gold and eternal slaves (ḫuraṣu … waᶜabadū ᶜulāmū) and the usual gifts of tribute, including slave girls. He should refuse by stating, like Esau, that he has enough of such things but lacks what is “not in my house” (ᵓênu babêtiya; 3.38) and then offering, in a manner drawing on ancient Near Eastern love poetry, a highly flattering description of Ḥuraya, the gift he seeks. The success of this speech makes the prospective siege of Udmu purely notional and creates a new relationship between Kirta’s family and Pabilu’s. Gift giving is opposed to warfare, a marriage alliance to the enmity of states, comity to enmity. These two examples, though different in several obvious ways, illustrate the complexity of the rhetoric of gift giving in ancient Israel and the Levant (see also the discussion in Chapter 2 above). First, not everyone can give or receive, but only those who already enjoy a relationship of reciprocity or can expect to do so. Hence David must ask on behalf of his men, and Jacob must use his men as messengers, for the gift does not come from them, and the exchange of a gift links two social networks, not just two individuals. Second, in theory the recipient may refuse the gift, but to do so ing considerable wealth” (Genesis 12–36, CC [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995], 526), but this is hardly an adequate analysis of the story. Esau does, after all, accept the gift eventually. The offer of the gift may have several purposes: to cement an alliance made possible by birth but threatened by behavior, to remove any concern that Jacob will drain his brother’s resources, or to atone for prior wrongs. The text’s failure to choose among these or other possible motivations allows both the characters and their readers to find appropriate resolution in the story and remove or forestall whatever source of future conflict they might identify. 18  In the economic sector, as opposed to the gift sector, purchase of property by those outside the lineage of its owners entailed just such ritual communication, as Gen 23:1–20 makes clear. Or put differently, the rules for gift giving and commercial exchange overlapped but remained distinct. It was important to maintain the distinction as a text like Isa 45:11–13 shows. There, the prophet takes pains to say that Yhwh’s grant of kingship to Cyrus elicited the king’s proper response of rebuilding Jerusalem, not as something illicit (bribery) or transactional but as part of a relationship of mutual honoring.

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short-circuits the envisioned social transaction, and opens the door to conflict. Gift exchange replaces violence with politics. Third, the gift must be appropriate to the time and place, and its appropriateness must be negotiated based on a calculation of the desired outcome. This calculation is not an economic matter only, since the relationships created and sustained by the exchange of gifts persist and grow more intricate over time.19 Fourth, the rhetoric of gift giving involves the use of polite, even familial forms, the making of careful arguments appropriate to the occasion, and the invocation of the divine realm as the ultimate source of sanctions for the gift. All these elements play a role in the story of Nabal and David. To extend this point further, we might briefly interact with a broader research agenda concerning gift giving. In his now classic work, The Gift (“Essai sur le don”), Marcel Mauss studies the North American potlatch and similar practices of radical, agonistic gift giving.20 In these examples of “total services,” persons of high status demonstrate their power and wealth by destroying many objects and by giving others to those around them according to their rank and social closeness. While such extreme cases of gift exchange have no direct parallel in the ancient Levant, Mauss makes two observations that bear on the activities of David and Nabal in our story. First, he notes that gift giving implies a set of interlocking obligations: The institution of “total services” [e.g., in the potlatch] does not merely carry with it the obligation to reciprocate presents received. It also supposes two other obligations just as important… to give presents, and … to receive them.21

In 1 Samuel 25, David asks a gift from Nabal in order to create a reciprocal relationship. He has already given something he believes Nabal should value, protection of his personnel and capital, and he expects some reciprocal action. Moreover, he imagines that the exchange of gifts will create a relationship, albeit asymmetrical in Nabal’s favor, between the two men and their retinues. Mauss also notes that the network of reciprocal gift giving in a society is “committed to in a somewhat voluntary form by presents and gifts, although in the final analysis they are strictly compulsory, on pain of private or public warfare.”22 The paradox of a compulsory gift has generated heated discussion among philosophers and anthropologists, but the best solution, in my view, takes into consideration, not just the 19  For a helpful discussion of the distinction between gift-giving and economic transactions and their respective places in social structures in antiquity, see Martin Rössler, “Von der Gabe zur Abgabe: Transaktionen im politischen Kontext,” in Geschenke und Steuern, Zölle und Tribute: Antike Abgabenformen in Anspruch und Wirklichkeit, eds. H. Klinkott, S. Kubisch, and R. Müller-Wollermann, CHANE 29 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 3–27. On the other hand, the Deuteronomistic History does pay some attention to strictly economic issues, as sorted out by Roger Nam, Portrayals of Economic Activity in the Book of Kings (Leiden: Brill, 2012). 20  Marcel Mauss, The Gift, trans. W. D. Halls, foreword Mary Douglas (New York: Norton, 1990). 21  Ibid., 13. 22  Ibid., 4.

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attitudes of the giver and recipient, but the social reality of relationships that gifts cement. The objects given and received have meaning as part of the very social reality they help create.23 Thus the gift creates a system parallel to the economy, though it involves objects that might otherwise serve as capital. To refuse to give or receive is to strip away an important aspect of society and thus to render human relationships more dangerous. Nabal as Rhetor and Gift-refuser In refusing to enter into a gift-exchange relationship with David, even one recognizing the superior status of the giver over the solicitor, Nabal thus sets in motion a train of events ending in his own death and David’s assumption of his property. What goes wrong? Although the narrator overcodes any interpretation of the story by calling the character Nabal, “Ignoble,”24 his arguments still deserve attention, again because they reveal a possible attitude of those of his social rank. His arguments fail because neither his immediate audience (his and David’s servants) nor the implied readers of the text share his assumptions about reality. Yet this rhetorical failure reveals a gap in Israelite society, since Nabal must assume that someone would find his arguments plausible. Nabal makes two arguments against giving a gift, both of which directly undermine David’s ethos as a potential ally. The first argument questions David’s reliability as an ally, and this on two grounds. Nabal says in v. 10, ‫מי דוד ומי בן יׁשי היום רבו עבדים המתפרצים איׁש מפני אדניו‬ Who is David, and who is the son of Jesse? Today many slaves are breaking away, 25 each from his master.

In other words, for Nabal, David’s request for a gift and thus a relationship fails because (1) neither he nor his family is of the right social status (implicitly they are servants, albeit of the king) and (2) in a period of social turmoil the shifting of alli23  See the discussion among the contributors to Edith Wyschogrod, Jean-Joseph Goux, and Eric Boynton, eds., The Enigma of Gift and Sacrifice (New York: Fordham University Press, 2002); also Annette Weiner, Inalienable Possessions: The Paradox of Keeping-while-Giving (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992); Maurice Godelier, The Enigma of the Gift, trans. Nora Scott (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999). 24  On the meaning of the root nābal, see Gillis Gerleman, “Der Nicht-Mensch. Erwägungen zur hebräischen Wurzel NBL,” VT 24 (1974): 147–58. “Wie man sieht, erweist sich ‫ נָדִ יב‬als ein sehr genaues Gegenbild von ‫ נבל‬. Er steht als der Positive da, vor allem als der Freigebige, der Gönner, ferner in weiteren Sinne als der sozial und moralisch höchgeschätze….” (157–58). Nabal’s failure is moral, not just intellectual. Contra David Toshio Tsumura, The First Book of Samuel, NICOT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 577. 25  See 4QSama, ‫המתפר] שים‬, “spreading out” (?). See the discussion in Frank Moore Cross, Donald Parry, Richard Saley, and Eugene Ulrich, eds., Qumran Cave 4, XII: 1–2 Samuel, DJD 17 (Oxford: Clarendon, 2005), 87. Both readings make essentially the same point.

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ances and the severing of time-honored patterns of command and obedience can only be a threat to the right ordering of things. Nabal answers his own rhetorical question about David’s identity by labeling him a runaway servant. In the context of 1 Samuel 23–26, such a dismissive evaluation of David reports a possible point of view on his troubles with Saul, his leadership of disaffected persons, and his meanderings about the countryside. All such things mark him, to a man of Nabal’s rank and attitudes, as a threat to social stability. The reader of the David stories must decide whether to accept this view of David, now associated as it is with a scabrous fool of the first order, Nabal. Nabal supports this argument against a gift with one that seems, at first, more directly rooted in economic reality (v. 11): ‫ולקחתי את לחמי ואת מימי ואת טבחתי אׁשר טבחתי לגזזי‬ ‫ונתתי לאנׁשים אׁשר לא ידעתי אי מזה המה‬ Shall I take my bread, my water,26 and my provisions that I provided for my shearers and give them to men whose origins I do not know?

The question at first seems to reflect a simple economic calculation, an assumption of insufficiency on the part of Nabal’s estate (and thus one of the central economic issues of all time). However, the narrator has already called Nabal an ‫ איׁש גדול‬and reported his vast herding operations. Thus the economic argument is a dodge. The real argument lies in the second half of his question: David and his retainers come from somewhere Nabal claims not to know. Again, however, Nabal’s argument is more complex than it seems immediately, for he does know David’s lineage and thus his home, since he calls him “Jesse’s son.” “Knowing” does not concern the acquisition of correct information, but the acknowledgement of correct social position. Strictly speaking, Nabal does not know the origin of every person in David’s entourage, but, again, this ignorance is irrelevant since David is the only one with whom an alliance rooted in reciprocal gift giving can be contracted. Two further points about Nabal’s rhetorical strategy: First, he makes a bid to undercut David’s ethos and build his own by making claims about the structure of reality. For him, the social structure should remain stable, indeed stratified, with clearly demarcated relationships of command and obedience, often reinforced by kinship (and thus, implicitly, intermarriage), while David and those like him threaten that “right” order. (Nor does he necessarily endorse the monarchy, which after all has failed to keep David in his place.) Nabal attempts to build his own ethos by locating himself at the top of the allegedly natural order of things. Here we should remember the analysis of Aristotle about arguments from the character of the speaker: “One persuades by moral character (διὰ τοῦ ἤθους) when whatever one says is made worthy of credence (ἀξιόπιστον)…. But it is necessary that this occur through the speech 26 

LXX reads οἶνον “wine.”

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(διὰ τὸν λόγον) itself.”27 Nabal clumsily attempts to do this by contrasting his own successful relationship of reciprocal duties to his servants to the breach of such a relationship that David has allegedly brought about. The argument fails because the narrator has already undermined it through a series of characterizations of Nabal’s character. The second relevant feature of Nabal’s overall approach is his appeal to the ridiculous. His question, “shall I give to David,” assumes that the hearer should believe such an act to be absurd. An appeal of this sort raises significant hazards for a rhetor because it depends on the audience’s agreement with the speaker’s assessment of the structure of reality. Appeal to the ridiculous seeks to evoke laughter, as Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca put it, at “eccentric behavior which is not deemed sufficiently important or dangerous to be repressed by more violent means.”28 Nabal seeks to expose both the illogic and the presumption of David’s bid for a gift. This appeal to the ridiculous fails for the story’s characters and for the ancient reader because of the narrator’s decisive characterization of Nabal as a coarse wine-swiller29 and money-grubber, as well as the text’s general sympathy for David. However, within the story itself, the characters reject Nabal’s arguments because they do not accept his characterization of David’s bid for a gift as inappropriate. Nabal’s rhetorical failure thus derives from his careless audience analysis. Another way to understand his failure is to contrast his procedure with David’s. The narrator has carefully constructed the performances of David and Nabal as a contrasting pair:     David                Nabal Extends greeting of peace

No greeting

Instructs servants

Denigrates servants

Seeks relationship

Rejects relationship

Identifies servants as reliable witnesses

Rejects servants as reliable witnesses

Seeks unspecified gift

Specifies gift but refuses to give it

The deepest contrast, however, lies in their views of social structure. David assumes a nested, quasi-familial hierarchy with Nabal as “father” of himself and the shepherds, while Nabal envisions a set of non-nesting groups relating agonistically. His contempt for David merely cements in place the social order he claims to despise.

27 Aristotle,

Rhet,, 1.2.4. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, New Rhetoric, 206. 29  On this aspect of Nabal’s personality and, more broadly, the role of urination in the story of David, see Peter Leithart, “Nabal and His Wine,” JBL 120 (2001): 525–27. 28 

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Abigail as Arbiter of Male Contestation This failure of Nabal’s rhetoric results, in large measure, from the maneuverings of his wife. As Dietrich points out, her intervention sits at the very center of the overall story and thus critically informs the whole.30 Although the narrative picks up the topos of the wise servant in 25:14–17,31 the initiative for the speech in vv. 23–31 appears to come from Abigail herself. Her bravura performance has drawn extensive comment in recent scholarship,32 but here I wish to focus on her presentation of the contestation between the two males, Nabal and David, and her shifting of the meaning of the gift. Her speech realigns the two key male characters in the story and gives a view of the eventual significance of David that the narrator must carefully consider. Abigail opens her appeal to David with gestures of obeisance (v. 23), signaling nonverbally her understanding of the relationship between her family and David as a hierarchical one, with David as ruler.33 This maneuver shifts the ground of the entire relationship between the two men. It also implies an alternative interpretation of the gift she brings (v. 18): the gift, which could feed David’s camp followers for only a day or two, and is thus not truly tribute or a significant redistribution of wealth,34 cements a relationship between David and Nabal (not Abigail, though the ambiguity of that negation creates some of the deliciousness of this story) in which David is the master. Abigail next proposes a series of arguments against David’s intended violence. Her greeting in v. 24, a petition using terms of subordination and weakness, appeals to David as a protector of the weak, surely an appropriate position for any elite member of society.35 She then makes a highly complex attack on the ethos of her husband in v. 25: “let my lord not set his mind (‫ )לבו‬on this man of Belial, on Nabal. For he is like his name – an ignoble person, and ignobility (‫ )נבלה‬is with him. But as for me, I did not see my lord’s servants whom you sent.” This part of her speech moves in three ways simultaneously. Not only does it identify her husband as an unreliable guide to reality, it also establishes Abigail as a wiser person who would surely have acted differently had she 30  Walter Dietrich, Samuel, vol.  2: 1Sam 13–26, BKAT 8/2 (Neukirchen-Vluyn, Neukirchener, 2015), 744. 31  For other examples of this topos, see, e.g., “The “Dialogue of Pessimism” or 1 Sam 9:3–14. The relationship of Gilgamesh and Enkidu offers a closely related version of the sidekick as interlocutor. 32  See, e.g., van Wolde, “Leader”; Fokkelman, Crossing Fates, 496–514; Campbell, 1 Samuel, 260– 62; Edward J. Bridge, “Desperation to a Desperado: Abigail’s Request to David in 1 Samuel 25,” ABR 63 (2015): 14–28. 33  On gestures, movements, and proxemics as elements of communication in ancient Israel and its environment, see Gruber, Aspects of Nonverbal Communication. 34  Tsumura (First Book of Samuel, 583–84) points out that the text does not specify how long the rations should last. He follows Malamat’s study reprinted in Abraham Malamat, History of Biblical Israel: Major Problems and Minor Issues, CHANE 7 (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 353–65. However, it is not clear that Abigail or the narrator thought of her food supply as a ration in the same sense as Papyrus Anastasi. 35  See, e.g., Isa 1:23; Job 31:13–23; the letter on an ostracon from Meṣad Hashavyahu.

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had more complete information ( ‫ )לא ראיתי את נערי אדני‬earlier, and it places David as an elite person (‫ )אדני‬who should not deign to respond violently to such an unworthy opponent. In short, as Nabal earlier did, Abigail appeals to the ridiculous as a way of shifting a course of action. Such an appeal depends on the speaker and audience sharing basic assumptions, in this case, that David’s request for a gift was appropriate. Vv. 26–27 forms the crux of Abigail’s appeal. Here she justifies the course of action that she seeks, a nonviolent resolution of the conflict, with appeals to divine guidance and David’s honor, not merely the argument from denigrated ethos in v. 25. Moreover, she renames the gift as a “blessing” (‫)ברכה‬, picking up her servant’s assessment of David’s original overture to Nabal as an attempt to “bless” (‫ ;לברך‬v. 14), and designates its recipients as David’s servants, rather than David himself, thus echoing David’s own stated understanding of the gift as one benefiting “your [Nabal’s] servants”, including David. In other words, the benefaction should benefit all the vulnerable, not merely a leader.36 Fokkelman correctly points out that this speech positions Abigail as one of David’s loyal servants,37 but more saliently, it raises the possibility that Nabal will assume such a role, too. Future events confirming Abigail’s characterization of him as a “man of Belial” will preclude such a resolution, but she does attempt it. Moreover, her speech makes her final arbiter of David’s true position in the reader’s mind. The place of the rest of her speech in the development of the Davidic monarchy’s self-predication has received considerable attention, and appropriately so. Abigail picks up a widespread ancient Near Eastern theme of the king as recipient of tribute.38 However, it is important that at this point in the narrative of David’s rise, he is not yet king, but, rather, a parvenu attempting to forge new alliances with members of the established aristocracy. Abigail helps him find a place within that land-based social order, first as a worthy recipient of a gift, and then as the owner of Nabal’s entire estate. She also reinstates him as the male at the center of a network of servants and wives. The Narrator as Reporter on Elites In presenting these speeches, then, the narrator works with character types and ideas that must have been familiar to the audience. Members of the traditional landed elite surrounded by their retainers and allied to one another were a fixture of many premodern societies. They formed the principal support for a monarchy, often providing 36  Interestingly, both Abigail’s twin points in vv. 26–27 and David’s in v. 7 open with “and now” (‫)ועתה‬, a phrase also used at critical points in chs. 24 and 26 (see Polzin, Samuel and the Deuteronomist, 210). 37 Fokkelman, Crossing Fates, 502; differently, Tsumura, First Book of Samuel, 588. 38  See the summary in Jürgen Bär, “Tributdarstellungen in der Kunst des Alten Orients,” in Geschenke und Steuern, Zölle und Tribute: Antike Abgabenformen in Anspruch und Wirklichkeit, eds. H. Klinkott, S. Kubisch, and R. Müller-Wollermann, CHANE 29 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 231–61, 549–59 (plates I–XI).

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wives, military personnel and supplies, and presumably officers of state.39 But why does this particular story survive? What does it tell the reader? In answering this question, one must ferret out the motives of the narrator. One option is to suppose that the story is part of a series of tales seeking to exonerate David of charges of lèse majesté.40 On this reading, the narrator becomes a propagandist for the Davidic dynasty, perhaps even writing for it during the tenth century. However, this interpretation fails to account both for David’s initial intemperance in responding to Nabal’s slight, understandable though it might be, and for the social role of Nabal, who does not figure as a supporter of Saul and the monarchy, but of an older yet persistent pattern of power and status ranking.41 Another option thus suggests itself. The story explores the relationship between older lineages and established power bases, represented by Nabal, and newer ones associated with the monarchy during a period of political upheaval. Thus the narrator defends, not primarily David, but a more flexible social structure in which the powerful protect the weak. Hence David’s expostulation in vv. 33–34, with its rejection of violence as a political solution, at least for domestic opponents. Perhaps the 39  Insufficient attention has been paid to the hereditary basis of offices in the Israelite state, but see broader discussions of the methods of governance there in Abraham Malamat, History of Biblical Israel, 241–73; Nili Sacher Fox, In the Service of the King: Officialdom in Ancient Israel and Judah (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 2000). An interesting case of hereditary officeholding appears in the Shaphan family. Shaphan was “scribe” for Josiah (‫סופר‬, perhaps head of the palace bureaucracy; 2 Kgs 22:3–24). (On the social location of scribes, see the excellent study of Karel van der Toorn, Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007], 51–108.) Shaphan’s son Aḥiqam was a powerful member of the bureaucracy (2 Kgs 22:12; Jer 26:24), as was another son, Gemariah (Jer 36:10). Aḥiqam, meanwhile, had at least two sons of note: one, Gedaliah hosted Jeremiah (Jer 39:14), continuing the family’s sponsorship of reformers, and later became the ruler of the Babylonian territory of Judah (2 Kgs 25:22; cf. Jer 40–41), a fact that probably indicates the family’s royal connections. Ezekiel charges another Shaphanite, Jaazaniah, with idolatry but does recognize him as a major leader whose malign influence must be opposed (see Ezek 8:11). 40  So Baruch Halpern, David’s Secret Demons: Messiah, Murderer, Traitor, King (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), esp.  77–78. 41  Here we can be misled by the placement of the story between two tales of David’s non-violent defeats of Saul. The Nabal story makes no obvious reference to Saul, though it does know about David’s future kingship. Contrasts between David’s behavior and Saul’s do not altogether redound to the former’s credit. Not only does Nabal’s death not prefigure Saul’s (contra Polzin, Samuel and the Deuteronomist, 211), but the story as a whole goes out of its way to ignore Saul and David’s struggle with him. Nor do the negotiation patterns and responses by David and other characters neatly mirror each other (contra Barbara Green, How are the Mighty Fallen? A Dialogical Study of King Saul in 1 Samuel, JSOTSup 365 [Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2003], 408–9). Our historical reconstructions, not the words of the text, drive us to see Nabal as a supporter of Saul (as in Simcha Shalom Brooks, Saul and the Monarchy: A New Look [Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005], 151). The story itself, however, offers three possible views of David: dependent of Nabal (David’s opening gambit), foe of all order (Nabal’s retort), and king worthy of tribute. None of those necessarily involves Saul at the level of the story, whatever we may say about the flow of the entire work of 1 Samuel. Nor is it clear how much the historical Saul would have influenced life in what became the kingdom of Judah. On a possible reconstruction of the merging of the stories, see Dietrich, “Zweifache Verschonung,” 247–51.

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narrator accepts the royal ideal seen in texts such as Ps 101 in which the monarch also protects the weak, but this point is left ambiguous. It is tempting to date such a story, as well as the surrounding material on Saul, to the turmoil in the region at the end of the eighth century,42 when David was a model but not yet the iconic hero of the Chronicler or later texts, but there is probably no way to be so precise. We do not know. We do know, however, that the interest in the lifeways of elites remains perennial. We also know, as Susan Pollock argues in a revealing study of the “human sacrifice” in the Ur III royal tombs, that elite groups use “(invented) tradition, routine practices, and the establishment of a notion of kingship that transcended individual holders of that office” to convince persons to do things they would ordinarily not do.43 A story such as this one shows that sometimes storytellers find ways to question the dominant narrative while also finding ways to resolve conflict within the culture. The narrator uses the story to explore how economic interests relate to other elements of social interaction (since gift-exchange parallels the economic system), how familial and quasi-familial relationships form and break apart, and how those at the top of the hierarchy should act.

The Dossier on Barzillai In the David stories, a second ‫ איׁש גדול‬appears, one Barzillai the Gileadite. The Hebrew Bible contains several stray traditions about him and his descendants, perhaps based on the genealogies that such an aristocratic family would have kept.44 Within the Davidic story, however, Barzillai functions as a foil to Nabal, an alternative way of being an elite member of society. He appears in the narrative in two episodes bracketing the tale of Absalom’s demise. The appearances of Barzillai thus serve as a framing device offering a contrast between those who engage the monarchy for self-serving reasons (Absalom the rebel 42  On which see, Baruch Halpern, “Jerusalem and the Lineages in the Seventh Century BCE,” in Law and Ideology in Monarchic Israel, eds. Baruch Halpern and Deborah W. Hobson, JSOTSup 124 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991), 11–107. Note also the comments of Dietrich, 1Sam 13–26, 762–64. For some modifications, particularly the demonstration of widespread economic and political readjustment under Hezekiah before Sennacherib’s invasion, see Andrew G. Vaughn, Theology, History, and Archaeology, 146–57. 43  Susan Pollock, “The Royal Cemetery of Ur: Ritual, Tradition, and the Creation of Subjects,” in Representations of Political Power: Case Histories from Times of Change and Dissolving Order in the Ancient Near East, eds. Marlies Heinz and Marian Feldman (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2007), 105. 44  See 1 Kgs 2:7; Ezra 2:61; Neh 7:63. The family apparently intermarried with the priesthood and otherwise served the nation. Within the narrative logic of the Deuteronomistic History, Barzillai offers “the very model of dutiful service to the king” as put by Iain Provan, “Why Barzillai of Gilead (1 Kings 2:7)? Narrative Art and the Hermeneutics of Suspicion in 1 Kings 1–2,” TynBul 46 (1995): 115.

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and Joab the counter-insurgency leader) and those who do not. Moreover, unlike those other characters, Barzillai does not engage in self-promotion through military prowess. His politics is subtler, rooted in gift giving and the rhetoric of deference. The first episode, 2 Sam 19:27–29, portrays him in the company of other magnates who offer numerous gifts, both of food and of furniture (‫ )מׁשכב‬and vessels, to David and his retinue. The list of gifts is especially detailed and goes beyond what one expects of rations. However, furniture (not to mention food) does figure as tribute in Assyrian reliefs,45 and thus the narrative may have in mind these gifts as permanent provisions, not simply as a temporary solution to a logistical problem. Thus the gift would function as a sign of the magnates’ loyalty to the struggling regime. 46 In reporting this story, the narrator adds a motive clause: ‫וצמא‬ ‫אמרו העם רעב ועיף‬46 ‫כי‬ ‫“( במדבר‬for they said, ‘the people may be hungry and tired and thirsty in the desert”). That is, the magnates give the gift, not because of the coercion of an imperious monarch, but as an act of generosity and fidelity to a struggling ally. They act as power brokers who can make or break the state. The second appearance of Barzillai comes in 2 Sam 19:32–40, in which he declines David’s invitation to participate in the life of the court, citing his advanced age and inability to discriminate among the fine viands of the court (v. 36: ‫האדע בין טוב לרע אם‬ ‫)יטעם עבדך את אׁשר אכל ואת אׁשר אׁשתה‬. As Victor Matthews has pointed out, this story explores the reciprocal nature of gift giving. By employing the rhetoric of self-abnegation, Barzillai manages to place a family member at court while avoiding leaving his own place.47 We can press this point further in at least three directions. First, the reference to the luxuries of the court, implicitly in contrast to the simpler fare of even the most powerful estate owners of the northern Transjordan, highlights the gap between the traditional gentry and those whose location at court gave them access to power, status, and wealth. If not for the characters, then at least for the implied reader of the text, Barzillai states reservations about the shifting of resources to provisioning the king’s retainers. Luxury may not be praiseworthy. In a well-known rhetorical strategy,48 Barzillai juxtaposes two hierarchies of value. In one, the skillful courtier can appreciate the best things of life, while country bumpkins, however rich, cannot. In a second, the aged have the wisdom to discern the truth about themselves, but not about the niceties of the court. By juxtaposing them, and by signaling that Barzillai is strong enough to cross the Jordan but too old to discern the quality of luxury goods, 45  For a discussion, see John Curtis, “Assyrian Furniture: The Archaeological Evidence,” in The Furniture of Western Asia Ancient and Traditional, ed. Georgina Herrmann (Mainz: von Zabern, 1996), 167–80. 46  Thus MT and apparently 4QSama. LXX assumes a third person singular verb, in which case the motive clause falls from the mouth of David, shifting the free offering to a demand. The singular reading is not implausible (contra the editors in DJD 17 [p.  165]), but does seem awkward. 47  Victor Matthews, “The Unwanted Gift: Implications of Obligatory Gift Giving in Ancient Israel,” Semeia 87 (1999): 95–96. 48  On which see, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, New Rhetoric, 337–45.

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the narrator raises serious questions about the integrity of the life at court. In this, the narrator shares the distrust of luxury-loving elites seen also in Amos 6 and similar texts, though without the sharp rhetorical edge of the prophetic invective.49 Second, Barzillai’s declination of a court appointment and David’s validation of that choice signal the narrator’s willingness to grant a dignity to the gentry that does not derive from royal patronage. The reciprocity between the characters that Matthews identifies remains more symmetrical than would otherwise be the case. By refusing to become a “burden” (‫ ;מׂשא‬v. 36) to the king, Barzillai implies that courtiers may be so characterized when they do not earn their way. Third, it is not obvious that the relocation of his son Kimham (v. 39) to the court was an entirely desirable result from Barzillai’s point of view.50 He may have been as much a hostage for his family’s good behavior as a recipient of royal honor. Certainly the story of Mephibosheth gives one pause on this score. We can now make a final observation about the Barzillai story. The movement of traditional elites to the court has been a frequent strategy of power management in states – think of Louis XVI’s Versailles or the use of royal hostages in numerous societies – because it allowed the monarch both to watch his clients and to separate them from their bases of power. Barzillai adroitly dodged such a fate by citing his advanced age and lack of sophistication. But the question is, why does the narrator pass on the tale? The text tries, I believe, to address the question of how the landed elite should relate to the state, or put the other way round, how much power the state should have. It does so by having Barzillai making arguments that persuade David, who after all owes his subject a great deal, but are in fact deeply ironic and subject to multiple interpretations. By portraying a courtier as someone who eats luxurious foods and listens to singers, Barzillai draws on the same view of the state that appears in the “rule of the king” in 1 Samuel 8, for which the royal court appropriates resources without offering substantive advantages to the populace. However, his view politely avoids the latter text’s critique of courtiers as leeches upon the nation as a whole but implies their effeteness (much as in Amos or 1 Sam 8). Such a view was undoubtedly contestable, as texts such as Psalms 45 or 72 make clear, but it had much to commend it (see also Chapter 9 below). Barzillai questions the values of the court though admitting his powerlessness to resist its power completely. The narrator, meanwhile, tells the tale in order, not to solve the problem of ill-directed hierarchy, but to describe its contours and to offer possible alternative solutions, one of which is an autonomous 49  I thank my student Josiah Peeler for pointing out this connection. It seems that in launching such attacks on the landed elites as Amos did, he could anticipate at least some support from other members of the culture, not only the victims of aristocratic abuse. One might expect within the aristocracy itself some criticisms of luxury as a weakening of ideals, as one sees later in someone like Cato the Elder or Confucian scholars, but such a social location is more difficult to pin down for the biblical texts themselves. 50  Contra Matthews, “Unwanted Gift,” 96; but J. P. Fokkelman, Narrative Art and Poetry in the Books of Samuel, vol.  1: King David (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1981), 307–8.

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aristocracy loyal to the monarchy but not dependent on it. The story thus expresses an unease, which must have been widespread, at the ways in which the Israelite state(s) altered traditional arrangements of power, status, and wealth.

Conclusions To conclude, then, elements of the stories of Nabal and Barzillai shed light on the lifeways of landed elite males and their hangers-on. Such patterns of relationship could be highly contestable, subject to change, and prone both to accident and to changes taking place far from the estates of the notables in question. Thus, surprisingly, it is possible, though the narrator has made it difficult, to feel sorry for a Nabal. He longs for a dying order in which one “knows” all one’s relationships and answers neither to upstart strongmen nor the monarch in an urban center, but to one’s place as a member of an old family with rich traditions. At some level, perhaps, the narrator shares that nostalgia, but hopes for a more stable order with the monarch on top. In that world, the place of speechmaking and gift giving would remain important, but for new reasons. But that is another story. The same may go for the story of Barzillai, who after all, appears in a much more favorable light. He appears as the sort of nobleman who takes his role seriously. Finally, what do these stories reveal about the social workings of ancient Israel? If it is possible to date stories from the sort of social relations they imagine existing in the real world, then these tales must reflect one or more times when the relationship of the landed gentry to the monarchy was a live topic. Again, both stories might well fit a time such as the turbulent last decades of the eighth century, when an opportunistic Judahite monarchy extended its reach over previously less pliant subjects. It might also fit a later period, though it is hard to imagine locating it in the post-exilic period, when the monarchy had become less a threat and more the subject of nostalgia or obloquy, depending on one’s view. In any case, as so often, the beautifully articulated stories of biblical narrative reveal the world beyond themselves even as they seek to reshape it. They also may reveal something of their intended audience, namely, the very elite groups who could sponsor the writing of a scroll and had the leisure to hear it read and to ponder its meaning. For such an audience, the Nabals and Barzillais were not merely names from the past. They were viable models for possible futures, as well.

Chapter 6:

Lost Kings and Lost Fields in Isaiah 32 [T]he art of policy is to create a calculation of the risks and rewards that affect the adversary’s calculations.1 Peasant and crops, in other words food supplies and the size of population, silently determined the destiny of the age.2

Such a quest for possible futures appears also in the Isaiah traditions, in several forms. If the DH represents an editorial process through which its creators edited its long and short source materials into an omnibus history of Israel from its entry into the promised land to its near expulsion, then the Isaiah book represents a similar process through which an analysis of the past could serve not just as warning but as a stimulus to creative thinking about the future. In both cases, the textualization of the past created an opportunity for a future outside the textual tradition, i.e., outside the realm of mere imagination. A significant part of this imaginative tradition of political theorizing appears in the book of Isaiah, then. This and the following chapter will consider two texts within that book, texts that are in many respects suggestive of the whole. To take a salient example, Isaiah 32 opens with a gorgeous paean to a future ideal ruler (vv. 1–8), shifts quickly to a lament for the despoiled nation (vv. 9–14), and ends with another poem anticipating national and royal restoration (vv. 15–20). What have these elements in common? Is their juxtaposition merely accidental, an ancient bit of patchwork solidified by medieval chapter divisions, or do they fit together in some meaningful way? If they do form a coherent unit, what is the rhetorical function of that unit? Answering these questions demands a multifaceted approach to the text, and it is not obvious that an answer will be forthcoming. Indeed, many scholars find the units to have little coherence with each other or with the pericopes immediately preceding and following them. However, analysis of the ways in which the constituent units individually and in combination use metaphor and argument to structure an audience’s beliefs, emotions, and actions – in short, the rhetorical functioning of the text – leads to a plausible interpretation of the whole. This study is not the first to consider 1 Kissinger,

Diplomacy, 481. Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, trans. Siân Reynolds (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), 2:1241. 2 

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the rhetoric of an Isaian text,3 but I do hope to break new ground by focusing on argumentation as well as stylistics, and by positioning the text within the nested intellectual environments within which it operated. Scholars at least since Duhm4 ordinarily identify three units in Isaiah 32: vv. 1–8, 9–14, and 15–20, with the first unit expressing hope for a revitalized monarchy and the rest of the chapter addressing concerns that such beatitude might not be realized. (Some see vv. 9–20 as a single unit consisting of two subunits, which amounts to the same thing.) As the text stands, vv. 9–14 lament political calamity, while vv. 1–8 and 15–20 alter the lament in several ways in order to create a meditation on the duties of kingship and elites by imagining a future state in which those duties are faithfully executed. The origins and processes of combination of the texts, as well as the authorial/editorial goals underpinning them, all trigger debate. What is more, any interpretation of the oracles in Isaiah 32 will interrelate with one’s views of a number of other interpretive problems, especially how these pericopes connect to those surrounding them. Since the precise development of chapters 28–35 (or 28–33 or 28–39, depending on one’s view) remains a highly contentious point, the rhetorical function and religio-political setting of all this material in chapter 32 deserve greater attention. For example, Duhm believed the entire chapter to stem from Isaiah of Jerusalem, rejecting atomizing tendencies as the work of “Philister.” Contemporary scholars are sharply divided, with Beuken understanding 1–8 and 9–14 to be Josianic or earlier and 15–20 to be a bridge unit,5 Sweeney believing the entire chapter to be the intend3 Gray, Rhetoric and Social Justice in Isaiah; Marta Høyland Lavik, A People Tall and SmoothSkinned: The Rhetoric of Isaiah 18, VTSup 112 (Leiden: Brill, 2007). An important essay shifting the focus of rhetorical analysis of biblical texts to argumentation and persuasion is Adina Moshavi, “Two Types of Argumentation Involving Rhetorical Questions in Biblical Hebrew Dialogue,” Bib 90 (2009): 32–46. 4  Bernhard Duhm, Das Buch Jesaia (1892; 5th ed.; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1968), 234–39; Otto Kaiser, Isaiah 13–39, OTL (London: SCM, 1974), 320–36; J. Vermeylen, Du Prophète Isaïe à l’apocalyptique: Isaïe, I–XXXV, miroir d’un demi-millénaire d’expérience religieuse en Israël, ÉBib (Paris: Gabalda, 1977), 1:424–28; Brevard Childs, Isaiah, OTL (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 236. Other arrangements include 1–2, 3–4, 5, 6–8, 9–11, 12–14, 15–18+20, 19 (Wilhelm Gesenius, Commentar über den Jesaia [Leipzig: Vogel, 1821], 884–90); 1–8, 9–20, with 9–14 and 15–20 being subsections (Joseph Addison Alexander, Isaiah Translated and Explained [New York: Wiley, 1851], 1:366; Willem Beuken, Isaiah II, vol.  2: Isaiah 28–39, HCOT [Leuven: Peeters, 2000], 219; John D. W. Watts, Isaiah 1–33, WBC 24 [rev. ed.; Nashville: Nelson, 2005], 480–89; Joseph Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 1–39, AB 19 [New York: Doubleday, 2000], 433); 1–5, 6–8, 9–14, 15–20 (Edward J. Kissane, The Book of Isaiah, vol.  1: I–XXXIX [Dublin: Browne and Nolan, 1960], 345; Georg Fohrer, Das Buch Jesaja, vol.  2: Kapitel 24–39 [Zurich: Zwingli, 1962], 118–28); 1–5, 6–8, 9–14, 15–20 (Paul Auvray, Isaïe 1–39, SB [Paris: Gabalda, 1972], 278–84); 1–8, 9–20 (9–12, 13–14, 15–20) (George Adam Smith, The Book of Isaiah, vol.  1: Isaiah I.-XXXIX. [New York: Armstrong, 1908], 248–70); and 1–8, 9–19, 20 (Marvin Sweeney, Isaiah 1–39: With an Introduction to Prophetic Literature, FOTL 16 [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996], 410). To my mind, the chapter consists of three major units, with a fairly clear coherence bridging two subunits in vv. 1–8 (a la Fohrer). Sweeney’s insightful analysis, however, deserves further consideration. 5 Beuken, Isaiah 28–39, 210, 222–23.

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ed conclusion of the Josianic redaction, 6 de Jong arguing for a complex redactional history beginning in the seventh century and extending much later,7 and Roberts returning to the views of Duhm by attributing the entire chapter to Isaiah of Jerusalem (though keeping an open mind on vv. 15–18),8 among other options. All such reconstructions depend on a series of intertwining hypotheses too difficult to unravel within a brief compass. Instead, it is worthwhile concentrating on the various parts of the chapter as religio-political discourse within the Isaiah tradition as it interacts with a series of wider Near Eastern intellectual problems.9 Some of these what one may call external connections are well-known, such as the intense reflection on the Marduk cult in Second Isaiah10 or the ongoing argument with Neo-Assyrian propaganda in the First Isaiah,11 so it should not be surprising, in principle, that the Isaiah tradition would contain more discussions of problems current throughout the region, not just in Israel. At the same time, literary expressions of religious traditions enjoy lives of their own, as the intellectual problems troubling the originating movement and the literary challenges of writing elegant poetry to explore them converge in a new literary creation. Thus internal literary factors come into play as well. 6 Sweeney,

Isaiah 1–39, 416; cf. Smith, Isaiah, 248–70. Matthijs J. de Jong, Isaiah among the Ancient Near Eastern Prophets: A Comparative Study of the Earliest Stages of the Isaiah Tradition and Neo-Assyrian Prophecies, VTSup 117 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 83–88. De Jong argues that several pericopes in chapters 28–32 “are part of a revision of the earlier prophetic material that was provoked by a new situation, the decline of the Assyrian empire in the later part of the seventh century” (89). I will try to show, however, that there is no sound reason for his break between verses 2 and 3 and that the shift in genre at that point fits widespread conventions of royal self-presentation. 8  J. J. M. Roberts, First Isaiah, ed. Peter Machinist, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015), 413. 9  See Shalom Paul, “Deutero-Isaiah and Cuneiform Royal Inscriptions,” JAOS 88 (1968): 180–86; Peter Machinist, “Assyria and Its Image in the First Isaiah,” JAOS 103 (1983): 719–37; Jesper Høgenhaven, “The Prophet Isaiah and Judaean Foreign Policy Under Ahaz and Hezekiah,” JNES 49 (1990): 351–54; Theodore J. Lewis, “‘You Have Seen What the Kings of Assyria Have Done’: Disarmament Passages vis-à-vis Assyrian Rhetoric of Intimidation,” in Isaiah’s Vision of Peace in Biblical and Modern International Relations: Swords Into Plowshares, eds. Raymond Cohen and Raymond Westbrook (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 75–100. One need not agree fully with Olof Bäckersten’s recent attempts to shift much of Isaiah’s social justice passages from an intra-Judahite to a pan-Near Eastern perspective to recognize that the Isaiah tradition was interested in religio-political problems at multiple levels. See Olof Bäckersten, Isaiah’s Political Message, FAT 2/29 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008). Like Amos 1–2, many texts in Isaiah seem to understand Israel/Judah as part of a network of states and therefore, of moral discourses. 10  See Peter Machinist, “Mesopotamian Imperialism and Israelite Religion: A Case Study from the Second Isaiah,” in Symbiosis, Symbolism, and the Power of the Past: Canaan, Ancient Israel, and Their Neighbors from the Late Bronze Age through Roman Palaestina, eds. William G. Dever and Seymour Gitin (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2003), 237–64; Hanspeter Schaudig, “‘Bēl Bows, Nabû Stoops’: The Prophecy of Isaiah xlvi 1–2 as a Reflection of Babylonian Processional Omens,” VT 58 (2008): 557–72; as well as the discussion in Chapter 7 below. 11  See, e.g., Peter Machinist, “Assyria and Its Image”; Michael Chan, “Rhetorical Reversal and Usurpation: Isaiah 10:5–34 and the Use of Neo-Assyrian Royal Idiom in the Construction of an Anti-Assyrian Theology,” JBL 128 (2009): 717–33. 7 

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More specifically, the book of Isaiah, like other parts of the Hebrew Bible, contains extensive reflections on the ideal state and possibilities for its realization in time and space. The already ancient fascination with kingship, human and divine, recurs throughout the book, illustrating the importance of the topic to ancient theologians of the three or more centuries during which the Isaiah tradition flourished. Though part of a larger web of texts, the three oracles in chapter 32 mark a key moment in the evolution of the Isaianic reflection on the monarchy, as will become clear. Far from being a heterogenous conglomeration of oracles, the three pieces fit together to set up a dialogue on the proper functioning of kingship. The editor of the text has set up a dialectical relationship between a view of monarchy, originating at court and represented by the royal psalms, that imagines it as the answer to all problems and one that envisages disaster for the nation, in part brought on by royal malfeasance or neglect, allowing the reader or hearer to imagine the reinvigoration of the monarchy and thus the nation. The focus on the ideal human king, because an ideal cannot be realized in history, opens up the possibility of shifting kingly images primarily to Yhwh (and secondarily to his vicegerents, such as Cyrus), as the Isaiah tradition would ultimately do (see Chapter 7 below). To understand how the oracles in Isaiah 32 work, then, one must consider the concentric circles of the text’s context. First, it is crucial to understand the mid-first millennium discussions of kingship, which took multiple forms but shared a common set of concerns. Second, it will be important to consider how the Isaiah tradition, at least as represented by the book of Isaiah, its major creation, talked about the monarchy. Third, a careful analysis of how the oracles function rhetorically should reveal the basic place of the oracles within the emerging Isaiah tradition as it thought about real-world problems.

Reflections on Kingship in the Ancient Near East To begin with the outermost contextual circle, the immediate intellectual climate of Isaiah 32’s consideration of kingship is that of the mid-first-millennium as scribes, in royal pay or not, reconfigured very old traditions throughout the Near East to help make sense of the creation of empires in the region and the subsequent intellectual and political challenges that the existence, legitimation, and preservation of the empires created. Much of this discourse is poorly understood, though the most influential voice, that of the Assyrian chancery, has rung increasingly clear in recent years.12 There is also clear evidence that the scribes of different states knew, and sought to 12  The publication and republication of relevant texts in the State Archives of Assyria and Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia series have made relevant texts easily available to biblical scholars, as well as others interested in the ancient Near East. On Assyrian strategies of rule and (implicitly) reflections thereon, see Frederick Mario Fales, “On Pax Assyriaca in the Eighth-Seventh Centuries bce and Its Implications,” in Isaiah’s Vision of Peace in Biblical and Modern International Relations:

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alter, each others’ use of narrative and other rhetorical strategies.13 Put briefly, throughout the Near East, ancient understandings of kingship were rethought in light of new realities on the ground. In the ancient world, the basic parameters of royal rule had been under discussion since at least the third millennium. Portrayals of the king as warrior and hero,14 builder of temples and cities,15 hunter of fierce beasts,16 protector of the vulnerable, and progenitor of dynasties had, despite variety in detail, reached a certain sustained balance. Royal propaganda, myth, and liturgy all envisioned kings in these ways. The absence of these royal images in a complex of texts would itself be significant, as should become clear for Isaiah 32 below. Reflections on the proper approach to kingship occurred in several genres. First, literary narratives (so-called epics) could explore the nature of tyranny and by implication its opposite, a disciplined, beneficent approach to rule. Thus Tablet III of the Epic of Gilgamesh speaks of the Urukians’ desperation at the sexual escapades of the epic’s eponymous hero, which is solved only when he departs with his Doppelgänger Swords Into Plowshares, eds. Raymond Cohen and Raymond Westbrook (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 17–35. 13  For examples, see André Lemaire, “Oracles, Politique et Littérature dans les Royaumes Araméens et Transjordaniens (IXe–VIIIe s. av. n.è),” in Oracles et Prophéties dans l’Antiquité, ed. Jean-Georges Heintz, Travaux du Centre de Recherche sur le Proche-Orient et la Grèce Antiques 15 (Paris: de Boccard, 1997), 171–93. On the cross-fertilization of scribal traditions, see the extended discussion of Eckart Frahm, Babylonian and Assyrian Text Commentaries: Origins of Interpretation, GMTR 5 (Münster: Ugarit, 2011); Veldhuis, Cuneiform Lexical Tradition, 387–89. 14  Perhaps the most ubiquitous image, attested in almost all ancient Near Eastern cultures, for obvious reasons. Interestingly, the Isaiah tradition downplays this role, even when war is known to have been a factor in a given king’s rule (e.g., note Isa 45:1–2), emphasizing, as in chapter 32, the role of the monarch as bringer of peace (‫)ׁשלום‬. That is, the circles that produced the book of Isaiah seem to have selected out warmaking as a kingly attribute, while retaining it for the divine king, Yhwh (see 41:1–2; 66). Arguably, this pacifistic attitude traces back to Isaiah of Jerusalem, as indicated by the exchanges with Ahaz in chapter 7. Regarding the presentation of violence as part of a network of signs surrounding the generative sign “king,” one might well echo Luc Bachelot’s more general remarks about the semiotics of Neo-Assyrian reliefs: “Le pouvoir absolu était selon l’interprétation courante et selon l’interprétation sémiologique la cause première, le determinant de la violence et de l’activité symbolique” (Luc Bachelot, “La fonction politique des reliefs Néo-Assyriens,” in Marchands, Diplomates et Empereurs: Études sur la civilization mésopotamienne offertes à Paul Garelli, eds. D. Charpin and F. Joannès [Paris ERC, 1991], 121). 15  The role of builder was, among other things, a way of connecting the present monarch to past rulers, since much construction was often actually reconstruction. See, for example, the comments on VA 5634, a building inscription of Sennacherib’s from Assur, by Eckhard Frahm, Historische und historisch-literarische Texte, WVDOG 121 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2009), 85–86. Several biblical traditions are critical of the role and unravel the connection between reconstruction and royal legitimacy (e.g., Jer 22:13–17; mutatis mutandis Amos 5–6 with its critique of nobles who imitate kings in lavish building). 16  E.g., the Assyrian royal seal portrays the king as lion stalker, an image widespread in Assyrian art, and calculated to impress the viewer with the crown’s power and comprehensive reach. Interestingly, this view of kingship is almost absent from the Israelite presentations of kings, perhaps anticipating the later Jewish view of hunting as a barbaric activity.

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Enkidu for far-flung adventures (see Chapter 4 above).17 Or Samuel warns against possible royal abuses and denies any malfeasance on his own part, with again the solution to the problem coming with the arrival of a physically imposing, but benign outsider (see 1 Sam 8:20–22; 12:1–5; cf. Num 16:15). Or the prophetic stories about the Omrides represent a dynasty that was politically successful on the world stage as utterly corrupt and tyrannical. In short, a range of oppositional strategies was available to ancient critics of monarchs. Second, inscriptions use epithets and other short descriptors, often quoted from standard myths and epics,18 to describe kings. Thus the Assyrian rulers describe themselves as šarru dannu (“mighty king”), šar šarrāni (“king of kings”), and so on.19 So, for example Shalmaneser III portrays himself as Shalmaneser, king of all people, prince, vice-regent of Aššur, strong king, king of Assyria, king of all the four quarters, sun of all people, ruler of all lands, the king desired of the gods, chosen of Enlil, trustworthy appointee of Aššur, attentive prince, who has seen remote and rugged regions, who has trodden upon the mountain peaks in all the highlands, receiver of booty and tax from all the four quarters, who opens paths above and below, at whose strong attack for combat the four quarters are distressed (and at) whose warlike ferocity the lands are convulsed down to their foundations, strong male who acts with the support of Aššur and Šamaš. …20

Though hardly a critical analysis of kingship, the introit to the annalistic inscription does reveal a set of deep cultural reflections, often ritualized,21 on the proper self-display of the king as epic hero, defender of the nation, and object of human veneration and divine care. The propaganda worked because it met the expectations of audiences about kingship.22 The focus of royal self-presentation could shift in response to realities on the ground, as when eighth- and seventh-century Neo-Assyrian kings 17  Though not the noble savage, as shown by Aage Westenholz and Ulla Koch-Westenholz, “Enkidu – the Noble Savage?” in Wisdom, Gods and Literature: Studies in Assyriology in Honor of W. G. Lambert, eds. A. R. George and I. L. Finkel (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2000), 437–50; on a possible anti-imperialist bent to the story, see Tracy Davenport, “An Anti-Imperialist Twist to ‘The Gilgameš Epic’,” in Gilgameš and the World of Assyria: Proceedings of the Conference held at the Mandelbaum House, the University of Sydney, 21–23 July 2004, eds. Joseph Azize and Noel Weeks, ANESSup 21 (Leuven: Peeters, 2007), 1–23. To my mind, however, the epic seems a more generalized critique of royal abuse than one of imperialism per se. The irony of the Neo-Assyrian adoption of epical tropes for their own royal self-display is thus all the more profound. 18  On the use of Enuma Elish, Lugale, and Erra in Assyrian royal inscriptions, see Amar Annus, The God Ninurta in the Mythology and Royal Ideology of Ancient Mesopotamia, SAAS 14 (Helsinki: Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 2002), 97–101; further, Stefan M. Maul, “Der assyrische König – Hüter der Weltordnung,” in Priests and Officials in the Ancient Near East, ed. K. Watanabe (Heidelberg: Winter, 1999), 201–14. 19  For a useful study of the titulary, see Barbara Cifola, Analysis of Variants in the Assyrian Royal Titulary from the Origins to Tiglath-pileser III (Naples: Instituto Universitario Orientale, 1995). 20  From the Kurkh Monolith, RIMA 0.102.2: i:5–10 (with slight modifications from the translation of A. Kirk Grayson). 21  See the study of the Neo-Assyrian basket ritual in Barbara Nevling Porter, “Ritual and Politics in Assyria: Neo-Assyrian Kanephoric Stelai for Babylonia,” Hesperia Supplements 33 (2004): 259– 74. 22  As explored by Peter Machinist, “Kingship and Divinity in Imperial Assyria,” in Text, Artifact,

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shifted the ninth-century focus away from the king as bringer of fertility to the king as receiver of tribute,23 or when the kings of Suḫu focused on their roles as sponsors of scientific agriculture,24 or when Israelite rulers adopted first Egyptian and then Assyrian artistic themes for their own portrayal.25 The Hebrew Bible, mutatis mutandis, preserved both official and quasi-official texts such as the royal psalms and other, non-official or even dissident traditions. By contrasting these texts, it is possible to identify the key points of discussion about the nature of well-functioning kingship. Without entering into the intricacies of the issues, suffice it to say that there is little difference in principle, though much in detail, between Israel and its neighbors as far as official presentations of the monarchy go.26 The ideational and practical problems surrounding kingship existed throughout the region. On the other hand, within the range of problems set by the longstanding regional intellectual tradition(s), some thinkers did strike out in new directions, as seems to have been the case with Isaiah of Jerusalem and his visions of universal peace.27 Isaiah 32’s interest in the nature of the ideal king thus finds a home within this broad set of discourses. Such a vision underlies both the self-presentation of monarchs as they portray their military might, piety, and loyalty to the chief values of the culture, but it also appears more overtly in a handful of chronistic or pseudochronistic texts such as the Cuthaean Legend and the Uruk Prophecy,28 which depict evil kings as those who breed internecine strife, neglect the temples, and fail to proand Image: Revealing Ancient Israelite Religion, eds. Gary Beckman and Theodore J. Lewis (Providence, RI: Brown Judaic Studies, 2006), 152–88. 23  See Barbara Nevling Porter, “Sacred Trees, Date Palms, and the Royal Persona of Ashurnasirpal II,” JNES 52 (1993): 120–39; John Malcolm Russell, Sennacherib’s Palace Without Rival at Nineveh (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 152–90 (“The absence of the ‘sacred tree’ from the corner slabs of the rooms of Sennacherib’s palace may be attributed to Sennacherib’s exclusive use of continuous military narrative….” [187]); Jürgen Bär, “Tributdarstellungen,” 231–61. 24  RIMB S.0.1001.1 II.37b’-41’; IV.13-V.6 (Šamaš-rēša-uṣur); his successor Ninurta-kudurrī-uṣur seems to have abandoned the rhetorical strategy in favor of Assyrianizing frightfulness and celebration of military achievements. See Chapter 9 below. 25 Rüdiger Schmitt, Bildhafte Herrschaftsrepräsentation im eisenzeitlichen Israel, AOAT 283 (Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2001), 195–96. The imitation of Egyptian forms is, of course older, going back to the Late Bronze Age and continuing into the Iron Age, as shown by such studies as Carolyn R. Higginbotham, Egyptianization and Elite Emulation in Ramesside Palestine: Governance and Accommodation on the Imperial Periphery, CHANE 2 (Leiden: Brill, 2000). 26  Cf. Patricia Dutcher-Walls, “The Circumscription of the King: Deuteronomy 17:16–17 in its Ancient Social Context,” JBL 121 (2002): 601–16. 27  Raymond Cohen and Raymond Westbrook, “Conclusion: Swords Into Plowshares Then and Now,” in Isaiah’s Vision of Peace in Biblical and Modern International Relations: Swords Into Plowshares, eds. Raymond Cohen and Raymond Westbrook (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 230. 28  On historical issues in the “Uruk Prophecy,” which values the renovation of temples and cult images as a sure sign of divine favor of given kings, see Robert D. Biggs, “The Babylonian Prophecies and the Astrological Traditions of Mesopotamia,” JCS 37 (1985): 86–90; Jonathan A. Goldstein, “The Historical Setting of the Uruk Prophecy,” JNES 47 (1988): 43–46; Maria deJong Ellis, “Observations on Mesopotamian Oracles and Prophetic Texts: Literary and Historiographic Considerations,” JCS 41 (1989): 127–86.

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tect the land from invaders. Good kings, by definition, play the opposite roles. In the words of the text sometimes called “The King of Justice,” the ruler For the sake of due process … did not neglect truth and justice, nor did he rest day or night! He was always drawing up, with reasoned deliberation, cases and decisions pleasing to the great lord Marduk framed for the benefit of all the people and the stability of Babylonia. He drew up improved regulations for the city, he rebuilt the law court, he drew up regulations. The image of his kingship is eternal.29

The king “who reigns for righteousness,” as Isaiah 32 puts it, was a known character in the imagined world of a number of intellectuals in the ancient Near East. The sign “ideal king” did not exist in a semiotic vacuum, but in interaction with an elaborate network of signs associated with living, breathing kings as they portrayed themselves as disinterested benefactors of their fellow human beings or as loyal agents of the divine realm (or rather, their scribes and sculptors portrayed them so). The ideal both challenged, and drew nourishment from, broader discourses about monarchy. Thus the challenge of fitting history into a mythic framework in a convincing way exercised these ancient scribes, not least in Israel.

Kingship in the Isaiah Tradition It should not be too surprising then, that the book of Isaiah contains numerous references to monarchs, creating an elaborate network of reflections on the nature of kingship, human and divine, Israelite and foreign. These kings play a role as foes of Israel or possible allies, as boastful plotters of wars, and as witting (or not) instruments of divine guidance. References to Kings in the Book of Isaiah ‫מלכי יהודה‬

1:1; 7:1, 6 (usurper); 14:28

‫מלך ארם‬

7:1, 17

‫מלך יׂשראל‬

7:1

‫מלך אׁשור‬

7:20; 8:4, 7; 10:12; 20:1, 4, 6; 36:1, 2, 4, 8, 13, 14, 16, 15, 18; 37:4, 6, 8, 10, 11, 18; 37:21, 33, 37; 38:6

‫מלך בבל‬

14:4; 39:1, 7

‫מלכי האדמה‬

24:21

‫יהוה‬

6:5; 33:17, 22; 41:21; 43:15; 44:6

29  Following with slight modifications the translation in Benjamin R. Foster, Before the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian Literature, 3rd ed. (Bethesda, MD: CDL, 2005), 871; on the historical and literary issues, see W. G. Lambert, “Nebuchadnezzar King of Justice,” Iraq 27 (1965): 1–11; and, connecting the text to Nabunaid, Hanspeter Schaudig, Die Inschriften Nabonids von Babylon und Kyros’ des Großen samt den in ihrem Umfeld entstandenen Tendenzschriften: Textausgabe und Grammatik, AOAT 256 (Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2001), 579–88 and infra.

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Chapter 6:  Lost Kings and Lost Fields in Isaiah 32

‫חזקיהו‬

36:1, 2, 21; 37:1, 5, 10; 38:9; 39:3

‫מלך מצרים‬

36:6

‫מלך כוׁש‬

37:9

Kings of other Aramaean states

37:13

‫מלכי גוים‬

14:9, 18

‫מלכי קדם‬

19:11

Unspecified foreign kings

41:2; 45:1; 49:7, 23; 52:15; 60:3, 10; 60:16; 62:2

Others

23:15; 30:33Qere

This richly textured portrayal of monarchs demonstrates the Isaiah tradition’s ongoing fascination with kingship, and especially the construal of foreign nations as ruled by kings who must compete with the paramount king, Yhwh, or else become amenable to the deity’s leading (like Cyrus). The treatment of kingship seems to have developed in stages. Without trying to work out all the details, I would identify three, all interlocking and mutually reinforcing. The eighth- and seventh-century bce texts in First Isaiah portray human kings as Yhwh’s soon to be defeated foes, whose boastful self-display30 or appeals to antiquity31 fail before the divinity’s intervention. Thus the Isaianic view of foreign kingship takes as its starting point the already ancient Judahite royal propaganda (seen in Ps 2 or 2 Sam 7 and its derivative texts), while it simultaneously deliberately inverts the propaganda strategies of the monarchies it condemns.32 The second stage appears in the text at hand, as well as in Isa 8:23–9:6, both of which envision an ideal human king as the solution of problems. 30  Isa 7:1–17 (Aram and Israel); 10:12; 36:8–18 (Assyria; on the Rab-šaqeh’s speech, see Peter Machinist, “The Rab Šāqēh at the wall of Jerusalem: Israelite Identity in the Face of the Assyrian ‘Other’,” HS 41 [2000]: 151–68; Isa 37:4 makes it clear that the author of the story understood the Assyrian official to speak for his master and thus his speech to function as royal self-display. One might argue that chaps. 36–37 belong to the postexilic era [as Høgenhaven, “Prophet Isaiah”], but Sweeney [Isaiah 1–39, 471–85] has convincingly shown that, while chapters 36–39 underwent a series of redactions, most of the extant story seems to date to the seventh century bce because it presupposes Sennacherib’s ultimate fate, while only chapter 39 and a few late additions assume the Babylonian invasion). 31  Isa 19:11 ‫“( אני בן מלכי קדם‬I am the son of ancient kings”) cites the Pharaoh’s claim to legitimacy based on a notional (and, as it happens, counterfactual, especially if the oracle refers to the rulers of Dynasty 25 rather than Dynasty 26) claim to the continuity of rule, an argument from the nature of reality (my family has always ruled; continuity equals legitimacy; therefore my rule is legitimate). On the date of the text, I agree with Sweeney (Isaiah 1–39, 272–73) on a seventh-century bce date; but see the critique in Childs (Isaiah, 142). One should consider, however, the emphasis by Roberts on Tanis in the oracle as the capital of the first Egyptian polity encountered by a traveler from Judah, and thus the central point of reference for the oracle’s understanding of Egypt. However, his view presupposes an eighth-century dating for the oracle, which cannot, of course, be excluded. See Roberts, First Isaiah, 260. 32  For example, see the Neo-Assyrian portrayal of the foreign king as immoral boaster; references in Fales, “Enemy in Assyrian Royal Inscriptions.”

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Though inherently unstable – what king could be an ideal ruler except in the memories of his distant successors or the publications of his own hireling public relations staff? – the idea of such a figure paved the way for the third stage, in which no human (at least no Israelite) king is necessary for Yhwh to reign in splendor. Thus the idealizations of a prospective king laid the groundwork for the abandonment of the idea of an Israelite monarchy present in Second Isaiah and later layers of the Isaiah tradition.33 While the word “stage” might seem to imply a series of mutually exclusive, as well as chronologically successive, understandings of kingship, the coexistence of the layers within the book of Isaiah implies that the circles responsible for the book did not see the identified views as exclusionary alternatives but as somehow in a dialectical tension with each other. Moreover, as texts such Isa 41:1–2 or 45:1 show, the idea of the defeat of kings as a triumph over chaos endured, though in new guises. While the precise attitude of Isaiah or his epigones to identifiable discrete political problems remains elusive, as Reventlow has recently cautioned,34 the attitude of the final form of the book of Isaiah (and thus of its tradents and redactors) to monarchy as an institution seems clear enough. As the Second Isaiah concluded, the kings of the earth pose no final threat to Israel because they must bow the knee to Yhwh. Thus the sundry foreign rulers appear in both chapters 40–55 and in 56–66 as suppliants who “come to your light,” or draw sustenance from Jerusalem’s notional breasts and thus become witness to Yhwh’s triumph over evil and redemption of Israel (see Isa 41:1–2; 49:7, 23; 60:3). The ultimate king is Yhwh, against whose standards of righteousness all actions of rulers must be measured. Human kings, Israelite and foreign, stand or fall on the basis of their commitment to righteousness.

The King Who Reigns in Righteousness (32:1–8) Within this network of notices about kingship, Isaiah 32:1–8 offers a remarkable vision of a renewal of the Israelite monarchy: Behold, for loyalty shall a king reign, and indeed nobles will lead for judgment. And a man will be like a shelter from the wind, a hiding place in a thunderstorm, like streams of water on the steppe, like a massive overhang in a parched land. The eyes of the seeing will not crust over, yes, the ears of the hearing will listen, and the heart of the attentive will understand knowledge, and the tongue of the stammerer will speak fluidly. And the fool will never again be called noble, nor the stupid eminent. For the fool speaks folly, and his heart does iniquity, to do ungodliness and to speak error to Yhwh, to leave the throat of the starving empty, to deprive the thirsty of drink. 33  But see Otto Kaiser, Der königliche Knecht: Eine traditionsgeschichtlich-exegetische Studie über die Ebed-Jahwe-Lieder bei Deuterojesaja, 2nd ed. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1962). 34  Henning Graf Reventlow, “A Religious Alternative to a Political Response to a Severe Political Crisis: King Ahaz and the Prophet Isaiah,” in Religious Responses to Political Crises in Jewish and Christian Tradition, eds. Henning Graf Reventlow and Yair Hoffman, LHBOTS 444 (New York/ London: T. & T. Clark, 2008), 36–51.

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The gangster’s gadgets are evil, he hatches plots to harass the poor with lying words, yes the destitute pleading a cause. But the noble plans noble things, and he makes noble things happen. ‫ולׂשרים למׁשפט יׂשרו‬35 ‫הן לצדק ימלך מלך‬ ‫והיה איׁש כמחבא רוח וסתר זרם‬ ‫בציון כצל סלע כבד בארץ עיפה‬36 ‫כפלגי מים‬ ‫    ולא תׁשעינה עיני ראים ואזני ׁשמעים תקׁשבנ ה‬ ‫צחות‬37 ‫ולבב נמהרים יבין לדעת ולׁשון עלגים תמהר לדבר‬ ‫לא יקרא עוד לנבל נדיב ולכילי לא יאמר ׁשוע‬ ‫כי נבל נבלה ידבר ולבו יעׂשה און‬ ‫לעׂשות חנף ולדבר אל יהוה תועה‬ ‫להריק נפׁש רעב ומׁשקה צמא יחסיר‬ ‫וכלי כליו רעים הוא זמות יעץ‬ ‫להבל ענוים באמרי ׁשקר ובדבר אביון מׁשפט‬ ‫ונדיב נדיבות יעץ והוא על נדיבות יקום‬

Such a beautiful vision poses significant interpretive challenges for those who seek to understand how it functions either in the vision of kingship in the book of Isaiah or in the ongoing Israelite political discourse. Here I wish to focus on three issues: (1) the coherence of the text as a portrayal of the righteous king; (2) its interest in oratory and other forms of communication as instruments of rule; and (3) the imagined place of monarchy within the entire power structure of a poorly or well functioning polity. Is the text coherent? Even on a casual reading, Isaiah 32:1–8 exhibits considerable variety of voice and literary genre, opening with a carefully balanced dictum about a future state of well-functioning government (v. 1) and supplementing it with a series of similes reminiscent of the depiction of the sage in Psalm 1 (v. 2), and a series of aphorisms (vv. 3–8) that build to a climax with a statement on the match between sound rhetoric and the virtue of the rhetor. Some commentators, therefore, have understood the text to be the result of one or more expansions.38 However, such divisions seem arbitrary, failing as they do to recognize the capacity of ancient authors both to incorporate proverbs in other literary genres (which was quite a common practice, in fact)39 and 35  Taking the lamedh to be emphatic (with William Henry Irwin, Isaiah 28–33: Translation with Philological Notes, BibOr (Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1977), 120. On the preposition ‫ ל‬as a statement of intent in the rest of the verse, see J. W. Olley, “Notes on Isaiah XXXII 1, XLV 19, 23 and LXIII 1,” VT 33 (1983): 446–53; but GKC §  143e. 36  LXX’s ἐν Σιων may (inadvertently?) pick up a pun intended by the author. 37  But note LXX’s reading εἰρήνην, apparently a case of ad sensum interpretation of the larger political context of the passage and thus an early witness to its overall interpretation. 38 Thus Hans Wildberger, Jesaja 1–39, 3 vols., BKAT 10 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1965–1982), 1251; de Jong, Isaiah, 83–88. 39  As shown, with numerous examples, by W. G. Lambert, Babylonian Wisdom Literature, 280– 82; Gary Beckman, “Proverbs and Proverbial Allusions in Hittite,” JNES 45 (1986): 19–30; and William W. Hallo, “Proverbs Quoted in Epic,” in Lingering Over Words: Studies in Ancient Near Eastern

Reflections on Kingship in the Ancient Near East

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to shift subject slightly even within the same unit.40 Using a switch of genre alone as a marker of literary development is methodologically dubious, and in this case, reasons for such divisions are simply arbitrary and unconvincing, even if, of course, the text does work out several thoughts simultaneously.41 The sapiential material serves as amplification and warrant for the basic vision of a just king and hierarchy. If the unit is coherent, to what does it refer? The use of the imperfect verbs in v. 1 ‫ ימלך‬and ‫ יׂשרו‬imply an imagined condition, a non-real referent, though one of which an audience can conceive, if just barely.42 They can do so if the prophet can construct a proper set of contrasts and anticipations. This is true because, as Umberto Eco argued in a brilliant book on referentiality, humans understand new experiences or realia based on prior shared mental constructs that we test in various ways with one another. Reference is based on prior contracts, that is, worked-out agreements on what counts as real.43 In ancient Israel, the “king” and the “nobles” functioned as an imagined pair,44 even if their relationship was under constant negotiation in practice and therefore in ideation. Thus there is no real reason to understand the opening vision of chapter 32 as anything other than a coherent whole. Yet, again, what sort of whole is it? The unit begins with a set of similes comparing the rulers to various forms of shelter from the elements (‫ )כמחבא רוח וסתר זרם‬and supplies of relief to the weary traveler (‫)כפלגי מים בציון כצל סלע כבד בארץ עיפה‬, along the way contrasting dryness and moisture, with the latter characterizing the fit rule of the imagined future. It then moves to a series of truisms about fools and their abuse of language, leading finally to a more direct accusation of them and thus a more penetrating analysis of their misrule: they abuse the poor. Gitay is certainly correct to note that speeches elsewhere in Isaiah make such shifts artfully and intentionally. As he puts it, “The rhetorical strategy of adjusting the audience’s position to the different positions maintained in the speech is the metaphor. The metaphor provides the Literature in Honor of William L. Moran, eds. Tzvi Abusch, John Huehnergard, and Piotr Steinkeller, HSS 37 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990), 203–17. 40  Other sapiential material appears in the Isaiah collection. On disputations in Isa 40–55, see Meindert Dijkstra, “Lawsuit, Debate and Wisdom Discourse in Second Isaiah,” in Studies in the Book of Isaiah (FS Willem A. M. Beuken), eds. J. van Ruiten and M. Vervenne, BETL 132 (Leuven: University Press/Peeters, 1997), 251–71. 41  As Blenkinsopp (Isaiah 1–39, 429), Sweeney (Isaiah 1–39, 415–17), and others recognize, vv. 1–8 work together as a single unit. 42  This is not the same as understanding the entire text to be wisdom instruction, as argued for by Irwin, Isaiah 28–33, 120. His construal depends on a series of grammatical analyses that are, at best, debatable. 43 Umberto Eco, Kant and the Platypus: Essays on Language and Cognition, trans. Alastair McEwen (New York: Harcourt, 1999), esp.  285–91, 317–21, 334–36. 44  The connections between ‫ ׂשרים‬and ‫מלכים‬, though varied and complex appear repeatedly in the Bible as a sort of folk sociology. The “princes” often figure in stories as courtiers, less often as independent lairds (e.g., Ps 68:28), though one should not overestimate the distinction since life at court would have been a route to wealth and power, just as local prominence could lead one to court in time. As a literary pair, the two words appear in Jer 1:18; 44:17, 21; Hos 3:4; 8:10; Lam 2:9; Esth 1:21; Ezra 8:25; 1 Chron 24:6; and 2 Chron 36:18.

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Chapter 6:  Lost Kings and Lost Fields in Isaiah 32

means for deducing the argument, and perceiving it as self-evident.”45 What seems, then, to be a case of incoherence proves, again, to be anything but. The coherent whole describes a coming king, though one may doubt whether the text is a “prophetic instruction speech concerning the announcement of a royal savior,” as Sweeney puts it.46 Not only is the label “instruction” too vague to be useful, but also understanding the text as announcing a historically identifiable king, as opposed to an imagined one, poses significant problems. Which king would it be? If vv. 9–14 describe the devastation of Sennacherib’s invasion in 701 bce, then the referent would be someone other than Hezekiah (Manasseh, perhaps?), a view that the criticisms of Hezekiah in chapters 36–39 might support.47 Or perhaps the text does not envision the devastation resulting from invasion but from the sort of economic collapse one might expect to result, but cannot demonstrate for the Levant, from the Assyrian civil war between Assurbanipal and Šamaš-šuma-ukīn, in which case Josiah might be a candidate, though the lack of specificity seems a problem.48 Or perhaps the renewal of the nation that comes from the righteousness-bringing king is a sort of type scene, an ideal with no readily identifiable historical setting. In this case, which I think most likely, the text intentionally leaves the identity of the coming king vague in order to allow the image to function as a standing critique of any given monarch. Certainly the text has such a sweeping effect, intended or not. In this, it closely resembles Isa 1:2–10’s indictment of the “rulers of Sodom,” a convergence of theme that points arguably to deliberate framing of the material at the beginning and ending of a corpus. (Incidentally, a date after 586 bce seems unwarranted because 32:1–8 implies the existence of kings and nobles who do not rule appropriately, not the total obliteration of the hierarchy.49)

45  Yehoshua Gitay, “Why Metaphors? A Study of the Texture of Isaiah,” in Writing and Reading the Scroll of Isaiah: Studies of an Interpretive Tradition, eds. Craig C. Broyles and Craig A. Evans, VTSup 70 (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 1:65. 46 Sweeney, Isaiah 1–39, 410; a similar objection applies to Kaiser’s (Isaiah 13–39, 321) understanding of the text as a “wisdom prophecy,” which seems simultaneously to affirm and to deny an airtight separation between prophetic and wisdom circles and texts. In my view, it is simply not useful to conflate literary with sociological categories in such ways. See further Mark W. Hamilton, “Israelite Religion as Communication: An Essay on Method,” in Epigraphy, Philology, and the Hebrew Bible: Methodological Perspectives on Philological and Comparative Study of the Hebrew Bible in Honor of Jo Ann Hackett, eds. Jeremy M. Hutton and Aaron D. Rubin (Atlanta: SBL, 2015), 295– 327. 47  For the issues in reclaiming the reign of Manasseh, see e.g., Ernst Axel Knauf, “The Glorious Days of Manasseh,” in Good Kings and Bad Kings, ed. Lester L. Grabbe (London: T. & T. Clark, 2005), 164–88. 48  See the discussion of Blenkinsopp (Isaiah 1–39, 430), who rules out both an eighth and a latesixth century bce date on somewhat different grounds. 49  But not an eighth century bce date, contra Paul D. Wegner, An Examination of Kingship and Messianic Expectation in Isaiah 1–35 (Lewiston, NY: Mellen, 1992), 296–97.

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How the text works as rhetoric It is one thing to say, then, that the text has a single identifiable (if imaginary) referent. It is another to discern how it leads an audience to understand that referent. Though the text does not ask the audience to do anything, it does more than confirm their values, and is therefore more like Aristotle’s forensic than his epideictic mode of oratory.50 The audience must decide whether any given set of rulers conforms to the ideal of 32:1. To create such an effect, the text relies on two types of arguments. The first is the argument from direction (“if we continue to do X, then Y will result”), a temporally-based argument that “always aims at making a stage and later developments interdependent.”51 Thus vv. 3–4 imagine the time when sensory organs will function properly and sense impressions will lead to correct knowledge because the rulers do their job properly (‫ולא תׁשעינה עיני ראים ואזני ׁשמעים תקׁשבנה ולבב נמהרים יבין לדעת ולׁשון‬ ‫)עלגים תמהר לדבר צחות‬. The right working of the body may have a causal link to right rule because Israel follows its leaders in virtue, as Wildberger suggests,52 or it may refer to the rulers themselves insofar as they are idealized human beings, as Beuken has it,53 but the text does not specify the precise referent of vv. 3–4 (whether the rulers or the people) because it is more interested in the tendency of all humans in the realm in which ‫ צדקה‬and ‫ מׁשפט‬reign. Moreover, the Isaiah tradition repeatedly refers to the blind, mute, and deaf as either signs of divine disapproval or recipients of divine grace.54 The healing of their ailments in Isaiah 32 marks a point of progress in the unfolding narrative of redemption in the book. Accordingly, the collocation of these figures describes a result of just rule in order to allow the audience to envision a reality different from that currently in play. Since no one would wish to return to a state of improperly functioning bodies, the vision of a new politics becomes a newly unarguable piece of the audience’s consciousness. The second argument is one of coexistence (not temporally sequential, but concurrently real), in which an act becomes “an element making it possible to construct and reconstruct our image of the person and to classify him into categories to which certain qualifications may be applied.”55 The prophetic rhetor asks the audience to

50 Aristotle,

Rhet., 1.3.5–6. Chaïm Perelman and L. Olbrechts-Tyteca, New Rhetoric, 283. 52  Hans Wildberger, Jesaja 1–39, 1256; but contrast Sweeney, Isaiah 1–39, 410–11. 53 Beuken, Isaiah 28–39, 212–13. 54  Note the comments of Hyun Chul Paul Kim, “The Spider-Poet: Signs and Symbols in Isaiah 41,” in The Desert Will Bloom: Poetic Visions in Isaiah, eds. A. Joseph Everson and Hyun Chul Paul Kim (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009), 176–77. ‫ עורים‬appears in Isa 29:18; 35:5; 42:7, 16, 18, 19; 43:8; 56:10; and 59:10; ‫ חרׁשים‬in 29:18; 35:5; 42:18, 19; 43:8 and the verb ‫ חרׁש‬in 36:21; 41:1; and 42:14. The combination of terms (implied, since the “deaf” are not explicitly mentioned, perhaps represented by the hapax ‫“ עלגים‬stammerers,” arguably those whose deafness leads to a speech disorder) may appear in 32:1–8 for the first time in the Isaiah tradition’s texts. 55  Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, New Rhetoric, 297. 51 

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judge current rulers deficient, not only in comparison with an imagined future set of leaders, but against common norms for actors with power. This argument from the nature of the relationships between acts and actors happens in several stages: (1) the poem reclaims language as a way of identifying characters properly ( ‫)לא יקרא עוד לנבל נדיב ולכילי לא יאמר ׁשוע‬, implying that the “fool” or “ignoble” and the “noble” are static (and antithetical) types that should be properly identified by actions, but often are not; (2) by highlighting specific actions characterizing a person as ignoble including using morally defective speech (‫ולדבר אל ;;נבל נבלה ידבר‬ ‫ ; יהוה תועה‬cf. 1 Sam 25:1–43), plotting wickedness (‫) לעׂשות חנף ;;ולבו יעׂשה און‬, and depriving the vulnerable of much-needed goods (‫ )להריק נפׁש רעב ומׁשקה צמא יחסיר‬in clear violation of cultural norms,56 the text casts the current rulers as opponents of God and oppressors of human beings, thus eliminating any possible defense of them based on their prestige or the length of their rule; and (3) the unit finishes off with another aphorism or statement of a fixed reality that provides a warrant for judging the oppressive rulers to be foolish and ignoble (‫)וכלי כליו רעים הוא זמות יעץ‬. The argument interweaves ideas of permanent state and discrete actions reflecting those states in a seamless way. How persuasive was this analysis of contemporary politics to the prophet’s audience? As Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca correctly note, such arguments “are rather weak if they are not envisaged as a continuous interaction of act and person,”57 an observation that leads almost inevitably to the semioticians’ notion of mental constructs lying at the heart of all communication. The ideas “just rulers” and “unjust rulers” depend on a network of referents in both the mind and in the real world (“ruler,” “justice,” “evaluative capacity of the governed,” etc.). They form a contrast between a model and an anti-model, a form of argumentation that moves an audience to evaluate behavior in terms of its adherence to dearly held values.58 Israelites may never have seen an ideal ruler, but they had seen bad ones. The question is, where did those they confronted day-by-day fall on the spectrum of possibilities? If subjects believed their rulers just, then the oracle must have fallen flat, and if not, then not. 56  See the discussion of the obligations of elite strata of society in Job 31, discussed in Chapter 8 below. An instructive sample of the interplay of socioeconomic location, affective self-understanding and self-display, and theological reflection is the use the noun ‫ ענו‬and the verb ‫ ענה‬in the Psalter. The noun became a sort of liturgical cliché, sometimes referring to the people as a whole (Ps 149:4), but more often a social layer, albeit not necessarily easily identifiable simply in terms of its economic resources. Social capital and other less tangible elements must also play a role. Most significantly, the liturgical texts portray the ‫ ענוים‬as the objects of Yhwh’s protection and care (Pss 9:13; 10:11–13, 17; 22:27; 25:9; 34:3; 37:11 69:33–34; 76:10; and 147:6). Differently, the verb (especially in the D and Dˉ conjugations) does not seem to refer to a social stratum or socioeconomic position (at least not primarily), but to a moral or religious state (most notably Ps 132:1; also 88:8; 119:71, 75; but contrast 105:18; 107:17, which relate more closely to the use of the noun). Thus I strongly disagree with the common treatment of this topic, as seen e.g. in Erhard Gerstenberger, “‫ ענה‬II ᶜānâ,” TDOT 11 (2001): 230–52, esp.  245–48. 57  Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, New Rhetoric, 304. 58  Ibid., 363–65.

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Imagined Monarchy This point raises, then, the further question of how this oracle envisions rulers and their relationship with subjects. Several features of the projected monarchy seem noteworthy. First, its rule commences through the operation of the divine realm. That is, the text does not consider “ordinary” political process, but as with most other ancient Near Eastern thinkers, imagines rule grounded in the actions of the divine realm. The fact that Isa 32:1–8 does not mention Yhwh or any other deity is no objection to this understanding of the text. Divine sanction was taken for granted in the world of the Isaiah tradition. Second, the close interaction of the king and notables, with the former able to limit the scope of the latter’s abuse of power, assumes a well-functioning hierarchy. On the one hand, such a view contrasts strongly with the earlier Isaiah tradition’s analysis of notables on the ground, which it characterizes as wayward, corrupt, ignorant, or if foreign, merely subject to divine discipline.59 Chapter 32 anticipates the Second Isaiah’s notions of nobles who will practice piety (49:7), though with the difference that the ideal rulers will be Israelite. Isaiah 32:1 thus imagines a well-functioning state in which nobles protect the vulnerable, a picture closer to that in Job 29–31 or the petition from Meṣad Hashavyahu than to the more ideologically driven conceptions of judges in the Priestly or Deuteronomic traditions. Third, the omission of the king from the depiction of misrule in vv. 5–7 may reveal the rhetorical tightrope that the creator of the text tried to walk. To criticize outright a reigning monarch involved risk,60 though the statement of an expectation of a future ideal king at least implicitly criticized the sitting ruler. Assigning the oracle to a particular historical situation, whether a weak king in his minority such as Josiah or a distrusted king (either Hezekiah or Manasseh or Amon, depending on how one understands Isaiah 36–39), would necessitate an elaborate set of conjectures about the interaction between this text and its reconstructed political milieu. However, such a strategy may be unnecessary, since no real king could measure up to an ideal. Indeed, there are adequate parallels in other political discourses, in other cultures, for different levels of connection between the words of criticism and the speakers’ willingness to apply them to the structures and personages of the state under examination. One thinks, for example, of the ways in which savage, even pornographic, satirizing of the tsarist government of Nicholas II led to what Orlando Figes has called its desacralization, and ultimately its demise, all the while many Russians longed for a “people’s tsar,” a democratically-elected autocrat, or perhaps less drastically the use of mockery in Peronist Argentina.61 Closer to hand lies the Assyrian 59 

Isa 1:23; 3:1–5; 31:9; on “rulers of Zoan” as fact or symbol, 19:11, 13; 30:4. theme that the Bible explores in, e.g., 1 Sam 10:27, 11:12–13; 2 Sam 16:5–14, 19:17–24 (ET 16–23); Jer 36; and Amos 7:10–17. The Saul and David stories seem parallel, perhaps deliberately constructed as such. Later legends of prophetic martyrdom (as in Mart. Ascen. Isa.; Heb 11: 32–38; perhaps Matt 5:12) expand a theme already latent in the Hebrew Bible itself. 61  Orlando Figes and Boris Kolonitskii, Interpreting the Russian Revolution: The Language and 60  A

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horror at the death of Sargon II on the battlefield and the loss of his body, alongside the desire of the imperial propaganda apparatus (and thus its political thinkers) to make theological and political sense of that event.62 At the other end of the spectrum of possibilities, the omission of royal misrule from the description of present evil may derive from politeness or fear, though it more likely reflects simply a willingness to see the monarchy, properly renewed, as part of the solution to injustice. Fourth, the failure to mention Yhwh’s intervention explicitly must have a rhetorical function. At the level of the final redaction of the book of Isaiah, chapter 32 precedes chapter 33, in which Yhwh is the ideal king, and it follows the salvation oracle of 31:4–9, indicating some understanding of a sequence of events in which divine salvation led to political renewal and thus the realization of Yhwh’s true sovereignty.63 However, Isa 32:1 has not reached the point of view of chapter 33, nor does it emphasize the divine patronage of kingship (contra 44:24–45:8). Rather, the expectation of the ideal king makes sense within a larger discourse of political reflection in which the present governmental corruption must give way to the saving work of Yhwh. The reign of the just king implies the reign of his patron, the Israelite God. The reticence builds a certain amount of suspense as one must ask how the arguments from the structure of reality that follow in vv. 5–8 can be sustained without any sort of divine intervention. They cannot be, and that is the point.

On the Reclamation of Words (32:9–14) O carefree women, arise – hear my voice. O trusting daughters, hear my word. Days on end will the trusting ones tremble, For the vintage has run out – no more will come. Quake carefree ones, tremble trusting ones, Strip off the clothes on your loins down to the skin. On breasts mourning64 over the lovely fields, over the fruitful vine(s). Symbols of 1917 (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1999), 9–29, 71–103; Sian Lazar, “Historical narrative, mundane, political time, and revolutionary moments: coexisting temporalities in the lived experience of social movements,” JRAS 20 special supplement (2014): 91–108. 62  Hayim Tadmor, Benno Landsberger, and Simo Parpola, “The Sin of Sargon and Sennacherib’s Last Will,” SAAB 3 (1989): 3–52; Ann M. Weaver, “The ‘Sin of Sargon’,” 61–66. 63  Beuken (Isaiah 28–39, 188–207) understands the unit to be Isa 31:1–32:8, with chapter 31 consisting of several layers atop an original woe oracle and positing a fairly clean break before chapter 33. A full response to this analysis lies beyond the scope of this paper, though I would hesitate to go as far as he does, and while agreeing with Williamson (The Book Called Isaiah: Deutero-Isaiah’s Role in Composition and Redaction [Oxford: Clarendon, 1994], 226) that chapter 33 “represents a different expectation from that which is characteristic of the rest of 1–39” would underscore his further point that, nevertheless, a deep continuity exists among oracles about divine kingship and those about an ideal human king. 64  The text is obscure. Here I follow, with reservations, Irwin (Isaiah 28–33, 128–29) in order to preserve the MT, though the LXX’s κόπτεσθε (“you shall beat”) implies an imperative. Arguably,

On the Reclamation of Words (32:9–14)

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Over my people’s land spring thorn and burr, Yes, over all the party houses and boastful town(s). For the palace is in ruins, the din of the city has left; It is a pile and a watchtower, a place of pits/quarries forever, A party place for wild asses, a field for herds. ‫נׁשים ׁשאננות קמנה ׁשמענה קולי‬ ‫בנות בטחות האזנה אמרתי‬ ‫ימים על ׁשנה תרגזנה בטחות‬ ‫כי כלה בציר אסף בלי יבוא‬ ‫חרדו ׁשאננות רגזה הטחות‬ ‫פׁשטה וערה וחגורה על חלצים‬ ‫על ׁשדים ספדים על ׂשדי חמד על גפן פריה‬ ‫על אדמת עמי קוץ ׁשמיר תעלה‬ ‫כי על כל בתי מׂשוׂש קריה עליזה‬ ‫כי ארמון נטׁש המון עיר עזב‬ ‫עפל ובחן היה בעד מערות עד עולם‬ ‫מׂשוׂש פראים מרעה עדרים‬

The brilliant mixture of overcoding related to the model and anti-model rulers in vv. 1–8 and the reticence about explicitly claiming divine sanction for either undergirds the text’s efforts to envision a transition from the disappointing present to the fulfilled future. The bridge is built of words, and thus the paean to the ideal political system ends with a promise to reclaim words. The virtuous rulers will avoid oppressive speech and give wise counsel. The wise counsel, in this case, recasts lament as the prelude to celebration and re-imagines Judah’s fate as one of glory, not tragedy. To set up the reversal, the middle section of the chapter, in a different voice and thus with a different point of view than what precedes it, constructs a cast of characters in a drama of mourning (which the final section, 32:15–20, will reverse). As I will argue, vv. 9–14 instantiate the “counseling of noble ideas” (‫ )נדיבות יעץ‬of v. 8. Thus the apparent discontinuity between the sections masks a real continuity. Though possibly created by the actions of a later hand writing vv. 1–8 and 15–20 around vv. 9–14, the continuity of ideas derives from an act of careful drawing out of latent possibilities in the earlier text. Nor should the rough transition between vv. 8 and 9 pose a problem for such an analysis of the text. In truth, the repeated use of uncited discourses throughout the Isaianic corpus (and elsewhere in the Bible)65 moves one to consider the possibility that such a literary device is in play here. Moreover, absent such a solution we are left with a literary section that, in the unfortunate judgment of Blenkinsopp, “seems to that translation picks up on a common Greek idiom (see e.g., Aeschylus, Pers. 683; Plato, Phaedo 60a; Josephus, Ant. 7.41). For a broader discussion, see Wildberger, Jesaja, 1269–70; but Beuken, Isaiah 28–39, 220. 65  Such speeches seems to be of several types: multivocal group speech (see the examples in George Savran, “Multivocality in Group Speech in Biblical Narrative,” JHebS 9 (2009): article 25 [www.jhsonline.org]), braided speech in which one genre adjoins another without any transition (e.g., Hos 14; Amos 9), and so on.

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drift inconsequentially from one topic to another.”66 The question is whether the coherentist reading makes sense of the text. Coherence and argumentation In other words, does the poem in vv. 9–14 hang together? To answer the question, one should consider how it works as rhetoric: what are its genre and intent, its use of argument, and its mode of character-construction? A consideration of those elements points to a coherence of the text. First, what is the genre? Commentators have understood Isa 32:9–14 variously as a dialogue,67 a threat or polemic,68 or a call to lament,69 the difference depending in part on how one construes the relationship of vv. 9–14 to vv. 15–20, the fixity of elements making up a lament, and the function of the constituent elements of vv. 9–14 itself. The more helpful question is, then, given the lament-like qualities of the text, how was it intended to function? Donald Polaski, in his analysis of Isa 26:7–21 has made an apposite suggestion, i.e., that lament can function as instruction in the school of survival.70 His arguments need not detain us here, though his basic understanding of the pedagogical functions of lament, at least in its ongoing usage if not its original composition and performance, seems on target. However, one should recall that educational texts serve to induct learners into a community of meaning with which they can identify. That is, they reinforce values and beliefs by building on already held values and beliefs. They thus fit the rhetorical category of epideictic, broadly speaking.71 The same would be true of Isa 32:9–14. While the implied speaker calls an audience of women at ease to lament, the real audience, broader and more aware of the tragedy befalling them, already engages in lament and thus needs no call. The call to lament is the lament, in other words. This is true whether the unit dates to the invasion of 701 bce,72 as I think probable, or to the Neo-Babylonian pe66 Blenkinsopp,

Isaiah 1–39, 433. Isaiah 1–33, 487. 68 Childs, Isaiah, 240–41. 69 Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 1–39, 433; Fohrer, Jesaja, 123; Wildberger, Jesaja, 1264 (apparently); Beuken, Isaiah 28–39, 222. 70  Donald C. Polaski, Authorizing an End: The Isaiah Apocalypse and Intertextuality, BibInt 50 (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 226–38. 71  On educational texts as epideisis, see Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, New Rhetoric, 50–54; Hauser, “Aristotle on Epideictic,” 5–23; Lois Agnew, “‘The Day Belongs to the Students’: Expanding Epideictic’s Civic Function,” RRev 27 (2008): 147–64. 72  As argued for by Fohrer, Jesaja, 123; Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 1–39, 434 (cautiously); but see the strictures of Beuken, Isaiah 28–39, 223. Yair Hoffman’s comments on Psalm 83 apply here as well: “Yet, should any specific event underlie the psalm? Not necessarily. … [T]he author of Ps 83 might have actually compressed into one imaginative historical occurrence the entirety of his own period” (Yair Hoffman, “Patterns of Religious Response to National Crisis in the Hebrew Bible, and some Methodological Reflections,” in Religious Responses to Political Crisis, eds. Henning Graf Reventlow and Yair Hoffman, LHBOTS 444 [New York/London: T. & T. Clark, 2008], 32). 67 Watts,

On the Reclamation of Words (32:9–14)

123

riod.73 The call to lament invites the hearers to acknowledge the reality, and deplorability, of the present devastation, something they (or rather their stand-ins, the women at ease) have been loath to do. Second, how does the text create assent through argumentation?74 At first glance, the search for arguments might appear misplaced. Does a description of desolation constitute argumentation? Yet several warrants for lament do appear, formally signaled by ‫ כי‬in vv. 10b and 14a75 and less obviously elsewhere. The warrants grounding lament may be construed as follows: (1) Harvest has ceased, not because of environmental degradation per se but because of the absence of farmers (‫ ;כי כלה בציר אסף בלי יבוא‬v. 10b); (2) Cities are depopulated, hence silent and in ruins (‫כי על כל בתי מׂשוׂש קריה עליזה‬ ‫ ;כי ארמון נטׁש המון עיר עזב‬vv. 13b-14a); (3) The despoliation of the cities has led to a return to wildness (‫מׂשוׂש פראים מרעה‬ ‫ ; עדרים‬v. 14c); (4) A pronounced hierarchization mark the wild cities, with part of the population reduced to digging pits amid the ruins of settlements76 while the occupying force builds watchtowers;77 and (5) The wildness has taken a peculiar form in which dumb animals behave as humans would in good times and as the lamenters cannot in view of their present predicament (hence the ironically contrasting repetition of ‫ מׂשוׂש‬in vv. 13 and 14).78 73 

As argued for by Wildberger, Jesaja, 1265; de Jong, Isaiah, 84 (postexilic date). On epideictic speech’s use of arguments to create assent, see the commentary on Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca in Richard Graff and Wendy Winn, “Presencing ‘Communion’ in Chaïm Perelman’s New Rhetoric,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 39 (2006): 45–71, esp.  49–51. 75 The ‫ כי‬in v. 13b seems, as Wildberger notes (Jesaja, 1263) “völlig deplaziert,” though there is no clear manuscript support for its omission (the LXX does not translate the conjunction in any of its appearances in vv. 9–14, for example). 76  ‫ עיר‬need not imply a fortified site, and thus the contrast is between formerly inhabitated settlements and the now relatively deserted landscape. On the semantic range of ‫ עיר‬, see Avraham Faust, “Cities, Villages, and Farmsteads: The Landscape of Leviticus 25:29–31,” in Exploring the Longue Durée: Essays in Honor of Lawrence E. Stager, ed. J. David Schloen (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2009), 103–12. 77  On Assyrian and Babylonian watchtowers in the land of Israel, see B. J. Parker, “Garrisoning the Empire: Aspects of the Construction and Maintenance of Forts on the Assyrian Frontier,” Iraq 59 (1997): 77–87; J. Peersmann, “Assyrian Magiddu: The Town Planning of Stratum III,” in Megiddo, vol.  3/2: The 1992–1996 Seasons, eds. Israel Finkelstein, David Ussishkin, and Baruch Halpern (Tel Aviv: Institute of Archaeology, Tel Aviv University, 2000), 524–34; Adam Zertal, “The Province of Samaria (Assyrian Samerina) in the Late Iron Age (Iron Age III),” in Judah and the Judeans in the Neo-Babylonian Period, eds. Oded Lipschits and Joseph Blenkinsopp (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2003), 377–412; E. Cogan-Zahavi, “‫ מבנה אשורי מצפון לתל אשדוד‬,” Qad 38/130 (2005): 87–90. More broadly, the agricultural reshaping of the land of Israel was a feature of Assyrian rule, as made clear by Yifat Thareani, “The Empire and the ‘Upper Sea’: Assyrian Control Strategies along the Southern Levantine Coast,” BASOR 375 (2016): 77–102. 78  The theme of animals acting out of character is a common trope in prophetic texts describing human misfortunes; see for example, the Balaam Inscription from Deir Alla (Combination 1, ll. 74 

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These descriptions of a nation’s tragic loss assume an opposite, now lost, world of bustling cities that the hearer must value, all the more in its absence.79 The women at ease presumably accede to the value of that no longer existing world and thus can only behave irrationally in refraining from lament. The present deserves lament. Third, how does argument support the creation of character, in two senses – the depiction of actors within the lament and the fixing of attitudes in the hearer? The first level is easier to ascertain. The lament moves across the stage a number of dramatis personae: the women who should lament but do not (apparently), the unnamed deportees or murdered co-nationals, and the implied audience, at least. Whatever the connection of the women at ease/trusting daughters to similar characters elsewhere in Isaiah,80 the adjectives describing them are ambiguous: were the women formerly at ease while the poet wishes they could return to that state, or is their ease a character flaw, rooted in their obliviousness to the tragedy all around them? The collocation of ‫ ׁשאננים‬and ‫ בטחים‬in Amos 6:1 (similarly, Job 12:5) would argue for the latter interpretation, while the wistful admiration of the ‫( ׁשאנן‬correcting for MT ‫ )ׁשלאנן‬in Job 21:23–24, as well as the context of Isaiah 32:9–14, in which the characters cannot easily miss the horror of their present, may point to the former. In either case, the women witness the absence of other characters, except for the poet and thus the hearers of the poem, who must find “ease” and “trust” unacceptable, even unimaginable, responses to the calamity about them. The Ethos of the Prophet Calling to Lament The call to lament can only succeed at recasting the imagination of the hearers if the speaker has earned a certain ethos. As Dale Sullivan, drawing heavily on the Aristotelian tradition, has pointed out, the ethos of the epideictic orator depends on the rhetor’s reputation, vision, authority, presentation of good reasons, and “creation of consubstantiality with the audience.”81 If, as I have claimed, the words of vv. 9–14 are those of the “noble speaking nobly” of v. 8, then an easy construal of the speaker’s authority lies at hand. The noble speaker can call to lament because of his or her rep7–10). Another example appears in Jonah, as noted by Yael Shemesh, “‘And Many Beasts’ (Jonah 4:11): The Function and Status of Animals in the Book of Jonah,” JHebS 10 (2010): 2–26. 79  De-urbanization is a theme of the Isaiah tradition, as noted by Joseph Blenkinsopp, “Cityscape to Landscape: The ‘Back to Nature’ Theme in Isaiah 1–35,” in “Every City Shall be Forsaken”: Urbanism and Prophecy in Ancient Israel and the Near East, eds. Lester L. Grabbe and Robert D. Haak, JSOTSup 330 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), 35–44. However, his claim that the loss of the city seemed a welcome development to those responsible for the book of Isaiah does not seem to fit the argument of chapter 32, as I will argue. 80  See Childs, Isaiah, 240–41; how much similarity in vocabulary proves is subject to debate, of course (see Randall Heskett, Messianism Within the Scriptural Scrolls of Isaiah, LHBOTS 456 [New York/London: T. & T. Clark, 2007], 254 on the use of ‫ רוח‬elsewhere in the book). Still, the similarities Childs assembles seem more than fortuitous. 81  Dale L. Sullivan, “The Ethos of Epideictic Encounter,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 26 (1993): 118 (113–33).

On the Reclamation of Life (32:15–20)

125

utation. Even if we think of the speaker as the book’s character “Isaiah,” then the same holds true. The entire book works to construct the prophet as a reliable communicator. The most difficult element of the analysis lies, then, in what Sullivan calls “creation of consubstantiality with the audience.” Unlike the prophet of Amos 6, say, the speaker here does not give utterance at a distance from the audience, real or literarily constructed. Rather, the desolate land belongs to ‫“( עמי‬my people”), indicating the prophet’s radical identification with the sufferings of fellow Israelites. By apprising the women at ease of the carnivalesque, grotesquely absurd, nature of the tragedy facing them, the poet lays the groundwork for a further rehabilitation of language, or counseling of noble things. I will return to the question of how the three oracles in this chapter relate to each other, but suffice it to say at this point that 32:9–14 fits well with the situation facing Judah after the invasion of 701 bce and much less well with either the period of Assyrian occupation (which seems to have involved only limited urban destruction and widespread recovery82) or even the period of Babylonian occupation. If this is correct, then vv. 1–8 either date to the same period or a later one (in which case they constitute a reworking and recontextualization of the lament in vv. 9–14). Either way, the juxtaposition of the units seems purposeful, intended to create a speech to which the hearers (within the text or its audience) can respond.

On the Reclamation of Life (32:15–20) The shape of that response depends on the extent to which the audience accepts the hopeful turn that the connective preposition ‫ עד‬in v. 15 signals. With a deft touch, a poet has repurposed the prior, older lament from a statement of ongoing reality to an anticipation of coming resolution: Until a spirit from above is poured out on us, And the savanna becomes an orchard and an orchard is reckoned a thicket, And justice dwells on the savanna and loyalty inhabits the orchard. Yes, loyalty’s work is peace – loyalty’s toil makes for quietness and perpetual repose. So my people will dwell in a peaceful pasture, indeed, trusty dwellings and carefree resting places. “When it hails as the forest falls and the sinking city sinks….” Happy are you sowing near all the waters, giving free rein to the cow and the donkey. ‫עד יערה עלינו רוח ממרום‬ ‫והיה מדבר לכרמל וכרמל ליער יחׁשב‬ ‫וׁשכן במדבר מׁשפט וצדקה בכרמל תׁשב‬ 82  See the discussion in Zertal (“Province of Samaria”) for the former Kingdom of Israel. The desolation assumed by vv. 9–14 did not continue after the imposition of vassalage on Hezekiah and Manasseh.

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Chapter 6:  Lost Kings and Lost Fields in Isaiah 32

‫והיה מעׂשה הצדקה ׁשלום ועבדת הצדקה הׁשקט ובטח עד עולם‬ ‫ויׁשב עמי בנוה ׁשלום ובמׁשכנות מבטחים ובמנוחת ׁשאננות‬ ‫העיר‬83 ‫וברד ברדת היער ובׁשפלה תׁשפל‬ ‫אׁשריכם זרעי על כל מים מׁשלחי רגל הׁשור והחמור‬

How does the transformative move in the text work? Vermeylen has argued that vv. 9–14 combined with vv. 1–8 to be “placé logiquement en finale de la collection XXVIII–XXXII.”84 In that case, vv. 15–20 would mark a transition to succeeding chapters, which envision a resolution of conflict and elimination of injustice under the kingship of Yhwh. Thus Wonsuk Ma argued that vv. 15–20 (1) date to the Babylonian Exile, (2) describe the work of Yhwh’s ‫ רוח‬as not only a political solution but as “the extension of God’s being,” and (3) shift the political focus so that “‘Righteousness’ in the field replaces a ‘king’ who reigns in righteousness (v. 1) and ‘justice’ in the desert for [sic] ‘rulers’ who rule with justice (v. 1),” attributing social reform directly to the action of the ‫רוח‬.85 Much of his analysis is defensible though debatable, yet I think that Ma has missed the metaphorical play in vv. 15–20 and thus the section’s relationship to vv. 1–8 (as well as, inevitably, the development of the text and its rhetorical function). Moreover, the difference between chapters 32 and 33, much less 34–35,86 seem to point to a more complex literary history, including the possibility that Isa 32:20 came at or near the end of one version of the book, as has often been argued. This metaphorical play works by juxtaposing several sets of signs: environmental location (‫מדבר‬, ‫כרמל‬, ‫)יער‬, political relationships or behaviors (‫מׁשפט‬, ‫צדקה‬, ‫)ׁשלום‬, and affective states (‫ׁשאנן‬, ‫) בטח‬. In fact, the three oracles interlock, in part, by the use of key words in new ways: e.g., ‫ רוח‬refers to unwelcome wind in v. 2 but a helpful gift or even divine presence in v. 15, ‫ מׁשפט‬is compromised in v. 7 but realized in v. 16, and ‫ עמי‬denotes a defeated people in v. 13 and a redeemed one in v. 18. Thus the combination of the units did not occur through happenstance but through an imaginative process of creating deliberate ambiguity in the meaning of individual words so as to provide a clear flow of ideas. Supporting this claim is also the apparent echo of the text in Isa 29:17–18:

‫הלוא עוד מעט מזער‬ ‫וׁשב לבנון לכרמל והכרמל ליער יחׁשב‬ ‫וׁשמעו ביום ההוא החרׁשים דברי ספר‬ ‫ומאפל ומחׁשך עיני עורים תראינה‬

83 1QIsaa reads ‫“( היער‬the thicket”), a homogenization of the text that seems secondary. The LXX reading complicates matters (see below). 84 Vermeylen, Prophète Isaïe, 426; thus I think Watts (Isaiah 1–33, 486–88) misses the logic of the text by assuming that the conditions prompting the lament remain in play in vv. 14–20. 85  Wonsuk Ma, Until the Spirit Comes: The Spirit of God in the Book of Isaiah, JSOTSup 271 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), 78–82. 86  Odil Hannes Steck, Bereitete Heimkehr: Jesaja 35 als redaktionelle Brücke zwischen dem Ersten und dem Zweiten Jesaja, SBS 121 (Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1985), 55–56.

On the Reclamation of Life (32:15–20)

127

Will it not be shortly That Lebanon will be an orchard and will be reckoned a thicket, And the deaf will hear in that day the words of a scroll, And even from gloom and darkness shall the eyes of the blind see?

Several interpreters have noted the verbal parallels between between Isa 29:17–18 and chapter 32, yet without noting why they are connected. While it seems unwise to go as far as Fohrer in attributing these lines in chapter 29 to the Second Isaiah,87 it seems that the offhanded way in which environmental revival and the healing of physical handicaps combine to mark the era of Yhwh’s salvation derives from chapter 32, in which the images are separate and their connection is less obvious, not the other way round. Thus it would be inappropriate to assign Isa 29:17–18 to Isaiah of Jerusalem or probably even the late Assyrian period.88 Two other possibilities remain: (1) Isa 29:17– 18 is a case of relecture, of reframing an earlier oracle for a new purpose, or (2) Isa 29:15–24 comes from the same hand that wrapped Isa 32:1–8 and 15–20 around 32:9– 14 (either as an editor or a composer). Either way, the author of 29:15–24 had access to chapter 32 in more or less its current form. It would also follow that one could reconstruct, at least in part, from the former text an early stage of the interpretation of the rhetorical aims of the combined version of the latter. Such evidence is not fully probative, but is highly suggestive. Arguments for a Post-destruction State Verses 15–20 construct, then, a vision of the future by laying out a series of images of justice, for which it argues. As in vv. 1–8, then, the type of speech most closely fits Aristotle’s category of forensic speech. The audience must decide to embrace a particular set of ideas, to which its present experience may not point. Let me explore these claims in detail. First, the selection (in or out) of images and arrangement of them bears rhetorical weight. The text does not opt for images it might build on: the rebuilding of cities, the elevation of a monarchy, or the return of deportees, to name only a few possibilities. (These omissions may not say anything about the date or setting of vv. 15–20, for if they did, the absence of the monarchy might point to a post-monarchic time, but the absence of returnees would presuppose an ignorance of the Second Isaiah, and thus an impasse in our analysis would result.) But the omissions – better, the silences – do allow the text to pursue a particular rhetorical strategy focusing on the conditions after lament, rather than the actors (human or royal) ending the cause of lament. The strategy is what Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca call “unlimited development,” in which arguments “insist on the possibility of always going further in a particular direction without being able to foresee a limit to this direction, and this progress is 87 Fohrer, 88 

Jesaja, 82; apparently Childs, Isaiah, 216 (though unclear). Contra Watts, Isaiah 1–33, 419 (apparently).

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accompanied by a continuous increase of value.”89 The two major forms of the argument, hyperbole and litotes, both presuppose an ideal toward which a given reality or trend moves: hyperbole imagines reality closer to that ideal than it is, and litotes understates the closeness. Thus v. 15 describes a radically altered landscape (savanna or even steppe becomes orchard and orchard thicket) hyperbolically, allowing the hearer to step back imaginatively from the idealized image to a still desirable state of fertility (cf. Hos 14:6–9; Amos 9:11–15). As Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca continue, the role of hyperbole is not “to create an image… [but] to provide a reference which draws the mind in a certain direction only to force it later to retreat a little, to the extreme limit of what seems compatible with its idea of the human, the possible, the probable….”90 Realizing that the poem deliberately uses hyperbole to make an argument (the future will be better than the present because the environmental degradation of today will give way to fertility and thus sustainable agriculture tomorrow and ever after) provides for two further insights. (1) The location of political and social reform ( ‫מׁשפט‬/ ‫ )צדקה‬in the now co-identified locales “steppe” and “orchard” is part of the same argument of unlimited development (justice and equity come even there, although the “there” is by definition “nowhere,” since two ecosystems cannot exist at the same time and place in the real world). And (2) the desire to speak in this way, rather than through something more direct (e.g., Yhwh or the new king or both will defend the country so that farmers can resettle the land and restore its agriculture) must serve a purpose. What is the purpose? Aristotle in his Rhetoric (1.3.5.6) sketched the purposes of his three types of oratory, while recognizing that they overlap. The question is, which goal is paramount? For deliberative speech, the end is “the expedient or the harmful” (τὸ συμφέρον καὶ βλαβερόν), for forensic “the just or the unjust” (τὸ δίκαιον καὶ τὸ ἄδικον), and for epideictic “the honorable or the dishonorable” (τὸ καλὸν καὶ τὸ αἰσχρόν). Isa 32:15–20’s direct reference to “justice” and “peace,” the absence of any overt call to action on the part of the audience, and the lack of direct evidence for ritual performance of the text at hand (unlike the lament of vv. 9–14) all point toward a working classification of this text as forensic speech, an attempt at weighing the justice of someone or something.91 If this is right, the person on trial, so to speak, would be Yhwh, whose failure to rescue Judah from Assyrian invasion, needed justification. Thus the text would fit the larger goal of several layers of the Isaiah tradition, which defends Yhwh by construing the prophets’ opponents as lying rebels, employ89 

Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, New Rhetoric, 287. Ibid., 291. 91  While forensic speech fitted most comfortably the Athenian (and modern) courtroom, its strategies spilled over into other arenas, including the writing of history. See Ian M. Plant, “The Influence of Forensic Oratory on Thucydides’ Principles of Method,” CQ 49 NS (1999): 62–73. On the applicability of Aristotle’s views to modern political thought, note Triadafilos Triadafilopoulos, “Politics, Speech, and the Art of Persuasion: Toward an Aristotelian Conception of the Public Sphere,” Journal of Politics 61 (1999): 741–57. 90 

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ing recurring motifs of indictment-writing,92 the devastation and rebuilding of Zion,93 the (very ancient) notion of nations as witnesses,94 among others. Most importantly, the forensic nature of vv. 15–20 indicates the overall rhetorical function of all of chapter 32. What arguments support the defense of Yhwh’s justice? Reading the entire construction that is now chapter 32, vv. 1–8 would constitute a single argument (Yhwh justly provides a governance structure that will insure the defense of the vulnerable), vv. 9–14 acknowledges the counter-argument (the land’s desolation is a mark against its divine sovereign’s competence or benevolence), while vv. 15–20 offer several responses demonstrating justice (Yhwh hears the cry of the suffering and responds by powerful reversals of fortune, marked by the restoration of nature itself). The text weaves together these ideas in a seamless pattern of metaphors. An Argument for Royal Reclamation, in Both Senses How, then, does the image of the new, idealized king fit into the chain of images in vv. 15–20? At first glance, it does not, for the metaphors of restoration here mention neither a monarch nor any characteristic royal activities such as building, war making, siring a lineage, lawgiving, or anything else. The text offers no hero at all, merely 92  See the discussion in Williamson, Book Called Isaiah, 94–115 (with references throughout the book of Isaiah). 93  Zion appears in Isa 1:27; 2:3; 4:3; 10:24; 14:32; 28:16; 30:19; 31:9; 33:5, 14, 20; 35:10; 41:27; 46:13; 49:14; 51:3, 11, 16; 52:1, 7, 8; 59:20; 60:14; 62:1; 64:9; and 66:8. As Brian Doyle has put it, in reference especially to chapter 25 but more generally as well, “we can use the relational metaphor ‘yhwh – Zion’ as a point of entry into that labyrinth of metaphors” (Brian Doyle, The Apocalypse of Isaiah Metaphorically Speaking: A Study of the Use, Function and Significance of Metaphors in Isaiah 24–27 [Leuven: University Press/Peeters, 2000], 222–23); cf. Ronald Clements, “Zion as Symbol and Political Reality: A Central Isaianic Quest,” in Studies in the Book of Isaiah: Festschrift Willem A. M. Beuken, eds. J. van Ruiten and M. Vervenne, BETL 132 (Leuven: Peeters, 1997), 3–17; Hans-Jürgen Hermisson, “Die Frau Zion,” in Studies in the Book of Isaiah: Festschrift Willem A. M. Beuken, eds. J. van Ruiten and M. Vervenne, BETL 132 (Leuven: Peeters, 1997), 19–39. Hermisson’s description of Zion as “solche eine kräftige Metapher, in der die Bewohnerschaft mitsamt der Stadt als ihrem Lebensgrund und mit ihrem Jahweverhältnis als Ganzheit aufgehoben ist und angesprochen werden kann” (38), certainly applies to chapter 32. 94  Beginning with Exod 15:14, i.e. at the origins of the Israelite tradition, the nations’ opinions, real or imagined, of Yhwh and the magnalia dei played a role in theological reflection. Apparently independent of the royal tradition of the Völkerkampf (e.g., Ps 2), though inevitably intertwining with it, the fascination with their neighbors’ fascination with Yhwh plays a major role in the Isaiah tradition as well. The theme appears as early as Isa 2 or even 1:7, 24. Thus the creators of the book saw the idea as characteristically “Isaian,” a fact that allowed for a range of understandings – from the foreign nations as implacable foes to their role as loyal servants of Yhwh (and thus Israel, as both the Second Isaiah and the early oracle in 2:2–5 have it). The hermeneutical complexity becomes evident in, for example, the combination of widely different attitudes toward the nations (and understanding of their attitudes toward Judah) in Isa 2:2–22; J. J. M. Roberts, “Isaiah 2 and the Prophet’s Message to the North,” JQR 75 (1984): 290–308; H. G. M. Williamson, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Isaiah 1–27, vol.  1: Commentary on Isaiah 1–5, ICC (London/New York: T. & T. Clark, 2006), 174–77.

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a series of images of environmental and thus human renewal. Moreover, the characteristic associations of kingship with urban life seem tellingly absent. The key word, however, is “seems,” for the text does not merely drift inconsequentially from image to image, as Blenkinsopp would have it. What happens, we should ask, when lament is reversed? According to vv. 15–20, the events include the receipt of the divine ‫רוח‬, the increased fertility of the land, the spread of justice and peace, and the correlative (perhaps resultant?) safety for humans and domesticated. While none of these elements in isolation demonstrates a connection to kingship, their combination in a field of images does mirror a pattern that, in many ancient Near Eastern settings, did characterize conceptions of the effects of successful rule. Thus, e.g., the coronation hymn of Assurbanipal,95 apparently performed in two stages by a priest, invites a series of deities to give him rhetorical and intellectual gifts (qabû, šemû, ketti) leading to justice (mēšaru), to bring about price deflation (hence prosperity for the center), to establish peace (sālimu) across social divisions, and to provide sufficient water for the land. Similarly, Ps 72:16 understands royal success in light of tribute arriving in Jerusalem but frames the resulting beatitude in ecological terms: ‫“ ( כלבנון פריו ויציצו מעיר כעׂשב הארץ‬like Lebanon shall his fruit be, and it [literally: they] shall blossom, shooting up like the foliage of the land”).96 Such texts do not, of course, demonstrate that Isa 32:15–20 derives from a court setting or necessarily points to monarchy, only that the language in it has one of its several homes at court. The more decisive point is that the person who wrapped vv. 1–8 and 15–20 around vv. 9–14 should not have forgotten the subject of the first unit when composing the third. Nor is the absence of explicit allusion to the king and his works a problem. Rather, the reticence reveals a rhetorical strategy, a technique by which a performed text allows the hearer to assume a causal link between the king’s pursuit of justice and the restoration of the land without detailing the steps in the argument too specifically or connecting the beatific post-lament state too closely to mundane (or even sordid) political realities. The hearer must imagine the connections for himself or herself. Through deliberate ambiguity, the text speaks of the reclamation of the monarchy (its restoration to a theologically significant role as mediator of divine justice) and the reclamation work wrought by the king. Such a strategy also helps explain the function of the mysterious v. 19a: ‫וברד ברדת‬ ‫“( היער ובׁשפלה תׁשפל העיר‬When it hails as the forest falls and the sinking city sinks….”). The seeming ill fit of the verse has bothered interpreters as early as the LXX, which paraphrases it ἡ δὲ χάλαζα ἐὰν καταβᾖ οὐκ ἐφ᾿ ὑμᾶς ἥξει. καὶ ἔσονται οἱ ἐνοικοῦντες 95  VAT 13831 = LKA 31 = SAA 3.11; see the transcription, translation, and notes in Alasdair Livingstone, Court Poetry and Literary Miscellanea, SAA 3 (Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 1989) = COS 1.142. 96  I read ‫ מעיר‬as a C participle of ‫“( עור‬to wake up, excite”), though the usage here would be unusual. The poet creates a word play and arguably intends a double entendre with the identical locution “from a/the city” (cf. Vulgate 71:16 de civitate and LXX 71:16 ἐκ πόλεως). A similar word play on the same root and on ayin and resh more generally appears in Isa 52:1–2. See also the discussion in Chapter 9 below.

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ἐν τοῖς δρυμοῖς πεποιθότες ὡς οἱ ἐν τῇ πεδινῇ (“The hail, if it falls, will not be on you, and those dwelling in the thickets will be like those in the plain”). This understanding, or even more desperate attempts to understand hail as a symbol of human arrogance97 or to attribute a hopelessly unintelligible text to the author’s “addiction to assonance,”98 do not consider another possibility, namely, that the line is a quotation or allusion to a text or oral trope that the author seeks to reinterpret. To discover it, one should note that the reference to hail has a specific background. The phrase ‫“( אבני ברד‬hailstones”) has been restored, probably correctly, in KAI 222A l. 26, which speaks at length about divine punishments on treaty violators.99 In general ways, the language of the treaty between Mattiel and Bir-gayah draws on Assyrian originals, suggesting a possible link between the reference to hail and Assyrian propaganda. A direct verbal connection remains elusive, since while hail (abnu) does figure in ritual texts,100 it does not feature prominently in inscriptions or other texts likely to have influenced Levantine states. However, a more generalized association exists in that such documents as Esarhaddon’s “Vassal Treaty,” which was known in the west, mentions meteorological disasters as due punishments of rebels against the Assyrian state.101 More to the point, the immediate literary context of Isa 32:19, the series of oracles beginning in chapter 28, refers to “hail” as a both a weapon of the divine against the enemy (Isa 28:2), probably Assyria102 or less likely a corrupt and co-opted vassal Samaria,103 and as a cleansing agent for Israel (Isa 28:17), soon to escape its covenant with Sheol (hence its commitments to “sin,” political or social). Thus Isa 32:19 seems closely connected to an anti-Assyrian complex of texts in Isaiah. Like the Sefire text, conditioned by a political argot that drew on old local ideas to respond to region-wide problems, the Isaiah tradition could construct its rhetoric in ways that drew on Israelite traditions but adjusted them to new realities. The literary suppleness characterizing the texts throughout Isaiah appears in 32:19 as well. Far from being an interruption or mistake in a hope oracle, the verse is a case of intertextual reference. The poet can acknowledge the disastrous encounters with 97 Vermeylen,

Prophète Isaïe, 428. Isaiah 1–39, 433. 99  See the discussion in KAI, vol.  2 , 248; Joseph Fitzmyer, The Aramaic Inscriptions of Sefire (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1995), 85. 100  For a handy list of references, see CAD 1:60. Israelite texts often associate hail and other climatological phenomena with the divine (Pss 18:13; 148:8; Job 38:22; Sir 32:10 [ms B]), often in association with the exodus and conquest traditions (Exod 9:18–35; 10:5, 12, 15; Pss 78:47–48; 105:32). Hag 2:17 describes hail as a punishment for an unspecified people (on the problems, see Hans Walter Wolff, Haggai, trans. Margaret Kohl [Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1988], 90–94). 101  Ll. 530–31; on the influences of the text, see Kazuko Watanabe, Die adê-Vereidigung anlässlich der Thronfolgeregelung Asarhaddons (Berlin: Mann, 1987), 2–6; but Kenneth Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 291–94. 102 Beuken, Isaiah 28–39, 19; Sweeney, Isaiah 1–39, 368; the use of hail against Assyria is most clear in Isa 30:30–31. 103 Fohrer, Jesaja, 43. 98 Blenkinsopp,

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Assyria, the cause of lament in vv. 9–14, but note their undoing. Thus v. 19 may be a quasi-quotation, perhaps not a direct citation of a then (but not now) known text, but an allusion to, and reinterpretation of, such a text or the ideas springing from it. The allusion forms a well-known type of argument, one moving the hearer to communion with the speaker. To cite Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca again, There is allusion when the interpretation of a passage would be incomplete if one neglected the deliberate reference of the author to something he evokes without actually naming it; this thing may be an event of the past, a custom, or a cultural fact, knowledge of which is peculiar to the members of the group with whom the speaker is trying to establish the communion…. Allusion increases the prestige of the speaker….104

The so-called ill-fitting verse thus clinches the argument of the entire section by referring the hearer to known ideas and thus overcoming a now clichéd representation of the dismal past or present. Verse 19 thus resumes the theme of vv. 9–14 only to set up the final transformation of its lament. Yhwh has reversed the misfortunes of Israel, leading to the fertility and freedom from banditry envisioned by v. 20.

Conclusions and Prospects The preceding analysis of Isaiah 32 has attempted three things: to discern the rhetorical shaping and functions of the text as its creators made it; to locate the action of creation (involving as it does the reuse of older material) in a plausible setting; and to demonstrate in the analysis a style – to avoid the reductionist word “method” – that could illuminate other texts. Much remains to be done, but perhaps we have met some success in these areas. A brief summary of gains and a conspectus of future work are in order. First, far from being a jumble of fragments or even deliberately constructed but purely imagistic text (reflecting the still too prevalent belief, inherited from the Romantics, that ancient poetry is somehow pre-rational because of its wealth of metaphor), it should be clear that the unit as we have it derives from a careful approach to argumentation. (Argumentation may appear in many literary forms, not just the philosophical essay!) The creator of the whole complex, and even that of vv. 9–14 (whom I take to be Isaiah of Jerusalem), sought to make a case for Yhwh’s benevolent rule and its instantiation in the life of a monarch. Second, I have been intentionally vague about the specific historical occasion that gave rise to the reworking of vv. 9–14 by the creator of vv. 1–8 and 15–20. In general, Barth’s arguments for a Josianic “Assur-redaktion”105 make sense of the text, though 104 

Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, New Rhetoric, 177. Hermann Barth, Die Jesaja-Worte in der Josiazeit: Israel und Assur als Thema einer produktiven Neuinterpretation der Jesajaüberlieferung (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1977), esp.  213– 17 (on chapter 32). For a view of Isaiah’s development without a Josianic redaction at all, see Roberts, 105 

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it is also possible to date the reworking of this material to a slightly earlier period, during the troubled reign of Manasseh (troubled, that is, from the point of view of the Deuteronomists and undoubtedly others influenced by the emerging prophetic traditions). The specific date is both unrecoverable and unimportant. The important point is that the mid- to late-seventh century bce saw intense literary (therefore, intellectual) activity calculated to find truth in history by interacting at multiple levels with old domestic traditions, the claims of the Assyrian state, and the ongoing revelation of Yhwh’s work (as the prophets and their followers understood it). Isaiah 32 testifies to the power of that intellectual work.

First Isaiah. Such a view creates for Roberts a number of problems, however, especially with respect to the Isa 10, 28–32, and other texts.

Chapter 7:

Yhwh’s Cosmic Estate: Politics in Second Isaiah Another testimonial to such intellectual work appears in the dramatic poems of Isa 40–55. Clearly, the creators of the Isaiah book continued to reflect on political life, responding to both external stimuli and to the pressing logic of inherited texts and traditions. In one of its later stages, that of the so-called Second Isaiah, older ideas came together in the most rhetorically splendid fashion, as the characters Yhwh, Israel, the nations, and cosmic forces engage in dialogue (or often set speeches) about the fate of Israel during a new era of Achaemenid rule. Even a casual reading of Isaiah 40–55 reveals the interests of its creator(s) in the workings of states and the groups subject to them. The work’s gorgeous poetry employs in turn a critique of the Marduk cult,1 a paean to Cyrus, invitations to foreign kings to regard Israel, and an exalted call to nations to return home or go into exile, depending on Yhwh’s will regarding them. At one level, then, a discussion of the politics of Second Isaiah seems straightforward. As Klaus Baltzer puts it, “DtIsa’s program is to link city, country, and Diaspora…. If we look at the situation as a whole, we can reconstruct the picture of a differentiated society.”2 Yet, on closer examination, this inquiry soon runs into serious methodological difficulties. To begin, what do we mean by politics? If the term refers, for example, to governmental administrative techniques, jockeying for power among stakeholders, or the creation, preservation, and ongoing legitimation of hierarchies, then Isaiah 40–55 offers little, in part because the text did not stem from a bureaucratic setting, but more significantly because Deutero-Isaiah and, to some extent, the rest of the creators of the book of Isaiah showed little interest in the practicalities of political life,

1  On the more extended Israelite interaction with Babylonian high-status religion, see also Martin Kessler, Battle of the Gods: The God of Israel Versus Marduk of Babylon: A Literary/Theological Interpretation of Jeremiah 50–51, SSN 42 (Assen: Van Gorcum, 2003). However, Joseph Blenkinsopp (Isaiah 40–55, AB 19A [New York: Doubleday, 2000], 107) considerably overstates the case when he writes that “the central message of Isa 40–55 can be construed as a kind of mirror-image of the ideology expressed in the akitu liturgy and the Enuma Elish myth,” not only because many elements of Isa 40–55 have ample precedents in earlier stages of the Isaiah tradition (though admittedly, even there influenced by contact with Mesopotamian theologies), but also because the creator of Second Isaiah worked out a series of ideas that went far beyond mere response to Babylonian stimuli. Moreover, most of the texts that Blenkinsopp cites appear in Isa 40–48. 2  Klaus Baltzer, Isaiah 40–55, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001), 32.

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an attitude that apparently originated with the eighth-century prophet whose name the book bears.3 Moreover, how do we understand the relationship between the intra- and extra-Israelite dimensions of the poems’ ideas about power, both human and divine? Granted that the work knows of, and responds to, Babylonian theological ideas, and perhaps even a specific religious contretemps, the conflict between the devotees of Sin and Marduk in the reign of Nabonidus,4 still the terms of the debate and the text’s positions within it grow out of Israel’s ongoing theological reflection. A sense of the breadth of the conversation thus becomes crucial. On the other hand, Isa 40–55 speaks of foreign rulers (notably Cyrus the Great), interrelated foreign cultures (imperial or subaltern), and a restructuring of political structures consistent with the transition to Persian rule in the late sixth century bce. The lack of detailed analysis of political events or structures or practices does not imply a lack of interest in those subjects. Here I argue, then, that in constructing a politics of a renewed Israel, Second Isaiah, or its constituent parts,5 drew on an apparently non-specialist knowledge of ancient repertoires of rule, especially of practices of displaying royal might and virtue. Gov3  On the one hand, the texts by and about the First Isaiah show a high interest in the movements of world empires (see, e.g., Machinist, “Assyria and Its Image”; J. J. M. Roberts, “Blindfolding the Prophet: Political Resistance to First Isaiah’s Oracles in the Light of Ancient Near Eastern Attitudes Toward Oracles,” in Oracles et Prophéties dans l’Antiquité, ed. Jean-Georges Heintz [Paris: Boccard, 1997], 135–46). On the other hand, however, the advice that Isaiah gives, notably to Ahaz in Isa 7:1–17 seems remarkably utopian since it allows for no meaningful political action by the state, assuming instead unmediated divine intervention of some sort. Isaiah’s advice involves more than waiting and seeing, but less than a concrete foreign policy. See, however, the strictures of Olof Bäckersten, Isaiah’s Political Message; and the theological implications of the Isaiah tradition as explored in the essays in Cohen and Westbrook, Isaiah’s Vision of Peace. 4  On which see M. Albani, Der eine Gott und die himmlischen Heerscharen: Zur Begründung des Monotheismus bei Deuterojesaja im Horizont der Astralisierung des Gottesverständnisses im Alten Orient, ABG 1 (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2000); idem, “Deuterojesajas Monotheismus und der babylonische Religionskonflikt unter Nabonid,” in Der eine Gott und die Götter: Polytheismus und Monotheismus im antiken Israel, eds. Manfred Oeming and K. Schmid, ATANT 82 (Zurich: TVZ, 2003), 171–201; Machinist, “Mesopotamian Imperialism”; Stefan Timm, “Jes 42,10 ff und Nabonid,” in “Gott kommt von Teman…”: Kleine Schriften zur Geschichte Israels und Syrien-Palästinas, eds. Claudia Bender and Michael Pietsch, AOAT 314 (Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2004), 237–59; Hanspeter Schaudig, “‘Bel Bows, Nabu Stoops!’.” As Machinist notes, however, the biblical material does not neatly fit the intra-Babylonian argument, meaning that Second Isaiah knew of the theological dispute at the imperial center but went its own way in the conversation. In general, dating Isaiah 40–55, even assuming that it was written all at the same period, is difficult. See the discussion in Ulrich Berges, Jesaja 40–48, HTKAT (Freiburg/Basel/Vienna: Herder, 2008), 43–45; and the well-considered caution of Philip R. Davies, “God of Cyrus, God of Israel: Some Religio-Historical Reflections on Isaiah 40–55,” in Words Remembered, Texts Renewed: Essays in Honour of John F. A. Sawyer, eds. Jon Davies, Graham Harvey, and Wilfred G. E. Watson, JSOTSup 195 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), 207–25. 5  It is perhaps debatable whether one can reconstruct a coherent viewpoint for Isaiah 40–55 as a unitary work given the possibility of a redactional process for its creation. See the careful discussion in Rainer Albertz, Israel in Exile: The History and Literature of the Sixth Century b.c.e. (Atlanta: SBL, 2003), 376–99. However, enough unity in the work exists to see a coherent picture, as I hope to show.

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ernmental techniques do not feature in detail, not merely because the creator(s) of the text did not write political science, nor because the impressionistic, imagistic mode of the poetry made other requirements, but because the text claimed to see beyond the surface of phenomena to a deeper reality. In some sense, that is to say, the very other-worldliness of Second Isaiah’s approach – its lack of specific policy proposals or detailed analysis of governmental structures – mirrors its well-known emphasis on the oracle as window onto the world.6 By creating a political myth counter to the Babylonian alternative but surprisingly congruent with at least parts of its emerging replacement, the Achaemenid royal ideology, Second Isaiah lays the groundwork for a new identity for Israel/Jacob, one in which the old stories of creation and exodus, of the remote ancestors and the returnees from the Golah (and not just from Babylonia!) converge to make possible not only a religious solution to the returnees’ problems but a political one that allows the Israelite community to find unity in spite of the diverse histories of its members since the Babylonian invasions.7 Since the true understanding of human history belongs only to Yhwh, whose “thoughts are not your thoughts and ways are not your ways” (‫ ;לא מחׁשבותי מחׁשבותיכם ולא דרכיכם דרכי‬55:8), for Isaiah 6  The literature on oracles and their political uses is, of course enormous. See, e.g., A. Leo Oppenheim, “Divination and Celestial Observation in the Late Assyrian Empire,” Centaurus 14 (1969): 97–135; Maria deJong Ellis, “Observations on Mesopotamian Oracles”; Ivan Starr, Queries to the Sungod: Divination and Politics in Sargonid Assyria, SAAS 4 (Helsinki: Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 1990); Martti Nissinen, References to Prophecy in Neo-Assyrian Sources, SAAS 7 (Helsinki: Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 1998), esp.  163–72; H. Hunger and D. Pingree, Astral Sciences in Mesopotamia, HdO 1/44 (Leiden: Brill, 1999); Stefan M. Maul, “Die Wissenschaft von der Zukunft: Überlegungen zur Bedeutung der Divination im Alten Orients,” in Babylon: Wissenskultur in Orient und Okzident, eds. Eva Cancik-Kirschbaum, Margarete van Ess, and Joachim Marzahn, Topoi: Berlin Studies of the Ancient World 1 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2011), 135–51; Ulla Susanne Koch, Mesopotamian Divination Texts: Conversing with the Gods, Sources from the First Millennium BCE, GMTR 7 (Münster: Ugarit, 2015). A full-blown study of divinatory language in Isa 40–55 lies beyond the scope of this study, but one should note the dominance of the vocabulary of knowledge (‫ )ידע‬especially in chapters 40–48 (25 X in 40–48 versus 8 X in 49–55). Second Isaiah insists that true knowledge comes from Yhwh rather than the gods of Babylon, that such knowledge is available to Israel (by reading earlier prophetic texts) and now to Cyrus and the Persians, that it is unavailable to idolaters, and that the lack of knowledge greatly impairs the foes’ ability to succeed. See Isa 40:13, 14, 21, 28; 41:20, 22, 23, 26; 42:16 (twice), 25; 43:10, 19; 44:8, 9, 18; 45:3, 4, 5, 6, 20; 47:8, 11, 13; 48:4, 6, 7, 8 (twice); 49:23, 26; 50:4, 7; 51:7; 52:6; 53:3; and 55:5. The use of the often parallel verb ‫ ראה‬is more evenly distributed, however (Isa 40:5, 26; 41:5, 20, 23, 28; 42:18, 20; 44:9, 18; 47:3, 10; 49:7, 18; 52:8, 10, 15; and 53:2, 11). It is not always clear whether ideas like the islands seeing (41:5) implies divination or merely messages sent by the Persian information system or simply merchants’ gossip, though this very ambiguity as to the medium simply reinforces the impression that Isa 40–55 gives that the news of Israel’s restoration and return will become universally known by whatever means available, all of which point in the same direction, toward a revelatory deity bent on redemption. 7  However, see the theoretical discussion in Jan Assmann, “Memory, Narration, Identity: Exodus as a Political Myth,” in Literary Construction of Identity in the Ancient World, eds. Hanna Liss and Manfred Oeming (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2010), 3–18; Francis Joannès, “L’écriture publique du pouvoir à Babylone sous Nabuchodonosor II,” in Babylon: Wissenskultur in Orient und Okzident, eds. Eva Cancik-Kirschbaum, Margarete van Ess, and Joachim Marzahn, Topoi: Berlin Studies of the Ancient World 1 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2011), 113–20.

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40–55, focusing on the cosmic inner mechanisms of politics takes on urgency, while the ways and means can take care of themselves.

The Politics of Display as Identity-Formation As already made clear, a Levantine intellectual of the sixth century bce would have known of several styles of political self-display, from rituals of tribute presentation (either real or captured in reliefs) to building projects of temples and palaces to the visible reminders of ruined cities that resisted the hegemon.8 These raw materials of political reflection lay readily to hand and had so lain for centuries. Moreover, such self-display by a state’s actors requires the ideological construction of both an ingroup and an out-group, entities who perceive the new politics from complementary yet opposite vantage points. Such display also reflects an attempt at describing, valorizing, and legitimating the relationship between those who accept the political claims on display and those who do not. It becomes possible for opponents of the regime in power to flip its self-display around and thus to subvert it in favor of alternative views. An author engaging in such an act of counter-display, of recasting dominant views, thus gains access to an elaborate set of ways of constructing such an identity for readers. The constructor of the dominant view has the same opportunities. Such construction could, therefore, take several forms, including that of a monarch describing himself in a series of grand titles resting on universalizing religious warrants and casting his enemies as irrational, evil-minded rebels against the divine realm.9 Or it could emphasize the system of tribute revolving around the imperial center.10 The goal for the state was “to make myself seen before all my enemies” (‫)וכי הראני בכל שנאי‬ 8  For the basic Neo-Assyrian examples of tribute, see Bär, “Tributdarstellungen”; on building, see inter alios, Sylvie Lackenbacher, Le Roi Bátisseur: Les récits de construction assyriens des origines à Teglathphalasar III (Paris: ERC, 1982); Jan-Waalke Meyer, “Tempel und Palastbauten im eisenzeitlichen Palästina und ihre bronzezeitlichen Vorbilder,” in Religionsgeschichtliche Beziehungen zwischen Kleinasien, Nordsyrien und dem Alten Testament, eds. Bernd Janowski, Klaus Koch, and Gernot Wilhelm, OBO 129 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993), 319–28. 9  Werner R. Mayer, “Ein neues Königsritual gegen feindliche Bedröhung,” Or 57 (1988): 145–65. This construction fits a larger program of casting foreign space as exotic, yet subject to the domination of the ruler displaying his prowess in reliefs, on which see the discussion of Michelle Marcus, “Geography as Visual Ideology: Landscape, Knowledge, and Power in Neo-Assyrian Art,” in Neo-Assyrian Geography, ed. Mario Liverani (Rome: CNR, 1995), 193–208; Daniele Morandi Bonacossi, “‘Landscapes of Power’: The political Organisation of Space in the Lower Ḫabur Valley in the Neo-Assyrian Period,” SAAB 10 (1996): 15–49; and Alison Karmel Thomason, “Representations of the North Syrian Landscape in Neo-Assyrian Art,” BASOR 323 (2001): 63–96. On the influence of this larger tradition on biblical texts, see Eckart Otto, “Psalm 2 in neuassyrischer Zeit: Assyrische Motive in der judäischen Königsideologie,” in Textarbeit: Studien zu Texten und ihrer Rezeption aus dem Alten Testament und der Umwelt Israels, eds. Klaus Kiesow and Thomas Meurer (Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2003), 335–49; John W. Hilber, “Psalm CX in the Light of Assyrian Prophecies,” VT 53 (2003): 353–77. 10  As in Ps 72, for example.

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as Mesha put it in the ninth century.11 The goal for those reimagining political realities, like the Second Isaiah, was to create a vision in which other actors took the stage. Again, Shakespeare’s Henry V has it just right: O for a Muse of fire that would ascend The brightest heaven of invention, A kingdom for a stage, princes to act And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!

Political thinkers need an audience, the higher up the social ladder the better. In whatever form it takes, then, such display requires objects, performers, and audiences. It is thus a species of identity-formation, an admittedly highly contestable term in modern political discourse, but still a useful one if one focuses on identity-making as a complex combination of group labeling or identification, categorization, self-undestanding, and commonality. As Cooper and Brubaker have argued with regards to modern studies of colonialism, “identity” is best understood as “a dispositional term that designates what might be called situated subjectivity: one’s sense of who one is, of one’s social location, and of how (given the first two) one is prepared to act.”12 That is, identity has both an intra-psychic (“subjective”) and extra-psychic (“objective”) dimension understandable by others through the linking of actions and self-understandings. In creating an identity for revived Israel/Jacob, then, Second Isaiah constructs the politics of display in at least three ways: narration of a story of political change, concentration on the act of seeing and being seen, and a reconception of the implied audience’s mental geography. Narrative-making In fashioning an appropriate narrative, then, Second Isaiah stages a group of characters who act and reflect upon their actions: Israel/Jacob (and Jerusalem/Zion), whom the text often exhorts to reimagine its future and whose redemption marks the true object of display of Yhwh’s accomplishments; the nations who sometimes must experience defeat in order to free Israel, but who usually appear simply as witnesses and tribute-bringers; and most significantly Yhwh the divine ‫( מלך‬Isa 41:21; 43:15; 44:6). The intertwined “situated subjectivity” of these characters invites the implied audience of Isaiah 40–55 to reconsider its position and, accordingly, to act in ways befitting a new exodus (Isa 55:1). Or as Isa 54:11–17 make clear, the reversal of the struc11  KAI 181:4. Often the C infinitive construct of ‫ ראה‬is translated as “to prevail over,” or some equivalent (referencing Mic 7:10; Ps 118:7, see Kent P. Jackson, “The Language of the Mesha Inscription,” in Studies in the Mesha Inscription and Moab, ed. Andrew Dearman (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989), 106; however, such a paraphrase is unnecessary. 12  Frederick Cooper, Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History, with Rogers Brubaker (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 73; cf. the narratival approach of Margaret Somers (“Narrative Constitution of Identity,” 605–49), which informs some of my framing of Second Isaiah’s approach.

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ture of oppression centered in Babylonian rule will lead to Israel’s renewal. Thus the literary depictions of the three characters functions rhetorically as an argument from the nature of reality as if to say, “since the world really works as Yhwh says, then the exiles should have new confidence.” This narratival rhetorical strategy underwrites the prophet’s views of political life. Accordingly, when speaking of human kings, Second Isaiah refers not only to Cyrus’s domination of ‫( מלכים‬Isa 45:1),13 but of their awed silence before Israel’s tragic, then joyous, fate (Isa 49:7; 52:15). Isa 52:15, similarly, speaks of kings shutting their mouths (‫ )יקפצו מלכים פיהם‬when confronted with the servant’s restoration (in direct contrast with his earlier “shame” before “many” [ ‫עליך רבבים‬14 ‫ ׁשממו‬Isa 52:14]), while Isa 49:7 similarly anticipates the nation’s reversal of fortune with an oracle: Thus says Yhwh, Israel’s redeemer and holy one, To the shamed, the disgraced nation,15 the servant of rulers, “Kings will see and rise up, princes bow down, Because Yhwh has been loyal – Israel’s holy one – and he has chosen you.” ‫כה אמר יהוה גאל יׂשראל קדׁשו‬ ‫לבזה הפׁש למתעב גוי לעבד מׁשלים‬ ‫מלכים יראו וקמו ׂשרים ויׁשתחוו‬ ‫למען יהוה אׁשר נאמן קדׁש יׂשראל ויבחרך‬

In other words, the political order must experience a series of inversions: the imagined (and real!) hierarchy in which the phrase “foreign king” signaled Israel’s subjugation is turned over as the ruler bows to the ruled.16 Those whose subjection was the central scene of the political drama find themselves the recipients of obeisance. Those who positioned themselves as controlling agents in the same drama find themselves acted upon. As Koole points out, the closest biblical parallel to this imagined turn of events is Ps 72:11, in which foreign kings bow before the king of Israel (see Chapter 9 below). The recipient of obeisance in Isa 49 is not, however, the Israelite monarch, for no such character appears (at least explicitly) in Isa 40–55, but rather Israel or the Servant, depending on one’s lights (though Isa 49:1–6 equates the two figures).17 Thus the typ13  Cf. Isa 41:2, and see the discussion of Baltzer, Deutero-Isaiah, 88–89; Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 40–55, 195–96; Antti Laato, The Servant of YHWH and Cyrus: A Reinterpretation of the Exilic Messianic Programme in Isaiah 40–55, ConBOT 35 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1992). 14  Note the variant reading ‫ עליו‬, however. 15  But see the discussion in Baltzer, Deutero-Isaiah, 315 and esp. n.  244. LXX’s τὸν βδελυσσόμενον ὑπὸ τῶν ἐθνῶν is the lectio facilior. 16  On the king of Assyria in the book of Isaiah, see Shawn Zelig Aster, “The Image of Assyria in Isaiah 2:5–22: The Campaign Motif Reversed,” JAOS 127 (2007): 249–78; Michael Chan, “Rhetorical Reversal and Usurpation”; Matthijs J. de Jong, “A Window on the Isaiah Tradition in the Assyrian Period: Isaiah 10:24–27,” in Isaiah in Context: Studies in Honour of Arie van der Kooij on the Occasion of his Sixty-Fifth Birthday, eds. Michaël N. van der Meer, Percy van Keulen, Wido van Peursen, Bas ter Haar Romeny, VTSup 138 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 83–107. 17  Jan L. Koole, Isaiah III, vol.  2: Isaiah 49–55, HCOT (Leuven: Peeters, 1998), 35.

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ical royal imagery, seen in many ancient texts and pictures, transfers here to an ostensibly non-royal figure. The complexity of the transfer becomes clearer in the much-discussed text Isa 52:13–53:12, whose long interpretive history needs no rehearsal at this point.18 Without trying to address the complex questions of the identity of the servant or the nature of his “resurrection,” one can identify several elements of political display that speak to Second Isaiah’s political ideas. First, again, Isa 52:15 describes royal astonishment at the servant’s state. Part of the reaction derives from the failure of the royal information-gathering system, which has offered wrong intelligence in both oral and written media ( ‫לא ׁשמעו‬/‫)לא ספר‬.19 Second, the failure of the clandestine services is understandable given the prior state of the servant, who famously appears as lacking physical attractiveness (Isa 53:2) and thus lives and dies in a shamed state. Here Second Isaiah plays off the old royal ideology in which the king is described as having ‫( הדר‬Ps 21:6; 45:4–5; 110:3; cf. Ps 8:6; Ezek 27:10), an attribute usually ascribed to the deity (Ps 29:4; 11:3; 90:16; 96:6 [?]; 104:1; 145:5, 12; 149:9; Job 40:10; and 1 Chron 16:27), though occasionally to other high status human beings. The servant’s lack of “aura” or “splendor” marks him as worthy of contempt, which would only be the case if, unlike most human beings, he should have had such a quality in an ideal world. In other words, the reversal of fortune that must be reversed by divine intervention negated an original regal state. The critique of failed intelligence also seems to play upon parts of the Marduk theology according to which the deity was the guarantor of wisdom for his supplicants. For example, prayers to Marduk of various periods speak of the deity as the ultimate source of discernment or insight (tašīmtu, milku, šitūlu)20 in the Old Babylonian period or, more relevantly for Second Isaiah, as the one revealing omens to his 18 See e.g., Harry M. Orlinsky, The So-Called “Suffering Servant” in Isaiah 53 (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1964); J. Alobaidi, The Messiah in Isaiah 53: The commentaries of Saadia Gaon, Salomon ben Yerhum and Yefet ben Eli on Is 52:13–53:12 (Bern: Peter Lang, 1998); the essays in William H. Bellinger and William R. Farmer, eds., Jesus and the Suffering Servant: Isaiah 53 and Christian Origins (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1998); the essays in Steve Moyise and Maarten J. J. Menken, eds., Isaiah in the New Testament (London/New York: T. & T. Clark, 2005); Joseph Blenkinsopp, Opening the Sealed Book: Interpretations of the Book of Isaiah in Late Antiquity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 251–93; Heskett, Messianism; Georg Fischer, “Gefährten im Leiden – der Gottesknecht bei Jesaja und der Prophet Jeremia,” BZ 56 (2012): 1–19. 19  The nature of spy networks in the ancient Near East is imperfectly understood, though major progress in unsnarling Assyrian practices has been the contribution of Peter Dubovský, Hezekiah and the Assyrian Spies: Reconstruction of the Neo-Assyrian Intelligence Services and its Significance for 2 Kings 18–19, BibOr 49 (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 2006). As he notes, moreover, many biblical traditions assume at least a popular-level knowledge of surveillance, reconnaissance, information collection, and processes of interpretation and contextualization, i.e., of the basics of an intelligence network. To attribute such knowledge to the creator of Isaiah 40–55 seems simple enough. 20  So lines 21–24 of the Old Babylonian Prayer to Marduk extant in several manuscripts. See the edition in Takayoshi Oshima, Babylonian Prayers to Marduk, ORA 7 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 137–90. The text seems to have remained in use for many centuries. See also Koch, Mesopotamian Divination Texts, 122–28.

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supplicants.21 To speak, then, of the inability of deities other than Yhwh to predict the future flies in the face of all the theological assumptions underpinning the elites’ ideology in the Neo-Babylonian Empire and thus undermining the ideological rationale for the empire itself. Third, the enigmatic 53:9 (‫ויתן את רׁשעים קברו ואת עׂשיר במתיו על לא חמס עׂשה ולא מרמה‬ ‫ )בפיו‬speaks of the servant’s burial with the wicked and death with the rich, in spite of (?) his lack of violent actions. The collocation of the wealthy and the wicked22 marks an obvious political gibe, yet whether 9b’s ‫ על‬is to be taken as contrastive23 or causal,24 the servant experiences a form of postmortem display (burial with the wealthy) that the poet regards as a sample of the shaming that Yhwh must reverse, though it is not entirely clear why this should be a bad death. Was the funeral lacking appropriate mourning rituals, or were the rituals excessive displays? Did the burial involve mockery or misplaced honor? The verse is obscure, but since ancient burial of the powerful was itself a political act (2 Sam 3:31–39; Isa 22:15–25), something has gone wrong in the politics of display.25 Second Isaiah evokes the image of the Servant’s funeral in part because tears can, under certain circumstances, reinforce, or even create anew, social relationships and the moral codes valorizing them.26 Fourth, however, according to Isa 52:10b-11 the ultimate (postmortem?) reversal of the servant’s fortune will lead not only to display before the very “multitude” (‫)רבים‬ that previously despised him (Isa 52:14; 53:11) but also to his sharing in the movement of goods across borders (‫ )ׁשלל‬and assumption of a place of honor among the powerful (Isa 53:12). While the servant is neither a king nor a substitute king,27 he bears kingly attributes.

27.

21 

Line 14 in the Neo-Babylonian prayer edited in Oshima, Babylonian Prayers to Marduk, 316–

22  Though a number of commentators have sought other explanations for ‫ ; עׂשיר‬see the discussion in Koole, Isaiah 49–55, 315–16. 23 Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 40–55, 345, 354; Baltzer, Deutero-Isaiah, 393; ESV; JSB/Tanakh; RSV; NRSV; NIV. 24 Koole, Isaiah 49–55, 312, 316; KJV. 25  John A. Wilson, “Funeral Sources of the Egyptian Old Kingdom,” JNES 3 (1944): 201–18; Jan Assmann, Altägyptische Totenliturgien, vol.  1: Totenliturgien in den Sargtexten des Mittleren Reiches (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag C. Winter, 2002); R. Mark Shipp, Of Dead Kings and Dirges: Myth and Meaning in Isaiah 14:4b-21 (Atlanta: SBL, 2002); Saul M. Olyan, “Some Neglected Aspects of Israelite Interment Ideology,” JBL 124 (2005): 601–16; on the connections between funerary and chronistic/building elements in a single text, see Alice Faber, “On the Structural Unity of the Eshmunazor Inscription,” JAOS 106 (1986): 425–32. 26  A point made in another context by Gary L. Ebersole, “The Function of Ritual Weeping Revisited: Affective Expression and Moral Discourse,” HR 39 (2000): 211–46, esp.  244. 27  Contra John H. Walton, “The Imagery of the Substitute King Ritual in Isaiah’s Fourth Servant Song,” JBL 122 (2003): 734–43; differently, though still in a one-sided way, Millard C. Lind, “Monotheism, Power, and Justice: A Study in Isaiah 40–55,” CBQ 46 (1984): 432–46. Lind’s sharp contrast between Cyrus and the “servant” rest on an unwarranted distinction, common among biblical scholars, between human and divine kingship. The biblical writers, especially outside some strands of the DH, took a more nuanced view of the interrelationships of the two than is common among

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To summarize, then, the text’s transformation of royal conventions of self-presentation doubtless draws on the development of the Isaiah tradition’s earlier shifting of regal imagery to Yhwh alone, as seen in chapter 33, which seems to come from the Josianic redaction of the book.28 At the same time, Isa 40–55 goes in new directions as it reflects on the restoration of Jacob/Israel to a status not merely of survivor, but in the text’s imagined world, an equal of Persia. The concentration of royal images of display on Israel, as well as on Yhwh, the divine sovereign of the cosmos, marks a further development of the Isaianic tradition in light of new geopolitical realities. The Gaze The politics of display informs other parts of Second Isaiah, as well. This can be seen in the prophet’s use of the image of the gaze, the practice of looking at objects to give them meaning.29 Thus “all flesh” sees (Isa 40:5) Yhwh’s acts of redemption, as do kings (Isa 49:7; 52:15), islands (Isa 41:5), Zion (Isa 49:18), the blind (Isa 42:18, 20), and unspecified persons (Isa 41:20; 52:8, 10). Even if the book of Isaiah constructs its imagined author as deeply ambivalent about what he sees, as Francis Landy has argued,30 the gaze of the outsiders is unambiguous, according to Second Isaiah. They “see” a renewed Israel/Jacob. Conversely, the idols cannot reveal (Isa 41:23, 28), nor can their votaries see (Isa 44:9, 18) or believe themselves seen (Isa 47:10). The theme of royal demonstrations of success through the redistribution of goods, destruction or saving of cities, and so on takes many forms in the ancient Near East, and the biblical tradition of foreign nations and their rulers witnessing Yhwh’s kingly acts of might goes back to the beginnings of the Israelite tradition (Exod 15:14–16). Yet Second Isaiah has taken the theme in a new direction: the divinely led parade of peoples does not include captives but only the freed, and kings come making obeisance, not to Israel’s ruler, but to Israel itself. Hence the transfer of the Davidic promises to the nation as a whole (Isa 55:3). What Millard Lind has felicitously called the “kingly modern scholars, influenced as we are by the spread of republicanism since the American and French Revolutions. 28  Hermann Barth, Jesaja-Worte in der Josiazeit; see Chapter 6 on Isaiah 32 above. But Roberts, First Isaiah. 29  The notion is usually attributed to the work of Michel Foucault, particularly his works on imprisonment and sexuality: Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 3 vols., trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage, 1978–86); idem, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage, 1995). For a searching reexamination of his work, with ample critique of its conflation of body and sexuality and thus distortion of the nature of the gaze, see the studies in James I. Porter, ed., Constructions of the Classical Body (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2002). Anne Koch has both placed Foucault’s work in a larger intellectual context and shown the limits of its usefulness to ancient Near Eastern studies in her work, “Reasons for the Boom of Body Discourses in the Humanities and the Social Sciences since the 1980s: A Chapter in European History of Religion,” in Menschenbilder und Körperkonzepte im Alten Israel, in Ägypten und im Alten Orient, eds. Angelika Berlejung, Jan Dietrich, and Joachim Friedrich Quack, ORA 9 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012), 3–42, esp.  5–9, 34–35. 30  Francis Landy, “I and Eye in Isaiah, or Gazing at the Invisible,” JBL 131 (2012): 85–97.

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characteristics of the servant” applies throughout the work to Israel as a whole.31 One kingly characteristic is the capacity to see and be seen, i.e., the politics of display. Mental Geography Display, however, needs a stage, and so Second Isaiah mentions several regions of the world: Qedar (42:11), Egypt (Isa 43:3; 52:4), Kush (Isa 43:3; 45:14), Babylon (Isa 43:14; 47:1; 48:14, 20), and Saba (Isa 43:3).32 Also appearing are the vaguely defined “isles, littorals” (‫ ;איים‬Isa 41:1; 42:10, 12, 15; 49:1), presumably the Aegean regions and those further west, part of the region-wide economy of the mid-first millennium, and thus part of the mental map of Israelites.33 Geographic terms such as “north” (‫ ;צפון‬Isa 41:25; 43:6; 49:12) and the even more vague “far away” (‫ ;רחוק‬Isa 43:6; 46:12; 49:1, 12) signal a move toward comprehensiveness at the cost of precision. Second Isaiah uses these place names as a synecdoche for the world defined by the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian empires and their neighbors. Sites in Iran and further east are noticeably absent. The choice of geographic names does not, however, imply a date to the Neo-Babylonian period, but simply that the mental geography of the author has been shaped by the experiences under that empire. The most elaborate constructions of this mental geography appear in Isa 43:1–7, a Heilsorakel often understood to reflect Cambyses’s conquest of Egypt,34 but in any case concerned with a recapitulation of the exodus in the emigration of Israelites now liberated from their erstwhile lands of sojourning. Yhwh gives Egypt and its neighbors as a ransom (‫ ; כפר‬Isa 43:3b) for Israel, with the Achaemenid Empire apparently the deity’s business partner in the exchange. Notably, the text does not press the imagery of exchange, and the oracle to Cyrus in Isa 44:21–45:13 in some respects undercuts the idea of business exchange because Israel’s liberation is an act of divine fiat mediated by a chosen viceroy (‫ )מׁשיח‬rather than a transaction between notional equals. More than one theory of the politics of return (or at least more than one set of metaphors and preunderstandings) is thus in play in Second Isaiah, as one might expect for such an important event. (Moreover, this breadth of thought extends to the potential makeup of the returnees, for at no point does the work envision return 31 

Lind, “Monotheism, Power, and Justice,” esp.  4 45. So M and 1QIsab, but note the LXX’s Σοήνη, apparently an ad contextum correction (cf. 49:12). 1QIsaa reads ‫סבאים‬, thus replacing the land with its inhabitants. 33  In contrast to Isa 60:4–7, which refers to the southeastern and western extensions of the Near Eastern economy, apparently a later reflection on an economic network which, however, dates to Neo-Assyrian times. 34  See Jan L. Koole, Isaiah III, vol.  1: Isaiah 40–48, HCOT (Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1997), 290–92. A possible point of reference here might be the portrayal of Egypt in P as no part of the world, an anti-cosmos, perhaps reflecting the early Persian period when Egypt lay outside the sphere of Achaemenid control, as argued by Konrad Schmid, “The Quest for ‘God’: Monotheistic Arguments in the Priestly Texts of the Hebrew Bible,” in Reconsidering the Concept of Revolutionary Monotheism, ed. Beate Pongratz-Leisten (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2011), 287. 32 

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from Babylonia alone, nor does it assume that those returning from there hold a special place in the newly unfolding economy of grace, contrary to much literature on the topic.) In any case, Isa 43:1–7 lays out the triad Egypt, Kush, and Saba (cf. Isa 45:14), hence the regions at the fringe of the Mesopotamian empires (alternatively inside and outside them). Whether or not the word ‫ מאׁשר‬in v. 4 should be read “from Assyria,” as Maalstad argued with few followers,35 the widespread Mesopotamian idea of the “four corners” of the world does show up immediately afterward in vv. 5–6 with their reference to the cardinal directions ( ‫ מזרח‬, ‫מערב‬, ‫צפון‬, ‫)תימן‬.36 In other words, universal domination includes rule of northeast Africa, and this rule is exercised first by Yhwh (Isa 43) and then, anachronistically, by Cyrus (Isa 45). Thus the Second Isaiah poems both embrace a view inherited from the period’s empires, i.e., that the ruler of the moment governed the entire earth just as the chief god governed the cosmos itself, and modifies that view to deconstruct the Neo-Babylonian claims to instantiate that imperial ideal.37 Rather than mere zones for imperial expansion, the various geographic regions in question become the sites of Yhwh’s salvation of Israel from its captors. This recasting of ideas takes on two further features, both related to the Persians. First, the oracles naming Cyrus in 44:24–45:13 situate his conquest of the Babylonian Empire within the context of a new creation not anticipated by the oracular knowledge workers (extispicers, astrologers, etc.) of the Mesopotamian priesthoods. At the same time, Cyrus plays the typical role of the king as builder of cities and temples even if the text does not explicitly link his ascendancy with the reconstructions envisaged for Judah. So Isa 44:28 places in parallelism two divine commands: ‫האמר לכרׁש רעי וכל חפצי יׁשלם ולאמר לירוׁשלים תבנה והיכל תוסד‬ The one saying to Cyrus my shepherd, “and all my desire he will perfect,” and to Jerusalem, “Let her be built,” and to the temple, “let it be erected.” 35  So Karl Maalstad, “Einige Erwägungen zu Jes. XLIII 4,” VT 16 (1966): 512–14. But see the dismissive note of Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 40–55, 220; and the more careful discussion of Koole, Isaiah 40–48, 293. However, Koole’s refutation of the comparative “more than Assyria” with the statement “it is not clear why Asshur should be mentioned in this context and even less why it should have been valuable in God’s eyes” is itself open to refutation. As Isa 19:18–24 makes clear, at least some tradents of the Isaiah tradition thought of Assyria as a favorite of Yhwh, and even if such an idea takes a different guise in Isa 40–55, then it is conceivable that the weight of the traditional reference to Assyria as a shorthand for Mesopotamian superpowers, a usage that survived at least until the writing of the book of Judith, plays a role in Isa 43 as well. 36  Cf. Isa 49:12 MT, which gives the directions as ‫“( מרחוק‬far away”), ‫“( צפון‬north”), ‫“( מים‬seaward, i.e., west”), and ‫“( סינים מארץ‬from the land of Syene”). LXX reads ἐκ γῆς Περσῶν in the last instance, a reading that makes little sense in the context (or rather, obliterates the concept behind the text), but does illustrate the translators’ ideas about distance. 37  Peter Machinist, “Transfer of Kingship,” 105–20. Joseph Blenkinsopp similarly argued that the Achaemenids deliberately subverted neo-Babylonian propaganda, and that the Second Isaiah was aware of that counter-ideological work; see Joseph Blenkinsopp, “The Cosmological and Protological Language of Deutero-Isaiah,” CBQ 73 (2011): 493–510.

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The ruler and the city are parallel loci of Yhwh’s rule, even if the two never come into physical contact (as indeed they did not). The second, and more striking point is the way in which Second Isaiah conceives of the world. Cyrus’s conquests of fortified cities serve the purpose of Jacob/Israel’s restoration (‫[ למען עבדי יעקב ויׂשראל בחירי‬Isa 45:4]), thus recasting the relationship of dominator and dominated as one of, to use Fokkelman’s happy expression, “an image of splendid reciprocity.”38 Cyrus’s rebuilding of Jerusalem figures as part of his viceroyalty before Yhwh, not as a quid pro quo act much less as a sort of bribe of the deity, but as a free gift given in the reciprocal relationship that had brought him the throne (Isa 45:9–13). The inversion of the ruler-subject relationship appears even further in the expansion of the Cyrus oracle in Isa 45:14, which makes Jerusalem (not Babylon or Pasargadae) the recipient of the obeisance of Egypt, Kush, and Saba the triad from chapter 43.39 Again, the regional political structure finds a new center, rebuilt Jerusalem, and a new hierarchy with Israel and Cyrus at the top. It is instructive, then, to situate this viewpoint in its larger context. To begin, Baruch Levine is probably right to argue that the ascendancy of Yhwh to cosmic rulership, evident in the Isaiah tradition from its earliest layers and taken for granted by Second Isaiah, owes much to the need to respond comprehensively to the claims of Assyria and its god Aššur, in the first instance, and then, I would add, to those of the successor empires.40 As Levine puts it in reference to Isa 9:5–6 and 11:1–10, and thus the eighth-century situation, “The attributes of the ideal king, his wise counsel and judgment, and his capacity to resolve conflicts peacefully rather than by use of military force, are said to have been endowed by the God of Israel. It would be more accurate to invert this statement: Yahweh is the ideal king, by virtue of the fact that kingship serves as the model for configuring the God-idea.”41 In other words, the complex interaction of politics and religion – not as unidirectionally as this sentence from Levine would imply – played out in a range of Near Eastern traditions in the mid-first millennium bce. It has become widely accepted that the Cyrus oracle presupposes the rise of that monarch and the later developments of his reign, and thus that the text dates from later in the sixth century bce than the fall of Babylon (i.e., that the text is a vaticinium 38  J. P. Fokkelman, “The Cyrus Oracle (Isaiah 44,24–45,7) from the Perspectives of Syntax, Versification and Structure,” in Studies in the Book of Isaiah (FS Willem A. M. Beuken), eds. J. van Ruiten and M. Vervenne (Leuven: Peeters, 1997), 320. 39  On the MT’s use of the second feminine singular suffix, see Berges, Jesaja 40–48, 418; cf. Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 40–55, 256–58. The larger issues of the organization of the end of chapter 45 and its relationship to the Cyrus oracle (or rather the boundaries of that oracle and its possible revisions) are thoroughly discussed in the commentaries and need not detain us here. 40  On the mediation (not through Media!) of Mesopotamian repertoires of rule to the Persian Empire, see Michael Jursa, “Observations on the Problem of the Median ‘Empire’ on the Basis of Babylonian Sources,” in Continuity of Empire (?): Assyria, Media, Persia, eds. Giovanni B. Lanfranchi, Michael Roaf, and Robert Rollinger, HANEM 5 (Padua: S.A.R.G.O.N., 2003), 169–79. 41  Baruch Levine, “Assyrian Ideology and Israelite Monotheism,” Iraq 67 (2005): 412 (411–27).

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ex eventu on the model of Mesopotamian “predictive” texts).42 Thus a comparison to Achaemenid practices might, in principle, illuminate Second Isaiah’s presuppositions and their articulation. Perhaps most relevant is the way in which Darius I and his immediate successors constructed a mappa mundi of twenty-three to thirty-one regions (depending on the text in question) from Afghanistan to Greece, from the Oxus to the Sahara, making up their empire.43 This construal of the world as one of subject peoples in every corner of the world (though lacking interest in listing all subject peoples, since Syria-Palestine usually appears in the lists as part of “Assyria” or Arabia)44 led to the creation of not only the famous parade of figures on the Persepolis terrace, but also perhaps more innovatively, the splendid tomb reliefs at Naqsh-i-Rustam and Persepolis. The latter repeat the same basic scene, in which the Persian emperor stands facing an altar atop a platform supported by two banks of fourteen men each (with one additional figure facing the legs of the platform but standing outside it, making thirty in all), with the images representing distinct regions of the empire. Other figures holding their hands before their faces in the Persian gesture of obeisance flank the main relief. Divinities, the winged disc of Ahura Mazda and a lunar disc, hover above the scene. Although slight differences among the tomb reliefs exist, the basic scene reflects a shared notion of the hierarchy governing the world. As Calmeyer puts it, “Herrscher and Gottheit korrespondieren direkt miteinander – nicht durch das Feuer hindurch… aber mit gleichem Gestus, der erhobenen Rechten mit der Handfläche nach innen….”45 I would add to this that the subjects are an integral part of the scene, according to which the empire existed under a divine aegis but in which the subject peoples were both locked into their supporting role and essential to the preservation of the cosmic structure, the platform on which the emperor stood.46 42 Berges, Jesaja 40–48, 375–79; Baltzer, Deutero-Isaiah, 223–26 (mutatis mutandis); but HansJürgen Hermisson, Deuterojesaja, BKAT 11/2 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1987), 60–61. Martin Leuenberger (“Kyros-Orakel und Kyros-Zylinder: Ein religionsgeschichtlicher Vergleich ihrer Gottes-konzeptionen,” VT 59 [2009]: 244–56) has shown that a number of royal themes (“Handergreifung, Namensnennung, Weltherrschaft oder wunderhafter Sieg”) appear in both Isa 44–45 and early Persian propaganda, though the latter clearly borrowed from Neo-Babylonian (and Neo-Assyrian) practices. On the last point, see also Reinhard Achenbach, “Das Kyros-Orakel in Jesaja 44,24–45,7 im Lichte altorientalischer Parallelen,” ZABR 11 (2005): 155–94; more recently, Mark Whitters has connected Persian court practices to the scene in Neh 8 in his essay, “The Persianized Liturgy of Nehemiah 8:1–8*,” JBL 136 (2017): 63–84. 43  For a brief overview, see Amélie Kuhrt, “The Achaemenid Persian empire (c. 550–330 BCE): continuities, adaptations, transformations,” in Empires, eds. Susan E. Alcock, Terence N. D’Altroy, Kathleen D. Morrison, and Carla M. Sinopoli (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 106– 9; eadem, “Achaemenid Images of Royalty and Empire,” in Concepts of Kingship in Antiquity: Proceedings of the European Science Foundation Exploratory Workshop, eds. Giovanni B. Lanfranchi and Robert Rollinger, HANEM 11 (Padua, S.A.R.G.O.N., 2010), 87–105; Pierre Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander, 172–73. 44  For Palestine as part of Arabia, see Herodotus Hist., 3.91. 45  Peter Calmeyer, Die Reliefs der Gräber V und VI in Persepolis, ed. Svend Hansen, with additional notes by Rüdiger Schmitt, AIT (Mainz: von Zabern, 2009), 28. 46  Perhaps an instructive comparison would be the artistic program of Augustus, particularly in the second half of his reign, when he sought to portray himself as a model for others in piously pro-

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Naqsh i-Rustam. Photograph by Wikimedia Commons user David Holt. https://commons. wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Iran_2007_094_Naqsh_I_Rustam_(1732510212).jpg. Naqsh i-Rustam. Photograph by Wikimedia Commons user David Holt. Accessed 13 October 2016

Does Second Isaiah, who almost certainly never saw these tombs, know of the basic idea informing the reliefs at their entrance? The question is difficult to answer because of the uncertainty surrounding both the date of the biblical text and the history of Achaemenid political propaganda. On the other hand, the depiction of human beings in diverse costumes holding up a surface supporting a monarch appeared much earlier on Neo-Assyrian royal thrones, as illustrated for example in the throne depicted on Sennacherib’s Lachish reliefs, and so it is plausible that the artistic motif migrated from one royal setting to another as part of the Achaemenids’ overall strategy of borrowing from predecessor empires. However, although the evidence for the transmission of this propaganda in Jewish settings is circumstantial and later (inter alia the letters in Ezra-Nehemiah and the tecting the old ways. The Ara Pacis Augustae offers perhaps the most famous example of imperial art portraying an imaginary scene in which all the forces of the world converge pacifically to exhibit the power – and inevitability and therefore rightness – of the imperium. Note broadly the work of Paul Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus, trans. Alan Shapiro (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1988), 101–66, esp.  159–62; more popularly, Jaś Elsner, Art and the Roman Viewer: The Transformation of Art from the Pagan World to Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 192–210.

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Sennacherib at the Siege of Lachish. Wikimedia Commons. Accessed 13 October 2016. https:// commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lachish_inscription.jpeg

Aramaic copy of the Bisitun Inscription from Elephantine), mechanisms clearly existed for the dissemination of the political ideas of the elites at the center of the Persian Empire.47 The question is whether any texts in Second Isaiah reflect the Persian viewpoint, however obliquely. To be sure, several elements of the Persian idea are clearly missing, notably the extended list of place/ethnic names and the presentation of the king as sacrificing to the deity (indeed an impossibility given Isa 45:4’s acknowledgement that Cyrus did not know Yhwh [‫)]ולא ידעתני‬. Moreover, the description of the king as warrior and recipient of tribute under the aegis of a divinity (45:1– 5), though prominent in Achaemenid reliefs and texts, is far from uniquely Persian, being instead inherited from prior polities and so ubiquitous in the Near East.48 47  See, however, the cautionary notes by Lester L. Grabbe, “The ‘Persian Documents’ in the Book of Ezra: Are They Authentic?” in Judah and the Judeans in the Persian Period, eds. Oded Lipschits and Manfred Oeming (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006), 531–70. The Bisitun inscription was known in Babylonia as well; see U. Seidl, “Ein Monument Darius’ I. aus Babylon,” ZA 89 (1999): 101–14. More generally, note the observations in Bruno Jacobs. “Herrschaftsideologie und Herrschaftsdarstellung bei den Achämeniden,” in Concepts of Kingship in Antiquity: Proceedings of the European Science Foundation Exploratory Workshop, eds. Giovanni B. Lanfranchi and Robert Rollinger, HANEM 11 (Padua: S.A.R.G.O.N., 2010), 107–13. Note the discussion in TADAE (3.59), in which the editors opine that the Elephantine copy of the Bisitun inscription served a public ritual, or educational purpose, perhaps on the centenary of Darius’s ascension to the throne. On the spread of Persian political ideas as far east as India, note also the presence of Persian loanwords (mostly political) in the third century bce inscription of Aśoka (r. ca. 269–232 bce) from Kandahar, Afghanistan; G. Pugliesi Carratelli and G. Garbini, A Bilingual Graeco-Aramaic Inscription by Aśoka, Serie Orientale Roma 29 (Rome: Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente, 1964). 48 Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander, 204–54. Note also the use of the hunter motif on coinage throughout the Achaemenid empire, again evidence for the transmission of Persian ideas (though

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Still, the idea of foreign nations as foundation of an empire as it serves a chief deity does appear in Second Isaiah, as well as in a more developed form in the so-called Third Isaiah (Isa 60:1–22).49 Within Isa 40–55, the recipient of tribute and thus the center of an imagined empire, is a renewed Israel. Hence the already discussed text 43:1–7, as well as such texts as Isa 49:23 And kings will be your allies (‫ )אמניך‬and their princesses your wet-nurses; They will bow to you palms to the ground, lick your feet’s dust. …

or 51:4b-5 For Torah comes from me, and my justice as a light to the nations (‫ )אור עמים‬I hasten; My rightness is near, my deliverance comes, and my arm judges the peoples; The isles ( ‫ )לאמים‬trust me and to my arm they look. …

or the closely related 42:4 He will not flag or be enervated until he establishes justice on the land, And the isles (‫ )איים‬await his Torah.

The latter two seem to imagine a reality in which distant parts of the world will be subject to Yhwh’s (or the Servant’s) law. Isa 49:23 (cf. Isa 49:7) is particularly striking because it draws on the widespread ancient Near Eastern theme of subject rulers bowing to an overlord, but recasts the theme in light of the exaltation of Israel as a whole (not its leader). Moreover, the juxtaposition of two semiotic planes (surrogate parenting and obeisance before a ruler) implies more than a throne scene in time and space, hence a reality in both the human (political) and divine (religious) realms.50 The God of Israel, and thus Israel itself, will enjoy some sort of dominion in and beyond its traditional territory. Such a notion comes to full flower in chapters 54 and 55, and in two ways. The first is the depiction of the rebuilt city of Jerusalem in Isa 54:11b-14aα: Indeed, I will lay your stones as antimony and make your foundations lapis lazuli And I will make your battlements like carnelian (?) and your gates precious crystal, And all your perimeter precious stones. Yes, all your children will be Yhwh’s pupils, and your builders a rav-shalom.51 In righteousness will you be established.52 with earlier antecedents) to the subject peoples; Vadim S. Jigoulov, The Social History of Achaemenid Phoenicia: Being a Phoenician, Negotiating Empires (London: Equinox, 2010), 91–97. 49  Isa 60 itself may have undergone a series of revisions that show continuing reflection on the political situation of the Yehud in imagined perfected state; see Jan L. Koole, Isaiah III, vol.  3: Isaiah 56–66, HCOT (Leuven: Peeters, 2001), 219–22. 50  Contra Baltzer, Deutero-Isaiah, 350–52 (quite apart from the problems of dating posed by Baltzer’s reconstruction of the setting of Isa 40–55). 51  Reading with 1QIsaa ‫“( בוניכי‬your builders”) rather than MT’s ‫“( בניך‬your sons”), though note LXX τὰ τέκνα σου. I have rendered v. 13b’s ‫ שלום רב‬as rav-shalom on the model of many Akkadian locutions equaling “master of/expert in X,” thus here “an expert in peace.” 52  Reading the final ‫ ני‬in ‫ תכונני‬as an energic form.

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The reconstruction of the city in such an impossibly grand style points to an awareness on the part of the composer of the intended majesty of imperial capitals (Esth 1:6; Song 5:9–16), which now Jerusalem is to surpass, though the beauty of the city emphatically does not exist merely to intimidate its foes, as is often the case for ancient capitals, but to promote ‫ׁשלום‬, even if the peace assumes a new hegemony with Jerusalem and Persia at its center(s). The vision of the splendid city resumes the theme articulated in the apostrophe to Jerusalem in Isa 51:17–23, deepening Second Isaiah’s interest in the renewed Jerusalem as a political center of some sort. The second is the almost off-handed allusion to the Davidic dynastic promise in Isa 55:3b: And I will cut an age-long covenant with you, the reliable mercies of David (‫)חסדי דוד הנאמנים‬.

The line almost certainly does not presume a restoration of the Davidic dynasty per se, since nothing else in Isa 40–55 points toward such an eventuality, but it does envision a renewal of the structure of divine benefaction and national success assumed by the monarchic ideology, perhaps particularly as set forth in Ps 89.53 While Conrad’s argument that the use of war oracle imagery in Second Isaiah represents a transference of regal imagery to the people as a whole falls flat because the formulae he cites are not uniquely royal,54 his basic idea is correct. Israel as a whole will stand in the legacy of David, just as it does for Abraham and Sarah (51:2) and even Noah (54:9). The restoration of the nation, its new exodus, marks the beginning of a new epoch of human history.

Conclusions To summarize then, Second Isaiah draws together a range of ideas, some already adumbrated in earlier stages of the Isaiah tradition such as Isa 32 discussed earlier, and works them out in the context of a larger, region-wide discussion about the proper nature of political power. Like other intellectual creations of the late sixth century or slightly later, the work drew on older intellectual and representational traditions and conventions to create something new. In doing so, it did not merely copy or, alternatively, reject older forms. The creator of Second Isaiah was not a mere epigone, but a true artist for whom politics was a high art and political thought a rigorous intellectual challenge. The poetry of Isa 40–55 draws its audience into a world in which politics exists, true, but politics of a higher order, a transcendental structuring of re53 Koole, Isaiah 49–55, 413–14; Baltzer, Deutero-Isaiah, 471; see also the possibly contemporaneous texts in Hos 3:5; Amos 9:11. 54  Edgar W. Conrad, “The Community as King in Second Isaiah,” in Understanding the Word: Essays in Honor of Bernhard W. Anderson, eds. James T. Butler, Edgar W. Conrad, and Ben C. Ollenburger, JSOTSup 37 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1985), 99–111.

Conclusions

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ality in which the real actors strutting and fretting across the stage are not flesh and blood, but types and shadows, idealizations serving to figure a more profound drama, one in which the world is re-created with the heavens and most exotic lands as witnesses. In short, Second Isaiah both does and does not live in a political world, and that very ambiguity, or rather multivalency, gives the work its significance, both for antiquity and for modern readers. The work is thus a gorgeous piece of propaganda, but more than that, it is an invitation to a new way of thinking in which the deepest resources of language do not serve the needs of a given monarch but the purposes of a deity, as humans understand that deity, who renews the world.

Chapter 8:

Elite Lives: Job 29–31 and Traditional Authority The landlord now turned into an overlord, a king: a logical extreme of the masquerade. From this developed an endless series of disguises. The simple, translucent life fell to pieces. The united community now became a host of masks divided. … And at the top stood the king. … (Ubayd in Saʿdallah Wannus, The King is the King Second Interlude

If the Isaiah tradition sought to respond to the rise of empires and the disappearance of the Israelite monarchies by appeals to visions of universal peace post bellum, other Achaemenid-era works explored the uses and abuses of political power in other ways. Perhaps most notably, the book of Job conducts the mental experiment of imagining the humiliation and recovery of an elite person, perhaps a local monarch or at least a major regional magnate. Everyperson he is not, and his story does not speak to human suffering in the broadest possible sense, though it does explore the key question of whether the cosmos is well governed. It comes to a guardedly positive conclusion on that point in the content of Yhwh’s speeches in Job 38–41, all of which emphasize divine beneficence in keeping chaos at bay and making possible a flourishing world in which the angels, if not always the human beings, can rejoice. How does Job carry on this investigation of sociopolitical relationships? A crucial piece of the book’s argument appears in chapter 29–31, Job’s soliloquy. Job’s lament for his lost status, wealth, and power in these chapters opens a window onto the values, styles of self-display, and social relationships of landed elite groups in ancient Israel, probably in the early Achaemenid period.1 Those families that inherited power 1 

For a date in the Achaemenid period for at least the book minus chapters 32–37, see H. H. Rowley, The Book of Job, NCBC (1970; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980), 21–23; Avi Hurvitz, “The Date of the Prose-Tale of Job Linguistically Reconsidered,” HTR 67 (1974): 17–34; Norman Habel, The Book of Job, OTL (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1985), 40–42; David J. A. Clines, Job 1–20, WBC 17 (Dallas: Word, 1989), lxvii-lxviii. But for arguments for an earlier date, see Marvin Pope, Job, AB 15 (2nd ed.; Garden City: Doubleday, 1973), xxxii-xl. The poetry may be older than the prose, but in any case the book as a whole assumes social structures that persisted over longer periods of time than the span of individual Near Eastern empires. A book consisting of chapters 1–31 + 38–42, much less the final form, must date no earlier than the early Achaemenid period, and even older poetry must at that time have made sense and reflected a view that the editor of the book found worth relating. Thus it is unnecessary for the purposes of this study to be more precise as to the dating of the chapters under consideration.

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based on land ownership and thus access to government office and the state’s treasury have received little attention among students of Israel and the Levant, apart from studies of lists of very high officials,2 yet the Bible does provide some evidence about them,3 as Chapter 5 above showed, and it at least sometimes, if not frequently, reflects their aesthetic and intellectual sensibilities. The lifeways of such elites informed the detailed exploration of leadership and its failures or successes in Job 29–31. Here, the book’s author articulated a sophisticated defense of a particular set of ideals about nobility that factor significantly into the book’s overall theological argument. The biblical text both reflects widespread, often ancient ideas4 and seeks to work out their implications and shore them up in the face of severe trials. In particular, the elite life that Job 29–31 envisions is one marked by (1) leisure to rule;5 (2) socially inscribed deference from inferiors; (3) rules for admission into the elite group;6 (4) access to (and perhaps monopoly of) the disposable wealth of the community; (5) predetermined rules for the proper use of such wealth; and (6) significant religious sanctions for proper and improper behavior. Each element deserves attention. As a person living such a life, Job sits above both peasants and retainers

2  See Tryggve N. D. Mettinger, Solomonic State Officials: A Study of the Civil Government Officials of the Israelite Monarchy (Lund: Gleerup, 1971); Fox, Service of the King; Raija Mattila, The King’s Magnates: A Study of the Highest Officials of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, SAA (Helsinki: Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 2000). For a preliminary study of local elites of the Achaemenid empire, see Joel Weinberg, “The International Elite of the Achaemenid Empire: Reality and Fiction,” ZAW 111 (1999): 583–608. 3  Such landed nobles in the Bible include: Barzillai (2 Sam 17:27; 19:32–40); Nabal (1 Sam 25:1– 44); Shaphan (2 Kgs 22: 3, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14), and his family (2 Kgs 22:12; 25:22; Jer. 26:24; 29:3; 36:10–12; 39:14; 40:5, 9, 11; 41:2; 43:6; Ezek 8:11); Micah (Judg 17–18); possibly Shebna (Isa. 22:15–25). See the discussion in Chapter 5 above. As a rule, the texts do not explore in detail either the landed sources of wealth or the modes of expenditure. Perhaps an exception to this is the exchange between Barzillai and David in 2 Sam 19:32–40, in which the former appeals to his age to excuse himself from being present at the royal court. The text recognizes the role of a royal court as an opportunity for the monarch to monopolize power by distributing luxury goods, income, and status to potential rivals, especially those with landed income. Thus high-ranking families at court would have received estates from the monarch (cf. 1 Sam 8:14), and landed nobles would have held office in the state apparatus (see Table A-1 in Fox, Service of the King, 281–301). See also the study of an estate by Lawrence Stager, “Shemer’s Estate,” BASOR 277/278 (1990): 93–107. 4  I agree on this point with Richard Neville, “A Reassessment of the Radical Nature of Job’s Ethic in Job XXXI 13–15,” VT 53 (2003): 181–200. 5  On idleness as a necessary yet risky lifeway of elites, see Gaetano Mosca, The Ruling Class (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1939), 421–22. As Max Weber put it, exercisers of political power are “Persons, who, first, are enjoying an income earned without, or with comparatively little, labor, or at least of such a kind that they can afford to assume administrative functions in addition to whatever business activities they may be carrying on; and who, second, by virtue of such income, have a model of life which attributes to them the social ‘prestige’ of a status honor and thus renders them fit for being called to rule” (Weber, Economy and Society, 2: 950). 6  See also S. F. Nadel, “The Concept of Social Elites,” in The Sociology of Elites, vol.  1: The Study of Elites, ed. John Scott (Brookfield, VT: Elgar, 1990), 413–24.

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such as priests and other technicians,7 but below the distant imperial overlord and his court, and thus enjoys considerable autonomy.8 Conversely, the decline of status that Job envisions in chapter 30 stems from a deficiency in the behavior of the elite person or group vis-à-vis one or more of these elements. Chapter 31 pushes this vision of competing elite positions further, with its self-imprecation that seeks to restore the happy, ordered world of domination and obedience that Job accepts and flourishes in, precisely by risking its final undoing.

The Social Location of the Character Job To be more specific, Job appears in the book bearing his name as a high-status male, but his precise social location is not easy to ascertain. The LXX tradition refashions the work to portray Job as a king, an interpretation doubtless flowing from the fantastic wealth ascribed to him as well as from the simile ‫“( כמלך בגדוד‬like a king among the troop”) in 29:25,9 and this social location is assumed in derivative traditions from the Testament of Job on.10 With the problematic exception of Job 29:25, the MT, however, does not locate Job at the very top of the ladder but one rung down, as a landed nobleman. His self-imprecation in 3:14–15 locates him among royals and nobles in the futile pursuit of self-display (“rebuilding ruins”), as his weakened state makes him understand such a key feature of elite lives. 7  I wish here to define “elite” more precisely than sometimes happens. See for example the description of social stratification in Achaemenid period Yehud by Paula McNutt in an otherwise outstanding work: “Classes of elites clearly represented in the postexilic literature include: professional members of the cult …, singers … Temple servants … gatekeepers … a scribal class … the provincial governor. … Artisans may also have been counted among the elite during this period. …” (Paula McNutt, Reconstructing the Society of Ancient Israel [Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1999], 200). 8  That is the imperial cooptation of local elites that appears in some bureaucratic empires does not appear in Job. For parallels to such cooptation, see the discussion in Andreas A. M. Kinneging, Aristocracy, Antiquity & History: Classicism in Political Thought (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1997), 38–68; Jeroen Duindam, Myths of Power: Norbert Elias and the early Modern European Court (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1994), esp.  27–34. As Duindam points out, early modern courts showed marked continuity with earlier ones. This is what we would expect for the Achaemenid period as well. 9  See Mark W. Hamilton, “In the Shadow of Leviathan: Kingship in the Book of Job,” ResQ 45 (2003): 29–40; see also Bruce Malchow, “A Royal Prototype in Job 29,” in The Psalms and Other Studies on the Old Testament (FS Hunt), eds. Jack Knight and Lawrence Sinclair (Nashotah, WI: Nashotah House, 1990), 178–84. Contra Malchow, the elements in Job 29 are not explicitly royal, but rather attach to any great notable. Of course, in the Achaemenid empire and its Mesopotamian precursors, even “kings,” i.e. local dynasts, reported to the central government. On this point, see Josette Elayi and Jean Sapin, Beyond the River: New Perspectives on Transeuphratene, JSOTSup 250 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), 145–56. 10  For a history of this leitmotif, see Samuel Terrien, The Iconography of Job Through the Centuries: Artists as Biblical Interpreters (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996), 45–50.

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And by the way, the vast herds and plowing oxen in chapter 1 seem to position Job not as a sheikh, despite his putative Transjordanian location, but as the owner of a vast working estate, whether a landholding long held by his family as part of the pre-imperial Uradel, or perhaps (since he does not speak of his ancestors much) a paretaš or other type of latifundium granted by the central government in exchange for administrative and military services.11 An author living during the Achaemenid period, even if reusing older poetry, may have had in mind a figure like the Tobiads of Ammon. (On the other hand, the practice of land distribution by the imperial government dates back to Neo-Assyrian times and was a tried administrative practice by the mid-first millennium.12) It is difficult to locate such a type in the poor Yehud that is emerging from the archaeological record, though perhaps not impossible.13 Yet the author could draw on oral traditions of such a figure, as Ezek. 14:14, 20 may show – though the precise social rank of Ezekiel’s “Job” is neither clear nor central to the prophet’s overall point – and in any case biblical writers were usually aware of social practices in neighboring cultures.14 Whatever the precise social location of Job or the origins of his status (a topic the text does not explore), he does sit atop the local hierarchies. That position matters to the overall logic of the book. Job 29–31 thus constitutes the book’s most sustained exploration of the selfunderstanding of an elite person. Following the incipit in 29:1, the chapters fall into three units (29:2–25; 30:1–31; and 31:1–40), with 29 and 30 forming a contrasting diptych and 31 a further development, a modified oath of purity.15 Habel correctly points out that the entire speech or mashal functions rhetorically to summon the deity to court and is thus proclaimed before an assembly of witnesses.16 But at another level, the text serves to convince Job’s audiences – whether we mean the auditors of 11 The paretaš need not be merely a pleasure park with or without hunting preserve, but can include vineyards and other economically productive elements; see Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander, 419–20, 442–46; more carefully Christopher Tuplin, Achaemenid Studies, Historia 99 (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1996), 80–131, esp.  94–97. That the text does not specify the source of Job’s wealth derives from its attempt to relate Job solely to his true, divine overlord. On views of relationships between the Persian government and local notables, see the survey of Lisbeth Fried, The Priest and the Great King: Temple-Palace Relations in the Persian Empire, Biblical and Judaic Studies 10 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2004), esp.  1–7. Note, however, the evidence from Tyre and other Phoenician sites seems to indicate continuity of local elites, as well as new relationships to the central government. See broadly, Josette Elayi, Économie des cites phéniciennes sous l’empire perse (Naples: Istituto Universitario Orientale, 1990), 59–76. 12  See the study and texts in Kataja and Whiting, Grants, Decrees and Gifts. 13  See Charles E. Carter, The Emergence of Yehud in the Persian Period: A Social and Demographic Study, JSOTSup 294 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), esp.  249–324. 14  On the nature of these traditions, see the remarks in Moshe Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–20, AB 22 (New York: Doubleday, 1983), 257–59. 15  See Michael Brennan Dick, “Job 31, the Oath of Innocence, and the Sage,” ZAW 95 (1983): 31–53; earlier, Georg Fohrer, “The Righteous Man in Job 31,” in Essays in Old Testament Ethics, eds. James Crenshaw and John Willis (New York: KTAV, 1974), 3–21. 16 Habel, Job, 405–6; cf. Georg Fohrer, Studien zum Buche Hiob (Gütersloh: Mohn, 1963), 84.

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the character or the readers of the book, Newsom’s superaddressee17 – that he has formerly occupied a social location that is now denied him, and that this denial demonstrates God’s failure to meet God’s obligations. Building on earlier speeches of the character Job that built his ethos by absolving him of false charges and demolishing the credibility of his opponents, a rhetorical state summarized and unsuccessfully undermined by Elihu in Job 32–37, these chapters go a step further by identifying the features of an ideal nobleman and Job as an instantiation of that ideal. This persuasion depends on a shared vision of the world in which some command while others obey, and the identity of each group ideally remains more or less constant. Chapter 29 portrays such a world, chapter 30 its dystopian reversal, and chapter 31 a renewed search for legitimacy.

A World of Order, Status, and Legitimacy Job 29:2–30 opens, then, with a series of regal images, portraying Job as the protector of the poor, counselor of the aged and powerful, phoenix, and tree.18 Some of these images explicitly explore the dimensions of Job’s society of domination and obedience, one in which legitimate authority rests on tradition. As Max Weber described this sort of relationship of legitimate Herrschaft and obedience, domination will thus mean the situation in which the manifested will (command) of the ruler or rulers is meant to influence the conduct of one or more others (the ruled) and actually does influence it in such a way that their conduct to a socially relevant degree occurs as if the ruled had made the content of the command the maxim of their conduct for its own sake. Looked upon from the other end, this situation will be called obedience.19

The author of Job envisions a society of hierarchies of status, but also of reciprocal obligation. As is true of other ancient and even early modern (really, pre-1945) elite groups,20 Job’s ideal nobility imagines itself acting in ways that beyond question benefit all society, even against the elites’ short-term self-interest. Others in the society 17  Carol Newsom, The Book of Job: A Contest of Moral Imaginations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 186. 18  On the successive images, see Habel, Job, 408–12. 19  Max Weber, Economy and Society, 2:946. 20  On the British Empire, see e.g., Cannadine, Aspects of Aristocracy; on the Roman Empire S. R. F. Price, Rituals and Power: The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), esp.  23–52. Price shows how traditional elites in Asia Minor enacted roles in the imperial cult as an expression of their status at home and as a way of enhancing their connections to an emerging empire-wide elite. Ritual and public benefaction were acceptable ways of displaying wealth, and more to the point allowed “the Greeks … to represent to themselves otherwise unmanageable power…” (52). See also Janet Huskinson, “Elite culture and identity of empire,” in Experiencing Rome: Culture, Identity, and Power in the Roman Empire, ed. Janet Huskinson (London: Routledge, 2000), 95–123; Fikret K. Yegül, “Memory, metaphor, and meaning in the cities of Asia Minor,” in Romanization and the City: Creation, Transformations, and Failures, ed. Elizabeth Fentress, JRASup 38 (Portsmouth, RI: Journal of Roman Archaeology, 2000), 133–53.

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may think differently (as we will see in Job 30),21 but the elites’ ideology marks this dissent as illegitimate. The elite group’s view may be widely accepted within the society, even by its victims. There is no way of determining how widespread dissent from these views may have been – probably much less so than democratically-oriented moderns imagine. In any case, the elaborate network of images that Job sets forth evokes this society, partly in order to recreate it. Through these images, we can see at least one person’s view of how his society worked. Presumably, this view was sufficiently verisimilitudinous for the book’s audience to recognize its world in it. Let us consider Job’s elite world in detail. At the top of the lost world of status sits the deity, who keeps Job (‫ ;יׁשמרני‬v. 2), remains with him (‫ ;עמדי‬v. 5) and who provides him knowledge for right conduct (‫…“[ בהלו נרו עלי ראׁשי לאורו אלך חׁשך‬when his lamp shone o’er my head, I went about by his light in the darkness”]; v. 3). That is, the noble leader enjoys unusual access to divine protection and knowledge of the realm of metajustice, and this allows him to use his power in appropriate ways. The word ‫ נר‬helps create the image of illumination. The same word pair ‫ נר‬and ‫אור‬ appears in Job 18:6 and 21:17 (from Bildad and Job respectively), texts that constitute a doublet commenting on the ignorance of the wicked (knowledge is dependent on morality and vice versa). Those paired texts form an intertextual link with 29:3: the elite person can escape wickedness by means of access to the deity. Moreover, ‫ אור‬is a favorite term of the author of Job, who uses it, sometimes literally, but often metaphorically to denote a condition of knowledge (3:16, 20; 12:22, 25; 17:12; 18:18; 24:16; 28:11; 38:15, 19, 24), a precondition of morality (18:5–6 [mutatis mutandis]; 24:14, 16), and a point of access to divine revelation (22:28; 25:3; 36:30, 32; 37:3, 15, 21), legitimate or otherwise (31:26).22 Job 29:24b (‫“ ;ואור פני לא יפילון‬and they did not let the light of my face fall”), whatever its precise meaning,23 picks up the connection between the noble’s access to ‫ אור‬and his protection of the vulnerable. “Light” draws the obedient poor who benefit from the magnate’s largesse into the moral world of order that stems from the divine realm itself. While it is possible to construe the elite monopoly of knowledge as another example of the unfairness of the world, for the author of Job it is important for the sound functioning of society that elite persons enjoy such knowledge lest they became oppressive. The management of knowledge is a prerequisite of “justice.”24 In the absence of evidence for the possibility of universally distributed wisdom – we are still waiting for that! – the Job author prefers to inscribed the pursuit 21  On dissent from elite ideals, see Ralf Dahrendorf, Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1959). Contemporary sociologists tend to emphasize either communal solidarity (a la Weber) or conflict (a la Dahrendorf). 22  On Job 31:26 and idolatry, see Pope, Job, 235. The verse contrasts legitimate with illegitimate access to knowledge, with the latter including divinatory practices, apparently. 23  LXX obelizes this half-verse. See E. Dhorme, A Commentary on the Book of Job (Nashville: Nelson, 1984), 422; Pope, Job, 211–12. 24  On rulers and knowledge systems, see Lasine, Knowing Kings, esp.  1–140.

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of wisdom as the mission of the privileged because it enables them to benefit society as a whole. Verses 3–10 not only place the high-status male under the protection of Eloah and Shaddai, the paramount lord(s), but describes status in terms of forms of bodily display on the part of ruler and ruled. Verses 8–10 rank persons with access to the leader: leader and led watch each other, and this watching constitutes their relationship.25 It is important both that a hierarchy exists and that it functions properly precisely when its various members perform prescribed roles in the presence of each other. Thus, the list of persons in verses 8–10 consists of a series of binary oppositions, which simultaneously comprehend many elements of Job’s community (‫נערים‬, ‫;יׁשיׁשים‬ ‫ׂשרים‬, ‫“ ;נגדים‬youths,26 the aged; nobles, officials”27) while excluding others. Job’s circles of deference include precisely those persons who also expect from others obedience, the other notables. Their deference, and not merely that of the peasants and artisans, creates, enforces, and validates Job’s status as a lord. The text thus sets up a set of binary oppositions of deference and protection that together circumscribe society as a whole. The world of obedience is thus multi-tiered, and again conceived as binary pairs: God The human sovereign (Job) The sovereign The notables The notables The protected Outside the network of relationships lie those hostile to the system, who threaten the poor but who receive their just punishment from the sovereign working under divine auspices. In this system, to cite Weber again, “the ruled had made the content of the command the maxim of their conduct for its own sake.”28 They defer to Job when living in society (their private feelings being irrelevant), and this obedience in turn creates the now lost ideal world. Deference to higher status reflects an ideal of deference to knowledge, which should be embodied in those with higher status. The circularity of the system must somehow be maintained for when the wheel stops spinning, the world falls apart, as Job 30 explains. In evoking this world, then, the author of Job draws on much wider conventional understandings of society, seen in epic and in royal self-presentations. For example, as noted above in Chapter 4, Tablet III ll. 212–14 of the Standard Babylonian version of the Epic of Gilgamesh (standardized in the late second millennium but widely 25  This notion of the relationship of ruled and ruler, which Foucault famously identified, certainly existed in ancient Israel; see the discussion in ibid., 127–40. 26  ‫ נער‬here apparently refers to officials; cf. KTU 4.68.60 and 4.126.12, both lists of occupations list naᶜrūma, and in the second case does so just after šarrūma. KAI 37, a fourth- or third-century temple tariff from Kition on Cyprus, refers to ‫ נערים‬as temple officials. See further H. F. Fuhs, “ ‫נַעַר‬ naʿar,” TDOT 9 (1998): 474–85. 27  G. F. Hasel (“ ‫ נָגִיד‬nāgîd,” TDOT 9 [1998]: 188) cites Sefire III. 10 for this usage. 28 Weber, Economy and Society, 2: 946.

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circulated in the first)29 portrays its heroes defending their quest for the den of Ḫumbaba to the eṭlūtu (“youths” = Hebrew ‫ )נערים‬and šakkanakkū (“officials” = Hebrew ‫“ נגיד‬prince”or ‫“ ׂשר‬official”).30 This pairing of notables sits as a tier in a three-tiered society of king, notables, and people. The king (here, Gilgamesh) must command the nobles’ acceptance of his plan to slay the monster Ḫumbaba, despite their acts of obeisance to him (including kissing his feet [l. 214 unaššaqū šēpīšu]). Persuasion occurs when he tempers his hero’s bravado with a promise to let Enkidu aid him, that is, when the notables’ interpretation of a shared ideal receives its due from a monarch who receives obedience while simultaneously allowing his powerful subjects to alter his choices modestly. In the classic epic text, kingship entails not merely the amassing of glory for the ruler, as Gilgamesh thinks, but also the long-term care of subjects, as the Urukians insist. The elite person may not (1) define glory in purely agonistic and individualistic terms or (2) ignore the views of his – the male pronoun is almost inevitable in these texts, though not quite so – subjects. A similar multilayered social structure and rhetorical climate appears in the Levant in royal inscriptions, as for example in one from Karatepe, in which Azatiwada foreswears kings, notables, and commoners (‫מלך‬, ‫רזן‬, ‫ )אדם‬from defacing his monument, just after he has portrayed himself as the guarantor of the nation’s prosperity (thus viewing the social order in much the same way as does Job 29).31 The prohibition of defacement (hence erasure of historical memory) is of course widespread in the ancient Near East, but the sense that such an insult might come from various directions reflects a sort of popular sociology shared also by Job, according to which the nested hierarchies of deference and benefaction interpenetrate and reinforce each other. Or, in the worst-case scenarios, they do not. Moreover, this view of the culture of obedience and command takes form in the display of the body of the elite person.32 Thus Job sits in the city gate at the boundary of domestic and wild space. Other high-status persons remain silent, reflecting obedience in their very bodily gestures. It is tempting, for example, to understand v. 9b ‫“( וכף יׂשימו לפניהם‬and a palm they place on their mouth”) as a reference to the gesture seen on Achaemenid art of courtiers holding the bent hand a few inches in front of their mouths, a gesture of deference in Richard Frye’s language.33 Moreover, the very

29  For the history of transmission and circulation, see A. R. George, Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic, 1:28–33. 30  Following the edition of ibid.,1: 585. Older versions of the epic lack this pericope. 31  KAI 26AIII.12–13 = TSSI 3:15AIII.12–13 = PhSt C/IV 12–13 (Halet Çambel, Corpus of Hieroglyphic Luwian Inscriptions, vol.  2: Karatepe-Aslantaş, The Inscriptions: Facsimile Edition, Untersuchungen zur indogermanischen Sprach- und Kulturwissenschaft 8.2 [Berlin: de Gruyter, 1999], 67). 32  A point recognized but not developed by August Dillmann, Hiob 4th ed. (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1891), 254. 33  Richard N. Frye, “Gestures of Deference to Royalty in Ancient Iran,” Iranica Antiqua 9 (1972): 102–7.

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bodies of the elites who supported Job as ruler now serve to proclaim his high status: voices are stilled (v. 9), and ear and eye laud him (v. 10). This deference extends beyond silence to amazement and longing for the help of the ruler on the part of the downtrodden. Drawing again on a widespread convention of the self-display of the ruler, the author pictures Job as mender of the very bodies of those who did not receive deference, the lowest tier of the society ( ‫עני יתום אבד אלמנה‬ ‫“ ; עור פסח אביונים‬poor, orphan, perishing, widow, blind, lame, poor”; vv. 12–16).34 Indeed, his body merges with theirs, so that, in a brilliant literary maneuver, the text identifies the body of the ruler with the body politic itself. With the emphasis on the ruler’s protection of the ruled – a use of power that both reinforces the elite’s status but does so by seeming to distribute power and wealth more widely than before – again the author draws on a convention seen also in Levantine royal inscriptions, even if the parallels are at the level of ideas rather than words.35 V. 23 picks up royal, indeed semidivine language of provision of rain, evidently seen in Psalm 72:6(+ 7) and 2 Sam 1:17–27, and then v. 24 notes that his benign laughter (‫“ אׂשחק אלהם לא יאמינו‬I laughed before them; they did not believe it”)36 inspires the subjects’ confidence. Bodily display signifies a set of relationships that Job and his audiences characterize as the right, divinely sanctioned, humanly sustaining uses of power. In turn, the bodies of the obedient subjects who depend on his largesse signal his worthiness (vv. 11–14), and his own body became a vehicle for helping the vulnerable among his dependents (v. 15). While the book of Job draws on hoary traditions and (apparently) the author’s personal observations to portray an elite life, some elements of such a life remain conspicuously absent, most notably the participation in warfare (arguably owing to a Persian imperial need to limit local wars) and hunting,37 as well as the dedication of 34  On the connections between kingship and the body, see Mark W. Hamilton, The Body Royal: The Social Poetics of Kingship (Leiden: Brill, 2005). 35  See e.g., KAI 24.10–13 = TSSI 3:13.10–13 (which describes benefaction as parental action as in Job); and 26A.I.3–6 = TSSI 3:15AI.3–6 esp.  5–6 “And in my days everything pleasant belonged to the Danunians, even grain and delicacies, and I filled the houses [?] of Paar” (‫וכן בימתי כל נעם לדננים‬ ‫) ושׁבע ומנעם ומלא אנך עקרת פער‬. On the elements of this translation, see Yitzhak Avishur, Phoenician Inscriptions and the Bible: Select Inscriptions and Studies in Stylistic and Literary Devices Common to the Phoenician Inscriptions and the Bible (Tel Aviv: Archaeological Center Publication, 2000), 183– 84. 36  For this interpretation, see Pope, Job, 211; Dhorme, Job, 422. The lack of connective particles makes the text difficult, but “laugh at” or “mock” makes no sense in the context. 37  Though hunting motifs, of both mythological and real animals, appear in Achaemenid period glyptic in Palestine and so remained in the consciousness of elite groups (seals WD 4, 17, 36, 51, etc.; see the discussion in Mary Joan Winn Leith, Wadi Daliyeh I: the Wadi Daliyeh Seal Impressions [Oxford: Clarendon, 1997], 209–28). On the continuity of the Achaemenid tradition with NeoAssyrian conventions, see Hildi Keel-Leu and Beatrice Teissier, Die vorderasiatische Rollsiegel der Sammlung “Bible + Orient” der Universität Freiburg Schweitz, OBO 200 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004), 228–30; Mark B. Garrison and Margaret Cool Root, Seals on the Persepolis Fortification Tablets, vol.  1: The Heroic Encounter, OIP 117 (Chicago: Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 2001).

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offerings to temples. The last practice features prominently in Levantine royal inscriptions of the fifth and fourth centuries BCE (as well as earlier). So, for example Eshmunazor, the local dynast of Sidon, is commemorated in his mortuary stele as a builder of sanctuaries for several deities.38 It is tempting to attribute this latter omission to the narrator’s reluctance to violate verisimilitude by having a Gentile support a temple in Jerusalem or Samaria (since we do not know the provenance of the book), or worse, one in Uz. Alternatively, the omission may be part of the book’s efforts at highlighting the conflict between the Job, who would speak to God as a ‫ נגיד‬should (31:37), and his divine overlord. In either case, the omission is glaring and illustrates a difference between the author’s view of elite groups and the views of some neighboring cultures. For a reader of the Psalms or other ancient prayer collections, the absence of temple and priesthood and patronage of them by elite persons seems very striking. To summarize, then, Newsom is surely correct to note that Job 29 describes a moral world in which “honor and respect are among the highest goods.”39 For Job, this honor takes the form of specific actions. Job’s Herrschaft, to cite Weber again, is a situation in which there is a “meaningful interrelationship between those giving orders and those obeying, to the effect that the expectations toward which action is oriented on both sides can be reckoned upon.”40 While this vision recognizes that some persons lie outside these relationships, it marks them as the oppressors whom the ruler must defeat. They also serve their part in the system, if only as a contrast with the obedient who enjoy the benefits of the ruler’s beneficence.

A World of Disorder, and Illegitimacy Chapter 30, meanwhile, both assumes this understanding of the elite’s social location in relationship to subordinates and recognizes its fragility. In two closely connected addresses (vv. 1–19 and 20–31),41 Job adumbrates a set of contrasts between chapters 29 and 30 in order to portray the collapse of traditional authority. These contrasts include a range of images from varying domains of life: city/wild places; young men who are silent with young men who mock; water and fecundity versus aridity and sterility. Placing geographical imagination in the service of social commentary, the author constructs a rhetorical environment for Job’s new déclassé status (his opponents live in the ravines [v. 6]).42 He understands the fall of elites pri38  E.g., see KAI 14.15–20; 17; 43; Pyrgi Inscription; cf. KAI 4; 6; 7 for older examples. For NeoAssyrian examples, see the texts and discussions in Mattila, King’s Magnates, esp.  40–41, 147; Lackenbacher, Le roi bâtisseur; Meyer, “Tempel- und Palastbauten,” 319–28. 39 Newsom, Book of Job, 189. 40 Weber, Economy and Society, 2:1378. 41  See Habel, Book of Job, 417–18. 42  This move has parallels elsewhere in the ancient Near East; on Neo-Assyrian parallels, see Marcus, “Geography as Visual Ideology,” 193–208.

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marily as a question of the loss of status and rights to deference signified by disintegration of the body. In lamenting the collapse of traditional authority, the author evokes a long-standing narratival tradition, which in the mid-first millennium is well represented by the legend and proverbs of Ahiqar, as well as several biblical texts. Two examples perhaps suffice. First, the Ahiqar story portrays a wise courtier43 unjustly accused by his master Esarhaddon and sentenced to death. He survives, thanks to the protection of an admirer and, in some versions, saves the king from embarrassment or worse.44 Two aspects of this story are significant for an analysis of Job: (1) his difficulties occur through the betrayal of his adopted son. No mere technical position, Ahiqar’s status as royal counselor, or as the prologue to the proverb collection puts it, “a wise and proficient [‫מהיר‬, lit. “speedy”] scribe,” could be inherited, and the system depends upon smooth transitions from one generation to the next. Moreover, (2) the monarch’s caprice endangers the nobleman. Ahiqar’s world of domination and obedience, like Job’s, can be disrupted by those above acting inappropriately,45 as well as by the actions of those below. The same theme appears in the aphorisms of the book (lines 84–88, 90–92), which advise a courtier on his duties, including the need to defer to a king and execute his decisions promptly.46 A second example of the same phenomenon appears in Isa 32, examined above (Chapter 6). In both that text and Job 30, elites can displace each other, with the resultant gain or loss or the moral integrity of the community and its leadership structure. 43  For biblical examples, see the stories of Joseph, Ahithophel and Hushai, and Daniel. See the discussion in W. Lee Humphreys, “The Motif of the Wise Courtier in the Book of Proverbs,” in Israelite Wisdom: Theological and Literary Essays in Honor of Samuel Terrien, eds. John Gammie, Walter Brueggemann, W. Lee Humphreys, and James Ward (Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1978), 177–90. 44  On the history of the Ahiqar tradition, see Michael Weigl, Die aramäischen Achikar-Sprüche aus Elephantine und die alttestamentliche Weisheitsliteratur, BZAW 399 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2010), esp.  1–59; Jonas Greeenfield, “The Wisdom of Ahiqar,” in Wisdom in ancient Israel (FS Emerton), eds. John Day, Robert Gordon, and H. G. M. Williamson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 43–52 = Jonas Greenfield, ‘Al Kanfei Yonah (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 1:334–43; John Strugnell, “Problems in the Development of the Ahiqar Tale,” ErIsr 26 (1999): 204*-11*. 45  The corruption of the political structure is also the theme of Qoh 5:7–8, an obscure proverb that, minimally, identifies the potential for abuse in a hierarchy, and notes also the layeredness of power (‫“ ;גבה מעל גבה שמר וגבהים עליהם‬a higher one watches over a high one, and there are higher ones still above them”) and thus the lack of accountability of its wielders (for a discussion of differing interpretations, see Thomas Krüger, Qoheleth, Hermeneia [Minneapolis: Fortress, 2004], 113–15; the proverb makes sense in a variety of ancient imperial settings, not merely under the Ptolemies, as Krüger argues). Qohelet may well refer to imperial political structures in which the center of power lies far from the book’s locale. The focus of the proverb would thus be different from the perspective of Job, in which any overlords at the level of the satrapy or the empire do not figure much in the dialogue, for which Job sits atop the social pile. Or at least he did so before his tragic fall. 46  For the text, see Porten and Yardeni, Textbook of Aramaic Documents from Ancient Egypt. I follow the line numbering of Porten and Yardeni here. See also the comments on these sayings in James Lindenberger, The Aramaic Proverbs of Ahiqar (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983), 79–94.

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Such texts evoke, then, the unrehabilitated language of a world in which hierarchies do not function properly. Such a state also appears in Job 30, as the author creates characters who threaten social order in general, and Job’s status in particular. Characterization proceeds simultaneously along several lines. First, part of the irony of the situation derives from the fact that the mockers are men who otherwise lie outside the set of relationships of obedience and subservience described in chapter 29.47 They are younger and therefore of inferior status (v. 1a: ‫ועתה ׂשחקו עלי צעירים ממני‬ ‫“ לימים‬and now those younger than I laugh at me”), as well as offspring of men who do not enjoy even the level of benefaction and protection to which even dogs are entitled (v. 1b; ‫“ אׁשר מאסתי אבותם לׁשית עם כלבי צאני‬whose fathers I would have refused to put with my sheepdogs”) and lacking in strength (v. 2).48 They are the offspring of the nameless (‫ ; בני בלי ׁשם‬v. 8). This frank acknowledgement that some people lie outside the social system and therefore pose an ongoing threat allows chapter 30 to demolish rhetorically the past world of chapter 29 and to heighten the nostalgia for that lost world. The triumph over chaos that chapter 29 idealizes could not have been as complete as we were led to believe. By rights, the outcasts of chapter 30 deserve neither to mock Job nor to receive his protection. Second, the adversaries’ noise, nonverbal laughter, contrasts with the world of silence of 29:8–10, in which the notables see (‫ )ראה‬but are silent (‫ חבא‬twice), have tongues cleaving to their palates (‫ )ולׁשונם לחכם דבקה‬and hear Job break the silence in connection with his deeds of saving the vulnerable (29:18). Job becomes the subject of their taunts, with language serving again to destroy legitimate hierarchy. Job 30:19’s ‫“ ואתמׁשל כעפר אופר‬and I became like dust and ashes” or perhaps “I rule over dust and ashes”49 seems to be a case of double entendre, with the poet playing off the dual meaning of ‫ מׁשל‬as “to rule” and “to be like,” as well as the nominal range of meaning from aphorism to taunt song.50 The deliberate ambiguity, or rather multivalence of the form, underscores the disorientation accompanying Job’s loss of status. Third, these outcasts lack the community’s resources (hence their disgusting diet) and the leisure that comes from prosperity. They do not internalize the community’s notions of justice, are not obedient, and thus stand outside the circles of those to whom the once rich Job bore obligations of persuasion or charity. Their mockery of 47 

The gender seems important, for Job’s plight becomes a case of male contestation for status. “[For I thought,] ‘what good is the strength of their hands to me/all their vigor is spent” (Habel) or “Yes, the strength of their hands – what is it to me? From them has full vigor fled….” (Anthony Ceresko, Job 29–31 in the Light of Northwest Semitic: A Translation and Philological Commentary, BibOr 36 [Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1980] 44) or “What to me the strength of their hands? From them all vigor has perished” (Pope). Best is perhaps Dhorme: “Even the strength of their hands, what good would it have been to me? Men whose vigour had wholly perished” (Dhorme, Job, 430). 49  So HALOT, DCH. The verb appears in the Hithpael only here in the Bible, perhaps indicating that it was a rare form in ancient Hebrew and thus a studied choice of the author’s aimed at effect. 50  On the range of meanings of the nominal form, see K.-M. Beyse, “ ‫ׁשל‬ ַ ‫ ָמ‬māšal I,” TDOT 6 (1998): 64–67. The proposal of multivalence here is my own. 48  Or

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him is thus doubly poignant. While mockery can be a vehicle for critique in many societies,51 the victims of it understandably object to a systematic devaluation of their social place (and wisdom). Job rejects such an approach. His suspicion resembles that of Nabal in 1 Samuel, but differs from it in that Job the rhetor has displayed a different ethos than Nabal’s, this ethos resting in turn on a different moral makeup. Fourth, these verses draw on the conventions of lament (though omitting praise to the deity),52 addressing the genre’s three topics of God, the lamenter, and the enemy, as Westermann notes.53 Not only does Job lament the destruction of his body in Job 30:16,54 but Job 30:12–19 appears to envision an insurrection or invasion. The walls of his city or palace breached, Job can be degraded. This degradation again is expressed in terms of bodily decomposition and infelicitous self-display, not merely as a loss of wealth. Whatever the imagined historical background of such a dissolution of traditional authority, that is, whether we should contemplate here the prologue’s Chaldean invasion or some other historical event such as the various proposals for fifthcentury domestic turbulence (views demolished by Hoglund)55 or turmoil arising from the Achaemenid response to Egyptian insurrections56 or merely a generalized observation about the fall of traditional elites – all this remains unanswerable at present. What should be clear, however, is that the author of Job knows well that aristocrats like his hero do not always simply drift into obscurity. They are often pushed. Fifth, lament drifts into mourning for the dead,57 especially in 30:20–31, the protest directly addressing God, which elaborates a series of contrasts with chapter 29, thus allowing the author to portray a society in which obedience is no longer a norm, and consequently the vulnerable do not receive protection. This alternative society exists in the realm of death (‫)מות‬, where the only assembly (‫ )מועד לכל חי‬is of the dead (30:23; cf. 30:26, 28, with their references to gloom [‫ אפל‬and ‫]קדר‬, and the absence of the sun [‫)]חמה‬. The evocation of mourning at a funeral (Job performing his own obsequies!), because it notices the breakdown of the social order that should come into play during mourning rites,58 functions ironically to underscore the radical collapse of the authority of Job. 51 

See, again, Lazar, “Historical narrative.” which element, see the brief comments of Claus Westermann, Praise and Lament in the Psalms (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1981), 170. 53 Westermann, Praise and Lament, 182–83. 54  On Job 30:18, see David Wolfers, “The ‘Neck’ of Job’s Tunic (Job XXX 18),” VT 44 (1994): 570–72. 55  Kenneth G. Hoglund, Achaemenid Imperial Administration in Syria-Palestine and the Missions of Ezra and Nehemiah, SBLDS 125 (Atlanta: Scholars, 1992) 51–96. 56  Best described in ibid., 97–106. 57 Saul Olyan (Biblical Mourning: Ritual and Social Dimensions [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004], esp.  21–22) has shown the fluidity of the boundary between mourning for the dead and other types of mourning. 58  On the social dimensions of mourning for the dead, see ibid., 28–61, 148–53; cf. Christopher B. Hays, A Covenant with Death: Death in the Iron Age II and Its Rhetorical uses in Proto-Isaiah (Grand Rapids; Eerdmans, 2011), esp.  243–346. 52  On

Seeking New Legitimacy

165

Sixth, this descent to the realm of death again draws on an older Near Eastern literary trope, which also appears in Tablet XII of the Standard Babylonian edition of the Epic of Gilgamesh.59 Enkidu descends to the Underworld (ana erṣeti) where, if he wishes to escape, he must avoid the care of the body and all social interactions, lest he be identified as a stranger (l. 34 kīma ubbarūma u’addūšū). That is, the Underworld’s social rules invert those of the land of the living. So also with Job. To summarize, then, in chapter 30 the status ranking of the good society of chapter 29 (God, the prince or king, other notables, the protected righteous) does not function properly. God withholds knowledge and thus justice (v. 20–22), and cries for help echo hollowly in the assembly (‫ ;קהל‬v. 28). Job can no longer protect the poor, though he does sympathize with their plight since he now shares it (v. 25). And the familial relationships of 29:16 (and the conventions of Levantine royal self-predication) have transformed tragically into brotherhood with jackals and ostriches, the very symbols of death and social detachment.60

Seeking New Legitimacy As a move in the direction of reversing such a tragic state, chapter 31, to continue, introduces a protestation of innocence. Whatever the genre’s origins, whether in the cult, the law court,61 or elsewhere, in its present state it shows the mark of didactic reflection on the nature of the duties of an aristocracy, framed negatively in terms of norms that Job has refused to violate. The list of eleven sins or violations of these norms62 in vv. 7–34 fall into five categories. The member of an elite group must not (1) use power for sexual gratification, (2) ignore the complaints of slaves, (3) refuse to help the poor and vulnerable, (4) gloat over wealth, or (5) engage in sorcery to overcome enemies.63 The duties of the magnate include the redistribution of his wealth, principally in the form of food and clothing, to the poor, as well as the sharing of table with such persons (a theme famously picked up in Testament of Job as well as the sayings of Jesus, among other Second Temple Jewish texts). Like Kilamuwa, Job understands the elite person’s care of his dependents in familial terms (v. 18; ‫ אב‬and ‫)אם‬. To use the language of the political philosopher John Rawls, this is a “well-ordered society,” that is, one whose members share a common idea of justice, mechanisms for enforcing this common idea, and a conviction of the need to live out one’s obligations under this common 59  On the origins and role of Tablet XII in the epic, see George, Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic, 1:47–54. 60  On the translation of v. 29, see Habel, Book of Job, 422; Pope, Job, 224; Dhorme, Job, 448. The Vulgate’s draconum also seems plausible, in which case the verse refers to the chthonic sea monster and her companion foes of the creator deity. 61  As argued by Dick, “Job 31, the Oath of Innocence, and the Sage.” 62  See the treatment of Habel, Job, 429–31. 63  On the design of the list of sins, see Habel, Book of Job, 429–30.

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Chapter 8:  Elite Lives: Job 29–31 and Traditional Authority

idea.”64 Or, to return again to Weber, a “meaningful relationship between those giving orders and those obeying” exists so that “the expectations toward which action is oriented on both sides can be reckoned upon.”65 This protestation of innocence offers access to the lifeways of the traditional elite. Job’s public actions cohere with his values illustrating his blamelessness. In the terminology of contemporary sociologists, there is decidedly no back stage here (that is, no hidden set of interactions accessible only to those in the know).66 Power is transparent. The lack of the back stage (the existence of which chapter 30 contemplates and 31 seeks to avoid) is important because what is at stake is the legitimacy of Job’s role at the top of his society, and thus the legitimacy of this society as a whole. While the notion of legitimacy is hotly contested in sociological circles67 and Weber does not fully work out his views, perhaps it is possible to start with the notion of Jürgen Habermas, “Unter Legitimität verstehe ich die Anerkennungswürdigkeit einer politischen Ordnung.”68 As he goes on to explain, legitimacy stems from the full integration of all the elements of a society (Gesellschaft). While this approach risks circularity, it at least avoids making economics or ideas or some other part of the human experience determinative of the whole. And certainly it helps us understand a text like Job 29–31, which envisions the simultaneous collapse of all the relationships in the well-ordered society and seeks to re-create them, at least literarily. This attempted re-creation proceeds in the face of significant social risks: the cuckoldry of the nobleman Job (v. 10) and the destruction of his own body (vv. 22). As in chapters 29–30, here we see an Israelite understanding status honor as a function of the body properly used for good ends, i.e., not veneration of non-deities (Job 31:27)69 nor celebration of one’s power (Job 31:25), but rather the redistribution of goods. Public display of power must be kept to a minimum to preserve the well orderedness of society. Power diminishes when used in ways outside the society’s conception of what is just.

64  John Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, ed. Erin Kelly (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2001), 8–9. 65 Weber, Economy and Society, 2:1378. 66  On backstages, see Albert Hunter, “Local Knowledge and Local Power: Notes on the Ethnography of Local Community Elites,” in Studying Elites Using Qualitative Methods, eds. Rosanna Hertz and Jonathan Imber (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1995) 151–70. 67  E.g., see the essays in Peter Graf Kielmansegg, ed., Legitimationsprobleme politischer Systeme: Tagung der deutschen Vereinigung für Politische Wissenschaft in Duisburg, Herbst 1975 (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1976); and Vatro Murvar, ed., Theory of liberty, legitimacy and power: new directions in the intellectual and scientific legacy of Max Weber (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985); Kinneging, Aristocracy, Antiquity, and History; Thomas Noetzel, Authentizität als politisches Problem, Politische Ideen 9 (Berlin: Akademie, 1999). 68  Jürgen Habermas, “Legitimationsprobleme im modernen Staat,” in Kielmansegg, ed., Legitimationsprobleme, 42. 69  See Pope, Job, 235. ‫ ותשק ידי לפי‬in 31:27b echoes the gesture of deference in 29:9.

Conclusions

167

The ultimate guarantor of this justice is, of course, the deity, whom Job both recognizes as the protector of the vulnerable (31:14), as any person of status and power should be, and as the one whose apparent dereliction has brought on the crisis of legitimacy that Job’s world now faces.70 The only way to right this apparent contradiction is for one who expects obedience from others and thus gives them protection, namely Job, to challenge another in the same position. That is, Job places himself in the position of his noble retinue in Job 29:10–13 vis-à-vis El. Chapters 29–31 conclude, then, with a challenge to the deity in which Job reaffirms his princely status and thus his right to God’s attentions. Employing with a twist a common literary device of describing virtues as clothing (v. 36: ‫אם לא על ׁשכמי אׂשאנו‬ ‫“ אענדנו עטרות לי‬rather, on my shoulder I would put it;71 I would wear it as crowns for myself”), he notes that his steps (‫ )צעדי‬are those of a prince (‫)נגיד‬. As a prince he may appeal to Eloah/Shaddai and anticipate an answer because of his bravura performance in the face of adversity. This social location is crucial for understanding the moral world envisioned by these chapters.

Conclusions These preliminary observations have implications for other biblical texts and the book of Job as a whole. First, Job 29–31 reflects not a concern with universal human conditions, but with the fate of a particular social location, a landed elite, and thus indirectly with the society over which this elite exercised power. Second, at the same time, since all humans have an interest in social order, the fate of elites, which exist in all human societies, remains a significant human concern. Thus we cannot dismiss the text as irrelevant to our own political or theological reflections. Third, Job is a part of a mid-first millennium set of reflections on the nature of sovereignty – of legitimate uses of power, status, and wealth – that includes texts such as the so-called “Sin of Nabu-šum-iškun,” Esarhaddon’s Vassal Treaties, Deut 17–18, 1 Sam 8–12, and many others. This concern, which has older antecedents but takes on new shapes during the Second Temple period, may derive from the reality of the creation of empires, with their structures of dominance and subalternity. It is tempting, again, to understand Job 29–31 to be reflecting upon the social dislocation that arises when traditional authority gives way to “new men.” In some respects, then, a date in the Achaemenid period, though probable, is not critical to the main lines of interpretation of these chapters, particularly if the basic outlines of local government remained intact as one empire succeeded another

70  Though not in chapter 31 as a divine enemy, as he appears in chapter 30; see Jean Lévêque, Job et son Dieu (Paris: Gabalda, 1970), 2:440–42. 71  I.e., the “scroll written by my legal adversary” (‫ )וספר כתב איש ריבי‬of v. 35b.

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Chapter 8:  Elite Lives: Job 29–31 and Traditional Authority

throughout the millennium, as seems often to have been the case.72 In fact, in several instances, these chapters of Job appeal to political ideas more at home in the seventh century than the fifth, a fact that probably reflects the essential conservatism of the Achaemenid Empire’s reuse of older traditions of rule (but see the discussion in Chapter 7 above). Since I have tried to read chapters 29–31 as part of a unified work that includes the prose framework, a form of the text that we know did exist in the Achaemenid period (whatever was the case for earlier, conjectural editions of Job), it is defensible to read 29–31 in light of issues of the post-exilic era, when, again, older political forms still flourished. Fourth, we need to ask why the ‫ חכמים‬or intellectuals of Achaemenid-period Yehud or Samaria (we do not know the provenance of the work) would create a book like Job. It is tempting to conjecture that they are lamenting a lost position as retainers for the class of which a Job would be part. This guess is both speculative and simplistic, however. More likely, the intellectual retainer groups are contemplating the collapse of intellectual systems – theologies that is to say – which are, like all theologies, embodied and enmeshed in socially shared sign systems. We need not assume that every detail of their portrayal of a member of an elite person like Job represents a facsimile of their own lives any more than the presence of advice to courtiers in Ahiqar implies that the owners of the book at Elephantine were contemplating presentation at court. Reading about the powerful perennially entertains and educates. At the same time, this analogy is imperfect: Job’s audience had a more direct interest in the issue than the Elephantine readers would have had. Fifth, we should note that status honor is embodied in bodily terms. Just as Esarhaddon contemplates the destruction of the bodies of subordinate monarchs who rebel against him and his heirs,73 so too does the author of Job make this connection. Political rule consists in part of displaying the body in culturally sanctioned ways. To borrow from John Blacking, an anthropologist who seeks a sound basis for the study of the body,74 this bodily referencing works in at least four dimensions. First, quoting Durkheim, he proposes that “society is ‘not a nominal being created by reason, but a system of active forces’” (8). Many human bodies live together, share affective states and bodily needs and thus form society.75 Second, “every normal member of the species possesses not only a common repertoire of somatic states and a common potential for the altered states of consciousness that have been classed…but also the same specific properties of cognitive function” (10). This anti-Levy-Bruhlian claim leads to the further conclusion that “Human behaviour and action are extensions of capabil72 See the discussion in H. Limet, “Les exploitations agricoles en Transeuphratène au Ier millénaire à la lumière des pratiques assyriennes,” Transeuphratène 19 (2000): 35–50. 73  VTE ll. 410–93. 74  John Blacking, The Anthropology of the Body (London: Academic, 1977). 75  Cf. M. L. Lyon and J. M. Barbalet, “Society’s body: emotion and the ‘somatization’ of social theory,” in Embodiment and experience: The existential ground of culture and self, ed. T. Csordas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 48–66.

Conclusions

169

ities that are already in the body…” (11). Third, “nonverbal forms of interaction are fundamental” (13). Kinesics and proxemics study these forms. Human interaction operates along many channels, all, in principle, subject to study. And fourth, “the mind cannot be separated from the body” (18), as one sees, for example, in “nonverbal communication, especially dancing and music…” among other ways. However helpful the rest of Blacking’s work might or might not be, the consideration of the body as a cultural, social phenomenon in the dual sense that the body has “meaning” within a network of ideas and practices and that the use of the body takes place within these complex sets of ideas and practices is a crucial insight, not just for Job, but more generally for the Hebrew Bible. Finally, the brilliant poetry of Job 29–31, while it apparently reflected the selfconsciousness of the elites of the southern Levant, also functioned as literature for them and others. It both draws on a culture’s self-understanding (folk sociology so to speak) and crafts something new, a work of art that transcends the reality on the ground. As such, the text belongs to the ages and contributes to our ongoing reflection of the nature of power, status, and wealth, and the stake that any society has in controlling access to them. By making Job a rhetor speaking on political matters, most notably his own status and power, the book signals the role of the magnate as speaker and the reader as judge of the legitimacy of the powerful. The art of rule thus becomes a window onto the nature of the well or poorly functioning society as a whole. The ruler and the ruled must decide whether a masquerade is underway with its “endless series of disguises,” or if perhaps behind the masks lies a potential new reality desirable for all who encounter it.

Chapter 9:

Prosperity and Kingship in Psalms and Inscriptions As Job’s speeches make clear, then, his concern as a leader lay in part with the happiness of the humans with which he shared the world, not merely their obedience. Modern politicians’ concern for national prosperity finds ample precedent in antiquity, even if the structure of economic life has changed in almost every other respect. For ancient rulers, as well, the prosperity of subjects was a concern, albeit one that appears overtly only sporadically in surviving texts. Such a concern antedated the Achaemenid period, with a text like Job simply reflecting an older ideal on this as on other points. We know a great deal about both tribute gathering and gift giving in some ancient cultures (notably the Assyrian Empire), but just how the two were connected remains unclear.1 Nor is it clear what ancient royal concerns with national prosperity, as expressed in the various media of royal propaganda, might say about contemporaneous ideas about the intersection of human behaviors we would call economic, sociopolitical, and religious. Yet, it is clear that to ignore the population’s need for material security was to court disaster, often understood as divine disfavor,2 however 1  See, e.g., J. N. Postgate, Taxation and Conscription in the Assyrian Empire (Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1974) 200–204; Moshe Elat, “Phoenician Overland Trade within the Mesopotamian Empires,” in Ah, Assyria: Studies in Assyrian History and Ancient Near Eastern Historiography Presented to Hayim Tadmor, eds. Mordechai Cogan and Israel Eph’al (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1991), 21–35. The situation has improved a bit with the assembling of tax and grant documents in various SAA volumes, the important studies on tribute cited below. Still much remains to be done; but F. M. Fales and J. N. Postgate, eds., Imperial Administrative Records, Part II: Provincial and Military Administration, SAA 11/2 (Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 1995), xii-xviii, xxviii-xxix; David Vanderhooft, “Babylonian Strategies of Imperial Control in the West: Royal Practice and Rhetoric,” in Judah and the Judeans in the Neo-Babylonian Period, eds. Oded Lipschits and Joseph Blenkinsopp (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2003), 235–62 esp.  250; Ryan Byrne, “Early Assyrian Contacts with Arabs and the Impact on Levantine Vassal Tribute,” BASOR 331 (2003): 11–25. The arguable impossibility of speaking of an ancient economy as distinct from society as a whole, a position for which Kevin McGeough has argued astutely in regards to Late Bronze Age Ugarit (Exchange Relationships at Ugarit, ANES 26 [Leuven/Paris: Peeters, 2007]), means that understanding the mechanisms for transferring goods and services within even a state as complex as Neo-Assyria and its successors would require careful attention to political and religious motivations for “economic” behaviors. (For this reason, I cannot agree with McGeough in following Weber’s argument that economics excludes military action and vice versa [ibid., 373]). 2  Consider several examples. The book of Amos contains an elaborate network of oracles denouncing economic oppression by the aristocracy (and implicitly the monarchy, though Amos’s rhetorical strategy led him to reticence on that connection) that lead to divine wrath, including the ultimate impoverishment of the nation (Amos 2:6–16; 4:6–12). Gift giving created a network of loy-

Chapter 9:  Prosperity and Kingship in Psalms and Inscriptions

171

veiled the cut-off point between masterly inactivity and malign neglect. As Appadurai and others have pointed out (see above), the movement of commodities and, one may add, the alteration of the landscape for the support of daily life reinforces, or even creates, social relationships. Things are not just things. Kings took pride in making commodities more affordable to a larger number of their subjects, thus altering the social meaning of those commodities and the structures that made their movement possible. Several texts make explicit what is often assumed in others. The texts I consider here, a set of inscriptions from several early first-millennium kingdoms and a contemporaneous psalm from the Hebrew Bible,3 both reveal and obscure ways in which ancient Near Eastern rulers sought to bring about material prosperity and to celebrate such an accomplishment in the oral or written media available to them. Interestingly, they demonstrate how a trope of kingly self-presentation could serve either to explain actual practices and thus legitimate rule, as in many of the inscriptions under consideration, or to imagine a non-real but desirable situation and thus to legitimize or reorient current rule, as in certain Israelite royal psalms. Such texts serve rulers’ pursuit of fame, including the approbation of the divine realm, in that the display of care for subjects says something about both the ruler and the elaborate network of deference and obedience of which he is part. This study also serves as a test of a widely argued thesis in biblical studies, namely, that the royal psalms functioned much like inscriptions in other parts of the Levant.4 If so, we should not be surprised to learn that a few of these psalms show an interest in material prosperity, as in fact they do. The challenge is to identify the precise ways in which the texts talk about prosperity, how such talk fits into the larger rhetorical alty and obligation. See for example, lines 266–82 of the so-called “Succession Treaty of Esarhaddon,” which assume royal benefaction to notables (at least) both as a norm and as an act creating a moral obligation on the part of the recipient (see the edition of Kazuko Watanabe, Adê-Vereidigung). Admittedly, benefactions to subordinate rulers differs from those to ordinary subjects, but the chain of gift giving and receiving began at the center and moved outward and downward, forming a circular flow of goods with the system of tribute collection. See the broader issues addressed by the essays in H. Klinkott, S. Kubisch and R. Müller-Wollermann, eds., Geschenke and Steuern, Zölle und Tribute: Antike Abgabenformen in Anspruch und Wirklichkeit, CHANE 29 (Leiden: Brill, 2007). 3  On the early dating of many psalms, see John Day, “How Many Pre-Exilic Psalms are There?” in In Search of Pre-exilic Israel, ed. John Day, JSOTSup 406 (London: Continuum, 2004), 224–50. 4  H. L. Ginsberg, “Psalms and Inscriptions of Petition and Acknowledgment,” in Louis Ginzberg Jubilee Volume: English Section (New York: American Academy for Jewish Research, 1945), 159–71; Patrick Miller, “Psalms and Inscriptions,” in Congress Volume Vienna 1980, ed. J. A. Emerton, VTSup 32 (Leiden: Brill, 1980), 311–32; Yitzhak Avishur, “Studies of Stylistic Features Common to the Phoenician Inscriptions and the Bible,” UF 8 (1976): 1–22; idem, Phoenician Inscriptions and the Bible; Roger Tomes, “I Have Written to the King, My Lord”: Secular Analogies for the Psalms (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2005); Eckart Otto, “The Judean Legitimation of Royal Rulers in its Ancient Near Eastern Contexts,” in Psalms and Liturgy, eds. Dirk J. Human and Cas J. A. Vos, LHBOTS 410 (London: Continuum, 2004), 131–39; cf. the study of narratives in the Bible and other ancient Near Eastern media in Simon B. Parker, Stories in Scripture and Inscriptions: Comparative Studies on Narratives in Northwest Semitic Inscriptions and the Hebrew Bible (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).

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Chapter 9:  Prosperity and Kingship in Psalms and Inscriptions

program of the texts we have, and what we might learn from such data about royal self-understandings and assumptions about subjects and their views.

Ginsberg and Miller Revisited To situate this study, it would be helpful to revisit briefly the earlier work of Ginsberg and Miller, and more recently of Avishur and Tomes. Ginsberg began his suggestive 1945 essay with a reference to “North Semitic Eucharistic epigraphy,” and specifically the Bir-Hadad Inscription (KAI 201 = TSSI 2.1). He focuses upon the text’s interest in announcing Hadad’s beneficence to the praying king (‫ ;וׁשמע לקהלה‬ll. 4–5) and the king’s grateful keeping of his vow ( ‫ ; זי נזר לה‬l. 4). Ginsberg then cites examples of vowing in both biblical and Egyptian psalms, noting that “the object of both Egyptian and Hebrew [and, we might add, Aramaean!] psalms of acknowledgment was precisely publicity….”5 This publicity took epigraphic form outside Israel, but if the surviving evidence offers any indication, primarily oral form within Israel. As Ginsberg notes, however, written inscriptions honoring vows taken to elicit divine favor were probably not absent there.6 Confirming this fairly uncontroversial assumption is the fact that the psalmic superscription ‫“( מכתם‬inscription”) applies to thanksgiving hymns (see Pss 16:1; 56:1; 57:1; 58:1; 59:1; 60:1), and in three cases we find the injunction ‫“( אל תׁשחת‬you shall not destroy”), a rubric also appearing in inscriptions. He concludes that the biblical writers “did not hesitate to attribute to the pious kings of Judah the practice so well attested for other nations of the Ancient Orient of setting up inscriptions of petition and acknowledgement.”7 Thirty-five years later, Miller reviewed Ginsberg’s study, concentrating on the inscriptions from Khirbet el-Qôm (especially no. 3)8 and Khirbet Beit Lei (nos. 3 and 5).9 The former closely resembles psalms of thanksgiving for deliverance, while the 5 

Ginsberg, “Psalms and Inscriptions,” 168; cf. 164 n.  14. Ibid., 169. Ginsberg cites Isa 38:9 in defense of this argument. Note, however, that no Hebrew inscription containing the verb or noun ‫ =( נדר‬Aramaic ‫ )נזר‬has come to light (see the concordance in F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp, J. J. M. Roberts, C. L. Seow, and R. E. Whitaker, eds., Hebrew Inscriptions: Texts from the Biblical Period of the Monarchy with Concordance [New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005]). The fragment of a stele from Jerusalem offers a tantalizing glimpse at what must once have been a larger assemblage of such texts. See the handy collection in Shmuel Aḥituv, Echoes from the Past: Hebrew and Cognate Inscriptions from the Biblical Period (Jerusalem: Carta, 2008), esp.  25–26; Émile Puech, “L’ostracon de Khirbet Qeyafa et les débuts de la Royauté en Israël,” RB 117 (2010): 162–84; but Jonathan N. Tubb, “Editorial: Early Iron Age Judah in the Light of Recent Discoveries at Khirbet Qeiyafa,” PEQ 142 (2010): 1–2. 7  Ginsberg, “Psalms and Inscriptions,” 171. 8  Lines 1–3: ‫אריהו העשר כתבה ברך ליהוה אריהו ומצריה לאשרתה הושע לה‬: “Uriah the rich had it written. Blessed be Uriah by YHWH, for from his foes by/for the sake of his Asherah he has rescued him.” See the discussion in Dobbs-Allsopp, et al., Hebrew Inscriptions, 408–14; for a thorough discussion of some aspects of the text, see also Ziony Zevit, The Religions of Ancient Israel: A Synthesis of Parallactic Approach (London: Continuum, 2001), 350–437. 9  No.  3: ‫ ארר חרפך‬: “Cursed be the one who reproaches you.” No.  5: ‫אני יהוה אליכה ארצה ערי יהדה‬ 6 

Ginsberg and Miller Revisited

173

second, though more like Second Isaiah than the Psalms, loosely resembles the conclusions of laments, and the third has parallels, again loose, throughout the Hebrew Bible, saliently with texts that speak of a foreign nation ridiculing Israel or its God. Citing several parallels with Psalms (e.g., 8; 80; 106), Miller locates these inscriptions in the prayer life of ancient Israel. Whereas Ginsberg could cite no Hebrew inscriptional evidence for his thesis, intervening discoveries allowed Miller to show that, in general, the language of communal worship (and thus the cult) penetrated at least some aspects of the more general culture. Over the past three decades, moreover, Yitzhak Avishur has published several studies of the stylistic parallels (especially stock phrases) shared by the Bible and other ancient Near Eastern corpora.10 These volumes provide handy lists of parallels among the various texts considered (as well as divergences and modifications or near-parallels), as well as frequently germane discussions of grammatical or syntactical issues. Avishur does not systematically raise questions of rhetorical construction in these texts (though his study of “style” does head in that direction). Still his work demonstrates that the biblical writers worked in a surprisingly tightly knit literary environment. More recently still, Tomes has compared Psalms with what he calls “secular analogies.” Thus petitions, protestations of innocence or confession, descriptions of plight, appeal to the interest of the lord, direct reproaches, and expressions of dependence in prayers resemble those in letters, as he shows with numerous examples. It is possible, as Tomes argues, that the location of so many common elements in different genres indicates that the psalmists, too, came from many walks of life, not merely the temple establishment.11 More likely, however, the phenomenon he catalogues arises from the porous boundaries between retainer classes such as the priesthood and scribal groups, and the extent to which the high status language, usable both orally and in writing, infiltrated many aspects of life.12 Before passing to the main topic of discussion, I would add a further parallel to this list. Ostracon 2 from Horvat Uza dates to the second half of the seventh century bce. Though broken, it speaks of reversals of fortune. In particular, lines 7–8 refer to the turning away (‫ )נסע‬of “the weeping of your mourning” (>‫)בית ׁשבתכ