Raising Up a Faithful Exegete: Essays in Honor of Richard D. Nelson 9781575066264

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Raising Up a Faithful Exegete

Richard D. Nelson

Raising Up a Faithful Exegete Essays in Honor of Richard D. Nelson

Edited by

K. L. Noll and Brooks Schramm

Winona Lake, Indiana Eisenbrauns 2010

© 2010 by Eisenbrauns Inc. All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America www.eisenbrauns.com

Acknowledgment Publication of this volume was made possible by a generous contribution from the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, Michael L. Cooper-White, President.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Raising up a faithful exegete : essays in honor of Richard D. Nelson / edited by K. L. Noll and Brooks Schramm.     p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-57506-201-3 (hardback : alk. paper) 1.  Bible. O.T.—Criticism, interpretation, etc.  2.  Deuteronomistic history (Biblical criticism).  3.  Bible—Theology.  I.  Noll, K. L.  II.  Schramm, Brooks, 1957–  III.  Nelson, Richard D. (Richard Donald), 1945– BS1171.3.R35 2010 221.6—dc22 2010040185

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. †Ê

Contents List of Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viii “I Still Can’t Believe It”: A Brief Biography of Richard D. Nelson . . . . . . . . . . . . .   ix Brooks Schramm Bibliographical History of Richard D. Nelson’s Career . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvii K. L. Noll Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxiv

Part 1 Biblical Studies, Ancient History, and Ancient Literature Prophetic Madness: Prophecy and Ecstasy in the Ancient Near East and in Greece . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3 Martti Nissinen The Deuteronomic History and the Book of Chronicles: Scribal Works in an Oral World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   31 Raymond F. Person Jr. The Deuteronomistic History: Historical Reconsiderations . . . . . . .   41 Niels Peter Lemche The Deuteronomistic History and “Double Redaction” . . . . . . . . .   51 Philip R. Davies On the Term Deuteronomistic in Relation to Joshua–Kings in the Persian Period . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   61 Ehud Ben Zvi A Portrait of the Deuteronomistic Historian at Work? . . . . . . . . . .   73 K. L. Noll Book-Endings in Joshua and the Question of the So-Called Deuteronomistic History . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   87 Thomas Römer

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Joshua in the Book of Joshua . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 Thomas B. Dozeman Synoptic David: The View from Chronicles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 A. Graeme Auld “Rest All Around from All His Enemies” (2 Samuel 7:1b): The Occasion for David’s Offer to Build a Temple . . . . . . . . 129 Timothy M. Willis Why Did David Stay Home? An Exegetical Study of 2 Samuel 11:1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 Steven L. McKenzie David, the Great King, King of the Four Quarters: Structure and Signification in the Catalog of David’s Conquests (2 Samuel 8:1–14, 1 Chronicles 18:1–13) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 Cynthia Edenburg

Part 2 The Bible, Theology, and the Christian Community The Self-Limiting God of the Old Testament and Issues of Violence . . 179 Terence E. Fretheim Wisdom Influence in the Book of Deuteronomy . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193 Jack R. Lundbom A Simple Matter of Numbering? “Sovereignty” and “Holiness” in the Decalogue Tradition . . . . . 211 Rodney R. Hutton What Is Abimelek Doing in Judges? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225 Roy L. Heller The Chronicler’s Theological Rewriting of the Deuteronomistic History: Amaziah, a Test Case . . . . . . . . . . 237 Ralph W. Klein The Rescue of Jerusalem from the Assyrians in 701 b.c.e. by the Cushites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247 Alice Ogden Bellis Covenant and Liberation: Diachronic Perspectives . . . . . . . . . . . . 261 Alejandro F. Botta Woe or Ho: The Lamentable Translation of ‫ הוי‬in Isaiah 55:1 . . . . . . 275 Marty E. Stevens

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Tested at the Boundary: Deuteronomy and Matthew in Conversation on Testing . . . . . . 283 Robert L. Foster Whose Faith? Reexamining the Habakkuk 2:4 Citation within the Communicative Act of Romans 1:1–17 . . . . . . . . . 293 Richard P. Carlson The Lord’s Supper as a Meal of Siblings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325 Walter F. Taylor Jr. Indexes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341   Index of Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341   Index of Scripture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 348

List of Contributors A. Graeme Auld: Professor Emeritus of Hebrew Bible, University of Edinburgh Alice Ogden Bellis: Professor of Old Testament Language and Literature, Howard University School of Divinity, Washington, DC Ehud Ben Zvi: Professor in the Department of History and Classics, University of Alberta Alejandro F. Botta: Assistant Professor of Hebrew Bible, Boston University School of Theology Richard P. Carlson: Glatfelter Professor of Biblical Studies, Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania Philip R. Davies: Professor Emeritus, University of Sheffield Thomas B. Dozeman: Professor of Hebrew Bible, United Theological Seminary, Dayton, Ohio Cynthia Edenburg: Department of History, Philosophy and Jewish Studies, The Open University of Israel, Raanana Robert L. Foster: Adjunct Instructor in Religious Studies, Texas Christian University, Ft. Worth, Texas Terence E. Fretheim: Elva B. Lovell Professor of Old Testament, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, Minnesota Roy L. Heller: Associate Professor of Old Testament, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas Rodney R. Hutton: Professor of Old Testament/Hebrew Scriptures, Trinity Lutheran Seminary, Columbus, Ohio Ralph W. Klein: Christ Seminary–Seminex Professor of Old Testament Emeritus, Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, Illinois Niels Peter Lemche: Professor of Theology, Dept. of Biblical Studies, The University of Copenhagen Jack R. Lundbom: Visiting Professor of Old Testament, Lutheran Theological Seminary, Hong Kong Steven L. McKenzie: Professor of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Rhodes College, Memphis, Tennessee Martti Nissinen: Professor of Old Testament Studies, University of Helsinki K. L. Noll: Associate Professor of Religion, Brandon University, Manitoba Raymond F. Person Jr.: Professor of Religion and Chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religion, Ohio Northern University, Ada, Ohio Thomas Römer: Professor of Hebrew Bible, University of Lausanne, Switzerland, and Collège de France, Paris Brooks Schramm: Professor of Biblical Studies, Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania Marty E. Stevens: Chief Financial Officer, Registrar, and Associate Professor in the Arthur Larson position of Stewardship and Parish Ministry, Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania Walter F. Taylor Jr.: Ernest W. and Edith S. Ogram Professor of New Testament Studies and Director of Graduate Studies at Trinity Lutheran Seminary, Columbus, Ohio Timothy M. Willis: Professor of Religion, Pepperdine University, Malibu, California

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“I Still Can’t Believe It”: A Brief Biography of Richard D. Nelson Brooks Schramm Richard Donald Nelson entered the world on October 27, 1945, in Ft. Sill, Oklahoma, the firstborn son of Ruth and Donald Nelson. Within the first year of his life, the new family moved to Gary, Indiana, and shortly thereafter his brother, Robert (1948), and his sister, Joan (1950), were born. While he was still in grade school, the family moved again, this time to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Rich would go on to graduate from Chartiers Valley High School in June 1963. That a scholarly career might be a prudent path to pursue was likely signaled early on by the nickname he acquired while competing in Little League Baseball in Pittsburgh: “E9” (let anyone with ears listen).1 In the fall of 1963, Rich left home for Capital University in Columbus, Ohio, where he majored in Greek, a subject that has remained a lifelong love of his. He spent the summer after his freshman year working as a “Parish Mission Builder” for the American Lutheran Church (ALC). Upon graduation from “Cap” (summa cum laude), Rich entered Evangelical Lutheran Theological Seminary (ELTS) in Columbus, Ohio, in September 1966, to begin his formal theological education.2 In 1967, he married Karen Frye. She reports that Rich’s seminary career was distinguished by his missing his first class-assigned sermon because he slept through the 8:00 a.m. start time (a truly amazing factoid for those who know him). After receiving his M.Div. degree (with honors), he entered Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, Virginia, in September 1970, where he studied Old Testament under Patrick D. Miller Jr. He received a Th.M. degree in 1971, and a Th.D.3 in 1973, for his dissertation The Redactional Duality of the Deuteronomistic History. A significant component of his graduate work was accomplished during the summer of 1971, which he spent digging at Tel Gezer as a volunteer. 1.  This is actually a story that Rich tells on himself. On an official baseball score sheet, “9” stands for the right fielder and “E” stands for error. Thus E9 = error on the right fielder. An error is a play that a fielder should have made but did not. In Little League, the more “athletically challenged” players are normally assigned to play right field. 2.  In 1974, ELTS merged with Hamma School of Theology to form Trinity Lutheran Seminary, as it is known today. 3.  Later converted to a Ph.D.

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Rich was ordained as a pastor in the American Lutheran Church in 1974. He served his home congregation, Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Pittsburgh, from October 1973 to August 1977. Rich and Karen’s first child, Daniel (1975), was born here. His first teaching position was at Ferrum College in Ferrum, Virginia, where he was Assistant Professor of Religion from August 1977 to May 1981. He has always spoken fondly of his years at Ferrum, for it was here that his vocation as a teacher was confirmed, and this was where Rich and Karen’s first daughter, Gretchen (1979), was born. In the summer of 1981, the family moved to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where Rich began teaching at the Lutheran Theological Seminary. Rich and Karen spent 20 years in Gettysburg, where Rich served as Kraft Professor of Biblical Studies from 1981 to 2001, and where the twins, Erica and Johanna (1983), were born. In the long history of Gettysburg Seminary, it is difficult to imagine a more significant hire. During these 20 years, Rich published five books (The Double Redaction of the Deuteronomistic History, 1981; First and Second Kings [Interpretation], 1987; Raising Up a Faithful Priest, 1993; Joshua: A Commentary [OTL], 1997; The Historical Books [Interpreting Biblical Texts], 1998. He also completed most of the research and writing for a sixth book (Deuteronomy: A Commentary [OTL], 2002), all the while functioning as an energetic and engaging teacher and preacher and carrying the numerous time-consuming administrative demands that come with serving on the faculty of a small denominational seminary. His ability to do so much and to do it all so well made him a revered figure in the seminary community. A school does not replace someone like Rich Nelson. It only moves on. In 2001, the opportunity developed for Rich to take a teaching position at Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, in Dallas, Texas. Though the decision was difficult, Rich and Karen decided that it was the right time, and the additional opportunity to teach Ph.D. students was the clincher. At Perkins, Rich now serves as W. J. A. Power Professor of Biblical Hebrew and Old Testament Interpretation and as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs. In 2006, he published his seventh book (From Eden to Babel: An Adventure in Bible Study). He is currently working on a commentary on Judges for the Eerdmans Critical Commentary Series and continuing his long practice of reading murder mysteries. In addition to his teaching appointments, Rich has conducted further research at Yale University (1980), at the Catholic University of Louvain (1991), at Princeton Theological Seminary (1999), and at Tyndale House, Cambridge, England (2008). The love of Wissenschaft that has characterized Rich’s life is also markedly in evidence throughout the entire family. Karen, who received her Masters in Education from the University of Pittsburgh (1977), teaches Developmental

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Reading at Richland College, a part of the Dallas County Community College District. Dan, who received his Ph.D. in High Energy Physics from Ohio State University (2002), works as programmer and producer for Neversoft, a division of Activision. He is married to Angie Linn Nelson (2006). Gretchen, who received her Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from Johns Hopkins University/ National Institutes of Health (2008), went on to receive a Masters in Public Health in Epidemiology at Columbia University (2010). She is married to Frank De Silva (2009). Erica, who received her M.A. in Math Education from the University of Pittsburgh (2007), teaches mathematics in Middle School in Alexandria, Virginia. And Johanna is currently working on a Ph.D. in X ray Physics at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Rich’s own scholarship, like Rich himself, is widely respected (in the full sense of the term). Many adjectives could be used to describe his work (and him), but certainly these apply: careful, precise, thorough, learned, humble, irenic. In a review of Raising Up a Faithful Priest, no less a figure than Jacob Milgrom evaluated the book in the following way: “I STILL CAN’T BELIEVE IT. A book on the institution of the priesthood in ancient Israel is just two hundred small (5″ by 8″) pages, with scarcely a footnote, and yet it is comprehensive, nearly always accurate—in a word, superb.”4 The general sense of Milgrom’s description could be said to apply, mutatis mutandis, to the entire body of Rich’s work. Three comments are now in order. The first is from Richard P. Carlson, a Biblical Studies colleague of Rich at Gettysburg: “For 11 years, I had the distinct pleasure and honor of having Richard Nelson as a senior faculty colleague. He has served as a fine model of what it means to be a dynamic and innovative teacher, an insightful mentor, a world-class scholar, a supportive friend, a dedicated leader in the church, and a person who takes sheer delight in all facets of his calling.” The second is from Roy L. Heller, a colleague in The Biblical Witness division at Perkins: “Rich Nelson is a truly rare breed of man. He is not only a passionate and respected scholar, thoroughly trained and representative of historical-critical approaches to the Hebrew Bible. But he is also open and interested in the whole spectrum of different ways in which the Bible is read and understood both in the church and the academy. He is a remarkable role-model.” And finally, from Patrick D. Miller Jr., Rich’s Doktorvater: “Rich Nelson was one of the best students I ever taught. In a seemingly effortless manner, he did basic, significant research that provided the grounds for a major but to that point generally undeveloped reading of the Deuteronomistic History. Out of that early study and his later scholarly work, he has rightly

4.  Interpretation 49 (1995) 200. See also Milgrom’s longer review in Bible Review 10/5 (1994) 14–15.

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become one of our leading interpreters of Deuteronomy and the history that evolved out of its circle.” On all faculty Web pages at Perkins, there are six standard headings: Title, Education, Teaching Specialties, Research Interests, Selected Publications, and Professional Distinctions. On Rich’s Web page (www.smu.edu/Perkins/ FacultyAcademics/DirectoryList/Nelson.aspx) under Professional Distinctions, one reads only this: Pastor, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. To miss the significance of this single chosen entry would be to miss the man.

Bibliographical History of Richard D. Nelson’s Career Books The Double Redaction of the Deuteronomistic History. JSOTSup 18. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1981. First and Second Kings. Interpretation. Atlanta: John Knox, 1987. Raising Up a Faithful Priest. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1993. Joshua: A Commentary. OTL. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1997. The Historical Books. Interpreting Biblical Texts. Nashville: Abingdon, 1998. Deuteronomy: A Commentary. OTL. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2002. From Eden to Babel: An Adventure in Bible Study. St. Louis, MO: Chalice, 2006. Judges. Eerdmans Critical Commentary Series. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, forthcoming.

Articles in Refereed Journals “Josiah in the Book of Joshua.” JBL 100 (1981) 531–40. “The Anatomy of the Book of Kings.” JSOT 40 (1988) 39–48. “The Altar of Ahaz: A Revisionist View.” HAR 10 (1986) 267–76. “David: A Model for Mary in Luke?” BTB 18 (1988) 138–42. “‘He Offered Himself’: Sacrifice in Hebrews.” Int 57 (2003) 250–63. “The Double Redaction of the Deuteronomistic History: The Case Is Still Compelling.” JSOT 29 (2005) 319–37. “Ideology, Geography, and the List of Minor Judges.” JSOT 31 (2007) 347–64. “The Old Testament and Public Theology.” Currents in Theology and Mission 36 (2009) 85–94. “Judges: A Public Canon for Public Theology.” Word and World 29 (2009) forthcoming.

Articles in Other Periodicals and Edited Volumes “Reading Texts in Lectionary Pairs.” Dialog 21 (1982) 95–101. “Realpolitik in Judah (687‑609 b.c.e.).” Pp. 177–89 in Scripture and Context II. Edited by William W. Hallo. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1983. “Was Not Abraham Justified by Works?” Dialog 22 (1983) 258–63. “Telling the Story: The Word in Witnessing to the Unchurched.” LCA Partners 6 (August/September 1984) 20–23, 30. xiii

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“Deuteronomy.” Pp. 209–34 in Harper Bible Commentary. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988. “God and the Heroic Prophet: Preaching the Stories of Elijah and Elisha.” QR 9 (1989) 93–105. “Biblical Perspectives on Stewardship and the Gospel.” Lutheran Theological Seminary Bulletin 70 (1990) 3–11. “The Role of the Priesthood in the Deuteronomistic History.” Pp. 132–47 in Congress Volume: Leuven, 1989. Edited by J. A. Emerton. VTSup 43. Leiden: Brill, 1991. “Amasa,” “Araunah,” “Hezion,” “Nahash,” and “Rimmon.” In Anchor Bible Dictionary. Edited by David Noel Freedman et al. New York: Doubleday, 1992. “The Day the Sun Stood Frozen in Amazement.” Lutheran Theological Seminary Bulletin 76 (1995) 3–10. “Ḥerem and the Deuteronomic Social Conscience.” Pp. 39–54 in Deuteronomy and Deuteronomic Literature: Festschrift C. H. W. Brekelmans. Edited by M. Vervenne and J. Lust. BETL 133. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1997. Annotations and Introductions for Deuteronomy, Joshua, and Judges. Pp. 219– 327 in The Access Bible. Edited by Gail R. O’Day and David Peterson. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. “Kings, Books of.” Pp. 769–72 in Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible. Edited by David Noel Freedman et al. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000. “Deuteronomy” (revised) and “1 and 2 Kings.” Pp. 189–213; 279–311 in The HarperCollins Bible Commentary. Revised edition. Edited by James L. Mays et al. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2000. “Divine Warrior Theology in Deuteronomy.” Pp. 241–59 in A God So Near: Essays in Old Testament Theology in Honor of Patrick D. Miller. Edited by Brent A. Strawn and Nancy R. Bowen. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2003. “Priestly Purity and Prophetic Lunacy: Hosea 1:2–3 and 9:7.” Pp. 115–33 in The Priests in the Prophets: The Portrayal of Priests, Prophets, and Other Religious Specialists in the Latter Prophets. Edited by Lester L. Grabbe and Alice Ogden Bellis. JSOTSup 408. London: T. & T. Clark, 2004. “Joshua.” Pp. 559–62 in Dictionary of the Old Testament: Historical Books. Edited by Bill T. Arnold and H. G. M. Williamson. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2005. Annotations and Introductions for Joshua and Judges. Pp. 310–81 in HarperCollins Study Bible. Revised edition. Edited by Harold W. Attridge et al. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2006. “Aaron, Aaronite,” “Aaron’s Staff,” “Ban,” “David’s Champions,” “Davidic Covenant,” “Destroy, Utterly,” “Exterminate,” “Holy War,” “Totemism,”

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“Tribe,” “Tribes, Territories of,” “Worship.” In New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible. 5 volumes. Edited by Katherine Doob Sakenfeld et al. Nashville: Abingdon, 2006. “What Is Achsah Doing in Judges?” Pp. 11–22 in The Impartial God: Essays in Biblical Studies in Honor of Jouette M. Bassler. Edited by Calvin J. Roetzel and Robert L. Foster. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2007. Notes on Deuteronomy. Pp. 302–60 in Lutheran Study Bible: New Revised Standard Version. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2009. “Gideon and Baal: A Test Case for Interreligious Dialog.” Journal of InterReligious Dialog 1: 2009. http://irdialogue.org/.

Expository Articles “Deuteronomy 5:1–15.” Int 41(1987) 282–87. “Isa. 60:1–6; Mark 1:4–11; 1 Sam. 3:1–10; Mark 1:21–28.” Lectionary Homiletics 2/2 (1991) 1, 7, 12–13, 18. “John 6:35, 41; Prov 9:1–6; Josh 24:1–2a, 14–18; Deut 4:1–2, 6–9.” Lectionary Homiletics 5/2 (1994) 12. “2 Thess. 1:1–5, 11–12; Luke 20:27–38; Luke 21:5–19; Luke 23:33–43.” Lectionary Homiletics 6/12 (1995) 1, 11–12, 19–20, 26–27. “2 Cor. 12:2–10, Mark 6:14–29, Eph. 2:11–22, John 6:1–21.” Lectionary Homiletics 8/8 (1997) 3- 4, 11, 18–19, 26. “Between Text and Sermon: Psalm 114.” Int 63 (2009) 172–74.

Adult Education Materials A Word for the Wise: Studies in Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1976. Amos and Hosea. SEARCH Bible Studies, Unit 17. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1987. God’s Exodus People. Inspire Bible Study Series. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1998.

Introduction K. L. Noll Brooks Schramm and I were eating lunch in a small family diner near the seminary in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, when our topic of conversation turned to Richard Nelson. Thinking out loud, I wondered whether Brooks and I ought to coedit a Festschrift for this man who has influenced us so much. Brooks took the suggestion as a “no-brainer,” an obvious necessity, and something of a sacred obligation. Before long, we began inviting colleagues to participate, and Brooks secured a publishing contract. I have shared Brooks’s passion for this project because Rich Nelson is one of the rare individuals who leads by example and has been a catalyst for producing the best in his colleagues and students. The sheer diversity of viewpoints contained in this volume is testimony to Rich’s capacity to connect with almost every subculture within the academy and among confessional students of the Bible. In addition to serving the Lutheran Church (ELCA) and the entire Christian community, Rich has made significant contributions to the academic study of the Bible, particularly the study of Deuteronomy and the Former Prophets. He helped to establish a now commonly accepted hypothesis that these canonical documents are supplemented versions of an original narrative that scholars call the Deuteronomistic History. Rich has also been praised for his study of priesthoods in his book Raising Up a Faithful Priest (1993), which was the inspiration for the title of the present volume. With Rich’s many contributions to church and academy in mind, 23 of Rich’s colleagues and students have written on theological topics, aspects of the Former Prophets, the relationships between various portions of the Bible (Old and New Testaments), as well as a variety of specific historical questions, such as the social interactions of religious functionaries in ancient societies, the roles of scribes, and the functions of literature in a largely nonliterate culture. Raising Up a Faithful Exegete is divided into two very general categories, though some of these essays might have been included in either section. The first half treats biblical studies as part of the larger field of ancient history and ancient literature. The second places the Bible in conversation with theological study, broadly defined, and the Christian theological community, more specifically. Martti Nissinen explores what Rich Nelson has called “stereotypical behavior” among the biblical prophets, but Nissinen expands the scope of his survey to the entire ancient Near East and Greece. Sources spanning several thousand xvii

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years from cultures as diverse as the Minoan, Hellene, and Neo-Assyrian demonstrate a remarkable consistency. These data suggest that the phenomenon of prophecy, which is perhaps better defined as “noninductive divination,” was common everywhere and was consistently associated with temples. Although the prophet engaged in some kind of socially recognized behavior that signified his or her role as a mouthpiece for the divine, the ancient sources display little interest in the behavior itself. What mattered, apparently, was the achievement of an intermediation between the heavenly and earthly realm. Raymond F. Person Jr. compares the construction and reconstruction of genealogies in a contemporary, traditional culture (the Luo people of Kenya) with similar reconstruction of genealogies in the Former Prophets and Chronicles. Person argues that, because the Hebrew literature was produced by and for a predominantly oral culture, modern exegetes must be cautious about importing anachronistic assumptions that every variant text was produced for ideological purposes. In some cases, suggests Person, the variant might not have been perceived by ancient scribes as a difference at all. Niels Peter Lemche reviews the origins of the Deuteronomistic History hypothesis. After enumerating its foundational assumptions, Lemche subjects the hypothesis to sharp criticism, suggesting that a series of circular arguments undermine these foundations. Meanwhile, potentially fruitful avenues of investigation have remained almost entirely unexplored. Lemche suggests that an evaluation of the strained relations between Samaritans and Jews as well as more comprehensive comparisons of the biblical literature and Hellenistic literature will provide an entirely new and much stronger foundation for a hypothesis about the composition of biblical history writings. Philip R. Davies examines the “double redaction” hypothesis introduced by Frank Cross and defended by Richard Nelson. Davies questions the plausibility of the historical contexts in which the hypothetical Dtr1 and Dtr2 are believed to have been active. He notes that, although the Cross-Nelson hypothesis focuses on a narrative fissure at 2 Kgs 23:26, there is a much weightier fissure in 1 Samuel, where the definition of Israel changes suddenly and without warning. Prior to this fissure, Judah is a component of the narrative’s definition of Israel, but by 1 Samuel, the narrative has begun to assume that Judah is an independent entity standing beside and in tension with Israel. The contradiction compels Davies to conclude that the evolution of the Former Prophets is more complex than a “double redaction” hypothesis suggests and that the compositional stages reach down into the Persian era. Ehud Ben Zvi encourages historical-critical researchers to shift focus, at least temporarily, from diachronic study to synchronic analysis. He reminds us that it is the text as it had been read—that is, the text as it had been understood in an ancient community—that influenced the community and shaped its discourse. Therefore, Ben Zvi asks how the language that we identify as

Introduction

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“Deuteronomistic” might have functioned for readers of the scrolls during the Persian period. Unlike the voice of, say, an Isaiah or an Ezekiel, the voice of a Moses figure was constructed and conveyed by the widespread use of Deuteronomistic language in many books. The combination of this Moses-like voice with literatures containing other voices and other perspectives both intertwines Moses with these other perspectives and also comments on them. From these observations, Ben Zvi suggests new answers to perennial questions that might surprise researchers of the DtrH and provide greater depth for traditional diachronic hypotheses. K. L. Noll suggests that a significant weakness of the Deuteronomistic History hypothesis is the portrait of the scribe(s) called “Dtr.” The range of options for conceptualizing biblical scribes has been constricted by a questionable a priori assumption that they always attempted to write theological histories. Furthermore, when it is recognized that the authors of these narratives freely modified their sources, many researchers conclude that the scribes were more interested in theology than accuracy. Noll suggests that the resulting portraits of Hebrew scribes are incoherent and incompatible with the textual data, and he proposes an alternative conceptualization. Thomas Römer examines a number of passages scattered through the book of Joshua that give the impression of once having been concluding formulas for earlier stages of the book’s growth. Römer believes that a late monarchicera conquest account may have formed the original nucleus of the book, though it is difficult to recover it entirely (Joshua 1–11*). A sixth-century edition of Deuteronomy–Joshua concluded with Josh 21:43–45 and 23:1–3*, 9, 11, 14b– 16a, which described a total annihilation of the Canaanites but also anticipated the Babylonian Exile. This version moved directly from Josh 23:16a to the death of Joshua (Josh 24:29–30* or Judg 2:8–9), then to the narrative now found at the beginning of 1 Samuel. Later, Joshua 23 was reworked when the book of Judges was integrated into the history. Finally, Joshua 24 was composed in the middle decades of the Persian era, when Hebrew intelligentsia attempted to construct a Hexateuch. Thomas B. Dozeman divorces the book of Joshua from the Deuteronomistic History hypothesis, suggesting instead that Joshua is an independent composition sewn into its present chronological sequence between Deuteronomy and Judges at a very late date. A detailed analysis of Joshua 1 reveals that the original version of this chapter is dependent on the entire canonical Pentateuch (not just Deuteronomy) and consists of Josh 1:1b–2, 5–6, 9–18. A later revision of the chapter added 1:1a, 3–4, 7–8. Originally the hero, Joshua, was depicted as an anti-monarchical warrior, but his character has been transformed in the later version to become a Torah-observant, royal leader like King Josiah. A. Graeme Auld responds to recent discussion of the relationship between Chronicles and Samuel–Kings, defending his well-known hypothesis that both

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mature narratives derive from a common earlier source equal to, very roughly, the text shared between them. Evaluating three recent commentaries on Chronicles, all of which support the conventional hypothesis that Chronicles is de­ pen­dent on Samuel–Kings, Auld argues that some data presented in these publications implicitly undermine the current consensus and support his alternative perspective. Auld closes with reflections on the conceptualizations of author and reviser, noting that scholars tend to equate early stages of composition with the former and later stages with the latter. The manuscript evidence complicates this question: late stages of massive supplementation and revision might be more authorial than earlier stages, in which faithful transcription of sources appears to have been more regularly practiced. Timothy M. Willis revisits the oft-contested Masoretic text of 2 Sam 7:1b (lacking in the Chronicles parallel). Willis examines this announcement that Yahweh has given David rest from all his surrounding enemies to determine its function in the larger narrative of the DtrH. He suggests that the motif of “rest” undergoes a subtle modification in 2 Samuel 7. Prior to this chapter, the divine granting of rest pertains to the establishment of peace within Israel’s borders. After 2 Samuel 7, David will begin a series of military campaigns outside those geographic boundaries. Therefore, argues Willis, the twin passages 2 Sam 7:1b and 11a construct a crucial pivot in the narrative flow of the DtrH. Verse 1b announces that rest has been achieved within the borders of Israel, and v. 11a promises that Yahweh will provide rest with respect to David’s future campaigns into foreign territory. After comparison of the DtrH with the Chronicler’s version, Willis concludes that 2 Sam 7:1b is an integral part of the original DtrH. Steven L. McKenzie takes issue with a widespread interpretation of 2 Sam 11:1. Traditional and academic exegetes have understood the introductory formula (“When, at the return of the year, at the time of the going out of the kings . . .”) as an implicit condemnation of David, who dwells in Jerusalem in the season when kings usually take the battlefield. McKenzie argues that the formula does not describe a custom of royal duty every spring. Rather, it resumes the story begun when David sent Joab to war in 2 Sam 10:7, whose mission remained incomplete and therefore requires the tale of 11:1* + 12:26–31. The story of Bathsheba (11:1b–12:25) has been inserted secondarily between 11:1a and 12:26. Cynthia Edenburg examines the catalog of David’s conquests (2 Samuel 8 // 1 Chronicles 18). She argues that the catalog was constructed by the Deuteronomistic Historian in the waning years of or sometime shortly after the Neo-Assyrian empire. Dtr has drawn upon earlier Judahite traditions, such as King Amaziah’s victory in the Valley of Salt (2 Kgs 14:7), and combined these details with rhetorical structures derived from Neo-Assyrian royal propaganda, such as the presentation of the royal warrior as “the king of the four quarters.”

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The purpose of the catalog is to present David as a great warrior and a great patron, very much in the manner of a Neo-Assyrian emperor. Terence E. Fretheim is the first contributor in part 2 of the Festschrift, and he treats the early stories of Genesis as a canonical prologue that establishes the guiding characterization of the Bible’s god. The two creation accounts portray a god who involves creatures in the creative process, and the narrative of the Great Flood finds this god regretful but, ultimately, willing to continue relations with a world in which sin and evil will continue indefinitely. This perpetually grieving god is also one who makes promises that necessarily limit the divine options in future situations of violence. Jack R. Lundbom examines the influence of the wisdom genre on the book of Deuteronomy. Lundbom defines wisdom as a tradition related to but not identical with theology that applies accumulated knowledge and discernment to all aspects of daily life. In contrast to the Covenant Code of Exodus, the book of Deuteronomy stresses wisdom motifs (for example, contrast Exod 23:8 with Deut 16:19). Moreover, Deuteronomy parallels the book of Proverbs in significant ways. Lundbom traces five specific wisdom themes in Deuteronomy: humane treatment of and benevolence to the poor and needy; teaching of children; blessing as life, goodness, and longevity in the land; avoidance of shame; and discernment between false and true prophecy. Rodney R. Hutton evaluates the differences between the Decalogues of Deuteronomy 5 and Exodus 20, then applies theological inferences from these differences to the books of Kings and Chronicles. The prohibition of graven images in Deuteronomy is linked to the commandment against other gods, so the graven images are images of these foreign deities. By contrast, the prohibition against graven images in Exodus is a distinct commandment that intends to exclude images of Yahweh as an earthly creature. Hutton links the deuteronomic version to theological emphases in the Deuteronomistic History, which is concerned with the political threat posed by other patron gods; but the Exodus version reflects the concerns of a Priestly redaction, also evidenced in the book of Chronicles, which tries to distance the deity from his creation. Roy L. Heller explores the story of Abimelek in Judges 9, arguing that Abimelek’s evil reign marks a significant turning point in the book of Judges. Not only does this story represent a decisive moment in the slow dissolution of the cyclical process introduced in Judges 2, but it places the reader in a surprisingly new location: this is the story of deliverance from an oppressor that is told from the perspective of the oppressor, and this oppressor is no longer foreign but Israelite. Moreover, the deliverance derives not from a judge (Yahweh does not, for example, raise up Jotham as judge) but from a woman whose retribution matches Abimelek’s initial crime: just as Abimelek killed his 70 brothers on a stone, so this woman kills him with a stone.

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Ralph W. Klein believes that the tale of Judah’s King Amaziah had flown under the theological radar of the Deuteronomistic Historian, prompting the Chronicler to modify this story in ways that would advance a religious message. Klein assumes that the Chronicler had a text much like 2 Kings before him, and he examines how the Chronicler’s version alters the story, theologically. In 2 Kings 14, the defeat of Amaziah by the king of Israel resulted from Amaziah’s folly, but in 2 Chronicles 25, it is caused by Amaziah’s idolatry. Alice Ogden Bellis uses the tale of Sennacherib’s invasion (2 Kings 18–19, Isaiah 36–37, 2 Chronicles 32) as foundation for reflection on the social locations of biblical scholars. She believes that political, social, and economic interests either consciously or unconsciously influence our judgments about ancient artifacts and ancient literature so that, for example, historical reconstruction of an ancient battle serves the historian’s ideological interests in the present. Alejandro F. Botta examines biblical covenantal passages from a theological perspective. A review of the book of Exodus establishes a connection between the covenant and the themes of liberation from oppression, redefined social relationships, and restoration in the promised land. These themes are reiterated in the new covenant promised by Jeremiah 31, which stresses that Israel’s god will take the initiative to purify the people for this covenant. Botta traces the themes as they are echoed at Qumran (with its Teacher of Righteousness) and among the early Christians (as stressed, for example, in the Gospel of Luke). Though these social groups were diverse, Botta notes that each has identified key elements of covenantal ethos, which includes a new internal social dynamic in which social justice is the norm. Marty E. Stevens takes issue with common English translations of ‫ הוי‬in Isa 55:1. This instance of the Hebrew particle is usually interpreted as an interjection of excitement rather than the more usual utterance of lamentation or judgment. Stevens surveys biblical use of the particle in various literary contexts to argue that it should be accorded its normal sense in Isa 55:1. Rather than reading Isa 55:1–2a as a gracious invitation to the divine banquet, Stevens proposes that the rhetoric is stridently sarcastic, warning the addressees to abandon their path toward death. Robert L. Foster surveys aspects of Deuteronomy and the Gospel of Matthew in order to contribute to a theology of the Christian Bible. Foster believes the central affirmation of the Christian Scripture is “incarnation,” which is in his view a “confession of limitation.” For that reason, Foster treats the discipline of Christian biblical theology as something that is always produced by individuals within particular and limited perspectives. From Foster’s perspective, Matthew’s use of Deuteronomy in the tale of the three temptations of Jesus is part of the Bible’s affirmation of a deity who prefers to test the elect with respect to divine command.

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Richard P. Carlson examines Rom 1:1–17 as a “communicative act.” The emphasis on divine initiative, promise, and action throughout this passage suggests that the prepositional phrase ἐκ πίστεως εἰς πίστιν (Rom 1:17) intends to convey movement from Paul’s god to this god’s goal or result. Moreover, Paul’s quotation from the Greek text of Hab 2:4 also uses ἐκ πίστεως, which, as a communicative act, would be interpreted most naturally in light of the phrase that the audience heard a moment before. This suggests that Paul’s use of Habakkuk’s affirmation, ὁ δὲ δίκαιος ἐκ πίστεως ζήσεται, intends to say: “a righteous person will live from God’s covenantal faithfulness.” Although this scriptural citation becomes the theological node for the letter to the Romans, Paul does not expect his audience to have formulated multiple or complex interpretations of it at this opening stage of the letter. Walter F. Taylor Jr. investigates the Apostle Paul’s concerns about the way the Corinthians observe or fail to observe the Lord’s supper in 1 Corinthians 11. Following anthropological research on food distribution and social interaction at meals, Taylor views Paul’s exhortations as an effort to construct the Christian meal as an event that is distinct from the prevailing Greco-Roman cultural assumption about social status, with its stress on honor and shame. Taylor argues that Paul has injected the language of family relationships into the community meal so that the Corinthians will perceive themselves as a family that will act like a family, sharing among themselves freely. Brooks and I hope that these 23 essays are a fitting tribute to a significant scholar, a valuable colleague, a supportive mentor, and a good friend. May Richard Nelson receive divine blessing, light, grace, and peace.

Abbreviations General A. Louvre Museum siglum Akk. Akkadian asv American Standard Version ChrH Chronicler’s History DH Deuteronomistic History (= DtrH) Dtr Deuteronomistic Historian (also, DtrG, DtrP, DtrN, Dtr1, Dtr2, etc.) DtrH Deuteronomistic History (= DH) ET English translation jps Jewish Publication Society Version K Tablets in the Kouyunjik collection of the British Museum kjv King James Version LXX Septuagint ms(s) manuscript(s) MT Masoretic Text nab New American Bible nasb New American Standard Bible neb New English Bible Nin Ninurta niv New International Version njps New Jewish Publication Society Version nkjv New Kings James Version nrsv New Revised Standard Version n.s. new series NT New Testament OG Old Greek OT Old Testament rsv Revised Standard Version

Reference Works AASF AB ABD ABRL ACNT AfOB AnBib

Annales Academiae scientiarum fennicae Anchor Bible Series Anchor Bible Dictionary. Edited by D. N. Freedman et al. 6 vols. New York: Doubleday, 1992 Anchor Bible Reference Library Augsburg Commentary on the New Testament Archiv für Orientforschung: Beiheft Analecta Biblica

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Abbreviations

xxv

Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament. 3rd ed. Edited by J. B. Pritchard. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969 AOAT Alter Orient und Altes Testament AOS American Oriental Series AOTC Abingdon Old Testament Commentaries ARM Archives Royales de Mari ATANT Abhandlungen zur Theologie des Alten und Neuen Testaments ATD Das Alte Testament Deutsch BASOR Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research BDAG A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature. 3rd ed. Edited by W. Bauer et al. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000 BETL Bibliotheca ephemeridum theologicarum lovaniensium BetOr Bulletin d’études orientales BHS Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia. Edited by K. Elliger and W. Rudolph. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1984 Bib Biblica BibInt Biblical Interpretation BJS Brown Judaic Studies BR Biblical Research BT The Bible Translator BTB Biblical Theology Bulletin BWANT Beiträge zur Wissenschaft vom Alten und Neuen Testament BWL Babylonian Wisdom Literature. W. G. Lambert. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1960. Reprinted Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1996 BZAW Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft BZNW Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft CAD The Assyrian Dictionary of the University of Chicago. Edited by A. L. Oppenheim et al. Chicago: Oriental Institute, 1956– CANE Civilizations of the Ancient Near East. Edited by J. Sasson. 4 vols. New York: Scribner, 1995 CBQ Catholic Biblical Quarterly CRRAI Compte rendu de la Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale CurBS Currents in Research: Biblical Studies DJD Discoveries in the Judaean Desert ErIsr Eretz-Israel ESHM European Seminar in Historical Methodology EstBib Estudios bíblicos EvTh Evangelische Theologie FAT Forschungen zum Alten Testament FM Florilegium Marianum FOTL Forms of Old Testament Literature FRLANT Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments ANET

xxvi GKC

Abbreviations

Gesenius’ Hebrew Grammar. Edited by E. Kautzsch. Translated by A. E. Cowley. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1910 HALOT The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament. L. Koehler, W. Baumgartner, and J. J. Stamm. Translated and edited under the supervision of M. E. J. Richardson. 4 vols. Leiden, 1994–99 HAR Hebrew Annual Review HAT Handbuch zum Alten Testament HBT Horizons in Biblical Theology Hen Henoch HKAT Handkommentar zum Alten Testament HNTC Harper’s New Testament Commentaries HS Hebrew Studies HSCP Harvard Studies in Classical Philology HSM Harvard Semitic Monographs HTR Harvard Theological Review HUCA Hebrew Union College Annual ICC International Critical Commentary Series IDB Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible. Edited by G. A Buttrick. 4 vols. Nashville: Abingdon, 1962 IEJ Israel Exploration Journal Int Interpretation JANER Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions JAOS Journal of the American Oriental Society JBL Journal of Biblical Literature JCS Journal of Cuneiform Studies JETS Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society JHS Journal of Hellenic Studies JJS Journal of Jewish Studies JNES Journal of Near Eastern Studies JNSL Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages JQR Jewish Quarterly Review JSNT Journal for the Study of the New Testament JSNTSup Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplements JSOT Journal for the Study of the Old Testament JSOTSup Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplements KAI Kanaanäische und aramäische Inschriften. H. Donner and W. Röllig. 2nd ed. 3 vols. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1966–69 KAT Kommentar zum Alten Testament KTU M. Dietrich, O. Loretz, and J. Sanmartín. Die keilalphabetischen Texte aus Ugarit: Einschließlich der keilalphabetischen Texte außerhalb Ugarits. AOAT 24/1. Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1976. [KTU 2 = CAT ] LCL Loeb Classical Library LHBOTS Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies LW Martin Luther. Luther’s Works. Edited by Jaroslav Pelikan. 55 vols. St. Louis, MO: Concordia, 1955–86

Abbreviations MNTC MSL NABU NCB NEB NIB NICNT NIDB

xxvii

The Moffatt New Testament Commentary Materials for the Sumerian Lexicon Nouvelles Assyriologiques Brèves et Utilitaires New Century Bible Neue Echter Bibel New Interpreter’s Bible. 13 vols. Nashville: Abingdon, 1994–2004 New International Commentary on the New Testament New International Dictionary of the Bible. Edited by J. D. Douglas and M. C. Tenney. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1987 NovT Novum Testamentum NovTSup Novum Testamentum Supplements NTM New Testament Monographs NTS New Testament Studies OBO Orbis biblicus et orientalis OLA Orientalia lovaniensia analecta Or Orientalia OTL Old Testament Library OtSt Oudtestamentische Studiën PSBA Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology QR Quarterly Review IV R H. C. Rawlinson. Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia, vol. 4 RA Revue d’Assyriologie et d’Archéologie Orientale RB Revue biblique RevQ Revue de Qumran RhM Rheinisches Museum für Philologie RIBLA Revista de interpretación biblica latino-americana SAA State Archives of Assyria SAAS State Archives of Assyria, Studies SBAB Stuttgarter biblische Aufsatzbände SBLDS Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series SBLSBS Society of Biblical Literature: Sources for Biblical Study SBLSCS Society of Biblical Literature Septuagint and Cognate Studies SBLSymS Society of Biblical Literature Symposium Series SBLWAW Society of Biblical Literature: Writings from the Ancient World SBP Sumerian and Babylonian Psalms SBT Studies in Biblical Theology SD Studies and Documents SHCANE Studies in the History and Culture of the Ancient Near East SJOT Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament SKGGGK Schriften der Königsberger Gelehrten Gesellschaft. Geisteswissenschaftliche Klasse SNTSMS Society for New Testament Studies, Monograph Series SNTSU Studien zum Neuen Testament und seiner Umwelt SWBA Social World of Biblical Antiquity TA Tel Aviv TB Theologische Bücherei

xxviii

Abbreviations

TCS TOTC TRE

Texts from Cuneiform Sources Tyndale Old Testament Commentary Theologische Realenzyklopädie. Edited by G. Krause and G. Müller. 38 vols. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1977–2007 UET Ur Excavations, Texts UF Ugaritic-Forschungen UTB Uni-Taschenbücher VT Vetus Testamentum VTSup Vetus Testamentum Supplements WBC Word Biblical Commentary WMANT Wissenschaftliche Monographien zum Alten und Neuen Testament WO Die Welt des Orients WUNT Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament ZAW Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft ZBKAT Zürcher Bibelkommentare: Alten Testament ZTK Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche

Classical Texts Ag. (Agamemnon)—Aeschylus Ant. (Antiquities)—Josephus BC (Bellum Civile)—Lucan C. Cels. (Contra Celsum)—Origen Eum. (Eumenides)—Aeschylus Euthyphr. (Euthyphro)—Plato In Ep. I ad Cor. Hom. (In Epistolam Primam ad Corinthios)—John Chrysostom Mor. (Moralia)—Plutarch Myst. (De mysteriis)—Iamblichus Quaest conv. (Quaestiones convivialum)—Plutarch Phaedr. (Phaedrus)—Plato Theog. (Theogonia)—Hesiod

Prophetic Madness: Prophecy and Ecstasy in the Ancient Near East and in Greece Martti Nissinen You talk to God—you are religious. God talks to you—you are psychotic. —Dr. Gregory House1 Well, there is apparently an identity present during what we have come to call “possession,” and it is as “real” as any other identity, including yours and mine. —Morton Klass2

In his recent article on priestly purity and prophetic lunacy, Richard D. Nelson discusses the “stereotypical behavior” of the biblical prophets as a feature of the prophetic performance that served the purpose of authenticating their role and maximizing their influence.3 Here, in his honor, I would like to broaden the scope of this fascinating topic to the ancient eastern Mediterranean world, attempting to corroborate with some new evidence the view that the same is true for the prophets appearing in ancient Near Eastern and Greek sources.4 1.  House M.D., Season 2, Episode 219: “House vs. God.” 2. Morton Klass, Mind over Mind: The Anthropology and Psychology of Spirit Possession (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003) 124. 3.  Richard D. Nelson, “Priestly Purity and Prophetic Lunacy: Hosea 1:2–3 and 9:7,” in The Priests in the Prophets: The Portrayal of Priests, Prophets, and Other Religious Specialists in the Latter Prophets (ed. Lester L. Grabbe and Alice Ogden Bellis; JSOTSup 408; London: T. & T. Clark, 2004) 115–33, esp. pp. 115–19. 4.  I would like to express my gratitude for the William F. Loughlin membership in the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton, NJ) in 2008–9. I would also like to thank my colleagues in Classics, Michael Flower and Renate Schlesier, for their valuable comments. This article partially overlaps my “Biblical Prophecy from a Near Eastern Perspective: The Cases of Kingship and Divine Possession,” in Congress Volume: Ljubljana, 2007 (ed. André Lemaire; VTSup 133; Leiden: Brill, 2010) 441–68.

3

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Ecstasy, Possession, Altered State of Consciousness, or Patterned Public Behavior? It is the shared conviction of today’s historians of religion, anthropologists, and biblical and Near Eastern scholars that prophetic performance is typically associated with a specific state of mind variably called ecstasy, trance, or possession. This was already suggested by, for example, Bernhard Duhm and Gustaf Hölscher,5 although only a few texts concerning non-Yahwistic prophets could be referred to at that time, such as the story of Elijah and the prophets of Baʿal on Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18) and the Egyptian narrative of Wenamun, who gives an account of a “great seer” who becomes ecstatic and delivers an oracle on behalf of the god Amon to the prince of Byblos.6 Hölscher and Duhm argued that the Hebrew prophets also gave their oracles while in ecstasy and subsequently wrote them down. The conviction that ecstatic behavior formed an essential part of the performance of the prophets was shared by a number of scholars,7 and it could be corroborated with further evidence, both from the cultural environment of the biblical writings and from historical analogies in various cultures. A Canaanite origin of ecstatic prophecy, or “Nabitum,” in Israel was suggested by Alfred Jepsen;8 Alfred Haldar was well ahead of his time in investigating the impressive comparative evidence from Mesopotamia, including the texts later known as Assyrian prophecies;9 and another Swedish scholar, Johannes Lind­blom, discussed prophecy in ancient Israel from the perspective of supernormal experiences, drawing on both ancient Near Eastern and more-modern analogies.10 Even though not all scholars have been willing to see the “classical” Hebrew prophets involved in ecstatic behavior,11 many have viewed the biblical 5. Gustav Hölscher, Die Profeten: Untersuchungen zur Religionsgeschichte Israels (Leip­ zig: Hinrichs, 1914); Bernhard Duhm, Israels Propheten (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1916). 6.  For this text, see below, n. 56. 7.  See, for example, Theodore H. Robinson, Prophecy and the Prophets in Ancient Israel (2nd ed.; London: Duckworth, 1953); see also the critical review by H. H. Rowley, “The Nature of Prophecy in the Light of Recent Study,” HTR 38 (1945) 1–38. 8. Alfred Jepsen, NABI: Soziologische Studien zur alttestamentlichen Literatur und Religionsgeschichte (Munich: Beck, 1934) 144–48. 9. Alfred Haldar, Associations of Cult Prophets among the Ancient Semites (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1945) 21–29 and passim. 10. Johannes Lindblom, Profetismen i Israel (Stockholm: Svenska kyrkans diakoni­sty­ relsen, 1934); idem, Prophecy in Ancient Israel (2nd ed.; Oxford: Blackwell, 1973). Lindblom discusses “primitive prophecy” (shamanism and the Arab kahins), Mohammed, the sleeping preachers in Finland (see below, n. 131), and St. Birgitta of Sweden. 11.  A decidedly non-ecstatic interpretation of the biblical prophets’ revelatory experiences was presented by Ivar P. Seierstad, Die Offenbarungserlebnisse der Propheten Amos, Jesaja und Jeremia: Eine Untersuchung der Erlebnisvorgänge unter besonderer Berück­ sichtigung ihrer religiös-sittlichen Art und Auswirkung (2nd ed.; Oslo: Universitetsforlaget,

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prophets’ performance, in all its variability, against the backdrop of the ancient Near Eastern texts and modern anthropological evidence.12 Since the number of pertinent sources from the ancient Near East has increased substantially, a fresh survey of the available evidence suggests itself.13 Before surveying the sources, however, I will briefly explain the results of the last three decades of clarification of scholarly vocabulary. (1) On the one hand, the characteristic features of prophetic performance can be described from the point of view of the one who performs, indicating the specific state of her/his body and mind during the performance. The words trance and ecstasy, the meanings of which largely overlap in scholarly language, refer to “forms of behaviour deviating from what is normal in the wakeful state and possessing specific cultural significance, typical features being an altered grasp of reality and the self-concept, with the intensity of change ranging from slight modifications to a complete loss of consciousness.”14 The 1965) 70–81, 156–83; see, from different angles, Simon B. Parker, “Possession Trance and Prophecy in Pre-Exilic Israel,” VT 28 (1978) 271–85; Gunnel André, “Ecstatic Prophecy in the Old Testament,” in Religious Ecstasy: Based on Papers Read at the Symposium on Religious Ecstasy Held at Åbo, Finland, on the 26th–28th of August 1981 (ed. Nils G. Holm; Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis 11; Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1982) 187–200. 12.  For more recent treatments of the subject, see Robert R. Wilson, Prophecy and Society in Ancient Israel (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980) 33–42; idem, “Prophecy and Ecstasy: A Reexamination,” JBL 98 (1979) 321–37 (reprinted in Community, Identity, and Ideology: Social Science Approaches to the Hebrew Bible [ed. Charles E. Carter and Carol L. Meyers; Sources for Biblical and Theological Study 6; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1996] 404–22); Peter Michaelsen, “Ecstasy and Possession in Ancient Israel: A Review of Some Recent Contributions,” SJOT 2 (1989) 28–54; Lester L. Grabbe, Priests, Prophets, Diviners, Sages: A Socio-Historical Study of Religious Specialists in Ancient Israel (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity International) 108–12; idem, “Ancient Near Eastern Prophecy from an Anthropological Perspective,” in Prophecy in Its Ancient Near Eastern Context: Mesopotamian, Biblical, and Arabian Perspectives (ed. Martti Nissinen; SBLSymS 13; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2000) 13–32; Joseph Blenkinsopp, Sage, Priest, Prophet: Religious and Intellectual Leadership in Ancient Israel (Library of Ancient Israel; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1995) 134–38; Terry L. Fenton, “Deuteronomistic Advocacy of the nābîʾ: 1 Samuel ix 9 and Questions of Israelite Prophecy,” VT 47 (1997) 23–42, esp. pp. 31–34; idem, “Israelite Prophecy: Characteristics of the First Protest Movement,” in The Elusive Prophet: The Prophet as a Historical Person, Literary Character and Anonymous Artist (ed. J. C. de Moor; OtSt 45; Leiden: Brill, 2001) 129–41, esp. pp. 131–33. 13.  I am not including the biblical texts in this article; a preliminary discussion can be found in my article “Biblical Prophecy from a Near Eastern Perspective: The Cases of Kingship and Divine Possession.” See also the critical review of Klaus-Peter Adam, “‘And He Behaved like a Prophet among Them’ (1 Sam 10:11b): The Depreciative Use of nbʾ Hitpael and the Comparative Evidence of Ecstatic Prophecy,” WO 39 (2009) 3-57. 14. Anna-Leena Siikala, “The Siberian Shaman’s Technique of Ecstasy,” in Religious Ecstasy (ed. N. G. Holm; Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1982) 103–21, esp. p. 104 (= Studies on Shamanism [ed. Anna-Leena Siikala and Mihály Hoppál; Ethnologica Uralica

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word possession can also be used of the same behavior, but whereas trance/ ecstasy refers to the psycho-physiological state of the performer, possession is a “cultural theory that explains how contact takes place between the supernatural and natural worlds”;15 that is, an explanation of the ecstasy as a state of being possessed by an external, usually superhuman, agent. This presupposes the audience’s interpretation of the ecstatic behavior as being due to a divine intervention. Some scholars would use the related word inspiration for a form of possession implying the belief that “the god/spirit/power remains outside the human body, being satisfied with resting upon it while seizing and subduing the soul of the personality without taking its place.”16 Ecstasy/trance and possession/inspiration are not always equivalent, because not all allegedly possessed behavior is ecstatic, and not all ecstasy is explained as possession. However, “‘trance’ and ‘possession’ regularly occur in the same cultural contexts, blending together to form a single, composite phenomenon—sometimes not.”17 A widely-used category that describes the characteristic behavior is altered state of consciousness, which can be used of both the psycho-physiological state of the performer and its cultural interpretation.18 (2) On the other hand, prophetic performance can also be described from the point of view of the audience, in front of which the performer authenticates his/her role corresponding to cultural expectations of the kind of behavior required of a person who claims to mediate between the human and divine spheres. A useful term to describe this is patterned public performance19 which, regardless of the degree of ecstasy or possession, is a culture-specific signifier of a culturally accepted behavior, considered appropriate for the specific role of the performer and serving as his/her identity-marker. By its very 2; Helsinki: Finnish Anthropological Society / Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1992] 26–40, esp. pp. 26–27). For related definitions, see Lindblom, Prophecy in Ancient Israel, 33–36; Nils G. Holm, “Ecstasy Research in the 20th Century: An Introduction,” in Religious Ecstasy, 7–26; I. M. Lewis, Ecstatic Religion: A Study of Shamanism and Spirit Possession (2nd ed.; New York: Routledge, 1989) 33–34. 15.  Wilson, Prophecy and Society in Ancient Israel, 33–34. 16.  Michaelsen, “Ecstasy and Possession in Ancient Israel,” 47. 17.  Lewis, Ecstatic Religion, 9; for their non-equivalence, see ibid., 39–40. See also Wilson, “Prophecy and Ecstasy: A Reexamination,” 325–26. 18. Morton Klass would rather talk about dissociation than an altered state of consciousness, suggesting the term patterned dissociative identity for spirit possession (Mind over Mind, 109–25). 19.  See Thomas W. Overholt, Prophecy in Cross-Cultural Perspective: A Sourcebook for Biblical Researchers (SBLSBS 17; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986) 13–16; Wilson, “Prophecy and Ecstasy: A Reexamination,” 324–26; Lisa Maurizio, “Anthropology and Spirit Possession: A Reconsideration of the Pythia’s Role at Delphi,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 115 (1995) 69–86, esp. pp. 73–76; Nelson, “Priestly Purity and Prophetic Lunacy,” 115–17. Klass makes a distinction between disorders and patterned dissociative phenomena (Mind over Mind, 117–19).

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function as transmissive activity, prophetic performance needs an audience, and there is no prophecy without an interplay between the prophet and the audience. Therefore, the performance needs to be not only patterned but also controlled: contrary to a common presupposition, ecstatic and possessed behavior, however eccentric it may appear, is not entirely idiosyncratic and random but one that can be recognized and appreciated by the audience.20 This is probably one of the reasons that the established ritual lends authority to the performance and is seen as its appropriate context. Terminological clarity is needed first and foremost to enable scholarly communication and to avoid arbitrary use of scholarly language. However, terms such as ecstasy or possession (or prophecy, for that matter) are not established entities that exist in their own right; rather, they reflect the ongoing scholarly process of understanding.21 Moreover, when applied to ancient texts whose way of expression is only partially understood by us and to which the scholarly conceptualization is fundamentally alien, we cannot expect them to yield easily to our classifications.22 Therefore, we must be careful about knowing all too much about ancient prophets who are no longer available for anthropological observation. This should not discourage us from attempting to understand prophetic performance in the ancient world; on the contrary, the cornucopia of bits and pieces that we have at our disposal should egg us on to put the puzzle together and see what kind of picture it will show us.

Prophetic Performance in Ancient Near Eastern Sources The standard prophetic designations in the Akkadian language, muḫḫûm/ muḫḫūtum (masc./fem., Old Babylonian) and maḫḫû/maḫḫūtu (masc./fem., Neo-Assyrian), are derived from the Akkadian verb maḫû ‘to become crazy, to go into a frenzy’.23 This verb is used of people who go out of their wits or, at least, behave in unexpected ways,24 and it is also used of a highly emotional 20. See Siikala, “The Siberian Shaman’s Technique of Ecstasy,” 109–11; and Birgitte Sonne (“The Professional Ecstatic in His Social and Ritual Position,” in Religious Ecstasy [ed. N. G. Holm; Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1982] 128–50), who emphasizes the collective nature of the ecstatic ritual. 21. See my deliberations on the definition of prophecy in “What Is Prophecy? An Ancient Near Eastern Perspective,” in Inspired Speech: Prophecy in the Ancient Near East: Essays in Honor of Herbert B. Huffmon (ed. John Kaltner and Louis Stulman; JSOTSup 378; London: T. & T. Clark, 2004) 17–37. 22.  Grabbe, Priests, Prophers, Diviner, Sages, 110: “The texts of concern to us were neither written by psychologists nor even written in an idiom always comprehensible to us whose knowledge of ancient culture is quite incomplete.” 23.  CAD M/1 115–16. 24.  See IV R 28:59: ‘the small and the great alike go into a frenzy’ (ṣeḫru imaḫḫi rabû imaḫḫi; compare with Joel 3:1!); BWL 38:21: ‘Like one who has gone mad and forgotten his lord’ (ana ša imḫû bēlšu imšû); Esarhaddon Nin A i 41–42: ‘Afterwards my brothers

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performance.25 The reflexive N-stem of maḫû repeatedly refers to prophetic performances, presumably indicating the condition in which the prophets received and transmitted divine words and suggesting that the characteristic behavior associated with the prophets appeared as a kind of “madness” in the eyes of those who witnessed them. It may be asked, of course, whether etymologies, notoriously treacherous as they are in defining actual meanings of words, tell anything about the real comportment of the prophets. Moreover, one might argue that the use of the verb maḫû represents nothing more than a customary introduction to prophetic speech that has lost its original reference to the prophets’ characteristic behavior; a similar argument could be made of the noun maḫḫû. That this is not the case, however, is widely suggested by Near Eastern evidence. For instance, a speaker in a prayer to Nabû combines very nicely the altered state of consciousness with the prophet’s role as an inspired intermediary: I became affected like a prophet [allapit kīma maḫḫê], what I do not know I bring forth [ša lā īdu ūbal ].26

Furthermore, in the Neo-Assyrian commentary on Šumma izbu, a birth omen series, the prophets are equated with “possessed men”: (#128) Prophetesses (maḫḫiātum) will = possessed people (šēḫu) will   seize the land.   seize the land. Prophets (maḫḫû) = possessed men (šēḫānu).27 Similar equations are made by several Old Babylonian and Neo-Assyrian lexical lists, repeatedly associating prophets with people like zabbu ‘frenzied,’ kalû ‘chanter,’ munambû ‘lamentation singer,’ lallaru ‘wailer,’ assinnu and kurgarrû ‘man-woman’—all devotees of Ištar with appearance and conduct noticeably different from the average citizen; for example: (#124) la-bar gala.maḫ

= kalû ‘chanter’ = kalamāḫu (šu-ḫu) ‘chief chanter’

went out of their senses (immaḫûma) doing everything that is displeasing to the gods and mankind’. 25.  See SBP 72:5–6: ‘the city raves in lamentations’ (ālu immaḫḫû ina lallarāti). 26.  PSBA 17:138–39; see Haldar, Associations of Cult Prophets, 25. 27.  K 1913: 365d–e; see E. Leichty, The Omen Series Šumma izbu (TCS 4; Locust Valley, NY: Augustin, 1970) 230–31. The word šēḫu means ‘wind’, also referring to a spirit possessing someone; see CAD Š/2 266; and Haldar, Associations of Cult Prophets, 23. Henceforth the numbers of the texts (#) refer to Martti Nissinen, with contributions by C. L. Seow and Robert K. Ritner, Prophets and Prophecy in the Ancient Near East (SBLWAW 12; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003).

Prophetic Madness: Prophecy and Ecstasy i-lu-di = i-lu-a-li = lú.gub-ba = lú.ní-zu-ub = kur-gar-ra = ur-sal = lú.giš.bala-šu-du =

munambû lallaru maḫḫû zabbu kurgarrû (šu-u) assinnu nāš pilaqqi

9

‘lamentation singer’ ‘wailer’ ‘prophet’ ‘frenzied’ ‘man-woman’ ‘man-woman’ ‘carrier of spindel’28

Thanks to these and other similar documents, we are not dependent on etymology alone when tracing the image of the Mesopotamian prophets.29 An etymological and lexical examination makes the prophets appear to be proclaimers of divine words associated with cult performers, practitioners of noninductive divination, and people whose more or less ecstatic behavior, eventually perceived as queer by the majority of the population, corresponded to their roles in the religious community. The way the lexical lists associate the prophets with other people performing in the context of worship can be taken as indicative of their socioreligious setting. This is also strongly supported by the tangible evidence provided by a ritual text from Mari, belonging to the ritual of Ištar, which was the annual highpoint of the ritual calendar.30 According to two texts describing this royal ceremony, prophets and prophetesses feature prominently in it, together with musicians.31 In one of these texts (#51), when the king enters the temple and takes his position, the musicians first strike up ú-ru am-ma-da-ru-bi, a Sumerian canonical city lamentation.32 After this, the prophet is supposed to 28.  MSL 12 102–3:209–17; see M. Civil et al., The Series lú = ša and Related Texts (MSL 12; Rome: Pontiical Biblical Institute, 1969) 102–3. The designation nāš pilaqqi is equal to assinnu and kurgarrû. 29.  Similar lists include MSL 12 5.22 (#120); MSL 12 4.222 (#125) and MSL 12 6.2 (#126). See the decree of expenditures from Mari (ARM 21 333:42–44 = ARM 23 446:18– 20, #55 and #59): “1 ordinary garment for Yadida ‘the crazy woman’ (lillatum), 1 ordinary garment for Ea-maṣi, prophet of Itur-Mer, 1 ordinary garment for Šarrum-dari, the chanter.” Note that the prophet is mentioned in association with a woman whose title lillatum probably designates ecstatic behavior and with a chanter comparable to kalû. 30.  See Bertrand Lafont, “Sacrifices et rituals à Mari et dans la Bible,” RA 93 (1999) 57–77, esp. p. 67. 31.  FM 3 2 and FM 3 3 (A. 3165 and A. 1249b+); see Jean-Marie Durand and Michaël Guichard, “Les rituels de Mari,” in Florilegium marianum 3: Recueil d’études à la mémoire de Marie-Thèrése Barrelet (ed. Dominique Charpin and Jean-Marie Durand; Mémoires de NABU 4; Paris: SEPOA, 1997) 19–78; Nele Ziegler, Florilegium Marianum 9: Les Musiciens et la musique d’après les archives de Mari (Mémoires de NABU 10; Paris, 2007) 55–64. 32.  Probably identical to the canonical lamentation úr u à m - m a - i r - r a - b i (see Miguel Civil, “Notes brèves 12,” RA 68 [1974] 95), for which see Nathan Wasserman and Uri

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prophesy and, if he is able to fulfill his task, another canonical lamentation, mà-e ú-re-mén, is sung.33 However: (#51) If by the end of the mo[nth] the prophet (muḫḫûm) maintains his equili[brium] (ištaqa[lma]) and is not a[ble] t[o] prophes[y] when it is time for [the chant] “m à - e ú - r e - m [ é n ],” the temple officials let the m[usicians] go. If he pro[phesies] (im[maḫḫima]), [they strike up] “mà-e ú-re-m[én].”34

To all appearances, the verb šaqālum denotes an unaltered state of mind, a “sober” condition that does not allow for a proper prophetic performance.35 If the prophet ‘maintains his equilibrium’ (ištaqal), that is, fails to achieve the altered state of mind necessary for prophesying, when it is time for another lamentation, the music is not performed and the musicians can go. In the other text (#52), the prophetesses and the musicians come before the goddess, and there is again an interplay between prophesying and lamentation, but the text is too poorly preserved to yield a clear idea of what actually is supposed to happen.36 According to a possible reading, if the women prophets are not able to prophesy, the musicians cover for them by singing a lamentation; in any case, they are not sent away, as in the previous case. The two texts allow several implications to be drawn concerning prophetic performance. (1) Prophets, male and female alike, are supposed to prophesy during a ritual celebration. However, (2) it is taken for granted that they will not necessarily be able to do so. This can be interpreted as a kind of “randomizing” feature in prophetic performance, indicating that the required state of consciousness is not a matter of course but depends on something that is not in the performers’ own control.37 Furthermore, (3) the temporal modifier “by the end of the month” is too imprecise to point to the very moment allotted to the prophet’s performance in the ritual and suggests rather that the prophetic state of consciousness was expected to last in some form for a certain period Gabbay, “Literatures in Contact: The Balag úru àm-ma- i r - r a - b i and Its Akkadian Translation UET 6/2, 403,” JCS 57 (2006) 69–84. 33.  The mà-e ú-re-mén is probably identical to the Sumerian canonical lamentation me-e ur-re-mèn; see Durand and Guichard, “Les rituels de Mari,” 50. 34.  FM 3 2:21–27 (Ritual of Ištar, text 2); for the restoration and translation, see Durand and Guichard, “Les rituels de Mari,” 54, 58. 35.  See Jean-Marie Durand, Archives épistolaires de Mari I/1 (ARM 26/1; Paris: Editions Recherche sur les Civilisations, 1988) 386–87. 36.  FM 3 3:4–13 (Ritual of Ištar, text 3): “When the musicians have entered before her, the prophetesses [. . .] and the mu[sicians]. Whe[n the prophetesses] main[tain their equilibrium], two m[usicians . . . enter] the [. . .]. [They sing] an eršemmakkum before [the goddess for Enlil?].” This translation is based on the restorations of Durand and Guichard, “Les rituels de Mari,” 60. 37.  For “randomizing” features, see Maurizio, “Anthropology and Spirit Possession,” 81–83.

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of time—if not as an enduring state of ecstasy, then at least as some kind of a “standby” position that precluded the actual ecstatic performance.38 (4) The prophets are not themselves introduced as musicians but perform in interplay with them. That their performance is preceded by music may suggest that the music was supposed to trigger or intensify the state of mind necessary for uttering a prophecy.39 (5) Prophecy coincides with lamentation, which may be taken as an indication both of the specific quality of the laments as triggers of the prophetic utterance and of its presumed contents. It is noteworthy in this ritual context that the úru àm-ma-ir-ra-bi (also known in an Akkadian translation) is a lament cried out by the goddess Inanna/Ištar, who is distressed over her destroyed city.40 As mouthpieces of the goddess, the prophets are probably supposed to commiserate with her agony—something that was part of the role of other personnel listed in the above-mentioned word lists, such as lamentation singers and the gender-neutral persons.41 Further evidence suggesting that the associations made in the lexical lists are not coincidental can be found in a Neo-Assyrian ritual text, where prophets and prophetesses feature together with ecstatics: (#118) For the frenzied men and women [ana zabbī zabbāti ] and for the prophets and prophetesses [maḫḫê u maḫḫūti ] you shall give seven pieces of bread.42

The context of this passage is a ritual that takes place on the 29th day of the month of Tammuz, “when Ištar makes the people of the land wail over Dumuzi, her beloved,” to be performed for a person seized by the spirit of a dead person, a demon, or any other evil thing.43 The ritual involves substantial food offerings and also some music, to judge from the wind instruments dedicated to Dumuzi. The only thing that is said about the role of the prophets in this ritual is that they are there together with “shepherd boys of Dumuzi”—that 38.  Lewis notes that “in many cultures where possession by a spirit is the main or sole interpretation of trance, possession may be diagnosed long before the actual state of trance has been reached” (Ecstatic Religion, 39). 39.  For comparable examples in Greece, see Sarah Iles Johnston, Ancient Greek Divination (Blackwell Ancient Religions; Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008) 49–50; among shamans, see Merete Demant Jakobsen, Shamanism: Traditional and Contemporary Approaches to the Mastery of Spirits and Healing (New York: Berghahn, 1999) 12. 40.  See Dominique Charpin, Le Clergé d’Ur au siècle d’Hammurabi (XIX e–XVIII  e siècles av. J.-C.) (Geneva: Droz, 1986) 451; Wasserman and Gabbay, “Literatures In Contact,” 70, 77. 41. See Simo Parpola, Assyrian Prophecies (SAA 9; Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 1997) xxxiv. 42. Walter Farber, Beschwörungsrituale an Ištar und Dumuzi: Attī Ištar ša ḫarmaša Dumuzi (Veröffentlichungen der Orientalischen Kommission 30; Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1977) 142:59; see also 140:31. 43.  K 2001+; see Farber, Beschwörungsrituale an Ištar und Dumuzi, 128–62.

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is, cult functionaries who intercede on behalf of the sick one—and frenzied men and women (zabbu and zabbatu). The prophets receive their share of the offerings and are present when the sick person begins to recite his prayer to Ištar. The performative role of the prophets and ecstatics must be extracted by reading between the lines, but it is probably to mediate the healing power of the goddess and to intercede on behalf of the sick person. The ritual context also suggests that the prophets’ performance interplays with that of musicians and has to do with Ištar’s wailing over Tammuz. Actual reports on prophetic performances can be found in letters to King Zimri-Lim of Mari referring to prophetic proclamation situations: (#23) In the Temple of Annunitum, on the 3rd day, Šelebum went into a frenzy [immaḫḫu] and said: “Thus says Annunitum . . .”44 (#24) In the Temple of Annunitum in the city, Ahatum, a servant girl [ṣuḫartu] of Dagan-Malik went into a frenzy [immaḫḫima] and spoke . . .45 (#33) [On that day] Irra-gamil [went into a fr]enzy ([imma]ḫêm). [This is what] he said . . .46

As demonstrated by these examples, the verb maḫû introduces divine direct speech, which indicates that it semantically encompasses both aspects of the oral performance of the prophet—that is, the distinct behavior and the act of speech. As such, it implies more than the more-usual introductory formula, “a prophet(ess) (NN) arose (itbi) and spoke.”47 The verbs maḫû and tebû never coincide, which raises the question whether they denote different kinds of prophetic performance; however, there is nothing in the texts to suggest that this is the case. The oracles introduced with maḫû are no more “frantic” than those with tebû; neither is there any indication of different behavior by the prophet in the proclamation situation. Hence, the two verbs may simply be taken as two different ways of expressing the same thing. At any rate, it is noteworthy that, in two of the three cases, the performance is said to have taken place in the temple context, and one of the prophets is Šelebum, well-known as a genderneutral person, an assinnu. An analogous Neo-Assyrian case may be found in the letter of Nabû-reḫtuuṣur to Esarhaddon, reporting an intriguing case from the western part of the Assyrian Empire:

44.  ARM 26 213:5–7. 45.  ARM 26 214:6–7. 46.  ARM 26 222:12–14. 47.  A. 3760 [#3]:6; ARM 26 195 [#5]:7; ARM 26 204 [#14]:5; ARM 26 209 [#19]:7; ARM 26 215 [#25]:15–21; ARM 26 219 [#29]: 5; ARM 26 237 [#42]:23.

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(#115) A slave girl (amtu) of Bel-aḫu-uṣur [. . .] upon [. . .] on the ou[tski]rts of H[arran]; since the month of Sivan she is enraptured (?) (sarḫat) and speaks a good word about him: “This is the word of Nusku: The kingship is for Sasî! I will destroy the name and seed of Sennacherib!”48

This text is more difficult to interpret, especially because the word sarḫat is otherwise unknown in the Akkadian language. If it can be interpreted as the feminine stative form of a verb corresponding to the Syriac šrḥ ‘to rage’, the ʾAphel form of which has the meanings ‘to ravish, enrapture, fascinate, captivate’,49 it can be understood as referring to the altered state of consciousness of the woman speaking on behalf of the god Nusku, hence providing an Aramaic-based equivalent for the Akkadian maḫû. That the behavior thus designated had gone on “since the month of Sivan” indicates that she had been seen in the respective state of mind for quite some time, not just on one occasion. Furthermore, it is reasonable to assume that the place where she delivered her “good word” is the temple of cedar erected by Esarhaddon “on the outskirts of Harran” when he was on his way to conquer Egypt.50 If these assumptions are correct, the presentation of the performance of the Syrian slave girl is closely reminiscent of that of her cognates at Mari, the difference being that from the point of view of the informer, her performance was to be judged as a pseudoprophecy. Our last cuneiform example derives from a much later period. The astronomical diary concerning events that happened in Babylonia in the month of Tishri of the year 133 b.c.e. gives an account of a prophetic performance that adds important aspects to what is discernible from the texts discussed above. The pertinent passage of diary begins as follows: (#134) In that month, a man belonging to the Boatman family became posse[sse]d and changed his consciousness (ittaṣb[atamm]a ṭēnzu išnima). [. . .] A dais that lies between the Temple of Sin, Egišnugal, and the gate [of Marduk . . .] He placed a food offering upon it and delivered a good message to the people: “Bel has entered Babylon!”51 48.  SAA 16 59 rev. 2–4. 49.  See J. Payne Smith, A Compendious Syriac Dictionary Founded upon the Thesaurus Syriacus by R. Payne Smith (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1998) 598. 50.  SAA 10 174; see my References to Prophecy in Neo-Assyrian Sources (SAAS 7; Helsinki: Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 1998) 123–24. 51.  AD 3 –132 B rev. 25–27; see Abraham J. Sachs and Hermann Hunger, Astronomical Diaries and Related Texts from Babylonia, vol. 1: Diaries from 652 b.c. to 262 b.c. (Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-historische Klasse, Denkschriften 195; Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1996) 216–19; Giuseppe del Monte, Testi dalla Babylonia Ellenistica, vol. 1: Testi Cronografici (Studi Ellenistici 9; Pisa: Istituti editoriali e poligrafici internazionali, 1997) 126–27; Martti Nissinen, “A Prophetic Riot in Seleucid Babylonia,” in “Wer darf hinaufsteigen zum Berg JHWHs?” Beiträge zu

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Agaißßn, we are told about a prophet—Mr. Boatman presents himself as a “messenger (mār šipri) of Nanaya”52—who makes a public appearance in the context of worship, first in the city of Babylon, and later on in Borsippa. Unlike the above-discussed documents that never refer to the origin of the prophets’ characteristic behavior, this text says unambiguously that the prophet was possessed (ṣabātu)—by what or by whom is not indicated, but Nanaya as the oracular deity suggests herself as the most likely candidate. As a result of the possession, his state of consciousness is said to have been changed. The word ṭēmu means, among other things, ‘reason’ and ‘intelligence’, and with the verb šanû it either denotes changing one’s mind or becoming mad;53 hence, the expression ṭēnzu54 išni presents itself as a semantic equivalent to the verb maḫû, giving an even better idea of what was thought to happen when a prophet acquired the proper state of mind: his consciousness was changed. That the religious authorities called the prophet a ‘hothead’ (šābibannu)55—certainly insinuating how he was appreciated by those who were less convinced by him than the people of Babylon and Borsippa—is probably indicative of his comportment. Moving from Mesopotamia to the West Semitic milieu, we can return to the long-known event that Wenamon the Egyptian reported to have happened to him in the Phoenician city of Byblos. In this assumed locus classicus for the “Canaanite” background of “Israelite” prophecy, Wenamon relates that, when the ruler of Byblos, who had repelled him and told him to leave the harbor, was offering to his gods, (#142) the god (Amon) seized a great seer from among his great seers, and he caused him to be in an ecstatic state, and he said to him: “Bring up the god! Bring the messenger who bears him! It is Amon who has sent him. He is the one who has caused that he come.”56

In light of the cuneiform evidence that we have at our disposal today, Wenamon’s report makes perfect sense, although there is nothing specifically “Canaanite” about the prophetic performance experienced by him. A prophet (that Prophetie und Poesie des Alten Testaments: Festschrift für Sigurður Örn Steingrímsson zum 70. Geburtstag (ed. Hubert Irsigler; Arbeiten zu Text und Sprache des Alten Testaments 72; St. Ottilien: EOS, 2002) 63–74. 52.  AD 3 –132 B l.e. 1, 3. 53. See CAD Ṭ 95–96 sub ṭēmu 5c–d. 54.  A Late Babylonian phonetic variant for ṭēmšu. 55.  AD 3 –132 B l.e. 4: “Do not listen to the words of that hothead.” 56.  Translation by Robert K. Ritner in Nissinen, Prophets and Prophecy in the Ancient Near East, 220. For a translation of the whole report, see Edward F. Wente, “The Report of Wenamon,” in The Literature of Ancient Egypt: An Anthology of Stories, Instructions, Stelae, Autobiographies, and Poetry (ed. William Kelly Simpson; New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003) 116–24.

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is, a mediator of the divine word) is seized by the deity and delivers the divine message to a ruler in the context of worship in a temple—all this is familiar to us from cuneiform sources.57 The fact that this scenario is described by an Egyptian as having happened to him in Phoenicia is an important piece of evidence, and not just because it was written in the 11th century b.c.e., an otherwise dimly visible corner in the historical landscape of prophecy. Whatever “really” happened in Byblos, the report of Wenamon tells us how an Egyptian writer would have interpreted a prophetic performance, and the way he does it is compatible in every respect with the cuneiform evidence with which he could not possibly have been familiar. This speaks for a common, long-term Near Eastern understanding of divine-human communication by means of prophetic activity. While the texts discussed so far demonstrate that prophetic performances were commonly associated with a characteristic behavior in different parts of the ancient Near East, there are virtually no descriptions in the above-mentioned sources to indicate how the required state of mind was achieved and what actually happened when the prophets prophesied. An intriguing hint at the prophets’ behavior is given by the Middle Babylonian “Righteous Sufferer” text found at Ugarit (#122) and dating roughly to the same period as the Report of Wenamon. In this text, the distressed speaker says that his brothers “bathe in their blood like prophets (kīma maḫḫê).”58 This brings to mind the association of the prophets with people like assinnu and kurgarrû, “carriers of spindel” and other specialists of ritual lamentation in the lexical lists discussed above, placing the prophets on par with the devotees of Ištar (or, for instance, Cybele), who were known for ritual performances including self-mutilation.59 There were demonstrably assinnus among the prophets,60 which makes their participation in such kinds of performances even more plausible—whether always, everywhere, and by every prophet is another question. Another indication of a possible method of achieving the state of mind required for prophesying in a completely different context can be found in the letter of Queen Šibtu of Mari to her husband: 57.  See already Jepsen, NABI, 144: “Bedeutsam ist einmal, daß das Gotteswort dem Jüngling während eines (ekstatischen?) Tanzes zuteil wird; zweitens, daß es während eines Opfers erfolgt und endlich, daß der Prophet sich an einem Königshofe befindet.” 58.  Ugaritica 5 162:11; see J. J. M. Roberts, “A New Parallel to 1 Kings 18:28–29,” JBL 89 (1970) 76–77. 59. See Parpola, Assyrian Prophecies, xxxiv, xcvi–xcvii. 60.  That is, the assinnus Šelebum (ARM 26 197, 198, and 213 = ##7, 8, and 23) and Iliḫaznaya (ARM 26 212 = #22); see Herbert B. Huffmon, “The assinnum as Prophet: Shamans at Mari?” in Nomades et sédentaires dans le Proche-Orient ancien (ed. Christophe Nicolle; CRRAI 46/Amurru 3; Paris: Éditions Recherche sur les Civilisations, 2004) 241–47. See also the three Assyrian prophets whose gender is unclear, Issar-la-tašiyaṭ (SAA 9 1.1 i 28 = #68), Bayâ (SAA 9 1.4 ii 40 = #71) and Ilussa-amur (SAA 9 1.5 iii 5–6 = #72).

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Martti Nissinen (#17) Concerning the campaign my lord is planning, I gave drink to male and female persons to inquire about signs.61 The oracle is extremely favorable to my lord. Likewise, I inquired of male and female about Išme-Dagan. The oracle is unfavorable to him.62 ––– Perhaps my lord would s[ay] this: “She has [made them speak] by fraudulent means.” But [I did] not make [them] speak anything. They speak voluntarily— they could resi[st] as well!63

The same divinatory technique is also mentioned in another letter of Šibtu (#22).64 Well imaginable though it may be, it is not certain whether the drink is alcoholic65 or otherwise intoxicating; in any case, the men and women in question are affected by it (or by the hospitality of Šibtu66) to the extent that they utter the inquired oracles. Interestingly, however, Šibtu is prepared for the accusation that she has obtained the oracle in an inappropriate way; this gives the impression that her method of soliciting divine words is unusual and therefore under suspicion. Unspecific as the sources are about the particulars of the characteristic behavior of the prophets, one should beware of sweeping generalizations concerning the nature of prophetic performances.67 What matters more is that, in 61.  Lit., ‘The signs, male and female, I gave to drink, making an inquiry’. The two verbs ašqi aštalma constitute an asyndetic construction, indicating that the inquiry is made by giving drink to the persons in question (Claus Wilcke, “ittātim ašqi aštāl,” RA 77 [1983] 93). It is not quite clear to whom the drink is given. Jean-Marie Durand takes ittātim zikāram u sinništam as the object, thus interpreting the male and female persons as signs (“In vino veritas,” RA 76 [1982] 43–50, esp. 43–44). Jack M. Sasson reckons with a double accusative: ‘I gave male and female the signs to drink’, thus assuming that the drink itself contains the signs to be rendered into understandable oracles by the ones who drink it (“The Posting of Letters with Divine Messages,” in Florilegium Marianum 2: Recueil d’études à la mémoire de Maurice Birot [ed. Dominique Charpin and Jean-Marie Durand; Mémoires de NABU 3; Paris: SEPOA, 1994] 299–316, esp. p. 308; see ARM 26 208 [#18]:11–25). 62.  ARM 26 207:3–10. Išme-Dagan was the king of Ekallatum in Assyria and an enemy of Zimri-Lim. 63.  ARM 26 207:35–38, reading imtaḫa[ṣū]; see Durand, Archives épistolaires de Mari, 435: ‘Certains parlent, d’autres résistent.’ William L. Moran reads imtaḫa[rū]: ‘On their own they speak, on their [own] they agre[e]’ (“New Evidence from Mari on the History of Prophecy,” Bib 50 [1969] 15–56, esp. p. 47). 64.  ARM 26 212:1–2: “[Concern]ing Babyl[on] I inquired about the matter by giving signs to drink (ašqi aštalma).” 65. Thus Durand, “In vino veritas,” 48–49. 66. Thus Wilcke, “ittātim ašqi aštāl,” 93. 67.  Adam (“And He Behaved like a Prophet,” 34), having discussed most of the material presented above, finds only a “very limited” testimony of prophetic ecstasy in them; in my own estimation, the evidence is rather comprehensive. However, I share Adam’s criticism of lumping biblical prophecy too easily together with what is imagined as “ecstatic prophecy” in the ancient Near East.

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whatever way the altered state of consciousness manifested itself to those who witnessed it, it was recognized as an altered state and was given an interpretation compatible with the common understanding of divine-human communication. Expressions denoting the characteristic behavior of the prophets such as the verb maḫû imply a “change of consciousness” in the first place, allowing only a faint idea of the particular method of acquiring the required state of mind. The texts seem to presuppose that the persons in question, whether servant girls or cultic functionaries, assumed a specific role in which they were acknowledged as capable of becoming mouthpieces of the divine; as says Richard D. Nelson on biblical prophets: “The audience of a biblical prophet would need to be convinced of the authenticity of that prophet’s divine communication and encouraged to listen to and act on it.”68

Prophetic Performance in Greek Sources Prophetic performances are a common topic in Greek literature. The impressive body of Greek sources on the oracle of Apollo at Delphi yields more elements than the complete set of ancient Near Eastern evidence for reconstructing prophetic performances. Moreover, while Delphi was the oracular site par excellence even for the Greeks, and much of our image of Greek divination is extrapolated from Delphi, the oracular activity of the Pythia was not the only type of divinatory performance in the Greek world. Especially the Temple of Apollo in Didyma, which was in many ways comparable to that in Delphi and enjoyed a high status in the seventh and sixth centuries b.c.e.,69 and that of Zeus in Dodona, Delphi’s greatest rival at times,70 deserve to be mentioned as principal sites of Greek prophecy.71 68.  Nelson, “Priestly Purity and Prophetic Lunacy,” 116. 69.  See H. W. Parke and D. E. W. Wormell, The Delphic Oracle, vol. 2: The Oracular Responses (Oxford: Blackwell, 1956); Joseph Fontenrose, The Delphic Oracle: Its Responses and Operations, with a Catalogue of Responses (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978); Veit Rosenberger, Griechische Orakel: Eine Kulturgeschichte (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2001) 48–64; Johnston, Ancient Greek Divination, 82–90. 70.  See H. W. Parke, The Oracles of Zeus: Dodona, Olympia, Ammon (Oxford: Blackwell, 1967); Ariadni Gartziou-Tatti, “L’oracle de Dodone: Mythe et rituel,” Kernos 3 (1990) 175–84; Esther Eidinow, Oracles, Curses, and Risk among the Ancient Greeks (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); Johnston, Ancient Greek Divination, 60–72. 71.  The use of the word prophecy is not unambiguous with regard to Greek literature, where the words προφήτης/προφῆτις, μάντις, πρόμαντις and the like are translated variably as ‘prophets’, ‘seers’, ‘soothsayers’, and so on. In my language, prophecy means in the first place a nontechnical transmission of divine knowledge (see Nissinen, “What Is Prophecy?”), which is well applicable to Greek inspired speakers such as the Pythia of Delphi but less applicable to Greek seers, who were diviners using different techniques. It is evident that the definition of prophecy created with biblical and ancient Near Eastern texts in mind needs to be modified when applied to Greek literature. See Armin Lange, “Literary Prophecy and

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The earliest Greek evidence of prophetic performances can be found in Minoan Crete. Although the Minoan culture does not provide us with applicable textual sources, Nanno Marinatos has recently turned her attention to four Minoan images from the sixteenth century b.c.e. showing men who are shaking the branches of a tree and kicking their legs, women who seem to be in a twirling movement, and also women leaning on a stone.72 According to her interpretation, the positions of the persons illustrate ecstatic behavior, and the images depict oracular scenes in an open air sanctuary: “shaking the branch leads to understanding of the language of the tree, and leaning over a stone leads to understanding the whisper of the stone or dreaming a vision.” This is reminiscent, not only of the tree oracle at Dodona73 and Hesiod’s much later claim of his own Muse-inspired poetic gift (“But why all this about [oak] tree and stone?”),74 but also of the roughly contemporaneus Ugaritic epic of Keret that mentions “a word of tree and whisper of stone,”75 possibly referring to a royal oracle.76 Marinatos interprets the female figure in the images to be the Minoan queen personally involved in a prophecy ritual. Her office as the high priestess thus included the role of an intermediary akin to the role of the later female prophets of Apollo. The Minoan iconography compares well with the above-mentioned Near Eastern sources—when it comes to both the prophets’ characteristic behavior and the lack of any theoretical explication of its communal interpretation. The last-mentioned aspect is, however, amply discussed in Greek literature from later times. The most famous Greek discussion on different forms of the divinatory art is the speech of Socrates in Plato’s Phaedrus (244a–245a) concerning different forms of μανία ‘madness’, as opposed to σωφροσύνη ‘the “sane” kind of reasoning’. Socrates defends the divine origin of μανία by referring to ancient sages who thus located the art of divination; the letter τ in μαντική is but a tasteless addition of the moderns who think that the divinely inspired Oracle Collection: A Comparison between Judah and Greece in Persian Times,” in Prophets, Prophecy and Prophetic Texts in Second Temple Judaism (ed. Michael H. Floyd and Robert D. Haak; LHBOTS 427; New York: T. & T. Clark, 2006); idem, “Greek Seers and IsraeliteJewish Prophets,” VT 57 (2007) 461–82; Michael Attyah Flower, The Seer in Ancient Greece (Berkeley: The University of California Press, 2008) 84–91. 72. Nanno Marinatos, “The Role of the Queen in Minoan Prophecy Rituals,” in Images and Prophecy in the Ancient Eastern Mediterranean (ed. Martti Nissinen and Charles E. Carter; FRLANT 233; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009) 81–89. 73. See Johnston, Ancient Greek Divination, 63–65. 74.  Hesiod, Theog. 36. 75.  KTU 1.3. iii 19–31; thus translated by N. Wyatt, Religious Texts from Ugarit: The Words of Ilimilku and His Colleagues (2nd ed.; Biblical Seminar 33; London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002) 78. 76. Thus idem, “Word of Tree and Whisper of Stone: El’s Oracle to King Keret (Kirta), and the Problem of the Mechanics of Its Utterance,” VT 57 (2007) 483–510.

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knowledge should be replaced by human reasoning, that is, the divinatory techniques (τέχνη) based on observation and calculation:77 . . . and in proportion as prophecy (μαντική) is more perfect and august than augury, both in name and fact, in the same proportion, as the ancients testify, is madness [μανία] superior to a sane mind [σωφροσύνη], for the one is only of human, but the other of divine, origin.78

The first traditional type of μανία is the gift of foretelling the future as practiced by the prophetess at Delphi, the priestesses at Dodona, the Sibyl, and other inspired persons who conferred great benefits on Hellas while being out of their senses (μαίνομαι) but less so while in their senses (σωφρονέω). The second type of μανία is beneficial in curing sicknesses, and the third type comes from the Muses: inspiring songs and poetry. Plato equates the divine inspiration of the poets and the diviners even elsewhere,79 and it is interesting to note that all three types of divine inspiration are found both in the ancient Near Eastern documents of prophecy and in the Hebrew Bible. At first sight, Plato’s typology seems to correspond perfectly to the distinction between inspired and technical divination familiar to us from ancient Near Eastern sources and scholarship. It must be borne in mind, however, that in the rhetorical framework of the passage, constituted by the relationship of the “mad” lover and the “sane” non-lover, all three traditional types of μανία are presented as an introduction to a “divine erotic madness” superior to all of them. Hence, the speech of Socrates is not primarily about ranking different kinds of divination but about the necessity of μανία in the self-knowledge that is essentially love. Indeed, “divine erotic madness and divine sophrosyne are to be united in the successful experience of love.”80 To be sure, Plato does acknowledge the inspiration of the diviners (μάντεις) who are not inspired speakers like the Pythia and the priestesses of Dodona but use inductive methods of divination. In his dialogue with Ion, Socrates juxtaposes the diviners with the poets inspired by the Muses while arguing for the divine origin of poetry: For not by art does the poet sing, but by power divine; had he learned by rules of art, he would have known how to speak not of one theme only, but of all; and therefore God takes away reason from poets, and uses them as his ministers, as he also uses the pronouncers of oracles and holy prophets [χρησμῳδοῖς καὶ τοῖς μάντεσι τοῖς θεοῖς], in order that we who hear them may know them to be 77.  See Charles L. Griswold, Self-Knowledge in Plato’s Phaedrus (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986) 76–78; Flower, The Seer in Ancient Greece, 84–88. 78.  Plato, Phaedr. 244d; translation by B. Jowett, The Dialogues of Plato (4 vols.; 4th ed.; Oxford: Clarendon, 1953) 3:150. 79.  Plato, Ion 533d–535a. 80.  Griswold, Self-Knowledge in Plato’s Phaedrus, 75.

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Martti Nissinen speaking not of themselves, who utter these priceless words while bereft of reason [νοῦς μὴ πάρεστιν], but that God himself is the speaker, and that through them he is addressing us.81

No trace of the distinction between inspired and technical diviners can be found here; on the contrary, even the seers (μάντεις) are said to speak “while bereft of reason,” like the poets. The μάντεις were not prophets exactly in the sense that ancient Near Eastern and biblical scholars understand the word— that is, transmitters of divine word by nontechnical means. Greek seers practiced divination using τέχναι, such as observing entrails of sacrificial animals and watching the flight of birds, but it is noteworthy that, even in their case, a successful divination was believed to be based on a god-given insight, without which the τέχναι would have remained unfulfilled.82 On the other hand, even the Pythia-type divination was understood as a τέχνη—that is, a god-given skill that Zeus, according to Aeschylus, inspired in the mind of Apollo, who was the spokesman (προφήτης) of his father;83 while Pythia, for her part, was the spokesperson (προφῆτις) of Apollo.84 The prophetic “madness” finds a mythological prototype in the honey­ induced frenzy of the bee maidens in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes (552–66): these semi-divine nymphs had the gift of prophesying but could not prophesy unless having partaken of μέλι χλωρόν, which probably stands for an intoxicating mead.85 Greek sources sometimes mention diviners in a way that suggests a characteristic behavior, such as Theoclymenus in the Odyssey (20.351–62), who is said by the suitors of Penelope to be ‘out of his senses’ (ἀφραίνει) because of his interpretations of portents;86 the ‘Sibyl with raving mouth’ (Σίβυλλα

81.  Plato, Ion 534c– d; translation by Jowett, The Dialogues of Plato, 1:108. 82. See Flower, The Seer in Ancient Greece, 84–91. 83.  Aeschylus, Eum. 17–19. 84. Thus Euripides, Ion 90–91, 321, 1322; and Plato, Phaedr. 244b. 85.  See Susan Scheinberg, “The Bee Maidens of the Homeric Hymn to Hermes,” HSCP 83 (1979) 1–28. 86.  See Walter Burkert, The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age (trans. Margaret E. Pinder and Walter Burkert; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992) 195 n. 1; Lange, “Greek Seers and Israelite-Jewish Prophets,” 571. Scheinberg states: “The words are flung as an insult, but they reflect the belief that practitioners of the mantic art are possessed by a god and hence ekphrones [‘out of their mind’]” (“The Bee Maidens of the Homeric Hymn to Hermes,” 16). Burkert also mentions the diviner mentioned by Herodotus (8.135) called Mys, who gave an oracle in a foreign language in the Temple of Apollo at Ptoum (Orientalizing Revolution, 79). I fail to see the ecstatic aspect in the behavior of this diviner: the words of Mys are not presented as frantic speech but as being spoken in the Carian language and written down by Mys immediately after the performance.

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μαινομένω στόματι) who “utters mirthless things” mentioned by Heraclitus;87 Plato’s seer, Euthyphro, who complains: “when I speak in the assembly about divine things, and foretell the future to them, they laugh at me and think me a madman [μαινόμενος]”;88 and Cassandra in Aeschylus’s Agamemnon,89 who claims to be appointed by Apollo to her office, uttering an oracle of woe, and is seen by others as frenzied (φρενομανής) and god-possessed (θεοφόρητος).90 It is difficult, if not impossible, to judge exactly what kind of “mad” behavior the readers of each of the above-mentioned texts were supposed to imagine. Without an oracular content, the words of Theoclymenus or Euthyphro could be interpreted as quite ordinary speech that for some reason sounded ridiculous to their opponents; at any rate, as far as their words are quoted, they are presented in an intelligible language. But as the example of the poets in Plato’s Ion shows, incomprehensibility can hardly be said to be the main characteristic of a divinely inspired speech in Greek literature. Not only the poets sing by power divine; even a diviner can utter a prophecy in hexameter verse, as does Amphilytus the chresmologue (that is, a collector of oracles) before the battle of Pallese in 546 b.c.e. to Pisistratus, allegedly under divine inspiration (ἐνθεάζων).91 The Greek vocabulary certainly suggests a specific state of consciousness of the divinely inspired speakers, but it does not necessarily refer to uncontrolled behavior, even though this sometimes may indeed be the case. What matters is that the people thus characterized are given a role that sets them apart from other people, and the words they speak are given a meaning that implies divine-human communication. Whether prophets in the Near Eastern sense or practitioners of inductive divination, “both the inspired prophet and the learned diviner fulfill the same role in society as intermediaries in the process of communication between the human and divine spheres.”92 The essential prerequisite of this role was that the prophet and the diviner could convince the audience of his or her legitimacy, which was always open to contradictory assessments, as the examples of Theoclymenus and Euthyphro demonstrate. All this should be kept in mind when we turn to the Pythia of Delphi, whose legitimacy was beyond question in the Greek world for centuries, and this 87.  Heraclitus 92 (75), quoted by Plutarch, Mor. 5.397; see M. Marcovich, Heraclitus: Greek Text with a Short Commentary (Merida, Venezuela: Los Andes University Press, 1967) 403–6. 88.  Plato, Euthyphr. 3c; translation by Jowett, The Dialogues of Plato, 1:310. 89.  Aeschylus, Ag. 1072–1340; see Herman L. Jansen, “Die Kassandragestalt in Aischylos’ Agamemnon,” Temenos 5 (1969) 107–19. 90.  Aeschylus, Ag. 1140. 91.  Herodotus 1.62.4–1.63.1; see Lange, “Greek Seers and Israelite-Jewish Prophets,” 471–72; Flower, The Seer in Ancient Greece, 79. 92.  Ibid., 86; see Johnston, Ancient Greek Divination, 72.

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is reflected by the host of sources dealing with the oracle of Apollo at Delphi. While not the only available example of Greek prophetic performance, the Pythia constitutes the most thoroughly analyzed case in modern scholarship.93 However, as one can expect, the reliability (so-called) of each source is a much-debated issue and, as abundant as the references are, substantial gaps remain in our knowledge of what actually happened at Delphi. These gaps cover, among other things, the alleged divine possession of the Pythia. Another debated issue is the authenticity of the Pythia’s oracles in verse and the nature of her speech. Here, if anywhere, we must deal with constructions, ancient and modern, between the extremes of the “raving” Pythia entirely possessed by the god and the “cool, collected Pythia, mildly inspired by a distant Apollo.”94 The traditional construction of the Pythia’s performance, represented by older scholarship, mostly presents the image of a virgin who, robed in white, enters a darkened room at the back of a temple. She sits on a tripod, which is positioned over a chasm in the earth. From the chasm pour forth intoxicating vapors, and as they fill her body, she becomes possessed by Apollo. She speaks for the god in an incoherent voice, and her gibbering message is translated by priests into poetic verse that enquirers will be able to understand.95

Among ancient writers, the construction of the raving Pythia uttering unintelligible sounds can only be found in Lucan (39–65 c.e.), who depicts her raging madly about the cave:96 first the wild frenzy overflowed through her foaming lips; she groaned and uttered loud inarticulate cries with panting breath; next, a dismal wailing filled the 93.  For more recent treatments of the oracle of Apollo at Delphi, in addition to those mentioned above in n. 69, see Bernard C. Dietrich, “Oracles and Divine Inspiration,” Kernos 3 (1990) 157–74; Lisa Maurizio, “Delphic Oracles as Oral Performances: Authenticity and Historical Evidence,” Classical Antiquity 16 (1997) 308–34; idem, “Anthropology and Spirit Possession”; Hugh Bowden, Classical Athens and the Delphic Oracle: Divination and Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Herbert B. Huffmon, “The Oracular Process: Delphi and the Near East,” VT 57 (2007) 449–60; Eidinow, Oracles, Curses, and Risk, 32–45; Yaakov S. Kupitz and Katell Berthelot, “Deborah and the Delphic Pythia: A New Interpretation of Judges 4:4–5,” in Images and Prophecy in the Ancient Eastern Mediterranean (ed. M. Nissinen and C. E. Carter; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009) 90–119; Adam, “‘And He Behaved like a Prophet,” 35–41. See the catalog of the Delphic responses in Fontenrose, Delphic Oracle, 240–429, and the list of Delphic consultations in Attic tragedy in Bowden, Classical Athens and the Delphic Oracle, 160–69. 94. Todd Compton, “The Herodotean Mantic Session at Delphi,” RhM 137 (1994) 217– 23, esp. p. 217.   95.  Characterization of the traditional view by Johnston, Ancient Greek Divination, 33; for the “gabble” of the Pythia, see Parke and Wormell, Delphic Oracle, 22, 39; H. LloydJones, “The Delphic Oracle,” Greece and Rome 23 (1976) 60–73.  96. Lucan, BC 5.161–74.

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vast cave; and at last, when she was mastered, came the sound of articulate speech.97

This once popular image of the Pyhtia has been largely abandoned by more recent scholars because it differs from the images of other ancient authors. Plutarch (ca. 46–120 c.e.), who himself was a priest of Delphi and probably witnessed the Delphic oracle working in his time, does not portray Pythia’s behavior in such a way. To be sure, Plutarch does relate a case of a Pythia who went into the oracular chamber unwillingly, failed to perform in an appropriate way, and finally became hysterical.98 In this case, evidently, the prophetic performance was a failure and did not meet the usual expectations; otherwise, Plutarch’s presentation of the Pythia is void of references to her frenzy or incoherent speech. While Plutarch (to whom we owe much of our image, if not knowledge, of the Delphic oracle) lived in the period of Delphic decline, his testimony can be said to be valid for his own time but anachronistic with regard to the mantic session at Delphi in older periods.99 However, Herodotus, who lived half a millennium earlier (ca. 484–425 b.c.e.), when the oracle of Delphi was at its height, makes dozens of references to the Delphic oracle throughout his work, constructing the image of the Pythia in a way that is not essentially different from that of Plutarch, at least when it comes to her comportment. Herodotus’s Pythia is not raving, speaks completely intelligible words usually in hexameter, and communicates directly with the consultants.100 Herodotus’s contemporary, Euripides (480–406 b.c.e.), depicts the Pythia who “sits on the sacred tripod and sings out to the Hellenes whatever Apollo cries to her,”101 without any clear references to her wild behavior or unintelligible speech; the “singing out” does not need to be understood as such.102 The same can be said of the oldest known presentation of the Pythia in Greek literature, by (ca. 525–456 b.c.e.), who in the opening scene of his Eumenides portrays her as entering the Temple of Apollo, taking her seat as a seer (μάντις), and doing what had to be done: “For as the god doth lead, so do I prophesy.”103 While the image of the “raving” Pythia, hence, finds little support in ancient constructions of the Delphic oracle, it is clear that the ancient authors without   97.  Ibid., 5.190–93; translation by J. D. Duff, Lucan (LCL; London: Heinemann, 1928) 253.  98. Plutarch, Mor. 438b.  99. For example, The Oracles at Delphi No Longer Given in Verse (Mor. 394d–409d). 100. See the evidence collected by Compton, “The Herodotean Mantic Session at Delphi.” 101.  Euripides, Ion 91–93. 102. See Fontenrose, Delphic Oracle, 206. 103.  Aeschylus, Eum. 29–33; translation by Herbert Weir Smyth, Aeschylus (LCL; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1952) 2:275.

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exception, beginning with Aeschylus, saw her as speaking on behalf of Apollo and under his inspiration. Herodotus clearly sees her as impersonating Apollo when he refers to the Pythia straightforwardly as “the god,”104 and Plato, as we have seen, attributes the Pythia’s μανία to divine inspiration. Lucan’s raving Pythia is entirely possessed by Apollo: “he forced his way into her body, driving out her former thoughts and bidding the human nature to come forth and leave her heart at his disposal.”105 Plutarch, in the mouth of his brother Lamprias, claims the opposite in The Obsolescence of Oracles: “Certainly it is foolish and childish in the extreme to imagine that the god himself after the manner of ventriloquists . . . enters into bodies of his prophets [προφητῶν] and prompts their utterances, employing their mouths and voices as instruments.”106 Nevertheless, even Plutarch attributes the Pythia’s inspiration to a divine source, explained in various ways in his dialogues. One explanation is that Apollo does not actually enter her body but gives an impulse to her soul which, combined with the impulse coming from Pythia’s own soul, results in prophetic speech.107 Alternatively, impulse was given by a δαίμων, a disembodied intermediary conveying the divine inspiration.108 Yet another theory is that “the earth sends forth for men streams of many other potencies,” one of them being the “prophetic current and thread” which is most divine and holy (μαντικὸν ῥεῦμα καὶ πνεῦμα θειότατον ἐστὶ καὶ ὁσιώτατον).109 The πνεῦμα from the earth is identified by many ancient writers as the source of the Pythia’s inspiration110 and not only hers but also of the prophetess of Apollo at Didyma who, according to Iamblichus, was inspired by the spirit rising from the holy spring.111 The πνεῦμα inspiring the Pythia is often associated with the vapors coming out of a chasm in the ground, above which the Pythia’s tripod was located. While the existence of the chasm and its vapors used to be routinely dismissed by scholars as a legend,112 recent geological investigations have suggested that the Temple of Apollo actually stood above an intersection 104.  Herodotus 6.86, 8.36. 105.  Lucan, BC 5.168–69; translation by Duff, Lucan, 251. John Chrysostom would identify the being entering the Pythia’s body as an evil spirit (πνεῦμα πονηρόν; In Ep. ad I Cor. Hom. 29.1). 106.  Plutarch, Mor. 5.414e; translation by Frank Cole Rabbitt, Plutarch’s Moralia, vol. 5 (LCL; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1936) 377. For Plutarch’s theory of inspiration, see Yvonne Vernière, “La théorie de l’inspiration prophétique dans les Dialogues pythiques de Plutarque,” Kernos 3 (1990) 359–66. 107.  Plutarch, Mor. 5.404e–f. 108.  See ibid., 5.414f–415c. 109.  Ibid., 5.432d; see Johnston, Ancient Greek Divination, 45–47. 110.  See the discussion on the powers of the earth in Plutarch, Mor. 5.433a–434f. Also Strabo 9.3.5 (πνεῦμα ἐνθουσιαστικόν); Diodorus Siculus 16.26; Iamblichus, Myst. 3.11. 111.  Iamblichus, ibid. 112.  For example, Fontenrose, Delphic Oracle, 197–203.

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of two fault lines, along which three different gases indeed came up, among them ethylene, which may cause an altered state of consciousness.113 While it may be doubted that the chasm kept producing its vapors for centuries, always at an appropriate time, it is possible that its existence is one of the reasons for the emergence of the Delphic oracle, and the very tradition of the existence of these earth-exhalations, perhaps together with their eventual appearance, may have triggered the μανία necessary for prophesying.114 A comparable trigger is provided by the sounds caused by the bronze cauldrons, doves, and trees that allegedly inspired the priestesses of Dodona115 and may find an iconographical expression in the above-mentioned Minoan images. Furthermore, the mantic session at Didyma may have been accompanied by music.116 It would be all too rational to explain the prophetic performance at Delphi, or anywhere, simply as a hallucinatory session of drug-addicted or otherwise stunned persons, whose twaddle was then given an interpretation by others.117 However, this is how scholars have often imagined “ecstasy” or “possession,” that is, as a state of mind that deprived the prophet of her or his intellectual 113.  J. Zeilinga de Boer, J. R. Hale, and J. Chanton, “New Evidence for the Geological Origins of the Ancient Delphic Oracle,” Geology 29 (2001) 707–10. For discussion, see Bowden, Classical Athens and the Delphic Oracle, 18–20; Johnston, Ancient Greek Divination, 47–50; Flower, The Seer in Ancient Greece, 226 with n. 49. The claim that the Pythia entered a mantic state because of ethylene intoxication is refuted by J. Foster and D. Lehoux, “The Delphic Oracle and the Ethylene-Intoxication Hypothesis,” Clinical Toxicology 45 (2007) 85–89; see Daryn Lehoux, “Drugs and the Delphic Oracle,” Classical World 101 (2007) 41–55. I thank Michael Flower for the last two references. 114.  Johnston, Ancient Greek Divination, 49: “Iamblichus [Myst. 3.11] may not have been far off the mark when he suggested that the pneuma coming out of the chasm prepared the Pythia to receive divine prophecy rather than caused the prophecy itself.” See the similar statement by Iamblichus on the prophetess at Didyma’s being inspired by the spirit of the spring; Joseph Fontenrose, Didyma: Apollo’s Oracle, Cult, and Companions (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988) 82: “It was perhaps an imaginary vapor of divine power that she breathed in.” 115. See Johnston, Ancient Greek Divination, 71–72. Note the cautionary judgment of Eidinow concerning the method of consultation at Dodona: “Talking doves and rustling oaks, erratic springs and men with dirty feet, women who may or not twitter like birds, echoing vessels and crowing demons, and finally tokens picked from a jar, possibly guided by dreams: in the end . . . all that we know for certain is that consultants wrote their questions down on lead tablets, which they then rolled up” (Oracles, Curses, and Risk, 71). The lead tablets of Dodona have been published in Éric Lhôte, Les lamelles oraculaires de Dodone (École pratique des hautes études, Sciences historiques et philologiques 3: Hautes études du monde Gréco-Romain 36; Geneva: Droz, 2006). 116. So Fontenrose, Didyma, 79–80, 111. 117.  For example, Parke and Wormell (Delphic Oracle, 36–40) explain the Pythia’s behavior as a self-induced hypnosis which produces only confused and disjointed words to be interpreted by the priests.

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capacity, disallowing intelligible and coherent speech. This understanding of divine possession has also affected the scholars’ constructions of the Pythia. If the wild, uncontrolled, and raving image of her is to be rejected, what is the alternative? Joseph Fontenrose agrees that she was believed to be inspired by Apollo; however, he vehemently denies any traces of what he considers symptoms of possessive behavior: “The Pythia experiences enthusiasm, but not an uncontrolled and irrational frenzy.”118 This construction of the “cool, collected Pythia, mildly inspired by a distant Apollo” presupposes that a god-possessed person is incapable of any intellectual achievement, such as coherent speech. Michael Flower, again, presents the Pythia as the prime example of someone experiencing spirit possession as the mouthpiece of a deity and indeed entering into an altered state of consciousness—and spontaneously composing hexameter verse.119 So was the Pythia raving or cool? Probably the most honest answer is that we do not really know. A detailed historical vision of the Pythia and other inspired mouthpieces of gods in Greece remains elusive, and we are left with constructions and reconstructions dependent on the ideological, conceptual, and literary contexts in which they were created. There is no room here to discuss the debated issue of the possibility of knowing whether the received wording of the Delphic and other Greek oracles actually can be taken as their ipsissima verba;120 at this point, suffice it to say that the texts available to us are the result of a substantial process of communication,121 the reversal of which is, to put it mildly, a highly demanding task. One thing is beyond doubt, however: regardless of the writer, the Pythia and her colleagues were believed to be inspired by Apollo or Zeus and to transmit divine knowledge to their consultants. What they said mattered more than how this knowledge was achieved and what kind of characteristic behavior accompanied the oracular event; that they were divinely inspired was crucial, not how the inspiration manifested itself.122 To all appearances, (1) these women had an acknowledged role as transmitters of divine knowledge, especially because (2) “place mattered ”:123 the divine word received in an established oracle site 118.  Fontenrose, Delphic Oracle, 211; see Dietrich, “Oracles and Divine Inspiration,” 160; and the similar judgment on the prophetess of Apollo in Didyma in Fontenrose, Di dyma, 84. 119.  Flower, The Seer in Ancient Greece, 88–91, 226; see Maurizio, “Anthropology and Spirit Possession,” 83–86. 120.  See, for example, Maurizio, “Delphic Oracles as Oral Performances.” 121. See Johnston, Ancient Greek Divination, 50–51. 122. See Flower, The Seer in Ancient Greece, 89: “The means by which the various types of possession occurred was less important to most Greeks than the fact that they did occur.” 123.  Johnston, Ancient Greek Divination, 72 (emphasis original). See Rosenberger, Griechische Orakel, 58: “Was zählte, war ein Spruch aus Delphi.”

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such as Delphi, Didyma, or Dodona was appreciated by virtue of the authority of the temple; and (3) the behavior of the inspired speakers was patterned in the way that it came up with the audience’s expectations. In whatever way the inspired speaker’s μανία became noticeable, its existence seems to have been believed by all those who contributed to the construction of her image. It was a god-given skill (τέχνη) to be the mouthpiece of the divine, and persons with such a skill were not expected to behave like anyone else, certainly not while transmitting divine knowledge.

Conclusion: Ecstasy in Context An overview of the ancient eastern Mediterranean evidence has shown that, no matter whether the sources come from Greece or the ancient Near East,124 prophesying is in one way or another associated with a patterned public behavior, very often marked by an element of an altered state of consciousness. This is not only suggested by the “lunacy” language (Akk. maḫû; Greek μανία) but also by the context of the references to the prophets’ performances. The idea of divine possession—that is, that the prophet is possessed, or at least thoroughly inspired, by a divine agent—is seldom mentioned explicitly but is presupposed by the very idea of the prophets as mouthpieces of the divine.125 A prominent feature shared by the ancient Near Eastern and Greek texts is the temple context of the vast majority of the cases discussed above; it indeed seems to have mattered where the oracles were spoken. Even though the paramount position of the temple at Delphi (and, at times, at Dodona and Didyma) has no counterpart in the Near East, the temples of Annunitum at Mari and Dagan in Terqa, as well as the Temple of Ištar in Arbela nevertheless stand out as principal centers of prophecy. The phenomenology of the prophetic performance as such is never a topic in its own right in ancient sources and has, therefore, to be reconstructed from fragmentary information provided by sources that mostly take its appearance for granted. The questions remain regarding to what extent the comparative evidence allows us to know “what really happened” in Near Eastern prophetic performances, whether they all imply a similar kind of prophetic behavior, and 124.  For a similar assessment of biblical texts, not discussed in this article, see Nissinen, “Biblical Prophecy from a Near Eastern Perspective.” See also Grabbe, Priests, Prophets, Diviners, Sages, 112: “From the point of view of modes of revelation, Israelite prophecy shows the same range and variety known all over the world, nor is there any distinction between ‘true’ and ‘false’ or between ‘classical’ and other prophets.” 125. The colophons of two Neo-Assyrian oracle collections regularly indicate the prophet by the ‘mouth’ of whom (ša pî) the divine word had been prononunced (SAA 9 1 i 28; ii 9, 13, 40; iii 5; v 10, 24; vi 31; SAA 9 2 i 14 [broken], 35 [broken]; ii 28; iii 18); this implies the idea of the prophet as the mouthpiece of the divine.

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how much relevant information actually can be drawn from the picture drawn from the great variety of textual and anthropological material. It is also difficult to know how significant some common features in the above-discussed texts, such as the function of triggers like music and liquids in the oracular process, actually were, since they are reported to us only in scattered individual cases. What matters most is that, in ancient Near Eastern and Greek sources, it seems equally important that the prophetic figures assumed a specific role in which they were acknowledged by their audience as capable of acting as mouthpieces of the divine. Following Morton Klass, we could conceptualize this as a patterned identity marked by the altered state of consciousness acknowledged by the prophet as well as by the audience.126 There is no lack of anthropological parallels for this sort of identity and role-taking; as several footnotes of this essay have already shown, shamanistic activities in particular may provide useful analogies of the way that the ecstatic prophetic performance may have worked.127 The most significant thing the prophets and shamans have in common is the role of intermediary between the heavenly and earthly realms.128 Further commonalities with the shamanic practice include the altered state of consciousness and its occasional triggers, such as liquids or drugs, and music or sounds, as well as the ambiguous gender role of some prophets and shamans.129 Not all typically shamanistic roles are shared by the Near Eastern prophets, however. What is lacking in the documentation of ancient Near Eastern prophecy is, as Herbert Huffmon notes, “any indication of the traditional shamanistic characteristics of the mastery of spirits, spirit journeys, and the focus on healing, as well as the matters of heredity of role and 126.  Note, however, that Klass (Mind over Mind, 109–25) would speak of dissociation rather than an altered state of consciousness. 127.  For the role-taking of the shamans, see Lauri Honko, “Role-Taking of the Shaman,” Temenos 4 (1969) 26–55; Lewis, Ecstatic Religion, 59–89; Anna-Leena Siikala, The Rite Technique of the Siberian Shaman (FF Communications 220; Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiede­ akatemia, 1978); idem, “The Siberian Shaman’s Technique of Ecstasy.” Ilkka Pyysiäinen, Supernatural Agents: Why We Believe in Souls, Gods, and Buddhas (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009) 75–82. For the applicability of shamanic examples in the study of ancient Near Eastern prophecy, see Grabbe, “Ancient Near Eastern Prophecy from an Anthropological Perspective,” 16–18; Huffmon, “The assinnum as Prophet”; for the Pythia of Delphi in comparison with shamans, see Flower, The Seer in Ancient Greece, 231. 128.  According to Åke Hultkrantz, the “central idea of shamanism is to establish means of contact with the supernatural world by the ecstatic experience of a professional and inspired intermediary, the shaman” (“Ecological and Phenomenological Aspects of Shamanism,” in Shamanism in Siberia [ed. Vilmos Diószegi and Mihály Hoppál; Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1978] 27–58, esp. pp. 30–31). See Pyysiäinen, Supernatural Agents, 81: “Knowing the spirits and their mind is equivalent to having all strategic knowledge; the shaman thus knows the mental organization of the community and can therefore keep it in balance.” 129.  On the androgyny of the shamans, see Margaret Stutley, Shamanism: A Concise Introduction (London: Routledge, 2003) 10–15.

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the initiation process.”130 To be sure, as we have seen, one type of μανία is beneficial in curing sicknesses according to Plato, and male and female prophets do feature once in the above-mentioned healing ritual together with “frenzied” men and women; but in comparison with the wide-ranging social functions of shamanism, the functions of prophetic activity appear as rather more restricted and focused on the transmission of divine knowledge. Regarding the problem of the coherence of speech of a person in an altered state of consciousness, debated especially with regard to the Pythia, the ancient Near Eastern texts do not even once give the impression that the prophets’ messages were not fully articulate and immediately understandable. When the prophets of Mari “went into trance [immaḫḫu] and said” something, there is nothing to suggest that what they said needed any interpreting by the informer or some other third party. This is not to say that the texts repeat verbatim what the prophets actually said; it only indicates that it was a common expectation that the prophets, however ecstatic, spoke in an intelligible way. Indeed, there is enough historical and anthropological evidence to show that the altered state of consciousness, in whatever manifestation, does not necessarily result in inarticulate speech.131 At first sight, the Greek literature seems to portray the prophetic performance very differently from the ancient Near Eastern texts; however, a closer look reveals that the basic elements of its representation are much alike on both sides. The most significant dissimilarity between the Greek and Near Eastern sources may be the very nature of the source material resulting in a difference of the type of presentation. Letters to the king are written for purposes quite different from the purposes of ritual texts and lexical lists; Herodotus’s historiography serves other ends than a Late Babylonian astronomical diary. Greek texts, Plato and Plutarch in particular, also discuss the prophetic performance within a philosophical framework not to be found in any Near Eastern source. To whatever extent the difference of presentation reflects actual phenomenological differences, it affects our image of ancient prophetic performance, which in any case remains incomplete. 130.  Huffmon, “The assinnum as Prophet,” 246. The difference pointed out by Stutley that the shaman does not bring about any social reform but is “a completely integrated part of the culture, whereas the prophet is a reformer-innovator” can hardly be corroborated by the evidence discussed in this article (Shamanism, 6). 131.  Flower (The Seer in Ancient Greece, 227–28) mentions Kuden, the Chief State Oracle of Tibet, who, while in an altered state of consciousness, provides highly articulated utterances. Another example is provided by the Finnish sleeping preachers, Karoliina Utriainen (1843–1929) and Helena Konttinen (1871–1916) who, while in an altered state of consciousness, gave lengthy sermons; see Antti Filemon Puukko, “Ekstatische Propheten mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der finnisch-ugrischen Parallelen,” ZAW 53 (1935) 23–35; Lindblom, Prophecy in Ancient Israel, 13–18; Kirsi Stjerna, “Finnish Sleep-Preachers: An Example of Women’s Spiritual Power,” Nova religio 5 (2001) 102–20.

The Deuteronomic History and the Book of Chronicles: Scribal Works in an Oral World Raymond F. Person Jr. The work of Martin Noth continues to have a significant influence on discussions of Deuteronomy through Kings, Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah, and their intertextual relationship.1 His influence can be seen in the generally accepted conclusion that the Deuteronomistic History is exilic and the work of the Chronicler is postexilic, as well as in the consensus model of historical linguistics that associates Standard Biblical Hebrew with the Deuteronomistic History and Late Biblical Hebrew with Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah.2 In earlier works, I have challenged these generally accepted understandings. In The Deuteronomic School: History, Social Setting and Literature, I argued that the Deuteronomic School probably returned to Jerusalem with Zerubbabel to provide scribal support for the rebuilding of the temple and its cult and that passages in the Deuteronomic History can be read in this Persian setting.3 In a later essay, I explored the implications of a later date for the redaction of the Deuteronomic History on its relationship with the book of Chronicles, arguing 1.  Martin Noth, Überlieferungsgeschichtliche Studien I: Die sammelnden und bearbeitenden Geschichtswerke im Alten Testament (Schriften der Königsberger Gelehrten Gesellschaft: Geisteswissenschaftliche Klasse 18; Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1943). See the excellent discussions of Noth’s influence in Steven L. McKenzie and M. Patrick Graham, eds., The History of Israel’s Traditions: The Heritage of Martin Noth (JSOTSup 182; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994) and in the introductions to the English translations of Überlieferungsgeschichtliche Studien: Martin Noth, The Deuteronomistic History (trans. Jane Doull et al.; JSOTSup 15; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1981) vii–x; idem, The Chronicler’s History (trans. H. G. M. Williamson; JSOTSup 50; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001) 11–26. 2.  For a brief discussion of the history of the development of this linguistic model and additional bibliographical information, see Ian Young, “Introduction: The Origin of the Problem,” in Biblical Hebrew: Studies in Chronology and Typology (ed. Ian Young; JSOTSup 369; London: T. & T. Clark, 2003) 1–6. 3.  Raymond F. Person Jr., The Deuteronomic School: History, Social Setting, and Literature (Studies in Biblical Literature 2; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2002). For one example of someone who has accepted much of my argument, see Thomas Römer, The So-Called Deuteronomistic History: A Sociological, Historical and Literary Introduction (London: T. & T. Clark, 2005), especially “Chapter 6: Editing the Deuteronomistic History during the Persian Period.”

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that the Deuteronomic History and the book of Chronicles were contemporary competing historiographies.4 Both descended from a common source that was produced by the Deuteronomic School in the Babylonian Exile. Their differences can be accounted for by a split in this scribal guild into two groups that continued their work on this common source—that is, the scribes who returned to Yehud under Zerubbabel (the Deuteronomic School) and those who remained in Babylon (the school that produced Chronicles and later Ezra and Nehemiah). These two scribal groups continued to revise the common source leading to these two competing contemporary historiographies that used different dialects of Hebrew—that is, the Deuteronomic History used the “western dialect” (that is, what has been called Standard Biblical Hebrew), and Chronicles used the “eastern dialect” (that is, what has been called Late Biblical Hebrew).5 These literary works once again came into contact with each other when Ezra returned to Jerusalem with his group of scribes, displacing the Deuteronomic School as the influential scribal school in Jerusalem. In this essay, I will explore the primarily oral culture in which these two contemporary competing historiographies took shape and how our understanding of the interaction of the oral and the written may help us understand the literature itself. I will begin by summarizing recent work on ancient Israelite scribal culture in an oral world and an anthropological study of the oral tradition of genealogy among the Luo people of Kenya. After this, I will examine some examples from the genealogical material in the Deuteronomic History and the book of Chronicles as a test case. This can clarify the way that these two works may have been created, enabling us to understand how these contemporary historiographies may have been understood as different from one another. I will conclude that, even though the Deuteronomic History and the book of Chronicles should be understood as competing contemporary historiographies, we nevertheless must be cautious so that we do not exaggerate their differences in ways that are so anachronistic that they do not accurately reflect the competing ideologies of these two schools of thought.

Ancient Israelite Scribal Culture in an Oral World During the last 50 years, scholars have paid closer attention to the interaction of the oral and the written throughout human history, often backing up 4.  Raymond F. Person Jr., “The Deuteronomic History and the Books of Chronicles: Contemporary Competing Historiographies,” in Reflection and Refraction: Studies in Biblical Historiography in Honour of A. Graeme Auld (ed. Robert Rezetko, Timothy H. Lim, and W. Brian Aucker; Leiden: Brill, 2007) 315–36. 5.  My linguistic arguments draw significantly from the work of Robert Rezetko and Ian Young. See especially Robert Rezetko, “Dating Biblical Hebrew: Evidence from Samuel– Kings and Chronicles,” in ibid., 215–50; and Ian Young, “Concluding Reflections,” in ibid., 312–17.

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their models of oral production with anthropological field studies of living oral traditions.6 Increasingly, biblical scholars are drawing from this comparative work to understand better the primarily oral culture of ancient Israel and writing’s place within this culture. Susan Niditch has concluded that “Israelite writing is set in an oral context.”7 She discusses four models for the composition of the Hebrew Bible on a continuum from orally dictated performance to written literature from written sources.8 Niditch shows how even in the most literate model—that is, written literature from written sources, which she illustrates with a discussion of Samuel–Kings and Chronicles—we can see the influence of the oral culture in the literature.9 In an earlier study, I concluded the following concerning the transmission process: The ancient Israelite scribes were literate members of a primarily oral society. As members of a primarily oral society, they undertook even their literate activity— that is, the copying of texts—with an oral mindset. When they copied their texts, the ancient Israelite scribes did not slavishly write the texts word by word, but preserved the texts’ meaning for the on-going life of their communities in much the same way that performers of oral epic re-present the stable, yet dynamic, tradition to their communities. In this sense, the ancient Israelite scribes were not mere copyists, but were also performers.10

David Carr, drawing from an impressive survey of comparative evidence in the ancient Near East, has demonstrated that ancient texts were composed and transmitted primarily as mimetic aids. The emphasis of ancient education was not on the texts themselves but on mastering the meaning of those texts. In Carr’s words, “the focus was as much or more on the transmission of texts from mind to mind as on transmission of texts in written form.”11 Therefore, if 6.  The most important work in this area has been that of Milman Parry, Albert Lord, and most recently John Foley. For an excellent discussion of the early work of Parry and Lord and their continuing influence, see John Miles Foley, The Theory of Oral Composition: History and Methodology (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988). Foley has continued to work in the areas in which Albert Lord worked—that is, Serbo-Croatian, Homeric, and Old English traditions (see especially Traditional Oral Epic: The Odyssey, Beowulf, and the Serbo-Croatian Return Song [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990]); Immanent Art: From Structure to Meaning [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991]; and The Singer of Tales in Performance [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995]). He has also encouraged similar studies of a vast variety of other oral traditions and orally derived texts through his founding and continuing editorship of the journal Oral Tradition. 7. Susan Niditch, Oral World and Written Word: Ancient Israelite Literature (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1996) 88. 8.  Ibid., chap. 8. 9.  Ibid., 127–29. 10.  Raymond F. Person Jr., “The Israelite Scribe as Performer,” JBL 117 (1998) 601–9 (esp. p. 602). 11.  David M. Carr, Writing on the Tablet of the Heart: Origins of Scripture and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) 5. For another recent discussion, see also Karel

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what is in the new copy of a text corresponds to what is in the mind, then the copy is an accurate re-presentation of the original, even if the actual words and phrases in the text differ to some degree from its Vorlage. In order to understand how ancient texts functioned in their oral cultures, we must think more like illiterate oral poets. In the following quote from The Singer of Tales, Albert Lord contrasts the idea of fluidity and multiformity in oral traditions with our modern understanding of literary texts. Whereas the singer thinks of his song in terms of a flexible plan of themes, some of which are essential and some of which are not, we think of it as a given text which undergoes change from one singing to another. . . . Our real difficulty arises from the fact that, unlike the oral poet, we are not accustomed to thinking in terms of fluidity. We find it difficult to grasp something that is multiform. It seems to us necessary to construct an ideal text or to seek an original, and we remain dissatisfied with an ever-changing phenomenon.12

As is clear from Lord’s observation, an individual singer does not reproduce an exact replica each time he performs the same song. Furthermore, different communities may have slightly different understandings of what is “essential,” thereby producing more multiformity. When we begin to understand ancient texts in analogous ways, answers to difficult questions often come more easily because we understand that we are asking the wrong questions. For example, when copying a manuscript, why would a scribe substitute one synonymous reading for another one? This question assumes that synonymous readings are not really synonymous. If they are synonymous, then in some sense the scribe has changed nothing.13 It is important to keep this observation in mind when we analyze the differences between the Deuteronomic History and the book of Chronicles. In other words, how “different” are these differences from the perspective of the ancient readers of the texts? Before addressing this question directly, we will look at a study of orally transmitted genealogies among the Luo people of Kenya.

Agreeing to Agree among the Luo of Kenya As he began his fieldwork among the Luo people of Kenya,14 Ben Blount understood that Luo society was based on patrilineal descent; therefore, he invan der Toorn, Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007). 12.  Albert B. Lord, The Singer of Tales (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960) 99–100. 13.  For a fuller discussion of this understanding of synonymous readings, see my “Ancient Israelite Scribe as Performer,” 604–5. 14.  This section is based on Ben G. Blount, “Agreeing to Agree on Genealogy: A Luo Sociology of Knowledge,” in Sociocultural Dimensions of Language Use (ed. Mary Sanches and Ben G. Blount; New York: Academic Press, 1975) 117–35.

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terviewed various individuals in order to create a genealogical chart for his use. He was surprised that few individuals could trace their ancestors back very far and that some individuals were reluctant to reconstruct their ancestral lineage by themselves, preferring that such work be done within the context of a group of elders. Despite these challenges, Blount was able to gather enough information to discern that there were inconsistencies and gaps in the memories of the Luo people. In other words, once someone outside the Luo started to write down the genealogy, for what was probably the first time, the fluidity of their oral genealogical “record” was clearly revealed. This revelation led to a gathering of the elders in order ‘to count their grandfathers’ (kwano kware). Below I will discuss this case further, looking more closely at the oral traditional setting of the Luo genealogies, the way that writing identified the conflict, and the limited nature of the resulting genealogy. Beyond the obvious observation that he had no written record of the Luo genealogy available to him when he began his work, Blount’s observations certainly reveal the oral traditional setting of Luo genealogy. The observation that few individuals, including elders, wanted to speak authoritatively as individuals certainly demonstrates the oral traditional setting in that the tradition must be defined by the community through its appropriate representatives. Inquiries among informants showed unanimous agreement that genealogies should be discussed only by a group of elders . . . [meeting] at the home of one elder who would serve as host and provide food and drink for the visitors.15

The elders were not only identified by the community as authorities on these matters, but the elders themselves had a hierarchy based upon their own patrilineal descent—that is, the expertise of the elders was understood as a combination of genealogical knowledge and social status based upon an agreed kinship relationship. Within this social hierarchy of elders, the genealogies were told, challenged, and reconstructed by agreement. Blount concluded, Combinations of these factors yielded a genealogy that was a product of negotiation, based on Luo history but history as a partially dictated and a partially arbitrated synthesis. In effect, the genealogies as history were created by the elders in competition, cooperation, and occasionally by fiat within a framework of Luo social interaction.16

During the discussion, an elder would sometimes ask for confirmation of what he stated from another elder. Confirmation sometimes came in the form of references to physical objects or geographical features associated with the ancestor under discussion. Many times these references would be connected to a 15.  Ibid., 123. 16.  Ibid., 118.

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folktale, which would then be performed. In this way, the discussion was not “simply” about a genealogical chart of ancestors but was in many ways a summary of the Luo culture and social structure. As oral traditional lore, the genealogical “record” definitely included multiformity. Not only was this multiformity the precipitating factor leading to the meeting in the first place, but disagreements among the elders occurred during the meeting itself. Blount discusses at some length a disagreement that occurred between two elders that had clear implications on one of the disputing elders’ social status, based on whether or not he was from an adopted ancestor who was a war captive or who had assimilated voluntarily. Although the social institution of kwano kware existed before he began his study, Blount’s work as an outsider asking questions and trying to write a definitive account of the Luo genealogy precipitated the conflict that led to the meeting of the elders. Blount’s own reflections betray his presuppositions based on his own literate culture. He expected that the elders would concentrate their discussion on the gaps and inconsistencies that he had identified rather than reconstructing the entire genealogy, and he was surprised by the reticence of the elders to speak authoritatively as individuals. In this way, we can see how Blount’s interaction with the Luo was a clash of cultures. However, the Luo used a traditional social institution to resolve the conflict within their cultural environment. The result of the elders’ meeting was not the type of definitive genealogy that Blount seemed, at first, to seek. The genealogy was stated authoritatively in that particular meeting for that particular time and place, based on the agreement of the specific individuals involved. The final version of [sic] genealogy for any speech event is the product of what the elders agree to agree upon. . . . Whatever the final product of the reconstruction, its acceptability as the accurate genealogy is the end result of a creative process whereby a structure of individual relationships is defined by reference to sets of rules and by individual initiative.17

Obviously, the genealogy may be reconstructed differently at a later time according to the same process but with different individuals involved because of the death of some of the elders and the elevation of others as elders. In this way, the “final” version of the genealogy was only final for that particular speech event and, therefore, multiformity and fluidity remained the norm for the Luo tradition.

The Genealogical Material in the Book of Chronicles as Compared with the Deuteronomic History The preceding discussion is a catalyst for a variety of questions concerning the relationship between the Deuteronomic History and the book of Chron­ 17.  Ibid., 134.

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icles. What was the process of textual composition and transmission that would produce these two different but related texts? What would the ancient Israelites themselves consider as variant readings that change the meaning of these texts rather than simply as inconsequential differences? Although these questions will likely never be answered satisfactorily, I have nevertheless begun a long-term project exploring these questions.18 In this essay, I want to explore the way that these questions might relate to a very limited number of texts containing genealogical references. From our own modern, literate perspective, we rightly ask how these variants came about and what the motivating factors might have been in these changes. The recent monograph by James Sparks, The Chronicler’s Gene­ alogies: Towards an Understanding of 1 Chronicles 1–9,19 addresses some of these issues and does so in a way that is somewhat consistent with the approach I am taking here, due primarily to his use of Robert Wilson’s comparative approach to biblical genealogies.20 I first want to draw our attention to Sparks’s discussion of the different genealogies of Benjamin’s descendents. He produces helpful charts summarizing the descendents of Benjamin as preserved in the following texts: MT Gen 46:21; LXX Gen 46:21, Num 26:38–41, 1 Chr 8:1–7, and 1 Chr 7:6–11.21 After discussing the inconsistencies between these genealogies, Sparks concludes: As Wilson points out, however, the differences that the different genealogies contain are not to be thought of as in conflict, for they each rightly reflect the historical social reality at the given point in time at which they were formulated. Wilson further indicates that it is probable that even if conflicting genealogies arose within the same historical context, that the society in which they were formulated would not view them as in conflict, but would recognize that the differences which they project are reflections of the different social, political or religious contexts which brought the differing genealogies into existence.22

As in the arguments I have given above from Blount’s work with the Luo, Wilson’s conclusions draw from comparative anthropological fieldwork. This comparative work influences Sparks to conclude that what appear to be contradictory genealogies may not have been understood as contradictory to the ancient audience. 18.  Raymond F. Person Jr., The Deuteronomic History and the Books of Chronicles: Scribal Works in an Oral World (SBL Ancient Israel and Its Literature 6; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2010). 19. James T. Sparks, The Chronicler’s Genealogies: Towards an Understanding of 1 Chronicles 1–9 (Academia Biblica 28; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2008). 20.  See especially Robert R. Wilson, Genealogy and History in the Biblical World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977). 21.  Sparks, Chronicler’s Genealogies, 265–68. 22.  Ibid., 263.

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This perspective applies to the differences in the genealogies between the Deuteronomic History and the book of Chronicles, some of which are given here: (1) 1 Chr 2:6 1 Kgs 4:31

The sons of Zerah: Zimri, Ethan, Heman, Calcol, and Dara Ethan the Ezrahite, and Heman, Calcol, and Dara, children of Mahol

(2) 1 Chr 2:13, 15 1 Sam 16:10

Jesse became the father of Eliab his firstborn . . . David the seventh Jesse made seven of his sons pass before Samuel, but Samuel said to Jesse, ‘The Lord has not chosen these.’” [implies that David is the eighth son]

(3) 1 Chr 2:13, 16 2 Sam 17:25

Jesse became the father of Eliab his firstborn . . . and their sisters were Zeruiah and Abigail Abigail daughter of Nahash, sister of Zeruaiah

(4) 1 Chr 3:1 2 Sam 3:2–3

These are the sons of David who were born to him at Hebron . . . the second Daniel, by Abigail the Carmelite Sons were born to David at Hebron . . . his second, Chileab, of Abigail the widow of Nabal of Carmel

(5) 1 Chr 3:6–8 2 Sam 5:15–16

[sons of David] Ibhar, Elishama, Eliphelet, Nogah, Nepheg, Japhia, Elishama, Eliada, and Eliphelet, nine. [Elishama and Eliphelet are repeated] [sons of David] Ibhar, Elishua, Nepheg, Japhia, Elishama, Eliada, and Eliphelet

(6) 1 Chr 3:6–8 2 Sam 5:15–16

[sons of David] Ibhar, Elishama, Eliphelet, Nogah, Nepheg, Japhia, Elishama, Eliada, and Eliphelet, nine. [sons of David] Ibhar, Elishua, Nepheg, Japhia, Elishama, Eliada, and Eliphelet

(7) 1 Chr 9:39 1 Sam 9:1

Ner became the father of Kish Kish son of Abiel

Our standard approach to inconsistencies of this sort is illustrated well in Sara Japhet’s comments on example (1) regarding the difference between Zerah (1 Chr 2:6) and Mahol (1 Kgs 4:31) as the father of Ethan, Heman, Calcol, and Dara. She wrote: It is precisely these historical difficulties which emphasize the Chronicler’s intentions: to establish some kind of genealogy for the Zerahites, and to weave into his genealogical fabric as many as possible of the historical figures appearing in

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his narrative sources but which he does not mention in his own narrative sections.23

Japhet assumes that the differences between 1 Chr 2:6 and 1 Kgs 4:31 were intentional on the part of the Chronicler and as an intentional change this difference must be related to a broader ideological or historiographical purpose. However, from what I have argued above, we should not assume that differences of this sort are intentional or even that they were noticed as being different. That is, we must allow the possibility that many of these apparent inconsistencies were so inconsequential from the perspective of the early tradents that they were not understood as inconsistencies at all. Now let me be clear that I am also not assuming that every difference is necessarily unintentional and therefore inconsequential. In fact, Japhet’s comments on example (1) very well may be accurate. Blount describes a case of disagreement about the genealogy of the Luo people that had significant consequences on the social standing of one of the elders, so there are certainly differences in genealogies within primarily oral cultures that are ideologically motivated. However, I think that we must assess carefully our own assumptions and try to determine on the basis of the literature itself what inconsistencies may be consequential and what inconsistencies may be inconsequential, rather than assuming that all (or even most) differences are intentional and consequential. Furthermore, when comparing the Deuteronomic History and the book of Chronicles, I think that we must not assume that the Chronicler was making changes to the Deuteronomic History as his Vorlage, because, if the two historians were using a common source, the works may have differed, independently, from this common source. Furthermore, this caution does not apply only to differences within the genealogical material but should apply to all of the apparent differences between the Deuteronomic History and the book of Chronicles. Since multiformity is characteristic of oral traditional literature, we must be cautious so that we do not overemphasize the differences between the Deuteronomic History and the book of Chronicles. I suspect that we have too often exaggerated these differences in anachronistic ways, even though I am confident that in many ways the Deuteronomic History and the book of Chronicles were competing historiographies. 23. Sara Japhet, I and II Chronicles: A Commentary (OTL; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1993) 75.

The Deuteronomistic History: Historical Reconsiderations Niels Peter Lemche In Old Testament scholarship we sometimes get the impression that am Anfang war Albrecht Alt! Richard D. Nelson and I belong to the generation of scholars who grew up in the shadow of Alt and his brilliant student Martin Noth. It has been said that everyone of our generation knows exactly what he or she was doing at the moment the news broke of President Kennedy’s death. I know exactly what I was doing when I read about Martin Noth’s sudden death in 1968. The authority of these scholars and their subsequent influence has been unparalleled to this day.1

Die Heimat des Deuteronomiums and the Deuteronomistic History In the second volume of his Kleine Schriften zur Geschichte des Volkes Israel, Alt published “Die Heimat des Deuteronomiums.”2 This essay tries to place the origin of the Deuteronomistic movement in Jerusalem during the Kingdom of Judah’s final days, following the fall of Samaria. The problem that Alt tried to solve had to do with the Deuteronomistic literature’s obvious focus on Jerusalem and Judah, even as it also includes northern traditions that must have originated in the former Kingdom of Israel. Because the high point of Deuteronomistic influence on Judah’s politics could be related to King Josiah’s “found” law book and the so-called “Deuteronomistic Reform” of the temple establishment in Jerusalem, Alt proposed that the Deuteronomistic movement resulted from an emigration of refugees out of Israel and their immigration to Jerusalem after 722 b.c.e. This hypothesis would explain the apparent controversy between the content and ideology of the Deuteronomistic literature. As a contrast to the Deuteronomistic literature’s incorporation of northern traditions that lacked any relation to the Kingdom of Judah and Jerusalem, the Chronistic 1.  Of course many North American scholars would include William Foxwell Albright here, but it is interesting to see how the generation of scholars after Albright turned to the German “fathers,” adopted their theories, and formulated their own scholarship based on this German foundation. 2. Albrecht Alt, Kleine Schriften zur Geschichte des Volkes Israel (3 vols.; Munich: Beck, 1953–59) 2:250–75.

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literature showed the Judean perspective: there is absolutely no interest in the fate of the north, and northern traditions are generally left out of the redaction/ rewriting of the Deuteronomistic narrative. It is impossible to know exactly when Alt wrote his essay published for the first time in Kleine Schriften. The most recent literature quoted is from 1951, but it is remarkable that Martin Noth’s Überlieferungsgeschichtliche Studien from 1943 is not mentioned, even though it was written by Alt’s most famous student and considered one of the masterpieces of Old Testament studies in its time.3 On the other hand, it seems likely that Noth knew Alt’s ideas about the origins of deuteronomism when he worked out his theory. Noth’s hypothesis of a Deuteronomistic History may be the longest living one in contemporary Old Testament scholarship. His study is a brilliant summary of the intellectual framework in these biblical books, and his demonstration of the coherent ideology binding them together is still accepted by most scholars, although some critical voices have been heard lately. Noth was also able—or so he believed—to date this work very precisely, because of the note in 2 Kgs 25:27–30 about the release of Jehoiachin from prison in 562 b.c.e.4 Nevertheless, this note cannot be more than a terminus a quo, and it expressly states that Jehoiachin had his provisions from the kings as long as he lived, if one presupposes that he was not alive when the note was written. Although dissenting opinions were aired (for example, among scholars who decided in favor of a Hexateuch instead of the usual Pentateuch, such as Otto Eissfeldt and Gerhard von Rad), Noth’s theory rarely has been challenged in any serious way. For many years, it remained unchanged. Only after Noth’s death have significant revisions appeared. The first revision of Noth’s thesis, originating among German scholars, can be traced back to an essay by Rudolph Smend in the 1971 Festschrift for Gerhard von Rad.5 Smend’s thesis operates with two editions of the Deuteronomistic History and allows for three, a subject elaborated by his students, among the more important of whom are Walter Dietrich and Timo Veijola.6 Collectively, 3.  Martin Noth, Überlieferungsgeschichtliche Studien I: Die sammelnden und bearbeitenden Geschichtswerke im Alten Testament (Schriften der Königsberger Gelehrten Gesellschaft: Geisteswissenschaftliche Klasse 18; Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1943; 2nd ed.; Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1957; ET Jane Doull et al., The Deuteronomistic History [JSOTSup 15; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1981]). 4.  Noth, Überlieferungsgeschichtliche Studien I, 12. 5.  Rudolf Smend, “Das Gesetz und die Völker: Ein Beitrag zur deuteronomistischen Redaktionsgeschichte,” in Probleme biblischer Theologie: Gerhard von Rad zum 70. Geburtstag (ed. Hans Walter Wolff; Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1971) 494–509. 6.  Walter Dietrich, Prophetie und Geschichte: Eine redaktionsgeschichtliche Untersuchung zum deuteronomistischen Geschichtswerks (FRLANT 108; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1972); Timo Veijola, Die ewige Dynastie: David und die Entstehung seiner

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these scholars are viewed as the “Göttingen School.” They identify three layers within the Deuteronomistic History: DtrG (the basic Deuteronomistic History), DtrP (a prophetic redaction), and DtrN (a law-oriented redaction). The second revision, a North American variety, originates with Frank Moore Cross and has been fully elaborated by Richard D. Nelson.7 These scholars operate with an initial history, very much in the same manner as their German colleagues, and one redaction of this foundational stratum: Dtr1 and Dtr2. Whereas the Germans distinguish between Deuteronomistic layers by thematic emphasis (prophetic and nomistic), the Americans differentiate between two Deuteronomists by their evaluation of King Josiah’s accomplishments: for Dtr1, Josiah has averted disaster, but Dtr2 disagrees. Both directions or schools (American and German) agree on the basic issues: the Deuteronomistic History has as its origin a group of scholars—historians and/or theologians— whose roots can be traced back to the final years before the Babylonian Exile. These schools of revision are also relevant to more-recent critics, in this case represented by Thomas Römer, who has published extensively on the Deuteronomistic History and correctly questions the concept of such a history.8 Römer asks for a compromise; one must allow for the fact that, although its roots go back to the period of the monarchy, the Deuteronomistic History’s present form presupposes both the exile and the postexilic period. As have several scholars recently, Römer reckons with an embryonic but already extensive scribal activity leading to biblical literature in the time of Josiah. He struggles forthrightly with the old question of how so many traditions might have survived without such an activity, a question any contemporary Old Testament scholar will have to answer. At the same time, Römer provides an answer to the problem of how the people exiled from Judah were able to survive in the midst of a Mesopotamian “sea” of foreign peoples and traditions. This basic Dynastie nach der deuteronomistischen Darstellung (Annales Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae, B193; Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1975); and idem, Das Königtum in der Beurteilung der deuteronomistischen Historiographie: Eine redaktionsgeschichtliche Untersuchung (Annales Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae, B198; Helsinki: Suomalainen ���������������� Tiedeakatemia, 1977). 7.  Frank Moore Cross, “The Themes of the Book of Kings and the Structure of the Deuteronomistic History,” in Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic: Essays in the History of the Religion of Israel (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973) 274–89; Richard D. Nelson, The Double Redaction of the Deuteronomistic History (JSOTSup 18; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1981). 8.  Among Thomas Römer’s publications on the Deuteronomistic History, we may mention his “L’école deutéronomiste et la formation de la Bible hébraïque,” in The Future of the Deuteronomistic History (ed. Thomas Römer; BETL 147; Leuven: Peeters, 2000) 179–93; and The So-Called Deuteronomistic History: A Sociological, Historical and Literary Introduction (London: T. & T. Clark, 2005).

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historical tradition was edited in the postexilic—more precisely the Persian— period, until it had played out its role and was substituted by the Torah.9

The Deuteronomistic History après la deluge10 The hypothesis of the Deuteronomistic History as we know it, in all its various forms and revisions, rests on a historical foundation constructed by Albrecht Alt and his students: •  The idea that emigrants from the lost Kingdom of Israel immigrated to Jerusalem, where they authored at least a fragmentary version of what was only in modern times (by Martin Noth) reckoned to be a coherent history of Israel. •  The assumption that there was considerable intellectual and literary activity in the days of Josiah leading to the formation of an embryonic Deuteronomistic History. In this view, 2 Kings is considered a historically valuable source for the history of the late Kingdom of Judah. •  The assumption that the note about Jehoiachin’s release from prison constitutes a date for the final revision of the Deuteronomistic History, although it obviously provides only a terminus a quo. The exile is, however, considered a necessary condition for the formation of this piece of literature. Basically, the biblical view on the exile is still accepted by most scholars active today. Relevant to the discussion are two additional questions. These are too complex for discussion in this essay but can be listed as: •  The relationship between the Pentateuch and the Deuteronomistic History. •  The relevance of a hypothesis of a major historical work covering several books in the context of the ancient Near East in pre-Hellenistic times. The first of these additional questions would also need to include a discussion of the Pentateuch’s date of composition. This discussion will also need to answer questions such as: •  Were the Pentateuch and the Deuteronomistic History originally one major historical work describing, in the form of a universal history, the fate of the world and Israel from very earliest times to the fall of Jerusalem? 9. See Römer’s last section, “The Death of the Deuteronomistic History and the Birth of the Torah,” The So-Called Deuteronomistic History, 178–83. 10.  The inspiration for the title of this section comes from John J. Collins, The Bible after Babel: Historical Criticism in a Postmodern Age (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005). The title of Leo G. Perdue’s Collapse of History: Reconstructing Old Testament Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994) might also work.

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•  Did the book of Deuteronomy originally belong to the Pentateuch or to the Deuteronomistic History? •  Should we, accordingly, speak of a Tetrateuch or a Hexateuch? •  Has there been a Deuteronomistic revision of the first four books of Moses? As for the second question, dealing with the relevance of this hypothesis within the context of the ancient Near East provokes this additional train of thought: •  The concept of literature in a pre-Hellenistic world: is it possible to find a parallel in ancient Near Eastern literature to a composite work such as the Deuteronomistic literature, or should it be compared with Greek or even Hellenistic history writing? Although all of these are interesting and necessary questions, this essay is able to concentrate only on the historical issues concerning the origin of the Deuteronomistic History. For 200 years, it has been a bad habit of Old Testament historical-critical scholarship to indulge in circular argumentation. Recently, when the members of the so-called Copenhagen School of Biblical Studies criticized the lack of stringent methodology in critical studies, the message was not well received. However, all three historical assertions formulated by Alt and his students, summarized above, need to be considered the product of circular reasoning. As a matter of fact, the assumption that immigrants arrived from the north after 722 b.c.e. may not even qualify as a hypothesis based on circular argumentation; it has no basis anywhere, not even in the Bible. It is no more than a desperate attempt to explain an obvious problem, the presence of northern tradition in the literature ascribed to the late Kingdom of Judah (and here we at least have some elements of a circular argument). The idea of literary productivity during the reign of Josiah is definitely based on circular argumentation. We only know about this activity from the Old Testament itself, and having asserted that there was such an activity, we find it easy to place the biblical narrative about Josiah (or at least the basic part of this tradition) in the time of Josiah. We have seen this kind of argument before, especially among the many scholars who, with Gerhard von Rad in the lead, argued in favor of a Solomonic origin for the genre of history writing in ancient Israel.11 The argument went this way: because of the enlightenment of Solomon’s court and the enlightenment of the Yahwist, we should trace the Yahwistic tradition to the time of Solomon. The only source for this enlightenment consisted of the very documents that were dated to Solomon’s time. Today, the hope for a historical foundation for this circular argument has van11. ������������ Gerhard von Rad, “Der Anfang der Geschichtsschreibung im alten Israel,” Gesammelte Studien zum Alten Testament (3rd ed.; Theologische Bücherei 8; Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1965) 148–88.

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ished as the great court of Solomon has disappeared in the light of archaeological excavations, which either deny the very existence of the Davidic state (the United Monarchy of ancient Israel) or reduce it to a local, minor affair, hardly the home of a great intellectual literary tradition.12 Now, the consequences of this reorientation remove any reason for an assertion that northern tradition goes back to northern refugees in Jerusalem during the seventh century b.c.e. It also removes the time of Josiah—another mythical period in biblical tradition—as the home of this literature. Whether founded on circular argumentation or not founded at all, assertions of this sort are superfluous; therefore, they should be dismissed. Circular argumentation is logically false argumentation and should never be included in scholarly discourse.13 Although Alt’s theory of the origins of deuteronomism cannot be falsified and will therefore never be the subject of a falsification process, it is still a false argument and a baseless assertion; there is really no further reason to dwell on it and its implications. The period of Josiah—the new “David”—is hardly more historical than the previous period of David himself and his son Solomon. When scholars argue that we need a Josiah and a literary activity in his days to explain the presence of the biblical tradition as well as the survival of the Jewish identity in exilic and postexilic times, they build on a false and circular argument; the real content of the argument only says that they cannot manage without this false assertion. Some will point out the possible presence of archival notes on which the biblical narrative may be based. This argument cannot be falsified either, and even if this should be the case, it is impossible to say much about the relationship between notes of this sort and the present shape of the tradition about Josiah. The lesson taught by the biblical story of Sennacherib’s attack on Jerusalem in 701 b.c.e. demonstrates how a note, possibly of archival origin, has been expanded and elaborated beyond recognition by biblical historiographers (2 Kings 18–19).14 Similarly, if an archival note about Josiah ever existed and was adapted into the biblical story, it may have mentioned no more than the name of the king, his ascension, and his departure from this world. The remaining story about Josiah may be counted as historical fantasy created by biblical 12. ��������������������������������������������� The discussion has been summarized in Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, David and Solomon: In Search of the Bible’s Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition (New York: Free Press, 2006). Finkelstein and Silberman have chosen the option of a minor political organization around Jerusalem in the tenth century b.c.e., and they opt for the Josianic age as the one that produced biblical traditions. 13.  I return to this subject as one of the main theses in my Old Testament between Theology and History (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2008). 14. ������������ Niels Peter Lemche, “On the Problems of Reconstructing Pre-Hellenistic Israelite (Palestinian) History,” in “Like a Bird in a Cage”: The Invasion of Sennacherib in 701 bce (ed. Lester L. Grabbe; JSOTSup 245; European Seminar in Historical Methodology; Sheffield: T. & T. Clark, 2003) 150–67.

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historiographers. This also includes the story of the restoration of the temple and the reform of the cult in Jerusalem. After all, Josiah was (in the eyes of the historiographers) a good king, and good kings build and repair temples. The tenacity with which biblical scholars retain the Josianic era as a formative period is nothing more than a last straw, an effort to cling to something of “biblical” preexilic Israel as a historical entity. Further, the members of the Copenhagen School, in particular Thomas L. Thompson, have questioned the biblical conceptualization of the exile in Babylon.15 Thompson does not question the historicity of sixth-century deportations from Jerusalem, similar in character to those from Samaria in the eighth century b.c.e. On the contrary, removals and resettlements of people were a standard procedure in those days. The issue at stake is, once again, the biblical narrative versus the historical reality. The problem is not restricted to the exile in the narrow sense of the word but includes its biblical aftermath, such as the activities of Ezra and Nehemiah. Not only is the notion of deportations from Judah in accordance with imperial practice at the beginning of the sixth century b.c.e.; it also accords with archaeological findings, as investigated by David W. Jamieson-Drake and more recently, with additional substance, by Oded Lipschits.16 In his largely ignored study of scribes and schools, Jamieson-Drake identifies a societal breakdown in central and southern Palestine ca. 600 b.c.e. His conclusions have been confirmed in greater detail by Lipschits, who, using the methodology with which Israel Finkelstein revolutionized the study of premonarchic Israel in the late 1980s, demonstrates a remarkable development following the Babylonian conquest.17 Most of the country was left by the Babylonians as a wasteland. The destruction around Jerusalem left little of importance to the population that was spared the ordeal of exile. One part of the country, however, escaped war and destruction: the central hill region north of Jerusalem, especially the home of the later Samaritans. Recent studies in the history of the Samaritans have provided an additional angle on these issues. Ingrid Hjelm’s thesis that the Samaritans never broke with but were thrown out by the Jerusalem Jews, who usurped their traditions, provides the opportunity for a totally revised view on the origins of northern 15.  Thomas L. Thompson, “The Exile in History and Myth: A Response to Hans Bar­ stad,” in Leading Captivity Captive: “The Exile” as History and Ideology (ed. Lester L. Grabbe; JSOTSup 278; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998) 101–18. 16. David W. Jamieson-Drake, Scribes and Schools in Monarchic Judah: A Socio­ Archaeological Approach (Social World of Biblical Antiquity Series 9; Sheffield: Almond, 1991); Oded Lipschits, The Fall and Rise of Jerusalem: Judah under Babylonian Rule (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2005). 17. Israel  Finkelstein’s  groundbreaking  study  was  The  Archaeology  of  the  Israelite    Set­tlement (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1988).

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traditions in biblical literature.18 Depending on the time of the break between Jerusalem and Samaria, we have everything here we can ask for as an explanation for the presence of northern traditions in Judaic literature, otherwise centering on Jerusalem. The competition between Jerusalem and Samaria is most evident in biblical tradition, which was evaluated by Hjelm and, more than 50 years ago, by Eduard Nielsen (although Nielsen dated this controversy to the early history of biblical Israel, as did everyone in those days).19 The survivors of the Kingdom of Israel’s destruction who escaped deportation to other parts of the Assyrian Empire preserved their traditions of the past in their own land. Whatever happened, the competition evidenced in biblical historical literature between Samaria and Jerusalem does not presuppose a preexilic situation; it is easier to explain on the basis of events and ideologies relevant to the so-called postexilic period. Lipschits’s study of the sixth to fourth centuries is even more interesting with respect to the return of the exiled from Babylon. The Old Testament describes the return of more than 40,000 men (Ezra 2:64, Neh 7:66). Although not inflated in the same degree as the number of people escaping Egypt in connection with the exodus, it still represents a population size far exceeding anything that occupied this area in the Iron Age—and they have left no trace in the archaeological records. As a matter of fact, Lipschits’s surveys indicate a reestablishment of society in the Judean part of Palestine no earlier than the late fifth or early fourth century b.c.e.20 The emergence of a Jerusalem-oriented biblical tradition may, as a matter of fact, represent a rather late development.21 In the previously discussed sympathetic study on the Deuteronomistic literature, Thomas Römer opts for a redaction of the Deuteronomistic tradition into a history of ancient Israel during the Persian period.22 Elsewhere, I have argued against the tendency in Old Testament study to date biblical texts to the 18. Ingrid Hjelm, The Samaritans and Early Judaism: A Literary Analysis (JSOTSup 303; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000). 19. Idem, Jerusalem’s Rise to Sovereignty: Zion and Gerizim in Competition (JSOTSup 404; London: T. & T. Clark, 2004); Eduard Nielsen, Shechem: A Traditio-Historical Investigation (2nd ed.; Copenhagen: Gad, 1959). I intend to return to this subject at a later occasion. 20. ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ For a necessary revision of Palestine’s history from the Babylonian conquest to the Persian period, these three volumes are compulsory reading: Oded Lipschits and Joseph Blenkinsopp, eds., Judah and the Judeans in the Neo-Babylonian Period (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2003); Oded Lipschits and Manfred Oeming, eds., Judah and the Judeans in the Persian Period (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2006); and Oded Lipschits, Gary N. Knoppers, and Rainer Albertz, eds., Judah and the Judeans in the Fourth Century b.c.e. (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2007). 21.  In another context, I have proposed a “Taliban”-like movement as the origin of early Judaism: “‘Because They Have Cast Away the Law of the Lord of Hosts’—Or: ‘We and the Rest of the World’; The Authors Who ‘Wrote’ the Old Testament,” SJOT 17 (2003) 268–90. 22.  Römer, The So-Called Deuteronomistic History.

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Persian period, not because nothing happened at that time, but because it constitutes a dark age as far as Palestine is concerned—or, rather, a “black box” that allows for nothing and everything.23 In many ways, the Persian period has been used in recent research the way premonarchic times were favored by earlier scholarship, because no falsification process is possible, since we know next to nothing about the period. The surveys by Lipschits and his colleagues demonstrate that nothing really happened in Palestine during the early and middle Persian periods. The first traces of a revitalization of the Palestinian society (apart from the hill region that was never affected by the events of the early sixth century) belong to the Late Persian period, the fourth century b.c.e. When the Deuteronomistic History has been compared with Greek literature (for example, by Flemming A. J. Nielsen), or Genesis compared with Herodotus (by Jan-Wim Wesselius), it has almost always been with Herodotus of the fifth century or even earlier Greek historiography.24 However, a better case could be made for a comparison with Hellenistic Greek literature (albeit inspired by Herodotus) and, from a formal point of view, even the aftermath of this historiography in Roman literature, notably Titus Livy.25

Conclusion These notes must be considered preliminary, although they point toward a reorientation of Deuteronomistic studies. Deuteronomism is far from being an intellectual movement of the Iron Age. Although the Deuteronomistic History, including the book of Deuteronomy itself, contains several traditions that may be old (at least they give an appearance of antiquity); in its present shape, it is probably a result of the split between Jerusalem and Samaria in the late Persian and/or Hellenistic period. The question of the stages during which this piece of biblical historiography was formed remains an important subject for scholars 23.  “��������������������������������������� The Old Testament—A Hellenistic Book?” SJOT 7 (1993) 163–93. A revised version appears under the same title in Did Moses Speak Attic? Jewish Historiography and Scripture in the Hellenistic Period (ed. Lester L. Grabbe; JSOTSup 317; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001) 287–318. 24.  Flemming A. J. Nielsen, The Tragedy in History: Herodotus and the Deuteronomistic History (JSOTSup 251; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997); Jan-Wim Wesselius, The Origin of the History of Israel: Herodotus’s “Histories” as the Blueprint for the First Books of the Bible (JSOTSup 345; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002). See also the earlier study by John Van Seters, In Search of History: Historiography in the Ancient World and the Origins of Biblical History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983; repr. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1997). 25. ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Regarding the Pentateuch, a comparison of this sort has been presented by Russell E. Gmirkin, Berossus and Genesis, Manetho and Exodus (LHBOTS 433; New York: T. & T. Clark, 2006).

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to discuss; for example, the many layers (three or more) of a text such as Deuteronomy 12 present clear evidence that layers of rewriting can be discerned.26 The importance of the Samaritan schism for the formation of the Old Testament literature has yet to be investigated. The same may be said about comparisons of the Old Testament and Greek literature. Very little on these topics has appeared because researchers have been obsessed with dating everything early, an approach that has been part of Old Testament studies since the beginning of the twentieth century. It should not be forgotten that some scholars of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century still entertained much more cautious ideas about the antiquity of biblical books—not to speak of scholars belonging to the very first phase of historical-critical scholarship, such as Karl David Ilgen and Wilhelm Martin Leberecht De Wette.27 However, the generally conservative climate of twentieth-century Old Testament scholarship effectively blocked the possibility of extensive comparative studies, including comparison with post-Persian culture.28 When the greater part of the Old Testament was dated to the Iron Age, and biblical Israel was considered the foundation of this literary production, there was no need for studies that also referred to Greek culture. One significant consequence of recent historical study, which also includes a fundamental revision of the biblical image of early monotheistic Israel, is its allowance for a renewed openness toward the outside world.29 26. See Römer (The So-Called Deuteronomistic History, 56–65), whose assumptions and dating differ from mine. 27. ��������������������������� On Ilgen, see Bodo Seidel, Karl David Ilgen und die Pentateuchforschung im Umkreis der sogenannten älteren Urkundenhypothese (BZAW 213; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1993). De Wette may be allowed to speak for himself: Beiträge zur Einleitung in das Alte Testament (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1971). 28.  Although it has been likened to the recent minimalism-maximalism controversy and often used similar language, the difference between Albright and Alt (and their respective students) was only a matter of degree. 29.  In my Old Testament between Theology and History, part 3, I formulate the thesis that biblical literature has its origins in Jewish sectarianism but is also “Diaspora-oriented,” pointing toward a date of composition no earlier than the late Persian and the Hellenistic periods: Genesis through 2 Kings narrates the sad history of old Israel. Prophets provide an opportunity to repent and join the people of God. Prophetic literature constitutes the façade for the outside world. Psalms make up the façade for the people of God as a community, opening with a description of the difference between God-fearing Jews and the rest of humanity. At the end of Psalms, only God-fearing individuals remain alive.

The Deuteronomistic History and “Double Redaction” Philip R. Davies My first encounter with Rich Nelson was our publication of his Double Redaction of the Deuteronomistic History in the JSOT Supplements Series.1 Here he refined Cross’s modification of Martin Noth’s thesis of a “Deuteronomistic History.” Noth had argued for a single stage of composition, effected in Judah in the sixth century b.c.e., while Cross proposed an initial edition under Josiah and a second edition during the Babylonian Exile.2 Nelson has recently reasserted his confidence in the “Double Redaction” theory—specifically, its three major contentions: first, that a “theologically and structurally unified DH does indeed exist from the first three chapters of Deuteronomy until very near the end of 2 Kings”; second, “the interests of this work are fundamentally preexilic and its themes unmistakably culminate in the reforms of Josiah”; and third, “elements within 2 Kings 21–25 are different in character from what has gone before and represent an exilic revision and supplementation.”3 Nelson’s more recent essay, however, begins by voicing unease with the methods used to support the Double Redaction hypothesis: Many of us who still practice historical criticism and source analysis have become less and less comfortable with what we are doing. It is increasingly apparent that the critical tools we have inherited from our scholarly forebears are entirely too blunt and crude for the delicate operations we have sought to perform 1.  Richard D. Nelson, The Double Redaction of the Deuteronomistic History (JSOTSup 18; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1981). 2.  Martin Noth, Überlieferungsgeschichtliche Studien I: Die sammelnden und bearbeitenden Geschichtswerke im Alten Testament (Schriften der Königsberger Gelehrten Gesellschaft: Geisteswissenschaftliche Klasse 18; 2nd ed.; Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1957; ET: Jane Doull et al., trans., The Deuteronomistic History (JSOTSup 15; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1981); Frank Moore Cross, “The Themes of the Book of Kings and the Structure of the Deuteronomistic History,” in Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic: Essays in the History of the Religion of Israel (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973) 274–89. 3.  Richard D. Nelson, “The Double Redaction of the Deuteronomistic History: The Case Is Still Compelling,” JSOT 29 (2005) 319–37 (esp. pp. 319–20). Nelson’s article contains an excellent bibliography, to which the reader is referred for several aspects of research on the Deuteronomistic History. The one major addition is Thomas Römer, The So-Called Deuteronomistic History: A Sociological, Historical and Literary Introduction (London: T. & T. Clark, 2005).

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Philip R. Davies with them. Anything approaching certainty or even scholarly consensus appears to be virtually impossible for nearly any assertion one might make about the redactional history of biblical materials.4

This is well expressed and justifiable. The inevitability of uncertainty should of course be recognized, but there are nevertheless ways in which the “critical tools we have inherited from our scholarly forebears” can be improved, or used more effectively. Recent decades have seen developments in both knowledge and technique, as a result of which, more informed analyses can be offered for the structure and history of many biblical compositions. The most important development in the field of history concerns the origins of Israel and Judah, where literary-historical conclusions about the Israelite settlement advanced by Alt and Noth were confirmed as well as modified by the results of the Israeli West Bank Survey, presented in the critical synthesis by Finkelstein.5 Further archaeological work, both surveys and excavations, have also raised strong doubts about the degree to which a Davidic-Solomonic empire could ever have existed. The broader conclusions to be derived from these findings are that the nature of the biblical so-called “historical” or “historiographical” narratives must be fundamentally reassessed.6 There have also been improvements in literary-critical technique. Paradoxically, while the “new literary criticism” that became increasingly fashionable over recent decades contained strong antihistorical features, its focus on larger textual structures, rhetorical devices, and ideological interests has contributed enormously to the armory of the historical critic.7 These reading strategies, including narratology, with explicit focus on character, plot, setting, and point of view, in combination with “new historicism” have expanded the number and sharpened the precision of exegetical procedures available to the historical critic. Study of the Deuteronomistic History (hereafter DH) is affected by all of the challenges and the opportunities just sketched. Its story of the acquisition of the land by an “Israel” was already regarded by Martin Noth as etiology, while Nelson himself has argued in his commentary that the figure of Joshua 4.  Nelson, “The Double Redaction,” 319. 5. Albrecht Alt, “The Settlement of the Israelites in Palestine,” in Essays on Old Testament History and Religion (trans. R. A. Wilson; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966) 133– 69; Martin Noth, Das Buch Josua (2nd ed.; Tübingen: Mohr, 1953); Israel Finkelstein, The Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1988). 6.  For example, see Israel Finkelstein and Amihai Mazar, The Quest for the Historical Israel: Debating Archaeology and the History of Early Israel (ed. Brian B. Schmidt; Society of Biblical Literature Archaeology and Biblical Studies 17; Leiden: Brill / Atlanta: Scholars Press, 2007). 7.  For an excellent set of examples, see Mario Liverani, Myth and Politics in Near Eastern Historiography (London: Equinox, 2004).

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is an ideological reflection of Josiah.8 But if, as the theory of a DH entails, the creators or editors of both this book and the books of Kings were one and the same, then the reigns of the Judean (and Israelite) kings, including Hezekiah and Josiah, might also be theological or ideological constructions. The history of the two kingdoms is part of the same plot as Joshua’s conquest, the succession of “judges” of Israel, and the Davidic-Solomonic empire.9 In no part of the DH, then, can we take a particular era or episode prima facie as a genuine historical datum, and certainly we cannot use it for reconstructing historical contexts. This is especially the case with Josiah, since we have no mention of him outside the biblical text and thus no control (in contrast to, say, Hezekiah) for the biblical description and evaluation of his reign. The Double Redaction theory rests on what Nelson calls an “unbridgeable thematic dissonance” between an optimistic Josianic world and the pessimistic world of the exile.10 The scholarly reconstruction of Josiah upon which Cross and others largely base the Double Redaction theory saw him not only as a major reformer of the cult of Yahweh but as a would-be restorer of national ambition, taking advantage of the demise of Assyrian power and the subsequent power vacuum in Palestine.11 He was often imagined as a second David seeking to restore a once mighty empire. This portrait actually goes beyond the textual data. Moreover, it has been undermined by Naʾaman’s analysis of the power transfer from Assyria to Egypt in the late seventh century, which indicates that any territorial ambitions on the part of Judah over the province of Samerina would have been futile.12 There is no evidence, really, that Josiah’s reign was one of great optimism or of military or political strength. The 8.  Noth, Das Buch Josua; idem, The History of Israel (trans. S. Godman; rev. English ed.; London: SCM, 1983); Richard D. Nelson, Joshua: A Commentary (OTL; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1997) 21–22. 9. If Finkelstein and Silberman are correct in suggesting that the founder of the Kingdom of Israel was Omri, then the historical status of the Israelites’ predecessors is inevitably put into question—though Finkelstein maintains a belief in some kind of historical entities underlying the figures of David and Solomon. See Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts (New York: Free Press, 2001); idem, David and Solomon: In Search of the Bible’s Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition (New York: Free Press, 2006). 10.  Nelson, “The Double Redaction,” 319–20. 11.  Recently, this maximal profile of Josiah has been elaborately developed by Marvin A. Sweeney, King Josiah of Judah: The Lost Messiah of Israel (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). This king’s reign also remains the setting for much of the biblical literature according to Finkelstein and Silberman, for reasons that are far from purely archaeological (Bible Unearthed and David and Solomon). 12. Nadav Naʾaman, “The Kingdom of Judah under Josiah,” TA 18 (1991) 3–71; repr., idem, Ancient Israel and Its Neighbors: Interaction and Counteraction—Collected Essays, Volume 1 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2005) 329–98.

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“Deuteronomistic reform” imputed to him remains widely regarded almost as an assured fact, but it has been questioned: there are alternative dates and settings for Deuteronomy itself, and comparative studies of the topos of “finding lost books” suggest that this key episode might be regarded as legendary.13 The exilic context of the “second redaction” also raises problems. Is a deported community likely to have possessed the literary resources to redact (the original text must have required several scrolls)? Did deported communities react in these ways to what must have been seen (given the usual outcomes) as a permanent situation? Possibly; but more likely, they made what they believed were permanent adaptations to the new situation. Noth, of course, had proposed that the DH was written in Palestine, specifically at Mizpah.14 This is logistically a much more likely setting, since any literary archives needed for composing the DH would have been transferred from Jerusalem to the new capital city. But, contra Noth, Benjaminite Mizpah would hardly have produced a text that so consistently subordinates Benjamin to Judah, denigrates the memory of Saul, and endorses the legitimacy of the Davidic Dynasty that had opposed the Neo-Babylonian regime and been punished for it. Nor would it celebrate Jerusalem as the political and religious center of both Judah and Israel. The content of the “second redaction” is therefore hardly less conjectural than that of the first redaction. These considerations prompt one to wonder whether the “preexilic era” and the “time of exile” are really the only scenarios available for the DH. The restoration of Jerusalem, politically and religiously in the fifth century, with the centralization of the cult there and the rivalry between Jerusalem and the newly-built temple at Gerizim (ca. 400 b.c.e.) provide an equally plausible context for the two major concerns of the DH.15 Although recent developments in scholarship on Israelite and Judean history have provided grounds for looking anew at possible historical contexts, the greater emphasis on narrative and ideological readings of texts also permit different interpretations. Does the crucial fissure in the ideology of the DH occur at 2 Kgs 23:26?16 Or can a more fundamental fissure be recognized through a combination of narrative and ideological analysis? 13.  Philip R. Davies, Scribes and Schools: The Canonization of the Hebrew Scriptures (Library of Ancient Israel; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1998) 93–102; David Henige, “In Good Company: Problematic Sources and Biblical Historicity,” JSOT 30 (2005) 29–47; Katherine M. Stott, Why Did They Write This Way? References to Written Documents in the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Literature (New York: T. & T. Clark, 2008) 77–122. 14.  Noth, Deuteronomistic History, 142 n. 10. 15. Oded Lipschits, The Fall and Rise of Jerusalem: Judah under Babylonian Rule (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2005) 185–271. On Gerizim, see Yitzhak Magen, Mount Gerizim Excavations, vol. 2: A Temple City (Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority, 2008). 16.  Several features are offered in support of this fissure: the notion that the nation’s fate was definitively sealed by Manasseh; a change in the regnal formulas; evidence of a

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There is, I suggest, a huge fissure in the narrative of Joshua–Kings, the epicenter of which lies toward the middle of the corpus but the cracks of which can be seen extending widely on either side. The fissure becomes evident when one concentrates on the composition of the entity called “Israel.”17 The books of Joshua and Judges—or at least the frameworks of these books—describe a 12-tribe nation. It has long been recognized, however, that in Joshua the conquest narratives are largely confined to the territory of Benjamin, while action elsewhere is sketchily presented. In Judges, individual tribal stories and their local heroes have been integrated into a “pan-Israelite” framework with a system of administrative “judges.” But again, we find a certain prominence attached to Benjamin, together with a different kind of emphasis on Judah. The first of the major judges, Othniel, is a Judahite, but he enjoys the merest of narratives and, by general critical consent, he is deemed to have been imported from elsewhere to provide a Judahite judge for the collection and, more significantly, to appear first, ahead of the left-handed Benjaminite Ehud, who is likely to have been the first of the original “saviors.” At the conclusion of the book, in chaps. 19–21, the tribes of Israel led by Judah conduct a war against Benjamin (again, their left-handedness is noted), triggered by an inhospitable act in Gibeah—the capital of the first king of Israel, the Benjaminite Saul. The Judah-Benjamin confrontations of Judges come to a head in 1 Samuel, where Saul meets David. The meeting is mediated by Samuel, who is in effect the last of the judges. His sphere of activity is again confined almost entirely to Benjaminite territory: Gilgal, Mizpah, plus Bethel (1 Sam 7:16).18 It is at this point in 1 Samuel that the cracks open up into a fissure. Judah suddenly and inexplicably emerges as distinct from and outside the “Israel” that is ruled by Saul.19 David later becomes king of Judah before succeeding Saul as king of Israel (2 Sam 2:4). The separation of Judah is not explained redaction of Huldah’s oracle; and the absence in the closing section of themes prominent elsewhere in the DH. The difference between Kings and Chronicles from the reign of Josiah onward also suggests that the Chronicler relied on a first redaction (following Steven L. McKenzie, The Chronicler’s Use of the Deuteronomistic History [HSM 33; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1985] 181–88). 17.  For elaborations of many of the points below, see my Origins of Biblical Israel (London: T. & T. Clark, 2006). 18.  Bethel is usually taken to be in Ephraim, following Joshua 16; but in Josh 18:13, it is assigned to Benjamin; in the books of Ezra–Nehemiah, it is within the boundaries of the province of Judah (and so, presumably, Benjaminite). The homes of both Joshua and Samuel are also in Benjamin, in the “hill country of Ephraim” (Judg 2:9, 1 Sam 1:1). According to Joshua 18, Ramah is in Benjamin; likewise the Benjaminite town of Gibeah is located in the “hill country of Ephraim” (Josh 24:33). 19.  In 1 Sam 11:8, Saul musters “300,000 from Israel and 30,000 from Judah”; in 18:16, “all Israel and Judah loved David”; in 22:5, David is told to go to the “land of Judah,” presumably to remain safe from Saul; in :2, Saul takes “3,000 select men from all Israel” to

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or described, simply taken for granted. And it remains in effect: in 2 Samuel and Kings, Judah and Israel are always described as separate “houses”—with a partial exception for Solomon, chiefly in 1 Kings 8.20 Apart from these few verses relating to Solomon, the books of Kings never present “Israel” as a single nation, never revert to the portrait of Joshua and Judges. The inclusion of both kingdoms in a single story might be taken to suggest otherwise, yet the contradiction between a 12-tribe “Israel” (Genesis–Judges) and a twohouse “Israel” is never properly resolved and generates curiosities such as the arithmetical division of 12 into 10 and one where the parting of Judah and Israel is narrated (1 Kgs 11:31–32). The decision of Benjamin, alone among the northern tribes, apparently to join with Judah is not recorded but implied (1 Kgs 12:21, 23), yet the enmity between the houses of David and Saul and Benjamin’s preeminence among the northern tribes make such a decision almost inconceivable. In fact, Benjamin disappears: it is neither counted as one of the 10, nor is it with Judah. Apart from the mention of “Geba of Benjamin” in 1 Kgs 15:22, the tribe is entirely forgotten. Why does the fissure that creates two “houses” occur invisibly at this point in the DH? It would have been preferable to place it where the kingdom of Rehoboam divided. Was it necessary to create a Judean house prior to this or to make David a king of this separate house? Could David not have been simply an Israelite who succeeded Saul to a single throne of Israel? No: for David was the founder of the Kingdom of Judah. Judah could not have come into existence by the secession of 10 tribes. It must have had its own proper beginning. (In fact, Judah and Israel may historically have been separate from the very beginning and emerged into statehood separately, as the archaeology of the settlement of Israel and Judah suggests.)21 As a result of this fissure, there are two separate histories of Judah implied in the DH: one is as part of Israel from the beginning (Joshua–Judges); the other is as a separate kingdom founded by David (Samuel–Kings). But the separate history of Judah implies a separate history of Israel as well. This history is embedded in Joshua–Judges, which preserve traces of a Benjaminite story from conquest to kingdom, originally without Judah. Hence, on each side of the fissure in 1 Samuel are distinct histories of Israel and Judah, and these continue to the end. They have been merged narratively in the person of their respective heroes: Saul and David. It is not surprising that the story of their encounters is complex or that David and his line are vicsearch for David. Judah is thus subject to a levy by Saul but remains, mysteriously, a separate entity and therefore not part of Saul’s Kingdom of Israel. 20. Also note Solomon’s single coronation, unlike David’s and Rehoboam’s double coronations as kings of Judah and Israel—so the double kingdom is not permanently welded into one. 21.  Finkelstein, Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement, 326.

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torious, since the combination of the two storylines is a Judean achievement, in which Saul’s family and his tribe of Benjamin are each, in different ways, effaced. Saul is superseded by David and Israel by Judah. Benjamin (certainly part of the Kingdom of Judah by the sixth century, as it remained afterward) is forgotten. There is more than a suggestion of animosity in the way the storylines are combined. The coordination of the material about Israel (the Omride and Jehu dynasties and the Elijah-Elisha cycle; the correlation of regnal successions) with a Judean history implies a unity between the two as subjects of the same god, whose commands and covenant apply to both equally—although from the time of Rehoboam onward Israel never fulfills these conditions. Hence Israel and Judah belong to the same religious community. But both McKenzie and Auld have suggested that this material was not part of a first draft, as suggested by their absence from the Chronicler’s narrative.22 McKenzie, who supports the Double Redaction theory, considers at least some of this material to have been absent from the first edition of DH, while Auld, who does not accept the theory of a Deuteronomistic History, regards them as additions in the books of Kings to an original shared narrative with Chronicles. The possibility, however, of a written “history of Judah” underlying Samuel–Kings (of which there are traces only in 1 Samuel) adds another possibility. The integration of the stories of Saul and David—with what must be considerable literary inventiveness—implies recognition of a common history and thus a reason for including details of the Israelite monarchy. Yet Chronicles, which portrays a single Israelite nation, omits all of this material, acknowledging David’s succession to Saul only very briefly. The fissure in 1 Samuel, then, with its associated cracks extending throughout the books of Joshua to Kings seems to point to two different strategies within the DH. In one, Judah and Israel are originally separate, politically unified for a brief period and later separated again; in the other, Judah and Israel are originally parts of a single nation, of which only Judah finally survives. This is a major inconsistency—really, a contradiction. It points not only to a lack of ideological unity in the DH but also to a more complex literary history. The second strategy—the creation of the single nation of Israel—seems to have been occasioned by the need to relate the DH to the Pentateuch, involving the rewriting of Joshua and Judges. This strategy was implemented more economically by the Chronicler, who removed the contradiction (mostly) by denying the existence of Judah and Israel as separate houses/kingdoms. Can these observations provide us with any clues to the historical contexts in which the DH was compiled? The two original histories of Israel and Judah 22.  Steven L. McKenzie, The Trouble with Kings: The Composition of the Book of Kings in the Deuteronomistic History (Leiden: Brill, 1991); A. Graeme Auld, Kings without Privilege: David and Moses in the Story of the Bible’s Kings (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1994).

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may have existed at any time from the formation of the kingdoms, though as a written text the Israelite history is perhaps most likely to have been composed in Mizpah in the sixth century, when it could have marked the new status of the Benjaminite city as capital of Judah and of a Benjaminite-ruling elite. It may have been at this point that David, the remembered founder of the “House of David,” first figured in the narrative, either as a vassal of Saul or as a treacherous opponent.23 From this point, in any case, the history of the two societies could be brought together. It is also plausible that the new regime was friendlier (could it have been less friendly?) to Samaria than the Davidic Dynasty: the Benjaminite Saul was after all presented as the first king of Israel. The notion of Judean supremacy in the present form of the narrative could not, however, be placed before the restoration of Jerusalem to political and religious preeminence, late in the fifth century. The strongly anti-Israel, antiBenjamin, anti-Saul, and anti-Bethel polemics would make very good sense as a reaction to more than a century of Benjaminite hegemony over the province and, perhaps, to any anti-Davidic, anti-Jerusalemite tendencies it may have had. It certainly reflects a policy of centralization in Jerusalem—not just over Judah, but over both kingdoms/provinces. The negotiation over the status of Samaria must date after this period (the late fifth century): the exclusion of Samaria from the nation of “Israel” (2 Kings 17) remained in the narrative; but the adoption of a shared Pentateuch and the more irenic vision of Chronicles (albeit with Jerusalem as the center) point in the other direction, perhaps to a subsequent, separate redaction. The Chronicler also omits the Saul-David and Judah-Benjamin polemics present in the DH: it ignores the feud with David, restores Saul’s line, and locates part of it in Jerusalem; it also retains the identity of Benjamin alongside Judah and ignores any mention of Bethel (a temple city much criticized in the DH, including the account of Josiah’s reign and the associated 1 Kings 13). It also recognizes, as Kings does not, that the post-722 population of Samaria remains part of the nation of Israel. These differences from Kings point to an ideological conflict involving relations between Judah on the one hand and both Israel and Benjamin on the other. The anti-Benjaminite prejudice hardly predates the Neo-Babylonian period, while the tension between the two ideologies was perhaps unresolved until the destruction of Gerizim by Hyrcanus in the second century b.c.e., when the cult of Yahweh thereafter became known as “Judaism,” and the Yahweh group called “Samaritanism” was reduced to the status of a sect whose relation to Judaism was never resolved. 23.  Compare the thesis of Diana V. Edelman, “Did Saulide-Davidic Rivalry Resurface in Early Persian Yehud?” in The Land That I Will Show You: Essays on the History and Archaeology of the Ancient Near East in Honour of J. Maxwell Miller (ed. J. A. Dearman and M. P. Graham; JSOTSup 343; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001) 70–92.

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These observations and deductions take us very far from the Double Redaction hypothesis. But my concern here is less to establish or defend an alternative theory for the structure and history of Joshua–Kings than to suggest that there are issues about the unity, ideology, and historical context of Joshua–Kings that the Double Redaction theory does not address. From the perspectives just explored, it would be more plausible to regard the reign of Josiah as something developed in order to provide an existing book of Deuteronomy (in some form) with a fictitious Davidic endorsement—to show that it was in fact put into effect, however briefly. But clearly it did not work, and cannot have worked, as history had shown. By implication, the scrolls had again been ignored and were perhaps “lost” again after Josiah’s death. Chronicles, we should note, does not in the same clear-cut manner equate Josiah with a deuteronomic law book and places the finding of the law book after his religious reform. The question of whether there is a Deuteronomistic History cannot avoid being asked here. The theory has been both taken for granted and challenged.24 If, however, the history of Joshua–Kings is understood as the outcome of a series of quite large-scale redactions, the theory of a single composition is improbable. Indeed, it remains an open question how far these books were modified to form a sequel to the Pentateuch narrative; as we have suggested, the books of Joshua and Judges represent an (editorial) pan-Israelite framework that links the Pentateuch to the remaining books, where such a concept is absent. Like Richard Nelson, I believe in the value of literary-historical criticism. We cannot avoid reading texts critically in order to understand why they exist and have the character that they do. They are historical products, and they can in principle reveal something of the history that produced them. I am, however, with Nelson, less comfortable about it than many previous (or contemporary) practitioners; for this reason, I am reluctant to call any theory (including my own) compelling. Like Nelson’s Double Redaction hypothesis, I have started my own analysis by identifying a major fissure, albeit one that has led in very different directions. I am fairly confident that he will wish to defend his hypothesis and criticize this hypothesis. I look forward to a robust response and wish him many more active years in which we can pursue the enigma of the Deuteronomistic History. 24.  For bibliographical references and discussion, see Römer, So-Called Deuteronomistic History; Nelson, “Double Redaction”; and see N. Lohfink, Das Deuteronomium (Leuven: Peeters, 1985); idem, Studien zum Deuteronomium und zur deuteronomistischen Literatur, IV (SBAB 31; Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 2000); idem, Studien zum Deuteronomium und zur deuteronomistischen Literatur, V (SBAB 38; Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 2005); Gary N. Knoppers and J. G. McConville, eds., Reconsidering Israel and Judah: Recent Studies on the Deuteronomistic History (Sources for Biblical and Theological Study 8; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2000).

On the Term Deuteronomistic in Relation to Joshua–Kings in the Persian Period Ehud Ben Zvi The aim of this essay is to raise two related issues that have substantial bearing on our understanding of the intellectual discourse of the Persian period li­terati among whom the collection Joshua–Kings reached its more-or-less present form. Thus, it addresses two related question s: (a) to which attributes of the “classical” history of Israel shaped by the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings could the term Deuteronomistic be applied within the context and intellectual discourse of Persian period literati? and then (b) what were the communicative, ideological, and social functions of these “Deuteronomistic” attributes during the Persian period? To be sure, our modern word Deuteronomistic was not part of the discourse of the ancient literati, but people may have concepts for which they have no clear term.1 Needless to say, if what we label “Deuteronomistic” would have been meaningless from the perspective of Persian period literati, then probably we should stop using the term for historical studies of their intellectual world. In a recent essay, Richard Nelson suggests that a majority of scholars would agree on the following minimal description of the Deuteronomistic History: The designation “Deuteronomistic History” communicates the conviction that a significant undertaking in authorship or redaction took place at some time either somewhat before or sometime after the debacles of 597 and 586. Using inherited sources to some extent, this literary undertaking generated a connected narrative in chronological order describing some portion of Israel’s history in the land. This was done on the basis of theological perspectives characteristic of the book of Deuteronomy. The narrative later underwent subsequent revisions and was eventually divided into individual books.2 1.  See Gad Prudovsky, “Can We Ascribe to Past Thinkers Concepts They Had No Linguistic Means to Express?” History and Theory 36 (1997) 15–31. I illustrated this point with respect to ancient Israelite thought in my “Analogical Thinking and Ancient Israel Intellectual History: The Case for an ‘Entropy Model’ in the Study of Israelite Thought,” in Relating to the Text: Interdisciplinary and Form-Critical Insights on the Bible (ed. Timothy J. Sandoval and Carleen Mandolfo; JSOTSup 384; London: T. & T. Clark, 2003) 321–32. 2.  Richard D. Nelson’s response to Thomas C. Römer in “In Conversation with Thomas Römer, The So-Called Deuteronomistic History, ed. Raymond F. Person Jr.,” Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 9 (2009) article 17, p. 5; available at http://www.jhsonline.org.

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It is not my intention to dispute here any of the claims that Nelson advanced but to note that, from the perspective of a Jerusalem-centered community of literati in Persian period Yehud, the particular emphases of his characterization possess minimal importance. Did repeated readings of these books by Persian era literati evoke, as a significant memory, the realization that “authorship or redaction took place at some time either somewhat before or sometime after the debacles of 597 and 586”? The answer is likely to be negative; these books asked their readers to focus primarily on their narration, which constructed the events of 597 and 586, the aftermath of these events, as well as matters of historical causality related to them; but the narration does not ask its readers to dwell on the act of writing the book of Kings, or a book of proto-Kings, or the (so-called) Deuteronomistic History (henceforth, DtrH). Nelson’s reference to theological perspectives characteristic of the book of Deuteronomy (or a hypothetical Ur-Deuteronomium) may have been more relevant to Yehudite literati but raises the question whether these literati would have considered only Joshua–Kings to reflect the true meaning or theology of the Deuteronomy that they read. The point is particularly significant because the text that influences and shapes a community is the text as reread—the text as understood within the community—not as it existed in earlier forms that could have been read and understood by earlier communities of readers.3 In addition, one must keep in mind that Nelson cautiously phrased his words. He did not write “the theology of Deuteronomy” but “theological perspectives characteristic of Deuteronomy” and added that there were subsequent revisions to the books that may have influenced their theological profile. Of course, Joshua–Kings were not the only documents to undergo subsequent revisions; Deuteronomy was revised as well. Moreover, there is the whole issue of when and how Deuteronomy became part of the Pentateuch and whether it was considered, at least for a while, simultaneously part of the Pentateuch (Genesis–Deuteronomy), the Hexateuch (Genesis–Joshua), DtrH (Deuteronomy–Kings), and even the Primary History (Genesis–Kings).4 To be sure, all these issues clearly affected the meaning of Deuteronomy for communities of 3.  Even the same text may be read and understood differently by diverse communities, each within its own historical context and characteristic discourse. In all these cases, it is always the reread text, that is, the text as understood by the particular reading community that influences it. 4. ������������������������������������������������������������������������������ On the question of when Deuteronomy became part of the Pentateuch see, for instance, Thomas C. Römer, “Israel’s Sojourn in the Wilderness and the Construction of the Book of Numbers,” in Reflection and Refraction: Studies in Biblical Historiography in Honour of A. Graeme Auld (ed. Robert Rezetko, Timothy H. Lim, and W. Brian Aucker; VTSup 113; Leiden: Brill, 2007) 419–45. One may consider the Pentateuch, the Hexateuch, the DtrH, and the Primary History as “mental shelves” in a library, with even the same Yehudite readers at different times or circumstances associating the book with one or another set of books in their repertoire—and perhaps redactors reworking the text, accordingly.

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readers, as well as what it may have meant for these communities to be ideologically based on Deuteronomy. But the quest for the historical referent of theological perspectives characteristic of and unique to Deuteronomy, as these perspectives were understood by Persian period Jerusalem-centered literati, becomes even more complicated: What exactly are the viewpoints that we usually tend to associate with the term Deuteronomistic? We need to take several considerations into account: (a) there are a multiplicity of viewpoints that we label Deuteronomistic that at times stand in clear tension; (b) books widely accepted as Deuteronomistic may communicate or reflect viewpoints that we often do not refer to as Deuteronomistic (for example, Joshua 20 or the Elijah/Elisha cycle) or include texts that contain relatively little Deuteronomistic material (such as Judges5); and (c) some Deuteronomistic texts in Kings may advance positions closer to Chronicles than to other Deuteronomistic sections in Kings.6 Finally, if the historical referent we propose for the term Deuteronomistic in the context of the Persian period is a set of theological themes that were widely and collectively shared among the Jerusalem-centered literati of Yehud, then the very usefulness of the term becomes problematic.7 It is worth noting that 5.  See Thomas C. Römer, The So-Called Deuteronomistic History: A Sociological, Historical and Literary Introduction (London: T. & T. Clark, 2005) 137–39. 6.  See Adrian Schenker, “The Division of the Kingdom in the Ancient Septuagint: LXX 3 Kingdoms 12.24 a–z, MT 2 Kings 11–12; 14 and the Deuteronomistic History,” in Israel Constructs Its History: Deuteronomistic Historiography in Recent Research (ed. Albert de Pury, Thomas Römer, and Jean-Daniel Macchi; JSOTSup 306; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000) 214–57; and my “Are There Any Bridges Out There? How Wide Was the Conceptual Gap between the Deuteronomistic History and Chronicles?” in Community Identity in Judean Historiography: Biblical and Comparative Perspectives (Gary N. Knoppers and Kenneth A. Ristau; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2009) 59–86. 7.  To illustrate, it is often maintained and regularly taught to students in introductory classes that the DtrH is “Deuteronomistic” because it maintains that the only legitimate sanctuary for Yhwh is the temple in Jerusalem, and therefore evaluates kings according to this principle (see, among many others, Christoph Levin, The Old Testament: A Brief Introduction [Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 2005] 72–73). From a certain perspective, and particularly if one wishes to stress the origins of this position, these claims are reasonable. But at the same time, it must be stressed that, by this standard, namely that the Jerusalemite temple is the only legitimate sanctuary of Yhwh, the entire discourse of the Jerusalem-centered literati of Persian Yehud, their ideologies, and literature would need to be considered “Deuteronomistic.” Not incidentally, the same consideration would hold true for most Jewish discourses and texts from the later Second Temple period and thereafter. If the term Deuteronomistic is used in such a wide sense, then it becomes minimally helpful as a scholarly tool. Most importantly for the present purpose, because what we would label “Deuteronomistic” (i.e., an ideological position on the unique character of the temple in Jerusalem) would serve at best as a pointer to a “concept” within the discourse of the Yehudite literati (or later Jewish groups), it carried no inner discerning, classifying, or characterizing meaning, since “everything” would be “Deuteronomistic” for them. Moreover, from the perspective of the

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most of the themes commonly identified by scholarship as Deuteronomistic were widely and collectively shared among these literati. These themes include, for instance: (a) Jerusalem is the unique place that Yhwh has chosen for the temple; (b) Jerusalem and the temple have an important place in the divine economy; (c) “all Israel” is construed to be Judah/Yehud/Jerusalem-centered; (d) a divine promise has been made to the House of David, and memories about the rule of this house are central; (e) a promise has been made for restoration after justified, divine punishment; (f) a written Torah/divine instruction is to be followed; (g) this Torah is associated with Moses; and (h) the memory of the exodus plays a central role, and this memory is also associated with Moses. Thomas Römer reflected the opinion of many scholars when he wrote that “the only way to avoid arbitrary definitions [of a text as Deuteronomistic] is to combine stylistic and ideological criteria.”8 Very few scholars would doubt that there is a particular style and a certain phraseology that is and (most likely) was understood by Persian period literati to be reminiscent of the language of Deuteronomy.9 This Deuteronomistic language is certainly predominant in Kings (though not in every chapter) and appears in sections of Joshua, Judges, Jerusalem-centered literati of the Persian period (and later Jewish groups), it is very unlikely that they saw the uniqueness of the Jerusalem temple as a concept exclusively based on Deuteronomy (and therefore, in our terms “Deuteronomistic”), since they “read” and understood many other books and texts as supporting the uniqueness of Jerusalem and its temple as well (note, for instance, the identification of Mt. Moriah with the Jerusalem temple in 2 Chr 3:1; and multiple claims about Zion in Psalms). 8.  Römer, The So-Called Deuteronomistic History, 33–34. Also worth noting is his observation that “it is impossible to restrain the definition of ‘deuteronomistic’ to a purely linguistic level, because otherwise we would find very late texts up to the New Testament that could be labeled ‘deuteronomistic’” (Römer’s response to Richard Nelson, Steven Mc­ Kenzie, Eckart Otto, and Yairah Amit in “In Conversation with Thomas Römer: The SoCalled Deuteronomistic History,” 48). Römer is correct, of course, but this raises two issues: (a) remarks about what the term Deuteronomistic may mean must be clearly and explicitly associated with particular sociohistorical settings—this essay, for instance, explicitly focuses on a Persian period community/ies of readers consisting of literati; and (b) different groups may write in a similar style; or in other words, the idea of “one style = one social group” does not hold water. The importance of this observation will be become clear later in this essay. Christoph Levin (private communication) maintains that, before labeling a text Deuteronomistic, one should take into account not only language and theological meaning but also a study of innerbiblical quotations—which according to him were one of the main reasons that some linguistic patterns spread so much. A study of his approach to the term Deuteronomistic is outside the scope of this essay, but his comments reinforce the point made by Römer and others. (One may also compare Christoph Levin, Die Verheißung des neuen Bundes in ihrem theologiegeschichtlichem Zusammenhang ausgelegt [FRLANT 137; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1985] 63–67, 167–68.) 9.  See Moshe Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School (Oxford: Clarendon, 1972; repr. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1992) 320–65.

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Samuel, Jeremiah, here and there in tetrateuchal books (for example, Gen 26:5; compare Deut 11:1) and, of course, in Chronicles. The presence of this language reminiscent of Deuteronomy in the so-called DtrH is usually explained as the style of the original author (the so-called Dtr) or subsequent creative reworkers who habitually are labeled redactors.10 These writers, it is maintained, contributed large or small Deuteronomistic additions/ layers to other books outside the DtrH. The case of Chronicles, which displays significantly more Deuteronomistic language than most “Deuteronomistic books,” however, is explained in terms of its dependence on the DtrH. These explanations may well be correct but, significantly, they focus on authorship rather than processes of reading. In other words, they construct, emerge from, and suggest a reading strongly informed by a chronological sequence of evolving texts, beginning with precompositional sources, compositional layers, and subsequent editions/reworkings. Even if the proposed sequence is correct, it is likely that ancient readers approached their texts synchronically, not diachronically, as favored by contemporary redaction critics. This is so because, from the perspective of the ancient readers, the implied author of a book/text was the communicator whose intention they needed to grasp.11 The idea that these readers attempted to grasp and construe evolving messages advanced by a series of authors and redactors (including precompositional and postcompositional authors and redactors of embedded and resignified sources) is highly improbable. Thus, although diachronic analyses may help to explain how the relevant books reached their present form in the Persian (or early Hellenistic) period, they are not much help when exploring how these books were read. In sum, it is the text as it had been read—that is, the text as it had been understood in a community—that influenced the community and shaped its discourse. This read text was associated with its implied author (and not with the series of authors and redactors that contemporary scholars posit and reconstruct—again, the latter has a place in research but is not helpful to understand how ancient communities read the final compositional form of a book or text). 10.  In my view, DtrH is a collection of books that are multivocal, complex, and do not show a tightly written, univocal, coherent unity. It is a “mental shelf” that includes different, though related books, not a single composition. For a similar view of Joshua–Kings, though derived from a different methodology, see K. L. Noll, “Deuteronomistic History or Deuteronomic Debate? (A Thought Experiment),” JSOT 31 (2007) 311–45. For a critique of the use of the term redactor, see John Van Seters, The Edited Bible: The Curious History of the “Editor”in Biblical Criticism (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006); and previously, idem, “The Redactor in Biblical Studies: A Nineteenth Century Anachronism,” JNSL 29 (2003) 1–19. These authors and redactors are usually seen as part of a Deuteronomistic school/s (or group/s, movement/s, party/ies). But see below. 11. ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ To be sure, as they “grasped” this intentional meaning, the readers construed their (implied) author.

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Against this background, a good place to begin to explore what the referent of the term Deuteronomistic might have been in Persian Yehud is to focus on the distinctive language that characterizes Deuteronomistic passages and to ask the question which equally distinctive meaning this language may have communicated in this particular context. This is so because it is unlikely that the literati reading these texts would have missed or been oblivious to the consistent presence of Deuteronomistic language or to the fact that it was evocative of Deuteronomy. This possibility becomes even more improbable once one takes into consideration that distinctive language was a significant and widely present feature of many books that existed in the repertoire of Persian period Jerusalemite literati. In particular, each of the prophetic books carried its own distinctive flavor. To be sure, there was a difference; whereas there was, for instance, only one book that carried a clear Isaianic flavor, there were numerous books that carried the Deuteronomistic flavor (or, better, flavors, since Deuteronomistic Jeremiah has some unique features). This situation raises the questions: Why would this be the case? And what kind of messages would the relatively widespread (as opposed to narrow and clearly demarcated) appearance of these Deuteronomistic linguistic flavors have communicated to the intended and primary rereaders of these books in the Persian period? To begin with the second question, a linguistic flavor can create associations. The Persian period literati who read and reread these books probably noted that the voices of the implied authors of these books evoked each other. At times, the voices of main characters in these books (such as Yhwh, Joshua, David, Samuel, Solomon, Josiah, Jeremiah) evoked each other as well. All these voices spoke, at least partially, in the tradition of Moses as he was portrayed in Deuteronomy. To a significant extent, Deuteronomy was construed in Persian Yehud as the “prophetic book” associated with Moses and thus as the book par excellence that carried his voice and in which Yhwh’s voice evoked that of Moses and vice versa.12 This being so, the presence of Deuteronomistic language connoted to the intended rereaders of Deuteronomistic books a sense that these books were related somehow to Deuteronomy’s distinctive tradition about Moses and, as such, partook (at least partially) in Deuteronomy’s legitimacy, authority, and evocative power.13 Conversely, the importance assigned to the Moses-like voice and to the memory of Moses within the discourse of 12.  In the other prophetic books (e.g., Isaiah, Ezekiel, Hosea), the divine and prophetic voices (and their flavors) tend to merge. Thus, for instance, the book of Isaiah carries Isaiah’s voice, and in it Yhwh’s voice evokes Isaiah’s and vice versa. 13.  On this matter and the use of Deuteronomistic language as marker for a Mosaic-like voice, see my “Deuteronomistic Redaction in/among ‘The Twelve’: A Contribution from the Standpoint of the Books of Micah, Zephaniah and Obadiah,” in Those Elusive Deuteronomists: The Phenomenon of Pan-Deuteronomism (ed. Linda S. Schearing and Steven

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Yehud explains why there would be several books associated with this tradition but only one carrying an Ezekielian or Hoseanic voice. This explains also why this Mosaic voice would inject itself into several books, but other, non-Deuteronomistic voices rarely appear in Deuteronomy—that is, in Moses’ prophetic book. This observation leads us to consider carefully both the extent and the limits of association evoked by the voice/s in the text: unlike the case in Deuteronomy, multiple voices appear saliently in Joshua–Kings. The readers were expected to read these works as related to one another but simultaneously to distinguish clearly between Deuteronomy and Joshua–Kings. Moreover, when some readers contributed to the ongoing textual development of these books as they doubled as authors (or “redactors”), they carefully maintained this sense of separation between, on the one hand, the prophetic book of Moses, a great individual, and, on the other hand, a prophetic, “national” history. The Mosaic association conveyed by Deuteronomistic language may also explain the general pattern of its occurrence in the repertoire of Yehud. Although this language appears in many places, its main corpus indisputably consists of one prophetic book (Jeremiah) and the DtrH. The former likely characterizes Jeremiah as a particularly Moses-like personage, while the latter probably partially constructs “national” history as fulfilled prophecy in Yehud.14 From this perspective, the DtrH may be seen as a detailed elaboration of the fulfillment of Deut 30:1 and 31:16–22. Of course, this would suggest that, from the perspective of the readers of Joshua–Kings, the subsequent chapter in their history is pregnant with the fulfillment of Deut 30:2–10.15 In addition, a world in which history is seen also as prophecy fulfilled would tend to show a systemic preference for an association of the large-scale “national” history with the earliest and the greatest of all prophets rather than with important but still secondary prophets such as Isaiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, and Zechariah. L. Mc­Kenzie; JSOTSup 268; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999) 232–61 (esp. pp. 258–61). 14.  For a brief survey of research (with bibliography) on the potential link between the figures of Jeremiah and Moses, see Mark Roncace, Jeremiah, Zedekiah, and the Fall of Jerusalem: A Study of Prophetic Narrative (LHBOTS 423; London: T. & T. Clark, 2005) 20. The Former Prophets as a fulfilled prophecy in Yehud is an interpretation I have elaborated in “Observations on Lines of Thought concerning the Concepts of Prophecy and Prophets in Yehud, with an Emphasis on Deuteronomy–2 Kings and Chronicles,” forthcoming in a Festschrift to be announced. 15.  This point is very important in terms of the general message of the DtrH. It bears much significance for the study of the relationship between prophetic literature, as usually understood, and the historical books. It may also have informed and contributed to the shaping of the ending of Chronicles, which stands in conversation with this expectation. This point goes well beyond the boundaries of the present essay, and I will return to it in a future publication.

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The appropriation of the figure of Moses that has been communicated by the Moses-like voice resonating through the DtrH played an additional role in the discourse of Yehud. Indirectly, but in a pervasive way, this appropriation shaped the image of Moses in a manner consistent with and supportive of the ideology of the Jerusalemite literati. The Pentateuch was a text shared by Samaria and Yehud. It could be shared by both communities because each understood it differently. The appropriation of Moses in Joshua–Kings is consistent with southern but not northern claims. This appropriation of a figure accepted by Samaria was central to the claims of legitimacy for Jerusalem/ Judah and contributed to a systemic preference for a history of “Israel” that is both Moses-like and Jerusalem/Judah-centered—in other words, for a DtrH.16 To some extent, this represents a kind of prefiguration of the later association of the authority of Moses and David that is so important in Chronicles.17 As mentioned above, there was a significant spectrum of viewpoints within Deuteronomistic literature; furthermore, not every text or voice in Persian Yehud was Deuteronomistic. The latter phenomenon might be explained away if one were to assume that there existed a “pure” Deuteronomistic group that read and reread only their own works and wrote only in the Deuteronomistic style—a group that formed a socially, ideologically, and discursively separate subculture within the Jerusalem-centered literati of Persian Yehud, with its own library and the like. I have suggested elsewhere that the existence of such a subculture is unlikely, given the total population of Jerusalem/Yehud at the time, the possible number of bearers of high literacy, and the integrative character of much of the discourse in Yehud.18 Even if this had been the case, however, the features mentioned above must be explained by the present approach: a Deuteronomistic literary voice served to mark and construe a voice as Moses-like. A combination of the centrality of Moses, his memory, and the related centrality of Deuteronomy within the discourse of Persian Yehud, on the one hand, and the range of world views and memories that characterized Yehud’s 16.  [See the essays by Niels Peter Lemche and Philip R. Davies in this volume—ed.] 17. On this matter see, for instance, Simon J. De Vries, “Moses and David as Cult Founders in Chronicles,” JBL 107 (1988) 619–39. 18.  See, for instance, my “Towards an Integrative Study of the Production of Authoritative Books in Ancient Israel,” and idem, “The Concept of Prophetic Books and Its Historical Setting,” both in The Production of Prophecy: Constructing Prophecy and Prophets in Yehud (ed. Diana V. Edelman and Ehud Ben Zvi; London: Equinox, 2009); idem, “The Urban Center of Jerusalem and the Development of the Literature of the Hebrew Bible,” in Urbanism in Antiquity: From Mesopotamia to Crete (ed. Walter E. Aufrecht, Neil A. Mirau, and Steven W. Gauley; JSOTSup 244; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997) 194–209; idem, “A Deuteronomistic Redaction in/among ‘The Twelve’”; idem, “Review of Raymond F. Person Jr., The Deuteronomic School: History, Social Setting, and Literature (Studies in Biblical Literature 2; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2002),” CBQ 66 (2004) 456–58.

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(Jerusalem-centered) literati, on the other hand, explains also why Deuteronomistic voices had to be (a) multivocal and (b) able to coexist with rather than erase other voices. A few examples clarify this point. The intended and primary readers of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings likely noted that their books included sections that carry a Deuteronomistic or Moses-like flavor but also others that did not. Scholars refer to the latter as either pre-Deuteronomistic sources or post- or non-Deuteronomistic additions, but from the perspective of a readership whose approach to the text was not informed by its history of redaction, a characterization of this sort was not particularly helpful. To understand the perspective of these Yehudite readers, it is better to refer to a combination of Moses-like and non-Moses-like voices, with the Moses-like, as expected, intertwining themselves with the others, commenting on the others, and at the same time and unavoidably being informed by the others. Of course, all these voices were integrated into one text, with one implied author/communicator. Reading and rereading this text communicated openness to a range of views within the discourse of Yehud, which contributed to social cohesion and to the necessary ability of this discourse to adapt to circumstances in the life of the community. It is not by chance that the presence of multiple viewpoints within each of the authoritative books in Yehud as well as across the entire repertoire of these books was so ubiquitous.19 Within this context, it is only to be expected that there was diversity within the realm of ideas that the literati of Yehud were asked to characterize as Mosaic. The most obvious cases involve well-noted tensions between the DtrH and Deuteronomy. Examples include tensions dealing with the role of the king in the polity (and perhaps the figure of Solomon; compare 1 Kgs 10:26–20 with Deut 17:14–20), royal cultic prerogatives (including the reference to the sons of David as priests in 2 Sam 8:18), and the role of prophets (for instance, Deuteronomy does not state that prophets are necessary to mediate divine legitimacy to kings or to take it away from them). Frequent examples occur within Kings itself in relation, for instance, to the reasons for the destruction of Jerusalem or the question whether Israelites should perform forced labor for the king (see 1 Kgs 5:27–32—compare also 1 Kgs 11:28—and contrast with 1 Kgs 9:20–22–2 Chr 2:16–17; 8:7–9). Additional examples can be noted between the Deuteronomistic voices of Kings and Jeremiah (such as the emphasis on social issues in the latter).20 19.  A point I explored further in “Towards an Integrative Study of the Production of Authoritative Books in Ancient Israel.” 20.  Compare Rainer Albertz, A History of Israelite Religion in the Old Testament Period (OTL; 2 vols.; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1994) 2:382–87; Gary N. Knoppers, “Rethinking the Relationship between Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic History: The Case of Kings,” CBQ 63 (2001) 393–415; idem, “The Deuteronomist and the Deuteronomic Law of the King: A Reexamination of a Relationship,” ZAW 108 (1996) 329–46; Bernard

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The thesis advanced in this essay may explain, as well, the logic behind the later expansion of the Moses-like literature to include what can be labeled non-Deuteronomistic texts. Toward the end of the Persian period, Chronicles (as an example) evoked the language of the DtrH and, indirectly, that of Deuteronomy. The result was a history that, to some extent, fit better into deuteronomic modes of thinking than the DtrH but simultaneously suggested that Deuteronomy had now become a book whose meaning emerged from readings that were informed by other pentateuchal books.21 This example recalls my observation that it is not a text’s historical evolution but the text as understood by a community of readers that influences the community. Because Deuteronomy was by this time informed by other pentateuchal books and vice versa, the Mosaic message was then construed as pentateuchal rather than strictly deuteronomic.22 That is to say, Exodus–Numbers (Genesis–Numbers?) have been construed as Mosaic in addition to but not instead of Deuteronomy. This process was, of course, directly associated with the authority of Moses and Moses’ memory in Persian Yehud, which not unexpectedly tended to associate with Moses the memories, voices, and texts that were foundationally authoritative for the community (and resulted, not unexpectedly, in the shaping and reshaping of the figure and memory of Moses himself). This process by necessity blurred the association between Moses and a particular language and, most importantly for the present discussion, removed the need for particular Deuteronomistic linguistic markers to signal the Mosaic character of a book. As a result, new Deuteronomistic texts began to be written only as additions (“editorial” or “redactional” notes, as we tend to call them) to Levinson, “The Reconceptualization of Kingship in Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic History’s Transformation of Torah,” VT 51 (2001) 511–34. 21.  As clearly demonstrated by the case of “boiling in fire.” On this matter, see my “Revisiting ‘Boiling in Fire’ in 2 Chron. 35.13 and Related Passover Questions: Text, Exegetical Needs and Concerns, and General Implications,” in Biblical Interpretation in Judaism and Christianity (ed. Isaac Kalimi and Peter J. Haas; LHBOTS 439; London: T. & T. Clark, 2006) 238–50 and bibliography cited there. 22. ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Compare Hecateus of Abdera and his depiction of Judah and its traditions. On this text, see, among others, Doron Mendels, “Hecataeus of Abdera and a Jewish ‘patrios politeia’ of the Persian Period (Diodorus Siculus XL, 3),” ZAW 95 (1983) 96–110; Rainer Albertz, “An End to the Confusion? Why the Old Testament Cannot Be a Hellenistic Book,” in Did Moses Speak Attic? Jewish Historiography and Scripture in the Hellenistic Period (ed. Lester L. Grabbe; London: Continuum, 2001) 30–46 (esp. pp. 41–46); but see also the recent challenge to the widely accepted claim that the text in Diodorus Siculus 40.3 goes back, at least primarily to Hecateus of Abdera: Daniel R. Schwartz, “Diodorus Siculus 40.3: Hecataeus or Pseudo-Hecataeus?” in Jews and Gentiles in the Holy Land in the Days of the Second Temple, the Mishnah and the Talmud: A Collection of Articles (ed. Menachem Mor et al.; Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 2003) 181–98.

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existing texts, which had to be consistent with the style and phraseology of the text to which they were added. The approach advanced here does not help explain the redactional history of the DtrH, nor does it advance the study of discourse in Judah during the Josi­anic era, but it may bring a new perspective that has much potential for the study of the roles that so-called Deuteronomistic features played in the discourse of pre-Chronicles Persian period Yehud. This thesis clarifies what encountering these features “did” to the readers of these texts at that time (that is, the ways in which these encounters affected them and their reading of the texts) and as such, it may help us to reconstruct the intellectual history of Israel during the Persian era. It also suggests an approach to the important question why Deuteronomistic books ceased to be composed by the late Persian period.23 Simultaneously, this essay suggests a research model that focuses not on processes of replacement by social/intellectual elites but on long-term, continuous rather than discontinuous, integrative rather than supersessionist processes that were strongly influenced by the social and ideological necessities of the discourse of Yehud. This model is more likely from a historical perspective than its alternative, given the socioeconomic conditions in the province.24 23. ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ This does not mean that writers of much later times could not resort to some degree of “Deuteronomistic coloring” of their texts, indirectly co-opting Moses’ image or Moses’ messages for the writers’ own positions. In fact, some New Testament texts display this tendency. But these matters are well beyond the historical period covered in this essay, that is, the Persian period. 24. ��������������������������������������������������������������������� For an example of a conflict approach, see, for instance, Raymond F. Person Jr., The Deuteronomic School: History, Social Setting and Literature (Studies in Biblical Literature 2; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2002), and Person’s essay in this volume.

A Portrait of the Deuteronomistic Historian at Work? K. L. Noll When I was his student from 1988 to 1991, Richard Nelson described himself as a “traditional” biblical scholar. My approach was far from traditional, yet Rich took me under his wing and mentored me, exposing me to the very best that traditional research can offer. Under Rich’s encouragement to think independently and critically, my dissatisfaction with the consensus views of that era gradually pushed me in a direction that was even less traditional than the one with which I had begun. Rich remains an articulate defender of Martin Noth’s thesis, but I am not convinced that the earliest evolutionary stages of Deuteronomy and the Former Prophets constitute a “Deuteronomistic History.” In my view, the hypothesis fails to construct a convincing portrait of the ancient scribe known as “Dtr.”

Part 1: Readers’ Response and the Taming of the Tanak’s God Two pious rabbis devoted their lives to the sayings of the ancient sage Hillel. They were fascinated by a particularly enigmatic proverb. The two rabbis agreed that this proverb was one of the keys to unlocking the mystery of divine truth, but they could not agree on what the proverb meant. Each insisted that the other rabbi’s interpretation was incorrect. Eventually, both rabbis died and went to heaven, where they met Hillel. So they asked him which of them had been correct about the ambiguous proverb. Hillel said, “My words were copied incorrectly. You’ve been trying to interpret a scribe’s error.” The two rabbis considered this news for a moment. Then they agreed that their own two interpretations were far superior to this new interpretation. Evaluation of a joke always kills the joke, but it is necessary to note that these two rabbis make us laugh because they are not concerned with their own sacred texts, nor do they really care about their venerated sage Hillel. Even if their piety is genuine, these rabbis are concerned exclusively with their own theological conceptualizations, and they have treated the canonical tradition as nothing more than raw material with which to work. 73

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It has been my thesis that the Bible became the Bible through the aggressive interpretational methods modeled by our two rabbis.1 An anthology of Hebrew literature, created by ancient scribes who never intended to produce religiously authoritative scrolls, inadvertently became religiously authoritative as an ever-widening circle of readers brought their own religious agendas to the texts, systematically limiting what each text was permitted to say. The original Hebrew anthology was an eclectic mélange, including dogmatically theological literature, such as Deuteronomy, cleverly impious narratives, such as 1–2 Samuel, and unself-consciously secular texts, such as the Song of Songs. The miscellaneous nature of the anthology demonstrates that only a handful of texts within it gave voice to the religious perspective of the scribes who produced the literature. After the Hebrew anthology was saddled with its sacred authority, it became impossible for any text to speak for itself. Pious Jewish readers struggled to find ways to make these old scrolls seem sacred, often by producing revised versions (such as the so-called rewritten Torah texts from Qumran; compare some of the later midrashim) or entirely new, alternative texts (such as Jubilees or the Qumran Temple Scroll). At other times, irrelevant interpretations were imposed (such as Qumran pesharim or various Christian Christocentric interpretations) or the texts’ plain sense was buried under sophisticated philosophical agendas (for instance, by Philo of Alexandria). All these failed experiments were attempted because the canonical Torah was, in reality, nothing more than a miscellany of sample mitzvoth combined with a variety of folktales (and scribal emulations of folktales). It could not become religiously authoritative until exegetes began to construct a fence around it. The Oral Torah evolved as a natural consequence of the written Torah’s unanticipated evolution from anthology to sacred authority (as witnessed by 4QMMT; compare the later Mishnah-Gemara). The Prophets and the Writings evolved in the same manner but more gradually.2 Although “Spinozan-era” researchers try to remain independent of the religious communities who preserved and transmitted the Bible, much of their research has been infected by the a priori assumptions of these religious com1. See, most recently, my “Evolution of Genre in the Hebrew Anthology,” in Early Christian Literature and Intertextuality, vol. 1: Thematic Studies (ed. Craig A. Evans and H. Daniel Zacharias; Library of New Testament Studies 391; London: T. & T. Clark, 2009) 10–23. My thesis is compatible with the thesis presented by Ehud Ben Zvi in this volume, provided everything that Ben Zvi writes about Persian era literati is viewed instead as a description of Hellenistic and early Roman era literati. 2.  For a recent overview of the data, see Eugene C. Ulrich, “The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Hebrew Scriptural Texts,” in The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls, vol. 1: Scripture and the Scrolls (ed. James H. Charlesworth; Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2006) 77–99; see also Martin S. Jaffee, Torah in the Mouth: Writing and Oral Tradition in Palestinian Judaism 200 bce–400 ce (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).

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munities.3 Researchers continue to believe that, when a god appears in a biblical narrative or poem, this god was religiously significant (or even authoritative) for the scribe who authored the text as well as the earliest readers of this text. A moment’s reflection ought to expose this fallacy. No one ever worshiped the divine buffoon Zeus as he is portrayed in Homer’s Iliad, and many Greek intellectuals dismissed Homer as a blasphemer.4 Homer’s version of Zeus did and said what the poet required his god to do and say in order to make the plot of the Iliad work. Likewise, the Yahweh who speaks and acts in many narratives and poems was not the Yahweh that the scribes (or anyone else) ever worshiped; frequently, this god is nothing more than a narrative necessity that drives the story’s plot.

Part 2: A Cartoon Portrait of the Deuteronomistic Historian at Work? With this thesis about the origins of the Tanak as foundation, I suggest that the continuing popularity of the Deuteronomistic History derives not from the textual data but from the academic community’s a priori commitment to the traditional religious assumption that every author of a biblical text intended to proclaim or defend a religious viewpoint. From the days of Jesus ben Sira and his students to the days of Martin Noth and his heirs, religious communities have read the Former Prophets as theological histories, a reading strategy that is not consistent with the literal content of the Former Prophets.5 The text for my sermon of protest derives from a cartoon by David Sipress that appeared in a recent edition of The New Yorker magazine (see p. 74). Most of us can imagine ourselves in this scene as begging the scribe to ignore his friend’s advice and instead corroborate every source carefully! However, once again, I am compelled to kill the humor by stressing the obvious. This cartoon makes us laugh because we are aware of two realities: first, the Bible is not accurate even when it corroborates its sources and, second, far too many people insist on taking the Bible literally in spite of its literal sense. Let us consider each of these two realities. 3.  I call the era since 1670 the “Spinozan era” after the father of secular biblical study. For an English translation of Benedict de Spinoza’s “Theologico-Political Treatise,” see R. H. M. Elwes, ed., The Chief Works of Benedict de Spinoza (2 vols.; New York: Dover, 1951) 1:13–266. 4. Robert Garland characterizes Homer as a forerunner to the later satyr dramas and comedies in Religion and the Greeks (London: Bristol Classic, 1994) 5; for ancient dis­ approval of Homer’s gods, see Howard W. Clarke, Homer’s Readers: A Historical Introduction to the Iliad and the Odyssey (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1981) 107–8 and passim. 5.  Martin Noth’s thesis appeared in 1943 and is available in English as The Deuteronomistic History (trans. Jane Doull et al.; JSOTSup 15; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1981).

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Cartoon by David Sipress, The New Yorker, March 10, 2008, p. 91. © The New Yorker Collection 2008 David Sipress from cartoonbank.com. All rights reserved.

The first observation entails a slight correction: contrary to the cartoon’s implication, the Tanak often claims to have corroborated its sources, but most of these citations are questionable. For example, Deuteronomy claims to be the text of a sermon by Moses, but careful study reveals that it is a composite of materials that accumulated over several centuries, at least. Similarly, prophetic voices such as Isaiah and Jeremiah were convenient fictions for organizing layers of literary supplements spanning centuries. 1–2 Chronicles also invokes a variety of written sources, even though the author’s primary source was either the books of Samuel–Kings or an early draft of them.6 It is also doubtful that royal daybooks (which were not royal archives but practical records discarded 6.  The consensus favors the former hypothesis, but A. Graeme Auld has advanced a case for the latter: Kings without Privilege: David and Moses in the Story of the Bible’s Kings

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after a brief interval) could have survived long enough to have been available to the scribes who consistently cited such daybooks throughout 1–2 Kings.7 One can debate the intended function of citations that the ancient reader is likely to have recognized as false, but the fictional nature of these citations appears self-evident.8 The Tanak displays a consistent pattern of carelessness with respect to the citation and handling of its sources. For example, MT Josh 10:13 cites the book of Yashar to corroborate a narrated miracle, but it is doubtful that even an ancient reader would have been impressed by the awkward spin placed on the poetic fragment allegedly deriving from the lost source.9 Moreover, recent scholars suggest that the actual sources underlying Joshua 10 have little to do with the book of Yashar, whether or not the Masoretic attribution is correct (it is lacking in the OG). Thomas Römer believes that the battle at Gibeon was constructed from Assyrian literary models, and Nadav Naʾaman identifies the five kings who met their fate at Makkedah as a garbled folk memory of Sennacherib’s invasion in the late eighth century b.c.e., filtered through folklore about a possibly historical David, and then recycled as a tale about Joshua.10 In other words, the current state of knowledge suggests that Joshua 10 was cobbled together from sources that the ancient scribe realized could not provide reliable information about someone named Joshua, who was supposed to have lived centuries before the scribe’s own day. He used these sources anyway, revising them to fit the narrative about his fictional hero, and one is justified to suspect that he was not trying to fool anyone into thinking that the narrative represented actual events. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1994); idem, Samuel at the Threshold: Selected Works of Graeme Auld (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004).   7.  On royal daybooks, see Donald B. Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992) 330–31.   8.  For recent discussion and bibliography, see Katherine M. Stott, Why Did They Write This Way? References to Written Documents in the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Literature (LHBOTS 492; New York: T. & T. Clark, 2008); Lester L. Grabbe, “Mighty Oaks from (Genetically Manipulated?) Acorns Grow: The Chronicle of the Kings of Judah as a Source of the Deuteronomistic History,” in Reflection and Refraction: Studies in Biblical Historiography in Honour of A. Graeme Auld (ed. Robert Rezetko, Timothy H. Lim, and W. Brian Aucker; Leiden: Brill, 2007) 155–73. My views were presented in “Is the Book of Kings Deuteronomistic? And Is It a History?” SJOT 21 (2007) 49–72.   9.  For a succinct summary of the difficulties with Josh 10:13, see our honoree’s discussion: Richard D. Nelson, Joshua: A Commentary (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1997) 141–45. 10. Thomas Römer, “On Book-Finding and Other Literary Strategies,” ZAW 109 (1997) 1–11 (esp. p. 3); Nadav Naʾaman, “The ‘Conquest of Canaan’ in the Book of Joshua and in History,” Canaan in the Second Millennium b.c.e.—Collected Essays, vol. 2 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2005) 317–92 (esp. pp. 351–53).

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In the instances that extrabiblical evidence permits us to check, it is beyond reasonable doubt that Hebrew scribes modified the content of their sources freely. For example, Iron Age Balaam ben Beor was a voice of ʾEl and the Shaddayîn gods at Deir ʿAllā, just a few miles from Jerusalem.11 Yet, Balaam became a pious Yahwist in Num 22:2–21 and 22:36–24:25 (artificially projected backward to the Bronze Age) and finally evolved into a false prophet (by the hypothetical addition of Num 22:22–35 and by later modifications, such as Num 31:8b, 16; compare 2 Pet 2:15–16).12 Clearly the Hebrew scribes received authentic sources about someone named Balaam, but I doubt that these scribes cared whether he was a real person. Balaam’s name was an empty vessel into which a scribe poured whatever was useful at the moment.13 Some researchers marvel at portions of the Bible that preserve reliable information, but what is more striking is the Tanak’s pattern of consistent inaccuracy, even in cases where the scribe obviously had access to reliable sources.14 The biblical narrative credits King Solomon with oversight of inter11.  For research on the Tel Deir ʿAllā plaster inscriptions, see the bibliography provided by Choon Leong Seow, “West Semitic Sources,” in Prophets and Prophecy in the Ancient Near East (ed. M. Nissinen, with contributions by C. L. Seow and R. K. Ritner; SBLWAW 12; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003) 201–18 (esp. pp. 208–9). 12. John Van Seters, “From Faithful Prophet to Villain: Observations on the Tradition History of the Balaam Story,” in A Biblical Itinerary: In Search of Method, Form, and Content—Essays in Honor of George W. Coats (ed. Eugene E. Carpenter; JSOTSup 240; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997) 126–32. 13.  See additional evidence for the deliberate fictionalizing of older sources in my “Evolution of Genre in the Book of Kings: The Story of Sennacherib and Hezekiah as Example,” in The Function of Ancient Historiography in Biblical and Cognate Studies (ed. Patricia G. Kirkpatrick and Timothy Goltz; London: T. & T. Clark, 2008) 30–56 (esp. pp. 39–46). 14.  A recent example of scholarly appreciation for biblical accuracy is the volume of essays edited by John Day, In Search of Pre-Exilic Israel (London: T. & T. Clark, 2004). My discussion in this paragraph and the next summarizes views presented in Canaan and Israel in Antiquity: An Introduction (Biblical Seminar 83; London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001) 124–28, 199–237, and passim; idem, “Is the Book of Kings Deuteronomistic?” 57–59, with citations; and idem, “The God Who Is among the Danites,” JSOT 80 (1998) 3–23. See also Oded Lipschits, The Fall and Rise of Jerusalem: Judah under Babylonian Rule (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2005); Diana V. Edelman, The Origins of the ‘Second’ Temple: Persian Imperial Policy and the Rebuilding of Jerusalem (London: Equinox, 2005); Lisbeth S. Fried, “The High Places (bāmôt) and the Reforms of Hezekiah and Josiah: An Archaeological Investigation,” JAOS 122 (2002) 437–65; Nadav Naʾaman, “The Abandonment of the Cult Places in the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah as Acts of Cult Reform,” UF 34 (2002) 585–602; Ernst Axel Knauf, “The Glorious Days of Manasseh,” in Good Kings and Bad Kings (ed. Lester L. Grabbe; London: T. & T. Clark, 2005) 164–88. Additional useful bibliography and recent discussion of these issues can be found in Israel Finkelstein and Amihai Mazar, The Quest for the Historical Israel: Debating Archaeology and the History of Early Israel (ed. Brian B. Schmidt; Archaeology and Biblical Studies 17; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2007).

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national trade routes that, from archaeological data, likely emerged about one hundred years or so later, probably under the Omrides. An Assyrian inscription informs us that King Ahab was a real person and simultaneously suggests that Ahab’s biblical battle narratives are largely unhistorical (or, at least, attributed to the wrong king). The Moabite Stone confirms the existence of the Bible’s King Mesha while also suggesting historical circumstances that differed from the biblical portrait, and the inscription suggests that an ethnic group known as Gad was, at that time, distinct from Israel. Two biblical kings of Aram, Hazael and Bar-Hadad, appear in the extrabiblical record, but the inscription from Tel Dan suggests that the biblical narratives fail to present a reliable account of that region’s fate during the era in which these kings were active. These examples can be multiplied, but they are sufficient to suggest that the scribes who created, supplemented, and transmitted the Hebrew scrolls prior to Hellenistic times took no interest in matters that we would define as “historical.” The scribes display a kind of antiquarianism in the sense that they made use of older sources from time to time, but one should note that these scribes failed to remember events that scribes with an interest in the details of the past were likely to remember—major events that had an impact on entire populations of Israelites or Judahites. The Hebrew scribes forgot that Egypt once ruled the land in which they lived; that a people called Israel fought a battle with Pharaoh Merneptah; that Pharaoh Sheshonq I’s campaign was not (primarily?) directed at Jerusalem; that the House of Omri (unlike the House of David) had achieved international renown; that multiple Yahweh Temples continued to operate throughout the days of the Judahite monarchy; that Assyria’s King Sennacherib devastated Lachish, the second largest city of Judah, so that King Manasseh presided over a reduced Judah that was also, paradoxically, Iron Age Jerusalem’s most peaceful and prosperous era; that Mizpah remained the political center of the south-central hill region from the early sixth century until about the middle of the fifth century; and that a Yahweh Temple was built on Mount Gerizim at roughly the same time that Jerusalem (and its temple?) was restored in the mid-fifth century. This casual disregard for accuracy remained endemic to the process of composition from earliest to latest stages. By the Hellenistic and Roman eras, when multiple manuscripts had begun to circulate, details from received sources were handled by the scribes in the same cavalier manner evident from the example of Balaam ben Beor. For example, the king of Judah in 2 Kings 3 is identified as Jehoshaphat in the MT, but Ahaziah in the OG. Likewise, the Old Latin version of the story in 2 Kgs 13:14–19 identifies the king as Jehu rather than the MT’s Joash.15 It does not matter which of these texts (if any) 15.  Steven L. McKenzie, The Trouble with Kings: The Composition of the Book of Kings in the Deuteronomistic History (Leiden: Brill, 1991) 97–98.

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represents the earliest version of each tale; there can be no dispute that ancient scribes, for whatever reason, made significant and quite deliberate changes to their sources. In light of these data, an absence of manuscript variations ought not to inspire trust in the accuracy of the text’s content. For example, Sara Japhet believes that the Chronicler depends on but denies the claim made by the book of Kings that Israel suffered exile.16 If Japhet is correct and if the book of Kings had not survived, the Chronicler’s arbitrary revision of his older source would have gone undetected. The datum of interest in these details is not the fact that the Bible tends to be inaccurate, but the nature of the inaccuracies. They are as blatant as they are ubiquitous and are perpetrated by scribes who, we can assume from the evidence, had some reasonable knowledge of the facts. A number of these examples were known already in the days of Martin Noth, which should have motivated Noth to revisit his notion of an Iron Age Deuteronomistic Historian. Clearly the men who compiled the narratives now contained in the Tanak were not historians, not even by ancient definitions of history.17 The New Yorker cartoon makes us laugh as well because we are aware of a second reality: far too many people insist on taking the Bible literally in spite of its literal sense, which is an anomaly that requires explanation. Today, a variety of religious communities promote the phrase “biblical literalism” and define it as belief that the Bible’s words are inerrant with respect to all matters of faith, history, and even science. This definition of literalism has nothing to do with a literal reading of the Bible. I doubt, for example, that the scribe(s) who juxtaposed Genesis 1 with Genesis 2–3 believed that the two tales were inerrant. Rather, the scroll of Genesis was designed to be an anthology of variant origin stories. The scribe(s) involved knew that the tales were not religiously authoritative accounts, or even theologically complementary narratives. The quasi-chronological framework with which Genesis is constructed served as a series of file folders (these scribes had not invented chapter and verse divisions). Artificial chronologies were useful especially because they could accommodate lists of all varieties, and lists (whether old or freshly invented was a matter of indifference) were a favorite genre among ancient scribes.18 In 16. Sara Japhet, “Exile and Restoration in the Book of Chronicles,” in The Crisis of Israelite Religion: Transformation of Religious Tradition in Exilic and Post-Exilic Times (ed. Bob Becking and Marjo C. A. Korpel; Leiden: Brill, 1999) 33–44 (esp. p. 40). 17.  I discuss definitions of the history genre, ancient and modern, in “Is the Book of Kings Deuteronomistic?” and idem, Canaan and Israel in Antiquity, 31–82. 18. My comments about Genesis presuppose that the scroll existed independently from other scrolls for many human generations. See, for example, Konrad Schmid, “The So-Called Yahwist and the Literary Gap between Genesis and Exodus,” in A Farewell to the Yahwist? The Composition of the Pentateuch in Recent European Interpretation (ed. Thomas B. Dozeman and Konrad Schmid; SBLSymS 34; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2006) 29–50. The incorporation of this “secular” anthology of origin myths into

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sum, Genesis exists in tension with itself in the same way that Chronicles and Samuel–Kings exist in tension with one another. Therefore, a genuinely literal interpretation perceives the Hebrew anthology as a kind of library, not a history and certainly not an attempt to proclaim religious truths.19 Spinozan-era scholarship congratulates itself for rejecting biblical literalism but inadvertently ingests a parasitic companion of this literalism. The biblical literalist imposes not one but two a priori assumptions: (a) the Bible has been divinely revealed, and (b) this revelation derives from a deity who happens to be a historian, as opposed to, say, a teller of tall tales.20 Although secular researchers dismiss the former assumption, they unconsciously accept a modified version of the latter by viewing the ancient Hebrew scribe as an individual who consistently pressed a theological interpretation on the past. In other words, instead of attributing the Bible to a divine historian, scholars assign it to human historians, but the notion that the Bible was designed to proclaim a theological history remains the a priori assumption, and alternative possibilities are not entertained. This anachronism is apparent in the thesis of Martin Noth and, in modified form, continues among his heirs. Noth’s portrait of the scribe whom he called “Dtr” is a projection onto ancient times of a twentieth-century biblical theologian. “Since [Dtr] valued all his sources equally as historical documents and it therefore did not occur to him to examine them critically, he had simply to add together the information at his disposal and, as a result, he used one source to supply what appeared to be lacking in another.”21 These words describe any religiously conservative theologian of Noth’s own generation, such as William Foxwell Albright. Like Albright and his students, Noth’s Dtr was comfortable with incompatible sources because he had discovered a religious ideology that made room for diverse voices of faith, provided that these voices pointed generally toward the same faith. Although Noth had the good sense to avoid characterizing Dtr as a fundamentalist, his model of the ancient scribe is nevertheless entirely incompatible with data demonstrating the eclectic manner by which the Hebrew scribes created these scrolls. the evolving Torah and its transformation into sacred Scripture took place quite late. My position is not far from that of Reinhard G. Kratz, who argues for Hasmonean appropriation, though I am less convinced by Kratz’s notion of an officially sanctioned text (Kratz, “Temple and Torah: Reflections on the Legal Status of the Pentateuch between Elephantine and Qumran,” in The Pentateuch as Torah: New Models for Understanding Its Promulgation and Acceptance [ed. Gary N. Knoppers and Bernard M. Levinson; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2007] 77–103). 19.  The “library” analogy derives from Thomas L. Thompson, Early History of the Israelite People from the Written and Archaeological Sources (Leiden: Brill, 1992) 389. 20.  Noll, Canaan and Israel in Antiquity, 69. 21.  Noth, Deuteronomistic History, 86.

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In light of the evidence, most defenders of the Deuteronomistic History hypothesis have abandoned Noth’s portrait of Dtr as a conscientious historian.22 An alternative option is to impose qualifications on the word history, so that Dtr can be called a historian even though he was not conscientious about sources or accuracy. For example, John Van Seters compares Dtr to Herodotus, among others, to demonstrate that free invention was not uncommon in ancient historiography.23 A variant is the thesis of Ziony Zevit, who views Dtr as “an opinionated, bookish person” who molded details to fit his theological agenda and even “determined for himself what constituted an event.”24 Each of these variants of the comparative model is reasonable but unpersuasive because a wide variety of narratives in the Former Prophets are inconsistent with the model. Van Seters is compelled to designate many narratives secondary supple­ments (for example, most of 2 Samuel), while Zevit ignores this problem by narrowing his focus to only the portions of the text that fit his model (primarily selected portions from 1 Kings 12–2 Kings 24).25 Even though researchers concede that Dtr was not a historian in Noth’s sense of an “honest broker,” Noth’s thesis nevertheless remains popular because his disciples resolutely retain Noth’s portrait of Dtr as a theologian.26 “The meaning which [Dtr] discovered was that God was recognisably at work in this history, continuously meeting the accelerating moral decline with warnings and punishments and, finally, when these proved fruitless, with total an­ nihilation.”27 It is safe to say that, because biblical scholarship is dominated by individuals with a keen personal interest in theology, this portrait of Dtr as theologian is the key to the longevity of the hypothesis, yet it creates an incongruous portrait of the ancient scribe. The most common portrait of Dtr is as a theologically motivated propagandist who ignored the facts when they were inconvenient. Frank Cross describes the original Deuteronomistic History as “a propaganda work” for an “imperial program,” in which the past was conformed to a rigidly schematic 22.  A rare exception is Baruch Halpern, The First Historians: The Hebrew Bible and History (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988), whose anachronistic model I have evaluated in “Is the Book of Kings Deuteronomistic?” 23. ����� John Van Seters, In Search of History: Historiography in the Ancient World and the Origins of Biblical History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983; repr. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1997). 24. Ziony Zevit, The Religions of Ancient Israel: A Synthesis of Parallactic Approaches (London: Continuum, 2001) 439–48 (quotations from pp. 439, 440, respectively). 25.  A��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� n additional criticism is the failure of researchers to pay attention to explicit rhetorical markers (or the lack of these markers), a point I discuss in “Is the Book of Kings Deuteronomistic?” 26.  Noth describes Dtr as an “honest broker” who “had no intention of fabricating the history of the Israelite people” (Deuteronomistic History, 84). 27.  Ibid., 89.

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pattern supporting the king’s political agenda.28 Thomas Römer believes these royal scribes provided a “Judean answer to Neo-Assyrian rhetoric of power and propaganda,” and this agenda included the construction of entire historical episodes that are “complete fiction.”29 “It goes without saying,” writes Nadav Naʾaman, “that ideological considerations played an important role in [Dtr’s] description of the history of Israel” so that theological lessons were “far more important to him than historical accuracy.”30 Marc Zvi Brettler asserts, “The Deuteronomist’s belief in how the world works was more important than what his sources claimed.”31 This conceptualization of Dtr is realistic in the sense that, if one accepts the a priori assumption that the narratives were intended to be accepted as accurate interpretations of the past, then the incontrovertible evidence for free manipulation of sources implies that the scribes valued ideology over reality. Although the portrait of a theological propagandist remains dominant, it effectively reduces the biblical narratives to a set of pious fictions designed to deceive pious readers, a point that is usually quietly ignored or carefully glossed.32 Among the hundreds of examples that could be cited, the best known is the Cross thesis that an original Dtr1 presented King Josiah as a savior who had restored Judah to its state of grace before Yahweh (2 Kgs 22:1–23:25a), but a later Dtr2 introduced an arbitrary change in which Yahweh declared that 28.  Frank Moore Cross, “The Themes of the Book of Kings and the Structure of the Deuteronomistic History,” Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic: Essays in the History of the Religion of Israel (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973) 274–89 (quotation from p. 284). 29. Thomas Römer, The So-Called Deuteronomistic History: A Sociological, Historical and Literary Introduction (London: T. & T. Clark, 2007), quotations from pp. 105 and 99, respectively. 30. ������ Nadav Naʾaman, “Updating the Messages: Hezekiah’s Second Prophetic Story (2 Kings 19.9b–35) and the Community of Babylonian Deportees,” in “Like a Bird in a Cage”: The Invasion of Sennacherib in 701 bce (ed. Lester L. Grabbe; JSOTSup 363; New York: Sheffield Academic Press, 2003) 201–20 (quotation from p. 219). 31.  Marc Zvi Brettler, The Creation of History in Ancient Israel (London: Routledge, 1995) 78. 32.  With tongue in cheek, I have borrowed William G. Dever’s polemical term, “pious fiction,” which was meant to attack scholars with whom Dever agrees more often than not. Although Dever’s publications reduce the discussion to caricature, they highlight the ironic reality that the majority of researchers believe the biblical narratives are pious fictions, but most (like Dever) are reluctant to say so unambiguously, preferring euphemisms such as “testimony,” “faith perspective,” or Dever’s catchphrase “overriding theological framework” (Dever, What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It? What Archaeology Can Tell Us About the Reality of Ancient Israel [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001] 4, 97, and passim). For a response to Dever, see Keith W. Whitelam, “Representing Minimalism: The Rhetoric and Reality of Revisionism,” in Sense and Sensitivity: Essays on Reading the Bible in Memory of Robert Carroll (ed. Alastair G. Hunter and Philip R. Davies; JSOTSup 348; London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002) 194–223 (esp. p. 210 and passim).

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King Manasseh’s sins were too much for even Josiah to overcome (2 Kgs 23:25b–27 and additional revisions to 2 Kings 21–23).33 Cross and his followers believe (but never stress the implications of their belief) that the first scribe was a spin doctor for a minor king with suicidal ambitions of imperial grandeur, and the second scribe desperately tried to salvage this hopeless ideology with ad hoc additions and revisions, through which he introduced a divine prediction of doom that he knew was sheer invention, a vaticinium ex eventu. To cut through the subtle formulations one usually encounters in the scholarship, the first Dtr was a liar and the second a fool. I have suggested elsewhere that these portraits are not realistic, for they gloss over the enormous complexity of the narratives compiled in the Former Prophets.34 The thesis that Dtr was a propagandist logically entails a corollary that the Deuteronomistic History was designed for wide dissemination, for what good is propaganda that is not addressed to an audience? This also is unrealistic. First, effective propaganda must provide a message that is easy for the average intellect to understand, inculcate, and transmit, but Dtr’s alleged propaganda is so complex that modern scholars are unable to achieve a consensus on its basic theological message(s).35 Second, defenders of the Deuteronomistic History rarely explain how this propaganda was disseminated. Usually, one reads vague assertions that the literature was a “preached history,” though the context for this preaching is undefined. Or the narratives are viewed as part of some entity called “Yahwism” or “Israel’s faith” or the like, as though ideology can be absorbed by hoi polloi through a kind of collective consciousness. I have criticized these tendencies elsewhere and will not pursue the issue here, except to emphasize that the physical evidence undermines the propaganda thesis; rather, it suggests that both the Former Prophets and their contents remained unknown to almost everyone until well into the Hellenistic era, so that it is quite simply impossible to believe that the pre-Hellenistic authors of the narratives were trying to create either political propaganda or some form of publicly disseminated “Yahweh-alone” theology.36 33.  Cross, “Themes of the Book of Kings,” 283–87. 34.  K. L. Noll, “Deuteronomistic History or Deuteronomic Debate? (A Thought Experiment),” JSOT 31 (2007) 311–45. (I would like to correct an error in n. 76, p. 337: “Of the four chapters . . . [chs. 2; 5; 9; 24]” should read “Of the five chapters . . . [chs. 2; 4; 5; 9; 24].”) 35.  For a history of scholarship, see Römer, So-Called Deuteronomistic History, 13–43; Thomas Römer and Albert de Pury, “Deuteronomistic Historiography (DH): History of Research and Debated Issues,” in Israel Constructs Its History: Deuteronomistic Historiography in Recent Research (ed. Albert de Pury, Thomas Römer, and Jean-Daniel Macchi; JSOTSup 306; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000) 24–141. 36. ������ K. L. Noll, “Was There Doctrinal Dissemination in Early Yahweh Religion?” BibInt 16 (2008) 395–427; idem, “Evolution of Genre in the Book of Kings,” 33–38.

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In sum, the longevity of the Deuteronomistic History has nothing to do with the textual evidence upon which it is said to rest, for the common portraits of Dtr are not consistent with those data. Widespread devotion to the Deuteronomistic History derives from a desire to retain the traditional a priori assumption that biblical narratives are theological histories. Because most advocates of Noth’s thesis have been more interested in theology than history, it did not even trouble them when the evidence compelled replacement of Noth’s historian with a propagandist. This stress on theology paints an unrealistic portrait of Dtr at work.

Concluding Comment (A Viable Alternative) Patricia Kirkpatrick notes that Hermann Gunkel relied on an incorrect understanding of the Brothers Grimm to formulate his model of an oral tradition behind the literature now contained in the book of Genesis.37 Gunkel believed that the Grimms had reproduced accurately a series of old, traditional folktales, but this allegedly unfiltered collection was nothing of the kind. The Grimms had selected from what was available and thoroughly revised the tales prior to publication. Moreover, subsequent editions of their work saw additional revisions designed to create greater narrative coherence for each tale. The Grimms also gave names to unnamed characters, added direct discourse, and introduced proverbs. The process of manufacturing folklore from rudimentary sources is not unique to the Brothers Grimm. Recently, Ruth Bottigheimer has suggested that the selection and revision of allegedly traditional tales or, in many cases, the free invention of them depend on the social, economic, and political interests of the literati engaged in this activity—an activity that in no way can be described as historiographical or theological.38 Historians should take note, for this also describes the process by which ancient Greek myths became mythological literature, as evaluated by Paul Veyne.39 The process bears more than a passing resemblance to the activity of Mesopotamian scribes, who frequently constructed new compositions by reconfiguring earlier sources and freely adding their own inventions.40 Scribes, ancient and modern, are free agents, so 37. ������������ Patricia G. Kirkpatrick, “The Jacob-Esau Narratives: From Form to Function,” in The Function of Ancient Historiography in Biblical and Cognate Studies (ed. P. G. Kirkpatrick and T. Goltz; London: T. & T. Clark, 2008) 1–17 (esp. pp. 3–4). 38. �������� Ruth B. Bottigheimer, Fairy Tales: A New History (New York: State University of New York Press, 2009). 39. Paul Veyne, Did the Greeks Believe in Their Myths? An Essay on the Constitutive Imagination (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988). 40.  Among recent discussions of this topic, see David M. Carr, Writing on the Tablet of the Heart: Origins of Scripture and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005);

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their literature often bears no more than a passing resemblance to its sources, and any oral versions (if they ever existed) are known only locally and by far fewer people than the scribe’s written version reaches. Scribes never serve traditions; traditions serve scribes. The methods by which the Brothers Grimm worked are similar to the methods by which Hebrew scribes constructed the anthology that later became the Tanak. These texts did not derive from a “pan-Israelite” tradition and were not constructed by distinct “schools” of Priestly and Deuteronomistic thought or by rival priesthoods vying for power by distributing revised “histories.” There were no old oral traditions carefully preserved without alteration, no disciples of prophets carefully preserving the master’s words, no priests codifying priestly practice and lore for active, daily consultation in a temple, no public dissemination of these texts as religious ideology either for the glory of an ambitious king or for the public sociopolitical construction of “Israelite” ethnic identity. Fragments within the Tanak certainly derive from people (mostly illiterate) who identified themselves as Judean or Israelite (or, in some cases, perhaps, both Judean and Israelite) and who worshiped a local patron god called Yahweh, who differed in no significant sense from the other patron gods of the Syro-Palestinian corridor, but the piety of hoi polloi was not preserved unfiltered. It was the Hebrew literati who, in addition to many other activities and ideologies, viewed themselves as the caretakers of a traditional Judean-Israelite identity and therefore gathered to themselves an anthology of literature to rival the likes of a Homer, a Hesiod, the wisdom literatures of Egypt, and the epics of Mesopotamia. From the gradual evolution of that anthology came the revisions that seem to us to be “Priestly” and “Deuteronomistic,” as well as the increased complexity of the tales and the deity who inhabits them, but these literary flourishes are akin to the literary revisions in the works of the Brothers Grimm, and they had no impact on Judaism until the scrolls began to circulate during the Hellenistic period. Only then, as the literature became known to increasing numbers of literate Jews did the anthology evolve (almost entirely by accident) into a set of sacred texts and its narratives into a sacred history, so that the literature became part of a public discourse on Judean-Israelite identity. The Deuteronomistic History never existed except as a Greco-Roman era interpretation of the Former Prophets; it was not the literary intention of the scribes who produced these scrolls. John Van Seters, “The Origins of the Hebrew Bible: Some New Answers to Old Questions, Part Two,” JANER 7 (2007) 219–37; Karel van der Toorn, Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007); John Van Seters, “The Role of the Scribe in the Making of the Hebrew Bible,” JANER 8 (2008) 99–129. See also Jeffrey H. Tigay, The Evolution of the Gilgamesh Epic (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982).

Book-Endings in Joshua and the Question of the So-Called Deuteronomistic History Thomas Römer Richard Nelson has devoted several works to and written a seminal commentary on the book of Joshua.1 In his view, this book provides compelling evidence for the existence of the Deuteronomistic History, a theory that is nowadays heavily disputed, even by one of his own students.2 According to Nelson, Joshua is a forerunner of King Josiah, and Joshua’s conquest of the land, which in the narrative parts is restricted to the territory of Benjamin, legitimates Josiah’s expansionist politics of incorporating parts of the former Northern Kingdom. All this supports the variant of Noth’s hypothesis proposed by Cross, the hypothesis of a first edition of the Deuteronomistic History in the time of Josiah.3 In the early pages of his Joshua commentary, Nelson states that “this Deuteronomistic redactional presence is visible throughout much of Joshua, but noticeably absent from the description of land distribution. . . . However, unlike the situation in Judges or Kings, evidence is lacking in Joshua for a second Deuteronomist with a theological viewpoint different from DH or using a distinct vocabulary.”4 Nevertheless, the question of the Deuteronomistic edition of Joshua appears to be a somewhat more complex issue when one takes note of several potential conclusions to the Joshua scroll that are included in the book. 1.  See especially Richard D. Nelson, The Double Redaction of the Deuteronomistic History (JSOTSup 18; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1981); “Josiah in the Book of Joshua,” JBL 100 (1981) 531–40; “Ḥerem and the Deuteronomic Social Conscience,” in Deuteronomy and Deuteronomic Literature: Festschrift C. H. W. Brekelmans (ed. Marc Vervenne and Johan Lust; BETL 133; Leuven: Peeters, 1997) 39–54; Joshua: A Commentary (OTL; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1997). 2.  K. L. Noll, “Deuteronomistic History or Deuteronomic Debate? (A Thought Experiment),” JSOT 31 (2007) 311–45. 3.  See Richard D. Nelson, “The Double Redaction of the Deuteronomistic History: The Case Is Still Compelling,” JSOT 29 (2005) 319–37. 4. Ibid., Joshua, 6.

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Books with Multiple Conclusions in the Christian and the Hebrew Bible The most obvious case in which a biblical book has been updated with a new conclusion is the Gospel of Mark, which originally ended with Mark 16:8 as attested by the oldest manuscripts. To this somewhat strange ending (the flight of the frightened women from the empty grave), later redactors added a new conclusion telling the manifestation of the risen Jesus in order to make Mark fit better with the other biblical Gospels. In the Hebrew Bible, comparable cases can be detected. Most scholars agree that the book of Leviticus initially ended with chap. 26 and that chap. 27 is a later conclusion, the aim of which is still debated. The Septuagint of Jeremiah probably reflects a Hebrew Vorlage with a double conclusion, since the conditional promise to Baruch (which takes up motifs from Jeremiah 1) in Jer LXX 51:31–35 [MT 45:1–5] is followed by the summary of the fall of Jerusalem and the events under Babylonian occupation (Jeremiah 52 // 2 Kings 24–25). This chapter was added in order to underline the relation between the book of Jeremiah and the books of Kings. Another example can be found at the end of Malachi (Mal 3:22–24), which was added (perhaps in two steps) to the original ending as a conclusion for the whole corpus propheticum.5 The end of the book of Joshua compares with these cases. In chaps. 23 and 24, Joshua holds two final discourses addressed to the people, and critical scholars agree that these speeches were written by different authors. But these two chapters are not the only possible conclusions to the book. Indeed, Joshua contains an impressive number of passages that look like attempts to conclude earlier versions of the book or parts of it.6 Before discussing the relationship between Joshua 23 and 24, we need to have a look at these texts and locate them in the process of the book’s formation.

Concluding Texts in the Book of Joshua Joshua 10:42 Joshua captured all these kings and their land at one time because Yhwh, the god of Israel, fought for Israel.

According to Knauf, Josh 10:42 concludes (together with 10:40–42*) the oldest conquest account, which was part of an “exodus and conquest narrative,” the beginning of which was probably in Exodus 2.7 The statement “Yhwh 5. Henning Graf Reventlow, Die Propheten Haggai, Sacharja und Maleachi (ATD 25/2; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993) 160–61. 6.  See on this E. Axel Knauf, “Buchschlüsse im Josuabuch,” in Les dernières rédactions du Pentateuque, de l’Héxateuque et de l’Ennéateuque (ed. Thomas Römer and Konrad Schmid; BETL 203; Leuven: Peeters, 2007) 217–24. 7. Idem, Josua (ZBKAT 6; Zurich: Theologischer Verlag, 2008) 17.

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fought for Israel” has a parallel in Exod 14:14 indeed, but is this enough to postulate a narrative reaching from Moses to Joshua? The ideology of Yhwh’s fighting for Israel and the delimitation of the conquered land from Kadeshbarnea to Gibeon in Benjamin (Josh 10:41) may well fit a seventh-century b.c.e. setting for the passage, probably under Josiah.8 But 10:40–42 may also be considered the “summation of southern conquests” related in Josh 10:28– 42, rather than a summary of all the conquest accounts in Joshua 3–10*.9 As a matter of fact, the mention of the kings fits 10:28–39 better than the foregoing stories, which are not centered on foreign monarchs. Furthermore, in spite of 10:40a, 10:42 does not speak of the conquest of the “whole” land (contrary to 11:23 and 21:43) but of the land controlled by the kings mentioned in chap. 10. Joshua 11:23 Joshua took the entire land according to all that Yhwh spoke to Moses; and Joshua gave it as an inheritance to Israel according to their tribal allotments by their tribes. And the land was at rest from war.

This Deuteronomistic verse sounds very much like a conclusion; it refers to Yhwh’s initial speech to Joshua in 1:1–9* with respect to the conquest of the land (1:2), the distribution of the land as a ‫נחלה‬, and the former promises made to Moses (1:3). Josh 11:23 suggests that the distribution of the land has already taken place, whereas the description of the partition of the land to the tribes is related in chaps. 13–19. It is therefore possible that the concluding remark in 11:23 reflects a stage of the formation of Joshua in which the list material in 13–19 did not yet exist.10 Kratz and Becker suggest that 11:23 was the original conclusion of the book followed by the report of Joshua’s death in Judg 2:8–9 (or Josh 24:29–30).11 If 11:23 is on the same literary level as 11:16–17, it would contain a description of the land that is broader than the description given in 10:41–42, covering more or less the borders of the biblical “United Kingdom.”12 In this case, 11:23 should be attributed to a later redactor than 8.  The mentions of the unidentifiable “land of Goshen” as well as of Gaza in Josh 10:41 may be later additions, as argued by most commentators. 9.  Nelson, Joshua, 138. 10.  Ibid., 164. 11. ������������ Reinhard G. Kratz, Die Komposition der erzählenden Bücher des Alten Testaments: Grundwissen der Bibelkritik (UTB 2157; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000) 207; ET: The Composition of the Narrative Books of the Old Testament (London: T. & T. Clark, 2005); Uwe Becker, “Endredaktionelle Kontextvernetzungen des Josua-Buches,” in Die deuteronomistischen Geschichtswerke: Redaktions- und religionsgeschichtliche Perspek­ tiven zur “Deuteronomismus”-Diskussion in Tora und Vorderen Propheten (ed. Markus Witte et al.; BZAW 365; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2006) 139–61 (esp. p. 151). 12.  That 11:23 is on the same literary level as 11:16–17 is suggested by the probability that the intervening vv. 18–22 are later additions (Knauf, Josua, 116–19); the hardening of the enemies’ heart in v. 20 reflects Priestly language, which is combined here with Deuter-

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10:41–42. The language of 11:23 is clearly Deuteronomistic. The last phrase, “and the land had rest from war,” which is repeated in Josh 14:15b, is, however, very limited inside the Deuteronomistic History.13 In the Former Prophets, the verb ‫ שקט‬with ‫ ארץ‬as subject only appears in the framing remarks of the book of Judges: 3:11, 30; 5:31; 8:28.14 This fact could indicate that 11:23 presupposes the integration of the book of Judges into the Deuteronomistic History, which is nowadays often located at a quite late stage of the formation of the Former Prophets (to be discussed below). Contrary to Judg 2:20, Josh 11:23 expresses the idea that Joshua conquered the ‘whole’ (‫ )כל‬land, and the same idea occurs in Josh 21:43–45. It cannot be excluded, however, that 11:16–23* preserves traces of an older ending that was later heavily reworked. Joshua 18:1 The whole congregation of the sons of Israel assembled themselves at Shiloh, and set up the tent of meeting there; and the land was subdued before them.

This verse is considered to be a conclusion by scholars who believe that the Priestly document or narrative contained a conquest account and ended somewhere in Joshua. The proponents of this idea argue that the verb ‫כבׁש‬ (‘to subdue’) also appears in P-text Gen 1:28, so that we have here an inclusio signifying that God’s original order has now been fulfilled.15 However, this view does not hold. First, the command in Gen 1:28 is addressed to humanity and defines its role in creation, whereas Josh 18:1 is about Israel and its land. Second, Genesis 1 depicts an ideal creation, not the world in which humanity lives. Humanity’s current world is established after the Flood, where the order to subdue is no longer part of the divine order when it is newly given to Noah (Gen 9:1–5). Therefore Josh 18:1 should be considered neither the Priestly ending of Joshua nor the conclusion of the P-document.16 More likely, this onomistic language (‫חרם‬, ‫)כאׁשר צוה משה‬. This mixture of Priestly and Deuteronomistic language is typical of late redactions and may belong to a “hexateuchal redaction” of Joshua. 13.  The function of Josh 14:5b is difficult to elucidate (see Nelson, Joshua, 155–56). It is probably later than 11:23. 14.  With other subjects in Judg 18:7, 27 (‫ )עם‬and 2 Kgs 11:20 (‫)עיר‬. Its main occurrences are in Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Chronicles. 15. Joseph Blenkinsopp, “The Structure of P,” CBQ 38 (1976) 275–92 (esp. p. 290); E. Axel Knauf, “Die Priesterschrift und die Geschichten der Deuteronomisten,” in The Future of the Deuteronomistic History (ed. Thomas Römer; BETL 147; Leuven: Peeters, 2000) 101–18 (esp. pp. 114–15). 16.  A. Graeme Auld, “Creation and Land: Sources and Exegesis,” in Proceedings of the Eighth World Congress of Jewish Studies, Panel Session A (Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 1982) 7-13. For the current debate on the end of P and the possibility that it ended somewhere in Leviticus, see Christophe Nihan, From Priestly Torah to Pentateuch: A Study in the Composition of the Book of Leviticus (FAT 2/25; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007) 20–68.

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verse belongs to late Priestly additions to the Deuteronomistic History.17 Additions of this sort reach as far as the books of Kings.18 Josh 18:1 takes up the post-Priestly text of Num 32:22–29.19 It prepares for 2 Sam 8:11, where the root ‫ כבׁש‬reappears in the statement that all nations were subdued by David. Joshua 21:43–45 Josh 21:43–45 clearly sounds like a conclusion; the verses emphasize that everything that Yhwh had promised has now been fulfilled (‫ כל‬is used six times). Especially important is the idea that Yhwh has given the whole land to Israel and that all the former inhabitants and enemies are defeated according to the divine promise. This view contradicts Joshua’s assertion in chap. 23 that there are still people remaining in the land with which Israel should not interact. Both Josh 21:43–45 and Joshua 23 display Deuteronomistic language. Blum has argued that Josh 21:43–45 should be considered the conclusion of the first Deuteronomistic redaction of the scroll followed by the death of its protagonist, whereas Joshua 23 should be attributed to a Deuteronomistic Fort­ schrei­bung (DtrG2).20 This theory would give support to Lohfink’s assumption of an originally independent “DtrL,” consisting only of Moses’ speech in Deuteronomy and the conquest accounts in Joshua 1–12* followed by a conclusion.21 Josh 21:43–45 looks back to Deuteronomy and Joshua 1–12*, to be sure, but does not prepare the reader for the subsequent periods.22 The case is different in Joshua 23, where Joshua foresees what will happen if addressees disobey the divine commandments. Since Joshua 23 also seems to adopt a 17.  As Richard Nelson rightly points out, the emphasis on Shiloh is not specifically a Priestly feature. In the Dtr History, “Shiloh was viewed as the legitimate forerunner to Jerusalem” (Joshua, 209). 18. Reinhard Achenbach, “Der Pentateuch, seine theokratischen Bearbeitungen und Josua–2 Könige,” in Les dernières rédactions du Pentateuque (BETL 203; Leuven: Peeters, 2007) 225–53. 19. Volkmar Fritz, Das Buch Josua (HAT 1/7; Tübingen: Mohr, 1994) 179–80. 20. Erhard Blum, “Der kompositionelle Knoten am Übergang von Josua zu Richter: Ein Entflechtungsvorschlag,” in Deuteronomy and Deuteronomic Literature (BETL 133; Leuven: Peeters, 1997) 181–212. 21. Norbert Lohfink, “Kerygmata des deuteronomistischen Geschichtswerks,” in Die Botschaft und die Boten: Festschrift H. W. Wolff (ed. Jörg Jeremias and Lothar Perlitt; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1981) 87–100. DtrL stands for deuteronomistische Landnahmeerzählung (‘the Deuteronomistic conquest narration’). Eckart Otto has picked up on the idea but locates DtrL, contrary to Lohfink, in the exilic period: Eckhart Otto, Das Deuteronomium im Pentateuch und Hexateuch: Studien zur Literaturgeschichte von Pentateuch und Hexateuch im Lichte des Deuteronomiumsrahmen (FAT 30; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000) 240–46. 22.  For details, see my Israels Väter: Untersuchungen zur Väterthematik im Deuteronomium und in der deuteronomistischen Tradition (OBO 99; Freiburg: Universitätsverlag / Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1990) 358–63.

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different perspective with respect to the “other nations,” one could reasonably postulate that a later Deuteronomist added this chapter. On the other hand, contrary to most commentators, one should take into account the possibility of a diachronic differentiation in Joshua 23. If such a differentiation applies, as I will argue in the following section, then Josh 21:43–45 and the first version of Joshua 23 could well belong to the same level. There are an impressive number of parallels between 21:43–45 and certain parts of Joshua 23: Joshua 21 Joshua 23 v. 43 ‫ויתן יהוה לישראל כל הארץ‬ ‫הארץ הטובה אשר נתן לכם‬ ‫הארץ הטובה הזאת אשר נתן‬ ‫יהוה אלהיכם‬ ‫ וינח יהוה להם מסביב‬v. 44 ‫הניח יהוה לישראל מכל איביהם‬ ‫מסביב‬ ‫לא עמד איש בפניהם מכל‬ ‫לא עמד איש בפניכם‬ ‫איביהם‬ ‫ לא נפל דבר מכל הדבר הטוב‬v. 45 ‫לא נפל דבר אחד מכל הדברים‬ ‫אשר דבר יהוה אל בית ישראל‬ ‫הטובים אשר דבר יהוה‬ ‫הכל בא‬ ‫אלהיכם עליכם הכל באו‬

v. 16 v. 15 v. 1 v. 9 v. 14

These parallels allow for two conclusions: either a later author in chap. 23 picked up expressions from 21:43–45, or both texts are from the same hand.23 In a Deuteronomistic edition of Joshua, these texts framed the return of the Transjordanian tribes in 22:1–6*, a Deuteronomistic topic that brings Josh 1:12–15 and 4:12 to an end.24 The Deuteronomists had to reconcile the historical reality of Israelite settlements in Transjordan with the idea that the Jordan 23.  A third possibility would be to consider 21:43–45 to be later and inspired by Joshua 23 (so Fritz, Josua, 217). This is less plausible, since Joshua 23 in its present form does not insist on the total fulfillment of the promises. 24.  Mark A. O’Brien, The Deuteronomistic History Hypothesis: A Reassessment (OBO 92; Freiburg: Universitätsverlag / Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1989) 75. The story about the altar of the Transjordanian tribes in 22:7–34 is an addition from the Persian period that tries to reconcile the Deuteronomistic ideology of centralization with the reality of cultic sites outside Jerusalem. For a late date of this text, see Cornelis G. den Hertog, “Der geschichtliche Hintergrund der Erzählung Jos 22,” in Saxa loquentur: Studien zur Archäologie Palästinas/Israels—Festschrift für Volkmar Fritz zum 65. Geburtstag (ed. Cornelis G. den Hertog et al.; AOAT 302; Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2003) 61–83; Rainer Albertz, “The Canonical Alignment of the Book of Joshua,” in Judah and the Judeans in the Fourth Century b.c.e. (ed. Oded Lipschits, Gary N. Knoppers, and Rainer Albertz; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2007) 287–303 (esp. pp. 298–99).

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93

River is the border of the promised land. Therefore, it seems reasonable to attribute 21:43–45 and the original version of Joshua 23 to the same author. Joshua 23 and 24 There is no doubt that both of the speeches in Joshua 23 and 24 were conceived as a conclusion, either to the book of Joshua or to an even larger narrative unit. It is also clear that these two testaments of Joshua cannot be the work of one author (otherwise one should definitively give up the historical investigation of the Hebrew Bible!). The juxtaposition of these texts has always puzzled the commentators. Martin Noth changed his mind several times about the date and origin of these speeches. The proponents of Cross’s model attributed Joshua 23 mostly to the Josianic Dtr1 and Joshua 24 to the exilic Dtr2, whereas Smend and the Göttingen school thought that Joshua 24 belonged to the Deuteronomistic Historian (DtrG) and Joshua 23 to the subsequent Nomist redaction (DtrN).25 Neither solution is satisfactory, for the following reasons. First, contrary to Joshua 23, chap. 24 displays a vocabulary and style that cannot be labeled “Deuteronomistic”; rather, it is closely related to the Priestly and non-Priestly texts in Genesis–Numbers, mixing this “Tetrateuch style” with some Deuteronomistic expressions.26 Second, as shrewdly observed by Nelson, “chapter 23 works well as a summary of the book of Joshua, limiting its review to the occupation of the land. Chapter 24, in contrast, seems designed as a conclusion for the Hexateuch as a whole.”27 In the next section, I would like to take up Nelson’s insight and try to demonstrate that Joshua 23 contains two Deuteronomistic conclusions to the book, whereas Joshua 24 is a later addition and reflects the attempt to add the book of Joshua to the nascent Torah.28 To summarize the investigation of the various “concluding formulas” scattered throughout Joshua 10–21: it has been suggested that Josh 18:1 does not constitute the conclusion of “P” but is a late “Priestly” insertion in the book. Moreover, Josh 21:43–45 is not an independent conclusion but was created at the same time as Joshua 23*. Additionally, Josh 11:23 in its present form is not earlier than 21:43–45 and seems to prepare the audience for the time of the Judges. Furthermore, 11:16–23 may be the result of the redactional reworking of an older conclusion, such as Josh 10:42. The latter verse sounds like a conclusion to the conquest story in Joshua 1–10*, and one could therefore argue 25.  For more details and bibliographical references, see Nelson, Joshua, 265 n. 4; and Thomas Römer, “Das doppelte Ende des Josuabuches: Einige Anmerkungen zur aktuellen Diskussion um ‘deuteronomistisches Geschichtswerk’ und ‘Hexateuch,’” ZAW 118 (2006) 523–48 (esp. pp. 525–27). 26.  This observation is common; see, for instance, Nelson, Joshua, 266. 27.  Ibid., 268. 28.  This discussion builds on my article “Das doppelte Ende.”

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that this verse represents the original ending of a smaller scroll containing only the conquest narrative.29 However, such a theory tends to outstrip the available evidence. Joshua 23 and the Double Deuteronomistic Conclusion to the Conquest of the Land The language of Joshua 23 is clearly Deuteronomistic. However, the text shows several signs of having been reworked from an older version. After the introduction (v. 1), which picks up the ideas of 21:43–45 (Yhwh has given Israel rest from all its enemies), Joshua, who has become old, gathers the people (v. 2)30 and begins his testament with a summation (v. 3) that concludes: ‫יהוה‬ ‫אלהיכם הוא הנלחם לכם‬. This statement, which repeats 10:42, refers to Joshua 1–12 but also to the beginning of Deuteronomy (Deut 1:30, 3:24). The new introduction in v. 4 (‫ ;ראו‬compare ‫ ראיתם‬in v. 3) leads to the affirmation that there remain nations that Yhwh may chase later, if Israel respects the Law of Moses and does not enter into any cultic or political relations with them (vv. 4–8). These verses, which allude to future events, are in tension with vv. 3 and 9, which refer to the past and express the idea that the conquest has successfully come to an end. Therefore, 23:4–8 should be considered a later nomistic insertion into Joshua’s final discourse.31 Indeed, the verbal form ‫ ויורש‬in v. 9 fits better after v. 3 than after v. 8. Verse 9 brings the retrospective to an end and is followed by the exhortation in v. 11. Verse 10 interrupts this sequel and is probably an addition.32 The admonition in 23:10 refers very clearly to Deut 6:5 (‫ ;)אהב את יהוה אלהיכם ;נפש‬this allusion continues in v. 14 with the expression ‫בכל לבבכם וכל נפשכם‬. Verses 12–13 (14a?)33 interrupt these allusions and take up the themes and terminology of 23:4–8. They belong, therefore, to the same 29.  Or, alternatively, a Moses-Joshua story, as argued by Knauf (see n. 7, above). 30.  The long list of addressees that parallels 24:1 may be due to later reworking and harmonization. 31.  The following observations foster this assumption. As Sicre pointed out, Josh 23:4 is the only text in which the nations (and not the land) are the object of the verb ‫( נחל‬José Luis Sicre, Josué [Estella: Verbo divino, 2002] 466). Verse 6 parallels Josh 1:7–8, a unit generally considered a later insertion (see already Martin Noth, The Deuteronomistic History [JSOTSup 15; 2nd ed.; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991] 62). The expression ‫ כאשר עשה‬at the end of v. 9 may be understood as resumption of ‫ אשר עשה‬in v. 3, a classical device of insertions (see also the doublet ‫ עד יום הזה‬in v. 8 and v. 9). 32.  Josh 23:10 is related to 23:4–5 by the idea of a future war against the nations (compare also ‫ כאשר דבר‬in v. 5 and v. 10). It picks up on v. 9 (‫ )לא עמד איש‬as well as v. 3 (‫יהוה‬ ‫ )אלהיכם הוא הנלחם‬and transforms these statements into promises for the future. 33.  According to Becker (“Kontextvernetzungen,” 160), v. 14a is not part of the original text. This may well be the case since Joshua already mentioned in v. 2 that his end is about to come. Verse 14a could have been inserted as part of the resumption, together with vv. 12–13, that interrupts the exhortation in vv. 11 and 14b.

Book-Endings in Joshua

95

“nomistic” revision of the original speech.34 The emphasis on the fact that all divine words have been fulfilled (v. 14b), which is referring again to 21:43–45, provides the transition to the announcement in vv. 15–16a of deportation in the event of Israel’s disobedience to Yhwh’s ‫( ברית‬an allusion to Deuteronomy). Joshua’s speech probably ended in v. 16a, since 16b is lacking in the LXX and is apparently a late gloss prompted by v. 15.35 The result of this diachronic investigation can be shown in the following presentation of the text of Joshua 23, in which the earlier stage (Dtr1) is presented unindented below, and the later additions (Dtr2) are indented: 1 A long time afterwards, when Yhwh had given rest to Israel from all its enemies all around and Joshua was old and well advanced in years, 2 Joshua summoned all Israel, [their elders and heads, their judges and officers,] and said to them, I am now old and well advanced in years, 3 and you have seen all that Yhwh your God has done to all these nations for your sake, for it is Yhwh your God who has fought for you. 4 Look, I have allotted to you as an inheritance for your tribes the nations that remain, along with all the nations that I have already cut off, from the Jordan to the Great Sea in the west. 5 Yhwh your God will push them back before you and drive them out of your sight; and you shall possess their land, as Yhwh your God promised you. 6 Therefore, be very steadfast to observe and do all that is written in the book of the Law of Moses, turning aside from it neither to the right nor to the left, 7 so that you may not be mixed with these nations left here among you or invoke the names of their gods or swear by them or serve them or bow yourselves down to them, 8 but hold fast to Yhwh your God, as you have done to this day. 9 Yhwh has driven out before you great and strong nations; and as for you, no one has been able to withstand you to this day. 10 One of you will put to flight a thousand, since it is Yhwh your God who fights for you, as he promised you. 11 Be very careful about yourselves, therefore, to love Yhwh your God. 12 For if you turn back and join the rest of these nations left here among you and intermarry with them, so that you marry their women and they yours, 13 know assuredly that Yhwh your God will not continue to drive out these nations before 34.  Further arguments for a late date of these verses can be added easily. The root ‫חתן‬ in the Hithpael (v. 12) appears only in Gen 34:9, Deut 7:3, and Ezra 9:15, texts that reflect the problem of mixed marriages in the Persian period. The description of the danger that the nations present in v. 13 has its closest parallel in Num 33:55, which is usually recognized as a very late text; see Gary N. Knoppers, “Establishing the Rule of Law? The Composition Num 33,50–56 and the Relationship among the Pentateuch, the Hexateuch and the Deu�teronomistic History,” in Das Deuteronomium zwischen Pentateuch und Deuteronomistischem Geschichtswerk (FRLANT 206; ed. Eckart Otto and Reinhard Achenbach; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004) 135–52. 35.  Nelson (Joshua, 255) prefers the MT and posits haplography from ‫ להם‬to ‫לכם‬. Even if this is the case, there is no change in the meaning of vv. 15–16.

96

Thomas Römer you; but they shall be a snare and a trap for you, a scourge on your sides and thorns in your eyes, until you perish from this good land that Yhwh your God has given you. 14 And now I am about to go the way of all the earth, and know in your hearts and souls, all of you, that not one thing has failed of all the good things that Yhwh your God promised concerning you; they all were fulfilled for you. Not one word of them has failed. 15 But just as every good thing that Yhwh your God promised concerning you has been fulfilled for you, so Yhwh will bring upon you all the bad things until he has destroyed you from this good land that Yhwh your God has given you 16 if you transgress the covenant of Yhwh your God, which he commanded you, and go and serve other gods and bow down to them. The anger of the Lord will break out against you, and you will perish quickly from the good land that he has given to you.

The original version of the speech comprises approximately vv. 1–3*, 9, 11, 14b–16a. Here the conquest is presented as totally fulfilled, in accordance with Josh 21:43–45. It is certainly not by chance that the parallels between these two texts are limited to the first edition of Joshua 23 (see the synopsis above). This first edition also conforms to the literary form of an Abschiedsrede (‘farewell speech’) as established by von Nordheim.36 It parallels en miniature Moses’ speech in Deuteronomy and presents Joshua as his successor, at the same time underscoring the unity of the scrolls of Deuteronomy and Joshua. Through insistence on the total fulfillment of Yhwh’s words, the time of Moses and Joshua is presented as a “golden age.” At the conclusion of the speech, however, Joshua announces the deportation from the land (as does Moses in Deuteronomy 28).37 Josh 23:15–16 prepares for 2 Kings 24–25 and apparently presupposes the Babylonian Exile. However, the idea that all enemies have disappeared from the land contradicts the assertion of nations remaining in the land in Judg 2:20–21. One may therefore wonder whether the older version of Joshua 23 was followed by the report of Joshua’s death (in Josh 24:29–30* or Judg 2:8–9)38 and then immediately by the beginning of the book of Samuel (Joshua is buried in the mountains of Ephraim, and this is where the book of Samuel begins). Several voices have recently argued for the possibility that Judges was integrated between Joshua and Samuel only at quite a late stage.39 36.  Eckard von Nordheim, Die Lehre der Alten, II: Das Testament als Literaturgattung im Alten Testament und im Alten Vorderen Orient (Arbeiten zur Literatur und Geschichte des hellenistischen Judentums 18; Leiden: Brill, 1985) 149. He establishes the following elements, which fit better in the original version of Joshua 23 than in the present text: gathering of the audience (vv. 1–2); statement of old age (v. 2); historical retrospective (vv. 3 and 9); exhortation (vv. 11 and 14b); prophetic announcement of future events (vv. 15–16a). These elements cover the verses belonging to my reconstructed original text. 37.  The root ‫ שמד‬in Josh 23:15 appears frequently in Deuteronomy 28. 38. As Blum (“Knoten,” 148 n. 10) rightly observes, it is difficult to decide which of the two accounts is the “original.” Both may have undergone redactional harmonizing activity. 39.  See, for instance, ������� Konrad Schmid, Erzväter und Exodus: Untersuchungen zur doppelten Begründung der Ursprünge Israels innerhalb der Geschichtsbücher des Alten Testa-

Book-Endings in Joshua

97

This would explain the somewhat different (and scarce) Deuteronomistic style in this book.40 The reworking of Joshua 23 by a late Deuteronomist with its emphasis on the remaining nations should then be understood as a means to integrate the time of the Judges into the Deuteronomistic History. The warning against any contact with the “other nations” in the reworked testament of Joshua points to a date of composition in the Persian period. Joshua 23 confirms the idea of a multi-layered Deuteronomistic History: the first edition of this text was apparently created in the Neo-Babylonian period, the second edition in Persian times. Both editions were probably preceded by a conquest account in the Neo-Assyrian period, a version now embedded in chaps. 1–10*, which perhaps ended at 10:42 or 11:16–23* originally. The two stages of Joshua 23 are conceived in the context of the Deuteronomistic History, in which the book of Deuteronomy was closely linked to the Former Prophets. The case is different for Joshua 24, a text that manifests an attempt to interrupt the transition between Joshua and Judges and to create a Hexateuch of a sort.

Joshua 24 and the End of the Deuteronomistic History The second farewell speech of Joshua (24:1–15), which is followed by the commitment of the people through Joshua in Shechem (24:16–28),41 is the work of a post-Deuteronomistic author or redactor.42 There is no need for or evidence of reconstructing an older version of the account, which would not have contained this speech. There is also no need to reconstruct a very short ments (WMANT 81; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1999) 220 (ET: Genesis and the Moses Story: Israel’s Dual Origins in the Hebrew Bible [Siphrut 3; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2010]); Knauf, Josua, 22. 40.  The scroll may be quite old, gathering folklore tales from the north; see my remarks in “Response to Richard Nelson, Steven McKenzie, Eckart Otto, and Yairah Amit,” in “In Conversation with Thomas Römer, The So-Called Deuteronomistic History: A Sociological, Historical and Literary Introduction (London: T. & T. Clark, 2005)”; ed. Ray F. Person Jr., Journal of Hebrew Studies 9/19 (2009) 36–49 (esp. pp. 41–43), http://www.jhsonline.org. 41.  Interestingly, the OG locates this speech in Shiloh in order to harmonize with 18:1 (Nelson, Joshua, 264) and to connect the account with the beginning of Samuel. Or should one read this variant as a later, anti-Samaritan correction, as argued by Moshé Anbar, Josué et l’alliance de Sichem (Josué 24:1–28) (Beiträge zur biblischen Exegese und Theologie 25; Frankfurt/M.: Peter Lang, 1992) 30? 42.  As demonstrated already by John �����Van Seters, “Joshua 24 �������������������������� and the Problem of Tradition in the Old Testament,” in In the Shelter of Elyon: Essays on Ancient Palestinian Life and Literature in Honor of G. W. Ahlström (ed. W. Boyd Barrick and John R. Spencer; JSOTSup 31; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1984) 139–58; Erhard Blum, Die Komposition der Vätergeschichte (WMANT 57; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1984) 39–43; Anbar, Josué.

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speech that would have predated Joshua 23.43 Except for some glosses, there are very few indications of later insertions.44 The most noteworthy insertion appears in 24:19–21. Joshua’s negative statement that the addressees are unable to serve Yhwh contradicts his exhortation of the people to serve Yhwh and the solemn covenant ceremony, which manifests the people’s engagement. Verses 19–21 also interrupt the sequel of the people’s commitment to worship Yhwh (v. 18) and Joshua’s confirmation of the addressees’ choice (22a).45 The people’s answer in v. 22b (“They said: ‘We are witnesses’”) is lacking in the LXX and interrupts Joshua’s speech. It is therefore also a later expansion.46 The idea expressed in Joshua 24 that Israel must choose between Yhwh and other gods is not Deuteronomistic at all. In Deuteronomy, Yhwh alone chooses Israel for himself (see Deuteronomy 7), and the only “choice” Israel has is to respect or to transgress the treaty that Yhwh has established with his people. The theme of Joshua 24 may relate to a situation in the Persian Empire or, more specifically, to the Jewish Diaspora, when the people were attracted to religious syncretism.47 43.  In older scholarly works, this reconstruction was triggered by the idea that Joshua 24 reflects an old, premonarchical ceremony. Today there is a trend in German-speaking biblical research to return (in a different way) to an idea that Noth had which was to date the first account of Joshua 24 before chap. 23 (both texts being considered no earlier than the sixth century b.c.e., however); see the recent works of Becker, “Kontextvernetzung,” 144–51. Another view is that of Erik Aurelius, “Zur Entstehung von Josua 23–24,” in Houses Full of All Good Things: Essays in Memory of Timo Veijola (ed. Juha Pakkala and Martti Nissinen; Publications of the Finnish Exegetical Society 95; Helsinki: Finnish Exegetical Society / Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008) 95–114 (esp. pp. 99–102), who claims that Josh 23:1–3* was originally followed by Josh 24:14–16*, 18b, and 22—a theory that raises more problems than its resolves. Knauf (Josua, 22–23, 189) dates the whole of chap. 24 earlier than Joshua 23. Nevertheless, he observes rightly that Joshua 23 is followed by Judg 2:6–3:5, whereas Joshua 24 concludes the whole Hexateuch and is not interested in fostering a transition to the time of the Judges. 44.  Especially “Terah the father of Abraham and Nahor” in v. 2 (this expression tends to explain the identity of the fathers “beyond the River”); “I sent Moses and Aaron” in v. 5 (lacking in the LXX and inspired by 1 Sam 12:8 or Ps 105:26); the list of the people in v. 11, which tries to explain the identity of the “masters of Jericho,” “from the house of bondage and has done those mighty things in our sight” in v. 17 (missing in the LXX); for details, see my “Das doppelte Ende,” 536–39. 45.  Christoph Levin, Die Verheissung des neuen Bundes in ihrem theologiegeschicht­ lichen Zusammenhang ausgelegt (FRLANT 137; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1985) 114; Aurelius, “Entstehung,” 100. Verses 19–21 were added by the technique of re�sumption, and organized in a chiasm according to “Seidel’s law”: v. 18b: ‫;נעבד את יהוה‬ v. 21b: ‫את יהוה נעבד‬. 46.  Nelson, Joshua, 265. If this is taken into account, both Levin’s (Verheißung, 114– 15) and Aurelius’s (“Entstehung,” 99–102) reconstructions of the Urtext in 24:14a, 15*, 16, 18b, 22, and 28 collapse. 47.  The case of Elephantine is well known, where Yhwh was worshiped together with other divinities in an Egyptian-like triad. Josh 24:2 and 14 may well allude to a Diaspora context.

Book-Endings in Joshua

99

Frequently it is observed that Joshua is depicted in chap. 24 as a second Moses: like Moses, he concludes a covenant; like Moses, he enacts laws and decrees (v. 25); like Moses, he raises a stone; and like Moses, he writes a scroll (v. 26: “and Joshua wrote all the words in the scroll of the law of God”). The rare expression ‫( ספר תורת אלהים‬see also Neh 8:18) was possibly coined as an alternative to the term ‫תורת משה‬, which in the Persian period became a name for the nascent Pentateuch. The aim of Joshua 24 was apparently to attach the book of Joshua to the Torah and to create a Hexateuch, as several scholars have recently argued.48 There is no doubt that Joshua 24 (together with Judg 1:1–2:5)49 interrupts the Deuteronomistic sequence of Joshua 23 (in its present form) to Judg 2:6–19* and tries to connect Joshua closely to the books of Genesis to Deuteronomy. This is the case for all parts of Joshua 24. Joshua’s speech, which ends up in a dialogue with the people, contains a recapitulation of events that covers the time from the patriarchs (or even before) to the conquest and the distribution of the land (24:2–13). The fact that Moses is not mentioned in the original form of this summary may be explained by the emphasis that the author wants to put on Joshua.50 The same holds true for the absence of the law-giving on Sinai, since at the end of Joshua 24, Joshua promulgates the law. Joshua’s exhortation to put aside the gods of the ancestors (vv. 14–15) refers back to the late text of Gen 35:1–7, which is also located in Shechem. In both cases, Shechem appears to be the place where one turns away from the foreign gods. The answer of the people (Josh 24:16–24) ends with the statement “we will serve Yhwh and listen to his voice.” This affirmation alludes to Exod 19:5 and 8 and parallels Joshua’s covenant (24:25) with the revelation on Mount Sinai. The statement that Joshua established a statute and ordinance for the people (‫ )חק ומשפט‬parallels Joshua with Ezra (see Ezra 7:10) and offers an alternative to the giving of the law on Mount Sinai.51 Finally Joshua’s death at the age of 110 years (24:29) is evocative of Joseph’s death at the end of Genesis (see also the burying of Joseph’s bones in Josh 24:32, which refers back to Gen 50:25–26 and Exod 13:17). Joshua 24 reflects a debate in the Persian period about the question whether the Torah should end with the book of Deuteronomy or if it should also comprise the book of Joshua.52 Apparently a Deuteronomistic-Priestly minority 48.  For details, see ������� Thomas Römer and Marc Z. Brettler, “Deuteronomy 34 and the Case for a Persian Hexateuch,” JBL 119 (2000) 401–19. 49. Judges 1 (which gives an alternative conquest account) was perhaps composed at the same time. Judg 2:1–5 may be somewhat older and the work of late Deuteronomistic redactors. 50.  Josh 24:5a is a gloss. Interestingly, the time in the wilderness is depicted without mentioning the people’s rebellions (v. 7), in contradistinction to the book of Numbers. 51.  Schmid, Erzväter, 228. 52.  The formation of the Torah should be understood as resulting from a compromise or a consensus between Priestly and lay (“Deuteronomistic”) groups. For an overview about the current understandings of the promulgation of the Torah, see Gary N. Knoppers and Bernard

100

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coalesced to promote the publication of a Hexateuch and composed, among other texts, Joshua 24. The very different ending to this chapter in the LXX, which apparently was also known at Qumran, may reflect (even if the text was later reworked) the original ending of the Hexateuch, because it emphasizes the role of Joshua.53 The location of this chapter in Shechem has often been explained in reference to 1 Kings 12, the place of the division of “Israel” into two kingdoms.54 The pan-Israelite perspective of Joshua 24 (v. 1 mentions “all tribes”) could then be understood as a counterprogram to the failed kingship: Israel’s unity does not depend on political institutions such as the monarchy but on a Torah that integrates the Samaritan Yahwists.55 The alternative “Pentateuch” or “Hexateuch” nevertheless reflects different perspectives on Israel’s identity. In a Hexateuch, the Torah is linked with the conquest of the land, whereas in the Pentateuch, Moses dies without entering the land. The Pentateuch better fits a Diaspora perspective. It states explicitly that the land is part of the promise but not as necessary as to listen and live according to the Torah. For this reason, the “final cut” was made after the books of Deuteronomy and Joshua became a sort of “deuterocanonical” book (see Josh 1:8). When the idea of a Hexateuch was given up, vv. 19–21 and 22b were inserted into Joshua 24 so that the audience is also prepared in the last chapter of Joshua for the time of the Judges, in which Joshua’s statement that the people are unable to serve Yhwh becomes reality.56 The promulgation of the Pentateuch was the end of the Deuteronomistic History, since Deuteronomy was now a part of the Torah. The addition of M. Levinson, eds., The Pentateuch as Torah: New Models for Understanding Its Promulgation and Acceptance (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2007). 53.  On the LXX version, see ���������� Alexander Rofé, “The End of the Book of Joshua according to the Septuagint,” Hen 4 (1982) 17–36. For the Qumran data, see Birgit Lucassen, “Josua, Richter und CD,” RevQ 18 (1998) 373–96. See 24:31 LXX, where Joshua is buried together with “the stone swords by which he circumcised the sons of Israel in Galgal, when he (!) led them out from Egypt” (quoted from the English translation of A. Graeme Auld, Joshua: Jesus Son of Naué in Codex Vaticanus [Septuagint Commentary Series; Leiden: Brill, 2005] 83). For the complex history of the transmission of the LXX conclusion of Joshua, see Martin Rösel, “The Septuagint-Version of the Book of Joshua,” SJOT 16 (2002) 5–23. 54.  Levin, Verheißung, 116–18; Anbar, Josué, 117. On the intertextual level, Shechem also refers to the beginning of the Abraham story, since Abraham’s first settlement in the land takes place at Shechem (Gen 12:6). 55. ����������� Christophe Nihan, “The Torah between Samaria and Judah: Shechem and Gerizim in Deuteronomy and Joshua,” in The Pentateuch as Torah (ed. G. N. Knoppers and B. M. Levinson; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2007) 187–223 (esp. pp. 197–99). 56.  The closest text to Josh 24:19–21 in Judges is 6:7–10, also a very late insertion into the book and lacking in a Qumran manuscript: Eugene Ulrich, “Deuteronomistically Inspired Scribal Insertions into the Developing Biblical Texts: 4QJudga and 4QJera,” in Houses Full of All Good Things (ed. J. Pakkala and M. Nissinen; Helsinki: Finnish Exegetical School / Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008) 489–506 (esp. pp. 490–94).

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Joshua 24 with its attempt to create an (ephemeral) Hexateuch also contributed to its dismantling.57

Concluding Remarks The various “concluding formulas” in the book of Joshua foster the idea of a multi-layered Deuteronomistic History that was followed by a post-Deuteronomistic redaction. The oldest conquest account, from the seventh century b.c.e., may have comprised only the narratives in Joshua 1–11*. The original conclusion of this account is difficult to ascertain. It may have sounded like 10:42 or 11:16–23 in a shorter form. The conclusion of the “exilic” edition from the sixth century was 21:43–45 and 23:1–3*, 9, 11, 14b–16a. This conclusion insists on the total fulfillment of the divine promises and emphasizes that there are no other nations remaining in the land. This conclusion was perhaps the ending of a scroll comprising the books of Deuteronomy and Joshua. Since the statement of the expulsion of all nations stands in tension with some Deuteronomistic texts in the book of Judges, it is possible that the latter was inserted only at a later date into an older sequence running from the end of Joshua to the beginning of Samuel. The revision of Joshua 23, which dates to the end of the sixth or beginning of the fifth century b.c.e., introduces the idea that Yhwh did not expel all of Israel’s enemies, preparing the transition to the book of Judges (Joshua 23 and Judg 2:6 and following). In the middle of the Persian period, when the Judean (and Samaritan?) intelligentsia decided to promulgate a Torah, Joshua 24 was composed as new conclusion to Joshua in order to attach this book to the Torah and to create a Hexateuch. Joshua 24 together with Judg 1:1–2:5 interrupted the Deuteronomistic transition, underlining the difference between “Joshua” and “Judges” (the latter is now preceded by an alternative conquest account). After the decision not to integrate the book of Joshua into the Torah, Josh 24:19–21 was added to reinforce anew the link with the time of the Judges. I am delighted to offer these reflections to my esteemed colleague Richard Nelson, even though he might disagree with my emphasis on the Babylonian and Persian periods, an emphasis that, I believe, enables us to understand the formation and evolution of the Deuteronomistic History—as well as its end. 57.  When Deuteronomy was cut off from the following books, several chapters where added, especially Deuteronomy 27, in order to facilitate the acceptance of the Torah by the Samaritans (Nadav Naʾaman, “The Law of the Altar in Deuteronomy and the Cultic Site near Shechem,” in Rethinking the Foundations: Historiography in the Ancient World and in the Bible—Essays in Honour of John Van Seters [ed. Steven L Mckenzie and Thomas Römer; BZAW 294; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2000] 141–61) and Deuteronomy 32, which offers a poetic summary of the Deuteronomistic History (from the entrance to the land to the exile).

Joshua in the Book of Joshua Thomas B. Dozeman The title of my essay derives from Richard Nelson’s important article in the Journal of Bible Literature, where he argued that Joshua represented a royal figure—a proto-king—modeled on the figure of Josiah.1 The composition of the book of Joshua was central to Nelson’s reading. His interpretation of Joshua was based on Martin Noth’s Deuteronomistic History hypothesis, in which the book of Joshua is read as an episode within the literary horizon of Deuteronomy through 2 Kings, rather than as an independent work.2 The emerging questions surrounding the Deuteronomistic History hypothesis in recent research provide the opportunity to reexamine the idealization of Joshua, when the composition of the book of Joshua is not attributed to the Deuteronomist.3 My interpretation will focus, for the most part, on Joshua 1, since this chapter is essential for establishing the role of Joshua in the larger book. My study will be separated into three parts. First, I will review the past interpretations of Joshua, most of which assume the Deuteronomistic History hypothesis to some degree. Second, I will propose a postpentateuchal composition of Joshua 1, which frees the book from the Deuteronomistic History hypothesis. Third, I will conclude with a reinterpretation of the figure of Joshua in the book of Joshua.

Past Research on the Idealization of Joshua John Van Seters was certainly correct when he concluded that Joshua 1 is not simply an editorial prologue that is attached to an otherwise independent series of stories.4 It is, rather, an integral beginning to the entire book. Given 1.  Richard D. Nelson, “Joshua in the Book of Joshua,” JBL 100 (1981) 531–40. I wish to thank Richard for this article and for his many other books and articles that have enriched our understanding of Deuteronomy and the Former Prophets. 2. Martin Noth, Überlieferungsgeschichtliche Studien (3rd ed.; Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1967) 41; idem, Das Buch Josua (HAT 7; 2nd ed.; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1971). 3.  For a general discussion, see Thomas Römer, Albert de Pury, and Jean-Daniel Macchi, eds., Israel Constructs Its History: Deuteronomistic Historiography in Recent Research (JSOTSup 306; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000). For a more focused discussion of Joshua, see Ernst Axel Knauf, Josua (ZBKAT; Zurich: Theologischer Verlag, 2008). 4. John Van Seters, In Search of History: Historiography in the Ancient World and the Origins of Biblical History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983; repr. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1997) 324.

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this importance, it is not surprising that interpreters have undertaken extensive research on the genre of Joshua 1 and on its literary relationship to Deuteronomy to interpret the meaning of the character of Joshua as the successor of Moses. Noth provided a beginning point for the interpretation of Joshua. He explored the role of Joshua in the Pentateuch as the successor of Moses and concluded that Joshua is idealized primarily as an Ephraimite military leader of the occupation of the land west of the Jordan River and that his inclusion in the Pentateuch as the successor of Moses is likely late and confined to the function of a military leader. The reason for the inclusion of Joshua, according to Noth, was because “the tradition did not regard Moses as a military commander in time of war.”5 Noth did not explore the implications of his research on Joshua beyond the Pentateuch into the book of Joshua, nor did he investigate how the idealization of Joshua may have influenced the presentation of other characters in the Deuteronomistic History. But his literary hypothesis of the Deuteronomistic History laid the groundwork for others to interpret the meaning of Joshua in the book of Joshua. Norbert Lohfink and J. R. Porter changed the focus from the role of Joshua in the Pentateuch to his function within the Deuteronomistic History through a study of the genre of Joshua 1.6 Lohfink interpreted the divine encouragement in v. 6a that Joshua “be courageous and strong” to reflect the technical language of the installation of an office, which is coupled with the clarification of the task in v. 6b, “for you will cause this people to possess the land,” and a promise of divine presence in v. 9, “do not be terrified or dismayed for Yahweh your God is with you wherever you go.”7 The genre indicated the close relationship between Josh 1:1–9 and the book of Deuteronomy, since the installation of Joshua appeared to provide the conclusion to a sequence of related texts in Deut 1:37–38; 3:18–28; 31:2–8, 14–15, 23. Porter built on the work of Lohfink by adding a more focused interpretation of the idealization of Joshua in the Deuteronomistic History.8 He argued that the genre of installation in Josh 1:1–9 was tied to the royal office. He noted a literary connection between Josh 1:7–8 and the succession of the king in 1 Kgs 2:1–4, especially with regard to the demand for courage and the role of law in successful leadership. Porter concluded further that the installation of Joshua in Josh 1:1–9 was based on the law of the king in Deut 17:18–20. 5. Martin Noth, A History of Pentateuchal Traditions (trans. B. W. Anderson; Scholars Press Reprint 5; Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1981) 177. 6. Norbert Lohfink, “Die deuteronomistiche Darstellung des Übergangs der Führung Israels von Moses auf Josua,” Scholastik 37 (1962) 32–44; J. R. Porter, “The Succession of Joshua,” in Proclamation and Presence: Old Testament Essays in Honour of Gwynne Henton Davies (ed. John I. Durham and J. R. Porter; Richmond: John Knox Press, 1970) 102–17. 7.  Lohfink, “Die deuteronomistiche Darstellung,” 83–97. 8.  Porter, “The Succession of Joshua.”

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Moshe Weinfeld rejected the form-critical conclusion of Lohfink and Porter that Josh 1:1–9 represented a genre of installation.9 He argued, instead, that the chapter was a literary creation within deuteronomic tradition, the central motifs of which develop the speech of military oration, which was aimed at conquest. These orations are meant to idealize the characters that speak them. The function of the speeches, moreover, is similar to the orations in Greek historical writing.10 Weinfeld concluded that the idealization of Joshua is of a “national-military leader,” which brings his interpretation back to the earlier conclusion of Noth.11 Weinfeld concluded further that the intense imagery of war combined with the sense of national identity likely derived from the NeoAssyrian war descriptions, which supported his conclusion that the literature was composed during the Josianic period.12 Richard D. Nelson agreed with Weinfeld’s dating of Joshua 1 to the Josianic period, but he returned to the royal imagery in the idealization of Joshua, advanced by Lohfink and Porter.13 He noted the important background of the law (Deut 17:18–19) as a source of wisdom (1 Kgs 2:2–4) in royal installations. The appearance of these motifs in Josh 1:1–9 led to his conclusion that Joshua is fashioned into a “proto-king” who conforms to the ideal deuteronomic monarch. The themes of obedience to the law in Josh 1:7, as well as Joshua’s role as the covenant mediator in Josh 8:30–35 and the chief actor in the Passover in Josh 5:2–9 led Nelson to the additional conclusion that Joshua is fashioned on the role of King Josiah in 2 Kings 22–23. Robert B. Coote follows Nelson, describing Joshua 1 as the introduction to the “Josianic book of Joshua,” in which the central character is cast in the role of a monarch who leads the people, studies Torah, and receives oracles.14 Israel Finkelstein and Neil Silberman agree, writing: “Joshua is used to evoke a metaphorical portrait of Josiah, the would-be savior of all the people of Israel.”15 The review of interpretation indicates a continuing debate between military and royal imagery in the interpretation of Joshua. A common feature throughout the debate, however, is the interpretation of the book of Joshua as an episode within the Deuteronomistic History, which provides the hermeneutical perspective for interpreting the character of Joshua. A reevaluation of the composition of Joshua 1 as the introduction to an independent, postpentateuchal  9. Moshe Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School (Oxford: Clarendon, 1972; repr. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1992) 45–51. 10.  Ibid., 52. 11.  Ibid., 50. 12.  Ibid., 45. 13.  Nelson, “Joshua in the Book of Joshua,” 531–40. 14.  Robert B. Coote, “The Book of Joshua,” NIB 2:584–85. 15. Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts (New York: Free Press, 2001) 95.

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book that underwent a revision when placed in its present literary context will provide a framework for relating the two interpretations of Joshua in the formation of the book. In the following section, I argue that Joshua is a military leader in the original introduction to the book of Joshua; however, the revision of Joshua 1 incorporated a qualified form of royal imagery with the introduction of the theme of the Torah.

The Composition of Joshua 1 Joshua 1 contains a series of literary tensions that suggest a history of composition. Interpreters focus in particular on four literary problems: (1) the transition of an era with the death notice of Moses in v. 1a; (2) the shift between the second person in vv. 3–4 and the third person in vv. 2, 6 in the references to the Israelites; (3) the demand to observe the Torah of Moses in vv. 7–8 as a condition for acquiring the promised land; and (4) the imbalance between two speeches by Joshua in vv. 10–11 and 12–15 and only one response by the people in vv. 16–18. Past interpreters have evaluated the literary tensions in Joshua 1 in a variety of ways to identify its history of composition. Noth, Boling, Nelson, Hess, Butler, and Schäfer-Lichtenberger have tended to emphasize a more unified reading of Joshua 1, often based on the comparison of its literary style with the rhetoric in the book of Deuteronomy.16 Other interpreters have suggested a more complex history of composition that originates with a pre-Deuteronomistic author. Eckhart Otto represents a source-critical solution with the identification of a pre-Deuteronomistic source (Source B) in Josh 1:2, 5, 10, 11, which was supplemented by a Deuteronomistic redactor in Josh 1:3, 4, 6–9, 12–17a, 18*.17 Manfred Görg follows a similar line of interpretation with the identification of Josh 1:1–2, 10–11 as the pre-Deuteronomistic version of Joshua 1.18 Increasingly, interpreters are identifying all the stages of the composition of Joshua 1 within Deuteronomistic tradition, under the influence of Noth’s Deuteronomistic History hypothesis. Volkmar Fritz, for example, suggests an original form of the divine speech to Moses in Josh 1:1–6 with subsequent redactions: one in Josh 1:7–9, which he identifies as RedD; and further additions in Josh 1:10–11 and 12–18.19 Klaus Bieberstein has identified three stages 16.  Noth, Josua, 20–21; Robert G. Boling, Joshua (AB 5; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1982) 117–38; Richard D. Nelson, Joshua (OTL; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1997) 29–36; Richard S. Hess, Joshua (TOTC 6; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1996) 7–80; Trent C. Butler, Joshua (WBC; Waco, TX: Word, 1983) 2–23; Christa Schäfer-Lichtenberger, Josua und Salomo: Eine Studie zu Autorität und Legitimität des Nachfolgers im Alten Testament (VTSup 58; Leiden: Brill, 1995) 190–224. 17. Eckhart Otto, Das Mazzotfest in Gilgal (BWANT 107; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1975) 86–88. 18. Manfred Görg, Josua (NEB; Würzburg: Echter Verlag, 1991) 11–14. 19. Volkmar Fritz, Das Buch Josua (HAT 1/7; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1994) 27–30.

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of Deuteronomistic composition, including an original version in Josh 1:1–2, 5b–6, 9b–11, 16–17 (18:a1–a2)?, 18ef (DtrA); an initial redaction in Josh 1:12– 15 (DtrR), a nomistic redaction in Josh 1:(3–5a), 7–9c (DtrN), and a possible quotation in Josh 1:18:a1–a2.20 More recently, Jochen Nentel has reduced the composition of Joshua 1 to two Deuteronomistic authors, including an original composition in Josh 1:1–2, 5–6, 10–11, 16–18 (DtrH) and a revision in Josh 1:3–4, 7–9, 12–15 (DtrS), although he leaves open the possibility that vv. 8–9 may represent a third author.21 I will build on the history of interpretation by identifying two stages of composition in Joshua 1, while also departing from past research by arguing that the composition of the book of Joshua is post-Deuteronomistic and thus dependent on the Pentateuch rather than simply the book of Deuteronomy. The identification of the distinct authors will begin with an analysis of the divine speech to Joshua in Josh 1:1–9 before turning to the literary problems in Joshua’s address to the Israelites in Josh 1:10–18.

The Two Stages of Composition in Joshua 1 There are two arguments against the literary unity of the divine address to Joshua in vv. 1–9. The first is the shift in focus between Joshua and the people, which is accompanied by a change in literary style in the reference to the Israelites. Carl Steuernagel questioned the coherence of the section already in the late 19th century by noting that Joshua is the object of divine discourse in vv. 1b and 5 as compared with the people in vv. 3–4.22 Recent interpreters have reinforced the insight of Steuernagel by focusing more closely on the changing pronominal suffixes in the references to the people, even though Noth disagreed, arguing instead that the change from the singular to the plural was triggered by the phrase “you and all this people” in v. 2.23 Over against the position of Noth, Bieberstein identified Josh 1:3–5a as a secondary addition because of the change in the reference to Israel from the third person in vv. 2 and 6 to the second person in vv. 3–5a, which he rightly concluded disrupts the literary context.24 Nentel supported the conclusion of Bieberstein, while rejecting the inclusion of v. 5a with vv. 3–4, since it does not fit the literary-critical 20. Klaus Bieberstein, Josua-Jordan-Jericho: Archäologie, Geschichte und Theologie der Landname-erzählungen Josua 1–6 (OBO 143; Freiburg: Universitätsverlag / Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1995) 90–99. 21. Jochen Nentel, Trägerschaft und Intentionen des deuteronomistischen Geschichtswerks: Untersuchungen zu den Reflexionreden Jos 1; 23; 24; 1 Sam 12 und 1 Kön 8 (BZAW 297; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2000) 21–48. 22. Carl Steuernagel, Das Buch Josua (HAT; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1899) 192. 23.  Noth, Josua, 27. 24.  Bieberstein, Josua, xx.

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criteria and rests instead upon separate form-critical judgments.25 The result is the identification of Josh 1:3–4 as an addition to Joshua 1. The deity commands Joshua in v. 2 to lead the people to the land that he is giving ‘to them’ (‫)להם‬. The divine address to Joshua continues in v. 6, where the people are also referenced in the third person: “Be courageous and strong, for you will cause this people [‫ ]העם הזה‬to possess the land, which I swore to their fathers to give to them [‫]להם‬.” In Josh 1:3, by contrast, the object of the divine discourse shifts from Joshua to the people, when the deity promises: “Every place, upon which the sole of your foot [‫ ]כף  ־־רגלכם‬will stride, I will give it to you [‫]לכם‬, as I spoke to Moses.” The change of address from Joshua to the people is accompanied by the geographical description of the promised land in v. 4. The second literary problem in Josh 1:1–9 is the introduction of the law in vv. 7–8 as a condition for the successful realization of the divine promise of land. The divine command for Joshua to be “courageous and strong” is repeated three times in vv. 6, 7, and 9. Rudolf Smend noted that the second occurrence of the motif in v. 7 departed from the other two instances in form and in meaning.26 The command is introduced in v. 7 with the particle ‫רק‬ (‘only’) and intensified with the adverb ‫‘( מאד‬very’). The new syntax is also accompanied with a change in meaning. Verse 6 is a demand for Joshua to be courageous in war because of God’s unconditional promise of land to the ancestors: “Be courageous and strong, for you will cause this people to possess the land, which I swore to their fathers to give them.” Verse 7 qualifies the unconditional promise of v. 6 with the word “only,” and the reinterpretation of success is conditioned on Joshua’s obedience to the Mosaic Law: “Only be courageous and very strong by observing and doing all the Torah, which Moses, my servant, commanded you.” Verse 8 strengthens the divine command in v. 7 by clarifying that the law is the “book of the Torah” and that success is only possible through obedience to the Torah. Smend identified the addition of vv. 7–8 as a legal or nomistic redaction within Deuteronomistic tradition (DtrN), and he included v. 9 as part of the addition. But the earlier conclusion of Steuernagel remains the stronger reading, when he noted that the promise of divine presence to Joshua in v. 9 relates more closely to the motif of the unconditional promise to the ancestors in v. 6 than to the nomistic addition in vv. 7–8.27 Michael Fishbane summarizes the insight of Smend by describing the insertion of vv. 7–8 as an instance of aggadic exegesis that “transforms the

25.  Nentel, Trägerschaft, 22–23. 26. Rudolf Smend, “Das Gesetz und die Völker,” in Probleme Biblisher Theologie (ed. Hans Walter Wolff; Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1971) 494–97. 27.  Steuernagel, Josua, 210.

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exhortation to physical prowess and courage (in v. 6) into spiritual fortitude” through the study of Torah.28 Interpreters also debate whether the speeches of Joshua in Josh 1:10–18 are unified or contain a history of composition. Steuernagel identified vv. 10–11 as a continuation of vv. 1–2, with vv. 12–18 representing later Deuteronomistic tradition.29 Butler reflects this position, describing vv. 10–11 as a “narrative fragment.”30 Variations of this interpretation continue in recent studies, where the address to the tribes east of the Jordan in vv. 12–15 is judged to be a later addition. Bieberstein noted the use of the infinitive absolute ‫‘( זכור‬remember’) in v. 13 as compared with the imperatives in vv. 1–11.31 Nentel detected a problem in geography with the phrase “across the Jordan,” which assumes that Joshua is west of the Jordan, when the narrative places him east.32 In addition, both Bieberstein and Nentel judge the imbalance between the two speeches of Joshua (vv. 10–11 and 12–15) and the one response of the people (vv. 16–18) to be a significant literary problem.33 The interpretations certainly highlight shifting motifs, but the literary tensions do not signify the clear signs of separate composition that are evident with the insertion of the divine speech to the people in vv. 3–4 or the reinterpretation of courage as the study of Torah in vv. 7–8. For this reason, I interpret the speeches of Joshua in vv. 10–18 as a unified composition by a single author.

The Pentateuch as the Literary Source of Joshua 1 The literary-critical study has identified Josh 1:1b–2, 5–6, 9–18 as the original introduction to the book of Joshua, which is supplemented with Josh 1:1a, 3–4, 7–8. A review of the themes and the motifs will clarify that the original introduction to the book of Joshua is dependent on the entire Pentateuch, rather than just Deuteronomy or the Deuteronomistic History. Interpreters who follow Noth’s Deuteronomistic History hypothesis have identified a literary relationship between Joshua and Deuteronomy in the themes of Joshua’s succession to the Mosaic office (Deut 3:21–28; 31:7–8, 14, 23; and 34:9), the divine promise of land (for example, Deut 1:20, 25; 3:20; 4:1; 5:31; 9:23; 28:8), and the identification of the eastern tribes (Deut 3:18–20). But all of these themes are also prominent in the Priestly literature of the Pentateuch and thus are not confined to the Deuteronomistic History. The Priestly literature contains an account of the succession of Joshua in Num 28. Michael Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985) 384. 29.  Steuernagel, Josua, 211. 30.  Butler, Joshua, 15. 31.  Bieberstein, Josua, 98. 32.  Nentel, Trägerschaft, 30. 33.  Bieberstein, Josua, 38–39, 99; Nentel, Trägerschaft, 27.

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27:12–23 and the identification of the eastern tribes in Numbers 32. The promise of land also appears frequently in the Priestly literature to Abraham (Gen 17:8), Jacob (Gen 35:12), and Moses (Exod 6:4), and in legislation, where the syntax closely parallels Josh 1:2 (for example, Exod 12:25; Lev 23:10; 25:2; Num 20:12, 24; 27:12), even though more elaborate variations of the phrase also appear in Deuteronomy, as noted above. The divine oath of land to the ancestors in v. 6, “the land which I swore to their fathers,” on the other hand, is prominent in Deuteronomy (for example, Deut 1:35; 8:1; 10:11; 31:7, 20) and in non-Priestly literature in the Pentateuch (for example, Exod 13:5, 11; Num 11:12; 14:23) but absent in the Priestly literature, as noted by Thomas Römer.34 The comparison clarifies that the central themes of Joshua 1 extend beyond the Deuteronomistic History to include a mixture of Deuteronomistic and Priestly literature from the Pentateuch. The same mixture of pentateuchal literature continues in the motifs of Josh 1:1b–2, 5–6, 9–18. The command for Joshua to “arise and cross the Jordan” in v. 2 echoes language from Deuteronomy (Deut 2:13, 24), as do the motifs of “courage and strength” in vv. 6, 9 (Deut 31:6, 7, 23) and “rest” in v. 15 as the end of military conquest (Deut 3:20, 12:10, 25:19). Yet the motif of rest in late Isaian tradition (for example, Isa 14:1, 3, 7; 28:12; 57:2), as well as the central role of the motif of “courage and strength” in Chronicles (1 Chr 22:13, 28:20; 2 Chr 32:7) caution against embedding the original composition of Joshua 1 as an episode within the Deuteronomistic History, since these motifs are used broadly in postexilic literature with less direct ties to Deuteronomistic tradition. The pentateuchal character of Joshua 1 is clarified with the description of Joshua as a novice (‫ )מׁשרת‬in v. 1b, which occurs infrequently in Deuteronomy (for example, Deut 10:8; 17:12; 18:5, 7), where the preferred term for an apprentice is ‘one who stands before you’ (‫)העמד לפניך‬, which is the phrase that is used to describe Joshua’s apprentice status to Moses (Deut 1:38). The word ‫ מׁשרת‬is far more common in Priestly literature (e.g., Exod 28:14; 28:35, 43; 30:20; 39:41). The same relationship between Joshua 1 and Priestly literature reappears in the exchange between Joshua and the eastern tribes in Josh 1:12–18. Although the command for the eastern tribes to assist in the conquest of the land west of the Jordan occurs in both Priestly (Num 32:28–32) and Deuteronomistic (Deut 3:18–20) literature, the response of the eastern tribes in Josh 1:17 is lacking in Deuteronomy, appearing only in the Priestly version in Num 32:31. The preceding literary comparison provides evidence to conclude that the composition of Joshua 1 cannot be restricted to the literary horizon of the Deuteronomistic History. In fact, it does not even contain innerbiblical quotations 34. Thomas Römer, Israels Väter: Untersuchungen zur Väterthematik im Deuteronomium und in der deuteronomistischen Tradition (OBO 99; Freiburg: Universitätsverlag / Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1990) 352–54.

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from Deuteronomy or “doublets” as noted by Butler.35 Rather, Josh 1:1b–2, 5–6, 9–18 includes a mixture of Deuteronomistic and Priestly themes and motifs from the Pentateuch, suggesting a postexilic origin of composition. The literary relationship, moreover, suggests that the author is taking up traditional pentateuchal themes in fashioning an introduction to the book of Joshua rather than creating explicit innerbiblical quotations. The original composition of Joshua 1 suggests an independent book that is postpentateuchal.

The Revision of Joshua 1 and Its Literary Context in the Deuteronomistic History The original introduction of Joshua 1 acquires three additions when the book of Joshua is placed in its present narrative context between Deuteronomy and Judges. The introduction in v. 1a links the book of Joshua with the book of Judges, the other two additions in vv. 3–4 and 7–8 reinterpret the two divine speeches to Joshua, while creating innerbiblical ties to the book of Deuteronomy. The divine promise to the Israelite people along with a geographical description of the promised land (vv. 3–4) are inserted into the first divine speech (vv. 1b–2, 5), while the unconditional promise of land and divine presence in the second (vv. 6, 9) is qualified by the need to observe the Torah (vv. 7–9). The additions create innerbiblical quotations of specific texts in Deuteronomy or Judges that anchor the book of Joshua in its present literary context, while also reinterpreting the unconditional divine promise of land as requiring obedience to the Torah. The New Introduction Josh 1:1a provides the present introduction to the book of Joshua with the formula: “After the death of Moses, the servant of Yahweh.” The formula is not original to Joshua 1, and Jacques Briend is likely correct that the earlier version of the book of Joshua probably began with the divine address to Joshua in v. 1b: “And Yahweh said to Joshua, son of Nun, the novice of Moses, stating.”36 Baruch de Spinoza long ago clarified the function of Josh 1:1a as a means by which an author connected the book of Joshua to its surrounding literary context in order to form a single narrative.37 Many modern interpreters argue that Josh 1:1a is tied closely to the notice of Moses’ death in Deut 34:5, even though the two texts differ in form. Thus, Fritz, for example, concludes that the temporal phrase regarding the death of Moses “points back to Deut 35.  Butler, Joshua, 7. 36. Jacques Briend, “The Sources of the Deuteronomistic History: Research on Joshua 1 12,” in Israel Constructs Its History (JSOTSup 306; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000) 360–86 (esp. pp. 373–74, 383). 37.  Benedict (Baruch) de Spinoza, The Theological-Political Treatise (trans. R. H. M. Elwes; New York: Dover, 1951) 128–29.

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34:5.”38 More striking, however, is the exact repetition of the formula in Josh 1:1, Judg 1:1, 2 Sam 1:1, and 2 Kgs 1:1, which fashions the Former Prophets into a sequence of epochs marked by the death of a hero, including Moses (Josh 1:1), Joshua (Judg 1:1), Saul (2 Sam 1:1), and Ahab (2 Kgs 1:1). The sequence clarifies that the purpose of the formula in Josh 1:1a is to embed the book of Joshua in its present narrative context and to link it specifically with the book of Judges. The late addition of the death formulas in Joshua and Judges is evident from an examination of Judges, where the death of Joshua is also embedded in the narrative of Judg 2:6–10 after the initial conquest of the land in Judg 1:1–2:5. The account of Joshua’s death in Judg 2:6–10 indicates that the opening stories of conquest in Judg 1:1–2:5 were intended to be read as taking place under his leadership. The narrative of Judg 2:6–10 states that Joshua dismissed the people (Judg 2:6), before his death is recorded: “Joshua, son of Nun, the servant of Yahweh, died at the age of one hundred and ten years” (Judg 2:8). The notice of Joshua’s death in Judg 2:8 is noteworthy, because it provides the literary parallel to the death of Moses in Deut 34:5–7, not Josh 1:1a as argued by Fritz. Both Moses and Joshua are described as the “servant of Yahweh” and their ages are recorded, with Moses living 120 years and Joshua 110 years. The parallel between Deut 34:5–7 and Judg 2:8 suggests that the account of the conquest under Joshua in the book of Judges originally followed the book of Deuteronomy directly, rather than the account of the conquest in the book of Joshua. The insertion of the death formulas of Moses (Josh 1:1) and Joshua (Judg 1:1) is for the purpose of incorporating the book of Joshua into its present narrative context between Deuteronomy and Judges. The new literary strategy, with the displacement of Judges as representing the era that follows the time of Joshua, results in the reporting of Joshua’s death twice: at the outset of the book (Judg 1:1) and again at the conclusion of the stories of conquest (Judg 2:6–10). The Promise of Land to the People The divine speech in Josh 1:1–9 shifts from Joshua in v. 2 to the people in vv. 3–4, when Yahweh states: “Every place upon which the sole of your foot will tread, I will give it to you.” The imagery in this promise of land is rare in the Hebrew Bible, appearing in only one other text, as a speech of Moses to the Israelites in Deut 11:24. Deut 11:24 occurs within an address by Moses that includes Deut 10:12–11:32, in which he encourages the Israelites to obey the law as a condition for prosperity in the land. Andrew Mayes separates the section into five parts: (1) a reference to law and the need for the exclusive worship of Yahweh (Deut 10:12–22); (2) a summary of Salvation History (Deut 11:1–7); (3) a warning against disobedience to the law (Deut 11:8–17); (4) the conse38.  Fritz, Josua, 27.

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quences of obedience and disobedience for Israel’s future life in the land (Deut 11:18–25); and (5) a concluding exhortation to keep the law (Deut 11:26–32).39 The outline of Deut 10:12–11:32 indicates that obedience to the law is the condition for the promise of land in Deut 11:24. Thus, when Moses states, “Every place upon which the sole of your foot [‫ ]כפ ־רגלכם בו‬will tread [‫ ]תדרך‬will be yours [‫]לכם‬,” the promise of success presupposes obedience to the law. A closer examination of Deut 11:24 also indicates that the verse relates the obedience to law with the unusually large geographical description of the promised land: “From the wilderness and Lebanon; from the river, the River Euphrates, to the Sea at the End.” The relationship between law and geography inform the unusually large description of the promised land in Deut 11:24, which also occurs in the addition in Josh 1:3–4, indicating the close literary relationship between these texts. Josh 1:3–4 is an innerbiblical quotation of Deut 11:24. The author quotes verbatim the initial phrase of Deut 11:24 at the outset of Josh 1:3: “Every place upon which the sole of your foot [‫ ]כף  ־רגלכם בו‬will tread [‫]תדרך‬.” Once the link between the texts is forged, the author departs from Deut 11:24 with the words: “I will give it to you as I promised to Moses.” Hess is correct in noting that the promise of land to Moses is unexpected and surprising, since this theme is associated with the ancestors in the Pentateuch, not Moses.40 The reason for the reference, however, is not to reinterpret the promise of land as changing from the ancestors to Moses but to make the innerbiblical relationship between Josh 1:3–4 and Deut 11:24 overt, since the reference to Moses points the reader back explicitly to its parent text. The innerbiblical quotation of Deut 11:24 is then reinforced further by the repetition of the large geographical boundaries of the promised land in Josh 1:4, which also appears in Deut 11:24. Both texts indicate the territory in which the law is authoritative. The innerbiblical relationship between Deut 11:24 and Josh 1:3–4 secures the literary context of the book of Joshua with Deuteronomy in much the same way as the introductory formulas in Josh 1:1a and Judg 1:1a joined these books. The result is that the book of Joshua is firmly anchored in its literary context between the preceding book of Deuteronomy and the following book of Judges. The quotation from Deut 11:24 also provides the background for interpreting the meaning of Josh 1:3–4. The emphasis on law in Deut 10:12– 11:32 suggests that the editor of Joshua 1 is introducing the same theme into the book of Joshua. In this case, the innerbiblical quotation of Deut 11:24 in Josh 1:3–4 not only secures the literary context of the book of Joshua, it also introduces a reinterpretation of the promise of land. The unconditional promise of land in Josh 1:1b–2, 5–6, 9 becomes conditioned on the obedience to law 39.  A. D. H. Mayes, Deuteronomy (NCB; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981) 208. 40.  Hess, Joshua, 69.

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in Josh 1:3–4. This new emphasis is made explicit in the further addition of Josh 1:7–8. The Obedience to Torah and the Conditional Promise of the Land The call for Joshua to obey Torah includes a series of motifs that quote Deuteronomy, without emphasizing one particular text, in contrast to the clear innerbiblical relationship between Josh 1:3–4 and Deut 11:24. Weinfeld identified “observing and doing all the Torah” in v. 7 as distinctive deuteronomic phraseology, noting its occurrence in Deut 17:19, 28:58, 29:28, 31:12, and 32:46.41 As was the case with the innerbiblical quotation of Deut 11:24 in Josh 1:3–4, the author makes the reference to Deuteronomy explicit by identifying the Torah as that which Moses commanded (v. 7). The additional reference to “this book of the Torah” in v. 8 also links the book of Joshua with Deuteronomy, where the phrase occurs in Deut 28:58, 61; 30:10; 31:24, and 26. Other motifs that further cement the literary relationship between Josh 1:7–8 and Deuteronomy include the emphasis on the written character of the law (for example, Deut 24:1, 3; 27:3, 8; 28:61; 29:19–26; 31:9, 19, 22, 24) and the requirement that Joshua not stray from it either to the right or to the left (Deut 2:27; 5:23; 17:11, 20; 28:14). The multiple innerbiblical ties to Deuteronomy reinforce the earlier conclusion that the aim of the author of Josh 1:7–8 is to embed the book of Joshua in its present literary context, while also making the divine promise of land conditional on obedience to the law.42

The Composition of Joshua 1 and the Idealization of Joshua I have identified two stages of composition in Joshua 1. Josh 1:1b–2, 5–6, 9–18 employs the Pentateuch as a literary resource for fashioning the commission of Joshua as a military hero who leads tribal Israel in purging the promised land of Canaanite city-states and their kings. This version of Joshua 1 suggests that the entire book of Joshua likely functioned as an independent document in the postexilic period. Josh 1:1a, 3–4, 7–8 is a revision to place the book in its present literary context, which accounts for the specific innerbiblical connections to Deuteronomy and to Judges. The revision indicates the late incorporation of Joshua into the so-called Deuteronomistic History. The two-stage process of composition also provides a framework for interpreting the changing idealization of Joshua from an antimonarchical warrior in the in41. Moshe Weinfeld, The Promise of Land: The Inheritance of the Land of Canaan by the Israelites (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993) 336. 42.  The comparison of the MT and the LXX by R. Rofé (“The Nomistic Correction in Biblical Manuscripts and Its Occurrence in 4QSama,” RevQ 14 [1989] 247–54) further accentuates the emphasis on law in the MT version of Joshua.

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dependent book of Joshua to a Torah-observant leader like the monarch Josiah in the Deuteronomistic History. The original form of Joshua 1 does not identify Joshua as a royal leader. The imagery of Josh 1:1b–2, 5–6, 9–18 lacks the specific literary connection to the law of the king in Deut 17:18–20 or to the succession of the king in 1 Kgs 2:1–4 that was emphasized by Porter or Nelson. Instead, the imagery is limited to that of a military leader, as noted by Weinfeld. Schäfer-Lichtenberger reinforces the rejection of royal imagery, noting that there is no office associated with Joshua nor any successor to his role in the story.43 When Joshua is read as an independent book, the royal interpretation of Joshua becomes even weaker. Joshua is portrayed as both an antimonarchical and an antiurban leader who lives in a camp at Gilgal and seeks to destroy all the city-states in Canaan. Joshua emerges as a “territorial hero,” to use a term from D. Mendels, who clears the land of cities and kings through a nationalistic conquest that establishes territorial borders and an ideal form of pastoral life in the promised land.44 At no time in the book is Joshua idealized as a king or even a proto-king. In fact, he represents a virulent form of antiurban and antimonarchical life in the promised land. Joshua kills kings; he does not model them. He slaughters the kings of Jericho and Ai, as well as the kings from the northern and the southern regions of the promised land, while living in a camp at Gilgal. Josh 10:22–27 provides the strongest portrait of Joshua in the book, when he takes the five kings out of the cave at Makkedah, places the feet of his warriors on their necks, then kills all of them and hangs their corpses on a tree, before continuing his massacre of kings from Makkedah in the north to the Negeb in the south (Josh 10:28–11:23), all of which culminates in the list of slaughtered monarchs in Joshua 12, including the king of Jerusalem (Josh 12:10). Joshua is related indirectly to the ideal of kingship in the Deuteronomistic History through the additions to Joshua 1 that focus in particular on Torah observance. Josh 1:1b, 3–4, 7–8 creates the links to a variety of themes that are central in the Deuteronomistic History, including the obedience to the law as a condition for acquiring the land in Deut 11:24; the law of the king in Deut 17:18–20; Torah observance and the succession of the king in 1 Kgs 2:1–4; and the central role of the law in the story of Josiah (for example, 2 Kgs 22:8–11; 23:34). The common thread throughout these texts is the obedience to the Torah that is required of the king (Deut 17:18–20). This law is modeled in the commission of Joshua (Josh 1:7–8), reinforced in the succession of Solomon (1 Kgs 2:1–4), and carried through to the reformation of Josiah (2 Kgs 22:8, 11). The relationship of these texts underscores that the aim of 43.  Schäfer-Lichtenberger, Josua und Salomo, 219–22. 44. Doron Mendels, The Rise and Fall of Jewish Nationalism: The History of Jewish and Christian Ethnicity in Palestine within the Graeco-Roman Period, 200 bce to 135 ce (ABRL; New York: Doubleday, 1992) 99.

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the redactor of Joshua is to locate the once independent book into its present narrative context within the Deuteronomistic History by means of the theme of the observance of law as a condition for success. The new theme, however, also qualifies the intense antimonarchical portrait of Joshua that dominates the independent book, because Joshua’s commission to undertake conquest becomes restrained by Torah, which in the context of the Deuteronomistic History allows for a qualified form of monarchy. Therefore, the editorial additions to Joshua 1 could be interpreted as the introduction of a modified royal theme. The additions allow the once antiurban and antimonarchical book of Joshua to function as an episode in the larger story of the Deuteronomistic History, which now culminates with the idealization of a king in the reform of Josiah.

Synoptic David: The View from Chronicles A. Graeme Auld Richard Nelson and I share an interest in the book of Joshua. Our understandings of the textual history of this book are very similar, but we have diverged over how to relate portions of Chronicles to this textual history. Study of Chronicles has been advanced in recent years through commentaries by three of Nelson’s U.S. colleagues who have, like him, made important contributions to study of the Former Prophets. In this essay I want to review the broadly convergent arguments that all three advance in support of the consensus view, that the Chronicler worked from and adapted a version of 2 Samuel when writing his David story. It is a great pleasure to offer these remarks in honor of Richard Nelson and in respect for his work. I hope these observations about Chronicles and Samuel may help to restart my discussion with him about Chronicles and Joshua. 1 Chronicles 11–21 and 2 Samuel 5–24 broadly begin and finish at the same places: with David anointed king and taking Jerusalem at the beginning, and David’s census of Israel and its consequences at the end. Long stretches of 1 Chronicles 11–21 are identical, or nearly identical, to the relevant portions of 2 Samuel; but some, while clearly related, differ considerably. •  1 Chronicles 11–16 contains almost all of 2 Samuel 5–6 + 23:8–39 but is fuller and differently ordered. •  1 Chronicles 17–19 is (nearly) identical to 2 Samuel 7–8 + 10. •  1 Chronicles 20 corresponds only to the beginning and ending of 2 Samuel 11–12 together with the ending of 2 Samuel 21. •  1 Chronicles 21 is very similar to 2 Samuel 24, but it is not as similar as 1 Chronicles 17–19 is similar to 2 Samuel 7–8 + 10. Three recent commentaries offer many small retractions from well-known detailed positions yet continue to support the familiar model in which Chronicles is dependent on 2 Samuel: these commentaries are by Steven McKenzie, Gary Knoppers, and Ralph Klein.1 Knoppers and Klein perform signal service in the 1.  To reduce cumbersome footnotes in the following discussion, page numbers from these three volumes will follow the author’s name or a quotation/paraphrase of the author’s argument: Steven L. McKenzie, 1–2 Chronicles (AOTC; Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 2004);

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meticulous attention they pay to narrowing the difference between the Chronicler and his probable Vorlage. Together with McKenzie, they should now have succeeded in making it much more widely known that it was a text (perhaps of Samuel) very different from MT Samuel that the Chronicler partly transcribed and partly reworked. All three have engaged with but have not been persuaded by my thesis that Chronicles and Samuel–Kings are each dependent on a shared source, essentially the synoptic portions of these books; and I want to advance this discussion here. I shall begin this brief review with the chapters of Chronicles most similar to their parallels in Samuel and follow with 1 Chronicles 11–16.

1 Chronicles 17–20 On 1 Chronicles 17, Knoppers (662) notes that the text used by the Chronicler was typologically more primitive than MT or LXX Samuel. He also insists that it contained Deuteronomistic editing (674); however, at some points Knoppers seems to overplay the evidence. Commenting on “whom God went forth to redeem as a people for himself  ” (1 Chr 17:21), he states that “the language is typical of Deuteronomy” (684). However, this phrase never occurs in Deuteronomy; only the verb “redeem” is found in the six verses he cites. Then, building on an observation by Peter Machinist that Israel, unlike the Egyptians and Mesopotamians, proclaimed their marginal status as newcomers, making this foundational to their special status, Knoppers claims that “the Chronicler, like the Deuteronomist before him . . . , pushes the trope a step further, hailing the newcomer status of David within Israelite history (vv. 16–18)” (688). Yet if, as I have argued, the relationship between Deuteronomy and synoptic texts (such as 2 Samuel 7//1 Chronicles 17 and 1 Kings 8//2 Chronicles 6) should be reversed, the development of this admittedly significant trope will have been from newcomer David to newcomer Israel. Discussing the same chapter, Klein (374) claims that the Chronicler omits 2 Sam 7:1b, 14b (he delayed the theme of “rest” until Solomon) but also works from a different Vorlage. He tells us that “the Chronicler follows closely the final redaction of 2 Samuel 7, although in more than twenty cases he follows a reading other than Samuel MT” (385). Klein (377) also suggests that the Chronicler frequently changes the divine name, although without apparent theological significance. In fact, this is a very difficult claim to sustain, because between the different texts of Samuel, let alone the parallel passages in Chron­ icles, there is considerable diversity in the divine name; and the number of uses of “Yahweh” is much higher in MT Samuel than in any other text. Regarding Gary N. Knoppers, 1 Chronicles (AB 12A; 2 vols.; New York: Doubleday, 2004); Ralph W. Klein, 1 Chronicles (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006).

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the different placing of the theme of “rest,” this might be better understood in terms of Ray Person’s model of “contemporary competing historiographies.”2 On 1 Chronicles 18, Knoppers (693) is more open than Klein (395–96) to accepting that Ab[i]shai (1 Chr 18:12) was the original victor over Edom rather than David, as in 2 Sam 8:13. Knoppers (698) notes that the reference to Ammon in the summary statement (1 Chr 18:11) is achronological (a narrative relating to Ammon follows in the next chapter), while Amalek features in the Chronicler’s text nowhere else (see also Klein, 395). Both scholars note that 1 Chronicles 18–20 represents a significant unit between 1 Chronicles 17 and 1 Chronicles 21; and both, in fact, write well on the coherence of 1 Chronicles 18–20 (which begins so similarly to 2 Samuel 8 + 10, and finishes so differently from 2 Samuel 11–21). Knoppers (700) describes these three chapters as a paratactic construction, with only vaguely chronological links between each section (and no heading in 1 Chr 18:14–17). Later, when discussing the beginning of 1 Chronicles 19, Knoppers (718) notes rather oddly that the connecting formula “sometime after this” had been drawn from the Chronicler’s Vorlage. Stated this way, his explanation could be read as suggesting that the creator of the parataxis had employed a vague connecting expression found somewhere else in 2 Samuel. However, the phrase “sometime after this” appears in 2 Sam 10:1. In fact the Chronicler is transcribing his source material without supplying any secondary links; and insofar as 1 Chronicles 18–20 reads like a wellconstructed unit, the reason may be simply that the source it transcribed was itself well constructed. Klein (389), despite himself, actually adds to the case for recognizing 1 Chronicles 18–20 as a well-framed unit by noting the role of “hand” at both beginning (1 Chr 18:1) and end (1 Chr 20:8), though he leaves unstated that the framing hands are both already in the putative source verses (2 Sam 8:1 and 21:22). When discussing the larger differences between 1 Chronicles 19 and 2 Samuel 10, Knoppers (723) takes the opportunity for a somewhat broader discussion of scholarly attitudes to these synoptic chapters. The views of Auld and Ho about Samuel and Chronicles are introduced in his debate here and never explicitly rebutted.3 Instead, Knoppers (726) develops the case that the Chronicler has drawn heavily on a distinctive text of Samuel (4QSama). 2.  Raymond F. Person Jr., “The Deuteronomic History and the Books of Chronicles: Contemporary Competing Historiographies,” in Reflection and Refraction: Studies in Biblical Historiography in Honour of A. Graeme Auld (ed. Robert Rezetko, Timothy H. Lim, and W. Brian Aucker; VTSup 113; Leiden: Brill, 2007) 315–36. 3.  A. Graeme Auld, Kings without Privilege (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1994); idem, Samuel at the Threshold: Selected Works of Graeme Auld (Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 2004); Craig Y. S. Ho, “Conjectures and Refutations: Is 1 Samuel xxxi 1–13 really the source of 1 Chronicles x 1–12?” VT 45 (1995) 82–106.

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McKenzie and Klein both read 1 Chr 20:1–3, sensibly, as the final element of 1 Chr 19:1–20:3; but, like Knoppers, both continue to defend the consensus position that 1 Chr 20:1–3 has been shortened from 2 Samuel 11–12. McKenzie (166) notes briefly that the statement that David stayed in Jerusalem has lost its significance in 1 Chr 20:1. The fuller comments by Knoppers (734) and Klein (406–7) note more pertinently that the statement has different significance in Samuel and Chronicles. Each offers an overview of the larger and smaller omissions that the Chronicler has made between 2 Sam 13:1 and 21:17: Knoppers (739–42), McKenzie (167), and Klein (410). McKenzie’s observations are typical, that 2 Samuel 13–20 was omitted because it stood in tension with the Chronicler’s “all-Israel” viewpoint and his general idealization of David’s reign; 21:1–14, because it contradicted the report in 1 Chronicles 10 about Saul’s House coming to a complete end on Gilboa; and 21:15–17, because the image of a David who requires help may have detracted either from his own prestige or from Yahweh’s reputation as his protector. However, none of these scholars admits to any surprise that four deletions from 2 Samuel 11–21, made solely on the basis of content, should have resulted in 1 Chronicles 20—such a perfect complement to 1 Chronicles 18–19 in both content (brief completion of the Ammon story) and style (three narratives each with the same distinctive introductory phrase)—and that the only rewriting required was in 1 Chr 20:1. This key verse, 1 Chr 20:1, merits closer examination. Knoppers finds “verse 1 taken from 2 Sam 11:1; 12:26a, 27–29” (728). He proposes that “the elite of the army” may reflect a Vorlage different from Samuel but that the change of text from David’s “sending” Joab (2 Sam 11:1) to Joab’s “leading out” employs ‫ נהג‬in a Late Biblical Hebrew sense (729). On the second point, it might be noted simply that ‫ נהג‬is also used in one other synoptic verse (2 Sam 6:3//1 Chr 13:7). However, Knoppers apparently misses the fact that ‘tore down’ (‫ )הרס‬is also used in 2 Samuel 11–12. Klein does observe that this verb “was apparently derived from 2 Sam 11:25, a verse omitted in Chronicles, in which David sent a messenger to urge Joab to continue the battle after the death of Uriah” (407). He adds the surprising footnote (n. 30) that “this is a clear example in which the Chronicler knew the longer text of Samuel and Kings (contra Auld).”4 I certainly agree with him that the link is suggestive; but it is, in fact, no less clear an example of how the author of the longer text of 2 Samuel 11–12 could have reused materials from a Vorlage very like 1 Chr 20:1–3. Knoppers and Klein both insist that the Chronicler is depicting Joab as acting on his own initiative in his attack on Ammonite Rabbah; the note about David’s staying in Jerusalem is purely incidental. In this, they betray that they are reading not a text in its own right but (what they know to be) a rewritten 4.  He had sketched my views in the introduction to his commentary (31–32).

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text. However, in the context of 1 Chr 19:1–20:3 (or, even better, 18:1–20:3), the drafting of the brief tailpiece in 20:1–3 is unexceptionable. Joab has been sent out by David against Ammon and its (nearer) Aramean allies (19:8); and he and his brother enjoy success against them (19:14–15). Only when more Aramean allies are hired does David himself become involved, and the Arameans are seen off. When the text says that Joab, at the beginning of the next fighting season (20:1), leads the army across the Jordan to finish off Ammon, prior to David’s dealing with the royal or divine crown, it is surely overreading to claim that Joab has acted on his own initiative. The situation is similar to another just reported in 1 Chr 18:12–13, where Ab[i]shai (without mention of instructions) killed many Edomites, put garrisons in Edom, “and all Edom became servants to David.” The terms in which that brief report is drafted need to be recalled when assessing the end of 1 Chr 20:4–8. Three reports of Philistine giants killed by associates of David (vv. 4–8a) are capped by the statement that “they fell by the hand of David and of his servants.” Some readers familiar with 2 Sam 21:15–22 charge the Chronicler with careless editing: after removing what in Samuel was the first of four reports, where the exploit was performed by David himself, he had forgotten to delete David from the conclusion.5 Knoppers simply notes that “the general summary derives from 2 Samuel” (737). However, seen through the Chronicler’s eyes there is neither mistake nor confusion: what David’s servants did was done for David and redounded to his credit as well as theirs. Other scholars have participated in the debate over 1 Chr 20:1–3 and its relationship with 2 Samuel 11–12. Julio Trebolle Barrera argues that 1 Chr 20:2–3 represents a text of 2 Sam 12:26–31 to which 12:27–29a had not yet been added: the addition of this contrived account about what contribution Joab and David each made toward the capture of Rabbah is marked by the resumption in 12:29b of “attacked and conquered” from 12:26.6 David’s take-over of the overthrow of Rabbah by Joab had happened in literary-historical stages. In the same volume, John Van Seters admits that whether or not the Chronicler knew the “Court History of David” is important to the disagreement he has with me.7 I find that Van Seters, like Klein and Knoppers, overreads the significance of David’s remaining in Jerusalem in 2 Sam 11:1. David’s location may provide the occasion for his adultery but should not be described as a “prelude” to it. (The same complaint must be made about McKenzie’s statement that “in 5.  J. W. Rothstein and J. Hänel, Kommentar zum ersten Buch der Chronik (Leipzig: Deichert, 1927) 357–58—despite their insistence that the Chronicler worked from a Vorlage other than the books of Samuel as we know them. 6.  Julio Trebolle Barrera, “Kings (MT/LXX) and Chronicles: The Double and Triple Textual Tradition,” in Reflection and Refraction (VTSup 113; Leiden: Brill, 2007) 483–501. 7.  John Van Seters, “The ‘Shared Text’ of Samuel-Kings and Chronicles Re-examined,” in ibid., 503–15 (esp. p. 504).

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Samuel it sets the stage for David’s seeing Bathsheba” [166].) However, the prelude or stage-setting to his adultery, marked by a new introductory temporal statement (2 Sam 11:2), is David’s walking on his roof and seeing a beautiful woman. The text nowhere suggests that David had remained behind in order to misbehave and, in fact, the space in the MT between vv. 1 and 2 (a sĕtûmāʾ appears here; consult BHS) is entirely appropriate. His staying behind, in Samuel no less than in Chronicles, says something about his relationship with Joab and nothing about his predisposition to adultery. Klein uncharacteristically compounds the confused comparison of 1 Chr 20:1 with 2 Sam 11:1 when he states that Joab “was accompanied only by ‘the armed forces,’ whereas in 2 Sam 11:1 ‘all Israel’ went with him and his servants” (406); he goes on to explain that “this change was necessitated by the fact that David stayed in Jerusalem and therefore, ipso facto, all Israel could not be on the battlefield” (406). First of all, in Klein’s sentence, the phrase “his servants” (which is not Klein’s quotation from the biblical text and therefore not in quotation marks) must be understood as Joab’s servants, whereas they are David’s servants in 2 Sam 11:1. More importantly, if “all Israel” could not be in the field without David, then Klein’s putative parent text (2 Sam 11:1) is also at fault.

1 Chronicles 21 All three commentators, McKenzie, Knoppers, and Klein, agree that the Chronicler’s account of David’s census and its tragic aftermath is based on a text very different from 2 Samuel 24 MT; Klein (429) counts 29 different readings. All agree that 1 Chr 21:16, which is attested also in 4QSama, had been accidentally lost from the text of 2 Samuel 24 that is familiar to us in both the MT and LXX. McKenzie offers no argument in support of his assertion that this verse “borrows a number of motifs from other texts. These include . . . 2 Kgs 19:2, . . . Josh 5:13, . . . Ezek 1:28, . . . Zech 5:9” (174). If, in fact, it was part of an older and better text of Samuel, then it is quite as likely that the borrowing happened in the opposite direction and that Samuel influenced these related texts. Klein similarly finds more widely in this chapter “allusions to . . . Abraham, Jacob, Balaam, Joshua, and Gideon” (429); but each of these links could also be reversed. The three also discuss Israel’s adversary (‫ )שטן‬in the opening verse but only regarding whether he is divine (Klein 418) or human (McKenzie 170 and Knoppers 744). And yet, despite their collective embrace of 4QSama (against the combined testimony of MT and LXX) with respect to 1 Chr 21:16, they do not even ask the question whether the Chronicler might have worked at the beginning of the story from a Vorlage different from 2 Sam 24:1 (MT and LXX). Arguments from silence are of course dangerous; but questions suggested by analogy can be fruitful. I agree with them that the portion of 4QSama shared

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with 1 Chr 21:16 represents an older form of 2 Samuel 24 than we read in the MT or LXX. In a recent paper, I sought to buttress this by suggesting that the Absalom who is caught by the hair in a tree “between heaven and earth” (2 Sam 18:9) was a deliberate anticipation of Yahweh’s messenger in the census story, whom David would see “between heaven and earth,” and who would also wreak havoc in the land and its people because of David’s faults.8 If the author of 2 Sam 18:9 knew the older and longer text of 2 Sam 24:16, it is also plausible that David’s nearby scolding of Joab and his brother as ‫( שטן‬2 Sam 19:23) alludes to the beginning of the census story. There Joab tries to protect David from the wiles of the ‫ ;שטן‬here David (prospectively ungratefully, as it were) reproaches the sons of Zeruiah as themselves being the wily adversary. Klein suggests that the Chronicler “omits the clause about Yahweh’s anger being kindled ‘again’ from the Vorlage, since this links back to 2 Sam 21:1–14, a passage not included in Chronicles” (418). However, the actual language of anger being kindled could equally be a more distant reference back to the puzzling eruption of Yahweh’s wrath against Uzzah reported both in Samuel and Chronicles (2 Sam 6:7//1 Chr 13:10).

1 Chronicles 11–16 In these six chapters, the Chronicler reports David’s beginnings as king, the taking of Jerusalem, the bringing of the ark to Jerusalem, successful campaigns against the Philistines, and lists of David’s heroes much more fully than in 2 Samuel 5–6 and also in a different order. Clearly, most of the Chronicler’s extra material is his own composition and has no bearing on the form in which he inherited the synoptic material shared with Samuel. The exception is the list of David’s heroes (1 Chr 11:10–47), which is also one of two differences in the ordering of the synoptic material. The Chronicler presents his list of David’s heroes after the report of the taking of Jerusalem, even though it appears much later in 2 Samuel (as 2 Sam 23:8–39). Chronicles and Samuel also differ over the relationship between the first part of the ark’s journey toward Jerusalem and the Philistine campaigns. None of our three commentators on 1 Chronicles 11–16 suggests that the Chronicler was working from a text other than 2 Samuel. But Knoppers and Klein favor arguments that could be deployed against this consensus view. Knoppers (590) discusses the Chronicler’s reordering of episodes in terms of “dischronological displacement,” influenced by Psalm 132. However, he also notes that Hertzberg and other students of Samuel “have argued that the order in Samuel is fundamentally achronological, determined by the narrator’s 8.  A. Graeme Auld, “Imag[in]ing Editions of Samuel: The Chronicler’s Contribution,” in Archaeology of the Books of Samuel: The Entangling of the Textual and Literary History (ed. Philippe Hugo and Adrian Schenker; VTSup 132; Leiden: Brill, 2010) 119-31.

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desire to have David address cultic issues only after he has successfully pacified the very Philistines who had earlier captured the ark (1 Sam 4:1–11)” (590). Similar ambiguity about chronology appears in Klein’s commentary. He writes, “Historically, David would have had to defeat the Philistines even before he conquered Jerusalem (1 Chr 11:4–9//2 Sam 5:6–10), so that the sequence of events in both Samuel and Chronicles is to be attributed to literary or theological reasons and not to historical reality” (338–39). He had already noted, somewhat differently: “Historically and according to the chronology in 1 and 2 Samuel, David’s defeat of the Philistines made it physically possible for him to move the ark to Jerusalem” (330 n. 4). However, Klein appears to use “historical” in a rather weak sense: when he writes that traditions about Joab preserved in 2 Samuel “seem historically reliable” (301), he can hardly mean more than that these traditions “appear plausible to the reader.” Klein’s judgments about historical chronology reduce to judgments about literary order. In other words, in the commentaries of both Knoppers and Klein, literary and/or theological reasons can be advanced in support of the ordering of the Philistine campaign and the first (unsuccessful) move of the ark in both Samuel and Chronicles; and, in terms of order, either could in principle be prior to the other. With regard to the list of heroes and the memories of exploits associated with some of them, all three colleagues assume that the material in 1 Chron­ icles 11 has been drawn from 2 Samuel 23, even though Chronicles may attest, in some respects, an earlier form of the material than the form in Samuel. However, it is possible that Chronicles attests an earlier order as well as an earlier form. All three commentators (especially Knoppers and Klein) cite McCarter’s commentary on Samuel frequently and respectfully.9 None of them reports McCarter’s view that the material preserved in the appendix to 2 Samuel (chaps. 21–24) belongs historically to the earliest period of David’s reign.10 A partial exception is Klein’s discussion of the water raid by the anonymous threesome (1 Chr 11:15–19), in which he notes that McCarter “places the stronghold at the Adullam location, situates the battle early in David’s career, before the capture of Jerusalem and the battles recounted in 2 Sam 5:17–25//1 Chr 14:8–17. While historically the battle may have taken place before David’s conquest of Jerusalem, the Chronicler places it after David’s anointing as king (v. 3) and after his capture of Jerusalem (vv. 4–9)” (304, emphasis in original). Once again, speculation about historical chronology reduces to judgments about literary order.

9.  P. Kyle McCarter Jr., I Samuel (AB 8; New York: Doubleday, 1980); idem, II Samuel (AB 9; New York: Doubleday, 1984). 10. Ibid.,�II Samuel, 500–501.

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An Alternative Perspective on 1 Chronicles 11–21 Space permits me to develop only some of the issues surveyed above. I am suggesting in this paper that, if we start from 1 Chronicles 11–21 and view the synoptic David story from there, we find every reason to suppose that the Chronicler has transcribed his source relatively faithfully. He may have adjusted its wording a little when dealing with the ark, with Nathan’s oracle and David’s prayer in response to it, as well as with the census. There may have been additions to the list of heroes at the end of 1 Chronicles 11 (after the name of Uriah the Hittite; 11:41b–47), before the major addition of the support available to David in 1 Chronicles 12. Also, the second stage of the ark’s journey to Jerusalem in 1 Chronicles 15–16 has been much extended beyond the synoptic source. The sorts of material in these two additions to or extensions of the source material anticipate—and are of a piece with—the major extension to the Chronicler’s account of David in 1 Chronicles 22–29. Both Samuel and Chronicles have made adjustments to the important ark story; and both employ “dischronological displacement” within their narratives. From the perspective of Chronicles, the only question that remains open concerns the relative order of 1 Chronicles 13 (the first part of the ark’s journey) and 14 (David’s consolidating his position in Jerusalem and against the Philistines). It is the business of a full commentary on the books of Samuel to explore whether a perspective from Chronicles on the material they share can contribute to a fresh and persuasive account of the way these books were drafted.11 The larger part of this task is, of course, to describe how the synoptic chapters functioned as a core or skeleton or foundation for the rest of Samuel. There is space here only for one sketch and one more general comment. In Samuel, the only transposition of shared material (apart from 2 Samuel 5–6, corresponding to 1 Chronicles 13–14, as noted in the previous paragraph) was of the list of heroes and selected exploits, which have moved from almost the beginning (1 Chr 11:10–47) to almost the end (2 Sam 23:8–39). Its new placement nicely illustrates how the structure of the synoptic chapters (as preserved in Chronicles) retained an influence on the developed books of Samuel. The synoptic chapters had begun (1 Chr 11:4–9) and finished (chap. 21) in Jerusalem. In second (11:10–47) and penultimate (20:4–8) positions, there had been exploits of heroes. Something of this balance is retained in the creation of the major chiasm in 2 Samuel 21–24. The positioning of 2 Sam 21:18–22 and chap. 24 was inherited from 1 Chr 20:4–8 and chap. 21. The new position for 1 Chr 11:10–41 became 2 Sam 23:8–39, but this new position still balanced 1 Chr 20:4–8//2 Sam 21:18–22, and the new chiastic structure was created by

11. ���������� A. Graeme Auld, I and II Samuel (OTL; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, forthcoming).

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importing 2 Sam 21:1–14 to balance the census disaster, along with the two poems at the heart of the chiasm. Viewing the process from the perspective of a shared original text provides a model for the composition of Samuel–Kings. My forthcoming commentary on 1–2 Samuel will defend the proposal that the oldest David narratives (those shared with Chronicles) are older than the oldest materials about either Saul or David and Saul and that the developed figure of Samuel who now heads the books of Samuel (1 Samuel 1–8) emerged later than either of these first two kings of Israel. The books of Kings were supplemented similarly. The foundation is the story of David’s descendents, his royal heirs in Jerusalem, from Solomon to the city’s collapse before Babylon’s army. Into this narrative was interleaved an account of the kings who ruled after Solomon over the larger portion of Israel to the north of Jerusalem. The latest large complex is the cycle of stories in the middle about the prophets Elijah and Elisha, as well as the struggles with Jezebel. These proposals make it likely that the developing books of Samuel had a very close relationship with the developing books of Kings from a very early stage. The David who becomes established in Jerusalem and is the leading and primary character in the books of Samuel is the ancestor of the kings of Jerusalem from Solomon till the end. His rival, Saul, anticipates in several respects the kings of rival Northern Israel. And Samuel foreshadows Elijah and Elisha as king-making and king-breaking prophets, as quasi-royal or even larger-than-royal figures—in fact, as Yahweh’s ideal “servants the prophets.” A minimal conclusion must be that both the themes and the development of the books of Samuel and of Kings have overlapped to a very large extent. The maximal conclusion is that, at all these main stages, the developing Samueland-Kings was a single narrative. The books of Chronicles developed the older, shared story of David and his Jerusalem successors in their own way. It is unnecessarily cumbersome to insist that they first removed from their principal source all the material that had been added to it in the later stages of its composition. 1 Chronicles 18–20 (discussed above, pp. 118–122) exemplifies the situation in miniature. Why suppose (with Van Seters and McKenzie) that the stories about David and Mephibosheth (2 Samuel 9), David, Bathsheba, and Nathan (2 Sam 11:2–12:25), the troubles of David’s House (2 Samuel 13–20), and David, Gibeon, and Saul’s descendants (2 Sam 21:1–14) are all among the latest additions to 2 Samuel; and then suppose also that the Chronicler created a gem like 1 Chronicles 18–20 out of 2 Samuel 8–21 by deleting every last one of these additions? Why note that it was into the account of Jerusalem’s kings that the account of the kings of the separate north was secondarily spliced, then further embellished by extended narratives about the prophets; and then suppose that the first acts of the Chronicler were to excise these major additions in their entirety,

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thus returning to what had been “square one” in the composition of the books of Kings? McKenzie notes that “Chronicles does not recount the history of the northern kingdom except when it overlaps with that of Judah” (50). This comment is of course true, but it may also be misleading: Chronicles retains all the material about Israel that Kings also recounts as part of the Judah/Jerusalem story, but it does not include any of the connected Israel history that we find in Kings spliced into the Jerusalem story. Of course, the mature form of the books of Chronicles is familiar with the nonsynoptic portions of Samuel–Kings, reuses, and alludes to many portions from them. And there may be some small influence in the opposite direction. But what the (first) Chronicler transcribed and what determined his agenda was what had also become the substratum of Samuel–Kings; and we should suppose that he had independent access to this. Indeed, we should suppose that many of the briefer allusions were the work of later scribes in the Chronicler’s tradition. It goes without saying that this proposal removes at a stroke the question addressed by all commentators on Chronicles: how to explain the Chronicler’s decision to include this piece of Samuel or to delete that. For example, Knoppers faces the challenge of David’s census as “a major blemish in an otherwise glorious career” and writes attractively about David in 1 Chronicles 21 as repentant sinner and intercessor (762–64). But the Chronicler did not decide which challenges to face or not to face: they were set for him. In light of what I have written about 2 Samuel 9–20 and 1 Kings 1–2, I find it difficult to accept the characterization of my view presented by Van Seters: he perceives these narratives as a “clearly defined literary work,” but I am alleged to view them as “merely part of a large mass of plusses that were added to a much smaller literary corpus.”12 My hunch is that his two seemingly rival formulations do not represent a coherent either/or choice. There were substantial authors but also much small-scale alteration of texts, both deliberate and accidental. Van Seters admits that “it is difficult to see what would count as a reasonable case against [my] hypothesis.”13 While of course I take some comfort from this admission, I readily admit in turn that the same could be said about several of the approaches I myself am questioning in this paper. “Authored” does seem to me to be the right word to describe 2 Samuel 11–20—yet authored not as an originally free-standing work but as a fresh, substantial (reauthored) expansion of an existing work, a view that is not dissimilar from the view of Van Seters. It has long been known that the Old Greek texts of Samuel and Joshua were closer than MT Samuel and Joshua to related materials in MT Chronicles. At one time, these data motivated apologists for MT Samuel and Joshua to 12.  Van Seters, “The ‘Shared Text,’” 503. 13.  Ibid.,����� 504.

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propose that the Greek versions of these books had been influenced by Hebrew Chronicles. The discovery at Qumran of an ancient Hebrew text of Samuel closer to the Greek than to the MT has successfully defended the Greek translators from these charges of influence from Chronicles. On the other hand, the discovery that 4QSama is even closer than OG Samuel to Chronicles, in both smaller and larger details, provides precious evidence for some of the activities of late-biblical-period scribes as well as possibilities of influence. I find it easier to speak of “authorship” in connection with the so-called “Court History” in 2 Samuel than in connection with the rewriting of synoptic texts. For example, discussing links between 1 Chronicles 21 and Genesis 23, Knoppers insists: “I use the term replicate, rather than assimilate, because the similarities between 21:22–25 and Gen 23:8–20 seem to result from deliberate authorial (and not scribal) activity” (758, emphasis in original). I doubt whether Knoppers has chosen the right terms.14 The purpose of this article has been to review the synoptic texts on David from the perspective of Chronicles. A much more exciting project would be the exploration of evidence in Chronicles to attempt a reconstruction of the complete text of the synoptic passages as these had once existed in 4QSama. Some might say this is a flight of fancy; but even to imagine some of the ramifications of a project of this sort should encourage us to think differently about “authorship” in these biblical books. For example, other adversaries identified as ‫ שטן‬appear in Samuel (e.g., 1 Sam 29:4) but never again in Chronicles. If we suppose that 4QSama as well as Chronicles presented a ‫ שטן‬at the beginning of the census story in 2 Samuel 24//1 Chronicles 21, would Yahweh’s burning wrath in the MT and LXX have been attributed to an “author” or “reviser” of Samuel? 14. ��������������������������� The flexibility with which Person uses “author,” “redactor,” and “scribe” within a carefully drafted paper (“The Deuteronomic History and the Books of Chronicles”) simply underscores this problem of appropriate terminology.

“Rest All Around from All His Enemies” (2 Samuel 7:1b): The Occasion for David’s Offer to Build a Temple Timothy M. Willis Nathan’s dynastic oracle in 2 Samuel 7 is a pivotal text in the flow of the so-called Deuteronomistic History (henceforth DtrH), and its interpretation has been crucial to many studies of this large block within the Hebrew Bible.1 The oracle has drawn an extraordinary amount of scholarly attention, which naturally has led to a wide variety of interpretations. One primary question arises regarding the occasion for this oracle: What prompted David to make the offer to build the temple?2 This leads in turn to a corollary question: Why does Yahweh forbid David to build the temple? The second question is much more complicated than the first, and I will attempt to answer only the first question here; but my comments certainly have a significant impact, at least in a general sense, on the second question. The Deuteronomistic Historian (henceforth Dtr) probably intends to provide an answer to the question of David’s motivations in the opening verses of the chapter, but interpretation of the answer is hampered on two levels. First, there are textual matters to unravel, as we try to ascertain what the Historian—and not later copyists—wrote. Second, there are matters of source and redaction, as we try to understand Dtr’s meaning in what he says with respect to the occasion for David’s offer. The debates here emerge primarily from 2 Sam 7:1b. There are significant variants among the Hebrew and Greek manuscripts of this verse, and there is an even more significant difference between the text of 2 Sam 7:1 and its parallel in 1 Chr 17:1. Examination of the variants that make up 2 Sam 7:1b opens the door to issues of source and redaction. The most immediate issue involves the apparent inconsistency between 7:1b and 7:11ab. Verse 1b states, “The Lord had given [David] rest all around from all his enemies,” while the simplest translation of v. 11 yields promises from Yahweh to David, including the promise that states, “I will give you rest from all your e­nemies.” The 1.  See, for example, Michael Avioz, Nathan’s Oracle (2 Samuel 7) and Its Interpreters (Bern: Peter Lang, 2005); William M. Schniedewind, Society and the Promise to David: The Reception History of 2 Samuel 7:1–17 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). 2.  I am not making a claim here about historicity. I am simply investigating these as events presented by the biblical writers.

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apparent inconsistency over whether David already has rest or will enjoy rest in the future, significant though it may be, is only part of a broader discussion concerning the theme of rest as part of Dtr’s redaction of DtrH and then regarding the way that the Chronicler adapts this theme to his own work. I am able to resolve most of the textual questions (at least, to my own satisfaction), but I still do not have rest regarding matters of source and redaction.

Establishing the Text of 2 Samuel 7:1b The textual witnesses provide two versions of 2 Sam 7:1b. The MT and Lucianic Greek manuscripts (boc2e2) represent one version, and the majority of the remaining Greek witnesses preserve the second version. MT: ‫ויהי כי־ישב המלך בביתו ויהוה הניח־לו מסביב מכל־איביו‬ LXX: και εγενετο οτε εκαθισεν ο βασιλευς εν τω οικω αυτου και κυριος κατεκληρονομησεν αυτον κυκλω απο παντων των εχθρων αυτου των κυκλω

There are three significant differences between the MT and LXX readings in this half-verse. The first involves the verb. The MT has the support of the Lucianic texts (boc2e2) in reading, ‘And the Lord gave him rest’ (‫)ויהוה הניח  ־לו‬. The majority of the Greek witnesses reflect a metathesis in the Hebrew Vorlage— from ‫ הניח  ־לו‬to ‫—הנחילו‬which changes the meaning to ‘And the Lord gave him an inheritance’. The MT’s use of the verb ‘give rest’ in conjunction with ‘from enemies’ or ‘all around’ or both is common enough that we might consider an appeal to lectio difficilior and argue that a copyist possessed a text with a less common expression (the LXX reading) and mistakenly corrected it to the more common (the MT reading). This argument does not hold up, however, under closer scrutiny. We find the verb ‘give an inheritance’ (Hiphil of ‫)נחל‬ 17 times in the Hebrew Bible, but it is never used to say that Yahweh gives an inheritance to an individual; on the other hand, there are several instances where Yahweh ‘gave rest’ (Hiphil of ‫ נוח‬⁄) to an individual (David or one of his descendants; 2 Sam 7:11; 1 Kgs 5:18[5:4]; 1 Chr 22:9, 18; 2 Chr 14:5–6[6– 7]; 20:30). If we consider the adverbial phrases that modify the verb here, we find that both phrases are used often with the verb ‘give rest’ but never with ‘give an inheritance’. It is easy to explain the LXX reading as a simple case of metathesis, perhaps motivated or supported by a desire to have consistency between v. 1 and v. 11. These observations suggest that the MT preserves a more original reading for the verb in 7:1b. The adverbial phrases pose another textual issue, because there is uncertainty over the placement of the phrase ‘all around’ (‫ )מסביב‬in v. 1b. There are 17 occurrences of ‫ מסביב‬in DtrH, and this is one of only two passages in which ‫ מסביב‬does not stand at the end of a clause.3 The manuscript evidence 3.  The other example is in 1 Sam 14:47, which reads that Saul “fought all around against all his enemies—against Moab and against the Ammonites.” The adjoining list identifying

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is unanimous in placing ‫ מסביב‬immediately after the verb in this verse; but the majority of the Greek witnesses provide an expanded reading that involves a duplication of the phrase ‘all around’ at the end of the clause (‘and the Lord gave him rest all around from all his enemies all around’).4 This probably arose from a desire to make the wording here match the common wording found elsewhere. It is noteworthy that none of the Greek witnesses simply moves the phrase to the end of the clause.5 This indicates the strength of the early textual evidence for the irregular placement of ‘all around’ before ‘from all his enemies’.6 In any case, the manuscript evidence strongly supports the retention of v. 1b in its entirety, because both adverbial phrases appear in every witness.7 The final textual variant involves the omission of this entire clause from the parallel in 1 Chr 17:1. It is not helpful to evaluate this solely on the basis of textual criticism.8 The witnesses for Samuel are unanimous in including 7:1b, and the witnesses for Chronicles are unanimous in omitting the clause. An explanation for this difference requires consideration of the text’s redactional history, so we will turn our attention in this direction.

Is There a Deuteronomic Rest-Formula? The clause that makes up 2 Sam 7:1b consists of 3 elements: the verb, “[the Lord] gave him rest”; and 2 adverbial phrases, “from all his enemies” and “all around.” Numerous scholars refer to the verb clause as the “deuteronomic rest-formula,” but we need to confirm and expand on this identification from

the enemies probably explains the unusual order of phrases here. We should also note that the Hebrew reads ‫ סביב‬rather than ‫מסביב‬, but the ‫ מ‬prefix might have been omitted accidentally, since the preceding word ends in ‫מ‬. 4.  The MT has the support here of the Lucianic texts and a few other Greek witnesses (mss Aacix). 5.  For this, one can appeal only to Armenian, Coptic, and Ethiopic witnesses. 6.  It is possible that one of the two adverbial phrases was accidentally omitted by a copyist, written in the margin, and reinserted out of sequence by a subsequent copyist who was confused by the marginal note; but this is mere conjecture. 7.  There is one minor exception, because ms a2 ends with the first “all around,” but this may reflect a case of haplography in copying from a Greek manuscript. 8.  Most critics argue that Chronicles represents a later, shortened text, but McCarter heads a minority position that gives priority to the shorter version in Chronicles. McCarter provides the following reconstruction: (1) originally, the second half of v. 1 was lacking and v. 11aβ read “I will give him [Israel] rest from his enemies”; (2) a copyist changed v. 11 so that the promise of rest now referred to David; (3) a second copyist composed a correction to v. 11aβ, placing it in the margin; (4) a later copyist mistakenly inserted the correction before v. 2, thus creating the current v. 1b; (5) Chronicles inherited a text without this scribal expansion. P. Kyle McCarter, II Samuel (AB 9; New York: Doubleday, 1984) 193–94; compare A. A. Anderson, 2 Samuel (WBC 11; Dallas: Word, 1989) 112–16.

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the evidence.9 In addition to 2 Sam 7:1b, there are 4 passages that have all 3 elements of this clause in a single clause (Deut 12:10, 25:19; Josh 23:1; 1 Chr 22:9). There are slight variations on this in Josh 21:44 and 2 Chr 32:22 (LXX). In Joshua 21, the narrator reports, “the Lord gave them rest all around” and then follows this with the explanation, “not one of all their enemies had withstood them, for the Lord had given all their enemies into their hands.” In 2 Chronicles 32 (LXX), the Chronicler states that Yahweh saved the people of Jerusalem from “all their enemies,” and then he summarizes with the clause, “and he gave them rest all around.”10 This yields a total of 7 passages in which these 3 elements appear together. In 5 of the 7, the same phrases appear in a single clause. Five of the 7 are in Deuteronomy or DtrH; the other 2 are in Chronicles, which is obviously influenced by DtrH. It is legitimate to regard this clause as a deuteronomistic construction. We can add to this number 11 passages that use 2 of the 3 elements together, always in the same clause. All of these fall between Deuteronomy and 2 Chronicles; 7 are in DtrH and 4 in Chronicles (Judg 2:14, 8:34; 1 Sam 10:1,11 12:11, 14:47; 2 Sam 7:11; 1 Kgs 5:18[4]; 1 Chr 22:18; 2 Chr 14:6[7], 15:15, 20:30). This reveals a total of 18 passages in the Hebrew Bible in which at least 2 of the elements in 2 Sam 7:1b appear in tandem. Twelve of these instances are within Deuteronomy–DtrH and 6 within Chronicles. There are also numerous examples of each element of the clause in v. 1b appearing individually, without either of the other 2 elements. The distribution of these features in isolation raises some question about their connection to particular literary sources. The verb “give rest” occurs in 11 other passages; these are distributed primarily, but not exclusively, within DtrH or Chronicles 9.  Gerhard von Rad, “There Remains Still a Rest for the People of God: An Investigation of a Biblical Conception,” in The Problem of the Hexateuch and Other Essays (trans. E. W. Trueman Dicken; Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1965) 94–102; Martin Noth, Überlieferungsgeschichtliche Studien (2nd ed.; Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1957) 65, 68; Moshe Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1992) 343; Wolfgang Roth, “The Deuteronomic Rest Theology: A Redaction-Critical Study,” BR 21 (1976) 6–7. Frank Cross identifies this clause as the first of 24 Deuteronomistic expressions in 2 Samuel 7 (Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic: Essays in the History of the Religion of Israel [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973] 252–54); compare Gwilym H. Jones, The Nathan Narratives (JSOTSup 80; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1990) 67–85. 10. Most modern translations follow the LXX here. The MT reading at the end of the verse appears to be corrupt: ‘and from the hand of all, and he guided them all around’ (‫)ומיד ־כל וינהלם מסביב‬. Leslie C. Allen, The Greek Chronicles: The Relation of the Septuagint or I and II Chronicles to the Massoretic Text, Part II: Textual Criticism (VTSup 27; Leiden: Brill, 1974) 116. 11.  I am assuming here that the longer reading in the LXX is correct and that the MT reading was accidentally shortened as a result of haplography; see P. Kyle McCarter, I Samuel (AB 8; New York: Doubleday, 1980) 171; Ralph W. Klein, 1 Samuel (WBC 10; Waco, TX: Word, 1983) 83.

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(Deut 3:20; Josh 1:13, 15; 22:4; Judg 2:23; 3:1; 1 Chr 23:25; also Exod 33:14; Isa 28:12, 63:14; Jer 27:11; compare Deut 12:9; 1 Kgs 8:56). References to “all X’s enemies” are scattered evenly throughout the Hebrew Bible, in DtrH and elsewhere (Deut 6:19; Josh 10:25; Judg 5:31; 1 Sam 20:15; 2 Sam 3:18; 7:9; 22:1; 2 Kgs 17:39; 21:14; 1 Chr 17:8, 10; compare Exod 23:27; Neh 6:16; Esth 9:5; Pss 3:7; 6:10; 18:1; 21:8; 89:42, 51; Lam 1:21; 2:16; 3:46; Mic 5:8[9]; one could expand this by considering “enemies” alone, without “all”). The data regarding ‫ מסביב‬is more one-sided. This term occurs only once in DtrH without either “he gave rest” or “from all X’s enemies,” but even this exception has a close parallel (“[Solomon] had peace on all his borders all around,” 1 Kgs 5:4[4:24]).12 This contrasts sharply to the two dozen passages outside DtrH that use ‫ מסביב‬but never with either of the other two elements of this clause (Num 16:24, 27; Job 1:10; Ps 31:14; Isa 42:25; Jer 4:17; 6:25; 20:3, 10; 46:5; 49:29; 51:2; Lam 2:22; Ezek 16:33, 37, 57; 23:22; 28:23; 36:3, 4, 7; 37:21; 39:17; Joel 4[3]:11–12).13 Thus, virtually every instance when Dtr employs the adverbial phrase ‫מסביב‬, he does so as part of a clause containing “gave rest” and/or “from all his/your enemies.” In sum, the preceding survey confirms the identification of 2 Sam 7:1b as Deuteronomistic;14 however, I would refine this identification by identifying more clearly why it is appropriate to speak of this phrase as Deuteronomistic: what makes the clause distinctly Deuteronomistic is that an author has brought together two or more particular elements into a single clause.15 A Deuteronomistic label for passages that employ only one of these elements would need to be confirmed by the presence of other Deuteronomistic features. These observations also clarify what we need to consider in evaluating the role of 2 Sam 12.  For the translation ‘borders’, see Simon J. De Vries, 1 Kings (WBC 12; Waco, TX: Word, 1985) 64, 66. 13.  Researchers often note the presence of Deuteronomistic language in parts of Jeremiah. Jeremiah has 7 passages with the expression “all around,” but none of these includes “give rest” or “from all enemies.” This emphasizes the distinctiveness of the usage of ‫מסביב‬ in DtrH. 14.  Roth, “Deuteronomic Rest Theology,” 6–7. For a survey of representative studies on 2 Sam 7:1 as part of a Deuteronomistic layer, see Jones, The Nathan Narratives, 67–70. For an opposing point of view, see Schniedewind, Society, 85–86. 15.  At this juncture, someone might be inclined to return to the earlier issue of the sequence of the elements in 2 Sam 7:1b and propose that the rare sequence of the elements of this clause reflects a pre-Dtr hand rather than a textual corruption. This is certainly possible, but the result would not help to resolve the issue of the relationship between v. 1 and v. 11. Verse 11 contains the only example where “he gave rest” is followed solely by “from all your enemies.” If the proposal is correct that “all around” was (re-)inserted secondarily in v. 1, then v. 1 stands out as more similar to v. 11 than currently thought, because then v. 1 would match v. 11. This only accentuates the problem of the apparent contradiction between the two statements, because it makes it more likely that they originated from the same hand.

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7:1b in the flow of DtrH. It is not enough to consider the passages that say “Yahweh gave rest”; we must include passages that use the other elements of v. 1b as well to obtain a more complete picture.

David Offers to Build a Temple: Redactional Developments in DtrH The first instance in DtrH where we encounter the clause “to give rest from enemies round about”—and the one that sets the tone for its usage—is in the important cult centralization law in Deuteronomy 12 (see chart on p. 145). The law specifically predicates centralization on the divine gift of rest. You have not yet come into the rest and the possession that the Lord your God is giving you. When you cross over the Jordan and live in the land that the Lord your God is allotting to you, and when he gives you rest from your enemies all around so that you live in safety, then you shall bring everything that I command you to the place that the Lord your God will choose as a dwelling for his name: your burnt offerings and your sacrifices. . . . And you shall rejoice before the Lord your God. (Deut 12:8–12)

The linguistic similarities between Deut 12:9–10 and 2 Sam 7:1 suggest a direct link between David’s offer to build a temple and the deuteronomic call for centralization. The implication is that Dtr wrote 2 Sam 7:1b to present David’s recognition of this divinely bestowed rest as the primary rationale for David’s offer to build the temple. One should not assume, however, that Dtr intends that the reader view the Jerusalem temple as the sole fulfillment of the cultcentralization law: the law does not designate the building of a temple as the goal of centralization, but it speaks instead of a more generic “place” that the Lord will choose.16 The purpose of the place is to serve as the single site where the people may bring their burnt offerings and sacrifices and “rejoice before the Lord.” In this way, Yahweh—or more precisely, the worship of Yahweh—is the primary bond that unifies the people of Israel. We also need to recognize that 2 Sam 7:1b would not be the first time in Israel’s history that the conditions were right for cult centralization. A survey of the use of the various elements in the clause “give rest from all enemies all around” between Deuteronomy 12 and 2 Samuel 7 reveals situations of rest 16.  Richard D. Nelson says as much in his introductory discussion of cult centralization in Deuteronomy: “Deuteronomy confesses the reality of Yahweh’s presence in association with this central shrine without describing divine presence as habitation in a temple building” (Deuteronomy [OTL; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2002] 9). For a slightly different understanding, see McCarter, II Samuel, 204. Roth argues that 1 Kgs 5:18[4] gives evidence of the “despatialization” of the rest formula in DtrN. Since 2 Sam 7:1 speaks of rest as a military accomplishment, he would argue that it comes from a different redactional layer than 1 Kgs 5:18[4] (“Deuteronomic Rest Theology,” 11–12). Compare Schniedewind, Society, 35–36.

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on different occasions prior to David’s reign. Two passages speak of “rest from their enemies all around” to characterize conditions at the end of Joshua’s life (Josh 21:44, 23:1; compare Deut 3:20; Josh 1:13–15, 22:4). At one level, the references to Yahweh’s giving rest allude to regional peace that follows military success, but the literary context points to something deeper. The references in Josh 21:43–45 and 23:1 function as brackets around the story of the Transjordanian shrine, which represented a threat to cultic unity. The narrator speaks of rest to summarize conditions after conquest and land allotment (Josh 21:44). Then, after the concerns about the Transjordanian shrine have been addressed, the narrator resumes the main story line by mentioning once again that Yahweh “had given rest to Israel” (Josh 23:1). Within the shrine story itself, Joshua sends the Transjordanian tribes back home after reminding them that Yahweh has given rest to the western tribes (Josh 22:4; compare Deut 3:20, Josh 1:13–15). References to rest in this context reinforce the connection between military success and cultic unity. The law in Deuteronomy 12 speaks of the offering of sacrifices at one shrine as the ultimate goal, while military success—“rest”— seems to be a means to this end. The Transjordanian shrine threatens to invalidate the rest achieved under Joshua, until the people make it clear that they will not offer sacrifices there. This emphasizes that the rest mentioned in Deuteronomy 12 is not fully realized unless cultic unity accompanies the military success.17 Josh 21:44 draws a direct parallel between “the Lord gave them rest all around” and “the Lord had given all their enemies into their hands.”18 Several other passages echo this language when they describe the victories of judges and King Saul over their “enemies all around.” Yahweh either gives the Israelites into the hands of “enemies all around” (Judg 2:14), or he delivers them from the hands of their “enemies all around” (Judg 2:18, 8:34; 1 Sam 10:1, 12:10–11, 14:47–48; 2 Sam 3:18). Several of these passages relate the situation of Israel vis-à-vis its enemies directly to cultic unity (Judg 2:14, 18; 8:34; 1 Sam 12:10–11; compare 1 Sam 10:1, 7), while others link together victory over enemies and Yahweh’s selection of a king (1 Sam 10:1, 2 Sam 3:18). The 17.  Compare Deut 6:14, 13:7–8. The sequence in Moses’ comments in Deut 6:16–19 seems to flow in the opposite direction. There, Moses tells the people to “do what is right and good . . . so that you may go in and occupy the good land . . . thrusting out all your enemies.” It seems that cult unity is a prerequisite to the attainment of rest. Some might argue that this reveals distinct redaction layers, but it could also show that we should not think of rest and cultic unity in terms of cause and effect but simply recognize that the two themes are closely related. 18.  There is another strong body of tradition that flows through Josh 21:43–45. It begins in Deut 27:1–8 and continues on into 2 Samuel 6 and 1 Kgs 8:56–64. This tradition deserves its own investigation.

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use of “enemies all around” to describe Israel’s opponents in these texts should remind the reader of the centralization law. It points to an implicit connection between military success (or oppression) and the people’s cultic unity and fidelity to Yahweh, such as they had in Joshua’s day. This connection operates in both directions. The attainment of rest establishes the conditions in which cult centralization and fidelity to Yahweh can be realized, and the failure to maintain fidelity to Yahweh and cultic unity destroys rest and leads to a need for a deliverer/king (compare the use of “all their enemies” in 2 Kgs 17:39 and 21:14). It might be significant that times of rest in the premonarchic generations come after battles fought entirely within the borders of the promised land. The law in Deut 25:19 predicates an Israelite attack on the Amalekites with Yahweh granting “rest from all your enemies all around.” It specifically identifies Israel’s enemies as those “in the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance.” The same language of “enemies all around” is used in Judges and 1 Samuel to refer to the peoples who occasionally entered Israelite territory and plundered the Israelites (Judg 2:14, 8:34; 1 Sam 10:1, 12:10–11). The summary of Saul’s wars identifies his “enemies” as Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Arameans, Philistines, and Amalekites, but the narrator refers to these collectively as “those who plundered” Israel (1 Sam 14:47–48). The verb “plundered” implies incursions by foreign armies into Israelite territory (compare Judg 2:16, 2 Kgs 17:20), and there is no indication that Saul ever operated beyond Israel’s borders. One can argue that the same is true of David’s military career during his reign, until the wars reported in 2 Samuel 8. His early years as king of Judah involve a prolonged struggle to establish his rule over all twelve tribes (2 Samuel 2–4). Even after all the tribes anoint David to be king, he continues to fight solely within Israel’s borders. His personal troops overthrow the Jebusites in Jerusalem, and then he repels Philistine incursions into Israel at the Valley of Rephaim (2 Sam 5:17–25). The transfer of the ark to Jerusalem (2 Samuel 6) and the offer to build a temple (2 Samuel 7) come in the wake of these events.19 It is not until after this stage in David’s reign that he sends his armies beyond Israelite territory and attacks the Philistines at Metheg-ammah (Gath in 1 Chr 18:1) and then the Moabites. He follows this with an attack on Hadadezer while he is “near the Euphrates,” establishes forts in Syrian territory, and forces the payment of tribute (2 Sam 8:1–8). In other conflicts, he “subdues” a half-dozen neighboring kingdoms, gathering spoils from all and 19.  Rost regards 7:1–4a as the continuation of the Ark Narrative, which is a major source for chap. 6. He links 7:1–4a temporally to the earliest layer of the prayer in the second half of the chapter. Leonhard Rost, The Succession to the Throne of David (trans. Michael D. Rutter and David M. Gunn; Historical Texts and Interpreters in Biblical Scholarship 1; Sheffield: Almond, 1982) 53–55.

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placing garrisons in some (2 Sam 8:9–14, 10:1–11:1, 12:26–31). All of the battles in 2 Samuel 8–12 take place beyond Israel’s borders. Thus, if we follow the flow of Dtr’s narrative, the events in 2 Samuel 6–7 take place at a pivotal time in David’s reign, between battles fought entirely within Israelite territory and battles fought beyond Israel’s borders.20 This general perspective concerning the geography of David’s wars before and after 2 Samuel 7 should influence the way in which we interpret 2 Sam 7:1b. The language of the “rest” clause is Deuteronomistic, so it should fit into the flow of the story that Dtr is telling. There are many reconstructions of the redactional history of this chapter, but it is generally accepted that the final layer(s) is (are) Deuteronomistic. This means that v. 1 should flow with the story and oracle that follow, but this is precisely where a central conflict emerges. There are 3 references to “enemies” in the chapter, and at least 2 of these clearly represent Deuteronomistic style. Yet the two references appear to contradict one another. The narrator states that “the Lord had given him rest all around from all his enemies” (v. 1), but Yahweh subsequently declares to David, “I will give you rest from all your enemies” (v. 11a). The latter stands within the “circumstantial statements” portion of a divine oracle of promise (vv. 8–11a), a section that establishes the circumstances out of which Yahweh is responding to David’s offer of a temple and promising to establish David’s eternal dynasty (vv. 11b–16). A crucial question of interpretation in 2 Sam 7:8–11a has involved the verb forms in these verses. The text has simple qatal and wayyiqtol forms in vv. 8–9a, but then it switches to we-qatal and simple yiqtol forms in verses 9b– 11a. Scholarly treatments of this passage propose three basic explanations for this shift. One seemingly simple explanation is to say that, while vv. 1 and 8–11a are ultimately Deuteronomistic, they represent distinct layers of redaction that (unfortunately) contradict one another regarding the matter of rest. Verses 8–9a come from the same hand as v. 1b, while vv. 9b–11a come from a different source or redactor. The problem with this explanation is determining which of the two layers is prior and which is subsequent, as well as explaining why the later redaction does not provide a more consistent reading; therefore, most critics have rejected this first option.21 A second solution to the use of “rest” in 2 Sam 7:8–11a is to emend the text of v. 11a, usually by changing the pronominal suffixes so that the recipient of 20.  There is no way to confirm whether this is the order in which these events actually took place or if they took place at all. This analysis considers only how Dtr is presenting David’s reign. In the same mode, the flow of the narrative presents the events in 2 Samuel 13–20 (24?) as a pulling back into Israelite territory following David’s affair with Bathsheba and murder of Uriah. 21.  In short, if a redactor felt comfortable with adding to an existing text, he should feel comfortable with emending it as well. For an early example of the problem of reconstruction on this point, see Rost, Succession, 52–56.

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future rest is Israel rather than David.22 The major hurdle to overcome here is the absence of a single textual witness that supports such emendations, either in Samuel or Chronicles. A third explanation for this passage is to argue that all the verbs in vv. 8–11a refer to past events. This requires that one recognize the verb forms in vv. 9b– 11a as yiqtol perfectives.23 Some modify this slightly to say that the verbs in vv. 9b–11a carry a different form because they refer to situations or actions that began in the past but persist through the present and into the future.24 The message is that Yahweh has chosen David to be king and has been with David so that he has won many victories, but Yahweh still has not completed the longterm process of giving David a great name and appointing a place for Israel and giving David rest.25 This is a plausible way of translating and interpreting the text, but it does not fully eliminate the problem of inconsistency with v. 1b. A fourth explanation of 2 Sam 7:8–11a in relation to v. 1 reads the verbs in the simplest way, viewing v. 1 and vv. 8–9a as references to past events, and vv. 9b–11a as promises of future events. This explanation regards “rest” in v. 1 as a reference to a temporary state of affairs (synonymous with “cut off all your enemies” in v. 9a); but Yahweh is informing David in v. 11 that, though the current rest will pass, he will establish a more enduring rest again in the future.26 22. Timo Veijola, David: Gesammelte Studien zu den Davidüberlieferungen des Alten Testaments (Schriften der Finnischen Exegetischen Gesellschaft 52; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1990) 120; McCarter, II Samuel, 193; Anderson, 2 Samuel, 112–16; Jones, The Nathan Narratives, 80 (see pp. 162–63 n. 124); against this, see John L. McKenzie, “The Dynastic Oracle in II Samuel 7,” Theological Studies 8 (1947) 197–98. 23.  Rost, Succession, 43–45. 24.  C. J. Goslinga, De Boeken Samuel opnieuw uit de grondtekst vertaald en verklaard. Tweede Deel: Korte Verklaring der Heilige Schriftmet nieuwe vertaliing (Kampen: Kok, 1956) 96–97; Anderson, 2 Samuel, 120; Philip E. Satterthwaite, “David in the Books of Samuel: A Messianic Hope?” in The Lord’s Anointed: Interpretations of Old Testament Messianic Texts (ed. Gordon J. Wenham, Richard S. Hess, and Philip E. Satterthwaite; Carlisle, England: Paternoster, 1995) 54. 25.  One can pair each item in vv. 8–9a with events reported before 2 Samuel 7 (for David as shepherd and prince, see 2 Sam 5:1–2; there are numerous passages affirming that “the Lord was with David”—1 Sam 16:18; 18:12, 14, 28; 2 Sam 5:10; though he defeated many foes, only one passage uses the language of “cutting off enemies”—1 Sam 20:15). It is more difficult to pair reported events with the items in vv. 9b–11a. The narrator mentions David’s great “name” in 8:13, and Solomon applies the fulfillment of the promise of rest to himself in 1 Kgs 5:17[3]; but there is nothing that corresponds explicitly to a time in the future when Israel is no longer disturbed. 26.  For a slightly modified version of this, see Donald F. Murray, Divine Prerogative and Royal Pretension: Pragmatics, Poetics and Polemics in a Narrative Sequence about David (2 Samuel 5.17–7.29) (JSOTSup 264; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998) 181–82.

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Based on the preceding observations, my own suggestion is to modify the fourth proposal slightly and argue that Dtr wants to signal a shift in the scope of David’s military activities. He has accomplished the task of providing a cessation of incursions by foreign invaders into Israelite territory (vv. 1, 9), but he is going to expand operations into foreign territory in the years ahead (v. 11) in order to provide a more lasting rest.27 Consideration of the relationship between chaps. 6 and 7 further clarifies this picture. The transfer of the ark to Jerusalem is an act of cult centralization. The narrator indicates that “David and all the house of Israel” bring the ark to Jerusalem (6:5, 15). They “set [the ark] in its place, inside the tent that David had pitched for it; and David offered burnt offerings and offerings of wellbeing before the Lord” (6:17). The direct reference to “all the house of Israel” in this ceremony along with the description of “burnt offerings and offerings of well-being” confirm that the intent is to describe a centralized cult event. The narrator gives no indication of military conflict between the ark story and chap. 7, which implies that the narrator wants us to view David’s ensuing offer to build the temple as something that comes in the wake of cult centralization; in the process, David perpetuates centralization or develops it further. David has already provided a “place” for the ark, but now he wants to establish a permanent place. From this perspective, it would not be surprising to find a refinement in the notion of rest, which Deuteronomy 12 and related passages link to cult centralization. Moreover, a primary implication of the dynastic oracle in its final (that is, Deuteronomistic) form is that it pairs the establishment of a permanent central shrine with the establishment of a permanent royal house (thus the play on “house”). Prior references to rest in DtrH describe temporary situations, periods of stability that last only as long as the victorious military leader is alive. The curious nature of the two references in 2 Samuel 7 is that there is no mention of a resumption of hostilities between them to explain the necessity for a promise of future rest. However, it would be logical to assume that the rest would end with David, based on previous experience. This might imply that the mention of rest in v. 11 is alluding to rest that will persist even after David’s death. 27.  Many commentators contend that the reference to “rest . . . from all his enemies” (v. 1b) shows that chap. 7 is out of place chronologically, because this statement is in­ appropriate before the wars reported in chaps. 8–12; but the present explanation shows how v. 1b might fit logically in the flow of the history. See Bernard Renaud, “La prophetie de Natan: Theologies en conflit,” RB 101 (1994) 5–61 (esp. p. 5); McCarter, II Samuel, 191; Johannes de Groot, II Samuel (Tekst en Uitleg; Praktische Bijbelverklaring door Prof. Dr. F. M. Th. Bohl en Prof. Dr. A. van VelDtruizen; Groningen: Wolters, 1935) 93; Goslinga, De Boeken Samuel, 93–97; Karl Gutbrod, Das Buch vom Reich. Das zweite Buch Samuel (Die Botschaft des Alten Testaments; Erlauterungen alttestamentlicher Schriften 11 [II]; Stuttgart: Calwer, 1958) 98; Hans Wilhelm Hertzberg, I and II Samuel, A Commentary (trans. J. S. Bowden; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1964) 284; John T. Willis, First and Second Samuel (Living Word Commentary; Austin: Sweet, 1982) 325, 329–30.

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These observations reveal a heightened significance to the references to “rest (all around) from all his/your enemies” in vv. 1 and 11. We have come to a moment in Israel’s history that merges political centralization and cult centralization. The redactor uses the theme of rest to develop a new level of meaning for both by speaking of rest from enemies as an existing situation and as a future goal. The military operations of David and Israel are about to move to a new level, as the king will send the armies of Israel beyond the borders of Israel for the first time. This military expansion serves as a primary indicator that David’s kingdom will surpass Saul’s kingdom and be more enduring. This speaks to a level of political unity, stability, and permanence that Israel has never enjoyed. Dtr’s use of “rest all around from all his enemies” in this context points to a parallel notion of an unprecedented level of cultic unity, stability, and permanence for the nation. There is one other example of “rest all around” in DtrH, and it lends credence to the present line of interpretation. In 1 Kgs 5:17–20[3–6], Solomon seeks the expert help of Hiram of Tyre in building the temple, and so he sends Hiram a letter that begins by mentioning David’s unrealized wish to build a temple. Solomon explains that “the wars that surrounded him” prevented David from accomplishing his goal, “but now the Lord my God has given me rest all around” (1 Kgs 5:17–18[3–4]).28 Solomon’s acknowledgement of the divine gift of rest falls a couple of paragraphs after Dtr has declared that Solomon enjoyed “peace all around; during Solomon’s lifetime Judah and Israel lived in safety” (1 Kgs 5:4–5[4:24–25]). This is the only passage in DtrH in which ‫ מסביב‬is not accompanied by “give rest” or “all his/your enemies,” but the reference to living “in safety” supports the likelihood that this is an intentional allusion back to Deut 12:10 and related passages. Dtr clarifies this comment about “peace” in terms of Solomon’s “dominion over all the region west of the Euphrates.” It is likely that Dtr is intending this wider geographic perspective in Solomon’s comment about “rest all around” (5:18[4]), which means Dtr’s use of “all around” in 1 Kings 5 envisions a geographically wider area than it had prior to 2 Samuel 7 (see especially Deut 25:19).29 This is con28.  I am reading “the wars that surrounded him” with the LXX and other early versions. It is possible that ‫ המלחמה‬is being used as a collective noun. See Mordechai Cogan, 1 Kings (AB 10; New York: Doubleday, 2000) 226. 29.  Roth contends that the rationale involving war in David’s reign (v. 17a[3a]) reflects DtrG, while attributing rest to Yahweh (v. 18[4]) is from DtrN. The former presents the temple as a project initiated purely by human desire but thwarted by warfare, and the latter shifts the initiative to Yahweh (“Deuteronomic Rest Theology,” 5–9). To make this stand, Roth must assume that David’s military activities were conceived in nontheological terms by a preexilic author. It would be hard to establish a nontheological perspective on war in ancient Near Eastern culture, particularly when one’s main argument is merely the absence of an explicit reference.

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sistent with the idea that Dtr is using “rest all around” with an expanded meaning following 2 Samuel 7. We can now summarize our understanding of the place of 2 Sam 7:1b in DtrH. The law calling for cult centralization (Deut 12:8–12) is the fountainhead of a Deuteronomic agenda of unity, a unity that is both cultic and political. The law conceives of unity first and foremost in terms of worship at the central shrine, and the opportunity for diverse groups to stand united at a central shrine is made possible through shared military success—provided by the deity to whom the shrine is dedicated—that has produced rest. Conversely, a failure to maintain cultic unity through worship at the central shrine leads to divine punishment and a loss of rest. According to Deuteronomy and the subsequent history, the location of the central shrine is tied to the presence of the ark, which has been “housed” primarily in a tent structure.30 Dtr places the story of David’s offer to build a temple at a time when David has already achieved rest from enemies within Israel’s borders and cult centralization. This implies that the presence of a temple would indicate enhanced notions about rest and cult centralization, so that the temple holds a deeper significance than what was previously associated with the central shrine. There are also political overtones to this change, because David makes his proposal as part of his political status as king. An implicit consequence of such a development is that it links cultic unity to political unity, but it also threatens to subordinate the cult to the state, because the existence of the temple will be attributed to the actions of the king. The Deuteronomic Code (including the cult-centralization law) serves as a permanent response to this threat by subordinating the power and well-being of the royal line to the law code.31 Moreover, DtrH perpetuates this subordination by portraying cult centralization in the temple merely as the final and culminating example of centralization.32 The history of successes and failures concerning cult-centralization stands as a reminder to the Davidic kings that the permanence of their status—because it is yoked to the central shrine— depends on faithful submission to Yahweh and adherence to Yahweh’s law. 30.  There is some question about the nature of the structure at Shiloh, since the text refers to it as “the house of the Lord” (1 Sam 1:7, 24; 3:15). 31.  Here we are helped tremendously by Levinson’s work on Deuteronomy. He shows that everything in Israel, including the throne, is subordinated to the law through the deuteronomic legislation. Bernard M. Levinson, Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics of Legal Innovation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997). 32.  Some recent analyses of Nathan’s oracle point to a similar understanding, because they emphasize how Yahweh’s response to David’s offer predicates the royal house’s ability to build the temple on Yahweh’s power and mercy in establishing the royal house. Lyle Eslinger, House of God or House of David: The Rhetoric of 2 Samuel 7 (JSOTSup 164; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1994) 17–19, 24–40; Murray, Divine Prerogative, 184–86, 215, 269–70, 298.

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The recognition that notions of cultic and political unity are inherent in the theme of “rest from enemies all around” also points to the most likely historical setting for the Deuteronomistic redaction of these passages. One could make a case for notions of this sort among supporters of the Davidic House at any time during its history, but the strongest arguments would fit the period following the fall of Samaria. There is ample archaeological evidence of a significant increase in the population of Jerusalem at this time, which should almost certainly be attributed to an influx of refugees from the north.33 If there is any credence to the biblical history of past relations between the inhabitants of Judah and these northern refugees, the newcomers would naturally resist demands to submit fully to the Davidic line. The tone and perspective of the Deuteronomic Code and History make this more palatable, because they hold the ruling house accountable to the same divine authority as everyone else.

David Offers to Build a Temple: Redactional Developments in Chronicles Let us turn now to addressing the use of “give rest from enemies all around” in Chronicles. It is curious that Chronicles includes general parallels to three of the passages where the clause appears in DtrH, yet none of the three parallels reproduces the clause from those passages.34 The first passage is 1 Chr 17:1, which omits a parallel to 2 Sam 7:1b. It is possible that the Chronicler has inherited a pre-Dtr version of 2 Samuel 7, but one would also have to assume that a pre-Dtr redactor is responsible for placing 2 Samuel 7 immediately after the story of the ark’s transfer to Jerusalem and before the accounts of David’s wars against the Philistines, Arameans, Ammonites, and Edomites.35 The immediate effect of the omission of 2 Sam 7:1b from 1 Chr 17:1 is that it removes “rest” from the existing conditions out of which David offers to build a temple. This omission leaves only one explanation for David’s offer in the text of Chronicles: David feels it is inappropriate that he is living in a house of cedar, while Yahweh’s ark is in a tent (1 Chr 17:1b). The context of military quiet that one finds in Samuel is completely missing from Chronicles. In fact, Chronicles reports David’s early successes over the Philistines between the two halves of the story of the transfer of the ark to Jerusalem (1 Chr 14:8–17; 33.  It is far less likely, in my opinion, that a drive for unity between northern and southern groups would have developed after the groups were exiled. If the drive had not begun before the exile, then one would expect the inclusion of other exiled groups as well. 34.  1 Chr 17:1 parallels 2 Sam 7:1 as the introduction to the story of Nathan’s dynastic oracle; 1 Chr 17:10 contains the parallel to the promise of rest in 2 Sam 7:11; and 2 Chr 2:2–9[3–10] stands as the parallel to 1 Kgs 5:17–20, two significantly different versions of Solomon’s request for lumber and craftsmen from Hiram of Tyre. 35.  Several scholars contend that the dynastic oracle was anachronistically placed before 2 Samuel 8 by the Historian (see n. 27, above).

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compare 2 Sam 5:17–25). Dtr in 2 Samuel situates this important event in a time of relative calm, while the Chronicler surrounds it with warfare. The second opportunity for a parallel comes in the divine promise, “I will give you rest from all your enemies” (2 Sam 7:11). This is altered in 1 Chr 17:10 to read, “I will subdue (‫ )כנע‬all your enemies.” The significance of ‫כנע‬ to ChrH is well known, and the use of ‫ כנע‬here points forward to the “programmatic” use of the term in 2 Chr 7:14.36 The change in verbs also eliminates any direct links between rest and David’s reign in Nathan’s oracle. In fact, there are no passages in all of Chronicles that state, “The Lord gave rest to David.” Instead, it is either Solomon or the people of Israel who are the recipients of the divine gift of rest (1 Chr 22:9, 18; 23:25).37 The final possible parallel between Samuel–Kings and Chronicles regarding rest appears in Solomon’s initial letter to Hiram of Tyre. Solomon declares in 1 Kgs 5:18[4] that “the Lord my God has given me rest on every side,” but the parallel text within 2 Chr 2:2–9[3–10] does not include Solomon’s rationale or this particular clause. Instead, Solomon begins there by making a connection between the cedar in David’s palace and the need for cedar in the temple. This version of the letter puts greater emphasis on the references to cedar in the negotiations between Solomon and Hiram, and it reminds the reader that the single precondition for David’s offer to build the temple in 1 Chr 17:1 was David’s disquietude over having a house of cedar while “the ark of the covenant of the Lord is under a tent.” These observations make it much more likely, in my opinion, that the Chronicler has emended the text he inherited from 2 Samuel 7 to fit the perspective he wants to promote. He believes that it was appropriate for David to offer to build a temple, because David was a pious and humble man who wanted to show proper honor to Yahweh; but Yahweh prohibits David from building the temple because the political and military conditions are not right. This even allows the Chronicler to imply that the conditions for building a temple never existed in Israel prior to Solomon’s day.38 The Chronicler employs the expression “the Lord gave rest all around” in six passages, none of which derives from DtrH. The first two are in 1 Chr 22:9 and 18, and these contribute significantly to the Chronicler’s explanation for the reason that David could not build the temple. In vv. 8–9, David encourages Solomon to build the temple after David’s death by passing on to him what the Lord had told David earlier, though these comments are not 36.  On the use of ‫ כנע‬in Chronicles, see Raymond B. Dillard, 2 Chronicles (WBC 15; Waco, TX: Word, 1987) 76–80. 37.  For a fuller discussion of the way 1 Chronicles 17 adapts 2 Samuel 7, see Michael Avioz, “Nathan’s Prophecy in II Sam 7 and in I Chr 17: Text, Context, and Meaning,” ZAW 116 (2004) 542–54 (esp. p. 549). 38.  For a similar interpretation of the evidence, see Murray, Divine Prerogative, 163–64.

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recorded in 1 Chronicles 17. First, Yahweh had informed David that he could not build the temple because he had shed much blood. Then, Yahweh promised that he would “give him [Solomon, not David!] rest from all his enemies all around.” A few verses later, David tells the military commanders that Yahweh has given them (not David!) rest by delivering Israel’s enemies into David’s hands (1 Chr 22:18). These two statements work well together within the larger theme of David’s making preparations for Solomon and the temple, a theme that is pervasive in 1 Chronicles 11–29. These two statements also provide a different perspective from Samuel–Kings on why David does not build the temple. The flow of the text implies that the end of David’s reign is approaching (1 Chr 22:5), so the statements here supplement the earlier dynastic oracle recorded in 1 Chronicles 17 (= 2 Samuel 7). When we put together 1 Chr 22:9 and 22:18, we see that David speaks of waging war his entire reign and that he has done so as part of the preparations for Solomon’s reign and temple-building. David has fought all the wars so that Solomon would have peace and thereby be qualified to build the temple. In Chronicles, war is a necessary part of David’s preparations for temple-building.39 The pious David accepts that a man of blood, such as himself, cannot build the temple, and thus he has shed blood so that Solomon will not have to shed blood. The Chronicler makes no mention of a state of rest before the end of David’s reign. In fact, David will eventually state that “the Lord, the God of Israel, has given rest to his people . . . and so the Levites no longer need to carry the tabernacle or any of the things for its service” (1 Chr 23:25–26; compare 22:19). The mere presence of the tent betrays a lack of rest. This shows that the Chronicler understands rest as something tied directly to the temple; the temple should be built as an immediate response to the gift of rest.40 The Chronicler speaks of Yahweh’s providing “rest all around” during the reigns of three subsequent kings of Judah. There are two occasions during the 39.  One passage in Chronicles identifies Israel’s enemies as “the inhabitants of the land,” which implies only enemies within the land of Israel (1 Chr 22:18). This refers to activities in David’s lifetime. The other texts clearly state or strongly imply that rest from enemies means that Israel does not have to fight beyond its borders (1 Chr 22:9 [compare 1 Kgs 5:18[4]; 2 Chr 20:29–30, 32:22; compare 2 Chr 16:7–9). 40.  Schniedewind, Society, 130–31, 198 (n. 42). Weinfeld interprets the perspective in Deuteronomy–Kings so that it matches the Chronicler’s perspective. Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School, 170; idem, The Promise of the Land: The Inheritance of Canaan by the Israelites (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993) 179–80. Roth essentially comes to the same conclusion, except that he explains it in terms of layers of redaction. The earliest layer (DtrG) views rest as being established in purely military terms by Joshua, without consideration of a temple; but the final layer (DtrN)—which is most like Chronicles—uses 2 Sam 7:1, 11; and 1 Kgs 5:18[4] to make rest a primary prerequisite for temple building (“Deuteronomic Rest Theology,” 5–9).

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reign of Asa when the assertion is made that Yahweh has given rest to the nation. The first comes after ten years without war (2 Chr 14:4–6[5–7]), and the second comes one battle and five years later (2 Chr 15:12–15). The writer presents both periods of rest as the direct result of “seeking” Yahweh (14:4, 6[5, 7]; 15:2, 4, 12, 13, 15; cf. 16:12), which is an allusion back to David’s comments in 1 Chronicles 22. Immediately after mentioning that Yahweh has given the nation rest, David instructs Solomon and the leaders to “seek the Lord your God” and “build the sanctuary” (1 Chr 22:19).41 David later tells Solomon, “If you seek him, he will be found by you” (1 Chr 28:9), and the prophet Azariah gives the same encouragement to Asa during his reign (2 Chr 15:2). In similar fashion, Asa’s son Jehoshaphat enjoys “rest all around” following a victory that resulted when he and the nation “assembled to seek the Lord” in preparation for battle (2 Chr 20:1–30 [esp. vv. 4, 30]; see also 17:4, 18:4, 22:9). Finally, when the Chronicler describes the miraculous victory over Sennacherib in the days of Hezekiah and Isaiah, he summarizes the victory by saying, “[the Lord] gave them rest all around” (2 Chr 32:22). He had previously described Hezekiah the reformer as a king who “sought” God with all his heart (2 Chr 31:21). These passages convey a consistent message within Chronicles in regard to having “rest all around.” In Chronicles, rest is a prerequisite for temple building, and David does not enjoy rest until the end of his reign, when it is too late for him to build a temple. Instead, David fights wars all his life to attain rest for the nation, so that he can pass it on (along with the physical materials for the temple) to his son Solomon. A key sign of rest is that the tabernacle is no longer needed, and so rest is indelibly linked to the temple. Yahweh provides rest for his people, and then his ark can be at rest. Solomon and subsequent generations can maintain or restore this rest, if they will “seek the Lord” wholeheartedly. Several passages imply that this involves participation in worship conducted solely at the temple (see n. 41).

David’s Offer to Build the Temple The preceding discussion points to competing answers to the question “What prompted David to make the offer to build the temple?” The Chronicler’s answer is simple: David is moved by a pious impulse to reverence Yahweh. He verbalizes this in his disquietude over the disparity between his own “house of cedar” and the accommodations for the ark, and Solomon’s own remarks about the desired magnificence of the temple reinforce this pious attitude (2 Chr 2:2–9[3–10]). The Chronicler also provides a simple explanation

41.  Several passages make a direct connection between “seeking the Lord” and temple worship (see 2 Chr 11:16, 15:10–15, 20:4, 30:18–19, 31:21).

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for Yahweh’s denial of David’s offer: David is a man of blood, and the temple builder must be a man of peace. The answers put forward by Dtr are more complicated. Dtr acknowledges David’s apparently pious motivation in the comment about his own house (2 Sam 7:2a), but he seems to recognize that it is inevitable that a royal offer to build a temple carries with it an implication of the crown’s desire to control the cult; therefore, Dtr supplements David’s stated motivation with the Deuteronomists’ own themes of rest and cult centralization. He presents David’s offer in the broad context of DtrH by saying, “The Lord had given him rest all around from all his enemies.” Verse 1 places the building of the temple, not just the offer to build it, at the confluence of two streams of tradition: one about cult centralization and one about political unity. The current examination of the Deuteronomistic rest clause shows how it initiates and carries along the idea of rest as the cessation of war—provided by Yahweh—that is supposed to serve as the catalyst for cult centralization and loose political unity, from the days of Joshua to David. The placement of this clause in 2 Sam 7:1b immediately after a story of cult centralization indicates that the themes of cultic and political unity are achieving greater significance and deeper/broader meaning in the events introduced by v. 1. The further usage of the same clause in v. 11 and then in 1 Kings 5 reveals the basic ways in which the themes are revised. The primary development is that cult centralization is now wedded to political centralization; yet, by making Yahweh’s gift of rest a major part of the catalyst for David’s offer, Dtr tries to insure that the cult retains preeminence over the crown.42 Recognition of these distinctions between DtrH and Chronicles influences how one reconstructs the relationship between the redaction of 2 Sam 7:1 and the redaction of its parallel in 1 Chr 17:1. In my view, it is much easier to argue that the Chronicler has excised the second half of the introductory verse than to contend that a secondary redactor of 2 Samuel 7 expanded the verse from the form preserved in Chronicles. The respective readings are consistent with other references to “rest from enemies all around” in their respective histories. Deut 12:8–12 speaks of Yahweh’s promising rest for Israel in the future, and DtrH associates this rest with several different events in Israel’s history, events that culminate in David’s victories and Nathan’s dynastic oracle. The promises in the oracle expand the idea of “rest from all enemies” to include military success beyond Israel’s borders, thereby suggesting greater stability (permanence) for the royal house and the cult (2 Sam 7:8–11, 1 Kgs 5:18[4]). The 42.  For some similar conclusions and additional comments on past scholarship, see Steven L. McKenzie, “Why Didn’t David Build the Temple? The History of a Biblical Tradition,” in Worship and the Hebrew Bible: Essays in Honour of John T. Willis (ed. M. Patrick Graham, Rick R. Marrs, and Steven L. McKenzie; JSOTSup 284; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999) 204–24.

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Chronicler assumes this expanded notion of rest in his own use of the clause. From the Chronicler’s perspective, Israel simply did not enjoy rest before David had completed all his military responsibilities and established a permanent dynasty. If Yahweh had actually given them rest prior to this development, the failure to build the temple would have been tantamount to a denial of the divine gift of rest. This explains why the Chronicler omits any reference to David/ Israel’s enjoying rest prior to the end of David’s reign.

Passage

Comparative Usage Chart “give rest from all enemies all around”

“give rest”

“(from) all enemies”

“all around”

Deut 12:10 X X X Deut 25:19 X X X Josh 21:44 X [succeeding sentence] X Josh 23:1 X X X Judg 2:14† [“sold them to”] X* X Judg 8:34 [“rescued them”] X X 1 Sam 10:1 [“save them”] X* X 1 Sam 12:11 [“rescued you”] X* X 1 Sam 14:47 [“fought against”] X* X 2 Sam 7:1 X X X 2 Sam 7:11 X X -1 Kgs 5:18 X [“adversary/misfortune”] X 1 Chr 22:9 X X X 1 Chr 22:18 X [“inhabitants of land”] X 2 Chr 14:6 X -- X 2 Chr 15:15 X -- X 2 Chr 20:30 X -- X 2 Chr 32:22 X [preceding sentence] X * = “all” is absent in these instances

Why Did David Stay Home? An Exegetical Study of 2 Samuel 11:1 Steven L. McKenzie A common understanding of the opening to the story of David and Bathsheba is that the root of David’s great sin was his failure to go to war. This failure and the consequences it produced are seen to be signaled for the reader in the explicit notice of David’s remaining behind in Jerusalem. David’s motive for staying behind is accounted for in various ways. It is perceived as laziness (“idleness is the Devil’s playground”), boredom, fear, cowardice, affluence, conceit, or a combination of these.1 This interpretation is based entirely on a reading of 2 Sam 11:1. Occasionally, there is an appeal to 2 Sam 21:15–17 as providing some basis for or background to David’s supposed fear or cowardice.2 The latter text relates an anecdote in which David grew weary in battle and had to be rescued, leading his men to cajole him not to go to war with them again. But this anecdote is in the context of a collection of similar battle tales, and it is not clear where in David’s reign it is supposed to have occurred, before or after the Bathsheba affair. The fact that it is said to have happened in a battle against the Philistines may suggest that it was early in David’s reign. But 2 Samuel 8 describes several wars waged by David personally after his subjugation of the Philistines. If the near escape in 21:15–17 was earlier and policy-changing, and if, as is often assumed, 11:1 intimates an older, less agile David, then remaining behind seems to be quite logical strategy rather than inherently wrong. Nevertheless, these issues are typically ignored, and it is contended that, if David had not shirked his responsibility to be on the battlefield, the entire incident with Bathsheba Author’s note: I am pleased to offer this contribution to this volume honoring Richard Nelson, hoping that it imitates the careful exegesis, logical deduction, and close reading that is characteristic of his work. 1.  An example of these sorts of explanations is the online exposition by Bob Deffinbaugh, “David and Bathsheba (2 Samuel 11:1–14),” http://www.bible.org (accessed June 1, 2009). 2.  Surprisingly, 2 Sam 18:1–5 does not seem to be cited as regularly for this purpose. Here, David’s men urge him not to go out personally against Absalom’s forces for fear that he will be killed. Perhaps it is understood from 18:3 that this was a special circumstance, in which Absalom and his army were targeting David in particular.

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would not have happened. There is also a sense that David’s failure to do what kings were supposed to do in the spring was made more egregious by his role in God’s larger plan. His function was to fight the wars of God and Israel in order to pave the way for the pax that would allow Solomon to build the temple. A comparison of leading English translations provides an easy way to see why this interpretation is so prevalent. asv:

And it came to pass, at the return of the year, at the time when kings go out to battle, that David sent Joab, and his servants with him, and all Israel; and they destroyed the children of Ammon, and besieged Rabbah. But David tarried at Jerusalem. jps:

And it came to pass, at the return of the year, at the time when kings go out to battle, that David sent Joab, and his servants with him, and all Israel; and they destroyed the children of Ammon, and besieged Rabbah. But David tarried at Jerusalem. kjv:

And it came to pass, after the year was expired, at the time when kings go forth to battle, that David sent Joab, and his servants with him, and all Israel; and they destroyed the children of Ammon, and besieged Rabbah. But David tarried still at Jerusalem. nab:

At the turn of the year, when kings go out on campaign, David sent out Joab along with his officers and the army of Israel, and they ravaged the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. David, however, remained in Jerusalem. nasb: Then it happened in the spring, at the time when kings go out to battle, that David sent Joab and his servants with him and all Israel, and they destroyed the sons of Ammon and besieged Rabbah. But David stayed at Jerusalem. neb:

At the turn of the year, when kings take the field, David sent Joab out with his other officers and all the Israelites forces, and they ravaged Ammon and laid siege to Rabbah, while David remained in Jerusalem. niv:

In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the king’s men and the whole Israelite army. They destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained in Jerusalem. njps:

At the turn of the year, the season when kings go out [to battle], David sent Joab with his officers and all Israel with him, and they devastated Ammon and besieged Rabbah; David remained in Jerusalem. nkjv: It happened in the spring of the year, at the time when kings go out to battle, that David sent Joab and his servants with him, and all Israel; and they destroyed the people of Ammon and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem.

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nrsv:

In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab with his officers and all Israel with him; they ravaged the Ammonites, and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem.

rsv: In the spring of the year, the time when kings go forth to battle, David sent Joab, and his servants with him, and all Israel; and they ravaged the Ammonites, and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem.

Readers of these English translations assume that, by pointing out that David stayed in Jerusalem when kings customarily went to war, the text is saying that the disaster that follows could have been prevented if David had behaved in a more kingly fashion and gone to war with his army. This interpretation has an illogical element to it: Israel was condemned for requesting a king in order to be like the nations (1 Samuel 8), so why should David be duty-bound to behave as a typical king? Nevertheless, it is easy to see how the interpretation follows from the usual English translations of the verse. It is not just lay readers of the English text who subscribe to this interpretation. The majority of commentators and scholars do as well, as the unanimity of the translations quoted above—most, if not all of which are the work of scholars—might suggest. However, a minority among commentators interpret the verse differently. Most recently, McCarter has argued that it refers not to a general practice of kings to campaign militarily in the spring but to the specific kings involved in the war narrated in chap. 10. According to this view, the dating formula in 11:1 should be translated “at the return of the year,” that is, a year later, rather than “in the spring.”3 McCarter was preceded in this basic understanding by only a few commentators.4 In this study, I propose to reexamine this verse in detail. While I follow McCarter’s lead, I hope to highlight certain features of the verse that have not received adequate consideration and to offer a slightly different and new slant on the understanding of its meaning and function in context.

Lexical, Syntactic, and Text-Critical Issues ָ ‫‘—ל ְתׁשּובַת ה‬at ‫ַשּׁנָה‬ ִ the return of the year’

The noun ‫ ְּתׁשּובָה‬is derived from the root ‫ׁשוב‬, which has the basic mean�� ing ‘return, turn around’. The noun appears eight times in the Hebrew Bible (1 Sam 7:17; 2 Sam 11:1//1 Chr 20:1; 1 Kgs 20:22, 26; 2 Chr 36:10; Job 21:34; 34:36), each of which conveys the sense of ‘return’ in some way. Thus, in 3.  P. Kyle McCarter, II Samuel (AB 9; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1984) 284–85. 4.  These include at least Henry Preserved Smith, The Books of Samuel (ICC; New York: Scribner’s, 1899) 317–18; and Karl Budde, Die Bücher Samuel (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1902) 250–51. McCarter is followed by Tony W. Cartledge, 1 and 2 Samuel (Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys, 2001) 496.

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1 Sam 7:17 it describes Samuel’s return to his home in Ramah at the end of his annual judging circuit. In the two passages from Job, it refers to verbal returns, that is, responses or answers. The five remaining texts all use ‫ ְּתׁשּובָה‬as part of ָ ‫ ִל ְתׁשּובַת ה‬in 2 Sam the expression ‘at the return of the year’, specifically, ‫ַשּׁנָה‬ ָ ‫ ְלעֵת ְּתׁשּובַת ה‬in 1 Chr 20:1. 11:1; 1 Kgs 20:22, 26; and 2 Chr 36:10, and ‫ַשּׁנָה‬ Closer inspection of these last five texts indicates that they all use this expression to date the sequel of a previously narrated incident—usually, though not always, a military foray. This is clearest in the two occurrences in 1 Kings 20, where the expression is used in regard to the return of the Arameans following their miraculous defeat narrated in 20:12–21. Similarly, in 2 Sam 11:1//1 Chr 20:1, it dates the renovation of hostilities against the Ammonites after the defeat of the Aramean-Ammonite coalition recounted in 2 ZSamuel 10//1 Chronicles 19. The occurrence in 2 Chr 36:10 is more difficult and will be discussed in greater detail below. But it seems to refer to Nebuchadnezzar’s dispatch of an envoy to remove Jehoiachin as king of Judah in the same way that he (Nebuchadnezzar) has previously removed Jehoiakim. The expression functions, thus, to date an event in reference to an event that occurred earlier. The events in these five passages are all dated “at the return of the year,” that is, a year later than their predecessors. Scholars generally recognize the literal meaning of the expression ‫ִל ְתׁשּובַת‬ ָ ‫ ה‬but regard it nonetheless as an idiom for spring. This understanding is ‫ַשּׁנָה‬ quite old, dating back at least to Josephus (Ant. 7.6.3). It is based, at least in modern interpretation, on two considerations. The first concerns the Israelite calendar. Exod 23:16 prescribes that the harvest festival or “festival of ingathָ ‫)ּבצֵאת ה‬. ering” be celebrated at “the going out of the year” (‫ַשּׁנָה‬ ְ Exod 34:22 ָ ‫)ּתקּופַת ה‬ uses the expression ‘the turn of the year’ (‫ַשּׁנָה‬ ְ to make the same prescription. Scholars disagree about whether these expressions refer to the beginning of the year or to its end. In either case, however, they apparently envision the new year as occurring in the fall, since that is when the harvest took place. The argument goes that “the return of the year” is to be seen as the opposite of these and therefore to be associated with the mid-point of the year, namely, the spring.5 This understanding assumes, therefore, that the writers of Exodus and 2 Samuel followed a common calendar and that it had a fall new year. An immediate problem with this idea is the rather compelling evidence for a spring new year. VanderKam observes that the Canaanite, ordinal numerical, and Babylonian arrangements for naming months all began the year in the spring. Moreover, within the book of Exodus itself, the month containing 5.  See Aubrey R. Johnson, Sacral Kingship in Ancient Israel (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1955) 48–49; and Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1961) 190–91. DeVaux (p. 190) states, “This ‘return’ of the year would be the time when the year was half over, and beginning to return from winter to summer, when the days began to equal the nights, our spring equinox.”

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Passover in the spring is designated the first month of the year (Exod 12:2).6 VanderKam concludes that different new years may have been observed in ancient Israel. Hence, it is uncertain that Israel consistently observed a fall new year or that idioms for the beginning or end of the year referred exclusively to the fall, much less that “the return of the year” idiomatically designated the spring equinox. The second reason for taking “at the return of the year” as an idiom for spring, is that military campaigns in the ancient Near East or Israel were typically undertaken during the spring when the dry season facilitated troop movement and recruitment of men not yet occupied with harvest. This was probably the reason for Josephus’s assumption that it was spring when David sent Joab to besiege Rabbah. It does appear that spring was the usual time for campaigning, at least in Neo-Assyrian practice, though it was not without exception, and it is reasonable to assume that the practice was comparable in ancient Israel and the Levant.7 Indeed, the author of 2 Sam 11:1 and its ancient readers would likely have assumed that it was spring when David reinitiated military action against the Ammonites. But typical practice does not establish the meaning ָ ‫ ִל ְתׁשּובַת ַה‬as an idiom. This is particularly true considering that the of ‫ׁשּנָה‬ instances of the phrase in the Bible occur only for dating military campaigns that are sequels, rather than initial engagements. This is where the argument in favor of the idiom becomes circular and is based essentially on the next phrase in 2 Sam 11:1. [‫ָכים‬ ִ ‫ ה ְַּמל‬Qere] ‫ָאכים‬ ִ ‫‘—לעֵת צֵאת ַהּמ ְַל‬at ְ the time of the going out of [the kings]’

According to the usual interpretation, 2 Sam 11:1 identifies “the return of the year” as the time that “kings march out to battle.” There is a problem with this interpretation at the outset: why would the author feel it necessary to explain a practice that was presumably so well known and widely followed? More to the point, however, as McCarter emphasized, the Hebrew text does not actually say “kings” but, rather, “the kings.”8 This in itself does not decisively settle the matter, because there are instances of the article’s being used for generic nouns in the plural.9 However, since “at the return of the year” dates a 6.  See James C. VanderKam, “Calendar,” NIDB 1:521–27. 7.  For Neo-Assyrian practice, see A. Kirk Grayson, “Assyrian Rule of Conquered Territory in Ancient Western Asia,” CANE 2:960; de Vaux, Ancient Israel, 190. An exception to this practice (from Neo-Babylonian rather than Neo-Assyrian sources but illustrating the point nevertheless) is the report in the Babylonian Chronicles that Nebuchadnezzar marched out to suppress Judah’s revolt in the winter month of Kislev (Kislimu), 598 b.c.e. (ANET, 564). 8.  McCarter, II Samuel, 285. 9.  Bruce K. Waltke and M. O’Connor, An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1990) §13.5.1f (pp. 244–45).

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particular event according to a previous event, the presence of the article here takes on added significance as referring to the specific kings mentioned in the previous narrative (10:6 and perhaps 10:19). The understanding of “the kings” in 2 Sam 11:1 as definite and a reference to the kings mentioned in chap. 10 finds support in the Kethiv reading in this verse. “The kings,” in fact, is the Qere. The consonantal text actually reads, “the messengers,” which is preferred by some scholars.10 As observed by these scholars, these messengers would most naturally allude to the episode about the Ammonites’ treatment of David’s envoy in 10:1–5. While the manuscript and versional evidence strongly favors the Qere as the better reading, the variant is another indication that the incident in chap. 11 was dated by ancient copyists according to a past event, be it the going out of “the messengers” or the marching out of “the kings.”11 The infinitive ‫צֵאת‬, of course, has no temporal value and can be construed in the construct chain as a reference to the past rather than to the present. In other words, the phrase does not identify “at the return of the year” as being spring, much less define it as being an idiom for the season. Rather, it dates the siege of Rabbah to a year following Israel’s initial action against the Ammonites and the Aramean kings hired by them (10:6–7). Before moving to a consideration of the broader context, we need to take a ָ ‫ ִל ְתׁשּובַת ה‬in 2 Chr 36:10, since this phrase closer look at the instance of ‫ַשּׁנָה‬ is typically taken as a confirmation that the expression means ‘spring’. There is actually little to recommend this view. To begin with, commentators appeal to 2 Sam 11:1 for the meaning of the phrase as ‘spring’, so that again, there is a good deal of circularity involved. Historically, Jehoiachin’s surrender of Jerusalem did indeed take place in the spring, on March 15/16, 597 b.c.e., according to the Babylonian Chronicles. But the account in the biblical book of Chronicles is hardly precise history. Thus, for instance, Jehoiakim apparently died before Nebuchadnezzar arrived in Jerusalem or during the siege of the city, as implied in 2 Kgs 24:1–11, and was not sent captive to Babylon as 2 Chr 36:6 reports. Chronicles’ version of the reigns of these two kings of Judah has been shaped ideologically, paralleling them in order to have them both die outside the land (along with Jehoahaz and Zedekiah) and both be partially responsible for the plundering of the temple vessels. The reference to Jehoiachin’s captivity as taking place “at the return of the year” following Jehoiakim’s is likely part of this ideological paralleling. As Talshir puts it, “The time of events in ‘the turn of the year’ seems to refer Jehoiachin’s misfortune back to the simi10.  J. P. Fokkelman, Narrative Art and Poetry in the Books of Samuel, vol. 1: King David (II Sam. 9–20 and 1 Kings 1–2) (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1981) 50–51; Smith, Books of Samuel, 317–18; also GKC §23g/p. 81. 11.  The verb ‫ יצא‬is commonly used for military action and would fit well with the reading “the kings” (HALOT, 425). But it is just as appropriate for the going forth of messengers.

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lar one inflicted on his predecessor, Jehoiakim.12 In sum, ‘spring’ is not the ָ ‫ ִל ְתׁשּובַת ַה‬in 2 Chr 36:10. On the contrary, the meanrequired meaning of ‫ׁשּנָה‬ ing that applies to the expression elsewhere—essentially, ‘a year later’—fits perfectly well here as part of the parallel drawn by the Chronicler between Jehoiakim and Jehoiachin.

Literary-Critical and Contextual Issues The first part of 2 Sam 11:1, then, dates the story it introduces a year after the marshaling of the Aramean kings described in chap. 10. At this time, David sent Joab with “his servants” and “all Israel” to ravage the Ammonites and besiege Rabbah. This report shows that in its context this verse does more than introduce the story that follows. It is a continuation of the narrative in chap. 10. This narrative, in fact, remains unfinished at the close of the chapter. The Ammonites, who precipitated the conflict by their treatment of David’s emissary (10:1–5), remain unpunished. The Arameans who were hired by the Ammonites have been soundly defeated and have subjected themselves to Israel (10:15–19). But the Ammonites have yet to be dealt with conclusively. The narrative in chap. 10, then, requires the account in 11:1* + 12:26–31 to complete it. The siege, defeat, and despoiling of Rabbah is really the completion of the mission on which Joab was originally sent. Hence, in 10:8, Joab is apparently preparing to besiege Rabbah or fight the Ammonites at its entrance when he finds himself flanked by the Arameans. His mission of retaliation and subjugation of the Ammonites is interrupted by the intervention of the Arameans. With Abishai’s help, Joab extricates his force from the double front and returns to Jerusalem (10:9–14). Then, Israel under David’s command takes on and defeats the Aramean coalition (10:15–19). But the Ammonite problem remains, so David again sends Joab to assault Rabbah (11:1). The notices of David’s sending Joab in 10:7 and 11:1 serve as a kind of frame around the part of the narrative relating the engagements with the Arameans, so that 11:1 resumes the story of Joab’s punitive mission against the Ammonites. The notice in 10:7 also shows that this (11:1) was not the first time that David sent Joab and the army off to war while remaining behind, and it thereby suggests that there was nothing particularly wrong with his doing so. Indeed, one could argue that by staying behind on both occasions David was doing exactly what he should have, namely, handling affairs of state in Jerusalem while Joab devastated the Ammonite 12. Zipora Talshir, I Esdras: A Critical Commentary (SBLSCS 50; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2001) 74. Talshir’s comment is on 1 Esd 1:43, the parallel to 2 Chr 36:10, which incidentally renders ‫ לתשובת השנה‬as μετ’ ενιαυτον ‘a year later’. Exactly how the Chronicler figured the span of time is unclear. In addition to Jehoiachin’s three-month reign, perhaps he was allowing time for Nebuchadnezzar’s march from Babylon to Jerusalem and the siege, capture, and partial pillaging of the temple before Jehoiachin’s installation.

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countryside and waited out the siege against Rabbah, seeking David’s involvement only for the coup de grâce.

Redaction/Source-Critical Issues The interpretation of the temporal expression at the beginning of 2 Sam 11:1 affirmed above helps to address two particulars regarding the redactional history of 2 Samuel 10–12 that have been matters of long-standing disagreement among scholars.13 The first of these is the question whether 11:1* + 12:26–31 represents an originally independent battle narrative. The answer to this question must be decidedly “no.” The expression “at the return of the year,” dating what follows according to a previous event, as we have seen, is not the beginning of an independent story but presupposes and requires a foregoing narrative. Hence, its occurrence in 2 Sam 11:1 assumes the story in chap. 10 or at least a significant portion of it. In addition, that story, as we have just seen, is incomplete in itself and requires the account of the siege and fall of Rabbah in 11:1* + 12:26–31 to finish it. It is possible, of course, that portions of chap. 10 have come in secondarily, especially vv. 15–19, as many scholars have argued. But the section of the chapter involving the Ammonites is closely bound to 11:1* + 12:26–31 and cannot be separated from it.14 The second redactional issue addressed by the understanding of 2 Sam 11:1 espoused here is whether this verse originally belonged with the war narrative, that is, 10:1–11:1 + 12:26–31, or with the Bathsheba story (11:1–12:25). If 11:1 requires the narrative in chap. 10 and vice versa, then it was obviously an original part of the Ammonite war narrative rather than the Bathsheba story (that is, 11:2–12:25). However, one may legitimately ask whether this conclusion necessarily pertains to the entirety of 11:1. Those who assign 11:1 to the Bathsheba story as an original part of it do so based on the significance of the statement that David stayed in Jerusalem as a setting for the story of his adultery. This is an important observation. It is, in fact, the observation shared by the interpreters mentioned at the beginning of this study. It is an observation that highlights the last clause of the verse, ‘while David was staying in Jerusaָ ‫)וָדִוד יוֹׁשֵב ִּב‬. lem’ (‫ָם‬ ִ ‫ירּוׁשל‬ ְ As indicated above, there is nothing particularly remarkable about David’s sending Joab and the army into battle without going himself. At least his do13.  For an overview of the redactional issues and positions on these chapters, see Walter Dietrich and Thomas Naumann, Die Samuelbücher (Erträge der Forschung 287; Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1995) esp. pp. 229–33. 14.  A number of scholars also regard 10:1–5 or 10:1–6a as an addition, including Rost, who reached this conclusion on stylistic grounds. See Leonhard Rost, The Succession to the Throne of David (Historic Texts and Interpretations in Biblical Scholarship 1; Sheffield: Almond, 1982) 57–62. This seems unlikely to me, but it is not a matter that can be decided on the basis of 2 Sam 11:1, unless one accepts the Kethiv reading, “the messengers.”

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ing so in the account of the initial attack against the Ammonites elicits no special comment on the part of the author (10:7). What is different about 11:1, of course, is what transpires next, namely, David’s adultery with Bathsheba, for which David’s presence in Jerusalem is crucial background. This consideration, therefore, suggests that the final clause of 11:1, the notice that David stayed in Jerusalem, was not the work of the author of the Ammonite war narrative, who would have no reason to stress this detail. Instead, it was the work of the author of the Bathsheba story in 11:2–12:25, or at least of its interpolator, since its function is to prepare the reader for this story.15 These reflections yield another, more general conclusion about the compositional background of 2 Samuel 10–12 that touches on broader issues of the purpose and intent of the David material in Samuel. The redaction-critical discussion above affirms the position long held by other scholars that the Bathsheba story is an insertion into 2 Samuel that made use of the Ammonite war story as a framework. As Van Seters has pointed out, the story differs dramatically in its perspective on David from the ideal that one finds elsewhere in the Deuteronomistic History, especially in Kings.16 Far from serving as a model for future kings, this David is guilty of adultery and murder—crimes comparable to those of Ahab, who is portrayed as the worst king of Israel (1 Kings 21). In my view, the depiction of David in 2 Samuel 11–12 also differs markedly from the surrounding narrative material about him.17 There is no effort to justify David’s actions or distance him from the death of Uriah as there is for the deaths of others, such as Abner and the heirs of Saul (2 Samuel 3; 21:1–6) and even his own sons (2 Samuel 13–18). The “bottom line” of the story is similar to the story of Abigail and Nabal (1 Samuel 25), in that David ends up with another man’s wife, and the other man ends up dead. Yet the explanations of these results differ considerably. David’s guilt in 2 Sam 11:2–12:25 is undeniable and the perspective on him quite negative. Analysis of 2 Sam 11:1, in other words, offers another piece of evidence indicating that the Bathsheba story is an addition to the David material from a later (post-Dtr) and much more negative orientation.

15.  Here I differ from McCarter (II Samuel, 285), who assigns all of 11:1 to the Ammonite war narrative. 16. John Van Seters, “The Court History and DtrH: Conflicting Perspectives on the House of David,” in Die sogenannte Thronnachfolgegeschichte Davids: Neue Einsichten und Anfragen (eds. Albert de Pury and Thomas Römer; OBO 176; Freiburg: Universitätsverlag / Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000) 70–93. 17.  Steven L. McKenzie, “The So-Called Succession Narrative in the Deuteronomistic History,” in Die sogenannte Thronnachfolgegeschichte Davids, ibid., 123–35. See also idem, King David: A Biography (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).

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Conclusion We are now in a position to address the question raised by the title of this essay: Why did David stay at home in Jerusalem instead of going to war with Joab and the army? The text, of course, does not give a reason. What we have learned, however, is that it also does not imply that David should have gone to war. The opening two phrases of 2 Sam 11:1 date the sending of Joab and the troops to a year following the engagement with the Aramean kings hired by the Ammonites as mercenaries (10:6, 19). They do not assert that spring was the season when kings, and specifically David, were duty-bound to march to war. There was nothing particularly unusual about David’s staying behind, and so the text does not offer an explanation for it. David’s crime was not due to where he was but to what he did there. The question why David chose to remain behind must be answered from a literary perspective rather than a historical. Seen in this way, the answer to the question is relatively straightforward: David stayed behind in Jerusalem, or at least notice is taken that he stayed there, because this is where the episode with Bathsheba is set.

David, the Great King, King of the Four Quarters Structure and Signification in the Catalog of David’s Conquests (2 Samuel 8:1–14, 1 Chronicles 18:1–13) Cynthia Edenburg The catalog of David’s conquests (2 Sam 8:1–14, 1 Chr 18:1–13) pre­sents a forceful cumulative image of King David’s dominion over all the lands within his scope. The king is depicted as an ideal empire builder, much like the depictions of the great Neo-Assyrian kings whose royal authority was reinforced by a divine mandate to establish Assyrian rule over all lands. Text- and historicalcritical issues should not supply the sole criteria for evaluating the two versions of the catalog; rather, we should also consider the possibility that they were shaped in order to convey different views of the part David’s conquests play in Samuel and Chronicles. 1 In fact, a close comparative reading of both versions will uncover differing ideological statements implicit in the structure of each text, which suggest that each has undergone separate and purposeful editing. In the following, I shall show that the scribes responsible for the two versions differed in how they viewed the intent of the catalog and its structure, and I shall argue that the deviations in structure were conceived to convey meaning and that they derive from purposeful editing rather than from accidents in transmission. 2 First, however, it is necessary to examine the significance of the structural elements that are shared by all the fully extant versions of the catalog. 1.  Discussion of the relationship between synoptic texts in Samuel and Chronicles must inevitably consider the text-critical issues arising from divergences between the various textual witnesses, which include 4QSama, the LXX of Samuel and Chronicles, and Josephus’s retelling. Notwithstanding, I shall focus mainly on the MT of Samuel and Chronicles, since the MT versions of the catalog are coherent texts in their own right that separately interact with their larger context. 2.  See Mario Liverani, “Critique of the Variants and the Titulary of Sennacherib,” in Assyrian Royal Inscriptions: New Horizons in Literary, Ideological and Historical Analysis (ed. F. M. Fales; Orientis Antiqui Collectio 17; Rome: Istituto per l’Oriente, 1981) 228 on the difference between transmission variants and compositional variants in recensions of Assyrian royal inscriptions: Variants in transmission mark the stages of a progressive deterioration in the written tradition . . . textual variants can be explained at the graphic or mnemonic level, or also at the level of linguistic habit, and reach a cultural level of interest only without the knowledge

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General Structure of the Catalog The catalog of David’s conquests is a discrete literary unit that is loosely connected to the dynastic oracle in both Samuel and Chronicles (2 Sam 7:1– 29, 1 Chr 17:1–27) by means of the introductory clause ‫( ויהי אחרי כן‬2 Sam 8:1, 1 Chr 18:1). 3 The catalog uses the narrative perfect (wayyiqtol) to list David’s victories over the surrounding peoples and thereby appears to present a chronological survey of achievements accomplished after Nathan delivered the dynastic oracle. However, the summary of David’s victories over the Ammonites, Hadadezer of Zobah, and Aram (2 Sam 8:3–8, 12; 1 Chr 18:3–8, 11) anticipates the full narrative of the Ammonite war that is related only later (2 Samuel 10–12, 1 Chr 19:1–20:3). Moreover, in Samuel the narrative introduction to the dynastic oracle states that David had been granted rest from all his enemies (2 Sam 7:1), which according to the Deuteronomist is a prior condition to the institution of the temple and its cult (Deut 12:9–11). 4 But this statement implies that David completed his conquests before he consulted Nathan in 2 Samuel 7, rather than after Nathan’s oracle was delivered. 5 Similar tension arises in Chronicles; although the catalog opens by reporting that David vanquished the Philistines (1 Chr 18:1), the Chronicler has the Philistine wars continuing in 1 Chr 20:4–8. Furthermore, while David’s wars and bloodshed (1 Chr 18:1–20:8) ostensibly serve to justify Yhwh’s refusal for David to build the temple, the Chronicler retained the catalog’s refrain that Yhwh granted David victory in all his endeavors (1 Chr 18:6, 13), implying that David’s wars were still in accord with divine will. 6 All these points indiof their authors (the copyists). Compositional variants on the contrary are the result of voluntary decisions by authors well aware of varying and specifically motivated (by style, or ideology, or historical context) to vary.

3.  This use of the temporal clause ‫ ויהי אחרי כן‬appears solely in the Deuteronomistic History and Chronicles, and imposes continuity upon previously unconnected material; see Judg 16:4; 2 Sam 2:1, 10:1, 13:1, 21:18; 2 Chr 20:1. 4.  On the so-called “rest theology,” see Gerhard von Rad, “There Remains Still a Rest for the People of God: An Investigation of a Biblical Conception,” The Problem of the Hexateuch and Other Essays (trans. E. W. Trueman Dicken; Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1966) 94–102 = idem, From Genesis to Chronicles: Explorations in Old Testament Theology (ed. K. C. Hanson; Fortress Classics in Biblical Studies; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005) 82–88; Wolfgang Roth, “Deuteronomic Rest Theology: A Redaction-Critical Study,” BR 21 (1976) 5–14; compare P. Kyle McCarter, II Samuel (AB 9; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1984) 251. 5.  See, for example, I. L. Seeligman, “Von historischer Wirklichkeit zu historiosophi­ scher Konzeption in der Hebräischen Bibel,” Gesammelte Studien zur Hebräischen Bibel (ed. Erhard Blum, Tübingen: Mohr/Siebeck, 2004) 199–201. 6.  See Wilhelm Rudolph, Chronikbücher (HAT; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1955) 139. Japhet notes that the Chronicler made an effort to portray David as “‘the great warrior’ of Israel’s history,” by assembling together in one continuous section (1 Chronicles 18–20) all the information available from his source about David’s campaigns and political activ-

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cate that the catalog is intended to summarize David’s achievements in the international sphere without regard for the chronological framework represented by the narrative in Samuel and Chronicles. The catalog itself has been shaped according to geographical principles, with the notices of David’s conquests moving from west (the Philistines, 2 Sam 8:1, 1 Chr 18:1) to east (Moab, 2 Sam 8:2, 1 Chr 18:2) and then from north (Aram, 2 Sam 8:3–8, 1 Chr 18:3–8) to south (Edom, 2 Sam 8:13–14, 1 Chr 18:12–13). 7 Similar four-point structures occur in boundary lists and commemorative inscriptions, where they are best understood as merism, in which the totality is represented by its limits. 8 The geographical structure is also implicit in the axis extending from Philistia and its western and southern ity; see Sara Japhet, I and II Chronicles (OTL; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1993) 344–45. On the achronological character of the catalog in its context, see Gary Knoppers, I Chronicles 10–29 (AB 12; New York: Doubleday, 2004) 702–3. 7.  See also Simon J. De Vries, 1–2 Chronicles, (FOTL; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1989) 159–60; Antony F. Campbell, S.J., 2 Samuel (FOTL; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005) 84; Knoppers, I Chronicles 10–29, 701. Geographical principles rather than chronology also ruled in the composition of Assyrian summary (or “display”) inscriptions; see A. T. Olmstead, Assyrian Historiography: A Source Study (University of Missouri Studies: Social Science series 3/1; Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1916) 6, 50; Hayim Tadmor, “The Historical Inscriptions of Adad-nirari III,” Iraq 35 (1973) 141; idem, The Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III, King of Assyria (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1994) 22, 25; Albert Kirk Grayson, “Assyrian and Babylonia,” Or 49 (1980) 152, 170. 8.  See, for example, the annalistic inscription of Tiglath-pileser I: “from beyond the Lower Zab . . . unto the further side of the Euphrates, and the land of Ḫatti and the Upper Sea of the West,” in Daniel D. Luckenbill, Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia, Parts I–II (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1926–27) §245; the “Standard Inscription” of Assurnasirpal (Luckenbill, Part I §487) which delineates Assurnasirpal’s reach in the north (Naʾiri, Šubaria, the source of the Subnat River and Urartu), west (the Lebanon and the Great Sea), east (Babite pass and land of Hashmar on the slopes of the Zagros), and south (Karduniaš / Babylonia); the bull inscription of Shalmaneser III (Luckenbill, Part I §640) with points in the west (Amanus and Ḫatti), north (Enzite, Melid, Arṣaškun), east (Namri on the slopes of the Zagros) and south (Sea of Kaldu); the Khorsabad summary inscription of Sargon (Luckenbill, Part II §79) listing points east (“the Medes up to the border of Mount Bikni”), north (Urartu), west (princes of Ḫatti) and south (Meluḫḫa); the building inscription of Ashurbanipal (Luckenbill, Part II §§906–12) pointing south (Kush), east (Qirbit), north (Lydia, Cimmerians, Tabal), and west (Arvad). For locations, see The Helsinki Atlas of the Near East in the Neo-Assyrian Period (ed. S. Parpola and M. Porter; Chebeague Is., ME: Casco Bay Assyriological Institute / Helsinki: Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 2001). For similar compass-point schemes in the Bible, see Gen 28:14; Josh 11:2, 12:7; Jer 47:1–49:22 (west Philistia 47:1–7, east Moab 48:1–47, north Ammon 49:1–6, south Edom 49:7–22); Jer 49:23–50:1 (north Damascus 49:23–27, south Qedar 49:28–33, east Elam 49:34–39, west Babel 50:1–5); Ezek 25:1–17. For discussion of the conventions of merism and additional sources, see N. Wazana, All the Boundaries of the Land: The Promised Land in Biblical Thought in Light of the Ancient Near East (Biblical Encyclopaedia Library 24; Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 2007; Hebrew) 57–79, 123–74.

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borders on the Sea and the Brook of Egypt (v. 1; compare Josh 13:2–3, 15:47), up to the river by which David intended to erect his monument (‫ יד‬v. 3). 9 My understanding of v. 3b ([‫ )בלכתו להשיב ]להציב[ ידו בנהר ]פרת‬requires some qualification, since the syntax is ambiguous in both Samuel and Chronicles, and the pronominal suffixes (‫בלכתו‬, ‫ )ידו‬could apply to either David or Hadadezer. An additional ambiguity arises from the fact that the river is unnamed in Samuel. The Chronicler identifies the river with the Euphrates (‫)פרת‬, but this may be an interpretive gloss. Some have argued that the monument mentioned must belong to Hadadezer, since it is unlikely that David ever reached the Euphrates. Others have suggested that the unnamed river by which David or Hadadezer erected a monument was the Jabbok and not the Euphrates. 10 Both interpretations attempt to reconcile the catalog’s report with historical feasibility and assume that the notice is rooted in the historical reality of David’s reign and perhaps even derives from a contemporary annalistic source. However, these assumptions are questionable. 11 Despite the historical intent of historiographical compositions, they frequently bend historical reality to fit ideological concerns or use data from later times when describing poorly documented periods. Therefore, I suggest that the statement regarding the monument by the river is best understood against both its immediate and its larger literary context. Within the immediate context, we should note that David’s achievements, and not Hadadezer’s, are the subject of the catalog; thus it is most likely that the catalog’s author intends to credit David with both acts, defeating Hadadezer and erecting the monument. Moreover, throughout the Bible, when “the river” is not further identified, it 9.  For this significance of ‫יד‬, see 1 Sam 15:12, 2 Sam 18:18. For discussion of the boundary between Philistia and Egypt, see Nadav Naʾaman, “The Brook of Egypt and Assyrian Policy on the Border of Egypt,” Ancient Israel and Its Neighbors: Interaction and Counteractions—Collected Essays, vol. 1 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2005) 238–64. 10. ������������� Hans Joachim Stoebe, Das zweite Buch Samuelis (KAT; Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlag, 1994) 243, 249–50; Japhet, Chronicles, 346; Baruch Halpern, “The Construction of the Davidic State: An Exercise in Historiography,” in The Origins of the Ancient Israelite States (ed. Volkmar Fritz and Philip R. Davies; JSOTSup 228; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996) 44–75 (esp. p. 65); Simon B. Parker, Stories in Scripture and Inscriptions: Comparative Studies on Narratives in Northwest Semitic Inscriptions and the Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997) 69; Nadav Naʾaman, “In Search of Reality behind the Account of David’s Wars with Israel’s Neighbors,” IEJ 52 (2002) 200–224 (esp. p. 208). 11.  It is doubtful whether royal scribes of the incipient monarchy would have been employed in the production of literary genres such as annalistic sources; see discussion and references in Nadav Naʾaman, “Sources and Composition in the History of David,” Ancient Israel’s History and Historiography: The First Temple Period—Collected Essays, vol. 3 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006) 23–25, 31–33; idem, “Sources and Composition in the History of Solomon,” in The Age of Solomon: Scholarship at the Turn of the Millennium (ed. Lowell K. Handy; SHCANE 9; Leiden: Brill 1997) 57–61 with additional references there.

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almost invariably indicates the Euphrates. 12 Finally, the broader context of the Deuteronomistic History (henceforth: DtrH) shows that the Chronicler’s gloss, identifying the unnamed river with the Euphrates, coincides with the utopian vision of the extent of Solomon’s rule ranging from “all the kingdoms from the river as far as the land of the Philistines” (1 Kgs 5:1, 4; compare 2 Chr 9:26). This delineation includes all the kings of the territory ‘Across the River’, that is, the Transeuphrates or ēbir nāri. 13 Thus, even if the Chronicler’s reading is a gloss, his interpretation undoubtedly coincides with the Deuteronomist’s intent. Hence, there is a sound basis for understanding 2 Sam 8:3 to claim that David erected a monument on the western bank of the Euphrates. Additional structuring becomes evident through the patterns of recurring formulations. The basic framework of the catalog is a series of four conquest notices corresponding to the four compass points. The first three notices follow one another and open in the same fashion: David defeated [x] with [x] representing the Philistines, Moab, and Hadadezer of Zobah, respectively (2 Sam 8:1–3, 1 Chr 18:1–3). However, the fourth notice (2 Sam 8:13–14, 1 Chr 18:12–13) breaks the pattern of the standard opening. Instead of the expected formulation, “David defeated Edom,” we find something entirely different in both Samuel and Chronicles. For the present, it is enough to notice that such a break of the recurring pattern at the end of a series is characteristic of the graduated number, or x + 1 sequence. In this type of sequence, the break in the repeated pattern not only alerts the reader that the sequence has come to its end but also frequently marks the climax or a significant turn of events. Accordingly, the victory over Edom in the Valley of Salt appears to be cast as the crowning achievement in this series of conquests. 12.  The determinate form ‘the river’ (‫ )הנהר‬appears 20 times without a subsequent designation. With the single exception of Num 22:5, all of these instances implicitly refer to the Euphrates; see Gen 31:21; Exod 23:31; 1 Kgs 5:1; Isa 8:7, 11:15, 27:12 and the phrase ‫עבר‬ ‫ הנהר‬in Josh 24:2–3, 14–15; 2 Sam 10:16; 1 Kgs 5:4; Ezra 8:36; Neh 2:7, 9; 3:7. Five times ‘the river’ is explicitly identified with the Euphrates (Gen 15:18; Deut 1:7, 11:24; Josh 1:4; 1 Chr 5:9) as opposed to a single identification with another river (the Tigris, Dan 10:4). Nowhere does ‘the river’ imply either the Jabbok or the Jordan. 13.  Although the term gained currency in the Persian period, it was already attested in the time of Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal; see, for example, Rykle Borger, Die Inschriften Asarhaddons Königs von Assyrien (AfOB 9; Osnabrück: Biblio-Verlag, 1967) 60 v 54; ibid., 109 iv 9 (treaty with Baʿalu of Tyre); Robert Francis Harper, Assyrian and Babylonian Letters (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1892–1914) 706 rev. 3. For the view that the term was the established name for the territory west of the Euphrates, see Naʾaman, “In Search of Reality,” 208 n. 35. According to some, this utopian vision of Solomon’s reach derives from post-Deuteronomistic revision; for example, Naʾaman, “History of Solomon,” 79; compare Thomas Römer, The So-Called Deuteronomistic History: A Sociological, Historical and Literary Introduction (London: T. & T. Clark, 2005) 175–76. However, an exilic Deuteronomist might choose to accentuate the loss of independence by means of a utopian representation of Solomon’s empire.

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Other elements intermittently augment this superstructure. These include booty notices (2 Sam 8:1b, 7–8; 1 Chr 18:1b, 7–8); 14 vassal and tribute notices (2 Sam 8:2b, 6b, 14b; 1 Chr 18:2b, 6b, 13b); the number of causalities inflicted (2 Sam 8:5, 13; 1 Chr 18:5, 12); comments that David appointed governors over (or stationed garrisons in) the conquered territory (2 Sam 8:6, 14; 1 Chr 18:6, 13); 15 and the statement that Yhwh granted David victory in all his endeavors (2 Sam 8:6, 14; 1 Chr 18:6, 13). Between the third and fourth conquest notices is an additional report relating how the king of Hamat sought an alliance with David and sent him tribute (2 Sam 8:9–12, 1 Chr 18:9–11). This report is placed after the notices dealing with Aram, since it continues the geographical progression northward and because Hadadezer figures in Toi’s motives for seeking the alliance (2 Sam 8:9–10, 1 Chr 18:9–10). Although the Hamat section stands out from its context by virtue of its shift in focus, perspective, and the separate summary list of David’s conquests (2 Sam 8:11–12, 1 Chr 18:11), this does not necessarily indicate that the catalog of conquests has been secondarily expanded by the insertion of the material dealing with Toi. 16 Similar changes in perspective and focus are also evident in Assyrian and West Semitic royal inscriptions. 17

Structure and Signification Now that the structural principles that shaped the catalog are clear, we are able to consider the meaning imparted by the structure. For, just as an automobile is more than a set of parts, so a text comprises more than a group of statements. The way parts are ordered and put together is crucial for a car to run, 14.  The reading in 2 Sam 8:1 ‫ מתג האמה‬is supported by 4QSama. Chronicles reads ‫גת‬ ‫ ובנתיה‬instead, but this is undoubtedly an interpretive reading rather than a true textual variant; see, for example, S. R. Driver, Notes on the Hebrew Text and the Topography of the Books of Samuel (Oxford: Clarendon, 1913) 280; Rudolph, Chronikbücher, 134. The phrase ‫ מתג האמה‬probably refers to a particular piece of booty similar to the golden quivers taken from Hadadezer (2 Sam 8:7) and the crown of Milcom taken from the temple in Rabbat (2 Sam 12:30); compare the ’r’l dwdh that Mesha took from Atarot and placed in Chemosh’s sanctuary in Qiryat (Mesha Inscription lines 12–13); see N. Naʾaman, “History of David,” 30; Parker, Stories in Scripture, 68. 15.  1 Chr 18:6a lacks the required object and is undoubtedly corrupt. 16. Contra Stoebe, Das zweite Buch Samuelis, 250; Parker, Stories in Scripture, 70. The other catalog notices focus on conquest, booty, and subjugation and are told from David’s perspective, while the Hamat section deals with diplomacy and patron-client relations and is narrated from Toi’s perspective. On the narrative mode of the section and its stylistic parallel in the Mesha Inscription, see Parker, Stories in Scripture, 71. 17.  This change in theme and perspective is particularly characteristic of the “letter to the god” genre; see Sargon’s “letter” reporting on his eighth campaign and Esarhaddon’s “letter” dealing with the campaign against Shupria (Luckenbill, Part II §§140–78, 593–612). See also the description of Shalmaneser’s thirtieth year in the “Black Obelisk” Inscription (Luckenbill, Part I §587).

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and so too, the structure—that is, the interaction between constituent parts—is integral to the signification of a text. In other words, there is a metonymic relationship between the text’s structure and the significance conveyed by the text as a whole. I suggest that the merisms implicit to the geographical structure not only shape the catalog of conquests but also impart significance beyond the list of separate victories. 18 Moreover, the merisms and other geographical topoi in the catalog are best paralleled by literary conventions known from Assyrian royal inscriptions. First, the merism inherent to the west–east, north–south structure implies that the scribe shaped the catalog in order to credit David with subjection of all the lands adjacent to Israel in all four cardinal directions—from west to east and from north to south. I think the scribe may even have intended this structure implicitly to claim for David the Mesopotamian royal title ‘king of the four quarters [of the world]’ (šar kibrātim arbaʾim). 19 The title King of the Four Quarters has a lengthy history in Mesopotamian royal inscriptions, and many kings employed the title from the beginning of their reigns before engaging in campaigns to every point on the compass. 20 However, from the time of Sennacherib, the title appears in Assyrian royal inscriptions only after enumerating campaigns to the four compass points. 21 Familiarity with the title penetrated westward with the advance of the Neo-Assyrian empire, as is attested by the Aramaic equivalent applied to Tiglath-pileser III in royal inscriptions of the kings of Yaudi/Samʾal. 22 Additionally, the statement that David defeated Hadadezer when he—David—set out to erect his monument by the river casts David in the role of one of the great kings who undertakes a hazardous campaign to the banks of the distant river, where he erects his stele symbolizing his claim to dominion over all the territory up to that point. This topos was a recurring motif in Assyrian royal inscriptions, and several Assyrian kings sought to enhance their prestige by erecting steles and engraving inscriptions on cliffs and walls by distant and immense natural boundaries at the far extreme of the king’s reach. 23 18.  On implicit spacial merism, see Wazana, Boundaries, 64–65. 19.  From Narâm-Sin of Akkad down to Cyrus, the title was claimed by Mesopotamian kings who pursued an aggressive policy of military campaigning; see M.-J. Seux, Épithètes Royales Akkadiennes et Sumériennes (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1967) 305–8; William W. Hallo, Early Mesopotamian Royal Titles: A Philologic and Historical Analysis (AOS 43; New Haven, CT: American Oriental Society, 1957) 49–56; Liverani, “Critique,” 234–36, 241; B. Cifola, Analysis of Variants in the Assyrian Royal Titulary from the Origins to Tiglath-Pileser III (Naples: Istituto Universitario Orientale, 1995) 40–41 and passim. 20.  See, for example, Hallo, Titles, 50; Cifola, Titulary, 41, 63, 82. 21.  Liverani, Critique, 234–36. 22.  See KAI 215 lines 13–14 (Panammu); 216 lines 1–4, 217 lines 1–2 (Barrakkab). 23.  See Mario Liverani, “The Ideology of the Assyrian Empire,” in Power and Propaganda: A Symposium on Ancient Empires (ed. Mogens Trolle Larsen; Mesopotamia:

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Another geographical convention of the Assyrian royal inscriptions uses the opposition of extreme boundaries, as in the royal title ‘king of the upper and lower seas’ (šar tâmti elīti u šupalīti). 24 This opposition I think is reflected by the trajectory running from the land of the Philistines up to the river (Euphrates) and undoubtedly is intended to imply that David realized the divine promises that Israel would inherit all the land from the Great River to the Sea and the Brook of Egypt at the southern border of Philistia (Gen 15:18, Deut 11:24, Josh 1:4; compare 1 Kgs 5:1). The use of these geographical conventions conveyed by structure and titulary in order to represent maximalistic expansion and universal domination is specifically characteristic of Mesopotamian royal inscriptions (particularly of Neo-Assyrian kings) and rarely occurs in West Semitic inscriptions. 25 Mesha’s Inscription, for example, details his conquests without invoking merism or maximalistic geographical topoi. Hence, I suggest that, in this aspect, the catalog emulates the literary conventions of Neo-Assyrian rather than West Semitic royal inscriptions. Furthermore, the clustering of augmenting formulas in the catalog (2 Sam 8:3–8, 13–14; 1 Chr 18:3–8, 12–13) imparts special emphasis to the notices dealing with the conquest of Aram and Edom, which represent the northern and southern extremes of David’s empire. These two extreme points are distinguished by the comments about appointing governors over the conquered territory and by the summation that Yhwh granted David victory in all his endeavors. As a result, although the narratives in Samuel and Chronicles only Copenhagen Studies in Assyriology 7; Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 1979) 297–317 (esp. p. 307); Hayim Tadmor, “Propaganda, Literature, Historiography: Cracking the Code of the Assyrian Royal Inscriptions,” in Assyria 1995: Proceedings of the 10th Anniversary Symposium of the Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project (ed. S. Parpola and R. M. Whiting; Helsinki: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 1997) 325–38 (esp. pp. 330–31); idem, “World Dominion: The Expanding Horizon of the Assyrian Empire,” in Landscapes: Territories, Frontiers and Horizons in the Ancient Near East—Papers Presented to the XLIV Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale (ed. L. Milano et al.; History of the Ancient Near East: Monographs 3/1; Padua: Sargon, 1999) 55–62; Ö. Harmanşah, “Source of the Tigris: Event, Place and Performance in the Assyrian Landscapes of the Early Iron Age,” Archaeological Dialogues 14 (2007) 179–204. 24.  Liverani, “Ideology,” 307; idem, Critique, 241; see also Cifola, Titulary, 42. Compare similar formulas, “from beyond the lower Zab . . . unto the further side of the Euphrates . . . and the Upper Sea of the West,” in the annalistic inscription of Tiglath-pileser I (Luckenbill, Part I §245); “from beyond the Tigris unto Mount Lebanon and the Great Sea,” in Ashurnasirpal’s bull inscription (Luckenbill, Part I §516); “from Bitter Sea of Bit-Yakin . . . up to the Western Sea,” in Tadmor, Tiglath-Pileser, 159, summary inscription 7. 25.  An interesting exception is the Azitiwada inscription from Karatepe (KAI 26), in which Azitiwada claims to have extended his land “from the rising sun to its setting” (A i 4–5; compare A ii 2–3) and to have built fortresses “in all the remote areas along the borders” (A i 14).

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relate specific battles that David waged against the Philistines, the Ammonites, and the Arameans, the shape of the catalog summarily establishes an ideal picture of the extent of David’s empire, attributing to David the subjugation of the entire Transjordan, from Aram in the north to Edom in the south. Finally, inclusion of the Hamat section within the catalog of David’s conquests casts David in the role of the great patron alongside his role as the great warrior. Moreover, this section implies that David realized virtual control over the ideal boundaries of the promised land up to Lebo Hamat in the far northeast, an area that the Deuteronomistic conquest account relegated to the territory of the “land that yet remains” (Josh 13:5, Judg 3:3; compare Num 13:21, 34:8; 1 Kgs 8:65). 26 In sum, merisms and other geographical topoi work together to paint a larger picture, one that emulates Neo-Assyrian style and intends to present David as the great king in the manner of Assyrian royal propaganda.

The Relationship between the Catalogs in 2 Samuel 8 and 1 Chronicles 18 All the elements discussed till now are shared by all the fully extant versions of the catalog. Now I shall examine some of the issues relating to the differences between the versions and concentrate on points that contribute to the structure or signification of the catalog. Significant Pluses in the Versions of Samuel and Chronicles There are three significant pluses in the versions of the catalog. The first, which describes David’s treatment of the Moabite prisoners, is found in the versions of Samuel (MT, LXX, and 4QSama) but is lacking in Chronicles. Some have suggested that the Chronicler deliberately deleted the comment because he found it denigrating to the character of David. 27 However, this is unlikely, since the Chronicler retained a similar report regarding David’s cruel treatment of a subject population in the description of the Ammonite war in 1 Chr 20:3. Thus, the phrase probably was already lost in the transmission of the Chronicler’s Vorlage, possibly due to homoioarkton (‫)מואב—ויהיו מואב‬. The situation is much more complex with regard to the other two pluses, placed at the end of consecutive verses (vv. 7–8) and dealing with the eventual fate of spoil taken from Hadadezer. The first comment, at the end of v. 7, states that the golden quivers taken from Hadadezer were later taken as booty 26.  Compare Nadav Naʾaman, “Lebo-Hamath, Subat-Hamath, and the Northern Boundary of the Land of Canaan,” UF 31 (1999) 417–41; Edward Lipiński, The Aramaeans: Their Ancient History, Culture, Religion (OLA 100; Leuven: Peeters / Sterling, VA: Department of Oriental Studies, 2000) 338. 27.  Compare Edward Lewis Curtis and Albert Alonzo Madsen, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Books of Chronicles (ICC; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1910) 232–33; Japhet, Chronicles, 346; Knoppers, I Chronicles 10–29, 690.

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by Shishak when he attacked Jerusalem in the time of Rehoboam. This plus is attested in Samuel by 4QSama and the Greek versions (the LXX of Samuel and Josephus) but is not extant in the MT of Samuel or in Chronicles. The second comment, at the end of v. 8, relates that the bronze taken from Hadadezer was used by Solomon in making various furnishings for the temple. This plus is found in the LXX of Samuel as well as in the MT of Chronicles and in Josephus’s paraphrase but is not preserved in the MT of Samuel or in 4QSama. It is initially tempting to view the additional comment in 1 Chr 18:8 in light of the Chronicler’s tendencies, since this note occurs at the midpoint of the catalog, implying that the true significance of David’s gains lay in the fact that they served to glorify the future temple. 28 Given the distribution of these pluses in the different versions, it seems most likely that they originated in a specific stem of copies of Samuel, with which both the Chronicler and the OG translator were familiar. 29 Even so, these anticipatory remarks are out of place in a catalog that revolves around David’s conquests and achievements. Therefore, they appear to be interpretive glosses that were inserted by a creative scribe who was influenced by the recurring comments in the DtrH regarding the temple treasury (for example, 1 Kgs 14:25–26; 15:18; 2 Kgs 12:5, 19; 14:14; 16:8, 17–18; 18:13–16; 24:13; 25:13–15). While the remarks in Kings about the temple treasury may have stemmed from a temple chronicle, their cumulative force within their context in the DtrH presents a picture of continual despoiling of the temple. 30 Thus, I think that the scribe who added the glosses to vv. 7–8 in the catalog may have wanted to make a double point. On the one hand, his comments emphasize David’s role in establishing the temple treasury by devoting his spoils to Yhwh. On the other hand, the remarks foreshadow later key developments in the history of the temple. The temple furnishings mentioned as those made by Solomon in the Chronicles plus to v. 8 are the same as those despoiled by Ne28.  Rudolph, Chronikbücher, 139; Stephen Pisano, Additions or Omissions in the Books of Samuel (OBO 57; Freiburg: Universitätsverlag / Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1984) 47–48. However, compare Japhet (Chronicles, 348–49), who notes that proleptic remarks are not characteristic of the Chronicler. 29.  See, for example, Steven L. McKenzie, The Chronicler’s Use of the Deuteronomistic History (HSM 33; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1984) 53–54; Frank H. Polak, “Statistics and Textual Filiation: The Case of 4QSama /LXX (With a Note on the Text of the Pentateuch),” in Septuagint, Scrolls and Cognate Writings: Papers Presented to the International Symposium on the Septuagint and Its Relations to the Dead Sea Scrolls and Other Writings (ed. George J. Brooke and Barnabus Lindars; SBLSCS 33; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992) 249–50; Knoppers, I Chronicles 10–29, 692; Frank Moore Cross et al., Qumran Cave 4, 12: 1–2 Samuel (DJD 17; Oxford: Clarendon, 2005) 25–26, 133. 30.  See, for example, Victor Hurowitz, “Another Fiscal Practice in the Ancient Near East: 2 Kings 12:5–17 and a Letter to Esarhaddon (LAS 277),” JNES 45 (1986) 289–94 (esp. p. 290 n. 5); Nadav Naʾaman, “The Deuteronomist and Voluntary Servitude to Foreign Powers,” JSOT 65 (1995) 37–53.

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buchadnezzar at the end of the DtrH (1 Chr 18:8, 2 Kgs 25:13). 31 Furthermore, the 4QSama and LXX plus to v. 7 alludes to the first despoiling of the temple treasures recorded in the DtrH, which occurred in the course of Shishak’s campaign (1 Kgs 14:26). These pluses should therefore be considered editorial glosses reflecting a process of compositional revision and not true transmission variants. Thus, it is not surprising that the Chronicler added the comment about the temple furnishings, since this note apparently derives from the copy of Samuel before him. But why did he not add the affiliated note about Shishak? Did he purposely delete this notice in order to avoid detracting from David’s conquests, as Frank Polak suggests? 32 Or was it already lacking from the copy of Samuel that lay before the Chronicler? 33 2 Samuel 8:3, 13 and 1 Chronicles 18:3, 12 The next difference in structure to be considered arises from a comparison of the pair of notices in Samuel and Chronicles regarding the victory over Hadadezer and the victory in the Valley of Salt. The MT of 2 Sam 8:3, 13 reflects opposing movements expressed by the phrases ‘on his way to’ [‫בלכתו ל־]קטול‬ (v. 3) and ‘upon returning from’ [‫( בשבו מ־]קטול‬v. 13) as well as opposing places: the river and the Valley of Salt. In addition, each of the verses contains one unit of the hendiadys ‫ יד ושם‬that is synonymous with an everlasting name or memorial (Isa 56:5; compare Isa 44:5, Jer 16:21, 2 Sam 18:18). 34 The breakup of the hendiadys along with the various oppositions between the two verses convey the impression that the two events are conceived as two parts of a whole and that the march to the river in the north and the victory in the Valley of Salt in the south are meant to signify a single achievement—namely, subjugating all of the east between Aram and Edom. 35 31.  The Chronicles plus stands in inverse relation to the despoiling notice at the end of the DtrH. According to 1 Chr 18:8, the bronze that David takes from Hadadezer’s cities is used by Solomon to make the bronze sea and the columns, while 2 Kgs 25:13 reports that the Babylonians dismantle the bronze columns and the bronze sea and carry them off to Babylon. Moreover, the Chronicles plus reverses the order of the clauses and the word pairs occurring in 2 Kgs 25:13, which may indicate intentional intertextual reference. 32.  Polak, “Statistics,” 250. 33.  For the suggestion of homoioteleuton, see McCarter, II Samuel, 244; Cross et al., 1–2 Samuel, 133; compare McKenzie, Chronicler’s Use, 53. 34. For ‫ יד ושם‬as a hendiadys and instances in which the two components are separated and appear in parallel cola, see Shemaryahu Talmon, “Yād wāšēm: An Idiomatic Phrase in Biblical Literature and Its Variations,” HS 25 (1984) 8–17 [repr. Literary Studies in the Hebrew Bible: Form and Content—Collected Studies (Jerusalem: Magnes / Leiden: Brill, 1993)]. Talmon noted (p. 12) the occurrence of the broken up form of the hendiadon in 2 Sam 8:3, 13 but did not indicate its function in structuring the catalog. 35.  The MT reading “Aram” in 1 Sam 8:13 is generally thought to be a scribal slip for “Edom” caused by the graphic similarity of dalet and reš (compare 2 Kgs 16:6; Ezek 16:57,

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Here we find that a specific version of the catalog—the version in Samuel—evokes an additional motif familiar from Mesopotamian royal inscriptions. This motif of ‘placing the name’ (šuma šakānu) of the monarch on a monument or a votive object was in use from the Old Akkadian period (latter third of the third millenium b.c.e.) down to the times of Nebuchadnezzar II (604–562 b.c.e.) and, according to Sandra Richter, was employed in order “to claim something as one’s own by placing one’s name upon it.” 36 In several inscriptions from different periods, Mesopotamian kings claim to have marched to the shore of the Great Sea, to the Cedar mountains, or to other distant landmarks and erected their stela and ‘placed their name’. Erecting the commemorative stela on which the king has placed his name preserves the memory of the king and his achievements for posterity and establishes the extent of his territorial hegemony. Sandra Richter has argued that in some inscriptions the idiom ‘placing the name’ is a metonym signifying the act of erecting a monument. 37 In the context of 2 Samuel 8, this suggestion might be extended, with the catalog itself as a literary composition filling the role of an actual monument by establishing the claim for David’s hegemony over all the neighboring lands and by commemorating his achievements for all time. 38 The framework and ideas conveyed by splitting the ‫ יד ושם‬hendiadys in the Samuel version of the catalog are absent from Chronicles. Chronicles makes no reference to “making a name” in conjunction with the victory at the Valley of Salt. Nor does Chronicles convey an opposition in movement between the encounter with Hadadezer and the victory in the Valley of Salt, since v. 12 lacks the temporal clause ‫בשובו מהכותו‬. Finally, Chronicles disagrees with Samuel by attributing the Valley of Salt victory to Abishai rather than to David (2 Sam 8:13, 1 Chr 18:12). 39 27:16; 2 Chr 20:2), and all the other versions (LXX Samuel, Peshitta Samuel, and 1 Chr 18:12) read “Edom” for “Aram” in this clause. The exchange of Edom for Aram seems to have occurred already in 2 Sam 8:12. The parallel in 1 Chr 18:11 has Edom at the beginning of the summary list, which reflects a geographical progression from south to northern Transjordan through Moab and up to Ammon. By contrast, placement of Aram at the opening of the list in the MT of 2 Sam 8:12 has no internal logic and appears superfluous since Hadadezer of Zobah is mentioned at the end of the list. Thus, an initial slip at the beginning of 2 Sam 8:12 seems to have led to a continuation of the same error in v. 13. 36.  Sandra L. Richter, The Deuteronomistic History and the Name Theology: Lešakkēn šemô šām in the Bible and the Ancient Near East (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2002) 183. 37.  Ibid., 153–84. 38. Compare Parker, Stories in Scripture, 73. 39.  Some suggest that ‫ אבישי בן צרויה‬in 1 Chr 18:12 is a corruption of a postulated reading in the Samuel Vorlage, such as, ‫ ;ובשובו מצובה הכה‬see, for example, Curtis and Madsen, Books of Chronicles, 235–36; Rudolph, Chronikbücher, 134–35; Thomas Willi, Die Chronik als Auslegung: Untersuchungen zur literarischen Gestaltung der historischen Überlieferung Israels (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1972) 74–75; Japhet, Chronicles, 344. However, this proposal is not supported by any textual witness.

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Naʾaman has suggested that the catalog’s notice about the Valley of Salt victory is based on the account in 2 Kgs 14:7 about Amaziah’s war there. 40 Indeed, the notice about Amaziah’s victory in the Valley of Salt is independent of the other variants and is integrated into the narrative of Amaziah’s reign. 41 By contrast, the account of David’s reign preserves no information about David’s victory over Edom, and the only other extant source for a campaign against Edom was incorporated into the episode dealing with Hadad the Edomite in 1 Kgs 11:15–16, which reports Joab’s slaughter of the Edomites. 42 As I have shown, the royal inscriptions of Mesopotamian kings who claimed to establish or rule an empire employed titles and geographical structures that represented them as sovereigns whose rule extended over the far extremes of the familiar world. If the author of the catalog was influenced by the literary conventions of these inscriptions, then he must have been motivated to credit David with the conquest of Edom in order to establish his rule over all the Transjordan, which represented the eastern horizon of the familiar world as seen from Judah. To this end, the author picked up a conquest notice associated with another king—Amaziah—and adapted it to his own purposes. By contrast, Chronicles significantly deviates from the pattern of the royal report, which focuses solely on the king’s accomplishments. At first it seems unlikely that the Chronicler would have deviated from a prior Davidic tradition, particularly given his tendency to glorify David. Therefore, some hold that the Chronicler simply followed his source in attributing the Valley of Salt victory to Abishai. 43 This view implies that Chronicles preserves the earlier version of the notice and that the catalog was subsequently revised to reflect the form of a royal summary inscription in which all achievements are attributed to the king. This position approaches the notion that Chronicles and Samuel–Kings have separately evolved from a common source. 44 40. Nadav Naʾaman, “Sources and Composition in the Biblical History of Edom,” in Sefer Moshe: The Moshe Weinfeld Jubilee Volume—Studies in the Bible and the Ancient Near East, Qumran, and Postbiblical Judaism (ed. C. Cohen, A. Hurvitz, and S. M. Paul; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2004) 318–19; idem, “History of David,” 31. 41.  Compare the unparalleled note in v. 7a2 regarding the conquest of Sela as well as the additional reference to Amaziah’s victory over Edom in v. 10. Furthermore, the postscript to Amaziah’s reign in vv. 21–22, which introduces Uzziah and reports his building project in Eilat, assumes the victory over Edom. 42.  For the source of this episode, see Naʾaman, “History of Solomon,” 62–63. 43.  Stoebe, Das zweite Buch Samuelis, 245; Diana V. Edelman, “The Deuteronomist’s David and the Chronicler’s David: Competing or Contrasting Ideologies?” in The Future of the Deuteronomistic History (ed. Thomas Römer; BETL 147; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2000) 67–83 (esp. pp. 75–78); Knoppers, I Chronicles 10–29, 693. For a comparable case in which Chronicles introduces an additional victor alongside David, see 1 Chr 11:4–​ 9 // 2 Sam 5:6–10. 44.  Edelman, “David,” 83. (See the essay by A. Graeme Auld in this volume.)

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However, both versions of the catalog reflect the geographical structure of the summary inscription genre, which seems to indicate that the Chronicler’s source already attributed all the victories to David. If Chronicles was composed at the end of the fourth century b.c.e., as Japhet, Knoppers, and others propose, then the Chronicler probably was not sensitive to the literary conventions of the Mesopotamian royal inscriptions, which heavily influenced scribes educated in the Neo-Assyrian and Babylonian periods. 45 Naʾaman suggests that the Chronicler may have been troubled by an apparent conflict between the report in the catalog that David defeated the Edomites and the report in 1 Kgs 11:15–16, according to which Joab commanded the campaign against Edom. 46 Of course, he was also aware of the similar report regarding Amaziah’s victory in the Valley of Salt, and the formulation found in 2 Kgs 14:7 appears to have influenced his revision of the catalog notice. If indeed the Chronicler revised the catalog in order to resolve the conflicting reports, he may have hit upon Abishai ben Zeruiah as victor in the Valley of Salt not only because he is related to Joab but also because his name contains the ʾalep, ṣade, yod, and he found in Amaziah’s name. 47 On the one hand, this view implies that the Chronicler was less concerned with enhancing David’s reputation as a valiant conqueror, and on the other hand, it presents the Chronicler in the role of a historian trying to make sense out of his sources. Interaction between the Catalog and the Dynastic Oracle In both Samuel and Chronicles, the catalog of David’s conquests immediately follows the pronouncement of the dynastic oracle and David’s subsequent prayer. This juxtaposition implies that David’s “empire” was established as a direct consequence of the divine promises and underscores the Deuteronomistic principle of double causality, according to which success results from human initiative accompanied by divine aid. 48 Thus, in the dynastic oracle (2 Sam 7:9; compare 1 Chr 17:8), Yhwh promised to assist David in all his endeavors (‫)בכל אשר הלכת‬, to eradicate (‫ )ואכרתה‬all his enemies, and to make his name great (‫)ועשתי לך שם גדול‬. These themes are underscored in 45. On the date of Chronicles, see Japhet, Chronicles, 23–28; Gary N. Knoppers, 1 Chronicles 1–9 (AB 12; New York: Doubleday, 2003) 116. 46.  Naʾaman, “Sources and Composition in the Biblical History of Edom,” 318. 47.  This may also explain why 2 Chr 25:11 appears to paraphrase rather than reproduce from the formulation of Amaziah’s victory in 2 Kgs 14:7. If the Chronicler deliberately patterned the catalog notice on the report of Amaziah’s victory, then he probably preferred to vary the formulation when relating the events of Amaziah’s reign. 48. See, for example, Knoppers, I Chronicles 10–29, 694, 703. On the principle of double causality, see I. L. Seeligman, “Menschliches Heldentum und göttliche Hilfe,” in Gesammelte Studien zur Hebräischen Bibel (ed. Erhard Blum; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004) 137–59; Yairah Amit, “The Dual Causality Principle and Its Effects on Biblical Literature,” VT 87 (1987) 385–400.

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the catalog through the enumeration of David’s victories along with the summary refrain that Yhwh granted him victory in all his endeavors (‫;בכל אשר הלך‬ 2 Sam 8:6, 14; 1 Chr 18:6, 13). At the same time, the catalog interacts differently with the oracle in the separate versions in Samuel and Chronicles. Only the Samuel version of the catalog explicitly picks up the promise of aggrandizing David’s name by stating that David ‘made his name’ (‫ )ויעש דוד שם‬through the Valley of Salt victory, and this statement, as we saw, is lacking in Chronicles (2 Sam 8:13; compare 1 Chr 18:12). On the other hand, Chronicles adds a link lacking in Samuel. The Chronicles version of the dynastic oracle reads in 1 Chr 17:10 “I shall subdue (‫ )והכנעתי‬all your enemies,” where 2 Sam 7:11 has “I shall grant you rest (‫ )והניחתי‬from all your enemies.” The Chronicler’s divergent reading in the dynastic oracle echoes the opening of the catalog that states that David subdued the Philistines (‫ויכנעם‬, 1 Chr 18:1). 49 The Chronicler’s divergence here undoubtedly stems from his rejection of the idea that Yhwh granted David rest from Israel’s enemies (1 Chr 17:1; compare 2 Sam 7:1). The postponement of the period of rest to the days of Solomon (1 Chr 22:8–10) plays a central role in the Chronicler’s attempt to justify the reason that the temple was built by Solomon and not by the founder of the dynasty—David. Thus, the interaction in Chronicles between the dynastic oracle and the catalog of conquests helps convey the notion that Yhwh subdues David’s enemies, without granting him rest from them. Here it is evident that the Chronicler is manipulating the metanarrative according to his purpose and that the divergence in reading derives from editorial or compositional considerations, rather than separate processes of transmission. 50

Conclusion I suggested above that the geographical scheme reflected by the catalog’s structure alludes to various Mesopotamian royal titles and topoi and conveys an ideological message, claiming for David the same prestigious position assumed by Mesopotamian kings who built empires and claimed to rule the four quarters of the world. If there is merit in my suggestion, then the catalog has been composed by a scribe familiar with the scribal conventions of the NeoAssyrian inscriptions. Although neither the DtrH nor Chronicles applies any royal titles to David or any other king of Judah or Israel, the geographical structure of the catalog alludes to a number of titles borne by Neo-Assyrian 49.  See also Gary N. Knoppers, “Changing History: Nathan’s Oracle and the Structure of the Davidic Monarchy in Chronicles,” in Shai le-Sara Japhet: Studies in the Bible, Its Exegesis and Its Language (ed. M. Bar-Asher et al.; Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 2007) 111*–12*. 50. Michael Avioz, “Nathan’s Prophecy in II Sam 7 and in I Chr 17: Text, Context, and Meaning,” ZAW 116 (2004) 542–54 (esp. p. 549); Knoppers, “Changing History,” 104*–5*.

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kings. While the title King of the Four Quarters and its implicit claim for universal dominion is already attested in the West Semitic sphere from the time of Tiglath-pileser III, the daring characterization of David in the image of a Neo-Assyrian empire-builder suggests that the architect of the catalog worked either after the demise of the Assyrian Empire or when it was waning. 51 The fact that the catalog draws upon Neo-Assyrian conventions firmly places it within the scope of Deuteronomistic literary production, even though it does not employ Deuteronomistic idioms. 52 The lack of Deuteronomistic idioms may be explained by the notion that the scribe derived some of the notices from a relatively early source, such as a “Chronicle of Early Israelite Kings,” as Naʾaman proposes. 53 The depiction of David in the figure of a Neo-Assyrian conqueror could easily fit within the working hypothesis of either a single exilic or double (preexilic and exilic) redaction of the DtrH. If the case for a double redaction is still compelling, as Richard Nelson argues, then the scribe, who viewed David as the alter-ego of Josiah, designed the catalog to imply that, with the withdrawal of Assyrian rule from Judah, David/Josiah became heir to the title King of the Four Quarters. 54 In the context of an exilic edition of the DtrH, the catalog helps build the figure of David as the image of the ideal king from which all subsequent kings steadily declined until Yhwh rescinded the dynastic promise, just as he revoked Israel’s inheritance to the land promised to Moses and Joshua. By contrast, the catalog in Chronicles overlooks the theme of making David’s name and downplays his conquering warrior image by casting Abishai as 51.  See n. 22 above. 52.  On the literary influence of Neo-Assyrian inscriptions on the idiom, style, and literary structure of the Deuteronomistic literature, see, for example, Moshe Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972; repr. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1992); Eckhart Otto, Das Deuteronomium: Politische Theologie und Rechtsreform in Juda und Assyrien (BZAW 284; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1999). 53.  Naʾaman, “History of David,” 25–31, 34. 54.  R. D. Nelson, “The Double Redaction of the Deuteronomistic History: The Case Is Still Compelling,” JSOT 29 (2005) 319–37. The double or multiple redaction hypothesis derives further support from the conflicting view of the Transjordanian kingdoms in 2 Samuel 8 and Deut 2:2–23. The total subjugation of the Transjordan as depicted by the catalog in 2 Samuel 8 probably conformed with utopian aspirations following the weakening of Assyrian hegemony during the rule of Josiah. By contrast, the view expressed in Deut 2:2–23, that Edom, Moab, and Ammon are outside the borders of the land that Yhwh has apportioned to Israel, probably reflects later territorial realities, when the Transjordan was incorporated into the Babylonian and Persian province systems. See Piotr Bienkowski, “New Evidence on Edom in the Neo-Babylonian and Persian Periods,” in The Land That I Will Show You: Essays on the History and Archaeology of the Ancient Near East in Honor of J. Maxwell Miller (ed. J. Andrew Dearman and M. Patrick Graham; JSOTSup 343; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001) 198–213; Oded Lipschits, “Ammon in Transition from Vassal Kingdom to Babylonian Province,” BASOR 335 (2004) 37–52; Römer, So-Called, 125.

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victor alongside him. The link with the dynastic oracle along with the proleptic notice regarding the bronze spoils invites the reader to reassess the impact of David’s achievements according to Chronicles’ catalog. David’s victories did not bring about rest in his day, but nonetheless, they helped amass the wealth and materials needed later to realize David’s ambition to build a temple. Thus, my examination of the versions of the catalog reaffirms the old view that the Chronicler based his work on the Deuteronomistic History and that his tendencies are evident, not only in what he chose to add or delete, but also in the way in which he reworked the source before him. Finally, although the catalog interacts differently with the dynastic oracle in both Samuel and Chronicles, this does not indicate that they represent separate editions deriving from a common source, particularly if the Chronicle’s version of the Valley of Salt victory has been influenced by key texts in the DtrH that were not replicated by the Chronicler (for example, 2 Kgs 14:7).

The Self-Limiting God of the Old Testament and Issues of Violence Terence E. Fretheim The God of the Old Testament is associated with a remarkable range of problematic words and actions, especially regarding violence. A lively concern about this sort of language is nothing new in the academy or religious communities.1 Already in the second century, Marcion had great difficulties with the Old Testament image of God, not least the divine anger and violence; he emerged with a truncated New Testament emptied of any remnants of problematic Old Testament God talk. Marcion has had many heirs. In the academy, this concern may be manifested in minimalist theological attention given to difficult God texts and/or sharp criticism of patriarchal and violent images, perhaps even an outright rejection of them.2 In the church, there has never been a time when the Bible did not create problems in and through what it did or did not say about God. These matters have been raised to new intensities in recent decades, not least because of changing cultural sensitivities and an increasingly diverse readership. At least one effect of these changing times is that both church and academy have begun to give new attention to difficult images of God.3 One might ask whether at least some of these difficulties with the God of the Bible are related, not to the textual images as such, but to the impact of traditional understandings of God on Bible readers. These traditional understandings include divine characteristics such as these: omnipotent, omniscient, 1.  I speak from the perspective of the church; other religious communities might be included. I would like to thank my student assistant Michael Chan for his comments on an earlier draft of this paper. 2.  See, for example, Kari Latvus, God, Anger and Ideology: The Anger of God in Joshua and Judges in Relation to Deuteronomy and the Priestly Writings (JSOTSup 279; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998) 91: “The God that deuteronomistic theologians created in their own image was thus the God of strict dogmatism, intolerance and fundamentalism. . . . The God of the crucified and powerless Jesus cannot be the same as the deuteronomistic God of anger.” 3.  For example, Eric Seibert, Disturbing Divine Behavior: Troubling Old Testament Images of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009). For my own work, see “God and Violence in the Old Testament,” Word and World 24 (2004) 18–28; idem, “‘I Was Only a Little Angry’: Divine Violence in the Prophets,” Int 58 (2004) 365–75.

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immutable, impassible, and atemporal. Though the Bible uses none of these words,4 their associated ideas have had an immense influence, consciously or unconsciously, on the way in which we interpret the word God whenever we encounter it in the text. The result is that many of the actual biblical images for God have been neglected or harmonized to fit with these divine attributes. The discussion of issues such as violence with respect to the God of the Old Testament often assumes textual commitments regarding divine omnipotence, or at least unlimited omnipotence (as it is usually considered), and related claims.5 The extent to which these traditional assumptions affect the conversation needs forthright attention before problematic issues such as divine violence can be fully considered. One of the ways in which this conversation can be furthered is by drawing out certain characteristics of the God of the text that seem to stand over against the God of classical theism. To this end, I would like to explore this matter through a close examination of the images of God that are present in the creation story (Genesis 1–2) and the story of the flood (Genesis 6–9), especially the image of divine self-limitation.6 These Genesis texts often challenge traditional descriptors of God (though this is not often made apparent in the various expositions). In addition, I suggest that the placement of these narratives at the beginning of the Bible invites readers to study all texts that follow through the theological lens they provide. How one reads the God that is presented in succeeding texts, not least the more problematic images, is to be shaped by these opening accounts. At the same time, it should be made clear that not everything that is said about God in the Old Testament/Bible can be fully harmonized.7 4.  Occasionally an equivalent is claimed (see, for example, Jer 32:17, 27), but it seems doubtful that phrases of this sort correspond to the traditional language (see my “Is Anything Too Hard for God? [Jeremiah 32:27],” CBQ 66 [2004] 231–36). Later in this essay, I will work with the possibility of divine omnipotence for the sake of argument. 5.  I have deeply appreciated Richard Nelson’s work over the years, not least his willingness to engage in theological issues presented by texts. This article is prompted in part by my response to several of his theological reflections. In his treatment of 1 Kings 1, for example, Nelson claims that “Yahweh’s plan and will must be effected, and for God, at least, the ends justify the means. . . . The good news is . . . that God is in charge even of the dark side. . . . In all that follows, Yahweh will be in complete control of events” (First and Second Kings [Atlanta: John Knox, 1988] 22–23 [italics mine]). Elsewhere, Nelson speaks of “God’s control of international affairs” and “the future of Jeroboam’s dynasty has already been closed off by prophetic foreknowledge” (p. 73). 6.  The language of “self” limitation does have some inadequacies, perhaps suggesting to some readers that it contemplates a diminishment of the divine self. I use this language to reference the idea that God is the subject of the limitation, not that which is other than God. It is God alone who limits the divine self. 7.  To return to the traditional claims about God of which we have spoken (for example, immutable, impassible), it is remarkable that these theological claims seem at best to be

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Divine Self-Limitation in Genesis 1–2 How we think about the God of Genesis, indeed of the Bible as a whole, will be sharply affected by how we portray the God of the creation accounts. It is common among commentators to say that God created the world alone, with overwhelming power and absolute control, working independently and unilaterally. But, if this understanding of God in creation is correct, then the beings created in God’s image could properly understand their role regarding the rest of creation in comparable terms—that is, in terms of power over, absolute control, and independence. By definition, the natural world thus becomes available for human manipulation and exploitation. In other words, how one understands the God of the creation accounts will have a significant impact on one’s view of the world, environmental sensitivities, and the urgency of one’s practices.8 What if the God of the creation accounts is imaged more as one who, in creating, chooses to share power in relationship, with a consequent self-limitation in the use of divine power and freedom? Then the way in which the human as image of God exercises dominion is to be shaped by this model. Even more, if the God of the creation accounts is imaged as one who involves creatures (human and nonhuman) in still further creations, as we will see, then this should inform our understanding of the value that they have been given by God. I see three types of textual evidence that can assist us in reflecting on this angle of vision.9 1. God creates in and through the use of existing matter. Male and female, for example, are not created “out of nothing” but out of already existent creatures, both human and nonhuman (Gen 2:7, 22). The Creator is not external to the creative process but “gets down in the dirt” (see God in human form in Gen 3:8) and creates in direct contact with the stuff used to create; God creates from within creation, not from without. This is an act of self-limitation. 2. God speaks with already existing creatures and involves them in creative activity: “Let the earth bring forth,” and “the earth brought forth” (Gen 1:11–13); “let us make humankind” (Gen 1:26). This is mediated rather than

tangentially correspondent with the centering witness about God present in many texts (for example, creedal statements about God such as Exod 34:6–7). The God in these creedal statements is a deeply relational God–a key point—a perspective that seems not to be central to at least some of the more traditional language regarding God. 8.  For an earlier reflection on this theological issue, see my God and World in the Old Testament: A Relational Theology of Creation (Nashville: Abingdon, 2005) 48–53. 9.  For detail, see my Creation Untamed: The Bible, God, and Natural Disasters (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2010). I assume literary and historical reflections on these texts. For a basic and thorough discussion, see Claus Westermann, Genesis 1–11: A Commentary (trans. J. J. Scullion; Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1984). See also J. Richard Middleton, The Liberating Image: The Imago Dei in Genesis 1 (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos, 2005).

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immediate creation. God’s creating is not accomplished alone; God seeks assistance from the creatures in creating. This is an act of self-limitation. 3. Gen 1:28, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion.” This first divine word to the newly created human being constitutes a sharing of power, which would be characteristic of any relationship of integrity. In other words, God gives up a monopoly on power for the sake of a genuine relationship with the world.10 From the beginning, God chooses not to be the only one who has creative power and the capacity to exercise it, indeed the obligation to do so. Human beings are invited, indeed commanded by God to play an important role in the becoming of their world in and through the exercise of power. God certainly is the one who invites their participation in the use of power. But, having done so, God is committed to this way of relating to them. Given this commitment, forfeiting or suspending this status of the human being for shorter or longer periods of time is not a divine option. God will be faithful to this way of relating to the human beings created in the divine image. As an example, God lets the human being determine whether the animals are adequate to move the evaluation of the creation from “not good” to “good” (Gen 2:18–21). The human being, not God, deems what is fit for him. God places the creative possibilities before the human being, but it is the creature that is given the freedom to decide. God, in turn, accepts the human decision and “goes back to the drawing board.” One might also cite Eve’s testimony to both human and divine involvement in the birthing of the first human being (Gen 4:1). These are acts of divine self-limitation. In sum, God takes the ongoing creational process into account in shaping new directions for the world, one dimension of which is engaging creatures in creative acts. Divine decisions interact with both human decisions and nonhuman activity in the becoming of the world. Creation is process as well as punctiliar act; creation is creaturely as well as divine. While creatures are deeply dependent on God for their creation and life, God has chosen to establish an interdependent relationship with them regarding both originating and continuing creation. God’s approach to creation is thus communal and relational; in the wake of God’s initiating activity, God works from within the world rather than on the world from without. God’s word in creation is often a communicating word with others, rather than, say, a top-down word.11 The actions of humans 10.  This would mean that any direct or indirect use of metaphors for God such as king cannot be construed to suggest that only the superior has genuine power. 11.  While the biblical testimony, finally, witnesses to creation out of nothing (Rom 4:17, Heb 11:3), there is strong consensus that this idea only exists on the edges of Genesis 1–2 (and, in any case, would apply to several details rather than creation as a whole—for example, Gen 1:6–7, 14–19).

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and other creatures make a difference with respect to the future of the creation, indeed God’s future with creation. These texts from the creation accounts are a witness to divine self-limitation in creation. God lets the world be involved in its continuing creation, indeed to create itself. In terms of the text, God keeps the Sabbath day (Gen 2:1–3). God rests, without managing the creaturely activity and lets the creatures be and become what they were created to be. God limits both the divine power and the divine freedom because God is committed to the sharing of power and freedom with the creatures. Foundational to these understandings of the God of the creation accounts is that God has entered into a genuine relationship with the world.12 God does not remain aloof and, like some divine mechanic, seek to work on the world from the outside. God personally involves the divine self in its life and chooses to work from within. This dimension of the text is revealing of a major Old Testament conviction—namely, the centrality of relationality at three levels of consideration: within God (see Gen 1:26), between God and world, and among the creatures. For the Old Testament, relationships are constitutive of life itself; all things are woven together in and through relationships. To live in a relational world of this sort means at least this: all creatures will be affected by every other creature. We are bound up with one another in such a way that each of us is involved in the plight of all of us. And God has chosen to be caught up in this spiderweb of relationships in a self-limiting way. God will move with the creatures into a future that is to some extent unsettled, dependent in part on what they do with the powers they have been given.

Divine Self-Limitation in the Story of the Flood A basic list of what God as subject does in the flood story13 is remarkable in its range: God expresses sorrow and regret (but not anger); God judges but does not want to; God goes beyond justice and decides to save some creatures; God pulls back from an initial decision to “blot out” the world (Gen 6:7), deciding to deliver both human beings and animals; God changes but people do not (Gen 6:5, 8:21); God is receptive to doing things in new ways in view 12.  For detail, see my God and World, 13–22. 13.  I assume basic historical and literary perspectives regarding this text and move immediately to theological considerations. Some literary observations: the flood story contains little direct speech and no dialogue; Noah never speaks a word. There is also minimal description of the disaster itself and no reaction from any individual. There is virtually no textual attention to the plight of the victims or to their fearful response or to scenes of death and destruction—in contrast to the many horrific artistic renditions of the flood and modern media portrayal of disasters. Why is the text so reticent regarding the suffering of the victims, not least in view of the fact that the text claims it is their guilt that has occasioned the disaster?

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of new divine experience with the world; and God commits to the future of a less than perfect world. God’s promising never to act in such a destructive way again, twice stated and formalized in covenantal terms (Gen 8:21–22, 9:8–17), entails an eternal, divine self-limitation in the exercise of power in response to evil in the world.14 From the perspective of many a Bible reader, including many theologians, these are problematic images for God indeed—and commentators often move past them quickly. I suggest once again that these understandings of God have a strategic canonical placement and, as with the opening pages in any good book are intended to provide an important theological lens through which to read subsequent biblical descriptions of God, especially as related to violence.15 Moreover, the fact that the flood story takes up so much textual space—longer than the creation stories—has long bedeviled scholars. Might the very length of the story suggest the theological importance it was believed to have in the biblical witness about God? When all is said and done, this conversation about the flood story’s language for God will leave us with questions, but this in itself is an invitation to consult other texts and to engage in further reflection. The following points overlap with one another, but they deserve separate consideration; at the same time, they are not of equal import, nor do they stand or fall together. From several perspectives, they are further witness to divine self-limitation. 1. I begin with a more general point: this text is testimony to the affectability of God. God is deeply and personally moved by what has happened to the relationship with humankind. “And the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart” (Gen 6:6). God is revealed as one who is affected by creatures both human and nonhuman (not just humans and not just Israel); God is not removed and detached from this world but is genuinely engaged with it and affected by this engagement. Several of the following points particularize this. 2. God repeatedly “regrets, is sorry”16 that God created humankind in the first place (Gen 6:6–7). God knows what might have been and profoundly de14.  The reference to “seedtime and harvest” in Gen 8:22 suggests that the divine promise is more extensive than a simple reference to “no more floods.” 15.  Even more, the story witnesses to a God who acts in saving ways beyond the walls of the chosen community. Indeed, in the larger creational context in which the flood story is embedded, God is the subject of a remarkable string of activities that are all too commonly reserved for the chosen community (by the chosen community!): God elects, reveals, saves from danger and death, and makes promises. And this is long before Abraham! And the story suggests: long after Abraham. 16.  These are the usual translations of the verb ‫( נחם‬Niphal; see niv, “grieve”). On these “anthropomorphic metaphors,” see my Suffering of God (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984) 5–12; and, for a study of ‫ נחם‬in its various contexts, idem, “The Repentance of God: A Key to Evaluating Old Testament God-Talk,” HBT 10 (1988) 47–70.

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sires that things had not come to this! Here the past of God, what might have been, seems to stand in disjunction with the present of God, what actually is, and the collision of past and present in God occasions a deep divine regret and accompanying suffering for God. I might add that this point is also testimony to the temporality of God, who has so deeply entered into the life of the world that past, present, and future are real for God. This witness regarding divine temporality is also evident in God’s resting on the Sabbath for a specific period of time (Gen 2:1–3). 3. God’s regret seems to assume that God did not certainly know that creatures would take this turn (as also in Gen 22:12, Deut 8:2). This does not mean that God is not omniscient, though some definitions of omniscience might be threatened by this understanding.17 The claim is still available that God knows all there is to know, including all possibilities, but there is a future that is not yet available for knowing, even for God.18 “Regret” language of this sort would challenge any position that God predetermined that the creation would take this course. What has happened to the creation is due most basically to creaturely activity, not divine. At the same time, God bears some responsibility for these developments by setting up the creation in a way that it could go wrong and could have such devastating effects. God created the world good, not perfect. 4. God’s response of regret assumes that human beings have successfully resisted God’s will for the creation. Thus, this text is a witness to divine vulnerability in the unfolding creation. This God is a God who takes risks, who makes the divine self vulnerable to the twists and turns of creational life, including human resistance. The resistibility of the will of God is a key to understanding many a biblical text that follows, not least the many passages that speak of divine anger. Should one resist this understanding of God, it might be asked (though not a feature of this text): if God’s will were never successfully resisted, why would God get angry? 5. God’s initial decision to “blot out” human beings and other creatures seemed to allow for no exceptions (Gen 6:7), but God’s pain and sorrow seem to lead God to a decision regarding Noah that changes this judgmental direction, with positive effects for “all flesh.”19 The idea that God changes the divine 17.  Ps 139:16 is sometimes cited to support divine omniscience (for example, nrsv, niv), but see the quite different translations of this verse in the kjv, njps, and neb. 18.  Regarding God’s power, it is often said to be illogical to ask: can God make a rock so big that God cannot lift it? Comparably regarding God’s knowledge, it is illogical to ask: can God know a future that is not yet there to know? At the least, the divine knowledge is not based on the experience of that future. 19.  Nothing that Noah has done is said to prompt Noah’s finding favor with God. Yet, Noah’s faithfulness is not just a blip on the cosmic screen, somehow irrelevant to God. Noah’s walking with God counts with God; but it is understood to be a (not inevitable) consequence of God’s prior action.

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mind (‫ )נחם‬is a relatively common biblical theme. At the same time, importantly, this change is not a change in the character of God or the being of God but a change in divine strategy in view of new experience with the world. Only the language of change seems capable of describing the God at the beginning of the flood story and the God of the end of the story, who promises never to do this again. It is God who has changed, not human beings (although there are fewer of them around!), as the text makes clear (Gen 8:21). Yet, as always, God’s action stands in the service of the divine immutability regarding being faithful and always acting in the best interests of the creation. 6. The image of God in the flood story is perhaps best described as a grieving and pained parent, distressed over what has happened to the human race (see Gen 6:5–7; compare with Ps 78:40–41, Isa 63:7–10).20 The niv says it well: God’s “heart was filled with pain”; the same word is used for the pain of the man and the woman in Gen 3:16–17, and God is now said to share this pain. The basic character of the human heart in Gen 6:5, “every inclination of their hearts was only evil continually,” is set alongside the disappointed and sorrowfilled response of the divine heart (Gen 6:6). The wickedness of humankind and the associated judgment about to fall have touched God deeply. While the external and more objective picture in this story is one of disastrous judgment, the internal, subjective image is of divine grief. The judgment talk in the prophets is comparable; grief is what the Godward side of judgment and wrath often looks like.21 For example, Jer 9:10 (niv): “I will take up weeping and wailing for the mountains and a lamentation for the pastures of the wilderness, because they are laid waste, so that no one passes through, and the lowing of the cattle is not heard; both the birds of the air and the animals have fled and are gone.” This image of God weeping over the judgment that has deeply affected humans and animals alike is paralleled in the flood story (see also Jer 9:17–21, 13:17, 14:17). The fact that divine judgment and divine tears go together has considerable theological import. Without the references to tears, God would be much more removed and unmoved. Judgment accompanied by weeping, although it is still judgment, is different—in motivation and in the understanding of the relationship at stake. God’s harsh words of judgment are not matched by an inner harshness.22

20.  Despite sometime claims to the contrary, the text makes no mention of the anger of God. Is this omission deliberate? 21.  For detail, see my “Theological Reflections on the Wrath of God in the Old Testament,” HBT 24 (2002) 1–26. 22.  The ethical implications of this understanding of God are considerable. If there were no divine judgment on sin/evil, then human judgment toward what is oppressive and abusive would not carry the same weight. At the same time, if there were no sorrow associated with divine judgment, then human judgment would be given a freer range regarding harshness.

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The narrative strategy in Genesis 6–9 is to portray the kind of God with whom the entire world has to do, not only Israel. This is a God for whom judgment is neither the first word nor the last and hence is a God of hope. While God may give the people up to the effects of their sinfulness, God does not finally give up on them. In other terms, the circumstantial will of God in judgment is always in the service of the ultimate will of God to save. To this end, God can use judgmental effects for a variety of positive purposes, such as refining, purification, insight, and discipline. 7. Inasmuch as human beings are said to be just as sinful after the flood as before it (compare Gen 6:5 with 8:21), pain will be an ongoing reality for God. That is, the flood did not end the reason for the divine suffering; it may have been designed initially to do this, but God’s change of the original decision to “blot out” all living creatures had long-term suffering effects for God. While not resigned to sin and evil, God decides to continue to live with these resisting creatures (not the response of your typical CEO!). This divine decision to allow a wicked world to exist, come what may, means for God a continuing grieving of the heart. Indeed, the everlasting, unconditional promise to Noah and all flesh that follows necessitates divine suffering; a pain-free future is now impossible for God. In other terms, the future of the creation that now becomes possible is rooted in this divine willingness to bear ongoing pain and sorrow. God determines to take the sin and resultant suffering of all creatures into God’s own being and bear it there for the sake of the future of the world. In some sense, the world’s future becomes dependent on this divine suffering. God’s suffering proves over time to be very powerful; indeed it might be said that, finally, suffering is God’s chief way of being powerful in the world (see 2 Cor 12:9–10). 8. This divine move leads finally to God’s promises. Gen 8:21 addresses two related matters: (a) God “will never again curse the ground because of humankind”;23 (b) “nor will I ever again destroy every living creature,” continuing the basic elements of the created order (formalized with a covenant in Gen 9:8–17). The first has reference to the created moral order; God places limits on God’s possible actions relating to the move from sin to consequence within the natural order. That is, the move to “blot out” (Gen 6:7) that God makes in the wake of the human condition announced by God in Gen 6:5 will no longer be available to God in view of God’s own edict. The second has 23.  This phrase has been thought to refer to (a) no more floods; (b) no additional curses on the ground (see Gen 3:17); (c) the abandonment of the existing curse; or (d) the end of the reign of curse. It seems best to regard the phrase as some combination thereof; that is, God’s newly stated word provides for a constant natural order within which life can develop without any concern about human sin “triggering” another disaster of the magnitude of the flood. That is, God places an eternal limit on the functioning of the moral order. See discussion in Westermann, Genesis 1–11, 454–56.

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reference to the effect of this new boundary for God; it is first stated negatively (no destruction of “every living creature”) and then positively (“seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease,” Gen 8:22).24 This multifaceted divine promise means that the route of world annihilation has been set aside by God as a divine possibility. God’s promise is not a promise to eliminate, say, all natural disasters. Divine judgment there will be (for example, Genesis 18–19), but it will be limited in scope. Sin and evil and their now-limited effects will be allowed to have their day, and God will work from within this sort of world to redeem it but will not overpower it from without. God remains committed to the freedom of the creatures, even though the effects may be horrendous. Indeed, their exercise of freedom may result in, not the end of the world, but the end of their world.25 Regardless of what people do, however, God will remain faithful to the promises regarding creation, sealed by the rainbow. What do these promises mean for God? For God to promise not to do something ever again entails an eternal divine self-limitation regarding the exercise of both freedom and power with respect to any related matters.26 God thereby limits the divine options in dealing with evil in the life of the world.27 And, given the fact that God will be faithful and keep promises, does this not mean that divine self-limitation yields real limitation for God? God may be said to be capable of doing anything, but the certainty of God’s faithfulness means that God cannot break a divine promise. Consider, say, the marital relationship (an oft-used metaphor for God and Israel): the individuals involved are capable of, say, “playing around,” but they cannot do so and still be faithful. These several characteristics of God seem to be fundamentally in tune with the biblical center about a God who is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love (Exod 34:6–7 and its many parallels). It is this kind of God with whom Israelite readers have to do, and it is primarily the word of divine commitment to promises made that they most need to hear.28 24.  Comparable divine promises are also found in Jer 31:35–37, 33:19–26. See the examination of related texts in Katherine J. Dell, “Covenant and Creation in Relationship,” in Covenant as Context: Essays in Honour of E. W. Nicholson (ed. A. D. H. Mayes and R. B. Salters; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) 111–33. 25.  For this language and a helpful commentary on divine judgment in Ezekiel 6–7, see Joseph Blenkinsopp, Ezekiel (Louisville: John Knox, 1990) 44–51 (esp. p. 50). 26.  For a discussion of divine self-limitation regarding the exercise of power and freedom in Jeremiah, see my “Character of God in Jeremiah,” in Character and Scripture: Moral Formation, Community, and Biblical Interpretation (ed. William P. Brown; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002) 217–19. 27.  Except perhaps as a means to bring the world to an end? 28.  Some kind of devastating situation in Israel’s history is probably in mind, though it could have a multigenerational applicability. The destruction of Jerusalem and the exile

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Implications and Conclusions Initially, how is this divine self-limitation regarding the flood and its aftermath related to the divine self-limitation we have seen to be present in the creation accounts? Generally speaking, in the wake of the flood God addresses a situation in the ongoing life of the created order that calls for a new divine response. That situation is depicted in Gen 8:21 and speaks of a continuing human reality that is deeply problematic: “The Lord said in his heart . . . the inclination of the human heart is [still!] evil from youth.” What God does in the face of a continuing human situation of wickedness is of special import. That is, inasmuch as the wicked situation of Gen 6:5 led to the flood, and this same situation of wickedness continues in a post-flood world (described in Gen 8:21), the threat of repeated floods (or other natural catastrophes) remains—if the basic cause-and-effect structures of the world were to continue unchanged. Thus, a significant shift in the very structures of the world is necessary if the world is not to experience ongoing convulsions. We have seen that God’s way with the created order has been shaped from the beginning in terms of divine self-limitation. Faced now with potentially recurrent flood-like devastations in the world’s experience because of continuing human sin, God does not pull back from this basic self-limiting direction in relating to the world. Instead, God intensifies this divine way with the world, entering even more deeply into self-limiting ways.29 As noted, the claim made in Gen 8:21 may give us a clue regarding this new direction for God: “I will never again curse the ground [or, regard the ground as cursed] because of humankind.”30 This announcement, which introduces the statement about human sin (“for”), means that God thereby explicitly places a limit on the actions of the divine self relative to this continuing sin (“never again”). This divine self-limitation entails a fundamental shift or adjustment in the way in which the created order functions. This change needed to be put into place by God so that the promise could be kept. Claus Westermann correctly notes (contrary to several scholars) that Gen 8:21 is not a note regarding a transition from curse to blessing; the effects of the curse continue in significant ways.31 At the same time, Westermann does not go far enough when he claims that the “never again” only means that God “decides to put up with this state of evil. . . . He can simply let things be, would be an especially appropriate context for a promise of this sort. 29. Michael Chan pointed out to me that Gen 6:3, “My spirit shall not abide in mortals forever, for they are flesh; their days shall be one hundred twenty years,” is another act of limitation by God that entails self-limitation (regarding the divine spirit). See also God’s self-limiting action “for the sake of his servant David” (2 Kgs 8:19). 30.  See the discussion of scholarly views in Westermann, Genesis 1–11, 454–58. 31.  Ibid., 454.

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putting up patiently with people just as they are with their inclination to evil.”32 At the least, his comments do not take into account the continuing divine suffering that we have noted. He is closer to the mark when he speaks of the world’s “stabilization.”33 But more seems to be at stake. God’s “never again” regarding the curse seems to signal a substantial change in the created moral order, or what might be called the causal weave. In effect, God puts into place a new boundary for the functioning of the created order. In other terms, God determines that the divine self-limitation that has been in place since the creation needs to be made deeper and more precise in view of humanity’s unchanging wickedness. The world (which acquired a life of its own already in God’s rest in Gen 2:1–3) is given divinely established boundaries within which it now functions in ways that will not allow for another flood-like response. In sum, what God does in the flood story recharacterizes the divine relation to the world. God qualifies the workings of divine judgment, placing constraints on the effects of sin and God’s own actions relating thereto, and proceeds to promise an orderly cosmos for the continuation of life. Human beings have not been changed by the flood but, in view of God’s experience with this world, God charts new directions in relating to this world. In canonical perspective, it is this kind of God who provides a basic lens through which readers are invited to interpret the God who is presented in all the biblical texts that follow. If a change of this sort in God’s relationship with the world in this early story of the Old Testament can be so characterized, might this help readers come to terms with later biblical texts that speak of violence, indeed divine violence?34 Associations of God with violence will pervade the texts that follow in the Old Testament, from natural disasters to invasions of foreign armies to destructions of cities and civilizations. What difference might it make in the interpretation of these texts if they are read in and through the images provided by the flood story, wherein God places a limit on what God can do about violence? Indeed, is it not the case that the recharacterized divine way with the world may issue in even more violence? That is to say, by promising “never again” to bring a violent world to an end, does not God thereby open up this world to unending violence, whether generated by human beings or natural forces, even if not catastrophic? From another angle, by loosening the divine control of the world (which the divine “never again” entails), God becomes even more closely associated with its potential for violence and its actual vio32.  Ibid., 456. 33.  Ibid., 457. 34.  While “later” refers to a canonical reading of this text, the basic perspectives present in Gen 8:21–22 are usually assigned to the Yahwist, probably an early form of the narrative.

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lence. In light of this reality, how might the divine association with violence in the post-flood world be articulated in more detailed ways? One potential direction for reflection resides in the divine decision to use human agents in carrying out acts of judgment. It may be said that much, if not all of the violence associated with God in the Bible is due to God’s decision to use agents that are capable of violence, though not of the world-ending sort (and God does not remove the divine self from continuing levels of involvement, which will entail suffering for God).35 Obviously, God does not perfect agents before deciding to work in and through them; this will also mean that God does not necessarily evaluate the work of the agents in positive terms. God’s agents may exceed the divine mandate, going beyond anything that God intended (for example, Zech 1:15). Notably, God will assume a share of the responsibility associated with this violence and will take on a certain degree of blame for using these agents (Jer 42:10).36 Most fundamentally, however, God engages in a new way with the world in and through the articulation of a self-limiting promise, the first formally stated promise in the Bible. In the language of Claus Westermann, “God promises that he will never again allow humanity to be destroyed. . . . There is no power that can shake this promise.”37 35.  See above discussion. See also this earlier language from my Suffering of God, 76: “force and violence are associated with God’s work in the world, because, to a greater or lesser degree, they are characteristic of the means of those in and through whom the work is carried out. In order to achieve God’s purposes, God will in effect ‘get his hands dirty.’” For details regarding divine judgment, see my God and World, 157–65. 36.  For details on these texts, see idem, “I Was Only a Little Angry.” 37.  Westermann, Genesis 1–11, 456. Compare the statement of William P. Brown, The Ethos of the Cosmos: The Genesis of Moral Imagination in the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999) 57: “God’s unconditional commitment to remain true to creation’s formfulness and integrity without destructive intervention.”

Wisdom Influence in the Book of Deuteronomy Jack R. Lundbom Wisdom is commonly defined as an intellectual capacity or quality of mind enabling one to live well in the world, to succeed, and to counsel others in the way of success. 1 Its opposite is foolishness, usually reduced to the lack of good sense or good judgment in a person. The wise are admired; fools are held up to ridicule. “Wise women” appeared in the early monarchy in ancient Israel (2 Sam 14:2, 20:16), and by Isaiah and Jeremiah’s time, “wise men” were a distinct professional class in Jerusalem (Isa 29:14; Prov 25:1; Jer 8:8–9; 9:12, 23; 18:18).2 Wise men were prominent in neighboring nations to Israel, particularly Egypt (Gen 41:8, Exod 7:11). Jeremiah tells us that tribal wisdom resided in Teman, a northeast region of Edom (Jer 49:7; compare with Eliphaz the Temanite in Job 2:11, 4:1), and years later, Paul says wisdom was highly sought after by the Greeks (1 Cor 1:22). In the Bible, wisdom is also something infinitely above and beyond human beings, being the first of God’s creation (Prov 8:22; compare with John 1:1). Blank says it exists ideally with God and imparts form to creation.3 That wisdom exists in other cultures, to some extent in all cultures, helps us to distinguish it from belief or godly faith. Wisdom deals largely with matters of earth; that is, it is not concerned primarily with God or the things of God, which we call theology. And while wisdom can certainly come by divine relevation, it need not be so acquired. More often than not, it comes by living fully and attentively in this world. Wisdom is thus more akin to humanism.4 When preparing entries for the Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, I never quite knew where to fit wisdom texts into the section reserved for theology. And yet, we must recognize with Daube that wisdom in ancient Israel was deeply religious.5 Ps 111:10 says: “The fear of the Lord is the 1.  Sheldon H. Blank, “Wisdom,” IDB 4:852–53. 2. Moshe Weinfeld, “Deuteronomy: The Present State of Inquiry,” JBL 86 (1967) 249– 62 (esp. p. 262); idem, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School (Oxford: Clarendon, 1972; repr. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1992) 161–62. 3.  Blank, “Wisdom,” 853. 4.  O. S. Rankin, Israel’s Wisdom Literature (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1936) 3; Moshe Weinfeld, “The Origin of Humanism in Deuteronomy,” JBL 80 (1961) 241–47 (esp. pp. 242– 43). 5. David Daube, “The Culture of Deuteronomy,” ORITA: Ibadan Journal of Religious Studies 3 (1969) 27–52 (esp. p. 28).

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beginning of wisdom.” And the book of Ecclesiastes concludes: “Fear God and keep his commandments” (Eccl 12:13). Without fear of the Lord, wisdom can become foolishness, as Job teaches us, as well as Paul in 1 Cor 1:18–25. Wisdom has three defining characteristics. It may have more, but it has at least these three: (1) Wisdom builds on knowledge—some would say accumulated knowledge. It is not the same as knowledge; rather, it is the larger and more comprehensive of the two terms. Similarly, foolishness takes in more than ignorance or even stupidity (= “slow-wittedness”). A wise person is someone who is well informed, having acquired knowledge from: (a) the teaching of others (older folk, parents, teachers); (b) practical experience both positive and negative; and (c) personal observations of and reflections on the natural order and the world in which one lives. Some would identify wisdom with common sense. For persons of faith, knowledge can come because God reveals things to us. Beware, in any case, of individuals who belittle the acquisition of knowledge. The wise person must have knowledge. However, not everyone possessing knowledge is wise. Francis Bacon, adviser to Queen Elizabeth I, was called by some “the most learned fool in the world.” (2) Wisdom requires discrimination, or discernment. The wise person recognizes similarities but also perceives differences and is able to discriminate among the pieces of knowledge that he/she possesses. The wise person knows how to “sort things out.” Wisdom often teaches a doctrine of the “two ways,” the way of the righteous and the way of the wicked (Psalm 1, Prov 4:10–19), the way to life and the way to death (Deut 30:15–20; Jer 6:16, 17:5–8, 21:8–9; Matt 7:13–14). Discrimination has been a bad word in America since Civil Rights, and we know why; nevertheless, the wise person is someone able to make judgments about good and bad, right and wrong, truth and falsity, and knows the difference—when there is one—between appearances and reality. A wise person can tell whether nice words convey graciousness or are “so much butter and cream.” A wise person knows body language and, more importantly, actions, discerning when either or both contradict words issuing forth from the mouth. King Solomon was wise because he was able to discern the real mother of the baby placed before him by two women, both of whom claimed he was theirs (1 Kgs 3:16–28). (3) Wisdom resides in individuals who use the knowledge and discernment they possess. Wisdom is something one does. Jesus says, “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house upon a rock . . .” (Matt 7:24–27). To be wise, one must use one’s knowledge to get on in the world, to avoid shame, or even more importantly, to keep oneself from suffering catastrophic loss. The wise person is also a teacher and counselor. In ancient times, the wise man was a counselor to the king, advising the best course of action to take in war, and also when and

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how to make peace. Fathers passed on wisdom to their sons: warning them of hidden dangers, instructing how to succeed in life, defining the virtues of a good wife, and so on (Proverbs). Mothers taught their daughters how to succeed in acquiring a husband (see Ruth 3:1–5) and how to find success in other ways throughout life. The Bible considers wisdom to be very important. Six “parables of wisdom” have been identified in the teachings of Jesus.6 In the Parable of the Unjust Steward (Luke 16:1–8), a fellow who had been doing a bad job of management, when learning that he is about to be fired, prudently settles his accounts in all haste. Jesus remarks: “The children of this age are wiser in their own generation than the children of light” (v. 8). And in the Parable of the Ten Maidens (Matt 25:1–12), it is foolishness on the part of five that bars the door to the messianic wedding feast. The five are not immoral, nor are they rank unbelievers. They are simply foolish. In the New Testament, foolishness stands next to godlessness in keeping people from true faith.

Wisdom in Deuteronomy The wisdom element in Deuteronomy is identified by its use of terms for wisdom and being wise and by themes held in common with the wisdom literature of the Old Testament—that is, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Job, certain Psalms, and in the Protestant Apocrypha, Wisdom of Solomon, and Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), the last-named said by some to be the wisdom book par excellence. We also have for comparison wisdom texts and international treaties in extrabiblical literature. These include texts such as the “Instruction of Amen-em-opet,” the Sefire Stele, the Vassal treaties of Esarhaddon, and others.7 The Instruction of Amen-em-opet invites comparison with Prov 22:17–24:22.8 We see early on in the book of Deuteronomy a concern that Israel be a nation imbued with wisdom. Moses says regarding the statutes and ordinances he has taught the people: So you shall be careful and you shall do, for that will be your wisdom and your understanding in the eyes of the peoples who, when they hear-all these statutes, will say, “Surely a wise and understanding people is this great nation!” (Deut 4:6)

6.  Arland J. Hultgren, The Parables of Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000). 7.  Amen-em-opet: ANET, 421–25. Sefire Stele: Joseph A. Fitzmyer, “The Aramaic Inscriptions of Sefire I and II,” JAOS 81 (1961) 178–222; The Aramaic Inscriptions of Sefîre (BibOr 19; Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1967); Dennis J. McCarthy, Treaty and Covenant (AnBib 21; Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1963). Vassal treaties of Esarhaddon: ANET, 534–41. 8. ANET, 421.

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The concern here is with appearances—how Israel appears to other nations. This is an appeal to avoid shame, a wisdom theme expounded all through Deuteronomy.9 In three pentateuchal passages, leaders and magistrates are appointed to aid Moses in governing the people, and in each passage the personal qualities cited are different.10 In Exod 18:21, Jethro tells Moses to “choose able men from all the people, such as fear God, men who are trustworthy and hate a bribe.” In Num 11:16–30, God endows the elders aiding Moses with a divine spirit. But in Deut 1:13–17, Moses is to appoint wise, understanding, and knowledgeable men (v. 17). We may compare the Covenant Code (Exodus 21–23) with Deuteronomy at another point to show how, in the view of Deuteronomy, the judge is expected to possess wisdom. Exod 23:8 states: “And you shall take no bribe, for a bribe blinds the officials, and subverts the cause of those who are in the right.” But Deut 16:19 says: “you shall not take a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and subverts the cause of the righteous.” Weinfeld points out that the intellectual qualities of wisdom, understanding, and knowledge are traits that characterize leaders and magistrates in the wisdom literature. A personified Wisdom declares in Prov 8:15–16: “By me kings reign, and rulers decree what is just; by me princes rule, and nobles, all who govern rightly.” Certain deuteronomic laws have clear parallels in the book of Proverbs. The law on not removing the neighbor’s landmark in Deut 19:14 and the curse for the same in Deut 27:17 have parallels in Prov 22:28 and 23:10. The law in Deut 25:13–16 about merchants in the marketplace not having false weights and measures has parallels in Prov 11:1 and 20:10, 23. In Deut 8:5 we are told that, as a man disciplines his son, so Yahweh disciplines his people, which echoes the teaching in Prov 3:11–12. And the law in Deut 23:21–23 about being sure to pay a vow has parallels in Prov 20:25, Eccl 5:4–5, and Sir 18:22. Deuteronomy also picks up characteristic vocabulary from Proverbs, for example, the term ‫‘ תועבה‬abomination’, often in the expression “abomination to Yahweh,” which appears only in Deuteronomy and Proverbs. The word ‫תועבה‬ appears 21 times in Proverbs (Prov 3:32; 6:16; 8:7; 11:1, 20; 12:22; 13:19; 15:8, 9, 26; 16:5, 12; 17:15; 20:10, 23; 21:27; 24:9; 26:25 [plural]; 28:9; 29:27 [2×]) and 16 times in Deuteronomy (Deut 7:25, 26; 12:31; 13:14; 14:3; 17:1, 4; 18:9, 12; 20:18; 22:5; 23:18; 24:4; 25:16; 27:15; 32:16). The term appears also in the “Instruction of Amen-em-opet.”11 9.  Daube, “The Culture of Deuteronomy,” 50. 10.  Weinfeld, “Deuteronomy: The Present State of Inquiry,” 257; Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School, 244–45. 11.  Ibid., 267–68.

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The most prominent wisdom themes in Deuteronomy are the following: 1. humane treatment of and benevolence to the poor and needy 2. teaching of children 3. blessing: life, goodness, and longevity in the land 4. avoidance of shame 5. discerning false from true prophets

Humane Treatment of and Benevolence to the Poor and Needy Deuteronomy’s concern that humanitarian treatment be accorded certain individuals in society has long been noted.12 Driver says of the deuteronomic writer: The author speaks out of a warm heart himself; and he strives to kindle a warm response in the heart of everyone whom he addresses. Nowhere else in the OT, do we breathe such an atmosphere of generous devotion to God, and of large-hearted benevolence towards man; nowhere else are duties and motives set forth with greater depth and tenderness of feeling, or with more winning and persuasive eloquence; and nowhere else is it shown with the same fulness of detail how high and noble principles may be applied so as to elevate and refine the entire life of the community.13

Scholars of an earlier generation attributed this humanitarian outlook to the influence of Hebrew prophecy, but Kaufmann took issue with this view, and Weinfeld countered with a thesis that influence came instead from Israel’s school of wisdom.14 Daube agreed, at least to the extent that Deuteronomy is seen to contain a strong shame-cultural element, which he attributes to wisdom influence.15 Daube goes on to say: “In a system where how you appear to others is of enormous importance, to look on your fellow with benevolence becomes a prominent virtue, to look on him with ill-will a prominent vice, indeed danger.”16 He thought it no accident that Deuteronomy alone in the Old Testament uses the expression “his eye is evil, grudging, toward somebody” (15:9; 28:54, 56). Deuteronomy shows particular concern for the sojourner, orphan (= fatherless), and widow; also the Levite in town, who has no inheritance (= landed property), and in the 7th century is out of a job. Local sanctuaries 12.  S. R. Driver, Deuteronomy (ICC; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1895) xxiii–xxv; Edward Day, “The Humanitarianism of the Deuteronomists,” Biblical World n.s. 38 (1911) 113– 25. 13.  Driver, Deuteronomy, xxv. 14. Yehezkel Kaufmann, The Religion of Israel (trans. Moshe Greenberg; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960) 157–66; Weinfeld, “The Origin of Humanism in Deuteronomy,” 244–47; idem, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School, 293–97. 15.  Daube, “The Culture of Deuteronomy.” 16.  Ibid., 50.

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have been ruined by enemy invaders or else closed down in the reform of Hezekiah (2 Kgs 18:2, 22 [= Isa 36:7]), which centralized worship in Jerusalem. The local Levite thus gets a share of offerings made at the central sanctuary (14:27, 18:1–5); is entitled to the third-year charity-tithe in the town where he lives (14:28–29, 26:12–13); and is invited to join families and their servants in the annual pilgrimages to the central sanctuary, where all are enjoined to eat and be glad (16:10–11, 14). At harvest time, the sojourner, orphan, and widow are accorded gleaning rights (24:19–21). Deuteronomy teaches that justice should not be perverted toward the sojourner, orphan, and widow (24:17, 27:19), for Yahweh loves them and treats them justly (10:17–18). Israel, for its part, would do well to reflect on its own past, remembering that it was once a band of slaves in the land of Egypt (10:19; 16:12; 24:18, 22). We learn from Egyptian, Akkadian, and Ugaritic texts that also in other societies special care was taken to protect and treat justly the orphan, widow, and outcast.17 From ancient Egypt comes the “Instruction for King Meri-ka-Re” (22nd century), in which a ruler gives this advice to his son and successor: “Do justice while you endure on the earth. Quiet the weeper; do not oppress the widow.”18 In “The Protest of the Eloquent Peasant” (21st century), a peasant beaten and robbed of donkeys on a trip to Egypt seeks redress from the Pharaoh’s Chief Steward, whom he addresses as “the father of the orphan, the husband of the widow, the brother of the divorcee, and the apron of him that is motherless.”19 The Laws of Ur-Nammu mandated protection for the orphan, widow, and the poor.20 King Hammurabi in the epilogue to his Law Code boasts that he “promoted welfare in the land . . . in order that the strong might not oppress the weak, that justice might be dealt the orphan and the widow in Babylon.”21 And in the “Keret Legend” from Ugarit, King Keret is reprimanded by his son Yaṣṣib for neglecting the orphans and the widows and is told to step down so that Yaṣṣib can reign.22 Finally, in the “Tale of Aqhat” it is the good Daniel who judges the cause of the widow and the orphan.23 In the New Testament, justice to widows lies at the heart of Jesus’ Parable of the Poor Widow in Luke 18:1–8. Many laws of Deuteronomy are humanistic in character. The following are peculiar to Deuteronomy and relate to human life and human dignity: 17.  F. Charles Fensham, “Widow, Orphan, and the Poor in Ancient Near Eastern Legal and Wisdom Literature,” JNES 21 (1962) 129–39; repr. in James Crenshaw, ed., Studies in Ancient Israelite Wisdom (New York: KTAV, 1976) 161–71. 18.  ANET, 415. 19.  ANET, 408. 20.  ANET, 524 (##162–68). 21.  ANET, 178 (lines 30–90). 22. �������������������� KRT C vi 25–50; ANET,149. 23.  Aqht A v 1–10; Aqht C i 20–30; ANET, 151, 153.

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•  required construction of a parapet (low wall encircling a flat roof) on a new house to eliminate the danger of someone’s falling off the roof and being killed (22:8) •  the attitude to fair maidens captured in (foreign) wars and wanted by Israelite men for wives—that the maidens be allowed time to mourn and to improve their appearance before the marriage is consummated. If the marriage does not work, the women are free to go wherever they want. They must not be sold as slaves, as was commonly done, or treated as slaves by the men who married them, assuming the marriage was largely to satisfy the man’s lustful urges (21:10–14) •  the giving of asylum to slaves escaping to Israel and not returning them to their (foreign) masters. They are to dwell in Israelite towns and not be oppressed (23:15–16) •  the attitude on debt remission (= cancellation) to a poor Israelite in the 7th year. The creditor shall not refuse to lend because the 7th year is approaching. The aim is to eliminate poor in the land, but this will obtain only if people obey the commandments. There is no danger that the poor will cease (or grow fat) in the land (15:1–11) •  the warning against a man discriminating against an unfavored wife and her firstborn son in the liquidation of his estate, giving the younger son of the favored wife the (double) portion, and the actual firstborn son what is left. The rights of the firstborn are to be given to the firstborn, even if he is the son of the unfavored wife (21:15–17) •  the attitude about not taking hand-mills or upper millstones in pledge, which would deprive the poor (women) of their only means to grind grain and prepare daily bread. This would be tantamount to taking a life in pledge (24:6) •  the attitude toward collecting a pledge as security for a loan, that the creditor not enter the house and fetch it for himself, but wait outside and have it brought to him (24:10–11) •  the attitude toward the poor laborer or sojourner, that he receive his wages the same day they are earned, before the sun goes down (24:14–15) •  the attitude about not taking a widow’s garment in pledge under any circumstances (24:17) Two laws in Deuteronomy deal with cruelty to animals: •  the prohibition against taking the mother bird with her eggs or her young from a nest happened upon by chance; the mother must be chased away (22:6–7) •  the prohibition against muzzling an ox treading grain (25:4)

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Other humanitarian laws in Deuteronomy have parallels or precedents in the Covenant Code: •  the attitude toward giving fellow-Israelites interest-free loans, intended as relief for poor and insolvent people who might be victims of war, famine, pestilence, a death in the family (2 Kgs 4:1), or some other adversity over which they had no control (23:19–20; see Exod 22:25) •  the attitude regarding a poor man from whom a garment has been taken as a pledge, that the creditor not sleep on the pledge but restore it to the man before sundown (24:12–13; see Exod 22:26–27) The law regulating manumission of Hebrew slaves in Deut 15:12–18 is more enlightened than corresponding law in Exod 21:1–11. In the deuteronomic law, both male and female slaves are set free when their term is up (Deut 15:12), whereas in the Covenant Code female slaves do not go free (Exod 21:7). The freed slave in the Deuteronomic Code is also given a gift at the time of manumission (15:12–14), which is not specified in the Exodus law. According to Weinfeld, Deuteronomy does not consider the Hebrew slave property (compare with Exod 21:21) but, rather, a “brother” (15:12).24 And in deuteronomic law, nothing is said about a wife given to a male slave by his master and children born to this wife, that they not go out with him, as specified in the law of the Covenant Code (Exod 21:4). The Deuteronomic Code does not deal with damages or civil suits, which occupy a large part of the Covenant Code. The Covenant Code is concerned with offenses relating to property, whereas the Deuteronomic Code is concerned with protecting human individuals, particularly individuals who have little or no means of protecting themselves.25 Deuteronomy contains only two laws on property, the law prohibiting removal of a landmark (19:14) and the law concerning just weights and measures (25:13–16). Weinfeld notes that both laws have parallels in Proverbs (11:1; 20:10, 23; 22:28; 23:10) and receive attention in other wisdom literature of the ancient Near East.

Teaching of Children Teaching and learning, with a larger aim of promoting doing, are important wisdom themes. The didactic temper, according to Weinfeld, is present in the wisdom literature because its concern is with education.26 Moses teaches Yahweh’s commands to the people (Deut 4:1, 5, 14; 5:31; 6:1; 31:19, 22), 24.  Weinfeld, “Deuteronomy: The Present State of Inquiry,” 261. 25.  Idem, “The Origin of Humanism in Deuteronomy,” 243; idem, “Deuteronomy: The Present State of the Inquiry,” 261. 26.  Idem, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School, 298.

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who are then supposed to teach the same to their children (4:9–10, 6:7, 11:19). Teaching children is not something one believes in; it is something one does. The verb ‘to teach’ (‫למד‬, Piel) appears ten times in Deuteronomy (4:1, 5, 10, 14; 5:31; 6:1; 11:19; 20:18; 31:19, 22), and the verb ‘to learn’ (‫למד‬, Qal) seven times (4:10; 5:1; 14:23; 17:19; 18:9; 31:12, 13). The verb ‘to teach’ appears in no other book of the Pentateuch—only in Deuteronomy.27 The related matter of discipline, which is a major theme in Proverbs (3:11–12; 5:7–14, 23; 6:23; 12:1; 13:24; 15:10; 19:18; 22:15; 23:13; 29:17) and in the wisdom literature, generally, finds a prominent place in Deuteronomy (4:36, 8:5, 11:2, 21:18–21, 22:18). Parents are to teach children the mighty acts of God in redeeming Israel from Egyptian slavery. In Deut 6:20–25, we read: 6 20When your son asks you in the future, saying: “What are the testimonies and the statutes and the ordinances that Yahweh our God commanded you?” 21Then you shall say to your son, “We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, and Yahweh brought us out from Egypt by a strong hand, 22and Yahweh gave signs and wonders, great and severe, against Egypt, against Pharaoh and against all his house, before our eyes, 23and us he brought out from there, in order that he bring us in to give to us the land that he swore to our fathers. 24And Yahweh commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear Yahweh our God, for our own good all the days, that he might let us live, as at this day. 25And righteousness it will be for us if we are careful to do all this command­ment before Yahweh our God, just as he commanded us.”

A liturgical injunction admonishing people to hear, internalize, and teach Yahweh’s commands to their children appears twice in the book (6:4–9, 11:18–20). In the first, it is preceded by the Shemaʿ (“Hear [O Israel] . . .”): 6 4Hear O Israel, Yahweh our God, Yahweh is one. 5And you shall love Yahweh your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 And these words that I am commanding you today shall be upon your heart. 7 And you shall teach them diligently to your children, and you shall speak of them when you sit in your house and when you walk in the way, and when you lie down and when you rise. 8And you shall bind them as a sign upon your hand, and they shall be as phylacteries between your eyes. 9And you shall write them upon the doorposts of your house and upon your gates.

The teaching of children is a prominent theme in Proverbs. In Prov 6:20–22, the son is told to keep the teachings of both father and mother (see also Prov 7:1–3 and 8:32–34). In the verses immediately preceding the injunction of 6:4–9, Moses stresses the importance of doing his teachings in the land the people are about to inherit. Keeping the commands by them and their children will lead to the fear 27.  Ibid., 303.

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of Yahweh (6:1–2), which, as was said above, is an important wisdom theme in Deuteronomy and throughout the Bible.28 Elsewhere in Deuteronomy, peop­le are told to make known the extraordinary events at Sinai and the words that Yahweh spoke there to both children and grandchildren (4:9–10). In Deut 31:10–13, Moses calls for a public reading of the law every seven years at the Feast of Booths. There entire families are to be present to hear the law read aloud by the Levitical priests: 31 10And Moses commanded them: “And at the end of seven years, at the appointed time of the year of remission, at the Feast of Booths, 11when all Israel comes to appear before Yahweh your God, in the place that he will choose, you shall read this law in front of all Israel in their hearing. 12Assemble the people, the men and the women and the little ones, also your sojourner who is in your gates, so that they may hear and so that they may learn to fear Yahweh your God, and be careful to do all the words of this covenant, 13and their sons who have not known, they may hear and they may learn to fear Yahweh your God all the days that you live upon the land that you are passing over the Jordan to take possession of it.”

When Yahweh commands Moses to teach the people a song, before he passes from the scene (Deuteronomy 32), that will serve as a witness to future generations of Israel’s rebelliousness in the wilderness, the writer adds parenthetically that this song “will live unforgotton in the mouths of their descendants” (31:21). Teaching of this song will thus be required. After Moses gave the song, he again told the people that they were to impart this teaching to their children (32:46). The ancient Near Eastern treaties also have a didactic concern. In the Sefire Stele: Thus we spoke (and thus we wr)ote. What I, Matiʾel, have written (is) a reminder to my son (and) my grandson who come af(ter) me. Let them do the right thing.29

And from the treaty of Esarhaddon: (You swear that) as you stand in the place of this oath you will not swear with the words of the lips (alone), but with your whole heart, (and) you will teach the treaty to your children who live afterwards.30

Blessing: Life, Goodness, and Longevity in the Land The Sinai covenant, being conditional in nature, is fortified by blessings and curses. Blessing is what Israel lives for, and Deuteronomy recalls Yah28.  Ibid., 274–81. 29.  McCarthy, Treaty and Covenant, 192. 30.  Ibid., 200.

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weh’s blessing in the past and anticipates more of the same in time to come. Opposite the blessing is the curse, and about covenant curses more is said in Deuteronomy than in any other book of the Pentateuch. If Israel obeys Yahweh’s commands, it will be blessed; if it disobeys, a multitude of curses will descend upon the nation. Blessings and curses are announced in Deut 11:26–32, where reference is to a covenant renewal festival on Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal (see Deut 27:12–13), and they are described in copious detail in chap. 28, where the curses outnumber the blessings nearly four to one. For a time after Israel has experienced the blessings and the curses, see Deut 30:1–10. Elsewhere in the book of Deuteronomy, Israel is promised blessing (and multiplication) if it obeys Yahweh’s commands (7:12–16, 8:6–10). Blessing will come when Israelites give the third-year charity-tithe to the Levite, sojourner, orphan, and widow (14:28–29); grant debt remission in the seventh year, most importantly to the fellow-Israelite who is poor (15:1–11); manumit Hebrew slaves—male and female—in the seventh year, providing them also with a departing gift (15:12–18); lend to fellow-Israelites without interest (23:19–20); restore garments taken in pledge from poor folk before sundown (24:12–13); and permit the sojourner, orphan, and widow to glean at harvest time (24:19–22). Deuteronomy assumes that Yahweh will bring abundant harvests in the good land, which will be a blessing (2:7; 12:7, 15; 14:24; 15:14; 16:10, 15, 17). And at the presentation of the firstfruits, the worshiper is to request Yahweh’s ongoing blessing on his people Israel (26:15). Deuteronomy describes blessing as material benefit: life, goodness, and longevity in the land. Weinfeld says: Like the wise teacher who stresses the material benefits that accrue from proper behavior, the author of Deuteronomy makes repeated references to the good fortune that will be the lot of those who observe God’s commandments. The principal Deuteronomic inducement to observe the Torah is, as in the wisdom literature, material retribution. In no other book of the Pentateuch does the concern for material welfare occupy so great a place as in the book of Deuteronomy. Life, good fortune, longevity, large families, affluence and satiety, the eudemonistic assurances which constitute an essential part of wisdom teaching— these constitute the primary motivation for the observance of God’s laws.31

In Deuteronomy, one often meets up with the stereotypical phrase about “living long in the land” (5:33, 11:9, 22:7, 32:47). Land tenure depends upon Israel’s keeping the covenant, which is doing the commands. If Israel goes after other gods, it will not live long in the land (4:26, 30:18). Doing the commands gives “life” to the covenant people (4:1, 8:1, 32:47). “Life” also comes to those who practice “justice, and only justice” 31.  Weinfeld, “Deuteronomy: The Present State of Inquiry,” 257.

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(16:20; see also Prov 21:21). Weinfeld notes that Proverbs speaks often about the fact that justice and righteousness serve to preserve one’s life or keep one from death (Prov 10:2; 11:4, 19; 12:28; 16:31).32 He thinks this emphasis on “life” has its ultimate source in Egyptian wisdom teaching, for example, the “Instruction of Amen-em-opet.” Deuteronomy pulls all these ideas together in its “two-ways” teaching at the close of chap. 30, which invites comparison with Prov 4:10–19. The “twoways” teaching in Deut 30:15–20: 30 15See I have set before you today the life and the good, and the death and the evil, 16and if you listen to the commandment of Yahweh your God that I am commanding you today, to love Yahweh your God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commandments and his statutes and his ordinances, then you will live and you will multiply, and Yahweh your God will bless you in the land into which you are going to possess it. 17But if your heart turns away and you do not listen, and you are drawn away and you worship other gods and serve them, 18I declare to you today that you shall surely perish; your days will not be prolonged upon the land that you are passing over the Jordan to enter to take possession of it. 19I call to witness against you today heaven and earth. The life and the death I have set before you, the blessing and the curse, so you can choose life in order that you and your descendants may live, 20 to love Yahweh your God and to obey his voice and to cling to him, for it is your life and the prolonging of your days to dwell upon the land that Yahweh swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give to them.

Avoidance of Shame David Daube has argued that Deuteronomy contains a strong shamecultural element and therefore teaches the avoidance of shame.33 This shamecultural bias he attributes to wisdom influence in the book. Daube says: The principal explanation of Deuteronomy’s shame-cultural bias seems . . . to lie in the affiliation with Wisdom. . . . Deuteronomy does not belong to Wisdom literature but it stands in close relation to it. . . . In so far as Wisdom governs, authority is more diffused, appeal is made to a larger number of people who are of correspondingly less overwhelming stature [than the single towering figure of a father for the culture in which guilt is more prominent]—the neigh­bours, peers, well-thinking citizens, and so forth; it is in these conditions that shame culture tends to come to the fore.34

32.  Idem, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School, 273. 33.  Daube, “The Culture of Deuteronomy”; idem, “‘Repudium’ in Deuteronomy,” in Neotestamentica et Semitica: Studies in Honour of Matthew Black (ed. E. Earle Ellis and Max Wilcox; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1969) 236–39. 34.  Idem, “The Culture of Deuteronomy,” 27, 51–52.

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Because wisdom has its eye on success in society, concern is expressed for the impression created by an act, on applause and disapproval. Yet, as I said above, Hebrew wisdom is deeply religious. Daube says this is because the guilt mechanism is vigorous. Guilt is present or imputed when one has succumbed to wrongdoing—particularly against God or the commands of God. Daube finds a curious blend of guilt culture and shame culture in ancient Israel and says that guilt culture may still predominate. Yet he believes that, unless attention is paid to the admixture of shame culture, our picture of Deuteronomy and conclusions drawn from it will be seriously distorted. A shame element can be seen in a number of Deuteronomic laws: Deut 20:8.  The officer responsible for recruiting the militia concludes his speech before the assembly by saying that the fearful and weakhearted should depart and not go to battle. This appeals to a man’s sense of shame, says Daube, particularly when preceded by an earlier admonition from the priest that the men not be fearful and weakhearted because Yahweh will give them victory (v. 3). It is evident that disgrace awaits anyone who slips away due to fear and weakheartedness. Conversely, glory awaits those who, after being offered an opportunity to opt out, do stay to fight. Acceptance, favor, and honor are great rewards in a shame culture. Shame is contrasted to honor in Prov 3:35. Deut 21:22–23.  Here it states that the body of a criminal executed and hanged must be taken down before sunset. The injunction appears only in Deuteronomy. The reason for not allowing the body to hang all night is so that the land will not be defiled. Daube says the look of things is important for the writer of Deuteronomy, just as when a corpse lies unburied (21:1), or the camp is left unclean (23:12–14).35 Deut 22:1–4.  Here a cluster of directives warns against “hiding oneself” from awkward situations. None has a parallel outside Deuteronomy. One must not hide oneself from someone’s animal that has wandered off, or when finding something a person has lost,ּ or from someone’s animal that has fallen down. The law concerning a stray animal in Exod 23:4 calls simply for its return by the one who finds it; there is no mention of “hiding oneself” from it. Daube says that what this means is that one must not give in to the tempation to avoid an awkward sight, and in a manner that dispenses with outright refusal.36 He says the injunction “do not hide yourself” introduces a shame aspect more common in the East than in the West. The deuteronomic writer assumes that one will be embarassed at an unseemly object and will try to escape without being noticed. A similar “hiding of oneself” is evident in Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:31–32). 35.  Ibid., 46–47. 36.  Ibid., 29–30.

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Deut 23:1–6.  Here certain categories of people are not permitted to enter the assembly of Yahweh: eunuchs, bastards, Ammonites, and Moabites. Edomites may enter only in the third generation. The creation of classes in which tainted individuals are deprived of full rights, says Daube, is “a mighty weapon in the shame cultural arsenal.” Deut 23:12–14.  This legislation about relieving oneself outside the camp and covering up one’s excrement is promulgated so that Yahweh, when touring the camp, will not see “an unseemly thing.” This expression (‫ )ערות דבר‬appears only one other time in the Old Testament, in the Deuteronomic law dealing with divorce (24:1), and Daube says it is a direct reference to the shame aspect. Deut 23:18. The wages of a cult prostitute—male or female—are not to be brought into the assembly of Yahweh. They are tainted by the disgraceful way in which they were received. Deut 24:1–4.  The description of the primary divorce in this law reflects a preoccupation with shame. The wife loses favor in the eyes of her husband, which Daube says in a shame culture is a terrible misfortune.37 The great aim in a shame culture is to find favor in the beholder’s eyes. The point is further stressed when it says the husband has found some “unseemly thing” (‫ )ערות דבר‬in her. Daube compares this with the Roman concept of repudium.38 Deut 24:8–9.  This law regarding leprosy requires that one follow the instructions of the priests minutely. Remember, the deuteronomic writer adds, what Yahweh did to Miriam when Israel came out of Egypt. Miriam (and Aaron) had questioned Moses’ authority, and Miriam was smitten with leprosy. Moses interceded on her behalf, but Yahweh replied: “If her father had but spit in her face, should she not be shamed seven days?” So Miriam was sent outside the camp for seven days (Num 12:14). Leprosy is a mark of disfavor brought upon by Yahweh, comparable to the disgrace of a child whose father had spit in his face. Deut 24:10–11.  In this law regarding a loan in which a pledge is required, the creditor is not permitted to go into the house to seize the pledge but must remain outside and wait there for the pledge to be brought to him. Daube says this is a striking instance of sensitivity to shame. If the creditor were to enter the house and seize whatever he desired for a pledge, it would be a great dishonor to the debtor and his family. The handing over outside preserves appearances. Deut 25:1–3.  Here the wrongdoer sentenced to a whipping must not be given more than 40 stripes. If he is given an excessive number, says the writer of Deuteronomy, the brother will ‘be rendered contemptible’ (‫ )ונקלה‬in the

37.  Ibid., 32. 38.  Ibid., 33; idem, “‘Repudium’ in Deuteronomy.”

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eyes of others. Daube says a man subjected to a wild, unlimited bastinado will lose his dignity and be degraded forever. Deut 25:5–10.  Here is the only law in the Pentateuch where punishment consists exclusively of public degredation. If a man refuses to carry out the duty of taking his dead brother’s wife in a levirate marriage, the widow shall come up to him in the presence of city elders, pull off his sandal, spit in his face, and recite a degrading word over him (v. 9). His name shall forever be: “The house of him who had his sandal pulled off.” Emphasis is laid here upon preserving “the name” of the dead man, which is of great importance in a shame culture.39 Deut 25:11–12.  Here is also the only law in ancient Israel explicitly mandating maiming. It results from a situation in which a woman intervenes in a fight involving her husband and grabs hold of the opponent’s ‘shameful parts’ (‫)מבוׁשים‬. She is punished by having her hand cut off, bringing her permanent disfigurement and eternal shame. Deut 27:16.  Here in Deuteronomy’s Dodecalogue, which deals with clandestine transgressions, a curse is placed on anyone who treats his father or mother ‘with contempt’. The verb (‫ )מקלה‬is the same as in 25:3, which deals with a brother rendered ‘contemptible’ in the sight of others if subjected to an unlimited bastinado. In Exodus and Leviticus, the death penalty awaits anyone who “curses” or “strikes” his parents (Exod 21:15, 17; Lev 20:9), which Daube says is a significant difference.40 Cursing or striking is more serious and can usually be witnessed by others. Contempt is shown in subtle ways and may be out of public view. Weinfeld says that, because dishonoring one’s parents is here a clandestine act, it cannot be penalized.41 But Proverbs says that such behavior is unacceptable and will be punished (Prov 15:20, 23:22, 30:17). The Deuteronomic Code in other ways shows itself to contain a shamecultural element. One may note, for example, the deterrent function of punishment.42 Four times after mandating capital punishment for an offense, the writer of Deuteronomy adds, “and all Israel / all the people / those who remain shall hear and fear” (13:11, 17:13, 19:20, 21:21). Public example is very important in a shame culture. Deuteronomy also speaks 11 times about the duty to “utterly remove [‫ ]בער‬evil / guilt of innocent blood from your midst / from Israel” (13:5; 17:7, 12; 19:13, 19; 21:9, 21; 22:21, 22, 24; 24:7). The concern in all these cases is with the look of things. On a happier note, Deuteronomy expects entire families—also servants and invited guests—to ‘rejoice’ (‫)ׂשמח‬ at the annual pilgrim festivals (12:7, 12, 18; 14:26; 16:11, 14, 15; 26:11). 39.  Idem, “The Culture of Deuteronomy,” 35. 40.  Ibid., 38–39. 41.  Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School, 277–78. 42.  Daube, “The Culture of Deuteronomy,” 40.

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Daube says that communal display of happiness on specific occasions suits a culture preoccupied with appearances. The other side of ritual merry­making is exclusion from the assembly (23:1–8). Other vocabulary in Deuteronomy supports the thesis that the book contains a shame-cultural bias. There is the expression, ‘you/he may not do [such and such]’ (‫ לא ־תוכל‬/ ‫)לא ־יוכל‬, which is not the same as the apodictic “you/he shall not.” This expression occurs 7 times in the book (12:17; 16:5; 17:15; 21:16; 22:3, 19; 24:4) and means something like “you/he must not even think of doing [such-and-such].” The appeal is to one’s sense of shame. Daube says the expression is similar to the modern English expression, “this is impossible behavior,” in which reference is to an infringement of appearances. There is also the deuteronomic expression ‘when there is found’ ( ‫כי‬ ‫)־ימצא‬, which appears 4 times in the book. It is used with reference to legislation concerning: (1) a man or woman who does evil and has gone and served other gods (17:2–3); (2) someone found slain in an open field, when it is not known who killed the individual (21:1); (3) a man found lying with another man’s wife (22:22); and (4) someone caught kidnapping a person and enslaving or selling him to another (24:7). This expression, says Daube, which occurs also in the prohibition of 18:10 against passing a son or daughter through the fire, shifts “the emphasis from the fearfulness of the crime to the fearfulness of the resulting appearance in the eyes of the beholder—God above all.”43 It is not so much the transgression that is condemned as its display. And when shame is felt toward God, we are approaching the realm of guilt. Daube says: The  beholder  is  horrified  not  only  by wicked acts in progress, idolatry, adul­ tery, theft of a fellow-Israelite, but also by a corpse lying unappeased. In fact, the latter spoils the appearance of the land almost more than any of the other incidents.

In these latter passages, the legislation concludes with the phrase: “you shall utterly remove the evil/guilt of innocent blood from your midst,” which was discussed above as having to do with the look of things. Daube concludes his brilliant essay by saying that the most remarkable appeal to shame is the plea that God not wipe out the Israelites, however rebellious, for then their enemies will conclude that he was powerless to lead them to triumph or was ill-intentioned against them from the beginning.44 This argument appears elsewhere in the Old Testament (Exod 32:12, Num 14:13–19), but not surprisingly, it occurs in the preaching of Deuteronomy (Deut 9:27– 29), as well as in the Song of Moses (Deut 32:26–27). 43.  Ibid., 43–50; idem, “To Be Found Doing Wrong,” in Studi in onore di Edoardo Vol­ terra (6 vols.; Milan: Giuffrè, 1971) 2:1–13. 44.  Idem, “The Culture of Deuteronomy,” 51.

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Discerning False from True Prophets There are two tests for false prophecy in the Old Testament, and both appear in Deuteronomy. The first is found in chap. 13, which contains a law in sermonic dress admonishing people not to follow other gods. Verses 1–5, which make the first point of a three-point sermon, focus on the prophet and “dreamer of dreams.” Should one of these give a sign or a wonder—even with a predictive word that comes to pass—the people are not to pay heed if the individual leads them in the way of other gods. Prophets who lead people in the way of these gods are ingenuine and must be put to death. Yahweh gives them success only so that he may test the people, to see whether they love him and are committed to walk in his way. The people, then, must likewise apply a “Yahweh-only” test to see which prophets are true and which prophets are false. The true prophet speaks for Yahweh and leads people in the way of Yahweh. The false prophet leads people in the worship of other gods. As long as it was between prophets of Yahweh and prophets of other gods, the choice was simple. But what does one do when all the prophets are Yahweh prophets, and there is disagreement among them? How does one tell the false prophet or the true prophet? For this situation, a second test of true and false prophecy is given in Deut 18:20–22. It states: 18 20But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die. 21And if you say in your heart, “How may we know the word which Yahweh has not spoken?”—22when a prophet speaks in the name of Yahweh, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word which Yahweh has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously; you need not be afraid of him.

When Yahweh-prophets speak contrary words, which happened in 1 Kings 22 and, later, in Jeremiah 28, the test for true and false prophecy comes in fulfillment of the prophetic word. Words spoken by false Yahweh-prophets will not be fulfilled. And for good measure, the older test of Deut 13:1–5 is incorporated into this new test by the addition of the words, “or who speaks in the name of other gods” in v. 20.45 Because wisdom is concerned about discerning what is true from what is false, these texts for true and false prophets must be included with other passages in the book showing wisdom influence. 45.  J. R. Lundbom, “The Inclusio and Other Framing Devices in Deuteronomy I–​ XXVIII,” VT 46 (1996) 311.

A Simple Matter of Numbering? “Sovereignty” and “Holiness” in the Decalogue Tradition Rodney R. Hutton We are indebted to Richard Nelson for his many years of scholarship in the service of both the church and the academy of scholarship, but in particular for his careful and thoughtful study of the Deuteronomistic History. In this brief essay, I wish to consider in particular the theological implications of the Deuteronomistic program with regard to the formulation of the Decalogue represented in Deuteronomy 5, comparing it with the version presented in Exodus 20, and to consider the implications of this analysis for the depictions of the cultic reforms of Hezekiah, Manasseh and Josiah as presented by DtrH on the one hand and ChrH on the other. Raised in a tradition shared by Lutherans and Roman Catholics, among others, I memorized a version of the Decalogue according to a certain numbering system that hinged for me on remembering that the fifth commandment was “Thou shalt not kill.” Only later did I realize that a different numbering system seemed to be at work for many of my friends, for whom the prohibition of killing was not the fifth but, rather, the sixth commandment. I was equally intrigued by the redundancy of my Decalogue, which had two “coveting” commandments at the conclusion, but I attributed this to the necessary “hair-splitting” that seemed to mark other parts of biblical legislation. I was intrigued by the system represented by my friends, which had only one “coveting” commandment at the conclusion, but I never gave the matter much thought. Only when afforded the luxury of teaching as a colleague of Richard Nelson did I have the occasion finally to take a closer look at what had been a curiosity and to try to make theological sense of the matter. This study will demonstrate, I hope, that what might appear to be a simple matter of numbering is in fact a significant theological divide that sets Deuteronomistic theology apart from Priestly theology and that underlies a critical distinction in the way these two traditions interpreted the importance of the two chief iconoclastic reform movements of ancient Israel’s history: the reforms of Hezekiah and Josiah. 211

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Coveting the “House(hold)” of One’s Neighbor As we will see, it is the opening prohibition(s) of the Decalogue that raises the significant theological issues at stake in our conversation. However, the conversation must begin by considering the last prohibition(s) in the list, which creates the critical issue with regard to numbering these “ten words.” Exod 20:17 reports this commandment as follows: “You shall not covet [‫]לא תחמד‬ the house [‫ ]בית‬of your neighbor. You shall not covet [‫ ]לא־־תחמד‬your neighbor’s wife or his male or his female servant, his ox or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s.” Several indicators determine that this prohibition is intended to be read as a single prohibition against coveting. First, the twofold use of the verb ‫ חמד‬requires reading v. 17b as a further clarification of v. 17a. Second, there is an obvious lack of any syntactical division between the two parts of the verse. The distinction between v. 17a and v. 17b is marked only by the atnach, forcing the reader to take the verse in its entirety as one issue. The lack of a soph pasuq and setumah or petuchah, which everywhere else in the list marks the conclusion of a command, indicates that the Masoretes intended v. 17 to be read as one unit.1 Therefore, the sense of the prohibition when read as presented in Exod 20:17 is first to identify the larger principle at stake: coveting the neighbor’s ‘household’ (‫)בית‬. This household is then further qualified by listing five specific property items that represent pars pro toto the entirety of the ‘household’: wife, servants (male and female), and cattle (ox and donkey). One unitary commandment relates to this prohibition against “coveting.” When comparing Exod 20:17 with its counterpart in Deuteronomy 5, however, we must note major differences. Deut 5:21 gives the following prohibition: ‘You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife’ (‫)ולא תחמד אׁשת רעך‬. As with Exod 20:17, the word ‫‘ רעך‬your neighbor’ is marked by an atnach. The difference, however, is that in Deut 5:21 there immediately follows a setumah, the Masoretic notation indicating that a major break is to be observed between what precedes and what follows. Therefore, what follows is clearly to be read as a distinct prohibition marked by an entirely different verb: “You shall not crave [‫ ]ולא תתאוה‬your neighbor’s house, his field, his male or female servant, his ox or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s.” In this prohibition, the term ‘house’ (‫ )בית‬no longer means ‘household’, of which the wife is a member, as it did in Exod 20:17. Rather, given its juxtaposition to ‘his field’ (‫)ׂשדהו‬, which was lacking in Deuteronomy but is introduced at this point, the term ‘house’ refers precisely to the physical aspects of the building. In Deuteronomy, the wife is removed from the listing of property that comprises the household and is placed alone as the object of coveting (‫)חמד‬. Property, which 1. A setumah is used before vv. 7, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, and 17, and a petuchah before v. 8 and at the conclusion of the list. We will discuss the difficulty with the syntax of v. 3 below.

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is the object of the verb “crave,” comprises six items in three pairs: house and field, servants male and female, and cattle—ox and donkey. The critical point is that, whereas Exod 20:17 presents us with one commandment relating to coveting (‫)חמד‬, the corollary in Deut 5:21 presents us with two distinct commandments—the first relating to “coveting [‫ ]חמד‬a neighbor’s wife” and the second to “craving [‫ ]אוה‬his property.”2 Whether to count this as one or as two distinct commandments, however, created the major problem in how the Decalogue would be read, because there had to be ‘ten words’ (‫ ;עׂשרת הדברים‬for example, Exod 34:28, Deut 10:4), not nine or eleven. To count the coveting commandment as two separate commandments meant that there could be only eight others. To count it as one single commandment, however, necessitated reading nine others. The central issue, then, was where this other commandment was to be found or eliminated. This is the issue that brings us back to the way that the first commandment is to be read.

The Deuteronomist: Idolatry as Apostasy against the Sovereign God The only place within the body of the Decalogue where a commandment could either be compressed into another (to make eight others) or teased apart from another (to make nine others) was in the opening prohibition(s) concerning the exclusive claim of Yhwh and the following qualification concerning the production of graven images. Thus, the question arose whether the commandments . . . ‫‘ לא יהיה ־לך‬you shall not have . . .’ (other gods) and . . . ‫לא תעׂשה ־לך‬ ‘you shall not make. . .’ (graven images) were to be read as one prohibition or two. As we saw above, the deuteronomic version of the Decalogue distinguished between two different coveting prohibitions. Therefore, it was forced to understand the first commandment as encompassing the entirety of Deut 5:7–10, thereby compressing the commandments ‫ לא יהיה ־לך‬and ‫לא תעׂשה ־לך‬. Understood this way, Deut 5:7 sets down the central prohibition, and vv. 8–10 then proceed to illustrate and qualify what was meant by the prohibition against the veneration of other gods. “You shall have no other gods before me. [That is to say], you shall not make for yourself a cast image [of these other gods] of 2.  Many commentators continue to read Deut 5:21 as containing only one commandment, as does Nelson himself. Nelson understands the distinction between the verbs ‫חמד‬ and ‫ אוה‬not as relating to different acts but as nuancing the action so that the reader understands that it “unambiguously includes internal thoughts.” Nelson does recognize, however, that the reading of Deut 5:21 “does make the word ‘house’ less clearly ‘household’ than in the Exodus parallel” (Richard D. Nelson, Deuteronomy: A Commentary [OTL; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2002] 84). This reading does, of course, affect the manner in which Nelson reads Deut 5:8–10 (below).

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any form3 whether it is in heaven above, or in the earth below, or in the water which is below the earth.” Read this way, Deut 5:8–10 is an integral part of the first commandment and does not in itself in any sense constitute a separate commandment.4 A critical issue concerns the meaning of the term ‫‘ פסל‬idol’ in Deut 5:8. A crux in the debate is whether these images are taken to be icons representing Yhwh, Israel’s God, or icons of other deities in direct competition with the God of Israel. Indeed, the term ‫ פסל‬is ambiguous. The rationale provided by Deut 4:12–16 is that idols are prohibited because Israel saw no ‫‘ תמונה‬form’ of God at Horeb. Therefore, there should be no form attributed to Yhwh by the creation of an idol. Taken this way, logic demands that idols were understood to be images of Yhwh and were prohibited because they attributed form to the one whose form was indefinable. A similar problem is presented by the story of Micah’s idol reported in Judg 17:3–4. Micah’s idol is made of silver that had been dedicated to Yhwh (v. 3). Furthermore, it is confiscated by the migrating Danites who, according to the Deuteronomistic tradition, establish it as the central icon of their Gershomite cult in Dan (Judg 18:14–31). The assumption is that this ‫ פסל‬is part of the ancient Yhwh cult and is not an idol representing a foreign or Canaanite deity. Whether it is intended to be a representation of Yhwh, however, is not expressly stated. To make a ‫פסל‬, therefore, may mean to fashion an object intended to present a form of Yhwh. Other texts, however, suggest that, from the deuteronomic perspective, the ‫ פסל‬was indeed understood to represent not Yhwh but some other deity that was in competition with Israel’s patron deity. Deut 4:23–24, for instance, suggests that the ‫ פסל‬would rouse Yhwh’s “jealousy,” and vv. 27–28 indicate that the punishment for making an idol would be removal to a foreign land, in which the people would “serve other gods made by human hands, objects of wood and stone that neither see, nor hear, nor eat, nor smell.” This typically Deuteronomistic language suggests that, whatever the origin of the term, the deuteronomic program certainly understood the ‫ פסל‬to be an object associated with religious apostasy and with the worship of other (foreign) gods than Israel’s patron, Yhwh. Consistent with this usage, 2 Kgs 21:7 reports that Manasseh erected a ‫ פסל‬of Asherah in the temple itself. Similarly, Ps 97:7 3. MT ‫ פסל כל   ־־תמונה‬suggests reading as a construct chain: ‘a cast image of any likeness’. Considerable evidence, including LXX οὐδὲ παντὸς ὁμοίωμα, supports reading ‫‘( וכל ־תמונה‬a cast image or any likeness’) as in Exod 20:4. However, deuteronomic usage supports the MT (‫פסל תמונת כל‬, Deut 4:16, 23, 25). 4.  Many commentators read Deut 5:7–10 as comprising two commandments, including Nelson himself, even though he acknowledges that “in the context of Deuteronomy” the prohibition likely proscribes images of “heathen deities” and that the deuteronomic version “links the prohibition of images to the commandment demanding exclusivity more tightly than Exod 20 does” (Nelson, Deuteronomy, 80–81).

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suggests that these idols are representations of other gods that themselves bow down in worship of Yhwh. It seems, therefore, that the first commandment according to the deuteronomic tradition prohibited the veneration of other (foreign) deities and understood this to include their representation by molded objects. It is not by sheer accident or simply by being constrained by the limit to ten commandments that the deuteronomic version read the first commandment in this fashion. The concern of this commandment according to Deuteronomy was not explicitly—or even implicitly—with “imaging Yhwh,” the God of Israel. The concern, rather, was with imaging other gods, with worshiping them as though they had a claim on the devotion of the people. That the Deuteronomistic editor edited the Decalogue material to reflect this concern is hardly surprising. Deuteronomistic theology had as its principal theological focus the exclusive claim of Yhwh on the people. The Deuteronomistic History, indeed, was written to demonstrate how the “sin of Jeroboam” in establishing competing cults to the Yahweh cult along with Israel’s and Judah’s proclivity toward worshiping “foreign deities” was the principal cause for Israel’s and Judah’s destruction. For this tradition, apostasy—that is, the worship of gods other than Yahweh—was the critical offense that spelled doom for both Israel and Judah. The sin of Jeroboam hung like a black shroud over the royal houses of Israel, according to DtrH, and this sin was consistently interpreted by the historian, whether rightly or wrongly, as the worship of foreign gods that “drove Israel from following the Lord.”5 Similarly, prophets who stood in this deuteronomic tradition—such as Hosea and Jeremiah—singled out religious apostasy, particularly apostasy symbolized by the worship of the god Baʿal, as the singular offense that above all others marked Israel and Judah for destruction.6 The deuteronomic edition of the Decalogue was not accidental. It was, rather, an intentional and critical statement of the primary theological commitments of the Deuteronomistic program.

The Priestly View: Idolatry as Profanation of the Holiness of God That the first commandment prohibited idolatry and the worship of other gods is hardly surprising. What is generally overlooked, however, is the subtle but critical shift that takes place in the tradition when read in the context of Exodus 20. We demonstrated above that, in the Exodus account, the commandment regarding coveting was read as one unitive rather than two discrete commandments, with the result that the Exodus edition of the Decalogue 5.  2 Kgs 17:21–23; compare with 1 Kgs 12:28, 13:34, 22:52–53; 2 Kgs 13:6. 6.  Hos 2:7–13; 13:1; Jer 2:8; 7:9; 11:13, 17, etc.

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had to present nine other commandments. This demand for nine others, rather than eight, necessitated the reading of what in Deuteronomy is the first commandment as comprising two distinct commandments—thus the tradition represented in the Reformed churches. According to this tradition, the first commandment clearly pertains to the specific issue of fidelity to and worship of Yhwh alone among the other gods: “You shall have no other gods before me” (Exod 20:3). In this tradition, however, there then follows in vv. 4–6 a distinct, second commandment relating to idolatry: “You shall not make for yourself an idol.” A syntactical problem is indicated by the question whether Exod 20:3 is or is not concluded by the Masoretic notation soph pasuq, indicating a major break between vv. 3 and 4. BHS indicates no such syntactical marker, but a soph pasuq is present in many Hebrew manuscripts and editions. The disputed presence or lack of a soph pasuq concluding Exod 20:3 seems to me to indicate the confusion that existed in how the text should be read. The tradition indicating its presence undoubtedly understood that, given the fact that syntax markers already indicated nine other commandments in the list, vv. 4–6 had to be a separate, tenth commandment. The critical question is what is at stake in this Exodus prohibition against idols. The version in Deuteronomy, driven by its commitment to Deuteronomistic theology, understood the production of idols to represent apostasy, the worship of other (that is, foreign or Canaanite) gods. However, is this association of idols with the “other gods” of the first commandment equally to be assumed of the version in Exodus 20, particularly when the prohibition against the making of these idols (commandment 2) has so clearly been disconnected from the prohibition of apostasy (commandment 1)? At least the association of idols with the prohibition of apostasy needs to be clarified and qualified and cannot simply be assumed. The version of the Decalogue given in Exodus 20 clearly stands within the broader context of Priestly theology, as contrasted with the Deuteronomistic theology discussed above. The connection of Exodus 20 with Priestly theology is most evident in the rationale provided for the Sabbath commandment in vv. 8–12: You are to observe the Sabbath because God observed it after creating the world in six days. Whereas the Deuteronomistic version of the Decalogue anchored the Sabbath command in a concern for social justice due to servants and laborers and in the historical remembrance of Israel’s escape from Egyptian bondage (Deut 5:12–15), the version in Exodus 20 refers directly to a critical point made in Priestly theological tradition: God’s creation of the cosmos in six days (Genesis 1). It seems justified and necessary, therefore, to understand Exodus 20 as standing within the larger orbit and tradition of Priestly theology and to look to this theological tradition for the broader context within which to understand the concern about idolatry as presented in Exod 20:4–6.

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The term ‫פסל‬, when used in texts associated with the Priestly tradition, suggests a later development, in which the concern was not expressly for the sake of Yhwh’s presence as Israel’s patron deity vis-à-vis other deities, as in deuteronomic theology, but for the sake of Yhwh’s “holiness” expressed vis-à-vis the rest of creation—the need to distinguish between “creator” and “creature.”7 Whereas DtrH reports that Manasseh set up a ‫ פסל‬imaging Asherah (2 Kgs 21:7), ChrH removes the reference to Asherah, perhaps to dissociate images of this sort from the worship of foreign deities (2 Chr 33:7). Following his Deuteronomistic source, ChrH allows that Manasseh did erect altars to “the Baʿals,” made Asherah poles, and worshiped the “host of heaven” (2 Chr 33:3– 5). The ‫ פסל‬that Manasseh set up, however, is dissociated from these foreign deities. 2 Chr 33:15 indicates that Manasseh later removed the foreign gods as well as the ‫ פסל‬from the temple, which would be a curious expression had ChrH understood the ‫ פסל‬to be an idol of a foreign god. In this tradition, an idol of this sort is characterized as the ‫( פסל הסמל‬2 Chr 33:7; ‘statuary idol’?). The term ‫ סמל‬is used otherwise in this Priestly tradition to represent the “image of jealousy” that Ezekiel sees in the temple (Ezek 8:3, 5). The writer does not state what this image is, but its mention is followed in Ezek 8:10 by a reference to the engravings of all manner of ‫‘ רמׂש‬creeping things’ and ‫בהמה ׁשקץ‬ ‘loathsome animals’—that is, not images of deities but of animals that were regarded as unclean. By the time the Priestly tradition was formalized in the postexilic period, a critical shift had taken place in Israelite (now “Jewish”) theology, as is evinced by the language of 2 Isaiah. If it is too naïve to speak of a sudden transition from “polytheism” to “monotheism,” one can at least understand how the crisis of exile would have thrown all old assumptions about the nature of deity into critical doubt. Certainly 2 Isaiah seems to lean in the direction of stressing the universality of God’s reign in such a way as not only to minimize the potency and efficacy of “other gods” but even to call their very existence into question. The incomparability of Yhwh (Isa 40:18–20, 25–26; 44:7, 24), the singleness of divine creation and rule (Isa 40:28, 44:24) and of divine control over history (41:4, 26; 42:8–9), and the solitary existence of God in the heavens (Isa 43:10–13, 44:6–7, 45:5–7) are themes stressed by the political 7.  When suggesting that the Exodus version of the Decalogue represents a “later version,” I do not wish to debate which version came first or to assume any sort of evolutionary development of the Decalogue tradition in which the deuteronomic version was “original.” On these issues, see the response to Frank-Lothar Hossfeld developed by Axel Graupner (“Zum Verhältnis der beiden Dekalogfassungen Ex 20 und Dtn 5,” ZAW 99 [1987] 308–29), in which Graupner disputes Hossfeld’s contention that the deuteronomic version, itself the result of a complex redaction-critical process, was the source for Exodus 20. The concern here is to suggest how the issues were understood in the “classical” forms of Deuteronomistic and Priestly theology as ideological expressions of their distinct theological programs.

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rhetoric of 2 Isaiah. Certainly, earlier assumptions regarding the existence of multitudes of “patron deities” among whom Yhwh ranked as Israel’s national patron8 were in the process of being radically rethought, and new theological voices stressed not only the absolute incomparability of Yhwh but even his own singular existence in a heaven depleted of other divine contenders. Yhwh alone ruled in the heavens, and idols were only laughable sticks of wood and sheet metal (Isa 44:9–20). If one can justifiably speak of a gradual inclination toward developing monotheism in this Priestly theology, then the corollary is that Priestly concern, unlike its earlier Deuteronomic counterpart, did not need to focus to such an extent upon the theme of Yhwh’s exclusive claim upon Israel over against other gods. This particular issue, so critical for the earlier Deuteronomistic program, had likely lost its urgency by the time the Priestly program was formalized. The concern of the Priestly tradition was, rather, to protect Yhwh’s exclusive “holiness” from contamination from the realm of the “common” or “ordinary,” to insist upon Yhwh’s utter “incomparability” not only over against any other gods but also over against anything that was “creature” as opposed to “creator.”9 It was this driving concern to distinguish between ‫‘ הקדש‬the holiness’ of God’s divine presence and ‫‘ החל‬the commonness’ of all that lay outside the sphere of the ‘holy’ that marked the critical interest of the Priestly program in every way (Lev 10:10). In this regard, the making of a ‫ פסל‬in Priestly perspective was seen not as a compromise of Yhwh’s integrity vis-à-vis other gods (so Deuteronomy) but vis-à-vis creation itself. The concern of this second commandment in Exodus 20 was not to preclude the imaging of other gods. They had largely lost their threat, at least within this theological program. It was, rather, to preclude the imaging of Yhwh himself—imaging deity with creaturely images—of “anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.” In this Priestly version of the Decalogue, the second commandment was not concerned with the prohibition of idols of foreign deities and was not understood as an extrapolation of the concerns of the first commandment. It was concerned, rather, with the imaging of God’s own holy presence by associating the holy with anything that represented creature— whether creatures of the sky or land or oceans/waters and which, through contamination with uncleanness and that which was common, would compromise Yhwh’s esssential holiness. 8.  For example, Deut 32:7–9, where ‫‘ יהוה‬Yahweh’, the patron of Israel, is given charge of his portion by ‫‘ עליון‬Elyon/Most High’. 9.  Durham suggests that the prohibition of images in Exodus is to insist that “nothing created can serve to represent him . . . because Yahweh has made every thing and every being. . . . No image conceivable to them could serve to represent him” (John I. Durham, Exodus [WBC; Waco, TX: Word, 1987] 286).

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Iconoclastic Reform in the Perspectives of DtrH and ChrH If the thesis proposed above is correct, that the interests of the Deuteronomistic and Priestly programs differed widely concerning the matter of “imaging deity,” then one might suspect that there would be traces of these differing perspectives reflected in the accounts of the reform movements of Hezekiah and Josiah as related by DtrH on one hand and ChrH on the other. It is to this issue that I now turn. The reforms of Hezekiah and Josiah are presented in the Deuteronomistic History as a straightforward attempt to clear the temple, Judah, and the entire land of offensive cultic objects that compromised the sovereignty of Yhwh. The primary problem, according to DtrH, is that Judah had “abandoned” Yhwh and worshiped other gods, provoking divine jealousy (2 Kgs 22:17). Hezekiah’s reform movement is concentrated on the ‫‘ מצבת‬memorial stones’ and the ‫‘ אׁשרה‬cultic pole’ associated with the local Baʿal/Asherah cult (2 Kgs 18:3–4). Of course the reference to the destruction of ‫‘ נחׁשתן‬Nehushtan’ in 2 Kgs 18:4 is a bit anomalous, since this object obviously was at home within the Yhwh cult itself.10 This note must have been firmly embedded in DtrH’s sources, because it is not likely that the author would have invented a detail attributing an apostate cultic icon to Moses. Its reportage in DtrH is therefore less the interest of the author than of his sources, and its presence in the report can only testify to DtrH’s fidelity to those sources. Otherwise, Hezekiah’s reform movement as presented by DtrH appears to be less a reform of the Yhwh cult and much more a suppression of foreign or non-Yahwistic elements that crept in as early as the reign of Rehoboam (1 Kgs 14:22–24, 2 Kgs 17:19). Indeed, DtrH reports the measures taken by Ahaz to reform the Yhwh cult itself, and in particular the addition of the updated altar, the repositioning of the bronze altar, and the redesign of the stands and “sea” (2 Kgs 16:10–20), with measured detachment, without any word of censure other than to state that Ahaz had effected these reform measures “because of the king of Assyria” (v. 18). Because DtrH’s concern was not a “reform” of the Yhwh cult but the suppression of “foreign” elements, there was no mention of the new altar or other design innovations introduced by Ahaz when Hezekiah restored the temple, since they were not understood to threaten Yhwh’s sovereignty. Similarly, DtrH describes the reform measures taken by Manasseh in terms of the reimportation of foreign elements: altars for Baʿal, the Asherah pole, and 10.  The report by Isaiah of seeing ‫‘ ׂשרפים‬seraphim’ within the temple (Isa 6:2–7) is a reflex of this tradition, which associates the cult object, attributed by DtrH himself to Moses, with the ‫‘ ׂשרף‬saraph’ (from the root ‫‘ ׂשרף‬burn’) erected by Moses in the wilderness as a curative for the ‘burning snakes’ (Num 21:6–9).

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altars for “all the host of Heaven” (2 Kgs 21:3–5). Indeed, the reference to a ‫ פסל‬of Asherah erected by Manasseh in the temple (v. 7) is surprising, since a “fashioned” image of this sort is not typically identified with this goddess. The reform of Josiah is described by DtrH in terms similar to the description of Hezekiah’s reform. Again, the problem is described as Judah’s abandonment of Yhwh and the worship of other gods, provoking divine jealousy by the “work of their hands”—a term referring to the manufacture of idols (2 Kgs 22:17). Josiah’s iconoclastic action is directed against cult objects associated with Baʿal, Asherah, Shemesh (sun-god), Yareach (moon-god), and “all the host of heaven” (23:4–14). The priests of these high places are identified by DtrH as ‫‘ כמרים‬idolatrous priests’ (v. 5), a term used otherwise only in Hos 10:5 and Zeph 1:4, where in both cases it is associated with the cult of Baʿal.11 Even the house of the male prostitutes, destroyed by Josiah, is associated not with the Yhwh cult but with that of Asherah (2 Kgs 23:7). As a part of his iconoclastic program, Josiah is reported by DtrH to have defiled a number of cultic sites, including Topheth (v. 10) and high places for Astarte, Chemosh, and Milcom (v. 13) by spreading human bones on them. The interest of DtrH in such matters as the cultic practices of Ahaz and Manasseh and the reform movements of Hezekiah and Josiah is in the suppression of what were regarded as foreign cultic practices or matters associated with the indigenous practices of Canaanite worship. The primary concern was regarding Israel’s apostasy, understood as rebellion against Israel’s patron deity, Yhwh, an offense against the sovereignty of Israel’s God. When we turn to the ChrH’s account of the reform movements of Hezekiah and Josiah, however, we can see a different theological concern at the center of the conversation. ChrH’s elaborate narrative about Hezekiah’s reform begins with the note that “he opened the doors of the house of the Lord and repaired them.” This note, lacking in DtrH’s account, refers to ChrH’s report that Ahaz had scuttled the temple cult and barred its entrance (‫ויסגר את־־דלתות בית־יהוה‬ 2 Chr 28:24). ChrH does indeed include the reference to foreign elements involved in Hezekiah’s reform, because this information could not be overlooked in his sources. ChrH’s account of the reform, however, is presented as a thoroughgoing cleansing and sanctifying of the Yhwh cult itself, a renewal of that which Ahaz had scuttled, and a removal of the contaminating ‫‘ הנדה‬filth’ from the temple (29:5). According to ChrH, the chief offense was not idolatry committed against the sovereignty of Yhwh by the worship of competing foreign or Canaanite deities. The chief offense was, rather, that “they also shut the doors of the vestibule and put out the lamps, and have not offered incense 11.  See Hos 13:1–2, which, in spite of what many argue is the original “Yahwistic” origin of the calf iconography in Bethel, Dan and, by extension, Samaria, clearly associates the iconography with Baʿal.

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or made burnt offerings in the holy place to the God of Israel” (2 Chr 29:7). It was for this reason, the suspension of the Yhwh cult itself, that “the wrath of the Lord came upon Judah and Jerusalem” (v. 8). The reform was understood to be directed at the sanctification of the sacred precincts and the cleansing of its utensils and paraphernalia due to their having been “deconsecrated” or “defiled” by Ahaz. The terms ‫‘ קדׁש‬sanctify’ and ‫‘ טהר‬cleanse’, which nowhere occur in DtrH’s account of the reform, are governing terms in 2 Chr 29:5–19. When it is reported that the priests “brought out all the unclean things” from the temple ( ‫כל‬ ‫־טמאה‬,  29:16), there is no reference to objects imaging foreign or Canaanite deities. The only logical referent is the temple utensils that had been destroyed by Ahaz (28:24). Hezekiah’s reform is, according to ChrH, a renewal and sanctifying of the temple precinct because of the defiling it had suffered under Ahaz. The issue was not that of asserting divine sovereignty over against the worship of foreign deities. It was, rather, a matter of asserting divine holiness over against contamination from commonness and from uncleanness resulting from the sacrificial cult’s having been suspended and the temple falling into disrepair (2 Chr 29:19). In the tradition represented by ChrH, abandonment of Yhwh did not mean first and foremost the worship of other deities. It meant, rather, the abandonment of the temple and the temple cult (29:6). The reform of Josiah is more complicated because ChrH’s source material, found in DtrH, was much richer and focused much more extensively on matters central to the Deuteronomistic program: the suppression of foreign and Canaanite deities. Again, this information could scarcely be ignored, and so ChrH reports on these matters. Two observations, however, suggest that ChrH was less interested specifically in the issue of the suppression of foreign cultic practices than, as in his portrayal of the reforms of Hezekiah, in the “purging” of uncleanness in preparation for the renewal of the Yhwh cult itself. While DtrH reports that Josiah ‘defiled’ (‫ )טמא‬a number of cultic installations (2 Kgs 23:8, 10, 13, 16), never is it said that Josiah ‘cleansed’ (‫ )טהר‬objects or places of this sort. In ChrH’s account of the reform of Josiah, however, his measures are cast as a ‘purging’ or ‘cleansing’ (‫ )טהר‬of Judah, Jerusalem, and the temple (2 Chr 34:3–5, 8). Even more significant is the well-known and often-discussed matter of the ordering of Josiah’s reform movement by ChrH in contrast to the ordering of DtrH. According to DtrH, Josiah’s reforms followed the finding of the Book of the Law in 622 b.c.e., because DtrH was interested in predicating the iconoclastic actions against the foreign and Canaanite deities specifically upon the deuteronomic law book itself. Accordingly, when Huldah the prophet reports that “they have abandoned” Yhwh, this can only be understood in terms of the foreign iconography that still infested the temple and the land. Abandonment of Yhwh, according to DtrH, means worshiping other gods and provoking

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Yhwh to anger with “the work of their hands” (2 Kgs 22:17). In the account of ChrH, however, a different ordering of events is provided, with the iconoclastic aspects of the reform reported to have already taken place before the finding of the Book of the Law in 622. It is often assumed that ChrH’s account may well be correct, given the obvious ideological commitments at work in the presentation of DtrH, focused as it is on the Deuteronomic Code. Though this may be true, we ought not presume that the account of ChrH is any less ideologically interested. By placing the iconoclastic actions of Josiah’s reform prior to the discovery of the Mosaic Torah, the words of Huldah (2 Chr 34:22–28) are mitigated because Josiah had already purged the land and the temple of these offenses. Indeed, ChrH reports that the finding of the Book of the Law further prompts only the covenant ceremony (2 Chr 34:29–33) and the reinstitution of the Passover in Jerusalem (2 Chr 35:1–19). Given this rearrangement of the reform measures, ChrH appears to be indicating that the purpose of Josiah’s iconoclasm, itself unprompted by any concern for Mosaic Torah, was for the express purpose of purging or cleansing the land, city, and temple as a form of preparation for that which was critical—the reinstitution of the Passover and the temple cult. According to this account, the abandonment of God (2 Chr 34:25) has more to do with the lapse of the temple cult than with the worship of foreign gods. Once again, ChrH understands the offense against Yhwh not exclusively in terms of idolatry as an offense against the “sovereignty” of God but in terms of the defilement of the temple cult as an offense against the “holiness” of God.

Conclusion: The Sovereignty of God and the Holiness of God If these observations regarding the iconoclastic reform movements of Hezekiah and Josiah are correct, they point out a major divide between Deuteronomic theology and Priestly theology regarding the way that cultic abuses, including the manufacture and implementation of images, were understood, and this divide is witnessed in the Decalogue tradition as presented in Deuteronomy 5 on one hand and Exodus 20 on the other. In the Deuteronomic tradition, the abandonment of Yhwh was understood in political terms as the denial of divine sovereignty as a result of the worship of foreign or Canaanite gods, provoking Yhwh to divine jealousy. In Priestly tradition, however, the abandonment of Yhwh was understood in cultic terms as the denial of divine holiness due to the contamination of the land, temple, and cult, which could be restored only by actions of cleansing, sanctifying, and restoring the sacrificial cult to its pristine condition. In this Priestly tradition, religious icons, whether regarded as images of foreign deities or simply as images of anything that represented creature in contrast to creator, were understood as a threat, not because of their challenge to Yhwh’s sovereign rights but because these images

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contaminated the sphere of the holy by confusing what was holy with what was common. That the Decalogue tradition in Deuteronomy 5 understands any ‫פסל‬ to represent the other gods of which it has spoken is the logical consequence of its alignment with the deuteronomic program. Similarly, that the tradition in Exodus 20 understands any ‫ פסל‬to represent the contaminating association of the common with the holy is similarly logical, given these sorts of Priestly concerns. It is this primary commitment to sovereignty on one hand and to holiness on the other that stands behind the two Decalogue traditions and that gives us our confounding numbering system of the Ten Commandments.

What Is Abimelek Doing in Judges? Roy L. Heller In his essay “What is Achsah Doing in Judges?” Richard Nelson provides an in-depth and tantalizing study of the mininarrative about Achsah in Judg 1:10–15.1 By looking at the various historical-critical issues associated with the text as well as its lexicographical and literary aspects, the article attempts to answer two different questions: “First, what is Achsah doing in Judges, that is to say what are the implications of her actions in the plot of the story? Second, what is Achsah doing in Judges, that is what is the rhetorical purpose of her story in the book?”2 The following essay concerning the theological and rhetorical purpose of the story of Abimelek for the book of Judges is offered to Richard with profound thanks for everything he has meant—professionally and personally—to me during the past eight years. The story of Abimelek (Judg 9:1–57) does not seem to fit within the book of Judges. Unlike the other major narratives in the book, Abimelek is not a judge/ deliverer, nor does a judge/deliverer explicitly appear anywhere in his story. Moreover, the story does not follow the well-known cyclical pattern of sin, oppression, deliverance, and peace (and subsequent sin) found in Judges 2 and scattered throughout the six major judge stories. Finally, the story of Abimelek does not seem to hold any vital importance for the book as a whole. If the final few verses of chap. 8 (8:29–35) and the entirety of Judges 9 were removed from the book—moving from “the land had rest forty years in the days of Gideon” to the notices of the minor judges Tola and Jair—we would, perhaps, be none the wiser and would certainly not miss the strange tale of the oppressive king of Shechem. In both its content and in its form, the story of Abimelek seems completely extraneous to the book of Judges as a whole. In his foundational study of the book of Judges from a literary perspective, Barry G. Webb also seems not to know what to do with King Abimelek.3 He notes that, while the story is primarily to illustrate a theology of retribution—a 1.  Richard D. Nelson, “What Is Achsah Doing in Judges?” in The Impartial God: Essays in Biblical Studies in Honor of Jouette M. Bassler (ed. Calvin J. Roetzel and Robert L. Foster; NTM 22; Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2007) 12–22. 2.  Ibid., 12. 3.  Barry G. Webb, The Book of Judges: An Integrated Reading (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 1987).

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major theme of Judges—the retribution that is illustrated does not parallel that found elsewhere in the book: The process of exact retribution in the Abimelech story is an aberration from the alternating pattern of punishment and rescue in the succession of stories about the savior-judges. . . . In the stories of the judges god [sic], as ‫( יהוה‬Yahweh), has operated on a different principle, namely, punishment tempered by compassion, with compassion (expressed as rescue) having the final say in each episode.4

Webb suggests that the story of Abimelek should be considered a “sequel” to the Gideon story, similar to the notices about Tola and Jair that follow it. He, therefore, discusses the story of Gideon, the story of Abimelek, and the notices about Tola and Jair all under the same section.5 However, this solution does not reflect the nature of the texts as we have them. The extended, artistic narrative about (Gideon and) Abimelek is clearly something different from the short, tight notices about Tola and Jair. Moreover, the clearly defined end of the narrative about Gideon in 8:28 (“So the land had rest forty years in the days of Gideon”)—a formulaic clause that marks the end of all previous judge stories6—signals that what follows is something else. Finally, if the overriding thematic motif in the Abimelek story is “retribution” (of whatever sort), this same theme is not a major or minor motif in the Gideon story. Thus, the Abimelek story is defined generically as separate from what follows, formally separate from what precedes, and thematically different from the Gideon story. It is not, for these reasons, appropriate to think of it as a “sequel” to the story of the fearful Gideon. What, therefore, is Abimelek doing in the book of Judges?

What Is Abimelek Doing in Judges? The first question to ask and settle is What is the significance and meaning of the Abimelek story, in and of itself? What is the purpose of the story? In his article “Abimelech und Sichem in Jdc 9,” Volkmar Fritz provides a historical-critical means for dealing with the small inconsistencies in the story of Abimelek.7 He believes that the original core of Judges 9 was a narrative illustrating that a kingship that uses violence will reach a violent end (9:1a, 6, 23, 25, 42, 45, 50–54, 56). The first redaction inserted the episode of Gaal ben Ebed and reformed the story to show that rebellion against a tyrant will fail (9:26–41). The second redaction emphasized the message that the people 4.  Ibid., 158. 5.  The paragraph discussing Abimelek begins, “In this sequel to the Gideon story two explicit statements of theme are provided by the narrator himself” (ibid., 154). The section in which the discussion occurs is named “Gideon (plus Abimelech, Tola, Jair)” (pp. 144–61). 6.  Othniel (3:11), Ehud (3:30), Deborah (5:31b), Gideon (8:28b). 7. Volkmar Fritz, “Abimelech und Sichem in Jdc 9,” VT 32 (1962) 129–44.

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must bear the responsibility for an evil king (9:5b, 7–16a, 19b, 21, 46–49). The third redaction expanded the rulership of Abimelek to include all Israel (9:22, 25). The fourth and final redaction enlarged and stressed the theme of the third redaction, the responsibility of the people (9:16b–19a, 24, 57). The story, as it is finally preserved, is a compilation of many sources and editions and has no essential underlying structure or meaning; indeed, episodes such as the Gaal ben Ebed narrative, in Fritz’s opinion, interrupt and contradict the original fiction, and portions such as the burning of the Tower of Shechem are absolutely unnecessary. There is, however, clearly a unified plot to the story of Abimelek’s kingship. Its plot and purpose are found in the two theological pericopes of 9:24–25 and 9:56–57: And God sent an evil spirit between Abimelek and the men of Shechem; and the men of Shechem dealt treacherously with Abimelek; that the violence done to the seventy sons of Jerubbaal might come and their blood be laid upon Abimelek their brother, who slew them, and upon the men of Shechem, who strengthened his hands to slay his brothers. Thus God caused to return the crime of Abimelek, which he committed against his father in killing his seventy brothers; and God also made all the wickedness of the men of Shechem to fall back upon their heads, and upon them came the curse of Jotham the son of Jerubbaal.

The plot deals with an act of divine retribution upon Abimelek and the people of Shechem for their sins of fratricide and conspiracy. T. A. Boogaart points out that this purpose is heightened by the chiastic structure of the interpretive passages.8 In the turning point of the story, 9:23–24, the pattern is A B/B A/A B (alternating between the agents of the sins, Abimelek and the people of Shechem), and in the concluding 9:56–57, it is A B/B A (alternating between the action of God and the action of the conspirators). By these two interpretive explanations, the story is unified to illustrate that the consequences of evil deeds return upon evil doers.9 How then do the various parts of the story work together to produce this meaningful purpose? The chapter is divided into two sections: the first presents a series of conflicts; the second traces their resolution. The major conflict is already present in the introduction to the story (9:1–6). Abimelek persuades his mother’s brothers (‫ )אחי־אמו‬to speak to the people of Shechem and ask them, “Which is better for you, that all seventy of the sons of Jerubbaal rule over you, or that one rule over you? Remember also that I am your bone and your flesh” (9:2). The people of Shechem agree that Abimelek should rule over 8.  T. A. Boogaart, “Stone for Stone: Retribution in the Story of Abimelech and Shechem,” JSOT 32 (1985) 49. 9.  This is, of course, one of the major themes in the entire Deuteronomistic History.

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them because, they reason, “He is our brother [‫( ”]אהינו‬9:3). They provide him with money from a newly established cult, and with it he hires “worthless and reckless” people, who help him to slaughter his brothers (‫)אחיו‬, the sons of his father, at Ophrah (9:5). Thereupon, the citizens of Shechem make Abimelek king over Shechem (9:6). The play on the word ‘brother’ (‫ )אח‬suggests that, even as the brothers of Abimelek (through his father) were killed at Ophrah, even so the brothers of Abimelek (through his mother) will be killed at Shechem. It is this initial subtle conflict that is worked out in the following episodes. In Jotham’s fable and speech (9:7–21), a single brother of Abimelek has escaped the slaughter and pronounces a curse upon the new king Abimelek and the people of Shechem who aided him in his crime. The theme of retribution is introduced. In the theological section (9:22–25), the reader learns that God has sent an evil spirit between Abimelek and the citizens of Shechem so that both parties may suffer for the crime. The theme of retribution is emphasized. In the episode about Gaal ben Ebed (9:26–39), the reader expects the judgment to be pronounced and executed. Gaal ben Ebed, in a drunken state, boasts of his own power and convinces the citizens of Shechem to overthrow the rule of Abimelek. Abimelek discovers their plot and wages war on the offenders. Retribution is meted out, not against Abimelek but by him! At this point, the conflicts of the story reach their climax, and from here the story is worked out in a series of resolutions. The reader knows the eventual outcome of the plot but the narrative turns provide suspense. First, instead of Gaal ben Ebed triumphing over Abimelek, Abimelek wins the victory; Gaal and his brothers are chased out of town. Retribution against Abimelek and the Shechemites is postponed. Abimelek then lays siege to Shechem. But instead of the citizens of Shechem overcoming the monarch, they suffer death at his hands. Retribution is partially postponed. Then, in a surprise twist based on the curse of Jotham, which promised that fire would “come out from Abimelek and devour the citizens of Shechem” (9:20), Abimelek leads his soldiers to set fire to the Tower of Shechem, in which about a thousand men and women had sought refuge from the war. The tower is destroyed; the citizens of Shechem pay for their sin of conspiracy against the house of Jerubbaal. Retribution is partially resolved. Finally, in a sweep of ambitious revenge, Abimelek encamps against Thebez, takes the city, and again attempts to burn its tower with fire. A single woman, however, flings a millstone from the tower and crushes Abimelek’s skull. With Abimelek’s death, the reader is reminded of the purpose for the story: “Thus God caused to return the crime of Abimelek . . . and the wickedness of the men of Shechem.” Retribution is, finally, fulfilled. Within this tale of exact retribution, two minor motifs appear to highlight the correspondence of the punishment with the crime. The word ‘stone’ (‫)אבן‬

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appears in two decisive points in the story.10 At the scene of the crime, Abimelek slays his 70 brothers upon a stone (9:5). At the scene of his punishment, Abimelek is likewise killed by a stone (9:52–54).11 In similar fashion, the word ‘one’ (‫אחד‬, ‫ )אחת‬appears at decisive points in the narrative.12 The original speech of Abimelek to his maternal family includes the words: “Which is better for you, that all seventy of the sons of Jerubbaal rule over you, or that one [‫ ]אחד‬rule over you?” (9:2). Abimelek kills his brothers on one (‫ )אחת‬stone (9:5). When he comes to confront Gaal ben Ebed at the climax of the story, Gaal reports that “one [‫ ]אחד‬head is coming down from the Diviner’s Oak”—that is, Abimelek (9:37). And finally, it is a single woman (‫ )אׁשה אחת‬that throws the stone that crushes his head and wins the victory over Abimelek (9:53). These minor themes support and emphasize the nature of the exact retribution executed upon Abimelek. One who wanted to be head of the people of Shechem and slaughtered his brothers upon one stone to secure his kingship was punished by having his own head crushed by a stone thrown by a single woman. The story of Judges 9 is a unified narrative that proclaims that divine punishment corresponds to human sin. Its unity is shown in its plot structure, in which each episode contributes to the overall climax-resolution framework of the story. Its unity is also woven together by the use of minor themes that use words such as “stone” and “one” to tie the plot together.

What Is Abimelek Doing in Judges? The second, and more troublesome issue that must be addressed is why the story of Abimelek is included in the book of Judges at all. The story has elicited less reflection or comment from scholars than any other portion of Judges, yet the story of the rise and fall of King Abimelek is clearly central to the book in several ways. The Abimelek narrative is vital to a full and textured understanding of the book as a whole. Falling as it does near the center of the book of Judges, the narrative of Abimelek divides the book into two parts and serves as a transitional chapter. Several characteristics of the book before chap. 9 change after chap. 9. For example: 10. See Boogaart, “Stone for Stone,” 51: “The correspondence between the two death scenes is unmistakable. The seventy sons of Jerubbaal, lying on a stone, were slain by Abi­ melech. Abimelech, lying on or near the bloody stone that had crushed his skull, was slain by his armour-bearer. His retribution has been exact indeed.” 11.  Rashi, in his commentary on Proverbs, uses Abimelek’s crime and death as an illustration for the proverb “Whoever rolls a stone, it will roll back upon him” (Prov 26:27). 12.  See the insightful article by J. G. Janzen, “A Certain Woman in the Rhetoric of Judges 9,” JSOT 58 (1987) 33–57.

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(1) Before chap. 9, each judge story ends with “and the land had rest X years” (3:11, 30; 5:31b; 8:28).13 This pattern never appears after chap. 9. (2) Before chap. 9, the victory over the oppressor is always symbolized by the defeat of the king of the oppressing nation: Cushan-Rishataim, king of Mesopotamia (3:10); Eglon, king of Moab (3:21–23); Jabin, king of Canaan (4:24); and Zebah and Zalmunna, kings of Midian (8:5, 21). After chap. 9, the victory of the Israelites is presented only in terms of overcoming the oppressing nation as a whole: the Ammonites (11:32–33) and the Philistines (16:30). (3) Before chap. 9, inner-Israelite relations are cooperative or, if tense, easily abated: Judah and Simeon (1:3), the war against Sisera (5:14–18), Gideon and his fellow citizens (6:28–32), and Gideon and the Ephraimites (8:1–3). After chap. 9, inner-Israelite relations almost always erupt in widespread violence: Jephthah and the Ephraimites (12:1–6), Micah and the Danites (18:16– 19), the Levite and the Benjaminites (19:22–26), the Levite and his concubine (19:27–30), Israel and the Benjaminites (20:18–48), Israel and Jabesh-Gilead (21:8–12), and Israel and the Shilohites (21:16–23). One can clearly see that the structure and progression of the stories of Judges are centered upon the story of Abimelek in Judges 9. What, however, is the significance of these rhetorical changes for our understanding of the Abimelek story and for our interpretation of the book of Judges as a whole? The two keys for understanding the function of the chapter involve the descending, cyclical structure of the stories throughout the book, and the unusual view of retribution pointed out by Webb, mentioned above in this article. It has almost become axiomatic that the stories of Judges are structured according to a four-part cyclical pattern laid out in chap. 2:14 1. Israel sins (2:11–13), followed by 2. God’s handing them over to an oppressor for punishment (2:14–15), followed by 3. God’s raising up a deliverer who rescues Israel from the oppressor (2:16–17), followed by 4. the deliverer’s judging and ensuring peace during his or her lifetime (2:18). 13.  Compare Deut 12:10. 14.  This is slightly revised from the classic description of the cycle found in, for example, J. Alberto Soggin, Judges (trans. J. Bowden; OTL; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1981) 4–5: [The characteristics of the narrative framework] are as follows: the people of God are unfaithful and Yahweh therefore deprives them of his protection, thus delivering them into the hand of their enemies; oppressed, the people repent and cry out to the Lord begging for mercy; the Lord sends help in the form of a judge who delivers them from their enemies. After a while, the process repeats itself and continues to do so a number of times, giving the impression of a quasi-cyclical conception of time in which history repeats itself.

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After the death of the judge, Israel “would relapse and behave worse than their ancestors” (2:19) and the pattern would repeat until, finally, God would no longer “drive out before them any of the nations that Joshua left when he died” (2:20–23). When this sequence is portrayed in the story of Othniel, the standard cycle is standardized in its language: 1. Israel “did what was evil in the sight of the Lord” (3:7), followed by 2. God “sold them into the hand of” an oppressor, whom they served for a particular number of years (3:8), followed by 3. Israel “cried out” in their oppression, God “raised up a deliverer for the Israelites,” upon whom the “spirit of the Lord” would come to bring about justice (3:9–10), followed by 4. the “land had rest for” a certain number of years, followed by the death of the judge (3:11). This pattern, however, only holds true consistently for the first, paradigmatic judge, Othniel. Beginning with Ehud, the pattern begins to break down. The Ehud cycle does not end neatly with “the land had rest,” followed by the death of Ehud. Instead the notice about Shamgar interrupts the pattern, along with a notice of Israel’s sinning before a circumstantial clause telling of Ehud’s death (4:1). In the Deborah cycle, the deliverance section is greatly expanded (4:4– 5:31a) and, in fact, never includes any mention of God’s raising up anyone to deliver the Israelites after their cry for help! Who, in fact, is the deliverer in the story? Deborah? Barak? Jael? All three? The only deliverer explicitly mentioned in the story is God (4:23)! In the Gideon cycle, the cry for help is followed, not by deliverance, but by an indictment by God about Israel’s waywardness (6:7–10). Even the call of Gideon (he is never “raised up”) seems to take forever, because of his fearfulness and reticence (6:11–7:15), until finally the battle occurs, which again seems greatly expanded and finally ends with Gideon’s killing the Midianite kings himself, not because he is Israel’s deliverer, but because he is forced to because of the immaturity and fear of his firstborn son (8:20–21). Most tellingly, Israel begins to sin before the death of Gideon, thus again confusing the ending of the cycle. As a whole, then, the cycle laid out in Judges 2 and perfectly illustrated in the story of Othniel, slowly dissolves through the tales of Ehud, Deborah/ Barak, and Gideon and will continue to disappear in the later story of Jephthah until, by the time of the Samson stories, little of it is left except the initial sin and oppression notice (13:1) and the final notice of Samson’s judgeship (16:31b). The unraveling of the cycle is not accidental, however, and does not represent careless editing in the composition history of the book. The progressive brokenness of the cycle exactly parallels the progressive brokenness of

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Israelite society as the people continue to worsen their sinful infidelity with each successive cycle. This, of course, will end with the two epilogues, in which the cycle is nowhere to be found. Only chaos reigns at the end of the tragic story of the book of Judges. This, then, is the structural pattern of the book as a whole. How does the story of Abimelek figure into this increasingly loosened structure? An answer is hinted at in Webb’s discomfort with the type of retribution illustrated by the story. It is true that the type of retribution at the center of the narrative is an exacting, tit-for-tat playing out of poetic justice as opposed to the type of justice that is tempered by mercy found in the relationship between God and Israel elsewhere in the book. But Abimelek here is not a cipher for Israel; Abimelek’s sin is not followed by his being oppressed, which is not followed by his crying out, which is not followed by his being delivered and having peace for a certain number of years. Abimelek does not stand in for Israel; Abimelek stands in for the oppressor. Elsewhere in the book, kings are punished with a type of exact retribution very similar to Abimelek. In Judges 1, King Adoni-bezek, thumbless and bigtoeless, understands that his fate is an exact retribution because of his treatment of his vassal kings. In Judges 8, Zebah and Zalmunna meet their fate because of their slaughter of Gideon’s half brothers: “if you had saved them alive, I would not kill you.” Abimelek’s retribution parallels the retributive justice due to oppressive kings, and it is this that causes the chapter—and the book as a whole—to cohere perfectly. If the reader has been careful and aware, the statements “the land had rest for forty years in the days of Gideon” (8:28) and “as soon as Gideon died, the people of Israel turned again and played the harlot after the Baals and made Baal-berith their god” (8:33) should signal an introduction to a new judge c­ycle. The reader expects, as in past sequences, that an oppressive nation will impose itself on Israel and plunder it. But, instead, what is the reader told? “Now Abimelek [My-father-is-king] the son of Jerubbaal went to Shechem” (9:1). The son of Jerubbaal negotiates and conspires with the people of Shechem to be anointed their king and, after slaughtering almost all his competition to the throne, succeeds in 9:6. In a fascinating shift of emphasis, the reader’s expectations are both fulfilled and surprised. We are now hearing the story from the other side; we have, in a sense, stepped through the “looking glass” and are hearing a story of deliverance from the perspective of the oppressive king. This is no digression from the sequence of judge figures, as Soggin states!15 Nor is this simply an antitype of the perfect judge.16 Nor is this only a simple tale of retribution.17 15.  Ibid., 163. 16.  See above, and in Lillian R. Klein, The Triumph of Irony in the Book of Judges (Bible and Literature 14; JSOTSup 68; Sheffield: Almond, 1988) 70. 17.  Boogaart, “Stone for Stone,” 49–53; Janzen, “A Certain Woman,” 33–37.

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Seen within the framework of the entire book, the story of Abimelek’s rise to power and fall to infamy is truly a climactic scene in the book of Judges for the very fact that it adheres to the cyclical pattern so closely! The oppressive tyranny of other nations and other princes and other kings has finally come home to Israel itself. Up to this point, kingship has always been seen as a force intent on the plunder and destruction of Israel. It is from this viewpoint that the narrator tells the reader that the citizens of Shechem “went and made Abimelek king.”18 In similar fashion, the reader expects God to elevate a deliverer to rescue Israel and kill Abimelek, even as his father slaughtered the princes and kings of Midian. Yet, as in the Deborah/Barak/Jael cycle, the deliverer and means of deliverance is not certain. The narrator seems to hint that, by having an Israelite king oppressing Israelites, the stakes of deliverance are heightened and more unsure than when the oppressor was a foreigner. Jotham, brother of Abimelek, appears immediately after the anointing. His speech opens with a note of righteous indignation: “Listen to me, you men of Shechem, that God may listen to you!”19 His fable hints at his opinion on Abimelek’s kingship (9:8– 15). His speech makes his perspective explicit (9:16–20). Surely this is the one who will deliver Israel! Yet it is not to be. The Spirit of God does not come upon him. He is unable to deliver Israel. Like his older brother before (8:20), and his father before his battle (6:27; 7:10), Jotham fears the opposition and goes into hiding (9:21). Israel remains under an authority besides God (8:23). “Abimelek ruled [‫ ]ויׂשר‬over Israel for three years” (9:22). This statement is not superfluous to the story as it now stands. It stands in parallel with the length of Israel’s oppression under the foreign kings noticed thus far in the book (3:8, 14; 4:3; 6:1). Israel serves Abimelek, the king of Shechem, for three years. The reader now expects God to elevate a deliverer, possessed by the Spirit of the Lord to rescue the people. Yet the spirit that is sent is an evil spirit. It is not sent “upon” any person; instead it is sent “between” Abimelek and the people of Shechem. What is its purpose? To bring the violence of the king and his supporters back upon their heads. Abimelek loses his Israelite support. Gaal (‘Loathsome’) the son of Ebed (‘A-Servant’) moves into Shechem with his brothers. Gaal’s speech sounds much like the declaration of Jotham earlier: 18.  I have yet to find a single commentator who interprets this passage in this way. Most believe the Abimelek story to be troublesome because, in their opinion, it does not fit the pattern established before in Judges. On the contrary, it seems clear that Abimelek (‘Myfather-is-king’) supports the pattern to a nightmarish consistency. 19.  That God may hear them when they cry out in repentance? Some may object that the theme of “crying out in repentance” is not found in chap. 9 and that Abimelek, therefore, is not being compared with the earlier kings. It should be noted, however, that the element of Israel’s crying out is not present in the paradigm example of 2:11–19 and is not consistently used even in judge cycles that are sure (for example, Samson). This is, again, an example of the brokenness of the cycle throughout the book.

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“Who is Abimelek, and who are we of Shechem, that we should serve him? Would that this people were under my hand! Then I would remove Abimelek, I would say to Abimelek, ‘Increase your army, and come out!’” (9:28–29). Perhaps this is the deliverer of Israel! Yet this one, like Jotham, is no deliverer. Gaal ben Ebed must be forced to face Abimelek on the field (9:38–39) and is soundly routed by Abimelek and driven out of Shechem (9:41). From this episode on, Abimelek becomes aggressive against the inhabitants of Shechem, and the narrator does not even hint at a possible deliverer. Abimelek destroys the town of Shechem, kills all its citizens, and, with a symbol of absolute annihilation, sows the city with salt. The citizens of the nearby Tower of Shechem hear the news and take refuge in the great tower there. The king and his army take brushwood and, placing it at the door of the tower, set the structure on fire. The episode ends with the sad statement that about 1,000 people died, men and women. No foreign king had been so evil as to destroy innocent people! Yet Israel’s king is willing to slaughter whoever opposes him. Abimelek goes further and begins killing people who did not participate in any way in the rebellion against him. At Thebez, the people seek refuge in the tower of the city. As Abimelek had done before, so he will do again. Drawing near, Abimelek attempts to burn the tower with fire. Yet remarkably, with no forewarning, the narrator tells that a single, solitary woman casts a millstone from the roof of the tower and crushes the king’s skull! Whether the armor bearer killed the king or not, it is this single unnamed woman who causes the death of the tyrant and delivers Israel from its oppression.20 When Israel sees the dead oppressor, each person goes home. This is a symbol of short-lived security. No longer does warfare plague them. The narrative cycle has come to its end. However, the wheel continues to turn, and Israel’s sin is again countenanced by the oppression by the Philistines and the Ammonites (10:6–9). This is followed by Israelites’ crying out (10:10), which, however, is not followed by deliverance but by an outright refusal by God to deliver them (10:11–14). When Israel persists, God relents and agrees to deliver Israel (10:15–17). J­ephthah’s leadership, however, seems as broken as the cycle. He, like Gideon, doubts God’s ability to rescue but also has a violent side that is turned against his own daughter (11:34–40) and against his fellow Israelites (12:1–6). And the wheel turns again after Jephthah’s death: Israel sins and is handed over to the Philistines (13:1). But, from here there is no cry for help, there is no “raising up” of Samson. Whenever the “spirit of the Lord rushed upon him,” he used the charisma for his own purposes, rather than delivering Israel outright (14:6, 19; 15:14). In his death, “he killed more than those he had killed during his life” (16:30). For a deliverer of Israel, however, this is not praise 20.  Compare Jael, who also crushes the skull of an oppressor (4:21; 5:26–27).

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but condemnation. During his judgeship of 20 years, the land never had any rest. The time was lost due to a deliverer that looked, for the most part, like a Philistine himself. And at this point, the cycle completely breaks down. In the conclusion of the book, two narratives are told. One story involves a Levitical priest who performs his services with an ephod, teraphim, a graven image, and a molten image (18:14). Surely this type of worship has been forbidden by the law and has, in the past, brought Israel into bondage to foreign or local kings (Deut 27:15; Judg 3:7–8, 8:33, 9:22, 10:6–7). Yet no oppressive king appears! In the second story, a Levite’s concubine is raped by some Benjaminites and, through an escalation of this violence, almost the whole tribe of Benjamin is slaughtered. Surely this type of violence will erupt in God’s punishment, in accordance with the pattern of retribution! Yet no evil king appears to punish Israel; no retribution is meted out by God. On the contrary, the narrator explains time and again that “in those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (17:6, 21:25; compare with 18:1, 19:1).21 The significance of this statement for the book as a whole is decisive. Whereas before, God punished idolatry and violence with oppressive kings, now a radical change has occurred. It seems as though God no longer deals with Israel along such strict lines of good and evil. Now, Israel’s idolatry and violence are met with, if not mercy, then silence. In this article, I have tried to show that the Abimelek narrative of Judges 9 is integrally woven into the greater plot of the book. By investigating the chapter alone and by looking at its place within the book, I have shown that the message(s) of Judges 9 inform(s) the greater purpose of the book. By “centering” the book of Judges within the story of the evil king, Abimelek, the authors have provided a rich interpretation of good and evil and have pronounced a sharp critique of any simplistic theology of retribution. Does God always punish evil and always reward good? Judges responds, “Perhaps once, at one time. But no longer. For better or for worse, no longer.” 21.  Almost all commentators interpret this sentence to be a radical revision of the Deuteronomistic Historian’s concept of kingship. This line of thinking believes the authors suddenly see kingship as a positive office, in light of the disintegration and violence present in Israel. This perspective, whether intentional or not, is based on a canonical interpretation of the text. The book of Judges is seen in light of the following books of Samuel, where Israel does have a king given to them. If the book of Judges, however, is interpreted within its own integrity, with no reference (intentional or unintentional) to Samuel, the concept of kingship remains negative. It is a simplistic understanding of the Deuteronomistic theology of retribution that has been radically revised.

The Chronicler’s Theological Rewriting of the Deuteronomistic History: Amaziah, a Test Case Ralph W. Klein While our honoree has written important commentaries on Deuteronomy and Joshua and many other works, his revised and published dissertation remains the best defense of the hypothesis of a preexilic and an exilic edition of the Deuteronomistic History (DH).1 The debate about DH in general and its various editions in particular continues unabated, although the account of Amaziah, which I examine in this essay, has not played a major role in these discussions.2 Therefore, I can avoid much of this debate about the editions of DH, since my focus in this essay will be on the final form of the Amaziah account in 2 Kgs 14:1–22, dated by me to the mid-sixth century b.c.e., and its revision in 2 Chr 25:1–26:2, dated by me to the first half of the fourth century b.c.e.3 How do these two works use the reign of Amaziah for theological purposes?

Amaziah in the DH The account of Amaziah in 2 Kings 14 can be outlined as follows: 14:1–2—Accession of Amaziah 14:3–4—Deuteronomistic evaluation of Amaziah 14:5–6—Amaziah’s execution of his father’s assassins 1.  Richard D. Nelson, The Double Redaction of the Deuteronomistic History (JSOTSup 18; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1981). Richard’s scholarship has served both the academy and the church. 2.  Antony F. Campbell and Mark A. O’Brien, Unfolding the Deuteronomistic History: Origins, Upgrades, Present Text (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000), do include Amaziah in their multilayered analysis of DH. They make the following distinctions in the Amaziah account: 2 Kgs 14:1–2, Josianic DH; 14:3–5, material from the Hezekian king list; 14:6, post-DH; 14:7, pre-DH material; 14:8–14, attributed to the royal focus within the DH revision; 14:15, Josianic DH; 14:16, attributed to the pre-DH Prophetic Record; 14:17, other pre-DH material; 14:18, Josianic DH; 14:19–21, Hezekian king list; 14:22, other post-DH material. For my evaluation of their hypothesis, see “A Response to Unfolding the Deuteronomistic History,” http://prophetess.lstc.edu/~rklein/Documents/Dtrspeech.htm (accessed July 1, 2010). 3.  For discussion of the date of Chronicles, see my 1 Chronicles (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006) 13–16.

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14:7—Amaziah’s battle against the Edomites 14:8–14—Defeat of Amaziah by Jehoash4 of the Northern Kingdom 14:15–16—Conclusion of Jehoash’s reign; accession of Jeroboam II 14:17–18—Concluding formula for Amaziah’s reign 14:19–21—Assassination of Amaziah and accession of Azariah 14:22—Azariah’s rebuilding of Elath after the king’s death5 Amaziah is among the Judean kings who are evaluated positively, but with restrictions: “He did what was right in the eyes of Yahweh, yet not like David, his father, but according to everything that Joash, his father, had done. Only the high places did not go away; the people were still sacrificing and burning incense at the high places” (2 Kgs 14:3–4). The Deuteronomistic Historian cites five other Judean kings, in addition to Amaziah, who are positively evaluated but about whom he also notes the exception that the high places were not removed during their reigns: Asa (1 Kgs 15:11); Jehoshaphat (1 Kgs 22:43–44); Joash (2 Kgs 12:3–4); Azariah (2 Kgs 15:3–4); and Jotham (2 Kgs 15:34–35). Amaziah is the only one of these positively evaluated Judean kings who is explicitly said to be unlike David, his ancestor.6 Asa did what was right as David, his father, had done, and Jehoshaphat is said to have walked in all the ways of Asa, his father. Joash did what was right all his days because Jehoiada the priest instructed him (2 Kgs 12:2–3), with no comparison to an ancestor; and Azariah and Jotham did what was right as their own respective fathers, Amaziah and Azariah, had done. Joash depleted Judah’s temple and palace treasuries to send tribute to Hazael so that he would not attack Jerusalem (2 Kgs 12:19[18]), an action that is not explicitly evaluated. Similarly the northern king Jehoash’s raid on the temple and palace treasuries of Amaziah is reported without explicit comment (2 Kgs 14:14). As soon as the royal power was firmly in Amaziah’s hand—his father had been assassinated, thus destabilizing the government—Amaziah executed the “servants” who had killed his father, but he did not kill their descendants, following a law in Deuteronomy (Deut 24:16) that parents should not be killed for the offenses of their children nor children for the offenses of their parents (2 Kgs 14:5–6).7 4.  Throughout this essay, I spell the northern king’s name Jehoash and the Judean king Joash. 5. The nrsv identifies this king as Amaziah. The clause “he slept with his ancestors,” however, is usually used with kings who died peacefully. This has led some commentators to ascribe this verse to a different king. 6.  Solomon is contrasted with his father, David, in 1 Kgs 11:6, 33; and Ahaz did not do what was right, unlike David, his ancestor (2 Kgs 16:2). 7.  This law is in tension with Deut 5:9, which indicates that Yahweh, as a jealous God, punishes the iniquity of parents to the third and fourth generations of their children. This tension is resolved eschatologically in Jer 31:29–30 and Ezek 18:1, 19–24.

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The Deuteronomistic Historian records Amaziah’s battle against Edom briefly, noting only that the king struck down 10,000 Edomites and that he seized “the rock” and gave it the name Jokthe-el.8 This is followed by his disastrous encounter with Jehoash of the Northern Kingdom. In 14:8, Amaziah proposes a battle to Jehoash, to which Jehoash responds with a devastating fable. Amaziah is compared to a thistle that proposes a marriage agreement with a cedar tree that would involve the thistle’s son and the cedar tree’s daughter.9 Jehoash charges that Amaziah’s victory over Edom has filled him with overconfidence and that he would be better advised to stay home and enjoy this triumph (14:9–10). Amaziah does not listen to this warning, and his subsequent battle with Jehoash takes place within his own country at Beth-shemesh. Jehoash routs the Judean army, which flees, and then he arrests Amaziah, goes to Jerusalem, tears down a major portion of the city wall, seizes vessels that are in the temple and in the king’s treasuries, takes hostages, and returns to his capital at Samaria (14:11–14). Amaziah’s fate during all this time is unclear. The hostages may have been taken to guarantee Amaziah’s loyalty to Jehoash, or Amaziah may have been taken as a prisoner to Samaria. 2 Kgs 14:15 indicates that he lived, presumably as king, for fifteen years after the death of Jehoash, but no events are reported from this time period except his death. Dillard, following Thiele, proposed that Uzziah was co-regent with his father, Amaziah, for 24 years and that Amaziah was released by Israel after the death of Jehoash.10 Thiele argued that Amaziah lived in Jerusalem after his release but did not reign.11 Galil suggested shorter co-regencies of Amaziah with his father, Jehoash, and with his son, Uzziah: Jehoash 842/841–802/801; Amaziah 805/804–776/775; Uzziah 788/787–736/735.12 2 Kgs 14:19 finds Amaziah in Jerusalem, where a conspiracy rises against him. He flees to the city of Lachish, where the conspirators put him to death. His body is hauled back to Jerusalem on horses, where he is buried with his royal ancestors in the city of David. 8.  We are told that this name endures “to this day,” but it is unclear whether this information comes from the historian’s source or is his own addition. 9.  There is no indication that Amaziah had made such a proposition; in fact, his proposal seems to be quite hostile. Hence Jehoash may be using a commonly known fable, the overall point of which is appropriate, but the details of which do not meet this specific case. See Ann M. Vater Solomon, “Jehoash’s Fable of the Thistle and the Cedar,” in Saga, Legend, Tale, Novella, Fable: Narrative Forms in Old Testament Literature (ed. George W. Coats; JSOTSup 35; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1985) 126–32. 10.  Raymond B. Dillard, 2 Chronicles (WBC 15; Waco, TX: Word, 1987) 198. 11.  Edwin R. Thiele, A Chronology of the Hebrew Kings (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1977) 42. 12. Gershon Galil, The Chronology of the Kings of Israel and Judah (Leiden: Brill, 1996).

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Only three actions are reported during Amaziah’s 29-year reign: his execution of his father’s assassins; his victory over Edom (both of these actions result from doing what is right); and his crushing defeat by Jehoash. Allowing the high places to continue to attract worshipers is the principal charge laid against him. His challenge to Jehoash seems more folly than sin. Sweeney speculates that the story of Amaziah in Kings, and especially the attack of Jehoash on Jerusalem, would have been understood in the Hezekian and Josian editions of DH as events that supported the contention that the restoration of Davidic rule over all Israel would redress the wrongs committed by the northern monarchs. In the exilic edition of DH, in Sweeney’s opinion, Israel’s oppression of Judah preceded and foreshadowed the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem and Judah.13

Amaziah in Chronicles The Chronicler’s account of Amaziah omits a few verses, adds a few verses, and makes other changes, most of them seemingly for theological reasons. 2 Chr 25:1–26:2 may be outlined as follows: 25:1–2—Introduction to Amaziah’s reign (compare with 2 Kgs 14:1–3) 25:3–4—Dealing with his father’s assassins (compare with 2 Kgs 14:5–6) 25:5–13—Amaziah’s war against Edom (compare with 2 Kgs 14:7) 25:14–16—Apostasy of Amaziah and reproof by a prophet 25:17–24—War with Jehoash of Israel (compare with 2 Kgs 14:8–14) 25:25–28, 26:1–2—Amaziah’s death and burial and the accession of Uzziah (compare with 2 Kgs 14:17–22) As usual, the Chronicler omits the synchronism with the Northern Kingdom (2 Kgs 14:1). He retains the verdict that Amaziah did what was upright that he found in the Vorlage but added “yet not with a whole heart” (2 Chr 25:2).14 The Chronicler’s observation about Amaziah’s imperfect heart prepares the reader for Amaziah’s apostasy in the second half of his life and for his misguided hiring of mercenaries in the first half of his life. Hence, even the first part of his life was not carried out with a completely whole heart. The Chronicler omitted the note about the high places continuing, as he also did during the reigns of Joash (2 Kgs 12:3–4 // 2 Chr 24:2), Azariah (2 Kgs 15:3–4 // 2 Chr 26:4), and Jotham (2 Kgs 15:34–35 // 2 Chr 27:2).15 With the serious charges that the Chronicler raised against Amaziah, one would not ex13.  Marvin A. Sweeney, I and II Kings: A Commentary (OTL; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2007) 363. 14.  For the expression, elsewhere only in a positive sense, see 1 Chr 12:39[38]; 28:9; 29:9, 19; 2 Chr 15:17; 16:9; 19:9. See also 2 Chr 15:12: “with all their heart and with all their innermost being.” 15.  This notice was retained with Asa (2 Chr 15:17 // 1 Kgs 15:14) and Jehoshaphat (2 Chr 20:33 // 1 Kgs 22:44).

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pect him to be compared with David. The comparison with Joash no doubt also seemed inappropriate to the Chronicler, since Joash remained faithful only as long as the priest Jehoiada was alive and served as Joash’s advisor. After Jehoiada’s death, there were widespread cultic abuses. When Zechariah, the son of Jehoiada, and other prophets protested against these abuses, a conspiracy arose against him, and at the command of the king he was killed (2 Chr 24:17– 22). Zechariah’s plea for divine vengeance was answered by an invasion of Aram (2 Chr 24:23–24). While the general comparison with Joash was no longer appropriate, the Chronicler did divide both of these reigns into distinct periods, a faithful period (Joash, 2 Chr 24:1–16; Amaziah, 25:1–13) followed by an unfaithful period (Joash, 2 Chr 24:17–27; Amaziah, 25:14–26:2). The Chronicler incorporated Amaziah’s execution of his father’s assassins from his Vorlage, apparently as an example of doing what was right in the eyes of Yahweh. As the verb for this execution, he chose ‫‘ הרג‬kill’ rather than ‫נכה‬ ‘strike down’, as in the Vorlage, just as he had used the verb ‫ הרג‬to describe the work of these assassins in 2 Chr 24:25. 2 Kgs 12:21 uses ‫ נכה‬also in that context. The matching verbs in Chronicles identify this as exact retribution.

The Edomite War in Chronicles With the Edomite war, the Chronicler makes his first major addition. 2 Kgs 14:7 is matched by nine verses in 2 Chr 25:5–13. 2 Kgs 14:7aα is equivalent to 2 Chr 25:11, whereas 2 Kgs 14:7aβb is incorporated and radically changed in 2 Chr 25:12. 2 Chr 25:5–10 and 25:13 are new material designed to put the Edomite war in an appropriate theological perspective. Amaziah began this military campaign by marshaling 300,000 soldiers. While these numbers are not to be taken literally,16 they are decidedly less than earlier Judean kings were able to put in the field: Abijah 400,000 (2 Chr 13:3); Asa 580,000 (2 Chr 14:8); and Jehoshaphat 1,160,000 (2 Chr 17:14–18). During the reign of Jehoram, the son of Jehoshaphat, Edom and Libnah had revolted (2 Chr 21:10), and the army of Aram had scored a significant victory against Joash, Amaziah’s father (2 Chr 24:23). These setbacks may have reduced the ability of Amaziah, at least in the thinking of the Chronicler, to number as many troops as his predecessors. To make up for this deficiency, Amaziah hired 100,000 mercenaries from Israel (the Northern Kingdom) for 100 talents (2 Chr 25:6).17 At this point, the man of God, who is anonymous, confronts Amaziah and warns him not to go into battle with the host of Israel —all these Ephraimites. Yahweh, the man of God argues, is not with Israel 16. See my “How Many in a Thousand?” in The Chronicler as Historian (ed. M. P. Graham, K. G. Hoglund, and S. McKenzie; JSOTSup 238; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997) 270–82. 17.  This would amount to about 6,730 pounds of silver, or a little more than an ounce of silver for each man.

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(25:7). In addition to the Chronicler’s hostility to military alliances, especially with the apostate north, another issue is that numbers do not count in Holy War, or as the man of God puts it in 25:8, “Rather, go by yourself and act. Be strong for the battle. Why18 should God make you stumble before an enemy? God has strength to help or to cause stumbling.” Amaziah misses the theological point and complains to the man of God that he would lose 100 talents if these mercenaries were sent home. The man of God responds, “Yahweh has the ability to give to you much more than this.” Amaziah listened to the man of God and dismissed the mercenaries (2 Chr 25:10). Amaziah then acted like a king, strengthening himself,19 and leading his people. He struck down 10,000 Seirites, as he had in 2 Kgs 14:7.20 What is more, the Judahites captured 10,000 additional soldiers alive and threw them off the top of the rock so that they were dashed in pieces (2 Chr 25:12).21 Obedience to the word of the man of God led to military victory, and the doubling of the Edomite body count illustrates that “Yahweh has the ability to give you much more than this.” Meanwhile, the dismissed mercenaries did not accept their firing easily. They were exceedingly angry with Judah and made raids on the cities of Judah, from Samaria to Beth-horon (2 Chr 25:10).22 They struck down 3,000 people in them and took much booty (2 Chr 25:13). Although this may seem to contradict the man of God’s assertion that Yahweh had the ability to give him much more than the 100 talents that Amaziah had already paid them, it may be the Chronicler’s way of asserting that Amaziah’s initial mistake in relying on the number of soldiers in his army to gain victory had its own consequences. The Edomite war, which in Kings was without theological significance, now illustrates that listening to prophetic figures will be rewarded by success in battle. At the same time, it shows that Amaziah did not always act with a “whole heart.” Amaziah’s initial strategy was to rely on numbers.

Amaziah’s Apostasy The accusation of apostasy begins the second half of the Amaziah narrative, which will focus on the king’s unfaithfulness. In 2 Kings 14, the defeat by Israel resulted more from Amaziah’s folly in challenging this stronger nation than from his sin. But according to the Chronicler, this defeat was not just the result of overconfidence, although it was that too, but it was in fact retribution 18.  The word ‫למה‬, which was omitted by haplography after ‫למלחמה‬, has been restored. 19.  See Asa, 2 Chr 15:8; Jehoiada, 2 Chr 23:1. 20.  2 Kgs 14:7 reads “Edom” instead of “Seirites,” with no apparent significance in this exchange of national designations. 21.  This replaces the note in 2 Kgs 14:7 that he seized the rock and renamed it. 22.  Both of these cities belong to Israel rather than Judah. The commentaries valiantly try to explain this, not with complete success, but a solution to this problem is not important for the present discussion.

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for Amaziah’s idolatry. Amaziah brought back the gods of the Seirites to Jerusalem (2 Chr 25:14). In antiquity, a conqueror would often transfer the enemy’s divine images to his own territory to signify his victory and the victory of his own gods. Amaziah, however, should have destroyed these images as David did (1 Chr 14:12),23 in the spirit of Deut 7:5 and 12:3. Instead, he set them up as gods, prostrating himself before them and burning incense to them. Amaziah not only violated the provisions of monotheism but showed almost criminal stupidity. Since the Edomite gods had not been able to defend their own country against Amaziah’s attack, why should he initiate worship of them? Yahweh’s anger at Amaziah leads him to send an anonymous prophet, who censures Amaziah for his allegiance to these Edomite gods.24 The prophet criticizes Amaziah for ‘seeking’ (‫ )דרׁש‬these gods. Seeking Yahweh is one of the Chronicler’s favorite terms for faithfulness to Yahweh.25 Amaziah’s reply to this prophet in 2 Chr 25:16 was far different from his response to the man of God: “Did we appoint you as a counselor to the king? Stop it! Why should they strike you down?” Amaziah’s sarcastic rebuttal assumes that prophets ought to be under the control of the king and are expected to agree with the king.26 The rhetorical question, “Why should they strike you down?” is an example of the Semitic paraphrastic passive. In clear text: “Why should you be struck down [by royal authority]?” In other words, Amaziah threatened him with capital punishment. The prophet stops (25:16), only momentarily(!), and then continues, “I know that God has taken counsel to destroy you, for you have done this and you did not listen to my counsel.” The Chronicler seems to take delight in punning on the root ‫‘ יעץ‬take counsel’. Amaziah had asked, “Did we make you a counselor?” Then the prophet affirms that God has taken counsel to destroy Amaziah and sharply criticizes the king for not listening to the prophet’s counsel. The punning continues in 25:17 as Amaziah takes counsel to initiate an attack on the north. We are not told with whom he took counsel. With himself? With his cabinet, consisting of the counselors whom he had appointed and who were “yes” men? It surely was not with Yahweh, whose counsel or consent would be necessary to start a legitimate war.27 23.  In a sense, this difference from David could have justified the retention of 2 Kgs 14:3, “yet not like David his ancestor.” As we noted above, however, the Chronicler introduces so many flaws in Amaziah that the comparison with David would make no sense. 24.  The verb “send” forms a theme running through the rest of the chapter: Amaziah sends a message to Jehoash (2 Chr 25:17); Jehoash sends a message back to Amaziah (25:18); a thistle sends a request to a cedar tree (25:18); and assassins send after Amaziah to kill him at Lachish (25:27). 25.  See 1 Chr 10:14, 13:3, 15:13, 28:8–9. 26.  The 400 court prophets in 1 Kings 22 // 2 Chronicles 18 unanimously endorsed Ahab’s war plans. 27.  See 2 Chr 20:14–17.

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Amaziah sent a message to Jehoash, king of the Northern Kingdom, challenging him to a battle. While this challenge is virtually identical with the one in the Vorlage, the context has changed, because Amaziah has already disobeyed the anonymous prophet. Jehoash again cites the fable about the thistle and the cedar tree, with its threat that a wild beast from Lebanon will trample the arrogant thistle. In 25:19, instead of Jehoash’s telling Amaziah to enjoy his triumph (‫)הכבד‬, the Chronicler has changed the verb form so that it states that Amaziah’s proud heart is expressing itself in boastfulness (‫)להכביד‬. In 2 Kgs 14:11, we are told only that Amaziah did not listen to (obey) King Jehoash. The text in Chronicles affirms this but adds that this incident is from God in order to hand them over, because they had sought the gods of Edom. Two changes are especially worth noting. Amaziah’s worship of the gods of Edom is now participated in by the people as a whole so that they will be handed over in typical Holy War fashion to the enemy. In addition, the message from the Israelite king is interpreted as a message from God, much as the message from Pharaoh Neco to Josiah was later described as a word from God (2 Chr 35:20–21). Throughout his work, the Chronicler considers Israel illegitimate, and the man of God has affirmed in this chapter that Yahweh is not with Israel. But this king of a Yahweh-less Israel, like the Egyptian Pharaoh Neco, can be a channel for a prophet-like message. Jehoash is the third prophet-like figure introduced into this narrative by the Chronicler. Jehoash’s attack and its consequences are described in 2 Chr 25:21–24 in words that are virtually identical with 2 Kgs 14:11b–14. But instead of not listening to the advice of a stronger king, Amaziah has failed to listen to a king who was announcing Yahweh’s plan. Ironically, Yahweh seems now to be with Israel and not with Amaziah (contrast 2 Chr 25:7!). The text in Chronicles clarifies somewhat the fate of Amaziah, since we are told that Jehoash brought him to Jerusalem (2 Chr 25:23), but his fate thereafter is still unknown. The treasures that Jehoash took from the temple were in the charge of Obed-edom (2 Chr 25:24). Amaziah, who had worshiped the gods of Edom, now ironically loses treasures that were under the control of a man whose name means in Hebrew ‘worshiper of Edom’. Two centuries have passed, in any case, since the ark was stored at the house of Obed-edom, this man’s namesake (1 Chr 15:18, 21, 24, 25; 16:5, 38). The last major change in Chronicles relates the conspiracy to assassinate Amaziah to his infidelity toward Yahweh (2 Chr 25:27). Amaziah’s departure from Yahweh was the occasion for the initiation of the conspiracy. The Kings text is ambiguous. Was the conspiracy related to the loss to Jehoash? But that was 15 years earlier. Did it have something to do with the regent status of Azariah and/or the attempt by Amaziah to regain (full) possession of the throne after being captured by the northern king? The Chronicler gives the conspiracy a theological spin. The idea of the conspiracy began when Amaziah departed from Yahweh.

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Conclusion Many commentators have seen the additional material in Chronicles as coming from a source available to him and not to us. There are occasions when this does indeed seem to be the case, and I would not want to rule it out even here.28 But the major additions in 2 Chronicles 25 seem to stem primarily from the Chronicler’s theological concerns. Hurling an additional 10,000 Edomites from a cliff and the meetings with the anonymous man of God and with an anonymous prophet try to make sense of the events in Amaziah’s life that had flown under the theological radar in DH. Turning Jehoash into a mediator figure surely requires no additional source. Whatever we decide about sources, we need to keep our eyes on the theological creativity and sensitivity of the Chronicler. The killing of an additional 10,000 Edomites seems related to the promise that Yahweh can give much more than the loss of money already paid to 100,000 Ephraimite mercenaries. For the Deuteronomistic Historian, Amaziah had been a minor figure who contributed to the justification of the exile only by permitting the high places to continue. The Chronicler apparently found the events in Amaziah’s life as reported in 2 Kings 14 hard to understand theologically. What, theologically speaking, was behind Amaziah’s success over Edom, and why did he suffer such a catastrophic defeat at the hands of Jehoash? Amaziah’s overconfidence played a role, but more importantly Amaziah was confronted by three prophet-like figures, and Amaziah had refused to listen to the last two of them, namely, the anonymous prophet and the northern king Jehoash. Amaziah did listen to the man of God, but his previous hiring of 10,000 mercenaries had exposed his infidelity. Even in Chronicles, Amaziah is not a major figure. But for the Chronicler, DH’s account had precipitated much theological head-scratching, which led to the Amaziah story in Chronicles as we now have it.29 28. Sara Japhet (I and II Chronicles: A Commentary [OTL; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1993] 856–60) proposes that some kind of sources were available for the data about Amaziah’s army (though not the numbers), the hiring of the Israelite band of mercenaries and its aftermath, and the course of the Edomite war. 29.  I have learned much about the Amaziah account in Chronicles from M. Patrick Graham, “Aspects of the Structure and Rhetoric of 2 Chronicles 25,” in History and Interpretation: Essays in Honour of John H. Hayes (ed. M. P. Graham, W. P. Brown, and J. K. Kuan; JSOTSup 173; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993) 78–89. Graham detects a chiastic arrangement of the chapter: 25:1–4, Introduction of Amaziah’s reign (A); 25:5–13, War with Edom (B); 25:14–16, Amaziah’s idolatry (C); 25:17–24, War with Israel (B′); and 25:25–28, Conclusion to Amaziah’s reign (A′). Graham also identifies a number of ironic elements in the present text of 2 Chronicles 25.

The Rescue of Jerusalem from the Assyrians in 701 b.c.e. by the Cushites Alice Ogden Bellis In 1815, the poet Lord Byron penned “The Destruction of Sennacherib,” creating such visual images that many a young student once memorized the lines, and countless others analyzed the poetry. Almost two centuries later, this poem and the events it commemorates are all but forgotten by most people. These events receive scant attention in standard “Introduction to Old Testament” course textbooks, even though Jerusalem’s surprising survival in the face of Sennacherib’s Assyrian army has been studied extensively by biblical scholars. Most Sunday School students and their teachers have no idea that anything memorable happened in 701 b.c.e. Nevertheless, the survival of Jerusalem was a pivotal event in the history of Judah. King Hezekiah had rebelled against Assyria (2 Kgs 18:7–8), annexing Philistine cities loyal to Assyria and tearing down high places where Assyrian gods may have been worshiped (2 Kgs 18:4). What exactly happened in 701 b.c.e.? There are three biblical accounts, the longest in 2 Kings. An account in Isaiah runs parallel to it, with one significant omission. 2 Chronicles also has a description of the event, which is shorter but does have some information not included in 2 Kings or Isaiah. The biblical accounts say that King Sennacherib attacked the fortified cities of Judah (2 Kgs 18:13 // Isa 36:1 // 2 Chr 32:1). According to 2 Chr 32:1–8, Hezekiah then fortified Jerusalem. 2 Kgs 18:14–16 indicates instead that Hezekiah apologized and sent tribute. Then, according to all three biblical sources, Sennacherib sent several highlevel emissaries with an army to Jerusalem, and the Rabshakeh delivered a long speech to two of Hezekiah’s officials, intending to intimidate them, and asking why they were so confident, to which the response was silence, though the matter was reported to Hezekiah (2 Kgs 18:17–37 // Isa 36:10–22 // 2 Chr 32:9–19). Hezekiah, distressed, sent for Isaiah, who said not to worry because God would cause Sennacherib to hear a rumor and return to Assyria (2 Kgs 19:1–7 // Isa 37:1–7). (Alternately, Hezekiah and Isaiah prayed; 2 Chr 32:20.) The story continues in 2 Kings and Isaiah. The Rabshakeh then returned to Libnah, where Sennacherib was fighting (2 Kgs 19:8 // Isa 37:8). At this point, Sennacherib heard a report that Tirhakah, king of Cush, had set out to fight 247

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against him (2 Kgs 19:9a // Isa 37:9a).1 Sennacherib again sent emissaries to Jerusalem, asking why Hezekiah thought he would be delivered (2 Kgs 19:9b– 13 // Isa 37:9b–13); Hezekiah prayed (2 Kgs 19:14–19 // Isa 37:14–20). Isaiah next delivered an oracle promising salvation for Jerusalem (2 Kgs 19:20–34 // Isa 37:21–35). At this point, 2 Chronicles rejoins the 2 Kings and Isaiah account. The angel of the Lord destroyed many Assyrians (2 Kgs 19:35 // Isa 37:36 // 2 Chr 32:21a), and Sennacherib returned to Nineveh (2 Kgs 19:36 // Isa 37:37 // 2 Chr 32:21b). In addition to the biblical narratives, Sennacherib’s annals claim a successful campaign, culminating in receiving tribute from Hezekiah.2 Herodotus, writing 250 years after the event, speaks cryptically of mice chewing up the Assyrian bowstrings, quivers, and shield handles.3 Today many scholars who have considered the issue probably agree with Brevard Childs, who in 1967 wrote that it would never be possible to understand exactly what happened without additional extrabiblical evidence.4 Others 1.  Biblical Tirhakah, also known as Taharqa, was a Cushite/Nubian (sometimes translated Ethiopian, though his land was in modern Sudan rather than Ethiopia) prince who later became Pharaoh. He was part of the 25th Dynasty, a Cushitic dynasty that ruled Egypt during the second half of the eighth and first half of the seventh centuries b.c.e. His predecessors in the dynasty were Piye, Shakaba, and Shebitku. 2.  Sennacherib’s campaign against the cities of Judah is recorded on the Oriental Institute’s Prism of Sennacherib (ANET, 287–88). See the appendix at the end of this essay, p. 257. 3.  Herodotus, The Histories (trans. George Rawlinson; Everyman’s Library; New York: Knopf, 1997) 2:141: The next king, I was told, was a priest of Vulcan, called Sethos. This monarch despised and neglected the warrior class of the Egyptians, as though he did not need their services. Among other indignities which he offered them, he took from them the lands which they had possessed under all the previous kings, consisting of twelve acres of choice land for each warrior. Afterwards, therefore, when Sanacharib, king of the Arabians and Assyrians, marched his vast army into Egypt, the warriors one and all refused to come to his aid. On this the monarch, greatly distressed, entered into the inner sanctuary, and, before the image of the god, bewailed the fate which impended over him. As he wept he fell asleep, and dreamed that the god came and stood at his side, bidding him be of good cheer, and go boldly forth to meet the Arabian host, which would do him no hurt, as he himself would send those who should help him. Sethos, then, relying on the dream, collected such of the Egyptians as were willing to follow him, who were none of them warriors, but traders, artisans, and market people; and with these marched to Pelusium, which commands the entrance into Egypt, and there pitched his camp. As the two armies lay here opposite one another, there came in the night, a multitude of field-mice, which devoured all the quivers and bowstrings of the enemy, and ate the thongs by which they managed their shields. Next morning they commenced their fight, and great multitudes fell, as they had no arms with which to defend themselves. There stands to this day in the temple of Vulcan, a stone statue of Sethos, with a mouse in his hand, and an inscription to this effect—“Look on me, and learn to reverence the gods.”

4.  Brevard S. Childs, Isaiah and the Assyrian Crisis (SBT second series 3; London: SCM, 1967) 120.

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agree with Ronald Clements, who concludes that Sennacherib’s withdrawal from Jerusalem was a result of Hezekiah’s sending tribute (2 Kgs 18:14–15) and that the narrative account of the angel of the Lord’s destruction of the Assyrian warriors is a late theological explanation of Jerusalem’s survival.5 Many are not particularly interested in this historical question, either because they agree with Childs that it is impossible to tell what happened or because they are more interested in the literary and theological aspects of the narrative than the historical aspects.6 Among those who hazard a guess as to what factors resulted in Sennacherib’s departure, two opinions have dominated over the centuries, with some advocating a combination of the two. The first opinion is that bubonic plague was responsible for the large number of Assyrian deaths, based on the report by Herodotus that mice chewed up the leather bowstrings, quivers, and shield handles. The mice are assumed to be symbolic of disease. As early as the first century c.e., Josephus subscribed to the notion that plague was responsible for the defeat of the Assyrians.7 This guess has been perennially popular and can be found in many 20th-century commentaries,8 though it has been rather thoroughly discredited by Lester Grabbe on the grounds that it involves an indefensible conflation of the biblical story with Herodotus’s narrative.9 In addition, mice were not associated with bubonic plague in either Egypt or Greece.10 Since mice were sacred to Horus and perhaps more generally,11 and since Herodotus’s story of deliverance from Sennacherib by field mice 5.  R. E. Clements, Isaiah and the Deliverance of Jerusalem: A Study of the Interpretation of Prophecy in the Old Testament (JSOTSup 13; Sheffield: Dept. of Biblical Studies, University of Sheffield, 1980). 6. Richard Nelson writes: “Our task is to read the narrative of chapters 18–19 as it stands in the canonical text of Kings and to consider its literary and theological impact. We may therefore leave literary history and historical reconstruction to others” (First and Second Kings [Interpretation; Louisville: John Knox, 1987] 235). Burke O. Long, although he thoroughly analyzes 2 Kgs 19:8–34, skips over vv. 35–37, giving them only one cursory sentence, and moves directly to chap. 20 (2 Kings [FOTL 10; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1991] 222–41). 7.  Josephus, Ant. 10.1–23; cited in Henry Aubin, The Rescue of Jerusalem (New York: Soho, 2002) 243. 8.  See John Gray, I and II Kings (2nd ed.; OTL; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1970) 622; Howard F. Vos, 1, 2 Kings (Bible Study Commentary Series; Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1989) 200. Donald J. Wiseman thinks that bacillary dysentery with a three-day incubation period was the culprit (“Medicine in the OT World,” in Medicine and the Bible [ed. B. Palmer; Exeter: Paternoster, 1986] 25). 9.  Lester L. Grabbe, “Of Mice and Dead Men,” in “Like a Bird in a Cage”: The Invasion of Sennacherib in 701 bce (ed. Lester L. Grabbe; JSOTSup 363; European Seminar in Historical Methodology 4; London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2003) 119–40. 10.  J. F. D. Shrewsbury, A History of the Bubonic Plague in the British Isles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971) 15. 11. Andrew Lang, The Origin of Religion and Other Essays (London: Watts, 1908) 33.

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involves a statue holding a mouse in the Temple of Vulcan (Ptah being the English equivalent),12 perhaps the Egyptians told a mythological story about their victory over Sennacherib. The second opinion is that the advancing army of Tirhakah, the Cushite or Nubian prince who would later become Pharaoh (part of the 25th Dynasty), played a major role in the withdrawal of the Assyrian forces. As early as the medieval period, the French Rabbi David Kimchi, otherwise known as Radak (1160–1235), writes that the words “he will return to his land” (2 Kgs 19:7) “refer to Sennacherib’s return to Assyria to defend it against Tirhakah, king of Kush [= Cush].” Although the idea that Tirhakah had launched an attack on the Assyrians in Mesopotamia seems unlikely, Kimchi does implicitly attribute Jerusalem’s rescue to Tirhakah.13 In the 19th century, the Cushite/Egyptian forces were also understood by many Christian interpreters to have had a leading role in defeating Sennacherib in 701 b.c.e. For example, in The Imperial Bible Dictionary, published in London in 1867, the Rev. Henry Constable says that Tirhakah overthrew Sennacherib.14 Similarly, Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson, the vice-president of the British Archaeological Association, speaks of Tirhakah’s “successful opposition to the power of Assyria” in Judah in the 1878 edition of his three-volume study of ancient Egypt. He gives Tirhakah the credit for the “defeat of the numerous army of Sennacherib.”15 In the 1880s and 90s, commentators changed course. The Englishman Cunningham Geikie, one of the most popular religious writers of the time, suggested in 1897 that the conflict had disgraced the Cushites, saying that “Tirhakah had been hurled back ignominiously toward Egypt . . . leaving Hezekiah, so far as he was concerned, to fall into the hands of his terrible foe.”16 Others threw their weight behind the epidemic theory. Examples include Alfred Edelsheim, Oxford scholar and Presbyterian minister, and George Adam Smith, Scottish preacher and principal of the University of Aberdeen.17 Why did this change occur? Henry Aubin, a Canadian journalist who became fascinated by the events of 701 b.c.e. and wrote a popular but highly informed book entitled The Rescue of Jerusalem: The Alliance between Hebrews 12.  Charlotte R. Long, The Twelve Gods of Greece and Rome (Leiden: Brill, 1987) 269. 13. David Kimchi; cited in Aubin, The Rescue of Jerusalem, 241. 14. Henry Constable, “Tirhakah,” in The Imperial Bible Dictionary: Historical, Biographical, Geographical, and Doctrinal (ed. Patrick Fairbairn; London: Blackie, 1867) 3:1042–43. 15.  J. Gardner Wilkinson, The Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians (new edition, revised and corrected by Samuel Birch; London: Murray, 1878) 1:94–95, 97. 16. Cunningham Geikie, Hours with the Bible, or the Scriptures in the Light of Modern Knowledge (New York: Pott, 1897) 4:472, 475. 17. Alfred Edelsheim, Bible History (1887) 7:155; George Adam Smith, The Historical Geography of the Holy Land (3rd ed; London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1895) 158.

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and Africans in 701 bc, proposes that the coincidence of British imperialism in Africa and the change in tone of the interpretations by biblical scholars of the time was no accident.18 Before 1880, the colonial powers did not own much of Africa, and what they did own was largely limited to the coastal areas. By the turn of the 20th century, much of Africa was carved up among the colonial powers.19 Aubin suggests that, before the advent of European, and especially British imperialism in Africa, interpreters viewed Africans in a positive light. After they became colonial powers, it was no longer comfortable to see Africans as saviors of the holy city.20 Commentators throughout the 20th century, although largely ignoring precritical scholarship, still followed suit in dismissing the African contribution to the rescue of Jerusalem. Not only have modern scholars frequently failed to credit the Cushites with saving Jerusalem. Aubin shows that in many cases they have gone so far as to vilify them for causing Sennacherib’s attack in the first place by inciting the Jerusalemites to rebel and suggesting that the Cushites were militarily inept and that the Hebrews despised them, interpretations that are demonstrably false.21 Among those who assert that the Cushite dynasty sought to foment rebellion in Judah are the Egyptologist James Breasted, William Adams, Maxwell Miller and James H. Hayes, Francolino Gonçalves, J. Alec Motyer, Amélie Kuhrt, and the Egyptologist Kenneth Kitchen.22 The only two of these who cite a primary source are Gonçalves and Motyer. The source is Isa 18:1–2: “Ah, land of whirring wings beyond the rivers of Ethiopia, sending ambassadors by the Nile in vessels of papyrus on the waters! Go, you swift messengers, to a nation tall and smooth, to a people feared near and far, a nation mighty and conquering, whose land the rivers divide.” This is a strange passage, because at first the messengers are apparently coming from Cush, then heading toward Cush. Even assuming Cushite diplomats came to Judah during the period leading up to 701, there is no evidence that they came to incite rebellion; they 18.  Aubin, The Rescue of Jerusalem, 249–65. 19. Harry Magdoff, “Colonialism: II. European Expansion since 1763,” in The New Encyclopaedia Britannica (15th ed.; 30 vols.; Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1975) 4:899. 20.  Aubin, The Rescue of Jerusalem, 235–68. 21. Ibid., 225–34. 22.  James Henry Breasted, A History of Egypt from the Earliest Times to the Persian Conquest (New York: Scribner, 1905); William Y. Adams, Nubia: Corridor to Africa (London: Lane, 1977); J. Maxwell Miller and James H. Hayes, A History of Ancient Israel and Judah (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1986); Francolino Gonçalves, L’Expédition de Sennachérib en Palestine dans la littérature hébraïque ancienne (Louvain-la-Neuve: Université Catholique de Louvain, 1986); J. Alec Motyer, The Prophecy of Isaiah: Introduction and Commentary (TOTC; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1993); Amélie Kuhrt, Ancient Near East c 3000–330 bc (2 vols.; London: Routledge, 1995); Kenneth Kitchen, The Third Intermediate Period in Egypt (1100–650 bc) (3rd ed.; Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1996).

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could just as easily have been counseling restraint. The evidence is that Judah sought help from Egypt, not that Egypt seduced Judah into rebellion.23 I will now focus on possible reconstructions of the events of 701 b.c.e. from the various sources, in light of Aubin’s hypotheses. I will also reflect on the connections between biblical scholarship and the political and social world of those who try to understand the events reported in the Hebrew Bible historically. Lester Grabbe lists six issues on which researchers have focused. These are: 1. the literary and source analysis of the account in 2 Kgs 18:13–19:37 2. the relationship of 2 Kgs 18:13–16 to the rest of the account 3. the number of invasions of Palestine that were carried out by Sennacherib 4. the question of the Rabshakeh’s mission and speech 5. the significance of Hezekiah’s “14th year” in 2 Kgs 18:13 6. the place of Taharqah (Tirhaka) and the Egyptians in the story24 We will consider each of these issues with the exception of 4 and 5, since they are secondary to the matter of the Cushites’ contribution to the rescue of Jerusalem.25 23.  Aubin, The Rescue of Jerusalem, 229–33. See Isa 20:1–6, 30:1–6, 31:1, where the Judahites are chastised for seeking Egypt’s help. 24.  Lester L. Grabbe, “Introduction: Two Centuries of Sennacherib Study,” in “Like a Bird in a Cage” (JSOTSup 363; London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2003) 20–35. 25.  How much of the Rabshakeh’s speech might be viewed as having an authentic historical kernel is an interesting question but not especially helpful in trying to determine the role of the Cushite army in the rescue of Jerusalem. Commentators have argued in a variety of ways. Moshe Weinfeld (“Cult Centralization in Israel in the Light of a NeoBabylonian Analogy,” JNES 23 [1964] 202–12), Brevard Childs (Isaiah and the Assyrian Crisis, 78–93), and W. R. Gallagher (Sennacherib’s Campaign to Judah [SHCANE 18; Leiden: Brill, 1999]) see the speech as reflecting the actual historical context; Ehud Ben Zvi (“Who Wrote the Speech of Rabshakeh and When?” JBL 109 [1990] 79–92), Klaas A. D. Smelik (“King Hezekiah Advocates True Prophecy: Remarks on Isaiah xxxvi and xxxvii/II Kings xviii and xix,” in Converting the Past: Studies in Ancient Israelite and Moabite Historiography [ed. K. A. D. Smelik; OtSt 28; Leiden: Brill, 1992] 93–128), and Dominic Rudman (“Is the Rabshakeh Also among the Prophets? A Rhetorical Study of 2 Kings xviii 17–35,” VT 50 [2000] 100–110) disagree. Similarly, there is a problem with Hezekiah’s 14th year in 2 Kgs 18:13, in that Hezekiah’s reign began in the 3rd year of Hoshea of Israel’s reign according to 2 Kgs 18:1, and Samaria fell in Hoshea’s 9th year, which is to say Hezekiah’s 6th year (2 Kgs 18:10). Assuming that Samaria fell in 722, Hezekiah’s 14th year would have been 8 years later, in 714. Yet we know from Sennacherib’s report of his near destruction of Jerusalem that this event occurred in 701 b.c.e. One solution is to assume a textual error. Others have suggested that there was an earlier invasion by another Assyrian king that was later confused with Sennacherib’s in 701. See A. K. Jenkins, “Hezekiah’s Fourteenth Year: A New Interpretation of 2 Kings xviii 13–xix 37,” VT 26 (1976) 284–98; Jeremy Goldberg,

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On the literary and source analysis of 2 Kgs 18:13–19:37 and the relationship of 2 Kgs 18:13–16 to the rest of the account, most biblical scholars now believe, following Bernhard Stade, who first formulated this approach in 1886, that there are three parts to the story, called A, B1, and B2.26 The part of the narrative in 2 Kgs 18:13–16 is called “A.” 2 Kgs 18:17–19:9a, 36 constitute B1. B2 includes 2 Kgs 19:9b–35 and 37. The A account in 2 Kgs 18:13–16 briefly explains that, in the 14th year of Hezekiah, Sennacherib, king of Assyria, attacked all of Judah’s fortified cities. In response, Hezekiah sent a message to Sennacherib, admitting his guilt of having rebelled in some fashion (2 Kgs 18:7). Sennacherib in turn imposed a heavy payment on Judah, which resulted in Hezekiah’s turning over all the silver in the temple and the palace, as well as stripping the doors and posts of the temple, which he had plated with gold. This narrative, although much less detailed and different in tone, runs somewhat parallel to Sennacherib’s own account.27 Although Sennacherib’s account obviously glorifies himself and probably exaggerates, the two versions of the events are close enough that many biblical scholars accept that 2 Kgs 18:13–16 is genuine history.28 Account B1 includes 18:17–19:9a as well as 19:36. This narrative describes the visit of the Assyrian Rabshakeh to Jerusalem to ridicule the Judahites’ confidence in their Egyptian ally and on the Lord, their God. When Hezekiah hears “Two Assyrian Campaigns against Hezekiah and Later Eighth Century Biblical Chronology,” Bib 80 (1999) 360–90. A third proposal is that the 14th year refers to the time of Hezekiah’s illness, the account of which would have originally preceded the Assyrian attack. Since Hezekiah lived another 15 years, 29 years of his entire reign would now be accounted for. See Hayim Tadmor and Mordechai Cogan, “Hezekiah’s Fourteenth Year: The King’s Illness and the Babylonian Embassy,” ErIsr 16 (Orlinsky Volume; 1982) 198–201 [Hebrew] (Eng. Abstract, pp. 258*–59*). 26. Bernhard Stade was the first to make this division (“Miscellen; 16. Anmerkungen zu 2 Kö. 15–21,” ZAW 6 [1886] 156–89). However, he did not see two separate conclusions for the two B parts. Brevard S. Childs sees v. 35 as the conclusion to B2 and vv. 36–37 as the conclusion to B1 (Isaiah and the Assyrian Crisis, 74–76). Mordechai Cogan and Hayim Tadmor agree but place v. 37 with B2, as I do here (II Kings: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary [AB 11; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1988]). 27.  See n. 2 above. 28. Christopher Seitz disagrees that the two accounts are substantially similar, noting that biblical account A indicates that Hezekiah sent tribute while Sennacherib was in La­ chish, presumably hoping to stave off an attack; however, Sennacherib’s annals say nothing of Hezekiah suing for terms but speak of his sending tribute after Hezekiah had returned to Nineveh. Similarly, while Sennacherib’s annals describe a siege of Jerusalem, biblical account A is silent about this. Seitz suggests that account A shows the thoroughly untrustworthy character of Sennacherib, which is in line with the arrogance he displays in the B narratives (Christopher R. Seitz, Zion’s Final Destiny: The Development of the Book of Isaiah— A Reassessment of Isaiah 36–39 [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991] 63–66).

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about the incident, he is depicted as going into mourning and piously entering the temple to pray. He also allegedly sends for Isaiah, who counsels him not to be afraid because God will put a spirit in the Assyrian King Sennacherib, so that he will hear a rumor and return to his own land. In 19:9a, Sennacherib hears that Tirhakah, king of Cush, has set out to fight against him. Verse 36 says that Sennacherib departed. Most commentators see this B1 account as being much more theologically motivated than the A account. In line with Deuteronomistic theology, the account implicitly presents the piety of Hezekiah and conversely the arrogance of Sennacherib as the primary reasons that God spared Jerusalem. Some reject its historicity completely; others view it as a theological interpretation of the sparing of Jerusalem as a result of Hezekiah’s offering of tribute to Sennacherib. Account B2, which in terms of plot runs somewhat parallel to B1, consists of 19:9b–35 and 37. This section says that Sennacherib (again) sent messengers to Hezekiah, this time ridiculing their God (but not Egypt). Hezekiah is then depicted even more piously than in B1, uttering a long prayer. Isaiah, in turn, speaks a much longer oracle, this time mostly in poetry, blasting the arrogance of the Assyrians and predicting their downfall. The narrative concludes with the announcement of the death of 185,000 Assyrian soldiers at the hand of the Lord’s angel and with the report of the death of Sennacherib (20 years later, though the biblical narrative does not indicate the elapsed time) at the hands of his sons. The similarity of the two B sections along with the fact that Tirhakah was previously erroneously thought to have been only about ten years old in 701 b.c.e. and thus not capable of leading an army into Palestine have caused some interpreters to posit that, not one, but two Assyrian invasions are described in the two B sections—one in 701 and a second invasion later. However, this solution now seems moribund.29 29.  William F. Albright (“The History of Palestine and Syria,” JQR 24 [1934] 363–76; idem, “New Light from Egypt on the Chronology and the History of Israel and Judah,” BASOR 130 [1953] 4–11; idem, From the Stone Age to Christianity: Monotheism and the Historical Process [2nd ed.; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1957] 314 n. 53; John Bright (A History of Israel [Philadelphia: Westminster, 1959]); and William Shea (“Sennacherib’s Second Palestinian Campaign,” JBL 104 [1985] 410–18) championed the two-invasion theory. Frank Yurco (“The Shabaka-Shebitku Coregency and the Supposed Second Campaign of Sennacherib against Judah: A Critical Assessment,” JBL 110 [1991] 35–45; idem, “Sennacherib’s Third Campaign and the Coregency of Shabaka and Shebitku,” Serapis 6 [1980] 221–40) refuted Shea’s arguments. Similarly, Kenneth A. Kitchen has written that the Egyptian inscriptions can only be interpreted to support one invasion (“Egypt, the Levant and Assyria in 701 bc,” in Fontes atque Pontes: Eine Festgabe für Hellmut Brunner [ed. Manfred Görg; Ägypten und Altes Testament 5; Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1983] 243–53; idem, The Third Intermediate Period in Egypt [1100–650 bc], 154–70). See also Anson F. Rainey, “Taharqa and Syntax,” TA 3 (1976) 38–41. Grabbe sums up the situation

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Interestingly, although most scholars see the B2 account as an even more theologically motivated and less historically useful account than B1, more effort has been put into finding a natural explanation for the angel of the Lord’s destruction of the 185,000 Assyrians in the B2 account than into consideration of the possibility that Egyptian/Cushite forces could have caused the Assyrians to leave. Although Grabbe has shown the plague interpretation to be based on circular reasoning, he believes that it does throw light on the biblical story. He writes: When Herodotus’s account is read in its own right, without interpretation in the light of the biblical, it tells us of an Egyptian defeat of Sennacherib. The defeat was not by normal force of arms but entailed some unusual happening. The Assyrian army was not destroyed but was rendered ineffectual in fighting so that many were killed. Unless we accept the literal statement about the field mice, which few of us would, we would have to think of some extraordinary event in which the Egyptian army was unexpectedly victorious. Although we cannot confirm the Egyptian story, it appears to be independent of other accounts and yet fits well into what we know from the Assyrian records.30

Aubin comes to the same conclusion, that Herodotus’s mice story represents the ravaging of the Assyrians by the Cushite/Egyptian army. This does not necessarily mean that the Cushite force actually met the Assyrian army at this point, but it certainly suggests that the battle-weary Assyrians were frightened enough by the prospect, as suggested by the biblical text, to beat a hasty retreat.31 At the time that Aubin’s book was published (2002), Grabbe’s edited volume had not yet appeared; its publication date is 2003. Aubin did find a number of modern scholars who had suggested, usually very briefly, tentatively, and unpersuasively that Tirhakah’s army was at least partially responsible for Jerusalem’s survival. Grabbe’s paragraph, quoted above, is much longer and more persuasive than the scholars that Aubin had found. Yet it is still rather tentative in tone. Aubin gives six reasons that he believes the Cushite forces were instrumental in thwarting the Assyrians, only two of which have been outlined here. The other reasons are that, in the years following 701 b.c.e., the Egyptians under the Cushite pharaohs enjoyed commercial and political success in Judah and its surrounding areas, influence that is consistent with Egypt’s having come out of the conflict in a strong position. In addition, Assyrian, Hebrew, and Greek texts from the period show that the Cushites had a reputation for military might, a by saying that, unless more information about Sennacherib’s reign after 689 is discovered, we cannot absolutely rule out a second Assyrian campaign in Palestine, but all the present evidence is against it (“Introduction: Two Centuries of Sennacherib Study,” 32). 30.  Ibid., 20–35. 31.  Aubin, The Rescue of Jerusalem, 24.

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reputation that is consistent with their having frightened the Assyrians away from Palestine. Finally, contrary to much popular opinion that reads anti-African bias into the Hebrew Bible, in fact the biblical authors had a very high regard for the Cushites, a regard that is also consistent with the Cushites’ having saved the Hebrews from extinction in 701 b.c.e.32 Even after one comes to the conclusion that Tirhakah’s force was instrumental in frightening the Assyrians away from Jerusalem, problems of historical reconstruction remain, especially given the differences between biblical account A and Sennacherib’s annals. Aubin believes that what happened is that the Assyrians left because of the advancing army of the Cushite Prince Tirhakah, and that after the fact the Assyrians accepted a deal in which Judah paid a heavy tribute in exchange for remaining a viable state. This reconstruction assumes more historicity for the Assyrian account than for biblical account A, which says that Hezekiah paid tribute before the siege, rather than afterward. It also raises the question why Hezekiah should have had to pay tribute if the Cushites had in fact ejected them. One could just as easily surmise that biblical A account is correct in depicting Hezekiah as sending tribute to Sennacherib in Lachish to fend off an attack but that Sennacherib had decided to attack him anyway. However one resolves these problems, the evidence suggests that Tirhakah’s forces were behind Sennacherib’s hasty retreat. Returning now to the issue of the social location of biblical scholars, the number of serious, scholarly articles on anything related to contributions by Cush, that is, Africa south of Egypt, published during the second half of the 20th century or the first five years of the 21st by scholars other than those with African ancestry or with ties to historically black institutions is paltry. If it is true that social location affects interpretation, as postmodern scholars affirm, then it is not surprising that a largely white academic guild that exists in the midst of the Western world with its history of anti-African bias is not free from such bias. Henry Aubin has done an important service by revealing the way that the social location of the late-19th-century British biblical scholars influenced their attitudes toward the events of 701 b.c.e. and the ways that their attitudes in turn shaped the following century. Aubin is white, but his adoption of a black son was the impetus that led him to the discoveries in his book. His social location was altered by the lifechanging event of raising a son with African ancestry. He wanted to tell his son stories from his ethnic traditions. This desire initiated a search that lasted many years, well after his son was grown. Most, though not all white scholars who have done serious research on matters relating to African contributions to biblical religion and history have similarly had their social locations modified 32.  See Randall C. Bailey, “Beyond Identification: The Use of Africans in Old Testament Poetry and Narratives,” in Stony the Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation (ed. Cain Hope Felder; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991) 165–84.

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by ties to historically black institutions. The world is ever so slowly changing. The intentional recruitment and inclusion of scholars from backgrounds other than northern European has begun to change the social location of all of us in the guild, just as the presence of an ever-increasing number of women has rather dramatically changed it. Finally, for those of us who are insiders in the biblical guild, our intellectual location, which I would argue is part of our social location, sometimes blinds us to new ideas. We are so accustomed to looking at the biblical world with the eyes bequeathed to us by our teachers and the existing paradigms they taught us that, in spite of our desire to make brilliant new discoveries, we often are limited by our training. Thus, we need new eyes and, to use a biblical metaphor from Jeremiah and Ezekiel, new hearts. Having begun this paper with Lord Byron, I consider it appropriate to close it with Ogden Nash’s 1934 humorous take on Byron’s Sennacherib, “Very Like a Whale.” It is evident that, even as late as 1934, at least literary types had not forgotten about the death of Sennacherib’s forces. The poem begins: One thing that Literature would be greatly the better for Would be a more restricted employment by authors of simile and metaphor. Authors of all races, be they Greeks, Romans, Teutons or Celts, Can’t seem just to say that anything is the thing it is but have to go out of their way to say it is like something else.33

Many historical-critically minded biblical scholars may well sympathize with Nash’s concern; after all, if the biblical authors had spoken more directly about what had happened in 701 b.c.e. and used less metaphorical language, subsequent people of faith would not have found it so difficult to figure out exactly what happened. On the other hand, perhaps the biblical authors’ sense of the theological magnitude of the events would have been lost. On another hand still (assuming we have three or more), if racism had not closed our eyes to the best explanation of the clues we do have, then perhaps every child in school would still be memorizing Byron’s poem—and maybe Nash’s to boot—or at least might be aware of the two poems.

Appendix: Sennacherib’s Campaign in His Own Words In my third campaign I marched against Hatti. Luli, king of Sidon, whom the terror-inspiring glamor of my lordship had overwhelmed, fled far overseas and perished. The awe-inspiring splendor of the “Weapon” of Ashur, my lord, 33. Ogden Nash, “Very Like a Whale,” in Angles of Vision: Reading, Writing, and the Study of Literature (ed. Arthur W. Biddle and Toby Fulwiler; New York: McGraw-Hill, 1992) 473–74.

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overwhelmed his strong cities (such as) Great Sidon, Little Sidon, Bit-Zitti, Zaribtu, Mahalliba, Ushu (i.e., the mainland settlement of Tyre), Akzib (and) Akko, (all) his fortress cities, walled (and well) provided with feed and water for his garrisons, and they bowed in submission to my feet. I installed Ethbaʿal (Tubaʾlu) upon the throne to be their king and imposed upon him tribute (due) to me (as his) overlord (to be paid) annually without interruption. As to all the kings of Amurru—Menahem (Mi-in-ḫi-im-mu) from Samsi­ muruna, Tubaʾlu from Sidon, Abdiliʾti from Arvad, Urumilki from Byblos, Mitinti from Ashdod, Buduili from Beth-Ammon, Kammusunadbi from Moab (and) Aiarammu from Edom, they brought sumptuous gifts (igisû) and—fourfold—their heavy tâmartu-presents to me and kissed my feet. Sidqia, however, king of Ashkelon, who did not bow to my yoke, I deported and sent to Assyria, his family-gods, himself, his wife, his children, his brothers, all the male descendants of his family. I set Sharruludari, son of Rukibtu, their former king, over the inhabitants of Ashkelon and imposed upon him the payment of tribute (and of) katrû-presents (due) to me (as) overlord—and he (now) pulls the straps (of my yoke)! In the continuation of my campaign I besieged Beth-Dagon, Joppa, BanaiBarqa, Azuru, cities belonging to Sidqia who did not bow to my feet quickly (enough); I conquered (them) and carried their spoils away. The officials, the patricians and the (common) people of Ekron—who had thrown Padi, their king, into fetters (because he was) loyal to (his) solemn oath (sworn) by the god Ashur, and had handed him over to Hezekiah, the Jew (Ha-za-qi-(i)a-ú amel Ia-ú-da-ai)—(and) he (Hezekiah) held him in prison, unlawfully, as if he (Padi) be an enemy—had become afraid and had called (for help) upon the kings of Egypt (Muṣ(u)ri) (and) the bowmen, the chariot(-corps) and the cavalry of the king of Ethiopia (Meluḫh̬a), an army beyond counting—and they (actually) had come to their assistance. In the plain of Eltekeh (Al-ta-qu-ú), their battle lines were drawn up against me and they sharpened their weapons. Upon a trust(-inspiring) oracle (given) by Ashur, my lord, I fought with them and inflicted a defeat upon them. In the mêlée of the battle, I personally captured alive the Egyptian charioteers with the(ir) princes and (also) the charioteers of the king of Ethiopia. I besieged Eltekeh (and) Timnah (Ta-am-na-a), conquered (them) and carried their spoils away. I assaulted Ekron and killed the officials and patricians who had committed the crime and hung their bodies on poles surrounding the city. The (common) citizens who were guilty of minor crimes, I considered prisoners of war. The rest of them, those who were not of crimes and misbehavior, I released. I made Padi, their king, come from Jerusalem (Ur-sa-li-im-mu) and set him as their lord on the throne, imposing upon him the tribute (due) to me (as) overlord. As to Hezekiah, the Jew, he did not submit to my yoke, I laid siege to 46 of his strong cities, walled forts and to the countless small villages in their

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vicinity, and conquered (them) by means of well-stamped (earth-)ramps and battering-rams brought (thus) near (to the walls) (combined with) the attack by foot soldiers, (using) mines, breeches as well as sapper work. I drove out (of them) 200,150 people, young and old, male and female, horses, mules, donkeys, camels, big and small cattle beyond counting, and considered (them) booty. Himself I made a prisoner in Jerusalem, his royal residence, like a bird in a cage. I surrounded him with earthwork in order to molest those who were leaving his city’s gate. His towns which I had plundered, I took away from his country and gave them (over) to Mitinti, king of Ashdod, Padi, king of Ekron, and Sillibel, king of Gaza. Thus I reduced his country, but I still increased the tribute and the katrû-presents (due) to me (as his) overlord which I imposed (later) upon him beyond the former tribute, to be delivered annually. Hezekiah himself, whom the terror-inspiring splendor of my lordship had overwhelmed and whose irregular and elite troops which he had brought into Jerusalem, his royal residence, in order to strengthen (it), had deserted him, did send me, later, to Nineveh, my lordly city, together with 30 talents of gold, 800 talents of silver, precious stones, antimony, large cuts of red stone, couches (inlaid) with ivory, nîmedu-chairs (inlaid) with ivory, elephant-hides, ebony-wood, boxwood (and) all kinds of valuable treasures, his (own) daughters, concubines, male and female musicians. In order to deliver the tribute and to do obeisance as a slave he sent his (personal) messenger.

Covenant and Liberation: Diachronic Perspectives Alejandro F. Botta

Introduction A dominant theme in the Hebrew Bible is the covenant(s) between God and Israel. Biblical scholars and theologians have dedicated many very detailed studies to various aspects of this topic, which is so central to our understanding of the Bible.1 In this essay, I will address one aspect of the covenant between God and Israel that has not yet received sufficient attention: the relationship between covenant(s) and liberation/restoration.2 I will focus on three covenantal moments: the Sinai covenant, the restoration covenant, and the new covenant at Qumran and in the New Testament.

Sinai: The Covenant of Liberation and Restoration The exodus as a liberation motif has been profusely explored by contemporary and, especially, Latin American biblical scholars.3 The exodus story Author’s note: I have learned from Richard Nelson’s writings since I was a theology student at the Instituto Superior Evangélico de Estudios Teológicos in Buenos Aires, which means it has already been 20 years of learning! It was such an honor to be Rich’s colleague at Perkins School of Theology (Southern Methodist University). His superb scholarship, kindness, wit, sense of humor, and egalitarian sense of collegiality are virtues rarely found in one person. I offer this essay to him with a deep sense of admiration and gratitude. 1.  See the extensive bibliography in E. Kutsch, “Bund I–III,” in TRE 7:397–410; and Scott Hahn, “Covenant in the Old and New Testaments: Some Current Research (1994– 2004),” CurBS 3 (2005) 263–92. 2.  See, for example, the classic study of Delbert R. Hillers, Covenant: The History of a Biblical Idea (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1969); see also Dennis J. McCarthy, Treaty and Covenant (AnBib 21; Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1963; revised 1978); idem, Old Testament Covenant: A Survey of Current Opinions (Richmond: John Knox, 1972); George Mendenhall and Gary A. Herion, “Covenant,” ABD 1:1179–1202; E. Kutsch, Verheißung und Gesetz: Untersuchungen zum sogennaten “Bund” im Alten Testament (BZAW 131; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1973); John Goldingay, “Covenant, Old Testament and New Testament,” NIDB 1:767–78. 3.  See, for example J. Severino Croatto, Exodus: A Hermeneutics of Freedom (Mary­ knoll, NY: Orbis, 1981); Jorge V. Pixley, On Exodus: A Liberation Perspective (Mary­ knoll, NY: Orbis, 1987); Jon D. Levenson, “Liberation Theology and the Exodus,” in Jews,

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includes, among other narrative components, a description of the oppression (Exod 1:8–22), a crying out by the oppressed (Exod 2:23), a sympathetic response by God remembering his covenant with the patriarchs (Exod 2:24–25), the choosing of a leader (Exod 3:7–12), the liberation (Exodus 12–15), and the establishment of a covenant between God and the liberated community (Exodus 20).4 In the statement that triggers the foundational event of Israel, Yhwh instructs Moses: I am Yhwh. I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name “Yhwh” I did not make myself known to them. I also established my covenant [‫ ברית‬LXX = διαθηκη] with them, to give them the land of Canaan, the land in which they resided as aliens. I have also heard the groaning of the Israelites whom the Egyptians are holding as slaves, and I have remembered my covenant [‫ ברית‬LXX = διαθηκη]. Say therefore to the Israelites, “I am Yhwh, and I will free you [‫ יצא‬LXX = εξαγω] from the burdens of the Egyptians and deliver you [‫ נצל‬LXX = ρυομαι] from slavery to them. I will redeem you [‫ גאל‬LXX = λυτροω] with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment. I will take you as my people, and I will be your God. You shall know that I am Yhwh your God, who has freed you from the burdens of the Egyptians. I will bring you into the land that I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; I will give it to you for a possession. I am Yhwh.” (Exod 6:2–8, emphasis added)5

The text clearly establishes the connection between covenant (‫ברית‬/διαθηκη) and liberation/restoration in the land (‫יצא‬/εξαγω, ‫נצל‬/ρυομαι, ‫גאל‬/λυτροω). The liberating act of God is based on the promise to the patriarchs and results in the covenant between God and his people through the verba solemnia “I will take you as my people, and I will be your God.” The key verbs highlighted were to become the vocabulary of liberation par excellence in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament.6 The exodus story became the theological center of the Hebrew Bible and the foundational event of the Jewish people. We read in the Passover Haggadah: “therefore, even if we were all men of understanding, all advanced in years, and all expert in the Torah, it would be our duty to tell of the departure Christians, and the Theology of the Hebrew Scriptures (ed. Alice Ogden Bellis and Joel S. Kaminsky; SBLSymS 8; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 2000) 215–30; Jorge V. Pixley, “History and Particularity in Reading the Hebrew Bible: A Response to Jon D. Levenson,” in ibid., 231–38; and the excellent recent exposition by P. R. Andiñach, El libro del Éxodo (Salamanca: Sígueme, 2006). 4.  See below for similar components in the covenantal language of Jeremiah and Ezekiel. 5.  For a structural analysis of Exod 6:2–8, see Pierre Auffret, “The Literary Structure of Exodus 6:2–8,” JSOT 27 (1983) 46–74; see also Walter Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997) 173–81. 6.  These verbs appear in passages such as Matt 6:13, 27:43; Luke 24:21; Rom 11:26; 1 Thess 1:10; 2 Tim 3:11; Titus 2:14; etc.

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from Egypt, and the more a man tells about the departure from Egypt, the more praiseworthy he is.” What became the most important celebration for the Jewish people, the liberation from Egypt by Yhwh, is what comprises the “historical prologue” of the stipulations of the Sinai covenant: “I Yhwh am your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage” (Exod 20:2). The separation of the Sinai and the Exodus historical traditions has been denied and reaffirmed repeatedly.7 The connection, however, between the liberation from Egypt and the stipulations within the Ten Words (Deut 10:4) is indisputable.8 The liberation from external oppression should be followed by the creation of a new, nonoppressive social dynamic within the liberated community itself: “the commandments are policies to create a society that practices Yahweh’s justice instead of Pharaoh’s injustice.”9 The oppression-liberation motif becomes not only the historical foundation for the Sinai covenant but also the justification for instructions and prescriptions to follow.10 The exodus event is not limited to the liberation from Egypt and the creation of a just society but also includes the resettlement in the land promised to the patriarchs: “I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey” (Exod 3:8). These three components: liberation from oppression, redefined social relationships, and restoration in the promised land will also be essential components of the other two covenantal moments that we are addressing in this essay.

Jeremiah 31:31–37 and the Prophetic Voices for the Renovation of the Covenant and Liberation from Exile Among Christians, Jer 31:31–34 is one of the most commented on and wellknown texts in the Hebrew Bible. According to John Bright, “Christ gave to his disciples, the new Israel, the promised new covenant when, on the night of his betrayal, he said: ‘this cup is the covenant of my blood’ (1 Cor 11:25).”11 Hyatt, 7.  See Herbert B. Huffmon, “Exodus, Sinai and the Credo,” CBQ 27 (1965) 102–3 for a discussion of previous studies. We accept the position of Weisser, Huffmon, and Bright that both traditions are connected with a concrete and unique historical experience. See also Frank Crüsemann, The Torah: Theology and Social History of Old Testament Law (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996) 27–57. 8.  For an analysis of how the Deuteronomists’ “new covenant theology” reshaped the tradition of the Sinai covenant, see Stephen Hultgren, From the Damascus Covenant to the Covenant of the Community: Literary, Historical, and Theological Studies in the Dead Sea Scrolls (Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah 66; Leiden: Brill, 2007) 126–36. 9.  Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament, 184. 10. �������������� Compare Deut 5:15; 15:15; 16:12; 24:18, 22. 11. John Bright, “An Exercise in Hermeneutics: Jeremiah 31:31–34,” Int 20 (1966) 188.

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on the other hand, stated that “Jeremiah . . . first enunciated . . . what has come to be a central principle of Protestantism.”12 For Nicholson, “this short passage is one of the most important in the book of Jeremiah. Indeed it represents one of the deepest insights in the entire prophetic literature in the Old Testament.”13 We will take a closer look at Jer 31:31–37 in the context of the book of Jeremiah and in connection with other covenantal texts of the Persian period. Based on the principles of rhetorical analysis initiated by Muilenburg and continued by Lundbom and Holladay, Jorge Torreblanca offered a new contribution to our understanding of the Masoretic Text of Jeremiah by providing a surface structure that encompasses the whole book.14 Torreblanca identifies a chiastic structure as follows: A 1 Commission to be a prophet to the nations; oracle of punishment against Judah and Jerusalem B 2:1–4:4 ‫ ריב‬against Israel and call to conversion C 4:5–6:30 Foreign invasion D 7:1–10:25 The people do not heed the prophets and reject Yhwh’s word E 11:1–17 The covenant is broken F 11:18–20:18 Salvation/consolation G 21–24 Conflicts with kings, prophets, and the exiled X 25  Oracle of judgment against Judah and Jerusalem and the nations G′ 26–29 Conflicts with kings, prophets, and the exiled F′ 30:1–31:30 Salvation/consolation E′ 31:31–33:26 A new covenant D′ 34–38 The people do not heed the prophets and reject Yhwh’s word 12.  James Philip Hyatt, Jeremiah: Prophet of Courage and Hope (New York: Abingdon, 1958) 106–7. 13.  Ernest W. Nicholson, The Book of the Prophet Jeremiah, Chapters 26–52 (Cambridge Bible Commentary; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975) 70. 14. Jorge Torreblanca, “Jeremías: una lectura estructural,” RIBLA 35–36 (2000) 68–82. See also James Muilenburg, “Form Criticism and Beyond,” JBL 88 (1969) 1–18; Jack R. Lundbom, Jeremiah: A Study in Ancient Hebrew Rhetoric (SBLDS 18; Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1975); and more recently his three-volume commentary on Jeremiah, Jeremiah (AB 21A–C; New York: Doubleday, 1999–2004). See also William L. Holladay, The Architecture of Jeremiah 1–20 (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press / London: Associated University Press, 1976). For a discussion of the contribution of this approach, see Siegfried Herrmann, Jeremia: Der Prophet und das Buch (Erträge der Forschung 271; Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1990) 111–17; Phyllis Trible, Rhetorical Criticism: Context Method and the Book of Jonah (Guides to Biblical Scholarship: Old Testament; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994) 25–52; and especially Roland Meynet, Rhetorical Analysis: An Introduction to Biblical Rhetoric (JSOTSup 256; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998).

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C′ 39–43 Foreign invasion B′ 44–45 ‫ ריב‬against Israel and call to conversion A′ 46–52 Oracle about the nations and fulfillment of the oracle of punishment The surface structure helps us to understand the basic oppositions and confluences of the narrative. According to this analysis, the center of the message in the book of Jeremiah is chap. 25, where Jeremiah proclaims the punishment that will come to Judah at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar. Jer 31:31–34 is part of a section traditionally called the Book of Consolation, which originally comprised chaps. 30–31 and was later expanded to include chaps. 32–33.15 The Book of Consolation, in its extended format, covers two aspects in two concentric structures: the consolation (restoration) and the new covenant. Both sections are structured around the sovereignty of God: A 30:1–31:26 Behold the days are coming: return B 31:27–30 Behold the days are coming: restoration C 31:31–37 Behold the days are coming: covenant D 31:38–40 Behold the days are coming: promise of Jerusalem’s reconstruction E 32:1–25 God is giving the city into the hands of the king of Babylon X 32:25–27 Yhwh’s sovereignty E′ 32:28–35 Nebuchadrezzar of Babylon will take Jerusalem D′ 32:36–39 Return and restoration of Jerusalem C′ 32:40–41 Definitive coventant: God liberates and restores Israel B′ 32:42–33:13 Promise of restoration for Jerusalem A′ 33:14–26 Behold the days are coming: Yhwh fulfills his promise In this structure, section C, the renovation of the covenant in Jer 31:31–37 is parallel to section C′, the promise of the definitive covenant in Jer 32:40–41; and both passages are surrounded by the promise of liberation and the restoration of Israel. Based on this presentation of the structural relationships, an important conclusion can be advanced: The new/definitive covenant is closely related to the liberation from exile and the restoration of Israel in the land. The passages that call for a ‫‘ ברית חדשה‬new covenant’ (Jer 31:31) and a ‫‘ ברית עולם‬definitive covenant’ (Jer 31:40)16 are not isolated cases in the 15.  Compare Konrad Schmid, Buchgestalten des Jeremiabuches: Untersuchungen zur Redaktions- und Rezeptionsgeschichte vor Jer 30–33 im Kontext des Buches (NeukirchenVluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1996). 16.  The expression ‫ ברית עולם‬should be understood as a covenant that is not limited a priori by time—that is to say, it is not exclusively ‘eternal’ or ‘everlasting’. See my “How Long Does an Eternal Covenant Last? ‫ עולם‬in the Light of Aramaic-Egyptian Legal Docu-

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Hebrew Bible. According to Pierre Buis, the prophetic announcements for a new/definitive covenant display a literary pattern composed of five topics.17 I propose to identify eight components, which I have reformulated in the following list: 1. A liberating act of God: reunification of the people and return to the land 2. One leader / king for a unified Israel 3. New faithfulness of the people 4. Forgiveness 5. Verba solemnia 6. A change in the social values: renovation of the people 7. Character of the covenant (new, definitive, of friendship) 8. Blessings The pattern is found with every element present only in Ezek 37:21–28:18 1. Gathering and return: “I will take, gather from the nations and bring them to their own land” (Ezek 37:21). 2. One leader/king for a unified Israel: “I will make them one nation in the land, on the mountains of Israel; and one king shall be king over them all. Never again shall they be two nations, and never again shall they be divided into two kingdoms” (Ezek 37:22). 3. New faithfulness of the people: “They shall never again defile themselves with their idols and their detestable things, or with any of their transgressions” (Ezek 37:23a). ments,” BT 59 (2008) 158–63. Definitive covenants were established with Noah (Gen 9:16; compare Isa 24:5, in which it is broken); Abraham (Gen 17:7, 19); Israel (see Exod 31:16; Lev 24:8 for the Shabbat); Phineas (Num 25:13); David (2 Sam 23:5); Israel (Isa 55:3, after the pattern of David); and Jerusalem (Ezek 16:60). 17. Pierre Buis, “La nouvelle alliance,” VT 18 (1968) 1–2. 18.  Other passages show a diverse combination of these components. Five of the eight elements are present in Ezek 36:22–35: (1) gathering and return; (4) forgiveness (cleansing); (5) verba solemnia; (6) renovation: new heart and new spirit to follow my ordinances; and (8) blessings. In Ezek 34:25–31, four of the topics are present: (1) liberation of the yoke; (5) verba solemnia; (7) covenant of friendship; and (8) blessings. In Ezek 16:53–63, we find three components: (1) gathering and return; (3) forgiveness; (7) covenant: “I will remember the covenant I made with you . . . I will establish it with you as an everlasting covenant.” The following components are found in Ezek 11:14–21: (1) gathering and return; (5) verba solemnia; (6) social renovation: “I will give them one heart and put a new spirit in them, that they may follow my ordinances and observe my rules, but as for them whose heart is set upon their detestable things . . . I will repay them for their conduct” (for the latter text, see Olegario García de la Fuente, “El cumplimiento de la ley en la nueva alianza según los profetas,” EstBib 28 [1969] 294). Although these texts display varying arrangements of the eight elements, the theme of liberation/restoration is present in all of them, in association with the covenantal element.

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4. Forgiveness: “I will save them from all the apostasies. . . . I will cleanse them” (Ezek 37:23b). 5. Verba solemnia: “They shall be my people, and I will be their God” (Ezek 37:23). 6. Renovation: “They shall follow my ordinances and be careful to observe my statutes” (Ezek 37:24). 7. Covenant: “I will make a covenant of peace with them; it shall be an everlasting covenant” (Ezek 37:26). 8. Blessings: “I will bless and multiply them” (Ezek 37:26). In Jer 32:37–41, which speaks of a definitive covenant (‫)ברית עולם‬, five of the eight elements are arranged in a chiastic structure: A 32:37–38 See, I will gather them from all the lands to which I have banished them in my anger and wrath, and in great rage; and I will bring them back to this place and let them dwell secure. They shall be my people, and I will be their God. B 37:39a I will give them a single heart and a single nature to revere me for all time, C 37:39b and it will be well with them and their children after them. X 37:40a  And I will make a definitive covenant with them; that I will not turn away from them C′ 37:40b and that I will treat them graciously B′ 37:40c and I will put into their hearts reverence for me, so that they do not turn away from me. Aʹ 37:41 I will delight in treating them graciously, and I will plant them in this land faithfully, with all my heart and soul. The center of this chiasm is the establishment of a ‘definitive covenant’ (‫ברית‬ ‫ )עולם‬between God and the people. Sections C and Cʹ define the blessings associated with the continuous presence of God (“it will be well with them”; “I will treat them graciously”). Sections B and Bʹ describe the renovation of the people who will remain faithful to God always. The delimitation of this chiasmus by the liberation from the exile and the restoration in the land (sections A and Aʹ) shows very clearly that the idea of the renovation of the covenant and the idea of liberation from oppression and restoration in the land are closely related. In the same way that the Sinai covenant is preceded by the liberation from Egypt and is followed by the settlement in the promised land, the renovation of the covenant during the Persian period involves a similar act of liberation and restoration in the land. Liberation, restoration, and covenant are

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intertwined in both covenantal traditions. In both covenantal moments, Sinai and restoration, the liberation also carries the establishment of social dynamics that would promote a just and stable society. A new exodus will bring the captives back to the land of Israel, and the restoration will begin. The classic text proclaiming a new covenant, Jer 31:31–37, is arranged according to the following chiastic structure: A 31:31 Proclamation of a new covenant B 31:32 Israel broke the ancient Sinai covenant C 31:33a Such is the covenant . . . D 31:33b Torah will be inscribed in the heart   X 31:33c I will be their God, and they will be my people Dʹ 31:34a Everyone will know the Lord Cʹ 31:34b Forgiveness Bʹ 31:35 Israel will always be God’s people Aʹ 31:36 Israel will never be rejected The center of the passage is the covenantal verba solemnia declaring that Israel is God’s people. The proclamation of a new covenant (section A) is mirrored by the affirmation that Israel will never be rejected (section Aʹ): “Thus said Yhwh: If the heavens above could be measured, and the foundations of the earth below could be fathomed, only then would I reject all the offspring of Israel for all that they have done” (Jer 31:37).19 It is true that Israel broke the Sinai covenant (section B), but Israel will always be God’s people (section Bʹ). The new covenant is an act of forgiveness (sections C and Cʹ), and the new aspect of this covenant is that the Torah will be inscribed on the hearts of the people and no longer on stone tablets (section D); therefore, everyone will know Yhwh (section Dʹ). The knowledge of God proclaimed in Jer 31:34 is closely connected with the liberating character of God.20 In Jeremiah, God ac19.  On the proclamation of a new covenant (section A), see Helga Weippert, “Das Wort vom neuen Bund in Jeremia xxxi 31–34,” VT 29 (1979) 336–51; Jorge Mejía, “La problématique de l’Ancienne et de la Nouvelle Alliance dans Jérémie xxxi 31–34 et quelques autres textes,” in Congress Volume: Vienna, 1980 (ed. John A. Emerton; VTSup 32; Leiden: Brill, 1981) 263–77; Robert Martin-Achard, “Quelques remarques sur la nouvelle alliance chez Jérémie (Jérémie 31,31–34),” in Questions disputees d’Ancien Testament: Méthode et Theologie (ed. C. Brekelmans; BETL 33; Leuven, 1974) 141–64; Adrian Schenker, Das Neue am neuen Bund und das Alte am alten: Jer 31 in der hebräischen und griechischen Bibel (Göttingen: Vanderhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006). 20.  Compare Exod 7:17; 8:6, 18; 9:14, 29; 10:2; and 11:7 (belonging to J); Exod 6:7; 7:5; 14:4, 18; etc. (pertaining to P); Deut 4:35, 39; 7:9: 11:2; 29:5; also the numerous passages in Ezekiel with the formula “you shall know that I am God,” among which is the Ge­ richtsworte (for example, Ezek 6:7, 10, 13, 14, etc.); the experience of God’s might as judge, such as the encounter of God as savior; while in the Heilsworte (for example, Ezek 37:13, 39:28), it is specifically of the saving action of God (compare also Isa 41:20; 45:3, 6; 49:23,

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cuses his people of worshiping gods whom neither their fathers nor they “have known” (Jer 7:9, 19:4, 44:3). Unlike the God of Israel, the other gods have never manifested their liberating power and so the people have not “known” them.21 The most positive definition of the knowledge of God is clearly stated in Jer 22:16. In his words to Shallum, the son of Josiah, the prophet declares: “He [Josiah] upheld the rights of the poor and needy—Then all was well. That is truly knowing me—declares Yhwh.” The liberation has, again, both connotations: liberation from foreign oppressors and internal social justice, that is, liberation from social oppression. Twice Jeremiah presents the return as a new Exodus replacing the former one: Jer 16:14–15 and Jer 23:7–8.22 “Assuredly, a time is coming—declares Yhwh—when it shall no more be said, ‘As Yhwh lives who brought the Israelites out of the land of Egypt,’ but rather, ‘As Yhwh lives who brought the Israelites out of the northland, and out of all the lands to which he had banished them.’ For I will bring them back to their land, which I gave to their fathers” (Jer 16:14–15). This is the new credo of the Diaspora. Just as there will be a new exodus, so, too, a new covenant will be established. Just as the previous covenant was preceded by the purification of the people (Exod 19:10–11), so, too, purification will precede the new one; however, on this occasion the people will not purify themselves, but God will purify them, “for I shall forgive their transgressions and will no longer remember their sin” (31:34). The actualization of the exodus from Egypt in the liberation from the exile demonstrates the rich surplus of meaning in God’s liberating acts. God is not a God of the epic past but is the God who enacts the liberation of his people in the present.

Liberation from the Empire: The Yaḥad of Qumran and Early Christianity Being under oppression is not the “normal” state for God’s people in the Bible. But after the short period of independence led by the Hasmonean Dynasty, the land of Israel again came under foreign occupation. The mere fact that God’s chosen people cannot enjoy freedom and independence in the promised land is a sign that something must be wrong with the covenantal relationship between God and Israel. Voices for a renovation of the covenant/new covenant are raised. The Teacher (‫ )מורה הצדק‬of the Qumran community states in his fifth hymn: “I praise you, O Lord, for you lit my face with your glory as I received 26). In this connection, see Walter Zimmerli, Erkenntnis Gottes nach dem Buche Ezechiel: Eine theologische Studie (ATANT 27; Zurich: Zwingli, 1954) 65–75. See also Moshe Weinfeld, “Jeremiah and the Spiritual Metamorphosis of Israel,” ZAW 88 (1976) 17–55. 21.  Compare also Deut 11:28; 13:3, 7, 14; 28:64; 29:25. 22. These passages are doublets (16:14–15 = 23:7–8). Both interrupt the context in which they appear and so are probably not from the original layer of the text.

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your covenant” (1QHa 12:7).23 The provisions or content of the covenant that the teacher, as a new Moses, receives seem to be a secret revelation; but the covenant that the new members of the community24 must swear to uphold is no other than the Sinai covenant. As Stephen Hultgren states, “the content of the ‘new covenant’ is essentially the same as the ‘covenant’—that is, it is the law of Moses correctly interpreted.”25 The Damascus Document establishes that those who repent of their wicked ways will be registered “by the oath of the covenant that Moses made with Israel, the covenant to return to the Law of Moses with a whole heart” (CD 15:7). The community that will be created around this covenant is based on egalitarian principles. As “through the sharing of wealth, the community becomes a single entity, a yaḥad, united in fidelity and purpose, no longer torn by the greed and violence that characterize the external economy.”26 The hopes for liberation/restoration are expressed in the eschatological expectations of the community: “A righteous, ‘anointed’ high priest serving in the temple according to the proper interpretation of Scripture, a restored Davidic monarchy, a purified and holy remnant of Israel, at whose core would be the men of the Community of the Renewed Covenant, and a period of divine blessing upon the land.”27 The relationship between this restoration and the covenant is clearly expressed in the Pesher on Genesis  a: A ruler shall [no]t depart from the tribe of Judah when Israel has dominion. [And] the one who sits on the throne of David [shall never] be cut off, because 23.  See Michael O. Wise, “The Concept of a New Covenant in the Teacher Hymns from Qumran (1QHa X–XVII),” in The Concept of the Covenant in the Second Temple Period (ed. Stanley E. Porter and Jacqueline C. R. De Roo; Leiden: Brill, 2003) 99–128. 24.  See Dale C. Allison Jr., The New Moses: A Matthean Typology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993). The Qumran community seems to have been part of a wider movement, the Community of the Renewed Covenant, which materialized during the second or third century b.c.e., but the origins of which should be looked for in Israel’s prophetic and apocalyptic traditions. Compare Shemaryahu Talmon, “The ‘Dead Sea Scrolls’ or ‘The Community of the Renewed Covenant’?” in The Echoes of Many Texts: Reflections on Jewish and Christian Traditions—Essays in Honor of Lou H. Silberman (ed. William G. Dever and J. E. Wright; BJS 313; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997) 131; and idem, “The Community of the Renewed Covenant,” in The Community of the Renewed Covenant: The Notre Dame Symposium on the Dead Sea Scrolls (ed. Eugene Ulrich and James VanderKam; Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994) 8. 25.  Hultgren, From the Damascus Covenant, 113. 26.  Catherine M. Murphy, Wealth in the Dead Sea Scrolls and in the Qumran Community (Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah 40; Leiden: Brill, 2002) 449. For a discussion of communism among early Christians and Essenes, see Hans-Josef Klauck, “Gütergemeinschaft in der klassischen Antike, in Qumran und im Neuen Testament,” RevQ 11 (1982) 52–68. 27.  Craig A. Evans, “Qumran’s Messiah: How Important Is He?” in Religion in the Dead Sea Scrolls (ed. John J. Collins and R. A. Kugler; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000) 138.

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the “ruler’s staff” is the covenant of the kingdom, [and the thous]ands of Israel are “the feet,” until the Righteous Messiah, the Branch of David, has come [Gen 49:10]. For to him and to his seed the covenant of the kingdom of His people has been given for the eternal generations.28

The “Community of the Renewed Covenant” was not the only group to claim to be part of a covenant community.29 The Gospel of Luke sets the action of the narrative in the context of God’s covenant with Israel by means of two hymns: the Magnificat (Luke 1:47–55) and the Benedictus (Luke 1:68–79).30 The Magnificat proclaims God’s mercy and strength (compare Ps 118:15– 16) are acting in history by causing an inversion of the oppressive social order:31 1:52  He has brought down the powerful [δυναστας] from their thrones,

and lifted up the oppressed;32 1:53  he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.

The coming liberation is the result of God’s mercy (Luke 1:50a, 54b)33 and the promises made to Abraham and Israel’s ancestors (1:54). “Promise” and “covenant” are conceptually related.34 The liberation is certainly good news for the oppressed but not for the rich and powerful.35 They are dispossessed and sent away empty. The fact that the δυναστας are dethroned really points to the liberation from the oppressive monarchy that is controlling Judah. A similar 28.  4Q252, fragment 1, column 5:1–4. Cited by Evans, ibid., 140. 29.  See Matt 26:28, Mark 14:24; also see Jesus’ words in the Last Supper in Luke 22:20, 1 Cor 11:25 (the cup of wine = the blood of the new covenant). See also John 13:34–35; and see the comparison between the ministry of the apostles and that of Moses in 2 Cor 3:1–18; Jesus as heavenly priest in Heb 8:6–13, 9:15, 10:15–18, 12:24; 1 John 2:8–11. See E. Kutsch, “Von der Aktualität alttestamentlicher Ausssagen für das Verständnis des Neuen Testamentes,” ZTK 74 (1977) 273–90. 30. Néstor Míguez, “Lucas 1–2: Una mirada económica, política y social,” RIBLA 53 (2006) 44–51. Compare Alberto Valentini, Magnificat: Genere letterario, Struttura, Esegesi (Bologna: Dehoniane, 1987); Paul Bemile, The Magnificat within the Context and Framework of Lukan Theology: An Exegetical Theological Study of Lk 1:46–55 (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1986). 31.  Compare 1 Sam 2:7–8; Isa 2:11–17; Ezek 21:26, 31; Ps 147:6; Job 12:14–25; and also Luke 10:29–37; 15:11–32; 16:19–31; 18:9–14; 1 Cor 1:26–31; 2 Cor 8:9; Phil 2:6–11. 32.  The Greek ταπεινους�������������������������������������������������� ����������������������������������������������������������� is better translated ‘oppressed’ in this context. ������������������������������������������������� 33.  For the connection between “mercy” and “covenant,” see 1 Kgs 8:23; 2 Chr 6:14; Neh 1:5, 9:32; Ps 89:28; Dan 9:4. 34.  See Stanley E. Porter, “The Concept of Covenant in Paul,” in The Concept of the Covenant in the Second Temple Period (ed. S. E. Porter and J. C. R. De Roo; Leiden: Brill, 2003) 283–84. 35.  For a sensitive understanding of the Magnificat in its sociopolitical setting, see Luise Schottroff, “Das Magnificat und die älteste Tradition über Jesus von Nazareth,” EvTh 38 (1978) 306–13.

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statement is found in Sir 10:14–15: “The Lord overthrows the thrones of rulers, and enthrones the lowly in their place. The Lord plucks up the roots of the nations, and plants the humble in their place.” As David Seccombe notes, “Ben Sirach no doubt has the occupation of Canaan in mind.”36 Thus the liberation entitles not only the demotion of the oppressive foreign regime but also the restoration of God’s people in their own land: ‘to be a free people in our land, the land of Zion and Jerusalem!’ (‫)להיות עם חופשי בארצנו ארץ ציון וירושלים‬. The Benedictus (Luke 1:68–79) also looks forward to the fulfillment of God’s salvation. The song is arranged in a chiastic structure, as follows:37 A 1:67 Zechariah was filled with the holy spirit B 1:68a God visited (επεσκεψατο) his people C 1:68b God redeemed (λυτρωσιν) his people D 1:69 God raised up a horn of salvation/mighty savior (κερας σωτηριας) for Israel38 E 1:71 We would be saved from our enemies (εχθρων)39 F 1:72a He has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors X 1:72b  God has remembered his holy covenant (διαθηκης αγιας) Fʹ 1:73 The oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham Eʹ 1:74 We will serve God, liberated from our enemies (εχθρων) Dʹ 1:76–77a God raises a prophet of the Most High to give knowledge of salvation (σωτηριας) to his people Cʹ 1:77b God will forgive (αφεσει) sins Bʹ 1:78–79 God will visit (επισκεψεται) his people Aʹ 1:80 The child grew and became strong in spirit The center of this hymn that proclaims the redemption-salvation-liberation of Israel according to God’s promise to Abraham is, precisely, the holy covenant made with Israel’s ancestors. The perception of the Sinai covenant by the various early Christian communities was certainly diverse and most likely different in several aspects from

36.  David Peter Seccombe, Possessions and the Poor in Luke–Acts (SNTSU 6; Linz: Fuchs, 1982) 79. 37.  J. Severino Croatto, “El ‘Benedictus’ como memoria de la alianza: Estructura y teología de Lucas 1,68–79,” RB 47 (1985) 207–19. For the Aramaic background of the hymn, see J. Luzurraga, “El Benedictus (Lc 1,68–79) a través del arameo,” Bib 80 (1999) 305–59. Compare François Bovon, Luke 1: A Commentary of the Gospel of Luke 1:1–9:50 (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002) 72–78; Walter Radl, Das Evangelium nach Lukas, Erster Teil: 1,1–9,50 (Freiburg: Herder, 2003) 93–102. 38.  Compare 1 Sam 2:10; 2 Sam 22:3; Ezek 29:21; Ps 18:2, 132:17, 148:14. 39.  Compare Ps 18:17.

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the perception of the Qumran community;40 but the hope for a definitive liberation and restoration of Israel seems to be shared by both groups. Paul’s proclamation of the role of the Torah from Sinai within the community of believers seems to fit the Jewish understanding of history as divided into three periods:41 “The Tanna debe Eliyyahu teaches: The world is to exist six thousand years. In the first two thousand there was desolation; two thousand years the Torah flourished; and the next two thousand years is the Messianic era” (b. Sanhedrin 97a; compare Pesiqta Rabbati 4a). As Leo Baeck commented, there is a “period” of the Torah that will come to an end when “the days of the Messiah” have come.42 The ‘New Torah’ ‫ תורה חדשה‬would supersede the Torah (Lev. Rabbah 13; compare Yalqut to Isa 26:2; b. Niddah 61b; b. Pesạim 50a).43 According to recent interpretations of Paul’s message, “Paul feels himself compelled to bring Gentiles into the εκκλησια of God because he believes that Jesus is the root of Jesse, the son of David, the χριστος who rises to rule the Gentiles.”44 The new social reality displayed by the anticipation of the imminent salvation is described in Acts 4:32–35: no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common. . . . There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. They laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.45

The liberation attested by the new covenant between God and Israel is expressed in the three realms that we saw in the paradigmatic exodus event: liberation from sociopolitical oppression, restoration of God’s people in the land of Israel, and redefinition of internal social dynamics according to God’s egalitarian justice.

40.  The communities in Palestine were hesitant to depart from the traditional Torah, while Paul seems to have moved in a new direction. 41.  Paul seems to use της���������������������������� ������������������������������� παλαιας�������������������� ��������������������������� διαθηκης����������� ������������������� in 2 Cor 3:14 to designate the reading of the Sinai covenant. In the New Testament, the use διαθηκη as a theological concept is not uniform: Luke 1:72–75; Acts 3:25–26, 7:8; Rom 9:4 (διαθηκαι); Gal 3:15–18, 4:22–31; Eph 2:11–12; and Rev 11:19. See most recently Harald Hegermann, “διαθηκη,” in Exegetische Wörterbuch zum Neuen Testament, vol. 1 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1992). 42. Le�� o� Baeck, “The Faith of Paul,” JJS 3 (1952) 161. Compare Walter Jacob, “Leo Baeck on Christianity,” JQR 56 (1966) 202. 43.  Cited by Baeck, “Faith of Paul.” 44.  Matthew V. Novenson, “The Jewish Messiahs, the Pauline Christ, and the Gentile Question,” JBL 128 (2009) 373. 45. See Klauck, “Gütergemeinschaft,” 68–79; Seccombe, Possessions and the Poor, 200–209; and the recent summary by Wilfried Eckey, Die Apostelgeschichte: Der Weg des Evangeliums von Jerusalem nach Rom, Teilband 1: Apg 1,1–15,35 (Neukirchener-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2000) 126–27.

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Conclusion When Israel is suffering a situation of oppression, it is a sign that the covenant with God has been broken. The renovation of the covenant always implies a liberation from oppression in the biblical texts. Liberation is not understood exclusively in terms of political freedom or self-determination but also in terms of a new internal social dynamic in which social justice is the norm. Oppression needs to cease both externally and internally. The social reforms of Nehemiah during the restoration period (Neh 5:1–13), the egalitarian practices of the Qumran community, and the early Jesus movement are good examples of the expected internal dynamic of a community that has renewed its covenantal relationship with God.

Woe or Ho: The Lamentable Translation of ‫ הוי‬in Isaiah 55:1 Marty E. Stevens The recognition of certain temporal and theological shifts throughout the 66 chapters of the book named Isaiah has solidified the authorial division of the book into three prophetic personalities: First Isaiah (chaps. 1–39), Second Isaiah (chaps. 40–55), and Third Isaiah (chaps. 56–66). Scholars typically consider chap. 55 as the climactic summary of Second Isaiah’s proclamation of salvation to the exiles in Babylon, characterizing the poem as a gracious invitation to God’s free banquet. This essay suggests that the opening word of the chapter, ‫ הוי‬hôy, conveys a quality of lamentation better translated ‘woe’ rather than the more frequent translation ‘ho’. We begin with analysis of the use of ‫ הוי‬in biblical texts, consider the influence of the translation ‘woe’ on the poem’s genre, and explore likely cultural contexts for the poem’s hearers. Thus, the essay questions the traditional characterization of the chapter as a gracious invitation and suggests instead that interpretations of the poem need to consider the deadly serious tone of this initial word of lamentation. The relationship of ‫ הוי‬to lamentation is confirmed by general characterizations of the use of the term in the Hebrew Bible: The word [hôy] is an automatic reaction of the prophet upon hearing the word of God’s judgment. . . . Promise of destruction was the destruction. Lament was called for.1 [The] primary point is that when those to whom the prophets preached heard the initial exclamation “hôy!”, they would have immediately associated this mentally and emotionally with mourning for the dead. The association of hôy with lamentation would have been especially striking to the listeners, for it would have brought into vivid relief the pronouncement of Israel’s death.2 A woe oracle mourns those whose actions are described after the opening ‫יֹוה‬.3 1.  Richard J. Clifford, “The Use of HÔY in the Prophets,” CBQ 28 (1966) 464. 2.  James G. Williams, “The Alas-Oracles of the Eighth Century Prophets,” HUCA 38 (1967) 87. 3.  John L. McLaughlin, The Marzēaḥ in the Prophetic Literature: References and Allusions in Light of the Extra-Biblical Evidence (VTSup 86; Leiden: Brill, 2001) 93.

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The very use of hôy makes these [invective] words [of the prophets] point with all possible emphasis and certainty to the deadly consequences entailed by such [sinful] actions and conduct on the part of [humanity].4

The word ‫( הוי‬or the associated variant ‫ הו‬hô) is used in the Hebrew Bible 53 times in 48 verses.5 Only one usage is outside the books of the prophets, and this use is in a prophetic narrative (1 Kgs 13:30). Of the 53 occurrences, 8 clearly intend ‫ הוי‬as an exclamation of mourning in the context of a funeral lament, the equivalent of crying over the dead body at the grave. These verses exhibit a similar syntactical pattern: the mourner speaks the interjection addressing the dead body, and the verb ������������������������������������� ‫����������������������������������ספד‬ ‘wail, lament’ is used in proximity to the interjection.6 In another 28 uses, ‫ הוי‬is an interjection introducing a prophetic oracle of judgment, something like “Alas—doom is coming!” These verses do not exhibit the consistent syntactical patterns of the funerary lament: the speaker is either the prophet or God; the addressee is a either a proper name, a participle, a noun, or a substantive adjective; the ‫ הוי‬statement is followed by an announcement of punishment following the conjunction ‫‘ לכן‬therefore’, a threat of punishment with no conjunction, an ironic or rhetorical question, or another ‫ הוי‬oracle.7 In another 8 uses, the context of ‫ הוי‬could be described as either funeral lament or announcement of judgment.8 Thus, there is fundamental agreement among scholars on the use of ‫ הוי‬in 44 uses—either a lament as at a funeral or an announcement of impending judgment. Seventeen of these uses of ‫ הוי‬as funeral lament or announcement of judgment are throughout First and Second Isaiah. Simple arithmetic (53 total uses of ‫ הוי‬minus 44 uses as lament or judgment) reveals that there are 9 times that ������������������������������������������������������������������������ ‫���������������������������������������������������������������������הוי‬ is used for which scholars offer the gamut of interpretations—everything from excited encouragement to announcement of doom. In some cases, the usage is simply considered anomalous without cogent explanation. In 5 of these remaining 9 uses, 3 in Isaiah, the contexts distinctly show a threat of judgment, either for Israel or for a foreign nation.9 Neglecting the context of threat, some scholars characterize these uses as some form of excla4. Hans-Jürgen Zobel, “‫( הוי‬hôy),” in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament (ed. G. Johannes Botterweck and Helmer Ringgren; trans. David E. Green; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1978) 3:364. 5.  The extensive scholarly debate about the origin of the ‫ הוי‬interjection—either funerary lament or family-clan ethos—is outside the scope of this essay, which focuses on the use of the interjection by the prophet. 6.  1 Kgs 13:30; Jer 22:18 (4 times), 34:5; and Amos 5:16 (‫ הו‬hô 2 times). 7.  Isa 5:8, 11, 18, 20, 21, 22; 10:1, 5; 28:1; 29:1, 15; 30:1; 31:1; 33:1; 45:9, 10; Jer 22:13; 23:1; Ezek 13:3, 18; 34:2; Nah 3:1; Hab 2:6, 9, 12, 15, 19; Zech 11:17. 8.  Isa 1:4; Jer 48:1, 50:27; Amos 5:18, 6:1; Mic 2:1; Zeph 2:5, 3:1. 9.  Isa 1:24 (Isr), 17:12, 18:1; Jer 30:7 (Isr), 47:6.

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mation of excitement.10 From Israel’s point of view, these oracles against foreign nations could be characterized as “excitement”—excitement that Israel’s enemies are about to be destroyed—but this excitement on Israel’s part does not change the fundamental function of the ���������������������������������� ‫�������������������������������הוי‬ statement to introduce impending judgment. The last 3 uses of ‫( הוי‬not counting Isa 55:1) are found in one passage, Zech 2:10–11[6–7]. The repetition of ‫ הוי‬at the beginning of 2:10 is unusual, found elsewhere only in Amos 5:16 (with the variant spelling ‫ הו‬hô), where it is clearly used in a context of mourning and lamentation. The double ‫הוי‬ interjection is followed by the imperative “flee” and then by an imperative commanding Zion to escape. The reason for the summons to flee and escape is the impending destruction of the surrounding land and peoples (2:9).11 Punishment of the enemy is the incentive to flee. Scholars seem at a loss to explain the particular nuance of ������������������������������������������������������ ‫���������������������������������������������������הוי‬ in these two verses, calling it excited encouragement, a summons to flight, or an attention-getting device. Clifford notes, “Zech 2.10, 11 illustrates a curious use of hôy as a cry to get attention. It apparently is related to the prophetic and funerary hôy only by sound.”12 The context in Zechariah 2, however, manifests the interjection ‫ הוי‬to be a cry of lamentation over the coming distress on the nations, which is, at the same time, the coming of “your” and “Zion’s” deliverance. In this postexilic passage, the ‫ הוי‬oracle does appear to have loosened its moorings a bit in the cry of lamentation or judgment; nevertheless, the context of judgment is still discernible. Presumably, “you” are to flee, and “Zion” is to escape in order to avoid the vengeance about to be inflicted on the nations. So, to summarize the use of the interjection ‫ הוי‬in the Hebrew Bible outside Isa 55:1, we note that in every case it serves as a cry of mourning in a funeral lament, a cry of lamentation over pending destruction, or an introductory cry to a prophetic announcement of judgment. Given the evidence accumulated thus far, one could reasonably assume the use of ‫ הוי‬in Isa 55:1 to be consistent with other uses in prophetic texts in the Hebrew Bible—that is, to be translated ‘woe’ or perhaps the weaker ‘alas’. However, the introductory ‫ הוי‬in Isaiah 55 is routinely translated ‘ho!’13 10.  For example, Gunther Wanke, “ ‫ אוי‬und ‫הוי‬,” ZAW 78 (1966) 217; Paul Humbert, Problèmes du Livre d’Habacuc (Neuchâtel: Université de Neuchâtel, 1944) 19; Erhard Gerstenberger, “The Woe-Oracles of the Prophets,” JBL 81 (1963) 251. 11.  See Amos 9:1 and Jer 46:6, where the same two verbs, ‫‘ נוס‬flee’ and ‫‘ מלט‬escape’, are used in a context of surrounding destruction. 12.  Clifford, “The Use of HÔY,” 463 (emphasis mine). 13.  Nrsv, rsv, njps; Walter Brueggemann, Isaiah (2 vols.; Westminster Bible Companion; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1998) 2:158; Charles Cutler Torrey, The Second Isaiah: A New Interpretation (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1928) 255; Claus Westermann,

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Scholars appear reluctant to understand the use of ‫ הוי‬in Isa 55:1 as anything but exclamatory. In his commentary on Isaiah 1–39, Brueggemann consistently notes the use of the interjection ‫ הוי‬as anticipatory of impending death. For example, regarding Isa 1:4: “The translation ‘ah’ is much too weak. The older translation ‘woe’ more nearly voices the ominous tone of what follows”; regarding the series of 6 ‫’הוי‬s in Isaiah 5: “The woes are introduced by a term that bespeaks the grief of death. The form of utterance expresses anticipated mourning for those who are sure to die for their unacceptable behavior”; regarding Isa 17:12: “The oracle begins with ‘ah,’ bespeaking great vexation and trouble”; regarding chaps. 28–31: “Each of the four chapters begins with a woe, a rhetorical signal of judgment bespeaking a sure, coming deathliness.”14 Nevertheless, his commentary on chaps. 40–66 is curiously silent regarding the identical interjection in Isa 55:1. All major Hebrew manuscripts begin Isa 55:1 with ‫ ;הוי‬however, the major Greek witnesses and the Vulgate omit the initial interjection.15 The syntax of the addressee in Isa 55:1 is consistent with the syntax of other ‫���������הוי‬ ������������ addressees in Isaiah and beyond.16 The addressee is quickly turned from the impersonal third-person singular (“every thirsty one” and “who has no silver”) to the second-person masculine plural through the use of imperatives, a general characteristic of ‫ הוי‬oracles in Isaiah and beyond.17 The poem continues with several imperatives and then with an ironic rhetorical question (55:2), again demonstrating consistency with other ‫ הוי‬oracles in Isaiah and beyond.18 Therefore, after analysis of the use of ‫ הוי‬in the Hebrew Bible, I think there is no convincing evidence to understand the ‫ הוי‬hôy in Isa 55:1 in a way significantly different from other uses. More convincing, every other use in the book Isaiah 40–66 (OTL; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1969) 280; Richard J. Clifford, “Isaiah 55: Invitation to a Feast,” in The Word of the Lord Shall Go Forth: Essays in Honor of David Noel Freedman in Celebration of His Sixtieth Birthday (ed. Carol L. Meyers and M. O’Connor; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1983) 28. 14.  Brueggemann, Isaiah, 2:16, 51, 150, 217. 15.  It is noted in Origen’s Hexapla as extant in Hebrew. Elsewhere, the LXX translates ‫ יוה‬with οὐαί 32 times, with ὦ 12 times, and with οἴμμοι 1 time, the same words used to trans­ late ‫‘ אוי‬woe’. Zobel, “ ‫( הוי‬hôy),” 359. 16.  Construct noun-adjective used substantively. See Isa 5:20, 17:12, 18:1, 28:1; Jer 47:6; Amos 6:1. 17.  Delbert R. Hillers, “Hôy and Hôy-Oracles: A Neglected Syntactic Aspect,” in The Word of the Lord Shall Go Forth: Essays in Honor of David Noel Freedman in Celebration of His Sixtieth Birthday (ed. Carol L. Meyers and M. O’Connor; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1983) 187–88; Williams, “The Alas-Oracles,” 83. See Isa 1:4, 5:8, 10:1, 29:15, 30:1, 33:1; Jer 22:13, 23:1; Ezek 34:2; Amos 5:18, 6:1; Mic 2:1; Hab 2:6, 9, 15. 18.  For questions following ‫ יוה‬statements, see Isa 1:4; 10:1; 29:15; 45:9, 10; Jer 22:13; 47:6; Ezek 13:18; 34:2; Amos 5:18; 6:1; Hab 2:6, 12, 19. The question in Amos 5:18 begins with ‫‘ למה‬why’, as does Isa 55:2.

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of Isaiah introduces lamentation of some sort. Surely ancient hearers would not have expected 52 uses to mean ‘woe’ and 1 to mean ‘ho’, without obvious linguistic clues to its change of definition. Are we to believe that the ancient hearer of Isaiah associates ‘woe’ with ‫ הוי‬17 times over the course of 917 verses, and a mere 169 verses later is supposed to realize that it now does not mean ‘woe’?19 In short, I see no reason to translate the first word of Isaiah 55 as anything other than ‘woe’, a word of lamentation and judgment. Linguistic analysis suggests the negative connotations of several other words in Isa 55:1. The addressee of the interjection ‫ הוי‬is “every thirsty one.” The word ‫‘ צמא‬thirst, thirsty’ appears in 11 verses throughout Isaiah.20 The word, of course, means the lack of water and is used in Isaiah of people, land, and fish. Thirst, if not remedied, is a deadly condition for the afflicted party; any remedy for thirst in Isaiah is always achieved through the actions of another party offering water, emphasizing the inability of the thirsty one to overcome the deadly condition without outside intervention. The word ‫‘ מים‬water’ is both a remedy to deadly thirst and a deadly threat as a powerful force of nature. The word ‫‘ כסף‬silver’ is widely used throughout the Bible to indicate an economic means of exchange. Of the 15 other uses of ‫ כסף‬in Isaiah, 5 are connected with idol-making, and 6 are in a context of judgment.21 The verb ‫‘ ׁשבר‬buy grain’ is used only here in Isaiah. In the Pentateuch, the purchase of grain is always in the context of survival of famine or wilderness wandering.22 The word ‫מחיר‬ ‘price’ occurs elsewhere in Isaiah only at 45:13, a chapter also containing ‫הוי‬ twice, where ‫ מחיר‬is in apposition to ‫‘ ׁשחד‬bribe’.23 Of the remaining 13 uses of ‫ מחיר‬in the Hebrew Bible, 7 are in a context of immoral or unwise behavior, and 2 are used in laments over the results of God’s judgment.24 Only 4 uses are neutral or positive.25 The word ‫‘ יין‬wine’ is used in Isaiah in the context of accusation, reproach, or judgment in each of the 12 verses (13 times) outside Isa 55:1. The word ‫‘ חלב‬milk’ only occurs 3 other times in Isaiah, each time in the context of sustenance for life.26 Any translation and interpretation of Isaiah 55 will need to take seriously the character of lamentation or announcement of judgment introduced by the interjection ‫ הוי‬and continued by words with connotations of deadly seriousness. 19.  This rhetorical question counts verses in the canonical form of Isaiah. I recognize, of course, the more complicated redactional history of the book. 20.  Isa 5:13, 21:14, 29:8, 32:6, 41:17, 44:3, 48:21, 49:10, 50:2, 55:1, 65:13. 21.  Idols: Isa 2:20, 30:22, 31:7, 40:19, 46:6. Judgment: Isa 1:22, 2:7, 7:23, 13:17, 43:24, 48:10. 22.  For example, Genesis 41–44; Deut 2:6, 28. 23.  See the identical parallelism in Mic 3:11. 24.  Behavior: Deut 23:19, 1 Kgs 21:2, Job 28:15, Prov 17:16, Jer 15:13, Dan 11:39, Mic 3:11. Lament of judgment: Ps 44:12, Lam 5:4. 25.  2 Sam 24:24, 1 Kgs 10:28 // 2 Chr 1:16, Prov 27:26. 26.  Isa 7:22, 28:9, 60:16. The LXX translates ‫‘ ָחלָב‬milk’ as if it were vocalized ‫‘ ֵחלֶב‬fat’.

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Rather than a gracious invitation, I suggest that the rhetorical unit of Isa 55:1– 2a be understood as a sarcastic taunt. Isa 55:1 begins with a cry of accusatory judgment that will inevitably lead to a funeral lament if the deadly situation is not remedied. In the remainder of 55:1, the addressees are sarcastically taunted to try to achieve their own remedy from their own resources. Then, in 55:2a, they are accused in an ironic rhetorical question. The irony lies in the diligent striving for satisfaction, “weighing out your silver” and “your laborious toil” for that which is “no bread” and “no satisfaction.” The prophet accuses the addressees of this sort of behavior. The question is obviously rhetorical—how could anyone explain spending money and effort on emptiness? The sarcastic taunting in 55:1–2a is abruptly interrupted with the opening imperative of 55:2b. The command to hear is completely unexpected in this context; one would instead expect a pronouncement of judgment for such prideful self­ sufficiency.27 Isa 55:2b continues with unusual intensification of the imperative “hear,” repetition of the imperative “eat” from 55:1b, and unusual vocabulary in 55:2bβ “so that your being may take exquisite delight in fatness.” Isa 55:2b displays several literary features that suggest the verse’s importance in the unfolding message. The cumulative rhetorical effect on the hearer is to present a stark contrast to the sarcastic accusatory taunting of 55:1–2a: the choice facing the hearer is one of death or life. Next, the question of the identity of the people addressed with this sarcastic taunt deserves some attention. While scholars debate the identity of the speaker here as God or the prophet or personified Zion, little notice is taken of the identity of the addressees, other than their geographical location in Babylon.28 I agree with the historical location of this text as being addressed to those in Babylonian exile. Can anything more be inferred about their social location? If we take seriously the inherent connection between the opening interjection and the context of mourning, two ancient cultural contexts seem possible: the ‫ מרזח‬marzēaḥ and the kispu rites. References to the ‫���������������������������������������������������מרזח‬ ������������������������������������������������������� are widespread in the ancient Near East. From Ugaritic texts, we surmise that the ‫ מרזח‬was a type of guild with members who paid dues, met at a designated house, and enjoyed copious amounts of wine in the course of their association. While the exact purpose of the guild is uncertain, some scholars posit a funerary context—namely, that members joined together to plan and carry out appropriate ancestor-worship rituals. Others suggest only that particular ‫ מרזח‬guilds may have developed funerary aspects, perhaps as a result of the common activity of imbibing at association gatherings and at 27.  See Ezek 13:18, 34:2; and Hab 2:6, in which the ‫ הוי‬statements lead to accusatory questions and then to pronouncements of judgment. See also the condemnation of prideful self-sufficiency in Isa 10:12–15, 14:4–6, 16:6–7, 28:14–15, 29:15–16, 47:5–7. 28.  See Simone Paganini, “Who Speaks in Isaiah 55.1? Notes on the Communicative Structure in Isaiah 55,” JSOT 30 (2005) 83–92.

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ancestor rituals.29 The word ‫ מרזח‬does not appear in Isaiah, but allusions are claimed for Isa 5:11–13; 28:1–4, 7–8; and 57:7–8.30 Note that ���������������� ‫�������������הוי‬ is found introducing two of these texts (5:11–13 and 28:1–4). Another possible cultural context for the addressees in Isaiah 55 is the Mesopotamian kispu rite, perhaps signaled by the use of the Hebrew word ‫ כסף‬in 55:1–2.31 Kispu (or ki.sì.ga) is the Assyrian term used for the regular offerings of food and drink to deceased ancestors. Two texts specify milk as the needed offering: Milk and ghee will be needed for the funerary offering (ki.sì.ga) of the month Abu.32 (Cows should come to Babylon) so that milk can be available until the funerary offering (ki.sì.ga) is finished.33

Through the invocation of the names of the deceased ancestors, current familial identity is linked to the past. According to van der Toorn, “The purpose of the rite was communion and the maintenance of mutual good-will.”34 By honoring the dead with religious rites including food and drink, the living descendants hoped to enjoy beneficence and prosperity. Two lines from a royal kispu rite bear a striking resemblance to the opening lines of Isaiah 55: All who have no one to care for them or to call them, Come ye, eat this, drink this, and give your blessing.35

The invitation in this Old Babylonian text is to the deceased ancestors who have no living relatives to perform the appropriate kispu rites. Here, King Hammurabi invites these unfortunate, neglected ancestors to come and enjoy the feast he offers. In gratitude, he hopes the dead will give their blessing, resulting in an enhanced life(style) for him. Turning to the addressees in Isaiah 55, we may infer from the funerary context of the initial interjection that the hearers are being addressed as if they are already dead or on a deadly path. Certainly the exiles in Babylon could be understood metaphorically to be dead; Ezekiel’s hopeful vision of the valley of dry bones employs this same metaphor. The dead exiles are being called by the 29.  Theodore J. Lewis, Cults of the Dead in Ancient Israel and Ugarit (HSM 39; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989) 81–83; McLaughlin, The Marzēaḥ in the Prophetic Literature, 66–79. 30.  Ibid., 154–84. 31.  This was first suggested to me by S. Dean McBride in private conversation. Identical consonants would indicate wordplay, even though the etymology differs. 32.  CAD K 425. 33.  Ibid., 425–26. 34.  Karel van der Toorn, Family Religion in Babylonia, Syria and Israel: Continuity and Change in the Forms of Religious Life (Leiden: Brill, 1996) 64. 35.  “Genealogy of the Hammurabi Dynasty,” as cited in ibid.

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living—God or the prophet or personified Zion—to abandon their deadly ways and to choose life. The remaining verses in Isaiah 55 describe life with God as listening (v. 3), living in the everlasting covenant (v. 3), seeking and calling upon the Lord (v. 6), returning (v. 7), going forth in joy and being led in peace (v. 12), receiving the acclamation of the mountains, hills, and trees (v. 12), and rejoicing in the cypress and myrtle (v. 13). This essay proposes that the characterization of Isaiah 55 as a gracious invitation to God’s free banquet does not give sufficient attention to the tradition of lamentation or judgment associated with the initial interjection ‫������������הוי‬ ��������������� . The translation ‘woe’ is to be preferred over ‘ho’. Translations and interpretations of the chapter need to reflect the deadly serious tone of the prophet’s words, words that call the hearer to life-and-death decisions. My translation of the opening two verses of Isaiah 55, including explanatory comments in parentheses, would be: Woe, every thirsty one! Go to the waters (if you think you can)! [Woe,] the one who has no silver (and cannot perform kispu rites)! Go (if you think it will do any good)! Buy grain and eat, with no money and with no illicit price, wine and milk! (Any fool knows you cannot buy grain, wine, and milk for ancestors with no money!) O why do you weigh out your silver for no bread, (O why do you expend) your wearying toil for no satisfaction?

Recognizing the funerary character of the opening word as well as the sarcastic taunt of the rhetorical questions exposes the hearer as one who is already dead, or at least on a deadly path. In the depth of this awareness, the grace extended in the following verses is all the more life-giving, persuading the dead exiles to be brought to life by listening, seeking, and going forth with God.

Tested at the Boundary: Deuteronomy and Matthew in Conversation on Testing Robert L. Foster

Confessions of a Limited Biblical Theologian Biblical theology as it refers to the scholarly enterprise of engaging the Christian Bible is generally an underdeveloped category of inquiry. The evident problem revolves around the fact that, with the rare exception of work by someone like Brevard Childs, scholars who write biblical theology normally focus on one or the other of the testaments.1 Thus, much of what passes for biblical theology is technically a biblical theology of either the Old Testament or the New Testament. In an era of specialization, one might reduce each of these two fields to biblical theologies of the Pentateuch or prophets or (synoptic) Gospels or (authentic) letters of Paul. One of the troubles facing anyone interested in more than specialization in a particular area of either testament is the proliferation of methods and critical literature in the field. The days when it seemed that historical criticism dominated the horizon of biblical scholarship are long behind us, and we have entered a world of Bakhtinian and postcolonial and reception-historical readings of texts, just to name a few recent methods in an ever-diversifying field. Journals continue to proliferate along with publications of dissertations that thoroughly examine the potentialities of specific pericopes within a portion of the Bible. These in turn emerge alongside the various collections of essays from symposiums on any of a number of inquiries into the history or social context or rhetorical structure or modern response to the biblical text, and so on. The good news for individuals who wish to produce biblical theological scholarship on the Christian Bible in the midst of this ocean of material and method is that one of the central affirmations of the Christian text is incarnation, Author’s note: I am delighted to be able to honor my Doktorvater with this essay. Prof. Nelson has proved to be a great teacher, a great conversation partner, and an avid supporter of my work over several years. Writing this essay to honor him seems a small thing compared with the debt I owe him for his contribution to my development as a scholar. 1.  See Brevard S. Childs, Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992).

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which is necessarily a confession of limitation. A person who wishes to engage in biblical theology that crosses the various portions of the canon must admit that he/she cannot engage all the pertinent literature and that he/she will investigate the text from a certain perspective, by use of a particular methodology. I think this does not disallow that the product will prove of even greater use, although, it will nevertheless be of limited use. And so it is with this grand proviso of confessed limitation that I engage in the following brief exploration of testing in two portions of the Christian biblical canon. The texts that I have chosen are related at the simplest level of intertextuality: I explore the texts in Deuteronomy that Jesus uses in his test in the wilderness as they function within both the rhetoric of Deuteronomy and the narrative of the Gospel of Matthew. I broadly define my methodology as narrative-rhetorical, attending to the features of the final form of the text that foreground stories or speech. I still acknowledge that biblical narratives often intend to persuade readers toward a specific course, while much biblical rhetoric is undergirded by narrative elements or references. I will attend to each text individually and then bring the two portions of Scripture into conversation in order to make a provisional statement about a biblical theology of testing. In this conversation, I hope to avoid any hint of triumphalism that automatically trumps the voice of the Old Testament text with the voice of the New Testament text. It is to this daunting task that I now turn.2

Imagining Productive Memory: Anticipating Troubles in the Promised Land The passages we are concerned with in the book of Deuteronomy appear in Moses’ second speech cycle in chaps. 5–11. This second cycle contains several key summaries of the demands of God, including the Ten Words (5:6–21), the Shemaʿ (6:4–5), and another brief summary in 10:12–22. Nevertheless, the overall thrust of this section is an exhortation regarding obedience to the law that will unfold in the following chapters. A consideration of the flow of the rhetoric of the book up to Deuteronomy 6 shows a balance between remembering the past and imagining the future that supports the call to obedience. Perhaps what surprises the reader is that in the first section of the book (Deuteronomy 1–4), though Moses recalls stories from nearly a 40-year period of wandering in the wilderness, he does not recite the story of the exodus. Instead, he highlights the time when the people appointed judges (1:9–18), refused to take the land of promise (1:19–46), jour2.  For a more thorough introduction to my method, see my Justice Prescribed and Personified: Toward a Biblical Theology of Justice (Ph.D. diss., Southern Methodist University, 2007) 1–35.

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neyed through foreign lands that eventually led to the defeat of Sihon and Og (2:1–3:22), and God refused to allow Moses to enter the promised land but allowed him to view it from Mt. Pisgah (3:23–29). Deuteronomy 4 primarily envisions the future of the people as they enter into the land and the impending threat of idolatry, of creating images to represent Yhwh as the neighboring nations represent their gods (4:1–40). Even this warning is grounded in memory as Moses recalls the time when God delivered the law at Horeb in the midst of fire and the fact that they did not see any form, which indicates that they should not make any form to represent God (4:9–14). It seems that the point of this very select remembrance of the history of Israel in the wilderness and the consequent warning against idolatry is to present a series of paradigmatic stories for Israel. The stories remind Israel that the major act of rebellion in the wilderness occurred when they refused to enter the land. The key victory that assures them that they may gain victory and settle the land promised to their forebears is the defeat of Sihon and Og and the settlement of these lands by the two and one-half tribes east of the Jordan. The essential revelation of their God in fire on Horeb serves as a strict warning not to engage in image-making when they settle in the land. Remembering the past includes inviting the present generation back into the past in order to remind them that Yhwh made a covenant with them, the present Israelites, who were not of battle age when the covenant was originally delivered (5:1–5). They are the ones who will live out its implications in the future as they settle the promised land. It is at this juncture that we begin to see the use of the interesting phrase this command (5:28; 6:1, 25). In 6:1, Moses claims that he will teach the Israelites as Yhwh intended so that they may go and possess the land. One way to read “this command” is in conjunction with the following phrase, “the statutes and ordinances,” so that “this command” encapsulates all the other commandments contained within the book of Deuteronomy. The fact that the next commandment that Moses issues is the Shemaʿ (6:4–5) points in another direction, however. With the Shemaʿ in view, it appears that, at least in this context, we may read “this command” as the command to love God completely, with the implication that obedience to all other statutes and ordinances flows out of this supreme command. In fact, it seems that this command is put in various ways throughout the chapter: to fear God (6:2, 13, 24), to love God (6:5), and to serve God and swear by God’s name (6:13).3 This is the command from which all others flow. 3.  Several scholars note the theme of complete devotion to Yhwh in chaps. 5–11, including Moshe Weinfeld, Deuteronomy 1–11 (AB 5; New York: Doubleday, 1991) 326; and Jeffrey H. Tigay, Deuteronomy: The Traditional Hebrew Text with the New JPS Translation (JPS Torah Commentary; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1996) 75.

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If we may read “this command” as the command to devote oneself to Yhwh, then this helps frame the command to “serve” God in 6:13. To fear God, serve God, and swear by God’s name are simply a variety of ways to urge the Israelites to devote themselves completely to God and, especially, not to devote themselves to other gods (6:14), which is the paradigmatic sin according to Deuteronomy 4.4 The test at the boundary of the land, then, is for the people of God to adopt a particular frame of mind: both to remember the past and to anticipate the future, lest they turn from devotion to Yhwh to serving other gods. As they stand and peer into the land with Moses, they must remember that this is the land that Yhwh promised to their forebears (6:10) and the reason for their release from the house of bondage in Egypt (6:12). Furthermore, the Israelites must anticipate God’s goodness to them—that Yhwh will indeed give them the land and that they will in essence inherit the riches of the land without having done any labor for them (6:12–13). The real test for Israel at the boundary is to determine in the present moment to keep the command, to be devoted to Yhwh based on their memory of the promises and activities of Yhwh and on their anticipation of Yhwh’s goodness to them in the future. Yhwh knows that the people stand in some danger of losing this commitment, this desire to devote themselves completely to Yhwh. In fact, Yhwh says as much at the end of Moses’ summary of the covenant revelation at Horeb: “Oh that they had such a mind as this always, to fear me and to keep all my commandments, that it might go well with them and with their children forever” (5:29). Although idolatry is the preeminent sign of a lack of devotion to Yhwh, it is not the only sign. Instead, rebellion against other commands of Yhwh threatens the life of the Israelites before Yhwh. The paradigmatic rebellion is their rebellion against Yhwh’s original command to take the land. Thus, Moses moves from exhortation to serve Yhwh alone and turn away from idolatry when they enter the land to “thou shalt not,” exhorting the Israelites not to put Yhwh to the test (6:16–19). Moses refers here specifically to the complaint at Massah, where the people complained against Moses because of their lack of water and doubted God’s presence among them (see Exod 17:1–7). Moses does not relate this story as he does some others in Deuteronomy. Rather, he alludes to it through the phrase “as you tested him [Yhwh] at Massah” (Deut 6:16). An allusion such as the one to Massah here in Deuteronomy 6 is meant to evoke the fuller story for the listener or reader. However, in this instance I think that the reference to Massah is meant to do more than evoke the story from Exodus 17. Instead, the audience is meant to put this story in the context 4.  Tigay (ibid.) and Weinfeld (Deuteronomy 1–11, 344) both note that the call to devotion in chap. 6 reflect the first two commandments of the Decalogue (Deut 5:7–10). While I agree with this assessment wholeheartedly, I still think that this command for complete devotion to Yhwh and against idolatry emerges from the paradigmatic story recorded in Deuteronomy 4.

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of the paradigmatic rebellion against Yhwh so that Massah becomes another instance of the greater sin of not having obeyed Yhwh and taken the land in the first place.5 It is not surprising then that the command not to test Yhwh but to obey the commands of Yhwh is followed by a comment that obedience will lead the people to take the good land (6:18) and thrust out their enemies from the land (6:19). The testing at the boundary for Israel is not only to imagine a future of devotion to Yhwh but to have faith, to trust Yhwh now for the future victory over its enemies and the fulfillment of the promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (6:18). Deuteronomy 7 presents a variation on these two themes as, first, Moses warns against intermarriage, which is a problem because it might lead to the preeminent sin of idolatry (7:1–5). Moses, second, instructs the people against rebellion by means of a positive statement about the ability of Yhwh to dispossess the nations in the land since Yhwh also delivered the people from Egypt (7:17–26). Deuteronomy 8 reintroduces the phrase “all this commandment,” which Moses commands the people to obey. Again, it seems that “this commandment” refers to the commandment to be devoted to Yhwh and eschew idolatry, because the chapter climaxes in the commandment to remember Yhwh and not go after other gods (8:17–20). “All” this commandment might then refer to the various ways that the people find themselves caught up in idolatry. The means to idolatry include making graven images (chap. 4), intermarriage of their children with the children of the nations in the land (chap. 7), and even the mediation of Aaron (chap. 9). One might also include the commandments that discuss the various ways the people might forget Yhwh, including satisfaction with the good things of the land (6:10–12) and thinking that the blessing of the land came from the power of their own hands (8:11–20). One other thing the people might forget as they enter to possess the land is that, during the 40 years of wilderness wandering, God tested them to see if they would keep his commandments but did not allow them to suffer from lack of food and clothing (8:1–10). Manna was not simply the provision of food by Yhwh but a real test of the people to see if they were open to his discipline (8:2–5). The gathering of the manna itself was a test from Yhwh (Exod 16:4), a seemingly simple test about gathering just enough every day and then enough for two days on the night before the Sabbath. Unfortunately, some of the people failed on both fronts (Exod 16:1–30). They did not understand that the bread did not sustain them, but their obedience to the commands of Yhwh

5.  I think that Tigay’s argument that Yhwh did not punish the Israelites for rebellion early on (such as at Massah) because of their lack of experience with Yhwh but only later, after repeated rebellion, seems to support the idea that the rebellion against taking the land is paradigmatic (Tigay, Deuteronomy, 81).

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would sustain them (Deut 8:3).6 This memory was meant to serve them as they entered into a land of promise, where this would be more than enough. The test for Israel at the boundary was to imagine a life in the land where they would remember the test they failed about gathering manna, in order not to forget that following the commands of Yhwh is really what will enable them to enjoy the land’s abundance.

Confrontation of Identity: Trust in and Devotion to the One God In the Gospel of Matthew, the scene of Jesus’ testing appears in the introduction to the person of Jesus before he enters into public ministry. The testing follows several key stories that inform the reader about Jesus’ identity. The genealogy emphasizes the fact that Jesus descends from the line of Abraham, the father of the nation of Israel, and of David, the king whose memory shapes the expectations of the nation. Yet, this line from Abraham to David to Jesus is not exactly straightforward, signaled by the various women highlighted in the genealogy (Matt 1:3, 5, 6, 16) and then again by the reference to the deportation to Babylon (1:11, 17). In the story of the actions of the first “son of David” in the narrative—that is, the story of Joseph’s marriage to Mary—we find that Jesus is “God with us” and that Jesus will save his people from their sins (1:21, 23). The journey of the wise courtiers to Jerusalem and then to Bethlehem highlights the special rescue of this special child and yet also the tragic death of others in his wake (2:1–23). In the baptismal scenes of Matthew 3, we find that Jesus is a glorious figure able both to grant the Holy Spirit to some and to bring fiery judgment on others, and we learn by the voice from heaven of Jesus’ special status as God’s progeny. At several turns in these opening stories, the narrative introduces the work of the Holy Spirit, by whom Mary becomes pregnant (1:18), with whom Jesus will baptize others (3:11), and which descends upon Jesus in the form of a dove (3:16). It is this Spirit that then leads Jesus into the desert to be tested by the devil (4:1). The fact that the narrative states that the Spirit purposed to lead Jesus to a time of testing indicates that part of the test for Jesus includes his 6.  This is only one of several ways to read this text. One could understand the text to mean that people do not live on the provision of the land but only on the provision of Yhwh (Tigay, Deuteronomy, 92), the difference between “living on” bread and living or existing by God’s providence (Weinfeld, Deuteronomy 1–11, 389). I am more in agreement with Richard D. Nelson, who writes, “Manna provided the central lesson: the ‘necessities of life’ are of only relative importance when compared to Yahweh’s decrees” (Deuteronomy: A Commentary [OTL; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2002] 107). I am emphasizing Deut 8:1, which states that the goal is to keep the commandment so that one may possess the land and enjoy its benefits; this was the reason for the manna—not just to provide for Israel but to test whether the people would obey the commands of Yhwh (8:2).

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willingness to trust the Spirit, over whom it seems he would have some control in order to baptize humans in the Spirit. The rather peaceful-sounding descent in the form of a dove should not overshadow the fact that the Spirit leads Jesus immediately into conflict and that Jesus must somehow trust the work of the Spirit in leading him into this desert struggle. The second striking feature of these temptations is that the devil begins the first two with the suggestive comment, “If you are the Son of God. . . .” The testing in the desert has something to do with Jesus’ identity, which the devil challenges immediately after the proclamation of Jesus as the Son of God at his baptism. Thus the test also includes an element of trust in the proclamation of the voice from heaven, a confidence in the fact that Jesus really is God’s Son. Jesus’ confrontation with the devil begins with a seeming taunt by the devil, “Turn these stones into bread.” In other words, if you are the Son of God, prove it! And, in fact, Jesus accepts his challenge to prove that he is the Son of God but in an unexpected way. The statement in Deuteronomy, “Humans do not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God,” is set in a context that reminds the listener that, “as a person disciplines a child, so the Lord your God disciplines you” (Deut 8:5).7 Jesus takes the devil’s challenge and twists it, showing that he is indeed the Son of God, faithful to the discipline of the Father and thus, unwilling to take orders from the devil. Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert, so he will yield to the will of the Spirit and not to either his own will or the devil’s will. The second test to which the devil puts Jesus also focuses on Jesus’ identity as the Son of God and the devil’s taunt, “Prove it!” In this instance, we find that the devil decides to reinforce the test by quoting from Scripture about the way God will send angels to save those who trust in God (Ps 91:11–12). Several ironies emerge in a careful reading of this text. First, the devil takes Jesus to the holy city, which proved a place of real danger to the Son of God in Matthew 2, because Herod sought to kill the baby Jesus. Second, and more to the point, in the case of the real threat to Jesus’ life, God did in fact send angels on more than one occasion to warn Joseph to take the baby and his mother to places of safety, away from the threat extending from Jerusalem (2:13, 19, 22). Finally, after the time of testing in the desert (and in Jerusalem and on a high mountain), angels come and attend to Jesus’ needs (4:11). In Deuteronomy, the statement “You shall not test Yhwh your God” refers to the time at Massah when the people 7.  Several scholars note that the broader context of Deuteronomy 8 highlights that Yhwh referred to Israel as his son (W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel according to Saint Matthew I–VII [ICC; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1988] 363; Daniel J. Harrington, The Gospel of Matthew [Sacra Pagina; Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1991] 68). They do not develop the further insight, however, that Jesus’ response to the devil then proves quite ironic because he claims his sonship just by the bare fact of his obedience.

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doubted God’s willingness to provide for them in the desert; the larger context ties this to the people’s doubt about whether God will grant them victory over their enemies. In the use of this quotation from Deuteronomy, Jesus seems to be confronting the devil with both confidence that God will meet his needs and confidence that God will grant him victory over his enemies—whether the devil or the Roman-appointed king reigning in Jerusalem. The devil gets down to the basic temptation presented in the book of Deuteronomy as he finally tests Jesus’ devotion to God.8 In Deuteronomy, the trouble with the nations in the promised land is that they might lead Israel to forget Yhwh and worship other gods. We find this twin struggle in the final test of Jesus’ devotion to God when the devil presents to Jesus both all the kingdoms of the world and an ultimate act of idolatry, to worship the god of these kingdoms, the devil.9 Furthermore, to turn and accept the kingdoms of the world is to deny the inbreaking of the kingdom of heaven, which John proclaimed (3:2), to which Jesus seemingly submitted in baptism (3:13–17), and which Jesus will in turn proclaim (4:17). Jesus strongly asserts to the accuser that the time of testing is come to an end because of Jesus’ devotion to serving God, the one who rules from heaven. Jesus will not be led astray by either the kingdoms of the world or their god. The test of Jesus beyond the boundary is to trust the working of the Spirit of God in leading him to the time of testing and to trust the proclamation of his identity as God’s Son. Grounded in his trust in the Spirit and the proclamation from heaven, Jesus seeks neither to substantiate this identity somehow, which would show his lack of trust in God’s discipline or provision, nor to turn from devotion to the kingdom of heaven or its ruler, God the Father.

Testing: Devotion, Commandment, Obedience What can we state, however provisionally, about a biblical theology of testing in light of the book of Deuteronomy and the Gospel of Matthew? One insight is that testing is not always the same. The main difference between these sets of testing passages is temporal. For the people of Israel, the test revolved around their willingness to imagine obedience to Yhwh based on various memories of their life with God in the desert. At the boundary of the promised land, the people of God needed to lean forward and see themselves in the land, possessing it in all its bounty, because they continued in faithful obedience to 8.  This is the basic temptation; it also seems to be the climactic temptation in the series, especially in light of the spatial progression of the temptations highlighted by Davies and Allison: from the desert to the temple pinnacle to the top of a mountain from which one can see all the kingdoms of the world (Saint Matthew I–VII, 352). 9.  Davies and Allison note, with reference to 2 Cor 4:4, that early Christian communities had a sense of the devil as the god of this world (ibid., 371).

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Yhwh. For Jesus, the test proved immediate, a direct confrontation with the devil, the accuser, the god of the kingdoms of this world. His success in passing the test also relied on memory but more on immediate recall as he engaged in swift repartee with the devil. Both sets of texts affirm that God tests people. Yhwh tested Israel by means of sending manna, not simply to satisfy their hunger, but to see if they could obey a simple command about gathering manna for daily provision. God tested Jesus as the Spirit of God led Jesus into the desert into a confrontation with the devil. The Bible affirms that God wants to see whether God’s people and God’s Son will prove themselves faithful to the commands of God. In the end, both Deuteronomy and the Gospel of Matthew make it clear that the test of God’s people is chiefly about their devotion to Yhwh, to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The real question may be echoed in the words ending the book of Joshua, “Choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forebears served beyond the Euphrates or those of the Amorites in whose land you now live; but as for me and my household, we will serve Yhwh” (Josh 24:15). Given the preeminent test of devotion to God, we are then not surprised that the Gospel chooses a key text from Deuteronomy as the greatest command, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your understanding” (Deut 6:5, Matt 22:37). Although these texts both affirm the command to complete devotion to Yhwh, they also affirm obedience to all the commands of Yhwh, whether simple commands about when and how to gather manna, or all the statutes and ordinances, which derive from the greatest command. Jesus’ own answers to the devil from the book of Deuteronomy complicate a vision of Christian Scripture that too easily divides between the old and new without attending to the consonance between old and new. A biblical theology of testing is simultaneously a biblical theology of commands, which serve as the basis of testing. Consequently, a more fully developed biblical theology of commands will also (1) attend to other texts such as Matt 5:17–20, a text that promises that not even a jot or tittle will fall away from the commands until they are all fulfilled, and (2) encourage the teaching and practice of the commands. Finally, a biblical theology of testing attends to a biblical theology of commandments and to a biblical theology of obedience. In this case, I simply want to state that we must allow for a closure of the gap of obedience and disobedience between Jesus and Israel. It is not uncommon for biblical commentators to note that Jesus seems to personify Israel in the Gospel of Matthew and that, in the temptation scene, Jesus does what Israel could not do in the wilderness: he passes the test put to him by God.10 To me, this dichotomy is too sharp for 10.  Harrington seems typical: “The concern of the passage is not so much whether the devil can lure Jesus into this or that sin as it is the portrayal of Jesus as God’s Son ‘who in

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two reasons. First, the text of Deuteronomy lays before the people both the blessing and the curse (11:26–32, 30:11–20). It is true enough that Yhwh and Moses seem to agree that Israel will not remain faithful to the commandments after the death of Moses (31:14–29), but the promise of a blessing for obedience implies at the very least the potential that the people may obey. In fact, if we date the book sometime in the exilic or postexilic period, it seems that the implication is that this period is an opportunity for the returning exiles to pursue obedience, and thus the blessing of Yhwh, one more time. In fact, “the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it” (Deut 30:14). Second, we must be careful not to read the testing of Jesus in the Gospel as an assured outcome of Jesus’ overcoming the troubles in the desert. Certainly, we expect the hero of the story to overcome all the troubles in the story, but for the narrative to have any tension at all we must believe that there is some potential for the protagonist to suffer defeat. Jesus and the devil are not simply engaged in a friendly game of chess in the park. No, they are struggling over the kingdoms of the world in the shadow of the kingdom of heaven come near. The potential eventualities in both texts—the real potential of obedience for the people of Israel in the promised land and the real potential that Jesus might fail the test of confronting the devil—these close the gap and allow that there is perhaps much more similarity between Israel and Jesus than the Christian commentator might normally allow. every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin’ (Heb. 4:15). Where Israel in the wilderness failed, Jesus passes every test” (Gospel of Matthew, 68).

Whose Faith? Reexamining the Habakkuk 2:4 Citation within the Communicative Act of Romans 1:1–17 Richard P. Carlson

Introducing the Problem and the Methodological Approach In a letter that establishes the foundational importance of the Holy Scriptures in its opening sentence (Rom 1:2) and that is brimming with scriptural quotations,1 the letter’s first explicit citation from Holy Scriptures (Hab 2:4 cited anonymously in Rom 1:17b) continues to be a source of interpretive disagreement. What was once so clear to Martin Luther regarding Paul’s use of Hab 2:42 is not at all clear among scholars who seek to understand the thrust of Paul’s seemingly simple six-word quotation from Hab 2:4, ὁ δὲ δίκαιος ἐκ πίστεως ζήσεται. While one scholar concludes “that Paul’s citation is deliberately ambiguous” so that ἐκ πίστεως includes both the sense of “from God’s faithfulness” and “the sense of the phrase ‘to faith’ as well,”3 another claims that Paul’s contextual argument and his intentional rendering of Habakkuk “point indisputably in the direction of ‘faith’ as a theological formula for participation in the Christian movement.”4 While one scholar concludes that the “sentence remains cryptic until we reach 3:21–4:25,”5 another makes an 1.  Scholars generally put the number of scriptural quotations in Romans in the 50s. See the discussion in Richard Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989) 34; and Christopher Stanley, Arguing with Scripture: The Rhetoric of Quotations in the Letters of Paul (London: T. & T. Clark, 2004) 138–41. 2.  Regarding the seminal role Rom 1:17 played in his personal life and for his theology, Luther writes, “There I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that by which the righteous lives by a gift of God, namely by faith. And this is the meaning: the righteousness of God is revealed by the gospel, namely, the passive righteousness with which merciful God justifies us by faith, as it is written, ‘He who through faith is righteous shall live.’ Here I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates. There a totally other face of the entire Scripture showed itself to me” (LW 34:337). 3.  James D. G. Dunn, Romans 1–8 (WBC 38a; Dallas: Word, 1988) 48. 4. Robert Jewett, Romans (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007) 145. 5.  N. T. Wright, “Romans,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible (Nashville: Abingdon, 2002) 10:426.

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argument that “it seems reasonable to read Hab 2:4 in Rom 1:17b with reference to the faithfulness of Christ.”6 So whose faith is it: God’s faith(fulness)? Christ’s faith(fulness)? A human’s faith (referring to one’s belief in Jesus Christ)? Humans’ faith (as a reference to a faith community)? Or is it a reference to some other dynamic of faith? Likewise, how does this faith relate to both the sentence’s subject (ὁ δίκαιος) and its verb (ζήσεται)? The interpretive issues are notoriously compounded when the realities of various readings of Hab 2:4 available in the first century are factored in as well as how this scriptural citation relates to both its immediate context in Romans 1 and Paul’s overall theological argument in Romans. Given the multiplicity and wide divergence of interpretive options that have been put forth as well as the complexity of the interpretive issues involved, I seek in this essay to reexamine the use of Hab 2:4 within the communicative act of Rom 1:1–17. To describe Rom 1:1–17 as a “communicative act” points to the methodology that this reexamination will seek to employ. We understand the communicative act within Rom 1:1–17 to entail an encoded sender constructing and presenting a theological message including its attendant construal of reality, which is intended to have persuasive effects on its encoded audience.7 On the one hand, a real author/sender (Paul) composed a real letter (the original text of Romans) that was sent to a real audience(s) (the various Christians/Christian communities in Rome). On the other hand, what we encounter in Romans (as well as Paul’s other letters), “is not the ‘real’ Paul or the ‘real’ audience, but Paul’s momentary construction of both himself and his intended audience.”8 Thus, within the text of Romans itself we encounter Paul’s presentation of himself, Paul’s construction of the letter’s recipients, and (most important of all), Paul’s “literary communication employing rhetorical devices and means of argumentation intended to persuade its recipients to feel, think or act in certain ways.”9 A “reader-response” or “reader-focused approach” to Romans of this sort does not deny the historical realities of Paul or the Roman Christians who were

6.  Douglas A. Campbell, “Romans 1:17: A Crux Interpretum for the πίστις Χριστοῦ Debate,” JBL 113 (1994) 284. 7.  The construct of implied author and implied audience had its origin in various literary/ narrative studies. On these elements encoded in and construed from the text, see Wayne C. Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction (2nd ed.; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983) 71–76, 211–21; Seymour Chatman, Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978) 148–51; Mark Allan Powell, What Is Narrative Criticism? (Guides to Biblical Scholarship; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990) 19–21. 8.  Stanley, Arguing with Scripture, 63. 9.  John Paul Heil, Paul’s Letter to the Romans: A Reader-Response Commentary (New York: Paulist Press, 1987) 1.

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to receive this letter.10 Instead, it focuses its interpretive scope not on the historical realities of Paul and the Roman Christians existing behind the letter but on the construed realities embedded within the communicative act of the letter itself in order to draw out the expected reading(s) that the encoded/implied sender establishes for the encoded/implied audience.11 Thus, a prior historical reconstruction of what was going on in Paul’s life and what was happening among the diverse Christians in Rome will not be used as the interpretive template to understand this letter or its use of Hab 2:4.12 Likewise, in attempting to interpret Paul’s words in Rom 1:1–17, we will look at what Paul presents within the communicative act of Rom 1:1–17 rather than at what Paul presents in his other letters, because there is no assumption within the communication of Romans that the implied audience had access to Paul’s other letters. This point will become important in the reexamination of the use of Hab 2:4 in Rom 1:17, because it precludes using the thrust of Paul’s quotation of Hab 2:4 in Gal 3:11. The implied audience is not expected to have read (or heard) Paul’s letter to the Galatians in order to make interpretive sense of his use of Hab 2:4 in Rom 1:17. Instead, the audience encoded in Romans has what Paul presents in Romans in order to understand Romans. Again, this does not deny the fundamental coherence to Paul’s theology that undergirds and even unites all of his letters,13 and the investigation of Paul’s coherent 10. Ibid. Heil labels his methodological approach “reader-response.” In examining Paul’s use of Scripture in Romans, J. Ross Wagner uses what he describes as a “readerfocused approach” (Heralds of the Good News: Isaiah and Paul ‘in Concert’ in the Letter to the Romans [NovTSup 101; Leiden: Brill, 2002] 34). In his examination of the prescript in Romans, Samuel Byrskog uses what he depicts as a “reader-oriented approach” (“Epistolography, Rhetoric and Letter Prescript: Romans 1.1–7 as a Test Case,” JSNT 65 [1997] 28). 11. See Stanley, Arguing with Scripture, 9; and Kevin Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in the Text? The Bible, the Reader, and the Morality of Literary Knowledge (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998) 224–26. Regarding a description of expected readings, Mark Allan Powell writes, “I define expected readings as ones that concur with meaning that is conveyed by the implied author to the implied readers” (Chasing the Eastern Star: Adventures in Biblical Reader-Response Criticism [Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001] 72). See his extended discussion on expected readings and implied readers on pp. 57–75. While Powell focuses particularly on expected readings as they pertain to narratives (both biblical and nonbiblical), his insights are applicable to the exploration of expected readings within the communicative act of Paul’s letters. 12.  On the multiplicity of such related historical discussions as well as the interpretive templates they sometimes spawn in order to fashion interpretations of Romans, compare A. J. M. Wedderburn, The Reasons for Romans (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991); Karl P. Donfried, ed., The Romans Debate (rev. and exp. ed.; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1991) xlix–lxxii, 53–127, 175–244; Mark D. Nanos, The Mystery of Romans: The Jewish Context of Paul’s Letter (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996) 166–238, 372–87; Jewett, Romans, 18–23, 46–91; and A. Andrew Das, Solving the Romans Debate (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007). 13.  On the dynamic relationship between contingency and coherence in Paul’s letters (particularly as they are played out in Galatians and in Romans), see J. Christiaan Beker,

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thought remains an important and necessary scholarly endeavor. Rather for my purposes, the limits of my methodological investigation will remain on what Paul establishes and presents to his audience within the letter of Romans itself. This becomes even more significant given the fact that Paul’s audience has not had direct contact with Paul prior to the communicative contact that Paul establishes in this letter.14 Paul cannot assume that his audience will understand some of his claims or points on the basis of a shared interpretive past as a result of Paul’s prior ministry with them.15 Instead, Paul will build an interpretive, theological grid within the letter to enable his audience to follow, understand, and appropriate its message. This constitutes Paul’s “communication” or what Paul “communicates” to his audience.

Setting the Context: The Communicative Act in the Letter’s Opening, Romans 1:1–15 The basic function of a letter’s opening involved conveying the nature of the relationship between the sender and the audience/addressee.16 The initial component of the opening was the prescript, for which the customary formula was: “A (sender) to B (recipient) greeting.”17 Typically, these prescripts were Paul the Apostle: The Triumph of God in Life and Thought (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980) 23–108. 14.  Assuming that the greetings of Romans 16 were part of Paul’s original letter does not automatically include the assumption that these people also provided the rest of the Roman Christians with a detailed understanding of Paul’s coherent theology. If this were the case, perhaps Paul would have chosen to construct a less lengthy and less intricate communication to his multifaceted Roman audience. Interestingly enough, in Romans 16 he does not tell the people he already knows in Rome to greet the rest of his Roman audience (as if they somehow have a mediating, interpretive role for his communication). Instead, he tells his Roman audience to greet the people that he knows. Thus, Paul construes his immediate Christian audience in Rome as broadly as possible. 15.  Paul does seem to assume that they have a shared faith in Jesus Christ as well as a shared understanding that he was crucified and raised from the dead. He seems to assume that his audience has participated in the common initiation rite of baptism associated with Christ’s name (6:1–3). On the broad facets Paul assumes that he shares with the audience regarding stories or aspects of Holy Scriptures, see Stanley, Arguing with Scriptures, 139–41. 16.  John L. White, Light from Ancient Letters (Foundations and Facets; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986) 198. Here we are using White’s epistolary categorizations to consider 1:1–15 the opening of Romans. The epistolary elements that White identifies as part of a letter’s opening include the prescript and expressions of health, “expressed as a prayer” (p. 202). Because of the religious nature of Paul’s letters, one finds a “substitution of an opening grace blessing for the opening greeting and the expression of thanksgiving to God as a surrogate form of the conventional wish for health” (p. 219). White also notes that openings could include requests or projections for visits that would be “mutually beneficial to the correspondents” (p. 202). Paul uses all of these items in his opening of 1:1–15. 17.  Ibid., 198.

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succinct and displayed minimal flourish. This is not the case in Romans, in which the prescript consists of a genre-busting 93-word sentence.18 Through his investigation of this letter’s prescript using a “hearer/reader-oriented approach,” Byrskog notes that “hearers/readers, with even only some basic education in letter writing, must immediately have focused their attention on these conventionally strange expansions.”19 It is generally noted that here Paul has greatly expanded expected epistolary conventions in order to establish an authoritative ethos and apostolic relationship with his Roman audience because these Christian communities were neither founded by Paul, nor was he fully familiar to them.20 What is particularly important to see through Paul’s greatly expanded prescript, however, is that in this communicative act Paul presents the apostolic relationship that he shares with his audience as part of a broader relational matrix established and overseen by God and the Lord Jesus Christ. In other words, Paul seeks to show his audience that their relationship exists as a subset of divinely ordered relationships in order that the audience will understand both themselves and Paul first and foremost in relationship to the divine activity of God and Jesus. Immediately following the standard and expected self-identification of the sender, Παῦλος, three appellations are rapidly added that provide key ways for the audience to comprehend Paul’s relational status and missional function vis-à-vis Jesus Christ.21 By labeling himself “slave of Christ Jesus,” Paul is empowering the audience to view him in an absolutely subordinate relationship with his master.22 While it is commonly noted that the designation “slave” is regularly given to leadership figures such as Abraham, Moses, Joshua, David, Elijah, Nehemiah, and the prophets in Holy Scriptures,23 it is not clear if the audience is expected to make those immediate connections as much as they are expected to view Paul in terms of a relational status of subordinate obedience to Christ Jesus. Through the next self-designation, “called apostle,” Paul is presenting his missional credentials to his audience. Paul assumes a shared understanding of apostle (as “one who is sent”) with his audience, since he does not feel a need to spell it out any further. The fact that he is “called” 18.  This according to the text in Nestle-Aland, 27th edition. 19.  Byrskog, “Letter Prescript,” 38. 20. See Dunn, Romans 1–8, 5; Joseph A. Fitzmyer, Romans (AB 33; New York: Double­ day, 1993) 227; and Douglas Moo, The Epistle to the Romans (NICNT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996) 40. 21.  For a helpful visualization of the syntactical flow of the entire prescript, see Byrskog, “Letter Prescript,” 29. 22.  All translations in this article are mine. 23.  Here and elsewhere “Holy Scriptures” will be used as a designation for the material commonly found in the Hebrew Bible (as well as the nuances found in the LXX), since this is the banner designation that Paul establishes for his audience in 1:2 (compare 4:3, 9:17, 10:11, 11:2, 15:4, 16:26).

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enables the audience to see the divine source (presumably Christ Jesus as carried over from the previous self-designation in 1:1) of his apostolic role. The third descriptive that Paul applies to himself, “having been set apart for God’s gospel,” modifies the second in that it shows the audience the divine agency, extent, and purpose behind Paul’s apostolic call as one who is set apart for a very specific divine task.24 Here the intentional use of the perfect passive participle, ἀφωρισμένος, communicates the divine agency of his being set apart as well as highlighting how that prior divine activity is still in effect in the present. Through the use of the εἰς εὐαγγέλιον θεοῦ prepositional construction, Paul designates God’s gospel as the purpose for which Christ has set him apart.25 Again, while these self-depictions in 1:1 serve to establish an ethos regarding Paul’s missional status and its purpose in the interpretive mind of the audience, they also function as divinely imprinted designations. Hence, the ultimate focus here is not on Paul himself but on who Jesus Christ has designated Paul to be and why. In this way, these really are not Paul’s self-designations; rather they stand as Christ’s designations for Paul that the audience is to recognize, appreciate, and appropriate. From the beginning, Paul seeks to be regarded as Christ has established him. Even the gospel is not presented in terms of Paul but in terms of God, whose gospel it is.26 The central focus on divine (not Paul’s) activity continues in the next clause (1:2), in which Paul further qualifies God’s gospel as being that which God pre-promised through God’s prophets in Holy Scriptures. It is important to note the theocentric focus that Paul is establishing for his audience. As the gospel belongs to God, so too did the prophets, and through God’s prophets, God pre-promised God’s gospel in Scriptures; thus, being described as “holy” gives them a divinely established, sacred status. Henceforth in his communication within this letter, Paul seeks to embed in the mind of the audience the divinely established relationship between Holy Scriptures and God, the gospel, and himself. Paul’s subsequent references to or uses of Holy Scriptures are to be filtered through this promissory, theocentric relationship between the gos24.  Jeffrey Weima claims that here Paul is presenting himself with a “prophetic vocation (see Jer. 1:5)” (“Preaching the Gospel in Rome: A Study of the Epistolary Framework of Romans,” in Gospel in Paul: Studies on Corinthians, Galatians and Romans for Richard N. Longenecker [ed. L. Ann Jervis and Peter Richardson; JSNTSup 108; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994] 341). Because ἀφορίζω is not used in the LXX to depict prophetic callings and because Jer 1:5 connections are only present in Gal 1:15, not Romans 1, it is highly unlikely that the audience would be expected to understand Paul as presenting himself akin to one of the prophets. 25.  Moo, Romans, 42. 26.  The genitive ����������������������������������������������������������������������������� θεοῦ������������������������������������������������������������������������� is best regarded as a subjective genitive so that it stands parallel to Χριστοῦ Ἱησοῦ. See Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996) 121.

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pel and the Holy Scriptures, of which Paul has been made a divine interpretive agent. The ongoing, central focus on divine designations takes a new turn in the parallel clauses of 1:3–4, which present God’s son as the content of God’s gospel that God pre-promised in Holy Scriptures.27 While it is fairly common for commentaries to analyze 1:3–4 in terms of an early Christian creedal/confessional statement,28 Paul does not present these clauses this way to his audience, nor does he signal that he is using such a statement to establish common theological ground with his audience. Instead he is establishing parallel designations regarding God’s son as the content of the gospel. On the one hand, God’s son was of Davidic descent according to the flesh. On the other hand, he was designated God’s son in power according to the Holy Spirit by the resurrection of the dead. While a full analysis of the exegetical details of these two tightly packed clauses is beyond the scope of our immediate interpretive concerns,29 it is important to note the God-given identity and status of Jesus being presented here. His identity is God’s son (the one common element in both clauses), descendant of David, Messiah, Lord as empowered and designated by God by virtue of God’s act of resurrection. Even Jesus, the core content of God’s pre-promised gospel, is being presented to the audience from a theocentric perspective. Not only is Jesus the messianic fulfillment of God’s scriptural promises, but Jesus’ resurrection and lordship status serve as God’s fulfillment of divine resurrection and lordship promises.30 The inclusion of the first-person-plural pronoun, ἡμῶν, at the very end of 1:4 directly draws both Paul and his audience within this divinely established and divinely emphasized relational network in which Jesus Christ is common Lord. In the next clause (1:5–6), which continues to be governed by the phrase ᾽Iησοῦ Χριστοῦ τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν, Paul repositions himself and his audience 27.  While περὶ τοῦ υἱοῦ in v. 3a goes primarily with εὐαγγέλιον θεοῦ in v. 1 rather than γραφαῖς ἁγίαις in v. 2, Daniel Kirk rightly notes that the link between God’s gospel, God’s son, and Holy Scriptures shows that, since “the Scriptures contain the pre-promise of the gospel and the gospel’s content is son of God, then the promise contained in the Scriptures is precisely the person and work of Jesus that Paul enumerates in vv. 3–4” (Unlocking Romans: Resurrection and the Justification of God [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008] 44–45). 28.  Jewett goes so far as to note that a “fairly wide consensus has crystallized that Paul is citing an early Christian confession in 1:3–4” (Romans, 97). Byrskog aptly cautions about this when he notes that it is “impossible to be certain that the recipient of the letter knew of this material in that pre-Pauline form” (“Letter Prescript,” 41). 29.  For this sort of insightful exegetical analysis, see Kirk, Unlocking Romans, 39–44. One exegetical point of note is that the word we translated ‘designated’ in v. 4 (ὀρίζω) is the verbal root of the word Paul uses to describe his having been set apart (ἀφορίζω) in v. 1. Thus, Paul’s apostolic status/mission relates to the divine activity that established Jesus’ resurrected status/mission—that is, his ruling in power as lord of the cosmos. 30.  Ibid., 44–45.

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within this divine, relational matrix to explain further his divinely established, apostolic mission. First he informs his audience, “Through [Jesus] we received grace and apostleship for the purpose of faith’s obedience among all the Gentiles for the sake of his name.”31 The prepositional clause in 1:5, εἰς ὑπακοὴν πίστεως,32 expresses the purpose of the apostolic mission that Paul received from their common Lord Jesus Christ and thus parallels the prepositional clause, εἰς εὐαγγέλιον θεοῦ, in 1:1, which had designated the purpose that Christ Jesus had in setting Paul apart. Through these parallel constructions, the audience is expected to make a direct connection between God’s gospel and faith’s obedience. Indeed as Paul first presented himself to be in a subservient, obedient relationship as Christ Jesus’ slave, so too all who have faith exist in a subservient, obedient relationship under Christ’s lordship. In 1:6 (where the ἐν clause further hones the ἐν clause of 1:5b), Paul not only includes his audience (note the emphatic use of ὑμεῖς) within this divinely determined network of relationships. Paul also informs them that they are a part of the missional scope he received from Jesus. Furthermore, by identifying his audience as ‘Jesus Christ’s called ones’ (κλητοί) Paul gives them the same called status that Christ had given him (κλητός in v. 1). While Paul’s audience would be expected to regard 1:7a as Paul’s succinct addressee formula and 1:7b as the prescript’s greeting, both the addressee formula and the greeting continue to be governed by a theocentric focus. The members of the audience are to understand themselves as God’s beloved (the 31.  The interjection of the first-person-plural verb in 1:5 (ἐλάβομεν) is rather unexpected since Paul lists himself as the only sender of the letter and does not make reference to other apostles (or co-senders) in this context. Because Paul does not clarify or expand on this, the plural reference remains somewhat enigmatic for the audience. Jewett presents an argument that seems to fit with the contours of Romans when he infers “that Paul wishes to convey solidarity with the apostles whose emissaries had established the house and tenement churches in Rome in the decades before the writing of this letter” (Romans, 108–9). On the use of χάρις in 1:5, it could be that Paul assumes that his audience already understands ‘grace’ to include a person’s divinely determined role within the Christian community since he does not elaborate on the matter until 12:3–8; 15:15–16. See Moo, Romans, 51. 32.  For a succinct consideration on the semantic range of meanings for πίστις, see Stanley Stowers, A Rereading of Romans: Justice, Jews, and Gentiles (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994) 199. For a review of the possible meanings of the phrase ὑπακοὴν πίστεως, see C. E. B. Cranfield, The Epistle to the Romans (2 vols.; ICC; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1975) 1:66–67; and Don Garlington, Faith, Obedience and Perseverance: Aspects of Paul’s Letter to the Romans (WUNT 79; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1994) 13–31. After his extensive exegetical analysis, Garlington concludes, “In Rom 1:5 (16:26), Paul has chosen to coin an ambiguous phrase expressive of two ideas: the obedience which consists in faith, and the obedience which is the product of faith. . . . Consequently, the English ‘faith’s obedience’ (or ‘believing obedience’) perhaps as well as any translation preserves the intention (and ambiguity) of the original” (pp. 30–31; emphasis original).

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use of θεοῦ as subjective genitive modifying “beloved” in 1:7a paralleling the uses of θεοῦ to modify the gospel in 1:1, the prophets in 1:2, and God’s son in 1:3, 4), as called holy ones (κλητοῖς in 1:7 reiterating their status in 1:6 and Paul’s status in 1:1), and as individuals to whom Paul imparts the greeting of grace and peace from their common divine father and their common Lord Jesus Christ. Thus, we see that in the letter’s prescript Paul is not simply presenting himself and his apostolic credentials to his Roman audience; rather, he is presenting who God and the Lord Jesus Christ have established him to be as directly related to God’s gospel. The stress and focus, then, are not on Paul’s apostolic authority in itself. Rather, the focus is on the divine decisions and actions working behind and through Paul’s apostolic status and missional activity. Likewise, the relationship that Paul and his Roman audience share exists within the divinely established framework of relationships that God and Jesus have nurtured. Thus, the audience is expected to understand the relationship that they share with Paul as Christ’s called ones to be a derived relationship—that is, a relationship derived from God and Jesus working out their plans and actions. These divine plans and actions are centered in God’s gospel, which God pre-promised in Holy Scriptures, and the content of which is God’s son. From the very start of Paul’s communicative act, his audience is being equipped and expected to understand themselves, to understand Paul, to understand faith, to understand the Holy Scriptures, and to understand the gospel in terms of God’s plans and actions realized in God’s son. These interpretive expectations do not end with the end of the letter’s prescript (1:1–7) but are fully extended into the letter’s thanksgiving (1:8–15).33 In fact, the network of divine relationships is on display in the opening of this section as Paul gives thanks to God through Jesus Christ concerning all the members of his audience (1:8a). Here it should be noted that Paul is reversing the relational direction he had presented to his audience in 1:5–6. In these verses, Paul noted that it was through the Lord Jesus Christ (δι ̓ οὗ) that he received his apostleship, which was directed toward all Gentiles, including the Gentiles of his current Roman audience. Now in 1:8, his thanksgiving prayer is directed toward God through Jesus Christ (διὰ ᾽Iησοῦ Χριστοῦ) concerning 33.  In addition to the analyses of the thanksgiving section found within commentaries on Romans, see the analyses of this section in the studies of L. Ann Jervis, The Purpose of Romans: A Comparative Letter Structure Investigation (JSNTSup 55; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991) 101–9; and Weima, “Preaching the Gospel,” 344–53. Methodologically, both Jervis and Weima analyze the thanksgiving of Romans in relationship to and in light of Paul’s other epistolary thanksgivings. The method used here seeks to understand this thanksgiving in terms of the expected readings that Paul constructs for his audience in the communicative act of Romans itself.

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all the Roman Christians.34 The reason Paul gives this thanks to God is because the audience’s faith is announced in the whole world.35 Note how once again Paul is weaving inclusive connections within the relational network he has already established. As the scope of his Christ-given, apostolic mission is among all the Gentiles (ἐν πᾶσιν τοῖς ἔθνεσιν, v. 5b), so Paul’s thanksgiving is for all his audience (περὶ πάντων ὑμῶν, v. 8a), and the scope of the announcement of the audience’s faith is in the whole world (ἐν ὅλῳ τῷ κόσμῳ, v. 8b). In the dense sentence of 1:9–10, Paul shows his audience new facets and depths of these relational connections. Because Paul’s prayers are directed to God, Paul evokes God to be the ultimate witness to the relationship that Paul shares with his audience as he constantly remembers them and is always prayerfully imploring that God will allow him to come to them.36 In 1:9, Paul notes that in the depths of his inner being he offers cultic service to God (λατρεύω) in the gospel whose content is God’s son (1:9 recalling 1:3, where God’s son was highlighted as the content of God’s gospel).37 Within his constant prayer petition in 1:10, he informs his audience that his coming to them would be a culmination of something he has long sought (πάντοτε in 1:10a combined with ἤδη ποτὲ in 1:10b) but would only happen if it is God’s will.38 Thus, not only is his audience within the scope of his Christ-given ministry (1:5–6), this ministry is Paul’s cultic service to God, which includes Paul’s constant prayer 34. Both Jervis (Purpose of Romans, 107) and Weima (“Preaching the Gospel,” 347) see this connection as the way that Paul is emphasizing his apostolic role or status. Yet it is also important to note that it provides another way for the audience to understand Paul’s relationship with them as part of the larger network of divinely established relationships. 35.  Jewett claims that here “your faith” refers “to converts’ participation in the charismatic process of proclamation, acceptance, transformation, and creation of new communities of faith” (Romans, 120). While this understanding of ἡ πίστις ὑμῶν in 1:8 fits perfectly with Jewett’s overall reading of Romans, it seems to go far beyond what the audience is expected to read/hear from this expression. Because Paul has not qualified the word faith with obedience or any other words, the audience would most likely be expected to understand this as a reference to their faith (and its attendant confession) in the Lord Jesus Christ. 36.  Note the emphatic thrust of ἀδιαλείπτως in v. 9b and πάντοτε in v. 10a to highlight the ongoing extent to which his audience is a central part of these regular conversations with God. Based on the invocation of God as Paul’s witness in his other letters, Weima suggests that its use here also has an “apologetic function . . . [which] suggests that Paul in his Romans letter is concerned to defend himself against any potential criticisms his readers may have” (“Preaching the Gospel,” 347). Within the communicative act of this thanksgiving, however, the tone is not at all apologetic because Paul is seeking to embrace his audience within God’s divine designs for him and for them. 37.  On ἐν τῷ πνεύματί μου in 1:9 as an expression related to the depths of Paul’s inner being, see Moo, Romans, 58. On the relationship between λατρεύω as cultic service and Paul’s apostolic ministry, see Fitzmyer, Romans, 244. 38.  In 1:10b, God’s will is highlighted both explicitly through the prepositional phrase ἐν τῷ θελήματι τοῦ θεοῦ and implicitly through the use of the divine passive εὐοδωθήσονται.

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requests to God that he would be allowed to come to his audience. Nevertheless, this missional trip will only finally happen under the auspices of God’s will. Again, a theocentric focus continues to dominate Paul’s message to and for his audience, including his prayer-filled desire to come to them. This prayer-filled desire to come to his audience now becomes the dominant topic for the rest of the letter’s thanksgiving (1:11–15), thus demonstrating to the audience again and again its emphatic significance.39 Four points should be noted about Paul’s communication to his audience in these verses. First, the purpose of Paul’s intense desire (ἐπιποθῶ in 1:11) to see his audience is to share with them a spiritual gift the goal of which is to strengthen them (1:11).40 Second, this will have a mutually beneficial outcome because both Paul and the audience would be encouraged through each others’ faith (1:12). This further solidifies the relational bonds between Paul and his audience that has been a major goal of the letter’s opening. The focus on mutuality also bookends 1:12 in that the ἵνα clause of 1:11b highlighted how Paul’s coming would strengthen the audience, while the ἵνα clause of 1:13b highlights how Paul’s coming would mean that he would be the one receiving a benefit from the audience.41 Third, all of Paul’s plans and intentions remain under God’s auspices, thus reinforcing the overarching theocentric tone of the opening. Through the use of the divine passive, ἐκωλύθην in 1:13, Paul implies that God had stopped him from coming to the audience prior to now, despite Paul’s persistent plans to do so. This is the flipside of 1:10, in which Paul highlighted the fact that his coming would be the result of God’s will. Paul’s comment on his indebtedness to all categories of Gentiles in 1:14 is also a part of this theocentric focus.42 “Paul knows himself to be a debtor, that is, having an obligation to them in the sense that God has laid upon him a duty toward them.”43 This reiterates anew Paul’s status as Christ’s slave (1:1) and the fact that he received grace and apostleship through Christ for the purpose of faith’s obedience among all Gentiles (1:5). Fourth, in 1:15 Paul brings his divinely established obligation back full circle to his Roman audience as he expresses his eagerness to share the gospel (expressed using the verb εὐαγγελίζομαι) with them so that they would be strengthened by Paul’s ministry, and he would be benefited through 39.  Rightly highlighted by Weima, “Preaching the Gospel,” 348. 40.  The exact nature of what this spiritual gift would entail and how it would serve to strengthen them is left ambiguous for the audience at this point in the letter’s progression. Paul does not spell out its details here, and his inclusion of the indefinite τι in conjunction with χάρισμα πνευματικόν furthers this ambiguity. 41.  Again note how Paul’s use of the indefinite τινα in 1:13 makes the specifics of receiving the beneficial fruit ambiguous at this point. 42. See Jewett for a discussion on the social dynamics of the categories in Paul’s “remarkable formation describing his ‘obligation’ to the hostile poles of ethnicity, class, and education” (Romans, 130–33, esp. p. 130). 43.  Cranfield, Romans, 1:85.

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their faith (1:11–12). In this way, Paul is communicating to his audience that his Christ-established mission of sharing the gospel is a central component of the mutual relationship that exists between Paul and his audience as a direct, ongoing result of divine designs. As noted at the beginning of this section, the prime epistolary function of a letter’s opening (including the prescript and the thanksgiving) is to convey relational realities. Not only has Paul’s opening fully done this, but as a communicative act it forms the initial interpretive grid that the audience is expected to use as Paul moves them into the body of the letter. Paul goes to great lengths, however, to show his audience again and again that these relational realities are divinely established and divinely regulated. Paul has an apostolic, missional obligation because Christ has enslaved, called, and set him apart. Paul’s ministry is his cultic service to God, and God is the one who ultimately determines where and how Paul will discharge this service. Paul and his audience are in a derived, mutually beneficial relationship that has been created and is nurtured by God their Father and their Lord Jesus Christ. Ultimately, Paul crafts his opening with the expectation that the audience understands him and themselves (as well as Holy Scriptures and the gospel) within this relational network overseen by God and God’s son. In this way, both the prescript and the thanksgiving have equipped the audience with a thoroughly theocentric interpretive framework. On the one hand, Weima’s analysis rightly notes that “the whole of the thanksgiving section, like the letter opening, has been skillfully adapted by Paul so that this epistolary unit emphasizes his apostolic status and the gospel that is central to that divine calling—a gospel that he feels divinely appointed to share with the Roman Christians.”44 On the other hand, it should also be clearly noted that Paul’s emphasis on his apostolic status and the gospel is ultimately an emphasis on the designs and activity of God and Jesus Christ. The central figures of the opening, then, are not Paul and the audience but God and Jesus Christ. Paul and the audience as well as their relationship are fully defined and governed by God and Christ.45

The Communicative Act of Romans 1:16–17 and the Use of Habakkuk 2:4 For the sake of our analysis, we have to some degree separated 1:16–17 from the letter’s opening in 1:1–15. This is not meant to suggest that a gap exists in the flow of the letter at this point. The fact that a gap does not exist has made it somewhat challenging to determine just where the opening 44.  Weima, “Preaching the Gospel,” 351–52. 45.  For a visual charting of this web of relationships that Paul has provided the reader in 1:1–17, see Heil, Romans, 22.

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of the letter ends and the body of the letter begins.46 Three points should be noted about what Paul is presenting to his audience at this juncture in the flow of his epistolary communication. First, it should be recalled that Paul’s written communication would be presented orally to his audience. Consequently, the “question of whether a sentence belongs to the preceding or the following paragraph is anachronistic since the text was to be read aloud and the original handwriting did not set the paragraphs off from one another. . . . In Romans, as elsewhere, the conclusion of one section frequently introduces the theme of the following section.”47 Second, within Paul’s communication itself, there is a shift in focus in that Paul as a distinctive, first-person entity moves fully into the background. Thus, the first-person references that dominated 1:1–15 (appearing in 13 of the 15 verses) fade out after 1:16a and do not reemerge until 2:16.48 The audience would therefore be expected to understand that a transition is occurring, if not immediately in the sentence demarcated as 1:16b, then soon thereafter. Analyzing this shift in terms of epistolary conventions, Jervis has concluded that 1:16–17 functions as “a relatively appropriate letter-body opening. Here we have a statement in the first person singular . . . that opens up that which Paul will make central in the body of his letter.”49 Third, Paul has structured the sentences of 1:16–17 within a chain of coordinated dependent clauses in which the causal, coordinating conjunction γάρ introduces 1:16a, 16b, 18, and 20. In this way, the audience is expected to regard each γάρ clause as some form of Paul’s elucidation of the previous statement.50 While a topical 46.  Scholars who analyze this part of Romans based on rhetorical rather than epistolary conventions do not fully agree on the precise rhetorical function of 1:16–17. See Jewett, Romans, 135–36; Kirk, Unlocking Romans, 48; Johannes Vorster, “Strategies of Persuasion in Romans 1.16–17,” in Rhetoric and the New Testament: Essays from the 1992 Heidelberg Conference (ed. Stanley Porter and Thomas Albricht; JSNTSup 90; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993) 154–55; Ben Witherington III, Paul’s Letter to the Romans: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004) 47–49; and Wilhelm Wuellner, “Paul’s Rhetoric of Argumentation in Romans: An Alternative to the DonfriedKarris Debate over Romans,” in The Romans Debate (ed. K. P. Donfried; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1991) 142–45. 47. Nils Dahl, “The Missionary Theology of Paul in the Epistle to the Romans,” Studies in Paul: Theology for the Early Christian Mission (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1977) 79. 48.  These first-person references appear in either the singular or plural and are expressed through the first person of the verb or the adjective. 49.  Jervis, Purpose of Romans, 106. 50.  On γάρ clauses as dependent clauses, see the discussion in Wallace, Greek Grammar, 657–58, 668–69, 673–74. On the interrelated dynamics of the γάρ clauses in this particular context, see the helpful insights by Paul Achtemeier, Romans (Interpretation; Atlanta: John Knox, 1985) 35–36. Roy Harrisville claims that aside from 6:14 all uses of γάρ clauses in Romans begin arguments “with or without any link to what precedes” (Romans [ACNT; Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1980] 24). Actually an examination of the 144 γάρ clauses in the

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shift is transpiring, Paul has provided clear links for the audience to follow the flow of his communication. It is perhaps most apt to adopt Elliott’s description of 1:15–18 as the “crucial hingepoint” between the letter’s “frame and body.”51 This analysis regarding where 1:16–17 belongs also helps us better understand the relationship between Paul’s conclusion in 1:15 and its explanation in 1:16a. In 1:15, Paul presented his eagerness to share the gospel with his Roman audience as a vital component of his divinely imposed indebtedness to all components of the Gentile world.52 Normally in an honor-shame culture, a relationship of indebtedness, especially to such socially repugnant groups as Barbarians and idiots (1:14), would have been the cause for extreme social shame. Since Paul’s indebted relationship to all Gentiles (as well as to the Romans) is a divinely mandated, missional relationship to share the gospel, he explains in 1:16a that he is not ashamed of the gospel. Through the γάρ construction of 1:16a, Paul is empowering the audience to understand his denial of shame regarding God’s gospel in relationship both to the potential social stigma of indebtedness and to the divine mandate controlling his gospel mission.53 The theocentric focus on indebtedness and shame implicit in Paul’s remark in the clause of 1:16a becomes fully explicit in the elucidating γάρ clause of 1:16b as he declares, “For it [that is, τὸ εὐαγγέλιον as brought down from 1:16a] is God’s power for salvation for all who believe, for Jews first and for Greeks.” Rather than being a vehicle of shame, the gospel is just the opposite. It is the vehicle unleashing God’s salvific power. While this is a thoroughly theocentric claim and though Jesus Christ is mentioned nowhere in these letter shows that they rarely begin an argument and almost always elucidate in some form or manner (even broadly) that which precedes them. 51. Neil Elliott, The Rhetoric of Romans: Argumentative Constraint and Strategy and Paul’s Dialogue with Judaism (JSNTSup 45; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1990) 28. 52.  The use of οὕτως at the opening of 1:15 signaled the audience that Paul was drawing a direct inference from what he had just said in 1:14 (BDAG, 742). 53.  Regarding the thrust of Paul’s not being ashamed of the gospel, others understand it as litotes (so, for example, Vorster, “Romans 1.16–17,” 157), as cultural shame much like 1 Cor 1:18–31 (Jewett, Romans, 137), as a potential Pauline use of a Jesus tradition subsequently evidenced in Mark 8:38 (Dunn, Romans 1–8, 38–39), as Paul’s defense against charges being leveled at him (so Wedderburn, Reason for Romans, 104), or as a perspective intended for his “largely Gentile audience [who] should not be ashamed of a gospel that is for the Jew first” (Witherington, Romans, 47–48), as an echo of Psalms such as 31:1–3; 71:1–2, 15–16, 19, 24; 143:1 in light of “what Israel (and many other peoples) felt in Paul’s day, suffering at the hands of Rome” (Wright, “Romans,” 424), or as deliberate connections to laments in the prophets and Psalms that are part of Paul’s theme of theodicy and “God’s eschatological vindication of those who trust in him—and consequently of God’s faithfulness” (Hays, Echoes of Scripture, 39).

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verses (in fact, explicit Christological references are absent from 1:10 through 3:21), the audience is expected to make interpretive connections back to 1:3–4 to see that the power-reality of the resurrected son of God (ἐν δυνάμει, v. 4) is now God’s power (δύναμις θεοῦ in 1:16b) unleashed in the proclamation of the gospel whose content is God’s son.54 The linkage of divine power and salvation would not have been surprising for the audience, “since saving power is naturally what most religions are concerned with.”55 In this context, it seems most likely that Paul’s audience is expected to understand the prepositional phrase εἰς σωτηρίαν as the goal or purpose of the gospel’s unleashing of God’s power56 (so that it would be parallel to the prepositional uses of εἰς in 1:1, 5). At this point in the letter, Paul does not spell out all that salvation entails for the audience, though they would most likely understand it in terms of deliverance because of its broad use in the LXX as well as the Greco-Roman world.57 This does not mean that Paul’s reference to salvation is ambiguous here. Rather, it is not fully amplified. As Paul moves the hearers/readers through the letter’s argument, they will be expected to view what he says about the gospel and about saving divine activity (past, present, and future) against the backdrop of his foundational theological claim regarding the gospel being God’s power. The datives in the second part of 1:16b show the audience for whom the gospel is such divine salvific power (thus, datives of advantage). It is for all who believe. The fact that Paul does not feel compelled to spell out anything with regard to the object of this believing (even though he has never directly met his audience) indicates that he expects them to understand that the Lord Jesus Christ is the object of shared Christian faith and its confession just as Christ is the content of the gospel (1:3–4, 9). Instead, Paul is focusing the audience’s attention on the tension he has chosen to construct between the expressions “for all who believe” and “for Jews first and for Greeks.” On the one hand, the use of παντί (especially as the leading word in the string of datives) inclusively and impressively unites all Christian believers in regard to the gospel, God’s power, and the goal of salvation. On the other hand, the insertion of πρῶτον and its link to ᾽Iουδαίῳ shows the audience that there is some type of priority or ordering as it relates to Jews. Within the context of what Paul has communicated to the addressees so far in the letter, they would certainly be expected to link Paul’s use of “first” back to 1:2–3 since God’s prophets, Holy Scriptures, 54.  Fitzmyer, Romans, 256; Peter Stuhlmacher, Paul’s Letter to the Romans: A Commentary (trans. Scott J. Hafemann; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1994) 28. 55.  Cranfield, Romans, 1:88. On potential connections that an audience in Rome could have made to imperial power, see Jewett, Romans, 138–39. 56.  Sam K. Williams, “The ‘Righteousness’ of God in Romans,” JBL 99 (1980) 255. 57.  Moo, Romans, 66.

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and God’s son from the lineage of David are all concepts thoroughly embedded in Judaism. In this way, “for Jews first” would relate to a continuity within God’s salvific plan.58 Thus, the audience would be expected to conclude that God’s pre-promises of the gospel are also fully embedded in God’s ongoing covenantal relationship with Israel/Judaism. For Paul’s Gentile audience, connections regarding “for Jews first” could actually be good news in that they have now been included in the fulfillment of God’s promissory activity to and for Israel.59 Nevertheless, because Paul not only has constructed this tension but allows it to stand without full comment, it too will continue as a theological and interpretive template to which the audience will be expected to make regular connections as the letter’s communication progresses. One final note should be made regarding Paul’s claims about the gospel in 1:16a, b. There is nothing within Paul’s remarks that indicates that he expects his audience to make some implicit, antithetical connections between the gospel and the law, as if what the gospel is the law is not (or no longer).60 This is an audience that has not been directly privy to Paul’s theological understanding of the law as expressed in Galatians and Philippians, and until Paul gives some direct indicators, they would not be expected to make direct connections to the law or its functioning. Instead, at this point in the letter, Paul is focusing the audience’s attention on the gospel and its functioning. Rom 1:17a stands as the third straight γάρ clause that Paul has constructed in his communication to the audience. As such, he uses it to elucidate what he just elucidated in the γάρ clauses of 1:16b and 1:16a. His comments and claims on God’s righteousness, its being revealed in the gospel, and faith are intentionally and intimately connected with 1:16a, b. At the same time, one’s interpretation of Paul’s comments in 1:17a (especially the prepositional phrase ἐκ πίστεως) will invariably set up how one understands Paul’s use of the Hab 2:4 citation in 1:17b (especially the prepositional phrase ἐκ πίστεως). Thus, we are getting to the heart of our overall quest regarding 1:17b by considering just how Paul’s audience is expected to understand and interpret the γάρ clause in 1:17a. Anyone with more than a passing familiarity with Paul’s theology and with Romans immediately recognizes the vast number of scholarly discussions re58. Ernst Käsemann, Commentary on Romans (trans. and ed. Geoffrey W. Bromily; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1980) 23. In the phrase “for Jews first,” Douglas Campbell sees Paul paying brief lip-service to a slogan used by militant Jewish Christians who are Paul’s targeted opponents, but a reading of this sort is fully dependent on a very particularized historical construct behind the text (“Determining the Gospel through Rhetorical Analysis in Paul’s Letter to the Roman Chrisitans,” in Gospel in Paul [JSNTSup 108; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994] 335). 59.  Vorster, “Strategies of Persuasion in Romans 1.16–17,” 160–61. 60.  This is rightly noted by Cranfield, Romans, 1:88.

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garding the righteousness of God. Our goal is not to replay all these discussions or to examine every interpretive option that has been proposed for its use and understanding beginning here in Romans. Instead, I wish to highlight four crucial points regarding its use here. First, the introduction and use of δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ at this point in the letter does not say all that Paul wishes to say about δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ. While commentaries typically include extended analyses and excurses on God’s righteousness at this point of their treatment of Romans, Paul really does not do this. Hence, all the potential interpretive implications involving the concept of God’s righteousness should not be overplayed at this point of an analysis of Paul’s communication to his audience. Second, Williams has keenly noted that, because Paul is not writing to one of his own churches and because he does not go to great interpretive lengths to explain to his audience “what he means by dikaiosynē theou in Romans 1, we can reasonably suppose that he expected his readers to be familiar with the term already. How? From scripture!”61 In other words, Paul does not explicate God’s righteousness here (as he will throughout the rest of the letter) because he expects his audience to have a basic understanding of God’s righteousness from the Holy Scriptures themselves.62 Third, through the investigation of the understanding of God’s righteousness embedded and expressed throughout Holy Scriptures, Williams and a number of others have demonstrated that God’s righteousness is both fully theocentric and covenantally relational. Indeed, these two facets simply cannot be separated from one another. In this way, Paul’s audience would be expected to have a scripturally grounded (though rather general) understanding that God’s righteousness entails God’s activity of bringing people into right covenantal relationships, of God being steadfast and consistent in fulfilling divine covenantal responsibilities (including fulfilling covenantal promises and extending judgment when covenantal partners do not fulfill their covenantal responsibilities), of God acting faithfully not only with respect to God’s covenantal people but also to the world as its creator, and that God’s righteous activity includes divine saving actions to sustain or restore Israel within the divinely created covenantal relationship (especially when Israel is unable to act on behalf of itself).63 This scriptural, 61.  Williams, “ ‘Righteousness’ of God,” 260 (emphasis original). 62.  Some stress scriptural echoes of Isa 51:4–5, 52:10; and/or Ps 98[97]:2–3. So Douglas Campbell, “The Meaning of δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ in Romans: An Intertextual Suggestion,” in As It Is Written: Studying Paul’s Use of Scripture (ed. Stanley E. Porter and Christopher D. Stanley; SBLSymS 50; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2008) 191–93; and Hays, Echoes of Scripture, 37–38. Because of the difficulty of demonstrating how the audience was explicitly expected to incorporate these specific passages into their interpretive understanding of Rom 1:16, it may be better to regard these passages as representative of the general constellation of God’s righteousness that Paul assumes his audience possesses. 63.  So, for example (with varying emphases), Achtemeier, Romans, 37; J. C. Beker, “The Faithfulness of God and the Priority of Israel in Paul’s Letter to the Romans,” in The

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theocentric focus seen in conjunction with the parallel subjective genitive uses of θεοῦ in 1:16b and 1:18 demonstrate that Paul expects the audience to regard δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ as a subjective genitive construction in 1:17a.64 Fourth, because Paul introduces God’s righteousness as an elucidation of his claim regarding the gospel’s being the power of God, the goal of which is salvation (1:16b), and because Paul established at the very beginning of the letter that God pre-promised God’s gospel in Holy Scriptures, the audience is expected to regard God’s righteousness (that is, God’s being loyal to God’s gospel promises) as fully intertwined with God’s saving power. Thus, Paul presents God’s righteousness not so much as a quality of God but as God’s powerful, salvific activity embedded in the gospel, the content of which is God’s son.65 Through the γάρ clause of 1:17a, Paul informs his audience that God’s righteousness is revealed in the gospel ἐκ πίστεως εἰς πίστιν. The passive voice of ἀποκαλύπτεται is to be regarded by the audience as a divine passive so that God is revealing God’s own righteousness in the gospel.66 This reinforces the theocentric emphasis of the audience’s focus. The present tense communicates to the audience that the gospel does not simply convey information of what God accomplished in and through Jesus Christ in the past. Rather, the gospel is the divine agency in which God manifests God’s saving activity as divine power experienced in the present.67 Not only is God’s hidden plan hidden no more, but in the gospel proclamation, God’s righteousness—God’s salvific plan and power—breaks into God’s creation and into human lives as God’s revealing activity.68 Paul rounds off his claim regarding God’s revealing activity in the gospel with the double prepositional construction ἐκ πίστεως εἰς πίστιν. Over the Romans Debate (ed. K. P. Donfried; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1991) 331; Brendan B­yrne, Romans (Sacra Pagina 6; Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1996) 53; Davies, Faith and Obedience, 36–37; Dunn, Romans 1–8, 41–47; Richard B. Hays, “Apocalyptic Hermeneutics: Habakkuk Proclaims ‘The Righteous One,’” The Conversion of the Imagination: Paul as Interpreter of Israel’s Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005) 52–56; Heil, Romans, 20; Moo, Romans, 74–75, 81–85; Stuhlmacher, Romans, 30–31; Charles Talbert, Romans (Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary; Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys, 2002) 35–39; Williams, “Righteousness,” 260–63; Wright, “Romans,” 398–401; and J. A. Ziesler, The Meaning of Righteousness in Paul: A Linguistic and Theological Enquiry (SNTSMS 20; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972) 186–89. 64.  Campbell, “Romans 1:17,” 270; Nils A. Dahl, “The Doctrine of Justification: Its Social Function and Implications,” Studies in Paul, 97; Jewett, Romans, 142; and Käsemann, Commentary on Romans, 27–29. 65.  Campbell, “Romans 1:17,” 270; Glenn Davies, Faith and Obedience in Romans: A Study in Romans 1–4 (JSNTSup 39; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1990) 37; Ziesler, Righteousness in Paul, 187–89. 66.  Williams, “Righteousness,” 256. 67.  Campbell, “Romans 1:17,” 272. 68.  Käsemann, Commentary on Romans, 30.

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course of centuries, interpreters have presented an array of interpretations regarding just what Paul means.69 Again, our interpretive quest involves what Paul expects his audience to understand here. A common conclusion is that both uses of πίστις “refer to human faith; the total expression is a rhetorical device lending intensive force: ‘through faith from first to last.’”70 Two recent studies of the prepositional construction ἐκ + A + εἰς + A in ancient Greek usage (including the LXX and New Testament) could not find examples of this sort of emphatic use.71 While it is possible that Paul intended an emphatic understanding, the fact that his audience would not have been familiar with an idiomatic, emphatic use of this prepositional construction makes it far less likely that they would be expected to regard the construction as Paul’s way of emphasizing human faith. Instead, it seems far more likely that Paul expected his audience to understand the prepositions as depicting a progression from a source to a result/goal, a progression from the faith of one whose goal (or result) is the faith of another.72 This would relate directly back to Paul’s similar uses of ἐκ in 1:3, 4 and εἰς in 1:1, 5, and 16. Especially in regard to εἰς πίστιν, it seems rather clear that Paul expects his audience to understand that the goal of God’s righteousness being revealed in the gospel is faith, just as the goal of Christ’s empowering Paul for his apostolic mission is faith’s obedience. With regard to ἐκ πίστεως, however, there seem to be three basic, interpretive options: •  God’s righteousness is revealed in the gospel from God’s faith(fulness) as source to / for human faith as goal. •  God’s righteousness is revealed in the gospel from Christ’s faith(fulness) as source to / for human faith as goal. •  God’s righteousness is revealed in the gospel from some aspect of human faith to / for human faith as goal. In favor of the third option is the fact that such an understanding of πίστις in 1:17a would parallel its prior uses in 1:5, 8, 12, as well as the thrust of the participle τῷ πιστεύοντι in 1:16. One problem with the third option is deciding to 69.  For a review of this interpretive history especially, see Charles Quarles, “From Faith to Faith: A Fresh Examination of the Prepositional Series in Romans 1:17,” NovT 45 (2003) 2–5. 70.  Byrne, Romans, 60. So too C. K. Barrett, A Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (HNTC; New York: Harper & Row, 1957) 31; C. H. Dodd, The Epistle to the Romans (MNTC; London: Fontana, 1959) 41; Moo, Romans, 75–76; Andres Nygren, Commentary on Romans (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1949) 78. 71.  Quarles, “Romans 1:17,” 5–13; and John Taylor, “From Faith to Faith: Romans 1.17 in the Light of Greek Idiom,” NTS 50 (2004) 337–48. Of the two, Quarles’s study is the most thoroughly documented and analyzed. 72.  Quarles, “Romans 1:17,” 12; Dunn, Romans 1–8, 43–44, 48; Jewett, Romans, 144; Stowers, Rereading of Romans, 202; and Witherington, Romans, 56.

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which facet of human faith ἐκ πίστεως would thus be referring.73 One proposal is that it refers to one who believed in God prior to the coming of Christ so that “the revelation of the righteousness of God extends from the faith of the Old Testament believer to the faith of the New Testament believer.”74 The major problem with this reading is that nothing within Paul’s immediate context equips his audience to see this type of progression.75 Even his references to Holy Scriptures in 1:2 and the Davidic descent of God’s son in 1:3 did not contain any reference to the faith of the Old Testament believer. Another proposal is that Paul is actually referring to “the success of the gospel and the growing number of believers, and in particular of the advance or growth of faith among the Gentiles.”76 While Paul did refer to his own missional focus and indebtedness for the faith of Gentiles in 1:5–6, 14–15 as well as the world-renowned faith of the Romans in 1:8, he presented this faith as the goal or result of ministry and not the source of some form of divine activity. Just the opposite is true regarding what he has established up to this point in the letter: divine activity is the source, and human faith is its result or goal. Thus, Paul has not equipped his audience to understand growing Gentile faith as the source (or even means) of God’s righteousness. Instead of some aspect of human faith serving as the source for the revelation of God’s righteousness in the gospel, Paul has fully equipped his audience to regard divine initiative and activity at work. After all, this has been the continuous, communicative focus that he has highlighted and emphasized for his audience since the letter’s opening line. Christ is the one who called and set Paul apart for the mission of God’s gospel (1:1) and, through Christ, Paul received his apostolic mission (1:5). Paul is Christ’s slave (1:1). Christ is the content of the gospel (1:4, 9). Jesus Christ is our Lord (1:4, 7). Paul’s audience is called by Jesus Christ (1:6). God pre-promised God’s gospel in Holy Scriptures (1:1–2). Jesus is God’s son by virtue of God’s designation and act of resurrection (1:4). God vouchsafes Paul’s prayer petitions, and it is God who decides where Paul carries out his cultic, missional service to God (1:9–10, 13–14). In the immediately preceding γάρ clause to which this particular γάρ clause is inseparably yoked, Paul established for his audience that 73.  One of the most extensive apologies for understanding ἐκ πίστεως as a reference to human faith in 1:17a on the basis of such an understanding of ἐκ πίστεως in 1:17b and the implications it has for 3:22 is offered in the dense arguments by Francis Watson, Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith (London: T. & T. Clark, 2004) 42–57, 71–78. Since a critical engagement with Watson’s readings is beyond the scope of this investigation, see the analytical critique regarding facets of Watson’s reading presented in Kirk, Unlocking Romans, 45–48. 74.  Quarles, “Romans 1:17,” 21. 75.  Rightly noted by Taylor, “Romans 1.17,” 344. 76.  Ibid., 346. A variation of this proposal is offered by Jewett, who concludes that “the progression in this verse refers to missionary expansion of the gospel” from faith communities to /for faith communities (Romans, 144).

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God’s gospel is God’s power for the goal of salvation for all who believe/have faith (1:16a). In the first part of this sentence, Paul focused the audience’s attention on God’s covenantal righteousness that God is revealing in God’s gospel. Hence, when Paul refers to the source of God’s righteous revelation as ἐκ πίστεως, the overwhelming emphasis of Paul’s communicative act since 1:1 (and fully reinforced in 1:16) is on a divine source—that is, divine faithfulness —rather than a human source.77 It may be possible to see Jesus as the subject of ἐκ πίστεως and hence the source of God revealing God’s righteousness on the basis of the Christological activity that Paul had established for his audience in 1:1–5. Scholars who have supported this understanding typically present three core arguments. First, the reading is confirmed by Paul’s subsequent Christological claims beginning in 3:21. Second, Paul is most likely drawing on an early Christian tradition that has used Hab 2:4 Christologically. Third, it would be superfluous and convoluted to regard God as the subject of both δικαιοσύνη and ἐκ πίστεως in 1:17a.78 The primary problem with understanding Christ’s faithfulness as the source (or even the means) of God’s revelation of righteousness in 1:17a is that Paul has removed Jesus from the audience’s central focus and will not return the audience’s focus to Jesus until 3:22. In other words, it would be rather difficult to expect the audience to understand ἐκ πίστεως as a reference to Christ’s faithfulness in 1:17a because they have not been equipped to make that interpretive move or connection. Even though Paul has presented Christ as the content of the gospel in 1:3, 9, he has not equipped the audience to understand this as directly related to Christ’s faithfulness. In fact, just the opposite is true in 1:2–4. While Jesus was noted as the content of the gospel, Paul still focused on God pre-promising God’s gospel in Holy Scriptures and on God designating Jesus as God’s son by the act of raising Jesus from the dead. Likewise, in 1:16–17 Paul is not focusing the audience’s attention on the content of the gospel but on the what and why of the gospel. The gospel is God’s power for salvation, for in the gospel God reveals God’s righteousness. Even though Paul may well present Christ’s faithfulness as the means by which God manifests God’s righteousness beginning in 3:21, Paul is not cryptically asking the audience to suspend understanding of what he says in 1:17 until that later point (3:21) of the letter.

77.  See also Douglas Campbell, who rightly notes that ἐκ πίστεως cannot refer to a person’s faith since that would jumble causality with result, “for if faith is the goal, how can it be a means?—can it function before it is created? But if faith is the means, why then is it also the goal?” (The Rhetoric of Righteousness in Romans 3:21–26 [JSNTSup 65; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992] 207). See also idem, “Romans 1:17,” 273. 78. See especially the arguments presented by Campbell, in ibid.; idem, Rhetoric of Righteousness, 207–8; Hays, “The Righteous One,” 119–42.

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Throughout the communicative act of the letter’s opening as well as the immediate context, Paul has equipped his audience to think in terms of God’s activity (and such a focus on divine activity will continue to be expressed, albeit negatively, in 1:18–28). Hence, it would be natural to expect Paul’s audience to understand God as the subject of ἐκ πίστεως.79 Indeed, a theocentric understanding of ἐκ πίστεως allows the audience to sharpen its understanding of δικαιοσύνη���������������������������������������������������������������� �������������������������������������������������������������������������� θεοῦ����������������������������������������������������������� ��������������������������������������������������������������� . Above all else, God’s righteousness involves God’s faithfulness to God’s gospel that God pre-promised in Holy Scriptures. Thus, Paul is equipping the audience to understand things vis-à-vis God’s faithfulness as the core expression of God’s righteousness revealed in God’s gospel, which is God’s power of salvation. This does not in any way lessen human faith. Instead, Paul’s addressees are to understand their faith as the goal of God’s faithful, revealing activity in the gospel just as salvation is the goal of the gospel as God’s power for the benefit/advantage of all who believe. After using three consecutive γάρ clauses, Paul opens his next clause (1:17b) with the comparative adverb καθὼς.80 In 1:13, Paul had used that very comparative adverb to show his Roman audience that he intends to come to them for the purpose of producing fruit among them just as he has reaped fruit from the rest of the Gentiles. Here its use establishes a comparison between what he has said in 1:17a and what has been written (γέγραπται) in the Holy Scriptures. While καθὼς γέγραπται will function as a standard formula that Paul will use 13 more times in the letter,81 its initial use here invites the audience to take seriously the verb’s passive voice to show divine activity and its perfect tense to show that the thrust or meaning of the original divine message is still in force. Though Paul does not explicitly identify this as a quote from the prophet Habakkuk, the stress on the gospel and God’s activity in 1:16–17a provides the audience with direct links back to 1:1–2, wherein Paul highlighted how God pre-promised God’s gospel through the prophets in Holy Scriptures (also noting the direct linguistic connection between γραφαῖς in 1:2 and γέγ­ ραπται in 1:17b). Thus, Paul expects the audience to understand the Habakkuk citation as God’s pre-promise of the gospel. Some have understood Paul to be using Hab 2:4 as a type of messianic prophecy of the “coming one” (noted in Hab 2:3) who is the “the righteous one” (noted in Hab 2:4). Jesus is then the fulfillment of a messianic expectation 79.  So too Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans (trans. Edwyn Hoskyns; 6th ed.; London: Oxford University Press, 1933) 41; Davies, Faith and Obedience, 43; Dunn, Romans 1–8, 44; Katherine A. Grieb, The Story of Romans: A Narrative Defense of God’s Righteousness (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2002) 12–13; and Wright, “Romans,” 425, though Wright regards the wording of 1:17 as “too dense and cryptic” and therefore relies on subsequent Pauline passages to confirm its meaning here. 80. See BDAG, 493. 81.  See Rom 2:24; 3:4, 10; 4:17; 8:36; 9:13, 33; 10:15; 11:8, 26; 15:3, 9, 21.

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for a “coming one,” and as such he is the righteous one who will live by/from faith.82 To support this understanding of the use of Hab 2:4 in Rom 1:17b, reference is made to 1 En. 3:2–3, 53:6, verses that contain “at least two references to the Messiah as the Righteous One. . . . This, then, was a traditional messianic title in the first century.”83 Confirmation and proof of this point is added through references to other New Testament passages that use ὁ δίκαιος as a Christological title (Acts 3:14, 7:52, 22:14; 1 Pet 3:18; 1 John 2:1). Thus, the conclusion is made that Paul understands and presents Christ as the righteous one who lived from his faithfulness most pointedly expressed in his death. Such non-Pauline references do indeed show that for the author and audience of 1 Enoch “the righteous one” was a messianic title and that there are other New Testament authors who seek to have their audiences understand Jesus as the righteous one. Nevertheless, this in no way proves anything with regard to Paul’s expectations for his audience here. If Paul expected his audience to understand this use of Hab 2:4 as a messianic fulfillment formula, the individuals in his audience would have needed more overt signals, since they did not have 1 Enoch or Acts or 1 Peter or 1 John to help them construe Hab 2:4 as a messianic prophecy.84 As noted above, Paul has placed Jesus temporarily aside in his argument and has riveted his audience’s focus on God’s activity at work through the gospel (of which his mission is a vital component). Even if one argues that Paul has his eyes on Christ’s faithfulness in 3:22–26 and 10:6 or on Christ’s righteousness in 5:19, he has not allowed his audience to see that far ahead at this point in the letter. The audience, however, is expected to regard this scriptural quotation as a type of fulfillment but not a fulfillment of a supposed messianic prophecy. Rather, it is a fulfillment of God’s pre-promise of the gospel in Holy Scriptures that Paul introduced in the first lines of his communication to his audience. That is, what God had promised regarding the gospel is now reality as the gospel reaches out as God’s power, the goal of which is salvation for all who believe, Jew first and Greek. Now God’s righteousness is revealed by God in the gospel, and the source of this divine revelation is God’s covenantal faithfulness, and the goal is the creation of faith among both Jews and Gentiles. Thus, Paul’s whole divinely established gospel ministry the goal of which is faith’s obedience among the Gentiles fulfills God’s pre-promise of the gospel expressed in and confirmed by Hab 2:4. This understanding of fulfillment, for 82.  Campbell, “Romans 1:17,” 278–80; Hays, “The Righteous One,” 126–34; Kirk, Unlocking Romans, 47–48; Stowers, Rereading of Romans, 199–202; and Talbert, Romans, 42. 83. Ibid. 84.  See also the rejection of a messianic interpretation of 1:17 offered by Rikki Watts, “‘For I Am Not Ashamed of the Gospel’: Romans 1:16–17 and Habakkuk 2:4,” in Romans and the People of God: Essays in Honor of Gordon D. Fee on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday (ed. Sven Soderlund and N. T. Wright; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999) 16–17.

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Paul and thus for his audience, also demonstrates the divine consistency of God’s gospel ways (an important point introduced here and heavily developed as Paul’s communication unfolds). At the same time, the use of Hab 2:4 presents divine confirmation to the audience regarding Paul’s claims, particularly in relationship to God’s righteousness, the gospel, and the life of faith. Stanley has noted that Paul’s “introduction of a verse from the sacred Scriptures invariably adds an air of divine authority to the passage, since it shows the God of Israel standing on the side of the speaker (i.e., Paul). If the words of Scripture are in fact the words of God, then a quotation from Scripture brings the audience into the very presence of God.”85 This is especially the case regarding the impact that Hab 2:4 is expected to have for the audience as the context links it fully with God’s salvific power, God’s self-revelation of God’s righteousness, and God’s pre-promises embedded in Holy Scriptures. Is the audience, however, expected to use the Hab 2:4 citation as a portal to connect the larger message of the prophet Habakkuk to Paul’s presentation of the quotation here? Some scholars have offered insightful arguments to establish how the broader issue of theodicy with which Habakkuk is dealing “provides a scriptural matrix in which Paul can justify his gospel.”86 While these arguments can be helpful in offering scriptural and hermeneutical avenues for understanding how Paul’s mind might have been working here, they seem to presume far too much when it comes to understanding what Paul’s audience is expected to understand. To presume that the audience was to make these broader interpretive connections is to presume that Paul’s audience recognized that this passage was from the prophetic book of Habakkuk (note that Paul nowhere specifies this), had reasonable access to the prophetic book of Habakkuk or already was rather familiar with the whole book of Habakkuk, and thus was able to connect Habakkuk’s theological struggle regarding theodicy to Paul’s theological presentation of theodicy. A view of this sort expects quite a bit from Paul’s audience. Here another insight from Stanley is quite helpful on the way that Paul’s audience would or would not be expected to regard a scriptural citation such as this: Paul constructed his biblical arguments for an “implied audience” that was incapable of consulting the original context of most of his biblical references. . . . Paul recognized and took seriously the limited biblical literacy of his audience and framed his arguments in such a way that the illiterate members of his audience could have grasped his essential point without having to rely on others to explain to them how he was interpreting the Jewish Scripture.87 85.  Stanley, Arguing with Scripture, 182. 86.  Watts, “Romans 1:16–17 and Habakkuk 2:4,” 24. See also Hays, Echoes of Scripture, 39–44; and Wright, “Romans,” 425–26. 87.  Christopher D. Stanley, “Paul’s ‘Use’ of Scripture: Why the Audience Matters,” in As It Is Written: Studying Paul’s Use of Scripture (SBLSymS 50; Atlanta: Society of Bibli-

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Again, while Paul may have had broader connections with Habakkuk in mind, it is difficult to show how the audience was intended to make those broader connections. With regard to the actual words of the Hab 2:4 citation, ὁ δὲ δίκαιος ἐκ πίστεως ζήσεται, three points need to be made with regard to the audience’s expected understanding of 1:17b. First, it seems most likely that they would be expected to understand ἐκ πίστεως in the scriptural quotation in line with the expected understanding of ἐκ πίστεως in 1:17a.88 Just as we have already seen that in the prior γάρ clause ἐκ πίστεως is best understood as referring to God’s faithfulness, so too the audience is expected to regard ἐκ πίστεως as a reference to God’s covenantal faithfulness. A theocentric repetition of this sort fully fits the theocentric stress of the immediate context, 1:16–17, the underlying theocentric foundation for the letter’s opening, 1:1–15, and the theocentric focus of the immediately following argument in 1:18–28. Second, it is quite common for scholars to reject this theocentric understanding of ἐκ πίστεως in the Hab 2:4 citation precisely because of the way Paul has chosen (or not chosen) to cite Habakkuk.89 This relates to the issue of the different renderings of Hab 2:4 that existed by the first century. Here Hays summarizes well the two predominant readings, one in the MT and the other in the (dominant) LXX tradition. In the Hebrew text of Habakkuk, God’s answer to the prophet is an exhortation to keep the faith: “The righteous one shall live by his faithfulness,” that is, the person who remains faithful will be rewarded in the end by God. The LXX, however, has reinterpreted the dictum as a promise about the character of God: “The righteous one shall live by my faithfulness,” that is, God’s own integrity in preserving the covenant with Israel will ultimately be confirmed.90 cal Literature, 2008) 155. For an extended, critical reassessment regarding contemporary scholarly assessments of the connections between Paul’s scriptural quotations, the original context of those quotations, and the capacity of Paul’s audience to recognize and interpret Paul’s scriptural quotations in conjunction with their original contexts, see idem, Arguing with Scriptures, 38–61. 88.  Thus, invariably, scholars who argue for an anthropological understanding of ἐκ πίστεως in 1:17a argue for an anthropological understanding of ἐκ πίστεως in 1:17b, and scholars who argue for a Christological understanding of ἐκ πίστεως in 1:17a argue for a Christological understanding of in 1:17b. A rare exception to this is Witherington, who understands ἐκ πίστεως in 1:17a to refer to either God or Christ but understands ἐκ πίστεως in 1:17b to refer to the faith of the believer (Romans, 55–56). 89.  So, for example, Davies, Faith and Obedience, 37; Joseph Fitzmyer, “Habakkuk 2.3–4 in the New Testament,” To Advance the Gospel: New Testament Studies (New York: Crossroad, 1981) 242; Jewett, Romans, 145; and Steven Moyise, “Quotations,” in As It Is Written: Studying Paul’s Use of Scripture (SBLSymS 50; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2008) 18. 90.  Hays, Echoes of Scripture, 40 (emphasis original). I noted the reading of “my righteousness” in the (dominant) LXX tradition because there was an LXX text tradition that

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While Paul does not include any pronoun within his citation (and seems to provide the only first-century rendering of Hab 2:4 that does not include a pronoun), its elimination does not automatically mean that his audience would have recognized this as being a discrepancy with the LXX and therefore would have been expected to regard the Habakkuk citation as referring to human faith in line with the MT reading of Hab 2:4. As we have noted, Paul has still provided his audience with extensive interpretive handles within 1:1–17 to understand ἐκ πίστεως in the Habakkuk citation to refer to God’s faithfulness. The lack of the pronoun in no way precludes this expected understanding by his audience. In fact, if the audience did know the LXX reading of Hab 2:4, it could be expected to assume that Paul was referring to “God’s faithfulness,” since his citation does not introduce or stress the faithfulness of another. As will be noted below, from Paul’s subsequent communication in Romans, there may be another reason why there is not a pronoun in the Hab 2:4 citation, but it does not relate to Paul’s attempt to have his audience reject the LXX reading of God’s faithfulness. Third, the substantive adjective, ὁ δίκαιος, presents to the audience a (representative) human figure who has a righteous status—that is, as a person who lives in a right covenantal relationship with God. Since the addressees would be expected to view this sort of status positively and even to identify themselves with this status, they would also be expected to connect ὁ δίκαιος directly back to the substantive participle τῷ πιστεύοντι in 1:16b and thus conclude that every believer, both Jew and Gentile, has the status of ὁ δίκαιος. What Paul has not yet said explicitly is fully implied implicitly: one’s status as ὁ δίκαιος involves the gospel as God’s power for salvation for everyone who believes and as the agency by which God’s righteousness is revealed from God’s covenantal faithfulness for the goal of our believing. Paul, however, has not yet moved the audience to a clear understanding that one’s status as ὁ δίκαιος is only from God’s faithfulness as manifested in the faithful death of Jesus Christ. Likewise, he has not yet moved the audience to a clear understanding that one’s status as ὁ δίκαιος is from faith engendered by the gospel rather than by works of the law. Instead, here in 1:17 he has established the scriptural node that will allow him to make these subsequent theological moves in the course of his communication. Given this as well as the fact that in 1:17a the prepositional phrase ἐκ πίστεως is linked more directly with the verb ἀποκαλύπτεται, it seems that Paul expects his audience (at this point in the communication) to link the prepositional phrase ἐκ πίστεως more directly with the verb ζήσεται91 and conclude that God’s pre-promised gospel perspective is: a righteous perplaced the pronoun μου after δίκαιος instead of after πίστεως. For a full analysis of Hab 2:4 in the MT, LXX, NT, and at Qumran, see Fitzmyer, “Habakkuk 2:3–4,” 236–46. 91.  So too D. Moody Smith, “Ho de dikaios ek pisteōs zēsetai,” in Studies in the History and Text of the New Testament in Honor of Kenneth Willis Clark (ed. B. L. Daniels and M. J.

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son will live from God’s covenantal faithfulness.92 At this point in his communication, the audience is not expected to put too much interpretive weight on ζήσεται beyond a generalized understanding that the Holy Scriptures declare that one who has a righteous covenantal status lives life from God’s covenantal faithfulness. Certainly connections could be made here to faith’s obedience in 1:5, but Paul has not yet fully presented the multifaceted dynamics of newness of life in the Christ dominion, let alone eternal life. Instead, he is establishing a scriptural node to ground his claims here and upon which he will build at later points in his communication. It should be noted that, at this point in the letter, the audience is not expected to regard the scriptural quotation as a polemic against the law or a polemic against the supposed Jewish Christians who are in opposition to Paul. Scholars who make these connections at this point typically resort to Paul’s use of Hab 2:4 in Gal 3:11 to substantiate their claims,93 but as we noted at the beginning of our reexamination, Paul’s audience in Rome does not have Galatians to help them understand how he is using Hab 2:4 here. Paul will definitely seek to establish appropriate and inappropriate understandings of the law and its divinely intended function, but he has not yet taken his audience to that point. At this point in his communication, he is not using Hab 2:4 as scriptural proof against the reliance on works of the law to obtain the status of ὁ δίκαιος.94 Finally, it is important to see how the Habakkuk citation at this point in the letter intensifies the audience’s dissonance that Paul begins to create in the very next line, as it stands in antithetical parallelism to 1:16–17. The γάρ clause of 1:18 presents an unexpected and negative elucidation of the Hab 2:4 citation as Paul claims, “For God’s wrath is revealed from heaven against every ungodliness and unrighteousness of humans who suppress the truth by unrighteousness.”95 The revelation of God’s righteousness is now held in Suggs; SD 29; Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press, 1967) 18. Jewett (Romans, 146) arrives at a similar conclusion using other criteria. 92.  For a similar reading of the Habakkuk text in this context, see W. B. Wallis, “The Translation of Romans 1.17: A Basic Motif in Paulinism,” JETS 16 (1973) 23. Applying the categories “expected readings” and “unexpected readings” first described above in n. 11 does not mean that Luther’s reading of the use of Hab 2:4 in Rom 1:17 as “he who through faith is righteous shall live” (LW 34:337) is a wrong reading of the text. Rather, it is an unexpected reading, which is not surprising given Luther’s existential and historical Sitz im Leben. 93.  So, for example, Harrisville, Romans, 32. 94.  Paul will not bring the law into direct focus until 2:12, where it then takes center stage. Also note that in his original reference to Holy Scriptures in 1:2 the audience’s focus was intentionally set on the prophets with no mention of the law. 95. While Davies rightly notes the significance of the use of γάρ in 1:18, his suggestion that, when Paul introduces “the revelation of the wrath of God in Rom 1.18 . . . he is doing so within the framework of the prophet’s message which identifies a division between the righteous and the wicked” (Faith and Obedience, 44–45) suggests too much as far as the

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tension (not antithesis) with the revelation of God’s wrath. The inclusivity of all who believe is now contrasted with the inclusivity of all ungodliness and unrighteousness of humans. The preferred covenant status of ὁ δίκαιος is now contrasted with the negative status and attendant deeds of ἀδικία. Whereas the addressees were being invited to wrap themselves in the mantle of the Hab 2:4 scriptural citation as those who have received the revelation of God’s righteousness, now they are expected to draw themselves fully away from those who receive the revelation of God’s wrath. As Paul develops his argument to its condemnatory crescendo in 3:19–20, however, it will become clear to the audience that God alone is the righteous, faithful covenant partner and that Scripture itself will wrap the audience, both Jew and Gentile, in the inclusive net of divine condemnation because the πᾶσαν ἀσέβειαν καὶ ἀδικίαν ἀνθρώπων of 1:18 will be shown to depict the conduct of πάσα σὰρξ in 3:20.

Trajectories of the Scriptural Node into the Body of the Letter Up to this point, the regular scholarly habit of examining 1:16–17 as the theme of the letter has been intentionally avoided. Too often this sort of examination immediately establishes an interpretive circle. Because Rom 1:16–17 is the theme of the letter, interpretive issues involving 1:16–17 are solved by invoking the rest of the letter. As a communicative act, however, the audience encounters 1:16–17 before it encounters Paul’s subsequent arguments, so Paul is expecting the addressees to develop certain understandings and interpretations regarding 1:16–17 (including the use of Hab 2:4) before they encounter the rest of the letter. This does not mean that after they have heard various aspects of Paul’s subsequent communication they could not expand their initial understanding of 1:16–17, but it does call for an initial caution to avoid solving everything regarding 1:16–17 on the basis of the rest of the letter. A detailed examination of the way that Paul develops the initial themes highlighted in 1:16–17 (and confirmed or solidified by the Habakkuk citation) throughout Romans is far beyond the modest scope of our reexamination and has itself been the subject of numerous full monographs. We do, however, want to note audience is concerned. This would only be true for the audience if they knew the fuller, original context of the Habakkuk quote. Again, while broader connections to Habakkuk may have been in Paul’s mind, the audience probably is not expected to realize this. They would, however, be expected to comprehend the strong antithesis between the scriptural citation from Habakkuk in 1:17 and the depiction of human conduct (and its resulting status under God’s wrath) that Paul presents beginning in 1:18. Through the connection that stands in the Romans text itself, the audience would be expected to distance itself from “those” unrighteous people Paul describes to them in 1:18–32.

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some significant trajectories of Paul’s presentation of Hab 2:4 in the development of the letter. While some scholars have suggested that Hab 2:4 provides the structure for the first half of Romans (chaps. 1–4 focusing on faith; chaps 5–8 explicating life/living),96 this partitioning would most likely have escaped an audience that was hearing the letter rather than reading it with chapter/verse divisions inserted. Nevertheless, as Paul develops and extends the communicative act of the letter, he regularly provides his audience with linguistic and theological connectors to Hab 2:4 so that the hearers are able to see the dynamics of ὁ δὲ δίκαιος ἐκ πίστεως ζήσεται played out among all covenantal partners. First and foremost, in line with his theocentric understanding of ἐκ πίστεως in 1:17a and 17b, Paul reasserts that God is the righteous covenant partner who lives out of divine faithfulness in 3:1–9. Indeed by this point in Paul’s argument, the audience is expected to regard God as the only righteous covenant partner. It is God’s faith alone that holds sway. In the course of a diatribe involving Paul and a Judaic interlocutor,97 a question is presented regarding the advantage of the Jews (3:1). The response is that their advantage in the first place involves the fact that they were entrusted with God’s oracles. The use of the divine passive, ἐπιστεύθησαν, in 3:2 is a variation of ἐκ πίστεως in 1:17a and 1:17b as a reference to God’s covenantal faithfulness being the source of God’s covenantal activity while also recalling the divine activity regarding the gospel, the prophets, and Holy Scriptures first noted in 1:2. This is immediately confirmed in the μὴ question put forth in 3:3, which anticipates a negative reply. God is the one who is righteous in God’s words and in God’s judgments (3:4). Even when human unrighteousness shows that God is the righteous covenant partner by revealing God’s wrath (3:5 especially connecting back to 1:17b–18), God remains the one who lives out of divine faithfulness because “‘the righteousness of God’ in Rom 3:5 appears as a functional equivalent of ‘the faithfulness of God’ (3:3) and ‘the truthfulness of God’ (3:7). . . . [A]ll three serve to affirm that God makes his integrity known through his active faith keeping.”98 Beginning in 3:21–26, however, God’s covenantal righteousness comes to its most profound and ultimate expression as the dynamics of Hab 2:4 are applied to Jesus. He is the faithful covenant partner through whose faithful death 96.  See especially the argument on this matter put forth by Nygren, Romans, 85–87. 97.  On Paul’s use of diatribe in Rom 3:1–9, see the analysis of Stanley Stowers, The Diatribe and Paul’s Letter to the Romans (SBLDS 57; Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1981) 119–20, 133–37, 148–54. 98.  Hays, “Psalm 143 as Testimony to the Righteousness of God,” The Conversion of the Imagination: Paul as Interpreter of Israel’s Scripture, 55.

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God’s righteousness has been manifested apart from the law.99 The audience would certainly have been expected to apply Paul’s claim in 3:21b, “though God’s righteousness is borne witness by the law and the prophets,” directly back to the use of Hab 2:4 as one of God’s central pre-promises of the gospel in Holy Scriptures. Likewise, the connection between the references to human faith in 3:22 (εἰς πάντας τούς πιστεύοντας), in 1:16 (τῷ πιστεύοντι), and 1:17 (εἰς πίστιν) provides the audience with “a reference to the faithfulness of Jesus as the foundation of God’s righteousness, bringing salvation to all who believe.”100 The presentation of Jesus as righteous covenantal partner/ participant will continue in the Adam/Christ antithesis of 5:12–21 as Christ’s righteous action (δι᾽ ἑνὸς δικαιώματος, 5:18) results in justification for all humanity (εἰς πάντας ἀνθρώπους, 5:18) and through his obedience (that is, his faithfulness in going the way of the cross in accord with God’s hidden plan of righteousness now revealed in the gospel) the many will be constituted righteous (δίκαιοι κατασταθήσονται οἰ πολλοί).101 In Rom 3:27–31, the reality of the Shemaʿ grounds God’s unified activity of justifying both the circumcised and the uncircumcised through the act of Christ’s faithful death.102 This is immediately followed in chap. 4 with the presentation of Abraham as the paradigm (or better “the prototype and the promise”)103 of the human covenant partner who models the reality of Hab 2:4 so that God reckons his faith as righteousness (thus the use of Gen 15:6 throughout Romans 4 builds on Hab 2:4). God’s covenantal consistency involves extending that divine mode of defining Abraham’s descendants on the basis of faith rather than circumcision. This allows Paul to include himself and his audience in the Hab 2:4 covenantal reality as participants who were brought into a right relationship with God out of faith by God’s activity (��� δικαιωθέντες ἐκ πίστεως, 5:1). From this, Paul will expand the implications of Hab 2:4 throughout chaps. 6–8 as the righteous exude appropriate baptismal99.  For overviews of the ἐκ πίστεως positions including their relations to a reading of 3:21–26, see the classic presentations by James D. G. Dunn, “Once More, ΠΙΣΤΙΣ ΧΡΙΣΤΟΥ,” in Society of Biblical Literature 1991 Seminar Papers (ed. Eugene Lovering Jr.; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991) 730–44; Richard B. Hays, “ΠΙΣΤΙΣ and Pauline Christology: What Is at Stake?” in ibid., 714–29. Also see the relevant bibliographic references in Campbell, “Romans 1:17,” 265–67; Moo, Romans, 224–25; Paul Pollard, “The ‘Faith of Christ’ in Current Discussion,” Concordia 23 (1997) 213–28; and Stowers, Rereading of Romans, 352. 100.  Davies, Faith and Obedience, 112. See also the related connections made by Grieb, Story of Romans, 37–38; and Witherington, Romans, 99–100. 101.  Note how the use of διά to express Christ’s obedience as means matches the use of διά to express Christ’s faithfulness as means in 3:22. 102.  Here any nuance in the differences between the two prepositions (περιτομὴν ἐκ πίστεως and ἀκροβυστίαν διὰ τῆς πίστεως in 3:30) has been dropped by Paul. 103.  Leander Keck, “What Makes Romans Tick?” in Pauline Theology, Volume III (ed. David Hay and E. Elizabeth Johnson; Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1995) 25.

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covenantal conduct because they are to walk in the new reality of life (ἐν καινότητι ζωῆς περιπατήσωμεν, 6:4) inaugurated through God’s act of raising Christ from the dead (6:1–14)104 and so live according to the Spirit rather than the flesh (8:1–16). In Romans 9–11, Paul does not digress or change his theological focus. Rather, he now applies the consistent theological logic of the gospel, of which Hab 2:4 has been established as a foundational expression, to issues involving theodicy and Israel (particularly the significant segment of Israel that does not believe and confess that Jesus Christ is Lord).105 On the one hand, Israel stumbled because they did not follow the contours of Hab 2:4. That is, while they pursued the goal of God’s righteousness, they did it out of works rather than out of faith (οὐκ ἐκ πίστεως ἀλλ̓ ὡς ἐξ ἔργων, 9:32). Because God’s consistent, covenantal righteousness makes people righteous from faith rather than from law, Paul can even pit the Holy Scriptures (Hab 2:4; Deut 9:4, 30:12 in Rom 10:6–7) against the Holy Scriptures (Lev 18:5) to reinforce what he has been claiming since the letter’s opening. On the other hand, God remains the ultimate faithful covenant partner whose mercy, not wrath, is the ultimate righteous, covenantal activity for all, including all Israel who will be saved (Rom 11:25–32). Finally, Paul holds up the covenantal relationships that members of the body share with one another as grounded in Hab 2:4 when he calls on his audience to use faith as the measure of self-discernment regarding its status and Godempowered functioning within the body (12:3–8). This remains part of what living from faith entails. Indeed, Paul had just warned the Gentile Christians in his audience against self-arrogance (11:17–24), because their basic standing as members of God’s holy people is literally on the basis of faith, whereas the unbelief of some of the members of Israel has been the cause of their temporary removal (11:20). From there, Paul will go on to show the audience that faith is the source for the way that Christians properly live in devotion to God while also in proper relation to each other (Rom 14:1–23) culminating with the claim that everything that is not out of faith is sin (ἐκ πίστεως used twice in 14:23 for emphasis). Thus, Paul will use Hab 2:4 as a scriptural and theological node for his audience to comprehend and connect the varying interrelated dynamics about covenant relationships, faith, and righteousness.106 This does not mean that within the immediate context of 1:16–17 Paul intends the audience to comprehend 104.  Richard Carlson, “The Role of Baptism in Paul’s Thought,” Int 47 (2003) 257–59; and Kirk, Unlocking Romans, 107–18. 105.  Keck, “What Makes Romans Tick?” 26–28. 106.  See Stowers’ notation that “Hab 2:4 is a key to the meaning of pistis in Romans” (Rereading of Romans, 199). Again, while we are not arguing that Paul has structured the outline of the letter according to Hab 2:4, this certainly shows that Paul gives a function to

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multiple meanings for Hab 2:4.107 Rather, he will go on to help his audience establish multiple meanings at subsequent points in his communication. In this way, the use of Hab 2:4 in 1:16–17 is not as ambiguous as Dunn contends.108 Rather, its use is malleable. Though it can never be known with certainty, this may be the very reason that Paul presents the Hab 2:4 citation to his audience without any personal pronoun modifiers.109 What can be known and what this reexamination has sought to show is that, as Paul’s communication to his audience develops, the lack of a personal pronoun within the citation allows the audience to apply ὁ δὲ δίκαιος ἐκ πίστεως ζήσεται to all the partners of the covenant relationship beginning with God, centered in Christ, modeled by Abraham, and lived out by all Christians in relationship to each other. Hab 2:4 that extends far beyond the subordinate clause of 1:17b; contra Vorster, “Romans 1.16–17,” 165–66. 107.  Contra Grieb, Story of Romans, 13. 108. Dunn, Romans 1–8, 48–49. 109.  So Watts, “Romans 1:16–17,” 21.

The Lord’s Supper as a Meal of Siblings Walter F. Taylor Jr.

Introduction The goal of my essay is to understand the early Christian meal labeled by Paul the “Lord’s supper” in terms of the ancient understanding of the way siblings related to each other. This topic reflects the source of my relationship with the honoree of this volume, Richard Nelson. We have come to know each other over many meals during our joint service on a national panel of our denomination and during the meals that are part of the annual meetings of the Catholic Biblical Association, of which we are both members. I have always found Richard to be a gracious, wry, humorous, hospitable, and gentle meal companion, as well as a brother in Christ who has incisive perceptions about what is going on in the church and what should be going on in the church. I am honored to contribute to a collection of essays gathered in his name.

Meals in Antiquity During the last generation, the study of meals in antiquity has been a major “growth industry” in New Testament, social-scientific, and Roman historical studies. Even a brief bibliography of major studies can overwhelm the reader.1 Author’s note: This essay was written during my time as visiting professor at the Evangelical Theological Seminary in Cairo, Egypt. I express my thanks to Trinity Lutheran Seminary for granting me a sabbatical leave during the 2008–9 academic year; to the Global Mission and the Vocation and Education units of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, which made it possible for me to teach during the spring semester of 2009 in Cairo; and to the faculty and students of the seminary in Cairo and the Evangelical Lutheran Theological University in Budapest, Hungary, where I shared some of my thinking in an earlier form. 1. Matthias Klinghardt, Gemeinschaftsmahl und Mahlgemeinschaft: Soziologie und Li­ turgie frühchristlicher Mahlfeiern (Texte und Arbeiten zum neutestamentliche Zeitalter 13; Tübingen: Francke, 1996); Onno M. van Nijf, The Civic World of Professional Associations in the Roman East (Dutch Monographs on Ancient History and Archaeology 17; Amsterdam: Gieben, 1997); Peter Garnsey, Food and Society in Classical Antiquity (Key Themes in Ancient History; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Katherine M. D. Dunbabin, The Roman Banquet: Images of Conviviality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Dennis E. Smith, From Symposium to Eucharist: The Banquet in the Early Christian World (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003); John F. Donahue, The Roman Community at Table during the Principate (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004).

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For our purposes, the interface of social-scientific studies with the study of the New Testament is especially germane.2 The impetus for much subsequent study has been the seminal article by Mary Douglas, “Deciphering a Meal.”3 “If food is treated as a code,” she asserted, “the messages it encodes will be found in the pattern of social relations being expressed. The message is about different degrees of hierarchy, inclusion and exclusion, boundaries and transactions across the boundaries.”4 Since the appearance of her article, as Willi Braun has written, “Anthropologists and sociologists interested in collective social identity . . . have studied meal practices and food ways as an entrée to a specified group’s sense of itself within, and in distinction to, a larger cultural matrix and to infer social values and relations within the group.”5 An important benchmark study is a work by Dennis E. Smith, From Symposium to Eucharist, whose basic approach and conclusions are to a high degree compatible with the book by Matthias Klinghardt, Gemeinschaftsmahl und Mahlgemeinschaft. Both scholars posit an overarching ideal type of meal from which the many meals of the Mediterranean world were derived—whether the meals were ethnically Judean, Greek, Roman, or a hybrid. Smith’s label for the ideal type is the “Greco-Roman banquet.” Klinghardt’s label is the “symposium,” but they both refer to the same phenomenon, on which other meals in Mediterranean antiquity were modeled. Smith will be my primary dialogue partner in this essay. He quite naturally devotes much of his work to understanding “the larger phenomenon of the banquet as a social institution.”6 Among the meals based on the Greco-Roman banquet, to use Smith’s terminology, was the early Christian meal called the Lord’s supper.7 Although Smith’s examination of meals is comprehensive, there is one meal that is strangely absent. This meal is the family meal. He does refer in passing

2.  For an orientation to social-scientific study, see my “Sociological Exegesis: Introduction to a New Way to Study the Bible, Part I,” Trinity Seminary Review 11 (1989) 99–110; idem, “Part II,” Trinity Seminary Review 12 (1990) 26–42; idem, “Cultural Anthropology as a Tool for Studying the New Testament: Part I,” Trinity Seminary Review 18 (1996) 13–27; idem, “Part II,” Trinity Seminary Review 18 (1997) 69–82. 3. Mary Douglas, “Deciphering a Meal,” Daedalus 101 (1972) 61–81. 4.  Ibid., 61. 5. Willi Braun, “   ‘Our Religion Compels Us to Make a Distinction’: Prolegomena on Meals and Social Formation,” in Identity and Interaction in the Ancient Mediterranean: Jews, Christians and Others—Essays in Honour of Stephen G. Wilson (ed. Zeba A. Crook and Philip A. Harland; NTM 23; Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2007) 41. 6.  Smith, From Symposium to Eucharist, 2. Smith’s caution is important: “What is more difficult . . . is determining to what extent a banquet reference in the data represents social reality or merely an idealized, imaginative reconstruction of it” (p. 6). While true of any event, this word of caution is particularly to be noted in the case of the banquet and its derivatives. 7.  Ibid., 174.

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to Paul’s use of the fictive family,8 and he does mention social obligation to Christian brothers and sisters,9 but he neither studies family meals in antiquity nor examines the primary early Christian communal meal as a family meal. This lack in an otherwise extremely helpful study is made more obvious by statements that might have led easily into consideration of the family dynamics of the meal. Thus he wonders: Given the diversity that came to characterize Christian groups at a very early stage of development, how could a sense of cohesion have developed so easily? How could individuals from diverse ethnic, religious, and social backgrounds come to call one another “brothers and sisters”? How were these bonds created and experienced? The most likely focus for this development is the community meal, with its unparalleled power to define social boundaries and create social bonding.10

Certainly. But, in addition to the meal and the theological framework that Paul provides for understanding it, what else is going on? What else is going on is that believers are gathering for worship, and in this worship and meal, they are constructing a new identity as a family. Smith also quite properly, in seeking to understand early Christian meals, turns toward philosophy’s emphasis on friendship. “Popular philosophy would have said that ‘the friend-making character of the meal’ was destroyed by divisions. Paul interpreted the nature of the communal meal in the same way, but without using the terminology of friendship.”11 True enough, but as we will see, Paul does use the terminology of family to write about the communal meal in 1 Corinthians 11. The use of this language provides a signpost for interpreting the meal.

The Lord’s Supper in 1 Corinthians 11 as a Family Meal Why should we understand the Lord’s supper as discussed by Paul in 1 Cor 11:17–34 as a family meal? In addition to consideration of the meal as reflective of the Passover meal of Judaism (a topic beyond the scope of this chapter), there are three major reasons to understand 1 Cor 11:17–34 as referring to a family meal. The Setting of the Meal There is widespread agreement that early Christ-believers normatively worshiped in homes, whether the domus ‘villa’ of a wealthier person or the small apartment of a poorer person. Thus, in the undisputed letters of Paul, we have 8.  Ibid., 200. 9.  Ibid., 210. 10.  Ibid., 184. 11.  Ibid., 198.

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references to churches that meet in homes (thus “house churches”) in Rom 16:5, 1 Cor 16:19, Phlm 2, and probably in Rom 16:23 and 1 Cor 1:16.12 Smith also identifies the home as the setting of the meal. “The community meal was a full-course dinner, as indicated by 1 Corinthians, in which the deipnon, or dinner course, is followed by the symposium.” Although food was brought by everyone, the householder or patron, according to Smith, was the host.13 The Term of Address In 1 Cor 11:33, as he concludes his instructions, Paul says to his listeners, “So then, my brothers and sisters, when you come together to eat, wait for one another” (nrsv). The Greek term for “brothers and sisters” is ��������������� ἀδελφοί�������� ‘brothers’. Paul uses the plural of ἀδελφός ‘brother’ 68 times in the undisputed letters, so it is a favorite of his. What does Paul mean by this term, and what are its implications for the central meal of the church? Is it a “throwaway” term or a filler (sort of an epistolary pause), or is it a significant term for him? The term that Paul uses to address his listeners in 1 Corinthians and elsewhere is the plural of ἀδελφός, which literally means ‘from the same womb’. When he uses this term in the plural, he is using the masculine-plural ‘brothers’. The question that we need to ask as readers of the New Testament in the 21st century is: given the linguistic customs of his time, did Paul mean to exclude women when he used the term brothers? What I find throughout Greek literature of that era is that everyone understood ‘brothers’ to include women as well as men, in much the same way that, a generation ago, “mankind” or “all men” were understood in English to refer to females as well as males. If the term as used by Paul does not include women as well as men, we would need to seek a reason why, especially since he does refer to individual women believers as ἀδελφή ‘sister’ (Rom 16:1; 1 Cor 7:15, 9:5; Phlm 2).14 Further, Paul’s direct address to women in Phil 4:2, his public commendation of Phoebe in 12.  In the deutero-Pauline material, see Col 4:15; 1 Tim 3:15; 2 Tim 1:16, 4:19. On Philemon as addressed to an extended family, see my “Obligation: Paul’s Foundation for Ethics,” Trinity Seminary Review 19 (1997) 99–100; Peter Balla, The Child-Parent Relationship in the New Testament and Its Environment (WUNT 155; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003) 195. The following two studies investigate thoroughly the household theme: Carolyn Osiek and David L. Balch, Families in the New Testament World: Households and House Churches (Family, Religion, and Culture; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1997); Carolyn Osiek and Margaret Y. MacDonald, with Janet H. Tulloch, A Woman’s Place: House Churches in Earliest Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006). 13.  Smith, From Eucharist to Symposium, 178. On the meal as a potluck (ἔρανος), see Peter Lampe, “The Eucharist: Identifying with Christ on the Cross,” Int 48 (1994) 39–40; he also points out that δεῖπνον ‘dinner’ always means a meal and not just bread (p. 42). 14.  I am indebted to Dr. Atef M. Gendy of the Evangelical Theological Seminary in Cairo for this insight.

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Rom 16:1–2, and other references to women presume that they are listening to the reading of his letters—a reading that Smith regularly reminds us occurred at meals. So, I think that when a New Testament text is not clearly referring to male siblings—the brothers of Jesus, for example—the plural “brothers” is legitimately and in fact most correctly translated ‘brothers and sisters’, as the nrsv has it. Further, the trajectory of meals in the Mediterranean world of Paul’s time was clearly one in which women and men dined together more and more, even in formal banquets, and they had long eaten together during family meals.15 That Paul uses the inclusive term ἀδελφοί may also indicate that the women and men who hear the letter read in worship are not separated by gender.16 The term ἀδελφοί, therefore, addresses both female and male believers. But it does more than this. The term also points to the relationships that Paul wants to foster within the young Christian communities, relationships that are familial in nature. He wants believers to live in the way that sisters and brothers ideally should live. And so we move to the third reason for understanding the Lord’s supper in 1 Corinthians as a family meal. Fictive Family Together with other students of Paul, I believe that one of Paul’s goals was to found congregations that would understand themselves as substitute or surrogate families, what we often in English call “fictive families.”17 The family language Paul uses normatively refers not to biological, blood-related families but to substitute or fictive families. This is why Paul so frequently addresses his congregations as “brothers and sisters.” According to Hellerman, a surrogate or fictive family “may be defined as a social group whose members are related to one another neither by birth nor by marriage, but who nevertheless (a) employ kinship terminology to describe group relationships and (b) expect family-like behavior to characterize 15.  Osiek and Balch, Families in the New Testament World, 45–46, 58–60. On the presence of women in banquets at Greek and Roman clubs, see Smith, From Symposium to Eucharist, 209. 16.  See Paul Parvis (“2 Clement and the Meaning of the Christian Homily,” in The Writings of the Apostolic Fathers [ed. Paul Foster; London: T. & T. Clark, 2007] 34–35), who highlights the use in 2 Clem. 19:1 and 20:2 of ἀδελφοὶ καὶ ἀδελφαί ‘brothers and sisters’. “Normal Greek usage,” he writes, “pagan as well as Christian, would have been to address a group of mixed gender as ἀδελφοί.” The fact that the author used both terms may point to a setting in which women and men are on opposite sides of the room, with the reader turning to address each gender. 17.  See Joseph Hellerman, The Ancient Church as Family (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001) 21; on potential origins of the fictive kin group idea, see pp. 59–91. For Paul, Hellerman (p. 93) points especially to Rom 4:1–18, 8:12–29; Gal 3:26–4:7; and 1 Thess 2:7–12.

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interactions among group members.”18 The use of the family terms by which Paul addresses the Corinthians, I would suggest, points to the concept of a fictive family and thereby leads us once again to the meal of 1 Corinthians 11 as a family meal.19

How Should Brothers and Sisters Treat Each Other? Paul’s understanding involved more than a label. It also involved desired behavior that was consistent with some, if not all, of the patterns and values of the Mediterranean family. What I see Paul doing is this: living within ancient Mediterranean cultures and families, he urges Christians to interact with each other in the most positive ways that brothers and sisters were supposed to interact with each other. To put it in other words, he takes the positive relationships of brothers and sisters in his world as his model, places these relationships under the authority of the cross, and applies them to life within the fictive family of the church. In Mediterranean cultures, the relationship between blood siblings was and is extremely close and in many ways, central. As Weisner puts it, “Siblings always matter.”20 The book of Jubilees (ca. 135–100 b.c.e.), just to give one example, has Esau say to his mother about Jacob, “for he is my brother, and we were sown together in your body, and together we came forth from your womb, and if I do not love my brother, whom shall I love?” (35:22).21 The relationship between siblings in antiquity was not only based on birth to the same parent or parents. It was also based on what cultural anthropologists call reciprocity. Basically, reciprocity has to do with the giving and receiving of gifts and the way that relationships and much of society revolve around the exchange of gifts. The classical study of gift from a cultural anthropological perspective is the book by Marcel Mauss.22 Mauss studied preindustrial societies, including the Romans. As a result of his study, he argued that there are no free gifts. The gift in and of itself, he maintained, engaged the giver and recipi18. Ibid., 4. Communities of Christ-believers were not the only fictive family groups of this sort in the first century. Hellerman (pp. 4–25) compares several types of voluntary associations. Other groups do use family terminology, including sibling language, but their use of this language, he finds, is less pervasive and less foundational than in the Christ-movement; neither does it provide the sort of self-understanding that sibling language has in Paul. 19.  Other uses in 1 Corinthians of “brothers and sisters” include 1:10–11, 26; 2:1; 3:1; 4:6; 7:24, 29; 10:1; 12:1; 14:6, 20, 26, 39; 15:1, 31, 50, 58; 16:15. 20.  Thomas S. Weisner, “Comparing Sibling Relationships across Cultures,” in Sibling Interaction across Cultures: Theoretical and Methodological Issues (ed. Patricia Goldring Zukow; New York: Springer, 1989) 14. 21.  The reference is from Reidar Aasgaard, ‘My Beloved Brothers and Sisters!’ Christian Siblingship in Paul (JSNTSup 265; London: T. & T. Clark, 2004) 61. 22. Marcel Mauss, The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies (trans. W. D. Halls; foreword Mary Douglas; New York: Norton, 1990).

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ent in a permanent commitment. “Each gift is part of a system of reciprocity in which the honour of giver and recipient are engaged.”23 Those who receive gifts are obligated to respond, either in kind or in loyalty or thanksgiving. And when the original receivers respond, the original giver needs once more to give. And if this seems strange, all we need to do is think of our own lives. When our son was married four years ago, for example, my wife and I invited friends and colleagues in part because they had invited us to the weddings of their children, and the gifts they gave were at least the same value as the gifts we had given to their children.24 Ekkehard and Wolfgang Stegemann—brothers, by the way—identify four different kinds of reciprocity.25 (a) In negative reciprocity, the objective is to take advantage of the other person and therefore only the interests of one party can be fulfilled. War and retaliation are examples. (b) General reciprocity refers to the exchange relationship that exists between a superior and an inferior, such as patron-client or teacher-student. The individual in the inferior position cannot respond at the same value level as the gift but responds instead with loyalty, political support, information, and so on. (c) Balanced reciprocity refers to a relationship that seeks a balance in the exchange of goods and services; that is, there is an equivalent value between what is exchanged. This kind of reciprocity is typical of relations with neighbors, especially people of the same status. (d) Familial or family reciprocity refers to a relationship in which score is not kept, and the cost or value of the item or service exchanged is not calculated. This kind of reciprocity is found especially among members of the same kinship group. The key is generous sharing, with no bargaining about a return, and any timeline for a return being left vague. The need for a return can even be forgotten. Thus siblings are to give to each other with no expectation of return. As an Egyptian student said to me about his brothers, his sisters, and himself, “We compete to give to each other.” When we look at studies regarding brothers and sisters in the larger Mediterranean basin, we discover that siblings have very close relationships with each other, much closer than the norm in the West. The brother is usually the first person that a sister having marital problems will seek out, for example. He is her protector, at times even more than the father, in part because the odds are that the brother will live longer than the father. The negative side of this relationship may be honor killings. Thus, the Daily News in Egypt reported that a Jordanian teenager had been charged with strangling his sister after her 23.  Ibid., viii. 24. ���������������������������������������������������������������������� For more on the obligation aspect of gift-giving and reciprocity, see my “Obligation,” 91–112. 25.  Ekkehard W. Stegemann and Wolfgang Stegemann, The Jesus Movement: A Social History of the First Century (trans. O. C. Dean Jr.; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999) 34–36.

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husband divorced her because of her apparent affair with another man. The 18year old boy was seeking to restore his family’s honor.26 Aasgaard provides an eight-point summary of what it meant in Mediterranean antiquity to be a sibling, no matter what the family’s ethnic identity was:27 1. Sibling relationship was central and usually the most long-lasting relationship a person had. 2. Adult siblings provided economic, social, and interpersonal security for each other, resulting in a sense of identity and belonging. 3. Siblings were expected to express love toward their siblings in both attitude and behavior. 4. Sibling relationships were to be close, trusting, and open. 5. Siblings were to be tolerant and forgiving of each other. 6. Siblings were not to judge each other, particularly not in public. 7. Siblings were to preserve unity in the family, especially against outsiders. 8. Siblings were supposed to defend the honor of their family. The relationship was close and intimate. An additional and important point is that siblings, according to most interpreters, are also to be understood as equals. Thus Schäfer has argued that Paul understood the community as a brotherhood, with the siblings as equals (in contrast to a hierarchical family).28 Schüssler Fiorenza has taken a similar position: the early church was egalitarian and only later assumed patriarchal structures.29 26.  “Jordan Teenager Kills Sister over Alleged Affair,” Daily News in Egypt, February 28–March 1, 2009. See also Aasgaard, ‘My Beloved Brothers and Sisters!’ 63–65. 27. Reidar Aasgaard, “‘Brotherly Advice’: Christian Siblingship and New Testament Paraenesis,” in Early Christian Paraenesis in Context (ed. James Starr and Troels EngbergPedersen; BZNW 125; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2004) 244. For a similar list of responsibilities, see Hellerman, The Ancient Church, 43–50. The same understanding of sibling relationships is supported by the research of J. K. Campbell on Greek shepherd families. Brothers freely share their resources with each other, engaging in familial reciprocity, although Campbell does not use this term (Honour, Family and Patronage: A Study of Institutions and Moral Values in a Greek Mountain Community [Oxford: Clarendon, 1964] 172–74). For a discussion of ways in which Paul sought to realize these ideals in his communities, see the comments on Romans and Philemon in my “Obligation,” 95–104; and idem, “Reciprocity, Siblings, and Paul: Why Act Ethically?” Lutheran Theological Journal 39 (2005) 192–94. 28. Klaus Schäfer, Gemeinde als “Bruderschaft”: Ein Beitrag zum Kirchenverständnis des Paulus (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1989). 29.  Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, “The Study of Women in Early Christianity: Some Methodological Considerations,” in Critical History and Biblical Faith: New Testament Perspectives (ed. Thomas J. Ryan; Villanova, PA: Villanova University, 1979) 46–49; idem, In Memory of Her (London: SCM, 1983) 147–51. Bartchy has particularly raised questions about using the language of equality. He points out that language of patriarchy (and, by extension, siblings) is kinship language. Language about equality in antiquity, on the other hand, was political language and referred to equal access to voting, public leadership, and

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Whether or not one agrees with all aspects of their theses, it is true that, in contrast to the meals of the early church, Roman banquets, especially, were designed to emphasize the social distinctions between people, with individuals receiving wildly differing foods at the same meal, based on their rank and relationship with the host.30 However, the overall picture may be more complicated than equality versus inequality. As Smith indicates, the long-standing ideal was that individuals eating together would be treated equally but at the same time that equality was experienced within the social stratification that was a clear part of Mediterranean culture.31 When we turn more specifically to the 1 Corinthians passage, we will need to engage this issue of the Lord’s supper as not only a banquet but also a family meal. What is clear, in summary, is that the sibling relationship was intimate and included a number of obligations. As we look at the family in Mediterranean antiquity, as well as Middle Eastern families today, we find a tremendous sense of togetherness and identity that comes from belonging to a family. An American comedian of the 20th century, George Burns, is reported to have said, “Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family . . . in another city.”32 This is the opposite of what we find in the Bible.33

Insights from Traditional Egyptian Meals In order to gain input from a contemporary culture that functions on many levels in ways that are similar to Mediterranean antiquity, I interviewed five graduate students in April 2009 at the Evangelical Theological Seminary in Cairo. Four of the five are pastors serving parishes; the fifth person is a seminary graduate who currently is working in industry. All of them grew up in traditional Egyptian settings—that is, homes and areas of Egypt in which traditional customs continue to be followed. Three of the four serve in farming villages in Upper Egypt, where traditional ways are maintained. One person serves a parish in a suburb of Cairo, and the final person lives and works in ownership of property (S. Scott Bartchy, “Undermining Ancient Patriarchy: The Apostle Paul’s Vision of a Society of Siblings,” BTB 29 [1999] 77). So he wonders if we should use the language of equality at all. Braun, for his part, is concerned that scholars not claim too much for the egalitarian tendencies in ancient meals (“Our Religion,” 47–48, 50). 30.  See ibid., 48 n.30, and the primary and secondary works cited there. See also the oftcited quotation from Martial, Epigrams 3.60. 31.  Smith, From Symposium to Eucharist, 11. Osiek and Balch question whether equality between the sexes is an appropriate category for addressing ancient texts (Families in the New Testament World, 41). 32. Robert Byrne, 1,991 Best Things Anybody Ever Said (New York: Ballantine, 1998) 320. 33. On the potential negatives in the sibling-sibling relationship, especially between brothers, see my “Reciprocity, Siblings,” 190 n. 45. It is no accident that the first story in the Bible regarding brothers is a story of murder (Cain and Abel).

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Cairo itself. My questions focused on the main meal of the day, which can be located at one of two points. While the ideal has usually been that the largest meal of the day would occur in the afternoon (starting anywhere from 2:00 to 4:00), the realities of urban life (especially the difficulty and length of travel in larger cities) and the inability of all family members to be home at this time have caused a decided shift in urban areas to an evening meal as the main meal of the day.34 In the farming villages, too, the main meal has moved to the evening so that the farmers will have as much daylight as possible for their work. In addition, the fields of many farmers are some distance from the village (30 minutes or more each way by foot), so that the same commuting problems face them as face urban workers. What is absolutely clear, no matter what time of day the main meal occurs, is its great importance in the lives of Egyptians (both Muslim and Christian). Repeatedly the interviewees said words to this effect: “It is not the food that is important but the time together.” If individuals in the family need to miss other meals during the day, that is okay. If the main meal needs to be postponed, that is quite acceptable, too, as long as the family unit is able to eat together. One person reported that a few weeks earlier his family members had suddenly become nervous and overly sensitive to the comments of other people in the family. After a major argument, they tried to analyze why they were so “touchy.” They realized that they had not eaten the main meal together for an entire week because of the student’s work schedule, and they felt out of touch with each other and resentful of his time away. They promptly worked out a more flexible main meal schedule to increase the odds of their being able to eat together. Because of my experience preaching and making home visits in a farming village in Upper Egypt, I know that a common housing pattern is a multistoried dwelling that includes the parents, all their sons, and their families. As each son is married, one more floor is added to the house. When the parents die, the brothers and their families continue to live and work together. They also, with their families, eat the main meal together. In answer to the question, “Do all the brothers receive the same food?” the answer was a resounding, “Yes.” Brothers share with each other so that each brother receives the same quality and quantity of food. The other members of the family (wives, children, unmarried sisters) likewise receive the same quality and quantity of food, even when they do not physically eat together. If the dining room is large enough, all eat in the same room, with the men at one table and the women and children at another. If there is not enough room for two tables, the men eat first, followed by the women and children—who eat the same food as the men. The only times that women and children eat different food (that is, less in quality or quantity) is if there is not enough food in the kitchen, which the pastors assured 34.  One pastor identified Western ideals as another reason for the shift.

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me occurs rarely. Kitchens are usually overflowing with food. In meals following a funeral, women and men always eat separately, but when the people around the table are a nuclear family (husband-father, wife-mother, children, grandparent/s) there is no separation by gender.35 If someone is late, the extended family will wait for a short time before eating. But if the head of the family—usually the oldest male expected—is late, the family will wait until he arrives. As the head of the family, he must be present for the meal to begin, unless he is incapacitated, in which case the role moves to the next oldest male. The “presiding” male is the one who cuts the meat and passes it to others, although an honored guest such as the pastor may cut and pass the meat, too—but only after the oldest male has asked the pastor to do so.

The Lord’s Supper in 1 Corinthians as a Meal of Siblings Gerd Theissen’s thesis regarding the problem with the Lord’s supper at Corinth has been almost universally accepted.36 He suggests that the congregation is composed, at least in part, of Christ-believers who are wealthier and who are therefore in control of their own schedules (so that they can arrive on time or even early). They are used to eating better food and more food than the masses, and they are class conscious.37 Other believers are lower in class; some of them are slaves, and all of them live lives at the whim of others (whether patrons or owners) and do not control their schedules in the same way that wealthier believers can. For our purposes, 1 Cor 11:20–21 is crucial: “When you come together, it is not really to eat the Lord’s supper. For when the time comes to eat, each of you goes ahead with your own supper, and one goes hungry and another becomes drunk.” What is happening to turn the community meal from the Lord’s 35.  The weekend I preached in Upper Egypt, I was accompanied by a male colleague from The Netherlands. He and I were the honored guests in the village. We had seven (very big!) meals during our three days there. During three meals, we ate with one man from the host family, while other men watched. During two other meals, no one else ate with us, but one man watched—and almost literally shoved food into our mouths! During one meal we ate alone, with no one watching. Only when we ate in the pastor’s apartment did the wife of the family eat with us. 36. Gerd Theissen, “The Strong and the Weak in Corinth: A Sociological Analysis of a Theological Quarrel,” The Social Setting of Pauline Christianity: Essays on Corinth (ed. and trans. John H. Schütz; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982) 121–43; see also two other chapters in the same book, “Social Integration and Sacramental Activity: An Analysis of 1 Cor. 11:17–34,” 145–74; and “Social Stratification in the Corinthian Community: A Contribution to the Sociology of Early Hellenistic Christianity,” 69–119. 37.  Smith (From Symposium to Eucharist, 193) argues that “social class,” the term Theissen uses, and status are different phenomena. Even individuals of lower or no class could have status within the believing community.

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supper into individual suppers? The key to answering this question is v. 21’s term προλαμβάνει. There are two basic interpretations of this word and its implications: (1) The wealthier are able to arrive “on time.” They go ahead and eat, so nothing is left by the time the poorer people arrive. On this interpretation, προλαμβάνει means to eat before others do. The argument has the advantage of paying attention to the prefix προ���������������������������������������������������������������� ������������������������������������������������������������������� -, which means ‘to do something ahead of’. (2) In the second interpretation, all believers are present pretty much on time, but normal societal customs prevail: the rich have their own food (and friends) and eat this food without sharing anything with the poor.38 In this case, the verb προλαμβάνει means either simply ‘to take’ or it means ‘to take by virtue of position’ or ‘to take by means of social standing’. I think it likely that the word has both connotations, depending on the specific occasion. But underlying the manifestations of the problem is the selfunderstanding of the wealthier believers that the same status–symbolic actions that they were accustomed to in the rest of their lives obtained in the Christbelieving community meal as well. In addition, as John Chow has argued, one significant aspect of their status-consciousness may have been the fact that some (many?) of them were patrons.39 And so, as Theissen writes, “the wealthier Christians made it plain to all just how much the rest were dependent on them, dependent on the generosity of those who were better off.”40 Contributing to the problem was architecture, especially if the meal was being celebrated in the home of a wealthier person. A wealthy host would have received into his or her domus ‘villa’ all members of the Christianity community but, given the space limitations of even expensive homes, the host would have been able to entertain only a portion of the congregation in the dining room—probably individuals of the same socioeconomic level as the host— while excluding poorer people and slaves. The latter would be in the atrium or peristyle. These physical realities would make the serving of different food during the dinner portion of the gathering even more likely. In fairness to the privileged Christians, they may not have given this any thought. They probably felt more comfortable with people like themselves, anyway.41

38.  See n. 30 above. 39.  John K. Chow, Patronage and Power: A Study of Social Networks in Corinth (JSNTSup 75; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1992). 40.  Theissen, “Social Integration,” 160. 41.  On the effect of living space on early Christian worship, including the Lord’s supper, see Osiek and Balch, Families in the New Testament World, 24–35; Osiek and MacDonald, Woman’s Place, passim; John Dominic Crossan and Jonathan L. Reed, In Search of Paul: How Jesus’s Apostle Opposed Rome’s Empire with God’s Kingdom (New York: HarperCollins, 2004) 307–11.

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What is the result? There are two: Some are hungry, but others are drunk; so, not only is there disorder in the community gathering, there is also clear social discrimination and ranking. Second, each one is eating his/her own meal, not the community meal that is the Lord’s supper, v. 20. Some, at least, are more concerned about themselves than others. What is obviously being destroyed is any sense of a family meal, such as the Egyptian main meal, in which brothers share with each other and in which all members of the family eat the same food.42 With these concerns in mind, Paul confronts the Corinthians in v. 22: “What! Do you not have homes in which to eat and drink? Or do you show contempt for the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What should I say to you? Should I commend you? In this matter I do not commend you!” In this verse we have a series of sharp rhetorical questions. They are addressed to those who do have houses and who see themselves as better than the others. “If all you want to have is a typical Greco-Roman dinner party,” Paul seems to be saying, “fine, eat at home. Or perhaps it is that you have no respect for the assembly of God, or perhaps you want to put the poor members to shame.” What we have in this discussion, then, is an issue of honor and shame. The wealthier Corinthians are, I think, acting the way they should act in their honor-and-shame framework: they are honoring the ones worthy of being honored and shaming the ones who are not worth honoring. They are acting the way people of their status should and did act. Paul wants them to turn this typical way of doing things upside down. And so he cannot commend them. Thus, this paragraph composed of vv. 17–22 begins and ends with firm statements that Paul cannot commend the Corinthians. At the end of the larger section, Paul in v. 34a picks up the same language he has used earlier in chap. 11: “If you are hungry, eat at home, so that when you come together, it will not be for your condemnation.” Paul picks up much of the language he has used earlier: come together, eat, hungry, and wait. “So if actual hunger is the issue, eat at home, O wealthier persons, so that you do not bring judgment onto the community.” Or perhaps he makes an ironic statement. As Gordon Fee writes, “In this context ‘if anyone is hungry . . .’ almost certainly means ‘if anyone wants to gorge,’” referring to “the kinds of meals that the wealthy are accustomed to eat together.”43 In between vv. 22 and 34, Paul reminds the Corinthians of the origins of the supper (vv. 23–26) and applies to the Corinthians a series of cultic laws and 42.  On the negative implications of participants bringing their own food to a banquet rather than eating from a common food platter, see Smith, From Symposium to Eucharist, 54–55, 192–93. 43. Gordon Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (NICNT; 2nd ed.; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1987) 568.

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directives that underline the seriousness of the current abuses of the communal meal (vv. 27–32). The entire passage confirms Scott Bartchy’s assessment of the difficult situation that Paul and the Corinthians faced. “This new social reality [of the assembly of Christ-believers] had to be nurtured into existence against the dominant cultural grain.”44 And how does Paul do this against a cultural grain that is built around social inequality and discrimination? In part, he does it by reminding them of the fictive family that he is in the process of creating, which is to be a living family of siblings who treat each other in the best ways that Mediterranean siblings are to treat each other—with equity and with sharing at the forefront of their interactions. Thus, in v. 33 he concludes his discussion of the Lord’s supper: “So then, my brothers and sisters, when you come together to eat, wait for one another.” His address to them is significant: “my brothers and sisters.” The Corinthans are not just anybody’s brothers and sisters. They are Paul’s brothers and sisters. Part of his final imperative is that they need to remember that they are a kinship group in the Lord and are related to the apostle, not a miscellaneous collection of individuals. They are to treat each other as brothers and sisters. The meal about which Paul writes is a family meal—not just a banquet or symposium—but a meal in which the Corinthians are to act as a family. And at the family meal they were to share their resources freely in the sort of familial reciprocity that was to characterize the ancient Mediterranean family. Part of what is going on, of course, is a struggle for identity. Braun outlines the identity issues this way: “The Pauline epistolary literature indicates that the dining room (place), social dining (ritual), and commensal and consumptive metaphors (myth) were core mechanisms in the self-identifying efforts of early Christian associations in the urban centres of the Roman East.”45 As in Smith, there is no reference to the Lord’s supper as a family meal. Philip Esler has paid more attention to family in his use of identity theory: “My principal thesis is that Paul uses family imagery to create an identity for his congregations very different from that of the dominant groups outside their boundaries, especially in his rejection of the usual struggle for honour in this culture.”46 The struggle for honor is to be given up, according to Paul in 1 Corinthians 11. Believers are to treat each other as brothers and sisters, not as people with whom they need to compete for space and standing. 44.  Bartchy, “Undermining Ancient Patriarchy,” 73. 45.  Braun, “Our Religion,” 42. 46.  Philip F. Esler, “Family Imagery and Christian Identity in Gal 5:1 to 6:10,” in Constructing Early Christian Families: Family as Social Reality and Metaphor (ed. Halvor Moxnes; London: Routledge, 1997) 122. Part of the problem for the Egyptian family that was unusually “touchy” following a period of not eating together was that their identities were not being reaffirmed.

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Finally, Smith examines a discourse in Plutarch on “whether the host should arrange the placing of his guests.”47 Most of the symposium members answer “yes,” but Timon objects. The meal, he argues, should be different from other institutions. When people arrive, they “should symbolically enter a new community,”48 in which the governing principle should be friendship, not the values of society. Smith concludes, “In this case friendship is interpreted to signify equality in social relationships, that is, where the rich do not lord it over the poor.”49 How much more should this have been true for the family of siblings coming into birth through Paul, the midwife? As my Egyptian student said to me about his siblings and himself in a statement quoted above in this study, “We compete to give to each other.”

Conclusion There is much to be learned by investigating the Lord’s supper in 1 Corinthians 11 as a family meal. The present study has shown that conceiving of the supper as a family meal provides a different dynamic from other approaches to understanding Paul’s concern and Paul’s response within the world in which he and the Corinthians lived. As opposed to the charges in the second century from Celsus, that Christian belief sought to destroy the family,50 Paul worked to create a new family of brothers and sisters, a family evident at the family table. Over the years I have learned much from Richard Nelson during our meals together. May he still permit me to eat with him in brotherly equality and sharing after he reads this chapter! 47.  Plutarch, Quaest. conv. 1.2 (615C–619A); in Smith, From Symposium to Eucharist, 55–58. 48.  Ibid., 57. 49.  Ibid., 57–58. 50.  Origen, C. Cels. 3.55.

Index of Authors

Aasgaard, A.  330, 332 Achenbach, R.  91 Achtemeier, P.  305, 309 Adam, K.-P.  5, 16, 23 Adams, W. Y.  251 Aeschylus 20, 22, 24, 25 Albertz, R.  48, 69, 70, 92 Albright, W. F.  41, 81, 50 Allen, L. C.  132 Allison, D. C., Jr.  270, 289, 290 Alt, A.  41, 42, 44, 45, 46, 52, 50 Amit, Y.  64, 172 Anbar, M.  97, 100 Anderson, A. A.  131, 138 Andiñach, P. R.  262 André, G.  5 Aubin, H.  249, 250, 251, 252, 255, 256, 257 Auffret, P.  262 Auld, A. G.  57, 76, 77, 90, 100, 119, 123, 125, 171 Aurelius, E.  98 Avioz, M.  129, 143, 173 Baeck, L.  273 Bailey, R. C.  256 Balch, D. L.  328, 329, 333, 336 Balla, P.  328 Barrett, C. K.  311 Bartchy, S. S.  332, 333, 338 Barth, K.  314 Becker, U.  89, 94, 98 Beker, J. C.  295, 309 Bemile, P.  271 Ben Zvi, E.  61, 63, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 74, 252 Berthelot, K.  23 Bieberstein, K.  106, 107, 109

Bienkowski, P.  174 Blank, S. H.  193 Blenkinsopp, J.  5, 48, 90, 188 Blount, B. G.  35, 36, 38, 39 Blum, E.  91, 96, 97 Boling, R. G.  106 Boogaart, T. A.  227, 229, 232 Booth, W. C.  294 Borger, R.  163 Botta, A. F.  265 Bottigheimer, R.  85 Bovon, F.  272 Bowden, H.  23, 26 Braun, W.  326, 333, 338 Breasted, J. H.  251 Brettler, M. Z.  83, 99 Briend, J.  111 Bright, J.  254, 263 Brown, W. P.  191 Brueggemann, W.  262, 263, 277, 278 Budde, K.  151 Buis, P.  266 Burkert, W.  20 Burns, G.  333 Butler, T. C.  106, 109, 111 Byrne, B.  310, 311 Byrne, R.  333 Byrskog, S.  295, 297, 299 Campbell, A. F.  161, 237 Campbell, D. A.  294, 308, 309, 310, 313, 315, 322 Campbell, J. K.  332 Carr, D. M.  33, 34, 85 Cartledge, T. W.  151 Chan, M.  179, 189 Chanton, J.  26 Charpin, D.  11

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Index of Authors

Chatman, S.  294 Childs, B. S.  248, 249, 252, 253, 283 Chow, J. K.  336 Cifola, B.  165, 166 Civil, M.  9 Clarke, H. W.  75 Clements, R. E.  249 Clifford, R. J.  275, 277, 278 Cogan, M.  140, 253 Collins, J. J.  44 Compton, T.  23, 24 Constable, H.  250 Coote, R. B.  105 Cranfield, C. E. B.  300, 303, 307, 308 Crenshaw, J.  198 Croatto, J. Severino  261, 272 Cross, F. M.  43, 51, 53, 82, 83, 84, 87, 93, 132, 168, 169 Crossan, J. D.  336 Crüsemann, F.  263 Curtis, E. L.  167, 170 Dahl, N.  305, 310 Das, A. A.  295 Daube, D.  193, 196, 197, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208 Davies, G.  310, 314, 317, 319, 322 Davies, P. R.  54, 55, 68 Davies, W. D.  289, 290 Day, E.  197 Day, J.  78 Deffinbaugh, B.  149 Dell, K. J.  188 Dever, W. G.  83 De Vries, S. J.  68, 133, 161 De Wette, W. M. L.  50 Dietrich, B. C.  23, 27 Dietrich, W.  42, 156 Dillard, R. B.  143, 239 Dodd, C. H.  311 Donahue, J. F.  325 Donfried, K. P.  295 Douglas, M.  326, 330 Driver, S. R.  164, 197 Duff, J. D.  24, 25 Duhm, B.  4

Dunbabin, K. M. D.  325 Dunn, J. D. G.  293, 297, 306, 310, 311, 314, 322 Durand, J.-M.  9, 10, 16 Durham, J. I.  218 Eckey, W.  273 Edelman, D. V.  58, 78, 171 Edelsheim, A.  250, 251 Eidinow, E.  17, 23, 26 Eissfeldt, O.  42 Elliott, N.  306 Elwes, R. H. M.  75 Esler, P. F.  338 Eslinger, L.  141 Euripides 20, 24 Evans, C. A.  270, 271 Farber, W.  11 Fee, G.  337 Fensham, F. C.  198 Fenton, T. L.  5 Finkelstein, I.  46, 47, 52, 53, 56, 78, 105 Fishbane, M.  108, 109 Fitzmyer, J. A.  195, 297, 302, 307, 317, 318 Flower, M. A.  3, 18, 19, 20, 22, 26, 27, 29, 30 Fokkelman, J. P.  154 Foley, J. M.  33 Fontenrose, J.  17, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27 Foster, J.  26 Foster, R. L.  284 Fretheim, T. E.  179, 180, 181, 183, 184, 186, 188, 191 Fried, L. S.  78 Fritz, V.  91, 92, 106, 111, 112, 226, 227 Gabbay, U.  10, 11 Galil, G.  239 Gallagher, W. R.  252 García de la Fuente, O.  266 Garland, R.  75 Garlington, D.  300

Index of Authors Garnsey, P.  325 Gartziou-Tatti, A.  17 Geikie, C.  250 Gendy, A. M.  328 Gerstenberger, E.  277 Gmirkin, R. E.  49 Goldberg, J.  252 Goldingay, J.  261 Gonçalves, F.  251 Görg, M.  106 Goslinga, C. J.  138, 139 Grabbe, L. L.  5, 7, 28, 29, 77, 249, 252, 254, 255 Graham, M. P.  31 Graupner, A.  217 Gray, J.  249 Grayson, A. K.  153, 161 Grieb, K. A.  314 Griswold, C. L.  19 Groot, J. de  139 Guichard, M.  9, 10 Gunkel, H.  85 Gutbrod, K.  139

Hertog, C. G. den  92 Hertzberg, H. W.  123, 139 Hesiod 18, 86 Hess, R. S.  106, 113 Hillel 73 Hillers, D. R.  261, 278 Hjelm, I.  47, 48 Ho, C. Y. S.  119 Holladay, W. L.  264 Holm, N. G.  6 Hölscher, G  4 Homer 75 Honko, L.  29 Hossfeld, F.-L.  217 House, G.  3 Huffmon, H. B.  15, 23, 29, 30, 263 Hultgren, A. J.  195 Hultgren, S.  263, 270 Hultkrantz, A.  29 Humbert, P.  277 Hunger, H.  13 Hurowitz, V.  168 Hyatt, J. P.  263, 264

Hahn, S.  261 Haldar, A.  4, 8 Hale, J. R.  26 Hallo, W. W.  165 Halpern, B.  82, 162 Hänel, J.  121 Harmanşah, Ö.  166 Harper, R. F.  163 Harrington, D. J.  289, 291 Harrisville, R.  305, 319 Hayes, J. H.  251 Hays, R. B.  293, 306, 309, 310, 313, 315, 316, 317, 321, 322 Hegermann, H.  273 Heil, J. P.  294, 295, 304, 310 Hellerman, J.  329, 330, 332 Henige, D.  54 Heraclitus 22 Herion, G. A.  261 Herodotus 20, 22, 24, 25, 30, 49, 82, 248, 249, 250 Herrmann, S.  264

Iamblichus 25, 26 Ilgen, D.  50

343

Jacob, W.  273 Jaffee, M. S.  74 Jakobsen, M. D.  11 Jamieson-Drake, D. W.  47 Jansen, H. L.  22 Janzen, J. G.  229, 232 Japhet, S.  38, 39, 80, 160, 161, 162, 167, 168, 170, 172, 245 Jenkins, A. K.  252 Jepsen, A.  4, 15 Jervis, L. A.  301, 302, 305 Jewett, R.  293, 295, 299, 300, 302, 303, 305, 306, 307, 310, 311, 312, 317, 319 John Chrysostom  25 Johnson, A. R.  152 Johnston, S. I.  11, 17, 18, 22, 23, 25, 26, 27 Jones, G. H.  132, 133, 138

344

Index of Authors

Josephus 152, 153, 159, 168, 249 Jowett, B.  19, 20, 22 Käsemann, E.  308, 310 Kaufmann, Y.  197 Kimchi, D., Rabbi  250 Kirk, D.  299, 305, 312, 315 Kirkpatrick, P.  85 Kitchen, K.  251, 254 Klass, M.  3, 6, 29 Klauck, H.-J.  270, 273 Klein, L. R.  232 Klein, R. W.  117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 132, 237, 241 Klinghardt, M.  325, 326 Knauf, E. A.  78, 88, 89, 90, 94, 97, 98, 103 Knoppers, G. N.  48, 59, 63, 69, 95, 99, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 127, 128, 161, 167, 168, 171, 172, 173 Konttinen, H.  30 Kratz, R. G.  81, 89 Kuhrt, A.  251 Kupitz, Y. S.  23 Kutsch, E.  261, 271 Lafont, B.  9 Lampe, P.  328 Lang, A.  249 Lange, A.  17, 20, 22 Latvus, K.  179 Lehoux, D.  26 Leichty, E.  8 Lemche, N. P.  46, 48, 68 Levenson, J. D.  261 Levin, C.  63, 64, 98, 100 Levinson, B. M.  70, 100, 141 Lewis, I. M.  6, 11, 29 Lewis, T. J.  281 Lhôte, E.  26 Lindblom, J.  4, 6, 30 Lipiński, E.  167 Lipschits, O.  47, 48, 49, 54, 78, 174 Liverani, M.  52, 159, 165, 166 Livy, Titus  49 Lloyd-Jones, H.  23

Lohfink, N.  59, 91, 104, 105 Long, B. O.  249 Long, C. R.  250 Lord, A. B.  33, 34 Lord Byron  247, 257 Lucan 23, 25 Lucassen, B.  100 Luckenbill, D. D.  161, 164, 166 Lundbom, J. R.  209, 264 Luther, M.  293, 319 Luzurraga, J.  272 Macchi, J.-D.  103 MacDonald, M. Y.  328, 336 Madsen, A. A.  167, 170 Magdoff, H.  251 Magen, Y.  54 Marcovich, M.  22 Marinatos, N.  18 Martial 333 Martin-Achard, R.  268 Maurizio, L.  6, 10, 23, 27 Mauss, M.  330 Mayes, A. D. H.  112, 113 Mazar, A.  52, 78 McBride, S. D.  281 McCarter, P. K.  124, 131, 132, 134, 138, 139, 151, 153, 157, 160, 169 McCarthy, D. J.  195, 202, 261 McConville, J. G.  59 McKenzie, J. L.  138 McKenzie, S. L.  31, 55, 57, 64, 79, 117, 118, 120, 121, 122, 126, 127, 146, 157, 168, 169 McLaughlin, J. L.  275, 281 Mejía, J.  268 Mendels, D.  70, 115 Mendenhall, G.  261 Meynet, R.  264 Michaelsen, P.  5, 6 Middleton, J. R.  181 Míguez, N.  271 Miller, J. M.  251 Monte, G. del  13 Moo, D.  297, 298, 300, 302, 307, 310, 311, 322

Index of Authors Moran, W. L.  16 Motyer, J. A.  251 Moyise, S.  317 Muilenburg, J.  264 Murphy, C. M.  270 Murray, D. F.  138, 141, 143 Naʾaman, N.  53, 77, 78, 83, 101, 162, 163, 164, 167, 168, 171, 172, 174 Nanos, M. D.  295 Nash, O.  257 Naumann, T.  156 Nelson, R. D.  3, 6, 17, 41, 43, 51, 52, 53, 59, 61, 62, 64, 73, 77, 87, 89, 90, 91, 93, 95, 97, 98, 101, 103, 105, 106, 115, 117, 134, 149, 174, 180, 211, 213, 214, 225, 237, 249, 261, 283, 288, 325, 339 Nentel, J.  107, 108, 109 Nicholson, E. W.  264 Niditch, S.  33 Nielsen, E.  48 Nielsen, F. A. J.  49 Nihan, C.  90, 100 Nijf, O. M. van  325 Nissinen, M.  3, 5, 7, 8, 13, 14, 17, 28 Noll, K. L.  65, 74, 77, 78, 80, 81, 82, 84, 87 Nordheim, E. von  96 Noth, M.  31, 41, 42, 44, 51, 52, 53, 54, 73, 75, 80, 81, 82, 85, 87, 93, 94, 98, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 109, 132 Novenson, M. V.  273 Nygren, A.  311, 321 O’Brien, M. A.  92, 237 O’Connor, M.  153 Oeming, M.  48 Olmstead, A. T.  161 Origen 278, 339 Osiek, C.  328, 329, 333, 336 Otto, E.  64, 91, 106, 174 Overholt, T. W.  6 Paganini, S.  280 Parke, H. W.  17, 23, 26

345

Parker, S. B.  5, 162, 164, 170 Parpola, S.  11, 15 Parry, M.  33 Parvis, P.  329 Perdue, L. G.  44 Person, R. F., Jr.  31, 32, 33, 34, 37, 71, 119, 128 Pixley, J. V.  261, 262 Plato 18, 19, 20, 22, 25 Plutarch 22, 24, 25, 30, 339 Polak, F. H.  168, 169 Pollard, P.  322 Porter, J. R.  104, 105, 115 Porter, S. E.  271 Powell, M. A.  294, 295 Prudovsky, G.  61 Pury, A. de  84, 103 Puukko, A. F.  30 Pyysiäinen, I.  29 Quarles, C.  311, 312 Rabbitt, F. C.  25 Rad, G. von  42, 45, 132, 160 Radl, W.  272 Rainey, A. F.  254 Rankin, O. S.  193 Rashi (Rabbi Shelomo Yitzhaki)  229 Redford, D. B.  77 Reed, J. L.  336 Renaud, B.  139 Reventlow, H. G.  88 Rezetko, R.  32 Richter, S. L.  170 Ristau, K. A.  63 Ritner, R. K.  8, 14, 78 Roberts, J. J. M.  15 Robinson, T. H.  4 Rofé, A.  100 Rofé, R.  114 Römer, T.  31, 43, 44, 48, 51, 59, 61, 62, 63, 64, 77, 83, 84, 91, 93, 97, 99, 103, 110, 163, 50 Roncace, M.  67 Rösel, M.  100 Rosenberger, V.  17, 27

346

Index of Authors

Rost, L.  136, 137, 138, 156 Roth, W.  132, 133, 134, 140, 144, 160 Rothstein, J. W.  121 Rowley, H. H.  4 Rudman, D.  252 Rudolph, W.  160, 164, 168, 170 Sachs, A. J.  13 Sasson, J. M.  16 Satterthwaite, P. E.  138 Schäfer, K.  332 Schäfer-Lichtenberger, C.  106, 115 Scheinberg, S.  20 Schenker, A.  63, 268 Schlesier, R.  3 Schmid, K.  80, 96, 99, 265 Schniedewind, W. M.  129, 133, 134, 144 Schottroff, L.  271 Schüssler Fiorenza, E.  332 Schwartz, D. R.  70 Seccombe, D. P.  272, 273 Seeligman, I. L.  160, 172 Seibert, E.  179 Seierstad, I. P.  4 Seitz, C.  253 Seow, C. L.  8, 78 Seux, M.-J.  165 Shea, W.  254 Shrewsbury, J. F. D.  249 Sicre, J. L.  94 Siikala, A.-L.  5, 7, 29 Silberman, N. A.  46, 53, 105 Smelik, K. A. D.  252 Smend, R.  42, 93, 108 Smith, D. E.  325, 326, 327, 328, 329, 333, 335, 337, 338, 339 Smith, D. M.  318 Smith, G. A.  250 Smith, H. P.  151, 154 Smith, J. P.  13 Smyth, H. W.  24 Socrates 18, 19 Soggin, J. A.  230, 232 Solomon, A. M. Vater  239 Sonne, B.  7

Sparks, J. T.  37, 38 Spinoza, B. de  75, 111 Stade, B.  253 Stanley, C.  293, 294, 295, 296, 316, 317 Stegemann, E. W.  331 Stegemann, W.  331 Steuernagel, C.  107, 108, 109 Stjerna, K.  30 Stoebe, H. J.  162, 164, 171 Stott, K. M.  54, 77 Stowers, S.  300, 311, 315, 321, 322 Stuhlmacher, P.  307, 310 Stutley, M.  29, 30 Sweeney, M. A.  53, 240 Tadmor, H.  161, 166, 253 Talbert, C.  310, 315 Talmon, S.  169, 270 Talshir, Z.  154, 155 Taylor, J.  311, 312 Taylor, W. F., Jr.  326, 328, 331, 332, 333 Theissen, G.  335, 336 Thiele, E. R.  239 Thompson, T. L.  47, 81 Tigay, J. H.  86, 285, 286, 287, 288 Toorn, K. van der  34, 86, 281 Torreblanca, J.  264 Torrey, C. C.  277 Trebolle Barrera, J.  121 Trible, P.  264 Tulloch, J. H.  328 Ulrich, E. C.  74, 100 Utriainen, K.  30 Valentini, A.  271 VanderKam, J. C.  152, 153 Vanhoozer, K.  295 Van Seters, J.  49, 65, 78, 82, 86, 97, 103, 121, 126, 127, 157 Vaux, R. de  152, 153 Veijola, T.  42, 138 Vernière, Y.  25 Veyne, P.  85

Index of Authors Vorster, J.  305, 306, 308 Vos, H. F.  249 Wagner, J. R.  295 Wallace, D. B.  298, 305 Wallis, W. B.  319 Waltke, B. K.  153 Wanke, G.  277 Wasserman, N.  9, 11 Watson, F.  312 Watts, R.  315, 316 Wazana, N.  161, 165 Webb, B. G.  225, 226, 230, 232 Wedderburn, A. J. M.  295, 306 Weima, J.  298, 301, 302, 303, 304 Weinfeld, M.  64, 105, 114, 115, 132, 144, 174, 193, 196, 197, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 207, 252, 269, 285, 286, 288 Weippert, H.  268 Weisner, T. S.  330 Wente, E. F.  14 Wesselius, J.-W.  49 Westermann, C.  181, 187, 189, 190, 191, 277 White, J. L.  296 Whitelam, K. W.  83

347

Wilcke, C.  16 Wilkinson, J. G.  250 Willi, T.  170 Williams, J. G.  275, 278 Williams, S. K.  307, 309, 310 Willis, J. T.  139 Wilson, R. R.  5, 6, 37, 38 Wise, M. O.  270 Wiseman, D. J.  249 Witherington, B., III  305, 306, 311, 317 Wormell, D. E. W.  17, 23, 26 Wright, N. T.  293, 306, 310, 314, 316 Wuellner, W.  305 Wyatt, N.  18 Young, I.  31, 32 Yurco, F.  254 Zeilinga de Boer, J. Z.  26 Zevit, Z.  82 Ziegler, N.  9 Ziesler, J. A.  310 Zimmerli, W.  269 Zobel, H.-J.  276, 278

Index of Scripture Old Testament Genesis 1 80, 90, 216 1–2 180, 181, 182 1:6–7 182 1:11–13 181 1:26 181, 183 1:28 90, 182 2–3 80 2:1–3 183, 185, 190 2:7 181 2:18–21 182 2:22 181 3:8 181 3:16–17 186 3:17 187 4:1 182 6–9 180, 187 6:3 189 6:5 183, 186, 187, 189 6:5–7 186 6:6 184, 186 6:6–7 184 6:7 183, 185, 187 8:21 183, 186, 187, 189 8:21–22 184, 190 8:22 184, 188 9:1–5 90 9:8 184 9:8–17 187 9:16 266 12:6 100 15:6 322 15:18 163, 166 17:7 266

Genesis (cont.) 17:8 110 17:19 266 18–19 188 22:12 185 23 128 23:8–20 128 26:5 65 28:14 161 31:21 163 34:9 95 35:1–7 99 35:12 110 41–44 279 41:8 193 46:21 37 49:10 271 50:25–26 99 Exodus 1:8–22 262 2 88 2:23 262 2:24–25 262 3:7–12 262 3:8 263 6:2–8 262 6:4 110 6:7 268 7:5 268 7:11 193 7:17 268 8:6 268 8:18 268 9:14 268 9:29 268 10:2 268

348

Exodus (cont.) 11:7 268 12–15 262 12:2 153 12:25 110 13:5 110 13:11 110 13:17 99 14:4 268 14:14 89 14:18 268 16:1–30 287 16:4 287 17 286 17:1–7 286 18:21 196 19:5 99 19:8 99 19:10–11 269 20 211, 214, 215, 216, 217, 218, 222, 223, 262 20:2 263 20:3 216 20:4 214 20:4–6 216 20:17 212, 213 21–23 196 21:1–11 200 21:4 200 21:7 200 21:15 207 21:17 207 21:21 200 22:25 200 22:26–27 200 23:4 205

Index of Scripture Exodus (cont.) 23:8 196 23:16 152 23:27 133 23:31 163 28:14 110 28:35 110 28:43 110 30:20 110 31:16 266 31:34 269 32:12 208 33:14 133 34:6–7 181, 188 34:22 152 34:28 213 39:41 110 Leviticus 10:10 218 18:5 323 20:9 207 23:10 110 24:8 266 25:2 110 Numbers 11:12 110 11:16–30 196 12:14 206 13:21 167 14:13–19 208 14:23 110 16:24 133 16:27 133 20:12 110 20:24 110 21:6–9 219 22:2–21 78 22:5 163 22:22–35 78 22:36–24:25 78 25:13 266 26:38–41 37 27:12 110 27:12–23 110

Numbers (cont.) 31:8 78 31:16 78 32 110 32:22–29 91 32:28–32 110 32:31 110 33:55 95 34:8 167 Deuteronomy 1–4 284 1:7 163 1:9–18 284 1:13–17 196 1:19–46 284 1:20 109 1:25 109 1:30 94 1:35 110 1:37–38 104 1:38 110 2:1–3:22 285 2:2–23 174 2:6 279 2:7 203 2:13 110 2:24 110 2:27 114 2:28 279 3:18–20 109, 110 3:18–28 104 3:20 109, 110, 133, 135 3:21–28 109 3:23–29 285 3:24 94 4 285, 286, 287 4:1 109, 200, 201, 203 4:1–40 285 4:5 200, 201 4:6 195 4:9–10 201, 202 4:9–14 285 4:10 201

349 Deuteronomy (cont.) 4:12–16 214 4:14 200, 201 4:16 214 4:23 214 4:23–24 214 4:25 214 4:26 203 4:35 268 4:36 201 4:39 268 5 211, 212, 222, 223 5–11 284 5:1 201 5:1–5 285 5:6–21 284 5:7 213 5:7–10 213, 214, 286 5:8 214 5:8–10 213, 214 5:9 238 5:12–15 216 5:15 263 5:21 212, 213 5:23 114 5:28 285 5:29 286 5:31 109, 200, 201 5:33 203 6 284, 286 6:1 200, 201, 285 6:1–2 202 6:2 285 6:4–5 284, 285 6:4–9 201 6:5 94, 285, 291 6:7 201 6:10 286 6:10–12 287 6:12 286 6:12–13 286 6:13 285, 286 6:14 135, 286 6:16 286 6:16–19 135, 286 6:18 287

350 Deuteronomy (cont.) 6:19 133, 287 6:20–25 201 6:24 285 6:25 285 7 98, 287 7:1–5 287 7:3 95 7:5 243 7:9 268 7:12–16 203 7:17–26 287 7:25 196 8 287, 289 8:1 110, 203, 288 8:1–10 287 8:2 185, 288 8:2–5 287 8:3 288 8:5 196, 201, 289 8:6–10 203 8:11–20 287 8:17–20 287 9 287 9:4 323 9:23 109 9:27–29 208 10:4 213, 263 10:8 110 10:11 110 10:12–22 112, 284 10:12–11:32 112, 113 10:17–18 198 10:19 198 11:1 65 11:1–7 112 11:2 201, 268 11:8–17 112 11:9 203 11:18–20 201 11:18–25 113 11:19 201 11:24 112, 113, 114, 115, 163, 166 11:26–32 113, 203, 292

Index of Scripture Deuteronomy (cont.) 11:28 269 12 134, 135, 139 12:3 243 12:7 203, 207 12:8–12 134, 141, 146 12:9 133 12:9–10 134 12:9–11 160 12:10 110, 132, 140, 147, 230 12:12 207 12:15 203 12:17 208 12:18 207 12:31 196 13 209 13:1–5 209 13:3 269 13:5 207 13:7 269 13:7–8 135 13:11 207 13:14 196, 269 14:3 196 14:23 201 14:24 203 14:26 207 14:27 198 14:28–29 198, 203 15:1–11 199, 203 15:9 197 15:12 200 15:12–14 200 15:12–18 200, 203 15:14 203 15:15 263 16:5 208 16:10 203 16:10–11 198 16:11 207 16:12 198, 263 16:14 198, 207 16:15 203, 207 16:17 203 16:19 196

Deuteronomy (cont.) 16:20 204 17:1 196 17:2–3 208 17:4 196 17:7 207 17:11 114 17:12 110, 207 17:13 207 17:14–20 69 17:15 208 17:18–19 105 17:18–20 104, 115 17:19 114, 201 17:20 114 18:1–5 198 18:5 110 18:7 110 18:9 196, 201 18:10 208 18:12 196 18:20–22 209 19:13 207 19:14 196, 200 19:19 207 19:20 207 20:8 205 20:18 196, 201 21:1 205, 208 21:9 207 21:10–14 199 21:15–17 199 21:16 208 21:18–21 201 21:21 207 21:22–23 205 22:1–4 205 22:3 208 22:5 196 22:6–7 199 22:7 203 22:8 199 22:18 201 22:19 208 22:21 207 22:22 207, 208 22:24 207

351

Index of Scripture Deuteronomy (cont.) 23:1–6 206 23:1–8 208 23:12–14 205, 206 23:15–16 199 23:18 196, 206 23:19 279 23:19–20 200, 203 23:21–23 196 24:1 114, 206 24:1–4 206 24:3 114 24:4 196, 208 24:6 199 24:7 207, 208 24:8–9 206 24:10–11 199, 206 24:12–13 200, 203 24:14–15 199 24:16 238 24:17 198, 199 24:18 198, 263 24:19–21 198 24:19–22 203 24:22 198, 263 25:1–3 206 25:3 207 25:4 199 25:5–10 207 25:11–12 207 25:13–16 196, 200 25:16 196 25:19 110, 132, 136, 140, 147 26:11 207 26:12–13 198 26:15 203 27 101 27:1–8 135 27:3 114 27:8 114 27:12–13 203 27:15 196, 235 27:16 207 27:17 196 27:19 198 28 96

Deuteronomy (cont.) 28:8 109 28:14 114 28:54 197 28:56 197 28:58 114 28:61 114 28:64 269 29:5 268 29:19–26 114 29:25 269 29:28 114 30:1 67 30:1–10 203 30:2–10 67 30:10 114 30:11–20 292 30:12 323 30:14 292 30:15–20 194, 204 30:18 203 31:2–8 104 31:6 110 31:7 110 31:7–8 109 31:9 114 31:10–13 202 31:12 114, 201 31:13 201 31:14 109 31:14–15 104 31:14–29 292 31:16–22 67 31:19 114, 200, 201 31:20 110 31:21 202 31:22 114, 200, 201 31:23 104, 109, 110 31:24 114 31:26 114 32 101, 202 32:7–9 218 32:16 196 32:26–27 208 32:46 114, 202 32:47 203 34:5 111, 112

Deuteronomy (cont.) 34:5–7 112 34:9 109 Joshua 1 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 110, 111, 113, 114, 115, 116 1–10 93, 97 1–11 101 1–12 91, 94 1:1 109, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115 1:1–2 106, 107, 109, 110, 111, 113, 114, 115 1:1–6 106 1:1–9 89, 104, 105, 107, 108, 112 1:2 89, 106, 110 1:3 89, 106, 108, 113 1:3–4 107, 108, 113, 114, 115 1:3–5 107 1:4 106, 113, 163, 166 1:5 106 1:5–6 107, 109, 110, 111, 113, 114, 115 1:6–9 106 1:7 105 1:7–8 94, 104, 106, 114, 115 1:7–9 106, 107 1:8 100 1:9 113 1:9–11 107 1:9–18 109, 110, 111, 114, 115 1:10 106 1:10–11 106, 107 1:10–18 107, 109 1:11 106 1:12–15 92, 106, 107 1:12–17 106 1:12–18 106, 110 1:13 133

352 Joshua (cont.) 1:13–15 135 1:15 133 1:16–17 107 1:16–18 106, 107 1:17 110 1:18 106, 107 3–10 89 4:12 92 5:2–9 105 5:13 122 8:30–35 105 10 77 10–21 93 10:13 77 10:22–27 115 10:25 133 10:28–42 89 10:28–11:23 115 10:40 89 10:40–42 88, 89 10:41 89 10:41–42 89, 90 10:42 88, 89, 93, 94, 97, 101 11:2 161 11:16 89 11:16–17 89 11:16–23 90, 93, 97, 101 11:23 89, 90, 93 12 115 12:7 161 12:10 115 13–19 89 13:2–3 162 13:5 167 14:5 90 14:15 90 15:47 162 16 55 18 55 18:1 90, 91, 93, 97 18:13 55 20 63 21 132

Index of Scripture Joshua (cont.) 21:43 89 21:43–45 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 101, 135 21:44 132, 135, 147 22:1–6 92 22:4 133, 135 23 88, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 101 23:1 94, 132, 135, 147 23:1–3 96, 98, 101 23:2 94 23:3 94 23:4 94 23:4–5 94 23:4–8 94 23:9 94, 96, 101 23:10 94 23:11 94, 96, 101 23:12–13 94 23:14 95 23:14–16 96, 101 23:15 96 23:15–16 95, 96 23:22 98 24 93, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101 24:1 94 24:1–15 97 24:2 98 24:2–3 163 24:2–13 99 24:5 99 24:14 98 24:14–15 163 24:14–16 98 24:15 98, 291 24:16 98 24:16–24 99 24:16–28 97 24:18 98 24:19–21 98, 100, 101

Joshua (cont.) 24:22 98 24:25 99 24:28 98 24:29 99 24:29–30 89, 96 24:31 100 24:32 99 24:33 55 Judges 1 99, 232 1:1 112, 113 1:1–2:5 99, 101, 112 1:3 230 1:10–15 225 2 225, 231 2:1–5 99 2:6 101, 112 2:6–10 112 2:6–19 99 2:6–3:5 98 2:8 112 2:8–9 89, 96 2:9 55 2:11–13 230 2:11–19 233 2:14 132, 135, 136, 147 2:14–15 230 2:16 136 2:16–17 230 2:18 135, 230 2:19 231 2:20 90 2:20–21 96 2:20–23 231 2:23 133 3:1 133 3:3 167 3:7 231 3:7–8 235 3:8 231, 233 3:9–10 231 3:10 230

353

Index of Scripture Judges (cont.) 3:11 90, 226, 230, 231 3:14 233 3:21–23 230 3:30 90, 226, 230 4:1 231 4:3 233 4:4–5 23 4:4–5:31 231 4:21 234 4:23 231 4:24 230 5:14–18 230 5:26–27 234 5:31 90, 133, 226, 230 6:1 233 6:7–10 100, 231 6:11–7:15 231 6:27 233 6:28–32 230 7:10 233 8 232 8:1–3 230 8:5 230 8:20 233 8:20–21 231 8:21 230 8:23 233 8:28 90, 226, 230, 232 8:29–35 225 8:33 232, 235 8:34 132, 135, 136, 147 9 225, 226, 229, 230, 233, 235 9:1 226, 232 9:1–6 227 9:1–57 225 9:2 227, 229 9:3 228 9:5 227, 228, 229 9:6 226, 228, 232 9:7–16 227

Judges (cont.) 9:7–21 228 9:8–15 233 9:16–19 227 9:16–20 233 9:19 227 9:20 228 9:21 227, 233 9:22 227, 233, 235 9:22–25 228 9:23 226 9:23–24 227 9:24 227 9:24–25 227 9:25 226, 227 9:26–39 228 9:26–41 226 9:28–29 234 9:37 229 9:38–39 234 9:41 234 9:42 226 9:45 226 9:46–49 227 9:50–54 226 9:52–54 229 9:53 229 9:56 226 9:56–57 227 9:57 227 10:6–7 235 10:6–9 234 10:10 234 10:11–14 234 10:15–17 234 11:32–33 230 11:34–40 234 12:1–6 230, 234 13:1 231, 234 14:6 234 14:19 234 15:14 234 16:4 160 16:30 230, 234 16:31 231 17:3–4 214

Judges (cont.) 17:6 235 18:1 235 18:7 90 18:14 235 18:14–31 214 18:16–19 230 18:27 90 19:1 235 19:22–26 230 19:27–30 230 20:18–48 230 21:8–12 230 21:16–23 230 21:25 235 Ruth 3:1–5 195 1 Samuel 1–8 126 1:1 55 1:7 141 1:24 141 2:7–8 271 2:10 272 3:15 141 4:1–11 124 7:16 55 7:17 151, 152 8 151 8:13 138, 169 10:1 132, 135, 136, 147 10:7 135 11:8 55 12:8 98 12:10–11 135, 136 12:11 132, 147 14:47 130, 132, 147 14:47–48 135, 136 15:12 162 16:10 38 16:18 138 18:12 138 18:14 138

354 1 Samuel (cont.) 18:16 55 18:28 138 20:15 133, 138 22:5 55 25 157 29:4 128 2 Samuel 1:1 112 2–4 136 2:1 160 2:4 55 3 157 3:2–3 38 3:18 133, 135 5–6 117, 123, 125 5–24 117 5:1–2 138 5:6–10 124, 171 5:10 138 5:15–16 38 5:17–25 124, 136, 143 6 135, 136 6–7 137 6:3 120 6:5 139 6:7 123 6:15 139 6:17 139 7 118, 129, 132, 134, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 146, 160 7–8 117 7:1 118, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 137, 139, 141, 142, 144, 146, 147, 160, 173 7:1–4 136 7:1–29 160 7:2 146 7:8–11 137, 138, 146 7:9 133, 139, 172

Index of Scripture 2 Samuel (cont.) 7:11 129, 130, 132, 139, 142, 143, 144, 147, 173 7:14 118 8 119, 136, 142, 149, 167, 170, 174 8–12 137 8–21 126 8:1 119, 160, 161, 164 8:1–3 163 8:1–8 136 8:1–14 159 8:2 161, 164 8:3 163, 169 8:3–8 160, 161, 166 8:5 164 8:6 164, 173 8:7 164 8:9–10 164 8:9–12 164 8:9–14 137 8:11 91 8:11–12 164 8:12 160, 170 8:13 119, 164, 169, 170, 173 8:13–14 161, 163, 166 8:14 164, 173 8:18 69 9 126 9–20 127 10 117, 119, 152, 155, 156 10–12 156, 157, 160 10:1 119, 160 10:1–5 154, 155, 156 10:1–6 156 10:1–11:1 137, 156 10:6 154, 158 10:6–7 154 10:7 155, 157 10:8 155 10:9–14 155

2 Samuel (cont.) 10:15–19 155, 156 10:16 163 10:19 154, 158 11 154 11–12 117, 120, 121, 157 11–20 127 11–21 119, 120 11:1 120, 121, 122, 149, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158 11:1–14 149 11:1–12:25 156 11:2 122 11:2–12:25 126, 156, 157 11:25 120 12:26 120, 121 12:26–31 121, 137, 155, 156 12:27–29 120 12:27–39 121 12:29 121 12:30 164 13–18 157 13–20 120, 126, 137 13:1 120, 160 14:2 193 17:25 38 18:1–5 149 18:3 149 18:9 123 18:18 162, 169 19:23 123 20:16 193 21 117 21–24 124, 125 21:1–6 157 21:1–14 120, 123, 126 21:15 149 21:15–17 120, 149 21:15–22 121 21:17 120

Index of Scripture 2 Samuel (cont.) 21:18 160 21:18–22 125 21:22 119 22:1 133 22:3 272 23 124 23:5 266 23:8–39 117, 123, 125 24 117, 122, 123 24:1 122 24:16 123 24:24 279 1 Kings 1 180 1–2 127 2:1–4 104, 115 2:2–4 105 3:16–28 194 4:31 38, 39 5 140, 146 5:1 163, 166 5:4 133, 163 5:4–5 140 5:17 138 5:17–18 140 5:17–20 140, 142 5:18 130, 132, 134, 140, 143, 144, 146, 147 5:27–32 69 8 56, 118 8:23 271 8:56 133 8:56–64 135 8:65 167 9:20–22 69 10:26–20 69 10:28 279 11:6 238 11:15–16 171, 172 11:28 69 11:31–32 56 11:33 238

1 Kings (cont.) 12 100 12–2 82 12:21 56 12:23 56 12:28 215 13 58 13:30 276 13:34 215 14:22–24 219 14:25–26 168 14:26 169 15:11 238 15:14 240 15:18 168 15:22 56 18 4 20 152 20:12–21 152 20:22 151, 152 20:26 151 21 157 21:2 279 22 209, 243 22:43–44 238 22:44 240 22:52–53 215 2 Kings 1:1 112 3 79 4:1 200 8:19 189 11–12 63 11:20 90 12:2–3 238 12:3–4 238, 240 12:5 168 12:5–17 168 12:19 168, 238 12:21 241 13:6 215 13:14–19 79 14 237, 242, 245 14:1 240 14:1–2 237

355 2 Kings (cont.) 14:1–3 240 14:1–22 237 14:3 243 14:3–4 237, 238 14:3–5 237 14:5–6 237, 238, 240 14:6 237 14:7 171, 172, 175, 237, 238, 240, 241, 242 14:8 239 14:8–14 237, 238, 240 14:9–10 239 14:11 244 14:11–14 239, 244 14:14 168, 238 14:15 237, 239 14:15–16 238 14:16 237 14:17 237 14:17–18 238 14:17–22 240 14:18 237 14:19 239 14:19–21 237, 238 14:22 237, 238 15:3–4 238, 240 15:34–35 238, 240 16:2 238 16:6 169 16:8 168 16:10–20 219 16:17–18 168 17 58 17:19 219 17:20 136 17:21–23 215 17:39 133, 136 18–19 46 18:1 252 18:2 198 18:3–4 219 18:4 219, 247 18:7 253

356 2 Kings (cont.) 18:7–8 247 18:10 252 18:13 247, 252 18:13–16 168, 252, 253 18:13–19:37 252, 253 18:14–15 249 18:14–16 247 18:17–37 247 18:17–19:9 253 18:22 198 19:1–7 247 19:2 122 19:7 250 19:8 247 19:8–34 249 19:9 248, 254 19:9–13 248 19:9–35 253, 254 19:14–19 248 19:20–34 248 19:35 248 19:36 248, 253 19:37 253 21–23 84 21–25 51 21:3–5 220 21:7 214, 217 21:14 133, 136 22–23 105 22:1–23 83 22:1–23:25 83 22:8 115 22:8–11 115 22:17 219, 220, 222 23:4–14 220 23:7 220 23:8 221 23:10 221 23:13 221 23:16 221 23:25–27 84 23:26 54 23:34 115

Index of Scripture 2 Kings (cont.) 24 82 24–25 88, 96 24:1–11 154 24:13 168 25:13 169 25:13–15 168 25:27–30 42 1 Chronicles 2:6 38, 39 2:13 38 2:15 38 2:16 38 3:1 38 3:6–8 38 5:9 163 7:6–11 37 8:1–7 37 9:39 39 10 120 10:14 243 11 124, 125 11–16 117, 118, 123 11–21 117, 125 11–29 144 11:4–9 124, 125, 171 11:10–41 125 11:10–47 123, 125 11:15–19 124 11:41–47 125 12 125 12:39 240 13 125 13–14 125 13:3 243 13:7 120 13:10 123 14:8–17 124, 142 14:12 243 15–16 125 15:13 243 15:18 244 15:21 244 15:24 244 15:25 244

1 Chronicles (cont.) 16:5 244 16:9 240 16:38 244 17 118, 119, 143, 144 17–19 117 17–20 118 17:1 129, 131, 142, 143, 146, 173 17:1–27 160 17:8 133, 172 17:10 133, 142, 143, 173 17:21 118 18 119, 167 18–19 120 18–20 119, 126, 160 18:1 119, 136, 160, 161, 164, 173 18:1–3 163 18:1–13 159 18:1–20:3 121 18:1–20:8 160 18:2 161, 164 18:3 169 18:3–8 160, 161, 166 18:5 164 18:6 160, 164, 173 18:8 168, 169 18:9–10 164 18:9–11 164 18:11 119, 160, 164, 170 18:12 119, 164, 169, 170, 173 18:12–13 121, 161, 163, 166 18:13 160, 164, 173 18:14–17 119 19 119, 152 19:1–20:3 120, 121, 160 19:8 121 19:9 240 19:14–15 121

Index of Scripture 1 Chronicles (cont.) 20 117 20:1 120, 121, 122, 151, 152 20:1–3 120, 121 20:2–3 121 20:3 167 20:4–8 121, 125, 160 20:8 119 21 117, 119, 127, 128 21:16 122, 123 21:22–25 128 22 145 22–29 125 22:5 144 22:8–10 173 22:9 130, 132, 143, 144, 147 22:13 110 22:18 132, 143, 144, 147 22:19 144, 145 23:25 133, 143 23:25–26 144 28:8–9 243 28:9 145, 240 28:20 110 29:9 240 29:19 240 2 Chronicles 1:16 279 2:2–9 142, 143, 145 2:16–17 69 3:1 64 6 118 6:14 271 7:14 143 8:7–9 69 9:26 163 11:16 145 13:3 241 14:4 145 14:4–6 145 14:5 130

2 Chronicles (cont.) 14:6 132, 145, 147 14:8 241 15:2 145 15:4 145 15:8 242 15:10–15 145 15:12 145, 240 15:12–15 145 15:13 145 15:15 132, 145, 147 15:17 240 16:7–9 144 16:12 145 17:4 145 17:14–18 241 18 243 18:4 145 20:1 160 20:1–30 145 20:2 170 20:4 145 20:14–17 244 20:29–30 144 20:30 130, 132, 147 20:33 240 21:10 241 22:9 145 23:1 242 24:1–16 241 24:2 240 24:17–22 241 24:17–27 241 24:23 241 24:23–24 241 24:25 241 25 245, 246 25:1–2 240 25:1–4 246 25:1–13 241 25:1–26:2 237, 240 25:2 240 25:3–4 240 25:5–10 241 25:5–13 240, 241, 246

357 2 Chronicles (cont.) 25:6 241 25:7 242, 244 25:8 242 25:10 242 25:11 172, 241 25:12 241, 242 25:13 241, 242 25:14 243 25:14–16 240, 246 25:14–26:2 241 25:16 243 25:17 243 25:17–24 240, 246 25:18 243 25:19 244 25:21–24 244 25:23 244 25:24 244 25:25–28 240, 246 25:27 243, 244 26:1–2 240 26:4 240 27:2 240 28:24 220, 221 29:5 220 29:5–19 221 29:6 221 29:7 221 29:19 221 30:18–19 145 31:21 145 32 132 32:1 247 32:1–8 247 32:7 110 32:9–19 247 32:20 247 32:21 248 32:22 132, 144, 145, 147 33:3–5 217 33:7 217 33:15 217 34:3–5 221 34:8 221

358 2 Chronicles (cont.) 34:22–28 222 34:25 222 34:29–33 222 35:1–19 222 35:20–21 244 36:6 154 36:10 151, 152, 154, 155 Ezra 2:64 48 7:10 99 8:36 163 9:15 95 Nehemiah 1:5 271 2:7 163 2:9 163 3:7 163 5:1–13 274 6:16 133 7:66 48 8:18 99 9:32 271 Esther 9:5 133 Job 1:10 133 2:11 193 4:1 193 12:14–25 271 21:34 151 28:15 279 34:36 151 Psalms 1 194 3:7 133 6:10 133 18:1 133 18:2 272 18:17 272

Index of Scripture Psalms (cont.) 21:8 133 31:1–3 306 31:14 133 44:12 279 71:1–2 306 71:15–16 306 71:19 306 71:24 306 78:40–41 186 89:28 271 89:42 133 89:51 133 91:11–12 289 97:7 214 98:2–3 309 105:26 98 111:10 193 118:15–16 271 132 123 132:17 272 139:16 185 143:1 306 147:6 271 148:14 272 Proverbs 3:11–12 196, 201 3:32 196 3:35 205 4:10–19 194, 204 5:7–14 201 5:23 201 6:16 196 6:20–22 201 6:23 201 7:1–3 201 8:7 196 8:15–16 196 8:22 193 8:32–34 201 10:2 204 11:1 196, 200 11:4 204 11:19 204 11:20 196

Proverbs (cont.) 12:1 201 12:22 196 12:28 204 13:9 196 13:24 201 15:8 196 15:9 196 15:10 201 15:20 207 15:26 196 16:5 196 16:12 196 16:31 204 17:15 196 17:16 279 19:18 201 20:10 196, 200 20:23 196, 200 20:25 196 21:21 204 21:27 196 22:15 201 22:17–24:22 195 22:28 196, 200 23:10 196, 200 23:13 201 23:22 207 24:9 196 25:1 193 26:25 196 26:27 229 27:26 279 28:9 196 29:17 201 29:27 196 30:17 207 Ecclesiastes 5:4–5 196 12:13 194 Isaiah 1–39 275, 278 1:4 276, 278 1:22 279

359

Index of Scripture Isaiah (cont.) 1:24 276 2:7 279 2:11–17 271 2:20 279 5:8 276, 278 5:11 276 5:11–13 281 5:13 279 5:18 276 5:20 276, 278 5:21 276 5:22 276 6:2–7 219 7:22 279 7:23 279 8:7 163 10:1 276, 278 10:5 276 10:12–15 280 11:15 163 13:17 279 14:1 110 14:3 110 14:4–6 280 14:7 110 16:6–7 280 17:12 276, 278 18:1 276, 278 18:1–2 251 20:1–6 252 21:14 279 24:5 266 26:2 273 27:12 163 28–31 278 28:1 276, 278 28:1–4 281 28:7–8 281 28:9 279 28:12 110, 133 28:14–15 280 29:1 276 29:8 279 29:14 193 29:15 276, 278

Isaiah (cont.) 29:15–16 280 30:1 276, 278 30:1–6 252 30:22 279 31:1 252, 276 31:7 279 32:6 279 33:1 276, 278 36:1 247 36:7 198 36:10–22 247 37:1–7 247 37:8 247 37:9 248 37:9–13 248 37:14–20 248 37:21–35 248 37:36 248 37:37 248 40–55 275 40–66 278 40:18–20 217 40:19 279 40:25–26 217 40:28 217 41:4 217 41:17 279 41:20 268 41:26 217 42:8–9 217 42:25 133 43:10–13 217 43:24 279 44:3 279 44:5 169 44:6–7 217 44:7 217 44:9–20 218 44:24 217 45:3 268 45:5–7 217 45:6 268 45:9 276, 278 45:10 276, 278 45:13 279

Isaiah (cont.) 46:6 279 47:5–7 280 48:10 279 48:21 279 49:10 279 49:23 268 49:26 269 50:2 279 51:4–5 309 52:10 309 55 275, 277, 279, 281, 282 55:1 275, 277, 278, 279, 280 55:1–2 280, 281 55:2 278, 280 55:3 266 56–66 275 56:5 169 57:2 110 57:7–8 281 60:16 279 63:7–10 186 63:14 133 65:13 279 Jeremiah 1 88 1–20 264 1:5 298 2:1–4:4 264 2:8 215 4:5–6:30 264 4:17 133 6:16 194 6:25 133 7:1–10:25 264 7:9 215, 269 8:8–9 193 9:10 186 9:12 193 9:17–21 186 9:23 193 11:1–17 264 11:13 215

360 Jeremiah (cont.) 11:17 215 11:18–20:18 264 13:17 186 14:17 186 15:13 279 16:14–15 269 16:21 169 17:5–8 194 18:18 193 19:4 269 20:3 133 20:10 133 21–24 264 21:8–9 194 22:13 276, 278 22:16 269 22:18 276 23:1 276, 278 23:7–8 269 25 264 26–29 264 27:11 133 28 209 30:1–31:26 265 30:1–31:30 264 30:7 276 31:27–30 265 31:29–30 238 31:31 265, 268 31:31–34 263, 265 31:31–37 263, 264, 265, 268 31:31–33:26 264 31:32 268 31:33 268 31:34 268 31:35 268 31:35–37 188 31:36 268 31:37 268 31:38–40 265 31:40 265 32:1–25 265 32:17 180 32:25–27 265

Index of Scripture Jeremiah (cont.) 32:27 180 32:28–35 265 32:36–39 265 32:37–38 267 32:37–41 267 32:40–41 265 32:42–33:13 265 33:14–26 265 33:19–26 188 34:5 276 37:39 267 37:40 267 37:41 267 39–43 265 42:10 191 44–45 265 44:3 269 45:1–5 88 46–52 265 46:5 133 46:6 277 47:1–7 161 47:1–49:22 161 47:6 276, 278 48:1 276 48:1–47 161 49:1–6 161 49:7 193 49:7–22 161 49:23–27 161 49:23–50:1–5 161 49:28–33 161 49:29 133 49:34–39 161 50:1–5 161 50:27 276 51:2 133 51:31–35 88 52 88 Lamentations 1:21 133 2:16 133 2:22 133 3:46 133

Lamentations (cont.) 5:4 279 Ezekiel 1:28 122 6–7 188 6:7 268 6:10 268 6:13 268 6:14 268 8:3 217 8:5 217 8:10 217 11:14–21 266 13:3 276 13:18 276, 278, 280 16:33 133 16:37 133 16:53–63 266 16:57 133, 169 16:60 266 18:1 238 18:19–24 238 21:26 271 23:22 133 25:1–17 161 27:16 170 28:23 133 29:21 272 34:2 276, 278, 280 34:25–31 266 36:3 133 36:4 133 36:7 133 36:22–35 266 37:2 267 37:13 268 37:21 133, 266 37:21–28 266 37:22 266 37:23 266, 267 37:24 267 37:26 267 39:17 133 39:28 268

361

Index of Scripture Daniel 9:4 271 10:4 163 11:39 279

Micah 2:1 276, 278 3:11 279 5:8 133

Hosea 2:7–13 215 10:5 220 13:1 215 13:1–2 220

Nahum 3:1 276

Joel 3:1 7 4:11–12 133 Amos 5:16 276, 277 5:18 276, 278 6:1 276, 278 9:1 277

Habakkuk 1:17 320 2:3 314 2:3–4 318 2:4 293, 294, 295, 304, 308, 313, 314, 315, 316, 317, 318, 319, 320, 321, 322, 323, 324 2:6 276, 278, 280 2:9 276, 278 2:12 276, 278

Habakkuk (cont.) 2:15 276, 278 2:19 276, 278 Zephaniah 1:4 220 2:5 276 3:1 276 Zechariah 1:15 191 2 277 2:9 277 2:10 277 2:10–11 277 2:11 277 5:9 122 11:17 276 Malachi 3:22–24 88

New Testament Matthew 1:3 288 1:5 288 1:6 288 1:11 288 1:16 288 1:17 288 1:18 288 1:21 288 1:23 288 2 289 2:1–23 288 2:13 289 2:19 289 2:22 289 3 288 3:11 288 3:16 288 4:1 288 4:11 289

Matthew (cont.) 5:17–20 291 6:13 262 7:13–14 194 7:24–27 194 22:37 291 25:1–12 195 26:28 271 27:43 262 Mark 8:38 306 14:24 271 16:8 88 Luke 1:47–55 271 1:50 271 1:52 271 1:53 271

Luke (cont.) 1:54 271 1:67 272 1:68 272 1:68–79 271, 272 1:69 272 1:71 272 1:72 272 1:72–75 273 1:73 272 1:74 272 1:76–77 272 1:77 272 1:78–79 272 1:80 272 10:29–37 271 10:31–32 205 15:11–32 271 16:1–8 195 16:19–31 271

362 Luke (cont.) 18:1–8 198 18:9–14 271 22:20 271 24:21 262 John 1:1 193 3:2 290 3:13–17 290 4:17 290 13:34–35 271 Acts 3:14 315 3:25–26 273 4:32–35 273 7:8 273 7:52 315 22:14 315 Romans 1 294, 298, 309 1–4 321 1:1 298, 299, 300, 301, 303, 307, 311, 312, 313 1:1–2 312, 314 1:1–5 313 1:1–7 301 1:1–15 296, 304, 305, 317 1:1–17 294, 295, 304, 318 1:2 293, 297, 298, 299, 301, 312, 314, 321 1:2–3 307 1:2–4 313 1:3 299, 301, 302, 311, 312, 313 1:3–4 299, 307 1:4 299, 301, 307, 311, 312 1:5 300, 302, 303, 307, 311, 312, 319

Index of Scripture Romans (cont.) 1:5–6 299, 301, 302, 312 1:6 300, 301, 312 1:7 300, 301, 312 1:8 301, 302, 311, 312 1:8–15 301 1:9 302, 307, 312, 313 1:9–10 302, 312 1:10 302, 303, 307 1:11 303 1:11–12 304 1:11–15 303 1:12 303, 311 1:13 303, 314 1:13–14 312 1:14 303, 306 1:14–15 312 1:15 303, 306 1:15–18 306 1:16 305, 306, 307, 308, 309, 310, 311, 313, 318, 322 1:16–17 304, 305, 306, 313, 314, 317, 319, 320, 323, 324 1:17 293, 294, 295, 308, 310, 311, 312, 313, 314, 315, 317, 318, 319, 321, 322, 324 1:17–18 321 1:18 305, 310, 319, 320 1:18–28 314, 317 1:18–32 320 1:20 305 2:12 319 2:16 305 2:24 314 3:1 321 3:1–9 321 3:2 321 3:3 321

Romans (cont.) 3:4 314, 321 3:5 321 3:7 321 3:10 314 3:19–20 320 3:20 320 3:21 307, 313 3:21–26 321, 322 3:21–4:25 293 3:22 312, 313, 322 3:22–26 315 3:27–31 322 3:30 322 4 322 4:1–18 329 4:3 297 4:17 182, 314 5–8 321 5:1 322 5:12–21 322 5:18 322 5:19 315 6:1–3 296 6:1–14 323 6:4 323 6:14 305 8:1–16 323 8:12–29 329 8:36 314 9–11 323 9:4 273 9:13 314 9:17 297 9:32 323 9:33 314 10:6 315 10:6–7 323 10:11 297 10:15 314 11:2 297 11:8 314 11:17–24 323 11:20 323 11:25–32 323 11:26 262, 314

363

Index of Scripture Romans (cont.) 12:3–8 300, 323 14:1–23 323 14:23 323 15:3 314 15:4 297 15:9 314 15:15–16 300 15:21 314 16 296 16:1 328 16:1–2 329 16:5 328 16:23 328 16:26 297, 300 1 Corinthians 1:10–11 330 1:16 328 1:18–25 194 1:18–31 306 1:22 193 1:26 330 1:26–31 271 2:1 330 3:1 330 4:6 330 7:15 328 7:24 330 7:29 330 9:5 328 10:1 330 11 327, 330, 337, 338, 339 11:17–22 337 11:17–34 327 11:20 337 11:20–21 335 11:21 336 11:22 337

1 Corinthians (cont.) 11:23–26 337 11:25 263, 271 11:27–32 338 11:33 328, 338 11:34 337 12:1 330 14:6 330 14:20 330 14:26 330 14:39 330 15:1 330 15:31 330 15:50 330 15:58 330 16:15 330 16:19 328

Colossians 4:15 328

2 Corinthians 3:1–18 271 3:14 273 4:4 290 8:9 271 12:9–10 187

Philemon 2 328

Galatians 1:15 298 3:11 295, 319 3:15–18 273 3:26–4:7 329 4:22–31 273 Ephesians 2:11–12 273 Philippians 2:6–11 271 4:2 328

1 Thessalonians 1:10 262 2:7–12 329 1 Timothy 3:15 328 2 Timothy 1:16 328 3:11 262 4:19 328 Titus 2:14 262

Hebrews 8:6–13 271 9:15 271 10:15–18 271 11:3 182 12:24 271 1 Peter 3:18 315 2 Peter 2:15–16 78 1 John 2:1 315 2:8–11 271 Revelation 11:19 273

Deuterocanonical Literature 1 Esdras 1:43 155

Sirach 10:14–15 272 18:22 196