Biblical Hebrew Poetry and the Task of Interpretation 9781107156203, 9781316659670, 1107156203

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Biblical Poetry and the Art of Close Reading

This volume explores the aesthetic dimensions of biblical poetry, offering close readings of poems across the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. Composed of essays by fifteen leading scholars of biblical poetry, it offers creative and insightful close readings of poems from across the canon of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament (Psalms, wisdom poetry, Song of Songs, prophecy, and poetry in biblical narrative). The essays build on recent advances in our understanding of biblical poetry and engage a variety of theoretical perspectives and current trends in the study of literature. They demonstrate the rewards of careful attention to textual detail, and they provide models of the practice of close reading for students, scholars, and general readers. They also highlight the rich aesthetic value of the biblical poetic corpus and offer reflection on the nature of poetry itself as a meaningful and enduring form of art. J. Blake Couey is Associate Professor of Religion at Gustavus Adolphus College. He is the author of Reading the Poetry of First Isaiah: The Most Perfect Model of the Prophetic Poetry, and he is currently working on a commentary on Isaiah 1–39. Elaine T. James is Assistant Professor of Theology at St. Catherine University. She is the author of Landscapes of the Song of Songs: Poetry and Place, and is currently working on a handbook on biblical poetry.

Biblical Poetry and the Art of Close Reading

Edited by

J. BLAKE COUEY Gustavus Adolphus College

ELAINE T. JAMES St. Catherine University

University Printing House, Cambridge cb2 8bs, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, ny 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, vic 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 79 Anson Road, #06–04/06, Singapore 079906 Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107156203 doi: 10.1017/9781316659670 © Cambridge University Press 2018 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2018 Printed in the United States of America by Sheridan Books, Inc. A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. isbn 978-1-107-15620-3 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Contents

List of Contributors List of Abbreviations

page vii x

Introduction

1

J. Blake Couey and Elaine T. James

part i the psalms 1

Words That Devour: Discursive Praxes and Structural Strategies in Psalm 50

13 15

Carolyn J. Sharp

2

“Silence Is Praise”: Art and Knowledge in Psalm 65

32

Elaine T. James

3

The Glory of Creation in Psalm 104

49

Robert Alter

part ii poetry in wisdom literature 4

Bildad Lectures Job: A Close Reading of Job 8

61 63

Edward L. Greenstein

5

Poetry as Pedagogy in Proverbs 5

80

Anne W. Stewart

6

The Utility and Futility of Poetry in Qohelet Simeon Chavel

v

93

Table of Contents

vi

part iii the song of songs 7

Structure, Sound, and Sense: A Close Reading of Chapter One of the Song of Songs

111 113

Tod Linafelt

8

How Is a Love Poem (Song 4:1–7) Like the Beloved? The Importance of Emotion in Reading Biblical Poetry

131

Sarah Zhang

part iv poetry in the prophetic books 9

Isaiah’s Love Song: A Reading of Isaiah 5:1–7

147 149

F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp

10

Poetry, Language, and Statecraft in Isaiah 18

167

J. Blake Couey

11

The Servant in Poetic Juxtaposition in Isaiah 49:1–13

184

Katie M. Heffelfinger

12

“It Is a Lamentation – It Has Become a Lamentation!”: Subverting Genre in Ezekiel 19

199

Sean Burt

13

The Enduring Day of Wrath: Zephaniah 1, the Sibylline Oracles, and the Dies Irae

216

Julia M. O’Brien

part v poetry in biblical narrative 14

YHWH’s Poesie: The Gnadenformel (Exodus 34:6b–7), the Book of Exodus, and Beyond

235 237

Brent A. Strawn

15

The Decipherment of Sorrow: David’s Lament in 2 Samuel 1:17–27

257

Steven Weitzman

Bibliography Index of Authors

275 293

Index of Scripture and Other Ancient Texts

297

Index of Subjects

310

Contributors

Robert Alter is emeritus Class of 1937 Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. His recent books include Psalms: A Translation with Commentary (2007), Pen of Iron: American Prose and the King James Bible (2010), and Ancient Israel: The Former Prophets: Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings: A Translation with Commentary (2013). Sean Burt is Assistant Professor with a joint appointment in English and Religious Studies at North Dakota State University in Fargo, North Dakota. He is the author of The Courtier and the Governor: Transformations of Genre in the Nehemiah Memoir (2014). Simeon Chavel is Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible at the University of Chicago Divinity School in Chicago, Illinois. He is the author of Oracular Law and Priestly Historiography in the Torah (2014). J. Blake Couey (editor) is Associate Professor of Religion at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota. He is the author of Reading the Poetry of First Isaiah: The Most Perfect Model of the Prophetic Poetry (2015). F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp is the James Lenox Librarian and Professor of Old Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, New Jersey. He is the author of several books, including Lamentations, Interpretation Commentary Series (2002) and On Biblical Poetry (2015). Edward L. Greenstein is Professor of Bible at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel, where he also directs the Institute for Jewish Biblical vii

viii

List of Contributors

Interpretation. He is the author of numerous articles and book chapters and is currently completing an annotated translation of Job (forthcoming) and a commentary on Lamentations. Katie M. Heffelfinger is Lecturer in Biblical Studies and Hermeneutics at The Church of Ireland Theological Institute. She is the author of I Am Large, I Contain Multitudes: Lyric Cohesion and Conflict in Second Isaiah (2011). Elaine T. James (editor) is Assistant Professor of Old Testament at St. Catherine University in St. Paul, Minnesota. She is the author of Landscapes of the Song of Songs: Poetry and Place (2017). Tod Linafelt is Professor of Biblical Literature at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. He is the author or editor of several books, including Surviving Lamentations: Catastrophe, Lament, and Protest in the Afterlife of a Biblical Book (2000), An Introduction to the Old Testament (coauthored with Walter Brueggemann; 2012), and A Very Short Introduction to the Hebrew Bible as Literature (2016). Julia M. O’Brien is the Paul H. and Grace L. Stern Professor of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament at Lancaster Theological Seminary in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Her publications include Challenging Prophetic Metaphor (2008), The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Gender Studies (editor; 2014), and Micah, Wisdom Commentary Series (2015). Carolyn J. Sharp is Professor of Hebrew Scriptures at Yale Divinity School in New Haven, Connecticut. She is the author of several books, including Prophecy and Ideology in Jeremiah: Struggles for Authority in the Deutero-Jeremianic Prose (2003) and Irony and Meaning in the Hebrew Bible (2009), and editor of several volumes, including The Oxford Handbook of the Prophets (2016). Anne W. Stewart is Associate Vice President for Communication and Deputy to the President at Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, New Jersey. She is the author of Poetic Ethics in Proverbs: Wisdom Literature and the Shaping of the Moral Self (2016). Brent A. Strawn is Professor of Old Testament at the Candler School of Theology, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia. He is the author or editor of several books including What Is Stronger Than a Lion? Leonine Imagery and Metaphor in the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East

List of Contributors

ix

(2005), The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Law (editor; 2015), and The Old Testament Is Dying: A Diagnosis and Recommended Treatment (2017). Steven Weitzman is Abraham M. Ellis Professor of Hebrew and Semitic Languages and Literatures and Ella Darivoff Director of the Katz Center of Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvannia in Philadelphia. He is the author or editor of several books, including Song and Story in Biblical Narrative (1997), Surviving Sacrilege: Cultural Persistence in Jewish Antiquity (2005), and The Origin of the Jews: The Quest for Roots in a Rootless Age (2017). Sarah Zhang is Assistant Professor of GETS Theological Seminary in Covina, California. She is the author of I, You, and the Word “God”: Finding Meaning in the Song of Songs (2016) and coeditor of Poetic Approaches to the Song of Songs (forthcoming).

Abbreviations

AB ABD ANEM ANEP

ANET

AOTC Arab. BBR BCOTWP BDB BEATAJ BHS

BibInt BibInt BLS

Anchor Bible Anchor Bible Dictionary. Edited by David Noel Freedman. 6 vols. New York: Doubleday, 1992 Ancient Near East Monographs/Monografías sobre el Antiguo Cercano Oriente The Ancient Near East in Pictures Relating to the Old Testament. Edited by James B. Pritchard. 2nd ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969 The Ancient Near East in Texts. Edited by James B. Pritchard. 3rd ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969 Abingdon Old Testament Commentaries Arabic Bulletin for Biblical Research Baker Commentary on the Old Testament Wisdom and Psalms Brown, Francis, S. R. Driver, and C. A. Briggs. A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament Beiträge zur Erforschung des Alten Testaments und des Antiken Judentums Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia. Edited by Karl Elliger and Wilhelm Rudolph. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1983. Biblical Interpretation Biblical Interpretation Series Bible and Literature Series x

List of Abbreviations BM BSMEL CBQ CC CEB ch(s). CJT CTU

CurBS DCH DJD ECC EncJud

ESV ET FAT fig. FOTL G GAS GKC

HALOT

HBS HCOT HdO HSM HThKAT HUCA IB

xi

British Museum Brill Studies in Middle Eastern Literatures Catholic Biblical Quarterly Continental Commentaries Common English Bible chapter(s) Canadian Journal of Theology The Cuneiform Alphabetic Texts from Ugarit, Ras Ibn Hani, and Other Places. Edited by Manfried Dietrich, Oswald Loretz, and Joaqín Sanmartín. Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 1995 Currents in Research: Biblical Studies Dictionary of Classical Hebrew. Edited by David J. A. Clines. 9 vols. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 1993–2014 Discoveries in the Judaean Desert Eerdmans Critical Commentary Encyclopedia Judaica. Edited by Fred Skolnik and Michael Berenbaum. 2nd ed. 22 vols. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007 English Standard Version English translation Forschungen zum Alten Testament figure Forms of the Old Testament Literature Greek Septuagint Greek Septuagint, Codices Alexandrinus and Sinaiticus Gesenius’ Hebrew Grammar. Edited by Emil Kautsch. Translated by Arthur E. Cowley. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon, 1910 The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament. Ludwig Koehler, Walter Baumgartner, and Johann J. Stamm. Translated and edited under the supervision of Mervyn E. J. Richardson. 4 vols. Leiden: Brill, 1994–1999 History of Biblical Studies Historical Commentary on the Old Testament Handbuch der Orientalistik Harvard Semitic Monographs Herders Theologischer Kommentar zum Alten Testament Hebrew Union College Annual Interpreter’s Bible. Edited by George A. Buttrick et al. 23 vols. New York: Abingdon, 1951–1957

xii

IBC IBHS

ICC inf. cst. ISBL JAH JAOS JBL JNES JNSL JPS 1917 JQR JR JSOT JSOTSup KAI

KAR KJV l(l). LHBOTS LXX LXXL MH ms(s) MT NASB NCBC NIB NICOT NIDB

List of Abbreviations Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax. Bruce K. Waltke and Michael O’Connor. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1990 International Critical Commentary infinitive construct Indiana Studies in Biblical Literature Journal of Ancient History Journal of the American Oriental Society Journal of Biblical Literature Journal of Near Eastern Studies Journal of Northwest Semitic Languagues The Holy Scriptures According to the Masoretic Text: A New Translation Jewish Quarterly Review Journal of Religion Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Journal for the Study of the Old Testament: Supplement Series Kanaanäische und aramäische Inschriften. Herbert Donner and Wolfgang Röllig. 2nd ed. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1966–1969 Keilschrifttexte aus Assur religiösen Inhalts. Edited by Erich Ebeling. Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1919–1923 King James Version line(s) Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies Septuagint Septuagint, Lucianic recension Mishnaic Hebrew manuscript(s) Masoretic text New American Standard Bible New Century Bible Commentary The New Interpreter’s Bible. Edited by Leander E. Keck. 12 vols. Nashville: Abingdon, 1994–2004 New International Commentary on the Old Testament New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible. Edited by Katharine Doob Sakenfeld. 5 vols. Nashville: Abingdon, 2006–2009

List of Abbreviations NIV NJPS NRSV OTE OTL PEPP

PEQ RIH RSRLC SAA SBL SBLDS SHBC SQAW SubBi SVTP Syr. TAD

TDOT

Tg. TWOT

UBL v(v). VT VTSup Vulg. WBC WMANT ZAW YLT

xiii

New International Version Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures: The New JPS Translation according the Traditional Hebrew Text New Revised Standard Version Old Testament Essays Old Testament Library The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. 4th ed. Edited by Roland Greene et al. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012 Palestine Exploration Quarterly Ras ibn Hani Routledge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture State Archives of Assyria Society of Biblical Literature Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary Schriften und Quellen der alten Welt Subsidia Biblica Studia in Veteris Testamenti Pseudepigrapha Syriac Peshitta Textbook of Aramaic Documents from Ancient Egypt. Edited by Bezalel Porten and Ada Yardeni. 4 vols. Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1986–1999 G. Johannes Botterweck et al., eds. Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament. Translated by John T. Willis et al. 15 vols. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977–2006 Targum Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament. Edited by R. Laird Harris, Gleason L. Archer, Jr., and Bruce Waltke. 2 vols. Chicago: Moody Press, 1980 Ugaritisch-biblische Literatur verse(s) Vetus Testamentum Supplements to Vetus Testamentum Vulgate Word Biblical Commentary Wissenschaftliche Monographien zum Alten und Neuen Testament Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft Young’s Literal Translation

Introduction J. Blake Couey and Elaine T. James

Poetry is an exacting and evocative art form. As a highly wrought, densely meaningful, and creative use of language, it makes demands on its readers: it cannot be skimmed or summarized; one must slow down. The argument of this volume is that minute attention to the body of the poem itself – careful, sustained attention to the text and its distinctly poetic features, what we are calling “close reading” – is the best way to understand individual poems. The reading of biblical poetry must attend to the form of the poem itself, how it means, not just what it means. Such poetic reading strategies are necessary for readers of the Bible because roughly a third of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) is poetry. It is highly diverse, comprising various types of hymns, laments, didactic wisdom, prophecy, inset poems in narrative texts, and love poetry, but it shares common features: its relative brevity and concision; its non-narrative character; its free and variable rhythms; and its preference for short, frequently parallelistic lines. All of it repays close reading. Although many of the Bible’s poems have been recognized and appreciated for their artistic quality throughout the ages – most notably the Psalms – the modern study of biblical Hebrew poetry as poetry began with Robert Lowth’s Praelectiones Academicae de Sacra Poesi Hebraeorum (“Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews”), delivered in 1741 and published in 1787.1 Lowth offered a wide-ranging account of the characteristics of biblical poetry, with detailed worked examples from the text, although his discussion of parallelism would prove his most enduring 1

The English translation of Lowth’s Lectures by G. Gregory was first published in 1787. Note the discussion of Lowth in Steven Weitzman’s essay in this volume.

1

2

J. Blake Couey and Elaine T. James

contribution. George Buchanan Gray and S. R. Driver, both informed by Lowth’s work, did further work at the turn of the twentieth century to characterize and categorize this body of literature.2 Significant advances in the study of biblical poetry were made in the 1970s – 1980s, including seminal studies in parallelism, line structure, and style and technique.3 And new trajectories have been established by the recent publication of F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp’s On Biblical Poetry.4 This (growing) body of secondary literature has made possible a sophisticated understanding of the workings of biblical Hebrew poetry, which must inform careful, erudite readings of individual biblical poems. Robert Alter’s The Art of Biblical Poetry has served for some decades as a model for this kind of literary reading,5 and good examples of close readings of poems can certainly be found in essays, journal articles, and commentaries. Even so, treatments of poetry by biblical scholars have tended either toward manuals or treatises on formal features, or more recently, toward theoretically oriented accounts, much more so than close reading.6 As Dobbs-Allsopp has observed, “Readings of biblical poems, and especially close, deep, lusciously savored, highly imaginative readings, are still too few in the field.”7 To our knowledge, no single volume brings together examples of such readings from across the Hebrew Bible, by recognized experts on biblical Hebrew poetry, in order to showcase their potential. This book aims to fill that gap. In using the term “close reading” we are intentionally connecting our work with the mid-twentieth-century movement in literary aesthetics known as the New Criticism. This loosely affiliated group of critics, most closely associated with I. A. Richards, William Empson, and Cleanth Brooks, broke with then current traditional philological and historical approaches in 2

3

4 5 6

7

Gray, The Forms of Hebrew Poetry (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1915); Driver, An Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1892). For overviews of this work, along with subsequent developments in the study of biblical poetry, see J. Kenneth Kuntz, “Biblical Hebrew Poetry in Recent Research,” CurBS 6 (1998): 31–64 and 7 (1999): 35–79; Wilfred G. E. Watson, “The Study of Biblical Hebrew Poetry: Past – Present – Future,” in Sacred Conjectures: The Context and Legacy of Robert Lowth and Jean Astruc, ed. John Jarick, LHBOTS 457 (New York: T&T Clark, 2007), 124–54. Dobbs-Allsopp, On Biblical Poetry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). Alter, The Art of Biblical Poetry (New York: Basic Books, 1985; rev. ed., 2011). For a discussion of the “literary” approach of Alter, and its legacy in biblical studies, see essays in the special issue of Prooftexts 27 (2007), and especially the introductory essay by Steven Weitzman, “Before and After The Art of Biblical Narrative,” Prooftexts 21 (2007): 191–207. Dobbs-Allsopp, On Biblical Poetry, 326.

Introduction

3

literary studies to emphasize the poem itself, informed by the conviction that form and content are inseparable. We are convinced that the kinds of historical and literary approaches that currently characterize biblical studies can still benefit from and fruitfully dialogue with such a formalist approach to biblical poetry. And yet by recommending literary “close reading,” we do not mean to exclude concerns that are extrinsic to the text, as New Criticism is sometimes thought to do. On the contrary, as literary critic Kenneth Burke writes, “Our primary concern is to follow the transformations of the poem itself. But to understand its full nature as a symbolic act, we should use whatever knowledge is available.”8 Close reading need not preclude historical questions. Most of the essays in this volume move to some extent between the text itself and the world behind the text. Neither does close reading simply mean a deliberate naivete about textual unity or design; as a variety of ideological and theoretical approaches over the last thirty years have illustrated, texts are susceptible to diverse tensions – both internal, and external. But, as many of the essays in this volume demonstrate, “close reading” continues to be an indispensible tool for a variety of theoretical approaches.9 We are not proposing a method or exegetical strategy per se; instead, this volume provides models of literary close reading in practice. It is our hope that they will spark a renewed appreciation for this body of biblical literature.

overview of essays The following essays offer close readings of poems from across the canon of the Hebrew Bible. While they do not cover every biblical book that contains poetry or represent every possible genre of biblical Hebrew poetry, they do suggest the rich variety of this poetic corpus. The essays have been grouped according to the texts that they treat. In what follows, we provide an overview of each essay and then discuss significant divergences, shared themes, and suggestive overlaps among them, along with questions for further study.

8

9

Burke, A Grammar of Motives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), cited in Andrew DuBois, “Introduction,” in Close Reading: The Reader, ed. Frank Lentricchia and Andrew DuBois (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), 10. On the importance of historical considerations in the interpretation of ancient poetry, see Jeremy A. Black, Reading Sumerian Poetry (London: Athlone Press, 1998), 20–47. On the compatibility of theory and close reading, see Terry Eagleton, How to Read a Poem (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2012), 1–24.

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J. Blake Couey and Elaine T. James

The volume opens with three chapters about the Book of Psalms, the classic example of biblical poetry. In Chapter 1, Carolyn J. Sharp traces multiple trajectories of poetic meaning across Ps 50, including discourse about speech and sacrifice, patterns in the usage of divine names, and alternation between singular and plural addressees. Drawing on Louis Althusser’s concept of “interpellation,” she concludes that the text offers its readers an ideological invitation to identify as obedient, submissive worshippers. Chapter 2 by Elaine T. James argues that Ps 65 offers a studied reflection on the question of human uniqueness by counterintuitively equating human silence with praise while celebrating the noise of the nonhuman world. Personification plays a key role in the psalm’s intellectual argument, which engenders a lyric reflection on the poetic creation itself. In Chapter 3, Robert Alter attends closely to a variety of poetic features of Ps 104 – including soundplay, imagery, personification, line structure, and narrativity – and demonstrates how they work together to produce a dynamic, panoramic vision of God’s creation that recalls the biblical creation stories of Gen 1–2, with further parallels to Job 38–42. The next set of chapters takes up poems from the wisdom books of Job, Proverbs, and Qohelet/Ecclesiastes. Each one explores how poetry provides an engine for the thought world of wisdom literature, driving the audience’s engagement with its questions. Closely attuned to the temporality of poetry, Edward L. Greenstein’s examination of Bildad’s first speech (“Bildad lectures Job: a close reading Of Job 8”) shows how the reader’s experience of the poem is consistently surprised, even thwarted, by the movement of the poem’s complexly interweaving arguments, which respond to earlier arguments by Job and Eliphaz and to Job’s (narrative) circumstances. Appealing to traditional wisdom, the poem presents the contrasting fates of the righteous and the wicked, seeming to offer Job a place among the former even as the reader is left to speculate on Bildad’s attitude toward his friend. In “Poetry as pedagogy in Proverbs 5,” Anne W. Stewart attends to the pedagogical function of Prov 5 as wisdom literature. She emphasizes how the resources of language – especially repetition, wordplay, sound, and rhythm – work together as a “cadence of instruction” for the poem’s student audience that draws the reader to a practice of moral discernment, and she examines in particular the imagistic world of moral oppositions drawn between the forbidden woman and the sanctioned woman (the wife of one’s youth). Simeon Chavel’s treatment of Qoh 3:1–8 in Chapter 6 uncovers evidence of both coherence and instability within the well-known poem. On the one hand, the repetitive

Introduction

5

structure and synergies among the various word pairs suggest a carefully ordered poetic reflection on the vicissitudes of life; on the other hand, no single principle can explain the selection or sequence a pairs, and conflicting formal cues undercut perceived patterns. According to Chavel, these tensions reveal that the speaker Qohelet has composed Qoh 3:1–8 as parody of a wisdom speech, demonstrating the unreliability of the genre and, ultimately, the limitations of poetry itself. Two chapters follow on the love poetry of Song of Songs, showing how this celebrated text repays close attention to its lyricism. Tod Linafelt’s essay (Chapter 7) develops a line-by-line analysis of the first chapter of the Song of Songs, showing how the poem enfolds its multisensory celebration of eroticism. He demonstrates that attention to how the poem means – its formal strategies – is crucial to our understanding of biblical Hebrew poetry more generally and the Song in particular. To that end, he explores features such as structuring patterns, soundplay, wordplay, metaphor, and repetition in order to tease out the Song’s playfully lyric sensibility. Sarah Zhang in Chapter 8 offers a close reading of a descriptive love poem from Song of Songs, informed by the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas and recent research on human emotions. She argues that Song 4:1–7 does not so much describe the beloved’s body as recreate the lover’s exuberant delight at the sight of it. Contemporary readers empathetically experience comparable emotions as they respond to the materiality of the poem’s language, especially its sound play and metaphoric imagery. The section of essays on poems from the prophetic books of the Latter Prophets (Isaiah–Malachi) is the largest in the volume, containing five chapters. This high number reflects the fact that prophetic poems constitute a significant portion of the Hebrew Bible’s poetry. Despite the size of the collection, however, prophecy has received less attention than other kinds of poems in recent studies of biblical Hebrew poetry – an omission to which these chapters offer a modest corrective. Three essays on Isaiah demonstrate the variety of poetry found within this prophetic collection, which contains more poetry than any biblical book outside of Psalms. In Chapter 9, F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp argues that Isa 5:1–7 adapts the genre of the love song, including its potential for mythological association, to the purposes of prophetic critique. He traces a number of sonic, rhythmic, and verbal cues across the poem, demonstrating how they anticipate the poem’s concluding revelation that the vineyard is an allegory for the breakdown of the divine–human relationship. In Chapter 10, J. Blake

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J. Blake Couey and Elaine T. James

Couey explores the “verbal inventiveness” of Isa 18:1–6, suggesting that this artistry contributes to the poem’s political agenda without being reducible to it. Language – both the diplomatic language with which the poem is concerned and its own words – is in a sense the true subject of the poem. Couey scrutinizes the poem’s exoticizing language depicting the Cushites, the meteorological similes for divine transcendence, and the agricultural metaphors foregrounding military confrontation. Emphasizing the nonnarrative character of biblical poetry, Katie M. Heffelfinger (Chapter 11) examines the development of the voice of YHWH’s servant in Isa 49:1–13. The servant expresses both deep confidence and futility, affectively swaying the exilic audience to respond similarly to their own situation. This voice is juxtaposed with that of Zion in the next poem in the chapter, a sympathetic but untrustworthy figure with whom the audience is encouraged not to identify. Sean Burt takes up the question of genre in Chapter 12. Specifically, he argues that the emphatic insistence that the poem is a lamentation (Hebrew qînâ) in vv. 1 and 14 establishes genre expectations that the poem partly fulfills but partly subverts. The poem, that is, gives conflicting cues about its genre, displaying some features associated with lamentations and other features associated with parables. In this way, the text destabilizes its own rhetorical purposes and draws attention to the poem itself and its unresolved tensions. In Chapter 13, Julia M. O’Brien reads the poem from Zephaniah alongside an important and enduring example of its “afterlife” – its role in the Dies Irae, part of the Christian church’s Mass for the Dead. She draws attention to how the Dies Irae combines Zeph 1 with texts from the Sibylline Oracles, emphasizing the poetic style of Zeph 1, in particular its marked use of repetition, which creates a litany of coming doom. The last two chapters of the volume are devoted to poems inset within the narrative books of the Hebrew Bible, including both the Torah (Genesis–Deuteronomy) and the Former Prophets (Joshua–2 Kings). Brent A. Strawn’s reading of Exod 34:6b–7 in Chapter 14 highlights the poem’s polyvalence, in particular the possibility that certain phrases are operative for both the lines preceding and following them. Although this expansiveness highlights YHWH’s benevolence, the poem as a whole establishes tension between divine mercy and punishment, allowing for a more dynamic characterization of the deity, as borne out by the poem’s larger context within the Book of Exodus. Finally, in Chapter 15, Steven Weitzman reads David’s lament for Saul and Jonathan in conversation with the historical study of emotions and within the broader genre of hero

Introduction

7

laments in the ancient world. Instead of viewing the poem simply as an outpouring of David’s passionate grief, he traces its pervasive concern with mitigating the shame of the fallen warriors and securing their memory. Reflecting the fact that close reading is more of an orientation to the text than a particular method, these chapters exhibit considerable methodological and interpretive diversity. Some engage theory more explicitly and extensively, while others broadly presume the New Critical principle of the inseparability of form and meaning. Many of the authors situate their poems in their putative ancient historical or religious contexts, but others adopt more ahistorical stances. Some essays include reflections on the contemporary theological or ethical ramifications of the text; for others, the poems are worth reading simply because of their artistic beauty. At times, the chapters even work from competing conceptions of poetry itself. All of this variation results from the differing demands of particular texts and the individual interests and temperaments of particular authors. We see it as a strength of this volume, an affirmation that we never read in isolation, but always participate in interpretive communities.10 Ultimately, readings will always be as diverse as readers. This methodological diversity sometimes manifests itself in differences in terminology among the essays. By and large, all the authors draw from the well-established lexicons of literary studies and biblical scholarship; as a result, there should be little confusion even when different authors prefer different technical terms. One exception worth noting is inconsistent language for the component units of poems. As is widely recognized, biblical poetry typically groups short strings of words – usually clauses or clause components – into groups, most often pairs or triads that display some parallelism. Most authors in this volume refer to the smallest of these levels as the “line,” and the groups of lines as “couplets,” “triplets,” and the like.11 (This usage corresponds to the terminology of “colon,” “bicolon,” and “tricolon” in biblical scholarship, although that language seems to be falling out of favor and is not used in any of the essays here.) Following his long-standing practice, however, Alter refers to the smaller level as a “verset,” a group of two versets as a “line,” and a group of three versets as a “triadic line.”12 Stewart uses similar terminology in her essay.

10 11 12

See DuBois, “Introduction,” 14. For a defense of this practice, see Dobbs-Allsopp, On Biblical Poetry, 8–9, 20–29. Alter, Art of Biblical Poetry, 9; compare Benjamin Hrushovski-Harshav, “Prosody, Hebrew,” EncJud 16: 598–99.

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J. Blake Couey and Elaine T. James Common Themes

Despite these not insignificant differences, certain common themes emerge when the chapters are put into conversation with each other. Revealing their debt to the New Critical project, all of the contributors devote extensive attention to formal features and poetic devices such as metaphor, rhythm, soundplay, imagery, personification, repetition, and line structure. And many of the essays explicitly take up the question of what poems can accomplish as forms of art. A poem may invite its audience to view themselves in particular ways. For Sharp, Ps 50 constructs an identity for its audience as faithful and obedient worshippers of God; for Heffelfinger, Isa 49:1–13 encourages its audience to view their situation as exiles through the perspective of YHWH’s servant; for Stewart, Prov 5 instructs its audience by shaping their moral imaginations as students of its wisdom. In other essays, the poem becomes a site of intellectual inquiry, an opportunity to explore fundamental questions of meaning and value. Greenstein’s reading of Job 8 catches the poem in a series of rhetorical ploys that force the audience (and Job) to reckon with traditional wisdom, in particular the respective fates of righteous and wicked persons. James argues that Ps 65 uses the trope of speech to scrutinize the idea of human distinctiveness, and in the process she demonstrates how the poem constitutes a mode of thought. Couey discusses the political impact of Isa 18 in the late eighth-century BCE, showing how the poem’s evocative portrayal of the Cushites sought to discourage Judah from allying with them. Chavel even demonstrates how a poem can interrogate the possibility of poetry itself, arguing that the irresolvable tensions in Qoh 3:1–8 express skepticism about poetry’s ability to tell the truth. And Strawn explores poetry as a vehicle for sophisticated theological reflection; in his reading, Exod 34:6b–7 reveals an evocative tension between YHWH’s benevolence and freedom. All of these readings underscore the complexity of thinking that poems are capable of embodying. A second common theme of this volume is the various dimensions of emotion in biblical Hebrew poetry. “All good poetry [originates in] the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings,” William Wordsworth famously wrote.13 And yet, as several of these essays argue, it is the calculated, carefully patterned language of poetry that creates this perceived

13

S. T. Coleridge and W. Wordsworth, Lyrical Ballads: 1798 and 1800, ed. M. Gamer and D. Porter (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview, 2008), par. 26.

Introduction

9

emotional immediacy. Linafelt’s reading of the Song emphasizes its passions, supporting his observation that biblical Hebrew poetry is strikingly interested in the interior world of human emotion, quite unlike biblical Hebrew prose. According to Weitzman, David’s lament in 2 Sam 1 has typically been read as an emotional poem of precisely the Wordsworthian variety – it expresses David’s deeply felt grief over the loss of Jonathan and Saul. Weitzman complicates this view, emphasizing the culturally bounded nature of emotions. For both Heffelfinger and Stewart, it is not the emotions of the poet that are so important, but rather the emotional appeal to the poems’ audiences. Poetry, on each of their readings, has the ability to draw readers into its complex, even paradoxical vicissitudes of feeling. Finally, Zhang’s essay shifts focus toward the emotional experience of the interpreter. It is readers’ “emotional integrity” that enables them to participate in the aesthetic experience of the poem. She develops, in dialogue with Emmanuel Levinas, a final ethical point: The integrity of this emotional experience is ultimately an ethical response to the alterity of the text. Lastly, several of the essays take up questions about how the poems relate to other texts. Burt, Chavel, and Dobbs-Allsopp all consider genre: How do particular poems join or diverge from other poems of a similar type? For Burt, Ezek 19 intentionally evokes the genre of the lamentation only to thwart its audience’s genre expectations, even parodying them. Chavel’s essay also uses the language of parody, arguing that Qoh 3:1–8 is a parody of a wisdom poem, and it serves to destabilize assumptions about the value and use of proverbial poetry. Dobbs-Allsopp argues that Isa 5:1–7 plays with the language and motifs of the love song, transforming it into a prophetic critique of the relationship between the deity and Israel and Judah. In such ways, these essays show quite well how the poetry of the Bible is deeply traditional, yet remains perpetually open to innovation and subversion. While not addressing the question of genre, Alter, Couey, and James similarly explore the tension between conventionality and novelty in their readings. Two essays explicitly discuss how their poem reaches beyond itself into other textual traditions. Alter reads Ps 104 as a monotheistic transformation of themes from the cosmogonic myths and creation hymns of other ancient Near Eastern cultures, while also noting the intertextual connections between this poem and Gen 1–2 and Job 38–42. O’Brien’s analysis of Zeph 1 reaches in the other direction, discussing a significant example of the text’s afterlife in the text of the Dies Irae. These examples show how “close reading” can pivot to the study of textual traditions beyond the verses of the individual poem itself.

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J. Blake Couey and Elaine T. James Broader Questions

In addition to these specific claims and concerns, some broader questions emerge when the essays in this volume are read together. First, how widely applicable is the category of “lyric”? The term has sometimes been used in scholarly discussions to characterize biblical Hebrew poetry in general, although it most readily associated with biblical poems that are identified as songs, including the Song of Songs and, at least implicitly, many Psalms.14 But there is clearly space for scholarly debate over the designation. Heffelfinger and Stewart, for example, identify lyric features in poems that are not universally recognized as such, prophetic (Isa 49) and wisdom poetry (Prov 5), respectively.15 Their suggestive claims pose an important question about the applicability of the category, and perhaps of the nature of biblical Hebrew poetry itself. Dobbs-Allsopp also finds evidence of lyricism in Isa 5:1–7, a prophetic poem that spoofs on the genre of love song. These issues prompt us to ask whether lyric is an appropriate category for some biblical poems but not others, or if it is a helpful way to conceptualize all biblical poetry. Second, prophecy in the Hebrew Bible is closely associated with divine speech, whereas other varieties of discourse more typically consist of human speech about God. This division does not always hold for the poems discussed in this volume, however. Among the poems from prophetic books, Isa 5:1–7 is voiced entirely by a prophetic speaker; the deity speaks only one verse in Isa 18:1–6; and the voices of both YHWH and YHWH’s servant appear in Isa 49:1–13. Zephaniah 1 does consist largely of divine speech, and Ezek 19 is framed as such (v. 1), although nothing in the poem itself demands an identification of YHWH as the speaker. Meanwhile, substantial divine speech appears among the poems from other collections. Exodus 34:6b–7 is self-disclosing speech by the deity – hence the title of Strawn’s chapter, “YHWH’s poesie” – and the majority of Ps 50 (vv. 7–23) consists of direct divine discourse, as Sharp discusses. This may at least partly be an accident of selection, but it calls into question the presumption that some kinds of biblical poems will be divine speech and other kinds will be human speech. Is the expectation or possibility of divine speech pervasive across biblical poetry, not just the prophetic 14 15

See the discussion in Dobbs-Allsopp, On Biblical Poetry, 178–232. See their longer discussions in “I Am Large, I Contain Multitudes”: Lyric Cohesion and Conflict in Second Isaiah (Leiden: Brill, 2011) and Poetic Ethics in Proverbs: Wisdom Literature and the Shaping of the Moral Self (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016), respectively.

Introduction

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books? Can all of biblical poetry can be characterized as broadly oracular? Such questions, which potentially subvert conventional scholarly categories like “lyric,” “didactic,” and “prophetic,” merit further consideration. The task of interpretation is ongoing.

the enduring value of close reading At its heart, close reading is an act of sustained attention to an object. It draws its cues from the nature of poetry itself, which forces slow reading through the density of its language and its tendency toward multivalence. And close reading resonates with the kind of meditative concentration to which poetry itself gives frequent expression, including many biblical poems.16 Among the poems treated in this volume, this kind of contemplation is perhaps best exemplified by the beloved’s exquisitely detailed description of the body of his lover in Song 4:1–7, as discussed in Zhang’s essay, but it can also be seen in the awed, panoramic survey of the created world in Ps 104 (Alter), the piling up of participial phrases to capture something of the divine character in Exod 34 (Strawn), or even the extended admiration of the predatory prowess of the lions in Ezek 19 (Burt). This kind of careful, lingering contemplation practiced by close readers reflects a high degree of attachment, one that approaches love.17 An emphasis on close reading may seem like a quaint throwback, an escape from theory and its political entanglements. Far from an exercise in conservative retrenchment, however, it constitutes a decidedly counter-cultural activity in our present cultural moment. Sustained attention – to a poem, a painting, nature, another person – grows out of a kind of commitment in short supply in a society that values multitasking over intense focus, casual encounters over committed relationships, click-bait over sustained analysis. Close reading claims that some tasks should not be done quickly. It is an affirmation of the possibility that some objects possess an abiding intrinsic value, one that resists commodification and rewards repeated, perhaps even lifelong, engagement. Terry Eagleton has recently argued compellingly for the continued vitality – indeed necessity – of close reading in a postcritical age. He sees it as a potentially subversive act that reclaims the extravagance of language in a culture that valorizes efficiency and productivity: “To attend

16

17

See Luis Alonso Schökel, A Manual of Hebrew Poetics, SubBi 11 (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1988), 66. DuBois, “Introduction,” 9.

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to the feel and form of words is to refuse to treat them in a purely instrumental way and thus to refuse a world in which language is worn to a paper-like thinness by commerce and bureaucracy.”18 These are grand claims, to be sure, and it would be dangerously naive to imagine that reading poetry is somehow a panacea for all of the world’s problems. It remains, however, a deeply human activity that can force us to grapple with the promise and perils of our humanness.19 The essays in this volume both model the practice of close reading of biblical poems and demonstrate its rewards. They are an invitation to return again and again to these influential and enduring texts.

18 19

Eagleton, How to Read a Poem, 10; see further 8–9, 17–22. See DuBois, “Introduction,” 16.

part i THE PSALMS

1 Words That Devour Discursive Praxes and Structural Strategies in Psalm 50 Carolyn J. Sharp

Pine Knoll Shores, North Carolina

Just off North Carolina’s coastal plain, the Bogue Banks barrier island is home to breathtaking dune environments and maritime shrub forests. These fascinating ecosystems are constituted by an intricate set of relationships among sand, salt water, beach grasses, shrubs, and trees. At the upper dunes, the beach grades into a tangle of shrub thickets. The thickets 15

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yield to scrub forest, with its gnarled trunks of live oak and red cedar, wax myrtle, yaupon holly, and woody vines, the low canopy arching over a sparse understory and stunted vegetation. Coastal dune ecosystems are dynamic, in a continual state of flux due to the pressures of salt spray, wind, high tides, and powerful Atlantic storms. The adjacent shrub forests endure many of the same extremes, though they are protected from the tides and the highest concentrations of salt spray. One trail in Pine Knoll Shores wends its way through a sun-dappled scrub forest of stunted live oaks. The path leads up an incline to a vantage point in the upper dunes barely wide enough for one person. Looking out, the hiker sees the vast glittering sweep of the Atlantic Ocean. A hundred yards offshore, flocks of brown pelicans skim low over the rolling waves; loons dive underwater to chase minnows. Where the tide meets the beach, Eastern willets and sanderlings follow retreating back-eddies of foaming surf, hurrying to nab tiny crustaceans and insects burrowing into the wet sand. The vista is a magnificent study in the play of perspectives, from the luminous horizon to ocean swells in the middle distance to bursts of activity at water’s edge. But from the same vantage point looking to the side, the view is radically different. The hiker is surrounded by a dense thicket bursting with avian and other life. In late afternoon, painted buntings, sparrows, Carolina wrens, and other small birds flit from twig to twig or dart to their nests, the tangle of undergrowth obscuring them from view. Bright chirps and warbled songs of dozens of birds shimmer through the air. The encircling density of the maritime thicket renders the auditory experience as a complex whole: birdcalls and rustling sounds seem to come from every direction. Shoulder-high in entwined shrubs, thorny branches, and leafy undergrowth, the hiker has the impression of being enclosed within the thicket just as the birds are. Reading poetry is like this. Poetry invites the reader into multiple dimensions of signifying. Fluid dimensions of soundplay interact with bursts of vivid imagery and the formal intricacy of structural features. The sketching of an expansive vista may give way to a stunning focus on an unexpectedly colorful detail, only to yield to a structuring trope skimming through the middle distance. Vocalic patterns and other organized lexical features, syntax and lineation, precise allusions to tradition and deep ambiguities: all these become intertwined in a tangled thicket of semantic possibilities. This semantic thicket constitutes a living network within which the interpreter works to perceive and construct meaning. Biblical Hebrew poetry works with elevated language, “gapping” or terseness, and sustained use of metaphors and imagery, deploying these features through a parallelistic “language” constituted by interwoven

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relationships of equivalence and difference.1 Hebrew parallelism functions on many structural levels – chief among them the line2 – to articulate progression, reconfiguration, displacement, and absence in dialogical relation. In biblical Hebrew poems, some sounds, forms, images, and concepts are foregrounded because they stand alone. Other sounds, forms, images, and concepts are repeated, or elements similar to them create the impression of recurrence; these are vital as well. Hebrew poetry raises compelling questions about temporality and implicit emplotment,3 voicing and the effects of different levels of discourse, the play of ambiguity and disambiguation, and more. Psalms utilize vectors of meaning-inrelation whose directions, degrees of magnitude, and points of intersection serve to map terrains of meaning.4 Using the analogy of the North Carolina coast: poetic meanings are generated in a dynamic ecosystem of relations that can be explored through various linguistic and semantic vantage points. This essay will assess the poetics of Psalm 50 by means of five trajectories of inquiry. First will be an investigation of two modes of discourse that represent covenantal relation through imagery of the mouth: a discourse of speech based on tropes of uttering, addressing, proclaiming, and remaining silent, and a discourse of sacrifice based on tropes of eating, drinking, and tearing apart. Following this will be explorations of three structural features that organize the poetics of Psalm 50: the series of divine names in the psalm, the alternation of singular and plural addressees, and inclusios linking the beginning and end of the psalm. I will argue that each divine name evokes an ambiguity that creates alarm in the implied audience; that the alternation of addressees works strategically 1

2

3

4

Adele Berlin has shown that Hebrew parallelism activates relationships of equivalence – and contrast within equivalence – at the levels of morphology, grammar, syntax, structure, and ideation. See Berlin, The Dynamics of Biblical Parallelism (revised and expanded; The Biblical Resource Series; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008). On heightening as a constitutive effect of ancient Hebrew parallelism, see James L. Kugel, The Idea of Biblical Poetry: Parallelism and Its History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981). For an investigation of lineation in Biblical Hebrew poetics, see F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp, On Biblical Poetry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 14–94. Dobbs-Allsopp explores the effects of pauses, end-stopping, enjambment, sentence logic, and binarism in biblical poetry. Robert Alter notes that redundancy in biblical poetry is not static: “There is subtlety as well as insistence in these seeming repetitions: utterances develop and change, miniature stories unfold” (The Art of Biblical Poetry [revised and updated; New York: Basic Books, 2011], xi). Beat Weber notes, “Inner-textual relations are productive of meaning through the ‘poetic function’. . . Through the poetry of verse, a linear stream of language is overlaid with paradigmatic cross-references set in place by means of similarity and polarity relationships.” See Weber, “Toward a Theory of the Poetry of the Hebrew Bible: The Poetry of the Psalms as a Test Case,” BBR 22 (2012): 157–88 (160, 165).

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to teach Israel to submit to God; and that the inclusios artfully emphasize the importance of discernment in the life of the believer.

discourses of speech and sacrifice Psalm 50 brings into relation a set of claims about speech and a set of claims about sacrifice. God uses divine speech to call Israel to account. Central to this poem is God’s speaking, as enacted in the present discourse of the psalm and as uttered in the statutes that ground Israel’s covenantal relation with God. God’s speech here corrects Israel’s flawed thinking, clarifying the parameters for appropriate behavior toward the deity and toward others in the covenant community.

Speech: Covenantal roles reenvisioned The psalm opens with a dramatic verbless shout of three different divine names – ʾēl, ʾĕlōhîm, yhwh – which focuses the hearers’ attention on the deity. God’s speaking (dibber) is evoked with an immediacy that makes the subsequent theophanic imagery, in all its vividness, seem to be subordinate to God’s mighty word. Verbs of summoning or calling (qrʾ, vv. 1, 4), not remaining silent (hrš, v. 3), making known (ngd, v. 6), and testifying _ (ʿwd, v. 7) organize the poetic lines that follow. The opening image is that of God summoning the earth “from the rising of the sun to its going down,” which signals the terrain over which God holds sway: all the earth from east to west. This expansive summons demonstrates the Lord’s authority: no one else could summon the whole earth. The implied audience is brought into a space of attention as vast as creation itself. Verse 2 offers something other than speech: theophany, as from “Zion, the perfection of beauty,” God “shines forth” (NRSV) or “appears” (NJPS). Here the semantic domain of the verb ypʿ enriches and complicates the arena of speech. The verb is linked with bwʾ and zrh in Deut 33:2, where _ God is hymned for having “come” from Sinai, “dawned” from Seir, and “shone forth” from Mount Paran (so NRSV; NJPS proposes the sequence “came,” “shone,” “appeared”). In view here is praise of God’s military might: though the clause at the end of Deut 33:2 is difficult, it seems to be saying that God came with his “holy myriads,” that is, with heavenly armies. That these verbs are related to the discourse of speaking seems evident in both Deuteronomy 33 and Psalm 50: Deut 33:3 asserts that the heavenly army was guided by Yhwh’s “pronouncements,” while in Psalm 50, the implied audience hears the verb ypʻ followed by the first phrase in v. 3, “Our God is coming and will not keep silent” (ʾal-yehĕraš). _ The Deuteronomy passage makes more audible the subtext of God’s

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military power, providing an implicit corrective for any reader who might be tempted to hear Ps 50:2 in an overly aestheticized or idyllic way. The sound of God’s voice and the absence of God’s silence are expanded by the roar of fire and the tumult of storm. God “speaks” not only in words but also in thunderous and terrifying enactments of theophanic power. With the insight that fire and storm express God’s power, the reader may be drawn back to the last clause of v. 1. God speaks and summons the earth all day long, that is, “from the rising of the sun to its going down,” not only in the sense of geographical expanse but also temporally, in the luminous phenomena of the created order expressed through time. The verb qrʾ (“call, summon”) had moved the hearer’s imagination over the territory across which God’s summons is heard. But after the storm imagery of v. 3 has underlined the power of God as Creator, the metaphor of the sun’s rising and setting may be heard as (also) having to do with God’s act of creation and thus with time. Ypʿ at the end of v. 2 reinforces both potential vectors of meaning. Upon its rising, the sun “shines forth” across terrain and across the unfolding hours of daylight: God speaks to and summons God’s people across the world and in every moment from dawn until sunset. Speech functions in an extraordinarily complex way in these verses, through the joining of visual and aural metaphors. Poet Mark Doty notes, “The yoking of disparate elements makes more than a vivid account of perception; the best description is never merely decorative, but makes meaning in itself, building an argument about the nature of the real.”5 Speech here is a multidimensional mode that allows the attentive believer to apprehend the reality of God’s power. Verse 4 resumes the image of God summoning the earth. The verb qrʾ is repeated, and the purpose of the divine summons comes into view: God summons the heavens and the earth to judge his people. An important ambiguity plays about v. 5. To be gathered are God’s righteous, the hăsîdîm, those in covenant relationship with God by sacrifice. Are they _ to be gathered as additional witnesses against (the rest of ) Israel, those who are not righteous in their speech or actions? Or will they too – perhaps even they in particular – be judged? The lack of clarity on this point heightens the anxiety of the implied audience, who would assuredly wish to be numbered among the righteous but do not yet know for what purpose the righteous are being gathered. The wordsʿammî (“my people”) and yiśrāʾēl (“Israel”) in v. 7 make plain the devastating truth: God is indicting all Israel. Verses 6 and 7 assert God’s identity using syntactically parallel noun clauses, first in the voice of the poet (“God is judge,” ʾĕlōhîm šōpēt hûʾ, v. 6), and then in the voice of the deity (“I am your God,” _ 5

Mark Doty, The Art of Description: World into Word (Minneapolis: Graywolf, 2010), 93.

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ʾĕlōhîm ʾĕlōhêkā ʾānōkî, v. 7). These two asseverations weave together the introduction by the psalmist (vv. 1–6) and the divine speech in the rest of the psalm (vv. 7–23). Divine speech had been portrayed as perfect beauty radiating from Zion (v. 2), something for which believers should yearn. But by v. 7, the divine discourse has turned ruthlessly against all of God’s people, even the hăsîdîm who, as guardians of right belief and praxis, _ might have hoped to avoid punishment. Verses 8 and 9 open the indictment with a preliminary stipulation. God’s dissatisfaction is not because Israel has failed to offer sacrifice; their burnt offerings are “continually” before the deity. In fact, God will no longer take a bull or goats from Israel’s pens – the Creator has no need of offerings of creatures over which God already enjoys full dominion (vv. 10–13). Instead, God requires thanksgiving: covenant obedience (cf. Lev 7:12–15) that demonstrates the people’s trust in God and gratitude for divine succor. Speech returns to the foreground: Israel is to “call on” God when trouble threatens (Ps 50:15). Next, the deity levels a blistering indictment against the wicked (vv. 16–20). The catalogue of misdeeds shows that reciting covenantal precepts is illegitimate when paired with refusal to accept correction (v. 17). The “mouth” and “tongue” of the wicked are given to evil, deceit, and malicious talk (vv. 19–20), dangerous indeed in a community in which kinship bonds are forged and labor ties maintained through spoken negotiation. Through the artful use of assonance and consonance in tāmîd and tāsmîd, the poet suggests that the sacrifice “continually” before God _ (tāmîd, v. 8) becomes caricature when the tongue of the worshipper “ties itself” (tāsmîd, v. 19) to deceit. _ The God who “will not keep silent” (v. 3) scathingly reproaches the wicked for having misinterpreted divine silence earlier: “these things you did; I kept silent, so you imagined I am like you” (v. 21). Silence is possible no longer: the deity’s discursive attack is needed to teach the hasîdîm about sacrifice, to unseal the charges on which the wicked may _ be arraigned, and to illumine the nature of covenant. God threatens to perform one final act with the divine mouth: absent the amendment of sinful ways, God will tear “those who forget ʾĕlôah ” to pieces as a wild animal eviscerates its prey (v. 22; cf. Hos 5:14; 13:7–8).

Sacrifice: Covenantal praxis reconfigured This reading has highlighted how the poem imagines discourse to be vital to the covenantal relation. The deity has spoken to correct Israel’s misunderstanding and to reprove the wicked for utterances of fidelity that are

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belied by unethical behavior. But sacrificial praxis is no less central to the poetics of this poem. For the psalmist, ritual observance, spoken word, and ethical behavior in community are inseparable. The reference to Zion in v. 2 evokes the sacral space of Jerusalem and the Temple altar.6 As the poem unfolds, animals and birds are named in an A B B0 pattern that works artfully with Israel’s relation to the world of fauna. A domesticated bull / goats B wild creatures of the forest / domesticated + wild animals on the hills --------B0 wild birds of the mountains / wild moving things in the fields -----

-----

After an oblique reference to creatures as implied in the word-pair designating sacrifices and burnt offerings (v. 8), the poet offers a metonymic pair – the A element – that names domesticated animals offered on Israel’s altars: bull/goats (pār/ʿattûdîm, v. 9). With the B element, the psalmist moves to images of free creatures, both those that can be domesticated and those that are wild but can be captured. God need not accept animals from Israel, for “all the creatures of the forest are mine,” God roars, as are all “the animals (bəhēmôt) on a thousand hills” (v. 10). The term bəhēmôt plays on the ambiguity between domesticated and wild creatures, since its semantic range includes both domesticated herds and untamed animals. The word evokes imagery of innumerable herds of cattle grazing peacefully on countless hillsides – a sign of the prosperity enjoyed by God’s people when their covenant with the Creator is honored – and also the irrepressible abundance of wildlife on mountains teeming with creatures of every kind.7 God presses the point: “I know every bird of the mountains” (no need to emend to “the heavens”; the imagined space is land, the boundary space where humans and wildlife, including winged varieties, interact). Further, “all the moving things in the fields are (already) with me” (v. 11). The modifier “all/every” (kol) is semantically operative in both clauses of both lines, although gapped in the second clause of each: every conceivable creature of the forests, hills, mountains, and fields belongs to God. What Israel effects in its sacrificial economy “on the ground” is rendered small and insignificant by God’s view from the heavens. The

6

7

John Goldingay: “The original location from which Yhwh spoke was Sinai, and the line applies to Zion the imagery associated with that original speaking” (Psalms, Volume 2: Psalms 42–89, BCOTWP [Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007], 112). Richard Whitekettle: “not only does he [God] possess their sacrificial and non-sacrificial Domesticated Land Animals, he also possesses the animals that human beings cannot control.” See Whitekettle, “Forensic Zoology: Animal Taxonomy and Rhetorical Persuasion in Psalm 50,” VT 58 (2008): 409–19 (412).

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contrast is expressed through the linking of two words via a fairly uncommon consonant cluster (m-k-l), each word showing reduplication: m-k-l-l in v. 2 and m-m-k-l in v. 9. The Creator of the dawn and dusk, the One sovereign over the earth and its temporal rhythms, shines from the center of the cosmos, Zion, “perfect in beauty” (miklal-yōpî, v. 2); Israel, for its part, attempts to manipulate this deity through offerings from lowly goat-pens (mimmikləʾōtêkā, v. 9). From a panoptic view of the majestic expanse of all creation under God’s dominion, the gaze of the implied audience is drawn to the impossibly insignificant site of an Israelite family’s goat-pens. With biting sarcasm, God demolishes a naïve literalist misunderstanding about the deity’s hunger or thirst. No such reality compels Israel’s sacrificial praxis (vv. 12–13): God does not need to be fed. The poet deconstructs sacrifice as an economy in which the deity “consumes” what Israel offers. Instead, God is to be honored8 as the omnipotent provider in whose hand are all living creatures. Israel’s role is to give thanks to God as the only One who can save (vv. 15a and 23b).

structural elements and liturgical pedagogy The structure of Psalm 50 exhibits a number of features that may be construed as teaching Israel about its covenantal relationship with God.9 These structural elements play an essential role in helping the implied audience see how right theology, worship, and ethical norms are mutually formative for the believing community. This poem comprises two macrostructural parts: an initial framing by the psalmist (vv. 1–6, with one embedded divine quotation), and a longer divine speech (vv. 7–23). Below is one way to sketch out the elaborate structure of Psalm 50. A simple tripartite division by theme is popular in the scholarly literature. Such a division is not incorrect, but it cannot capture the rich interweaving of sonic, formal, structural, and thematic connections across the three

8

9

Citing Ugaritic literature, Mitchell Dahood claims, “Exegetically, ‘to honor’ here denotes ‘to honor with a banquet’” (Psalms I: 1–50 [AB 16; New York: Doubleday, 1966], 310). Such a valence, though not inevitable, would work well within the ironic rebuke of an over-literal understanding of sacrifice: “This is how you give me a ‘feast’?!” would be God’s point. Among those who see pedagogy enacted by this psalm is Rolf A. Jacobson. In Chapter 4, “‘The Lord Has Sworn’: The Function of God Quotations,” in his “Many Are Saying”: The Function of Divine Discourse in the Hebrew Psalter (JSOTSup 397; London: T&T Clark International, 2004), Jacobson notes, “In Psalms 50, 75, 81, and 95, the God quotations function primarily to admonish and teach the gathered community” (110).

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sections, some of which can be perceived only as the interpreter chooses one or another axis along which to (re-)perform attentive reading.10 PART I: The poet frames God’s impending prosecution of Israel The poet’s opening theological assertion, via nature imagery “read” visually/ aurally: A God speaks and summons the earth (v. 1) B God is radiant from Zion (v. 2) X God approaches and will not be silent (v. 3a) B0 Fire and storm accompany God’s approach (v. 3b) A0 God summons heavens and earth to judge God’s people (v. 4) C Imperative: “Gather my faithful ones!” (v. 5) Poet’s closing theological assertion, via nature imagery “read” juridically: A0 the heavens declare God’s righteousness (v. 6a) assertion of God’s identity as judge (v. 6b) ---------------------------------------------

PART II: God judges Israel for flawed ideation and praxis C0 Imperative: “Hear, O my people!” (v. 7a) C0 Imperative (gapped): “[Hear,] O Israel, and I will testify against you!” (v. 7b) assertion of God’s identity as Israel’s God (v. 7c) -----------------------------------------------------D Misunderstanding corrected: divine sovereignty eclipses need for sacrifice (vv. 8–12) E Rhetorical question: Is divine power compatible with a naïve understanding of sacrifice? (v. 13) C0 Imperative: “Make a thank-offering to God instead!” (v. 14a) C0 Imperative: “Fulfil your vows to the Most High!” (v. 14b) C0 Imperative: “Call on me when trouble threatens!” (v. 15) E0 Rhetorical question: Is liturgical recital compatible with unethical behavior? (v. 16) X Detailed description of behavior of wicked (vv. 17–20) D0 Misunderstanding corrected: God is not like the wicked (v. 21) 0 C Imperative: “Understand this!” (v. 22) Summary statement of Israel’s position in relation to God (v. 23)

The divine speech displays two structuring features that create the impression of coherence and artfulness: a series of imperatives and rhetorical questions. Imperatives are deployed at key junctures (vv. 5, 7, 14, 15, 22) in a progression that lays out God’s prosecution, moving to a command to discern the truth of what God has articulated. Rhetorical questions, too, occur at crucial points. A pair of expressed interrogatives (vv. 13 and 16) emphasizes the absurdity of a literalist understanding of sacrifice 10

As Weber observes, “. . . a poem is characterized by extraordinary complexity and density. It is a multidimensional, space-filling structure. This fullness of sense can only be captured through repeated hearing or reading” (“Toward a Theory of the Poetry of the Hebrew Bible,” 168).

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and the outrageousness of Israel’s flouting of ethical norms. We might also read two unmarked rhetorical questions in v. 21, as Mitchell Dahood does: “Should I remain silent?” and “Am I like you?”11 A doubled chiastic structure would result: A “Do I eat the flesh of bulls?” (Israel’s misconstrual of God, v. 13) A “Do I drink the blood of goats?” (Israel’s misconstrual of God, v. 13) B “How dare you recite my statutes?” (God’s counterattack, v. 16) B “How dare you take my covenant upon your lips?” (God’s counterattack, v. 16) A0 “Should I remain silent?” (ironic invitation to further misconstrual of God, v. 21) A0 “Am I like you?” (ironic invitation to further misconstrual of God, v. 21)

We turn now to three major parallel formations that organize meaning in this psalm: the series of divine names, alternation of singular and plural addressees, and inclusios that link the beginning and the end of the poem.

Series of divine names Five names for God are deployed in this work of literary art: ʾēl (v. 1), ʾĕlōhîm (vv. 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 14, 16, 23), yhwh (v. 1), ʿelyôn (v. 14), and ʾĕlôah (v. 22). Four of these occur only once, each at a structurally significant juncture. The names ʾēl and yhwh occur in the opening verse; ʿelyôn occurs in the exhortation that closes the section addressed to all Israel (v. 14); ʾĕlôah comes at the close of the section addressed to the wicked (v. 22). The name ʾĕlōhîm occurs frequently and governs the theological nomenclature of the poem. The shout that opens the poem, ʾēl ʾĕlōhîm yhwh, voices three names of God with no syntactical markers of connection. In the sequence, yhwh is the simplest to consider: scholarly consensus holds that this name revealed to Moses at the burning bush (Exod 3) has to do with the identity of God as Israel’s covenant partner. The semantic force of the divine name ʾēl is considered along two main trajectories by scholars: it identifies the head of the Canaanite pantheon, but more likely in the foreground here is God as Creator, considered in cosmic terms and not in terms of the history of a particular covenant people.12 The appellation ʾĕlōhîm has been considered to convey one or another particular meaning, as, for 11 12

Dahood, Psalms I, 305. John Goldingay makes both points in a nuanced way: “‘El’ designates God as the great creator, sovereign among the heavenly beings (cf. Jerome’s fortis). It is a title that links Israelite faith with the faith of other peoples around” (Psalms, Volume 2, 111).

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example, in John Goldingay’s assertion, “‘God’ designates God as deity over against humanity.”13 But there is no provable way to narrow the possible nuances of ʾĕlōhîm, a name of God commonly used here and elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible. The sequence ʾēl ʾĕlōhîm yhwh appears elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible only in Josh 22:22, where the phrase, doubled, is a shout of terror by the Transjordanian tribes. They have just been accused of rebellion against the Lord and threatened with a fate similar to that of Achan, who had been annihilated from the congregation of Israel: stoned, burned, and crushed under a memorial that would stand as a warning to future transgressors (Josh 7). The Transjordanian tribes bellow their acclamation of the power of Yhwh and insist with hyperbolic anxiety that their construction of what has been misinterpreted as an illegitimate altar had been solely to remind coming generations about their stake in service to the Lord and their membership within Israel. The shout of three divine names memorably expresses the Transjordanians’ fear of being obliterated from Israel. Here in Ps 50:1, the sequence of three divine names has spurred translators to supply an implied verb of being (so Dahood, “The God of gods is Yahweh”)14 or to connect only the third divine name to the verb of speaking that immediately follows (“Yhwh speaks”). Either of these is theoretically possible, but neither is an ideal choice, for two reasons. First, the echo of the Transjordanians’ verbless shout of terrified acclamation should be kept in the foreground of interpretation, given the rarity of this striking formulation with three divine names. Second, the proliferation of divine names in this psalm performs an articulation of the different ways in which the deity has been known to Israel: the single occurrences of ʾēl and yhwh in v. 1 are amplified by nine occurrences of ʾĕlōhîm (with and without pronominal suffixes) throughout the psalm, ʿelyôn in v. 14, and ʾĕlôah in v. 22. None of these names should be subordinated to one another in a clunky propositional sentence about God being the Lord.15 To supply an implied verb of being would force this elliptical utterance into a prosaic syntactical structure that may ameliorate the reader’s unease but is unwarranted, especially in light of the larger theme of the psalm that human mastery – of sacrifice; of the deity to whom it is offered – is an illusion. The observation of poet Charles Bernstein is 13 14

15

Goldingay, Psalms 2, 111. Dahood, Psalms I, 304; contra, Hans-Joachim Kraus notes acerbically that ʾēl ʾĕlōhîm “cannot be translated ‘God of gods’” (Psalms 1–59 [CC; trans. Hilton C. Oswald; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993], 487, 491). So also Kraus: “the powerful introit with its heaping up of the names of God should not be corrected (cf. Josh 22:22)” (Psalms 1–59, 487).

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relevant here: “Syntax is never what you thought it was; just when you think you’ve got it down, it bolts out of the corral into the high chaparral. The job of poetry is not to get syntax back in the corral but to follow its wild journey into the unclaimed.”16 In Psalm 50, the syntax of the opening cry is artfully ambiguous. Is this a shout of adoration? of terror? of submission? The implied audience cannot yet know; the utterance is wild, poetically speaking, and should be left syntactically undomesticated. In v. 14 comes the divine name ʿelyôn (“Most High”), a term that occurs only twenty-two times in the Psalter; by contrast, ʾĕlōhîm occurs many dozens of times in that corpus. The appellation ʿelyôn is positioned at the end of the section that lays out in dramatic terms God’s sovereignty over all living things. The dimension of height has been evoked three times before this point, serving as a metonym for divine transcendence and power. First, the allusion to Zion (v. 2) has put the hearer in mind of the Temple Mount, an elevated locale. Second, God calling to “the heavens mēʿāl ” (v. 4) has suggested either God’s authority over things that are themselves very high (“God calls to the heavens above”), or God’s calling to things that, while high from a human perspective, are still below the vantage point of the deity (“God calls to the heavens from above [them]”).17 Third, God’s knowing the “beasts on a thousand hills” (v. 10) and “all the birds of the mountains” (v. 11) suggests an omniscient view from above the workings of creation. So it is fitting that the divine name “Most High,” deployed in the close of this first section, be a name that evokes God’s transcendent remove from the ordinary plane of human life. The divine name ʾĕlôah (v. 22) is unusual. It occurs only four times in the Psalter and, apart from appearing frequently in the poetic passages of Job (41 times), it is used only a handful of times otherwise in the Hebrew Bible. Occurrences of the name in Ps 114:7 and 139:19 are in poetic contexts that underline God’s power as awe-inspiring, even terrorinducing – certainly the case in the Joban references as well. Rhetorically dramatic is the use of this rare and mysterious name for the deity in a verse that characterizes the wicked as being “those who forget ʾĕlôah.” 16

17

Charles Bernstein, “How Empty Is My Bread Pudding,” in Contemporary Poetics (ed. Louis Armand; AGM Studies; Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2007), 5–14 (11). Many scholars translate mē‘āl here as referring to the heavens rather than to God’s position. Nancy deClaissé-Walford chooses the second option: “He summons the heavens from above.” See deClaissé-Walford, Rolf A. Jacobson, and Beth LaNeel Tanner, The Book of Psalms (NICOT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014), 448.

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Alarm might well be evoked in an implied audience told that it will be torn asunder if it cannot recall what the divine name ʾĕlôah actually signifies. Thus the poem as a whole evokes a potentially alarming theological ambiguity: at the beginning of the poem (v. 1) by means of a dramatic shout that may remind worshippers of the Transjordanian tribes under dire threat; in the middle of the poem (v. 14) by means of an exhortation to pay their vows to a God who is impossibly transcendent and distant from human praxis; and at the end of the poem (v. 22) by means of an unusual name for a deity who will tear them apart if they forget him.

Alternation of singular and plural addressees Psalm 50 deploys alternating singular and plural addressees in a way that may be theorized as rhetorically strategic. Almost the entire poem is a lengthy quotation of the deity directed to diverse addressees. First the heavens and earth are addressed. Israel as a whole is the second addressee. Sinners within Israel constitute the third addressee, identified variously as “the wicked” (singular) and “those who forget God,” these appellations naming malfeasants in two ways related to behavioral and conceptual faults. All Israel is construed as misguided in v. 7, but the poem divides Israel further against itself as the divine discourse unfolds, implicitly inviting the faithful to stand over against malfeasants in the congregation. In the first direct address (v. 5), the implied audience overhears God’s command to unspecified others to gather his faithful ones. The next direct address from God is trained on Israel as masculine singular addressee (vv. 7–15). The sharply antagonistic tone is enhanced by the focus on a singular “you,” which may emphasize the accountability and vulnerability of the one whom this awe-inspiring deity is excoriating. A plural addressee might have afforded a rhetorical opportunity to hide from God’s indictment or shift the blame to other malefactors; the singular “you” allows no such escape. Next, God addresses “the wicked” (lārāšāʿ, vv. 16–21), arraigning a singular addressee as culpable for religious defiance and ethical wrongs. The counts in this indictment move from covenantal disobedience writ large – hating God’s discipline,18 disparaging God’s words – to specific

18

See Deut 11:2. Per Kraus, mûsār “denotes the ‘existential’ combination of obedience and discipline into which Yahweh’s covenant and covenant law place human beings (cf. Jer. 2:20; 5:3; 7:28; Prov. 15:10)” (Psalms 1–59, 495).

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infractions, perhaps metonymic for the Decalogue, that would be known only to intimates: thievery, adultery, and deceitful and slanderous talk. On this level, too, there is no escape from the omniscience of the divine covenant partner. The final address is oblique: discourse about a third-person masculine singular subject – the faithful believer – that draws the implied audience together to look at the paradigmatic possibility: one who aligns [his] path will be shown the salvation of God (v. 23). Some scholars emend the second participle, śām, “the one who directs” or “the one who aligns” [his] path, to tam, “the one who is upright” [in] the path. Occurrences of tom-derek in Prov 10:29 and 13:6, along with other pairings of tmm with drk or hlk, illustrate that connecting tmm with derek works well. But that is a choice that the ancient poet did not make. Apropos here is the observation of James Longenbach, “Every poem is based at least implicitly on a choice to do something rather than something else, and as a result, every poem takes power from its exclusions as well as its inclusions.”19 In Psalm 50, even if tam derek might have been expected, space was made for a transitive verb that better fits amendment of the unethical behavior just described by the deity.20 The right ordering of behavior is the central point toward which the last third of the divine discourse drives. The masculine singular participle in the last line of the psalm mirrors the second-person masculine singular used in God’s direct address of Israel generally (vv. 7–15) and the wicked specifically (vv. 16–21). The shift to plural addressees in v. 22 (“understand this, all you who forget ʾĕlôah!”) creates an assembly of evildoers over against which the use of the masculine singular in the last verse (v. 23) is strikingly effective, focusing audience attention on the ideal of the individual who sees that obedience in matters of worship is inseparable from ethical action. Overall, the alternation of plural and singular addressees may be seen to serve a pedagogical purpose. Through being incorporated implicitly into all Israel (“my people”), being threatened with possible identification with “the wicked,” and finally being shown the model of the faithful believer, the implied audience has learned that to survive the relationship with a

19 20

James Longenbach, The Art of the Poetic Line (Minneapolis: Graywolf, 2008), 120. Emending to šōmēr (“keep”) would be possible, and the scribal loss of the third consonant, resh, could be explained by haplography with the following dalet. But that emendation is too robust to command my assent, and no ancient manuscripts attest to that reading.

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devouring God requires appropriate submission to the deity and treating justly the one who is “kin” under the covenant. Inclusios grammatical and conceptual Taking account of soundplay, grammatical equivalences, syntagmatic patterning, and ideational correspondences, the attentive reader might pursue a number of trajectories of equivalence and difference in Psalm 50. Three inclusios work in notable ways with morphological, syntactical, and ideational parallelism near the beginning and end of the poem. These envelope structures catalyze for the reader a complex sense of performative elegance, semantic completeness, and theological closure. First are two verbs, dîn (“judge”) and bîn (“understand”), which echo one another in clarion tones due to shared assonance and alveolar n. The psalm opens with a sovereign Creator whose standing to judge his people is affirmed by the heavens (v. 4). The judgment then unfolds: the faithful summoned, their misunderstanding of sacrifice is deconstructed by God with razor-sharp irony, and the wicked are excoriated for unethical behavior. In a final imperative (“Understand this!” in v. 22), the point is driven home: Israel must grasp the full significance of the divine discourse that has just concluded or risk being torn apart by their outraged covenantal partner. The relation of judgment and discernment (dîn and bîn) is of urgent consequence in this psalm. A second inclusio involves masculine plural participles in construct formations: kōrətê bərîtî (“those who make covenant with me” or “those who subscribe to my covenant,” v. 5) and šōkəhê ʾĕlôah (“those who _ forget ʾĕlôah,” v. 22). The first characterization of Israel comes at the beginning of the divine discourse of judgment, the latter characterization almost at the end. The two participles identify the alternatives between which the discerning believer must choose: life inscribed by faithfulness or an unprincipled, corrupt existence that leaves the believer outside the bounds of covenant protection. A third inclusio draws the beginning and end of the psalm together on an ideational level that has to do with perception. The opening theophany is rendered in powerful visual terms (ʾĕlōhîm hôpîaʿ, “God shines forth,” v. 2); the closing promise of God is rendered in terms of what God will make the faithful see (ʾarʾennû bəyēšaʿ ʾĕlōhîm, “I will show him the salvation of God,” v. 23). The radiance of the deity shines from the Temple on Mount Zion – the place where sacrifice honors God when it is rightly understood, performed by those with upright hearts who express their

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faithfulness through ethical care for the covenantal community. A productive ambiguity enlivens the verb “to show” in the last clause of the poem. First, the divine radiance illumines for the faithful – for those who understand (v. 22) – what God’s salvation will be: they will be shown how God is present in the covenantal bond for redemption. A second sense is that the faithful will be shown what salvation is because they will be experiencing it: God will save them.

psalm 50 and interpellation of the faithful subject In critical theory, the concept of interpellation is traced to the philosopher Louis Althusser (1918–1990). His idea was that people are subtly addressed by cultural ideologies that invite them to be, or become, certain kinds of subjects. For example, a candidate for political office might encourage those at a rally to show that they are “patriots” by cheering a policy antagonistic toward international trade agreements. In a worshiping community, the invitation to be faithful might be tied to a subtext concerning sexual mores or a particular view of the authority of Scripture. Althusser wrote this: . . . all ideology hails or interpellates concrete individuals as concrete subjects. . . ideology “acts” or “functions” in such a way that it “recruits” subjects among the individuals (it recruits them all), or “transforms” the individuals into subjects (it transforms them all) by that very process which I have called interpellation or hailing.21

The theologically significant subject is constituted by the invitations of ideologies that are performed through sacred literature, liturgy, and other cultural forms. Ideological invitations enact degrees of force from gentle to coercive, extending many kinds of offers of community and agency. Yet even when harsh, such invitations can be perceived as natural or necessary by those being interpellated, if they are aware of ideology at all. What Longenbach says of a poem by Andrew Marvell may be applied to artful interpellation more generally: “It was as if the poem were a house I’d lived in all my life without knowing it.”22 Similarly, Doty writes of

21

22

Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses: Notes towards an Investigation” (trans. Ben Brewster; pp. 1264–72 in The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends, 3rd ed.; ed. David H. Richter; Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 2007), 1269; emphasis original. James Longenbach, The Virtues of Poetry (Minneapolis: Graywolf, 2013), 11.

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exquisite poetry: “It is possible to feel, at least for a moment, language clicking into place, into a relation with the world that feels seamless and inevitable. . . . At that instant when language seems to match experience, some rift is healed, some rupture momentarily salved.”23 The ideological invitations extended by Psalm 50 function to form the implied Israelite subject as one who loves God and neighbor, and as one who loves obedience. This poem enacts sustained ideological invitations regarding Torah observance and the significance of ritual praxis, the appropriate posture of the worshipper as submissive before God the Creator, and the inescapable relevance of ethical norms in a community formed by covenant identity. The poetry works brilliantly to draw the Israelite audience past rupture into the control of covenant relationality. Psalm 50 interpellates the faithful Israelite subject through rhetorical moves that evoke wonder (vv. 1–3), heighten anxiety (vv. 4–7), deepen shame (vv. 8–13, 16–21), engender terror (v. 22), and inspire hope (vv. 14–15, 23). The poem lays out the grounds on which Israel’s God is worthy of awe, unleashing words of judgment that mock misunderstanding and threatening with evisceration those who “forget” the deity. Through its dramatic rhetoric and artisanal structure, and particularly through the claims of vv. 14–15 and 23, the psalm invites the chastened hearer to yield in grateful obedience to the power of God.24 The psalmist evokes the image of a pilgrimage to Zion, only to subvert the standard valence of rejoicing (as seen, for example, in the Songs of Ascent, Pss 120–134) by means of dark undertones of threat. The Lord calls from Zion, summoning the faithful to stand before him. The poet then reconfigures the pilgrimage path toward Jerusalem as a road along which lurks a predator that may tear and devour: the Lord will be like a lion or leopard to those who “forget ʾĕlôah ” and forsake the path. Prophetic and sapiential ideologies are worked through this intricately constructed liturgical poem to teach Israel about a God whose words “devour” all that renders the Holy in inadequate ways and all that rends the community of the faithful. Before this God the hăsîdîm stand – _ inspired, instructed, and reformed.

23 24

Doty, Art of Description, 10. Per Althusser, in religious systems “the individual is interpellated as a (free) subject in order that he shall submit freely to the commandments of the Subject [God], i.e. in order that he shall (freely) accept his subjection ” in order to “make the gestures and actions of his subjection ‘all by himself’” (“Ideology,” 1271–72; emphasis original).

2 “Silence Is Praise” Art and Knowledge in Psalm 65 Elaine T. James

What can poetry do? In this essay, I will suggest with reference to Psalm 65 that one thing poetry does is offer a mode of inquiry; poetry does intellectual work. As Alva Noë suggests, “The job of art, its true work, is philosophical.”1 For Noë, art is itself a unique mode of investigation that is a legitimate source of knowledge.2 He argues that the way art produces knowledge is to put on display for us things that are largely taken for granted about human experience. Art confronts us with the often invisible ways that human life is organized. For example, a painter is a visual artist who makes pictures. In making pictures, the painter is putting vision itself on display for consideration. Vision itself – the way we see, the way our seeing is organized – is something we largely take for granted. The painter cracks open that vision and puts it “in the frame” for us to wonder about, to help us ask the question, What does it mean to see? Noë writes, “If pictures are the result, then they are pictures that don’t only show you something but also invite you to wonder what you could possibly see in or with or thanks to a picture.”3 I will argue that, as a poem, Psalm 65 is a work of art whose task is philosophical. It puts on display the nature and function of human speech. It offers an aesthetic meditation on silence and

This essay has been improved by thoughtful feedback from the Biblical Hebrew Poetry section of the national SBL, the Colloquium of the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Studies at the University of Minnesota, and the insight of several generous readers, including Blake Couey, Sarah Olson, Abigail Pelham, and Mary K. Schmitt. 1 Alva Noë, Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature (New York: Hill and Wang, 2015), xiii. 2 3 Noë, Strange Tools, xii. Noë, Strange Tools, 45.

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words that draws the audience in to wonder what human speech can possibly accomplish, and whether and how it sets humans apart as unique from the rest of the world. I will show that this is the case by way of a close reading of the poem, examining first how it poses a provocation about human speech, and then how it progressively unfolds a vision of the loud world through the technique of personification. Psalm 65 is structured by three clear sections marked by distinct themes, but they share a unifying concern, namely speech and sound.4 The first section (vv. 2–5 [ET vv. 1–4]) is characterized by liturgical words and images. The first line foregrounds religious ritual: “to you silence is praise, O God in Zion / and to you a vow is fulfilled” (v. 2 [ET v. 1]). These themes continue through verse five, which refers to “prayer,” “covering our sins,” and God’s “house” and “temple.” In the second section (vv. 6–9 [ET vv. 5–8]), the poem evokes creation motifs: God is the one who “establishes the mountains,” “stills the roaring seas,” and performs wonders that are seen at all corners the world (vv. 8–9 [ET vv. 7–8]). Then, the most dramatic transition in the psalm occurs in the final section (vv. 10–14 [ET vv. 9–13]), where the psalm portrays God as a farmer: “You visit the land and water it abundantly/ the river of God is full of water/ you establish the grain, for so you establish it” (v. 10 [ET v. 9]). The three parts have sometimes been thought to be different genres and perhaps of different origins.5 But speech – or its absence – is one thread of coherence that stitches the various sections of this psalm together.6 As we shall see, the poem probes the nature and function of human speech as it moves from an affirmation of human silence to the observation of the “loudness” of the land.

4

5 6

Frank-Lothar Hossfeld, “Psalm 65,” in Frank-Lothar Hossfeld and Erich Zenger, Psalms 2: A Commentary on Psalms 51–100, trans. Linda Maloney, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005), 137; Hans-Joachim Kraus, Psalms 60–150, trans. Hilton Oswald, CC (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989), 29–31; pace, e.g., Hermann Gunkel’s two-part analysis in Die Psalmen (Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1968); and Pierre Auffret’s four-part in “Tu as Couronné l’Année de ton Bienfait Nouvelle Étude Structurelle du Psaume 65,” OTE 20 (2007): 307–19. Discussion in Kraus, Psalms 60–150, 28. Other proposals for the Psalm’s coherence include, e.g., Pierre Auffret, Voyez de vos yeux: Étude structurelle de vingt Psaumes dont le Psaume 119 (Leiden: Brill, 1993), 137–52; Sylvia Schroer, “Psalm 65—Zeugnis eines integrativen JHWH-Glaubens?” UgaritForschungen 22 (1990): 285–301.

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silence is praise The first triplet foregrounds the themes of speech and divine perception: To you, silence is praise, O God in Zion. To you, a vow is performed, O hearer of prayer. To you all flesh comes.7 (vv. 2–3 [ET vv. 1–2])

The first line, “Silence is praise,” is really a provocation. Why is silence like praise? The line is a teaser, shaping the audience’s response to the rest of the psalm. On the face of it, this claim itself is a fallacy, or a paradox. It drives against the general consensus – not to mention the role – of the Psalter, which recommends praise, prayer, thanksgiving, even lament as constitutive obligations of human speech before the deity. The more typical, intuitive formulation is that praise is made of words, songs, verbal affirmations. Psalm 30, for example, offers a nice counterpoint, and a less puzzling articulation of the relationship between silence and praise: You have taken off my sackcloth And clothed me with joy so that my soul may praise you and not be silent. (Ps 30:12–13)8

According to Psalm 30, silence is the opposite of praise. Only a handful of texts recommend silence, and they do not define the posture as praise, but as self-restraint in the face of enemies (Pss 4:5; 37:7; 62:6; 131:2).9 It is so counterintuitive, in fact, that the versions consistently interpret the consonants dmyh according to the root d-m-h, “to be like” (LXX; Syr.). This interpretive swerve away from silence is widely followed. For

7

8

9

This lineation highlights the clear parallelism of the first three lines, all of which begin with a prepositional phrase of direct address, and the first two of which end with a vocative. This departs from BHS, which divides the verses between yǝšullam-neder (“a vow is performed”) and šōmēaʿ tǝpillâ (“hearer of prayer”). Auffret lineates similarly, but groups the lines according to MT’s versification, detecting a chiasm between vv. 2–4 (Tu as Couronné l’Année de ton Bienfait, 309). Hossfeld notes the 3+2 pattern, but still lineates according to BHS (“Psalm 65,” 137–38). All biblical citations follow the traditional Hebrew versification found in MT. In many cases, especially in Psalms, the verse numbers in most English translations will differ by one. (For instance, MT Ps 30:12–13 = ET Ps 30:11–12.) Because of the high number of citations from the Psalms, I have not noted versification differences outside of Psalm 65. In a few prophetic texts, silence is the commended response to the divine, but it is not equated with praise (Hab 2:20; Zeph 1:7; Zech 2:17 [ET 2:13]).

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example, the NRSV translates, “Praise is due to you, O God in Zion.”10 This interpretation is somewhat strained, since d-m-h is rarely used in the sense of “fitting,” “appropriate.” MT’s vocalization dūmiyyâ, “silence” is perfectly grammatical, and the most straightforward reading (construing the consonantal text according to the root d-w-m, as BDB and DCH do; cf. Pss 22:3; 39:3; 62:2, 6). It is its content, its counterintuitive claim, that drives the alternative rendering. It is clear, then, that Psalm 65 opens with a provocation, a puzzle, that will remain to be teased out in the lines that follow. It will do so by continued attention to forms of speech, both human and non-human. By bringing both silence and speech under scrutiny, it is the artistic contribution of the poem to interrogate the nature of human speech itself. That “silence is praise” is counterintuitive is further marked by the poem’s opening word: “to you, silence is praise.” When the emphatic “to you” (ləkā) occurs at the beginning of a poetic line in the Psalms, it places a striking prominence on God (alone) over against others, especially humans (e.g., Ps 51:6, “against you, you alone, I have sinned”; cf. Pss 62:13; 74:16; 89:12, 14; 116:17; 119:94). In each case, the term emphasizes divine agency, what is uniquely God’s. At the beginning of this line, ləkā “to you” signals a disjunction: what is evident to God (that silence is praise) is not self-evident to the audience. And, as this lineation makes clear, the accent at the start of each line is on God as the perceiver (“to you . . . to you . . . to you”),11 which is further underscored by the vocatives, which call on God in Zion at the temple, and as “hearer of prayer” (v. 3). The emphasis on speech at the poem’s outset is complemented by the depiction of God as the perceiver of both prayer and vow.12 The puzzling first line, “silence is praise,” is both ameliorated by the emphasis on divine perception and troubled by it. The foregrounding of

10

11

12

See also, for example, LXX, KJV, NIV, Nouvelle Edition de Geneve (1979) and many others; HALOT, 217; TWOT, §3913. A few preserve “silence,” notably Targums; Rashi; Maimonides; Luther, “Man lobt dich in der Stille”; NASB. David ben Raphael Haim HaCohen rejects both alternatives, proposing instead a derivation from Arab. dwm “remain,” pointing to God’s eternality (“Praise Waiteth for Thee [Ps 65:2],” Dor le Dor 16 [1987/88]: 179–82). Göran Eidevall argues that the related roots dwm|dmh| dmm all relate to stillness, and “there is no sharp line between stillness and silence” (“Sounds of Silence in Biblical Hebrew: A Lexical Study,” VT 62 [2012]: 159–74, esp. 170). Erhard Gerstenberger, Psalms Part 2 and Lamentations, FOTL 15 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 21. Vows would have had a verbal component, for example, Hannah “made a vow and said” (1 Sam 1:11). See Claus Westermann, The Psalms (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1980), 98.

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the temple and ritual practices apparently affirms human religious acts. But the first line has already destabilized this assumption by undermining the assumed goodness of human speech, a constitutive part of praise, prayer, and vow. The final line of this triplet further destabilizes that assumption: “To you all flesh comes.” Scholars usually interpret this as a human pilgrimage to the temple to worship. Hans-Joachim Kraus writes, “‘All flesh,’ that is, all human beings, come into the presence of Yahweh and praise him.”13 But the phrase kol-bāśār “all flesh” is not necessarily limited to human beings; it frequently refers to animals, or living creatures in general, as in Gen 6:19 (“from every living thing, from all flesh, you shall bring two of each kind”), and the inclusion of humans and animals by the phrase “all flesh” is specified in Num 18:15 (“every firstborn of the womb of all flesh which is offered to the LORD – whether human or animal – will be yours”; cf. Gen 6:17; Lev 17:14; Dan 4:9). In the other two instances of this phrase in the Psalms, both meanings are possible. In Ps 136:25, God is the one “who gives food to all flesh,” and in Psalm 145:21, all flesh are called to bless God, and the context, which emphasizes God’s feeding of “every living thing” (Ps 145:16), suggests the whole creaturely panoply. While interpreters tend to see “all flesh” here as exclusively human pilgrims, the phrase itself is ambiguous. In these ways, the first triplet in Psalm 65 playfully destabilizes the presumed uniqueness of human worship practices, affirming that the one who hears praise in silence also permits the approach of all creatures. The next lines continue to wrestle with human speech and uniqueness, exploring what it might mean that silence is praise: Words of iniquity are stronger than me. Our sins, it is you who forgives them. Happy is the one you choose and draw near to dwell in your courts. May we be satisfied with the good of your house the holiness of your temple. (vv. 4–5 [ET vv. 3–4])

Speech again takes center stage: “words (dibrê) of iniquity.” Dibrê can also mean “deeds/things/affairs” and is often given this sense in translation (e.g., “when deeds of iniquity overwhelm us,” NRSV).14 But the 13

14

Kraus, Theology of the Psalms, trans. Keith Crim (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1986), 134, emphasis added; cf. Gerstenberger, Psalms Part 2 and Lamentations, 21; Hossfeld, “Psalm 65,”; Marvin Tate, Psalms 51–100, WBC 20 (Dallas: Word, 1990), 141; etc. Luther; ESV; KJV; YLT; etc.

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term’s literal sense of speech is apropos given the interest in speech already in the poem.15 Moreover, it is in keeping with a broader theme of the Psalms, which often point to speech as a source of sin (e.g., “They utter lies to each other / with flattering lips and a double heart they speak” Ps 12:3).16 This is heightened by the parallel structure of the two lines, which heads each line with a noun relating to sin (“words of iniquity” // “our sins”) and offers contrasting visions of response (“they overwhelm me” // “you forgive them”). In this, there is one incipient answer to why silence is praise: because human speech is susceptible to corruption. The first section concludes with an affirmation of life in the temple, and commends the satisfaction of dwelling in the “courts” and “house.” Throughout this section, the emphasis on ritual and worship seems to affirm human uniqueness. At the same time, this is unsettled by the hint that humans are only one part of the larger world, “all flesh,” who approach God, and by the possibility that human speech is potentially corrupt.

you answer us While the poem turns away from the theme of temple worship, the second section (vv. 6–9 [ET vv. 5–8]) continues to draw out the themes of speech and silence. As it does so, increasing attention is paid to the human place in the non-human world. Here, we see the first instance of personification in operation, as the earth and sea trust in God, and the dawn and dusk open their mouths and shout: With wonders of righteousness you answer us, O God of our salvation, Trust of all ends of earth and the wide sea, establishing the mountains in his strength, girded with might. (vv. 6–7 [ET 5–6])

The opening of the second section reiterates the accent on speech (“you answer us”), only this time it is God’s speech that is foregrounded. In contrast to the human speech in the first section, which is marked by 15

16

So LXX logoi; JPS 1917 “the tale of iniquities.” Marc Girard translates “Les parolesgestes de fautes”: Les Psaumes redécouverts: De la structure au sens, II: 51–100 (Montreal: Bellarmin, 1994), 180–90. Cf. Pss 5:7; 17:10; 28:3; 31:19; 35:20; 36:4; 41:7; 50:20; 52:5–6, etc.

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iniquity (dibrê ʿăwōnōt, “words of iniquity”), God’s “speech” is characterized by “righteousness” (sedeq). But it’s not quite speech, per se. God’s _ answer comes in “wonders” (nôrāʾôt), which are typically visible actions, as Deuteronomy emphasizes: “he is your God, who has done for you these great and awesome wonders (hannôrāʾôt) that your eyes have seen” (Deut 10:21; cf. Ps 45:5). If silence is speech in the first section of this poem, speech becomes visible action in the second section. And what are these visible actions, these “words” that aren’t words, with which God answers? The poet does not address this question directly. Instead of making strong or active claims about God, the poem shifts to nominal and participial phrases which share the repeated initial m- sound (mibtāh, _ _ “trust”/mēkîn, “establishing”), and which will be echoed in the following 17 verse (mašbîaḥ̣, “stilling,” v. 8 [ET v. 7]). God’s “answer” is in these durative, cosmogonic acts, calling to mind the battle over chaos intrinsic to the mythos of the ancient Levant.18 In other texts, God’s “wondrous deeds” refer to God’s great acts of Israel’s theological memory: the parting of the Red Sea (Ps 106:22), the conquest of the Promised Land (2 Sam 7:23). Psalm 65 is unique in its use of “wonders” (nôrāʾôt) to refer not to such concrete interventions, but rather to the primordial ordering of the whole earth.19 But the actions are not relegated merely to the past: both the participles and the finite verb “you answer us” (taʿănēnû) convey ongoing action, suggesting a link between the creation and the ongoing circumscription of the world (creatio prima and creatio continua, in theological terms).20 The next triplet brings speech and silence more squarely into view again: God is stilling the roaring (šəʾôn) of seas, the roaring (šəʾôn) of their waves, the uproar (hămôn) of peoples. (v. 8 [ET v. 7])

17

18

19

20

“Hymnic participles,” Frank Crüsemann, Studien zur Formgeschichte von Hymnus und Danklied in Israel, WMANT 32 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1969), 201–02. Sylvia Schroer has shown that the structure of this psalm, in linking the deity’s battle over chaos with the successive establishment of rain and fertility, participates in a broader ancient Near Eastern mythos (esp. CTU 1.16 iii.1–17): “Psalm 65,” 287–301. Schroer, “Psalm 65,” 289. Its use of the parallel “your signs” ʾôtōtêkā (v. 9) is similarly unique (cf. Gen 9:12–17; Exod 4:8–9; Num 14:11; Deut 4:34; Isa 8:18; Pss 78:43; 86:17; 135:9): Gerstenberger, Psalms Part 2 and Lamentations, 22. Hossfeld, “Psalm 65,” 140.

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Both šǝʾôn and hămôn – “roaring,” and “uproar,” synonyms as well as a near rhyme – are nouns that evoke noise. The first, šǝʾôn, evokes a sense of clamor raised by a tumultuous force (often water or an army). Its sonic aspects come into view as it is paralleled with qôl “voice/sound” (Isa 13:4; Jer 51:55; Ps 74:23) and the music of instruments and song (Isa 24:8; 25:5; Amos 2:2). The more common noun hămôn, too, is a noisy word. It, too, frequently conveys the sense of a loud commotion, as of a crowd of people or waves (Isa 13:4; 33:3; Dan 10:6; Job 39:7). It, too, is frequently paired with qôl “voice/sound”21 and with other noises, such as the growling of a lion, music, and shouting.22 God’s intervention, then, “stills” (mašbîah) that noise.23 This seems like a plain affirmation of the poem’s _ opening claim “to you, silence is praise,” since God’s work makes calm and quiet of the boisterous tumult. The term mašbîah itself might be seen _ as a bit of poetic wordplay on exactly the relationship between silence and praise: the root š-b-h most commonly means “praise,” and so the uncom_ mon form mašbîah, “silence,” may gesture to or subtly echo “praise,” _ creating for the audience a moment of pause: God causes praise? or silence? By the poem’s end, we will see that God ultimately does both. For the moment, though, the scale tips back to silence. The triplet’s cumulative power builds to this last clause: wahămôn lǝʾummîm, “and the uproar of peoples.” The noise of peoples is compared to the roaring of the chaos waters (cf. Isa 17:12; Jer 51:55). The parallel between people and waters is encouraged by the line, and reinforced by assonance: šǝʾôn yammîm / wahămôn lǝʾummîm. Not only are hămôn (“uproar”) and šǝʾôn (“roaring”) synonyms, and sound alike, but the parallel phrases share almost identical rhythmic patterns, with one exception: the additional syllable at the beginning of each word of the final phrase: wahămôn lǝʾummîm. The cumulative effect emphasizes not only similarity between the noise of humans and the chaos waters, but the “one-more” quality of human clamor. The poem evokes the overwhelm

21 22 23

1 Sam 14:14; 1 Kgs 18:41; Isa 13:4; 33:3; Jer 10:13; 47:3; 51:16; Ezek 23:42; Dan 10:6. Isa 31:4; Ezek 26:13; Amos 5:23; Ps 42:5; Job 39:7. The form, the hiphil participle of š-b-h, is a hapax (the root is more commonly expressed in the piel). HALOT eliminates the_ meaning “silence” from its treatment of š-b-h, _ preferring “calm”; its only clear example is here in Psalm 65. But in light of the sonic aspects of the surrounding nouns, and the more common related root š-b-h (“praise”), _ which emphasizes verbal expression (Pss 63:4; 106:47; 117:1; 145:4; 147:12; Ecc 4:2; 8:15; Dan 2:23; 4:31, 34; 5:4, 23; 1 Chr 16:35), it is best to retain the sense of “still” here, which suggests both cessation from movement and “silence,” per BDB “silence” (986) and DCH “muzzle” (230).

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of chaotic noise through the triplet that piles up images, of which human noise is the pinnacle. This comparison between thundering waves and roaring peoples offers another “take” on the poem’s initial puzzle, “to you, silence is praise” (Ps 65:2 [ET 65:1]). Silence is preferred because noise is related to chaos, and God’s intervention preserves or returns stillness or silence. This calls to mind the pervasive Mesopotamian topos famous from the Atrahasis epic, in which the noisiness of humanity irritates the gods, and so they send a flood to quell the noise and restore peace.24 The paradox “silence is praise” is underscored by its converse: God’s “answer” is silencing and produces silence. There is a sense in which the noise that humans make, noise that is marked by “sin” in the first section of the poem, is part of the threatening presence of chaos. As Walter Brueggemann and William Bellinger have nicely articulated, “The parallel lines of poetry refer to cosmic disorder (‘roaring of the seas’) and social disorder (‘tumult of the peoples’), both being severe threats that jeopardize an ordered life for the world.”25 Silence denotes the deity’s ordering of the world. This second section closes with a couplet that continues the gradual attenuation of human presence while it simultaneously hints at the sounds that can be heard when the disordered noise of peoples and chaos are extinguished: They fear your signs, who dwell at the far edges. You make those rising at morning and evening shout for joy. (v. 9 [ET v. 8])

The couplet pairs humans – those who “dwell at the far edges” – with nonhumans. “Those rising” may evoke both a sense of temporality (dawn and dusk) and directionality (east and west); in this sense they are a merism for the vast expanse of the whole world. The horizons also evoke more specifically the heavenly bodies, the moon and the sun that signal the turning of morning and evening. There is a right kind of noise – shouting for joy in response to God’s signs. But it is not people who make this noise. The far reaches of the nonhuman world are subtly personified, imagined to give voice. While the psalm already poses human speech as a problem, it acknowledges the propriety of the “speech” of the natural 24

25

Stephanie Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others, rev. ed., Oxford World’s Classics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 18–31. Walter Brueggemann and William H. Bellinger, Jr., Psalms, NCBC (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 284.

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world. The world’s “speech” is not just proper, it is actually caused by God: “You make [them] shout for joy” (tarnîn is in the hiphil, the causative stem). This subtle personification anticipates the more elaborate use of the device at the poem’s end.

they even sing In the final section (vv. 10–14 [ET vv. 9–13]), personification becomes more or less the governing trope. The theme here shifts yet again – now to a description of agricultural productivity – and the human presence is completely effaced. Instead, the speaking agent is the land itself, and we see the meadows, hills, and pastures taking over the human precinct of praise. The first lines are a description of agriculture: You visit the land and water it. You drench it abundantly. The river of God is full of water. You establish its grain for thus you establish it, soaking its furrows, settling its ridges. With showers you melt it, its sprouting you bless. (vv. 10–11 [ET vv. 9–10])

These lines shift to a metaphorical depiction of God as a farmer: God establishes the grain, a reference to cereal crops, which were the backbone of the ancient Israelite diet.26 God prepares the fields by smoothing and softening the hilly and stony soil, one of the most labor-intensive tasks of ancient agrarians. And above all, like the Canaanite storm-god Baal (who also defeats the sea), God provides the rain that was the sole source of irrigation.27 The deity is the consummate farmer and the source of agricultural bounty; human farmers are nowhere to be seen. The complete absence of human farmers weighs the possibility of a larger truth that, while humans necessarily undertake the physical tasks of agriculture, the larger forces that create abundance remain hidden to the human eye, visible only to the anthropomorphic imagination that detects the deity at work. But if God is the primary subject of these verses, it is the land that is the primary object of focus. In these five lines, the most striking sound is 26

27

LXX generalizes “grain” while highlighting its agricultural significance by translating it trophēn, “food.” Schroer, “Psalm 65.”

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the repeated suffix ‑hā/-nâ/-āh (“it”), which draws the reader back no less than seven times to its referent, “the land” (hāʾāres): wattǝšōqǝqehā (“you _ water it”); taʿšǝrennâ (“you drench it”); tǝkînehā (“you establish it”); tǝlāmêhā (“its furrows”); gǝdûdêhā (“its ridges”); tǝmōgǝgennâ (“you melt it”); simhāh (“its sprouting”). In this way, the evocations of hāʾāres, _ _ _ “the land,” envelop these lines. The land – arable, productive farmland – is the recipient and result of the deity’s attentive care, encompassing the audience as it encompasses the line. This formal feature suggests a posture for the audience – to hear or speak these lines is to witness and utter the evidence of divine blessing everywhere, all around, the land’s bounty saturating the senses. As we shall see, the latter part of this psalm describes an intersubjectivity between God and the land, mobilized by personification. Humans are beneficiaries of God’s care for the land, which is hinted at in dǝgānām (“their grain,” a reference to the food they will eat), but they are almost perfectly effaced. The poem here plays with the presumption of human uniqueness, evoking agriculture, the place and task that would be the assumed place for humans in the ancient world, and yet removing them from it. (This is similar to the playful destabilizing of human presence in liturgy in the first section of the poem.) It is in the final lines that the poem returns to the theme of speech, and it is also here that personification takes its fullest effect: You crown the year with your goodness And your wagon-tracks drip with ripeness.28 The wild pastures drip, With joy the hills dress, The meadows wear flocks, And the valleys robe themselves with crops. They shout out, they even sing. (vv. 12–14 [ET vv. 11–13])

Personification here is evident in two ways: first, God’s farming activity is anthropomorphized as God is imagined driving a wagon through the furrowed fields.29 “Your wagon tracks drip with ripeness” is an evocative and many-faceted image. It connects God’s giving of rain with the giving

28

29

The translation “ripeness” is suggested by Ps 92:15, which connects dǝšēnîm “fatness,” with greenness and fruitfulness. Jon Whitman helpfully distinguishes between the giving of an actual personality (as in deification), and the fictional use of personifying an abstraction (the literary use of prosopopoeia). For my purposes of examining personification as a tool for exploring the significance of human presence, both senses are applicable. See Whitman, Allegory: the Dynamics of an Ancient and Medieval Technique (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987), 271–72.

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of grain and calls to mind the tradition of the deity who rides on the clouds, dropping rain in his path to irrigate the thirsty crops below (Pss 68:5–10 and 104:3).30 It also observes the furrows of a field, the “path” or “track” puddled with rain after a heavy shower, understood as a gift of divine visitation. At the same time, it evokes the wagons of the farmers themselves, laden with the “ripeness” (dāšen) of a plentiful harvest. This layered image once again tucks the human farmer mostly out of sight, insisting on seeing God as farmer – they are “your wagon tracks” – as the ultimate source of agriculture. The poem, though, is selfconscious about the limits of the metaphor. God, too, is tucked out of sight – the wagon and the deity who drives it are gone by the time we encounter the image; we see only the tracks left behind. Second, the land itself is personified. God “crowns” the year with goodness, and the bountiful harvest is figuratively the splendid adornment and symbolic pinnacle of the cycle of seasons. Indeed, to “crown” specifically imagines the figure of the human head. Even when it is used metaphorically, crowning serves as a mark of human distinctiveness: “What are human beings?” Ps 8 asks, then answers: “you have made them a little lower than gods, and crowned them with glory and honor” (Ps 8:5–6; cf. Song 3:11; Pss 5:12; 21:4; 103:4). This claim to human uniqueness in Psalm 8 is almost directly challenged in Psalm 65, which plays with the idea that the seasonal productivity of the land is not only like a person, but also that it too is “crowned” by God. In a further and striking development of this personification, the land is imagined to have a body, which “dresses” with joy, “wears” flocks of sheep like a garment, and “robes itself” with crops. The “land” evoked here is both cultivated (the valleys that produce crops) and uncultivated (the wild pastures).31 Even more than speech, clothing is a quintessentially human act. It is not just what humans do, clothing is also what people do as a mark of their humanity: When Adam and Eve receive their clothing, it marks their distinctiveness from the rest of creation (Gen 3:21); similarly, Enkidu in the Gilgamesh Epic becomes civilized, “human,” when he is given clothes by Shamhat.32 That the land is clothed is a particularly distinct personification, asserting a strong likeness between the land and

30

31 32

Cf. e.g., Deut 11:14; 1 Kgs 17; Hos 6:3; Jer 14:22; 51:16; Joel 2:19, 23; Job 5:10; 38:22–38. See Mark Futato, “A Meteorological Analysis of Psalms 104, 65, and 29,” (PhD diss., Catholic University of America, 1984), 174–75, 183. For discussion, Futato, “Meteorological Analysis of Psalms 104, 65, and 29,” 186–87. Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia, 59, 138.

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people. As the human presence is completely effaced in the final section, the two elements of attention – God and the land – take on human form. This personification comes into full view in the climactic final line: “They shout out, they even sing” (Ps 65:14 [ET 65:13]). After the stilling of the chaos of the waters and human noise in section two, the silence here gives way to exuberant noise. But it is not humanity, but the land that is loud. While at the outset of the poem, human speech is suspect, here the faculty of speech is transferred to the nonhuman realm and receives no such scrutiny. The form of this final section reinscribes the singularity of the land’s “speech”: Each of the final three verses is comprised of closely matched couplets of three-word lines, each of which describes a single element of the landscape. But the poem signals its close by disrupting the pattern with a triplet: “The meadows wear flocks, / And the valleys robe themselves with crops. / They shout out, they even sing” (v. 14 [ET v. 13]). The final line breaks with the form: Here, no new subject is introduced. Instead, the collective “they” seems to refer to all the features listed before it – the meadows, hills, pastures, and valleys – and the personification is complete. All these elements of the land are endowed with speech. The final line almost stands on its own as a fitting reflection on the entire psalm, since the loudness of the land is an exact counterpoint to the silence with which the psalm began. This is a dramatic end to the psalm – there is no further framing in human speech, no concluding reflection; the cries themselves ring out, lingering in the mind of the audience.

conclusion: what can poetry do? As I have argued, Psalm 65 offers an example of a poem that is specifically engaged in questions about the nature of speech and of praise, and throughout, it keeps a steady eye on the question of human uniqueness in the larger landscape. A primary way that the question of uniqueness is raised is through the technique of personification, by which I mean the attribution of human traits to a nonhuman entity.33 Over the course 33

I consider anthropomorphism and prosopopoeia as subsets of personification. Pace, e.g., Joseph R. Dodson, The “Powers” of Personification: Rhetorical Purpose in the Book of Wisdom and the Letter to the Romans (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008), 27–40. See also, for example, Luis Alonso-Schökel, A Manual of Hebrew Poetics, SubBi 11 (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1988), 122; Paul de Man, The Rhetoric of Romanticism (New York: Columbia University, 1984), 241; “Anthropomorphism,” “Personification,” “The Pathetic Fallacy,” and “Prosopopeia,” in A. Preminger and T. V. F. Brogan, eds., The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, (4th ed.; Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993).

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of Psalm 65, the instances of personification become increasingly bold. It begins with the subtle suggestion that “all flesh” can approach the deity, then imagines that the dawn and dusk shout for joy, and ends with the final and elaborate description of the land: clothed, crowned, and singing. Nineteenth-century theories of personification have emphasized the fictive quality of personification – to impute human characteristics to nonhuman things is an act of human imagination. John Ruskin, in his book Modern Painters, coins the phrase “the pathetic fallacy” to describe how personification works.34 He gives the following example, citing lines from Oliver Wendell Holmes’s “Spring”: The spendthrift crocus, bursting through the mould Naked and shivering, with his cup of gold.

Reflecting on these lines, Ruskin writes, “This is very beautiful, and yet very untrue. The crocus is not a spendthrift, but a hardy plant; its yellow is not gold, but saffron. How is it that we enjoy so much the having it put into our heads that it is anything else than a plain crocus?”35 The answer Ruskin gives is that the poet is telling us first of all something about human emotion, not about the nature of the crocus. He names this pleasing imputation of human pathos, human feeling, to inanimate things the “pathetic fallacy.” For Ruskin, the term “fallacy” is not a devastating critique of poetry; rather, it recognizes the impulse of the creative imagination to describe the world in human terms. The great nineteenth-century Hebraist S. R. Driver follows very clearly in Ruskin’s steps. He cites Psalm 65 as an example of the unique capacity of the poet to perceive the world “animated by a life, vibrating in harmony with his own.. . . For him, not merely the animal world, but inanimate nature as well, is throbbing with human emotions.”36 For Driver, as for Ruskin, the power of the pathetic fallacy is what it reveals about the experience of the poet. Were we to follow this trajectory, however, the most we could say about Psalm 65 is that it is a true expression of human joy in response to divine blessing, a window into the feeling of both the potential limitations of human worship and the overflowing abundance of the natural world. This is exactly what Hermann Gunkel does, arguing that these verses show the joyful effusions of the poet who is overcome

34

35 36

Ruskin avoids the terminology of “personification” and “prosopopoeia” (James J. Paxson, The Poetics of Personification [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009], 28–29). John Ruskin, Modern Painters, 5 vols. (New York: Wiley, 1843–60), 3:159. S. R. Driver, A Treatise on the Use of Tenses in Hebrew, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1892), 59–60.

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with happiness over the spring rains.37 But, as the above analysis has shown, the entire poem presses the reader to consider whether and how such a response really is unique to humans. In contemporary theories of personification, there is greater willingness to admit the possibility that the trope itself is more significant. Paul de Man famously calls prosopopoeia the “master trope of poetic discourse.”38 He writes that anthropomorphism involves not just a trope but an identification on the level of substance. It takes one entity for another and thus implies the constitution of specific entities prior to their confusion, the taking of something for something else that can then be assumed to be given.39

According to de Man, personification is not merely a fictive device, but rather establishes or assumes an ontological relationship.40 His formulation is highly suggestive. Perhaps personification doesn’t merely create an imaginary sympathy with the natural world, but is a trope that is generated from a deep conviction about the order of the natural world. Personification fosters the sense that there is an intersubjectivity, an I-you relationship, between the entity that speaks and the addressee. In the case of this psalm, that suggests an I-you relationship between the land and God. Even as the human presence is progressively effaced through the course of the poem, the land responds willingly and directly to the deity. This imputation of speech and standing to the land is not unique to Psalm 65. Other texts, too, affirm strands of community between the natural world and humans by way of personification, especially in the rejoicing of creation (see, e.g., Pss 89:13 and 96:12; Isa 44:23; 49:13).41 But Psalm 65 also takes up and dissents from common motifs found elsewhere in the Psalms. I have already mentioned how “silence is praise”

37 38

39 40

41

Gunkel, Psalmen, 274. de Man, The Resistance to Theory (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), 48. de Man, Rhetoric of Romanticism, 241; cf. Paxson, Poetics of Personification, 33–34. Of course, de Man is a deconstructionist, so for him the “face” of prosopopoeia or anthropomorphism is ultimately empty of meaning – the mask is a signal of endless rhetorical interreferentiality, a narcissistic projection of the self. See, e.g., Michael Riffaterre, “Prosopopoeia,” Yale French Studies 69 (1985): 112. For a critique of the necessity of narcissism in the aesthetic encounter, see Susan Stewart, The Open Studio: Essays on Art and Aesthetics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 20. Hilary Marlowe, “The Hills Are Alive! The Personification of Nature in the Psalter,” in Leshon Limmudim: Essays on the Language and Literature of the Hebrew Bible in Honour of A. A. Macintosh, ed. David A. Baer and Robert P. Gordon, LHBOTS 593 (London: T&T Clark, 2013), 189–203.

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is itself a direct dissent from the general consensus of the Psalms. And I have already pointed to how the idea of “crowning” the land seems to directly controvert Psalm 8, where “crowning” is an image mobilized in direct service to the idea of human uniqueness. This psalm also diverges from other uses of personification in biblical Hebrew poetry. In other psalms, there is a greater insistence on the fictive quality of personification. For example, in Psalm 30, personification is used ironically in support of the rhetoric of human uniqueness: What profit is there in my death, If I go down to the pit? Will the dust praise you? Will it tell of your faithfulness? (Ps 30:10)

The assumption of Psalm 30 is that the “dust,” that constitutive element of land, is not capable of praise. These rhetorical questions position the human being over against the earth as uniquely capable of speech. Another instructive counterexample is Ps 19: the heavens “tell the glory of God,” and yet this psalm also consciously engages the pathetic fallacy, hedging its claim with the following caveat: “there is no speech, there are no words, their voice is not heard, yet their voice goes out ” (Ps 19:4). Psalm 19 is keenly aware that imputing speech to the nonhuman realm is an act of human imagination, a possibility that can be realized only by the extension of human sympathy to that which is not human.42 Each of these examples displays the flexible potential of personification. In Psalm 65, this potential is shaped toward an affirmation of the kinship between humans and the natural world, and in so doing it dissents from, and invites active speculation about, the nature of such a kinship.43 In this way, the psalm models one of the things that poetry can “do,” namely create new knowledge. As Alva Noë argues, the arts make contributions to reflection insofar as they put on display for us the things that we take for granted – the ways we are organized. By “organized,” he means the structures of engaged

42

43

For a discussion of Ps 19 and the poet’s self-consciousness of personification, see Marlowe, “The Hills Are Alive,” 198–99. On the idea of “kinship” in this psalm, see Ellen F. Davis, “Land as Kin: Renewing Our Imagination,” in Rooted and Grounded: Essays on Land and Christian Discipleship, ed. Ryan D. Harker and Janeen Bertsche Johnson (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2016), 3–12, esp. 8–10.

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activity that characterize all parts of our lives.44 The arts create new knowledge by bringing into the open the things that remain hidden in our lives. Poetry, understood in this way, calls attention to the structures of language that shape our lives, and to which we often remain oblivious. Psalm 65 puts on display what is taken for granted about human speech and human praise – its role in temple liturgies, its capacity for truth (and fallacy), and its uniqueness as a human endeavor. On my reading, the focus of this psalm is not “the praise of God for the human condition,” as Hossfeld argues.45 Rather, the focus of this psalm is precisely to raise questions about the human condition. As much is suggested by the final line: the land “even sing[s]” (ʾap-yāšîrû), which echoes the title of the poem itself, which is a “song ” (šîr). Does it mean something different for the land to sing, than for a congregation to do so, or for the poet to compose? The poem poses this question in the way that a poem spectacularly can – through the techniques of paradox, heightened speech, soundplay, and imaginative tropes like personification. Although the poem commends human silence, it is still a human verbal artifact, a poem. The endowment of the land with the faculties of a speaking subject engenders a lyric reflection on the poetic creation itself. The world calls forth human creativity, the making of art, and so while the poem commends human silence, it cannot keep it. The impulse of the verbal art of poetry speaks even about the necessity of its own silence. The arguments that this poem makes, in other words, are not propositional; rather, they proceed by way of creativity and dissent. If this is correct, then, the Psalms do not only or necessarily encode accepted cultural values, or aestheticize conventional or traditional knowledge. Psalm 65 opens with a provocation, “to you, silence is praise,” and does not finally end with one tidy answer. Rather, my reading of Psalm 65 suggests that the poem itself is in the business of thinking in new ways about human nature and uniqueness.

44

Noë, Strange Tools, 16.

45

Hossfeld, “Psalm 65,” 137.

3 The Glory of Creation in Psalm 104 Robert Alter

1:

2: 3:

4: 5: 6: 7: 8: 9: 10: 11: 12: 13:

Bless, O my being, the Lord! Lord, my God, You are very great. Grandeur and glory You don. Wrapped in light like a cloak, stretching out heavens like a tent-cloth. Setting beams for His lofts in the waters, making His chariot the clouds, He goes on the wings of the wind. He makes His messengers the winds, His ministers, glowing fire. He founded earth on its solid base, not to be shaken for evermore. With the deep You covered it like a garment – over mountains the waters stood. From Your blast they fled, from the sound of Your thunder they scattered. They went up the mountains, went down the valleys, to the place that You founded for them. A border You fixed so they could not cross, so they could not come back to cover the earth. You let loose the springs in freshets, among the mountains they go. They water all beasts of the field, the wild asses slake their thirst. Above them the fowl of the heavens dwell, from among the foliage they send forth their voice. He waters mountains from His lofts, from the fruit of Your works the earth is sated.

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50 14:

15:

16: 17: 18: 19: 20: 21: 22: 23: 24:

25:

26: 27: 28: 29:

30: 31: 32: 33: 34:

Robert Alter He makes the hay sprout for cattle, grass for the labor of humankind to bring forth bread from the earth, and wine that gladdens the heart of man to make faces shine brighter than oil, and bread that sustains the heart of man. The trees of the Lord drink their fill, the Lebanon cedars He planted, where the birds make their nest, the stork whose home is the cypresses, the high mountains for the gazelles, the crags a shelter for badgers. He made the moon for the fixed seasons; the sun – He appointed its setting. You bring down darkness and it turns to night in which all beasts of the forest stir. The lions roar for prey, seeking from God their food. When the sun comes up, they head home, and in their dens they lie down. Man goes out to his work and to his labor until evening. How many Your deeds, O Lord, all of them You do in wisdom. All the earth is filled with Your riches. This sea great and wide, where creatures beyond number stir, the little beasts and the large. There the ships go, this Leviathan You fashioned to play with. All of them look to You to give them their food in its season. When You give them, they gather it in, when You open Your hand, they are sated with good. When You hide Your face, they panic, You withdraw their breath and they perish, and to the dust they return. When You send forth Your breath, they are created, and You renew the face of the earth. May the Lord’s glory be forever, may the Lord rejoice in His works, Who but looks down to earth, and it trembles, but touches the mountains – they smoke. Let me sing to the Lord while I live, let me hymn to my God while I breathe. Let my speech be sweet unto Him. As for me, I rejoice in the Lord.

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Let offenders vanish from earth and the wicked be no more. Bless, O my being, the Lord, Hallelujah!

35:

(my translation)1

Psalm 104 is arguably the greatest hymn to the glory of creation in the Hebrew Bible. With some reminiscences of the creation story in the first two chapters of Genesis, it also draws on certain elements from the cosmogonic myths of contiguous cultures but reshapes them for a monotheistic framework. Let us follow this process line by line through the poem. “Lord, my God, You are very great. / Grandeur and glory You don” (v. 1). The celebration of God’s majesty is of course a commonplace in Psalms. Here it is given an effect of freshness because the “grandeur and glory” that God puts on amount to His dressing Himself in royal robes, and this regal rhetorical flourish is highlighted in the Hebrew by the strong alliteration of hôd wǝhādār, a phonetic flourish that my translation “grandeur and glory” seeks to emulate. The image of royal raiment is then brilliantly extended in the next line (v. 2) by the representation of light – implicitly, the light of the sun – as God’s splendid cloak. In the second verset of this line, the poet, having introduced the cloak, moves associatively to likening the heavens to a “tent-cloth” (yǝrîʿâ).2 The next line moves on to water – these are the “upper waters” that produce rain for the earth in the biblical cosmic picture – and wind. In this fashion, the poem lines up at its beginning the constituent meteorological elements of God’s benevolent sustaining of creation: sun, water, and wind. It is also worth noting that all the verbs in verses 2–4 are participles. (This would have been awkward to reproduce completely in translation.) Such concentration of participles is relatively rare in biblical usage and here conveys a sense of the constant presentness of God’s cosmic activity: stretching out the heavens, setting beams in the celestial lofts, making the clouds His chariot, going on the wings of the wind. The initial verbs of verses 5–6 then switch to the perfect tense because what they indicate are completed acts of creation. As God was wrapped in a “cloak” of light, He once covered the earth with the waters of the deep 1

2

See Robert Alter, The Book of Psalms: A Translation with Commentary (New York: Norton, 2009), 362–68. I follow Benjamin Hrushovski [Harshav] (“Prosody, Hebrew,” EncJud 16:595–623) in using “verset” to designate each of the two or three components of a line of biblical poetry. Others call this “hemistich” or “colon,” but both those terms seem to me cumbersome and not entirely accurate.

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that are likened to another term of apparel, a “garment.” But the poet immediately makes clear that God’s “blast” (or “rebuke”) caused these waters to recede, and that He set a limit for them that they could not cross (vv. 7–9). All this aqueous cosmogonic language patently belongs to the same poetic tradition that is drawn on in Job 38:8–11, the poem in which God speaks to Job from the whirlwind. It is, as scholars have often observed, a vigorous monotheistic transformation of the Canaanite creation myth. In the Canaanite version, creation takes place when Baal, the weather-god, succeeds in subduing a monstrous and menacing seagod (variously called Leviathan, Yamm, Rahab, or Tanin in Psalms, Job, Isaiah, and elsewhere) and preventing him from overwhelming the dry land. In our psalm, as in the Job poem, the sea no longer has any divine or demonic agency – its surging is wholly subject to the imperative of omnipotent divine command. Leviathan, as we shall see, makes an appearance in Ps 104:26, but in almost comically reduced dimensions. The mighty pulse of cosmic waters is here channeled into “freshets,” or more literally, “springs” (v. 10), which instead of threatening the dry land, give it precious moisture and fructify it, providing drink for all the beasts of the field. The living population of the Priestly version of creation in Genesis 1 is reassembled here, beginning with the beasts of the field, the fowl of the heavens, and the green growing things (Ps 104:11–14). Humankind, perhaps climactically as in Genesis 1, is introduced only in Ps 104:14–15. These last two verses are an eloquent evocation of idyllic life on earth. They are prefaced by a somewhat odd epithet for rain, “the fruit of Your works” (v. 13). Various emendations have been proposed for the Hebrew phrase, none especially convincing and none supported by any ancient version or variant Hebrew manuscript. “Fruit,” of course, is a common biblical idiom for “product” or “consequence.” The poet may have chosen to use it here in order to lay the ground for the landscape of fruitfulness that will unfold in the next two lines (vv. 14–15), both of which are triadic, generating metric room for the representation of the amplitude of nature’s bounty. In these lines, there is a beautiful sweeping movement from hay, which humankind raises to feed its cattle, to bread, the primary food made from the grain it grows, to wine, which gladdens the heart and makes faces shine brighter than oil (through the comparison, still another principal agricultural product – oil – is invoked), and back to bread, which is also a synecdoche for food in general. In all this, the harmony between humankind and the animal kingdom is firmly stressed. The same rains that enable humans to prosper also

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sustain the grandest of trees. In an implicit personification, they “drink their full” (yiśbǝʿû, v. 16), just as human beings both drink life-giving water and imbibe gladdening wine. Living creatures of all sorts, moreover, thrive in this green world: birds make their nests in the branches of the lofty trees, and gazelles and rock badgers abound on the mountainsides (vv. 17–18). Having surveyed the panorama of flourishing life enabled through God’s creation, the poet now turns to the cosmic clock that God has set to regulate the world. The biblical term hōq, in fact not used here but _ occurring prominently in many closely related poems (see Job 38:10, which has numerous parallels in Psalms), has both a spatial and a temporal aspect. It is the “limit” God sets to the raging sea (v. 9), but it is also the “statute” or “rule” through which He fixes a regular cyclical order in the created world. (Even though the passage we are considering does not use the term hōq, it is entirely continuous thematically with the many _ cosmogonic poems, especially in Psalms, that invoke that word.) That is the larger cosmogonic idea implied in the introduction of the sun and the moon in verses 19–20. One could say that the celestial light in which God wraps himself as king is now parceled out into moon – its changing phases are used to determine the “fixed seasons” or festivals – and sun. The two together impart to human and animal life the circadian rhythm of day and night by which all things live. The poet imagines that nighttime is when predators go out to seek their prey – as in the Voice from the Whirlwind (Job 38:39–40); this is viewed as a natural activity, not a threatening one – with the lion, like the human creature, seeking its food “from God” (Ps 104:21). As the beasts of prey return from their hunt to their lair at dawn, humans go out to work the fields till nightfall (vv. 22–23). It is this passage of the poem in particular (vv. 19–23) that has triggered a sometimes vexed discussion of the relation of this psalm to its ancient Near Eastern antecedents. Generations of scholars have identified a broad similarity between this poem and Akhenaton’s “Hymn to the Sun-God,” which antedates it by more than half a millennium. In the Egyptian poem as in the Hebrew one, there is a teeming landscape of fruitfulness – human and beast, bird and cattle – made possible by the beneficent influence of the sun upon earth, complemented in the Egyptian text by the welling waters of the Nile. The cycle of day and night is also evoked at one point in the Egyptian poem, and in the dark of the night “Every lion cometh forth from his den, / All serpents, they sting. / Darkness . . . / The world is silent. / He that made them resteth in his

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horizon.”3 Some scholars have made the extravagant claim that our psalm is essentially a translation of the Egyptian poem or an “adaptation” of it. There is no way of knowing whether this psalmist actually read Egyptian, or whether he might have been familiar with the hymn through some Canaanite translation or adaptation, which of course we do not possess. One cannot exclude the possibility that any panoramic celebration of a benevolent creator-god residing on high is likely to have certain shared features, such as the catalogue of the animal kingdom, the references to the cycle of day and night, and the flourishing of the green world. I think there may be some likelihood, however unprovable, that our psalmist was familiar with at least an intermediate version of Akhenaton’s hymn and adopted some elements from it. (This, for example, is the view of the Oxford biblical scholar, John Day.4) What should be stressed is that writers, ancient and modern, do this sort of thing all the time, picking up images or ideas from antecedent texts and transforming them to serve their own distinctive purposes. This is a process that it is not accurately described as translation or even adaptation. There are, for example, passages in Moby-Dick describing the storm-tossed harpooners’ boat that bustle with the poetic lexicon of King Lear, often even moving into iambic cadences that come close to blank verse. Melville could not resist the explosive power of Shakespeare’s language as he aspired to create a resonant American tragedy in prose-poetry. There is a limited degree of overlap in meaning between Lear on the rain-swept moor and the crewmen of the Pequod in their fragile boat battling the monstrous whale, but a partially shared poetic idiom is made to body forth very different worlds. The deity that presides so generously over creation in Psalm 104 in no way merges with the sun, unlike the deity of the Egyptian hymn, and that is an essential difference from which others follow. Sunlight, or perhaps simply the dazzle of celestial radiance, is His cloak, not His substance. Indeed, at the beginning of the psalm, riding a chariot of clouds, He more closely resembles the Canaanite Baal than the Egyptian Aten-Ra. God’s sailing across the sky in a celestial chariot is indicative of a distinctive feature of the psalm. An observation on the dynamic of the poetic

3

4

Translation by James Henry Breasted, Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1912), 325. John Day, “Psalm 104 and Akhenaten’s Hymn to the Sun,” in Jewish and Christian Approaches to the Psalms: Conflict and Convergence, ed. Susan Gillingham (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 211–28.

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line in the Bible is in order here. Since Robert Lowth in the eighteenth century identified semantic parallelism as the structuring principle of the biblical line, the standard description has been that the two halves (or three thirds) of the line mirror each other in meaning through synonymy. In the early 1980s, James Kugel and I independently proposed that in fact what usually happened through the movement from the first verset to the second was some sort of heightening, intensification, concretization, or specification.5 (In Ps 104, verse 7 is a clear-cut instance of this pattern, moving from the somewhat general “blast” or “rebuke” to the specifying “thunder.” Again, in verse 17, first we get the general category, “birds,” then the specific bird, “the stork.”) What Kugel did not see was that fairly often the second verset showed a narrative development of material that appeared in the first verset. Real narrative poetry is quite rare in the Bible and, at least in comparison to the epics of surrounding cultures, very brief. I suggested in my book on biblical poetry that it looked as if the narrative impulse, suppressed on the larger scale, reasserted itself on the microtextual level in the manifestation of narrativity between the first verset and the second.6 This sort of narrativity is especially prominent in Psalm 104. God, having constructed lofts for the waters of the sky and having turned the clouds into a chariot, proceeds to mount the chariot and to go riding on the wings of the wind (v. 3). After the declaration that He first covered the earth with the waters of the deep, we see those waters going up over the mountains and down into the valleys and finally settling in the place demarcated for them by God (vv. 4–6). One notices this sort of narrative drive within many lines. The fowl of the heavens in the first verset of verse 12 simply dwell in the branches of the trees, but in the second verset they sing. The divinely appointed cycle of day and night is also an emphatic narrative sequence: “You bring down darkness and turn it to night / in which all beasts of the forest stir” (v. 20). The next line focuses on a particular beast: “The lions roar for prey, / seeking from God their food” (v. 21). (Seeking of this sort, one should note, is not something the lions in the Egyptian poem are said to do.) With sunrise, the lions head home, and that narrative sequence is completed in the second verset when they lie down in their dens (v. 22). The following line marks a complementary

5

6

James Kugel, The Idea of Biblical Poetry: Parallelism and Its History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981); Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Poetry, rev. ed. (New York: Basic Books, 2011 [original 1985]). Alter, Art of Biblical Poetry, 29–74.

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narrative movement: humans go out to their work at daybreak (v. 23, first verset), and they continue their labor till nightfall (second verset). Narrativity is especially striking in the triadic line of verse 29: first the living creatures panic when God hides His face; then they perish; and in the third verset, they return to the dust. Although most of the reported actions of the first large section of the psalm are cyclical, the prominence of narrativity in so many of these lines imbues the evocation of the natural world with a strong sense of process. The theater of creation imagined by this poet is not static. Things are continuously happening: in the original act of creation, the waters surged, receded, were confined within limits. In creation’s daily manifestations, freshets rush through their mountain channels, humans labor to produce sustenance for themselves and for their cattle, and beasts of prey go out on their quest for food and then return to their lairs. The created world is felt to be energized through and through. In the implied theology of the psalm, God not only brings about creation but also makes it keep happening, moment after moment. The blessing instituted by the early rabbis for the morning prayers is entirely in keeping with the spirit of this psalm: hamehadesh betuvo bekhol yom tamid ma‘aseh brei’shit, “who _ renews through His goodness each day perpetually the act of creation.” The first section of the poem concludes with a kind of doxological flourish, appropriately cast in triadic lines because triadic lines are often deployed to mark points of transition or closure in biblical poems: “How many are Your deeds, O Lord, / All of them You do in wisdom. / All the earth is filled with Your riches” (v. 24). The last Hebrew word of this line, qinyānekā, is virtually a pun. It means “something acquired,” hence “riches” in this translation, which follows the King James Version, but the verb qanâ in some contexts also means “to create” (e.g., Deut 32:6; Ps 139:13; Prov 8:22), so the riches are what God creates. There is a line in Akhenaton’s hymn that sounds quite like this one, but given that formulations very close to this occur quite a few times in Psalms, this is scarcely evidence for any borrowing from the Egyptian poem and, on the contrary, constitutes an object-lesson that similarities do not demonstrate influence. At this point, the psalm, after its grand panoramic survey of mountains and valleys and forests and cultivated fields, turns back to the sea (v. 25), which, in the logic of ancient Near Eastern cosmogony, is more or less where the poem started. The sea now, however, is imagined very differently than was the primordial deep at the beginning of the poem. The sea is of course the Mediterranean, seen as a vast expanse almost without

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limit, and, in keeping with the idea of a creation pulsing with energy, it is the teeming home of all sorts of creatures, great and small. Far from being a roiling realm of chaos threatening the dry land, this sea is a highway for human commerce: “There the ships go” (v. 26). But the most decisive transformation of the old Canaanite mythology is what happens to Leviathan. In most biblical poetry, Leviathan, in consonance with his origins in Canaanite tradition, is a fearsome sea-monster (in Ps 74:14, he actually is said to have multiple heads) that can be subdued only by the power of another deity. In the Job poem from the whirlwind, Leviathan undergoes a partial and somewhat ambiguous transformation from monster-god to beast (Job 40:25–41:26 [ET 41:1–34]). That is to say, Job’s Leviathan is essentially a hyperbolic representation of the Egyptian crocodile who belongs to the animal kingdom and dominates it. As a fire-breather impregnable to all conceivable weapons, though, he seems more dragon than crocodile, while nevertheless still part of God’s unfathomable creation. In the pacific world of our psalm, ruled over by a God who is both allpowerful and benevolent, the lethal menace of Leviathan is entirely erased, and, disporting himself like a dolphin alongside the ships that ply the sea, he is turned into God’s aquatic pet. The verb “play” (śaheq, Ps 104:26) is _ crucial to the larger implications of the transmogrification of Leviathan: conflict is absent from this picture of creation, and the warrior-god of many biblical poems – obliquely alluded to in the chariot of the clouds (v. 3) – has become a genial God who enjoys what one might call leisure activities. At one point in the garden story in Genesis 3, God is seen going for a stroll in the cool of evening, but only here does He play. Translators who think the clause says that Leviathan is playing in the sea (bô, “in it”) do not properly understand the Hebrew syntax: “Leviathan” is immediately followed by the pronoun zeh (“this”) and “You fashioned to play with,” so bô has to refer to the preceding noun, “Leviathan,” and in fact there is no noun “sea” in the sentence. The line immediately after the mention of Leviathan inaugurates a concluding panoramic sweep: “All of them look to You / to give them their food in its season” (v. 27). Initially, “all of them” (kullām) is a little ambiguous. Since the poem has just invoked the swarming life of the creatures that live in the sea, it would seem that these – “the little beasts and the large” – are the antecedent. But as the next three lines unfold, “all of them” appears to encompass all living creatures, including human beings. All look to God for their sustenance, like the lions in v. 21. The language of the poem saturates the world with monotheistic consciousness, attributing it, at least rhetorically, even to the beasts of the field and

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the fish of the sea. The representation of death as “to the dust they return” (v. 29) is a clear indication that the poet no longer is thinking of seacreatures, or at least not primarily of sea-creatures. The corollary of the idea of creation as a continuous dynamic process is the notion articulated in vv. 28–30 that all life from moment to moment depends on the nurturing power and benevolent will of God. This is an underlying difference, perhaps of nuance but nevertheless crucial, from the Egyptian hymn to the sun. The poet surely knows from his familiarity with the Yahwistic version of creation that God blows the “breath of life” (nišmat hayyim) _ into the nostrils of the clay that He has fashioned to make the first human (Gen 2:7). Here a different term, rûah, is used, twice (Ps 104:29, 30), but _ when applied to the force that energizes life, it is a very close semantic equivalent of the phrase in Genesis 2. What is remarkable is that the Yahwistic creation account’s conception of the infusion of life-breath undergoes a significant revision in Psalm 104. In Genesis, once the Lord God blows that breath into the nostrils of hāʾādām, the human being, His creature becomes self-propelled, fully equipped to live out his many days until his time comes to return to the dust. In Psalm 104, by contrast, every living thing is constantly dependent on God to sustain it in life: “You withdraw their breath and they perish” (v. 29). This amounts to a new existential perception of the intrinsic fragility of all life. A lion, an ox, a fish, a man or woman, in full ostensible vigor, may be suddenly extinguished – in our medical terms, if some vital system fails – and so needs to be perpetually sustained by God. The formulation of this idea in v. 30 is especially striking: “When You send forth Your breath, they are created, / and You renew the face of the earth.” A verb we might have expected at the end of the first clause would be something like “they revive.” Instead, we have the slightly startling “they are created” (yibbārēʾûn). The sustaining of life, especially when it has been at the point of failing, is represented as a new creation, a reenactment of that portentous moment when God first imbued inert clay with the breath of life. The second verset is no less arresting in its generalizing boldness: “You renew the face of the earth.” The revival of the breath of life in the living creature is a return of sorts to the first creation, when the fashioning of the human creature was coordinated with the flowing of the four rivers of Eden and the flourishing of all the trees of the Garden. This is a concise literary allusion that carries with it a rich nexus of theological implications. That ringing phrase “You renew the face of the earth” appropriately marks the substantive conclusion of the poem that has been about the

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creation and the subsequent sustaining of life on earth. What follows in vv. 31–35, as a poetic coda, is a doxology celebrating God’s greatness. The transition is marked by the use of two jussive verbs, “May the Lord’s glory be (yǝhî) forever, / may the Lord rejoice (yiśmah) in His works” _ (v. 31). The invocation of God’s terrific seismic power in the next line – “Who but looks down to earth and it trembles, / but touches the mountains, they smoke” – may at first seem like a dissonant note in a poem about God’s providential care for the world. The phrases used are patently reminiscent of several other biblical poems that evoke God’s irresistible power to shake the earth. (Compare, for example, Judg 5:4–5.) That power, however, is the obverse side of the divine providence manifested in the poem. God has the vast cosmic capacity to hold back the raging sea, to make rivers run, to bring rain to earth, and to endow living creatures with the breath of life or to take it away. The invocation, then, of the seismic deity at the end of the psalm may not be out of place after all. The steady luminosity and solidity of creation are complemented by God’s power when He so chooses to make the earth tremble and the mountains smoke. The declared resolution to sing just before the end of the psalm is both thoroughly conventional and relevant to this particular poem. Psalms of thanksgiving very often conclude with the speaker’s affirming that “I will sing” (ʾāšîrâ) or “hymn” (ʾăzammǝrâ, the verbal cognate of mizmôr, “psalm”) to the Lord. The phrases “while I live” and “while I breathe” (v. 33) also have abundant equivalents elsewhere in Psalms: the dead do not praise God nor all who go down into silence (Ps 115:17), but such praise is the vocation of the living, breathing person. Our psalm is not, strictly speaking, a thanksgiving psalm, except in the extended sense that it offers thanks for the miracle of creation. As such, it is a splendid piece of poetry, marshaling radiant imagery to express the speaker’s sense of the glories of God’s creation. I suspect that the poet has an awareness of this poetic achievement, and that when the poem goes on, “Let my speech be sweet unto Him” (Ps 104:34), there seem to be some grounds to hope that it will be. It has certainly been that for readers over nearly three millennia. The last line of poetry before the concluding refrain, “Bless, O my being, the Lord,” is something of an off-note: “Let offenders vanish from earth / and the wicked be no more” (v. 35). The poem, after all, has not been concerned with questions of wickedness and injustice. I suppose it is at least conceivable that the poet, having conjured up this grand luminous picture of harmonious creation, was bothered at the end by an awareness that there were miscreants present in the world who disrupted

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its God-given harmony. It is far more likely that an editor, focused on the moral calculus in Psalms of retribution for the wicked and reward for the just, introduced this moralizing note at the end because a poem of nonstop celebration seemed to require some mention of the human wrongdoing that demanded correction and, ideally, elimination. If this inference is right, it would be one of countless instances of the porousness or composite character of biblical literature. In our poem, fortunately, it is no more than a small oddity before the conclusion. The psalm as a whole remains one of the great lyric celebrations produced by ancient literature, a rhapsodic expression of the beauty and variety of the world and of the miraculous nurture of all things that live. Its grand movement from the brightness of the sky and the primordial waters to the mountain streams and bird, beast, humankind, and fish are a thrilling poetic imagining of a creation that is both richly variegated and ultimately unified. Poetry could scarcely do more to convey a vision of the world seen in the light of monotheistic faith.

part ii POETRY IN WISDOM LITERATURE

4 Bildad Lectures Job A Close Reading of Job 8 Edward L. Greenstein

The Book of Job is a rhetorical drama in which Job and his companions try to get to the root of the exemplary Job’s afflictions, on the one hand, and Job seeks the truth behind his misery from an uncanny deity, on the other. I will be reading here one of those discourses, a poem in which Job’s companion Bildad the Shuhite lectures him on the subject of the fates of the righteous and the wicked. The lecture deals in a number of related issues and employs a variety of images, but its complexity derives mainly from a phenomenon that characterizes most if not all of the discourses in Job: Job’s interlocutors are responding to more than one of Job’s claims at a time, as well as to the circumstances of Job’s suffering.1 Bildad’s discourse entails several overlapping arguments. However, these arguments are made not by an array of logical points, building one on the other, but by a series of rhetorical ploys, which I shall identify and ponder in the course of my reading. Before reading a poem, any poem, or any other literary work, one should consider the process of reading. One does not read a text the way one looks at a picture. One does not take in the whole at once. Reading is far more analogous to the experience of listening to music or watching a film. It is temporal rather than spatial. One takes in a bit at a time; and in the course of the reading process, one entertains expectations, which

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On the responsiveness of Job and his companions to one another, see, e.g., Sara Goldenberg, “Coherence between the Discourses and Responses of the Companions and the Discourses of Job” (MA thesis, Tel Aviv University, 1997; in Hebrew); Nehamit Perry, _ “Conceptual Metaphors as a Means of Discourse in the Book of Job,” Teʿuda 24 (2011): 21–44 (in Hebrew).

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may be fulfilled or frustrated; one undergoes surprises and tensions; one develops hypotheses about what is going on and what may happen; one forms judgments that may be reinforced or undermined; one asks oneself questions, which one may or may not be able to answer as one proceeds.2 In the reading of Job 8 that follows, I will offer my analysis and interpretation as I go along, for the most part adhering to the sequence of the poem – its twists and turns, so to speak. At the same time, I will occasionally break pattern and comment on a feature or phenomenon with regard to the entire poem, in order to capture an idea or image that can be discerned only through attention to more than the passage in my immediate sights. Breaking pattern in this way also serves the purpose of making full disclosure: in reading this poem a verse or line at a time, I do not mean to suppress the fact that I am actually aware of what is coming – even when my remarks appear to maintain the pretense that surprises are in store. Nevertheless, not to worry: a compelling artistic work will continue to surprise, to arouse, to disturb, to delight – to compel – even on the umpteenth experience of it. Such, I believe, is the case with Job 8, which may not be the most exquisite and textured of all the poems in the Book of Job, but which is a relatively self-contained discourse, the complexity of which is more than sufficient to sustain interest. Looking ahead at the whole, the poem may be divided into several sections. First, Bildad sums up his analysis of Job’s situation and proffers friendly advice (vv. 2–7). He then endeavors to back up his advice by citing a lesson, in proverbial form, from the sages of yore (vv. 8–13). The boundary between this section and the next is porous, as Bildad adds a new figure of his own to that of the ancients (vv. 14–15). In my reading, the significance of the new figure, a spider’s web, will become apparent. In line with this image, Bildad adduces a similar but opposite one, describing a contrary fate (vv. 16–20). Finally, Bildad closes with a favorable forecast for Job (vv. 21–22). The text I am using is the traditional Masoretic Hebrew version, with adjustments made on the basis of philological considerations, which I shall briefly explain and justify, mostly in footnotes. My work on Job is still in progress, but I draw here upon an annotated translation of the book that I expect to publish soon.3

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For an introduction to and a variety of reader-oriented approaches to literature, see, e.g., Jane P. Tompkins, ed., Reader-Response Criticism (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980). The Book of Job: A New Translation (New Haven: Yale University Press, forthcoming).

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Bildad’s speech follows four earlier units in the book: 1. A narrative in prose that relates that Job, a perfectly just and pious man, suffered the loss of his estate, his livestock, his servants, and his ten children at the hands of the deity and his agent, the satan (an angel whose mission is to trip people up and inform on their misdeeds) (chs. 1–2); 2. A complaint by Job, contending that it is better to be dead than to live with affliction (ch. 3); 3. A response by the companion Eliphaz, who assures Job that to suffer is human and that a righteous person will live to enjoy the benefits of life following a period of suffering (chs. 4–5);4 and 4. A response by Job, replying that he cannot withstand “the arrows of Shaddai” (divine affliction; Job 6:4) anymore, that his life is too far gone to expect the enjoyment of better days, and that God is hounding him as though he were a threat (chs. 6–7). In one way or another, Bildad in his discourse echoes or relates to each of these prior segments. The preceding seven chapters serve as the background of Bildad’s remarks. Bildad begins, as Job and his companions usually do,5 with a reference to the words of the preceding speaker (v. 2): How long will you make such declarations? (How long) will the words of your mouth be a massive wind?

Sound repetition (alliteration, assonance) in each of these lines (təmallelʾēlleh, kabbîr ʾimrê-pîkā – “you make declarations,” “the words of your mouth a massive [wind]”)6 adds rhetorical punch to the opening. The parallelism of the couplet serves to equate Job’s “declarations” and his “massive wind.” Bildad is the first but not the last of Job’s companions to denigrate Job’s words as “wind.”7 But it was Job who first suggested that his supposed friends regarded his arguments as “wind” (6:26), thereby confirming the accuracy of Job’s perception. Seeing that Eliphaz’s speech to Job was relatively sympathetic, we might have surmised that Job, in his extreme suffering, was exaggerating his friends’ animus. Instead, Job regards any reaction short of unwavering support as betrayal.8 He has

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Minus the hair-raising vision of a renegade spirit in 4:12–21 that has been misplaced and is actually Job’s; see n. 9. See, e.g., John E. Course, Speech and Response: A Rhetorical Analysis of the Introductions to the Speeches of the Book of Job (Chapters 4–24) (Washington, DC: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1994). Recall that /m/ and /p/ are labial consonants, like /b/. See, e.g., Edward L. Greenstein, “Truth or Theodicy? Speaking Truth to Power in the Book of Job,” The Princeton Seminary Bulletin 27 (2006): 238–58, esp. 245–47. See Greenstein, “Truth or Theodicy?” 244–45.

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compared his companions to a river that runs flush with cold, refreshing water in the rainy winter but turns bone-dry and disappears in the summer (6:15–20). Nevertheless, Bildad now makes clear his own sentiment, that Job’s words are empty wind. The reader will wonder what in Job’s discourse Bildad found so unworthy. The following couplet alludes to an answer (8:3): Would God corrupt justice? Would Shaddai corrupt what is right?

Again, the parallel lines reinforce pretty much the same idea. Bildad believes that Job has accused the deity, the “judge of all the earth” (Gen 18:25), of perverting justice. But where has Job thus far made such an accusation? The critical reader may regard Bildad’s contention with skepticism. But the patient reader will review what Job has already said in two preceding discourses in order to identify a possible provocation. Nothing in Job’s first discourse seems to apply – unless one understands that the vision of a spirit, a member of the divine circle, described in the second half of Eliphaz’s speech in chapter 4, is misplaced and is in fact the conclusion of Job’s first discourse.9 Job quotes the spirit as saying, Can a mortal be righteous before God? Can a man be pure before his Maker? (4:17)

The implication is that the deity finds human beings lacking just for being human. Perhaps Bildad sees in that implication an accusation of divine unfairness. In Job’s second discourse there are many candidates to choose among, although none of them directly attributes injustice to the deity. Perhaps the strongest expression of distress with the deity’s justice is the very last statement Job makes (7:21): Why can’t you pardon my transgression, Commute my punishment? For I’ll soon be lying in the dirt – And when you seek me, I’ll be gone.

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Among the reasons: Eliphaz mocks Job’s claim to have heard a spirit (5:1, 8) and Job defends it (6:10); Eliphaz (ch. 15) attributes the spirit’s revelation to Job; Elihu, who quotes Job, cites the words of the spirit; and more. See, e.g., Edward L. Greenstein, “Jeremiah as an Inspiration to the Poet of Job,” in Inspired Speech: Prophecy in the Ancient Near East—Essays in Honor of Herbert B. Huffmon, ed. John Kaltner and Louis Stulman, JSOTSup 378 (New York: T & T Clark, 2004), 105–07; Ken Brown, The Vision in Job 4 and Its Role in the Book, FAT 2/75 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015).

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Here Job relates directly to crime and punishment, the dynamic on which justice turns, and complains that his punishment should be commuted because he is convinced he is near the end. Why continue to inflict punishment on one who is doomed to imminent death? In any event, the very accusation Bildad ascribes to Job – that God perverts justice – is not one that Job has explicitly made. Bildad, however, is not only referring to statements Job may have made in the past. He also is seeking to elicit Job’s assent in the present to the proposition that God is just.10 He seeks to accomplish this by formulating his accusation as a rhetorical question: Would the deity act corruptly? A rhetorical question presupposes the addressee’s agreement with the proposition that underlies it: of course the deity would not act corruptly.11 If Job were not to answer Bildad’s question, he could be assumed to accept the idea behind it: no, the deity would not act corruptly. Bildad would then have won Job over to the side of the righteous, in Bildad’s terms. The righteous would not question the justice of God. Throughout his discourse, Bildad operates on the assumption that Job is basically righteous – his fate can be salvaged. A rhetorical question, by its nature, does not require a response, and Job does not now respond. This enables Bildad to continue haranguing Job as though Job is in agreement and is still a pious man. Accordingly, Bildad in his next statement exonerates Job of any fault. Setting aside all Job’s other afflictions, Bildad homes in on the most poignant of them – the catastrophic death of all Job’s children (v. 4): If your sons committed a sin against him, He has dispatched12 them for13 their offense.

The deity has brought death upon Job’s children not for any sin on Job’s part, but for theirs. The sin is not cited, and one can wonder if it is the one that Job had feared in the opening narrative – that in the course of their merriment, under the influence of wine and jubilation, they might have blasphemed (see 1:4–5). In the biblical milieu, the penalty of death 10

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Cf., e.g., C. L. Seow, Job 1–21: Interpretation and Commentary, Illuminations (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013), 516. Cf., e.g., J. Gerald Janzen, Job, IBC (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1997), 84, 87; Alison Lo, Job 28 as Rhetoric: An Analysis of Job 28 in the Context of Job 22–31, VTSup 97 (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 88–90. For the verb šillah in the sense of “to kill,” see Job 14:20. _ For the understanding of bəyad in the sense of “on account of,” e.g., Isa 64:6 (ET 64:7); Job 27:11; cf., e.g., Robert Gordis, The Book of Job: Commentary, New Translation, and Special Studies (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1978), 88–89; Seow, Job 1–21, 528.

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could be inflicted for the sin of cursing God (compare, for example, Lev 24:10–16; 1 Kgs 21:10, 13). With this explanation, Bildad seems to think he has solved the paradox posed by Job – a wholly good man who suffers. Job’s suffering, suggests Job’s friend Bildad, is not a punishment of him by God; it is rather an inescapable consequence of the punishment of Job’s children by the deity. The sins of Job’s children are visited on the father. The structure of verse 4 departs from the roughly synonymous parallelism of the preceding two couplets. The second line does not reiterate the sense of the first but rather deepens it by providing the consequence of what is related in the first. The structure manifests a quasi-juridical pattern – it resembles the pattern of almost all ancient Near Eastern law and most biblical law. Such law was formulated casuistically, in the form of a case: if such and such happens, then the law is this. The verse begins with the conjunction ʾim, “if” (or: “it being the case that”), the same term that opens many casuistic laws in the Bible.14 Bildad’s formulation therefore smacks of legal logic: if Job’s children sinned, then they were executed by the deity (by an “act of nature” – a strong wind that collapsed the house upon them). After presenting this case of act and consequence to Job, Bildad employs the very same term, ʾim, “if,” and applies it repeatedly and analogously to Job (vv. 5–7): If you would only seek God, seek compassion from Shaddai, If you are pure and straight (of ways), then will he protect you,15 and make your rightful homestead whole. Though your former days were meager, your latter days will exceedingly thrive.

The action Bildad implores Job to take is to turn humbly and reverently to God – seeking the deity’s compassion (v. 5). The consequence is that Job will overcome his current distress and enjoy a happy future (v. 7). However, within this similar quasi-juridical framework is a different kind of “if,” the kind that indicates doubt. If Job is “pure” and innocent, then, and

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E.g., Exod 22:24, 25 (ET 22:25, 26). Strictly speaking, most casuistic laws begin a topic with kî “if” and indicate a secondary situation within the case with ʾim; e.g., Exod 21:2–6. Clines observes well that this “if” is not hypothetical but provides a circumstance to explain the death of Job’s children; David J. A. Clines, Job 1–20, WBC 17 (Dallas: Word, 1989), 198, 202. The use of the rare verb “protect” alludes to the deity’s protection of Israel like a bird hovering over its nest (Deut 32:11); cf., e.g., Amos Hakham, Job, Daʿat Miqraʾ (Jerusalem: Mossad Ha-Rav Kook, 1970), 62.

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only then, will the deity ensure his wellbeing (v. 6). Literally between the present case of Job and Job’s future lies Bildad’s uncertainty concerning his friend. Perhaps he is not innocent; perhaps he deserves his suffering. Bildad here nearly parrots Eliphaz. In his speech, Eliphaz had also advised Job to “seek out (dāraš) God” (5:8), using a near synonym of Bildad’s verb (šiher, “seek,” 8:5). Eliphaz foresaw for Job a “whole, _ peaceful” (šālôm) “tent” (i.e., home) and an “estate” (nāweh) that will lack for nothing (5:24). Similarly, Bildad uses the verbal form šillēm (“make whole”) and the same noun nāweh (“homestead”) in 8:6. It would seem that Bildad uses the less frequent verb šiher, “to seek,” in _ 8:5 in order to create an ironic contrast with Job in 7:21, where Job addresses the deity: “you will seek (šiher) me – but I am gone.” Bildad _ would seem to suggest: it is not for God to look for you, Job; it is for you to seek out God.16 Bildad foresees a thriving future for Job (“your latter days will exceedingly thrive,” v. 7). His optimism, if sincere, flies in the face of Job’s own concerns, which he had expressed in response to Eliphaz. Job says he has not the strength that is needed to endure his suffering (6:11–12) nor the prospect of sufficient time to wait out the period of his affliction (7:1, 6–8). Is Bildad trying to refute Job’s claims, or is he in denial of the profundity of Job’s distress?17 We cannot know because, as Bildad’s speech progresses, although he will echo Job’s allusion to a “shadow” in the context of life’s brevity (7:2), he will apply it in a very different direction (8:9, see below). In contrast to Eliphaz, who had warranted his advice to Job on the pseudopersonal observations of a self-appointed sage,18 Bildad invokes the traditional wisdom of earlier pundits. Eliphaz asserted that he and his companions had themselves “probed” (hāqar; 5:27) the depths of wisdom; _ Bildad bids Job to consider what their predecessors had “probed” (hēqer, _ rendered “deep-wisdom” in 8:8):

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See., e.g., Avraham Kahana, The Book of Job, Torah, Prophets, and Writings with Scientific Commentary (Tel-Aviv: Meqorot, 1928), 40 (in Hebrew); Edwin M. Good, In Turns of Tempest: A Reading of Job with a Translation (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), 68, 218; cf. Clines, Job 1–20, 205. Cf., e.g., Carol A. Newsom, “The Book of Job: Introduction, Commentary, and Reflections,” NIB (Nashville: Abingdon, 1996), 4:401. See Edward L. Greenstein, “‘On My Skin and in My Flesh’: Personal Experience as a Source of Knowledge in the Book of Job,” in Bringing the Hidden to Light: Studies in Honor of Stephen A. Geller, ed. K. F. Kravitz and D. M. Sharon (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns; 2007), 63–77.

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Edward L. Greenstein Just inquire of the former generations, and consider19 the deep-wisdom of our ancestors;20 For we are only yesterday and have no knowledge; For our days on earth are but a (fleeting) shadow. (8:8–9)

Prior to quoting some of the hoary wisdom on which he relies, Bildad characteristically performs some more explaining. Explaining, we begin to see, is his thing. We need to turn to our elders, because we have so much less experience. Whereas Job had referred to the “shade” that a hired laborer – a metaphor for any human – seeks during the oppressive part of a workday (7:2), Bildad adduces the cliché – well-worn already in biblical times21 – of a fleeting “shadow” as a figure of the brevity of the human lifespan.22 It is not so much that we will be here for a short while, but that we have only arrived here a short while ago – hyperbolically, “only yesterday.” Bildad’s assumption is that there is an extended chain of transmitted wisdom, reaching back to much earlier generations, and that this wisdom can be accessed by consulting our ancestors. Compare Ben Sira 8:9–12: Do not ignore the discourse of the aged, For they themselves learned from their ancestors; From them you learn how to understand And to give an answer when the need arrives. (NRSV)

The citation of conventional wisdom is itself a biblical convention.23 If one were to consult the ancestors, they would dispense their knowledge. Bildad continues (v. 10):

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Reading bônen for kônen (which would mean “establish”) with the Syriac translation and others; see Greenstein, “On My Skin,” 65, n.4. The traditional text reads “their ancestors,” which makes little sense in context; see Greenstein, “On my Skin,” 66–67 with n. 8; the final mem is a ligature of what should be nun and waw – a well-known scribal phenomenon; see Raphael Weiss, “On Ligatures in the Hebrew Bible,” JBL 82 (1963): 188–94, 193; Emanuel Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible (Minneapolis/Assen: Fortress/Van Gorcum, 1992), 249. A clearer instance occurs at 15:18. Compare esp. 1 Chr 29:15; cf., e.g., C. J. Ball, The Book of Job: A Revised Text and Version (Oxford: Clarendon, 1922), 176. Cf., e.g., Francis I. Andersen, Job: An Introduction and Commentary, Tyndale OT Commentaries (Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity, 1976), 141. See esp. Norman C. Habel, “Appeal to Ancient Tradition as a Literary Form,” ZAW 88 (1976): 253–72.

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They will surely instruct you, they’ll tell you; Out of their hearts they will utter words:24

The use of the verb “instruct” (hôrā) can be understood as Bildad’s response to Job, who had asked his companions to “instruct” him, using the same verb (6:24).25 Bildad does not believe that he and his friends – or Job – have the proper wisdom to speak. Only the ancients do. And as in the opening couplet of Bildad’s speech, this couplet too features sound repetition in each line (hălōʾ-hēm yôrûkā yōʾmrû lāk / umillibbām yôsiʾû millîm, v. 10), _ announcing with a flourish a bit of proverbial wisdom. And as in the opening of Bildad’s discourse, the formulation of the proposition as a rhetorical question is meant to compel assent.26 The phrase “out of their hearts (a stand-in for ‘mouths’) they will utter words” is a formula introducing quoted speech.27 The proverb introduced by 8:10 comprises at least the first of the next two couplets (vv. 11–12): “Can papyrus grow without marshland? “Can a canebrake thrive without water? “While yet in the flower, it cannot be plucked; “And it withers even sooner than grass.”

The first couplet reiterates one basic idea: papyrus or bulrushes cannot grow without a watery base. The use of Egyptian loanwords for both “papyrus” and “canebrake” lend both coherence and a sense of the exotic to the image. The saying evokes Egypt, a fabled venue of wisdom in the Bible (e.g., 1 Kgs 5:10 [ET 4:30]), suggesting that the proverb in some way conveys sage counsel. But the import of this wisdom saying in the

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For the heart (mind) as the seat of speech, see, e.g., Pss 19:15 (ET 19:14); 49:4 (ET 49:3); Prov 24:2; and especially Qoh 5:1, where we have a locution similar to the one used here; see H. L. Ginsberg, “Lexicographical Notes,” in Hebräische Wortforschung: Festschrift . . . Walter Baumgartner, ed. B. Hartmann et al., VTSup 16 (Leiden: Brill, 1962), 80. In another study I argue that in the biblical conception, speech begins with a thought in the heart and makes its way out into the world by passing through the throat, mouth, tongue, palate, and lips. The employment here of “heart” as the organ of speech (compare the parallel use of “mouth” in Job 15:13) would appear to be occasioned by a sound play with “words”; see immediately below. E.g., Kahana, Book of Job, 41. Cf., e.g., John E. Hartley, The Book of Job, NICOT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988), 159. See esp. Edward L. Greenstein, “The Extent of Job’s First Speech,” in Studies in Bible and Biblical Exegesis 7, Presented to Menachem Cohen, ed. Shmu’el Vargon et al. (RamatGan, Israel: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2005), 245–62 (in Hebrew).

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context of Bildad’s argument has not yet been clarified. What, we may wonder, is the lesson in this botanical fact for Job (and for us)? The following couplet (v. 12) describes a plant yet in the bud – where it is presumably nurtured by the water in its stem. Does this image refer to another plant, parallel to that of the papyrus plant or bulrush, produced by analogy by Bildad? Or does it belong to the preceding couplet, referring still to the growth of papyrus or bulrushes? Either way, this couplet, unlike the first, describes a turn of events. Such is the “dynamic” function of parallelism – moving the subject forward instead of marching in place.28 The first line of the couplet develops the brief narrative of the vegetation, and the second takes it even further, drawing the consequence. A plant depending on a bed of water will grow until it flowers, but if it loses its water source, it will wither even faster than dry grass.29 Readers familiar with biblical literature will recognize in the proverbial metaphor a conventional image: the righteous are plants that grow splendidly because they are well watered, while the wicked are plants that wither because they lack a nourishing source (see especially Jer 17:5–8; Ps 1:3–4).30 The metaphor derives from the underlying concept that the deity is the source of life (e.g., Jer 17:13; Ps 36:10 [ET 36:9]) and, by extension, wisdom is a source of nourishing water (e.g., Prov 10:11; 13:14; 14:27; 16:22). The plant cut off from its source and therefore withering is, the reader may anticipate, a figure for the impious. The reader’s hypothesis is confirmed by Bildad in the following verse, in which he spells out his meaning (v. 13): Thus is the fate31 of all who reject God; The hope of the blasphemer vanishes.

The term for “fate” (ʾahărît), which I read here, echoes the use of that _ term (“latter days”) above in verse 7. By this means Bildad encourages

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See, e.g., Newsom, “Book of Job,” 401; cf. Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Poetry (New York: Basic Books, 1985), 3–26. Perry suggests that the image of the withering plant in 8:11–13 answers to Job’s metaphor of the friends as a dried-up wadi in 6:14–17 (“Conceptual Metaphors,” 32–35). For finer distinctions among the specific images, see Meir Weiss, The Bible from Within: The Method of Total Interpretation (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1984), 135–63. Reading ʾahărit (“fate”) for ʾorhôt (“the paths of”). In parallelism with “hope,” we _ _ expect “fate,” not “paths”; see Jer 29:11; Prov 23:18; 24:14. Several scholars maintain the reading “paths,” understanding the phrase to refer to “paths of fate” (see Prov 1:19); e.g., Edouard Dhorme, A Commentary on the Book of Job, trans. Harold Knight (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1984), 119; Clines, Job 1–20, 199. However, the image of “paths” is out of place in this part of the poem.

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Job by drawing a sheer contrast between the desolation destined for the impious and the prosperous “latter days” he foresees for Job – if he will be faithful to God. Bildad maintains that Job has the option of securing a blessed future. Nevertheless, there is also an ominous threat embedded in Bildad’s image – the fate of the waterless plant could also be Job’s future, if he makes the wrong choice. In order to induce Job to adopt the right course, Bildad adds another image to represent the situation of the “blasphemer” (vv. 14–15): His stronghold is gossamer,32 and his trust a spider’s house. When he leans on his house, it will not stand up; He will hold onto it, but it will not stand firm.

The home of the impious is likened to a spider’s web. By implication, the impious is a spider. Industriously, it constructs its web, but all its efforts come to naught when pressure is applied. The intricately made house collapses under any substantial amount of weight. Moreover, the home erected by the spider is also a trap – a trap to catch and prey on its victims.33 The image of the spider is therefore not simply another tableau drawn from nature – an animal figure to complement a figure of vegetation – but a clever characterization of the godless, recalling Eliphaz’s metaphor in 4:10–11 of the predatory lion as a figure of the wicked.34 The picture of the impious holding on to his collapsing house is reiterated and extended over two lines of a couplet. It is a pathetic sight, and one calculated to make Job think twice before opting for blasphemy. But for Job, the image is also profoundly personal. The image of a home collapsing can hardly but evoke the death of Job’s ten children.35 Here is how a messenger related the disaster to Job in the prose tale:

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The meaning of yāqôt as “gossamer” was discerned already by Saadia Gaon. The word _ is an apparent borrowing from Akkadian qū ettūti, “spider’s web”; see Edward L. Greenstein, “The Invention of Language in the Poetry of Job,” in Interested Readers: Essays on the Hebrew Bible in Honor of David J. A. Clines, ed. James K. Aitken, Jeremy M. S. Clines, and Christl M. Maier (Atlanta: SBL, 2013), 345–46. Suggested by my former student, Rabbi Jill Jacobs (in 2000). See Greenstein, “Some Metaphors in the Poetry of Job,” in Built by Wisdom, Established by Understanding: Essays on Biblical and Near Eastern Literature in Honor of Adele Berlin, ed. Maxine L. Grossman (Bethesda, MD: CDL Press, 2013), 188–89. So, e.g., Norman C. Habel, The Book of Job: A Commentary, OTL (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1985), 172–73; Seow, Job 1–21, 522.

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It was this most terrible news that broke Job down and drove him into mourning (1:20). The reader must consider Bildad’s motivation in raising this horrendous association. Until now Bildad has accused Job of blasphemy only indirectly in by means of a rhetorical question (“Is God corrupt?” 8:3) to which Job need not reply. Bildad allows that Job might agree in the end that God is only just. He declares that if Job will choose a path of piety, he will thrive. But the metaphor of the imploding spider’s web as an image of the impious would seem, in its evocation of the death of Job’s children, to ascribe a certain guiltiness to Job, expressed in an albeit passive-aggressive fashion. It is as though Bildad were saying to Job: you are on the verge of coming to an end similar to that of your children. Please make a choice that will avert such a fate for yourself. Bildad’s language conveys a theological implication as well. Even if the householder “holds strong” (yahăzîq) to his domicile, it will not “stand _ up” (v. 15). The strength of the habitation does not depend on what the dweller brings to it, no matter how much effort is invested. The strength depends on external forces, and in the theological world of Job and his companions this means the deity. Like Eliphaz before him, Bildad affirms to Job that his well-being depends on divine favor.37 At this point Bildad conjures up a very different image (v. 16): He remains moist even in the sun;38 And out of his spring his sapling grows.

Who is “he”? What is the antecedent? The reference to a spring and sapling in the second line of the couplet should make it clear that Bildad is speaking of a plant. The reader accordingly links this image with that of the water-deprived plant depicted in verses 11–12 above. However, if the reference is to the same plant, then there is a blatant contradiction: that plant withered, and the one described here “remains moist” – “even in the sun”! – and regenerates, producing a “sapling growing” “out of his/its spring.”

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37 “Touched” (nāgaʿ), but by nuance, “plagued.” Cf., e.g., Andersen, Job, 141. Cf. Hakham, Job, 66. Rendered “exposed to the sun” in John Gray, The Book of Job, ed. David J. A. Clines (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2010), 189.

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We have seen above that the full biblical topos of the plants involves two situations: with and without nourishment. The widely known work of Egyptian wisdom, the Instructions of Amenemope, provides another example of two contrasting botanical tableaux: As for the heated (intemperate) man in the temple, He is like a tree growing indoors; A moment lasts its growth of shoots, Its end comes about in the woodshed. It is floated far from its place. The flame is its burial shroud. The truly silent (temperate), who keeps apart, He is like a tree grown in the meadow. It greens, it doubles its yield, It stands in front of its lord. Its fruit is sweet, its shade delightful, Its end comes in the garden.39

Here the intemperate man and the temperate man are characteristically juxtaposed. The former is likened to an unnourished tree, the latter to a tree flourishing in a meadow. The similarities to Bildad’s images are manifest. According to convention, two different plants are expected – not a single one that first withers and then flourishes.40 Bildad’s reference to a plant standing “moist even in the sun” evokes a contrasting image of the righteous. Saadiah Gaon inserts into his translation a phrase indicating that verse 16 transitions to a description of the righteous.41 Some moderns make the facile assumption that a verse mentioning this switch has dropped out of the received text.42 However, such moderns neglect a rhetorical feature of Bildad’s metaphors of the two plants, something a scrupulous reader might observe. Bildad first develops the figure of the waterless plant drying up (vv. 11–12) and only then does he spell out its reference (v. 13) – the godless. In introducing the moist plant that reproduces itself, prior to identifying its reference (v. 20), Bildad is holding to that pattern. Presenting the figure suddenly, without introduction, may puzzle the reader, but 39

40 41

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Chapter 4. See Miriam Lichtheim, The Ancient Egyptian Literature, 2: The New Kingdom (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1976), 150–51. Cf., e.g., Gordis, Book of Job, 521; Habel, Book of Job, 171; Seow, Job 1–21, 522–25. See Lenn E. Goodman (trans. and ed.), The Book of Theodicy: Translation and Commentary on the Book of Job by Saadiah Ben Joseph Al-Fayyūmī, Yale Judaica 25 (New Haven-London, 1988), 217, 220. E.g., Robert Alter, The Wisdom Books: Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes: A Translation with Commentary (New York: Norton, 2010), 41.

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that sort of rhetorical play is on the order of a riddle. It is a strategy of engaging Job, the addressee, and by extension all readers of the discourse. Bildad has kept the reader guessing all along – will Job agree that God does not pervert justice? Is Job truly innocent? Will Job be interested in and swayed by the wisdom of the ancestors? Here, too, must the reader reckon that the reference to the water-nourished plant is a figure for the righteous. As said above, the contrasting image conforms to the literary convention of the two plants, one watered and one dry. The following three verses elaborate the image of the thriving plant or tree (vv. 17–19): His roots intertwine round a pile-of-stones, He can cut through even a house of stones.43 If he is transplanted from his place, So that it denies him: “I don’t recognize you!” Then he moves his growth-path,44 And sprouts from another (piece of ) ground.45

The nourished tree or plant strikes very strong roots, capable of twisting their way through a pile of stones; and even if transplanted, it can regenerate on new ground. It is persistent and resilient. The plant, serving as a figure of the righteous man, is highly personified – he is the subject of a series of actions: he breaks through stones, changes course, sprouts from strange soil. The personification of the plant is reinforced by the corresponding personification of the site (məqômô), to which is attributed the dialogue: “I do not recognize (literally, see) you.” This language recalls almost precisely part of Job’s earlier pessimistic portrayal of human transience:

43

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A bed of rocks. The verb hāzā, ordinarily “to see,” is a pseudo-Aramaism for Hebrew _ hāsā, “cleave in two”; cf. Gordis, Book of Job, 92. For another instance of Hebrew /s/ _ _ _ replaced by /z/, see Job 6:17, where z-r-b “be scorched” replaces s-r-b. Most moderns _ read yōhez, “it seizes”; e.g., Clines, Job 1–20, 198, 200; Hartley, Book of Job, 159–60, _ n. 5; Kahana, Book of Job, 41; Marvin H. Pope, Job, AB (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1965), 65; N. H. Tur-Sinai, The Book of Job: A New Commentary (Jerusalem: Kiryath Sepher, 1957), 151–52. For məśôś (“joy of”), which does not make sense here, read yāmîš, “he moves” (cf. Isa 46:7) or possibly (without changing a letter) môšeš, “he moves (it),” which would be a unique form. Almost all modern commentaries acknowledge the problem. For a similar solution, see Gordis, Book of Job, 93. The waw at the end of yismāhû, “they sprout,” is otiose; the verb is governed by the same _ _ all pronoun “he” that governs the verb-phrases from v. 16 on. Cf., e.g., Kahana, Job, 43.

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A cloud dissipates and passes; So does one gone down to Sheol never come up again. He does not return to his home; His place knows him not anymore.46 (7:9–10)

Bildad, in what appears to be a rejoinder, transplants Job’s line about the finality of death to his image of the flourishing righteous. One may surmise that Bildad is expatiating on the power and vitality of the thriving plant – the righteous – in order to enhance its appeal to Job. Bildad had earlier exempted Job from direct blame, and now he holds out a promise of blessing as part of his rhetorical plan – to save Job from himself. Like Eliphaz before him and Zophar after him, Bildad cannot help but expound his lesson in a doctrinaire fashion (v. 20): For God will never reject (māʾas) the whole (tām; i.e., of heart); He will never lend support to evildoers.

It is this dogma that warrants Bildad’s scenario of the well-nourished plant – the righteous, who will always merit divine favor. If Bildad’s imagery of the withering and thriving plants was a more subtle way of conveying his message, the explicit formulation of his doctrine is blunt. In this couplet we may hear an echo of an earlier contention by Job, a contention that Bildad would now seem to evoke in order to refute. Recall Job in 6:14: Why is one who turns from evil put to shame?47 And one who fears Shaddai accursed?48

The verse is difficult, and my translation is based on a modest reconstruction.49 Be that as it may, Bildad’s statement will be repudiated by Job, when he contends in his response (9:21–22): I am innocent – I care50 not for my self; I’m fed up with my life.51 It is all the same. And so I declare: The innocent and the guilty he brings to (the same) end.

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49 50

The same line is used in Ps 103:16 in describing the ephemeral nature of life. Reading: lāmā sār mērāʿ yəhussād (with Ginsberg) for the impossible traditional text. For _ the verb, compare Prov 25:10 (hissed, “shames”). _ Reading yəʿuzzār; compare Akkadian ezēru and Phoenician ʾzr. Note how Job unwittingly evokes his characterization in 1:1, 8; 2:3. See Greenstein, “Language of Job,” 665–66. 51 For this sense of yādaʿ see, e.g., Exod 2:25; Ps 1:6. Compare Job 7:16.

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The language of 9:21, using the term tām, “whole (of heart), innocent,” and the verb māʾas, “reject, be fed up,” closely echoes Bildad’s in 8:20, making clear that Job finds Bildad’s rhetoric not supportive but provocative. Bildad, however, believes, or wants to believe, in the merit of his argument. And so he completes his discourse with two assurances. The first appeals directly to Job’s state of mind: Yet52 will your mouth fill with laughter, and your lips with jubilation. (8:21)

Bildad’s reference to Job’s mouth recalls the opening of the discourse, in which he denigrated the words of Job’s mouth as “a massive wind” (v. 2). Job, he seems to suggest, should abandon his harsh rhetoric in order to enjoy a future laughter – and not only laughter, but jubilation. Bildad’s image of a mouth filling with laughter, however, rings less than true – it is a cliché, used in Ps 126:2 to describe the joy of the Judean exiles returned from Babylonia: Then did our mouths fill with laughter, and our tongues with rejoicing.

One wonders if Bildad’s encouragement of Job is sincere or merely pro forma. The impression that Bildad, who had earlier spun his argument out of traditional wisdom, is again relying on worn-out platitudes is strengthened with the pronouncement of his second assurance to Job: Your adversaries are clad in defeat; And the abode of the wicked – is no more! (8:22)

Job has no adversaries other than the deity, whom he perceives to be perceiving him as his enemy (see especially 7:12). Bildad surely does not share in this perception. Instead, Bildad must be thinking of human adversaries who cause distress to the righteous. It is these adversaries whom pious psalmists pray will be “clothed in defeat” or dismay (see Pss 35:26; 132:18). Bildad’s prayer – taken right out of Psalms – that Job’s adversaries be confounded is irrelevant to Job’s situation. Job has lost his estate, 52

The adverb ʿad is the Aramaic equivalent of Hebrew ʿōd, used already at 1:18; so, e.g., Hakham, Job, 67. Accordingly, it is superfluous to repoint it, as most modern commentators do. The Joban poet peppers the discourse with Aramaisms; see Greenstein, “The Language of Job.”

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his herds, his servants, and his children. He suffers from an incessant skin inflammation. He has complained not of personal enemies besetting him but of his companions disappointing him, failing to show him support (6:15–28). Bildad’s suppressed hostility to Job, whose words he regards as “massive wind,” shows itself again in his final line: “the abode (literally, tent) of the wicked – is no more!” (8:22). The annihilation of the wicked person’s home harks back to the image of the imploding house of the spider, explained earlier as a figure for the wicked.53 And that image, as we saw, can hardly but evoke the scene of the death of Job’s children, when the house in which they gathered for celebration was collapsed onto them by a “great wind.” In spite of his apparent intention to win Job over with appealing rhetoric and a hopeful promise, Bildad seems deep down to connect Job’s troubling discourse with the fate of his children, whom Bildad explicitly says were “dispatched” by God for their “transgressions.” Finally, the final phrase spoken by Bildad in this discourse, “is no more,” said of the home of the wicked, is a precise echo of the final phrase in Job’s immediately preceding discourse (7:21).54 Job used that phrase to explain to the deity that there is no point to persecute him – on account of the brevity of life and the degree to which Job has suffered, he will soon “be no more.” Picking up on Bildad’s passive-aggressive rhetoric, the reader may wonder: by echoing Job, does Bildad mean to associate his friend with the wicked, implicitly threatening him with annihilation should he fail to repent? Or does Bildad want to reassure Job that only the wicked will soon be gone – not he? The question will be answered one way by Job in his response (chs. 9–10), but perhaps differently by the reader, who may process Bildad’s discourse more sympathetically.

53 54

Cf., e.g., Alter, Wisdom Books, 41. Noted by many modern commentators, e.g., Hartley, Book of Job, 164; Janzen, Job, 86; Seow, Job 1–21, 525.

5 Poetry as Pedagogy in Proverbs 5 Anne W. Stewart

Poetry “begins in delight and ends in wisdom,” quips Robert Frost.1 The book of Proverbs is a collection of instructions and aphorisms for wise living, yet its subject matter should not belie the beauty, subtlety, and complexity of its delightful poetic form. In fact, poetry is a primary vehicle of the book’s pedagogical function. The literary form itself schools the student in a particular way of thinking. As Gerhard von Rad insisted, the poetic form of Proverbs “cannot be separated from the intellectual process as if it were something added later; rather, perception takes place precisely in and with the poetic composition.”2 But how exactly does this intellectual process unfold? And what does poetry have to do with it? As proverbial poetry seeks to compel its reader to a particular point of view, it does not make its argument by narrative progression or propositional argumentation. Instead, it saturates the thinking process with vivid imagery, complex metaphors, and a cacophony of speaking voices. The resources of poetry are vital to the way that the book seeks to shape the imagination of the reader in accord with its vision of wisdom and righteousness. The book of Proverbs contains several forms of poetry, from the short proverbial sayings that comprise the majority of the book’s collections in chapters 10–31 to the longer poems in chapters 1–9. While all of it can broadly be categorized as didactic poetry, the forms employ different

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2

Robert Frost, “The Figure a Poem Makes,” in The Robert Frost Reader: Poetry and Prose, ed. E. C. Lathem and L. R. Thompson (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2002), 440. Gerhard von Rad, Wisdom in Israel, trans. James D. Martin (London: SCM Press, 1972; repr., Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 1993), 24.

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means towards their pedagogical ends.3 In assessing the poetry of chapters 1–9, the features and function of lyric poetry provide a helpful frame of reference. Although the nature of this poetry is in many ways distinctive to the book of Proverbs and ancient forms of wisdom literature, its generic conventions share many of the features of lyric poetry.4 At the same time, these poems stretch some of the conventions of lyric and offer instances of poetry deployed toward a pedagogical process. This essay will examine Proverbs 5 as an example of the sophisticated use of poetry to shape the moral imagination of the reader. Although lyric poetry is often lauded for its expression of feeling and ability to capture emotion, it also has a unique capacity to convey a distinct mode of reasoning. Indeed, poetry itself can enact a thinking process. Robert von Hallberg argues that lyric poetry can do the work of analytical reasoning in a way that prose cannot, for it can accommodate vacillations of thought and experience; appeal to images, rhythms, and figures; and sustain abrupt shifts in perspective. “One thinks in a poem,” he explains, “not so much of a truth as toward something unpossessed.”5 In this manner, “the value of lyrical thinking, and of poetry in particular, is to lead consciousness toward ever more comprehensive ideograms, or ideas of order and coherence.”6 That is, poetry itself mimics a thinking process of coming gradually to a conclusion, not always directly but often by a circuitous route. The poetry of Proverbs relies upon the subtlety of language to create a thinking process that works upon the reader in subliminal ways. The effect of poetry frequently emerges in the gap between the lines, by what is left unsaid, and what is left upon the reader’s mind. As Jonathan Culler observes, “lyric language doubtless works subliminally, and much of its social efficacy may depend on its ability to embed itself in the mind of readers, to invade and occupy it, to be taken in, introjected, or housed as instances of alterity that can be repeated, considered, treasured, or ironically cited.”7 Culler notes that rhythm, repetition, and rhyme schemes

3

4

5

6 7

For a more thorough evaluation of the range of poetic forms in the book of Proverbs, see Anne W. Stewart, Poetic Ethics in Proverbs: Wisdom Literature and the Shaping of the Moral Self (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016). For a discussion of the Hebrew lyric, see F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp, On Biblical Poetry (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 178–214. Robert von Hallberg, Lyric Powers (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 125, emphasis original. Hallberg, Lyric Powers, 139. Jonathan Culler, Theory of the Lyric (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015), 305.

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often function to impress an idea upon the reader’s mind and thus to expand one’s imagination.8 In similar ways, the poetry of Proverbs uses the resources of language to embed itself in the reader’s mind. With repetition and the play of words, its rhythms become a cadence of instruction for the student. Its language and images lend themselves to memorability. By the way in which it imagines the world, it positions the reader in a particular way and shapes the student’s own imagination to view the world likewise. Proverbs 5 is a striking example of the dynamics of proverbial poetry employed toward pedagogical ends. The chapter contains one long poem organized around opposing images of two women: the strange woman – the forbidden woman whose seductive ways lead to death – and the youth’s wife, the sanctioned woman. It advances not by narrative development but by a kaleidoscope of images and metaphors that build to a crescendo by the poem’s final lines. The poem positions the reader in the middle of a world where moral alternatives ricochet from line to line. It is, in Robert Alter’s words, “an imaginative plunge into the experiential enactment of moral alternatives.”9 Proverbs 5 demonstrates the thinking process of poetry by the way in which it holds together divergent images, ideas, and points of view. It accommodates vacillation in viewpoint from moment to moment, which the poetic form is uniquely suited to do. As John Koethe observes: Poetry has the resources . . . to enact these oscillations: the imagistic and metaphoric potential to evoke perception and sensation; the discursive capacity of language to express states of propositional awareness and reflexive consciousness; the rhythmic ability to simulate the movement of thought across time; and a lyric density that can tolerate abrupt shifts in perspective and tone without losing coherence.10

The poems in Prov 1–9 as a whole retain an essential coherence, even as they contain frequent shifts in speaker, image, and metaphor. Within Proverbs 5 in particular, the images move every two to three verses from admonition to vivid description of two different women, from direct speech to reported speech, from singular to plural address. As the poem

8 9 10

Culler, Theory of the Lyric, 305. Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Poetry (New York: Basic Books, 1985), 184. John Koethe, Poetry at One Remove (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000), 82, cited in von Hallberg, Lyric Powers, 116.

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unfolds, these divergent streams are woven together, leading to a larger conclusion about the way of wisdom and the way of folly. * * * Proverbs 5 1 My son, pay attention to my wisdom! Toward my understanding bend your ear! 2 To keep shrewdness – let your lips guard knowledge!

The poem begins with an urgent direct appeal: “my son!” (bǝnî, a single word in Hebrew). Its first word establishes the listener as the son and student of the parental tutor. In so doing, it colors everything that follows, offering a particularly gendered view of the world. It is the father’s vision that will shape the imagination of the son, and, in turn, it is the subject position of the son that will shape the reception of the addressee: the reader is given no choice but to take up the position of the son who is addressed.11 It is a form of “triangulated address,” which features an address to the reader by means of an address to someone else.12 That is, the address to the singular son of the father functions as an address to all students. The reader overhears a lesson from father to son, while at the same time being addressed as the singular object of the father’s instruction. In this way, it positions the reader as the son of the speaker, thus subtly shaping the reader in the ethos of the malleable (male) student. The opening lines establish the authority of the father’s voice. The cadence and rhyme of the first line add to the urgency and authority of the appeal.13 The resounding /i/ and /a/ vowels bind the line together and lend a weight to the address: bənî ləḥ̣ ākəmātî haqšîbāh litbûnātî _ hat-ʾoznekā. As Carl Dennis explains, rhythm “makes us feel the presence _ 14 of a speaker behind the words.” It is a significant tool in establishing the authority of the speaker’s voice. Likewise, the father’s voice resonates with purpose and promise. These opening lines are saturated with the fruit of instruction: wisdom, understanding, shrewdness, knowledge.

11

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For a discussion of the ways in which Prov 1–9 establishes the subjectivity of the reader to promote the ideological interests of the patriarchal family, see Carol A. Newsom, “Woman and the Discourse of Patriarchal Wisdom: A Study of Proverbs 1–9,” in Gender and Difference in Ancient Israel, ed. P. Day (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1989), 142–60. See Culler, Theory of the Lyric, 186. For the purpose of this discussion, I treat each verse as a line. For a thorough discussion of lineation in Hebrew poetry, see Dobbs-Allsopp, On Biblical Poetry, 14–94. Carl Dennis, Poetry as Persuasion (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2001), 18.

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The father’s claim to authority arises from the end to which he points, underscored by the purposeful cadence of the lines. 3

For the lips of a strange woman are dripping honey; her mouth is smoother than oil. But afterwards – bitter as wormwood, sharp as a double-edged sword!15 Her feet go down to death, her steps seize Sheol – Lest she tread16 the path of life – her tracks wander, she does not know.

4 5 6

As the father launches into a description of the strange woman, his tone is striking for its vivid and sensual concession to her power to entice. The beginning of his lesson grants surprising legitimacy to the strange woman’s appeal. Her appeal is not simply a rational evaluation, asking the student to weigh the benefits and drawbacks of following her way, but it is a sensual enticement that leads the student to evaluate her texture and taste. Her lips drip with honey, and her mouth is smoother than oil. Even the sound of the Hebrew phrase in verse 3 is sweet to the ear: kî nōpet tit tōpənāh śiptê zārāh wǝhālāq miššemen hikkāh. The resound_ _ __ ing /n/, /t/, /f/, and /a/ sounds allow the words themselves to drip smoothly off of the tongue. Yet the strange woman’s sweetness and smoothness are deceptive. Verse 4 turns the tastes and textures of verse 3 on their head; sweet becomes bitter, and smooth becomes sharp; honey turns to wormwood, and oil to a sword. With two lines, the poem evokes the range of touch and taste. In so doing, it schools the student with sensory perceptions. Furthermore, it extends the nature of discernment. Moral evaluation is not simply a matter of rational proposition to be assessed by the heart or mind, but it also encompasses the range of senses and perceptions. 15

16

The phrase kəhereb pîyôt translated literally means a “sword of mouths.” Fox explains that a blade of_ a sword is thought of as a “mouth” that “eats” its victims (see Judg 3:16; Michael V. Fox, Proverbs 10–31: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB 18B [New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009], 192). See also Joshua Berman, “The ‘Sword of Mouths’ (Jud. III 16; Ps. CXLIX 6; Prov. V 4): A Metaphor and Its Ancient Near Eastern Context,” VT 53 (2002): 291–303. The interpretation of pen-təpallēs is difficult. The verb p-l-s means either “to observe” (see v. 21; cf. Akk. palāsu, “to see”) or “to make way” (see Isa 26:7; Ps 78:50; cf. Akk. palāšu, “to pierce, break in to”). Here the form could be analyzed either as a second- or third-person form. Thus the phrase may imply either that the strange woman is the one who avoids either walking in or gazing upon the straight path or that she impedes the youth (“you”) from doing so. Fox translates, “she refuses to go straight in the path of life” (Michael V. Fox, Proverbs 1–9: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB 18A [New York: Doubleday, 2000], 192–93). On the other hand, the ambiguity of the form may foreshadow the explicit address to the sons in the following verse. So Murphy, “lest you observe the path of life” (Roland E. Murphy, Proverbs, WBC 22 [Nashville, TN: Thomson Nelson, 1998], 30).

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One’s senses require education if they are to be wise measures of discernment, for the enticement of destructive pleasures may lead them astray. Here again, the unfolding poetry educates the reader’s imagination in a distinct way. The father could couch the image of the strange woman in pure disgust or revulsion, figuring her as an object of disgrace, yet he embellishes her power to allure. Why describe her this way and not another way? By contrast, 4Q184, a text from Qumran, describes the wicked woman in entirely negative terms. Her eyes are iniquitous; her hands seize the pit; her legs work wickedness; her bed is corruption. As Scott C. Jones points out of the approach in 4Q184, “The objectification of the Wicked Woman’s speech betrays a reticence to present this outsider in all her allure.”17 Jones explains further: “the instructor at Qumran displays an antipathetic posture toward indeterminacy in pedagogical method, fearing that the student might be unable to distinguish between good and bad.”18 However in Proverbs 5, the father admits that the strange woman appears enticing, at least at first glance. Consequently, negotiating the way of wisdom requires advanced discernment and the ability to see the reality that may be hidden beneath the surface. Jones explains that in Proverbs, in contrast to the Qumran text, reality “is construed indeterminately. In such a pedagogical task, both the father and the son must wield all their intellectual and imaginative powers to live wisely in a world of harshly ambiguous foes.”19 Even as the father offers some concession to the strange woman’s allure, ultimately his voice undermines her appeal, for he controls the way in which she is envisioned. In this sense, the images themselves serve pedagogical ends, for they feed the student’s moral imagination by portraying the world in a particular way. The lesson also unfolds through the layering of metaphors throughout the poem. The use of metaphor throughout Proverbs is an essential part of its shaping of the student’s imagination. Metaphor is not simply a clever literary trick to say what could be said otherwise. Rather, it communicates ways of conceptualizing the world. Paul Ricoeur insists that metaphor is more than an “ornament of discourse,” more than an appeal to emotion. Rather, “metaphor says something new about reality.”20

17

18 20

Scott C. Jones, “Wisdom’s Pedagogy: A Comparison of Proverbs VII and 4Q184,” VT 53 (2003): 77. 19 Jones, “Wisdom’s Pedagogy,” 79. Jones, “Wisdom’s Pedagogy,” 79. Paul Ricoeur, “Biblical Hermeneutics,” Semeia 4 (1975): 80. He adds, “Metaphor is nothing other than the application of a familiar label to an object which first resists and then surrenders to its application” (86).

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As the father describes the strange woman’s course, he depicts her as a moral deviant whose path departs from the way of wisdom, leading instead to death. Here the poem employs two of the primary metaphors throughout the entire book: LIFE IS A PATH and BEING MORAL IS BEING STRAIGHT. Throughout Proverbs, wisdom is often described as a straight path, and the student is admonished to keep to its course. Proverbs 2:20–21, for example, advises: “walk in the way of the good, and keep to the paths of the just. For the upright will abide in the land.” On the other hand, evil or foolishness is often described as crookedness or waywardness of path. Thus Prov 4:14–15 warns, “Do not enter the path of the wicked, and do not walk in the way of evildoers. Avoid it; do not go on it; turn away from it and pass on.” Here the strange woman’s way is directed toward death. Her steps tread to Sheol, and this presents a danger to the student. The verbal forms in verse 6 present an ambiguity that plays on two aspects of this cautionary tale. The form pen-təpallēs (which I have translated “lest she tread”; see n. 16 above) is ambiguous – it can be translated as either a thirdperson or second-person form, thus referring either to the strange woman herself or to the observant son. The verb p-l-s means either “to observe” (see v. 21) or “to make way” (see Isa 26:7; Ps 78:50). Thus the phrase may imply either that the strange woman is the one who avoids walking in or gazing upon the straight path or that she impedes the youth from doing so. In fact, both meanings are operative, and the ambiguity of the line functions as a turning point of the poem, both reinforcing the description of the strange woman’s waywardness and signaling a turn toward the direct address of the student in the following line. 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

Now my sons listen to me! Do not turn from the words of my mouth! Keep your path far from her – don’t near the opening of her door! Lest you give your vigor to others or your years to a cruel one, Lest strangers sate themselves on your strength as you toil in a foreigner’s house. You will groan afterwards when your flesh and blood21 are consumed. Then you will say, “How I hated discipline! My heart rejected reproof! I did not listen to the voice of my teacher, I did not bend my ear towards my instructor! 14 How quickly I am in every trouble in the midst of the whole assembly.”22

21 22

Literally “your flesh and your body,” bəśārəkā ûšəʾērekā. The phrase “in the midst of assembly and congregation” (bətôk qāhāl wəʿēdāh) is a hendiadys for the assembled congregation.

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As the father again invokes the student directly, his voice plays upon and extends the metaphors from the previous line. Whereas the strange woman’s path is crooked and her feet flirt with danger, the youth is encouraged to keep his own path apart from hers and adhere to the father’s way. He is warned not to draw near to her “opening” (petah). _ With this multivalent term, a double meaning lurks below the surface of the image. The “opening,” that is the door of the house, also alludes to the “opening” of the body, a euphemism for genitalia. Those who fall into the trap of this opening flirt with danger. Verse 7 opens with a momentary glimpse of the larger audience in view as the father switches to a plural address: Now listen to me, my sons! Yet the address quickly reverts to the singular subject by the following verse, and the reader is once again positioned as the singular object of the father’s instruction. With this momentary shift in address, the father’s voice gestures to the wider audience beyond his son. The son is, in fact, all sons, and this passing slip in address offers a glimpse of the broader context of all who overhear these admonitions. The reader at once becomes one with the son to whom the lesson is directed and with all students who experience the poem. F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp notes that a characteristic feature of lyric poetry is its utterance of a singular voice. Thus the reader or listener of the poem “might be said to shed his or her all-too-specific person, and to take on the speaking self of the poem,” as R. Greene observes.23 In other words, Dobbs-Allsopp explains, “He or she entertains the statements made by the poem’s speaker, tries them on, and reexperiences them from the inside, as it were.”24 Proverbs offers a variation on this theme, for it positions the reader not as the speaker of the poem but as the recipient of the lesson. In verses 12–14, the reader tries on the speaking voice as the father imagines the youth’s own reflections should he dally with the strange woman: “How I hated discipline! I did not listen to the voice of my teacher!” In this way, the poem’s voice shapes the student’s imagination to engage the consequences of wayward actions. The use of reported speech here allows the student to enact remorse as the result of an imaginative event. As John Dewey explains, one of the chief attributes of imaginative reasoning is that various possibilities can be considered,

23

24

Dobbs-Allsopp, On Biblical Poetry, 195; citing Roland Greene, Post-Petrachism: Origins and Innovations of the Western Lyric Sequence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 5. Dobbs-Allsopp, On Biblical Poetry, 195.

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yet are ultimately “retrievable.”25 Imagination is, as John Kekes suggests, “the mental exploration of what it would be like to realize particular possibilities.”26 That is, one can envision the consequences without actualizing them. Similarly, the poem functions to shape the imagination of the reader toward a specific conclusion that the father endorses. It thus guides the student to evaluate the outcome of a particular course of action in a way that aligns with the father’s viewpoint. At the same time, its method is imaginative, not dogmatic. In other words, it advances the father’s notion of wisdom by allowing the student to explore moral alternatives rather than overtly dictating a conclusion at the outset. Drink water from your own cistern, flowing water from your own well! Your streams are scattered about – channels of water in the squares:27 May they be for you alone – no strangers with you!

15 16 17

In this next movement in the poem, a new woman is introduced implicitly. The wife of the youth, the sanctioned woman, stands in contrast to the strange woman. As the poem moves to its new subject, a different set of metaphors shapes how this woman is envisioned. In verse 15, the metaphor of water is used to speak of the fulfillment of love with one’s own wife. Here, sexuality is figured as a substance that one can drink. This imagery is strikingly similar to that of the Song of Songs. In Song 4:15, for example, the beloved calls his lover “a garden spring, a well of living water, and flowing streams from Lebanon” (cf. Song 4:12). Proverbs 5:19 further describes the fulfilling nourishment of the sanctioned woman’s love. Her breasts provide nourishment, satiation, and intoxication. The poem provides two starkly different ways for the student to conceptualize women and sexuality. While the first half of the poem used metaphorical language of the twisted path and loss of physical prowess to convey the danger of sexual liaison, by the second half of the poem, water metaphors convey the nourishment and satisfaction that it can bring. In this sense, the lesson is in the metaphor. Wisdom is predicated on the

25

26

27

John Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct: An Introduction to Social Psychology (New York: Holt, 1922), 190. John Kekes, The Morality of Pluralism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 101, emphasis added. Some translations interpret the line as an implicit question, i.e., “Should your springs be scattered abroad, streams of water in the streets?” (NRSV; see also Murphy, Proverbs, 30), yet the line is not marked as such (cf. v. 20). In this way, it implicitly indicts the student as if he had already propagated his promiscuous waters.

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ability to discern between opposing outcomes and, literarily, to read the right metaphor. One possibility costs, the other nourishes. Yet interpreting metaphor is not always so clear. The ambiguity of the water metaphor surfaces in verse 16, “Your streams are scattered about – channels of water in the squares.” One may read this positively, that is, fidelity will bear fruit in numerous offspring. In this reading, “streams of water” (palgê-māyim) is a reference to the male’s reproductive powers. This interpretation follows nicely from the previous verse, where “water from your well” (mayim mibbôrekā) is a figure for the female’s sexual prowess. The two images are further connected by the sound play between bəʾērekā, “your well,” a reference to the man’s possession of his wife’s sexuality, and maʿyənōtêkā, “your springs.” Yet by verse 17, another admonition colors the reading, infusing the metaphor with a weight of danger. In this context, the image functions to warn the student not to scatter his springs. In this reading, the following verse, “let them be yours alone,” suggests that the problem with sexual promiscuity is that one shares claim to his offspring with others, and thus does not possess them entirely.28 Paul A. Kruger notes that the verse contrasts private property of wells and cisterns with public property of streets and plazas: The image of “scattering abroad” suggests an undesirable loss of control rather than the fortunate enhancement of a valuable asset that remains in one’s possession. The scattering of springs does not imply an increase of “water” (children), but a spilling of valuable water from the cistern or well to the city streets, where it is wasted. Once the water is scattered about the city, they cannot be “yours alone.”29

Michael V. Fox underscores this interpretation, noting that the verbal stem (p-w-s) can “refer to scattering and dispersion, almost always with _ consequent disorganization, rather than to an increase of objects still maintaining organization.”30 The metaphor is able to hold both readings at once. Verse 16 is another hinge line in the poem, with the metaphor turning one way when read with the preceding line and another with the following line. The image of the son’s streams is both the promise of abundant life-giving water, akin

28 29

30

For a discussion of this verse, see Fox, Proverbs 1–9, 201. Paul A. Kruger, “Promiscuity or Marriage Fidelity? A Note on Prov. 5:15–18,” JNSL 13 (1987): 67–68. Fox, Proverbs 1–9, 201. Thus note the builders of the tower of Babel being scattered (Gen 11:4, 9), the tribes of Levi and Simeon punished for being scattered (Gen 49:7), and Israel punished by being scattered (Deut 28:64). Fox notes that in its sixty-four occurrences, the root is only used once to refer to a positive decrease (see Zech 1:17).

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to the flowing water that is the figure of the wife’s sexuality, and also the wasted semen of liaison with the strange woman. The overlapping, and even contradictory, meanings of the metaphor prompt the very discernment that the book seeks to instantiate, a feature that is further developed in the final section of the poem. 18 May your fountain be blessed: take joy in the wife of your youth, 19 A loving doe, a graceful goat – may her breasts saturate you in every season, In her love may you always grow drunk!31 20 Why would you be intoxicated with a strange woman, my son? Cling to the foreigner’s bosom? 21 For the ways of a man are before the eyes of YHWH, he watches all of his tracks. 22 The iniquities of the wicked trap him, seized in the ropes of his sin. 23 He will die without discipline, drunk on his great foolishness.

The triplet in verse 19 calls attention to itself, for it is the only triplet in the entire poem. Here the nourishment metaphor is extended to a figure of intoxication. Not only does a wife’s love nourish, but it satiates to the point of intoxication: “may her breasts saturate you (daddêhā yərawwūkā) in every season, in her love may you always grow drunk (tišgeh).” In this line, it has a positive connotation. Intoxication signifies satiation and delight. However, the metaphor is shaded with different meaning in the following verses. The threefold repetition of š-g-h in the last five lines of the poem (vv. 19, 20, 23) points to the ambiguity of the metaphor. Intoxication can also impair the senses and compromise one’s judgment, even to the point of death. Here again, the lesson is the multivalent metaphor. Delight can quickly turn to danger. The wise student has a discerning palate, only imbibing wise things. By the final lines of the poem, the path metaphor returns again, bringing full circle the imagery from the beginning of the poem. Here the path metaphor becomes a figure not just for the nefarious habits of the strange woman (see vv. 5–6) but for the measure by which God evaluates humanity. As it mingles here with the metaphor of intoxication, which itself is a multivalent metaphor pointing both to the satisfactions of the sanctioned woman and the dangers of the strange woman, the path metaphor acquires an additional layer of meaning as a bellwether of wisdom.

31

The verb š-g-h means to stagger from intoxication or, metaphorically, to err, i.e., to stumble from the right path (see Ps 119:21, 118). Here it has a positive connotation of imbibing on the drink of one’s wife’s love, yet the negative overtones of the term are operative in the other two occurrences of the root (Prov 5:20, 23).

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In its concluding lines, the poem mixes two sets of metaphors that are developed over the course of the poem. Subtle wordplays also connect the end of the poem to its beginning. In verse 3, the father describes the smoothness of the strange woman’s “mouth” (hikkāh). By verse 20, he asks the youth why he would embrace _ her “lap” (hēq). In verse 21, the repetition of p-l-s and maʿgāl echoes verse 6, _ where they first appeared together. But the later use turns the image on its head. In verse 6, the strange woman does not “keep straight” (p-l-s) in the path of life, but walks in tracks (maʿgālôt) that lead astray. Here in verse 21, though, p-l-s has the meaning “to see,” as YHWH observes (p-l-s) the tracks (maʿgəlōt) of the human. The verb t-m-k in verse 5 refers to the strange woman’s steps “seizing” (yitmōkû) Sheol, and in verse 22 the same verb appears in a reflexive form to describe the consequences befalling the wicked one: “seized (yittāmēk) in the ropes of his sin.” Alter observes that these wordplays create an envelope structure for the poem, linking back to the description of the strange woman in its opening lines.32 The final line of the poem delivers the indictment of the wicked one and the conclusion to which the poem has been building: “He will die without discipline, drunk on his foolishness.” In describing the wicked one in the third person, the poem subtly differentiates the addressee, the singular student who has implicitly been the subject of the poem from the beginning, from the wicked one. This is underscored by the subject pronoun at the beginning of the last verse: hûʾ yāmût –“he will die. ” As the poem began by placing the son in the forefront with its first word, “my son,” it ends by allowing the listener to avert the father’s direct gaze at the end of the poem, instead aligning him with the father who issues the indictment. That is, the language positions both the speaker and the listener as the onlookers who observe the wicked one’s foolishness and can yet learn from its consequences. * * * Proverbs 5 schools the reader of the poem in its thinking process. From the father’s stark warnings to the evocative descriptions of the strange woman to the shifting metaphors as the poem advances, the poem presents an unfolding pattern of pedagogy, alternatively exposing the student to visions of the crooked and the straight course, shaping the reader’s imagination, and allowing the listener of the poem to try on various 32

Alter, The Art of Biblical Poetry, 181.

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actions and their consequences. The poem thus evidences a dynamic movement from beginning to end. As Helen Vendler observes, the “thinking” of poetry is “always in process, always active. It issues . . . in pictures of the human mind at work, recalling, evaluating, and structuring experience.”33 This is why the import of poems cannot be appreciated by paraphrasing their main point, but rather the point “can be grasped only by our participating in the process they unfold.”34 So too in Proverbs 5, the lesson cannot be fully articulated apart from the experience of its unfolding within the lines of the poem. It positions the reader as the son of the father, amenable to instruction and with an impressionable imagination. Through its language and imagery, it carries the student through an imaginative exercise in moral discernment, coloring his picture of the world in accord with the father’s vision of wisdom.

33

34

Helen Vendler, Poets Thinking: Pope, Whitman, Dickinson, Yeats (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004), 119. Vendler, Poets Thinking, 119, emphasis added.

6 The Utility and Futility of Poetry in Qohelet Simeon Chavel

In his “Last Lecture” about the absurd nature of human life, the character Qohelet presents some thoughts on a large group of events, activities, and moods and their relationship to time (Qoh 3:1–8). Scholars debate whether the speech at this point merely lists them or constitutes a poem, and whether the sentence that introduces the speech has the character of poetry and is the first line of the poem. The debate has not turned on a clear definition of a poem and poetry or of a list. Nor has it produced an articulate statement about the relevance for understanding the character Qohelet or the book Qohelet. In fact, many of those who do not consider the speech a poem nevertheless have it printed in verse format.1 A second set of debates concerns various linguistic and conceptual aspects of the speech: the meaning and referents of the key word ʿēt (“time”) and other elements, the syntax that determines the relationship between the elements within each clause and between the different clauses, the logic of the total set and its sequence, and the point overall.

Thanks to Sam Boyd, Jordan Skornik, Jeffrey Stackert, Jacqueline Vayntrub, and especially Blake and Elaine, who improved this essay. Biblical citations transliterate Aron Dotan, ed., Biblia Hebraica Leningradensia (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2001); translations are mine. 1 George A. Barton, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Ecclesiastes, ICC (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1908), 99; Rudi Kroeber, Der Prediger, SQAW (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1963), 83–85, 132–34; Robert Gordis, Koheleth—The Man and His World: A Study of Ecclesiastes, 3rd ed. (New York: Schocken Books, 1968), 154, 228–29; Michael V. Fox, A Time to Tear Down and a Time to Build Up: A Rereading of Ecclesiastes (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 191–206, at 191–92 (reversed: Ecclesiastes [JPS Bible Commentary; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2004], 20).

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This study argues that the two sets of debates about the form and the content of the speech are related; that they respond to mixed signals present in the speech; that the indeterminacy and inconsistency in the semantics, syntax, and sequence of the speech serve to advance a view on the nature of speech and poetry; and that this view of poetry stands at the heart of the character’s thoughts on the absurdity of life. The study interprets the speech at 3:1–8 as Qohelet’s mimicry of proverbial poetry, which claims to encapsulate the nature of life and package it pithily for the discerning. Combining the proverbial line, list, and extended instruction all in one, Qohelet’s mastery of proverbial poetry authorizes him to illustrate its fatal flaws. The argument begins by defining biblical poetry – written poetry – and distinguishing it from the list. The definition informs a critical survey of the speech at Qoh 3:1–8, which traces how the features generate a sense of coherence and meaning, and then analyzes the semantics, syntax, and sequence to reveal fundamental instability. The argument concludes by situating the speech at 3:1–8 in the context of Qohelet’s complete lecture, which denies the validity and utility of the proverbs, lists, and poems of wisdom-speech.

the speech at qohelet 3:1–8 As applied to the treasury of Hebrew literature from ancient Israel, Judea, and Babylon known as the Jewish Bible, the idea of poetry may be said to refer to patterned evocative speech – speech that is structured by varieties of repetition and that evokes the presence of a speaker to effect something more or something other than the transmission of information.2 Speech is the verbal component of the text, specifically, speech belonging to and constituting a speaker in the text rather than speech about the text, like a title or preface. Patterning – regularized repetition – can occur in any aspect of speech, its meaning, grammar, lexemes, or sounds. To effect a pattern, repetition must occur with sufficient frequency and at effective junctures to be perceptibly an organizing factor. In biblical poetry, patterning occurs primarily at the level of the clause, namely from one clause to another, with respect to both the length of a clause and its constitutive

2

Compare Barbara Herrnstein Smith, Poetic Closure: A Study of How Poems End (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), 4–33.

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elements – accent, syntax, and semantics.3 By “evocativeness” is meant the aim or the effect, not of participating in the world immediately, but of conjuring or eliciting a virtual representation of it and simulating a speaker in it, which in turn can then affect one’s experience of the real world and engagement in it.4 In this definition, biblical poetry is not a manner of speaking but a type of event, an event that turns on speech. Lists bear a striking resemblance to poems. They are patterned speech. But they are not necessarily evocative. They function to transmit information as part of the regular activity of the world for use directly in it. Evocativeness depends on the contextualization of the speech, and contextualization can either be signaled by additional speech around the poem or be supplied by the audience on the basis of their own conventions and interests. Moreover, an audience may knowingly choose to treat a list as a poem or a poem as a list. Evocativeness, then, is protean, subjective, and, for the critic, a moving target.5 The relationship between the list and the poem is even tighter in that both entail classification and organization, but whereas the list can be said to present conceptual or conceptualized entities in a fixed sequence, the poem can be said to put them in motion, to show interaction, to feature relationships, to bring them, as it were, to life. If the list embodies knowledge and transmits values, then the poem instigates evaluation and demands acknowledgment. From this point of view, one may say the biblical poem turns on the list. By this threefold measure, the famous speech by the character Qohelet about times for things at 3:2–8 in the book of Qohelet is a poem. At the same time, aspects of the poem show the proverbial emperor to have no clothes: poetry is a sham. The analysis below reviews the elements that make the speech poetry and those that unravel it. Ambiguity in the basic syntax and semantics of the speech preclude providing a translation that can serve as a stable referent against which to develop the argument. The elements will be presented and analyzed in turn until a clear picture of the speech as a whole can emerge. Introduced by a general statement that everything, every endeavor, has its time and its timing (v. 1), the speech at vv. 2–8 presents a series of events, activities, and states of mind – twenty-eight items as fourteen pairs 3

4

5

Benjamin Hrushovski-Harshav, “Prosody, Hebrew,” EncJud 16: 595–623, at 596, 598–600. Barbara Herrnstein Smith, On the Margins of Discourse: The Relation of Literature to Language (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978). Compare Stanley Fish, Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980), 303–37.

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of oppositions – which by the logic of illustration and accumulation capture together the lives of human beings:6 1: 2: 3: 4: 5: 6: 7: 8: 9: 10: 11: 12: 13: 14:

being born7 and dying planting and uprooting killing and tending8 smashing and building crying and merrymaking mourning and dancing discarding stones9 and gathering them clasping and avoiding to clasp demanding and forfeiting10 preserving and discarding11 tearing and sewing keeping silent and speaking loving and hating war and peace

Each event or activity is preceded by the word ʿēt (“time”), with every second instance preceded by the conjunction wǝ- (“and”). The repeated alternation of ʿēt . . . wǝʿēt . . . ʿēt . . . wǝʿēt . . . (“a time . . . and a time . . . a time . . . and a time . . .”) creates pairings and lines and gives the speech its structure. Nearly all activities, events, and states of mind (twenty-six) are 6

7

8

9

10

11

The pairs are not merisms, as many claim, but illustrations (Fox, A Time to Tear Down, 194). Scholars debate whether qal lāledet means here “to give birth,” an imprecise opposite of lāmût “to die,” or, unusual for the qal stem, “to be born”; see C. L. Seow, Ecclesiastes, AB 18C (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 160; Paul Joüon, A Grammar of Biblical Hebrew, 2 vols., trans. and rev. T. Muraoka (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1991), 2:439 §124s. Qohelet used the qal inf. cst. with passive force earlier: litqōn “be set aright” (1:15); he will use the niphal inf. cst. for the root y/w-l-d later: yôm hiwwālǝdô “the day of one’s birth, on which one is born” (7:1). Perhaps he means here the passive but uses the active form to match all the infinitives that follow. The root r-p-ʾ means not only to heal (TDOT 13:596–599) but also to tend to, keep well: Exod 15:26; Isa 53:4–6; Ezek 47:9, 11; Hos 11:3; Prov 4:22. Hiphil š-l-k means not just to cast but to (leave) abandon(ed): HALOT 2:1528, šlk I §1d (add §1e Exod 22:30 to §1d). Piel b-q-š and piel ʾ-b-d are best taken legally as claim and forfeiture of a claim. Note Aramaic ʾ-b-d, “forfeit (the right to a claim),” in H. L. Ginsberg, “The Brooklyn Museum Aramaic Papyri,” JAOS 74 (1954): 153–62, at 156; Yochanan Muffs, Studies in the Aramaic Legal Papyri from Elephantine (Leiden: Brill, 1969), 181. Note Tg. ʿydn bhyr _ lmtbwʿ mmwnʾ wʿydn bhyr lmybd nksyʾ (MS Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale 110, Compre_ hensive Aramaic Lexicon online: http://cal1.cn.huc.edu [accessed 17 December 2015]). Hiphil š-l-k again.

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formulated as the infinitive construct – twenty-three preceded by the prepositional prefix lǝ- (“to [verb]” or “for [gerund]”),12 and three without it (mourning and dancing, in l. 6, clauses a and b; gathering stones, in l. 7b). The final pair are nouns (war and peace, in l. 14). And almost all of the activities, events, and states of mind (twenty-four) are conveyed by a single word; the others by only two (uprooting, in l. 2b; discarding stones and gathering stones, in l. 7; avoiding to clasp, in l. 8b). The predominance of infinitives construct, single-word concepts, and brief clauses – forms of repetition – tightens the structure. The steady repetition of a particular sound throughout the speech has its impact too. The regular recurrence of the sounds ʿēt and wǝ every line – ʿēt twice per line at the head of each clause, and wǝ prefixed to ʿēt every second clause – creates its own sense of ebb and flow, of rhythm and rhyme, a symmetry sublime. In its effect, all those human activities and events named have their place and their pace, rotating in turn and in tune, like the heavens under which – so the introduction – they happen. The semantic content of the repeated sound ʿēt, “time,” reinforces the sense of pacing and regularity. Together, the twenty-eight infinitives and nouns promote a general impression of human activity and concretize the sense of ʿēt as seasonality, marking something reliable, logical, or even necessary. Concluding with the noun šālôm “peace” strikes a round and ringing note that brings the alternating pairs to resolution with a sense of overall perfect completeness, harmony, and uniformity.13 The activities named, pairings made, and placement in sequence all contribute to the sense of totality of life, how it is lived, and categories and values that make life meaningful. The framing pairs play a decisive role. The speech begins with the pair of birth and death and concludes with that of war and peace – events that happen to people.14 The bodily process of birth has its own compulsion; failure to comply and participate can have disastrous results for both birther and birthed. Death rarely is conceived to involve the active participation of the dying; typically, it

12

13

14

Many represent the construction as genitival, “of [gerund],” but usage in the Hebrew Bible counters that. James L. Crenshaw, Ecclesiastes, OTL (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1987), 96. Further speech bringing closure with šālôm: Num 6:22–27; Isa 9:5 (ET 9:6); Pss 29; 125; 128; Est 10:3. Compare Norbert Lohfink, Qoheleth, trans. S. McEvenue, CC (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2008), 60; Michael V. Fox, Ecclesiastes, JPS Bible Commentary (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2004), 20; Kroeber, Der Prediger, 133.

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befalls a person.15 War and peace are processes or events that happen to groups of people, to society as a whole. Whatever else one could say about these framing pairs and their limited notions of agency, they diverge from the rest of the items in the list, which involve or are conceived to involve individual will and its expression. Life begins and ends apart from one’s will – conveys the frame – but the rest of it is lived willfully. Additionally, whereas birth and death naturally represent the extent of a single individual life – during which all the subsequent activities occur16 – war and peace do not naturally represent the duration of any corresponding entity. Indeed, birth necessarily ends in death, the death of that which was born, but war does not necessarily end with peace. That the first thirteen pairs all comprise infinitives, while the final pair comprises nouns, underscores this shift in focus from events in the life of an individual to the state or condition of society.17 Life, the frame conveys, is lived both as an individual and as a member of society. The framing pairs establish opposition as a determinative feature of the list.18 The first pair generates the expectation for it, and the list does not fail it. The list comprises several varieties: activities of doing and of undoing; activities of opposite vectors or perspectives; activities and nonactivities; activities bespeaking opposed moods; and opposed states of mind. By the time one reaches the concluding pair, war and peace, the sense of opposition crystallizes as that which organizes not just individual experience but collective experience too.19 The penultimate pair, loving and hating, effects a pivot between the first twelve pairs and war and peace. As emotions or states of mind rather than specific activities, loving and hating provide the set of an individual’s activities with concluding variation – the opposing core emotions that animate a wide range of activity. Moreover, the two states of mind naturally recall and align themselves with the definitive events that opened the list,

15

16 17 18

19

Closest: 2 Kgs 2. Suggestive: Gen 49:33; Num 20:23–28; Deut 32:48–52; 34:1–5; also Judg 11:30–39; 16:28–30; 1 Sam 31:2–5; 2 Sam 1:6–10; 17:23. Kroeber, Der Prediger, 133. Beyond Barton, that variation signals conclusion (Book of Ecclesiastes, 104–05). J. A. Loader refers to poles of desirable and undesirable (“Qohelet 3 2–8 – A ‘Sonnet’ in the Old Testament,” ZAW 81 [1969]: 240–42; Polar Structures in the Book of Qohelet [Berlin: de Gruyter, 1979], 11–13, 29–33), which many adopt. But all the activities are subject to circumstance and may be taken as desirable or undesirable. Better, therefore, to describe the types of opposition without evaluative prejudice. Roland E. Murphy, Ecclesiastes, WBC 23A (Nashville: Nelson, 1992), 34.

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birth and death, especially through the coloring of the third pair, killing and tending.20 The correlation creates a frame for the activities in between as a single set. At the same time, love and hate serve in the technical and legal language both of individual relationships, like friendship and rivalry and marriage and divorce, and of political ones affecting the collective, in treaties of alliance or vassalage and in diplomatic correspondence.21 Bound up with the states of peace and war, the language of love and hate, then, makes a Janus-like pivot to the final pair.22 The framing pairs of the series, processed more quickly by an audience, also represent the variation in notions of opposition that might occur, or have occurred, in the intervening set. The final pair confirms the impression made by the first that opposition as a constructed concept has varieties and, what is more, that these can coexist in a single list to produce a sense of how life is lived not just between events, but between types of events.23 The experience of life and its vicissitudes is a cognitive enterprise. The speech, then, represents the wisdom genre. Cases of illustrative value line up in agglomerative fashion to produce cumulative knowledge about life as a knowledge-based affair. Repetition of form generates understanding of matter; aesthetics affords control, in language as in life. The voicing of such speech is that of the wise, who experiences life, packages it, and reproduces it for others. The character voicing it, Qohelet, does not just add wisdom, but goes beyond his level of discourse to get into character and play the wise. This evocativeness would make it a poem. Further considerations will strengthen the case while revealing an underlying subversiveness. As pointed out by Jacqueline Vayntrub, the speech in Qohelet strikingly resembles a text (in alphabetic script and Hebrew or Phoenician language) found at the site of ancient Gezer some twenty-four miles west of Jerusalem and prepared in the late tenth or early ninth century BCE,

20

21

22

23

Note r-p-ʾ for loving care of newborns at Hos 11:3. Death is frequently presented as a result of hate, e.g., Num 35:20–21; Deut 19:4–6, 11; Ps 9:14 (ET 9:13); also Deut 7:9–10. Zvi Henri Szubin and Bezalel Porten, “The Status of a Repudiated Spouse: A New Interpretation of Kraeling 7 (TAD B3.8),” Israel Law Review 35 (2001): 46–78; William L. Moran, “The Ancient Near Eastern Background of the Love of God in Deuteronomy,” CBQ 25 (1963): 77–87; Moshe Weinfeld, “Covenant Terminology in the Ancient Near East and Its Influence on the West,” JAOS 93 (1973): 190–99. On the chiasm, love – hate – war – peace, see Tremper Longman III, The Book of Ecclesiastes, NICOT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 117–18; Murphy, Ecclesiastes, 34; further, Crenshaw, Ecclesiastes, 96; Seow, Ecclesiastes, 162. Fox emphasized the difference (A Time to Tear Down, 200).

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some five hundred years before Qohelet.24 Like Qohelet’s speech, the Gezer text joins a set of nine activities – gathering, sowing, late sowing, weeding, harvesting barley, harvesting wheat, measuring, pruning, and cutting25 – by a word for a unit of time repeated eight times, yrh, “month.” _ The activities are denoted by one word five times and by two words three times, in a mix of infinitives and nouns, each one preceded by yrh – four _ times by yrh alone (singular “month”) and four more times by yrhw _ _ (plural “two months,” plus singular pronominal suffix functioning pro26 leptically – “of it”). Nine activities and twelve months are adapted to each other in eight lines. The result is imprecise and inapplicable practically and imbalanced and imperfect aesthetically. Vayntrub incisively reasons that rather than transmit traditional knowledge, the Gezer text represents an intellectual exercise, creates new knowledge, constitutes a literary event. Vayntrub’s use of Qohelet’s speech to shed light on the character of the Gezer text as forcibly folding a set of activities into a separate temporal scheme has the return effect of shedding light on Qohelet’s speech. Similar to the Gezer text, it mashes together multiple schemes in a way that looks and sounds consistent but upon inspection resists synthesis and pulls in alternate directions – indeed, more so. The divergences do not solely reflect the mismatch between two schemes; they occur within the schemes too. Entirely in the author’s control, they need not occur and throw harsh light on the speaker’s intent. First of all, the activities in the Gezer text line up in a chronological sequence that recurs reliably and productively on an annual basis.27 In Qohelet’s speech, as C. L. Seow has insisted, no discernible principle groups the pairs or guides their sequence – neither chronology nor causality, neither materials nor mood, not perspective or result, not word counts or

24

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27

Jacqueline Vayntrub, “‘Observe Due Measure’: The Gezer Inscription and Dividing a Trip around the Sun,” in Epigraphy, Philology, and the Hebrew Bible: Methodological Perspectives on Philological and Comparative Study of the Hebrew Bible in Honor of Jo Ann Hackett, ed. J. M. Hutton and A. D. Rubin, ANEM (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2015), 191–207. See Vayntrub, “Observe Due Measure,” 198–199, but kl likely reflects kwl , “to measure” (see HALOT 1:463), and qs, as the final entry, is likely multivalent (note _ Amos 8:1–3). On yrh – yrhw, see Dennis Pardee, “A Brief Case for Phoenician as the Language of the _ _ ‘Gezer Calendar,’” in Linguistic Studies in Phoenician in Memory of J. Brian Peckham, ed. R.D. Holmstedt and A. Schade (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2013), 226–46, at 229–32. On thematic grouping, see Vayntrub, “Observe Due Measure,” 197–99.

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syllable counts or consonant schemes like alliteration and the acrostic.28 Some pairs begin with a constructive or life-advancing item and close around the other pole, others do the reverse; some are indeterminate, others are altogether neutral – and the sequence does not reflect this aspect, either. No discernible principle explains the items selected for mention and those left out. What is archetypal about clasping and avoiding to clasp? There are other puzzling choices: opposing “clasping” (h-b-q) to the _ clunky inverse “avoiding to clasp” (r-h-q min h-b-q), rather than a dis_ _ tinct activity like “releasing” (š-l-h), “separating” (p-r-d), “fleeing” (b-r-h), _ _ or even “distancing” (r-h-q alone) in l. 8; reusing the root “discard” (hiphil _ š-l-k) in ll. 7a, 10b; and seeming to repeat a core idea, in building and breaking in l. 4 and gathering stones and discarding them in l. 7. As said, most items are denoted by one Hebrew word, but a few are denoted by two; most are cast as infinitive construct with preposition, but some are cast without. Speech dominated by rigid patterning is beset by erratic irregularity; the sense of patterning is belied by its antithesis, randomness. Secondly, the unit of time in the Gezer text, yrh “month,” reflects an _ observable recurring celestial event and adapts it to political, legal, and other administrative purposes. In Qohelet’s speech, by contrast, the term ʿēt acts as a literary keyword and structural anchor but refers to no stable temporal entity.29 Planting and hoeing are seasonal activities, determined by the sun and climate and recurring annually. Birth comes at the end of a fairly fixed term after a discrete, willed event whenever and wherever it occurs.30 Death has no regular, discernible term at all apart from a general lifespan, “seventy years and if mettlesome eighty years” (Ps 90:10). If birth and death still are natural or fated to occur, what time span, season, or process is appropriate for killing? Which season would not be one for tending? The only meaning for ʿēt that could encompass all the events, activities, and moods has nothing to do with the cosmically or otherwise fixed forms of recurrence evoked by the repetitions and structure of the speech, but with sets of conditions observable to and identifiable by humans – circumstances – and requiring their keen judgment.31 Thirdly, the Gezer text, which lacks an introduction, presents a series of sentence fragments, construct phrases comprising yrh or yrhw followed _ _ 28 29 30 31

Seow, Ecclesiastes, 171–72; see too Fox, A Time to Tear Down, 193–94. Vayntrub, “Observe Due Measure,” 200. See Gen 18:10, 14: lammôʿēd. . .kāʿēt hayyâ; also Job 39:1–2. _ In this direction, Vayntrub, “Observe Due Measure,” 194–96.

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by a noun or prepositionless infinitive construct, “a month of X” or “two months of it, of X.” Qohelet’s speech, which has an introduction, presents a complex, ambiguous case that actually shifts with the perspective of the reader. The dominant construction of the clauses – (a) noun ʿēt followed by (b) preposition l- plus (c) infinitive construct – can be independent, in which case the speech is a series of separate statements, but it can also be dependent, in which case the speech is a series of dependent clauses hanging on a single independent clause – in the introduction at v. 1 – namely one very long statement. Nearly all commentaries assume the second option. The formal cast of the clause ʿēt lǝkol hēpes in the introduction _ _ does resemble the clauses that follow, ʿēt lǝ + [inf. cst.]. But the syntax differs. In the introduction, a compound sentence in parallelism, the preposition l- signals possession, and the clauses are statements of possession: lakkōl zǝmān // wǝʿēt lǝkol hēpes tahat haššāmāyîm, “Everything has its _ _ _ time // and every endeavor under the heavens has its timing.” In the clauses that follow, the l- of the infinitives construct signals purpose, and the clauses are statements of existence: ʿēt l-[inf. cst.], “There is a time to/for [activity].”32 This change in syntax makes the clauses after the introduction a series of independent statements.33 The speech’s form creates the sense of structure and continuity, its content – fissures and instability. In fact, as the speech progresses, this reading of it comes undone. The three clauses that have infinitives construct without preposition l- (ll. 6, 7b), and the two clauses with nouns (l. 14) are bound phrases, “a time of,” and must be dependent.34 While the two clauses of line 6, “mourning” and “dancing,” could be standing in apposition to those that precede them in line 5, “crying” and “merrymaking,” and qualifying them respectively; in line 7, “gathering stones” cannot stand in apposition with “discarding stones”; it must depend on a clause in the introduction, which means so must all the clauses in between. The final line, two clauses with two nouns in construct, “a time of war and a time of peace,” strengthens the reevaluation of the whole as lines of dependent clauses. The syntax of the whole, then, actually shifts with the audience’s vantage point: independent clauses

32 33

34

See 2 Kgs 5:26; Hos 10:12; Hag 1:4; Ps 102:14 (ET 102:13). Compare Morris Jastrow, A Gentle Cynic (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1919), 210. Contrast Seow, Ecclesiastes, 160. Note well the tactics of Barton, Book of Ecclesiastes, 97; Gordis, Koheleth, 154; Kroeber, Der Prediger, 83. Reading v. 1 as a complex sentence, lakkōl zǝmān wǝʿēt // lǝḵōl hēpes tahat haššāmāyîm “Everything has its time and timing // every _ _ _ (Tod Linafelt and F.W. Dobbs-Allsopp, “Poetic Line endeavor under the heavens” Structure in Qoheleth 3:1,” VT 60 [2010]: 249–59), sharpens the disjunction. Fox insists on the genitival relation of noun + prepositionless infinitive construct, like nouns in construct (A Time to Tear Down, 207); see too GKC §114b.

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when read from the introduction on, dependent clauses when reconsidered from the conclusion back, with a few moments of ambiguity in between.35 An even sharper problem exists. The dominant clause form, ʿēt followed by l- prefixed infinitive construct, indicates purpose and gives instruction: there are times or seasons “for” or “to,” that is, in which one should do as appropriate to them, which expresses the view that the activity realizes or responds to a recognizable time or season.36 The two other clause forms, ʿēt followed by unprefixed infinitive construct or by a noun, offer description: there are times or seasons “of,” that is, characterized by certain activities or events, which expresses the view that time is a function of activities and events.37 Just what idea does the speech mean to convey, and how does it hold together? Whereas the Gezer text superimposes two coherent schemes – sets of repetition in form and content – to debatable effect, in Qohelet’s speech the schemes themselves do not hold. The sound, structure, and substance create the experience of the rhythm, regularity, and harmony of human existence, but departures in form and contradictions in meaning irritate and frustrate the experience. The speech, whose rhythm and rhyme seemingly mean to simulate the harmony of life, is thwarted by anomalous elements and random divergence. Finally, the Gezer text, which lacks an introduction, has no contextualization – additional speech in the text that would frame the compound list and direct its interpretation. The speech at Qoh 3:2–8 has a context in the text, a speaker who introduces it and articulates it.38 Its meaning, therefore, turns on this character – his situation, his general idea, his style of delivery, and his aim in this bit of speech.39 Clarifying this context will

35

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This reading, that the text contains two different syntactical and semantic pulls, neither of which can be shown to yield fully to the other, and which recognizes the confusion as significant (see below), draws its inspiration from Fish, Is There a Text in This Class, 147–73. Fox, Ecclesiastes, 19–20. Longman translates the clauses “a time to [verb]” (Book of Ecclesiastes, 111–12), yet oddly denies the prescriptive aspect (114). Seow (Ecclesiastes, 161) and Longman (Book of Ecclesiastes, 115) take the prepositionless infinitives construct seriously enough to represent the clauses as nouns in construct with gerunds, but draw no conclusions about the speech as a whole. Prepositionless infinitives construct closest to purpose are agricultural seasons, because the conditions and activities are so closely aligned, e.g. Jer 50:16; 51:33; Song 2:12; likewise activities of great regularity, e.g., Gen 29:7; Josh 10:27. Vayntrub, “Observe Due Measure,” 200. What follows develops Robert Gordis’s idea that Qohelet quotes others and refutes them (e.g. “Quotations in Wisdom Literature,” JQR 30 [1939]: 123–47; Koheleth, 95–108, despite debatable description and instances) and Michael Fox’s idea that absurdity is the linchpin of Qohelet’s anti-proverbialism (Qoheleth and His Contradictions, JSOTSup 71 [Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1989]; A Time to Tear Down, 27–42).

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engage further the third aspect of poetry, evocativeness. Just as the speech is destabilized in its semantics, syntax, and message, and the patterning suffers irregularity, the evocativeness of the poem disturbs the project of poetry.

the context of the speech at qohelet 3:1–8 The poem at Qoh 3:2–8 is spoken by a character referred to mostly by the proper noun “Qohelet,” an irreducible person, but also, oddly enough, by the descriptor “the qōhelet,” a type of person, one defined by a particular activity, evidently that of drawing crowds.40 This doubled set of designations playfully signals to the readership the constructed nature of the character. It also gives him the best of two (overlapping) worlds of associations, a type of wise scholar and lecturer (12:9–10) and a particular royal individual – a son of David who was king in Jerusalem over all Israel (1:1, 12), whose station afforded him the best education and the best opportunities to apply it, and whose Solomonic cast calls to mind the mastery of proverbial and all other genres of wisdom (1 Kgs 3:3–28; 5:9–14 [ET 4:29–34]).41 The setting presented by the text does not actually foreground Qohelet. Rather, two anonymous people are in conversation, and one quotes to the other – a son or pupil – a long, rambling lecture by Qohelet.42 In the lecture, Qohelet had talked about his past, where he began, realizations that shook him, a journey he undertook, and the understanding he achieved. He said he was a former king over “all Israel,” who had seen all manner of success (Qoh 1:12). He had built massively, gathered a teeming entourage and household, amassed farm animals manifold, planted luxuriantly, produced crops in abundance, brought in precious metals and exotic goods, commanded a diplomatic army, owned the finest talent in entertainment, and spared himself no self-indulgence (2:4–11). He said

40

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“Qohelet” at 1:2; 12:9–10. “The qōhelet ” at 12:8; probably 7:27. The instances at 1:1, 12 are indeterminate. See Seow, Ecclesiastes, 95–97. Compare Fox, Ecclesiastes, ix–x. The quoter and addressee are present in 1:1–2; 7:27; 12:8–14 (Michael V. Fox, “FrameNarrative and Composition in the Book of Qohelet,” HUCA 48 [1977]: 83–106; Simeon Chavel, “Literary Theory and Biblical Literature: Levels of Speakers in Qohelet and Song of Songs ” [paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the SBL, Baltimore, MD, 25 November 2013]; but Fox, A Time to Tear Down, 361–77).

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that he had far surpassed all who came before him in Jerusalem; he was the poster-child for proverbial wisdom, for lessons learned and transmitted, for the road to riches, for mastery of the reason and the rhyme of life (2:9). He was the princely counterpart to the female personification of wisdom in the book of Proverbs, the one she beckons and guarantees health, wealth, and happiness (esp. Prov 8:1–36; also 1:20–33; 3:13–18; 4:5–9; 9:1–6). But Qohelet had a series of realizations that challenged traditional, proverbial wisdom (Qoh 2:11–26). Death does not distinguish between the successful and the sad sack. It renders assets useless and the effort to gain them fruitless. Nor can Qohelet guarantee his assets’ fate, that they will not be squandered by his successor, that he himself will possess them until his death, or that divine fate has not used him to favor another. So Qohelet resolved to examine the proverbial wisdom by which he had lived – cause and effect, comparison and application, restraint and reward, the reason and rhyme of life – and ascertain its difference from folly, for if even a king could not guarantee such a thing, who could? As the lecture wound its way, Qohelet reviewed many of the conventional pieces of wisdom he had examined on a host of matters in a variety of settings, citing them to discard them, even composing his own to parody them. Proverbial wisdom trades in life’s patterns, formulas of action and result, guarantees of work and yield: who lives in its constraints will have no complaints. It expresses them in pithy sayings of balance and measure, puzzling series of poetic lines, and whole poems of voiced instruction. And these offer quotidian, quirky, and cryptic situations that only the clever can enjoy, decode, and apply. Qohelet came to deny the proverbial predictability of life, the rule of causality, wisdom through formula. In his newer, prosaic view, life comprises utterly useless repetition and singular accidents. The wise thought the proverb ineffectual and self-pricking in the mouth of the fool, like the legs of the lame and the rose-stem in the hand of the drunk (Prov 26:7, 9); Qohelet found the proverb itself useless and the wise self-pricking. Qohelet began his lecture (Qoh 1:4–11) by highlighting the useless repetition, illusory dynamism, and utter stasis of the world’s elements in their spheres (the earth, the sun in the sky above it, the wind at its surface, and the water running through it and below) and of human cognitive organs and processes (speaking, seeing, and hearing). Then he turned to the accidental dimension, treating at length its relentless attack on human knowledge and control. Reviewed together, certain parts of Qohelet’s critique illuminate the poem at 3:1–8.

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In one instructive instance (8:5) that features the key word ʿēt, Qohelet cited a proverbial piece of wisdom, “who does as told misfortune will not know” (šômēr miswâ lōʾ yēdaʿ dābār rāʿ),43 a poetic line whose rhythm _ and rhyme serve its reason (cause and effect); then he offered the more knowing insight born of experience, “but timing and course of action does the astute mind discern” (wǝʿēt ûmišpāt yēdaʿ lēb hākām).44 Mind_ _ less obedience does not guarantee good fortune and results; the wise improvise. Qohelet’s quip balances the proverb, creating a couplet of thought and counterthought, one that turns on the root y-d-ʿ “to know, knowledge.” The proverb applies the root to a passive experience – an experience to be avoided, knowledge never to have; the quip reapplies it to active participation in the event, shaping it and turning it to advantage. The quip also sharply pits mišpāt against miswâ, which typically it com_ _ plements.45 Qohelet did not end the point here, but elaborated (8:6–7) by repeating the sentence from 3:1b and explicating: Every endeavor has its unique timing and course of action (lǝkol hēpes ʿēt ûmišpāt); on _ _ _ the whole, fate and misfortune overwhelm a man (rāʿat hāʾādām rabbâ ʿālāyw), who knows not what will come next (ʾênennû yōdēaʿ mâ šeyyihyeh), and when it does come, no one will tell him it is what is next, consequence, and not something wholly other, coincidence (kaʾăšer yihyeh mî yaggîd lô). Evidently, the statement introducing the poem at 3:2–8 featured not seasonality but serendipity. In a similar way earlier on (7:1–6a), Qohelet first quoted a proverbial series about values and practices. Reputation (which subsists) trumps rubbing oil (which dissolves); the day of death (one of triumph), that of birth (all needs and no deeds); the house of mourning, that of feasting, when death and reputation are on instructive display. So too, vexation trumps joy and chastisement tomfoolery for their edifying effect. Then Qohelet punctured the series with a counterproverb about the wise being themselves fully susceptible to whim and greed (v. 6b–7): “But this too is untenable, for ungainly gain makes fools of the wise and a gift dispenses with sense” (wǝgam zeh hebel kî hāʿōšeq yǝhôlēl hākām wiyʾabbēd _

43

44

45

Compare Prov 4:4 šǝmōr miswôtay wehyēh; 7:2 šǝmōr miswôtay wehyēh; 19:16 šōmēr _ _ _ and the_ entire passage at miswâ šōmēr napšô bôzēh dǝrāḵāyw yûmāt (Qere: yāmût); _ 7:1–27. For mišpāt as (appropriate) course of action, measures (to be) taken, manner of behavior, _ see Gen 40:13; Exod 26:30; Deut 18:3; Josh 6:15; 1 Sam 2:13; 8:11; 27:11; 1 Kgs 5:8 (ET 4:28); 18:28; 2 Kgs 1:7; 11:14; 17:26–27; TDOT 9:96 §5. The echo created by the shared noun pattern, miCCāC, reinforces their correlation.

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ʾet lēb mattānâ).46 Even those recognizing circumstances – as in the poem at 3:1–8 – cannot control them. Later on in his speech (9:11), in classic proverbial fashion, Qohelet offered a symmetrical list of paradigmatic cases to illustrate his counterproverbial point, which too features ʿēt, that neither innate talents nor learned skills guarantee success – not to the fleetest does the race ever go, nor does the valiant victory always know, not to the cleverest does the money ever flow, nor does the wise always stand in grace’s glow – because “chance and circumstance befall them all” (ʿēt wāpeḡaʿ yiqreh ʾet kullām).47 Worse, he added (v. 12), repeating his earlier sentiment (8:5b–7), no better than trapped fish and snared birds do people caught by misfortune grasp their situation when it suddenly befalls them (kî gam lōʾ yēdaʿ hāʾādām ʾet ʿittô . . . yûqāšîm bǝnê hāʾādām lǝʿēt rāʿâ kǝšettippôl ʿ ălêhem pitʾōm). The wisdom seemingly championed by the poem at 3:1–8 is illusory. In a fourth example, Qohelet summed up a proverb he just examined in his own parable (9:14–16), the advantage of the wise over weapons (9:18a tôbâ hokmâ mikkǝlê qǝrāb), and then followed it up with the irony _ _ that a single misstep can ruin a huge advantage (9:18b wǝhôteʾ ʾehād _ _ _ yǝʾabbēd tôbâ harbēh).48 This led him to compose his own proverbial, _ parabolic, parallelistic couplet (10:1), that the intricate plan is foiled and the delicate article spoiled by the most common and random of things, the bug in the computer, the fly in the ointment, which he not only expressed semantically but also modeled syntactically: “Dead flies will rot, bubble the perfumer’s ointment; more precious than wisdom, than honor is but a bit of folly” (zǝbûbê māwet yabʾîš yabbîaʿ šemen rôqēah // yāqār _ mēhokmâ mikkābôd siklût mǝʿāt).49 The form of the proverb illustrates _ _ its message: the nearly perfect parallelism is marred by doubled elements lacking the mere conjunction “and” in both its lines: yabʾîš yabbîaʿ // mēhokmāh mikkābôd. The wry observation and its ironic formulation _ 46 47

48

49

Compare Prov 15:27, “Who does greedily afflicts his home; who spurns gifts lives.” See Eliezer Ben Yehuda, A Complete Dictionary of Ancient and Modern Hebrew, ed. H. Ben Yehuda, M. Z. Segal, and N.H. Tur-Sinai, 17 vols (Tel Aviv: La’am Publishing House, 1948–1959), 9:4781b [Hebrew]. Qohelet denied the proverbial advantage of the wise over the fool earlier (2:13–15) – “the wise has his eyes in his head, while the fool walks in darkness” – since miqreh “accident, incidentals” (the incident of death if v. 16 elaborates the thought) befalls them both equally. See Seow, that zǝbûbê māwet (zbby mwt) “dead flies” represents a mistaken worddivision of *zǝbûb yāmût (zbb ymwt) “a fly that dies” (Ecclesiastes, 310).

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show Qohelet to be a master of the proverbial line and list, and a disaster for proverbial wisdom; he can compose with the cleverest and undercut the concept of doing so, all at the same time. The sentiment at 10:1 captures the experience of the poem at 3:1–8, the stubborn resistance to its own symmetry and the difficult syntax. That Qohelet composed the deliciously flawed proverbial line at 10:1 with ironic intent suggests that he also composed the poem as a parody, one that mimics the wise, who absurdly persist in seeking patterns and willfully ignore patterns’ inherent flaws and necessary failure. Qohelet satirized the human penchant for patternizing life, though it has a way always of going awry. Symmetry, he argued, can never suppress serendipity. The poem’s frame sharpens the point. After the poem, Qohelet exclaimed the futility of all toil since God controls all outcomes (vv. 9–15). Scholars agree that the thought follows from the poem logically as the conclusion to draw from it. Because action is determined by time or circumstances, and time or circumstances by God, toil is pointless.50 However, whereas Qohelet’s remarks following the poem refer to God explicitly six times and implicitly twice more,51 the poem with its introduction never does; the contrast challenges the retroactive, univocal reading. The poem creates regularity, implies predictability, and anticipates a remark that the wise know how to identify the times and turn them to their advantage.52 Accordingly, some have sought the historical origins of the poem in some other context and signs of its adaptation for Qohelet’s speech.53 The suggestions have not been compelling. Moreover, they do not account for the degree of disjunction between the poem and the speech around it. Qohelet gave clear indication that the poem does not represent his thought. In the poem, the term ʿēt refers to a season, cycle, or regular

50

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Kroeber, Der Prediger, 134; Gordis, Koheleth, 228–29; Murphy, Ecclesiastes, 33, 39; Longman, Book of Ecclesiastes, 111, 118; Fox, A Time to Tear Down, 192–93; Seow, Ecclesiastes, 169–72; Lohfink, Qoheleth, 59–60; Fox, Ecclesiastes, 20; Antoon Schoors, Ecclesiastes, HCOT (Leuven: Peeters, 2013), 228–29. Seow, Ecclesiastes, 169–70. Vayntrub sees the radical break between the poem’s attempt at systematization and the prose that undercuts it (“Observe Due Measure,” 194–95). Compare Longman, Book of Ecclesiastes, 111. Addison G. Wright, “‘For Everything There Is a Season’: The Structure and Meaning of the Fourteen Opposites (Ecclesiastes 3, 2–8),” in De la Tôrah au Messie: Mélanges Henri Cazelles, ed. M. Carrez, J. Doré, and P. Grelot (Paris: Desclée, 1981), 321–28; Joseph Blenkinsopp, “Ecclesiastes 3.1–15: Another Interpretation,” JSOT 66 (1995): 55–64.

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recurrence. Throughout the rest of his lecture it indicates the irregular, the coincidental, the singular. Indeed, immediately after the poem with his reaction to it, Qohelet repeated the remark that set the poem in motion – ʿēt lǝkol hēpes – with a contrasting sense (3:16–17). Lamenting _ _ the vagaries of the courthouse, he declared justice the preserve of God because “every affair has its unique circumstances” (ʿēt lǝkol hēpes), the _ _ kind that only God can know, interrelate, and evaluate.54 The repetition suggests that Qohelet’s debate with the proverbially wise turns precisely on conceptualizing time. The proverbially wise see patterns, reliable repetitions whose identification they can turn to their advantage. Qohelet sees a mirage, and beyond the mirage – unyielding fate and fortune.55 Moreover, after the poem, Qohelet asked a biting question (3:9) that concludes the line of thought he expressed before the poem (2:18–26), which sets off the poem as distinct. He had been talking of his newfound recognition that he could not control the bounty he had amassed through work and planning. It would not serve him in death, but go to another, perhaps an undeserving lazy fool. Even in life, any enjoyment is fleeting and offers no guarantee for what follows; indeed, it gives no genuine satisfaction at all. He of all people should know. In fact, he said, it looks very much like the inscrutable deity will have one person work to give it to another. Who, then, is the fool and the patsy? The rhetorical question at 3:9 continues and punctuates this line of thought: What benefit has the doer for all his toiling!? The poem in the midst of that train of thought interrupts it and contradicts it. The poem’s aura of seasonality and timeliness implies a formula for success, but the discourse framing it denies all form of guarantee. This flow – development of a point, contradiction, conclusion of original point – reinforces the view that the poem represents the wisdom Qohelet came to reject. Consistent with his style, Qohelet performed a wise-sounding poem whose rhythm and rhyme suggest the reasonableness of time, and then he parried with his more-knowing alternative. Moreover, the poem is one that fails its own standards and shows its own absurdity. To judge by other parts of the lecture, Qohelet did not cite a sloppy poem; he composed a parody of one. And by all

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Contrast Fox, A Time to Tear Down, 206. Compare the extensive discussion in Fox, A Time to Tear Down, 194–206. Qohelet’s remark “he made (or: did) everything well at its time” (3:11a) may too represent the traditional wisdom he debunks.

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signals, when he uttered it he did not simply get into character as the voice of the wise; he performed it derisively, in mocking tone.56

conclusion In his speech, Qohelet cites proverbs to undercut them, wields proverbs against each other, and composes his own proverbial poems to parodic effect, none more forcefully than the series of “times” at 3:1–8. From this perspective, the unwieldy, rambling prose of Qohelet’s philippic that has so perplexed readers seems designed by the author of Qohelet as a deliberate counterpoint to the spectrum of measured poetic speeches typical of proverbial speakers. It presents a direct antithesis to those poetic instructional speeches that stay on theme (e.g., in Prov 1–9), while it parodies the long, unstructured sequences of disconnected proverbial lines (e.g., in Prov 10:1–24:22) as unrealistic and unusable.57 Poetry – verbal imagery capturing life – is a sham; life prosaically keeps one off-balance.58 The author of Qohelet did not have Qohelet explode all poetry, but had him end his lecture with a masterful bit of poetry, the topic, prosody, and poetics of which suit the lecture perfectly (11:9–12:7). Nor did the author give Qohelet the last word. The character quoting Qohelet’s lecture to a son or pupil (12:8–14) describes Qohelet as one of the wise who cast many proverbs (v. 9), and then concludes wielding his own (v. 11).

56

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The observations that the use of zǝmān in the introduction at 3:1 is imprecise and serves merely to complete the parallelism (Fox, A Time to Tear Down, 201) and the conventions of parallelism would have the unusual term zǝmān come second not first (Longman, Book of Ecclesiastes, 114) suggest that Qohelet formulated an unusual opening line to strengthen the signal of an ironic moment beginning. On the typology of Proverbial matter, see Jacqueline Vayntrub, Proverbs and the Limits of Poetry (PhD diss., The University of Chicago, 2015), 256–349. Relatedly, the conflicting forms of characterization for the quoted speaker in Qohelet – the person, Qohelet, and the type, “the qōhelet ” – reinforce the counterpoint between him and the different kinds of speakers in Proverbs, fathers and mothers (e.g. Prov 1–9) and also named individuals (30:1; 31:1).

part iii THE SONG OF SONGS

7 Structure, Sound, and Sense A Close Reading of Chapter One of the Song of Songs Tod Linafelt

Surely one of the high points of ancient Hebrew poetry is the Song of Songs. A sequence of loosely connected love lyrics, the Song of Songs unfolds in the alternating voices of two apparently unmarried adolescents, a young man and a young woman, with occasional interruptions by a group female voice and a group male voice. I hasten to emphasize that what we get in the Song of Songs are fictive poetic “voices,” constructed by a poet (or perhaps poets) who is not an adolescent in the throes of a newly discovered erotic love, but has decided to represent in first-person voices what such young love might feel like. The result is a highly accomplished poetic achievement, “about” the experience of young erotic desire but equally “about” the poetic idiom. If we read only for the sense of the poetry (what it means, or the content it presents), then we are missing out on a great deal of what constitutes the poet’s achievement. To read also with an eye for the structure and sound of the poetry (how it means, or the form it takes) will help us to appreciate more fully the craft of ancient Hebrew poetry. To that end, I present here a close reading of chapter one of the Song of Songs, focused on the three elements of structure, sound, and sense.

1:1–4 The opening verse of the Song of Songs is in fact the title of the book: “the Song of Songs which is Solomon’s.” It is also, however, poetry in its own right, and reading it in the Hebrew, one notices immediately its lyrical quality: šîr haššîrîm ʾăšer lišlōmōh. The consonance of the fourfold repetition of the sh sound (the Hebrew letter shin, transliterated as š above), 113

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the threefold repetition of r (Hebrew resh), and the doubling of both the m and the l (the letters mem and lamed, respectively), combine with the assonance of repeated vowels to produce a particularly nice-sounding poetic line. I cannot but note that the practical effect of the repeated consonants, read aloud, is to push one’s speech toward the front of the mouth. With its strategic use of specific consonants, the line is all tongue and lips and whispered shin’s. What better way to begin a collection of erotic poetry? The effect of reading those r ’s and sh ’s is to form one’s lips as if preparing for a kiss! It is possible that this effect is a mere accident of phonology; but it is quite likely that there is a mimetic intention behind it. That is, the words are chosen in such a way that they enact what they are about to refer to–in this case, kissing: “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth!” (v. 2a). Taking verse 1 not only as the title of the book but also as a line of poetry allows us, then, to see it as part of a couplet with verse 2a. The first line loosens up the mouth and gets one properly prepared, while the second delivers the goods. And binding the lines together formally is the repetition of the sh sound of the Hebrew shin, which after occurring four times in verse 1 occurs twice more in verse 2a: yiššāqēnî minnǝšîqôt, “let him kiss me with the kisses.” After the opening couplet of the book, we encounter in verses 2–4, depending on how we understand the final clause of verse 4 to fit in, either (1) four couplets, of two parallel lines each, or (2) three couplets and one triplet. The initial couplet of this section represents a fine example of the frequent biblical use of chiasm, or envelope structure. Thus one can outline the lines (vv. 2b and 3a) as follows: a – For better (kî tôbîm) b – is your love (dōdêkā) c – than wine (miyyāyin), c1 – as for scent (lərêah) _ b1 – your oils (šəmānêkā) 1 a – are fragrant (tôbîm).

Matched in the first and last position of the couplet is the plural form (tôbîm) of the Hebrew word tôb, which in its most basic sense means “good.” But the word has a wide semantic range, and the proper translation will often depend on what the word modifies. Here tôb is applied to “your love” and “your oils,” and in the first case is used in a common Hebrew idiom of comparison, so the NRSV is correct that the best renderings are something like “better” and “fragrant,” respectively. “Your love” and “your oils” are syntactically parallel as the subjects of the two

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lines and, because of their shared plural form with second-person masculine suffixes (-êkā), are also phonologically parallel (that is, parallel in sound). The two central terms, “wine” and “scent,” are parallel grammatically in that each is constructed of a noun with prefixed prepositions. And each indicates what is being predicated about the subject: How good is your love? Better than wine. In what way are your oils good? They are good to smell. The next couplet (v. 3bc) picks up the reference to oils and elaborates. What the NRSV translates as “perfume” is the same Hebrew word (šemen) translated as “oils” in verse 3a, here paired with the word šəmekā, “your name,” for a nice alliterative effect (we find the same wordplay in Qoh 7:1). The couplet is less tightly structured with regard to syntax than the previous, though it makes use of semantic parallelism. This parallelism of meaning might best be understood as an example of what Robert Alter has called specification, that is, the second line both reiterates the first and makes it more specific, more concrete, or more focused.1 One of the connotations of “name” in Hebrew is “fame” or “glory” (e.g., Ezek 39:13; Zeph 3:19), and the meaning of the first line (v. 3b) is most likely “you are famous for your flowing oil/perfume.” The second line (v. 3c) then not only restates this fame by reference to the many young women who find the man desirable, but by doing so also makes the claim more specific – he is famous among young women. And in the Hebrew there is a phonological parallelism in the repeated -kā, the second person masculine suffix, at the end of each colon (šəmekā / ʾăhēbûkā = “your name” / “they love you”). The following two couplets (v. 4ab and v. 4cd) also demonstrate a parallelism of specification, as the general imperative “draw me after you” leads to the concrete destination of “his chambers,” and as the general exulting and rejoicing “in you” leads to the very specific reason for such lavish praise, namely “your love.” The phrase dōdêkā miyyayin, “your love more than wine,” is repeated verbatim from verse 2bc, “your love is better than wine,” thereby framing the immediate unit. The final line, “rightly do they love you” (v. 4e), lends thematic closure and, by repeating the Hebrew ʾăhēbûkā (“they love you”) of verse 3d, also lends formal closure to the unit. Again, one might take it as either a rare freestanding line, not matched up to any other line, or as the third line in a triplet.

1

Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Poetry (New York: Basic Books, 1985), 19–20.

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The opening poetry of the Song of Songs is unequivocal about the book’s subject and intent: to convey and to celebrate the body-to-body business of erotic love. In this regard it is worth noting that the first line after the title – “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth” – is a very rare example in the book of a nonmetaphorical statement about lovemaking. While one typically finds statements of desire and descriptions of erotic acts couched in metaphors or similes (e.g., “his fruit was sweet to taste,” 2:3), this statement is resolutely literal and concrete, as if to establish the bodily basis of all that will follow. The opening unit also intimates much of what is to come in the book by the introduction of two leading words: lovemaking (dôdîm) and wine (yayin). Both terms recur in the book numerous times. Lovemaking is mentioned, in addition to 1:2 and 4, in 4:10 (twice), 5:1, and 7:12, with over two dozen instances also of the noun form “lover” or “beloved” (dôd). Wine or the vine are referred to in 2:4, 4:10, 5:1, 7:9, and 8:2. The reader may be surprised to find the first of these leading words, dôdîm, rendered as “lovemaking,” since it is typically rendered less concretely as “love,” as for example in the NRSV. The traditional rendering is of course more chaste, allowing one to imagine that the love in question is platonic rather than sexual. Or, even if one admits the sexual nature of such love, it can still be imagined that sexual desire is being referred to here rather than sexual activity. But it is clear, both in the Song of Songs and elsewhere in the Bible (see Prov 7:18; Ezek 16:8, 23:17) that dôdîm refers to bodily, sexual intimacy. As Fox points out, however, the word should not be reduced simply to intercourse, and certainly not solely to coitus.2 He offers, as a nice alternative in 1:2, “your caresses,” which might be compared to the slightly more earthy translation by Bloch and Bloch, “your sweet loving.”3 Both renderings are effective in that they remain concrete while encompassing a range of amorous activity. The portrayal of sex here is playful – as it will remain for most, but not all, of the book. Thus the extravagant praise of the man by the woman, and the reference to the multitude of women who would love to be in her place, is an example of the sort of sweet-talk that comes so readily to the lips of young lovers. (It is worth noting that the man praises the woman in 4:10

2

3

Michael V. Fox, The Song of Songs and the Ancient Egyptian Love Songs (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 97. Ariel Bloch and Chana Bloch, The Song of Songs: A New Translation with an Introduction and Commentary (New York: Random House, 1995), 45.

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in language nearly identical to 1:2–3.) In the same way, the idea of retreating with the king into his chambers for a rendezvous is best understood as a bit of role playing love-talk; the young man is not a king, but is perhaps willing to pretend for the space of an afternoon. But while eros is imagined in playful terms here and throughout the book, it is never trivialized. The voices of the lovers celebrate carnal love as an undeniable pleasure, but, as the book also makes clear, they do not underestimate its power to link one person to another in a profound and potentially lifealtering way.4 It is only natural that wine, the second of the leading words in the opening unit, should play such a prominent role in the book. On the one hand, wine is invoked as one of many indicators of sensual pleasure. Along with the fragrance of nard, the sound of a dove, and the sight of gold and silver ornaments to describe the aesthetics of love, one finds the taste of raisins, apples and, most of all, wine. The occasional warning about drunkenness notwithstanding (e.g., Prov 20:1; 26:9), the drinking of wine is generally portrayed in the Bible as a common and pleasurable activity – common enough that Lam 2:12 can present even young children in the streets of destroyed Jerusalem calling out for “bread and wine,” and pleasurable enough that Judg 9:13 can present wine as that which “cheers both gods and mortals.” Like wine, then, love is imagined as a staple of life, and a particularly sweet one at that. On the other hand, in addition to the pleasure derived from the taste of wine, the poetry will also allude to the potential effects of wine. Love, like wine, can be intoxicating. “Eat, friends, drink,” the poetry encourages in 5:1, “and be drunk with love (dôdîm).” Wine is used, then, not only as a point of comparison for the couples’ lovemaking (“kisses sweeter than wine”), but also as a metaphor for the lovemaking itself: “I would give you spiced wine to drink, the juice of my pomegranates,” says the woman in 8:2, referring, it would seem, to something more than a beverage. The caresses of a lover are sweet, sensual experiences, then, that may prove intoxicating. For our poet, this intoxication is something to be celebrated rather than censured, even if it does affect one’s perception and impair one’s judgment. Love, after all, tends to do that. And who would want it otherwise?

4

On the recognition in the Song of Songs of the threatening aspects of eros, see Tod Linafelt, “The Arithmetic of Eros,” Interpretation 59 (2005): 244–58.

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1:5–6 These verses are a single textual unit tied together both by the theme of the woman’s dark complexion (with a close verbal correspondence between šəhôrâ, “black,” in v. 5 and šəharhōret, “dark,” in v. 6) and by a distinct_ _ _ ive and consistent poetic structure based on the repetition of three letters per line. In verse 5 the repetition takes the form of alliteration, while in verse 6 it takes the form of rhyme. Verse 5 is composed of four lines, the first two forming a couplet of nonparallel lines but the next two exhibiting a strong parallelism (“like the tents of Kedar // like the curtains of Solomon”). The use of alliteration, however, is present in both couplets and seems to be the dominant poetic technique for the verse. In each couplet there are three repeated consonants, with two occurring in the first line of each couplet and one in the second. Moreover, in each couplet the third alliteration of the consonant occurs on the first full syllable of the second line. Thus, the pattern of alliterated n-sound in verse 5, šəhôrâ ʾăNî wəNāʾwâ / bəNôt yərûšālāim, _ matches the alliterated k-sound of verse 5b, Kəʾohŏlê Qēdār / Kîrîʿôt šəlōmōh. This alliteration links the two separate parts of the poetic line and draws the reader or hearer of the poetry more quickly from the first halfline to the second, giving us what we might think of as a strong quatrain. Verse 6 presents, rather than alliteration, a pattern of internal rhyme (rather than end rhyme, with which we are more familiar in English but which is less common in Hebrew). Here the rhyming takes the form of the repeated long e sound of the Hebrew letter hireq: v. 6a – ʾal-tirʾûnÎ šeʾănÎ šəharhōret _ _ šeššĕzāpatnÎ haššāmeš v. 6b – bənê ʾimmÎ nihărû-bÎ śāmūnÎ nōtērâ _ʾet-hakkərāmîm v. 6c – karmÎ šellÎ lōʾ nātārtÎ _ v. 6a – Do not gaze at me because I am dark Because the sun has gazed on me. v. 6b – My mother’s sons were angry with me; They made me keeper of the vineyards, But my own I have not kept!

The vowel is prominent in the verse owing to the fact the woman is engaged in self-description, and in Hebrew the long hireq shows up as both a pronominal and a verbal suffix indicating the first person singular, “I/my.” Thus the verbal form ʾal-tirʾûnî, “do not gaze at me,” rhymes with the noun phrase bənê ʾimmî, “my mother’s sons.” What turns this

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rhyme into a genuine structuring pattern for the verse is the fact that, like the alliterated consonants in verse 5, the rhymed vowel-endings occur three times in each couplet of the verse. And in the first two couplets of verse 6, again we find the first two occurrences of the long hireq in the first line and the third occurrence in the initial word of the second line. The final line of the verse, “but my own vineyard I have not kept,” may be understood as a freestanding line, though it is certainly connected with verse 6b closely enough that we might better see it (with the NRSV) as the third part of a long line. Indeed it repeats two of the three Hebrew words from 6b–“watch” and “vineyard”–in a reverse, chiastic order: “they made me keeper of the vineyards / but my own vineyard I have not kept.” Still, with regard to the long e vowel pattern employed in the verse, it stands as its own line, with a compressed version of the threefold repetition of the hireq. The third occurrence of the vowel is, unlike verses 6a and 6b, at the very end of the line, rounding off the textual unit by rounding off the vowel pattern. While the opening unit of the book focused attention on the male lover, here the focus is squarely on the female lover. One need only compare the occurrences of “your” and “you” in verses 2–4 with the preponderance of “I” and “me” in verses 5–6. Both units are spoken from the perspective of the woman, but while the first is addressed to the man and gives us her exalted opinion of him, the second is addressed to the daughters of Jerusalem and gives us third-party opinions of her. This shift to a thirdparty perspective feels intrusive, and that is no doubt intentional. We may explore this sense of intrusion by focusing on the two key themes of the passage, the darkness of the woman’s complexion and the anger that is directed at her by certain third parties. In the NRSV the woman declares, “I am black and beautiful.” But in earlier translations one is much more likely to find an apologetic tone, such as the RSV’s “I am very dark, but comely.” The difference between “and” and “but” – either is a possible translation of the single Hebrew letter waw that connects the two words – can make a world of difference for modern readers, and more particularly modern American readers, who may be used to thinking of skin color in the racialized terms of African-American and Caucasian or “black” and “white.” Is the woman celebrating her dark skin, her “blackness,” as a mark of beauty and desirability? Or is she asserting her beauty despite the undesirable darkness of her skin? There is little doubt that generations of European and Euro-American translators and commentators of the Song have read a pervasive prejudice for light skin into this verse, unable to imagine that

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blackness could be a mark of beauty. And despite a few forceful statements to the contrary,5 given the statement in verse 6 – “Do not gaze at me because I am dark” – many commentators still argue that the woman’s tone is apologetic, albeit without reference to “race” (which is not on the horizon of the poetry) but rather in reference to class or social status. That is, the woman apologizes for her dark skin, which she knows is contrary to prevailing standards of beauty, but she has had to work the fields at the behest of her brothers, rather than staying indoors and preserving a fair complexion as a woman of leisure might.6 But if one takes her tone as more defensive than apologetic, then one can imagine the woman admitting that her dark skin diverges from conventional standards of beauty, but that she is nevertheless unapologetic and in fact proud of the way she looks.7 The latter option is the best way to read the reference to blackness in these verses. While verse 6a presumes that her dark skin attracts stares and needs explaining, we need not assume an embarrassment about that fact on the part of the woman. Indeed, nowhere else in the book does the woman – or for that matter the man – indicate any doubt about her desirability. We should also note that it is not necessary to take the selfdescription of the woman literally. That is, throughout the book both the male and female voices engage in all sorts of role-playing and metaphoric description, and it may well be that just as the reference to a “king” in 1:4 is part of the game of love, so too is the reference to a sun-kissed shepherd girl. Seeing the description as a literary device, rather than a literal description, is supported by the way it effectively contrasts with the immediately previous reference to a king – both in terms of class and social status, as well as the inside outside/dichotomy of the king in his chambers and the shepherd girl in the fields – and leads into the immediately following theme of the anger of the woman’s brothers. The darkness of the woman’s skin is connected thematically to the anger of her brothers by the explanation in verse 6b, “My mother’s sons were angry with me; they made me keeper of the vineyards,” but it is connected also lexically by certain careful word choices. For example, the verb applied to the brothers, Hebrew nīhărû, is a niphal form of _ the root h-r-r. While it certainly is to be translated here as a metaphor _ 5

6 7

See especially Marcia Falk, The Song of Songs: A New Translation and Interpretation (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1990), 168–69. See esp. Fox for this sort of reading (Song of Songs, 101). Renita J. Weems, “The Song of Songs: Introduction, Commentary, and Reflections,” NIB (Nashville: Abingdon, 2001), 5:382–84.

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for anger, it has as its primary meaning the very literal sense of being scorched or burned. (It also, in the niphal form, plays on the Hebrew root n-h-r, which means to snort – the sun gazes with its eye, the brothers _ snort with their nostrils.) Likewise, the Hebrew verb n-t-r, used twice in _ verse 6 to refer to the “keeping” of vineyards, would seem to be carefully chosen to connect the theme of the woman working in the fields (and thus being burnt by the sun) with the anger of the brothers: The word is a less common synonym for the root n-s-r, which would seem the more appro_ priate word for the present verse since it is elsewhere used in the sense of guarding or keeping watch over something (in Isa 27:2–3, with the object vineyard). But the root n-t-r, outside the Song, is always used with the _ object wrath or anger (e.g., Jer 3:5; Nah 1:2; Ps 103:9) and does not mean “to guard” but rather “to keep,” in the sense of maintaining or preserving. The poet no doubt employs the slightly less appropriate word here because of its allusion to the theme of anger. The final line of v. 6, “my own vineyard I have not kept,” is set off (as noted above) and serves almost as a punch line to the unit. After opening the unit with a self-reference on the part of the female persona, and then moving through references both to the daughters of Jerusalem and to her brothers, the poet now closes the passage with another self-reference by the woman, which quite artfully ties up the unit as a whole. There is a flickering double meaning in the line, which hinges on the poet’s choice of n-t-r for the idea of “keeping.” As noted above, the word really connotes _ maintaining rather than guarding, and to this end the line can be understood as, “my own vineyard I have not maintained.” But since the poet has used the verb in the immediately preceding line to mean “keeper” in the sense of “guard,” the line can also be understood as, “my own vineyard I have not guarded.” The difference between the two renderings is subtle but important, and I suspect that the poet intends the reader to catch both. The trope of the vineyard in the Song (cf. 1:14; 2:15; 7:12; 8:11–12) functions as a metaphor for the woman’s self and, it would seem, more particularly for her sexuality.8 On the first rendering of our line, then, the woman is stating that she has not maintained herself, or her looks, by allowing the sun to burn her while she was guarding the vineyards, but that she is, with reference back to verse 5, “black and beautiful.” On the second rendering, the woman is stating that she has 8

On the sexual symbolism of the vineyard see Marvin H. Pope, Song of Songs, AB 7C (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1977), 323–26, though it is certainly too drastic to narrow the meaning to “sexual parts,” as Pope does.

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not guarded herself, or her sexuality, but has in fact given her love as she pleases. There is a fine irony, of course, in the fact that the brothers set her as a guardian of a (literal) vineyard, even as she declines to guard her (metaphorical) vineyard.

1:7–8 These verses take the form of a question by the female voice and a response by the male voice, and are thus naturally and obviously bound together. There are also, however, formal poetic devices that bind the verses as a unit. Modifying the NRSV slightly and outlining the verses, we may note the similarity in structure between the two verses. Verse 7: a) Tell me, you whom my soul loves, b) where you graze // where you rest the flock at noon; Lest I be like one veiled c) beside (ʿal) the flocks of your companions. Verse 8: a1) If you do not know, O fairest among women, b1) follow the tracks of the flock // and pasture your kids c1) beside (ʿal) the tents of shepherds.

Each verse opens with a direct address by one lover to the other, and the opening line of each employs a nickname for the one being addressed. One notes further that the nicknames are strikingly parallel in their use of both consonants and vowels. Every single consonant from the first phrase (šeʾāhăbâ napšî, “whom my soul loves”; v. 7) is used in the second (hayyāpāh bannāšîm, “fairest among women”; v.8), nearly making one an anagram of the other. Likewise, the vowel pattern is almost identical, with a series of a-sounds (the Hebrew letters qames and patah) followed _ _ in each case by a single long e-sound (the Hebrew hireq). In each verse the initial address is followed by two closely matched couplets. In both verses the congruence between the couplets is established with the opening word: in verse 7 “where” is repeated verbatim, and in verse 8 one finds two matching imperatives: “follow” and “pasture.” The similarity is continued in each verse with lexically equivalent words: in verse 7 the matching verbs “pasture” and “lie down,” and in verse 8 the matching nouns “flock” and “kids.” Although verse 7 includes one extra line, the verses end with lines (c and c1 above) that match both syntactically and semantically. Tying it all together is the threefold

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repetition of the Hebrew root r-ʿ-h, “to pasture, to shepherd,” which occurs once in verse 7 and twice in verse 8. With this passage we have, for the first time, a dialogue between the female and male voices. The similar structures of the two brief speeches are important for helping to establish from the outset the essential mutuality of the lovers. Throughout the Song of Songs, the male and female voices mirror each other in such a way as to encourage an identification of one with the other, an essential theme of love poetry. While later in the book this theme will take on an almost deadly seriousness (most especially in 5:2–8 and 8:6), here it is manifested lightly in the rhetorical similarity of the voices and is placed in the service of a playful exchange. The playfulness of the passage consists in its teasing tone, and it is reinforced by a wordplay on the keyword rāʿāh, “pasture.” As Fox notes, the Hebrew root r-ʿ-h plays on three homophonic words: (1) to graze, or to pasture a flock; (2) to be friends or companions with someone; and (3) to desire or take pleasure.9 Thus while the ostensible topic of the exchange between the man and woman concerns the first of these, one suspects that a bit more is going on here. In the first place, “grazing” would seem to be a double entendre. The verb can be either transitive or intransitive, and the lack of an object here allows ambiguity as to which it is. On the first level the woman is asking, “Where do you graze your flock?” But on the second level she is asking, “Where do you yourself graze?” Of course in both cases the overtones are patently sexual – the first representing a desire for a noontime tryst, the second a poetic description of the “landscape” where the man might “graze,” namely the woman’s body itself (cf. 6:2–3).

1:9–14 It is possible that in verses 9–14 we have two discrete units: verses 9–11 on the one hand and verses 12–14 on the other. The first is spoken in the male voice and the second in the female, and other than the references to Pharaoh in verse 9 and to the king in verse 12, which lend an air of royalty to each voice, there is not much to connect the two passages thematically. But the two passages are poetically and structurally very similar and thus may be read as a dialogue in which the two lovers take

9

Fox, Song of Songs, 103.

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turns celebrating each other. Each passage is made up of three couplets, in which the first couplet introduces a metaphor and the second and third couplets play out the metaphor, and in each case the first couplet is comprised of interrelated but nonparallel lines while the second and third couplets are more strictly parallel. Reading the verses as a single unit, moreover, allows one to recognize a brief narrative movement from the admiring gaze of the man in verses 9–11 (“to a mare among pharaoh’s chariots I compare you”) to the bodily intimacy of verses 12–14 (“a bag of myrrh that lies between my breasts”). As befits such a movement from admiration to consummation, the emphasis on the sense of sight in the man’s speech gives way to the more intimate senses of smell and touch in the woman’s. There is some debate as to the force of the metaphor in the man’s speech, where the woman is compared in verses 9 to “a mare among Pharaoh’s chariots,” or more literally to “my mare among the chariotry of Pharaoh.” Based on an ancient Egyptian battle account in which an enemy prince tries to disrupt the Egyptian battle lines by setting loose a mare among the stallions that are pulling the chariots (ANET, 241), it has been suggested that the metaphor in the Song exemplifies the irresistible sexual attraction of the woman. Thus Marcia Falk’s rendering, “Like a mare among stallions / you lure, I am held.”10 This understanding of the verse is certainly attractive – the image of a well-ordered and powerful army being thrown into chaos by the passing of a single mare is striking – but it is difficult to know if the poet in fact had it in mind. It would help if we knew how widespread the particular battle strategy was and whether or not our poet could reasonably be expected to know of it. The immediate context of the verse suggests that the comparison to a mare is based less on animal attraction than on a shared elegant beauty, since in the lines that follow it is this beauty that is described, enhanced by reference to extravagantly imagined ornaments. The parallel lines of verse 10, “Lovely are your cheeks in bangles / your neck in strings of beads,” are tied to verse 11 by the repetition of “bangles” (tōrîm, translated in the NRSV as “ornaments”): “Bangles of gold we will make you / with decorations of silver.” There is an interlinear heightening or intensification between the two verses, which I take to be important to understanding the meaning of the passage. That is, if the woman is beautiful in plain bangles and beads, imagine how much more so in golden bangles with

10

Falk, Song of Songs.

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silver flourishes. This would seem to be the primary force of the comparison to a royal mare, which are depicted in ancient Egyptian representations with elaborate ornamentation. Indeed, although the NRSV renders the Hebrew piel verb form dimmîtîk as “I compare you,” we should probably render it as “I imagine you.” In this line, then, the man is not simply offering a metaphor for the woman’s elegant beauty, but is saying that such beauty deserves the finest adornment. If the metaphor of a royal mare emphasized the beauty of the woman, and thus placed the man at an admiring distance, the response by the woman in verses 12–14 collapses that distance by accentuating the more intimate sense of smell. The poetry makes reference to three aromatic spices, two of which – nard and myrrh – are well known elsewhere in the Bible and other ancient literature as love-charms or aphrodisiacs. Nard is of Indian origin and is mentioned in the Atharva Veda as an ointment facilitating seduction.11 Likewise both Greek and Roman classical authors refer to nard as an agent of seduction. In keeping with the royal playacting of our lovers, nard would also have been quite an expensive luxury, a quality highlighted in the Gospel accounts of the woman who anoints Jesus with “ointment of pure nard,” which, according to those at the scene who objected to such an act of excess, would have been worth nearly an entire year’s income for a laborer (Mark 14:3). While Mark and Matthew’s account of the anointing come late in their narratives and are explicitly symbolic acts of preparation for burial, Luke places the episode much earlier and focuses instead on the fact that the woman is notorious as a “sinner,” likely a prostitute, raising the prospect that nard is a tool of her trade (Luke 7:39). Myrrh is referred to in Esther 2:12 as one of the ointments used to prepare women from the harem for a night with the king, and in Ps 45:9 (ET 45:8) the king prepares for his wedding night by anointing his robes with “myrrh and aloes and cassia.” And in Proverbs 7, a patriarchal vision of the “loose woman” (v. 5) portrays her attempting to seduce an ostensibly upright young man by boasting that she has perfumed her bed with “myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon” (v. 17). The third spice mentioned in 1:12–14, henna, is less well attested, though we may assume that it too functions here as an enticement to the bodily pleasures of love. It is mentioned again in 4:12–15, along with nard and myrrh, in the man’s description of the woman as a garden impossibly rich with the choicest of fruits and spices.

11

John Pairman Brown, “The Mediterranean Vocabulary of the Vine,” VT 19 (1969): 161.

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All three spices mentioned in the passage, then, can be taken literally to refer to the perfumes used, especially in royal contexts, to prepare for the intimacy of lovemaking. But like the royal mare of 1:9, these aromatic spices are also used in the poetry as metaphors for the lovers themselves. This is made clear in verses 13–14: “My lover is a bag of myrrh, / spending the night between my breasts; // My lover is a cluster of henna, / in the vineyards of Ein Gedi” (my translation). The two verses are almost precisely parallel, repeating verbatim the phrase “my lover is to me” (dôdî lî). The epithet “my lover” or “my beloved” (dôdî) occurs here for the first time, though the woman will use it to refer to the man over two dozen times in the poetry that follows. The two verses also repeat, in the Hebrew, the identical vowel pattern of three long o-sounds followed by three long e-sounds. Verse 13 is only barely a metaphor, with the image of a costly bag of perfume lodged between the woman’s breasts fading quickly into the image of the man himself spending the night in the selfsame place. (The Hebrew verb lîn means not simply “to lie,” as most translations have it, but more precisely to “spend the night.”) The parallelism of verses 13 and 14 leads one to interpret verse 14 in a similar way, that is, as a barely disguised double entendre for the couple’s lovemaking. On this reading, Ein Gedi – a lush oasis apparently quite famous in the ancient Near East, since it is mentioned in Ben Sira, Josephus, and Pliny the Elder – is not simply the place from which the henna comes, but is a metaphor for the place where the man spends the night, namely the woman’s embrace. This reading is reinforced both by the use of the vineyard imagery and by the literal meaning of Ein Gedi, “spring of the kid,” since elsewhere the vineyard and the spring seem to be symbols of the woman’s sexuality (1:6; 7:12; 8:11; and 4:12, respectively; with “kids” perhaps functioning that way as well in 1:8). Since nard and henna are so explicitly figures for the male lover, some interpreters have taken the nard in verse 12 to be a similar reference, thus extolling the scent of the man. But I would argue that the nard giving forth its scent is rather a reference once again to female sexuality. If that is the case, then we have a clear pattern in verses 12–14 of alternating references to the man and the woman. In each verse, the initial line of the couplet refers to the man and the following line to the woman (and more explicitly to the woman’s sexuality).

1:15–17 In verses 15–17 we find a closely interlocked dialogue between the male and female voices. The man’s exclamation in verse 15, “Ah, you are

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beautiful, my love; ah, you are beautiful,” is echoed closely in verse 16 by the woman’s response, “Ah, you are beautiful, my beloved, truly lovely.” The compliments on the lovers’ respective beauty are, allowing for differences in the Hebrew masculine and feminine grammatical forms, identical: hinnāk yāpāh in verse 15 and hinnəkā yāpeh in verse 16. And each voice employs a favorite epithet for the other, with the man referring to the woman as raʿyātî (“my dear”) and the woman calling the man dôdî (“my love”). The man’s compliment in verse 15 alliterates on the n-, k-, and y-sounds, and the woman’s response in verse 16, while picking up on the k and y only in the initial repeated phrase “Ah, you are beautiful,” alliterates on the n five times in a single line. The result of all this grammatical and alliterative repetition is, I would say, to underscore in a subtle way the egalitarian nature of their love – each to each equally. The Hebrew word for “beautiful,” yāpāh in its feminine form and yāpeh in the masculine, is quite often applied to women and less frequently to men. In fact, outside of the Song, the only men who are said to be yāpeh are Joseph, David, and Absalom. With regard to male sex appeal, this is indeed illustrious company in which to be placed, and it may be the case that the masculine form of yāpeh is a carefully chosen, somewhat surprising word here when applied to the man. If so, then by applying a typically feminine adjective to a man, the poetry serves to further underscore the mutuality of the lovers, even as it undercuts typically gendered notions of physical attractiveness. The singular instance of the woman’s beauty to which the man directs his attention is her eyes, which he equates with doves (yônîm). “My dove” (yônātî) is another of the man’s favorite words for the woman. Verse 15 is repeated verbatim in 4:1, and elsewhere in the Song the man refers to the woman, and not just her eyes, as “my dove” (2:14, 5:2, 6:9). There is little agreement among commentators on just what is the intent of the metaphor, “your eyes are doves.” Dove-like qualities, such as gentleness, softness, purity, and innocence, and the shape or the color of the eyes have all been offered as suggestions for interpreting the man’s compliment. Keel adduces iconographic evidence from the ancient Near East in addition to classical poetic sources to show that “the dove was used as a symbol of love across the entire eastern Mediterranean area,”12 and was particularly associated with goddesses of love. Combined with the observation that when the poetry speaks of “eyes” it really means 12

Othmar Keel, The Song of Songs, trans. F. J. Gaster, CC (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994), 71.

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“glances” (as in Isa 3:16 and Sir 26:9), he suggests that the line may best be rendered as “your glances are messengers of love.” Whatever the force of the metaphor, it is worth noting that later in the book the woman returns the man’s compliment: “His eyes are like doves beside springs of water” (5:12). This is the single reference to the man as being somehow like a dove, and it may be that in 5:12 the woman is once again playfully reversing gender stereotypes of beauty. As noted above, the man twice employs the phrase “Ah, you are beautiful” (hinnāk yāpāh) in verse 15, with the woman using it once in verse 16 (hinnəkā yāpeh). Rather than repeating the phrase, however, the woman substitutes for it the phrase “truly lovely” (ʾap nāʿîm). The semantic parallelism, as well as the repeated vowels and consonants, of hinnəkā yāpeh and ʾap nāʿîm, establishes a continuity that one would expect to carry over into the second half of verse 16. If the man ends his statement in verse 15 by comparing the woman’s eyes to doves, one might expect the woman to end her statement by singling out some instance of the man’s beauty for praise. But the woman responds not by praising the man’s beauty further but instead, in verses 16b–17, by shifting the poetic imagery away from the bodies of the two lovers to their surroundings. The shift is abrupt, but it is consistent with the Song’s refusal to represent the act of sexual consummation, as much as it may allude to it. It is possible that the present passage is meant to be read as a continuation of the incipient narrative movement in verses 9–14, with its progression from admiration (vv. 9–11) to embrace (vv. 12–14). In the midst of that embrace the man, eye to eye with his lover, testifies to her beauty (v. 15), and the woman responds in kind (v.16a) – such is the manner of lovers as they embrace. But instead of continuing with the details of their moment of intimacy, the poetry suddenly shifts our attention away from the lovers to their environs. The woman declares, “Our couch is green” (16b). The word used for “couch” (ʿereś) more probably means “bed,” and in light of its uses elsewhere in the Bible, indicates a particularly posh bed. It is the word used to describe the beds of King Og of Bashan (Deut 3:11), of King David (2 Sam 17:28; Pss 41:4 [ET 41:3]; 132:3), and of the idle rich in the book of Amos (3:12–14; 6:4). Thus it fits the lovers’ use of extravagant, royal imagery in their addresses to one another. But immediately one is forced to revise the image of an ornate bed when it is described as “green” or “fresh.” The primary intent of the poetic image would seem to be that the lovers’ rendezvous transforms their rustic, outdoor meeting place into a veritable palace, with a bed of lush green growth and (in v. 17) overhanging tree branches as their roof. Yet the word for “green” (raʿănānâ) has a

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pejorative connotation in the Bible that is hard to overlook. It is used repeatedly in the well-known phrase “under every leafy tree” to describe the sites of Israelite apostasy (Deut 12:2; 1 Kgs 14:23; 2 Kgs 16:4; 17:10; Isa 57:5; Jer 2:20; 3:6, 13; Ezek 6:13; 2 Chron 28:4). In the prophetic texts, with their use of the marriage metaphor to characterize the relationship between the lord and Israel, such apostasy is typically sexualized and described as adultery. Given the seeming ubiquity of the association of raʿănānâ with illicit sexuality (even if a metaphor for apostasy and not to be taken literally), and given that our poet appears to employ religious language in a similarly subversive way elsewhere in the book, the word seems intentionally chosen in order to subvert this connotation of apostasy. Read this way, the poet uses the word raʿănānâ as a way of reclaiming and celebrating sexuality outside the bounds of marriage, rather than seeing it as the lewd, sordid practice that his or her prophetic interlocutors presume it to be.

conclusion Scholars are just now beginning to explore the extent to which biblical Hebrew poetry differs from biblical Hebrew prose narrative.13 The poetry is always essentially nonnarrative, representing not stories with plots and identifiable characters rendered by a third-person narrator, but rather forms of highly rhetorical direct discourse expressed by a first-person speaker and generally directed to a second-person addressee. This is, of course, what we find in the Song of Songs, where two young lovers take turns addressing each other with declarations of passionate intention. This latter aspect of the Song of Songs is also something that differs from the conventions of biblical narrative. That is, biblical narrative fairly consistently avoids the expression of passion or thought, preferring to leave that in the “background,” important but unexpressed.14 Biblical poetry, on the other hand, quite often revels in such expression, and 13

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For an overview of these differences see Tod Linafelt, “On Biblical Style,” The St. John’s Review 54.1 (2012): 17–42; and The Hebrew Bible as Literature: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). For the most recent and most complete treatment of the many distinctive aspects of biblical poetry, we now have F. W. DobbsAllsopp, On Biblical Poetry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). The classic treatment of the dimly perceived, implied “background” of psychological complexity and implied character motivation in biblical narrative is Erich Auerbach’s essay “Odysseus’ Scar,” in Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953), 3–23.

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in this regard is an example of what literary criticism has traditionally named “lyric” poetry. “It is essential feelings,” writes poetry critic Helen Vendler, “which are traced in lyric.”15 Vendler goes on to say that “the [lyric] poet’s duty is to create aesthetically convincing representations of feelings felt and thoughts thought.”16 In this the poetry of the Song of Songs has surely succeeded, giving readers believable, even thrilling, expressions of what it feels like to be young and in love. A sense of passionate spontaneity predominates in the poetry, as it should. Yet, if our close attention to the sound and structure of chapter one of the Song of Songs has revealed anything, it is that this sense of the spontaneous overflow of passion is in fact the product of complex and subtle poetic technique. To attend to such technique is to give the poetry its proper due as the polished, highly constructed literary achievement that it is.

15

16

Helen Vendler, The Art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets (Cambridge, MA: Belknap/Harvard, 1997), 16. Vendler, Art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, 16.

8 How Is a Love Poem (Song 4:1–7) Like the Beloved? The Importance of Emotion in Reading Biblical Poetry Sarah Zhang

Most scholars of biblical poetry would not hesitate to acknowledge the importance of emotion;1 in practice, however, the interpreter’s emotional participation is not infrequently distanced in order to maintain an objective analysis. Gladly, we are seeing a growing interest in emotion among biblical scholars, with the new session “Bible and Emotion” at the annual Society of Biblical Literature meeting being a case in point. In this paper, I will join this dialogue through a close reading of Song 4:1–7, in order to demonstrate how the reader’s emotional integrity enhances rather than hinders one’s interpretation. By “emotional integrity,” I refer to how emotion aligns rational interpretations to sensual receptions, thus ensuring the integrity of the reader’s response to the literary text, with poetry as the art of words par excellence.

beginning with emotional integrity Poetry’s excellence is not tied to its ability to correctly represent reality. Instead of being a mimesis of reality, more properly speaking, poetry is I would like to thank the participants of the “Emotion and the Bible” panel at the 2014 SBL meeting, as well as friends at the Old Testament Research Colloquium at Princeton Theological Seminary – especially F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp – for the insightful and constructive feedback on this paper. Portions of this paper derive from my monograph, I You and the Word “God”: Finding Meaning in the Song of Songs (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2016). 1 For detailed discussions of emotion in arts, see G. Gabrielle Starr, Feeling Beauty: The Neuroscience of Aesthetic Experience (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2015), 33–68; Jerrold Levinson, “Emotion in Response to Art: A Survey of the Terrain,” in Mette Hjort and Sue Laver (eds.), Emotion and the Arts (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 20–34.

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a making (Greek poēsis) of words (cf. maʿăśeh, “making,” as a designation for poetry in Ps 45:2 [ET 45:1]).2 The linearly streamed reality (as captured by human consciousness) is but a skeleton or even shadow. On this thematic skeleton the poet imparts lyrical forms as flesh and blood to generate a vivifying body. “If [in poetry] the real world is not altogether rejected,” William B. Yeats writes, “it is but touched here and there, and into the places we have left empty we summon rhythm, balance, pattern, images that remind us of vast passions.”3 In this process of word-making, the poet applies lyrical forms with the purpose of embodying the full emotional experience, which the poetic object has stirred up in the poet, and which has triggered the birth of the poem. Helen Vendler observes how, with the theme or message already secured, Yeats exhausts himself in seeking the “appropriate body” that fully conveys “the emotional unity” in his mind.4 Yet when the poet (or the oral composer) attempts at resuscitating such original emotional integrity in language, it is always already a past perfect event to the thinking mind. Since rational language could not return to the concrete situation due to its required objective distance, the poet resorts to savoring his/her emotional aura at the original moment, and takes it as a reference to adjust the lyrical forms to make them most congruent at conveying – and responding to – the original intrigue.5 In brief, the saliency of poetry, especially lyrical poetry, lies in the excess of emotional integrity over thematic representation. The role of emotional integrity in reading biblical poetry can be illustrated in the case of Song 4:1–7, a poem that sequentially describes a girl’s physical features.6 Operating with a hermeneutic of mimetic verisimilitude, scholars of the historical critical school have assumed that 2

3 4

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Given that I am a contemporary literary reader, the poems that I am familiar with are often the high literary types. Biblical poems, in contrast, mostly grew out of oral traditions, and the trajectory of their formation is harder to trace; for a more detailed analysis of the orality of biblical poetry, see F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp, On Biblical Poetry (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 233–325. Nevertheless, evidences for the intentional crafting of words therein is not lacking. A comparison of the narrative and poetic accounts of Jael’s encounter with Sisera (e.g., Judg 4:19 and 5:25) reveals the word-crafting aspect of biblical poetry. William. B. Yeats, Memoirs, ed. Denis Donoghue (New York: Macmillan, 1972), 211. Helen Vendler, Our Secret Discipline: Yeats and Lyric Form (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), 3. See Robert von Hallberg, Lyric Powers (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 1; Northrop Frye, “Approaching the Lyric,” in Lyric Poetry: Beyond New Criticism, ed. Chaviva Hošek and Patricia Parker (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), 31. There are four such descriptive poems in the Song 4:1–7; 5:9–16; 6:4–10; 7:2–6.

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representation transcends “the differences between media” in the cognitive process.7 Hence, the interpretation of Song 4:1–7 was often reduced to taming the fancy poetic language into rational predications that uncover the kernel of truth, that is, the beloved’s physical appearance.8 With irony, Tremper Longman illustrates how this thematic preoccupation works through a paraphrase of v. 2: “To be banal about it, the verse basically has the man saying to the woman, ‘Your teeth are white, and you even have all of them!’”9 Laughable as it sounds, this kind of rationalistic marginalization of poetic media (including both the text and the audience) is not a rarity. For instance, when extracting the girl’s image from the descriptions, some scholars are puzzled at how “bizarre, if not grotesque” it is, while others conclude that her head is big like a mountain and her hair patchy like goats scattered over the slope.10 Yet in this case, the cause of the grotesqueness lies neither in the authorial intention (as parody), nor in radically different aesthetic tastes between the ancient and contemporary audiences,11 but in the readers’ interpretive lenses.12 Common sense suggests that intense emotions may cause exaggeration and incoherence in language. This is more pronounced in poetry, as it has license for extravagance. The beloved’s perfection (Song 4:7) is a case in point. Yet when interpreters put on the “objective” lenses that shield them from emotional effects, they may transcribe the extravagance of the lover’s impression embodied in the poem as the ridiculousness of the beloved’s qualities in reality. In other words, the suppression of emotional participation in reading lyric poems leads to a distorted representation rather than an

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Charles Sanders Peirce, “On Representation,” in Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition, ed. Christian J. W. Kloesel, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), 3:62–75. For instance, Gustav von Grunebaum contends that, if “the perfection of form and language” is set aside, the beauty of the lover’s presentation “derives entirely from the fidelity of his observation, not from his reaction to the impressions that actually inspired his song” (“The Response to Nature in Arabic Poetry,” JNES 4 [1945]: 139–40). Tremper Longman III, Song of Songs, NICOT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 144. Leroy Waterman, The Song of Songs: Translated and Interpreted as a Dramatic Poem (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1948), 63; M. H. Segal, “The Song of Songs,” VT 12 (1962): 480; B. S. J. Isserlin, “Song of Songs IV, 4: An Archaeological Note,” PEQ 90 (1958): 59–60; Fiona C. Black, “Beauty or the Beast? The Grotesque Body in the Song of Songs,” BibInt 8 (2000): 311. See Marcia Falk, “The Wasf,” in A Feminist Companion to the Song of Songs, ed. _ Athalya Brenner (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), 227–28. Though the activity of “reading” is genuine to the contemporary approach to biblical poems, its limitation should be acknowledged in view of the ancient way of coming into contact with the lyrics through oral performance and aural reception.

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objective distillation. This is similar to how a realist can only see absurdity in Picasso’s paintings, instead of a “similarity more real than reality.”13 Of course, given the diversity of contemporary hermeneutics, a critique of extreme rational interpretations comes close to beating a dead horse. I do ask, though, have we then actively explored the poetic media that are so marginalized?

the materiality of poetic language I will now turn to the first constituent of the poetic media – the materiality of poetic language, with an eye to expose how it embodies and evokes the intended emotions. Unlike what is assumed in the conventional distinction between form and content, poetic language is not merely a disposable medium of the message. Serving the original goal of emotional integrity, poetry embodies the materiality of language more than any other discourse. Materiality here does not refer to “the matter opposed to thought and mind, which fed classical materialism,” but to the unreflected somatic impression that resists assimilation into rational reflection.14 A convenient example comes from Song 1:13 – sǝrôr hammōr dôdî lî _ bên šāday yālîn

A pouch of myrrh is my beloved, who stays between my breasts.

The rolling -ôr vocally emulates the aroma of myrrh; the end rhymes of -î endearingly tie the lover to “me”; the echoing -ên and -în encircle the sweet lodging spot. Reading this couplet is like being invited to imbibe a glass of wine, which goes down smoothly in a perfect blend of sonic, semantic, and aromatic perceptions. The immediate and compound sensations evoke a raw feeling of jolly contentment before the semantics and styles are parsed. Crafted lyrics like this one embody, rather than merely reflect on, their original moment when the poet is “strongly” provoked, whether they are understood in a scholarly definition as “a heightened speech,”15 or resounding to a Bedouin woman’s experience that “[t]hose

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Picasso confessed that “I keep doing my best not to lose sight of nature. I want to aim at similarity, a profound similarity which is more real than reality, thus becoming surrealist” (Karl Ruhrberg and Ingo F. Walther, Art of the 20th Century [Köln: Taschen, 1998], 215). Emmanuel Levinas, Existence and Existents, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Boston: Kluwer, 1988), 57. Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative (New York: Basic Books, 1981), 2.

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who sing feel something strongly in their hearts [ʿagl].”16 That is to say, poetic in-spiration is indebted to the intrigue of the other; at the same time, facilitated by the material impressions contained in a verbal body, a poem provokes in the audience that which has provoked the poet to write. The materiality of poetry, therefore, stretches from the poem to include both its exotic origin as being touched by alterity, and its relational end as a resurrection of the original intrigue in the audience. In terms of the exotic origin of poetry, the case of impression turned into expression is particularly pronounced in love poems that describe the beloved: the inflowing sensations provoked by the features of the beautiful beloved, after vivifying the lover, revert to an outpouring of exuberant praises. In this light, Song 4:1–7 is often compared to the Arabic lyric genre wasf, which characterizes the individual features of things, animals, _ and people for evaluation.17 Although “description” is the core meaning of the Arabic noun wasf, the related verbal form (wasafa) means both _ _ “to describe” and “to praise, laud, extol.”18 This intertwined texture – describe to extol, and extol by describing – reminds the readers of Song 4:1–7 to stay in line with its emotional orientation. Now if, as William Blake claims, “Exuberance is Beauty,”19 Song 4:1–7 can be called a work of beauty, inspired by and praising another beauty. 1a

hinnāk yāpâ raʿyātî b hinnāk yāpâ

1c

ʿênayik yônîm d mibbaʿad lǝsammātēk _ e śaʿrēk kǝʿēder hāʿizzîm f šeggālǝšû mēhar gilʿād 2a šinnayik kǝʿēder haqqǝsûbôt b šeʿālû min-hārahsâ _ c šekkullām matʾîmôt_ _ d wǝšakkūlâ ʾên bāhem

16

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18 19

1a

Ah, you are fair, my dear, b ah, you are fair!

1c

Your eyes, oh, doves, d from behind your veil. e Your hair—like a flock of goats, f that cascade down from Mt. Gilead. 2a Your teeth—like a flock of shorn ones, b that come up from the washing; 2c All of them bear twins, d and bereavement is not in them.

Lila Abu-Lughod, Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 182. Akiko Motoyoshi Sumi, Description in Classical Arabic Poetry. Wasf, Ekphrasis, and _ Interarts Theory, BSME 25 (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 6. Sumi, Description in Classical Arabic Poetry, 6. William Blake, “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell,” in William Blake, Blake’s Poetry and Designs, 2nd ed., ed. Mary Lynn Johnson and John E. Grant (New York: Norton, 2008), 73.

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3a

kǝhût haššānî śiptōtayik b_ ûmidbārêk nāʾweh c kǝpelah hārimmôn raqqātēk _ d mibbaʿad lǝsammātēk _ sawwāʾrēk 4a kǝmigdal dāwîd _ b bānûy lǝtalpiyyôt c ʾelep hammāgēn tālûy ʿālāyw d kōl šiltê haggibbôrîm _

3a

5a

šǝnê šādayik kišnê ʿŏpārîm b tǝʾômê sǝbiyyâ c hārôʿîm_ baššôšannîm 6a ʿad šeyyāpûah hayyôm b wǝnāsû has_ sǝlālîm _ c ʾēlek lî ʾel-har _hammôr d wǝʾel-gibʿat hallǝbônâ

5a

7a

7a

kullāk yāpâ raʿyātî b ûmûm ʾên bāk

Like a scarlet thread, your lips, b and your mouth, so lovely. c Like a slit pomegranate, your palate, d from behind your veil. 4a Like the Tower of David, your neck, b built in courses; c A thousand of shields hang on it, d all bucklers of warriors. Your two breasts – like two fawns, b twins of a gazelle, c grazing among the lilies. 6a Till the day breathes, b and the shadows flee, c Let me go to the mountain of myrrh, d and to the hill of frankincense. All of you is beautiful, my dear, b And no flaw is in you!

Exuberance had impacted the lover’s perception and description of his beloved. Its pulsation is palpable in this poem. First, his alleviated emotional state is felt immediately when the poetic space opens up: hinnāk yāpâ raʿyātî (“ah, you are fair, my dear”)! The presentative interjection hinnēh directs the lover’s entire “here-and-now”20 to “you” (-āk); in doing so he submits his full attention to her captivating presence. In other places, the lover may say something similar without hinnēh, as in Song 6:4 – yāpâ ʾatt raʿyātî (“fair are you, my dear”). Likewise, the presentations of Sarai’s beauty happen both with hinnēh, in Abram’s emotionladen exclamation (Gen 12:11), and without, from the Egyptians’ observation (Gen 12:14). These alternative examples suggest that Song 4:1–7 requires a theatrical enthusiasm to set its tone. Psalm 133 offers yet another example of how the initial hinnēh (Ps 133:1) sets an exuberant

20

T. O. Lambdin, Introduction to Biblical Hebrew (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1971), 168; see also IBHS, 675. F. I. Andersen proposes to categorize the particle as a “perspectival presentative predicator”: it signals a switch of perspective to the viewpoint of a character, presents a new element into a discourse in a quasiverbal predicating function (“Lo and Behold! Taxonomy and Translation of Biblical Hebrew hnh,” in Hamlet on a Hill: Semitic and Greek Studies Presented to Professor T. Muraoka on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday, ed. M. F. J. Baasten, and W. Th. van Peursen [Leuven: Peeters, 2003], 52–56). Moreover, as Robert S. Kawashima points out, hinnēh adds an expressive force to the succeeding clause in biblical narratives (Biblical Narrative and the Death of the Rhapsode, ISBL [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005], 84–85).

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tone for the whole poem.21 The exclamatory opening is then sustained by a strain of a- vowels that accentuate the excitement. Structurally, a direct appeal to the addressee through the vocative rāyātî contracts the visual and emotional shock into the central idea of you-as-my-dear. That is, the first part (“ah, you are fair”) and the third (“ah, you are fair”) mirror each other and embrace the central one (“my dear”). With the vocative being set like a diamond on a ring, this poem reveals its underlying saying as his charged response to her beauty rather than a dispassionate reflection. From the other end of the main poetic body, moreover, this initial sensation is hyperbolically reaffirmed, as the poem ends with the same ring structure (4:7). Thus the inclusio formed by v. 1 and v. 7 enwraps the body of the poem with the lover’s exuberant adoration, as would his arms around his beloved (Song 2:6; 8:3), or a loving frame around the bust portrait of the beloved.22 Second, the main body of this poem unfolds along and ends with a note of thinly veiled passion. At a glance, through the symbolic value of the number seven – the number of body parts named in the poem – the perfection of the beloved’s body is embodied in that of the poetic composition, and prepares for the conclusive exclamation that she is entirely beautiful (4:7a).23 More specifically, the upswing of delight is mapped through the lover’s intensifying downward gaze, as the words reveal his visual caressing of the beloved’s seven bodily features in three phases: (1) eyes, hair, teeth (4:1c–2d); (2) lips, palate, neck (3a–4d); (3) breasts (5a–6c). These three stages are marked by conspicuous structural patterns within and among poetic lines. Eyes Hair Teeth

Doves Goats Shorn ones

1 couplet 1 couplet 2 couplets

Scarlet thread Pomegranate Tower of David

Lips Palate Neck

1 couplet 1 couplet 2 couplets

Breasts

Fawns

1 triplet + 2 couplets

21 22

23

Dobbs-Allsopp, On Biblical Poetry, 327–28. The framed verbal presentation of what the male lover sees also echoes his gazing through the windows in Song 2:9 (F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp, “The Delight of Beauty and Song of Songs 4:1–7,” Interpretation 59 [July 2005], 270). The pronominal suffix “you/your” also appears fourteen times, giving further assistance in the leap from the concrete features to the conceptual whole.

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In the first stanza the bodily features precede the similes, while in the second this order is reversed. Meanwhile, both stanzas close with two couplets devoted to one bodily feature (4:2, 4), while the previous features have only one couplet. Still, these two stanzas make use of the paced progression of couplets throughout to embody the lover’s rhythmic perceptions. This is altered when he moves down to the seventh and the last feature: her breasts (4:5). As if the passion pent up through the caressing gaze has overflown the established rhythm, in 4:5a–c he expands the lines into the only triplet in the poem. This alteration is also accompanied by the return of the word order in the first stanza (feature-simile), as well as the animal imagery. The overwhelming sensation is also shown in how the main body of the poem ends: immediately after mentioning her breasts, the poetic painter drops his brush and wishes to approach her (4:6)! He did not quite say “I cannot hold it anymore,” but the audience gets it. In short, with two mental strings – her bodily features and the respective metaphors – making two vertical threads, and seven sets of his descriptive extolments traversing horizontally in form of the poetic lines, the warp and weft of the lyric body are artfully interweaved. In other words, this poem gains its propelling force from the lover’s ardent longing to keenly perceive her body (her features) and the exuberant outpouring of his delightful savoring (similes). The closure of the main body (4:6) reveals that these two form an underlying erotic tension: the perceiving (the lover in terms of his mental capacity) requires a proper distance, but the perceived (the beloved as the lover’s perceived sensual data) calls for a personal greeting. Third, even a casual look at the poem can reveal that the lover pours way more energy in elaborating the metaphorical images than in describing the beloved’s features. Through the mental transportation of metaphor that “carries the thought beyond the theme thought,”24 the lover drifts away from the bodily feature of his beloved when he moves onto feeling its beauty. He savors the aesthetic delight at seeing her features through repeated metaphorical flights (e.g., like the black goats flocking down the slope, her dark hair bounces in movement), as if explosions of vivid images periodically blind his mental vision. The invocation of her

24

Emmanuel Levinas, “Exercises on ‘The Madness of the Day,’” in Proper Names, trans. Michael B. Smith (London: Athlone, 1996), 156. Note the derivation of “metaphor” form Greek meta-pherein, “to carry beyond.”

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features (from the second set on) reappears only when the previous simile creates adequate volume to match his associated aesthetic delight. As a result, these rich images partially overlay and obscure an actual perception of her bodily features. The primary reason for this lyrical design may be that, due to the explosive volumes of feelings, the lover can only see clearly the beloved (asyndetic enumerations of her features) between evoked mental images.25 Similarly in Iris Murdoch’s novel The Black Prince, Bradley Pearson recalls his perception of Julian Baffin: “Consciousness half swoons with its sense of humble delighted privilege while keen sight, in between the explosions of the stars, devours every detail of the real presence.”26 This fine description shows how the lover’s gaze at the beloved evokes vast passions that weaken him, resonating with how in the Song the lover’s gaze at the beloved overwhelms his heart (4:9; 6:5). The heavy use of metaphorical elaborations can be further explained by the fact that one is able to describe only the experiences or objects that one has acquired. When facing an object that is beyond one’s mental control, metaphor is summoned to assist human cognition.27 That is, to bring the distant object close, one relates it to familiar ones. For instance, the mysterious Leviathan is so powerful that even his would-be soft belly is “like sharp potsherds” (Job 41:22 [ET 41:30]). In such mental association, a similar sensory quality, like the black color of the girl’s hair and of the goats, serves as the cognitive point of contact between the target and the referent.28 However, in what sense would the mundane hair (teeth, lips, etc.) become something alien, worthy of praise and demanding more than description? What correlates the galloping goats and the beloved’s hair in the lover’s mind? Besides the goats, there are many other objects that are black, right? This question leads one to the second constituent of the poetic media – human emotional susceptibility.

25

26 27 28

Passion prevents the man from directly describing his beloved’s beauty, e.g., its shape, color, texture and so on. Cf. J. Cheryl Exum, Song of Songs: A Commentary, OTL (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2005), 160; Francis Landy, Paradoxes of Paradise: Identity and Difference in the Song of Songs, BLS 7 (Sheffield: Almond, 1983), 176. Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince (London: Penguin, 1975), 239. Cf. W. Martin, “Metaphor,” PEPP 868. The point(s) of contact is the key in interpreting metaphors and can be multiple. For example, in Shir ha-Shirim Rabbah, twelve points are identified between “dove” and its symbolic referent “Israel,” including “purity,” “atonement for sin,” and “loyalty” (J. Neusner, Song of Songs Rabbah: An Analytical Translation, 2 vols. [Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989], 1:88).

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emotional susceptibility In his study on “the feeling brain,” Antonio R. Damasio helpfully provides the key to how images, instances, and situations are connected – by emotion.29 He finds that experiences with similar emotional meanings are grouped together in the brain and will be summoned when a new but similar feeling appears. In the case of Song 4:1–7, the subjective experience of the beloved’s beauty is connected to the metaphorical references by aesthetic joyance, or “an inward pulsing of delight,”30 to borrow the words of Bernard of Clairvaux. Through this emotional key of aesthetic delight, the lover unlocks his memory of beauty experienced, activating that which would rise to the highest level of exuberance and also befit the chosen aspects of his beloved’s features. In short, the point of contact in these similes is twofold: the cognitive correspondences between the bodily features and the metaphors (like the black color), and the underlying emotion with which the lover’s experiences of beauty are grouped (aesthetic delight). Of these two, the lover’s amorous emotion precedes and conditions the cognitive links, orchestrating the metaphors toward the goal of praising the beloved.31 Furthermore, as metaphors overlay each other when poetic lines pile up, the detailed descriptions of the metaphorical imageries also form a landscape within the verbal painting of the beloved: the rock dove flutters its wings (4:1); the black goats stream down from Mt. Gilead (4:1); the white ewes march up from the water (4:2); the scarlet thread and the juicy pomegranate entice with lusciousness (4:3); the shields reflect golden rays on the Tower of David (4:4); two fawns bounce amidst lilies in the loving gaze of their mother (4:5). In the waves of poetic lines, with glowing familiarity and affection, the land shows its chosen facets according to 29

30

31

Antonio R. Damasio, Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain (Orlando: Harcourt, 2003), 71, 100, 200, 204. Of course, the lover can access these romantic images as conventional symbols to convey stereotyped sentiments. But it remains true that they are based upon concrete experiences with which the lover is familiar. See also Joseph E. LeDoux, The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), 179–224. Bernard of Clairvaux, On the Song of Songs I (trans. Kilian Walsh; Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1971), 7. Cf. Damasio, Looking for Spinoza, 43–46. The emotional repertoires of the lover in an agrarian setting – be it personal or conventional – do not readily coincide with that of the contemporary readers, especially those who live in industrialized, urban contexts. The negligence of the conditioning emotional timbre, in conjunction with different cultural experiences, helps to explain why some readers have difficulty accepting that these metaphors are meant to praise the girl’s beauty.

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the lover’s embodied memory. Given the diversity and randomness of the chosen images, the reader realizes that what is revealed here is but the tip of an iceberg, thus opening up the borders of this latent landscape within the portrait. The expansive and endless variations of the land aptly express the lover’s voluptuous and ever fresh delight in the beloved’s body. Through metaphor and the compilation of metaphors, the poem thus radiates the lover’s delight, which overflows the poem. With the lover’s particular memory of beauty as paint upon the canvas of his delight, his beloved’s body is painted as/into a visual perfection, which is impossible to stare at directly and floods over the imagination. That is to say, the significance of his assertion of her perfection lies not in its possibility but its impossibility, for the real always falls short of the perfect; nonetheless, the lover’s exuberant admiration makes up for it. Saying “all of you (kullāk) is beautiful” (4:7) is therefore a veiled confession: “I truly love you, truly I do.” Description as found in anatomy is objective discourse. But in a poem that describes in order to praise the beloved, emotion constitutes an ineluctable strand.32 I have so far explored how Song 4:1–7 is born in, and pregnant with, emotional significance. However, a poem that directly addresses the beloved (“you”) would not stop at expressing the lover’s emotion. It seeks to evoke feelings of love from the beloved. The affective intent of descriptive-laudatory poems is well articulated in studies devoted to the Arabic wasfs. Sumi observes that the most _ important aspect of wasf is its capacity to transport the audience into _ a state of tarab, a “strong emotion of joy or grief.”33 Considering the _ genetic similarities, Richard N. Soulen rightly calls for a hermeneutic that is attentive to the affective intent of such descriptive poems: “[a] wasf is a _ celebration of the joys of life and love and at the same time an invitation 34 to share that joy.” Soulen’s comments end here, but may one ask how the reader can actually “share that joy”? Or, how would the readers’ emotional susceptibility facilitate their reception of the poem? The reader’s emotional participation in the poetic significance can be heuristically described through two kinds of poetic experiences, which in practice often blend together: (1) the reader’s experience with the poetic words (“close reading”), and (2) the reader’s experience of the embedded

32 34

33 Cf. Starr, Feeling Beauty, 19. Sumi, Description in Classical Arabic Poetry, 124. Richard N. Soulen, “The wasfs of the Song of Songs and Hermeneutic,” in A Feminist _ Companion to the Song of Songs, ed. Athalya Brenner (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic

Press, 2001), 224.

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emotions (“embodied emulation”).35 The former refers to the reader’s aesthetic experience of the words and their interaction in a poem – sound, color, texture, structure, wordplay, and so on. I will briefly illustrate with soundplays.36 Being an essential element of rhythm, sound is a basic means through which a poem impacts its audience. For instance, as poetic rhythm tightens or relaxes, the reader’s breathing alters.37 Though canonical Hebrew poetry does not demonstrate a consistent use of meter or rhyme, the constraints on the length of the lines38 and local interweaving of soundplays39 are regularly attested. Such is the carefree function of the vowel pattern a-ā-ē in Song 4:3–4: raq-qā-tēk (“your palette”), lǝsam-mā_ tēk (“your veil”), and saw-wāʾ-rēk (“your neck”). Together with the _ rhyming -ēk, this vocalic pattern ends three consecutive lines, which form no thematic unity but a pleasant vocal string. In this somatic experience, the delight of the ear (of the reader) resuscitates that of the eye (of the lover), while the soundplay vocally interlaces two thematic units. Besides soundplays, the reader can also experience poetic materiality through other practices of close reading, like tracing the exquisite compositional structure, or feeling the interactions among the lucid images. In Song 4:1–7, the first stanza of the main body (4:1c–2d) maintains a tamed black-and-white color palette (doves, black goats, and white ewes). It constitutes the perfect foil to the shocking red and the exciting metallic sheen (red thread, pomegranate, and shining bucklers) in 35

36

37

38

39

For more discussion on language and simulation theory, see Benjamin K. Bergen, Louder Than Words: The New Science of How the Mind Makes Meaning (New York: Basic Books, 2012). Sounds and feelings have profound somatic associations that can be traced to the infantile stage of acquiring language (Mutlu Konuk Blasing, Lyric Poetry: The Pain and the Pleasure of Words [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007], 15–16). In the case of the audile aspect of the Song, a cautionary note is in place. The present study is based mainly on the vocalization of the Hebrew text in the MT tradition. It should be acknowledged that the sonority of the Song cannot be completely reconstructed, as neither the Song’s accompanying musical score nor the historical pronunciation of the words has been preserved. As a collection of songs, the Song of Songs was meant to be sung. Modern readers can get a sense of its vocalic artistry by reading aloud. Stephen A. Geller summarizes that Biblical Hebrew poetic lines usually have two to six stresses, which corresponds to each “metric unit” (“commonly taken as “a ‘word’ in the Masoretic graphemic system”), though long terms of five or more syllables may receive two stresses (“Hebrew Prosody and Poetics: I. Biblical,” PEPP 610–11). For further theoretical references, see F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp, “Poetry, Hebrew,” NIDB 4: 552; Michael Patrick O’Connor, Hebrew Verse Structure (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1980), 87. Examples can be easily gleaned from the Song, such as 1:1, 14a; 2:9a, 12a, 15; 5:2b; 8:7.

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the second stanza (4:3a–4d). Such aroused sensations on the reader’s sensibility are not exactly like touching the beloved’s skin, or being caught in her tresses, or succumbing to her glance. But the reader’s personal responses to the lyrical beauty are one of the closest means that the reader has to catch the fire of the beloved’s beauty, in her lover’s eyes. The sensations provoked by the lyrical beauty emulate those of the lover by his beloved’s beauty. Secondly, the reader can empathetically feel the emotions embodied in the poems. One may follow the verbal cues to “see” the said imagery and “feel” its accompanied feelings, as described above. To be sure, such experience requires the reader to have a necessary grasp of the relevant linguistic, cultural, and historical data, in order to reconstruct the implied meaning as faithfully as one can. For instance, which body part does raqqātēk (4:3c) refer to?40 But an even more essential prerequisite of this aspect of poetic experience is the ability to empathize. In David Freedberg and Vittorio Gallese’s recent study on empathy in aesthetic experience, they accredit this ability to “the mirroring mechanisms in the human brain,” namely, “embodied simulation”: Our capacity to pre-rationally make sense of the actions, emotions and sensations of others depends on embodied simulation, a functional mechanism through which the actions, emotions or sensations we see activate our own internal representations of the body states that are associated with these social stimuli, as if we were engaged in a similar action or experiencing a similar emotion or sensation. Activation of the same brain region during first- and third-person experience of actions, emotions and sensations suggests that, as well as explicit cognitive evaluation of social stimuli, there is probably a phylogenetically older mechanism that enables direct experiential understanding of objects and the inner world of others.41

Through this “pre-rational” simulation, the observer viewing a painting activates the brain regions in charge of the same motor movements implied

40

41

There are several opinions as to how to translate raqqâ, which appears twice in the Song (4:3 and 6:7) and three times in Judges (4:21–22, 5:26). First, it is traditionally rendered as “temples” (KJV). Second, and similar to the first option, OG and Vulg. translate the noun with “cheeks.” Thirdly, 4QCanta witnesses mzqntk, which is probably connected to zākān, “chin” (Emanuel Tov, “Introduction to 4QCanta–c,” in Les ‘Petites Grottes’ de Qumran (Planches), ed. M. Baillet, J. T. Milk, and R. De Vaux, DJD XVI [Oxford: Clarendon, 2000], 200). However, 4QCantb also maintains rqtk. Finally, Keel points out that a slit (not slices) in the pomegranate is always present in Egyptian paintings, so he translates raqqâ as “palate” (Othmar Keel, The Song of Songs, trans. F. J. Gaster, CC [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994], 138, 143–46). David Freedberg and Vittorio Gallese, “Motion, Emotion and Empathy in Esthetic Experience,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 11.5 (2007): 198.

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in the painting, as well as the accompanying feelings. While Freedberg and Gallese’s research focuses on paintings and visual experience, their findings can be applied to poetic situation as well. Just as the viewer feels pain at seeing another’s open wound, the audience feels joy when hearing another’s delightful serenade. For instance, the invocation of pomegranate in association to the beloved’s palate (4:3c) activates the cortical network of areas that are related to the sense of taste, along with the delightful feeling of tasting a sweet and juicy pomegranate, or a deep kiss.42 In conjunction, Starr’s aesthetic-neuroscientific model and her close readings of selected poems help one appreciate how poetry moves the reader through emotional rewards that are embedded in aesthetic experiences.43 With words as the media, the poetic body provokes the reader’s feelings through simulating the sound, color, texture, taste, and/or smell upon the reader’s sensibility. It should be acknowledged that, though the words’ provocative power is theoretically the same, the provoked feelings vary depending on the reader’s knowledge, ability, and personal memories. In brief, how is Song 4:1–7 like the beloved’s body? It is through the contact between the two aspects of the poetic media – the materiality of the poem and the emotional susceptibility of the reader. From the reader’s perspective, it is processed through close reading and emotional simulation. When the reader responds to the lyrical body by being transported into the erotic delight that had given birth to and is embedded in this poem, the poetic goal of a descriptive-laudatory love poem is realized.

an ethical sketch of emotion In the previous pages I have emphasized the materiality of poetry and the “prerational” nature of readers’ emotional susceptibility (especially shown in the embodied simulation), because critical reevaluations of the established rational approach are necessary in biblical poetic studies.44

42

43 44

A further example can be found in Song 2:11a–13c. This spring serenade activates the reader’s multiple senses – visual (flowers appearing), audible (turtledoves’ sound heard), olfactory (blooming vines giving off fragrance), and gustatory (olive trees ripening fruits). The lines together evoke a synaesthetic experience of spring wonder and its delight. The accumulated sensual feelings serve to work up the girl’s desire, so that she may accept her lover’s invitation. Starr, Feeling Beauty, 69–100. While concrete factors for each case may vary and be valid, the dominance of a rational handling of biblical poems can be traced to the existing assumption of the field, which derives from, and reinforces, the superiority of rationality in the traditional western dichotomy of reason and emotion. Robert Eaglestone observes that contemporary

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To end this paper on a more holistic note, I would like to offer a brief sketch of emotion, for fear that this paper too would be rationally conceptualized under the dichotomy of emotion versus reason. First, feelings, which consolidate into emotions, are mental ideas. In Damasio’s words, “[a] feeling in essence is an idea – an idea of the body and, even more particularly, an idea of a certain aspect of the body, its interior, in certain circumstances.”45 One feels feelings by taking a mental mapping of one’s body as it responds to external intrigues. Second, the continuity and unity of the body-mind in emotional activities rather require one to go back to a preoriginal synthesis of the body and the mind. Or, to offset the potentially misleading terminology, one may adopt the concepts of “the mental” and “the extended,” as Emmanuel Levinas has suggested, in describing this a priori synthesis. In his late essay “In Memoriam Alphonse de Waelhens,” Levinas ponders the ambiguity of the mind as being conditioned by the body. “The mental” refers to the constituting initiative of the consciousness, while “the extended” describes the constituted thought concretized by the body (including its present state and memory).46 The mental is not the absolute foundation of a human being as an independent entity, as it is constantly influenced by the extended. Before the “I” of “I think” applies its intention to shape the constituted, there is already a synthesis between the constituting and the constituted. Levinas terms this a priori synthesis as sensibility, from which the mental branches out and oftentimes forgets.47 From an ethical perspective, sensibility is where alterity

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47

literary criticism is commonly built upon a deep rational structure: “We rely at a deep level on methodologies and presuppositions taken from the natural sciences, and this includes the natural sciences’ way of understanding truth: the correspondence of a proposition with a state of affairs” (“One and the Same? Ethics, Aesthetics, and Truth,” Poetics Today 25.4 [2004]: 606). One should be reminded, however, that a scientific approach no longer equals a rational and objective approach. Reflecting on the philosophy of science, for instance, some scientists have pointed out that scientific research is conditioned by subjective and sociopolitical factors (Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions [Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1962]; Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958]). Damasio, Looking for Spinoza, 88. Emmanuel Levinas, “Sensibility,” in Ontology and Alterity, ed. Galen A. Johnson and Michael B. Smith, trans. Michael B. Smith (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1990), 61. A historical outline of the idea of sensibility can be found in Andrew Gibson, Postmodernity, Ethics, and the Novel (London: Routledge, 1999), 162.

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leaves traces in me, where the “I” can authentically feel the touch of the other before it is assimilated into thoughts. Translated into poetic experiences, sensibility is performed as the reader’s active reception of, and genuine response to, poetry’s touch. In the case of a laudatory-descriptive poem, it is the platform where impression turns into expression, and where expression is fulfilled in the audience’s provoked emotional state. In short, poetic experience begins not from the consciousness, but from the reader’s sensibility awakened by the alterity of poetry. Since sensibility by definition is beyond rational definition, the above statement cannot be operated or tested within consciousness. But we have emotion. On the one hand, emotion retains the somatic integrity that is rooted in sensibility. On the other, as a mental mapping of the bodily situations, emotion can also be accessed with the mental. Thus, emotion aligns the mental to sensibility, ensuring the authenticity of the reader’s response to the poem. For instance, the exuberant embrace around the main body of Song 4:1–7 (1, 7) sets an amorous tone for the whole poem. When through the lines the implied poetic emotion is resuscitated upon the reader’s sensibility, it functions as the canvas that sustains and corrects the reader’s response to the poem, by continually measuring the latter against the emotional timbre of the poem. Therefore, though parody may seem like a possible explanation to readers who do not agree that the sight of black goats cascading down the slope is beautiful (due to the lack of such personal experience), most readers can take a cue from the embedded emotion and construct it toward the goal of extolment. To conclude, the media of poetry, which include the materiality of poetic language and the susceptibility of human emotion, constitute the site where emotional significance happens, where one is touched as a whole person.

part iv POETRY IN THE PROPHETIC BOOKS

9 Isaiah’s Love Song A Reading of Isaiah 5:1–7 F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp

In Ezek 33:30–33, Yahweh likens the prophet to a singer of “love songs” (šîr ʿăgābîm),1 a skilled musician with a “beautiful voice” performing before a live audience, whose pretty words (cf. Ps 45:2 [ET 45:1]) are heard but not acted on. The Song of Songs, of course, offers the Bible’s most obvious examples of what such love poetry was like. But Isa 5:1–7 remains of interest for a variety of reasons. If genuine to Isaiah of Jerusalem,2 it provides relatively early evidence for the knowledge of love poetry in Judah (ca. eighth century BCE). It also evidences in scope the same relatively brief scale that typifies most love poems from the ancient Near

Oral versions of this essay were presented and discussed at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Society of Biblical Literature (New Brunswick, March 11, 2016), as a part of “Reading Biblical Poetry: A Symposium Celebrating the Publication of Chip Dobbs-Allsopp’s On Biblical Poetry ” (Princeton Theological Seminary, March 15, 2016), at the Bible Colloquium at Vanderbilt Divinity School (March 22, 2016), and as the J. J. M. Roberts Annual Lecture in Old Testament Studies at the Christian Scholar’s Conference (Lipscomb University, June 9, 2016). My thanks to all the organizers of these events for their kind invitations and to the participants for a generous and stimulating reception, which has greatly improved my reading of the poem and the quality of this essay. 1 Regardless of the textual difficulties in this verse, the image of the prophet as a singer of love songs is clear. 2 So H. G. M. Williamson, Isaiah 1–27, ICC (London: T&T Clark, 2006), 1:330–31; J. J. M. Roberts, First Isaiah, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015), 3–4. Further, I assume scribal mediation of various kinds in the process of writing the poem down and ultimately including it in a larger scroll; see Karel van der Toorn, Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007), esp. 173–204. As Williamson notices, the song “is clearly to some extent a self-contained unit” (Isaiah 1–27, 1:324) – extra spacing is used to separate the song from what precedes and follows it in Hebrew manuscripts (Aleppo, B19a, and 1QIsaa).

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East.3 And this Isaianic lampoon seems to trade on the very same awareness of the allure of the lyrical that informs the Ezekiel passage. In the close reading of Isa 5:1–7 that follows, I track the lyricism of Isaiah’s lampoon, situating it against the backdrop of ancient love poetry generally and following its logic of love through to its prophetic end – “justice” (mišpāt) and “righteousness” (sǝdāqâ).4 _ _ *** The genre of Isa 5:1–7 has been much debated,5 but there can be little doubt that it was intended and heard as a riff on a love song, a šîr yǝdîdōt as in Ps 45:1, or even a šîrat dôdîm, as suggested by the Greek rendering of our opening verse in both Alexandrinus and Sinaiticus.6 Why else, for example, reference Yahweh (even if only belatedly and obliquely) as yǝdîdî, “my love” (and dôdî, “my beloved” in MT) in v. 1? Nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible is Yahweh so designated. And the love song conceit is sustained through to the end of the poem – šaʿăšûʿāyw, “his delight” (v. 7) is language of intimacy (cf. Jer 31:20; Ps 119:47; Prov 8:30–31) that

3

4

5

6

Some Egyptian love songs are written on ostraca (e.g., Ostracon Gardiner, 304), and Sumero-Akkadian traditions of “erotic-lyric” are similarly small in scale (e.g., the NeoAssyrian “Love Lyrics of Nabû and Tašmetu” comprises a single tablet, some 56 lines). My construal of the text of Isa 5:1–7 with notes and translation may be found at: https:// ptsem.academia.edu/ChipDobbsAllsopp (last accessed: 2 January 2018). John T. Willis, “The Genre of Isa 5:1–7,” JBL 96 (1977): 337–62; Williamson, Isaiah 1–27, 1:327–28. The rendering of šîr yǝdîdōt “love song” as ōdē hyper tou agapētou (“a song for the beloved”) in G at Ps 45:1 (=LXX Ps 44:1), suggests that GAS in Isa 5:1 (asma tou agapētou, “a song of the beloved”) could reflect the very material reading long posited by Robert Lowth as a conjectural emendation: šîrat dôdîm, “love song” (Isaiah. A New Translation: with a Preliminary Dissertation [London: J. Nichols, 1778]; reprinted in Robert Lowth (1710–1787): The Major Works, ed. David Reibel [London: Routledge, 1995], 2:55–56). MT, 1QIsaa, and all the other versions preserve a different material reading, šyrt dwdy, which most construe after MT šîrat dôdî, “a song of my beloved” (e.g., J. A. Emerton, “The Translation of Isaiah 5, 1,” in The Scriptures and the Scrolls: Studies in Honor of A. S. van der Woude on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday, ed. F. García Martínez, A. Hilhorst, and C. J. Labuschagne, VTSup 49 [Leiden: Brill, 1992], 18–30; Williamson, Isaiah 1–27, 1:317–18). Others advocate vocalizing dwdy as dôday (“my love”), resulting in an explicit reference to “(my) love song” (Roberts, First Isaiah, 70, n. b.; cf. Joseph Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 1–39: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB 19 [New York: Doubleday, 2000], 205–07). But the addition of the possessive suffix in MT (and the other witnesses) looks suspiciously like a explicating gloss to clarify whose love song is being sung, namely the lover’s/farmer’s and not the singer’s. Even so, the phrase gestures to a love song proper, whether šîrat dôday or šîrat dôdîm (cf. Ps 45:1; CTU 1.3 iii.5–6).

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gestures back to the song’s opening vocabulary of love.7 Indeed, once Yahweh is implicated as the lover (of Isaiah and the vineyard) in v. 7, the song (retrospectively) taps into the kind of ideology prominently promoted in rituals and poetry of divine love best exemplified from ancient Mesopotamia, namely, to symbolize “an intimate connection between the divine and human worlds and . . . to secure divine blessings – not only for the king but also for the people.”8 The chief upshot of Isaiah’s little allegory,9 after all, is to reveal just how out of sorts the divine-human relationship is, miśpāh (“bloodshed”) and sǝʿāqâ (“outcry”) instead of _ _ mišpāt (“justice”) and sǝdāqâ (“righteousness,” v. 7). Unlike Egyptian _ _ love poetry or the Bible’s Song of Songs, most of the erotic-lyric tradition in Mesopotamia gets projected mythologically – that is, involving deities instead of humans.10 In the Bible, that dimension of the erotic-lyric tradition is most obviously manifested in prophetic compositions like Hosea 2, where the divine-human relationship is imagined through the marriage metaphor. This tradition is also evident in Isa 5:1–7 – though here (as also in the Song) marriage is nowhere in view. Of course, Isaiah’s performance is anything but that of a straightforward love song (divine or otherwise). He bends the genre to suit his prophetic critique – genres are rarely pure or univocal.11 The poem itself is shaped in a traditional ring structure. The opening and closing sets of lines (vv. 1–2, 7) reference the beloved/farmer in the third person and envelop the two internal stanzas (vv. 3–4, 5–6), each of which begins with wǝʿattâ (“and now”) and is voiced in the first person of the beloved/farmer in MT. The major rhythmic contours of these sections

7 8

9

10

11

Roberts, First Isaiah, 70–74. Martti Nissinen, “Song of Songs and Sacred Marriage,” in Sacred Marriages: The DivineHuman Sexual Metaphor from Sumer to Early Christianity, ed. M. Nissinen and R. Uro (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2008), 202. “Little” referring to its brevity and to the limited nature of its allegory (cf. Williamson, Isaiah 1–27, 1:328). It remains unclear whether the Song was ever read mythologically prior to the Hellenistic period, and nothing in it requires a mythological staging. This contrasts quite markedly with Isa 5:1–7, where the (limited) allegory is made explicit in v. 7. On other swerves away from the love song’s animating centers of focus, see W. G. Lambert, “The Problem of the Love Lyrics,” in Unity and Diversity: Essays in the History, Literature, and Religion of the Ancient Near East, ed. H. Goedicke and J. J. M. Roberts (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975), 98–135; Gwendolyn Leick, Sex and Eroticism in Mesopotamian Literature (London: Routledge, 1994), 239–46.

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get marked among other ways by variation in line length.12 At the seams of the song’s several sections, in particular, shifts back and forth between subtly longer and shorter sets of lines may be observed.13 The whole coheres around a central focus on the upkeep and destruction of the kerem (“vineyard”), the prototypical site of love in ancient Mediterranean love poetry. The term itself is repeated six times (vv. 1 [2x], 3, 4, 5, 7), and at least once in each stanza, which helps stitch the poem together as a single whole. It is joined by other word repetitions (e.g., q-w-h “to wait, hope,” vv. 2, 4, 7; ʿ-ś-h “to do, make,” vv. 2 [2x], 4 [4x], 5) and chains of soundplays (e.g., end-rhyme: ʿănābîm, “grapes” // bǝʾūšîm, “rotten grapes,” vv. 2, 4; internal rhyme: mišpāt, “justice” // miśpāh, _ _ “bloodshed,” sǝdāqâ, “righteousness” // sǝʿāqâ, “outcry”, v. 7). The most _ _ conspicuous of these involves the conjunctive waw, which heads fifteen of the poem’s twenty-nine lines and appears twenty-four times in total.

i The opening couplet appears intentionally ambiguous, even misleading.14 The first line, ʾāšîrâ nāʾ lîdîdî (“let me sing of my love[r]”), on its own may be heard straightforwardly as articulating the intent to sing a song to or about the singer’s lover. It is a most traditional opening to a song (e.g., ʾăšîrâ la-yhwh “Let me sing to Yahweh,” Exod 15:1; cf. Judg 5:3; CTU 1.24 1; BM 47507 40 [= KAR 158 i.7]). The second line provides the object of the singing: “a love song about his vineyard.” Such denominations are not uncommon, either (e.g., “O God, a new song I will sing to you,” Ps 144:9; cf. Ps 59:17 [ET Ps 59:16]; RIH 98/02.2; CTU 1.3 iii.5–6). There are even lines that include both direct and prepositional objects (e.g., “Sing to Yahweh a new song,” Ps 96:1), as well as syntactic elaborations that carry over to a second line (e.g., “How can we sing a song of Yahweh / in a foreign land,” Ps 137:4; cf. Ps 98:1). The misdirection comes in the specification that the love song will be about a vineyard belonging to someone else, the singer’s beloved. That is, the initial

12

13

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Hans Wildberger, Isaiah 1–12, trans. T. H. Trapp, CC (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), 179. For example, the call for judgment (vv. 3–4) begins with a couplet of two longer lines (fourteen and nine syllables, respectively), which contrasts with the mostly short lines of vv. 1–2 (mostly six or seven syllables). Gary Roye Williams, “Frustrated Expectations in Isaiah v 1–7: A Literary Interpretation,” VT 35 (1985): 459–65.

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impression of a singer singing to his own lover requires immediate revision in light of the syntactic elaboration in the second line of the couplet. The love song is now sung at some remove, about another lover and his beloved, or in terms of the allegory, a farmer (who is not Isaiah) and his vineyard.15 Also to be emphasized is Isaiah’s explicit naming of the song as a “love song” šîrat dôdîm (with GAS) and the use of the vocabulary of love in these initial lines. The former perhaps comes most conspicuously into view in contrast to the more allusive reading of MT, šîrat dôdî (literally, “a song of my beloved”), a song, that is, that need not be a literal love song – singing would have accompanied work in the vineyards, especially during the harvest (e.g., Judg 21:20–21; Isa 16:10; Amos 5:17).16 Such an insistent designation is troubled almost immediately by the specification, lǝkarmô, “for/about his vineyard,” since normally lovers (human or divine) are serenaded in ancient love songs, not their vineyards. Indeed, part of the poem’s initial ambiguity is precisely the misfit between its denomination as a love song and its content – especially in the body of the poem (vv. 2–6), which features the cultivation and destruction of a literal vineyard. The use of dôdîm “love” (or dôd in MT) and kerem “vineyard” intentionally employs the vocabulary of love. Compare Song 7:13 – “Let us go early to the vineyards (kǝrāmîm) / . . . there I will give my love (dōday) to you.”17 And the song’s second couplet in Isa 5:1, kerem hāyâ lîdîdî / bǝqeren ben-šāmen (“a vineyard belonged to my lover / on a fertile spur”), continues the traditional vernacular of love, as made clear by a similar line from Song 8:11: “a vineyard belonged to Solomon in BaalHamon.” But in borrowing this image from the traditional repertoire of love poetry, the prophet is also fixing on the primary focus of his (love) song, the vineyard. The term kerem is repeated at the end of the second line and then immediately at the beginning of the third, which effectively slows the movement of the poem for auditory fixation and emphasis. The vineyard is one of the premiere settings for love in ancient Mediterranean

15

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MT’s šîrat dôdî “a song of my beloved” ramifies this redirection. In this light, although the initial misdirection remains, it may be viewed as an explicating gloss (if not simply a good variant). See n. 6 above. Carey Ellen Walsh, The Fruit of the Vine: Viticulture in Ancient Israel, HSM 60 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2000), 181–86. See Williams, “Frustrated Expectations,” 360.

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love songs.18 And on occasion in the Song of Songs, for example, the vineyard may even be metaphorized as a reference to the beloved girl herself or her sexuality (Song 1:6; 2:15). However, there is no similar attempt in these early lines of Isa 5:1–7 to implicate a figurative sense to the vineyard imagery. To the contrary, the prophet literalizes the image, especially in v. 2, where the various tasks of preparing the vineyard are described. He takes a common setting in ancient love poems, a vineyard, and makes it the principal subject of his discourse. Indeed, the chief function of this second couplet is to establish the animating scene for the little poem – a vineyard set amid the fertile terraced hills of Judah (cf. Jer 31:5; Amos 9:13) – and to reveal the lover as a farmer. The vineyard only becomes allegorized (and not personified at all) in v. 7 – “the vineyard (kerem) of Yahweh Sabaoth is the house of Israel.” The language of love in these opening lines accomplishes a number of important things. First, it sets (up) tone and expectations that, given the relatively brief compass of the Song, are never really left behind. The insistence on a love song, the naming of a lover, and the iterative setting in a vineyard – accompanied (in performance) no doubt by a host of nonsemantic cues, such as rhythm, tune, bodily gestures, scale – more than suffice to set the audience’s expectation for love. Second, the lack of an explicit identity for the lover/farmer is tolerated in a genre where anonymity prevails, or where identity is ascribed extratextually (e.g., in the Song the lovers are never truly named). Part of the overall force of Isaiah’s ditty depends on v. 7, where the allegorical bent of the prophet’s pantomime is revealed. That force is created in part by the wait of the intervening lines, which is permitted (without frustration) precisely because there is no expectation for a particular identity in such a (love) song. Finally, in specifying the vineyard as belonging to “Yahweh Sabaoth” in v. 7, the poignancy of Isaiah’s initial naming of his “beloved” as yādîd becomes most fully appreciated: yādîd is used chiefly in the Bible to figure Yahweh’s human adorant (e.g., Deut 33:12; Jer 11:15; Ps 127:2). Here the reversal of that usage is revealing. Not only have Israel and Judah failed in matters of mišpāt, “justice” and sǝdāqâ, “righteousness,” they have also _ _ not acted as a yādîd, “beloved.” That is, the appropriation of the term for Yahweh is telling, in contrast with its very withholding as a designation for Israel and Judah. A final observation about the poem’s opening couplets is their striking euphony. The high /ī/ sound of the hireq yod vowel is repeated nine times 18

See Michael V. Fox, The Song of Songs and the Ancient Egyptian Love Songs (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 285–88.

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over, and the cluster of root and near-root repetitions (esp. y-d-d, d-w-d, š-y-r, and k-r-m), means that shins, reshes, dalets, kaphs, and mems clatter and clash pleasantly. Even the press of original qatl forms – *karm _ (2xs), *qarn, and *šamn, all ending with a nasal consonant (mem or nun), tickles the ear and tongue. In fact, sound turns out to be critical to this song’s larger prosody. While Isa 5:1–7, like almost all other biblical poems, does not systematically orchestrate one kind of sound effect to any specific end, a wide use of various sound patterns nonetheless are prominent, and the poem comes closer than many other biblical poems to using sound to effect a rhythmic norm. Beyond the burbles of sound just noted in v. 1 and what is perhaps the Bible’s most famous bit of rhyming in v. 7 (mišpāt //miśpāh and sǝdāqâ //sǝʿāqâ),19 other plays on sound _ _ _ _ include the following: v. 2 opens with three wayyiqtol forms from two different verbal stems, which are manipulated to effect a repeated cadence (wayʿazzǝqēhû waysaqqǝlēhû / wayyit tāʿēhû, “and he dug it and cleared __ it of stones / and planted”); a splutter of consonance involving alephs and ayins resounds through the opening couplet in v. 5; and line internal rhyming and chiming punctuates vv. 5–7 (e.g., lōʾ yizzāmēr, “will not be pruned” // lōʾ yēʿādēr, “will not be hoed,” v. 6). This is by no means regularized, but the periodicity of some kind of soundplay is sufficient to rival the rhythmic norm of unscripted sounds and to create the anticipation (however nonpredictive) of yet further sonic flourishes. So when the rhyming does come in the poem’s final couplet, auditors are not surprised. Indeed, a great deal of satisfaction accompanies such a closing, as if the poem was heading to this way of ending all along, even though that could not have been known ahead of time and equally satisfactory means of closing the poem are imaginable. The glut of sonic effects also increases the felt density of the language, which enhances aural uptake and ensures a slower, more measured pace to the poem, especially when combined with the semantic opacity of this prophetic song (e.g., who is speaking? who owns the vineyard? why the love theme?).

ii With the exception of the first longish line (10 syllables), v. 2 continues to feature relatively short lines in its three couplets. All are headed by a conjunctive waw, and wayyiqtol forms appear six times, five in lineinitial position. This allows a fairly economical narration of the farmer’s 19

See Edward L. Greenstein, “Wordplay, Hebrew,” ABD 6:969.

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cultivation of his vineyard and also witnesses the impress of prose writing. This is not the only place that Isaiah’s love song betrays a conspicuous debt to a prose style of narration. Two more wayyiqtol forms are present in the song (vv. 4, 7); the phrase šiptû-nāʾ bênî ûbên karmî (“judge _ between me and my vineyard”) in v. 3 appears to be prosaic (see Gen 16:5; Exod 18:16; Judg 11:27);20 and a clump of prose particles in the first couplet of v. 5 (ʾet-, ʾēt, ʾăšer) underscores that couplet’s supporting prose syntax. Prose writing in a Hebrew vernacular script likely dates to the latter part of the ninth century BCE (on present evidence),21 and there is no reason the poetic prophecies of Isaiah of Jerusalem a century later could not bear the imprint of this new form of discourse. If so, note how it has been adapted poetically and acoustically. For example, the opening sequence of wayyiqtol forms in v. 2 has been specifically orchestrated sonically and rhythmically, and eight of the nine wayyiqtols in the poem are in line-initial position. The phrase šiptû-nāʾ bênî ûbên karmî stands out _ among its hundred plus prose parallels by the intentionality of its sonic shaping: the addition of the first person singular suffix on kerem provides the line with internal chiming (bênî // ûbên karmî); karmî (“my vineyard”) is integrated into the patterned repetition of this word throughout the song; and the addition of nāʾ helps tie the opening of this section to the openings of the sections that precede and follow it, where nāʾ also appears (vv. 1, 5). Of course, Isaiah’s prosaic style also benefits his poetry. The run of wayyiqtol forms in v. 2 capitalizes on biblical prose’s economy of narration – one of the chief gains of written narrative prose. In three short couplets, the prophet gestures effectively toward the energetic work of the farmer in his careful cultivation of the vineyard, something that could well have taken a storyteller many more verses to accomplish in the traditional idiom of oral narrative song (with its characteristic epic – lengthy – repetition). This brevity suits the song, which is compact and not interested in a protracted rendering of a farmer’s daily routine; with these brief, formulaic hints, Isaiah’s audience could easily fill in details for themselves from their own practical experience.22 So even while benefiting from written prose’s advantages, the song remains dominantly indexical

20

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This idiom bên . . . ûbên may be poetic only in Ruth 1:17, but it still is under the impress of prose; Judg 5:27, Isa 59:2, and Song 2:2 each have two bêns but not the prose idiom. See F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp, On Biblical Poetry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 298–318. Walsh, Fruit of the Vine, 88.

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in nature and thus bound to tradition, where meaning is supplied as much from outside as inside the text, from knowledge shared and broadly familiar. Isaiah briefly evokes a realistic picture of a vineyard somewhere on the fertile slopes in the (central) hill country of the Cisjordan (bǝqeren ben-šāmen “on a fertile spur”),23 and of the typical tasks undertaken by a local (eighth-century) farmer in the cultivation and upkeep of such a vineyard – choosing an appropriate site, loosening the soil and clearing it of stones, planting the vines, constructing a guard tower and press. Some of what is not mentioned here gets picked up in later lines, such as the need to enclose terraced vineyards with a wall or hedge (v. 5; cf. Num 22:24; Ps 80:13–14 [ET 80:12–13]) and the hoeing and pruning that would constitute part of the routine maintenance of a vineyard (v. 6; cf. Lev 25:3; Isa 18:5; Gezer calendar, l. 6). Indeed, all is neatly telescoped. For example, in the real world of ancient Judah, it could take from three to four years on average before newly planted vines would bear fruit24 – the hyper-literal base meaning for the verbal root q-w-h, “to wait” is to be emphasized in the verb’s threefold use in this love song (vv. 2, 4, 7). The point here is the poem’s insistence on being taken literally in these early lines. What is heard at the surface – a farmer’s litany of typical tasks for keeping (up) a vineyard – is mostly what is intended to be heard. Mostly. This turns out to be the setup for the rest of the song, the (cultivated) ground against which the remainder of the lines will play. The only tickle in Isaiah’s abbreviated farmer’s almanac of vineyard care comes sonically and rhythmically. And these clash a bit, perhaps with the intent to bemuse further. Each couplet in v. 2 is marked by soundplay. The first couplet involves a run of three wayyiqtol forms, each ending with the same object suffix (-ēhû in Tiberian Masoretic vocalization), while the other two couplets feature end-rhyme, -ô // -ô and -îm // -îm. The first two sets of like sounds underscore likeness, whether in the acts of

23

24

Ben-šāmen appears to be a geographical location (cf. Song 8:11) or even a place name (Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 1–39, 206). The Hebrew phrase alludes to the high aesthetics associated with royal or sacral anointing (cf. ʾet-qeren haššemen in 1 Sam 16:13; 1 Kgs 1:39; cf. 1 Sam 16:1; Ps 92:11 [ET 92:10]; CTU 2.72 29–31). The euphonic phrasing underscores this heightened aesthetic (see J. Blake Couey, Reading the Poetry of First Isaiah: The Most Perfect Model of the Prophetic Poetry [London: Oxford, 2015], 162). Walsh (Fruit of the Vine, 93–94) is likely correct in thinking that šāmen metonymically figures the vineyard’s fertility (see Gen 27:28, 39; Num 13:20; Deut 8:8; 32:13; Isa 28:1, 4; Ezek 34:14; Job 29:6). Walsh, Fruit of the Vine, 93, n. 16.

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cultivation (-ēhû) or the site of building (bǝtôkô, “in its midst” // bô, “in it”); in the third set, by contrast, the end-rhyme helps hold together opposites, “grapes” (ʿănābîm) and “rotten grapes” (bǝʾūšîm).25 This high euphony of song is not out of character since, as noted, work in the vineyard would have occasionally been accompanied by work songs. On the other hand, already beginning in the second couplet of v. 1 and persisting through v. 4, the main rhythm is that of the unbalanced couplet, the so-called qînâ meter which traditionally accompanies dirges (e.g., Amos 5:2).26 Although this couplet type is by no means restricted to dirges (e.g., Ps 19:8–10 [ET 19:7–9]), I do not think it “absurd,” as H. G. M. Williamson suggests, that in this instance one implication of this rhythmic choice is to foreshadow the song’s “denouement.”27 Poetic rhythm effects meaning depending on how it is put into play. After the balance of the poem’s initial couplet, the seven unbalanced, qînâ-shaped couplets demand auditorial recognition, especially in a song (šîr), the very antithesis of a dirge (qînâ; cf. Amos 8:10; Lam 5:15). Moreover, each of the couplets that sound the farmer’s failed expectations are unbalanced (the final couplets in vv. 2, 4, and 7) – a rhythmic underscoring of intent, just in case auditors did not make the immediate association. The disappointment of a failed grape crop would have been devastating economically, something truly to be mourned. The second mention of failed expectation even mimes the traditional “why” of lament: “why (maddûaʿ) had I waited to make grapes, / but it made rotten grapes?” (v. 4). Here, as in Job 3:12 and Jer 14:19, for example, there is an intentional miss, a flaw if you will, in the mime. The word maddûaʿ “why” never occurs in psalmic laments, where instead lāmâ/lāmmâ is typical (e.g., Pss 22:2 [ET 22:1]; 42:10 [ET 42:9]; Lam 5:20). So even here Isaiah seems to signal yet further mystification through his word choice. If there is foreshadowing of the poem’s ending, however haunting, it may yet not be quite the expectation anticipated. And finally, this succession of limping, unbalanced couplets leads immediately to the announcement of impending destruction in v. 5 – “let me make known to you / what I am about to do to my vineyard” – which in turn is spelled out to good effect in terms of the undoing of all the farmer’s care-full cultivation (e.g., tearing down of

25

26 27

Bǝʾūšîm is a hapax legomenon. The root has as its basic meaning “to stink” (Exod 7:18; Isa 50:2; Qoh 10:1), so rotten or spoiled grapes are likely in view here (Walsh, Fruit of the Vine, 89). Wildberger, Isaiah 1–12, 179; Williamson, Isaiah 1–27, 1:326. Williamson, Isaiah 1–27, 1:326.

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the terrace wall, ceasing to hoe or prune). Vineyards, because of their value in the lifeworld of the ancient Levant, figure prominently in biblical depictions of destruction (e.g., Deut 28:30, 39; Ps 80:13–14 [ET 80:12–13]). In Isa 16:10 the absence of song that would normally attend vineyard work is even remarked on, and in Amos 5:17, song is replaced with “lamentation” (mispēd). Thus, it is not absurd at all to follow the feel of the rhythmic contours in these early lines toward their ultimate overturning of the love song Isaiah set out initially singing (cf. Amos 8:10; Lam 5:15).

iii In Isa 5:3 the change in line length and the opening wǝʾattâ, “and now” announce the shift to a new movement in Isaiah’s song. This is accompanied by a shift in voice. Now the farmer, adopting the first-person voice as his own, addresses a collection of Judahites. The two central sections of the poem hang together by virtue of this first-person voice and their like beginnings (wǝʾattâ “and now,” vv. 3, 5). The farmer asks his neighbors to “judge” (šiptû) between him and his vineyard. The abrupt introduction _ of forensic language calls attention to itself, especially given the agricultural focus to this point in the poem – not to mention that vineyards, though sometimes the focus of legal theory in antiquity (e.g., Exod 22:4 [ET 22:5]; Lev 19:10), ordinarily were not objectified as a party to a legal dispute.28 The immediate return to language from the earlier stanza in the two following rhetorical questions smooths the brief juridical rupture. But the turbulence is important as it helps the prophetic songster secure his ending when he comes to it. The plays on (the lack of ) “justice” (mišpāt) _ and “righteousness” (sǝdāqâ) in v. 7 (cf. Amos 5:7, 24), heard after the _ call to “judge” in v. 5 (šiptû), are all the more satisfying for having been _ briefly anticipated (cf. Deut 1:16; Isa 11:4; Prov 31:9). This brief eruption of forensic coloring also sharpens (at least momentarily) the image of the two collectives addressed, framing the yôšēb yǝrûšālayim “inhabitants of Jerusalem” and ʾîš yǝhûdâ “people of Judah” more specifically as the community elders and other elites (e.g., Isa 3:14), who would normally sit in judgment and deliberation at the city gate (e.g., Deut 22:13–21; 2 Sam 15:2; Isa 29:21; Job 31:21)29 – an image that shimmers again across the

28 29

See Willis, “Genre,” 350. Cf. Stephen C. Russell, “Gate and Town in 2 Samuel 15:1–5: Collective Politics and Absalom’s Strategy,” JAH 3 (2015): 2–21.

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surface of the poem in v. 7, as precisely the same group is chiefly responsible for maintaining social justice in ancient Judah.30 The content words of the two rhetorical questions in v. 4 are all repeated from earlier lines (ʿăśôt, “do”; karmî, “my vineyard”; qiwwîtî, “I expected”; ʿănābîm, “grapes”; etc.) This tightens the stanza’s connection both with what precedes and with what follows, as some of these words (the root ʿ-ś-h, kerem) feature again in the opening couplet of the next stanza (vv. 5–6). As important, the iteration in v. 4 buttresses the picture of care already sketched, especially the fourfold repetition of ʿ-ś-h “to make, do” and the close version of the failed expectation couplet in v. 2. The first question in v. 4 points up the summative and indexical nature of the song’s initial depiction of vineyard cultivation: “what more was there to do for my vineyard / that I did not do in it?” Other pertinent acts of care could be easily formulated (e.g., active guarding, Isa 27:3; Song 1:6), and some are even referenced in later lines (e.g., building a protective wall, v. 5). But a more inclusive rendering is unnecessary, as auditors could easily fill in the details of agricultural care from the stereotyped depiction, and thus would give ready assent to the central thrust of the prophet’s question – yes, no more could have been done. Indeed, the threefold repetition of ʿ-ś-h in v. 4, as voiced by the farmer, underscores the vigor of his effort – “I did . . . did . . . did.” It is the break in the pattern in the fourth repetition of the root that locates the source of disappointment: “but it (i.e., the kerem) made (or ‘did,’ wayyaʿaś) rotten grapes” (v. 4).31 This last line is repeated verbatim from the end of v. 2, but in that earlier rendition the intended subject (farmer or vineyard) is not made explicit. With the farmer’s adoption of the first-person voice in vv. 3–4, that ambiguity is resolved. Repetition and variation are at the heart of so much of this poem.

iv The song makes its penultimate turn in vv. 5–6, signaled lexically by a second wǝʾattâ (“and now”) and rhythmically by a change to more 30

31

See Moshe Weinfeld, “‘Justice and Righteousness’ in Ancient Israel against the Background of ‘Social Reforms’ in the ancient Near East” in Mesopotamien und seine Nachbarn: politische und kulturelle Wechselbeziehungen im alten Vorderasien vom 4. bis 1. Jahrtausend v. Chr. (XXV. Rencontre assyriologique internationale Berlin, 3. bis 7. Juli 1978), ed. H. J. Nissen and J. Renger (Berlin: Reimer, 1987), 491–519. Williamson (Isaiah 1–27, 1:339–40) appreciates the sevenfold repetition of the root in vv. 2–5.

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balanced couplets (and one triplet). Some initial word repetition from earlier stanzas in v. 5 (wǝʿattâ, nāʾ, ʿ-ś-h, kerem) eases the transition and continues to build coherence into the song. Here, too, another outbreak of prosiness is encountered. In the main, the clutter of prose particles (ʾet-, ʾēt, ʾăšer) and the syntactic expansion slow the tempo down as a way of setting up and making plain the announcement of what the farmer is now about to “do” (ʿōśeh) to his vineyard. And as in the other instances, the prose touches are poeticized. Here note the alliteration of alephs and ayins, the staging of ʾôdîʿâ-nāʾ (“I will tell you”) so that it chimes with ʾāšîrâ nnāʾ (“I will sing”) from the opening line (v. 1), and the use of the markers of direct object (ʾet-, ʾēt) to accentuate line structure. The two couplets and one triplet that follow describe the farmer’s decultivation of his vineyard. These lines in the farmer’s voice answer to and oppose the three couplets in v. 2, where the farmer’s labors (of love) on behalf of his vineyard were first narrated. In fact, these lines appear as the material undoing of those earlier lines. The formal elegance of three unbalanced, qînâ-shaped couplets in v. 2 – with each line headed by a conjunctive waw and the wayyiqtol form repeated six times over – is completely unraveled in vv. 5–6. The run of couplets this time is exploded by the song’s lone triplet (v. 6); none of the line groupings are patterned alike; and the dominantly parallelistic strategy in v. 2 gives way to the song’s most strikingly enjambed couplet: “and the clouds I will command / from raining upon it rain” (v. 6). The nonnormative, tortured syntax here seems to be the final ruining of the smooth run of wayyiqtols in the earlier lines.32 And just to underscore the point, waʾăšîtēhû, “I will make it” (v. 6) mimes the sonic pattern of the poem’s first three wayyiqtols (wayʿazzǝqēhû, “he dug it,” waysaqqǝlēhû, “he cleared it of stones,” wayyit tāʿēhû, “he planted it,” v. 2), only now as an act of unmaking, of __ decultivation (bātâ, “wasteland”).33 The semantics follow suit. In place of the digging, clearing, planting, and building of cultivation, the farmer announces his intention to destroy the vineyard’s hedge/wall, to cease hoeing and pruning (the routine tasks of care demanded by grape growing, cf. Gezer Calendar, l. 6), and even to

32

33

The stanza starts out with the song’s other pronounced bit of enjambment (v. 5), forming a nice inclusio that gives formal shape to this section. Bātâ is a hapax legomenon (cf. MH bātâ, “destruction”) with no obvious cognates. The sense seems clear enough from context – waste, ruin, desolation, destruction (cf. Syr., Vulg.).

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withhold the life-giving rain that all agriculture depended on in this part of the world. This last, like the positioning of the vineyard as a party to a legal dispute, jars a bit; this is no ordinary farmer. These lines also feature sound- and wordplay: hāsēr, “removing” // bāʿēr, “devoured,” lōʾ yizzāmēr, “not be pruned” // lōʾ yēʿādēr, “not be hoed,” and mēhamtîr, “rain” _ // mātār, “rain.” These prepare auditors for the song’s final punch lines, _ which depend on line-internal rhyming (mišpāt, “justice” // miśpāh, _ _ “bloodshed” and sǝdāqâ, “righteousness” // sǝʿāqâ, “outcry,” v. 7). Note _ _ also the alliterative pairing šāmîr wāšāyit (“thorns and thistles”) and the sequence wǝʿālâ . . . wǝʿal . . . ʿālāyw (“and upon it . . . and upon . . . upon it”) punctuating the last three lines in v. 6.

v The song’s concluding movement in v. 7 is marked initially by kî (“for, because”) – a particle that commonly appears at the end of biblical poems and sections of poems (e.g., Isa 1:20; Amos 4:13; Ps 133:3; Job 3:10) – and yet another change in line length, shifting to slightly longer lines (nine to eleven syllables) than that which typifies the immediately preceding stanza (v. 6: seven to nine syllables). The return to the third-person perspective of the song’s beginning (vv. 1–2) completes a version of the ring structure that so often contains and thus closes traditional songs. And then there is the change-up to verbless clauses. Most of the poem’s clauses to this point consist of verbal predicates – often involving finite verb forms. However, at the poem’s end in v. 7, the identity of the players in the allegory are finally revealed in a couplet consisting of verbless clauses: kî kerem yhwh sǝbāʾôt bêt yiśrāʾēl wǝʾîš yǝhûdâ nǝ_taʿ šaʿăšûʿāyw _ For the vineyard of Yahweh Sabaoth (is) the house of Israel and the people of Judah (are) the planting of his delight.

The actional flow of verbal clauses momentarily stops in the stasis created by the two verbless clauses for the allegory’s unveiling. The final couplet is set up verbally (wayqaw, “and he waited/hoped,” echoing the ends of the first two stanzas in vv. 2, 4), but it too derives its punch through the contrasting verbless clauses at the ends of its two lines. Here the stasis underscores the damning disappointment and contrary reality, quite literally stopping the poem. This last bit of justly celebrated rhyming helps to close the poem forcefully, emphatically:

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wayqaw lǝmišpāt wǝhinnê miśpāh _ lisdāqâ wǝhinnê _sǝʿāqâ _ _ He hoped for justice but instead there was bloodshed, for righteousness but instead there was outcry. (Isa 5:7)

The missed expectations are mimed sonically and formally in the consonantal mismatches in the pairs mišpāt //miśpāh and sǝdāqâ //sǝʿāqâ, while _ _ _ _ the rhyming holds the pairs together so that auditors can hear (and readers see)34 the mismatch. As it has been throughout the poem, the vineyard is the main focus of the allegorical move here at poem’s end. The citizenry of Israel and Judah – especially the elders and ruling elites – now is shifted from judge and onlooker (vv. 3, 5) to participant and target, as a consequence of being identified as the vineyard and the “planting” of Yahweh’s “delight” in v. 7. The poetics work to catch the citizenry out, to reveal in the language of the song the prevalence of miśpāh, “bloodshed” and sǝʿāqâ, _ _ “outcry” where there should be mišpāt, “justice” and sǝdāqâ, “righteous_ _ ness.” By contrast, the allegorization of Yahweh Sabaoth as lover and farmer is not scripted in the same way at the surface of the poem, but is more oblique. Ancient allegories frequently make explicit their participants (e.g., Ezek 23:4), but here there is no corresponding identification of Yahweh as farmer or lover (contrast Isa 27:3: “I Yahweh am its keeper”). Indeed, the farmer’s assumption of the divine powers to control the rain in v. 6 (see Job 38:25–28) suggests that the punch at poem’s end is not principally fixated on Yahweh. That is, the allegorizing in this poem is mainly limited and local and not wholesale.35 The slight unbalance in the length of lines in the final couplet (four words // three words) alludes to the qînâ rhythm that shaped vv. 2–4. This adds to the poem’s ending an undertone of mourning. But the prophets 34

35

The word miśpāh (glossed as “bloodshed”) is another hapax legomenon (cf. Arab. safaha, “to pour _out, shed”; saffāh, “shedder of blood, murderer”; Wildberger, Isaiah _ _ 1–12, 185). As with bǝʾûšîm in vv. 2 and 4, miśpāh may be a made-up rhyme word. _ Indeed, if its root derives from *s-p-h (cf. mispahat, “skin rash,” sappahat, “scab”), then _ _ h in Isa 3:17). The spelling _ perhaps even the spelling has been altered (cf. śippa with a sin _ graphically enhances and underscores the aural play – which implies an anticipation of readers and not just listeners for this text. Thus Ronald E. Clements speaks appropriately of “allegorical features” (Isaiah 1–39, NCBC [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980], 56; cf. Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 1–39, 207; Couey, Reading the Poetry of First Isaiah, 162, n. 89; Jeremy Schipper, Parables and Conflict in the Hebrew Bible [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009], 112).

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were fond of using the dirge (qînâ) ironically as a kind of condemnatory critique that proclaims the impending downfall of some person or polity, as in Ezekiel’s dirge over the king of Tyre (Ezek 27:1–36) or in Isaiah’s own māšāl (cum dirge) over the king of Babylon (Isa 14:3–23; see also Isa 47:1–15; Amos 5:1–3). So there is also a bite to Isaiah’s lament over the lack of mišpāt and sǝdāqâ. Indeed, the whole point of the little ditty is _ _ simple: to underscore this lack. Whatever specificity might accompany the terms miśpāh and sǝʿāqâ – the first is a hapax legomenon whose etymol_ _ ogy has yet to be fully unraveled and the second a general cry of despair or suffering (e.g., Exod 3:9; Ps 9:13 [ET 9:12]; Job 27:9) – they chiefly mark (sonically and formally) a rupture in the unquestioned and thus traditional norms of mišpāt, “justice” and sǝdāqâ, “righteousness,” _ _ which are paired more than forty times in the Bible (e.g., Gen 18:19; 2 Sam 8:15; Isa 1:27; Ps 72:1–2; cf. KAI 4.6–7). This is yet another point at which this poem makes plain its extratextual appeal to shared experience and tradition. The song does not so much explicate the wrongs that have generated miśpāh and sǝʿāqâ as expose and name them for what every_ _ body already knows them to be, namely, not mišpāt and not sǝdāqâ. _ _ Indeed, refusing a fifth iteration of the verb ʿ-ś-h, “to do, make” only adumbrates the complaint, a figural erasure of the traditional exhortation to do “justice” and “righteousness” (esp. Gen 18:19; Jer 22:3; Pss 99:4; 119:121; Prov 21:3; 2 Chron 9:8).36 At stake here is the very foundation of the cultured world – or better, the cultivated world (see Gen 2:8) – as the ancients knew it. The gods were responsible for establishing the foundations of the earth (Ps 102:26 [ET 102:25]; Job 38:4), and the lack of justice on earth could threaten to topple those foundations (Amos 8:4–8; Ps 82:5). Ancient love songs were sung to many ends, including securing divine blessing and ensuring fecundity and human flourishing. The latter is most obviously at issue in the so-called sacred marriage texts from ancient Mesopotamia. That the erotic was also an appropriate vernacular means for giving expression to similar themes in ancient Israel and Judah (and Persian period Yehud) is indicated by texts such as Hosea 2, Jer 3:1–5, Ezekiel 16 and 23, and Isaiah 54.37 This suggests that Isaiah’s choice to riff on a love song likely 36

37

G, Vulg., and Tg. resort to periphrastic renderings that supply the expected idiom that MT (and 1QIsaa) so artfully resists, thus ramifying the erasure itself and the damning critique it reveals. David M. Carr (The Erotic Word: Sexuality, Spirituality, and the Bible [New York: Oxford University Press, 2003], 65–72) rightly reads these texts together with Isa 5:1–7, sensing their broad literary kinship.

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was intended to trade on these extratextual associations of the genre all along. That is, the final upshot of the small poem is to point up the failure to maintain traditional norms of justice and right-ness in Israel and Judah, a theme that was commonly enough inflected in the language of love. In the Bible (especially in the prophets), the staging of the erotic mythologically (i.e., involving Yahweh) is usually negative – at times even pornographic and/or misogynistic – and in service of critique. Yahweh is imagined as the jealous and wronged husband. Nowhere in Isa 5:1–7 is divine love elaborated narratively. No personification is ever evoked. There is no mention of marriage, sex, or adultery. The thematic touch is light and weighted toward the beginning of the short song. Nevertheless, the love song genre is entirely appropriate as a means to expose the rift in the divine-human relationship that emerges when basic norms of social justice falter. *** In his assessment of the form of Isa 5:1–7, Hans Wildberger reports that “it is frequently suggested that Isaiah wants to get the attention of his listeners by playing the part of a popular singer.”38 While Wildberger never totally disavows this idea, he seems to distance his own thinking from it, ultimately stressing the song’s formal resemblances to an “accusation speech” – something, one suspects, felt to be just a bit more serious than a simple love ditty.39 For me, however, Wildberger’s initial impression seems spot on. I do think Isaiah is posing (in a way) as a popular singer and spoofing a love song. Prophets were traditional performers, of whom we may presume a range of performative competencies (see 1 Kgs 20:35–43). This includes singing, which is specifically the image (however unflattering) in Ezek 33:32.40 And the repurposing of (verbal) art forms to different ends – here a love song – is well attested already in antiquity (e.g., the mock dirge in Isa 14:3–23; the Joban poet’s parody of Deut 32 in Job 12:7–841). As I have tried to indicate above, the vernacular of love in antiquity could be put to various uses, including critique, and staged

38 39 40

41

Wildberger, Isaiah 1–12, 177. Wildberger, Isaiah 1–12, 178; cf. Carr, Erotic Word, 60. Dennis Pardee, The Ugaritic Texts and the Origins of West Semitic Literary Composition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 123. Edward L. Greenstein, “Parody as a Challenge to Tradition: The Use of Deuteronomy 32 in the Book of Job” in Reading Job Intertextually, ed. K. J. Dell and W. Kynes, JSOTSup 574 (New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2012), 66–78.

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mythologically, even in Israel and Judah. Thus Isaiah’s pose here, as a singer of love songs, is not at all innocent. In fact, the lyric medium of the love song is itself crucial to Isaiah’s exposé of the breakdown in mišpāt _ and sǝdāqâ. How he does it – as much through word- and soundplay, _ manipulation of rhythm, line-structure and form, as through semantics – is very much to point. The love song, like many of the Bible’s other nonnarrative poetic genres, is more than its thematic bits. In the end, then, Isaiah’s love song in behest of beloved divinity and about a muchloved vineyard proves to be a most congenial vehicle for his prophetic critique.

10 Poetry, Language, and Statecraft in Isaiah 18 J. Blake Couey

Mario Cuomo, the former governor of New York, famously equated governing with prose, and indeed, statecraft would seem to have little room for poetry in the contemporary world. By contrast, as depicted in the Hebrew Bible, prophetic poetry provided a lively medium for political discourse in antiquity, and a brief, enigmatic poem in Isa 18:1–6 reflects the international affairs of the southern Levant in the late eighth century BCE. The kingdom of Cush, located in modern Sudan, had seized control of its northern neighbor and one-time overlord Egypt. It subsequently sought alliances with small neighboring kingdoms, including the Philistines and Judah, in an unsuccessful attempt to resist Assyrian domination. Understood against this setting, the poem in Isa 18 recreates a public performance by the prophet Isaiah of Jerusalem that sought to dissuade Judah from joining forces with Cush.1 One should perhaps imagine the Some ideas in this chapter appeared previously in J. Blake Couey, Reading the Poetry of First Isaiah: The Most Perfect Model of the Prophetic Poetry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 103–05, 157–61; and Couey, “Philology and Biblical Hebrew Poetry” (paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the SBL, Baltimore, MD, November 25, 2013). My thinking on certain matters has changed since these works. A preliminary version of this chapter was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Upper Midwest Regional SBL in St. Paul, MN, on April 1, 2017. I am grateful to my co-editor Elaine T. James for her astute feedback and to Jeremy Hutton and Jeremy Schipper for their helpful observations at various points. 1 So most commentators, including Joseph Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 1–39: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB 19 (New York: Doubleday, 2000), 310; Ronald E. Clements, Isaiah 1–39, NCB (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980), 163; George Buchanan Gray, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Isaiah I–XXVII, ICC (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1912), 311, 313; Hans Wildberger, Isaiah 13–27, trans. Thomas H. Trapp, CC (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997), 219, 225–26; J. J. M. Roberts,

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performance being accompanied by a symbolic action like that described in Isa 20, in which the prophet paraded naked through the streets of Jerusalem to portend the humiliating treatment of defeated Cushites by the victorious Assyrians (compare Jer 27:1–11). The poem offers no direct political advice, but it casts the mighty African kingdom as an ineffective ally by ordering its envoys to return home and describing its catastrophic defeat in battle, all the while subversively evoking its perceived military prowess. Whatever its possible historical subject, however, Isa 18:1–6 remains a poem and is thus also a self-focused linguistic creation. Literary critic Terry Eagleton describes this character of poetry: “Poetry is language in which the signified or meaning is the whole process of signification itself. It is thus always at some level language which is about itself.”2 Despite its contemporary theoretical grounding, Eagleton’s account fits Isaiah’s ancient poem well. As I will show, language is a chief concern of the poem, which uses diction to evoke the sounds of the Egyptian language. Depending on how one interprets an obscure word in v. 2, it may refer explicitly to the Cushites’ foreign language. The poem also showcases what language can do. Its prominent use of soundplay reveals a concern for aspects of language beyond the basic meanings of words, even as its semantic content is remarkably dense, exploiting multiple associations of words and employing novel imagery. It also uses a high number of rare terms for a relatively short composition. Even the organization of these features is expressive, contributing to the poem’s distinctive rhythm and movement. This chapter offers a reading of Isa 18:1–6 that seeks to account for these features as indispensable components of its meaningfulness, rather than curiosities to be explained away. Although not without its share of conventional language, the poem is one of the most “verbally inventive,” to use Eagleton’s phrase, in the Hebrew Bible.3

2

3

First Isaiah, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015), 250. I do not claim that Isa 18 contains the exact words spoken by the prophet on this occasion, only that it preserves some memory of the performance and thus can be fruitfully read against this background. For very different construals, see Otto Kaiser, Isaiah 13–39: A Commentary, trans. R. A. Wilson, OTL (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1974), 92–95; Christopher R. Seitz, Isaiah 1–39, IBC (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1993), 147–49. Terry Eagleton, How to Read a Poem (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2012), 21, emphasis original. Eagleton, How to Read a Poem, 25, 41–47.

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isaiah 18:1–6 as poetry The following translation of Isa 18:1–6 attempts, however inelegantly, to capture its most important features. Justification for particular translation choices will be provided in the reading of the poem. 1a 1b

Hey, land of winged bugs/boats, which is beyond the rivers of Cush,

2a 2b

that sends diplomats by sea and by papyrus vessel on the waters:

2c 2d 2e 2f 2g

Go, swift messengers, to a nation stretched and smoothed, to a people feared from there to yonder, a nation of babbling and trampling, whose land rivers divide.

3a 3b 3c

All world inhabitants and earth dwellers: when a standard is raised on the mountains, look! and when a trumpet is sounded, listen!

4a 4b

For thus YHWH said to me: “I will calmly watch in my secure abode,

4c 4d

like bright heat above light, like a mist cloud at harvest time.”

5a 5b

For before harvest, when flowering is complete, and a blossom becomes a ripening grape,

5c 5d

then one will cut the shoots with pruning hooks, and the sprouts one will remove, rip off.

6a 6b

They’ll be left together for the vultures of the mountain, and for the beasts of the land.

6c 6d

And the vultures will winter upon it, and all of the beasts of the land will summer upon it.

Before proceeding, some discussion of the poetic character of the text is necessary. Neither the Masoretic Text (MT) nor the Qumran scrolls that preserve these verses (1QIsaa, 4QIsab) arrange them in one of the layouts sometimes used for poetry.4 The text contains several grammatical particles that are more common in biblical prose than poetry, such as the definite article ha-, the relative particle ʾăšer, and the direct-object marker ʾet.

4

On these layouts, see F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp, On Biblical Poetry (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 29–42.

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Other factors, however, strongly suggest that these verses are poetry. Most comparable texts in Isaiah are poetic, including other oracles against foreign nations in chapters 13–23 and other units introduced by hôy (“hey”; 5:8; 10:1, 5; 28:1; etc.). The presence of some so-called prose particles is not unexpected in prophetic poetry.5 Most tellingly, syntactic breaks consistently divide Isa 18:1–6 into three- to five-word segments, consistent with the typical line lengths in biblical poems but contrasting with the more variably sized units in prose.6 This is not true of v. 7, a long clause with typical prose word order that resists division into lines, apart from the material it repeats from v. 2d–g. This fact may support the common judgment that the verse is a later addition. Regardless of its origins, its prose character and the closural effects of v. 6 justify treating it as an epilogue to the poem, so I do not include it in my reading. Structurally, the poem can be divided into two sections of twelve lines each, vv. 1–3 and vv. 4–6. The first section contains three vocatives, respectively addressing the “land of winged bugs/boats” (v. 1a), “swift messengers” (v. 2c), and “world inhabitants and earth dwellers” (v. 3a). The second section constitutes the prophetic oracle proper (“thus YHWH said,” v. 4a). Providing a structural bridge across the juncture between the sections, vv. 3 and 4 each contain parallel lines beginning with the k- prefix (“when, like”). The repetition of ʾeres (“land, earth”) through_ out the poem provides additional overarching stability (vv. 1a, 2g, 3a, 6b, 6d). Given the ubiquity of the couplet in much Biblical Hebrew poetry, the first section is notable for its atypical line groupings, including an unusually long group of five lines in v. 2c–g and a triplet in v. 3. By contrast, the second section consists entirely of couplets, all but the first of which display parallelism.

“go, swift messengers” The first section of the poem uses a variety of strategies to portray Cush as remote, enigmatic, and powerful. Two of the poem’s most prominent features, consonantal repetition and unusual diction, appear already in its

5

6

David Noel Freedman, “Another Look at Biblical Hebrew Poetry,” in Directions in Biblical Hebrew Poetry, ed. Elaine R. Follis, JSOTSup 40 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1987), 15–16; see also Dobbs-Allsopp, On Biblical Poetry, 283–84. See Dobbs-Allsopp, On Biblical Poetry, 49–51; Stephen A. Geller, “Hebrew Prosody and Poetics: I. Biblical,” PEPP 610–11.

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first line: “Hey, land of winged bugs/boats!”7 The recurring /ts/ and /l/ sounds in ʾeres (“land”) and silsal attract attention,8 even as the phrase _ _ _ resists easy understanding due to the obscurity of the word silsal. The _ _ most commonly proposed meanings for the term are insects or boats.9 Initially, an ancient reader or hearer might more naturally associate “wings” with insects, but then the nautical references in v. 2a–b encourage reconsideration of the term’s meaning while it is still fresh in the audience’s mind. Double entendre seems likely.10 As a term for an insect, silsal especially brings to mind the creature’s sound. The repeated con_ _ sonants are onomatopoeic, and the word likely comes from the root s-l-l, which refers to a high-pitched ringing (1 Sam 3:11; 2 Kgs 21:12; _ Jer 19:3). The reference to wings leads the audience to imagine the creature in flight. In this way, the poem creates an initial impression of a land filled with piercing noise and frenetic motion. It also contains a hint of threat. Deuteronomy 28:42 warns of crop destruction by this creature, and insects are a frequent metaphor for invading armies in ancient texts (e.g., Jer 51:14, 27; Nah 3:15–17; CTU 1.14 ii.50–iii.1, iv.29–31). These vivid impressions precede the explicit identification of the land in question, which comes at the end of the second line. The designation “beyond the rivers of Cush” refers to the Nile and its major tributaries, which lie south of the traditional boundary between Egypt and Cush. Although it is an awkward designation for Cush itself, the phrase emphasizes its distant location, as in its other occurrence in Zeph 3:10, and it

7

8

9

10

On the vocative character of hôy (“hey!”), see Gray, Isaiah I–XXVII, 309; Delbert R. Hillers, “Hôy and Hôy-Oracles: A Neglected Semantic Aspect,” in Poets before Homer: Collected Essays on Ancient Literature, ed. F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2015), 288–92; Roberts, First Isaiah, 77. Marta Høyland Lavik, A People Tall and Smooth-Skinned: The Rhetoric of Isaiah 18, VTSup 112 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 60, 84. As a term for an insect, silsal would either be the construct form of sǝlāsal, a kind of locust _ _ word for the sound of an insect (compare _ Symmachus, _ in Deut 28:42, or a related Vulg.); see Willem A. M. Beuken, Jesaja 13–27, trans. Ulrich Berges, HThKAT (Freidburg: Herder, 2007), 147; Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 1–39, 308; Gray, Isaiah I–XXVII, 315. The meaning “boat” is supported by the renderings of LXX, Tg., and Theodotion, and the possible Imperial Aramaic cognate slslʾ (TAD C3.8); see Clements, Isaiah 1–39, 164; John _ _ the Eighth Century Prophet: His Times and His H. Hayes and Stuart A. Irvine, Isaiah Preaching (Nashville: Abingdon, 1987), 254; Roberts, First Isaiah, 249; Wildberger, Isaiah 13–27, 206–07. See, more generally, J. J. M. Roberts, “Double Entendre in First Isaiah,” CBQ 54 (1992): 39–48.

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reflects an ancient association of Cush with rivers (see Gen 2:13).11 Once the identity of the nation becomes clear, the repeated consonants in silsal _ _ retrospectively add foreign color by evoking the sound of the Egyptian 12 language, in which reduplication occurs frequently. Additional reduplicated terms in vv. 2 and 5 will extend this effect. It is not uncommon for prophecies about foreign nations – especially in Isaiah – to include linguistic elements that gesture toward the language of the nation under discussion, a phenomenon that has been termed “addressee switching.”13 The use of the Egyptian loanword gōmeʾ (“papyrus”) in v. 2b is another example.14 In addition to providing a touch of verisimilitude to the poem’s depiction of Cush, the device emphasizes the otherness of the nation by focusing attention on their language. The commotion of insects gives way to the more purposeful, but no less energetic, motions of diplomacy in v. 2a–b: “that sends diplomats by sea / and by papyrus vessel on the waters.” As discussed above, the references to seafaring indicate that silsal could refer to ships as well as insects in _ _ v. 1a. Each of the poem’s first four lines would then contain a reference to water or watercraft: “winged boats” (v. 1a), “rivers” (v. 1b), “sea” (v. 2a), and “papyrus vessels” and “water” (v. 2b). The phrases “winged boat” and “papyrus vessel” are examples of the poem’s creative language. “Wings” are a novel metaphor for sails, although the use of kānāp to designate part of a cloth garment offers some precedent (Num 15:38; Hag 2:12; Ruth 3:9), and only here does kǝlî (“container, instrument”) mean “boat” in the Hebrew Bible. The poem’s eschewal of more common terms for watercraft (e.g., ʾŏnîyâ, sî) emphasizes the exoticness of these ships, _ while the qualifiers “winged” and “papyrus” suggest their lightness and quickness (see Job 9:26), which reinforces Cush’s great distance away. 11

12

13

14

Csaba Balogh, The Stele of YHWH in Egypt: The Prophecies of Isaiah 18–20 concerning Egypt and Kush, Oudtestamentische Studiën 60 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 163–64; Roberts, First Isaiah, 249. Meir Lubetski and Claire Gottlieb, “Isaiah 18: The Egyptian Nexus,” in Boundaries of the Ancient Near Eastern World: A Tribute to Cyrus H. Gordon, ed. Meir Lubetski, Claire Gottlieb, and Sharon Keller, JSOTSup 273 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), 368–69, citing Alan H. Gardiner, Egyptian Grammar, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Griffith Institute, 1957), 210, 216–77. Their argument that Isa 18 was mutually intelligible both to speakers of Hebrew and to those of Egyptian goes much farther than the evidence allows. Gary A. Rendsburg, “Addressee Switching,” Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics, ed. Geoffrey Khan (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 1:34–35. Rendsburg does not discuss Isa 18. Yoshiyuki Muchiki, Egyptian Proper Names and Loanwords in North-West Semitic, SBLDS 173 (Atlanta: SBL Press, 1999), 241–42.

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Some of the references to water also have mythological overtones. The pair nāhār/yām (“river”/“sea”) has such connotations elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible (Isa 50:2; Jon 2:4 [ET 2:3]; Pss 24:2; 66:6), and it recalls the dual names for the enemy of the deity Baal in Ugaritic myth (CTU 1.2 i.26, 30; iv. 14–17, 22, 27; etc.). This allusive potential may explain why the poem uses these otherwise common terms instead of directly naming the Nile. The phrase ʿal-pǝnê-mayim (“on the waters”) also occurs in mythological contexts in Gen 1:2, Gen 7:18, and Job 26:10. The next group of lines opens with a command in Isa 18:2c, presumably in the voice of the prophet: “Go, swift messengers” (lǝkû malʾākîm qallîm). Euphony enhances the persuasiveness of the command; note the consonantal repetition (/l/, /k/ or /q/) and rhyme.15 The lack of explicit identification for these messengers continues the poem’s characteristic obliqueness. Still, it makes sense to identify them with the “diplomats” in v. 2a.16 The adjective “swift” matches the earlier emphasis on the lightness of their boats, and sîr (“diplomat”) and malʾāk (“messenger”) _ appear in parallel lines in Prov 13:17. The people to whom the messengers are commanded to go in v. 2d–g are not named, either, but these lines most likely depict the Cushites themselves.17 The description of the people as tall (v. 2d) is consistent with other ancient accounts (Isa 45:14; Herodotus, Histories, 3.20), and v. 2g repeats the terms “land” and “rivers” from v. 1, which refers to Cush. On this understanding, Isaiah dismisses the overtures of the Cushite diplomats and orders them to return home, ostensibly to share his prophetic word with their royal court (see Jer 27:3). The command perhaps implies the presence of Cushite emissaries in Jerusalem, whether in the historical circumstances remembered in the poem or the literary world that it creates.18 Alternatively and perhaps more dramatically, we could take vv. 1–2 as a visionary

15 16

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Høyland Lavik, People Tall and Smooth-Skinned, 84. Beuken, Jesaja 13–27, 165; Paul M. Cook, A Sign and a Wonder: The Redactional Formation of Isaiah 18–20, VTSup 147 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 59–60; Gray, Isaiah I–XXVII, 308; Roberts, First Isaiah, 249; Wildberger, Isaiah 13–27, 211. Other alternatives include Judahite messengers (Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 1–39, 310; Høyland Lavik, People Tall and Smooth Skinned, 70) and divine beings (Balogh, Stele of YHWH, 167–68; Clements, Isaiah 1–39, 164; Seitz, Isaiah 1–39, 148). Beuken, Jesaja 13–27, 166; Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 1–39, 310; Gray, Isaiah I–XXVII, 308; Roberts, First Isaiah, 249–50; Wildberger, Isaiah 13–27, 211. The primary alternative is Assyria (Clements, Isaiah 1–39, 165; Hayes and Irvine, Isaiah, 254–55). Clements, Isaiah 1–39, 163; Gray, Isaiah I–XXVII, 310; Wildberger, Isaiah 13–27, 212; see also Roberts, First Isaiah, 250.

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experience in which the prophet sees the diplomats en route and warns them to return before they even reach Jerusalem. Of course, the diplomats would not need a description of their own people, as follows in v. 2d–g. The address to the Cushite messengers, like the addresses to the land in v. 1 and the global population in v. 3, is a poetic apostrophe. The imagined audience of the entire poem is the Judahite leaders whom the prophet warns against forming an alliance with Cush.19 The portrayal of Cush in vv. 1–2 both overtly and subtly characterizes its land and people as distant, exotic, and powerful – the very characteristics that make the Cushites seem like an attractive coalition partner. In this way, the poem mocks Judah’s fascination, bordering on fetishization, with this people.20 The extensive description in v. 2d–f bespeaks a fascination with the Cushites, heaping phrase upon phrase to capture the exotic prowess of this faraway people: “to a nation stretched and smoothed, / to a people feared from there to yonder, / a nation of babbling and trampling.” Like the preceding couplets, these lines use a number of novel, multivalent locutions. In v. 2d, mǝmuššāk (“stretched”) seems to describe their lengthened bodies; the root m-š-k means “lengthen” or “extend” in many contexts, including its only other occurrence in the pual stem (Prov 13:12; see also Isa 13:22; Hos 7:5; Ps 109:12). Other biblical descriptions similarly emphasize the height of foreign peoples as evidence of their military supremacy, sometimes attributing it to their descent from antediluvian giants (e.g., Num 13:32–33; 2 Sam 21:19–22; Amos 2:9). The paired term mǝmôrāt (“smoothed”) likely refers to hairlessness (see Lev 13:40–41).21 _ Cushite men appear with clean-shaven faces in their own art, and their beardlessness distinguishes them from other ethnic groups in ancient Assyrian and Egyptian iconography. Notably, this description of the Cushites contains no reference to their skin color, a feature that attracts

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Gray, Isaiah I–XXVII, 313; Roberts, First Isaiah, 250; Wildberger, Isaiah 13–27, 211, 219. That said, the description is not necessary because the Judahites were unfamiliar with the Cushites, as suggested by Wildberger; the frequent references to Cushites throughout the Hebrew Bible suggest otherwise. See Høyland Lavik, People Tall and Smooth Skinned, 88, 92. Balogh, Stele of YHWH, 149; Roberts, First Isaiah, 249–50. Other interpreters think the line refers to the Cushites’ oiled skin (Beuken, Jesaja 13–27, 166; Gray, Isaiah I–XXVII, 312; Wildberger, Isaiah 13–27, 218). The reading mǝmôrāt is supported by 1QIsaa; most _ lack the expected m- prefix MT mss. read môrāt. Although pual participles sometimes (GKC §52s), it seems_ unlikely that the poet would miss an opportunity to have adjoining words begin with repeated /m/ sounds, and the shorter form can be explained by haplography.

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notice in Jer 13:23.22 The use of the roots m-š-k and m-r-t to describe _ physical appearance is unusual, and alternative idioms exist in Biblical Hebrew for tallness (Deut 9:2; 1 Chr 11:23; Ezek 1:18) and hairlessness (Gen 27:11, 16; Jer 41:5). Soundplay partly accounts for the word choice here. Both terms begin with repeated /m/ sounds, chiming with other words in the following lines (min-hûʾ, “from here”; mǝbûsâ, “trampling”). The atypical terminology further reinforces the Judahite perception of the strange appearance of the Cushites. Both words also have overtones of military power. The verb m-š-k designates the movement of an army in Judg 4:6–7, 5:14, and 20:37, while it refers to drawing a bow in 1 Kgs 22:34 // 2 Chron 18:33 and Isa 66:19. M-r-t refers to the forced shaving of defeated enemies as a form of _ humiliation in Ezek 29:18 (see also Isa 50:6; Neh 13:25). It is also used of polished – that is, combat-ready – swords in Ezek 21:14–16, 33 (ET 21:9–11, 28). Neither case quite achieves the status of double entendre, but the military connotations of both words subtly flavor the poetic description in ways that would have resonated with ancient stereotypes. Egyptian texts depict the inhabitants of Cush as a formidable opponent, such as an inscription by Amenemhet I that compares them to crocodiles and lions.23 Ta Sety (“Land of the Bow”) was an Egyptian designation for the area along its border with Cush, and other sources indicate that Cushite soldiers were regarded as skilled archers, a stereotype upon which mǝmuššāk seems to play.24 References to Cushite armies or soldiers appear in many biblical texts (2 Sam 18:21–23; Jer 46:9; Ezek 38:5; 2 Chron 12:3; 14:8–12; etc.).25 The conquests of the Egyptian delta by the Cushite rulers Piye and Shabako in the late eighth century BCE would have powerfully reinforced these impressions at the time of the poem’s likely composition.26 The militaristic overtones of v. 2d are developed by explicit references to the Cushites’ military power in the next two lines: “feared” (nôrāʾ, v. 2e;

22

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There is little evidence that the Cushites’ skin color was regarded as inherently negative in antiquity: Gray, Isaiah I–XXVII, 312; Rodney Steven Sadler Jr., Can a Cushite Change His Skin? An Examination of Race, Ethnicity, and Othering in the Hebrew Bible, JSOTSup 425 (New York: T&T Clark, 2005), 52, 148. David O’Connor, Ancient Nubia: Egypt’s Rival in Africa (Philadelphia: University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania, 1993), 26. See Derek A. Welsby, The Kingdom of Kush: The Napatan and Meroitic Empires (Princeton: Weiner, 1996), 40–42. Sadler, Can a Cushite Change His Skin?, 146–48. Roberts, First Isaiah, 250; Wildberger, Isaiah 13–27, 218.

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see Hab 1:7) and “trampling” (mǝbûsâ, v. 2f; see Isa 22:5). The obscure qaw-qāw in v. 2f is often translated as “mighty” on the basis of a putative Arabic cognate (qawiya), which would give it a similar nuance.27 More likely, however, it refers to the Cushites’ foreign language, especially in light of Isa 28:13, where the similar expression qaw lāqāw represents the incomprehensible speech of the Assyrians – hence my translation “babbling.”28 Etymologically, the term may mimic a birdcall, as suggested by Michael B. Dick; foreign languages are sometimes derogatively portrayed as animal sounds in ancient texts.29 The Instruction of Ani, a mid– second millennium BCE Egyptian text, specifically compares the linguistic capacity of the Cushites to that of apes.30 Cush generally used Egyptian for diplomatic communication in the first millennium BCE, which the poem probably has in view here.31 Other biblical references similarly emphasize the unintelligibility of Egyptian (Isa 19:18; Hos 7:16; Pss 81:6 [ET 81:5]; 114:1). The reference to their foreign speech casts the Cushites as other and perhaps derides the content of their diplomatic speech as mere babble. In line with the other descriptive phrases in vv. 2e–f, it also evokes their martial superiority. Although contemporary readers may not immediately associate foreign language with military prowess, other biblical texts suggest the connection.32 The parallel use of qaw lāqāw in Isa 28:13 specifically presages the Assyrian conquest of Judah (see also Isa 33:19), and a

27

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Balogh, Stele of YHWH, 153; Gray, Isaiah I–XXVII, 317–18; Wildberger, Isaiah 13–27, 208; etc. Clements, Isaiah 1–39, 165; Herbert Donner, Israel unter den Völkern; die Stellung der klassischen Propheten des 8. Jahrhunderts v. Chr. zur Aussenpolitik der Könige von Israel und Juda (VTSup 11; Leiden: Brill, 1964), 122; Hayes and Irvine, Isaiah, 255; cf. CEB. Michael B. Dick, “Foreign Languages and Hegemony,” in Language in the Ancient Near East, vol. 1.2 of Proceedings of the 53e Recontre Assyriologique Internationale, ed. Leonid Kogan et al., Babel und Bibel 4 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2010), 1140–41. For similar onomatopoeic words for animal sounds, compare Aramaic qwqw (“croaking”) and qwqyʾ (a type of bird), as well as Latin cuculus, English “cuckoo,” etc. Note also the use of reduplicated forms of the root s-p-p to represent bird sounds in Isa _ 10:14; 38:14. Stuart Tyson Smith, Wretched Kush: Ethnic Identities and Boundaries in Egypt’s Nubian Empire (London: Routledge, 2003), 27. Donner, Israel unter den Völkern, 124; see further Susan K. Doll, “Texts and Writing in Ancient Nubia,” in Ancient Nubia: African Kingdoms on the Nile, ed. Marjorie M. Fisher et al. (Cairo: American University of Cairo Press, 2012), 160–63; László Török, The Kingdom of Kush: Handbook of the Napatan-Meroitic Civilization, HdO 1/31 (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 49–51. Dick, “Foreign Languages and Hegemony,” 1137–44; Werner Weinberg, “Language Consciousness in the Old Testament,” ZAW 92 (1980): 189–91.

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treaty curse in Deut 28:49 threatens Israel with invasion by “a distant nation . . . whose language you won’t understand” (see also Jer 5:15). The final line of the long description of the Cushites returns to the water imagery that ties vv. 1–2 together: “whose land rivers divide” (v. 2g).33 Yet again, the audience encounters a rare term; the verb b-z-ʾ appears only here and in the reappropriation of this verse in v. 7. Although not entirely satisfactory, analyzing it as a cognate of Aramaic b-z-ʿ (“divide”) remains the most persuasive option.34 At the same time, practically all of the ancient versions understand it as a form of the verb b-z-z (“plunder”), which occurs frequently in Isaiah (8:1, 3; 24:3; 42:22, 24; etc.).35 This suggests that an ancient audience would make an initial connection to this root. Further, because the verb occurs at the beginning of the line, before either the object or subject, the audience might well expect that the unfolding line will describe how the Cushites plundered a defeated land, given the emphasis on their military power in the preceding lines. The appearance of the Cushites’ own land as the object would then come as a shock, revealing that the initial understanding of the line was mistaken, and a different verb would make better sense in the newly disclosed context.36 Even so, the phantom possibility of Cush being plundered might persist in the audience’s mind, subtly anticipating the description of their defeat later in the poem (vv. 5–6). The outlook of the poem shifts from the distant edge of the known world to the entire global population in v. 3.37 In contrast to the unusual diction of the preceding lines, this verse contains highly conventional language. For instance, “inhabitants of the world” (yōšǝbê tēbēl) also occurs in Isa 26:9, 18; Ps 33:8; and Lam 4:12, and “blow a trumpet” (t-q-ʿ šôpār) appears in Hos 5:8; Joel 2:1, 15; Ps 81:4 (Eng 81:3); etc. “World”/ “earth” (tēbēl/ʾeres) is a common poetic word-pair (1 Sam 2:8; _ Isa 14:21; Ps 24:1; etc.). Similarly, v. 3 contains more straightforward 33 34

35 36

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Høyland Lavik, People Tall and Smooth-Skinned, 61–62. Gray, Isaiah I–XXVII, 318; Wildberger, Isaiah 13–27, 208; see also Balogh, Stele of YHWH, 154. So lxxL (v. 2), Syr. (vv. 2, 7), Symmachus (v. 7), Tg. (vv. 2, 7), and Vulg. (vv. 2, 7). This process of initial misunderstanding followed by reinterpretation, known as “retrospective patterning,” is common in Isaianic poetry (Couey, Reading the Poetry of First Isaiah, 93, 172, 183–85; see further Barbara Herrnstein Smith, Poetic Closure: A Study of How Poems End [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968], 10–13). Some interpreters argue that v. 3 is a later addition (e.g., Cook, Sign and a Wonder, 70–78; Wildberger, Isaiah 13–27, 209–10). Unlike the prose epilogue in v. 7, however, v. 3 contributes significantly to the movement of the poem in its current form, and so I have included it in my reading, without taking a position on its originality.

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parallelism than vv. 1–2. The fact that these shifts in style accompany a shift in subject confirms that the unconventional language of vv. 1–2 serves the exotic portrayal of Cush. The imagery of “standard” (nēs) and “trumpet” (šôpār) indicates the onset of conflict (see Judg 3:27; Isa 13:2; Jer 50:2; Zech 9:14); these terms only appear together elsewhere in martial contexts (Jer 4:5–6, 21; 51:27). Although it comes as no surprise following the hubbub of international relations in vv. 1–2, the possibility of war is unsettling, especially given its suggested global scale. One might expect a command to flee or seek refuge in v. 3b–c, as sometimes accompanies nēs or šôpār (Jer 4:5–6; Ezek 33:3–6; Ps 60:6 [ET 60:4]). Instead, the populace is urged to pay attention to the events that will transpire. The lack of objects for the verbs “look” and “hear” creates anticipation for a description of battle in the following lines.

“I

WILL CALMLY WATCH ”

In contrast to the preceding verses, the second section of the poem divides consistently into couplets, which creates an impression of more measured and predictable movement. Several other features of the poetry heighten this sense of orderliness. The repetition of kî in vv. 4a and 5a establishes a sense of logical progression, with v. 4 offering reasons for the imperatives in vv. 1–3 and vv. 5–6 explaining YHWH’s actions in v. 4. Several terms across vv. 4–6 evoke the fixed sequence of the annual cycle: hōm (“heat”) _ in v. 4c; qāsîr (“harvest”) in vv. 4d, 5a; q-y-s (“summer”) in v. 6c; and _ _ h-r-p (“winter”) in v. 6d (see Gen 8:22).38 These effects emphasize the _ central claim of this section of the poem, that YHWH will calmly observe while world events unfold as anticipated. At the same time, to mitigate the predictability of the repeated couplets, shifts in imagery accompany each new verse.39 Rhythmic differences underscore these shifts; for instance, the strings of monosyllabic nouns in v. 4c–d contrast with the three polysyllabic nouns in v. 5c–d, which have been made even longer by the addition of prefixed prepositions or definite articles and plural endings.40

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Shemaryahu Talmon, “Prophetic Rhetoric and Agricultural Metaphora,” in Storia e tradizioni di Israele: Scritti in onore di J. Alberto Soggin, ed. Daniele Garrone and Felice Israel (Brescia, Italy: Paideia, 1991), 274. Wildberger, Isaiah 13–27, 221. Høyland Lavik (People Tall and Smooth-Skinned, 128–29) notes the monosyllabic nouns in v. 4.

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Verse 4 contains YHWH’s only clear words in the poem, as indicated by the prophetic messenger formula (“thus YHWH said”). The phrase “to me” (ʾēlay) is an atypical addition to the formula, appearing in only five other cases among the formula’s nearly three hundred occurrences (Isa 8:11; 31:4; Jer 13:1; 17:19; 27:2). Here it emphasizes the prophet’s role as a commissioned messenger of God, positioning him as the counterpart to the Cushite messengers of v. 2.41 First-person verbs mark the beginning of the divine speech in v. 4b: “I will calmly watch in my secure abode.”42 Like the world population in v. 3, the deity will observe the events about to transpire, but without trouble or anxiety. The phrase “in my secure abode” (bimkônî) enhances this impression; it probably refers to the temple in Jerusalem.43 The line echoes other warnings in Isaiah against Judahite alliances in several ways, including the use of the verb š-q-t (“be calm,” Isa 7:4; 30:15)44 and the motif of the security of _ Jerusalem (Isa 14:32; 28:16). A pair of similes in v. 4c–d develop this image of untroubled neutrality: “like bright heat above light, / like a mist cloud at harvest time.” The first simile likely refers to the mirage of shimmering air produced by hot temperatures, a novel image that does not appear elsewhere in the Bible,45 while the second one suggests high, dense vapor.46 Together, they richly characterize the divine inactivity of v. 4b, in sharp contrast to the hubbub of diplomatic activity in

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For the use of kōh ʾāmar (“thus says”) by a human “messenger” (malʾāk), see Num 20:14; 1 Kgs 20:5; 2 Kgs 9:18. ʾešqŏtâ wǝʾabbîtâ (literally, “I will be calm and watch”) is best understood as a _ _ hendiadys; see Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 1–39, 309; CEB; NRSV. Roberts, First Isaiah, 250; see LXX. For this meaning of mākôn, see Exod 15:17; 1 Kgs 8:13; Isa 4:5; Ezra 2:68. Other interpreters take it as a reference to heaven: Balogh, Stele of YHWH, 172; Høyland Lavik, People Tall and Smooth-Skinned, 134; Wildberger, Isaiah 13–27, 220. Donner, Israel unter den Völkern, 125; Hayes and Irvine, Isaiah, 256; Wildberger, Isaiah 1–39, 219. Roberts, First Isaiah, 250; Wildberger, Isaiah 13–27, 220. Gray, Isaiah I–XXVII, 314; Wildberger, Isaiah 13–27, 220. As indicated by its unique occurrence with ʿāb (“cloud”), tal here refers to light rain or mist (see Deut 32:2; 2 Sam _ 1:21; 1 Kgs 17:1; Prov 3:20), rather than “dew,” as it is frequently translated. In the a second half of the line, 1QIsa and most MT manuscripts, supported by Tg., read bĕhōm _ qāsîr (“in the heat of harvest”); other MT manuscripts, supported by LXX, Syr, and _ Vulg., read bĕyōm qāsîr (“at the time of harvest”), as translated here. While these may be _ variants, it seems more plausible that a scribe would read hōm legitimately undecidable _ for an original yôm under the influence of the preceding line (Balogh, Stele of YHWH, 158; Wildberger, Isaiah 13–27, 208).

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vv. 1–2.47 The stationary appearance of both phenomena resonates with YHWH’s stillness. “Heat” (hōm) is closely associated with rest, as work _ often ceases during the warmest part of the day (Gen 18:1; 2 Sam 4:5; Job 37:17), and the second simile may have the height of clouds in view as a figure for divine transcendence (see Isa 14:14; Job 20:6). These images portray a deity who need not always play an active role in world events. Utterly superior, YHWH is beyond the impact of political and military actions, and Judah would do well to remain similarly uninvolved in the Cushites’ machinations. The couplet in v. 5a–b introduces new imagery of a summer vineyard in the process of yielding fruit: “for before harvest, when flowering is complete, / and a blossom becomes a ripening grape.” The lush agricultural language (“flowering,” “blossom,” “ripening grape”) follows nicely from the reference to rain in the previous line, and the repetition of qāsîr _ (“harvest”) in both lines tightens the connection. Following this idyllic scene, the aggressive tone of the next couplet (v. 5c–d) comes as a shock: “one will cut the shoots with pruning knives / and the sprouts one will remove, rip off.” The language highlights the destructiveness of the depicted actions by using three violent verbs in two lines (karat, “cut”; hēsîr, “remove”; hētaz, “rip”)48 and by specifying the instrument as a pruning hook, a knife with a small, curved blade.49 The repetition of harsh /z/ sounds in zalzallîm (“sprouts”) and mazmērôt (“pruning hooks”) further contributes to this effect. At the same time, the reference to pruning hooks indicates that these lines imagine the routine pruning of grapevines to encourage fruit production.50 According to the Gezer Calendar, an ancient Israelite text that outlines a sequence of agricultural tasks, the two-month period of “pruning” (zmr) took place between the grain and fruit harvests, from mid-May to mid-July, which matches

47

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Gray, Isaiah I–XXVII, 314–15; Kaiser, Isaiah 13–39, 95; Roberts, First Isaiah, 250; Wildberger, Isaiah 13–27, 220–21. For different interpretations, see Hayes and Irvine, Isaiah, 256; Høyland Lavik, People Tall and Smooth-Skinned, 136–42. Høyland Lavik, People Tall and Smooth-Skinned, 167. The verb hētaz derives from either t-z-z or t-y-z (GKC §§67v, 72dd). Although otherwise unattested in Biblical Hebrew, either root could be a biform of Jewish Aramaic/Mishnaic Hebrew n-t-z, which means “decapitate” in the aphel/hiphil. See Gray, Isaiah I–XXVII, 318. Oded Borowski, Agriculture in Iron Age Israel (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1987), 109. Borowski, Agriculture in Iron Age Israel, 109; Talmon, “Prophetic Rhetoric,” 273; Carey Ellen Walsh, The Fruit of the Vine: Viticulture in Ancient Israel, HSM 60 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2000), 37–38, 72–73; Wildberger, Isaiah 13–27, 221.

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the period indicated by the temporal markers in v. 5a.51 Despite the contrasting tones, then, the actions in the second couplet of v. 5 are precisely what one would expect at the time described in the first couplet. With the emphasis on its inherent violence, the pruning imagery serves as a metaphor for the military conflict announced in v. 3. Other stages of the agricultural process, like plowing, harvesting, or winnowing, similarly signify the destruction of armies or cities in prophetic poetry (Isa 17:5–6; Jer 51:2; Mic 3:12; etc.).52 Although the identity of the pruned vines in Isa 18:5 is contested, a reference to the defeat of the Cushites makes the most sense.53 They are the only nation identified in the poem, and v. 2g had subtly hinted at their downfall by playing on the sonic similarity between the verbs b-z-ʾ (“divide”) and b-z-z (“plunder”). Further, the term zalzallîm (“shoots”) in v. 5c recalls the reduplicated terms silsal (“bugs/boats”) _ _ and qawqāw (“babbling”) in vv. 1–2, which had evoked the exoticness of the Cushites through their semantic content and foreign sound.54 Now, at its climactic moment, the poem again educes the complex of alien characteristics associated with this nation, but with obvious sarcasm as its humiliating defeat is related. Despite their exoticism and prowess, the Cushite troops will fall in battle with no more resistance than a grapevine puts up against the vinedresser. The identity of the pruner is unclear 51

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Gezer Calendar, ll. 5–7. Both the inscription and Isa 18:5 seem to refer to in-season maintenance of the vines, not the large-scale pruning that would occur in the off-season; see F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp et al., Hebrew Inscriptions: Texts from the Biblical Period of the Monarchy with Concordance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 162–63; Kaiser, Isaiah 13–39, 95. Although qāsîr normally designates the grain harvest, it refers to the _ 7:1, which the context demands for Isa 18:5 as well grape harvest in Isa 16:9 and Mic (Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 1–39, 318; Gray, Isaiah I–XXVII, 315). Because pruning is limited in scope and serves a productive function, some interpreters think it would not be an appropriate metaphor for this context; they argue instead that this verse must describe the total destruction of the vineyard, much like Isa 5:5–6 (Balogh, Stele of YHWH, 174–5; Gray, Isaiah I–XXVII, 315; Høyland Lavik, People Tall and Smooth-Skinned, 167–69, 176–77). Agricultural metaphors for judgment, however, typically emphasize the destructive impact of the actions in question, without necessarily having their outcome in view (Couey, Reading the Poetry of First Isaiah, 155–61). So Kaiser, Isaiah 13–39, 92; Roberts, First Isaiah, 250; Seitz, Isaiah 1–39, 148; Wildberger, Isaiah 13–27, 218–19. Other suggestions include Assyria (Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 1–39, 311; Gray, Isaiah I–XXVII, 315), Judah (Høyland Lavik, People Tall and Smooth-Skinned, 182–85), or the plans of the Cushite-Judahite coalition (Cook, Sign and a Wonder, 64–66) Clements (Isaiah 1–39, 165), Hayes and Irvine (Isaiah, 256), and Høyland Lavik (People Tall and Smooth-Skinned, 172) note the similar sounds of silsal and zalzallîm. For _ Hebrew Bible, see possible etymologies of zalzallîm, which occurs only here in_ the HALOT, 272; Høyland Lavik, People Tall and Smooth-Skinned, 151; Wildberger, Isaiah 13–27, 221.

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because the verbs in v. 5c–d lack explicit subjects. Many commentators assume that it is YHWH.55 In light of v. 4, we should rather imagine that YHWH continues to observe quietly as another military force – likely Assyria (see Isa 20:4) – defeats the Cushites. The emphasis on the timeliness of the pruning in v. 5 suggests that these events unfold exactly as YHWH foresees them, further enriching the earlier image of the deity’s tranquility. Initially, the first couplet of v. 6 seems to extend the pruning imagery: “they’ll be left together for the vultures of the mountain, / and for the beasts of the land.” The pair zalzallîm/nǝtîšôt (“shoots”/“sprouts”) from _ v. 5 is the subject of the plural verb yēʿāzǝbû (“will be abandoned”), which suggests that the surplus foliage will be discarded and consumed by birds and animals. Prunings from grapevines, however, were not typically fed to livestock but instead burned (Ezek 15:2–4; John 15:6), and ʿayit (“vulture”) is a bird of prey that eats flesh, not foliage (Gen 15:11; Jer 12:9). Most likely, then, the poem has moved beyond the metaphor, the discarded vines having become the dead bodies of Cushite soldiers.56 The imagery draws on a common ancient Near Eastern curse that the unburied corpses of one’s enemies will be devoured by scavengers, often both birds and animals (e.g., Deut 28:26; 1 Sam 17:44, 46; Ezek 39:17–20; Esarhaddon’s succession treaty [SAA 2.6], ll. 425, 519).57 This motif finds visual expression in the third-millennium bce “Stele of the Vultures” from Lagash, which depicts vultures flying away from a battlefield clutching human heads and limbs (ANEP, 95, fig. 301). The final couplet of the poem emphasizes the scope of the defeat, suggesting that the scavengers will need an entire year to consume the carrion: “And the vultures will winter upon it, / and all the beasts of the land will summer upon it” (Isa 18:6c–d). This exaggerated depiction of the battle’s aftermath matches the exaggerated depiction of its onset in v. 3, which suggested that the conflict would involve the entire world, and thus resolves the expectations created by the earlier lines. Although the corresponding nouns are well attested in the Hebrew Bible, the derived verbs q-y-s (“spend the summer”) and _ h-r-p (“spend the winter”) are unique. The poem’s use of novel language _ thus persists until its final lines, offsetting the largely conventional curse

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Gray, Isaiah I–XXVII, 315; Wildberger, Isaiah 13–27, 222; Roberts, First Isaiah, 250. So Gray, Isaiah I–XXVII, 315–16; Wildberger, Isaiah 13–27, 221–22. F. Charles Fensham, “Common Trends in Curses of the Near Eastern Treaties and Kudurru-Inscriptions Compared with Maledictions of Amos and Isaiah,” ZAW 75 (1963): 162–63; Wildberger, Isaiah 13–27, 222.

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language that dominates v. 6. The reference to a full annual cycle also creates a sense of completeness to establish closure for the poem, which is enhanced by the strikingly long final line, in contrast to the unusually short line preceding it. The gruesome depiction of the annihilation of Cush’s ineffective army utterly discredits them as a potential coalition partner for Judah.

conclusion According to Isa 18:2, the foreign language spoken by the Cushites is qaw-qaw, unintelligible babbling as senseless as a bird’s monotonous chirps. At times, the poem itself seems to be little more, with its reduplicated terms, odd turns of phrase, and curious images. Close reading, however, reveals a poem that revels in the possibilities afforded by its words. The simple sounds of words evoke the rhythms of the Egyptian language and come to stand for a complex of characteristics associated with Cush. Other terms occur in contexts that exploit multiple possible meanings, destabilizing an exclusively instrumental view of language. The poet repeatedly uses rare words or crafts novel expressions, often to suggest Cush’s exotic foreignness, and two unusual similes support an exceptional claim about YHWH’s transcendence over world affairs. Even as traditional themes and conventional language appear throughout the poem, its pervasive “inventiveness” makes possible its compelling depiction of the shocking but certain defeat of the Cushites. One can appreciate how the poem might have originated as an attempt to dissuade Judah from building its foreign policy upon an alliance with its powerful but doomed southern neighbor. Nonetheless, its verbal imagery retains the power to arrest the imaginations of readers millennia later. At its center, the poem evocatively claims that YHWH transcends eighth century BCE Judahite statecraft. Due in no small part to the power of its language, the poem itself finally does the same.

11 The Servant in Poetic Juxtaposition in Isaiah 49:1–13 Katie M. Heffelfinger

Isaiah 49:1–13 confronts its readers with a voice which calls attention to itself and its speaking.1 The voice is strong, powerful, and conflicted. Most of all, the voice addresses the hearer directly. Despite repeated attempts in the history of interpretation to assign this voice to a historical person or corporate referent, or to situate it in a narrative, the voice remains an “orphaned” poetic voice.2 This poetic text frustrates our compulsion to understand it narrativally.3 In what follows, I suggest that our reading of the so-called Second Servant Song benefits from attention to the conventions of its poetic form, in this case voice, tone, and juxtaposition. Isaiah 49:1–13 is a nonnarrative, paratactic, and episodic poem that employs metaphor and the address of a voice as its primary modes of expression; therefore, the 1

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On the limits of the passage, see Tryggve N. D. Mettinger, A Farewell to the Servant Songs: A Critical Examination of an Exegetical Axiom, trans. Frederick H. Cryer, Scripta Minora (Lund: CWK Gleerup, 1983), 13, who notes the typical verses of the so-called second servant song (49:1–12). The inclusion of v. 13 is justified by its reuse of the figure of apostrophe, consistency of speaker with the preceding verses, and change of speaker at 49:14. John Goldingay and David Payne, Isaiah 40–55, ICC (London: T&T Clark, 2006), 1:154; and Uta Schmidt, “Servant and Zion: Two Kinds of Future in Isaiah 49,” in “My Spirit at Rest in the North Country” (Zechariah 6.8): Collected Communications to the XXth Congress of the International Organization for the Study of the Old Testament, Helsinki 2010, eds. Hermann Michael Niemann and Matthias Augustin, BEATAJ 57 (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2011), 85, also include v. 13. F.W. Dobbs-Allsopp, “The Psalms and Lyric Verse,” in The Evolution of Rationality: Interdisciplinary Essays in Honor of J. Wetzel van Huyssteen, ed. F. LeRon Shuts (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 368. See J. Cheryl Exum, Song of Songs: A Commentary, OTL (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2005), 42.

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poetic category of lyric is the most appropriate comparison partner.4 Lyric may be defined as “that subcategory of poetic literature that is characterized by the absence of plot or discursive argument, and that thus must overcome the fragmentation produced by its commonly paratactic flow so as to achieve a sense of cohesion through other means, most notably the address of voice(s), musicality, and imagistic and/or stylistic use of language.”5 The relevance of this poetic style extends to much of Second Isaiah, and indeed to much prophetic poetic literature. I have chosen this passage partly because it has been at the heart of a history of narrativizing the servant, a metaphorical figure who intriguingly stands juxtaposed to another of Second Isaiah’s speaking voices, Lady Zion.6

the songs and the servant Discussion of the so-called Servant Songs in Second Isaiah has largely, and rightly, shifted away from thinking of these texts primarily as an intrusion within the book.7 The voices of the Servant and Zion do not form part of a story, nor do they appear together.8 They do not enter into dialogue, and while each interacts with the divine voice, the voices of Zion and the Servant are neither in conversation nor best appreciated as actors in a drama.9 Instead, they are poetic voices in lyric juxtaposition.10 4

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See further, Katie M. Heffelfinger, I Am Large, I Contain Multitudes: Lyric Cohesion and Conflict in Second Isaiah, BibInt 105 (Leiden: Brill, 2011). This is the definition I offered and defended more fully in Heffelfinger, I Am Large, 37–44. See further, Brent A. Strawn, “Lyric Poetry,” in Dictionary of the Old Testament: Wisdom, Poetry, and Writings, ed. Tremper Longman III and Peter Enns (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2008), 438, and Dobbs-Allsopp, “The Psalms and Lyric Verse,” 350, for similar definitions by biblical scholars. A number of studies describe the history of discussion, including the individual and collective understandings; see especially Mettinger, Farewell. In this essay, I treat the voice as a metaphorical figure representing an idealized Israelite response to their circumstances, potentially collective. On metaphor and personification, see further, Patricia Tull Willey, Remember the Former Things: The Recollection of Previous Texts in Second Isaiah, SBLDS 161 (Atlanta, GA: Scholars, 1997), 219; and Schmidt, “Servant and Zion,” 90. Mettinger, Farewell, has been a key work in this scholarly shift. See also John F.A. Sawyer, “Daughter of Zion and Servant of the Lord in Isaiah: A Comparison,” JSOT 44 (1989): 89–107. Tull Willey, Remember the Former Things, 105. Compare Annemarieke van der Woude, “Can Zion do without the Servant in Isaiah 40–55?” CTJ 39 (2004): 109–16. Increasing awareness of the so-called Servant Songs’ integral place in Second Isaiah has led to greater attention to the relationship between Zion and the Servant. See Sawyer,

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Together they express a tension for the exilic audience between that audience’s voiced complaint and the speaker into which the text designs to transform them. As I will argue, the poetry evaluates these two voices differently through their juxtaposition.11 The poetic mode of persuasion casts one voice as trustworthy and to be embraced and followed. The other voice it treats as worthy of response but unreliable. This sequence of juxtaposed utterances invites the exilic audience to move from seeing their situation as Zion sees it, to speaking about it as the servant does.

poetic persuasion and hearing the servant’s voice Poetic tone is a key element in the rhetorical impact produced by the juxtaposition of the Servant and Zion. The three speakers of Isaiah 49’s two poems12 (YHWH, the servant, and Zion) stand juxtaposed to one another, making inherent comparisons between these voices and the ethos of each an element of their larger literary setting.13 The servant’s voice pairs with YHWH, both by stylistic imitation and by repeated reference to its own commission by YHWH to speak. However, the servant’s confident expression, imitating the divine voice’s tone, stands in direct contrast to the servant’s expressions of futility (v. 4). These contrasts produce an element of the poem’s rhetorical power, through the development of the “reader’s sympathetic attention.”14 Attention to tone and voicing are central activities for the interpreter of poetic texts, not least since the style of poetic texts within the Hebrew Bible is overwhelmingly the sort governed by the “utterance of a voice.”15 The audience encounters a speaking voice, and the utterances of this voice, its tone and imagery, its use of poetic form and violation of that form,

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“Daughter of Zion and Servant of the Lord,” 89; and Knud Jeppesen, “Mother Zion, Father Servant: A Reading of Isaiah 49–55,” in Of Prophets’ Visions and the Wisdom of Sages: Essays in Honour of R. Norman Whybray on His Seventieth Birthday, ed. Heather A. McKay and David J.A. Clines, JSOTSup 162 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993), 109–25. Foundational for my thoughts on the relationship of the two voices are Tull Willey, Remember the Former Things, 105–227; and Schmidt, “Servant and Zion,” 90–91. Schmidt, in particular, highlights the rhetorical value of the juxtaposition. I am treating Isaiah 49 as two poems in a closely juxtaposed relationship. Isa 49:1–13 is a “Servant poem,” while Isa 49:14–50:3 is a “Zion poem.” Carl Dennis, Poetry as Persuasion (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2001), 17. Dennis, Poetry as Persuasion, 2. Jonathan Culler, Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 75.

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convince the implied audience to accept or reject the poetic speaker’s claims, to embrace the possible world imagined by the text or to reject it.16 The voice in Isaiah 49:1–13 begins and ends its speaking with apostrophe, addressing islands, distant peoples, the heavens, earth, and mountains. This poetic device of address to inanimate objects frames the poem by drawing particular attention to the speaking act itself. As Jonathan Culler writes, “Apostrophes foreground the act of address, lift it out of ordinary empirical contexts, and thus at some level identify the poetic act as ritualistic, hortatory, a special sort of linguistic event.”17 The impact upon tone is magnification. The first lines address the islands, demanding that they pay attention to the speaker. The opening couplet’s parallelistic pairing of “islands” with “far off peoples” (v. 1) makes the address to the islands call their inhabitants to mind via metonymy.18 By addressing inanimate land masses prior to a human addressee, the poem highlights the distance and comprehensiveness of the speaker’s address. Similarly, the closing apostrophe addressing heavens, earth, and mountains (v. 13) reaffirms that this speaker commands all-encompassing attention, including that of distant land masses and structures of the created order. So, while the apostrophe itself has the effect of magnifying tone, the addressees lend confidence to the speaker’s tone. The speaker’s tone, then, is highly confident. The reason for this highly confident tone becomes apparent as the address continues: the speaker has been commissioned by YHWH (v. 1). Ironically, the unnamed speaker declares that YHWH has “named” him (v. 1). Even the title he gives for himself (“my servant,” v. 3) marks out his relationship to YHWH. The servant does not give his own name, but the name of the one who called him and who designated him from within his mother’s womb. The servant’s voice continues, quickly becoming a secondary subject in his own self-description, and pointing instead to divine action. YHWH is the actor behind the verbs. YHWH “called,” “reckoned,” “set,” and

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Paul Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor: Multi-disciplinary Studies of the Creation of Meaning in Language, trans. Robert Czerny (Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 2000), 92, notes that “meaning is the projection of a possible and inhabitable world.” On tone, see Reuben Arthur Brower, Fields of Light: An Experiment in Critical Reading (New York: Oxford University Press, 1951), 29; and Heffelfinger, I Am Large, 73–81. Jonathan Culler, “Lyric, History, and Genre,” in The Lyric Theory Reader: A Critical Anthology, ed. Virginia Jackson and Yopie Prins (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014), 69. All translations, unless otherwise noted, are my own.

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“hid” (v. 2). The servant’s confident tone, his ability to command attention from far-off land masses, is not based in himself, but in activities that have been done to him. Voicing continues to be thematically significant as the poem progresses. The speaker employs vivid military metaphors to describe his commission, depicting himself as a weapon in YHWH’s arsenal.19 A simile links the instrument of speech with a piercing weapon (v. 2). The alliteration of “like a sharp sword” (kǝhereb haddâ) draws attention both to the _ _ phrase’s description of the voice’s place of speech and to the gratuitous adjective “sharp.” Imagery connecting sharpness or a sword with words and speaking appears within the Hebrew Bible describing enemies’ words, particularly in psalmists’ complaints to God about the wounds inflicted by the words and mouths of the wicked (Pss 57:5 [ET 57:4]; 59:8 [ET 59:7]; 64:4 [ET 64:3]).20 Presenting his own speech as a sword poised in YHWH’s hand, and an arrow tucked into YHWH’s quiver, the servant again highlights YHWH’s agency, now with a focus on pending utilization. Particularly within Isaiah, the sword connected with YHWH carries connotations of divine judgment (e.g., Isa 1:20; 14:19; 31:8; 34:6). The servant’s mouth connects with images of ability to wound and divine righting of wrongs.21 It is as yet unclear against whom this divine justice weapon is to be unleashed, but the metaphors for the servant’s equipping and commissioning lead the audience to anticipate implementation. The servant’s utterance returns to the theme of his own commissioning again, and the echoes between the lines in which the servant recounts his commission from the womb (vv. 1 and 5) connect the thoughts with which they are paired in their immediate contexts through distant parallelism. The first time the speaker introduces the theme, sword and arrow imagery interrupt the movement from being called from the womb (v. 1) to being called servant (v. 3). The idea reappears in closer concentration: “fashioned me in the womb to be his servant” (v. 5). The repetition and concentration of these images, which are already familiar in the poem, emphasize and connect the images of deliverance, restoration, and reclamation of Jacob/Israel to the motif of the servant and his speaking depicted as implements of divine warfare. Thus YHWH’s purposes of “glorifying myself” (v. 3) and “bringing Jacob back to him” (v. 5) together point to 19 20 21

See Joseph Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 40–55 (AB 19A; New York: Doubleday, 2002), 300. Goldingay and Payne, Isaiah 40–55, 2:157. Christopher R. North, The Second Isaiah: Introduction, Translation and Commentary to Chapters XL–LV (Oxford: Clarendon, 1964), 186–87.

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the larger purposes of the servant’s voicing. He is an instrument in the divine warrior’s hands, an image that elsewhere in Second Isaiah tends to convey both the certain accomplishment of the deliverance promised and a level of potentially fearsome anger (e.g., Isa 41:2–3; 43:16–28). Ironically, the servant’s heavily confident speech conveying his status as divine instrument is juxtaposed with his own expressions of limitation (v. 4a). The servant’s objection is emphasized through the sound and structure of the line. There are seven long i-vowels (hireq-yods) in the eight-word couplet. The couplet conveys the servant’s sense of futility by correlating his efforts with “emptiness,” “formlessness,” and “vanity” (v. 4). Assonance and repetition draw attention to this line and link it emphatically and explicitly with its first-person speaker.22 Thus the poem adds emphasis to the lines in which the servant expresses his sense of futility. Contrast emphasizes that futility. “Formlessness” and “vanity” (tōhû and hebel) are the sole words of the line without the long i-vowel sound. Ironically, the servant expresses “formlessness” in a neat semantic and structural parallelism with four accented words per line. In both lines of the couplet, the servant’s statement consists of the preposition “for” (l-), attached to a noun conveying the idea of futility (lǝrîq, “for emptiness”; lǝtōhû, “for formlessness”), followed by a first-person finite verb expressing expenditure (yāgaʿtî, “I have toiled”; killêtî, “I have spent”). The introductory pronoun and verb of the first line balance a synonymous expansion of the futility noun (wǝhebel, “and vanity”) and the portion of the self that is expended (kōhî, “my strength”) in the second line. _ The confident voice expressing futility stands in emphatic self-conflict. The expressed level of futility is not uncommon in Second Isaiah and seems reflective of the circumstances of the exilic audience. These are ideas we hear from the unnamed voice who is compelled to “call” in Isaiah 40:6. These are emotions that Jacob/Israel expresses as being overlooked by God (40:27). And this is the idea for which Zion will be rebuked in the poem that immediately follows this one (49:14). This realism about doubts and fears allows the audience to experience a speaker who overcomes limitations similar to theirs. He becomes a voice with whom they can identify. This is an element of poetic persuasion. Carl Dennis describes the need of the poetic “speaker” to exhibit “passion, discrimination, and inclusiveness.”23 While these values are culturally 22 23

North, The Second Isaiah, 189, also observes the emphatic pronoun. Dennis, Poetry as Persuasion, 17; for the fuller discussion, see 16–37.

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conditioned, Dennis’s claim that it is necessary that we trust the speaker seems well founded and cross-cultural. For the exilic audience, a speaker who cannot acknowledge the hurt and confusion occasioned by exile is likely a voice to whom they cannot relate. By projecting a confident speaker, but one who is well familiarized with doubt, the poem’s voice enables connection. The futility imagery echoes Isaiah 40 and Genesis 1. Here the servant’s limitation is likened to primordial chaos (cf. tōhû in Gen 1:2, a theme that Isa 40:17 picks up to compare the nations to YHWH). But YHWH’s arm vanquishes chaos, a tradition Second Isaiah apparently knows (Isa 51:9–10), so the servant’s lethargy is quickly overcome through reexpression of the servant’s connection to YHWH in Isa 49:5. These will remain intertwined, as the servant’s voicing and his proclamation of YHWH’s voicing melt and mix, enacting his commission to speak. Divine speech and servant speech are juxtaposed with interruptions and overlaps between them. In the absence of the perspective created by a narrator, the reader is forced into the poem’s speaking moment and not allowed to observe the voices from the outside. As Culler notes, “The fundamental characteristic of lyric . . . is not the description and interpretation of a past event but the performance of an event in the lyric present, a time of enunciation.”24 The servant speaks as if directly to the poem’s audience. The juxtapositions and interruptions add to this immediacy by eliminating pauses and spaces between speakers’ expressions. The poem will not permit the speaking voices to be set fully in the past. While some expressions seem to recount divine speech to the servant made previously, for example “he said to me, ‘you are my servant’” (v. 3), there is also the notice “and now (wǝʿattâ), YHWH says” (v. 5). However, most of the movement between speakers remains unexplained. There is no necessary sequence between them that allows the audience to encounter them as fully past and mediated through a reporting narrator. The servant utters, “Thus says YHWH,” but interrupts the “messenger formula” with his own commission (v. 5) and with participial praises of the divine speaker (v. 7). In this way, the servant imitates the divine voice in Second Isaiah, which tends toward participial self-description (e.g., 41:13–14; 44:24b–28; 48:17).25 The servant, commissioned to speak on

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Culler, “Lyric, History, and Genre,” 68. See further, James Muilenburg, “The Book of Isaiah, Chapters 40–66: Introduction, and Exegesis,” IB 5 (Nashville: Abingdon, 1956): 391; Claus Westermann, Isaiah 40–66, trans. David M.G. Stalker, OTL (Philadelphia: Westminster: 1969), 14; Theodore M. Ludwig, “Traditions of Establishing of the Earth in Deutero-Isaiah,” JBL 92 (1973): 346.

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YHWH’s behalf, imitates the divine mode of speech, moving away from his self-proclaimed weakness (v. 4) toward confident expression of strength as YHWH’s weapon. The servant’s increasingly confident tone – mingled with the style and tone of YHWH’s voice – builds as the servant recalls YHWH’s commission to him (vv. 7–8). In verse 7, the servant’s voice continues imitating the divine voice’s mode of participial self-description as the servant speaks as, and on behalf of, YHWH. Although Second Isaian style commonly glorifies the deity while introducing divine speech, this voice goes beyond that, contrasting the audience’s lowliness in a parallel construction. YHWH is “redeemer of Israel” and “his holy one.” The recipient of the divine address is “the contemptible self,” the “abhorred of nations,” and “slaves of rulers” (v. 7). The parallelism builds from two glorying descriptions of the deity to three deprecating attributions for the addressees, placing heavier emphasis on the audience’s limitations. This contrast conveys YHWH’s majesty. The poetic form confirms this contrasting juxtaposition’s meaningfulness (v. 7). It consists of three parallel line pairs. The first pair contrasts YHWH, on whose behalf the servant speaks, with the message’s lowly recipients. The second pair employs height and depth metaphors for reactions to the message: “kings will see and rise up / princes will bow down” (v. 7). Finally, the verse concludes by glorifying YHWH as the cause of the rulers’ reverence. The entire oracle continues the magnification of the deity on whose behalf the servant speaks. It employs height and depth images and juxtaposition of contrasting descriptions to achieve a dominant sense of YHWH’s majesty and power, further conveying meaningful antithesis between human and divine. The glorified divine voice begins again in verse 8. Here the language of the servant’s commission reappears, as his calling to “restore the guardians (nǝsûrê)26 of Israel” (v. 6) and “to be my salvation (yǝšûʿātî)” _ (v. 6) become direct divine action. YHWH’s voice, now speaking in the first person, hears “on a day of salvation (yǝšûʿâ)” and “guard[s] you (ʾessārǝkā)” (v. 8). Thus the roles the divine voice called the servant to __ fulfil have become divine activities, further mingling the servant’s commission to act on the deity’s behalf with YHWH’s own activity. The result for the servant’s speaking tone is that, as the servant increasingly speaks as and on behalf of YHWH, the servant fulfils his commission, and the confidence of his speech increases. These voices’ mingling continues

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through the poem’s end. Verse 10 calls YHWH “their compassionate one” (mǝrahămām). Then, without transition or explanation, YHWH _ speaks in the first person in verse 11: “I will make” (wǝśamtî). By the end of the passage it is increasingly difficult to differentiate the servant’s voice and the divine voice. The servant was commissioned to speak on YHWH’s behalf, and his speaking takes up the message and majestic tone of the divine voice. The poetic form embodies the passage’s message. The poem’s parallelism also conveys that, even as the servant’s voice merges with YHWH’s, the servant’s commission mingles with the people’s. This new element of mingling points toward the poem’s larger rhetorical project. Joining the people’s task with the servant’s underlines the intended identification between the servant and the audience, supporting the aim of drawing them into the servant’s perspective on “comfort.” The servant was called “to raise up (lǝhāqîm) the tribes of Jacob” (v. 6). Now, speaking as YHWH, he proclaims that God has called the people “to raise up (lǝhāqîm) the land” (v. 8). Building upon this parallelism with the servant’s commission earlier in the poem, verses 8 and 9 employ a chain of infinitives developing the work assigned to the people. Up to this point the activity has been God’s. Even in the parallel reference to the servant, the activities constructed this way “to be my servant, to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the guardians of Israel,” are “too light a thing” (v. 6).27 The action only comes when YHWH plans to “give” the servant as “a light” and “to be . . . salvation” (v. 6). Now that the servant’s commission has been shared with the “covenant people” (v. 8), they are “give[n] . . . to raise up land” and “to inherit desolate inheritances” and “to say to the prisoners, ‘Go out’” (vv. 8–9).28 They are to proclaim freedom to the prisoners and light to those in darkness. Imagery for the message’s recipients is a metaphorical cacophony. The voice juxtaposes prison and darkness, animals, and journey images. Each of these overlaps. The grazing figures journey on roads (v. 9) and are led to water (v. 10), while prisoners are sent out (v. 9). Grazing animals give way to figures coming from “far off” (v. 12), as the poet weaves together familiar Second Isaian images for YHWH’s announcement of coming 27 28

See Mettinger, Farewell, 35–36. I read v. 8b “I will guard you and I will give you as a covenant people (librît ʿām).” This reading treats the verb ntn as “make, constitute,” with an accusative suffix plus a construct chain introduced by the lamed preposition; see BDB, 681. Translations that treat the servant as a covenant figure to the people (e.g., “I have kept you and given you as a covenant to the people,” NRSV; Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 40–55, 303–05) interrupt the construct chain’s syntax.

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comfort for the exilic audience.29 “Bare heights” (v. 9; cf. 41:18), “hunger” (v. 10; cf. 55:1–2), “thirst” (v. 10; cf. 41:17; 44:3; 48:21; 55:1), and “burning heat and sun” (v. 10; cf. 43:2, “fire . . . and flame”) appear alongside the announcement that YHWH will make “mountains into a road” and exalted “highways” (v. 11), the very actions commanded in 40:3–4.30 As the servant’s voice, now thoroughly mingled with the divine voice, reaches its closing apostrophe, the utterance’s urgency grows through repetitions, pointing out figures converging from many directions. Verse 12’s triplet develops from “look at these coming” (hinnēh-ʾēlleh . . . yābōʾû), to “look at these” (hinnēh-ʾēlleh), “and these” (wǝʾēlleh). The parallelism builds by stepping up the specificity of locales. The speaker’s tone becomes urgent and intense, climaxing in his apostrophic command to the heavens, earth, and mountains to rejoice: “Ring out a cry, O heavens, and shout for joy, O earth” (v. 13a). The poem’s final line conveys the cause of this enthusiasm: “For YHWH has comforted his people, he has shown compassion for his wretched ones” (v. 13b). The contrast between YHWH and the people remains right to the end of the poem, but the speaker’s certainty about YHWH’s provision of comfort sits in harmony with the growing confidence he has exuded in the poem’s latter portions, and it echoes Isaiah 40 by utilizing the same themes and imagery, but conveying certainty and completion rather than doubt and command.31

the servant and zion juxtaposed Isaiah 49:1–13 presents a compelling depiction of enacting the commission to speak as YHWH’s servant. This is the commission to which he calls the implied audience. But the servant is not the only compelling personified poetic speaker in the context. The rhetorical impact of the servant’s particular tone and voicing emerge more clearly when one considers a voice in the immediately following poem – that of Lady Zion in 49:14. In contrast to the servant, Zion’s speech is limited and embedded. 29

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Muilenburg, “Book of Isaiah, Chapters 40–66,” 572, also sees these lines as referring to the exiles. Goldingay and Payne, Isaiah 40–55, 2:176; and Muilenburg, “Book of Isaiah, Chapters 40–66,” 573, also note the connections between these chapters. In this final line the servant seems to speak, as YHWH is referred to in the third person. However, the language echoes the command of Isa 40:1, using the same root that there is a plural imperative spoken by God (nhm, “comfort”), commanding that the activity of _ providing comfort be taken up by an unidentified addressee. Here the verb is a perfect aspect verb indicating completed action attributed to YHWH.

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She speaks only where YHWH quotes her. That quotation is brief and immediately rebuked. A paratactic shift marks the beginning of the new poem (49:14). Another speaking voice appears. Its emergence comes in the aftermath of the resoundingly confident assertion that “YHWH has comforted his people” (49:13). This voice’s tone and perception stand in juxtaposed tension to what has preceded: “But Zion said, YHWH abandoned me, and my lord forgot me” (49:14). In contrast to the servant’s voice, Zion’s voice is minimal, despairing, and overshadowed by the divine response it receives and in which it is embedded. A speaker, unidentified at this point, quotes Zion, whose utterance constitutes a single couplet. Her speech is a mere four words in Hebrew (ʿăzābanî YHWH waʾdōnāy šǝkēhānî), arranged chiastically with refer_ ences to YHWH by name and as “my lord” in its center. The beginning and ending words of this chiasm are a pair of verbs that mirror each other precisely in their grammatical form, and each expresses the sense of neglect. In their current context, juxtaposed with the immediately preceding triumphant proclamation by the servant (49:13), these two verbs conveying completed action stand in tension with the verb of that line, which also conveys completed action and whose subject is also YHWH. There YHWH’s completed action is “comforted” (niham), and it is underscored _ by alliteration with its parallel term “shown compassion” (yǝrahēm). The _ speaker quoting Zion’s words picks up immediately afterwards with a nearly opposite claim in the same verbal aspect and with the same subject: “YHWH has abandoned” (v. 14). The new poem begins with Zion’s embedded speech and stands juxtaposed to the servant’s in the preceding poem. There is no introduction to move the reader into the new situation, nor are there signals that a dialogue is taking place. The servant does not reply to Zion, nor is Zion addressing her complaint to what the servant has said. In 49:1–13 the voices are YHWH’s and the servant’s; in 49:14–50:3 the voices are Zion’s and YHWH’s. As Patricia Tull Willey notes, Zion and the servant do not appear together in Second Isaiah.32 However, the juxtaposition of the two creates resonant tensions that impact our reading. Zion’s voice contrasts sharply with the servant’s, not least in its opposite content.33 By taking the grammatical form of the preceding utterance and following so closely after it without transition, Zion’s words further highlight that opposition. 32 33

Tull Willey, Remember the Former Things, 105. Tull Willey, Remember the Former Things, 190, also notes the contrast.

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Similarly, the divine voice’s utterance, into which Zion’s complaint is embedded, appears unintroduced and without transition, and picks up vocabulary that both the servant and Zion employ.34 These juxtapositions are unexplained, and the reader is left to hear the resonances and tensions between them. The divine utterance focuses heavily on the second of Zion’s claims, reemploying the verb “to forget” three times in the pair of couplets that follows (49:15). The result is a pointed rebuttal of the claim that YHWH has forgotten. Verse 15 builds suspense as the rhetorical question and its parallel draw on the maternal bond’s emotional resonances, reinforcing this emphasis by alliterating the final word pair “child of her womb” (ben-bitnāh). The second of the two couplets answers the rhetorical ques_ tion of the first with a dramatic antithetical parallelism: “Even these may forget, but I will not forget you.” This reversal, which reveals the speaker with the emphatic personal pronoun “I” (ʾānōkî), is a highly personal address, from “I” to “you,” and tilts YHWH’s tone toward stinging accusation.35 Not only the does the divine voice stand in contrastive juxtaposition to Zion’s utterance, it echoes the servant’s speech with which it mingled in the preceding poem. YHWH’s voice uses the participle “mother” (mǝrahēm) as the second reference to the maternal figure in _ its rhetorical question about potential forgetfulness.36 The servant’s voice employed this verb (rhm, “comfort”) to proclaim what YHWH had done _ for his afflicted ones in the previous poem (v. 13). Similarly, “even these may forget” (gam-ʾēlleh) picks up the repetition of “these” from the servant’s exultation over people coming from afar (v. 12). These poems’ language is intricately overlapped. The relationship between them is not dialogic or narratival, but an interweaving of images and echoes, resonances that the audience cannot fail to hear, and with which they must wrestle towards meaning.

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The transition from Zion speech to divine speech is so unmarked that there is debate among scholars about where the divine voice’s speech begins. Schmidt, “Servant and Zion,” 87, argues that Zion continues speaking through 15a. She cites the “even these” (v. 15b) as an indication of YHWH’s speech beginning, noting that the same structure appears in v. 24. However, in that case “Thus says the Lord” precedes the “even” phrase, and in v. 15 it does not. The use of “even” is not restricted to v. 24 in the immediate context, and the rhetorical question seems more likely part of the divine response. For further argument for this reading, see Heffelfinger, I Am Large, 228–45. The participle here conveys a mother figure in parallel with the preceding line. The poet seems to be playing with the nuances of “compassionate,” “soft,” and “womb”; cf. North, The Second Isaiah, 193.

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The juxtaposition of these two distinctive metaphorical personifications grants the audience a pair of imaginative lenses through which to view its receipt of and interaction with the message of divine comfort. Zion’s complaint follows the servant’s proclamation in the sequence of poetic utterances but should not be read as chronologically “next.” Second Isaiah does not set out a narrative story line in which comfort has been proclaimed and then Zion complains further. Rather, the two stand in juxtaposed tension. Throughout, Second Isaiah wrestles with the realization of divine comfort (40:1). That the servant’s speech precedes Zion’s makes the contrast between them more striking, as the end of the servant’s speech and the beginning of the divine voice’s citation of Zion highlight the conflict. However, the tension between potential responses to proclaimed comfort is neither new in Second Isaiah, nor are they bound into a chronology of the poems. The tensions between rejection, fear, and futility on the one hand, and confidence and proclamation of comfort on the other, go right back to Second Isaiah’s opening chapter (40:1–11). That tension continues as the two metaphorical personifications stand juxtaposed in this pair of poems. Together they work to transform the exilic audience, though they employ differing poetic persuasive means.

unpacking the rhetorical impact of lyric juxtaposition The servant’s utterance’s poetic form invites its audience to share its perspective by imitating the divine voice’s tone and style and by incorporating the audience into its vision of its own mission. This voice, its tone, and its aims are marked out positively. They belong to a trustworthy speaker, deserving of imitation. By contrast, Zion’s utterance is diminished and rhetorically marked as untrustworthy and to be rejected. Whereas the servant’s speech increasingly melted into divine speech and commanded the audience’s attention to itself, Zion’s words are cited speech, few in number, and are overwhelmed in direct divine response. The servant was paired with images that established his words’ reliability, such as, “he set my mouth like a sharp sword” (Isa 49:2). By contrast, the divine voice treats Zion’s words as unreliable. The womb imagery of the two poems illustrates the contrast. Twice the servant refers to his commission from the womb (49:1, 5), an image that conveys lifelong divine fidelity to the servant. On the other hand, the divine voice introduces womb imagery into the Zion poem (49:15) as part of the rhetorical question about a mother’s ability to forget her child. The lines themselves, “Can a woman

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forget her nursling, a mother the child of her womb?” imply a negative answer. The rhetorical questions are initially a strong and almost sarcastic rejection of Zion’s complaint about divine forgetfulness, lending an element of indictment to YHWH’s tone. As the poem progresses, these lines accumulate further implications. The words the divine voice places in Zion’s mouth for future expression subtly indict Zion herself as a forgetful mother (49:21). In each of these ways, the poetry undermines personified Zion’s trustworthiness as a poetic voice. The juxtaposition of the dependable, divinely inspired Servant with the falsely accusing, forgetful mother Zion produces a tension between potential responses to divinely proclaimed comfort for Jacob/Israel. It urges the exilic audience to embrace the servant’s persona and to reject Zion’s persona through a distinctively poetic approach to persuasion. Zion herself is not rejected in this sequence of poems. Indeed, she may be the voice that most nearly expresses the exilic audience’s outlook that the poems seek to transform through poetic means. Theirs is a rhetorical task, but not a point-by-point refutation of an argument. Instead, they work at both the affective and cognitive level, transforming both the ideas and emotions of their audience through the juxtaposition of emotionally freighted images. The specter of shame haunts both the servant and Zion. The servant’s voice resumes in the poem that immediately follows the divine voice’s rejection of Zion’s complaint (50:4). There the servant’s voice says it was not rebellious (50:5) and employs images of masculine humiliation – receipt of beatings, having his beard plucked out, being insulted and spat upon – as descriptions of what has happened to him (50:6).37 He expresses his confidence in YHWH, saying that YHWH helps him and he knows he will not be “shamed” (ʾēbôš, 50:7). Thus, the servant enacts and voices the confidence that the divine voice urged Zion to embrace in the preceding poem, where YHWH had assured Zion that “the ones waiting on me will not be shamed (yēbōšû)” (49:23). The juxtaposition between the two figures, one who is urged to accept the proclamation made to her from the beginning of Second Isaiah, and one who enacts such acceptance, powerfully and poetically depicts the tension between promise and fulfilment. The audience is placed in the rhetorical gap between Zion and the servant. The poems endeavor to transform the audience. Instead of resisting the proclaimed divine comfort 37

See further Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 40–55, 321; Goldingay and Payne, Isaiah 40–55, 2:210–13; Muilenburg, “Book of Isaiah, Chapters 40–66,” 585.

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as personified Zion does, the poems encourage them to embrace their role as YHWH’s servant. Isaiah 49 and 50 do not resolve the tension that continues through the sequence of poems. The emotionally freighted contrast intensifies in the juxtaposition of Isaiah 52:13–53:12 and 54. There the implied audience have words about the servant placed on their lips in “we” speech (53:3–6), and the passage ironically frames humiliation imagery (52:14–53:10a) with glorification by YHWH (52:12–13; 53:10b–53:12). A similar level of tonal climax appears in the Zion poem with which the servant’s humiliation and glorification are juxtaposed (Isa 54). Here images of female humiliation (e.g., desolation in v. 1; abandonment in v. 6) are acknowledged and placed decisively in the past (vv. 7–8) to be fully forgotten (v. 4).38 Strong images of marital relationship, lavish care, and protection underscore YHWH’s claim to have comforted Zion. Here, for the only time in Isaiah 40–55, Zion language and servant language appear together. In naming YHWH’s certain protection of Zion and her children from the weapons and words of enemies (54:17), the divine voice calls it “the inheritance of the servants (ʿabdê) of YHWH.”39 There is no statement like, “You are Zion, my servant.” Rather, Zion is offered the benefits of participation in the servant’s role. The series of poems is not a drama. We do not see Zion respond. Rather, it is persuasive poetry. The divine voice lays out here most explicitly the rhetorical aim to which the juxtaposition of Zion and servant imagery throughout the series of poems has been driving. The exilic audience is left with an urged response and a vision of what servant-like response to the divine voice makes possible. In conclusion, Second Isaiah’s juxtaposition of poetic tonalities gives voice to conflicting perspectives and does not minimize the real anguish of the audience’s exilic experience. The divine voice takes Zion’s complaint seriously, not disregarding it, even in confrontation and refutation (Isa 49:14–50:3). The poems invite the exilic audience to imagine a positive future in their relationship with YHWH through both Zion and Servant images. However, as I have argued, the poetry evaluates the two differently in and through their juxtaposition. This sequence of juxtaposed utterances invites the exilic audience to move from seeing their situation as Zion sees it, to speaking about it as the servant does.

38 39

Goldingay and Payne, Isaiah 40–55, 2:350–51. Tull Willey, Remember the Former Things, 232–33.

12 “It Is a Lamentation – It Has Become a Lamentation!” Subverting Genre in Ezekiel 19 Sean Burt

One of the core discoveries of modern biblical criticism – if not its central insight1 – is the idea that biblical texts emerged out of a literary culture that was vast and varied. The fruits of this insight have perhaps been most strongly realized in the study of biblical Hebrew poetry, particularly the Psalms, where scholars have identified and debated over a diverse number of different poetic genres. Yet, while some biblical texts display an awareness of poetic genres (riddle, parable, lament, song), few parts of the Hebrew Bible offer anything in the way of explicit reflection on literary form. A major exception, however, can be found in the poetic oracles in the book of Ezekiel.2 In several places, the prophet is instructed not (or not just) to prophesy, but to “raise” a “lamentation” (Heb. qînâ; Ezek 19:1; 26:17; 27:2; 28:12; 32:2).3 The use of a genre term to frame a poem is itself worthy of observation, because it is a relatively rare phenomenon in the Hebrew Bible. Ezekiel 19 is a particularly curious case because, although it is labeled a “lamentation,” the text gives readers numerous reasons to believe that it is something other than a lamentation. This text demands that we consider matters of form as we read and reflect on it. Accordingly, many commentators have grappled with what to call it: Is it indeed a lamentation? Or is it a parable? A parody? In other words, how 1

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Compare Benjamin D. Sommer, Revelation & Authority: Sinai in Jewish Scripture and Tradition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015), 256, n. 8. See Luis Alonso Schökel, A Manual of Hebrew Poetics, SubBi 11 (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1988), 8–10. The term also appears at 2:10; 27:32; 32:16, but not with an accompanying command to Ezekiel. I translate it “lamentation,” rather than “lament,” in order to distinguish from the “lament psalm” genre.

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does the text’s own insistence on its status as a “lamentation” impact the reading? This essay seeks to highlight the ways in which Ezekiel 19, by means of subtle shifts in poetic form (rhythm, lineation, word choice), repeatedly and serially establishes and then subverts generic expectations. While Ezek 19 may be in rare company as a self-proclaimed “lamentation,” poems identified by scholars as “lamentations” occur in a number of places in the Hebrew Bible. Examples include David’s lament over Saul and Jonathan in 2 Samuel 1, the lament over Israel in Amos 5, Lamentations 1–5, Jeremiah 7:29, and Ezekiel’s lamentations later in the book (including Ezek 26, 27, 28, and 32).4 Daniel I. Block lists four main characteristics of this poetic genre: 1) an opening exclamatory declaration of grief (e.g., Lam 1:1; 2 Sam 1:19); 2) address to the deceased (2 Sam 1:26); 3) a before and after, or a “once-now,” scheme highlighting what has been lost; and 4) a distinctive poetic rhythm (the “qînâ ” rhythm – more on this below).5 Other scholars suggest other elements, such as encouragement for the audience to weep or to raise their own lamentations, and praise for the life of the deceased.6 As we will see below, Ezek 19 does not display some of the lamentation’s common features. Accordingly, several commentators have argued that it is a parable (māšāl) more than it is a lamentation.7 A parable, following Jeremy Schipper, is a narrative comparison made explicit by the text itself.8 So, for Schipper, Ezek 17’s clear and selfconsciously identified comparison between the personified plants and animals (eagle, vine) and historical figures and places (king of Babylon, Pharaoh, Egypt) anchors that text in the world of the parable.9 In a similar way, Ezekiel 19 presents a lioness and then a vine in a manner that suggests that this chapter also should be understood as a parable.10 That being said, the text seems to resist complete identification as a parable, too. While the 4

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For a basic orientation, see Edward L. Greenstein, “Lamentation and Lament in the Hebrew Bible,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Elegy, ed. Karen A. Weisman (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 67–84. Daniel I. Block, Ezekiel 1–24, NICOT (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997), 592–93. See also Panc Beentjes, “What a Lioness Was Your Mother: Reflections on Ezekiel 19,” in On Reading Prophetic Texts: Gender-Specific and Related Studies in Memory of Fokkelien van Dijk-Hemmes, ed. Bob Becking and Meindert Dijkstra, BibInt 18 (Leiden, Brill: 1996), 21–35. Beentjes, “What a Lioness Was Your Mother,” 22. Block categorizes this as a “parody” (Ezekiel 1–24, 594). Jeremy Schipper, Parables and Conflict in the Hebrew Bible (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 2. Schipper, Parables and Conflict, 117–18. Much of the scholarly discourse on Ezek 19 has been devoted to the pursuit of identifying the historical persons that may be the subject of this purported allegory. For extensive

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parable in Ezek 17 has an extensive conclusion interpreting the parable (Ezek 17:12–21), Ezek 19 lacks such a section,11 concluding instead with an emphatic reiteration that “it is a lamentation – it has become a lamentation!” (Ezek 19:14). As the following close reading of Ezek 19 will show, the evocations and resistance to such conventions of genre shape – and ultimately subvert – the reader’s expectations of the text.12

translation of ezekiel 19 (1) And you: raise up a lamentation over the princes of Israel. (2) Say: What a lioness was your mother Among lions! She rested among young lions – She multiplied her cubs. (3) She brought up one of her cubs; He became a young lion. He learned to pursue prey; He devoured humans. (4) Now, the nations heard about him; He was caught in their pit. And they led him with hooks To the land of Egypt. (5) When she saw that she was bereft, Her hope was lost. She took one of her cubs; She made him a young lion. (6) He strode among the lions; he became a young lion. He learned to pursue prey; He devoured humans. (7) He knew his widows, Their cities he razed. The land and its inhabitants shuddered At the sound of his roar. (8) Against him assailed the nations, The surrounding provinces.

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discussion of many of the positions, see Walther Eichrodt, Ezekiel: A Commentary, OTL (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1970), 252–56. For briefer summaries, see Paul M. Joyce, Ezekiel: A Commentary (London; New York: T&T Clark, 2009), 147; and Christopher R. Seitz, Theology in Conflict: Reactions to the Exile in the Book of Jeremiah (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1989), 131. Margaret S. Odell, Ezekiel, SHBC (Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys, 2005), 234. I engage in a similar method in my study of genre in the narrative of the Nehemiah Memoir. See Sean Burt, The Courtier and the Governor: Transformations of Genre in the Nehemiah Memoir (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014).

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Sean Burt When they cast their net over him, He was caught in their pit. (9) They set him in a collar, in hooks; They brought him to the king of Babylon; They brought him into the fortress So that his voice would no longer be heard On the mountains of Israel. (10) Your mother is like a vine in your blood, Planted upon the waters. Fruitful and lush was she Because of many waters. (11) She had strong branches; They became royal scepters. And its height was lofty Among the clouds; And its exaltation was seen In its great foliage. (12) But she was uprooted in anger; Thrown to the earth; Dried by the east wind; Her fruit torn away. Her strong branch dried; Fire devoured it. (13) And now she is planted in the wilderness, In a land dry and thirsty. (14) Fire went forth from its branch; Its shoots, its fruits devoured. There was no strong branch on it For a royal scepter. This is a lamentation – it has become a lamentation!

On first glance we can see that not only does Ezekiel introduce this poem as a lamentation, but also that the text doubles down, so to speak, after the conclusion, insisting twice upon that genre designation (v. 14). The text’s suggestion that Ezekiel is raising a lamentation enacts what one might call a genre “script.”13 A genre script functions to initiate a pattern in the reader’s expectations, or, as the scholar of genre theory Alastair Fowler writes, “Generic markers that cluster at the beginning of a work have a strategic role in guiding the reader. They help to establish, as soon as possible, an appropriate mental ‘set’ that allows the work’s generic codes to be read.”14

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See Michael Sinding, “Genera Mixta: Conceptual Blending and Mixed Genres in Ulysses,” New Literary History 36 (2005): 589–619. Alastair Fowler, Kinds of Literature: An Introduction to the Theory of Genres and Modes (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), 88. Similarly, Carol A. Newsom’s

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At the same time, the literary context of Ezekiel may be enacting a parallel, dueling “script.” Two chapters prior to Ezek 19, Ezekiel is instructed to “riddle a riddle and parable a parable” (Ezek 17:2). This chapter bears many similarities with Ezek 19. Both use metaphors of animals and plants (cedar tree, vine, eagle in Ezek 17; lion and vine in Ezek 19), as well as a fair amount of common vocabulary (“many waters,” “vine,” “fruit,” “the east wind,” “drying,” references to Babylon and Egypt). The proximity of Ezek 19 to Ezek 17,15 juxtaposed with the fact that the other lamentations appear only much later in the book (Ezek 26–28, 32), seems to provide a different clue as to the nature of this text.16 Ezekiel 19, in other words, provides a fascinating case for thinking about genre recognition because it is a text that alternately reinforces and undermines the scripts it initiates. As a result it pushes the reader to reflect not just on the content of the poem, but also, even primarily, on its form. Interpretive difficulties emerge with the poem’s first line – indeed with the very first word! The initial line begins with the Hebrew particle māh, which in many cases is used as an interrogative particle (“what?”),17 but which also can indicate an interjection (“how”).18 The most natural move, considering Hebrew syntax, would be to translate it as a question, as I have done: “What is your mother? A lioness.”19 However, the genre clue offered by the label of “lamentation” suggests a different translation: in keeping with other lamentations (e.g. 2 Sam 1:19; Lam 1:1), one might expect an opening exclamation, such as “What a lioness was your mother!”20 The genre designation that frames the poem thus destabilizes our reading from the outset, pitting syntax against genre. Yet the problems multiply beyond that single opening word. The question of how seriously one takes the “lamentation” label has implications

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observations in The Book of Job: A Contest of Moral Imaginations (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 13, as well as her “Spying Out the Land: A Report from Genology,” in Bakhtin and Genre Theory in Biblical Studies, ed. Roland Boer, SBL Semeia Studies 63 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2007), 19–30. Leslie C. Allen argues that Ezek 19 was originally adjoined to Ezek 17. See Ezekiel 1–19, WBC 28 (Dallas: Word, 1990), 285; cf. Karin Schopflin, “The Composition of Metaphorical Oracles within the Book of Ezekiel,” VT 55 (2005): 101–20 (115). 17 Seitz, Theologies in Conflict, 131. IHBS §18. Ronald J. Williams, Hebrew Syntax: An Outline, 2nd ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1976), §127. Beentjes, “What a Lioness Was Your Mother,” 34. Those who read it as an exclamation include Walther Zimmerli (Ezekiel 1, Hermeneia [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979], 393) and Joyce (Ezekiel, 147). Those who read it as a question include Block (Ezekiel 1–24, 595, 598–99), Allen (Ezekiel 1–19, 283), and Odell (Ezekiel, 233).

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for reading each of the first four lines of the poem. The standard critical edition of the Hebrew Bible – the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (BHS) – breaks up 19:2 into poetic lines in the following way: What is your mother? A lioness Among lions! She rested among young lions; She multiplied her cubs.

However, the Masoretic accents, the guides to reading and singing the Hebrew text developed in the early medieval world, suggest a different lineation: What is your mother? A lioness. Among lions she rested. Among young lions she multiplied her cubs.21

A debate over the lineation of a poetic text is possible because, despite the numerous indications that biblical poetry is definable as discourse shaped by lines,22 the earliest manuscript evidence does not consistently introduce graphic line breaks into the text. As a result, throughout the Bible, the division of lines is, in numerous places, up for debate. This particular difference in the lineation of Ezek 19:2 may not seem exceedingly important in itself – the difference in meaning between the variations is negligible. Apparently influenced by the genre designation, the editors of BHS have rejected the guidance of the traditional Masoretic accents and divided the opening poetic lines in Ezek 19 to match the rhythm typical of many laments. The choice is defensible because Ezekiel, by calling this poem a lamentation, suggests that we do that! In making a determination about lineation, a number of factors are at play, but the two that loom largest are parallelism and rhythm. The topic of parallelism is well treated in other scholarship,23 but a brief view of a couplet from this poem whose lineation is uncontroversial can help to illustrate the syntactic and lexical connections that can be present among

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Compare Block, Ezekiel 1–24, 595–96. The Hebrew University Bible edition of Ezekiel, which follows the Aleppo Codex, shows the same implicit lineation but does not arrange the text into poetry on the page: Moshe Goshen-Gottstein and Shemaryahu Talmon, eds., The Hebrew University Bible. The Book of Ezekiel (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2004). F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp, On Biblical Poetry (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 14–94. See, e.g., Adele Berlin, The Dynamics of Biblical Parallelism, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008).

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lines (but are not always!), here in an ultraliteral translation (hyphens indicate single words in Hebrew): He-learned to-pursue prey He-devoured humans (19:3b)

The synonymous parallelism of the first line is clear: the second line is a striking echo of the first. But the first line also has one element (“to pursue”) that has no parallel in the second line. This second, shorter line leads us to the next and more pressing consideration: rhythm. The system of stress-based rhythm characteristic of biblical Hebrew poetry can often be apparent even in English translation, as in this example, in which the first line contains three stresses and the second line contains two stresses, or, a 3+2 rhythm. This rhythm is often referred to as the qînâ, or “lamentation,” rhythm.24 The qînâ rhythm is widely (if not universally)25 acknowledged to be one distinctive feature of the lamentation genre – though, it is important to note, this rhythm is neither limited to lamentation texts nor required by them. Unlike 19:3b, however, 19:2 is ambiguous and requires the reader of the Hebrew text to make a decision. If the text is indeed a “lamentation,” and one can plausibly read the opening line as conforming to that genre’s characteristic poetic rhythm, then perhaps it should be read it that way, as the editors of BHS have done, with three stresses in the first line and two in the second. Conversely, if one does not find that the text is, on balance, a lamentation – if the text’s own genre label is not a determining factor – then there then is no reason to depart from either the Masoretic accents or the straightforward syntactical meaning of the first word (māh, “what”). The decision between the two renderings is not open-and-shut – far from it, since, as noted already, the poem intermittently departs from the lamentation genre, showing itself equally akin to a parable. The text as it unfolds will betray Ezekiel’s designation of its genre. My translation of the first couplet is a compromise, in that it follows the BHS in lineation while rendering the initial line as a question. Yet no translation of 19:2 is

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W. Randall Garr, “The Qinah: A Study of Poetic Meter, Syntax, and Style,” ZAW 95 (1983): 54–75. Because it shares a name with the genre, I will distinguish the two by using the Hebrew word qînâ to refer to rhythm and the English word “lamentation” to refer to the genre. Raymond De Hoop, “Lamentations: The Qinah-Metre Questioned,” in Delimitation Criticism: A New Tool in Biblical Scholarship, eds. Marjo Korpel and Josef Oesch (Assen: Van Gorcum, 2000), 80–104.

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fully satisfactory, particularly insofar as Ezekiel’s use of the “lamentation” label encodes a duality into the text. It pushes the reader to oscillate between thinking about the poem itself (What is in the poem?) and thinking about how we read it (What kind of poem is this?). Do we read the text as a lamentation even in instances when that presumption pushes us to make conclusions about the text that may not be fully warranted when considering the text as a whole? Thus far, the discussion has lingered on technical matters of rhythm and lineation in one couplet in order to illustrate the shifting signals shaping genre expectation. After the ambiguity of v. 2, the next two couplets in 19:3 move the reader into the main body of the poem by settling comfortably into a recognizable qînâ rhythm.26 Additionally, these two couplets introduce the first of what will be several shifts in focalization: from mother to cubs. A small chiasm, young lion (2bα) – cub (2bβ) – cub (3aα) – young lion (3aβ), links the first couplet in 19:3 with the preceding couplet in 19:2 and brings us from the world of the mother to the emergence of the offspring. The word “raised” in 3a (wataʿal, from the root ʿ -l-h “to bring up”) is common enough, but is otherwise used nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible to describe parenting or raising children. This unusual word choice resonates with other phrases later in the poem (particularly in 19:11) that portray the offspring’s height. The mother’s cub has now become a fear-inducing hunter who preys on humans (19:3b; compare Ps 104:21). Indeed, this couplet (“He learned to pursue prey; / He devoured humans”), which displays the terrible power of the young lion, will be a refrain in this poem that we will encounter again just a few verses later. Yet, as we will see in increasingly starker detail later in verses 7–9 and 10–14, this description may be a critique of hubris as much or more than a praise of greatness. The uncommon use of the root ʿ -l-h, “raised,” may evoke a motif, found elsewhere in prophetic literature (e.g., Isa 2:11–17; 14:12–15; Amos 2:9), that links height imagery with hubris.27 Lions appear as agents of destruction, not heroes, later in Ezekiel (22:25) and in other prophetic texts (e.g., Nah 2:12–13 [ET 2:11–12]).28 Accordingly, it may come as no surprise to see that, while it takes only three short 26

27 28

Terence Collins, Line-Forms in Hebrew Poetry: A Grammatical to the Stylistic Study of the Hebrew Prophets, Studia Pohl: Series Maior 7 (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1978). I thank Blake Couey for this observation. See Seitz (Theologies in Conflict, 135), Odell (Ezekiel, 237), Block (Ezekiel 1–24, 600). Ezekiel 22:25 shares a number of specific words with Ezek 19. It refers to “roaring,” “lion,” “pursuing prey,” “devouring” humans (though with a different word for human), and “widows.”

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couplets for this fearsome lion to emerge from his mother’s den, the expected fall is even swifter. Immediately, the nations “hear of him” and he is “caught in their pit” (19:4a; see also the identical language in 19:8b). Then, in the following couplet, the young lion is taken to Egypt and is not heard from again. The decisive, even rushed, end of this young lion manifests itself also in the poetic form, as the 3+2 qînâ rhythm gives way to a shorter 2+2 (“they-took-him in-hooks / to-the-land of Egypt”). Further, this pair of lines gives us the first enjambed couplet in the poem, which eschews the usual end-stopped line as if to shuffle the lion off to Egypt more quickly. This small climax changes the pace of the poem, but it does not necessarily – or decisively – shift the poem away from the lamentation genre. These kinds of alterations in rhythm and couplet syntax appear in other lamentations. Yet in retrospect, the small story told in 19:4 may, after we consider the poem as a whole, indicate that the text is closer to narrative than to commemorative poetry. To that end, we can see that 19:4 contains the third and fourth consecutive couplets that begin with the wayyiqtol verb form, which is not unheard of in Hebrew poetry, but far more characteristic of prose narrative. In fact, glancing ahead, every couplet throughout 19:3–9a begins with this verb tense, perhaps hinting that we are reading something akin to a parable. Whether that is so, however, is not yet clear. After the fall of the young lion, the poem shifts its focalization again, this time back to the mother. The first line of the opening couplet of verse 5 is difficult to translate, but it most likely describes a short period of despair and mourning (“When she saw that she was bereft, / Her hope was lost”).29 This despair lasts for only that single couplet, though, and the text then works to rebuild the lost splendor. The section that goes from 19:5–6 resembles a “second verse,” insofar as it starts up again with a second cub who also grows to become a fearsome young lion, and concludes with a passage that calls back to 19:3b. Yet, as the table below shows, the manner in which this section proceeds to the refrain varies in subtle and suggestive ways.

comparison of ezekiel 19:3 and 5b–6 In 19:5b–6, variations are indicated by italics and verbatim parallels by underlining.30

29

30

For other renderings of the difficult term I translate as “was bereft” (nôhălâ), see Block, Ezekiel 1–24, 596; Seitz, Theologies in Conflict, 135; Zimmerli, Ezekiel _1, 389. Compare Block for a similar visual presentation of these verses (Ezekiel 1–24, 601–02).

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Ezekiel 19:3

Ezekiel 19:5b–6

3a

5b

3b

She brought up one of her cubs;

He became a young lion He learned to pursue prey; He devoured humans.

She took one of her cubs She made him a young lion 6a He strode among the lions He became a young lion 6b He learned to pursue prey; He devoured humans.

Just as in 19:3, the mother raises a cub, but this time the mother “takes” rather than “brings up.” This variation appears to be a pun on the previous line (“she saw that her hope [tiqwātāh] was lost / then she took [watiqah] one of her cubs”). Where 19:3 has the first cub immediately _ become a young lion, 19:5 notes that the mother “made him” a young lion. This alteration keeps the mother in view for a longer stretch, but it also gives room for the second young lion to sneak up on the reader. Whereas the first newly grown young lion immediately learns to pursue prey, the second emerges in a more deliberate, even suspenseful manner. This second young lion “strides” among the lions (or “stalks” or “patrols” – which, as the hithpael conjugation of h-l-k, is the same verb used to describe the activity of the Accuser in Job 1:7). Not unlike a stalking young lion, 19:6 presents a direct repetition of 19:3 that emerges rather surreptitiously. After this stretch of three lines in 19:5b–6aα, each of which increasingly becomes less similar to 19:3, 19:6aβ throws the poem back into a verbatim repetition of 19:3 that will hold for the final three lines. This direct repetition of “he became a young lion,” which was feinted toward in 19:5bβ, slips in, perhaps surprisingly, not in the initial line of a couplet but in its second line. The passage of the second young lion, in other words, toys with the expectations set up by 19:3, and then suddenly springs back into a direct parallel with it. As a whole, then, this passage (19:5b–6) makes its conclusion (“he devoured humans”) read as even more savage in this iteration, both in its more drawn out attention to the young lion’s actions as well as its stalking, so to speak, of the repetition of 19:3. The savagery of this second section intensifies as the second young lion continues to stalk the poem a bit longer after this refrain. Verse 7 contains two couplets that linger on his fierceness. The first opens with an opaque phrase (“his widows were known”) that perhaps means he is a “widow maker.”31 The second couplet dwells on the destruction that he wreaks:

31

Zimmerli (Ezekiel 1, 389) seeks to emend this line. Others adhere to MT, including Joyce (Ezekiel, 147), Seitz (Theology in Conflict, 135), and Block (Ezekiel 1–24, 596). Compare also Ezek 22:25.

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“The land and its inhabitants shuddered / At the sound of his roar” (19:7b). The placement of this enjambed couplet mirrors that of the enjambed couplet in the first section (19:4b) – both appear two couplets after the repeated “He learned to pursue prey / He devoured humans.” Additionally, like 19:4b, 19:7a also has a 2+2 rhythm. The qînâ rhythm thus wobbles in a similar place in the section and after three consecutive stable 3+2 couplets (19:5b–6). This time, turning the focalization to the land, the enjambment focuses attention on the young lion’s reign of terror instead of on his downfall. Yet the heightening of the glory of the second young lion only serves to make its downfall even more severe. In 19:8 the focalization remains on the land (or “the nations”), parallel to 19:4a. The expansive repetition of the young lion’s fall tracks the expansion of the rise. Ezekiel 19:8aα parallels 4aα syntactically, but where the earlier has the nations merely hear, the later has the nations set upon him. Even further, the text of 19:9 goes beyond simply noting his deportation, and dwells on the second lion’s degradation. At this point, in the second half of 19:9, the poetic rhythm dissolves almost completely. The MT suggests a break between “They brought him to the king of Babylon” and “They brought him into the fortress.” This division leaves us with a final triplet made up of three nonparallelistic lines. Some commentators have taken these variations as evidence of a corrupt text and as a problem to be solved,32 but the fact that we see the rhythm disappear precisely at a point where the poem narrates a tragic conclusion suggests that this departure from the established rhythm is meaningful. As I have shown above, the rhythm also shifts in smaller ways at important junctures earlier in the poem. Indeed, this last verse draws a neat conclusion to the stories of the mother and her two young lions, because the silencing of the second young lion’s voice hearkens back not just to his roar in 19:7, but also to the notice that the nations “heard about” the first young lion in 19:4a. So far, we have seen a poem that bears strong resemblances to the lamentation genre. The repeated movement of rise and then fall marks a clear “once-now” schema that is characteristic of the genre.33 We also see indications of the qînâ poetic rhythm.34 Other features of the lamentation, conversely, are either unclear or lacking entirely at crucial junctures. Neither an address to the audience nor any call (explicit or implicit) to weep or mourn these losses are present. The exclamation is likely also not 32 33 34

See Collins, Line-Forms, 271–73. Compare Beentjes, “What a Lioness Was Your Mother,” 25. See Zimmerli (Ezekiel 1, 391) and Eichrodt (Ezekiel, 251).

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present, since the opening line and word (māh) most likely introduce a question, especially if readers consider it separately from the claim that Ezekiel is raising a “lamentation.” Accordingly, while some of the four major feature of the lamentation are present (the “once-now” scheme and the qînâ rhythm), others are absent or questionable (the opening exclamation, the address to the deceased, and the call to mourn). The text shows both an awareness of poetic form and a willingness to manipulate it. Verse 10 then brings the reader to a new section, as evidenced by the finality of Ezek 19:9’s conclusion and the clear shift to a new metaphorical subject (v. 10 begins with “Your mother is like a vine”). Yet, as the opening word “your mother” (ʾimməkā) indicates, something must be linking the lioness with the vine. The sense that an explicit comparison is being constructed between the addressees’ “mother” and first the lioness and then the vine – the mixed metaphor itself should not surprise, as stretching metaphors beyond their breaking points would seem to be a common strategy in Ezekiel35 – draws the text closer to a parable. Nonetheless, other indications remain that the text still is anchored in the world of the lamentation genre. First, after the rhythmically chaotic close of 19:9, 19:10a picks up again as the first of three consecutive couplets that employ the qînâ rhythm, and indeed six of the ten couplets in 19:10–14 utilize the qînâ rhythm (the exceptions are 11b, 12a, 13, and 14a). Even more, a “to be” verb (hāyətâ), semantically unnecessary in Hebrew, fills out the 3+2 rhythm in 19:10bα. Altogether, the first few couplets of this section suggest that the poet took pains to begin it with a clear, discernable rhythm. Whereas the lion section concluded in violence, the vines section returns to a world of calmness, and introduces a complex of imagery that suggests lush tranquility. In 19:10, the pair of couplets is neatly balanced (both 3+2): Your mother is like a vine in your blood36 Planted upon the waters. Fruitful and lush was she Because of many waters.

35

36

Michael A. Lyons, An Introduction to the Study of Ezekiel (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 44. “Your blood” is difficult to make sense of in this context. Accordingly, many commentators emend it. See Zimmerli (Ezekiel 1, 390), Joyce (Ezekiel, 148), Block (Ezekiel 1–24, 607), Allen (Ezekiel 1–19, 284). However, Seitz (Theologies in Conflict, 135) observes that “blood” also occurs in Gen 49, a key source text for Ezekiel.

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Neither couplet is, on its own, syntactically parallel. Rather, in this case, the syntax creates a parallel between the closing lines of each couplet. This formal stability expresses the stability of the well-watered vine in the image. Though this tranquil imagery seems radically different from that of stalking lions, the vine acts like the lioness by producing sturdy and thriving offspring (cubs in 19:2; branches of a vine in 19:11). Here, the offspring also thrive and quickly grow. Verse 11a introduces the “strong branches” (mat tôt ʿōz) and, with a couplet that adheres to the clipped __ qînâ rhythm, quickly notes that they become “royal scepters.” If this couplet is the intrepid shoot that emerges from the vine, then the following couplet illustrates their fecundity: And its height was lofty, Among the clouds And its exaltation was seen In its great foliage.

As one might expect after considering the lioness and her cubs, the description of the towering heights of the vine imply the fall to come. These enjambed lines stretch out the description in a manner that mirrors the overflowing growth of the branches. The terms “lofty” and “exaltation” in 11b translate the verb and noun form, respectively, of the same Hebrew root (g-b-h). This term suggests hubris elsewhere in Ezekiel, sometimes even impending destruction.37 For example, the lamentation over Tyre repeatedly notes that the king of Tyre’s heart is “exalted” (28:2, 5, 17). Additionally, Ezek 17:24 and 21:31 (21:26 ET) both mention that the “exalted” will be brought low.38 The other images that evoke height in these lines also foreshadow a fall, especially following the repeated pattern in Ezek 19:2–9 (recall the first unusual and notable use of the word “brought up” back in 19:3). The closing two verses of the poem narrate the fall that verses 10–11 anticipate. Ezekiel 19:10–14, in other words, retains the once-now pattern, established by Ezek 19:2–9, of flourishing followed by devastation. Like the section on the lioness, the section on the vine also has a two-part structure that is roughly parallelistic and further divisible into two halves. However, where 19:2–9 links the two main sections in parallel to one another, 19:10–14 connects its sections in the course of a single narrative.

37

Joyce, Ezekiel, 148.

38

See also Ezek 16:50; 31:3, 5, 10, 14.

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Beyond the broadly symmetrical and chiastic large-scale structure, 19:10–14 also displays a tight thematic progression. From 19:12 to the end of the poem, we see a piece-by-piece dismantling and destruction of that which was planted and grew in 19:10–11. At the start, the vine is “planted” and “fruitful” (pōriyyâ) and grows “strong branches” that are “fit for a royal scepter” (19:11). Those branches grow to a towering and unsustainable height, and in 19:12, the vine is uprooted, its fruit (piryāh – a noun form of the same lexical root as the word “fruitful” in v. 10) is stripped, and its strong branch is torn away and then devoured by fire. Ezekiel 19:13 then shows the results, the “and now,” by repeating the vine-fruit-strong branch sequence that occurs in both 19:10 and 12. The vine is now “planted in the wilderness / in a land dry and thirsty.” The latter line repeats the sibilant tsade (s, /tz/), and the consonance evokes an _ onomatopoetic sound of dried plants: bəʾereS ̣ S ̣iyyâ wəS ̣āmāʾ. And finally the fruit is devoured by fire. This repetition of the term “devour” for branch and fruit recalls the swaggering actions of the young lions who “devoured” humans (19:3, 6); in a sense, the devourer has now become the devoured. Finally, in 19:14aβ, the closing couplet of the poem nearly repeats 19:11: Where once “It had strong branches, / Fit for royal scepters,” now “It had no strong branch / Fit for a royal scepter.” The final couplet resolves the thematic progression of the poem, the “once-now” pattern. From the endpoint of the entire chapter, we can see that this pattern unfolds repeatedly in Ezek 19:1–14: three rises and three falls, each successively longer and more dramatic than the previous. This pattern, as a characteristic element of the lamentation, hints at this genre’s influence on the text. Otherwise, though, indications of lamentation are much more difficult to find in the section on the vine. In contrast to the part on the lioness, which contains three consecutive qînâ couplets, the rhythm is far freer in the section on the vine, in which the qînâ disappears completely until the final couplet returns to it.39 In other words, the section on the vine by and large does not display one of the major characteristics of the lamentation genre. Similarly, as with the lioness, this part of the poem does not address its audience, neither calling it to mourn, nor beginning with an exclamation, and these lacks bring the text further away from the lamentation, which could suggest that the parable is again the controlling reading strategy.

39

Block, Ezekiel 1–24, 594.

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Yet immediately after the end of the poem comes a stunning insistence: “This is a lamentation – it has become a lamentation!” (Ezek 19:14b). What is going on here? As Seitz observes, this text appears to display a “janus-like quality,”40 in that it both laments and tells a parable. One approach to understanding this duality is to synthesize these two genres. For instance, Odell argues that Ezekiel here transforms a parable into a lamentation.41 Block, similarly, proposes that it offers a parody of the lamentation.42 Yet while synthetic interpretations like these are highly suggestive, what is more remarkable about the use of genre in Ezek 19 is the simultaneity of these two genres. Neither is fully resolved to the other, particularly insofar as the chapter closes not with an explanatory passage as in Ezek 17, but with a reassertion of the lamentation label that is so emphatic as to perhaps protest too much. Ezekiel 19 is a text that asks readers repeatedly to reevaluate their stance toward it. It declares its status as a lamentation, yet refuses to mourn; it seduces the reader with tantalizing parable-like comparisons, but then refuses to give sufficient clues to identify them. Indeed, as mentioned above, commentators have suggested that Ezek 19 is a parable about a number of historical persons, but no identification has produced any consensus. While Ezekiel 19 can and surely does provide resources for the interpreter who wishes to pursue other meanings, it is first and foremost a text that focuses explicitly on form. The terms that a text itself lays out can and do provide the resources for analyzing that text. In the case of Ezekiel 19, given the prose frame’s insistences that the text is a “lamentation,” whether it is a lamentation must be a central question for the reader. Even more, I would suggest that the poem’s reluctance to clarify the meaning of its seeming parables is a text-immanent clue that the matters of form – genre, poetic rhythm, wordplay – should remain at the forefront. The particular effect of this poem’s use of form is to make the reader consider it from multiple, and alternating, perspectives. The text pushes one to shift back and forth, or to oscillate, not just from lamentation to parable but, more importantly, from content to form. The text’s implicit calls to lament, to puzzle on a parable, or even to synthesize the two, are repeatedly superseded by the demand to reflect on the form of the text itself. My thinking here is informed by the work of the rhetorician Richard Lanham. In his 1993 book The Electronic Word, Lanham names a mode of reading, always present but heightened in the age of electronic 40 42

Seitz, Theologies in Conflict, 132. Block, Ezekiel 1–24, 594–95.

41

Odell, Ezekiel, 241.

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communication, the “AT-THROUGH oscillation.”43 When reading a written text, one can read “through” the text to focus on its communicative content. Alternatively, one can read “at” the text to focus on its form and materiality (typography, page layout, “multimodal” matters such as sound or image, and so on). The contemporary shifts in how we use and produce textuality in the electronic age, Lanham argues, has confronted readers and writers with textual materiality and form in ways that had been taken for granted or minimized under analog print culture. Any connection between Lanham’s concept and Ezekiel 19 surely resides more in the realm of analogy than of application. My appeal to this research acknowledges some delightfully compounded anachronisms (namely, the use of a pre-Internet book on electronic communication to inform a reading of an Iron Age literature). That being said, Lanham’s work highlights the effect of technological shifts on textuality. Accordingly, it may not be a stretch to consider that the book of Ezekiel, created at a transitional point in the emergence of written discourse in ancient Israel, also provides an occasion for reflection on the nature of textual form.44 In the specific case of Ezek 19, the curious refusal to close the chapter with an explanatory passage parallel to Ezek 17:12–21 – or, rather, the choice to conclude with the exclamation at 19:14b – is perhaps revealing about what the text does and does not do. Instead of creating a conclusion that forms an authorized rhetorical closure, Ezek 19 insists on itself as a lamentation, a discourse whose fundamental orientation is toward grief and irreversible loss, toward the unresolvable. The synthetic readings of Ezek 19 as a parodic or converted lament, mentioned above, have the advantage of linking form and content, of placing the text fully under Ezekiel’s control. In this view, Ezekiel becomes a creative weaver of different genres. These kinds of readings are compelling in large part because they allow us to read THROUGH the form of text to find an underlying rhetorical purpose created by an authorial voice. However, the lack of an interpretive conclusion to Ezek 19 serves as a reminder that, while it may indeed have a didactic purpose, the tragedy of the lioness and the vine is also a story not to be mastered and understood, but simply to be mourned. From this perspective, the reader looks AT the text, at the unresolved tensions of genre in this poem.

43

44

Richard Lanham. The Electronic Word: Democracy, Technology, and the Arts (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993). Capitalization in the Original. See Ellen F. Davis, Swallowing the Scroll (Sheffield: Almond Press, 1989).

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Schipper suggests that the parable in Ezek 17 functions as a rhetorical device for highlighting Ezekiel’s status as an authoritative interpreter, especially insofar as it includes the explanatory conclusion (Ezek 17:12–21).45 While 19:14b can be read as a similar attempt to assert authority over the text by defining it, this poem’s use of alternating generic conventions also simultaneously effaces Ezekiel’s authority. The composition history of Ezek 19 lies beyond the scope of the present essay, but scholars have found indications that this poem, at least in part, is a preexisting text adapted for its present literary context.46 Of course, even adapted and repurposed texts can be the site of great creativity.47 As the foregoing reading has sought to illustrate, despite its unwillingness to remain within a single genre, Ezek 19 is a tightly structured text. The reader gets a sense that the lioness and the vine are meant to impart some didactic content, and yet the reader is left without a clear interpretive guide, only a claim that the story is worth mourning. Ezekiel 19 may indeed seek to parody the lamentation genre at the expense of the mother lioness/vine, but just as genre names the aspects of texts that cannot be fully controlled by the author,48 the emphasis on form in this poem may serve to subvert its own rhetorical aims.

45 46 47

48

Schipper, Parables and Conflict, 117–22. See Beentjes (“What a Lioness,” 21), and Collins (Line-Forms, 272). On Ezekiel 19 as a text that adapts other literary materials, chiefly among them Gen 49, see Michael Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 502. See Burt, The Courtier and the Governor, especially ch. 3.

13 The Enduring Day of Wrath Zephaniah 1, the Sibylline Oracles, and the Dies Irae Julia M. O’Brien

In content, the book of Zephaniah offers little beyond standard prophetic fare. Like other books of the Major and Minor Prophets, it includes announcements of judgment on Jerusalem; accusations of idolatry; oracles against the nations of Moab and Ammon; the promise of salvation for a “remnant”; criticisms of prophets, judges, and priests; an announcement of salvation for Daughter Zion; images of God as Divine Warrior; and the promise that God will gather those now scattered among the nations. In literary style, however, the book’s opening chapter is arresting, presenting a comprehensive and harrowing depiction of the devastation of the earth and its inhabitants. Not only humans, but also animals, birds, fish, and “everything” will be swept away from the face of the earth (1:2–3). The Day of the LORD will be a day of wrath, distress, anguish, ruin, devastation, darkness, and gloom (1:15). The poem’s all-encompassing litany of doom remains one of the most enduring images of judgment from the Hebrew Bible, affecting not only those who read it directly but also those who encounter its rhetoric through later appropriations. This essay first considers an important chapter in the “afterlife” of Zeph 1: its incorporation into the Dies Irae, long part of the Christian church’s Mass for the Dead. It then explores the literary features of Zephaniah that invite its association with the Last Judgment and grant the work a haunting resilience.

zephaniah 1:15–16 and the dies irae The Vulgate translation of Zeph 1:15 begins one of the most widelyrecognized sequences in Western music: the Dies Irae, the Gregorian 216

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setting of a Medieval Latin poem traditionally attributed to Thomas of Celano, the biographer of St. Francis.1 The Dies Irae was incorporated into the Requiem Mass at the Council of Trent (1545–63), where it remained until the liturgical reforms of Vatican II. In Roman Catholic rites in the United States, it remains part of the liturgy for All Soul’s Day. With a haunting melody and a long association with rites of death, the melody of the Dies Irae subsequently has become the “music of doom” in classical compositions, appearing in the works of Mozart, Verdi, Britten, Listz, Rachmaninov, and Berlioz. In contemporary film, even advertising, it remains the cadence of doom and danger. The distinctive, tolling first eight notes resonate through the soundtracks of Masque of the Red Death, It’s a Wonderful Life, The Lord of the Rings, The Lion King, Star Wars, The Exorcist, Sweeney Todd, Friday the 13th, and (in a hip-hop version) a Nike commercial.2 The connection between the Dies Irae and Zephaniah is evident in the chant’s opening lines, which mirror Jerome’s translation of Zeph 1:15: Dies Irae3

Zephaniah 1:15, Vulgate

Dies irae, dies illa, solvet saeculum in favilla, teste David cum Sibylla.

Dies irae dies illa dies tribulationis et angustiae dies calamitatis et miseriae dies tenebrarum et caliginis dies nebulae et turbinis.

Day of wrath, that dreadful day, shall heaven and earth in ashes lay, as David and the Sybil say.

That day is day of wrath, day of trouble and anguish, a day of calamity and misery, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and whirlwinds.

1

2

3

Many modern interpreters now suggest an anonymous, less-famous author. A thirteenthcentury date is here assumed for the composition of the poem. Various examples are discussed by Tom Allen, CBS Radio Host: Aisha Harris, “The Fascinating History of a Latin Death Hymn You’ve Heard Many Times without Knowing It,” May 8, 2014, www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2014/05/08/dies_irae_in_movies_ tom_allen_and_the_cbc_trace_the_history_of_the_latin.html. The hip hop version, “The Second Coming” by Just Blaze and Juelz Santana, is discussed by Ricky O’Bannon, “Gregorian Chant Gets a ‘Second Coming’ with Help from Hip-Hop,” April 16, 2014. www.classicalmpr.org/story/2014/04/16/dies-irae-just-blaze-julez-santana. Throughout I utilize the translation of Michael Martin, “Dies Irae: Day of Wrath,” www.preces-latinae.org/thesaurus/Hymni/DiesIrae.html.

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The correspondence between the opening lines of each has led many interpreters to claim that Zephaniah is the (sole) source for the medieval poem.4 As seen above, however, the two texts soon diverge, with the Dies Irae attributing the prediction of this day of doom to (king) David and the Sibyl. The reference to the Sibyl is not incidental to the poem but actually integral to it. By stanza three, textual allusions within the Dies Irae are no longer to the book of Zephaniah but to Book 8 of Sibylline Oracles, a sixth-century Christian appropriation of the sibylline traditions whose history is discussed below. The Sibylline Oracle 8:217–50 offers an epic poetic rendering of the apocalypse and the Day of Judgment: Dies Irae

Sibylline Oracle 8:239–425

The mighty trumpet’s wondrous tone

A trumpet from heaven will issue a most mournful sound, wailing for the defilement of limbs and the woes of the world. The gaping earth will then show the abyss of the nether world. All will come to the tribunal of God the king.

shall rend each tomb’s sepulchral stone and summon all before the Throne.

The Sibylline Oracles in Christian Tradition The Dies Irae is not unique in linking the Sibylline Oracles with biblical texts. By the Middle Ages, the sibyls as characters were firmly ensconced in the Christian tradition and long associated with the prophets of the Hebrew Bible. The Oracles themselves were treated as “ancient” confirmation of the truth of the Incarnation, the Nativity, and the Last Judgment. The sibyls as aged ecstatic women with the power to foretell the future are mentioned in Plato’s Phaedrus, Aristophanes’ Equites, Euripides’

4

5

So R. J. Coggins and Jin Hee Han, Six Minor Prophets through the Centuries, Blackwell Bible Commentaries (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 185; Ehud Ben Zvi, A Historical-Critical Study of the Book of Zephaniah (Berlin, New York: De Gruyter, 1991), 27, n. 32; Peter Craigie, Twelve Prophets, vol. 2 (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1985), 108. Throughout, I use Collins’ translation of the Sibylline Oracles: John J. Collins, “Sibylline Oracles,” in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, ed. James H. Charlesworth (New York: Doubleday, 1983), 317–472.

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Bousiris, and Virgil’s Book of the Dead,6 sometimes distinguished from one another (Cumaean, Erythraean, etc.) and sometimes conflated into a single feminine figure known as the Sibyl. Jewish tradition incorporated the sibyls at least by the time of Josephus, and early strata of the Sibylline Oracles likely emerge from the Jewish community in Hellenistic Egypt.7 In its current form, however, the Sibylline Oracles are distinctively Christian, with the Preface explicitly claiming that the books “expound clearly about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.. . . and recount the things which are expounded in the Mosaic writings and the books of the prophets.”8 While early church fathers such as Theophilus of Antioch and Clement of Alexandria regularly refer to the Sibyl and her sayings,9 Christian appropriation of the sibylline tradition centers on a single passage from the Sibylline Oracles. According to Sib. Or. 8:217–50, the (pagan) Sibyl foretold Christ by proclaiming an acrostic poem, the first letters of each line spelling (in Greek) JESUS CHRIST, SON OF GOD, SAVIOR, CROSS. The acrostic concludes with “This is our God, now proclaimed in acrostics, the king, the immortal savior, who suffered for us.” Lactantius (Divine Institutes 4.18), Eusebius (Oration of Constantine, ch XVII), and Augustine (City of God, Book XVIII, ch 23) discuss the acrostic, but its wide dissemination can be attributed to Quodvultdeus (d. 439), a student of Augustine. Quodvultdeus included a Latin version of the acrostic in his influential Judicii Signum (Sermon against Jews, Pagans, and Arians, concerning the Creed), a sermon in which the author summons various prophets, including the Sibyl, to attest to the coming of the Messiah. Later incorporated into a reading for Christmas Matins,10 it became the basis for Song of the Sibyl, sung throughout Europe and still performed in Catalan churches on Christmas Eve.11 By the eleventh

6

7

8

9

10

11

Rieuwerd Buitenwerf, Book 3 of the Sibylline Oracles and Its Social Setting, SVTP (Leiden; Boston, MA: Brill, 2003), 93. J. J. Collins, “The Sibylline Oracles,” in Jewish Writings of the Second Temple Period: Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, Qumran, Sectarian Writings, Philo, Josephus, ed. Michael E. Stone (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), 357–82; H. W. Parke, Sibyls and Sibylline Prophecy in Classical Antiquity (London: Routledge, 1988), 8. John J. Collins, Seers, Sybils, and Sages in Hellenistic-Roman Judaism (Leiden, New York: Brill, 1997), 185. Theophilus of Antioch (To Autolycus, Book II, ch 38) and Clement of Alexandria (The Stromata, Book VI, ch 6). See Buitenwerf, Book 3 of the Sibylline Oracles and Its Social Setting. Frank A. D’Accone, The Civic Muse: Music and Musicians in Siena during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 82. “The Song of the Sibyl,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Song_of_the_Sibyl.

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century, the sermon took on the form of dramatized processions of prophets (Ordo Prophetarum), performed in Aquitaine, Laon, and Rouen and in the Middle English Corpus Christi plays in Townesley and Wakefield.12 Most of the prophetic processions conclude with the Sibyl, who foretells the Last Judgment: on that day the earth will be drenched with sweat, the trumpet will sound, and a king will come from heaven to judge the world and send offenders to eternal flame.13 By the time of the Renaissance, Quodvultdeus’s sermon, the sibylline acrostic, and the characters informed the art, theater, and music of the West. Quotations directly from the Sibylline Oracles and from their citations in Lactantius, Augustine, and the Prophecy of Erythraean (ca. 1250, attributed to Joachim of Fiore), appear in religious art at Siena, Florence, and Rome, with sibyls themselves ubiquitous at Pisa, Pistoia, and Rome. Michelangelo features sibyls in the Sistine Chapel,14 and Roger van der Weyden’s Bladelin Altarpiece (c. 1460) juxtaposes two annunciations – one to the Sibyl and one to the Magi – in panels on either side of a nativity scene. Jan and Hubert van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece, completed in 1472, pairs two prophets with two sibyls, one of the later holding a scroll proclaiming “rex altissimus adveniet per secula futurus scilicet in carne,” a Latin version of the second line of the acrostic. Christian usage of the Sibylline Oracles also strongly influenced the iconography of Jesse trees at Voronet (Moldavia) and Orvieto.15 The Dies Irae shares in this widespread Christian tradition. The passages cited from the Sibylline Oracles derive from the acrostic of Sib. Or. 8:217–50 – a passage key to Christian interpretation both prior to and long after the composition of the medieval hymn.

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13

14

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Mary Hatch Marshall, “The Dramatic Tradition Established by the Liturgical Plays,” PMLA LVI (1941): 962–91; E. Catherine Dunn, “Lyrical Form and the Prophetic Principle in the Towneley Plays,” Mediaeval Studies 23 (1961): 80–90; Robert Brawer, “The Form and Function of the Prophetic Procession in the Middle English Cycle Play,” Annuale mediaevale 13 (1972): 88–124. “The prophecy of the Sibyl [is] the climax of the sermon . . . the Sibyl’s terrible images of the last judgment show the dire consequences of continued disbelief and are intended to convert the stubborn heretic by fear, if nothing else.” Ibid., 91. Creighton Gilbert, Michelangelo on and off the Sistine Ceiling (New York: Braziller, 1994), 59–113. At Orvieto, the sibyl and other pagans (likely including Plato and Aristotle) form the bottom two rows of the historiated tree. Michael D. Taylor, “A Historiated Tree of Jesse,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 34/35 (1980): 135.

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Zephaniah and the Sibyl Despite the long-standing association of sibyls with the prophets and the Last Judgment, I have found no text prior to Dies Irae that combines the Sibylline Oracles with Zephaniah and no evidence that the author of the Sibylline Oracles quotes Zephaniah. The Apocalypse of Zephaniah, a fragmentary second-century CE text that portrays sinners suffering torment in Hades and the judgment of souls after death, mentions neither the Sibyl nor Zephaniah 1. Zephaniah does not appear in Quodvultdeus’ sermon or in the Ordo Prophetarum at Limoges or Laon; in the Ordo Prophetarum at Rouen, Zephaniah appears in an extended list of prophets, though his words derive from Zeph 3:14 rather than Zeph 1.16 The Dies Irae, it seems, is distinctive in linking Zephaniah 1 with the Sibylline Oracles to create a clearly Christian and harrowing picture of the Last Judgment. Why Zephaniah? In what follows, I explore the features of Zephaniah that may have invited its appropriation by the author of the Dies Irae and invited this intertwining with the sibylline tradition. While of course my argument cannot firmly establish the causality of usage, I suggest that not only the content but also the style of Zeph 1 are ripe for this medieval appropriation.

literary style of zephaniah 1 In what follows, I explore various literary features of Zeph 1:  The repetition of words, both verbatim and in closely related forms  The repetition of sounds, particularly in the form of alliteration and assonance  The multiplication of modifiers, where multiple nouns and adjectives modify a single term  The employment of metaphor and simile These features are traced throughout three distinct units of the poem: 1:2–6; 1:7–13; and 1:14–18. Throughout, the transliterated Hebrew text is paired with the NRSV translation, and font and underline styles highlight repeated vocabulary. 16

Karl Young, “Ordo Prophetarum,” Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. Transactions. 20 (1922): 58. For a popular treatment of the Ordo Prophetarum, see http://inthisfalsworld.blogspot.com/2015/09/the-sermon-of-quodvultdeus-entitled.html.

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Several assumptions undergird this analysis. First, it largely relies on the vowel pointing of the Masoretic Text, as reflected in the Leningrad Codex on which Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia is based, and not on emendations or reconstruction of the “original” Hebrew. Second, the line breaks in each verse given here are not based solely on stichographic considerations but have been chosen primarily to highlight literary devices.

1:2–6 Transliterated Hebrew text

NRSV translation

2a ʾāsōp ʾāsēp kōl b mēʿal pənê hāʾădāmâ nəʾumYHWH 3a ʾāsēp ʾādām ûbəhēmâ b ʾāsēp ʿōp-haššāmayim ûdəḡê — — — — hayyām c wəhammakšēlôt ʾet-hārəšāʿîm d wəhikrattî ʾet-hāʾ dām -‒ -‒ -‒ e mēʿal pənê hāʾădāmâ nə’umYHWH 4a wənātîtî yādî ʿal-yəhûdâ _

I will utterly sweep away everything from the face of the earth, says the LORD. I will sweep away humans and animals; I will sweep away the birds of the air -‒‒‒ and the fish of the sea. I will make the wicked stumble. I will cut off humanity - ‒- ‒- ‒- ‒- ‒ from the face of the earth, says the LORD. I will stretch out my hand against Judah, and against all the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and I will cut off from this place

b c

wəʿal kol-yōšəbê yərûšālāim

wəhikrattî min-hammāqôm -‒ -‒ -‒ hazzeh d ʾet ....-šəʾār habaʿal e ʾet-šēm hakkəmārîm .... ʿim-hakkōhănîm 5a wəʾet-hammišta hăwîm .................................... ʿal-haggaggôt lisbāʾ_ haššāmāyim — — — — _ hăwîm b wəʾeṯ-hammišta .................................... _ c hannišbāʿîm laYHWH --------------d wəhannišbāʿîm bəmalkām ------------------6a wəʾeṯ . .-hannəsôḡîm mēʾahărê _ YHWH b waʾăšer lōʾ-biqšû ʾet-YHWH c wəlōʾ dərāšuhû

- ‒-‒-‒-‒

.every remnant of Baal and the name of the idolatrous priests; ..

t. hose who bow down on the roofs to ......................... the host of the heavens; ‒ ‒ ‒ ‒ those who bow down ......................... and swear to the LORD, ------but also swear by Milcom; ------.those who have turned back from following the LORD, who have not sought the LORD or inquired of him.

A key feature of this unit is the repetition of verbatim word forms and also word forms that sound similar. Some of the latter derive from the same Hebrew root, while others do not.

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The opening words of 1:2, which modern English translations render as “I will utterly sweep away,” are in Hebrew a classic case of sound repetition: ʾāsōp ʾāsēp. It is a common construction in Hebrew to create an intensive by joining two different forms of the same verb (usually an infinitive absolute and a finite verb), and this is the basis for the English translations of “utterly,” which emend the Hebrew phrase. The phrase in Hebrew, however, derives from two different Hebrew roots: the first from ʾāsap (“gather”) and the second from sûp (“destroy”). Berlin suggests that this linkage of similar-sounding words from two different roots was intended to effect greater assonance.17 The second word (ʾāsēp) is repeated verbatim in 1:3a. Other repetitions appear as well. In 1:2–3, ʾădāmâ (“ground”) and ʾādām (“humanity”) are linked, each appearing twice, and both verses also end with the same phrase, nəʾum-YHWH (“says the LORD”). Both 1:3d and 1:4c begin with wəhikrattî (“I will cut off”). Verses 1:5a and 1:5b begin identically with wəʾet-hammištahăwîm (“those who bow _ down”), and hannišbāʿîm (“those who swear”) appears twice in 1:5d. These repetitions not only provide the unit with a clear sonority but also, by their sequencing, underscore the comprehensive nature of the doom being declared. The global statement that the deity will sweep away everything (kol) from the face of the ground is followed by a detailed list of who and what is included: he18 will sweep away humans and animals, he will sweep away birds and fish, he will cut off humanity from the face - - ‒- - ‒ of the ground, he will cut off the remnant of Baal, namely those who bow ........ ‒- ‒dow down to the LORD, as well as those who ........n to the gods and also bow ................... swear to the LORD and also swear by Milcom.19 By repeating and build--------------ing verbs of destruction and nouns that form their object, the unit underscores its opening thesis that the divine one will destroy “everything” (kol) – a refrain with which the chapter as a whole will conclude (1:18). These verses also include various allusions to the Flood narratives of Genesis, both the initial announcements of destruction in Gen 6–7 and the reversal of destruction in Gen 8–9. Zephaniah 1:2–3 echoes Gen 6:7 in reporting the deity’s determination to cut off humanity (ʾādām) from the face of the earth (ʾădāmâ), and the listing of humans, beasts, birds of heaven, and fish of the sea is similar in Zeph 1:2–3, Gen 6:7, and 17

18 19

Adele Berlin, Zephaniah, AB (New York: Doubleday, 1994), 72. The Vulgate mirrors this sound repetition, though the meaning differs from the MT. Treating both words as from ʾāsap (“gather”), it reads congregans congregabo (“gathering, I will gather”). I follow the Hebrew text in using the masculine pronoun for the deity. The Hebrew text actually reads “their king” (malkām), though the NRSV emends the text to read “Milcom,” the name of an ancient Near Eastern deity.

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Gen 7:14. After the flood, God promises never again to destroy “all” (kol) life on the earth, repeating the same lists of creatures as before (Gen 8:17–19) and claiming that he will never again curse the earth (ʾădāmâ) because of humans (ʾādām) (Gen 8:21). Just as Gen 2 and 7 underscore that the promises made to humans extend to the earth from which humans derive, Zeph 1 underscores that the whole earth will suffer from the consequences of human wickedness. With allusions to the Flood story, Zephaniah 1:2–3 announces not only a second destruction of the created order but also a abrogation of the promises God made after the flood to never again destroy the earth in this way. The divine promise in Genesis 8–9 never again to destroy creation is here reversed by the divine claim in Zephaniah: the divine announcement of destruction returns to the destruction of the flood announced in Gen 6–7.20 Intertwined with the language of the creation/de-creation in Zeph 1 is a more targeted critique of idolatry. This concern is introduced in 1:3c with wəhammakšēlôt ʾet-hārəšāʿîm, a phrase that the NRSV translates as “I will make the wicked stumble” based on an emendation of the Hebrew which reads “those who cause the wicked to stumble.” The acts of idolatry are detailed in 1:4–6, echoing language that characterizes both reform and apostasy in 2 Kgs 21–25. According to 2 Kings, the evil king Manasseh erected altars for Baal (2 Kgs 21:3; cf. Zeph 1:4) and for the host of heaven (2 Kgs 21:3; cf. Zeph 1:5), and he made his son pass through fire (2 Kgs 21:6; giving weight to the NRSV’s emendation to “Milcom” in Zeph 1:5). Josiah, the religious reformer, abolished the altars of Asherah and Baal (2 Kgs 23:4; cf. Zeph 1:4), deposed the idolatrous priests (2 Kgs 23:5; cf. Zeph 1:4), outlawed the worship of the hosts of heaven (2 Kgs 23:4; cf. Zeph 1:5), and forbade any to pass their children through fire as an offering to Molekh (2 Kgs 23:10; cf. Zeph 1:5). These allusions are further advanced by the superscription of Zephaniah, which places the work of the prophet in the time of Josiah. Known in 2 Kgs as the foe of idolatry and the champion of YHWH-alone reforms, Josiah’s literary presence in Zephaniah further bolsters its antiidolatry message.21

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Sweeney denies this dependence on the flood story and gives alternative biblical parallels. Marvin Sweeney, Zephaniah, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), 63. For further discussion, see Julia M. O’Brien, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, AOTC (Nashville: Abingdon, 2004), 92–93; 98.

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This charge of idolatry is further highlighted by the use of several literary devices. Repetition within 1:5 underscores the wicked’s duplicity: they ................... bow down (hammištahăwîm) to the host of heaven; they bow down ................... _ (hammištahăwîm) and swear (hannišbāʿîm) to the LORD; they also swear --------------_ (wəhannišbāʿîm) by Milcom. As demonstrated by the repetition of verbs, the people (sinfully) offer the same worship to others gods as they do to YHWH. In 1:6, three separate phrases describe people who refuse to seek Yahweh: they have turned back; they do not seek him; they do not inquire of him. The list of the people’s failures, clearly, is long. Through the use of repetition and allusion to the Flood narratives, this unit contends that all creation will suffer the devastating consequences of human idolatry.22 While it lists the specific sins of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the majority of the literary devices call attention to the effect of those sins on “all” the world. These universal overtones, as I will later explore, well mirror the themes of the Sibylline Oracles and the message of the Dies Irae.

1:7–13 Transliterated Hebrew text 7a b c d 8a b c d

has mipənê ʾădōnāy YHWH kî qārôb yôm YHWH kî-hēkîn YHWH zeba h ......... _ hiqdîš qəruʾāyw wəhāyāh bəyôm zeba h ......... YHWH ûpāqadtî ʿal-haśśārîm_ wəʿal-bənê hammelek wəʿal kol-hallōḇəšîm malbûš nokrî

9a ûpāqadtî ʿal kol-haddôlēg b ʿal-hammiptān bayyôm hahûʾ c haməmalʾîm bêt ʾădōnêhem hāmās -‒ _ ûmirmâ 10a wəhāyâ ḇayyôm hahûʾ nə’umYHWH b qôl səʿāqâ miššaʿar haddāḡîm _

22

Sweeney, Zephaniah, 57.

NRSV translation Be silent before the Lord GOD! For the day of the LORD is at hand; the LORD has prepared a sacrifice ............, he has consecrated his guests. And on the day of the LORD’s ............ sacrifice I will punish the officials and the king’s sons and all who dress themselves in foreign attire. On that day I will punish all who leap over the threshold, who fill their master’s house with ‒ ‒ ‒ violence and fraud. On that day, says the LORD, a cry will be heard from the Fish Gate,

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(cont.) Transliterated Hebrew text

NRSV translation

c wîlālâ min-hammišneh ------d wəšeber gādôl mēhaggəbāʿôt 11a hêlîlû yōšbê hammaktēš ------b kî nidmâ kol-ʿam kənaʿan c nikrətû kol-nətîlê kāsep 12a wəhāyah bāʿēt_ hahîʾ ʾăhappēś ʾeṯ-yərûšālaim bannērôt _ b ûpāqadtî ʿal-hāʾănāšîm haqqōpəʾîm ʿal- šimrêhem c hāʾōmərîm bilbābām lōʾ-yêtîb _ YHWH wəlōʾ yārēʿa 13a wəhāyah hêlām limšissâ _ ûbāttêhem lišmāmâ ‒ ‒ ‒ ‒ ‒ b ûbānû bāttîm wəlōʾ yēšēbû

a wail from the Second Quarter, -------a loud crash from the hills. The inhabitants of the Mortar wail, ----for all the traders have perished; all who weigh out silver are cut off. At that time I will search Jerusalem with lamps, and I will punish the people who rest complacently on their dregs, those who say in their hearts, “The LORD will not do good, nor will he do harm.” Their wealth shall be plundered, and their houses laid waste. ‒ ‒ ‒ Though they build houses, they shall ‒ ‒ ‒ not inhabit them; though they plant vineyards, they shall not drink wine from them.

‒ ‒ ‒

c

wənātʿû kərāmîm wəlōʾ yištû _ ʾet-yênām

The technique of repetition continues in this unit, albeit with new vocabulary. The divine name appears four times in rapid succession at the beginning of the unit and is revisited twice in subsequent verses. The word ûpāqadtî (“I will punish”) appears in 1:8b, 1:9a, and 1:12b; and repeated words appear in close proximity, such as zebah (“sacrifice”) in _ 1:7c and 1:8a and wə’al (“and against”) in 1:8c and 1:8d. As in the previous unit, these repetitions grant the unit not only coherence but also a sense of pervasive doom: punishing these, and these, and these, the deity acts decisively and alone. The most important repetition, however, is yôm YHWH (“day of the LORD”), introduced in 1:7b. Indeed, yôm (“day”) appears four times in this unit and fourteen times in the chapter as a whole. The phrase bāʿēt hahîʾ (“in that time”) in 1:12a is a related reference. Zephaniah’s “Day of the LORD” language links intertextually to a wide range of texts in the prophetic materials and beyond.23 Throughout

23

References to the “day” occur over 200 times in the prophets. See Richard Hiers, “Day of the Lord,” ABD 2:82.

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the Prophets, the Day of LORD is associated with violent judgment. In the harrowing imagery of Isaiah 13, the Day of the LORD is qārôb (“near”) (cf. Zeph 1:7, translated by NRSV as “at hand”), and Babylon will experience divine wrath, anger, desolation, darkness, anger, rape, and infanticide. Isaiah 34 employs multiple metaphors for the Day: on the LORD’s “day of vengeance” (Isa 34:8), he appears as a warrior who devastates Edom with the sword (34:5), profuse amounts of blood (34:6), smoke (34:10), and other signs. In Jeremiah 46, the Day of the LORD is a day of reckoning in which the deity holds a zebah (“sacrifice,” cf. Zeph _ 1:8a) in the land of Egypt. As widely noted in scholarly discussions of this concept, the reckoning of the Day of the LORD can bring salvation to Israel and/or Judah by judging enemy nations (as in Isa 13, 34, 63; Jer 46; Zech 14:1–9, etc.) or judgment to Israel and/or Judah (Amos 5:18–20; Ezek 7:1–20, etc.).24 Throughout the Prophets, the Day of the LORD imagery is utilized in these two different ways, granting the imagery an inherent ambiguity. Zephaniah 1:7–8 uses repetition and the progression of vocabulary to exploit this ambiguity. One should stand silent before the LORD (1:7a) because the Day of the LORD is near (1:7b); the LORD has prepared a sacrifice and invited guests (1:7c). Zephaniah 1:8a combines the previ.............. ously delivered information into a new descriptor: the Day of the LORD becomes the Day of the Sacrifice .............. of the LORD. Given comparisons with other prophetic materials (especially Jer 46:10, mentioned above), the language through 1:8a allows the possibility of a positive implication for the Day: perhaps guests will be honored at the sacrifice the deity prepares. The introduction of new vocabulary in 1:8b (ûpāqadtî, “I will punish”), however, turns the language menacing: the officials and princes shall become not the guests at the sacrifice but instead themselves will be sacrificed for their crimes. God “consecrates” them (hiqdîš, 1:7c) not as a sign of honor but in preparation for their slaughter on the altar. In an ironic turn, the purported guest is now “served,” new information that surprises not only the officials and the princes but also the reader. The repetition of ûpāqadtî in 1:9a and 1:12b and the resumption of yôm in 1:9b and 1:10a (along with bāʿēt hahîʾ, “in that time, in 1:12a) reinforce the equation the rhetoric crafts between the Day, sacrifice, and the punishment of idolatry.

24

Daniel J. Simundson, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, AOTC (Nashville: Abingdon, 2005), 134.

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Additional imagery in 1:12 underscores the people’s depravity. God’s exhaustive campaign against evil is compared to a night search with lamps (1:12a).25 The complacent are compared to wine left too long in its sediment (1:12b), steeping in its own decay. The closing verses threaten the people with utter futility (1:13b–c), juxtaposing the hopes of the people with their actual fate by wəlōʾ (“and not”): “Though they build houses, they shall not inhabit them; though they plant vineyards, they - ‒ ‒ ‒ shall not drink wine from them.” Their fate, like the fates of the officials and princes in 1:8, is the opposite of what they envision. Other literary features of the unit include an interjection (has, “hush!” 1:7) and onomatopoeia in 1:10c and 1:11a (wîlālâ, hêlîlû, “wail”), the basis for the Latin and English words “ululate.” Through these commands, the writer indicates the proper response to the Day – both for the characters within the text and for the readers as well. The impending Day of the LORD demands attention.

1:14–18 Transliterated Hebrew text

NRSV translation

14a qārôb yôm-YHWH haggādôl b qārôb ûmahēr məʾōd c qôl yôm YHWH mar d sōrēah šām gibbôr _ _ 15 yôm ʿebrâ hayyôm hahûʾ b yôm sārâ ûməsûqâ _ _ c yôm šōʾâ ûməšôʾâ d yôm hōšek waʾăpēlâ _ e yôm ʿānān wa’ărāpel 16a yôm šôpār ûtərûʿâ b ʿal heʿārîm habbəsurôt _ c wəʿal hapinnôt haggəbōhôt 17a wahăsērōtî lāʾādām wəhāləkû _ kaʿiwrîm b kî laYHWH hātāʾû _ _ keʿāpār c wəšuppak dāmām d ûləhumām kaggəlālîm _

The great day of the LORD is near, near and hastening fast; the sound of the day of the LORD is bitter, the warrior cries aloud there. That day will be a day of wrath, a day of distress and anguish, a day of ruin and devastation, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness, a day of trumpet blast and battle cry against the fortified cities and against the lofty battlements. I will bring such distress upon people that they shall walk like the blind; because they have sinned against the LORD, their blood shall be poured out like dust, and their flesh like dung.

25

Some have seen here an allusion to the classical tale of Diogenes of Sinope (ca. 400–323 BCE), who searched the city with a lamp, looking for an honest man (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Book 6, Chapter 41).

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(cont.) Transliterated Hebrew text

NRSV translation

18a gam-kaspām gam-zəhābām b lōʾ-yûkal ləhassîlām __ c bəyôm ʿebrat YHWH d ûbəʾēš qinʾātô tēʾākēl kol-hāʾāres ‒ ‒ ‒ ‒ ‒ ‒_ e kî-kālâ ʾak-nibhālâ f yaʿăśeh ʾēt kol-yōšəbê hāʾāres ‒ ‒ ‒ ‒ ‒ ‒ ‒ ‒ ‒_

Neither their silver nor their gold will be able to save them on the day of the LORD’s wrath; in the fire of his passion the whole earth ‒ ‒ ‒ ‒ ‒ ‒ ‒ shall be consumed; for a full, a terrible end he will make of all the inhabitants of the ‒ ‒ ‒ ‒ ‒ ‒ ‒ ‒ ‒ ‒ ‒ ‒ ‒ earth. ‒ ‒ ‒

The theme of the Day of the LORD, introduced in 1:7, is resumed and intensified in 1:14–18. While 1:7 insists that the Day of the LORD is “near” (qārôb; “at hand” in NRSV), 1:14 magnifies the imagery by adding the adjective “great” (gādôl), by repeating the adjective qārôb, and adding the descriptor “hastening fast” (mahēr məʾōd): “The great day of the LORD is near, near and hastening fast” (1:14). The Day is mentioned ten times in the unit, six times in 1:15 alone. In each case, yôm (“day”) is followed by an adjective or noun without a connecting verb. The only repeated descriptor of the Day is ʿebrâ / ʿebrat (“wrath,” 1:15, 18); otherwise, the list multiplies rather than repeats characterization of the Day. In 1:14, adjectives modify yôm. It is “near,” “great,” and “hurrying,” and its sound is “bitter.” In 1:15–16, yôm is linked to a string of common nouns, many of which appear in pairs: it is a day of wrath, a day of distress and anguish, a day of ruin and devastation, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness, a day of trumpet blast and battle cry (NRSV).26 When yôm returns in 1:18, the first of these nouns (“wrath”) has become synonymous with the Day: the claim introduced in 1:15a that the Day of the LORD is a day of wrath is assumed in 1:18a, with the new label becoming “the Day of the Wrath of the LORD.” This technique of sequencing descriptors to create a new name for the Day was also used in 1:7–8 (see above), in which the “Day of the LORD” progressively developed into “the Day of the Sacrifice of the LORD.” These verses, upon which the Dies Irae builds, present a litany-like, comprehensive insistence on the doom facing humanity: the Day of the 26

This repetition appears also in the Vulgate: dies irae dies illa dies tribulationis et angustiae dies calamitatis et miseriae dies tenebrarum et caliginis dies nebulae et turbinis.

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LORD is so devastating that one description cannot do it justice. Assonance adds to this effect. The phrase yôm šōʾâ ûməšôʾâ27 (“ruin and devastation”) in 1:15c pairs two words built on the same Hebrew root; while the meaning of the words is indistinguishable, their pairing creates an intensifying and haunting effect. Zephaniah 1:17–18 halts the repetitions to explore effects of the Day upon the inhabitants. To do so, it turns to a series of similes. The guilty will “walk like the blind,” and “their blood is poured out like dust//their flesh like dung” (1:17). Nothing will be able to save them (1:18). Those elements of human bodies that are most precious will be treated as disposable and contemptible. The final verse not only ends this unit but also serves to summarize the entire poem. Its final insistence that the Day of the Wrath of the LORD will destroy all the inhabitants of the earth serves to underscore the poem’s primary claim that the deity’s anger will lead to the decimation of all creation. The poem comes full circle: the LORD who first announced that he will sweep away kōl mēʿal pənê hāʾădāmâ (“everything from the face of the ground,” 1:2) now is described as destroying kol-hāʾāres (“all the earth”) and kol-yōšəbê hāʾāres (“all the inhabitants _ _ of the earth,” 1:18). Unlike previous units, 1:14–18 contains no proper nouns, no obvious allusions to particular times and places, and nothing else that might ground it in a specific historical context. Its litany of doom relies on abstract nouns and common similes, granting it a universal and, ultimately a transferable, character.

zephaniah, the sibylline oracles, and dies irae The previous section has argued that numerous literary devices help shape Zeph 1 into a harrowing litany of doom. Repetitions of words and sounds, allusion, the multiplication of modifiers, and the use of figurative language grant the biblical poem rhetorical force and sonorous power. These devices, along with the very content of the book of Zephaniah, also may suggest why the author of the Dies Irae links Zephaniah and the Sibylline Oracles. Zephaniah 1 and Sib. Or. 8 differ in important ways, but in terms of vocabulary, style, and content they have much in common.

27

“Shoah” as a name for the Holocaust comes from this verse. See Sweeney, Zephaniah, 99.

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1. Most obviously, both Zephaniah and the Sibyl are presented in these texts as “seers” who predicted future doom. Indeed, the literary fiction of the Sibylline Oracles relies on the belief that an ancient classical figure had predicted the coming of the Messiah and the doom facing sinful humankind: The most characteristic feature of Sibylline Oracles is the prediction of woes and disasters to come upon mankind.. . . In this they show some similarity to the Old Testament prophets, since “from remote times the prophets . . . prophesied war, famine and plague for many countries and for great kingdoms” (Jer 28:8).28

While diverse biblical prophets offer dire predictions and thus were apt for appropriation, Zephaniah was already identified by the early church fathers as the prophet of the Day of the LORD’s wrath. Although neither the Revelation, the Pauline Epistles, nor the Little Apocalypse of Luke (Luke 21) explicitly cite Zephaniah, in his Commentaries on the Epistle to the Romans Origen uses Zeph 1:14–18 to explain Paul’s reference to “day of wrath” (Rom 2:5–6), and Cassiodorus, Theodore of Mopsuestia, and Gregory the Great incorporate Zeph 1 in their discussions of the end time.29 Similar to the Jewish targumic tradition which interpreted Zephaniah’s Day of Wrath as the day in which YHWH would punish idolaters,30 early Christian authors interpreted Zephaniah as predicting the Last Judgment. Verbal similarities between the Sibylline Oracles and Zephaniah further facilitate this linkage. Sibylline Oracle 8:1 begins with the prediction of “great wrath” to come on the disobedient world (megales orges epi kosmov), which is identified as the action of God in 8:2 (cf. Zeph 1:15, 18). Like Zephaniah, Sib. Or. 8 focuses on the fate of the “whole world” (8:81–83; cf. Zeph 1:3, 18) and declares that the “last day is near” (8:91; cf. Zeph 1:7, 14). The acrostic in Sib. Or. 8: 217–50, incorporated into Lactantius, Origen, Quodvultdeus’ sermon, and the Dies Irae, insists that the Divine Judge “will come from heaven who is to judge all flesh (sarka paron) . . . and the whole world (kosmov apanta) forever when he comes (8:218–19; cf. Zeph 1:2, 18).

28 29 30

Collins, “Sibylline Oracles,” 318. Coggins and Han, Six Minor Prophets through the Centuries, 107. Ahuva Ho, The Targum of Zephaniah: Manuscripts and Commentary (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 415.

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2. The Sibylline Oracles and Zeph 1 also share a strong critique of idolatry. In their present Christian form and perhaps also in the Jewish substrata, the Sibylline Oracles underscore monotheism and the folly of worshipping other deities. As Malay recognizes, The references in sibylline prophecies concerning a single and all-powerful deity, along with messianic prophecies and other material derived from the Old Testament, was ripe for use by early Christians seeking to justify their religion in the face of much opposition.31

Sibylline Oracle 8:359–428 offers a long speech against idolatry, invoking the language of creation (“four-footed animals, swimming creatures, and birds that fly,” 8:364; cf. Zeph 1:3) to underscore God’s incomparability. The “desire for deceitful gold and silver” cannot save humans from divine wrath (8:18; cf. Zeph 1:18). 3. While both the Sib. Or. 8 and Zeph 1 include accusations specific to the time of their composition, both also utilize rhetorical devices that draw attention to the more “universal” language that transcends time and place. Several verses in Zeph 1 refer to specific locales and crimes: Judah, Jerusalem, Baal (1:4); “dressing in foreign attire” (1:8); “leaping over the threshold” (1:9); the Fish Gate and the Second Quarter (1:10); Jerusalem (1:12). As discussed above, however, most rhetorical features are concentrated in the beginning and end of the poem, which focus on the consequences of sin for all the world. Similarly, Sib. Or. 8 specifies judgment on Rome and discusses both Hadrian and Nero, yet it grants most stylistic attention to the effects of the cosmic aspects of divine judgment. Just as Zeph 1 heavily utilizes repetition in 1:2–6 to underscore that all creation will be decimated, Sib. Or. 8:110–20 employs frequent repetitions to underscore that all will suffer equally on the Day of the LORD’s wrath: the word ou͗ and its variants (“no,” “none”) appear nineteen times in these verses, reflected here in Collins’ English translation: No one is slave there, no lord, no tyrant, no kings, no leaders who are very arrogant. no forensic rhetoricians, no ruler judging for money. They do not pour blood on altars in libations of sacrifices. No drum sounds, no cymbal, no flute of many holes, which has a sound that damages the heart. no pipe, which bears an imitation of the crooked serpent. no savage-sounding trumpet, herald of wars,

110

115

31

Jessica Malay, Prophecy and Sibylline Imagery in the Renaissance: Shakespeare’s Sibyls, RSRLC (New York and London: Routledge, 2010), 23.

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none who are drunk in lawless revels or dances, no sound of the lyre, no evil-working device, no strife, no anger, in its diverse kinds; nor will there be a knife beside the dead, but the age will be common to all.

120

The use of common nouns further allows both Zeph 1 and Sib. Or. 8 to transcend the time of their composition. Along with references to Rome and Hadrian, Sib. Or. 8 speaks of gain and folly, kings and princes, a purple dragon, thunder, confusion, fire and brimstone, and the gnashing of teeth. The many nouns linked to the Day of the LORD in Zeph 1:14–18, as discussed, are not historically bound. Parke’s description of the Sibylline Oracles indeed applies to Zephaniah as well: The use of ambiguous and metaphorical language, which was traditional in oracles, had the effect that Sibylline forecasts were sufficiently lacking in specific detail to appear to apply equally well to different periods.32

4. Although this essay has focused only on Zeph 1, the remainder of the book of Zephaniah points to an additional, and perhaps key, reason that the author of the Dies Irae found Zephaniah and the Sibylline Oracles so compatible. The litany of doom presented by Zeph 1 is followed in Zeph 2 by a call to repentance; resuming earlier language, it appeals: Gather together, gather, O shameless nation, before you are driven away like the drifting chaff, before there comes upon you the fierce anger of the LORD, before there comes upon you the day of the LORD’s wrath. Seek the LORD, all you humble of the land, who do his commands; seek righteousness, seek humility; perhaps you may be hidden on the day of the LORD’s wrath. (Zeph 2:1–3, NRSV)

The Day of the LORD’s wrath is fearful but might yet be averted. Zephaniah 3 ends the book not with additional judgment but with a promise of Daughter Jerusalem’s future salvation. Celebration will replace disaster (3:14–20). As Sweeney notes, the doom of Zeph 1 leads to paraenesis – an appeal to alter one’s behavior.33 32 33

Parke, Sibyls and Sibylline Prophecy in Classical Antiquity, 15. Sweeney, Zephaniah, 9–10.

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The same is true of Sib. Or. 8. The oracle, best known for its own vision of doom, ends with an ethical and ritual exhortation: 480

500

Be humble in heart, hate bitter power. and, above all, love your neighbor as yourself, and love God from the soul and serve him . . . But rejoicing with holy minds and glad spirit, abundant love and hands that bring good gifts with gracious psalms and songs appropriate to God, we are bidden to sing your praises as imperishable and pure from all deceit, God, wise begetter of all.

The insistence on hope in the face of the judgment that runs through Zephaniah and the Sibylline Oracles was clearly also of great importance to the author of the Dies Irae. More than half of the medieval liturgical chant is an appeal for divine mercy. The Day of Wrath and the searing eyes of the Divine Judge, it suggests, should provoke not only fear but also repentance: O Judge of justice, hear, I pray, for pity take my sins away before the dreadful reckoning day. Your gracious face, O Lord, I seek; deep shame and grief are on my cheek; in sighs and tears my sorrows speak.. . . Full of tears and full of dread is that day that wakes the dead, calling all with solemn blast to be judged for all their past. Lord, have mercy, Jesus blest, grant them all Your Light and Rest. Amen.

conclusion The three poems discussed here – Zeph 1, Sib. Or. 8, and the Dies Irae – differ in important ways. Each comes from a distinct time and place and addresses particular concerns. The powerful poetic style of Zeph 1, however, allowed the author of the Dies Irae to draw on the biblical book in crafting its own haunting image of the Last Judgment. The chapter’s use of repetition, allusions to creation, common nouns, metaphors, and, ultimately, its inclusion in a book insisting on repentance and salvation, combine to create an enduring poem of doom and hope – one that not only resonated with the literary art of the Sibylline Oracles but also inspired subsequent poets, liturgists, artists, and dramatists.

part v POETRY IN BIBLICAL NARRATIVE

14 YHWH’s Poesie The Gnadenformel (Exodus 34:6b–7), the Book of Exodus, and Beyond Brent A. Strawn

YHWH utters many words in the Book of Exodus, even more in the Torah as a whole. Much of this divine speech is reported – that is, mediated through Moses – and the majority of it is thoroughly prosaic, even legal. Peppered here and there, however, like spice to flavor a dish, are snatches of poetry from YHWH’s own mouth. The purpose of the present study is to look at perhaps the most important instance of YHWH’s poesie in Exodus, namely Exod 34:6b–7. This text, the so-called Gnadenformel (German for “grace formula”), is a statement about YHWH’s nature that is itself peppered throughout the Old Testament, such that, according to some scholars, it attained creedal or quasicreedal status in ancient Israel.1 In what follows, I will argue that the Gnadenformel, understood as poetic utterance, bears within itself a lyric tension between the (far more) merciful and (far less) punitive sides of YHWH’s character. The first section of the essay establishes Exod 34:6b–7 as poetry so as to assess its poetics (§1). The next section notes divine poetry elsewhere in the Bible, especially in Exodus, and comments on the significance of the Exodus poems, and particularly the Gnadenformel, for their literary contexts (§2). The essay concludes with a brief reflection on what YHWH’s poetry in Exodus (and elsewhere) might suggest about the nature of the Torah, if not Scripture as a whole (§3). My thanks go to the editors for their assistance and also to T. Collin Cornell and Justin T. R. Walker for comments on an earlier draft. 1 See, inter alia, Thomas B. Dozeman, “Inner-biblical Interpretation of Yahweh’s Gracious and Compassionate Character,” JBL 108 (1989): 207–23; and Walter Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997), 215–24, esp. 216.

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1. the poetics of the gnadenformel (exodus 34:6b–7) Before assessing Exod 34:6–7 as poetry, the text must be laid out and translated. For present purposes, v. 6a can be set aside as a narrative introduction to the Gnadenformel proper, which begins immediately thereafter. Neither of the great codices of the Hebrew Bible (Aleppo and Leningradensis) lines out 34:6b–7 as poetry, but that is not unusual since most poetic sections of the Hebrew Bible are not stichometrically presented. “Finding poetry,” then, will depend on other factors internal to the content itself, not (solely) on the (re)presentation of the texts as we find them in ancient manuscripts or now-standard editions.2 In prose format, the text may be provisionally translated as follows: 34:6b

Then YHWH called out: “YHWH: A God merciful and gracious, patient and abounding in faithfulness and truth! 7 One who keeps faithfulness to thousands. One who forgives iniquity, transgression, and sin and does not leave (such wrongdoing) unpunished. One who repays the iniquity of parents upon children and grandchildren unto the third, even the fourth generation.”

Other translations are possible, and I will revisit some of the phrasing offered here in what follows; but even this provisional translation evidences features of the text that are more indicative of poetry than prose – or, at least, nearer the poetic side of the poetry-prose continuum.3 These include parataxis, repetition, assonance/consonance, anaphora, rhythm, and parallelism. These elements become even clearer in a poetically lined version: (1) a wayyiqrāʾ yhwh: b yhwh ʾēl rahûm wǝhannûn _ ʾappayim _ c ʾerek d wǝrab-hesed weʾĕmet _

2

3

e

nōsēr hesed lāʾălāpîm _ _

f

nōśēʾ ʿāwōn wāpešaʿ wǝhat tāʾâ _ __

Then YHWH called out: “YHWH: A God merciful and gracious, patient and abounding in faithfulness and truth! One who keeps faithfulness to thousands. One who forgives iniquity, transgression, and sin

See J. Blake Couey, Reading the Poetry of First Isaiah: The Most Perfect Model of the Prophetic Poetry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 22–27; F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp, On Biblical Poetry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 29–42. On which see, James L. Kugel, The Idea of Biblical Poetry: Parallelism and Its History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), 59–95.

The Gnadenformel, the Book of Exodus, and Beyond g

wǝnaqqēh lōʾ yǝnaqqeh

h pōqēd ʿăwōn ʾābôt i ʿal-bānîm wǝʿal-bǝnê bānîm j ʿal-šillēšîm wǝʿalribbēʿîm

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and does not leave (such wrongdoing) unpunished. One who repays the iniquity of parents upon children and grandchildren unto the third, even the fourth generation.”

A number of features indicate the poetic nature of the text. First, the text manifests a good deal of repetition: key words are repeated, including yhwh (a, b), hesed (“faithfulness,” d, e), ʿāwôn (“iniquity,” f, h), √nāqāh _ (“leave unpunished,” g [2x]), bānîm (“children,” i [3x]); as are the particles wǝ- (“and,” b, d, f [2x], g, i, j) and ʿal (“upon,” i [2x], j [2x]). Perhaps most striking in terms of repetition is the three-fold use of the same grammatical form (qal active participle, qōtēl form) at the beginning _ of lines e, f, and h (“One who . . .”), two of which also begin with the same consonant (n) and contain a sibilant as the second consonant (nōsēr, _ “one who keeps,” in e and nōśēʾ, “one who forgives,” in f ). The lines 4 thus share parallel structures reinforced by assonance. Consonance and assonance are also present in repeated endings: the dual (-ayim, c) and masculine plural (-îm; e, i [2x], j), which are near-rhymes, if not actual rhymes. The same holds true for the heavy use of the a vowel, which occurs in every line; the use of the labial consonants b and p throughout; the long /ū/ sound that binds rahûm wǝhannûn together (b); and so on _ _ and so forth. Finally, despite the not infrequent use of waw (b, d, f–g, i–j), several parts of the unit are conjoined asyndetically/paratactically – that is, without a conjunction – or, put differently, these parts are serially arranged: yhwh yhwh (a–b); ʾerek ʾappayim (“patient,” c); ʿal-bānîm . . . ʿal-šillēšîm (“upon children . . . unto the third,” i–j); and nōsēr (“one who _ keeps,” e), nōśēʾ (“one who forgives,” f ), pōqēd (“one who repays,” h). Each of the latter three participles have extended adjuncts, of course, but their morphology and close concatenation are reminiscent of dense doxological poetry like that found in Second Isaiah (e.g., Isa 41:13–14; 44:24b–28; 48:17).

4

Other grammatical and phonological repetitions include the repeated syndetic (b, d, f–g, i–j) and prepositional constructions (i–j); the two segholate (qetel) noun forms _ forms rahûm hesed (“faithfulness”) and ʾĕmet (“truth”) in d; the two adjectival qattūl _ _ _ (“merciful”) and hannûn (“gracious”) in b; and the emphatic infinitive + _verb construction _ wǝnaqqēh lōʾ yǝnaqqeh (“and does not leave unpunished”) in g.

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These elements are present, at least in the Hebrew text as it currently stands, regardless of the precise lineation used, and their presence already suggests a poetic composition. Even so, the lineation offered above should not go unexamined. At least four items call for careful investigation, and since all poetry, including Hebrew poetry, depends on the line,5 assessing each of these four will help to determine the nature of the Gnadenformel as poetic discourse even as it will also facilitate a close(r) engagement with the poetics of the text itself.

The lineation of lines a–b There are two main alternatives to consider for lines a–b: (2)

wayyiqrāʾ yhwh yhwh ʾēl rahûm wǝhannûn _ _

Then YHWH called out: “YHWH: A God merciful and gracious”

(3)

wayyiqrāʾ yhwh yhwh ʾēl rahûm wǝhannûn _ _

Then he called out: “YHWH, YHWH: A God merciful and gracious.”

or

In (2), the first instance of yhwh functions as the subject of the verb wayyiqrāʾ (“he called out”), with the second yhwh serving as the first word of the reported speech. In (3), both instances of yhwh belong to the divine speech and are best understood as an emphatic repetition of the divine name: “YHWH, YHWH!” Deciding between (2) and (3) is no easy matter. YHWH’s name is also used in Exod 34:6a as the subject of the verb wayyaʿăbōr (“he [YHWH] crossed over”), and so, syntactically, it does not need to be repeated here, where it would be technically superfluous.6 This observation would seem to support option (3). Also favoring (3) is the disjunctive accent sǝgōltā found with wayyiqrāʾ in the Hebrew text, which serves to separate it from the first instance of yhwh; that first instance, in turn, has a conjunctive

5 6

See Couey, Reading the Poetry, 21–54; Dobbs-Allsopp, On Biblical Poetry, 14–94. The repetition of yhwh following “and he proclaimed,” coupled with the explicit mention of Moses as subject of the verbs in v. 8, should leave little doubt that YHWH is the one who speaks vv. 6b–7. Despite these factors, Targum Neofiti and (apparently) the Septuagint (LXX) understood Moses, not YHWH, to have spoken the Gnadenformel. The Samaritan tradition supports YHWH as speaker.

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accent (mûnāh), which connects it to the second yhwh.7 On the other _ hand, perhaps in favor of (2), is the specific conjunction of the verb qārāʾ (“to call out”) with the divine name: elsewhere, this combination means “to invoke.”8 If that is the case here, the second yhwh would be the subject of the entire formulation, producing yet another possible lineationwith-translation: (4)

wayyiqrāʾ yhwh yhwh ʾēl rahûm wǝhannûn _ _

Then YHWH invoked (the name) “YHWH”: “A God merciful and gracious . . .”

though this lineation could also be understood along the lines of (3): (4*)

wayyiqrāʾ yhwh yhwh ʾēl rahûm wǝhannûn _ _

Then he called out: “YHWH, YHWH: A God merciful and gracious . . .”

While the disjunctive accent on wayyiqrāʾ appears to argue against (4) or (4*), the accent over the second YHWH (zāqēp parvum) might support either, insofar as it separates, even if only slightly, the second yhwh from the ʾēl rahûm wǝhannûn (“A God merciful and gracious”) that follows. _ _ Of course, that may simply mark yhwh yhwh as separate from ʾēl rahûm _ wǝhannûn, which would work for (3), (4), and (4*). _ To be sure, the punctuation of the Hebrew text (no less than its vocalization) is not foolproof, but the same judgment holds true for every other evaluative instrument as well.9 Meter, for instance, is now widely believed not to be operative in Hebrew poetry. But even the harshest critics of metrical approaches to Hebrew poetry often still end up counting various elements, even if that is only for descriptive purposes.10 But what, exactly, should one count: words, syllables, stresses, or all of the above?11 Still further, what, if anything, constitutes an “acceptable” or “regular” structure (“meter”), or at what point does “free rhythm”

7

8

9 10 11

For the importance of punctuation in ancient manuscripts for poetic analysis, see Couey, Reading the Poetry, 28. See Gerhard von Rad, Old Testament Theology, trans. D. M. G. Stalker, 2 vols. (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1962), 1:183; cf. William H. C. Propp, Exodus 19–40: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB 2A (New York: Doubleday, 2006), 610. Cf. Couey, Reading the Poetry, 26, 47, 54. See Couey, Reading the Poetry, 22, 28, 40–49. See, inter alia, Oswald Loretz and Ingo Kottsieper, Colometry in Ugaritic and Biblical Poetry: Introduction, Illustrations and Topical Bibliography, UBL 5 (Altenberge: CISVerlag, 1987).

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become so free as to no longer be properly considered verse? Finally, should the lines “balance” somehow, or be otherwise regular(ized) in some way? Consider, again, (2) and (3), this time with word + syllable and stress counts: (2)

wayyiqrāʾ yhwh:

yhwh ʾēl rahûm wǝhannûn _ _ (3)

(wayyiqrāʾ) yhwh yhwh ʾēl rahûm wǝhannûn _ _

[2+3; 2] [4+8; 4] [Ø]12 [2+4; 2] [3+6; 3]

Since we are not entirely certain what would have been acceptable prosody in terms of quantitative evaluation (if such ever existed), it is difficult, if not impossible, to know if (2) or (3) is superior. Furthermore, it is entirely possible that a poem (or poet) might break with form for any number of reasons, which would effectively obviate any “metrical” analysis – or at least the attempt to deploy it prescriptively. These important caveats entered, it remains the case, in terms of balance or symmetry, that the second line in (2) seems overloaded, with twice as many words, syllables, and stresses as the first line. Although (3) is better on this point, (4) or (4*) seems best of all.13 Whatever the precise case, it seems fair to say – both from the perspective of balance/symmetry and on the basis of the Hebrew punctuation and syntactical considerations – that the lineation of lines a–b is susceptible to more than one analysis.14 Among other things, yhwh yhwh may be polyvalent, with one or both instances functioning with the verb, even as one or both could be taken as that which is invoked (the divine name itself ) or with the following definition of the deity as ʾēl rahûm _ wǝhannûn. These apparently unresolvable questions about lines a–b _ should not be taken as indicating that they are not poetry, but simple

12

13

14

In this understanding, wayyiqrāʾ is the narrative introduction to the poetry and thus “extra-metrical.” If so, this has bearing on wayyiqrāʾ: might it have been considered part of the poetry – a kind of frozen introduction? The pleasing rhythm of (4), especially when understood as per (4*), would permit as much. Lineation is, of course, not determined by any one single consideration like balance or parallelism but by a host of factors. See Couey, Reading the Poetry, 21–54; DobbsAllsopp, On Biblical Poetry, 14–94.

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prose. Quite to the contrary, the polyvalence at work in these lines seems sufficient by itself to suggest that Exod 34:6b–7 is poetic utterance.

ʾēl rahûm wǝhannûn in context _ _ The second factor that needs discussion is the relationship of ʾēl rahûm _ wǝhannûn (“A God merciful and gracious”) to what follows. If the force _ of wayyiqrāʾ yhwh yhwh is to invoke the divine name “YHWH,” a name (or entity) that is immediately glossed as ʾēl rahûm wǝhannûn, then the _ _ next, paratactically conjoined line offers further definition of YHWH as ʾerek ʾappayim (“patient”). This two-fold, asyndetic definition of YHWH is followed immediately by a clause with the conjunction: wǝrab-hesed _ weʾĕmet (“and abounding in faithfulness and truth”). An important question at this point, to put it in contemporary terms, is whether this long description of YHWH is a case of the “Oxford comma.” Is YHWH thrice-defined: (i) a gracious-and-merciful God, (ii) patient, and (iii) abounding-in-faithfulness-and-truth? Or is the last mentioned item further definition of the second, such that there are only two groups of qualities mentioned here – namely, YHWH as (i) gracious-and-merciful and (ii) patient-and-abounding-in-faithfulness-and-truth? The repetition of the conjunction waw (“and”) in wǝhannûn and wǝrab suggests the _ latter is the case, resulting in a nice balance: rahûm _ ʾappayim ʾerek

wǝhannûn _ hesed weʾĕmet wǝrab_

In this understanding we seem to have a total of four qualities,15 with hesed weʾĕmet functioning as one (hendiatically): “true faithfulness,” _ “loyal truth,” or the like.16 This suggestion is strengthened by the phonological and grammatical binding that is evident in the repetition of these two qetel forms in close succession (along with ʾerek in line c). Whatever _ the case, the semantic overlap between these four qualities is a clear case of heaping up terms – a certain poetic density – so as to underscore the

15

16

In point of fact, Exod 34:6b–7 is the locus of the famous Thirteen Attributes of God in Judaism, for which, see Benno Jacob, The Second Book of the Bible: Exodus, trans. W. Jacob (Hoboken, NJ: Ktav, 1992), 985. Cf. Ruth Scoralick, Gottes Güte und Gottes Zorn: Die Gottesprädikationen in Exodus 34,6f und ihre intertextuellen Beziehungen zum Zwölfprophetenbuch, HBS 33 (Freiburg: Herder, 2002), 37–38.

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benevolence of YHWH, if not also to somehow merge or mix the four qualities such that each is somehow defined with reference to the others.

wǝnaqqēh lōʾ yǝnaqqeh in context The third item that requires discussion is the relationship of wǝnaqqēh lōʾ yǝnaqqeh (“and does not leave unpunished”) to the surrounding material. This phrase (shaded) clearly interrupts the series of three participles (underlined): e f g h

nōsēr . . . (“One who keeps . . .”) _ . . . (“One who forgives . . .”) nōśēʾ wǝnaqqēh lōʾ yǝnaqqeh pōqēd . . . (“One who repays . . .”)

In some ways, the issue here is not unlike the preceding one: Is wǝnaqqēh lōʾ yǝnaqqeh subordinate to nōśēʾ ʿāwōn wāpešaʿ wǝhat tāʾâ (“One _ __ who forgives iniquity, transgression, and sin”) – a kind of parenthetical aside or further definition – or is it to be considered in line with the other participles, such that one has a string of four (more) qualities of YHWH? Are there, that is, three qualities here – Keeper (nōsēr) _ Forgiver (nōśēʾ) – but not leaving unpunished (wǝnaqqēh lōʾ yǝnaqqeh) Repayer (pōqēd) – or four? Keeper (nōsēr) _ Forgiver (nōśēʾ) Requiter (wǝnaqqēh lōʾ yǝnaqqeh) Repayer (pōqēd) In favor of the fourfold understanding is that the preceding lines also manifested a string of four qualities: Gracious Merciful Patient Abounding Perhaps also in favor of a four-element listing is that “Requiter” makes this second string of divine descriptions divide evenly between two more benevolent (Keeper, Forgiver) and two more judgmental (Requiter,

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Repayer) qualities. Perhaps arguing against it, however, is that wǝnaqqēh lōʾ yǝnaqqeh is itself not a participial construction, coupled with the fact that it seems to depend syntactically on the preceding line for the objects of its verbal action (ʿāwōn wāpešaʿ wǝhat tāʾâ, “iniquity, transgression, _ __ and sin”), not to mention its semantic content, even if that is antithetically flexed: forgiver of x, y, and z, but not acquitting the same. Then again, as in the case of ʾerek ʾappayim wǝrab-hesed weʾĕmet discussed above, _ perhaps one should not be too quick to judge the waw-constructions as dependent solely on their immediately preceding lines. It remains possible, that is, given the sparseness that marks poetry, which so often leaves syntactical relations un(der)specified, that the phrase “and does not leave unpunished” is janus-faced: it may well be an indication of one way YHWH keeps hesed (“faithfulness”) to thousands (line e) even as it _ simultaneously segues into the following description of YHWH as pōqēd ʿăwōn ʾābôt (“One who repays the iniquity of parents”). Here too, then, as with yhwh yhwh earlier, we have an element in the Gnadenformel that appears to do double-duty, working both backwards and forwards, and which manifests a kind of polyvalence within the play of what increasingly appears to be poetic utterance.17

Lines i–j in context The same may hold true for the fourth issue that requires discussion – namely, the relationship of the final two lines with what precedes them. The lineation offered in (1) above made lines i–j subordinate to line h: h i j

pōqēd ʿăwōn ʾābôt ʿal-bānîm wǝʿal-bǝnê bānîm ʿal-šillēšîm wǝʿal-ribbēʿîm

which is perfectly sensible and how most translations understand the syntax:

17

To be sure, a confluence of numerous factors is required to determine the presence of poetry (see above and further below, esp. note 21). For other treatments that consider Exod 34:6b–7 to be poetic, see, inter alia, William Johnstone, Exodus 20–40, SHBC (Macon: Smyth & Helwys, 2014), 406–08; and Duane A. Garrett, A Commentary on Exodus (Grand Rapids: Kregel Academic, 2014), 639–42, 652–53, 721. Contrary opinions exist: John I. Durham, Exodus, WBC 3 (Waco: Word, 1987), 450, lines out the Gnadenformel “not to indicate any poetic form, but to give this recital something of the sonorous impact it has in Hebrew.” But such impact may itself be proof of poetry!

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One who repays the iniquity of parents upon children and grandchildren unto the third, even the fourth generation.

Two observations caution against a hard and fast conclusion, however, or at least an inflexible understanding of the lines. The first is to recall that line h is the third in a sequence of participles describing YHWH. Lines i–j, that is, may relate somehow to the entire string of participles, or, to be more precise, the previous two (nōsēr, “Keeper”; and nōśēʾ, “Forgiver”), _ not just the third in the sequence (pōqēd, “Repayer”). The second observation is that a similarly extended poetic relationship was posited for wǝnaqqēh lōʾ yǝnaqqeh in line g. That line, too, may not relate exclusively to the preceding line f (“One who forgives . . .”), but might also operate with reference to line e (“One who keeps . . .”) even as it anticipates line h (“One who repays . . .”). If a similar situation obtains for lines i–j, then they would modify not only line h but also line f. A diagram demonstrates this relationship clearly: e

nōsēr hesed lāʾălāpîm _ _

f

nōśēʾ ʿāwōn wāpešaʿ wǝhat tāʾâ _ __

(i)

g

(ʿal-bānîm wǝʿal-bǝnê bānîm) (ʿal-šillēšîm wǝʿalribbēʿîm) wǝnaqqēh lōʾ yǝnaqqeh

h

pōqēd ʿăwōn ʾābôt

(j)

i j

18

ʿal-bānîm wǝʿal-bǝnê bānîm ʿal-šillēšîm wǝʿalribbēʿîm

One who keeps faithfulness to thousands. One who forgives iniquity, transgression, and sin (of18 children and grandchildren) (unto the third, even the fourth generation,) and does not leave (such wrongdoing) unpunished. One who repays the iniquity of parents upon children and grandchildren unto the third, even the fourth generation.

Taking ʿal here as “with regard to, concerning” (see HALOT 2:826; BDB 754); hence: “of.” The polyvalence of Hebrew prepositions frequently requires that they be translated in various ways, even when they appear in close succession (cf. lines i–j: “upon . . . unto”), which can lead to the need for reanalysis. For reanalysis in Hebrew poetry, see, inter alia, Edward L. Greenstein, “How Does Parallelism Mean?” in A Sense of Text: The Art of Language in the Study of Biblical Literature, ed. L. Nemoy (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1983), 41–70.

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If this is correct, the double-duty of lines i–j produces several effects. The first is to draw an additional distinction between lines e and f. Beyond the obvious lexical differences between the two lines, there is now the additional difference between “thousands” (ʾălāpîm)19 in line e and the more restricted number of generations (ʿal-bānîm . . . wǝʿal-ribbēʿîm) in line f (via lines i–j). Even so, understanding lines i–j in this way means that each participle in the sequence now has its own associated temporal phrase: nōsēr . . . lāʾălāpîm _ . . . (ʿal-bānîm. . .wǝʿal-ribbēʿîm) nōśēʾ pōqēd . . . ʿal-bānîm . . . wǝʿal-ribbēʿîm

Keeper . . . to thousands Forgiver . . . (unto the third, even the fourth generation) Repayer . . . unto the third, even the fourth generation

A second effect is that line g (wǝnaqqēh lōʾ yǝnaqqeh, “and does not leave unpunished”) is highlighted even more than it already was. Even if line g is not subordinate to line f, it is nevertheless distinctive – a point signaled by its different, nonparticipial construction, and now further underscored insofar as it occurs between two constructions that concern forgiveness for and punishment upon children and grandchildren. But the third, and by far the most important, effect is that lines i–j now extend YHWH’s forgiving action (line f ) as far into the future as YHWH’s repaying action (line h). It is not only YHWH’s punishment that reaches to the third and fourth generation: so also now does YHWH’s forgiveness. An analogue from a much later poetic text lends support to this understanding of how lines i–j relate to lines f and h. According to some scholars, the phrase “on earth as it is in heaven” (hōs en ouranō kai epi gēs) in the Lord’s Prayer (Matt 6:9–13; cf. Luke 11:2–4) applies to each of the three preceding requests, not simply the final petition:20 Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name (on earth as it is in heaven). Your kingdom come (on earth as it is in heaven). Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. (Matt 6:9b–10)

19

20

ʾălāpîm probably refers to generations – either “the thousandth generation” or “thousands of generations.” Cf. Propp, Exodus 19–40, 173: “We should understand ʾălāpîm as an expression of infinity.” See Alan Hugh McNeile, The Gospel According to St. Matthew: The Greek Text with Introduction, Notes, and Indices (London: Macmillan, 1915), 79; and Frederick Dale Bruner, Matthew: A Commentary, Vol. 1: The Christbook: Matthew 1–12, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 304.

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To sum up to this point: Exodus 34:6b–7 gives ample evidence of sophisticated artistry and a concentration of poetic elements, all of which support its assessment as high diction – in a word, poetry.21 If this is correct, then several things follow. Paramount among these would be that the poetic nature of the Gnadenformel suggests that it is less linear in terms of logic than typically construed and also less straightforward in terms of syntactical relationships (at least in English translation). Indeed, no less than three different parts of this unit appear to serve more than one function within the utterance (yhwh yhwh, wǝnaqqēh lōʾ yǝnaqqeh, and ʿal-bānîm . . . wǝʿal-ribbēʿîm). Furthermore, it has long been clear in almost any reading (even rather prosaic ones) that divine benevolence outweighs divine judgment in the Gnadenformel: YHWH forgives three things (line f: ʿāwōn wāpešaʿ wǝhat tāʾâ), but only punishes one (line h: _ __ ʿăwōn) and shows hesed to “thousands” (line e) but extends punishment _ to (merely) the fourth generation (lines i–j). But the effect of the doubleduty parts wǝnaqqēh lōʾ yǝnaqqeh and ʿal-bānîm . . . wǝʿal-ribbēʿîm is to make the divine benevolence even more extensive than typically recognized. YHWH’s commitment to not leave wrongdoing unpunished (line g) is not only an anticipation of YHWH’s repayment of wrongdoing (line h) but equally also an instantiation of how YHWH keeps hesed (line e). _ Additionally, it is not only YHWH’s repayment of iniquity (line h), but 21

It is instructive at this point to compare the Gnadenformel with Exod 20:5b–6 (the Second Commandment), where similar language is also found: “Because I, YHWH your God, am a jealous God: One who repays the iniquity of parents upon children unto the third, even the fourth generation of those who hate me [pōqēd ʿăwōn ʾābōt ʿalbānîm ʿal-šillēšîm wǝʿal-ribbēʿîm lǝśōnǝʾāy], but one who shows faithfulness to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments [wǝʿōśeh hesed laʾălāpîm lǝʾōhăbay _ ûlǝšōmǝrê miswōtāy].” Could Exod 20:5b–6 also be poetry? One immediately notes the _ balance offered by the two participial phrases (“One who repays . . . one who shows . . .”), but those would be inordinately long poetic lines without further division. Other details, such as the syndetic construction pōqēd. . . wǝʿōśeh (“One who repays . . . but one who shows . . .”) in Exodus 20 vs. the paratactic one in Exodus 34; the frequency of prose particles in Exodus 20 and their absence in Exodus 34; and the difficulties in understanding the poetic relationship between the “lines” of Exodus 20 (even if one employs a generous understanding of “synthetic” parallelism or “seconding/intensification” categories) are all indicators that, despite the semantic similarity to the Gnadenformel, Exod 20:5b–6 is decidedly not poetic. The comparison also helps to underscore the poetic nature of the Gnadenformel. For further observations on Exodus 20 vis-à-vis Exodus 34, see Nahum M. Sarna, Exodus ‫שמות‬: The Traditional Hebrew Text with the New JPS Translation (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1991), 216; Johnstone, Exodus 20–40, 400, 405; Jacob, Exodus, 982–85; and Thomas B. Dozeman, Exodus, ECC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 736–39.

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also his forgiveness of iniquity, transgression, and sin (line f ) that extends to children and grandchildren – even to the third and fourth generations (lines i–j). In brief, analyzing the Gnadenformel as poetry produces a far more dynamic understanding of the presentation of the divine character: YHWH’s character turns out to be flexible and porous – not unlike so much poetry – and ultimately not simply or predominantly benevolent, but superabundantly if not almost exclusively benevolent. This proves extremely important when Exod 34:6b–7 is considered within its larger literary context (see §2 below). Before offering such a reading of the Gnadenformel in context, the provisional translation offered initially may be revisited, this time with an eye on trying to make the poetic aspects of the unit more readily apparent in a rendering that is freer: Then he shouted: “YHWH! YHWH! A God merciful and gracious, A God patient and abounding in faithfulness and truth! Keeper of faithfulness to thousands! (One who does not leave wrongdoing unpunished.) Forgiver of iniquity, transgression, and sin! (For children, even grandchildren to the third, even the fourth generation!) One who does not leave wrongdoing unpunished! Repayer of parental guilt to children, even grandchildren to the third, even the fourth generation!”

2. yhwh’s poetry elsewhere and in the context of exodus 32–34 With the poetry and poetics of the Gnadenformel established to sufficient degree, we may now turn to larger, contextual considerations. YHWH’s utterance of this poetic unit occurs within a book that is full of divine speech, most of which is not poetry. In Exodus, that is, YHWH does not always or often speak in poetry, but sometimes can and sometimes does. This raises questions: Where else does YHWH prove the poet? And why would YHWH speak in poetry in such places and, especially, here in Exod 34:6b–7? There is not space in the present essay to explore every instance of divine poetic utterance in the Hebrew Bible. The Latter Prophets represent extended poetic speeches by the Deity (mediated by the prophetic figures themselves), but God speaks poetically elsewhere as well, as in Job 38–41.

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In these cases, poetry may be mostly a matter of course – part and parcel of the underlying literary genre (prophecy or wisdom, respectively). The most instructive comparables to the Gnadenformel, therefore, are those places where YHWH utters poetry that is embedded within larger prose contexts.22 These, too, are not unknown in the prophets (e.g., Jeremiah, Ezekiel), but are best traced in the narrative works of the Old Testament. But even with this generic restriction, there is not space to explore divine poetry within the Torah alone, let alone the entire Primary History (or beyond). That point granted, a fruitful way of proceeding is to investigate those instances of divine speech within narrative contexts in which God’s discourse takes poetic form. Texts such as Gen 1:28b; Gen 3:14–19; 8:22; 9:5–6; 12:3; 16:10–12; and 25:23 are among those in the opening book of the Bible that have often been identified and lined out as poetry in English translations. But other passages in the Torah also represent YHWH’s poetic flair, though these poetic snatches remain just that: scattered bits of poetry amidst a sea of prose. Even so, two poetic moments within Exodus are particularly significant:23 1. The first is the revelation of the divine name ʾehyeh ʾăšer ʾehyeh (“I am who I am” or the like) in 3:14. This name, which seems poetic enough on its own, is immediately recast by the Deity (ʾĕlōhîm, “God”) as “the LORD” (yhwh). After this (re)definition comes a conclusion that is a perfect poetic couplet: zeh-šǝmî lǝʿōlām wǝzeh zikrî lǝdōr dōr

This is my name forever, and this is my memorial for all time. (3:15b)

2. The second is the divine speech in 19:3–6, which begins with an introduction that is, just like 3:15b, a textbook example of “synonymous” parallelism:

22

23

On inset poetry generally, see James W. Watts, Psalm and Story: Inset Hymns in Hebrew Narrative, JSOTSup 139 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1992); and Steven Weitzman, Song and Story in Biblical Narrative: The History of a Literary Convention in Ancient Israel, ISBL (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997). For more on poetic texts in Exodus, see James Muilenburg, “The Form and Structure of the Covenantal Formulations,” VT 9 (1959): 347–65, esp. 352–53, who deems all of Exod 19:3–6 poetic; and Garrett, Exodus, passim, who finds no less than eight poems in Exodus: 5:21; 6:2–8; 15:1–18; 15:25–26; 19:3–6; 24:15–18; 29:42–46; and 34:6–7. Not all of Garrett’s corpus are divine speech, and some of these texts are noncontroversial (15:1–18). In several instances, however, Garrett fails to provide adequate justification that the texts in his corpus are, in fact, poetry, and there is oftentimes good evidence against such a determination (e.g., the presence of prose particles). Finally, some texts that could be poetic (e.g., 32:18) are not identified by Garrett as such.

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251

Thus you will speak to the house of Jacob, and declare to the children of Israel. (19:3b)

Both of these poetic snippets are un(der)developed, to be sure, and shift quickly enough back into prose discourse, but both are intriguing as they represent YHWH with a poetic penchant, sliding into high diction at what appear to be singularly important moments: the revelation of God’s own name (3:14–15) and the introduction to the Sinaitic covenant (19:1–6). In the case of Exodus 3, the couplet that concludes the exchange about YHWH’s name underscores the poetic nature of the name itself – in this case its given-ness (yhwh) coupled with its opacity (ʾehyeh ʾăšer ʾehyeh).24 The poetic conclusion in 3:15b instantiates both aspects, semantically signaling that God’s name is secure (lǝʿōlām, lǝdōr dōr) even while playing with nonidentical equivalences (šēm, zēker) and omitting any finite verb, including the copula, which would otherwise lock the name down or determine it in some axiomatic “equation.” God’s name is given, therefore, but not in any final sort of way. In the case of Exodus 19, so much of what follows in the Sinai pericope is far from poetic – much appears downright pedantic given the legalese of it all. But, despite that, YHWH’s covenant begins with poetic balance and style, suggesting that the law to follow, similarly, should be considered beautiful – perhaps due to its own symmetries and balance (cf. Hebrew mišpāt) – and so the law _ deserves to be artfully introduced by means of poetry.25 This leads back to a consideration of 34:6b–7 in its wider literary context. Why should YHWH speak poetically precisely at this point, and what does the poetry do in this particular setting? Tradition-historical or compositional-critical perspectives might suggest that the Gnadenformel is an ancient cultic fragment that has been simply inserted here, or, alternatively, that it is a text of more recent vintage that was composed for just this literary context. Either approach would explain, diachronically, why the poetic Gnadenformel appears literarily distinct from its more prosaic context. Neither, however, would explain its poetic function in context. A wider consideration of Exodus 32–34, coupled with the insights provided by the interaction of the poetic bits of 3:14–15 and 19:3 with their surrounding prose contexts, proves far more interesting and instructive than tradition-historical or composition-critical perspectives.

24

25

For reflections on YHWH’s presence in the divine name, which nevertheless remains elusive and intangible, see von Rad, Old Testament Theology, 1:180–83. For more poetry that celebrates the perfections of God’s law, see Psalms 1, 19, and 119.

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Exodus 32 famously recounts the incident of the Golden Calf (vv. 1–6). The complete obliteration of Israel is only prevented by Moses’ intercession with YHWH (vv. 7–14), though the aftermath remains nothing short of deathly (vv. 15–35). YHWH’s anger seems mostly assuaged at the end of chapter 32, but YHWH is adamant that he will accompany the Israelites no further (33:1–6). This leads to a second important intercession by Moses and YHWH’s apparent concession to accompany Moses (33:12–14). But Moses isn’t satisfied and so continues to press for God’s continuing presence with Israel as a whole, and YHWH eventually concedes (vv. 15–17). After this comes the exchange about Moses seeing YHWH’s “glory” (v. 18), but YHWH states that only his “goodness,” not his face, may be seen (vv. 19–23). At last we come to chapter 34, and Moses ascends Sinai once more with two new tablets (vv. 1–4). This is the moment when YHWH appears, invokes the name, and speaks the Gnadenformel (vv. 5–7). Moses’ response is obeisance and worship and a third intercessory request that YHWH accompany the people and forgive their sin (vv. 8–9). After this comes the account of the so-called cultic Decalogue (vv. 10–28), but it is quite striking that YHWH does not reply directly or explicitly to Moses’ most recent request, and, up to v. 10 at least, it is possible to take YHWH’s words as having to do solely with Moses (the first instance of a second person plural verb referring to all Israel is found in v. 13). The poetry and poetics of the Gnadenformel fit this larger literary context in two primary ways. First, as virtually all commentators note, what is needed after the stupendous breach of covenant found in Exodus 32 is nothing less than a full pardon, total forgiveness. As detailed in the preceding analysis (§1), the poetics of the Gnadenformel indicate that YHWH’s character is fully capable of such clemency, and in far more extensive and developed ways (thanks to the poetry) than is typically recognized. YHWH’s character is not just benevolent in this regard but superabundantly benevolent. YHWH’s capacity for faithfulness and forgiveness matches, but then surpasses – exponentially! – his ability to punish. And yet, the Gnadenformel continues to acknowledge YHWH’s punitive capacities; indeed, the poetics of the Gnadenformel make YHWH’s punishment part of the way YHWH keeps hesed.26 The Gnadenformel, _

26

Cf. George V. Pixley, On Exodus: A Liberation Perspective, trans. R. R. Barr (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1987), 157–58.

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that is, bears within itself what could be called a lyric tension – replete with lyric cohesion – between YHWH’s (far more) merciful and (far less) punitive sides.27 Both sides of YHWH must be acknowledged within the context of Exodus 32–34: the former since the breach brought about in the calf debacle is too fundamental, the cut too deep, to think it could be repaired easily or quickly. Hence, barring a superabundance of divine mercy, there will simply be no more story of Israel to tell – at least no more story of Israel-with-YHWH. But the punishing side of YHWH must also be admitted because, again, the covenant wound is deep, and the judgment experienced by Israel in its aftermath was both costly and deathly – so much so that it cannot be forgotten or ignored.28 Both sides of the divine nature must be acknowledged, then – and for both YHWH and Israel alike – and both sides are acknowledged in the Gnadenformel: they cohere. But it is equally evident by means of explicit semantic content and via the poetics that YHWH’s benevolence outpaces his punitive sensibilities. The coherence is not equal, therefore, but decidedly unbalanced: (poetic) tension is at work. Among other things, the tension between these two sides protects YHWH: he remains free to punish even if his mercy far outweighs his wrath, and he remains free to forgive even if wrath is part of his nature. In this way, the Gnadenformel addresses the crisis of the covenant moving forward – for both YHWH and Israel alike – but it does not limit YHWH to only one mode of being or relating vis-àvis Israel. YHWH can and will punish should the need arise; YHWH can and will forgive, and is overwhelmingly predisposed to doing so.29 Second, the poetics of the Gnadenformel may explain why YHWH does not reply explicitly to Moses’ last intercession in 34:8–9. In one sense, YHWH’s silence here may be compared to YHWH’s exchange with Jeremiah in his “confessions.” YHWH answers one of the prophet’s laments in Jer 12:5–6 and does so again in 15:19–21. After this, however, YHWH speaks no more, even though Jeremiah’s laments continue

27

28

29

For a similar dynamic in Second Isaiah, see Katie M. Heffelfinger, I Am Large, I Contain Multitudes: Lyric Cohesion and Conflict in Second Isaiah, BibInt 105 (Leiden: Brill, 2011). For her comments on the Gnadenformel, see ibid., 225. Cf. Propp, Exodus 19–40, 611; Umberto Cassuto, A Commentary on the Book of Exodus, trans. I. Abrahams (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1967; repr., Skokie, IL: Varda, 2005), 438; and, analogously, Heffelfinger, I Am Large. Cf. Brueggemann, Theology, 217–18; Donald E. Gowan, Theology in Exodus: Biblical Theology in the Form of a Commentary (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1994), 236; and Mark J. Boda, A Severe Mercy: Sin and Its Remedy in the Old Testament, Siphrut 1 (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2009), 523.

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(e.g., 20:7–18). The reason for YHWH’s silence may well be due to the last line of his final response in 15:21 (“because I am with you, to save you and to deliver you”), which echoes the divine promise of presence and deliverance given at the time of Jeremiah’s call in 1:8 (“because I am with you to deliver you”).30 There is, in a very real sense, nothing further YHWH can say or that YHWH needs to say. God’s initial promise of divine accompaniment and protection remains in place. Jeremiah will have to go on with just that much: no more, certainly, but certainly no less. Analogously, the Gnadenformel within Exodus 32–34 may, in YHWH’s perspective, suffice such that he need not say anything further in response to Moses’ third request (Exod 34:9).31 After the Gnadenformel, what more needs to be said? Moses’ further intercession thereafter misses the point. The poetry makes (super)abundantly clear that YHWH is precisely what Moses continues (somewhat pedantically) to request: a forgiver of guilt and sin – to far off generations! – even if Moses employs the verb √sālah (“to forgive”) while YHWH prefers √nāśāʾ (“to forgive”).32 _ Moses, it would seem, has missed the larger point(s) of the poetry with this additional, but completely unnecessary, intercession. Of course, Moses would not be the first person to inadequately grasp a poem! But, before we are too hard on Moses, it should be admitted that there is no indication in the larger context that he is a poor interpreter of YHWH. To the contrary, Moses seems to know just what to say to YHWH and exactly when to say it. Still further, rather stunning commendations of Moses bracket the Gnadenformel in the unit about Moses speaking with YHWH “face-to-face” (33:7–11) and in the unit describing Moses’ “shining” face (34:29–35). Far from being a poor interpreter of poetry, that is, Moses

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See Brent A. Strawn, “Jeremiah’s In/Effective Plea: Another Look at nʿr in Jeremiah i 6,” VT 55 (2005): 366–77. The lack of explicit responsiveness to Moses might underscore the lyric nature of the Gnadenformel. Jonathan Culler has suggested that the “fundamental characteristic of lyric . . . is not the description and interpretation of a past event but the performance of an event in the lyric present, a time of enunciation” (“Lyric, History, and Genre,” in The Lyric Theory Reader A Critical Anthology, eds. Virginia Jackson and Yopie Prins [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014], 63–77 [68]). For √sālah, see Walter Brueggemann, “The Travail of Pardon: Reflections on slh,” in _ _ A God So Near: Essays on Old Testament Theology in Honor of Patrick D. Miller, ed. Brent A. Strawn and Nancy R. Bowen (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2003), 283–97. For √nāśāʾ, which may connote YHWH’s own carrying of the sin, see Jacob, Exodus, 984; and Gary A. Anderson, Sin: A History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 15–26.

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might be an excellent one, sensing within the lyric play that YHWH’s opacity remains firmly in place (cf. “my back” vs. “my face” in 33:18–19, 23) and that YHWH’s punishing side remains a lively (and deathly) option – even to far off generations!33 And so, in light of the cohesion and conflict of YHWH’s bipolar nature, Moses feels the need to implore yet once more that the triumph of mercy be decisive in this particular case. If, that is, YHWH, by means of the poetry, is somehow hedging the divine bets to some degree, retaining divine freedom, even definitively, Moses nevertheless prays one more time that YHWH’s mercy and grace triumph decisively (34:9).34 Given the superabundance of mercy in the divine character as pronounced in the Gnadenformel, such a prayer has a very good chance of success, indeed.35

3. yhwh’s poetry and/as scripture More could be said on the matters discussed above. But that is to be expected whenever the subject is poetry, which does not answer every question but, instead, seems to invite any and all questions. I wish to conclude, then, not by recapitulating what has been argued here, or strengthening those points further, but by asking a question. Is what one finds in the Gnadenformel and in its relationship to its larger literary context, as well as what one sees in traces of YHWH’s poesie elsewhere in the Torah (and beyond), instructive for how to best understand the divine address in Scripture? By means of the poetry of Exodus, we see that the divine nature is both revealed and concealed (3:14–15), and is (at least) bivalent, even if divine mercy overwhelms divine wrath (34:6b–7). Then, too, there is divine instruction: so extensive, so detailed, so overwrought, but introduced with a snippet of perfect poetry as if to frame it all in high

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For another instance of this sort of lyric tension in the space of a single verse, see Ps 99:8: “YHWH, our God, you answered them: you were a Forgiving God (ʾēl nōśēʾ) to them and a Requiter (wǝnōqēm) of their wrongdoings.” Another, related possibility, as Justin Walker has pointed out to me (personal communication), is that Moses may be resisting YHWH’s poetry at this point, hoping to return to something more prosaic and more certain à la, say, Exod 33:17. According to b. Ber. 7a, God prays the same thing to himself (!) every day: “May it be My will that My mercy may suppress My anger, and that My mercy may prevail over My [other] attributes, so that I may deal with My children in the attribute of mercy and, on their behalf, stop short of the limit of strict justice.” I owe this reference to Kimberley C. Patton, The Religion of the Gods: Ritual, Paradox, and Reflexivity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 265–73.

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artistic style (19:3a). Perhaps in lyrical moments such as these, we see a microcosm of the Torah writ large – if not Scripture itself, in its entirety: it is something on the move, something in profound tension and yet still cohesive, something in (and at) play, something somehow fundamentally and at root, in ipse, poetic. It is not unusual, after all, for the spice that is peppered here and there in a dish to turn out to be that which makes it tasty, delicious, and altogether memorable.

15 The Decipherment of Sorrow David’s Lament in 2 Samuel 1:17–27 Steven Weitzman

The Hebrew Bible records many psalms and songs ascribed to King David, compositions that have long impressed themselves on readers as deeply personal. But not everyone is convinced that these psalms reveal the inner life of David. During the twentieth century, critical scholars came to realize that the introductory lines that associate these psalms with various episodes in David’s life were added long after the composition of the psalms, and they cannot be relied upon to understand their authorship. As personal as they might seem to readers, few critical scholars would read them as a transcript of the historical David’s inner life.1 One possible exception to this depersonalization of Davidic poetry, however, is not found in the book of Psalms but in the narrative of 2 Samuel: a lament ascribed to David in 2 Sam 1:17–27, which he is said to have uttered after the death of King Saul and his son Jonathan. Other poetic compositions embedded within the narrative of 1–2 Samuel, including Hannah’s prayer in 1 Sam 2 and a song ascribed to David in 2 Sam 22, are very similar to the Psalms; in fact, they quite literally overlap with particular psalms in both form and substance (compare 1 Sam 2 and Ps 113; 2 Sam 22 and Ps 18).2 David’s lament stands out in this regard. With the exception of the superscription at the beginning, most of the psalms offer little to connect them to the king; the gratitude,

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James Kugel, “Topics in the History of the Spirituality of the Psalms,” in Jewish Spirituality from the Bible through the Middle Ages, ed. Arthur Green (New York: Crossroad, 1988), 113–44. Steven Weitzman, Song and Story in Biblical Narrative, ISBL (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 113–23.

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grief, and guilt they express are generic; not superficial, but so vaguely autobiographical that they can be detached from David’s life and applied to very different circumstances. By contrast, the lament, which refers directly and repeatedly to the loss of Saul and Jonathan, strikes many readers as very personal, context-specific, and revealingly autobiographical. Whereas many commentators doubt that David wrote the Psalms, many believe that he authored the lament in 2 Samuel 1 because it seems so directly tied to his circumstances and psychology. Given that no other poetic composition in the Hebrew Bible seems to come from David himself, and given that there are doubts about David as a historical figure, why do so many modern commentators take the lament as the words of the king himself? It is not because scholarship can prove linguistically that it was written by the king, but rather because the feelings it expresses seem so genuine. “There is in it such depth and fullness of feeling,” notes one nineteenth-century commentator, “that one can think of it only as a genuine cardiphonia, – a true voice of the heart.”3 As Tod Linafelt has shown, many scholars into our own era read the lament as a record of sincerely felt emotion, even as they acknowledge that they cannot prove that it was composed by David himself.4 Thus, one scholar says of the lament, “Its emotion is direct and seemingly spontaneous”; another registers a “tone of real mourning”; for another, “Its directness, passion and innocence are reflective of a genuine grief.”5 Despite this impression of authenticity, David’s lament is, after all, a work of art, an effort to represent the inner-life, and everything it reveals about David’s feelings is mediated by an author with designs of his own. Other moments in 2 Samuel where David expresses grief over another feel very personal too (2 Sam 12:22–23; 19:1 [ET 18:33]), but they cannot be classified as poetry, as they replicate the qualities of ordinary speech. By contrast, the lament is very carefully designed, not arising as an improvised outpouring of grief but a careful orchestration of wordplay, internal echoes, and other uses of sound and meaning. Thanks to what scholars

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W. G. Blaikie, The Second Book of Samuel (London: Hodder and Stoughten, 1888), 8. Tod Linafelt, “Private Poetry and Public Eloquence in 2 Samuel 1:17–27: Hearing and Overhearing David’s Lament for Saul and Jonathan,” JR 88 (2008): 497–526. William Holladay, “Form and Word-Play in David’s Lament over Saul and Jonathan,” VT 20 (1970): 153–89, esp. 154; Walter Brueggemann, First and Second Samuel, IBC (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1990), 213; Hans William Herzberg, I and II Samuel: A Commentary, OTL (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1964), 239. Cf. Linafelt, “Private Poetry,” 504–05.

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have discovered about the larger cultural context in which biblical literature was composed, we can also now appreciate that the lament was not created in a void; it emerged from a preexisting literary tradition, a tradition of heroic military poetry related to that preserved in other ancient Mediterranean literatures like those of ancient Greece and the ancient Syrian city of Ugarit. However genuine the grief its expresses, its expression was not spontaneous but was preconditioned by convention, both literary and emotional. The lament’s fusion of pathos and poetry is the reason it has been described as one of the most beautiful and moving passages in all of the Hebrew Bible, but it also makes it a rare artifact of the inner-life from ancient Israel, an opportunity to explore the connection between feeling and form in the production of biblical poetry, and that is how I want to approach it here. In the close reading that follows, my focus will be on the emotion expressed in the lament, the identification of that emotion, and the exploration of why it expressed itself in precisely this way. To understand the relationship between form and feeling in the lament, it will not be enough to draw on biblical studies alone; we will have to venture into the history and anthropology of emotion, resources that can help us to recognize what needs to be deciphered about its expression of sorrow. We will also need to engage in a bit of self-reflection about our own inner-life as we try to make sense of the text, probing what it is that we bring to the biblical text when we find ourselves moved by it. *** David offered this lament over Saul and over Jonathan his son, and said, “For teaching to the sons of Judah, ‘the Bow’ (?). And look, it is written in the Book of Yashar: “The gazelle (?), Israel, on your high places it is slain. How the mighty have fallen. Do not report it in Gath, do not announce it in the streets of Ashkelon lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice, lest the daughters of the uncircumcised exalt. Mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew or rain upon you, no fields of offering (?), for it was there that the shield of the mighty was abandoned, the shield of Saul left unanointed with oil. From the blood of the slain, from the fat of the mighty – the bow of Jonathan did not turn back, and the sword of Saul, did not come back empty. Saul and Jonathan, beloved and held dear in their lifetimes,

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in their deaths, inseparable. They were swifter than eagles, mightier than lions. Daughters of Israel, weep for Saul, the one who clothed you with scarlet and other adornments, the one who placed ornaments of gold on your clothing. How the mighty have fallen in the midst of battle. Jonathan on your high places is slain. I am distressed about you, my brother Jonathan. You were so dear to me. Your love was more wondrous to me than the love of women. How the mighty have fallen, and the weapons of war are no more.”

There is much in the lament that this translation obscures: words and phrases of uncertain meaning (I have marked the most stubbornly puzzling words with question marks), puns and allusions, and according to some readers, a covert dig at Saul and Jonathan here and there. We will get to some of that obscurity in time, but first, it is important to place the lament in the context of the story of David. The lament brings to an end the story of David’s relationship to Saul as narrated in 1 Samuel. Half a book earlier, in 1 Sam 15, God had decided to withdraw the kingship from Saul because of his disobedience, enlisting the prophet Samuel to anoint David as the new king without Saul’s knowledge. Over time, as David grows more popular, Saul grows more resentful, eventually trying to kill his young rival, but David’s loyalty to Saul never wavers. He refrains from hurting Saul even when he has the opportunity (1 Sam 24, 26), and he develops a close bond with Saul’s son Jonathan, who protects him from his father (1 Sam 20). Even after Saul and Jonathan fall in battle against the Philistines, David remains loyal to them. When an Amalekite seeks to ingratiate himself with David by claiming to have helped Saul to kill himself, David has him executed for having raised his hand against the Lord’s anointed king (2 Sam 1:14–15). The narrative of 1–2 Samuel leaves David’s thoughts rather murky, but the lament in 2 Sam 1:19–27 brings them into the open and reveals his enduring allegiance to Saul and Jonathan, his admiration for the one and his love for the other. Scholars have been able to glean insights into its author’s psychology through a close reading of the lament itself. This was a major goal of one of the first great close readers of biblical poetry in modern times, Bishop Robert Lowth (1710–87). Lowth’s Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews is best known for its groundbreaking analysis of parallelism, but it also has a lot to say about poetry’s connection to the inner life, and more specifically to emotion. According to Lowth, in fact, what distinguishes prose from poetry is precisely the degree to which each medium is shaped by passion:

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The language of reason is cool, temperate, rather humbled than elevated, well arranged and perspicuous. The language of the passions is totally different: the conceptions burst out into a turbid stream . . . expressive in a manner of the internal conflict; the more vehement break out in hasty confusion; they catch (without search or study) whatever is impetuous, vivid or energetic. In a word, reason speaks literally; the passions poetically.6

Poetry, according to Lowth, is the language of emotion, a direct expression of its vehemence and volatility. The conversion of passion into language is structured by verse and other formal devices, but the core of it all is the “agitation of passion,” conceived as a mental energy or force that sometimes bursts out from the constraints of language. The perception of David’s lament as a direct access point to the mindset of its author is based in part on this perception of poetry. Lowth drew on this psychological theory to explain David’s lament. His reading appears at the end of two related lectures devoted to the topic of elegy (Heb. qînâ), which in Lowth’s view has an unusually direct connection to the emotions. He notes that the genre can grow ostentatious, but the most beautiful examples replicate the spontaneous expression of grief. Lowth devoted particular attention to David’s lament. In his reading, it begins with an explosion of emotion (“as might naturally be expected, sorrow is predominant and bursts forth with the impetuosity of exclamation”7), and then follows the abrupt mood swings of its author from grief to anger: “the same passion (sorrow) is also sullen and querulous, wayward and peevish, unable to restrain its impatience, and firing at everything that opposes it.”8 The psychology of the lament’s author not only explains its shifting mood, but it helps to account for other aspects of the poem as well, like its use of repetition: Why does the line “How the mighty have fallen” recur three times over the lament? Lowth explains it as a consequence of strong emotion: grief “is fond of dwelling upon the object of its passion, and frequently repeating them.”9 Lowth’s influence persists today in what Linafelt calls the “Romantic” approach to the lament that treats it as a transcript of emotion. An example is what scholarly commentators make of its opening couplet (2 Sam 1:19):

6

7 9

Robert Lowth, Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews, trans. G. Gregory (London: Chadwick, 1847), 150. 8 Lowth, Sacred Lectures, 260 Lowth, Sacred Lectures, 261. Lowth, Sacred Lectures, 262.

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Though we are dealing here with a mere eight words in the original Hebrew, there is a lot about this brief line that we simply do not understand, including the very first word. The Hebrew term rendered here as “gazelle” (səbî) can also be rendered “beauty” or “splendor” – a homo_ nym in Hebrew spelled in exactly the same way, and there are arguments in favor of either reading. Other biblical passages compare the appearance of fleet-footed warriors to the gazelle (2 Sam 2:18; 22:34), but “beauty” would be consistent with other lamentations in the Bible which dwell on lost splendor (Lam 1:6), and the word with that meaning is associated with royalty in texts like Isa 28:1–5. We also have no way to resolve whether the term/metaphor is meant to refer to Saul, to Jonathan, or more generally, to the warriors of Israel who died in the fight with the Philistines. But these questions were less important to Lowth than the couplet’s intensity, which he tried to convey by inscribing the emotion he thought registered in the couplet into his translation of the lament: “Thy glory, O Israel, droops its languid head . . .” (nothing in the original Hebrew corresponds to the italicized text).10 What is it about this couplet that prompted Lowth to read into it such emotional force? Perhaps Lowth had in mind other biblical laments which, as he notes, consist of many “plaintive effusions,” such as Lam 1:16: “For these things I cry; my eye, my eye runs with water.” But the opening of David’s lament does not suggest emotion in such a direct way, nor is there any interjectory ʾôy or hôy (“woe”) as in laments like Isa 6:5, Jer 22:18, or Amos 5:16, where such words mimic a mourner’s cries. And yet Lowth – and many scholars since Lowth – detect in the couplet precisely such an exclamation, to the point that it is often translated with an extra “Oh” or “Alas” – “Oh, how the mighty have fallen” – to convey the emotional punch detected between its lines.11 What injects this kind of emotional force into the couplet? Lowth does not explain his thinking, but other commentators find a lexical anchor at one of two points in the lament. Some believe that the initial h- that begins the line in Hebrew, understood by the scribes who vocalized the Masoretic text as the determinate article “the” (ha-), has been misconstrued and that it was originally a “particle of lament,” to be translated as 10 11

Lowth, Sacred Lectures, 263. See, e.g., P. Kyle McCarter Jr., II Samuel, AB 9 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1984), 66; James Kugel, Great Poems of the Bible (New York: Free Press, 1999), 98.

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“woe” or “oh.”12 An alternative explanation zeroes in on the “how” (ʾêk) in the second line of the couplet (“how the mighty have fallen”), construed not as an interrogative that introduces a question but as an exclamation of feeling in the way that the variant form ʾêkâ functions in the book of Lamentations. With either option, we need to read an exclamation into the text that is not registered explicitly. This example, wherein a single letter or word is made to signify the powerful emotion from which the lament originates, illustrates one of the hermeneutical complications that gets in the way of reading the lament as a record of an ancient person’s emotional life: how to distinguish the emotions motivating the poem from the emotions that we, as modern readers, project onto it in light of our own literary and psychological assumptions. With the advantage of historical hindsight, we can detect some of what Lowth was projecting onto the lament. Prior to the eighteenth century, European scholars developed their understanding of the emotions out of classical thought, but during the Enlightenment, in precisely the period when Lowth developed his interpretation, psychologists had begun to approach the emotions in a newly scientific way, conceiving them as a “motion of the Mind” that could be explained in much the same way that the motions of material entities could be explained in light of physics.13 Lowth’s conception of emotion is indebted to such thinking. Recall how he explains the thrice-fold repetition of “How the mighty have fallen” (vv. 19, 25, 27). His idea that grief likes to dwell on the object of its loss, repeating itself again and again, was drawn from the psychology of his day, echoing a commonplace that also surfaces in the writing of contemporaries like Edmund Burke: “it is the nature of grief to keep its object perpetually in its eye . . . to repeat all the circumstances that attend to it.”14 We can see in retrospect that Lowth was projecting an Enlightenment-era psychological cliché onto the text, and in other cultural contexts, the repetition has been given other explanations, as when

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See Mark S. Smith, Poetic Heroes: Literary Commemorations of Warriors and Warrior Culture in the Early Biblical World (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014), 527–29. See Constance Walker, Bards of Passion: Enlightenment Psychology in English Romantic Poetry (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1982), esp. 1–57; Richard Sha, “The Motion Behind Romantic Emotion: Toward a Chemistry and Physics of Feeling,” in Romanticism and the Emotions, ed. Joel Faflak and Richard Sha (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 19–47. Edmund Burke, “A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful,” reprinted in vol. 1 of The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, ed. T. O. McLoughlin and James T. Boulton (New York: Cosimo Classics, 2008), 109.

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contemporary biblical scholars explain it as a structuring device, an inclusio that ties the final section of the lament to the beginning by placing similar material in both places. The last twenty years have seen the rise of scholarship focused on the history of emotions, which seeks to trace how the experience, perception, and representation of emotion changes over time. The medievalist Barbara Rosenwein seeks to refute what she refers to as the “hydraulic model,” the idea that emotions generate a pressure that must be released or channeled in some way.15 She stressed the role of perception and evaluation in emotional experience, and that those perceptions and evaluations can differ from one culture or era to another. While Rosenwein does not deny the neurological and physiological dimensions of emotion, her approach amounts to a kind of cultural relativism in which different societies operate according to different rules of feeling that govern the expression of emotion. Grief is a classic example. Well before Rosenwein’s article, anthropologists had shown that grief is experienced in different ways in different cultures.16 From this perspective, one cannot understand the emotions of people from another era or place without situating their expression within the context of their culture’s emotional norms. Embracing this history of emotions approach means that we need to be more self-conscious about our own emotional culture and how it might lead us to misread the feelings at work in the lament, but it also suggests it might still be possible to learn something about those feelings by attending to the cultural and social context in which the lament was composed. Consider verse 26, at the end of the lament: I am distressed about you, my brother Jonathan. You were so dear to me. Your love was more wondrous to me than the love of women.

These lines are considered the most personally revealing of the lament, but what precisely do they reveal? The words “love” and “brother” might conceivably be diplomatic language, referring to a close political or military bond, as scholars have argued on the basis of ancient Near Eastern treaties that use the language of love to describe close alliances

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Barbara Rosenwein, “Worrying about Emotions in History,” The American Historical Review 107 (2002): 821–45. E.g., Paul Rosenblatt, Patricia Walsh, and Douglas Jackson, Grief and Mourning in Cross-Cultural Perspective (New York: Human Relations Area Files, 1976).

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between rulers.17 Is the author divulging something personal or even eroticized about his relationship with Jonathan, as many readers suppose?18 Or is he merely engaging in the language of diplomatic convention, using the language of love to claim an alliance with Jonathan? There is no way to get to the bottom of what David and Jonathan felt for each other, and perhaps we are wrong to distinguish between the political and the personal so sharply. There is enough evidence from the ancient Near Eastern context in which the lament was composed to caution us against assuming that the Hebrew for “love” in this verse resonates in the intimate or sexualized way that our word for love does for us. If we expand this contextualizing approach to the lament as a whole, it is possible to understand the emotion at work in a different way than Lowth did. Sorrow is still at the center of the lament, but there may be other emotions at work that can become more visible if we try to set aside the Romantic assumptions that still govern how many of us read biblical poetry and attend more carefully to how the lament fits into an ancient context, and those other emotions might help us in turn to better understand the lament as a vehicle of psychological self-expression. Let us keep that possibility in mind as we move forward in reading the lament. Do not report it in Gath, do not announce it in the streets of Ashkelon lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice, lest the daughters of the uncircumcised exalt. (2 Sam 1:20)

Having scarcely begun his lamentation, the author immediately turns his attention from the fallen heroes to the enemy, calling on his audience to prevent the news of the defeat from spreading to the nearby Philistines. Lowth explains these verses by once again calling attention to the psychology of grief, which in his view is very irritable, “always ready at inventing causes for self-torment.” If we approach this couplet anthropologically rather than psychologically, another explanation presents itself. In the preceding narrative, the Philistines did indeed seek to spread the news of their victory and celebrated Saul’s defeat in a public way: “they cut off his head and stripped his armor and sent word of it into the land of 17

18

See William L. Moran, “The Ancient Near Eastern Background for the Love of God in Deuteronomy,” CBQ 25 (1963): 77–87. See James Harding, The Love of David and Jonathan: Ideology, Text, Reception (Oakville, CT: Equinox, 2013); Saul M. Olyan, Social Inequality in the World of the Text: The Significance of Ritual and Social Distinctions in the Hebrew Bible, Journal of Ancient Judaism Supplements 4 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011), 85–99.

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the Philistines all around, to announce the news in the house of their idols” (1 Sam 31:9). If we take this verse seriously as a clue to what the author of the lament was anxious about, we can detect another feeling besides sorrow between its lines – not just loss of dear friends but loss of face, the embarrassment that comes from being dishonored by the enemy. This disgrace, not sorrow, explains why the author has chosen to express himself in poetry. It is not far-fetched to suppose that the Philistines’ rejoicing included songs of victory, perhaps even the same sort of victory songs that the Israelites themselves performed. One of those victory songs is cited a few chapters earlier in 1 Sam 18:6–7: When the men were returning home after David killed the Philistine, the women came out from all the towns of Israel to meet King Saul with singing and dancing. They sang and danced for joy with tambourines and cymbals. And they danced and sang: “Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands.”

Another example is the Song of Deborah in Judges 5, said to have been recited after the Israelites’ victory against the Canaanite king Jabin and his general Sisera. Like David’s lament, the song imagines the reaction of the other side: whereas David’s lament imagines the gloating of the Philistine women, the song of Deborah refers to the response of the enemy’s women, or woman in this case, describing what Sisera’s mother is thinking as she begins to realize that her son is taking too long to return from the fight (Judg 5:28–30). Another text, Micah 2:4, suggests that the enemy would sometimes compose mock laments in order to belittle the loss of the mourners. From such examples, we can infer that battle provoked rival poetic performances – victory songs to greet the winners on their return, laments from the losing side to mourn its losses. We might even say that each genre was composed as a way of countering the other genre: the losers composed laments that not only mourned the loss of fallen soldiers but defied the celebratory songs of the victors, while the victors’ songs mocked the defeated and – judging from Micah – even parodied the laments they offered for their dead. This then would explain why the author of David’s lament had to express himself in such an elaborately poetic form: he was seeking to counter the kind of victory songs being performed on the other side, to minimize the humiliation of defeat by containing the news. We cannot prove this, but the Bible does register an ongoing exchange of mockery between the two peoples. In 1 Sam 17:8–10 and 43–44, for example, the Philistine Goliath mocks the Israelites before a battle, and prophetic texts like Isa 14:3–23 show that the Israelites knew how to dish it out as well.

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It is not unreasonable, therefore, to situate David’s lament as part of that poetic back-and-forth between the Israelites and the Philistines, comparable to the use of poetic taunts and boasts in contemporary contexts that involve conflict or competition, as when Muhammad Ali used rhymed couplets to taunt his opponents before boxing matches or when gang members use rap music to diss their rivals. Mark Smith has set David’s lament within the context of an ancient Mediterranean warrior culture that adhered to some of the same values best known from the epics of Homer but that are also reflected in the earlier poetry of Ugarit (ca 1550–1200 BCE).19 In both cultures, a warrior could achieve enduring fame through exceptional acts of aggression and courage considered worthy of being commemorated in song. The performance of those songs was not just a way of paying tribute to fallen heroes but a form of immortality, keeping them alive in the minds of others. Much of the Hebrew Bible is from a period after the end of this heroic ethos, but Smith believes that it can be glimpsed in archaic poems like the Song of Deborah and David’s lament, remnants of a lost world of heroic epic much older than the narratives in which these poems appear, a world where a hero’s fate – his ability to be remembered and thus, in a sense, to survive death – depended on being commemorated in song. In this early heroic culture, defeat in battle had psychological implications that went beyond what such an experience entails for many Americans today, who are far more distant from the battles fought on their behalf. It brought profound shame for the defeated warriors, so much so that a warrior would sooner take his own life than allow himself to be killed in a way that others might mock. Thus we read in Judg 9:50–54 that the leader Abimelech, felled in battle by a women who throws a stone on his head from atop a wall, orders his servant to run him through with a sword rather than let it be known that he died in this way. Similar thinking leads Saul to order his servant to kill him after he is injured by the Philistines – he too was seeking to protect his reputation, “lest these uncircumcised come and pierce me and exult over me” (1 Sam 31:4). Such stories come from a culture where a warrior could suffer something worse than death, a reputational death in which one’s memory is ruined forever by having died disgracefully. Evidence beyond the Hebrew Bible suggests that the act of lamentation was a moment to manage the feelings that came with defeat, and to

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Smith, Poetic Heroes.

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mitigate the reputational death the warriors worried would follow their physical death. The climax of the Iliad is the death of the valiant warrior Hector at the hand of Achilles, and the last book of the epic reports several laments uttered in Hector’s honor. The lament by Helen of Troy, the last in the sequence, makes for a particularly telling comparison with David’s (Iliad 24.762–74). As a person who could be held liable for the death of Hector, her participation in the mourning was potentially controversial, just as one can imagine David’s lament provoking outrage given that he was regarded as an enemy by Saul (see 1 Sam 27:1–28:2). And yet Helen not only participates in the mourning but offers the final lament as if she were the person closest to Hector, and her words, like David’s, are accepted as a fitting tribute, causing the people to weep. Maria Pantella argues that Helen’s lament attempts to rehabilitate the memory of Hector after a devastating and humiliating loss on the battlefield.20 It is not just an expression of grief but an effort to perpetuate the glory – and hence the immortality – of Hector in a way that looks beyond his inglorious defeat. We can understand David’s lament in a similar way, not only as an outburst of sorrow but also as an attempt to salvage the reputation of warriors felled in battle. This brings us to verse 21 of the lament, at which point it begins to exhibit similarities with the battle scenes of Homeric poetry, poetry that was meant to glorify the exploits of fallen warriors. Verses 21–23 transport the reader from the grieving present back to the place where Saul and Jonathan made their last stand: ð21Þ

Mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew or rain upon you, no fields of offering (?), for it was there that the shield of the mighty was abandoned, the shield of Saul left unanointed with oil. From the blood of the slain, from the fat of the mighty – the bow of Jonathan did not turn back, and the sword of Saul, did not come back empty. Saul and Jonathan, beloved and held dear in their lifetimes, in their deaths, inseparable. They were swifter than eagles, mightier than lions.

ð22Þ ð23Þ

Verse 21 has long puzzled commentators: why would the author lash out against the Mountains of Gilboa, calling for them to become barren as

20

Maria Pantella, “Helen and the Last Song for Hector,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 132 (2002): 21–27.

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if they bore some responsibility for the deaths of Saul and Jonathan? Comparison with Ugaritic literature has revealed the existence of similar cursing in earlier literature from the region.21 But even if there is a cultural logic to cursing the earth as a part of the grieving process, the comparison does not explain how this curse advances the author’s communicative goals. To account for the curse in that way, I would call attention to another literary parallel: the use of apostrophe in Homeric poetry, especially the poet’s direct address to supernatural beings like the Muses. In the Iliad, this device disrupts the temporal integrity of the third-person narrative, inserting the poet into a kind of conversation with deities or other beings outside the narrative frame. Here the use of an apostrophe, an address directed to the mountains of Gilboa, allows for another kind of temporal shift, giving the poet a way to move from the present moment of grief to an earlier time when the battle is still unfolding, and it also facilitates a geographical shift, moving the reader’s attention from the place of the lament’s recitation to the site where Saul and Jonathan died. The poet has smoothed over the temporal-spatial jump with a clever use of syntax. The continued use of verbs in the negative volitional mood (“report it not in Gath . . . let there be neither dew nor rain”) carries the commanding tone of the speaker from verse 20 into verse 21, thus providing a kind of continuity as the poem shifts from one set of spatial-temporal coordinates to another. The use of apostrophe allows the author to accomplish representationally a transition to an earlier moment when it can depict Saul and Jonathan in action. Also helping with this transition are the weapons of Saul and Jonathan: the shield and spear of Saul and the bow of Jonathan. Here, too, Homer comes to mind, because he enlists weapons as metonyms for his heroes’ identity and power (e.g., the shield of Achilles).22 In David’s lament, the weapons of Saul and the other fallen warriors are first pictured lying abandoned and untended in the field, which conveys by implication the fallen state of their owners. The description of Saul’s shield as “unanointed in oil,” evoking the king’s title as the “anointed one” or māšîah, reinforces _ the impression of a fall by calling to mind how he has lost the kingship. But those same weapons serve as another pivot point in the lament’s efforts to shift from a bereft present to a heroic past in which Saul and

21 22

Smith, Poetic Heroes, 272. On the personification of weapons, see Smith, Poetic Heroes, 273–74.

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Jonathan are still alive, providing the author with a pretext to conjure a fleeting glimpse of the two warriors in battle. In verse 22, it appears at first that the lament is referring to the slain king and his son, who have been the focus thus far: “from the blood of the slain, from the fat of the mighty.” But in the second half of the couplet, it becomes clear that the lament is referring not to the king and his son but to those who have died at their hand, either pierced by Jonathan’s bow or struck down by Saul’s insatiable sword. As their weapons are reactivated by the poem in this way, the two heroes come alive again if only for a verse or two – fearless, fearsome, unrivaled by any other warrior. I would note one last Homeric touch. The next line uses an animal simile to describe the heroes: “They were swifter than eagles, stronger than lions” (v. 23), which recalls animal similes used to describe the warriors in the Iliad (e.g., a lion simile used of Achilles in 20:164–75; an eagle simile used of Hector in 22.308). If I am right that the aim of the lament is not just to give vent to grief but also to fend off the disgrace of defeat, this section, which I regard as the most Iliad-like passage in the Hebrew Bible, reminds its audience why Saul and Jonathan, despite their demise and despite the contempt with which their bodies are treated by the Philistines, are worth remembering and honoring. By now, an explanation is emerging for why the author of the lament expresses himself in a poetic form. Contrary to Lowth, it is not simply that his grief was so overwhelming that it could not be confined to prose. In the warrior culture described by Homer, there is but one consolation for a warrior’s death: the knowledge that such a death brings enduring fame, the kind of fame achieved by having a poem like the Iliad recount their exploits. This indeed seems to have been a major aspiration for the warriors themselves, to be a subject of songs sung by future people (cf. Iliad 6.357–8). David’s lament seems to have come out of a similar ethos. If there is a single emotion at work, it was not sorrow but the worry that people will speak only of Saul and Jonathan’s defeat, and vv. 22–23, a kind of mini-epic account squeezed into two verses, can be understood as an effort to counter that way of remembering them by freezing an image of the king and his son in an enduring pose of fierce warriors. Such a motivation explains why, according to the introductory narrative, David taught the lament to the sons of Judah: That he would instruct other people to tell the story salvaged a continued existence for Saul and Jonathan. Despite their defeat and the gloating of the enemy, the lament shows that their actions in war deserved to be remembered, that they merited being sung about to generations yet unborn.

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In the final section of the lament, in another use of apostrophe (“daughters of Israel”), the author leaves the scene of the battle and seems to leave behind the poetry of battle as well: ð24Þ

Daughters of Israel, weep for Saul, the one who clothed you with scarlet and other adornments, the one who placed ornaments of gold on your clothing. How the mighty have fallen in the midst of battle. Jonathan on your high places is slain. I am distressed about you, my brother Jonathan. You were so dear to me. Your love was more wondrous to me than the love of women. How the mighty have fallen, and the weapons of war are no more.

ð25Þ ð26Þ ð27Þ

According to Lowth’s reading, the author of the lament has calmed down, to the point that the fervor of his grief is now tempered to some extent by the tenderness of friendship.23 Smith detects in these lines the assertion of a more private kind of grief: he speculates that it is only here in the lament that David himself actually speaks, having argued that the preceding lines were uttered by followers of Saul.24 While I am not persuaded by either explanation for the shift of focus and tone, I do agree that there is a shift taking place. Beyond the temporal move back to the present, there is also a shift from the battlefield to the more day-to-day world where people care about what they wear, from male to female (whereas the preceding verses repeat male-oriented words like “mighty,” gibbôrîm, which is literally related to the word for “male,” these verses introduce women twice in vv. 24, 26), and from the communal to the personal (the preceding verses uses plural verbs and pronouns; here the author uses the first person singular “to me”). For the first time, we have explicit references to grieving (“weep for Israel”); for the first time, the speaker refers directly to himself and his feelings for the fallen; and the blood and guts of preceding verses are balanced out now by references to the non-martial qualities of Saul and Jonathan, their generosity and friendship. Lowth is right: there is something tender about this section of the lament. And Smith is also right: it comes across as more personal and intimate. To account for this change, however, I would not speculate about the psychology of the author’s grief or posit a change of voice but instead refer to what I see as the driving motivation of the lament – the effort to salvage the reputation of warriors felled in a shameful defeat. Once again, the Iliad provides an instructive comparison. If Hector is to achieve

23

Lowth, Sacred Poetry, 261–62.

24

Smith, Poetic Heroes, 279–80.

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undying glory, his reputation cannot depend only on his skills as a fighter, since he has been slain in battle in such a humiliating way (just as the Philistines mistreat Saul’s body, so too Achilles abuses Hector’s corpse). Helen’s lament addresses that problem by adding another dimension to his legacy – Hector deserves to be remembered not only because of his feats as a warrior but also because of what he did back home, including his generosity to Helen herself as a captive woman. David’s lament makes a similar move in its final lines. Its praise for Saul in verse 24 makes note of his kindness to women, and its praise for Jonathan in verse 26 bears an even more striking similarity to Helen’s lament. Compare what she says in an address to the dead Hector: Hector, of all my lord’s brothers dearest by far to my spirit.. . . I mourn for you in sorrow of heart, and mourn myself also and my ill luck, for there was no one else in all wide Troad who was kind to me, and my friend. (Iliad 24.762–74)25

Helen detaches Hector’s reputation from the manner of his death, expanding the quality of heroism to include uncommon generosity and love. Admittedly, I have excerpted Helen’s speech in a way that accentuates its similarity to David’s lament, but not in a way that distorts what they share in common formally and in terms of the sentiment expressed. In both cases, we are dealing with apostrophe addressed to a fallen hero; in both cases, the speaker emphasizes his or her personal relationship to the deceased; and in both cases, the speaker singles out the deceased not for his military prowess but for his exceptional kindness. The similarities suggest a way to understand the final verses of the lament within the context of the poem as a whole. I have tried to illumine the emotional logic at work in the lament, and that logic, I have argued, is different from the kind that Lowth believed was at work. Following what his contemporaries understood about the mechanics of emotions in the eighteenth century, Lowth attributed many of the lament’s formal qualities to the power and volatility of sorrow. By drawing on what more recent scholars have learned from the history of emotions and from the comparative study of other ancient literatures, I have argued by contrast that the lament is as much concerned with shame as it is with sadness, that it is about salvaging reputation as much as it is about grieving a loss. Each approach is operating with a distinct theory of mind, of what goes on in other people’s heads and how to access 25

The translation is that of Richard Lattimore, trans., The Iliad (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 517–18.

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it, and that leads to very different interpretations of the lament as a record of emotion. As for what was actually going on in the mind of David – or of whoever it was who composed the lament – ultimately, alas, there is no way to know that, but I hope that the reading proposed here has at least been successful in suggesting how interpretively rewarding it is to imagine that mind working differently than our own minds do.

afterword: on deciphering the emotions of biblical poetry At the end of the day, we can only conjecture about the feelings at work in the lament. Other readings of the lament, it should be noted, have proposed different mental backgrounds for its composition – a guilty conscience or a calculating, public-relations-minded ambition – and there is no real way to settle the matter since whatever psychology lies behind the lament is well beyond our reach. At a minimum, however, we have learned that we should not simply project onto the lament our intuitions about how our own feelings work, as Lowth did, but need to think about them in a more historical and culturally specific way. This is not to argue against engaging biblical poetry emotionally. I would not want to stop anyone from taking solace in the psalms of David, but we should not simply presume that we know how to move from the language on the page to the inner-life of the author hidden behind it. I end on this point because I believe it carries a larger lesson for how we read biblical poetry. F. W Dobbs-Allsopp notes that emotionally charged language is to be found everywhere in the Psalms and other poetic texts in the Bible. Not only is it important to grapple with these emotions in order to understand biblical poetry, he argues; he even suggests that it can benefit the reader psychologically to engage them as part of the reading experience.26 But Dobbs-Allsopp himself concedes that it is much harder to analyze such emotions than it is the more formal qualities of biblical poetry. How then does one “read” the feelings expressed in biblical poetry? Is it sufficient to consult our own feelings as an interpretive guide, or is some additional kind of knowledge required? Because it has been recognized to convey emotion in a way that is exceptionally genuine, David’s lament gives us a chance to explore the inner-life of the author

26

F.W. Dobbs-Allsopp, On Biblical Poetry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 210–12.

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who created it, but it has also helped us to see that, from the perspective of the critical study of biblical poetry, it does not suffice for such insight to rely on what we experience of our own inner-lives. The sentiments registered in a biblical lament or victory song, like every other aspect of biblical poetry, require a kind of decipherment to retrieve: a knowledge of cultural and social context, an attention to form, and an ability to recognize what makes the sorrows and other feelings of ancient authors alien to a twenty-first century sensibility.

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Index of Authors

Abu-Lughod, Lila, 135 Allen, Leslie C., 203, 210 Alonso Schökel, Luis, 11, 44, 199 Alter, Robert, 2, 4, 7, 9, 11, 51, 55, 72, 75, 79, 82, 91, 115 Althusser, Louis, 4, 30–31 Andersen, Francis I., 70, 74, 136 Anderson, Gary, 254 Auerbach, Erich, 129 Auffret, Pierre, 33 Ball, C. J., 70 Balogh, Csaba, 172–74, 176–77, 179, 181 Barton, George A., 93, 98, 102 Beentjes, Panc, 200, 203, 209, 215 Bellinger, William, 40 Ben Yehuda, Eliezer, 107 Ben Zvi, Ehud, 218 Bergen, Benjamin K., 142 Berlin, Adele, 17, 206, 223 Berman, Joshua, 84 Bernard of Clairvaux, 140 Bernstein, Charles, 25 Beuken, Willem A. M., 171, 173–74 Black, Fiona C., 133 Black, Jeremy A., 3 Blaikie, W. G., 258 Blake, William, 135 Blasing, Mutlu Konuk, 142 Blenkinsopp, Joseph, 108, 150, 157, 163, 167, 171, 173, 179, 181, 188, 192, 197 Bloch, Ariel, 116 Bloch, Chana, 116

Block, Daniel I., 200, 203–4, 206–8, 210, 212–13 Boda, Mark J., 253 Borowski, Oded, 180 Brawer, Robert, 220 Brower, Reuben Arthur, 187 Brown, John Pairman, 125 Brown, Ken, 66 Brueggemann, Walter, 40, 237, 253–54, 258 Bruner, Frederick Dale, 247 Buitenwerf, Rieuwerd, 219 Burke, Edmund, 263 Burke, Kenneth, 3 Burt, Sean, 6, 9, 11, 201, 215 Carr, David M., 164–65 Cassuto, Umberto, 253 Chavel, Simeon, 4, 8–9, 104 Clements, Ronald E., 163, 167, 171, 173, 176, 181 Clines, David J. A., 68–69, 72, 74, 76, 186 Coggins, R. J., 218, 231 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 8 Collins, John J., 218–19, 231 Collins, Terence, 206, 209, 215 Cook, Paul M., 173, 177, 181 Cornell, T. Collin, 237 Couey, J. Blake, 5, 8–9, 157, 163, 177, 181, 206, 238, 240–42 Course, John E., 65 Craigie, Peter, 218 Crenshaw, James L., 97, 99

293

294

Index of Authors

Crüsemann, Frank, 38 Culler, Jonathan, 81, 83, 186, 190, 254 D’Accone, Frank A., 219 Dahood, Mitchell, 24–25, 30 Dalley, Stephanie, 43 Damasio, Antonio R., 140, 145 Davis, Ellen F., 47, 214 Day, John, 54 de Man, Paul, 44, 46 deClaissé-Walford, Nancy, 26 Dennis, Carl, 83 Dewey, John, 87 Dhorme, Edouard, 72 Dick, Michael B., 176 Dobbs-Allsopp, F. W., 2, 7, 9–10, 17, 81, 83, 87, 102, 129, 131–32, 137, 142, 149, 156, 169, 171, 181, 184, 204, 238, 240, 242, 273 Dodson, Joseph R., 44 Doll, Susan K., 176 Donner, Herbert, 176, 179 Doty, Mark, 19, 31 Dozeman, Thomas B., 237, 248 Driver, S. R., 2, 45 DuBois, Andrew, 3, 7, 11–12 Dunn, E. Catherine, 220 Durham, John I., 245

Garr, W. Randall, 205 Garrett, Duane A., 245, 250 Geller, Stephen A., 142, 170 Gerstenberger, Erhard, 35 Gesenius, Wilhelm, 102, 174, 180 Gibson, Andrew, 145 Gilbert, Creighton, 220 Ginsberg, H. L., 71, 77, 96 Girard, Marc, 37 Goldenberg, Sara, 63 Goldingay, John, 21, 25, 184, 188, 193, 197–98 Good, Edwin M., 69 Gordis, Robert, 67, 75–76, 93, 102–3, 108 Gottlieb, Claire, 172 Gowan, Donald E., 253 Gray, George Buchanan, 2, 167, 171, 173, 180, 182 Gray, John, 74 Greene, Roland, 87 Greenstein, Edward L., 4, 8, 65, 69, 71, 73, 75, 77, 155, 165, 200, 246 Grunebaum, Gustav von, 133 Gunkel, Hermann, 33, 45

Falk, Marcia, 123–24, 133 Fensham, F. Charles, 182 Fish, Stanley, 95, 103 Fishbane, Michael, 215 Fowler, Alastair, 202 Fox, Michael V., 84, 89, 93, 96–97, 99, 101–3, 108–10, 123, 154 Freedberg, David, 143 Freedman, David Noel, 170 Frost, Robert, 80 Frye, Northrop, 132 Futato, Mark, 43

Habel, Norman C., 70 HaCohen, David ben Raphael Haim, 35 Hakham, Amos, 68, 74, 78 Hallberg, Robert von, 81–82, 132 Han, Jin Hee, 218, 231 Harding, James, 265 Harris, Aisha, 217 Hartley, John E., 71, 76, 79 Hayes, John H., 171, 173, 176, 179–81 Heffelfinger, Katie M., 6, 8–10, 185, 187, 195, 253 Herzberg, Hans William, 258 Hiers, Richard, 226 Hillers, Delbert R., 171 Ho, Ahuva, 231 Holladay, William, 258 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 45 Hoop, Raymond de, 205 Hossfeld, Frank-Lothar, 33–34, 36, 38, 48 Høyland Lavik, Marta, 171, 173–74, 177–81 Hrushovski [Harshav], Benjamin, 7, 51, 95

Gallese, Vittorio, 143 Gardiner, Alan H., 172

Irvine, Stuart A., 171, 173, 176, 179–81 Isserlin, B. S. J., 133

Eaglestone, Robert, 144 Eagleton, Terry, 3, 12 Eichrodt, Walther, 201, 209 Eidevall, Göran, 35 Emerton, J. A., 150 Exum, J. Cheryl, 139, 184

Index of Authors Jackson, Douglas, 264 Jacob, Benno, 243, 248, 254 Jacobs, Jill, 73 Jacobson, Rolf, 22, 26 James, Elaine T., 4, 8–9 Janzen, J. Gerald, 67, 79 Jastrow, Morris, 102 Jeppesen, Knud, 186 Johnstone, William, 245, 248 Jones, Scott C., 85 Joyce, Paul M., 201, 203, 208, 210–11 Kahana, Avraham, 69, 71, 76 Kaiser, Otto, 168, 180–81 Kawashima, Robert S., 136 Keel, Othmar, 127, 143 Kekes, John, 88 Koethe, John, 82 Kottseiper, Ingo, 241 Kraus, Hans-Joachim, 25, 27, 33, 36 Kroeber, Rudi, 93, 97–98, 102, 108 Kruger, Paul A., 89 Kugel, James, 55 Kuhn, Thomas S., 145 Kuntz, J. Kenneth, 2 Lambdin, T. O., 136 Lambert, W. G., 151 Landy, Francis, 139 Lanham, Richard, 213 LeDoux, Joseph E., 140 Leick, Gwendolyn, 151 Levinas, Emmanuel, 5, 134, 138, 145 Levinson, Jerrold, 131 Linafelt, Tod, 5, 9, 102, 117, 129, 258, 261 Lo, Alison, 67 Loader, J. A., 98 Lohfink, Norbert, 30, 97, 108 Longenbach, James, 28 Longman, Tremper, III, 99, 103, 108, 110, 133 Loretz, Oswald, 241 Lowth, Robert, 1, 55, 179, 260–63, 265, 270–73 Lubetski, Meir, 172 Ludwig, Theodore M., 190 Lyons, Michael A., 210 Malay, Jessica, 232 Marlowe, Hilary, 46–47

295

Marshall, Mary Hatch, 220 Martin, Michael, 217 Martin, W., 139 Marvell, Andrew, 30 McCarter, P. Kyle, Jr., 262 McNeile, Alan Hugh, 247 Melville, Herman, 54 Mettinger, Tryggve, 184–85, 192 Moran, William L., 99, 265 Muchiki, Yoshiyuki, 172 Muffs, Yochanan, 96 Muilenburg, James, 190, 193, 197, 250 Murdoch, Iris, 139 Murphy, Roland E., 84, 88, 98–99, 108 Neusner, Jacob, 139 Newsom, Carol A., 69, 72, 83, 202 Nissinen, Martti, 151 Noë, Alva, 32, 47 North, Christopher R., 188–89, 195 O’Bannon, Ricky, 217 O’Brien, Julia M., 9, 224 O’Connor, David, 175 O’Connor, Michael Patrick, 142 Odell, Margaret S., 201, 203, 206, 213 Olyan, Saul M., 265 Pantella, Maria, 268 Pardee, Dennis, 100, 165 Parke, H. W., 233 Patton, Kimberley C., 255 Paxson, James J., 45–46 Payne, David, 184, 188, 193, 197–98 Peirce, Charles Sanders, 133 Perry, Neḥamit, 63, 72 Picasso, Pablo, 134 Pixley, George V., 252 Polanyi, Michael, 145 Pope, Marvin, 76, 121 Porten, Bezalel, 99 Propp, William H. C., 241, 247, 253 Rad, Gerhard von, 80, 241, 251 Rendsburg, Gary A., 172 Ricoeur, Paul, 85, 187 Riffaterre, Michael, 46 Roberts, J. J. M., 149–50, 167, 171, 173–75, 179–82 Rosenblatt, Paul, 264 Rosenwein, Barbara, 264

296

Index of Authors

Ruskin, John, 45 Russell, Stephen C., 159 Saadia Gaon, 75 Sadler, Rodney Steven, Jr., 175 Sarna, Nahum M., 248 Sawyer, John F. A., 185 Schipper, Jeremy, 163, 200, 215 Schmidt, Uta, 184–85, 195 Schoors, Antoon, 108 Schroer, Sylvia, 33, 38, 40 Scoralick, Ruth, 243 Segal, M. Z., 107, 133 Seitz, Christopher R., 168, 173, 181, 201, 203, 206–8, 210, 213 Seow, C.-L., 67, 73, 75, 79, 96, 99–100, 102–4, 107–8 Sha, Richard, 263 Sharp, Carolyn J., 4, 8, 10 Simundson, Daniel J., 227 Sinding, Michael, 202 Smith, Barbara Herrnstein, 94, 177 Smith, Mark S., 263, 267, 269, 271 Smith, Stuart Tyson, 176 Sommer, Benjamin D., 199 Soulen, Richard N., 141 Starr, G. Gabrielle, 131, 141, 144 Stewart, Anne W., 4, 7–10, 81 Stewart, Susan, 46 Strawn, Brent A., 6, 8, 10–11, 185, 254 Sumi, Akiko Motoyoshi, 135, 141 Sweeney, Marvin, 224–25, 230, 233 Szubin, Zvi Henri, 99 Talmon, Shemaryahu, 178, 180, 204 Tanner, Beth LaNeel, 26 Tate, Marvin, 36 Taylor, Michael D., 220 Thomas of Celano, 217 Tompkins, Jane P., 64 Toorn, Karel van der, 149

Tov, Emmanuel, 70, 143 Tull Willey, Patricia, 185 Tur-Sinai, N. H., 76, 107 Vayntrub, Jacqueline, 100–1, 103, 108, 110 Vendler, Helen, 92, 130, 132 Walker, Constance, 263 Walker, Justin T. R., 237 Walsh, Carey Ellen, 153, 156–57, 180 Walsh, Patricia, 264 Waterman, Leroy, 133 Watson, Wilfred G. E., 2 Watts, James W., 250 Weber, Beat, 17, 23 Weems, Renita J., 120 Weinberg, Werner, 176 Weinfeld, Moshe, 99, 160 Weiss, Meir, 72 Weiss, Raphael, 70 Weitzman, Steven, 1–2, 6, 9, 250, 257 Welsby, Derek A., 175 Westermann, Claus, 35, 190 Whitekettle, Richard, 21 Whitman, Jon, 42 Wildberger, Hans, 152, 158, 163, 165, 167, 171, 173–75, 177–82 Williams, Gary Roye, 152–53 Williams, Ronald J., 203 Williamson, H. G. M., 149–50, 158, 160 Willis, John T., 150, 159 Woude, Annemarieke van der, 185 Wright, Addison G., 108 Yeats, William B., 132 Young, Karl, 221 Zenger, Erich, 33 Zhang, Sarah, 5, 9, 11 Zimmerli, Walther, 203, 207, 209–10

Index of Scripture and Other Ancient Texts

18:1, 180 18:10, 101 18:14, 101 18:19, 164 18:25, 66 25:23, 250 27:11, 175 27:16, 175 27:28, 157 27:39, 157 29:7, 103 40:13, 106 49, 210, 215 49:7, 89 49:33, 98

Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Genesis 1–2, 4, 9 1, 52 1:2, 173, 190 1:28, 250 2, 58, 224 2:7, 58 2:8, 164 2:13, 172 3, 57 3:14–19, 250 3:21, 43 6–7, 223–24 6:7, 223 6:17, 36 6:19, 36 7:14, 224 7:18, 173 8–9, 223–24 8:17–19, 224 8:21, 224 8:22, 178, 250 9:5–6, 250 9:12–17, 38 11:4, 89 11:9, 89 12:3, 250 12:11, 136 12:14, 136 15:11, 182 16:5, 156 16:10–12, 250

Exodus 2:25, 77 3, 24 3:9, 164 3:14, 250 3:14–15, 251, 255 3:15, 250–51 4:8–9, 38 5:21, 250 6:2–8, 250 7:18, 158 15:1, 152 15:1–18, 250 15:17, 179 15:25–26, 250 15:26, 96 18:16, 156

297

298

Index of Scripture and Other Ancient Texts

Exodus (cont.) 19:1–6, 251 19:3, 251, 256 19:3–6, 250 20:5–6, 248 21:2–6, 68 22:4 (ET 22:5), 159 22:24–25 (ET 22:25–26), 68 22:30, 96 24:15–18, 250 26:30, 106 29:42–46, 250 32–34, 251, 253 32, 252 32:1–6, 252 32:7–14, 252 32:15–35, 252 32:18, 250 33:1–6, 252 33:7–11, 254 33:12–14, 252 33:15–17, 252 33:17, 255 33:18, 252 33:18–19, 255 33:19–23, 252 33:23, 255 34:1–4, 252 34:5–7, 252 34:6, 240–44 34:6–7, 6, 8, 10, 237–40, 243, 245, 248–56 34:7, 244–47 34:8, 240 34:8–9, 252–53 34:9, 254–55 34:10–28, 252 34:13, 252 34:29–35, 254 Leviticus 7:12–15, 20 13:40–41, 174 17:14, 36 19:10, 159 24:10–16, 68 25:3, 157 Numbers 6:22–27, 97 13:20, 157

13:32–33, 174 14:11, 38 15:38, 172 18:15, 36 20:14, 179 20:23–28, 98 22:24, 157 35:20–21, 99 Deuteronomy 1:16, 159 3:11, 128 4:34, 38 7:9–10, 99 8:8, 157 9:2, 175 10:21, 38 11:2, 27 11:14, 43 12:2, 129 18:3, 106 19:4–6, 99 19:11, 99 22:13–21, 159 28:26, 182 28:30, 159 28:39, 159 28:42, 171 28:49, 177 28:64, 89 32, 165 32:2, 179 32:6, 56 32:11, 68 32:13, 157 32:48–52, 98 33:2, 18 33:3, 18 33:12, 154 34:1–5, 98 Joshua 6:15, 106 7, 25 10:27, 103 22:22, 25 Judges 3:16, 84 3:27, 178 4:6–7, 175

Index of Scripture and Other Ancient Texts 4:19, 132 4:21–22, 143 5:3, 152 5:4–5, 59 5:14, 175 5:25, 132 5:26, 143 5:27, 156 5:28–30, 266 9:13, 117 9:50–54, 267 11:27, 156 11:30–39, 98 16:28–30, 98 20:37, 175 21:20–21, 153 1 Samuel 1:11, 35 2, 257 2:8, 177 2:13, 106 3:11, 171 8:11, 106 14:14, 39 15, 260 16:1, 157 16:13, 157 17:8–10, 266 17:43–44, 266 17:44, 182 17:46, 182 18:6–7, 266 20, 260 24, 260 26, 260 27:1–28:2, 268 27:11, 106 31:2–5, 98 31:4, 267 31:9, 266 2 Samuel 1:6–10, 98 1:14–15, 260 1:17–27, 9, 200, 257–61, 265–74 1:19, 200, 203, 261–63 1:20, 265 1:20–21, 269 1:21, 179, 268 1:21–23, 268

1:22, 270 1:22–23, 270 1:23, 270 1:24, 271 1:24–27, 271 1:25, 263 1:26, 200, 264, 271 1:27, 263 2:18, 262 4:5, 180 7:23, 38 8:15, 164 12:22–23, 258 15:2, 159 17:23, 98 17:28, 128 18:21–23, 175 19:1 (ET 18:33), 258 21:19–22, 174 22, 257 22:34, 262 1 Kings 1:39, 157 3:3–28, 104 5:8 (ET 4:28), 106 5:9–14 (ET 4:29–34), 104 5:10 (ET 4:30), 71 8:13, 179 14:23, 129 17, 43 17:1, 179 18:28, 106 18:41, 39 20:5, 179 20:35–43, 165 21:10, 68 21:13, 68 22:34, 175 2 Kings 1:7, 106 2, 98 5:26, 102 9:18, 179 11:14, 106 16:4, 129 17:10, 129 17:26–27, 106 21–25, 224 21:3, 224

299

300

Index of Scripture and Other Ancient Texts

2 Kings (cont.) 21:6, 224 21:12, 171 23:4, 224 23:5, 224 23:10, 224 Isaiah 1:20, 162, 188 1:27, 164 2:11–17, 206 3:14, 159 3:16, 128 3:17, 163 4:5, 179 5:1, 150, 152–56, 161 5:1–2, 151–52, 162 5:1–4, 158 5:1–7, 5, 9–10, 149–52, 165–66 5:2, 152, 154–63 5:2–4, 163 5:2–5, 160 5:3, 152, 156, 159–60, 163 5:3–4, 151–52, 160 5:4, 152, 156–58, 160, 162–63 5:5, 152, 155–56, 158–60, 163 5:5–6, 151, 160–62, 181 5:5–7, 155 5:6, 155 5:7, 151–52, 155–59, 162–64 5:8, 170 6:5, 262 7:4, 179 8:1, 177 8:3, 177 8:11, 179 8:18, 38 9:5 (ET 9:6), 97 10:1, 170 10:5, 170 10:14, 176 11:4, 159 13, 227 13–23, 170 13:2, 178 13:4, 39 13:22, 174 14:3–23, 164–65, 266 14:12–15, 206 14:14, 180 14:19, 188

14:21, 177 14:32, 179 16:9, 181 16:10, 153, 159 17:5–6, 181 17:12, 39 18:1, 170–72, 174 18:1–2, 170, 173, 177–79, 181 18:1–3, 170, 178 18:1–6, 5, 8, 10, 167–70, 183 18:2, 168, 170–77, 179, 181, 183 18:3, 170, 174, 177–79, 181–82 18:4, 170, 178–80 18:4–6, 170, 178 18:5, 157, 172, 178, 180–82 18:5–6, 177–78 18:6, 170, 178, 182–83 18:7, 170, 177 19:18, 176 20, 168 20:4, 182 22:5, 176 24:3, 177 24:8, 39 25:5, 39 26:7, 84, 86 26:9, 177 26:18, 177 27:2–3, 121 27:3, 160, 163 28:1, 157, 170 28:1–5, 262 28:4, 157 28:13, 176 28:16, 179 29:21, 159 30:15, 179 31:4, 39, 179 31:8, 188 33:3, 39 33:19, 176 34, 227 34:5, 227 34:6, 188, 227 34:8, 227 34:10, 227 38:14, 176 40–55, 198 40, 193 40:1, 193, 196 40:1–11, 196

Index of Scripture and Other Ancient Texts 40:3–4, 193 40:6, 189 40:17, 190 40:27, 189 41:2–3, 189 41:13–14, 190, 239 41:17, 193 41:18, 193 42:22, 177 42:24, 177 43:2, 193 43:16–28, 189 44:3, 193 44:23, 46 44:24–28, 190, 239 45:14, 173 46:7, 76 47:1–15, 164 48:17, 190 48:21, 193 49:1, 187–88, 196 49:1–12, 184 49:1–13, 6, 8, 10, 184–86 193–94 49:2, 188, 196 49:3, 187–88, 190 49:4, 186, 189, 191 49:5, 188, 190, 196 49:6, 191–92 49:7, 190–91 49:8, 191–92 49:8–9, 192 49:9, 192 49:10, 192 49:11, 192–93 49:12, 192, 195 49:13, 46, 184, 187, 193–95 49:14, 184, 189, 193–95 49:14–50:3, 186, 194, 198 49:15, 195–96 49:21, 197 49:23, 197 49:24, 195 50:2, 158, 173 50:4, 197 50:5, 197 50:6, 175, 197 50:7, 197 51:9–10, 190 52:12–13, 198 52:13–53:12, 198

52:14–53:10, 198 53:3–6, 198 53:4–6, 96 53:10–12, 198 54:1, 198 54:4, 198 54:6, 198 54:7–8, 198 54:17, 198 55:1–2, 193 57:5, 129 59:2, 156 63, 227 64:6 (ET 64:7), 67 66:19, 175 Jeremiah 1:8, 254 2:20, 27, 129 3:1–5, 164 3:5, 121 3:6, 129 3:13, 129 4:5–6, 178 4:21, 178 5:3, 27 5:15, 177 7:28, 27 7:29, 200 10:13, 39 11:15, 154 12:5–6, 253 12:9, 182 13:1, 179 13:23, 175 14:19, 158 14:22, 43 15:19–21, 253 15:21, 254 17:5–8, 72 17:13, 72 17:19, 179 19:3, 171 20:7–18, 253 22:3, 164 22:18, 262 27:1–11, 168 27:2, 179 27:3, 173 28:8, 231 29:11, 72

301

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Jeremiah (cont.) 31:5, 154 31:20, 150 41:5, 175 46, 227 46:9, 175 46:10, 227 47:3, 39 50:2, 178 50:16, 103 51:2, 181 51:14, 171 51:16, 39, 43 51:27, 178 51:33, 103 51:55, 39 Ezekiel 1:18, 175 2:10, 199 6:13, 129 7:1–20, 227 15:2–4, 182 16, 164 16:8, 116 16:50, 211 17, 200–1, 203, 213–14 17:2, 203 17:12–21, 201, 214 17:24, 211 19:1, 199 19:2, 203–6, 211–12 19:2–9, 211 19:3, 204–6, 208, 211–12 19:3–9, 207 19:4, 207, 209 19:5, 207 19:5–6, 207–9 19:6, 212 19:7, 208–9 19:7–9, 206 19:8, 207, 209 19:9, 209–10 19:10, 210–12 19:10–11, 211 19:10–14, 206, 210–11 19:11, 210–12 19:12, 210, 212 19:13, 210, 212 19:14, 201–2, 210, 212, 214 21:14–16 (ET 21:9–11), 175

21:31 (ET 21:26), 211 21:33 (ET 21:28), 175 22:25, 206 23, 164 23:4, 163 23:17, 116 23:42, 39 26, 200 26–28, 203 26:13, 39 26:17, 199 27, 200 27:1–36, 164 27:2, 199 27:32, 199 28, 200 28:2, 211 28:5, 211 28:12, 199 28:17, 211 29:18, 175 31:3, 211 31:5, 211 31:10, 211 31:14, 211 32, 200, 203 32:2, 199 32:16, 199 33:3–6, 178 33:32, 165 33:30–33, 149 34:14, 157 38:5, 175 39:13, 115 39:17–20, 182 47:9, 96 47:11, 96 Hosea 2, 151 5:8, 177 5:14, 20 6:3, 43 7:5, 174 7:16, 176 10:12, 102 11:3, 96, 99 13:6–8, 20 Joel 2:1, 177

Index of Scripture and Other Ancient Texts 2:15, 177 2:19, 43 2:23, 43 Amos 2:2, 39 2:9, 174, 206 3:12–14, 128 4:13, 162 5, 200 5:1–3, 164 5:2, 158 5:7, 159 5:16, 262 5:17, 153, 159 5:18–20, 227 5:23, 39 5:24, 159 6:4, 128 8:1–3, 100 8:4–8, 164 8:10, 158–59 9:13, 154 Jonah 2:4 [ET 2:3], 173 Micah 2:4, 266 3:12, 181 7:1, 181 Nahum 1:2, 121 2:12–13 (ET 2:11–12), 206 3:15–17, 171 Habakkuk 1:7, 176 2:20, 34 Zephaniah 1, 6, 9, 216, 230–34 1:2, 223, 230–31 1:2–3, 216, 223–24 1:2–6, 222–25, 232 1:3, 223–24, 231–32 1:4, 223–24, 232 1:4–6, 224 1:5, 223–24 1:6, 225

1:7, 226–29, 231 1:7–8, 229 1:7–13, 225–28 1:8, 226–28, 232 1:9, 226–27, 232 1:10, 227–28, 232 1:11, 228 1:12, 226–28, 232 1:13, 228 1:14, 219, 229 1:14–18, 228–31, 233 1:15, 216, 229, 231 1:15–16, 229 1:17, 230 1:18, 223, 229, 231 2:1–3, 233 3:10, 171 3:14, 221 3:14–20, 233 3:19, 115 Haggai 1:4, 102 2:12, 172 Zechariah 1:17, 89 2:17 (ET 2:13), 34 9:14, 178 14:1–9, 227 Psalms 1, 251 1:3–4, 72 1:6, 77 4:5 (ET 4:4), 34 5:7 (ET 5:6), 37 5:12 (ET 5:11), 43 8:5–6 (ET 8:4–5), 43 9:13 (ET 9:12), 164 12:3 (ET 12:2), 37 17:10, 37 18, 257 19, 251 19:4 (ET 19:3), 47 19:8–10 (ET 19:7–9), 158 19:15 (ET 19:14), 71 21:4 (ET 21:3), 43 22:2 (ET 22:1), 158 22:3 (ET 22:2), 35 24:2, 173

303

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Psalms (cont.) 28:3, 37 29, 97 30:10 (ET 30:9), 47 30:12–13 (ET 30:11–12), 34 31:19 (ET 31:18), 37 33:8, 177 35:20, 37 35:26, 78 36:4 (ET 36:3), 37 36:10 (ET 36:9), 72 37:7, 34 39:3 (39:2), 35 41:4 (ET 41:3), 128 41:7 (ET 41:6), 37 42:5 (ET 42:4), 39 42:10 (ET 42:9), 158 45:1, 150 45:2 (ET 45:1), 132, 149 45:5 (ET 45:4), 38 45:9 (ET 45:8), 125 49:4 (ET 49:3), 71 50, 4, 8, 18, 22–23, 31 50:1, 18–19, 23–25, 27 50:1–3, 31 50:1–6, 20, 22 50:2, 18–24, 26, 29 50:3, 18, 23–24 50:4, 18, 23, 26, 29 50:4–7, 31 50:5, 19, 23, 27, 29 50:6, 18–19, 23–24 50:7, 18–20, 23–24, 27 50:7–15, 27–28 50:7–23, 10, 20, 22 50:8, 20–21 50:8–12, 23 50:8–13, 31 50:9, 20–22 50:10, 21, 26 50:10–13, 20 50:11, 21, 26 50:12–13, 22 50:14, 23–27 50:14–15, 31 50:15, 20, 22–23 50:16, 23–24 50:16–20, 20 50:16–21, 27–28, 31 50:17, 20 50:17–20, 23

50:19, 20 50:19–20, 20 50:21, 20, 23–24 50:22, 23–26, 28–29, 31 50:23, 22–24, 28–29, 31 51:6, 35 52:5–6 (ET 52:4–5), 37 57:5 (ET 57:4), 188 59:8 (ET 59:7), 188 59:17 (ET 59:16), 152 60:6 (ET 60:4), 178 62:2 (ET 62:1), 35 62:6 (ET 62:5), 34–35 62:13 (ET 62:12), 35 63:4 (ET 63:3), 39 64:4 (ET 64:3), 188 65, 4, 8, 32, 44–48 65:2 (ET 65:1), 33–35, 40 65:2–4 (ET 65:1–3), 34 65:2–5 (ET 65:1–4), 33 65:3 (ET 65:2), 35–36 65:4–5 (ET 65:3–4), 36–37 65:6–7 (ET 65:5–6), 37–38 65:6–9 (ET 65:5–8), 33, 37 65:8 (ET 65:7), 38–40 65:8–9 (ET 65:7–8), 33 65:9 (ET 65:8), 40–41 65:10 (ET 65:9), 33 65:10–11 (ET 65:9–10), 41–42 65:10–14 (ET 65:9–13), 33, 41 65:12–14 (ET 65:11–13), 42–44 65:14 (ET 65:13), 44 66:6, 173 68:5–10 (ET 68:4–9), 43 72:1–2, 164 74:14, 57 74:16, 35 74:23, 39 78:43, 38 78:50, 84, 86 80:13–14 (ET 80:12–13), 157 81:4 (ET 81:3), 177 81:6 (ET 81:5), 176 82:5, 164 86:17, 38 89:12 (ET 89:11), 35 89:13 (ET 89:12), 46 89:14 (ET 89:13), 35 90:10, 101 92:11 (ET 92:10), 157 92:15 (ET 92:14), 42

Index of Scripture and Other Ancient Texts 96:1 152 96:12, 46, 152 98:1, 152 99:4, 164 99:8, 255 102:14 (ET 102:13), 102 102:26 (ET 102:25), 164 103:4, 43 103:9, 121 103:16, 77 104, 4, 9, 11, 49–51, 60 104:1, 51 104:2, 51 104:2–4, 51 104:3, 43, 55, 57 104:4–6, 55 104:5–6, 51 104:7, 55 104:7–9, 52 104:9, 53 104:10, 52 104:11–14, 52 104:12, 55 104:13, 52 104:14–15, 52 104:16, 53 104:17, 55 104:17–18, 53 104:19–20, 53 104:19–23, 53 104:20, 55 104:21, 53, 55, 57, 206 104:22, 55 104:22–23, 53 104:23, 56 104:24, 56 104:25, 56 104:26, 52, 57 104:27, 57 104:28–30, 58 104:29, 56, 58 104:30, 58 104:31, 59 104:31–35, 59 104:33, 59 104:34, 59 104:35, 59 106:22, 38 106:47, 39 109:12, 174 113, 257

114:1, 176 114:7, 26 115:17, 59 116:17, 35 117:1, 39 119, 251 119:21, 90 119:47, 150 119:94, 35 119:118, 89 119:121, 164 120–134, 31 125, 97 126:2, 78 127:2, 154 128, 97 131:2, 34 132:3, 128 132:18, 78 133:1, 136 133:3, 162 135:9, 38 136:25, 36 137:4, 152 139:13, 56 139:19, 26 144:9, 152 145:4, 39 145:16, 36 145:21, 36 147:12, 39 Proverbs 1–9, 80, 82, 110 1:19, 72 1:20–33, 105 2:20–21, 86 3:13–18, 105 3:20, 179 4:4, 106 4:5–9, 105 4:14–15, 86 4:22, 96 5, 4, 8, 10, 82–83, 165–66 5:1–2, 83–84 5:2 127 5:3, 84, 91 5:3–6, 84–86 5:4, 84 5:5, 91 5:6, 86, 91

305

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Proverbs (cont.) 5:7, 87 5:7–14, 86–88 5:12–14, 87 5:15, 88 5:15–17, 88–90 5:16, 89 5:17, 89 5:18–23, 90–91 5:19, 88, 90 5:20, 88, 90 5:21, 84, 91 5:22, 91 5:23, 90 7:1–27, 106 7:2, 106 7:5, 125 7:17, 125 7:18, 116 8:1–36, 105 8:22, 56 8:30–31, 150 9:1–6, 105 10–31, 80 10:1–24:22, 110 10:11, 72 10:29, 28 13:6, 28 13:12, 174 13:14, 72 13:17, 173 14:27, 72 15:10, 27 15:27, 107 16:22, 72 19:16, 106 20:1, 117 21:3, 164 23:18, 72 24:2, 71 24:14, 72 25:10, 77 26:7, 105 26:9, 105 30:1, 110 31:1, 110 31:9, 159 Job 1–2, 65 1:1, 77

1:4–5, 67 1:7, 208 1:8, 77 1:18, 78 1:19, 74 1:20, 74 2:3, 77 3, 65 3:10, 162 3:12, 158 4–5, 65 4:10–11, 73 4:12–21, 65 4:17, 66 5:1, 66 5:8, 66, 69 5:10, 43 5:24, 69 5:27, 69 6–7, 65 6:4, 65 6:10, 66 6:11–12, 69 6:14, 77 6:14–17, 72 6:15–20, 66 6:15–28, 79 6:17, 76 6:24, 71 6:26, 65 7:1, 69 7:2, 69–70 7:6–8, 69 7:9–10, 77 7:12, 78 7:16, 77 7:21, 66, 69, 79 8:2, 65–66, 78 8:2–7, 64 8:3, 66–67, 74 8:4, 67–68 8:5–7, 68–69 8:7, 72 8:8, 69 8:8–9, 69–70 8:8–13, 64 8:9, 69 8:10, 70–71 8:11, 71 8:11–12, 74–75 8:11–13, 72

Index of Scripture and Other Ancient Texts 8:12, 71–72 8:13, 72–73, 75 8:14–15, 64, 73–74 8:16, 74–76 8:16–20, 64 8:17–19, 76–77 8:20, 75, 77–78 8:21, 78 8:21–22, 64 8:22, 78–79 9–10, 79 9:21–22, 77 9:26, 172 12:7–8, 165 14:20, 67 15, 66 15:13, 71 15:18, 70 20:6, 180 26:10, 173 27:9, 164 27:11, 67 29:6, 157 31:21, 159 37:17, 180 38–42, 4 38:4, 164 38:8–11, 52 38:10, 53 38:22–38, 43 38:25–28, 163 38:39–40, 53 39:1–2, 101 39:7, 39 40:25–41:26 (ET 41:1–34), 57 41:22 (ET 41:30), 139 Song of Songs 1:1, 113, 142 1:2, 114–15 1:2–3, 117 1:2–4, 114, 119 1:3, 114–15 1:4, 114–15, 120 1:5, 118–19, 121 1:5–6, 119 1:6, 118–22, 126, 154, 160 1:7–8, 122–23 1:8, 126 1:9, 123–24, 126 1:9–11, 123–24

307

1:9–14, 128 1:10, 124 1:11, 124 1:12 125 1:12–14, 123–26 1:13, 126, 134 1:14, 121, 126, 142 1:15–17, 126–29 2:2, 156 2:3, 116 2:4, 116 2:9, 137, 142 2:11–13, 144 2:12, 103, 142 2:14, 127 2:15, 121, 142, 154 3:11, 43 4:1, 127, 137, 140, 146 4:1–2, 137, 142 4:1–7, 5, 11, 132–36, 140–41, 144 4:2, 133, 138, 140 4:3, 140, 143–44 4:3–4, 137, 142 4:4, 138, 140 4:5, 138, 140 4:5–6, 137 4:6, 138 4:7, 133, 137, 141, 146 4:9, 139 4:10, 116 4:12, 88, 126 4:12–15, 125 4:15, 88 5:1, 116–17 5:2, 127, 142 5:2–8, 123 5:9–16, 132 5:12, 128 6:2–3, 123 6:4, 136 6:4–10, 132 6:5, 139 6:7, 143 6:9, 127 7:2–6 (ET 7:1–2), 132 7:9 (ET 7:8), 116 7:12 (ET 7:11), 116, 121, 126 7:13 (ET 7:12), 153 8:2, 116–17 8:3, 137 8:6, 123

308

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Song of Songs (cont.) 8:7, 142 8:11, 126, 153, 157 8:11–12, 121 Ruth 1:17, 156 3:9, 172 Lamentations 1:1, 200, 203 1:6, 262 1:16, 262 2:12, 117 4:12, 177 5:15, 158 5:20, 158 Qohelet/Ecclesiastes 1:1, 104 1:1–2, 104 1:2, 104 1:4–11, 105 1:12, 104 1:15, 96 2:4–11, 104 2:9, 105 2:11–26, 105 2:13–15, 107 2:16, 107 2:18–26, 109 3:1, 95, 102, 106, 110 3:1–8, 4, 8–9, 93–94, 105, 107–8 3:2–8, 95–104 3:9, 109 3:9–15, 108 3:11, 109 3:16–17, 109 4:2, 39 5:1 (ET 5:2), 71 7:1, 96, 115 7:1–6, 106 7:6–7, 106 7:27, 104 8:5, 106 8:5–7, 107 8:6–7, 106 8:15, 39 9:11, 107

9:12, 107 9:14–16, 107 9:18, 107 10:1, 107–8, 158 11:9–12:7, 110 12:8, 104 12:8–14, 104, 110 12:9, 110 12:9–10, 104 12:11, 110 Esther 2:12, 125 10:3, 97 Daniel 2:23, 39 4:9, 36 4:31, 39 4:34 (ET 4:37), 39 5:4, 39 5:23, 39 10:6, 39 Ezra 2:68, 179 Nehemiah 13:25, 175 1 Chronicles 11:23, 175 16:35, 39 29:15, 70 2 Chronicles 9:8, 164 12:3, 175 14:8–12 (ET 14:9–15), 175 18:33, 175 28:4, 129 New Testament Matthew 6:9–10, 247 6:9–13, 247 Mark 14:3, 125

Index of Scripture and Other Ancient Texts Luke 7:39, 125 11:2–4, 247 21, 231 John 15:6, 182 Romans 2:5–6, 231 Other Ancient Texts 4Q184, 85 Akhenaton, Hymn of, 53–54, 56 Amenemope, Instructions of, 75 Apocalypse of Zephaniah, 221 Aristophanes, Equites, 218 Atharva Veda, 125 Atrahasis Epic, 40 Augustine, City of God, 219 Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 7a, 255 BM 47507 [= KAR 158], 152 Esarhaddon’s Succession Treaty (SAA 2.6), 182 Euripides, Bousiris, 218 Eusebius, Oration of Constantine, 219 Gezer Calendar, 99–104 lines 5–7, 180 line 6, 161 Gilgamesh Epic, 43 Herodotus, Histories, 173 Iliad 6.357–58, 270 20.164–75, 270 22.308, 270 24.762–74, 268, 272

309

KAI 4, 164 Lactantius, Divine Institutes, 219 Love Lyrics of Nabû and Tašmetu, 150 Ostracon Gardiner, 150 Plato, Phaedrus, 218 Prophecy of Erythraean, 220 Quodvultdeus, Judicii Signum, 219, 221 Sibylline Oracles 8:1, 231 8:2, 231 8:81–83, 231 8:91, 231 8:110–120, 232 8:217–250, 218–20 8:218–219, 231 8:239–242, 218 8:480–500, 234 Sirach 8:9–12, 70 26:9, 128 Song of the Sibyl, 219 Stele of the Vultures, 182 TAD C3.8, 171 Ugaritic texts CTU 1.2 i.26, 30, 173 CTU 1.2 iv. 14–17, 22, 27, 173 CTU 1.3 iii.5–6, 150, 152 CTU 1.14 ii.50–iii.1, 171 CTU 1.14 iv.29–31, 171 CTU 1.16 iii 1–17, 38 CTU 1.24 1 152 CTU 2.72 29–31 157 RIH 98/02.2, 152 Virgil, Book of the Dead, 219

Index of Subjects

accent. See rhythm accents, Masoretic, 204–5, 240 acrostic, 101, 219–20, 231 address, 17, 27–29, 34, 46, 76, 83–84, 86–87, 104, 122, 128–29, 137, 141, 172, 184–85, 187, 191, 195, 200, 209, 212, 255, 269 aesthetics, 2, 8, 81, 99, 117 afterlife, literary. See reception history allegory, 151, 153–54, 162–63, 200 alliteration, 65, 115, 118, 127, 161, 221. See also assonance, consonance, repetition allusion, 218, 223–24, 228, 260 ambiguity, 17, 19, 21, 27, 30, 84, 86, 89, 95, 102–3, 123, 145, 153, 160, 206, 227 anagram, 122 anaphora, 238 anthropomorphism, 44, 46 apocalypse, 218, 221, 231 apostrophe, 174, 187, 193, 269, 271–72. See also address, vocative Aramaism, 76, 78 art, philosophy of. See aesthetics assonance, 29, 39, 65, 83, 114, 119, 122, 126, 128, 137, 142, 154, 189, 223, 230, 238–39, See also alliteration, consonance, repetition asyndeton. See parataxis audience, 4, 6, 8–9, 17–19, 22, 26–27, 31, 33–34, 42, 44, 87, 95, 99, 102, 133, 135, 142, 144, 146, 154, 156, 171, 174, 177, 186, 188–93, 195–98, 200, 209, 212, 265, 270

Baal, 41, 52, 54, 222–24, 232. See also mythology beauty, 7, 18, 20, 22, 60, 80, 119–20, 124–28, 133, 135–41, 143, 262 character, 11, 29, 45, 93–95, 99, 103–4, 129, 136, 218, 220, 228, 237, 249, 252, 255 chiasm, 34, 99, 114, 137, 151, 162, 206, 211 close reading, 1–3, 7, 9, 11–12, 141–42, 144, 183, 260 closure, 29, 56, 94, 97, 115, 138, 183, 214 coherence, 4, 23, 33, 71, 81–82, 94, 161, 226, 253 complaint, 186, 188, 194–98. See also lament consonance, 20, 22, 29, 114, 122, 128, 155, 170, 172, 175, 180, 212, 238–39. See also alliteration, assonance, repetition cosmogony, 9, 38, 51–53, 56 covenant, 17, 19–20, 22, 24, 27–29, 31, 99, 192, 251–53 creation, 4, 9, 19, 22, 26, 33, 38, 46, 48, 51–53, 56–59, 224, 230, 232 curse, 177, 182, 224, 269 Decalogue, 28, 252 description, 11, 19, 23, 41, 45, 75, 82, 84, 86, 91, 118, 120, 123, 125, 133, 135–36, 138–41, 173–75, 187, 190–91, 206, 230, 243–44, 269 dialogue, 76, 123, 126, 185, 194

310

Index of Subjects diction, 168, 170, 177, 248, 251 didactic poetry, 1, 80, 214. See also proverb, wisdom Dies Irae (Mass for the Dead), 216–18, 221 dirge. See lament double entendre, 6, 126, 171, 175. See also wordplay elegy. See lament ellipsis. See gapping emotion, 5, 8–9, 45–46, 85, 98–99, 131–46, 195, 197–98, 257–66, 271–74 empathy, 143 enjambment, 17, 161, 207, 209, 211 envelope structure. See chiasm, inclusio ethics, 7, 9, 21–23, 27–31, 144–46, 234 exaggeration. See hyperbole exhortation, 24, 27, 164, 233 exile, 8, 78, 190, 193 figurative language. See imagery, metaphor, simile gapping, 21, 205 gaze, 22, 91, 118, 120–21, 124, 137, 139–40 gender, 127. See also imagery, feminine genre, 6, 9, 33, 135, 151, 199, 202–3, 213–15, 250. See also didactic poetry, lamentation, love poetry, oracle, parable, parody, proverb, thanksgiving, Psalm of, wisdom heightening. See intensification hendiadys, 86, 179 hermeneutics, 132, 134, 141, 263 hyperbole, 25, 57, 65, 70, 133, 137, 182 ideology, 30–31, 151 idolatry, 216, 224, 227, 232 imagery, 18, 33, 40, 54, 59, 82–83, 90, 133, 178, 192, 197, 216, 226–29, See also metaphor, simile agriculture, 41–43, 52, 180–82 animal, 20–21, 31, 36, 52–53, 55, 57, 73, 79, 124, 127, 138, 140, 171, 176, 182, 192, 203, 206–9, 270 architecture, 73, 79 birth, 188, 195–96 body parts, 71, 78, 85, 91, 127–28, 137, 143

311

chaos, 39–40, 190 clothing, 43, 51–52 color, 119–20, 128, 138–40, 142 feminine, 82, 84–85, 87–88, 90, 198 height, 26, 174, 180, 191, 206, 211 intoxication, 53, 88, 90, 117 meteorology, 19, 55, 161, 179–80 military, 18, 124, 175–78, 188–89, 227, 269 path, 28, 43, 72, 86–88, 90–91, 192 pilgrimage, 31, 36 plant, 52–53, 71–77, 203, 210–12 royalty, 47, 51, 104, 117, 125, 128 sacrifice, 20–22, 227 vineyard, 121, 126, 153–54, 157, 159, 161–62, 180–82 water, 51–52, 55–56, 66, 71–72, 88–90, 172, 177 inclusio, 17, 24, 29–30, 91, 137, 161 incoherence, 133 intensification, 17, 37, 55, 124, 248 interpellation, 4, 30–31 judgment, 31, 181, 188, 216, 220–21, 227, 232, 234, 248, 253 justice, 159, 162–65, 188, 234 juxtaposition, 6, 186, 190–91, 194–98 lament, 1, 6, 9, 34, 109, 158–59, 164, 199–205, 207, 209–10, 212–14, 257, 259, 261, 263, 265, 267. See also complaint, qînâ rhythm lampoon. See parody law, 27, 68, 224, 251 lineation, 16, 35, 200, 203–6, 240–43 list, 93–99 liturgy, 22–30, 42, 48, 217, 234 loanword, 71, 172 love poetry, 1, 5, 9, 88, 90, 113–46, 149–52, 164–66 lyric, 4–5, 10, 60, 80–83, 87, 113, 130, 132–34, 150–51, 166, 185, 237, 253, 255–56 merism, 40, 96 metaphor, 19, 41, 43, 70, 72–74, 86, 88–91, 116–17, 120–21, 124–27, 140, 154, 171–72, 181, 184, 188, 191–92, 195–96, 203, 210, 227, 262. See also imagery, simile marriage (prophetic), 129, 151 theory of, 85, 138–39

312

Index of Subjects

meter. See rhythm metonymy, 21, 26, 28, 157, 187, 269 musicality, 149, 185, 216 mythology, 5, 38, 52, 57, 151, 165–66, 173. See also cosmogony names, divine, 4, 17–18, 24–27, 226, 240–41, 243, 250 narrative, 1, 4, 6, 55, 65, 67, 72, 80, 82, 124–25, 128–29, 156, 165–66, 184, 196, 200, 207, 211, 223, 238, 250, 257, 260, 265, 267, 269–70 onomatopoeia, 171, 176, 212, 228 oracle, 170, 191, 199, 216, 218, 220–21, 230–31, 233–34. See also prophecy parable, 6, 76, 107, 199–200, 203, 205, 210, 213–14 paradox, 9, 34, 40, 48, 68 paraenesis. See exhortation parallelism, 1, 17, 19, 29, 34, 37, 39, 55, 66, 68, 72, 102, 107, 110, 114–15, 118, 122, 124, 126, 128, 161, 170, 173, 178, 187–89, 191–95, 205, 211, 238–39, 250, 260. See also synonymy parataxis, 139, 238–39, 243 parody, 5, 9, 105, 108–9, 133, 146, 150, 165, 199–200, 213, 215 patterning, 4–5, 8, 16, 21, 29, 34, 39, 44, 55, 64, 68, 75, 91, 94, 101, 104, 106, 108–9, 118–19, 122, 126, 132, 137, 142, 155–56, 160–61, 177, 202, 211–12 pedagogy, 4, 22, 28, 80–92 personification, 4, 8, 33, 37, 41–47, 53, 76, 105, 165, 195–96, 200 poet, 9, 19–23, 25, 28, 31, 38, 45, 48, 51–53, 56, 58–59, 113, 117, 121, 124, 129–30, 132, 134, 138, 165, 183, 192, 195, 210, 234, 249, 269 poetry, definition of, 1, 10, 16–17, 32, 80, 92, 94–95, 129, 131 praise, 4, 18, 33–36, 39–41, 44, 46, 48, 59, 115–16, 135, 139, 190, 206, 234, 272 prophecy, 1, 5, 129, 149, 151, 156, 167, 170, 179, 184, 216, 231, 249, 260, 266. See also oracle prose, 9, 65, 73, 81, 110, 129, 155, 161, 167, 169–70, 207, 213, 238, 242, 250–51, 260, 270

proverb, 64, 71–72, 80, 82, 94, 104–7, 110. See also didactic poetry, wisdom pun, 208, 260. See also wordplay qînâ rhythm, 163, 200, 205–7, 209–12. See also lament reception history, 216–18 repetition, 17, 71, 82, 90–91, 94, 97, 99, 101, 103, 105, 109, 123–24, 152, 155–56, 160–61, 170, 178, 180, 188–89, 193, 195, 208–9, 212, 222–23, 225–27, 230, 232, 238, 240, 243, 261, 263 rhetorical question, 23, 47, 67, 71, 74, 109, 159, 195, 197 rhyme, 39, 83, 118–19, 134, 142, 152, 157, 161, 163, 173, 239 rhythm, 1, 83, 97, 103, 106, 138, 142, 151, 155–60, 178, 200, 204–5, 207, 209, 238, 241–42. See also qînâ rhythm riddle. See parable righteousness, 19, 38, 65, 67, 72, 77, 80, 150–51, 154, 159, 164 ring structure. See chiasm sarcasm, 22, 181, 197 satire. See parody senses, 42, 85, 90, 115, 117, 124–26, 144 servant songs, 185–86 sexuality, 88–89, 116–17, 121, 123, 126, 129, 154, 265 shame, 31, 197, 267, 271–72 simile, 116, 138–40, 179–80, 188, 230, 270. See also imagery, metaphor skin color, 119, 174 soundplay. See alliteration, assonance, consonance, onomatopoeia, repetition speech, 4, 8, 10–11, 17, 32–40, 42, 44, 46–48, 71, 82, 87, 94–95, 110, 176, 196, 237, 240, 249, 258. See also voice symmetry, 97, 107–8, 212, 242, 251 synonymy, 39, 68–69, 121, 189, 205, 229, 250. See also parallelism syntax, 16, 19, 24–26, 29, 94–95, 102–3, 108, 114, 122, 153, 156, 161–62, 170, 203–4, 207, 209, 211, 242, 245, 248, 269 tension, 3, 186, 194–98, 214, 237, 252–53, 255–56 thanksgiving, psalm of, 59

Index of Subjects theophany, 18–19 tone, 27, 29, 84, 110, 120, 123, 136, 146, 154, 180–81, 186–88, 191, 193–96, 269, 271 variation, 98, 152, 160, 207, 209 vocative, 35, 137, 170–71. See also address, apostrophe

313

voice, 6, 19, 83–85, 87, 113, 151, 159–60, 184–87, 189–92, 194–98. See also dialogue, speech wisdom, 69–72, 80, 83, 85–86, 88, 90, 92, 94, 99, 104–5, 107, 109. See also didactic poetry, proverb wordplay, 39, 91, 115, 123, 162, 258. See also double entendre, pun