193833424 journal of biblical literature vol 120 no 3 fall 2001

Journal of Biblical Literature

VOLUME 120, No. 3 Fall 2001

The Law of the Heart: The Death of a Fool (1 Samuel 25)MARJORIE OROURKE BOYLE 401427

Exploring the Dismal Swamp: The Identity of theAnointed One in Daniel 9:2427

TIM MEADOWCROFT 429449

The Sources of the Old Testament Quotation in Matthew 2:23MAARTEN J. J. MENKEN 451468

A Celebration of the Enthroned Son: The Catena of Hebrews 1KENNETH L. SCHENCK 469485

Light within the Human Person: A Comparison of Matthew 6:2223and Gospel of Thomas 24

THOMAS ZCKLER 487499

Tatians Diatessaron and the Old Testament PeshittaJAN JOOSTEN 501523

Nabal and His WinePETER J. LEITHART 525527

Book Reviews 529 Index 599

US ISSN 00219231

JOURNAL OF BIBLICAL LITERATUREPUBLISHED QUARTERLY BY THE

SOCIETY OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE(Constituent Member of the American Council of Learned Societies)

EDITORS OF THE JOURNALGeneral Editor: GAIL R. ODAY, Candler School of Theology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322Book Review Editor: TODD C. PENNER, Austin College, Sherman, TX 75090

EDITORIAL BOARDTerm Expiring

2001: JANICE CAPEL ANDERSON, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID 83844HAROLD W. ATTRIDGE, Yale Divinity School, New Haven, CT 06511ALAN M. COOPER, Jewish Theological Seminary, New York, NY 10027BERNARD M. LEVINSON, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455-0125THEODORE J. LEWIS, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602DAVID K. RENSBERGER, Interdenominational Theological Center, Atlanta, GA 30314EILEEN SCHULLER, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON L8S 4K1 CANADAFERNANDO F. SEGOVIA, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37240NAOMI A. STEINBERG, DePaul University, Chicago, IL 60614JAMES C. VANDERKAM, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556

2002: BRIAN K. BLOUNT, Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, NJ 08542DAVID M. CARR, Union Theological Seminary, New York, NY 10027PAMELA EISENBAUM, Iliff School of Theology, Denver, CO 80210JOHN S. KSELMAN, Weston Jesuit School of Theology, Cambridge, MA 02138JEFFREY KUAN, Pacific School of Religion, Berkeley, CA 94709STEVEN L. McKENZIE, Rhodes College, Memphis, TN 38112ALAN F. SEGAL, Barnard College, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027-6598GREGORY E. STERLING, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556STEPHEN WESTERHOLM, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON L8S 4K1 CANADA

2003: SUSAN ACKERMAN, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755MICHAEL L. BARR, St. Marys Seminary & University, Baltimore, MD 21210ATHALYA BRENNER, University of Amsterdam, 1012 GC Amsterdam, The NetherlandsMARC BRETTLER, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA 02254-9110WARREN CARTER, St. Paul School of Theology, Kansas City, MO 64127PAUL DUFF, George Washington University, Washington, DC 20052BEVERLY R. GAVENTA, Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, NJ 08542JUDITH LIEU, Kings College London, London WC2R 2LS United KingdomKATHLEEN OCONNOR, Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, GA 30031C. L. SEOW, Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, NJ 08542VINCENT WIMBUSH, Union Theological Seminary, New York, NY 10027

Editorial Assistant: C. Patrick Gray, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322

President of the Society: Harold Attridge, Yale Divinity School, New Haven, CT 06511; Vice President: John J.Collins, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06511; Chair, Research and Publications Committee: David L. Petersen,Iliff School of Theology, Denver, CO 80210; Executive Director: Kent H. Richards, Society of Biblical Literature,825 Houston Mill Road, Suite 350, Atlanta, GA 30329.

The Journal of Biblical Literature (ISSN 00219231) is published quarterly. The annual subscription priceis US$25.00 for members and US$50.00 for nonmembers. Institutional rates are also available. For informationregarding subscriptions and membership, contact: Society of Biblical Literature, P.O. Box 2243, Williston, VT05495-2243. Phone: 877-725-3334 (toll free) or 802-864-6185. FAX: 802-864-7626. E-mail: [email protected]. Forinformation concerning permission to quote, editorial and business matters, please see the Spring issue, p. 2.

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JBL 120/3 (2001) 401427

THE LAW OF THE HEART:THE DEATH OF A FOOL (1 SAMUEL 25)

MARJORIE OROURKE [email protected]

University of Toronto, Toronto, ON M5S 1A1 Canada

Heart (ble, bb;le) is the principal anthropological concept in the HebrewScriptures, occurring more than eight hundred times to describe human statesand actions.1 Its adoption by the NT ensured its prominence in the Christiantradition. Yet the heart, as intimate and reassuring as its regular beat, is faint inthe history of ideas, from its obscure ancient origins to William Harveys (15781657 C.E.) precise discovery of its circulation of the blood. At its origins, biblicalexegesis asserts a philosophical and medical knowledge of heart that seemsanachronistic. The anatomical and physiological truth will be the question forthis cultural anatomy through biblical exegesis.

To begin the dissection: The initial entry in the standard Hebrew lexicon isthe quivering, pumping organ, the heart.2 Yet this definition presupposesHarveys simile of the pump.3 The lexical entry substantiates the statement of amajor biblical dictionary that the governing use of heart is for the bodilyorgan, of the centrality of which as the seat of life the ancients had on the wholea correct view. The premise then assumes Harveys discovery of its circulationof the blood.4 Since in Bible phrase the life is in the blood (Lev. 17:14), that

1 Hans W. Wolff gives 858 times (The Anthropology of the Old Testament [trans. MargaretKohl; London: SCM, 1974], 40). Tallies vary. For a more recent distribution, see Francis I. Ander-sen and A. Dean Forbes, The Vocabulary of the Old Testament (Rome: Pontificio Istituto Biblico,1989), 348.

2 Ludwig Koehler, Lexicon in Veteris Testamenti libris (2 vols.; Leiden: Brill, 1951), 2:469.3 See C. Webster, William Harveys Conception of the Heart as a Pump, Bulletin of the

History of Medicine 39 (1965): 50817; George Basalla, William Harvey and the Heart as aPump, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 36 (1962): 46770.

4 See recently Emerson Thomas McMullen, Anatomy of a Physiological Discovery: WilliamHarvey and the Circulation of the Blood, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 88 (1995):49198; Allan Chapman, William Harvey and the Circulation of the Blood, Journal of Laboratoryand Clinical Medicine 126 (1995): 42327; Don G. Bates, Harveys Account of His Discovery,

401

organ which forms the centre of its distribution must have the most importantplace in the whole system. So by an easy transition heart came to signify theseat of mans collective energies, the focus of personal life. The arrogation ofHarveys science is pressed to an exact comparison. As from the fleshly heartgoes forth the blood which is the animal life, so from the heart of the human soulgoes forth the entire mental and moral activity. To it all the actions of the humansoul return. This is explicated as a circuit,5 precisely Harveys discovery.

The premise of the circulation of the blood throughout the body from thecentral organ of the heart cannot be a historically valid comparison for a scrip-tural understanding of the soul or mind and its activities. Yet this fundamentalerror repeats. The current, revised edition of the standard lexicon (199496)retains as the prime definition the quivering, pumping organ, the heart.6 Bib-lical dictionaries repeat that primarily the heart is the seat and principle ofvitality, for the life of the flesh is in the blood (Lev. 17:11), and the receptacleof the blood is the heart.7 Heart in scripture is literalized as the physicalorgan or the center of physical vitality, a part of the physical body.8 Thebiblical authors supposedly recognize the physiological activity of the heart indetail: fainting, heart failure, healthy action, longevity.9 Jeremiahs wildly beat-ing heart (4:19) describes angina pectoris.10 Although it is conceded that as

Journal of Biblical Literature402

Medical History 36 (1992): 36176. For philosophical implications, see recently Geoffrey Gorham,Mind-Body Dualism and the Harvey-Descartes Controversy, JHI 55 (1994): 21134.

5 J. Laidlaw, Heart, in Dictionary of the Bible (ed. James Hastings; New York: CharlesScribners Sons, 1901), 2:31718. Consider also the comparative philological claim that theancients were not ignorant that it was the essential engine of the circulation of the blood (P.Dhorme, Lemploi mtaphorique des noms de parties du corps en Hbreu et en Akkadien, RB 31[1922]: 493). Cf. the recent corrective that Akkadian libbu does not denote a specifically identifi-able part of the body (Heinz-Josef Fabry, leb, TDOT 7:403).

6 HALOT 2:514.7 T. K. Cheyne and J. Sutherland Black, Encyclopedia Biblica: A Dictionary of the Bible (2

vols.; New York: Macmillan, 1901), 1981; R. C. Dentan, Heart, in The Interpreters Dictionary ofthe Bible (ed. George A. Buttrick; 4 vols.; New York: Abingdon, 1962), 2:54950; and for the heartas practically synonymous with blood (Lev. 17:11), see Louis F. Hartman, Encyclopedic Dictio-nary of the Bible (New York: McGraw Hill, 1963), 947.

8 William L. Holladay, A Concise Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament: Basedupon the Lexical Work of Ludwig Koehler and Walter Baumgartner (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,1971), 171; Scott Nash, Heart, MDB, 360; Nahum M. Sarna, Exploring Exodus: The Heritage ofBiblical Israel (New York: Schocken, 1986), 64; The New Bible Dictionary (ed. J. D. Douglas; Lon-don: Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, 1962), 509, citing 1 Sam 5:37; Dentan, Heart, 549.

9 Madeleine S. Miller and J. Lane Miller, Heart, in Harpers Bible Dictionary (rev. ed.;New York: Harper & Row, 1973), 247; for heart failure and rending of the pericardium, see J. R.Willis, rev. Norman Henry Snaith, Heart, in Dictionary of the Bible (ed. James Hastings, rev. ed.Frederick C. Grant and H. H. Rowley; New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1963), 369.

10 Wolff, Anthropology, 4142. He cites as other anatomical passages 2 Kgs 9:24; 2 Sam18:14; and a physiological text on irregular heartbeat, Ps 38:10. Against this, see Fabry, leb, 411.

the vital organ that pumps blood through the body, the heart is seldom men-tioned, nevertheless, the Bible is believed to mention it. Several texts (2 Kgs9:24; 2 Sam 18:14; Ps 38:10) are regularly cited as evidence of precise cardiacknowledge.11 The proof text of the physical organ is: And in the morning,when the wine had gone out of Nabal, his wife told him these things, and hisheart died within him, and he became as a stone. And about ten days later theLord smote Nabal; and he died (1 Sam 25:3738).12

I. The Medical Diagnosis

Biblical exegesis has diagnosed the cause of Nabals death medically. Hehas a heart attack, later Yahweh kills him.13 Despite acknowledgment that aclinical description of a heart attack and its progress from a mild to a fatal ill-ness was not published until William Heberden in 1768, it is asserted that theDeuteronomist historian of 1 Samuel had precocious knowledge of myocardialinfarction. And, despite acknowledgment that coronary thrombosis as a diag-nosis proved by autopsy was only published by George Dock in 1886, the text isdeemed an account of this disorder. Nabal became enraged and suffered aheart attack. Ten days later, he was dead. His metamorphosis into stone haseven been associated with the clinical entity during open-heart surgerydescribed more recently by Denton A. Cooley as stone heart, in which theorgan is in a state of contraction that can be fatal.14

Another opinion considers it quite uncertain that the heart attack in 1 S.25:37 . . . can be interpreted with anatomical precision. It expresses, rather,rigidity as a sign of grief. Nabal collapses into a coma.15 An alternative diag-nosis is of a stroke, either paralysis or apoplexy. Since there is no suggestion inthe Hebrew Scriptures of any relation between the pulse and the heart, we canonly think of paralysis. To a doctor that would suggest a stroke. The heart inthis verse corresponds to the brain.16 Nabal is in shock, so that a stroke of

Boyle: The Law of the Heart 403

11 Hartman, Encyclopedic Dictionary, 947 (italics mine), citing 1 Sam 25:37; 2 Sam 8:14;2 Kgs 9:24; Fabry, leb, 411.

12 E.g., Frederik von Meyenfeldt, Het hart (le b, lebab) in het Oude Testament (Leiden: Brill,1950), 13536; Wolff, Anthropology, 4041; New Bible Dictionary, ed. Douglas, 509; Dentan,Heart.

13 J. P. Fokkelman, Narrative Art and Poetry in the Books of Samuel: A Full InterpretationBased on Stylistic and Structural Analysis, vol. 2, The Crossing Fates (I Sam. 1331 and II Sam. 1)(SSN 23; Assen: Van Gorcum, 1986), 522.

14 Robert B. Greenblatt, Search the Scriptures: Modern Medicine and Biblical Personages(3d enlarged ed.; Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1977), 14750.

15 Fabry, leb, 411, 414, 416.16 Wolff, Anthropology, 41.

paralysis is the natural explanation, followed by a second stroke which wasfatal.17 Again, it is a case of shock and more. Nabals death is divided intodeaths of the heart and of the self, with a gratuitious description. The accountof his demise in two stages, first the death of the heart and then of himself (v.37), augments this effect by portraying a huge body, alive but subhuman,breathing but not feeling, not responding, a living being turned to stone for tendays. . . . Nabal suffers a fatal stroke.18

He has a seizure, a stroke which leaves him paralyzed.19 There occursthe miraculous conclusion of complete paralysis, since the heart is notcertainly the organ of biological life, but rather that of psychical life.20 Stroke isalso confused with a heart attack, although the conditions are distinct. He hasa stroke, later dies. . . . heart attack, later Yahweh kills him.21 Although paraly-sis does appear in scripture, it is not explicated in Nabals case. Paralysis is,moreover, unrelated to heart, its cause being a neurological, not a cardiac,injury or disease. A diagnosis implicitly acknowledges this. The text treats of acerebral attack that produces paralysis, and not a paralyzation of the heart inthe actual sense.22 Or, there is not so much evidence of heart failure (i.e.coronary artery disease) as for a seizure in popular parlance.23 Apoplexy isalso proposed as a reasonable explanation.24 In yet another opinion Nabal sim-ply became sick, with the notation that he suffered from addiction to alco-hol.25 There is terrible fright, compounded by the effects of alcohol. The


17 Henry Preserved Smith, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Books of Samuel(New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1909), 228.

18 Jon D. Levenson, 1 Samuel 25 as Literature and as History, CBQ 40 (1978): 17.19 Peter R. Ackroyd, The First Book of Samuel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1971), 199.20 Andr Caquot and Phillipe de Robert, Les livres de Samuel (CAT 6; Geneva; Labor et

fides, 1994), 313.21 Fokkelman, Crossing Fates, 478, 522.22 Santiago Fernndez-Ardanaz, Evolucin en el pensamiento hebreo sobre el hombre:

Estudio diacrnico de los principales conceptos antropolgicos, RCT 12 (1987): 294 (translationmine).

23 Donald J. Wiseman, Medicine in the Old Testament World, in Medicine and the Bible(ed. Bernard Palmer; Exeter: Paternoster Press for the Christian Medical Fellowship, 1986), 28,citing R. K. Harrison, Disease, in ISBE, 1:95360.

24 A. T. Sandison, Degenerative Vascular Disease, in Diseases in Antiquity: A Survey of theDiseases, Injuries, and Surgery of Early Populations (ed. Don R. Brothwell and A. T. Sandison;Spingfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, 1967), 479, citing Edward Bell Krumbhaar, Pathology (Cliomedica 19; New York: P. B. Hoeber, 1937); see also Andr-Marie Dubarle, Le don dun coeurnouveau (Ez 36, 16-38), BVC 4 (1956): 5766.

25 Gnana Robinson, Let Us Be Like the Nations: A Commentary on the Books of 1 and 2Samuel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), 136. Alcoholism is not a convincing diagnosis. Cf. theparallel, where Absalom avenges the rape of Tamar as wanton folly (2 Sam 13:1213) by orderingthe death of Amnon precisely when his heart is merry with wine (v. 28). The rape of the concu-

debate about his stony state, whether it refers to catalepsy resulting from anapoplectic coma or only the motionlessness of paralysis and unconsciousness,remains undecided.26 In a general diagnosis, he took ill and soon died, smittenby the Lord so that he perishes through a divine stroke.27 Or, Nabal isstunned by his wifes behavior.28 In a new development, Abigail contractswith David to kill Nabal, but her news triggers a paralyzing heart attack, or,perhaps a stroke. She has counted on a bad heart she might have been awareof from previous manifestations of ill health.29 The sensational new specula-tion is that Abigail actually murdered Nabal. Yet it, too, reverts to concedingpossible medical diagnoses such as coma, then death by heart attack or alco-holic overindulgence.30

II. The Medical History

What is the historical evidence for this clinical knowledge of the humanheart? of a pump circulating blood? of myocardial infarction? Some dissent hasbeen published, although an alternative interpretation has not been demon-strated exegetically. The Encyclopaedia Judaica considers that, even when theterms for heart refer to something inside the body, they do not always mean theheart but probably more often refer to the general insides. Moreover, theBible never mentions about the lev(av) anything that is literally physical, suchas a heartbeat; neither does it mention any literal pain or ailment of it.31 Ascholar concurs that, despite the numerous occurrences of ble, bb;le, it wasnever used of that physical organ.32 A biblical dictionary acknowledges thatthe ancients were unaware of the circulation of the blood and the physiological


bine also takes place as they were making their hearts merry (Judg 19:22; cf. vv. 6, 9). Both rapeswere nebal, or serious social sins. See my argument below. Finally, the king was not supposed todrink wine lest he forget the law and the rights of the oppressed (Prov 31:4). Nabal is drunk at theharvest festival like the feast of a king (1 Sam 25:36).

26 Julius Preuss, Biblical and Talmudic Medicine (ed. and trans. Fred Rosner; New York:Sanhedrin, 1978), 307. Fear of danger from David, plus the effects of alcohol, is unconvincing,since Abigail had resolved Davids threat and since the wine had left Nabal.

27 James Barr, The Symbolism of Names in the Old Testament, BJRL 52 (196970): 22, 27.28 Adele Berlin, Characterization in Biblical Narrative: Davids Wives, JSOT 23 (1982): 77.29 Robert Alter, The David Story: A Translation with Commentary of 1 and 2 Samuel (New

York: W. W. Norton, 1999), 15960.30 Steven L. McKenzie, King David: A Biography (New York: Oxford University Press,

2000), 98101.31 Harold Louis Ginzberg, Heart,EncJud, 8:7. Rabbinical knowledge of the circulation of

the blood by the heart is dismissed as doubtful by Louis Isaac Rabinowitz, Heart in the Talmudand Aggadah(ibid., 8:8), since the majority of references are ethical.

32 Wiseman, Medicine, 20.

functions of the heart.33 A systematic biblical anthropology states that itsactual physiological importance was, of course, unknown; for the Israelites, incommon with the other peoples of the ancient world, appear to have learntnothing of the circulation of the blood.34 A semantic analysis posits that theancient Hebrews did not, as we do, indicate the central organ of the circula-tion of the blood, but a much wider anatomical field. Nabals ble was not hisheart.35

The majority opinion stands, however, that the ancient Hebrews had ararely expressed but definite cardiac knowledge. An up-to-date biblical dictio-nary allows that the Hebrews were unaware of its function but accepts theconsensus about its usage rarely in the physiological sense.36 In sum, themeaning of heart was rarely physiological yet it was so. The authority of therevised standard lexicon and the agreement of most reference works concern-ing a physiological sense of heart are fortified importantly by the numerousmedical diagnoses in exegesis of 1 Sam 25:37 as the proof text. Traditionexplains this cardiac knowledge by positing a medical borrowing. The Hebrewswere doubtlessly influenced in their medical concepts and practices by thesurrounding nations, particularly by Egypt, where medical knowledge washighly developed.37 They possessed a wide and perfect knowledge of Egyp-tian medicine, of its methods and practices, . . . knowledge from first handsources, emanating directly from the Egyptian medical literature. Compara-tive philology has argued that the Hebrew hz

confused with the intestines or stomach.39 The most recent analysis of the med-ical papyri, by an Egyptologist who is also a surgeon, dichotomizes the terms:h\ 3ty means the modern cardiac muscle, while ib represents an interior com-plex of parts concentrated in the abdomen and thorax.40 Yet both words areused interchangeably in the medical papyri for the anatomical heart, althoughh\ 3ty is never extended to the emotions, as is ib.41 Although the hieroglyphs forexternal bodily members generally depict human anatomy, the signs for theinternal organs, including the heart, depict only mammalian anatomy. Egyptianknowledge of animal anatomy was long precedent to that of human anatomy,since the veterinary surgeon was charged with the ritual inspection of the sacri-ficial beasts.42 However, the hieroglyph for heart has been judged a reason-able diagram.43

With more than one hundred terms recorded,44 the ancient Egyptiansindeed had anatomical and physiological knowledge far greater than their con-temporaries.45 The Harvein Oration of 1904, perhaps the first professionalnotice of the inquiries of their physicians on the circulation and circulatory dis-eases, was sanguine. Ancient Egyptian physicians were accorded partialknowledge of the circulation; they did not solve the problem, but theyapproached it as nearly as did the Greeks, and probably from them the Greeksobtained such knowledge as they possessed in early times. Their knowledge


39 Alexandre Piankoff, Le coeur dans les textes gyptiens depuis lAncien jusqu la fin duNouvel Empire (Paris: Librairie orientaliste Paul Geuthner, 1930), 813.

40 Thierry Bardinet, Les papyrus mdicaux de lgypte pharaonique: Traduction intgral etcommentaire (Paris: Fayard, 1995), 6880. See also Bernard Long, Le ib and le h\ 3ty dans lestextes mdicaux de lgypte ancienne, in Hommages Franois Daumas (2 vols.; Montpellier:Universit de Montpellier, 1986), 2:48394.

41 John F. Nunn, Ancient Egyptian Medicine (London: British Museum, 1996), 54. For themedical uses of ib, see Hermann Grapow, Hildegard von Daines, and Wolfhart Westendorff,Grundriss der Medizen der Alten gypter (9 vols. in 11; Berlin: Akademie, 1954), vol. 7-1:Wrterbuch der medizinischen Texte, 3542. Since there are problems of translation, a bettersource, which includes nonmedical sources, is vol. 1, Anatomie und Physiologie, 6372, accordingto Kent Reid Weeks, The Anatomical Knowledge of the Ancient Egyptians and the Representa-tion of the Human Figure in Egyptian Art (Ph.D diss., Yale University, 1970), 23.

42 Paul Ghalioungui, Magic and Medical Science in Ancient Egypt (London: Hodder &Stoughton, 1963), 68; Warren R. Dawson, Egyptian Medical Papyri, in Diseases in Antiquity, ed.Brothwell and Sandison, 108; and for the signs, see Piankoff, Coeur, 7.

43 Nunn, Ancient Egyptian Medicine, 53, and 52, fig. 3.5; see also Alan H. Gardiner, Egyp-tian Grammar: Being an Introduction to the Study of Hieroglyphs (3d ed.; London: Oxford Univer-sity Press for the Griffith Institute, Ashmolean Museum, 1957), F 34. For context, see John T.Baines, Communication and Display: The Integration of Early Egyptian Art and Writing, Antiq-uity 63 (1989): 47182.

44 Ghalioungui, Magic and Medical Science, 68; Dawson, Egyptian Medical Papyri, 108.45 Dawson, Egyptian Medical Papyri,108.

was declared not physiology but practice.46 As late as 1963 it was asserted thatthe Ebers Papyrus, as the record of a secretive medical knowledge orally trans-mitted, evidenced notions on the circulation of the blood that escaped theGreeks.47 Evaluation since has been more reticent, burdened with seriousuncertainty about the semantics. Medical historians were misled by a poortranslation of the principal papyrus, which is only a miscellaneous compilationfrom an extinct text. Few medical writings even survive, so that there is the fur-ther problem of projecting from only partial evidence.48 Moreover, the texts arenot scientifically medical but indiscriminately mix in religion and magic.49

Two theoretical treatises comprise in modern terms physiology and path-ology: a book on the vessels of the heart in the Ebers Papyrus, with a fragmentin the Edwin Smith Papyrus, and a book on diseases of the heart in the EbersPapyrus, copied with errors in the Berlin Papyrus. In the history of medicine,they represent nothing less than a first attempt to explain the phenomenon oflife in health and disease, not mythologically but in terms of a speculative phi-losophy of nature.50 Their common conception was that the human body con-


46 Richard Caton, The Harveian Oration: Delivered before the Royal College of Physicians onJune 21, 1904 (London: C. J. Clay and Sons, 1904), 3, 11.

47 Ghalioungui, Magic and Medical Science, 47.48 Nunn, Ancient Egyptian Medicine, 6, 23, with discussion of the medical papyri on pp. 24-

41. For the Ebers Papyrus as a miscellany, see Dawson, Egyptian Medical Papyri, 101; Ghalioun-gui, Magic and Medical Science, 45. For a facsimile with an introduction by Georg Ebers, seePapyrus Ebers: Das hermetische Bch ber die rtzeneimittel der alten gypter in hieratischerSchrift (ed. Ebers with Ludwig Stern; 2 vols.; Leipzig, 1875); and for a transcript of the hieratic textinto hieroglyphics, see Walter Wreszinski, Das Papyrus Ebers, 1 Teil, Umschrift (Die Medizin deralten Agypter 3; Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1913). The original German translation, Papyrus Ebers: Daslteste Buch ber Heilkunde (ed. H. Joachim; Berlin, 1890), has been criticized by Dawson (Egyp-tian Medical Papyri, 9899). He also criticizes (p. 100) the English translation by B. Ebbell, ThePapyrus Ebers: The Greatest Egyptian Medical Document (Copenhagen: Levin & Munksgaard,1937), as does Nunn (Ancient Egyptian Medicine, 30). According to Nunn, there is a definitivetranslation into German in vol. IV/1 of Grundriss, 31. There is also an English translation byGhalioungui: The Ebers Papyrus (Cairo: Academy of Scientific Research and Technology, 1987).Although copies are scarce, there is one in the Library of Congress. Ghalioungui also complainsabout the importance and precision of the anatomical knowledge having been vastly exaggeratedby some commentators (Magic and Medical Science, 69). There is now a translation into Frenchby Bardinet: Papyrus mdicaux, 251-73.

49 For the phenomenon and problem, see recently Robert K. Ritner, The Mechanics ofAncient Egyptian Medical Practice (Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 54; Chicago: OrientalInstitute of the University of Chicago, 1993), 428.

50 Henry E. Sigerist, A History of Medicine, vol. 1: Primitive and Archaic Medicine (2 vols.;Historical Library, Yale Medical Library 27; New York: Oxford University Press, 1951), 1:268, 304,349, 313. The sources are The Physicians Secret Knowledge of the Hearts Movements andKnowledge of the Heart, in Ebers Papyrus 99, 112; 100, 214, and Smith Papyrus, 1, 68; andThe Collection of the Expelling of the Wehedu, in Ebers 103, 118 and Berlin Papyrus 16364a

tained a vascular system, like the Nile network of irrigation canals. It issuedfrom the heart, connected with all other bodily parts, and united in the anus.These vessels (mwtw) were undifferentiated in function among arteries, veins,ducts, tendons, muscles, and, perhaps, nerves. Moreover, they transported avaried content of air, blood, mucus, urine, tears, semen, solid matters such asfeces, and spirits good and evil. 51 The most current research concludes, It willbe clear that the vessel book, while containing glimpses of anatomical reality,does not provide any basis for believing that the ancient Egyptians had anyclear concept of the circulatory system, distributing blood to all parts of thebody.52 Moreover, a medical history reminds that, although the vessels joinedat the heart, so did they join at the anus. Fecal matter, the rot (wh dw) thatwas the principal pathogenic agent, absorbed into the vessels and traveledthrough the network into the heart, causing decay and disease.53

Beyond the paucity of medical literature, no equipment survives.54 Surgerywas practiced in the Old Kingdom, probably as a rational science and skilledart, but it declined so severely that it survived merely as a tradition, in veryminor procedures. The brief and sometimes misleading references in thepapyri render any knowledge incomplete: operations are mentioned but with-out techniques. Examination of mummies has shown no sign of surgery, exceptfor circumcision. There were serious proscriptions against injury to bodies,even by embalmers.55 Dissection was not practiced until the Hellenistic period,when Herophilus broke the taboos against defilement of the dead and experi-mented with vivisection on criminals. But he did not recognize the circulationof blood,56 although his contemporary, Erasistratus, who described the human


(The Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus [ed. J. H. Breasted; Chicago: University of Chicago Press,1930]; Der grosse medizinische Papyrus des Berliner Museums [ed. Walter Wreszinski; Medizinder alten Aegypter 1; Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1909]). For errors in the Berlin copy, see Ghalioungui,Magic and Medical Science, 47.

51 Nunn, Ancient Egyptian Medicine, 4445, 4849, 55; Ghalioungui, Magic and MedicalScience, 69; Sigerist, History of Medicine, 1:34951, 355. Arguing against the translations liga-ment or muscle is Bardinet (Papyrus mdicaux, 6368). Sigerists analogy with the Nile (p. 349)is repeated by Eugen Strouhal (Life in Ancient Egypt [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1992], 245).

52 Nunn, Ancient Egyptian Medicine, 49. The concept of circulation was still beyond theEgyptians knowledge, since they did not distinguish between arteries and veins, nor appreciatethat the blood returned to the heart (Strouhal, Life in Ancient Egypt, 245).

53 Heinrich von Staden, Herophilus: The Art of Medicine in Early Alexandria (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1989), 1012. For wehedu, see recently Bardinet, Papyrus mdicaux,12838.

54 Nunn, Ancient Egyptian Medicine, 163.55 J. Thompson Rowling, The Rise and Decline of Surgery in Dynastic Egypt, Antiquity 63

(1989): 31219.56 Von Staden, Herophilus; Nunn, Ancient Egyptian Medicine, 42, 207.

tricuspid and mitral valves, approximated Harveys discovery. Their successorsstudied the pulse but abandoned dissection.57 Its practice was resumed only inthe Italian Renaissance.58 The resultant lack of empirical knowledge throughobservation so seriously retarded anatomy and physiology that the principalcardiac function, the circulation of the blood, was undiscovered until the seven-teenth century. There was no cardiology in antiquity that Hebrew authorscould have employed to describe or even imply a medical cause of Nabalsdeath. Abigail could not have detected or diagnosed his bad heart as patho-logical.

The major sources for human anatomical knowledge in ancient Egyptwere the observation of the casualties of battle and of serious industrial acci-dents and the practice of embalming the visceral organs through a small inci-sion in the abdomen.59 Yet mummification has been dismissed by a medicalhistorian, because of the rough extraction of the organs.60 A physical anthropol-ogist has confirmed that the embalming procedure had nothing in commonwith medical autopsies for anatomical knowledge. Egyptian physicians usedtexts, in which the human internal organs were described analogously to animalones.61 In either case, embalming was of slight importance for cardiac knowl-edge because the heart was always left in place, attached to its major vessels.This integrity was believed essential to the survival of the deceased in thenetherworld. If the heart was severed or injured accidentally, it was reposi-tioned in the thoracic cavity, either left free or attached by a ligature. The heartwas never wrapped with the other viscera and stored in canopic jars. Therewere important mortuary spells preserved in the Book of the Dead against itsremoval or for its restoration.62

57 Nunn, Ancient Egyptian Medicine, 2078, 42.58 For an introduction to this important fact, see Giovanna Ferrari, Public Anatomy Lessons

and the Carnival: The Anatomy Theatre of Bologna, trans. Chris Woodall, Past and Present 117(1987): 50106; Katherine Park, The Criminal and Saintly Body: Autopsy and Dissection inRenaissance Italy, Renaissance Quarterly 47 (1994): 133.

59 Rowling, Surgery in Dynastic Egypt, 43.60 Sigerist, History of Medicine, 1:353-54.61 Strouhal, Life in Ancient Egypt, 24344.62 G. Elliott Smith and Warren R. Dawson, Egyptian Mummies (London: George Allen &

Unwin, 1924), 145, 149; Ghalioungui, Magic and Medical Science, 157; Carol Andrews, Amulets ofAncient Egypt (London: British Museum for the Trustees of the British Museum, 1994), 72. Mum-mification removed the heart from the body in the most ancient practice, as testified by texts on theheart scarabs and by preventive spells 27 and 28 in the Book of the Dead, according to J. Zandee,Death as an Enemy: According to Ancient Egyptian Conceptions (SHR 5; Leiden: Brill, 1960),15455, 174, 176. This opinion is repeated by Nunn, Ancient Egyptian Medicine, 65. However,there are numerous references to the punishment of sinners as the heart being cut or torn out, tor-tured, cooked, and devoured (Zandee, Death, 14246, 149, 155, 15760, 181; Erik Hornung,Black Holes Viewed from Within: Hell in Ancient Egyptian Thought, Diogenes 42 [1994]: 137,

410 Journal of Biblical Literature

Although the Egyptians knew from taking the pulse the relation betweenthe heartbeat and the peripheral pulse, the sounding of the heart resulted fromair, not blood, in the vessels. The Egyptians were not prescient before Harvey.The whole concept of a circulatory system was unknown. Moreover, they didnot know the cause of heart failure. The phrase the heart weakens meant onlythat it did not speak, as detectable in place or in the pulses, or that the vessels,usually filled with air, were silent.63 Sources for knowledge of disease werehuman remainsnot only mummies but also bodies desiccated by burial in thesandrepresentations, and the medical papyri. Although there are also glosseson terms for pathological states of heart, the text or texts they gloss are lost, sothat interpretation is difficult. The glosses list remedies without any referenceto the pathology involved. The ancient Egyptians could not have known that incongestive cardiac failure the heart was dilated with blood.64 Beyond glossesand texts, mummies do evidence arteriosclerosis,65 but only to modern paleon-tologists and paleopathologists using radiology, not to ancient physicians wield-ing knives. Even grave robbers seeking the precious amulets among themummies wraps would have discovered no medical models. The famous heart


13839, 145). The spells for the preservation of the heart are frequently discussed; see, e.g., Alan B.Lloyd, Psychology and Society in the Ancient Egyptian Cult of the Dead, in Religion and Philoso-phy in Ancient Egypt (ed. William Kelly Simpson; Yale Egyptological Studies 3; New Haven: YaleUniversity Press, 1989), 128; Andrews, Amulets, 72; Zandee, Death, 20, 33, 175. For the weighingof the heart in the funerary ritual, see Jan Assmann, Mat: Gerechtigkeit und Unsterblichkeit imAlten gypten (Munich: Beck, 1990), with the weighing of the heart on pp. 12425, 13236; idem,Death and Initiation in the Funerary Religion of Ancient Egypt, in Religion and Philosophy, ed.Simpson, 13559; S. G. F. Brandon, The Judgement of the Dead: An Historical and ComparativeStudy of the Idea of Post-Mortem Judgement in the Major Religions (London: Weidenfeld & Nicol-son, 1967), 648, with weighing on pp. 2841; Jean Yoyotte, Le jugement des morts dans lEgypteancienne, in Le jugement des morts (Sources orientales 4; Paris: Seuil, 1961), 15-80, with weighingon pp. 3650; Hermann Kees, Totenglauben und Jenseitsvorstellungen der alten gypten: Grund-lagen und Entwicklung bis zum Ende des Mittleren Reiches (2d ed.; Berlin: Akademie, 1956), withweighing on pp. 5455; Piankoff, Coeur, 5472, 78, 8083; and for the iconography of the scales,see Christine Seeber, Untersuchungen zur Darstellung des Totengerichts im alten gypten(Mnchner gyptologische Studien 35; Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1976), 6783. The judg-ment of the dead is frequently surveyed; see, e.g., S. G. J. Quirke, Ancient Egyptian Religion (Lon-don: British Museum Press, 1992), 6667. For a nonfunerary text on weighing and justice, see R. B.Parkinson, Literary Form and the Tale of the Eloquent Peasant, JEA 78 (1992): 16378.

63 Sigerist, History of Medicine, 1:349; Nunn, Ancient Egyptian Medicine, 49, 55, 133, 113,5556, 95. For the weakness of the heart as probably heart disease causing edema, see Ghalioun-gui, Magic and Medical Science, 51.

64 Nunn, Ancient Egyptian Medicine, 64, 86, 87. Note the possible observation of ischaemicheart disease.

65 George J. Armelagos and James O. Mills, Palaeopathology as Science: The Contributionof Egyptology, in Biological Anthropology and the Study of Ancient Egypt (ed. W. Vivian Daviesand Roxie Walker; London: British Museum, 1993), 118.

scarabs, with naturalistic markings reminiscent of blood vessels, were designedafter an animal, probably a bull, as known from butchery and as presented tothe corpse during the funerary ritual.66

The Hebrews allowed the embalming of their patriarchs Jacob and Joseph(Gen 50:23, 26)67 but did not themselves practice it. It was only in the eigh-teenth century C.E. that, upon that biblical precedent, Judaic law allowedautopsy, as a practical question of halakah.68 In sum, concerning the cardiacknowledge in the Ebers Papyrus, which dates from the Israelite sojourn inEgypt, a basic medical history still seems judicious: It is uncertain as to howmuch the Jews learned therefrom. Considering their humble status as shep-herds, then day laborers, one cannot assume that direct borrowing of Egyptianlearning by the Jews occurred.69 Even if the Egyptians shared the importanceof the heart with the exiled Hebrews, its importance was not anatomical andphysiological. To the Egyptians the heart was the most essential of organs, notbecause it pumped blood around the bodyit is unclear that they understoodthis functionbut because they believed it was the seat of intelligence, theoriginator of all feelings and actions, and the storehouse of memory.70

III. The Biblical Text

A scriptural dependence on Egyptian anatomical and physiological knowl-edge of the heart is thus denied by modern history of medicine. Yet mere denialof a Hebraic knowledge of the heart will not serve learning any better than has


66 See Andrews, Amulets, 72, also 5658 and figs. 16b, 56, 61, 66b and k, 69, 100c. For the rit-ual, see recently Ann Macy Roth, The ps-kf and the Opening of the Mouth Ceremony: A Ritualof Birth and Rebirth, JEA 78 (1992): 11347.

67 A lay physician was apparently requested to avoid violation of his body by a heathen priest.Ghalioungui, The Physicians of Pharaonic Egypt (Cairo: Al-Ahram Center for Scientific Transla-tions, 1983), 6.

68 Louis Isaac Rabinowitz, Autopsies and Dissection, EncJud 3:93132.69 Preuss, Biblical and Talmudic Medicine, 18, 5.70 Andrews, Amulets, 72. Although there are very many discussions of the importance of the

heart, this one is cited as historically plausible. Egyptologists, like biblical exegetes, tend to imposeanachronistically a Greek facultative psychology and Augustines later concept of the will. The basicreliable reference is Piankoff, Coeur; see also Jan Assmann, Zur Geschichte des Herzens imalten gypten, in Die Erfindung des inneren Menschen: Studien zur religisen Anthropologie (ed.Jan Assmann and T. Sundermeier; Studien zum Verstehen fremder Religionen 6; Gtersloh:Mohn, 1993), 81113; Hellmut Brunner, Das Herz im gyptischen Glaubens, in Das hrendeHerz: kleine Schriften zur Religions- und Geistesgeschichte gypten (ed. Wolfgang Rllig; OBO 80;Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1988), 841, rpt. from idem, Das Herz im Umkreis desGlaubens (Biberach: Karl Thomae, 1965), 81106; Hans Bonnet, Reallexikon der gyptischen Reli-gionsgeschichte (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1952), 29697.

its sheer assertion. There needs to be an exegetical demonstration that theproof text states no medical fact, by proposing a clear and cogent alternativeand thus razing the foundation for a precocious cardiac knowledge. Since thereis no extant medical text in ancient Hebrew71 to apply to Nabals case, the Biblemust suffice to interpret itself. Although the issue of the physical heart is gener-ally mistaken, there is excellent biblical research on other subjects, especiallyphilology and law, to apply to its resolution. To begin, then, a foolish tale (1 Sam25:138):

This initial story in the ascent of David to the monarchy impels him into the wilderness,where he hears of a prosperous rancher who is shearing his three thousand sheep. Thename of this man is Nabal, meaning churlish and ill-behaved (v. 3). Because Davidsmen have guarded Nabals shepherds and flock without harm or raid, on a feast dayDavid dispatches some with orders to greet Nabal peaceably and to request recom-pense. But Nabal rebuffs Davids band, railing at the injustice of sharing the food for hisshearers with strangers. At this report David girds his sword in umbrage at evil returnedfor good and contemptuously swears retribution against all males of that household. Awitness tells Abigail, the understanding wife of Nabal, about the confrontation and itsportending evil. He urges her discretion, since Nabal is so ill-natured that one cannotspeak to him (v. 17). Abigail hastily loads asses with gifts of provisions and she sets offwithout telling her husbandto meet the army of four hundred men and David. Pros-trate before him, she pleads for the security of the household. Let not my lord regardthis ill-natured fellow, Nabal; for as his name is, so is he; Nabal is his name, and folly iswith him (v. 25). She argues against vengeance and bloodguilt, upon her prediction ofthe divine appointment of David to become prince over Israel. So David blesses her andgrants her petition. When Abigail returns home, Nabal is feasting like a king with amerry heart, for he is quite drunk; so she keeps still. And in the morning, when thewine had gone out of Nabal, his wife told him these things, and his heart died withinhim, and he became as a stone. And about ten days later the Lord smote Nabal; and hedied (vv. 36b38). David praises God for avenging Nabals insult while restraining hisown hand from evil. And he weds Abigail.72


71 Preuss, Biblical and Talmudic Medicine, 4; Muntner, Medicine in the Bible, col. 1178.72 For general interpretation, see Caquot and Robert, Livres de Samuel, 30414; Robert

Polzin, Samuel and the Deuteronomist: A Literary Study of the Deuteronomic History, Part 2,1 Samuel (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), 21012; Robinson, Like the Nations,13236; Ulrich Berges, Die Verwerfung Sauls: Eine thematische Untersuchung (FB 61; Wrzburg:Echter, 1989), 15358; Peter D. Miscall, 1 Samuel: A Literary Reading (Bloomington: IndianaUniversity Press, 1986), 14958; Fokkelman, Crossing Fates, 474528; Moshe Garsiel, The FirstBook of Samuel: A Literary Study of Comparative Structures, Analogies, and Parallels (Ramat-Gan, Israel: Revivim, 1985), 12223; David M. Gunn, The Fate of King Saul: An Interpretation of aBiblical Story (JSOTSup14; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1980), 96102; P. Kyle McCarter, Jr., 1 Samuel:A New Translation with Introduction, Notes, and Commentary (AB 8; Garden City, NY: Double-day, 1980), 39698; Levenson, 1 Samuel 25, 1128; Jakob H. Gronback, Die Geschichte vom Auf-steig Davids (1. Sam. 152. Sam. 5): Tradition und Komposition (ATDan 10; Copenhagen:Munksgaard, 1971), 17080; Ackroyd, First Samuel, 195200.

The protagonist David has usually been identified as a fugitive demandingprotection money,73 so that God unjustly blesses an extortionist. God avertsDavids retributive bloodguilt against a legitimate property owner, Nabal, whois merely defending his rights. Then God personally strikes this innocent victimdead and awards David his shrewd widow in marriage, toward the acquisitionof Judah and eventually Israel. Davids malice against Nabalfrightening aman to death and stealing his wifeis a premonition of his more notoriousrapacity, when he slays Uriah, husband of Bathsheba.74

Yet there were ancient laws operative in this tale, laws whose transgressionhad profounder consequences than a heart attack. Even proverbially, the end ofa fool was death (Prov 10:21; cf. 15:10), and for a fool to die in calamity was nosurprise ending. Blessed is the man who fears the Lord always; but he whohardens his heart will fall into calamity (28:14).75 Whether Nabal was a typicalor an actual name, its meaning was fool in the severe sense of churl.76 Thisimplied more than the ill-natured or ill-behaved fool of the textual puns onNabal (1 Sam 25:3, 15). Fools were defective, morally and mentally, like thelysiK], who was glib and incorrigible, or the r['B', who was stupid and boorish.


73 See Steven McKenzie, who compares him to a mafioso (King David, 97); Gunn, Fate ofKing Saul, 9798, 102; Ackroyd, First Samuel, 195; Barr, who calls him something more like agangster (Symbolism of Names, 22); Smith, Commentary, 222. Alter is uncertain about thismeaning (David Story, 153 n. 7), and the protection racket is rejected by Yairah Amit, The Gloryof Israel Does Not Deceive or Change His Mind: On the Reliability of Narrator and Speakers inBiblical Narrative, trans. Judith Krausz, Proof 12 (1992): 205, 206.

74 Levenson, 1 Samuel 25, 12, 23.75 For this hardening as stubbornness and refusal to listen, with reference to Exod 7:3 and Ps

95:8, see R. N. Whybray, Proverbs (London: Harper Collins, 1994), 393.76 E.g., Ackroyd, First Samuel, 197. The word was used especially to denote no perception

of ethical and religious claims, and with the collateral idea of ignoble, disgraceful (McCarter,1 Samuel, 396). Also, the word in Hebrew suggested one who was insensible to the claims of eitherGod or man, and who was consequently at once irreligious and churlish (Samuel R. Driver, Noteson the Hebrew Text and the Topography of the Books of Samuel [2d ed. rev.; Oxford: Clarendon,1913], 200). It is thus inadequately said by Hans Wilhelm Hertzberg to connote silly, simpleton(I and II Samuel: A Commentary [trans. J. S. Bowden; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1964], 202).Even the interpretation that it designates not a harmless simpleton, but rather a vicious, material-istic, and egocentric misfit is weak (Levenson, 1 Samuel 25, 13). For background, see J. Marbok,nabal, TWAT 5:17185; Johann Jacob Stamm, Der Name Nabal, in Beitrge zur hebrischenund altorientalischen Namenkunde (ed. E. Jenni and M. A. Klopfenstein; OBO 30; Freiburg: Uni-versittsverlag, 1980), 20513; Gillis Gerleman, Der Nicht-Mensch: Erwgungen zur hebrischenWurzel NBL, VT 24 (1974): 14758; Trevor Donald, The Semantic Field of Folly in Proverbs,Job, Psalms, and Ecclesiastes, VT 13 (1963): 28592. According to Levenson and Baruch Halpern,the name Nabal is typical, his true name is Yeter (1 Chr 2:7; cf. Yitra, 2 Sam 17:25) (The PoliticalImport of Davids Marriages, JBL 99 [1980]: 50718); Garsiel, First Samuel, 127. The name isconsidered true, although rare, by Caquot and Robert (Livres de Samuel, 307), who indicate Punicand north Arabic sources, as does Barr (Symbolism of Names, 25).

The fool as lb;n: (nabal) was gravely defective: he acted in serious guilt with com-munal consequences.77 The root lbn (nbl) denoted the phenomenon of death,for a human corpse before burial or for an animal that was ritually unclean. Theverb also denoted the withering of plants. The notion of hl;ben (ne be l) wasextinction, whether of human, animal, or vegetable life. The noun hl;b;n (nebal)involved sacrilege, so that the fool was an outcast.78

Traditionally the epithet fool as lb;n: (nabal) was deplorable, euphemisticfor serious sin. The fool committed extremely disorderly and unruly acts, hl;b;n(ne ba l) that endangered or destroyed social relationships, whether tribal,familial, marital, commercial, or religious. The ancient examples concerned thebreach of customary law by sexual assault. The rape of Dinah (Gen 34:7) vio-lated the prohibition of marriage within kin; the rape of Tamar (2 Sam 13:12),the prohibition of sexual relations with women under the same familial roof;while the rape of the Levites concubine (Judg 19:23; 20:6, 10) violated hospi-tality. Achans covetous looting of the spoil of battle, which was subject to theban, violated the customary law of holy war (Josh 7:15). When he admitted histransgression, he was stoned (vv. 2526). Because of its gravity the word hl;b;n(nebal) was rare. Yet it was pronounced of Nabals typical behavior. As Abigailimplored David, Let not my lord regard this ill-natured fellow, Nabal; for ashis name is, so is he; Nabal is his name, and folly (hl;b;n, ne ba l) is with him(1 Sam 25:25). Nabals refusal of sustenance to Davids men was indeed suchfolly. It violated the customary entitlement to tribute for protection, whichNabals own herdsmen recognized that Davids men deserved. Davids oath ofretributive massacre was thus consequent on Nabals denial of his customaryright. Since for breach of customary law there was no means of satisfactionthrough the courts, direct action by the injured party was inevitable.79

The encounter between David and Nabal was in context legal, as signaledby the very word of greeting the band was ordered to use. As David instructed,And thus you shall salute him: Peace (!/lv;, alm), be to you, and peace be toyour house, and peace be to all that you have (1 Sam 25:6). Although !/lv; is,perhaps, the most familiar Hebrew greeting, its root meaning is payment,retribution.80 The phrase to ask the !/lv; of someone was a customary per-sonal greeting, but it rarely occurs as such in scripture. There it is usually a for-mula of diplomatic negotiations. Since Nabals shepherds had been cooperative


77 Robert A. Bennett, Wisdom Motifs in Psalm 14=53na ba l and >e sa h, BASOR 220(1975): 16.

78 Wolfgang M. W. Roth, NBL, VT 10 (1960): 394409. See also BDB, 61415.79 See Anthony Phillips, NEBALAHA Term for Serious Disorder and Unruly Conduct,

VT 25 (1975): 23741. For the parallels, see also Caquot and Robert, Livres de Samuel, 306; Roth,NBL, 4046; Bennett, Wisdom Motifs,16; Barr, Symbolism of Names, 25.

80 Gerleman, Die Wurzel lm, ZAW 85 (1973): 114.

allies protected by Davids men, David through his delegation sought fromNabal a favorable response to be tokened by some gift. Their salutation !/lv;invited Nabal into a pact with David. Nabals rebuff, Who is David? (v. 10),did not profess ignorance of their masters identity; rather, it served as a formalrejection of their negotiation. David later accepted Abigails gift with the phraseGo up in peace to your house; see, I have hearkened to your voice, and I havegranted your petition (v. 35). That was not a simple farewell. With !/lv; it con-cluded their successful negotiation, by the assurance that the desired relation-ship had been achieved. The word !/lv; uttered to Abigail the mediating wifesettled Davids dispute with Nabal and his household.81

Yet there were even graver issues in this tale than the customary law abouttariff for protection. In rebuking David, Nabal elaborated his reason for deny-ing the men food. There are many servants nowadays, he said, who arebreaking away from their masters. Although David has usually been inter-preted as a fugitive, separation from a master did not necessarily denote thatstatus. It included a debtor being released from his master. The laws governingthe release of slaves stipulated that the master was to provide them sufficientfood (Deut 15:1218). And when you let him go free from you, you shall notlet him go empty-handed; you shall furnish him liberally out of your flock, outof your threshing floor, and out of your wine press; as the Lord your God hasblessed you, you shall give to him (vv. 1314). The command to care for groupsmarginal to Israelite society was specifically motivated by remembrance of itsslavery in Egypt. The weak among them were not to suffer a repetition of thatinjustice. You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, andthe Lord your God redeemed you; therefore I command you this day (v. 15).82

Paralleling this law for the provision of emancipated slaves was the stipula-tion concerning sojourners. If there is among you a poor man, one of yourbrethren, in any of your towns within your land which the Lord your God givesyou, you shall not harden your heart or shut your hand against your poorbrother, but you shall open your hand to him, and lend him sufficient for hisneed, whatever it may be (Deut 15:7). That law compared the hard heart tothe tight fist. Since Yahweh loved the sojourner, giving him food and clothing,


81 Wiseman, Is it Peace? Covenant and Diplomacy, VT 32 (1982): 31718, 32324.82 For manumission, see Gregory G. Chirichigno, Debt Slavery in Israel and the Ancient

Near-East (JSOTSup 141; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993), 256301; Jeffries M. Hamilton, Social Jus-tice and Deuteronomy: The Case of Deuteronomy 15 (SBLDS 136; Atlanta: Scholars, 1992), 1924,8591; Christof Hardmeier, Die Errinerung an die Knechtschaft in gypten: Sozialanthropolo-gische Aspekte des Erinnerns in der hebrischen Bibel, in Was ist der Mensch? . . . Beitrge zurAnthropologie des Alten Testaments: Hans Walter Wolff zum 80. Geburtstag (ed. Frank Crse-mann et al.; Munich: Kaiser, 1992), 13352; see also Anthony Phillips, The Laws of Slavery: Exo-dus 21.211, JSOT 30 (1984): 5166.

so should the Israelites behave. Love the sojourner therefore; for you weresojourners in the land of Egypt (10:19). The sojourner was an intermediary instatus, between a foreigner and a native. He usually worked as a day laborer ora hired hand. Because he lived without property within a society that was nothis kin, its hospitality was essential to his sustenance and his safety. His eco-nomically tenuous and legally disadvantaged status was specially protectedunder that Deuteronomic law. Oppression of the sojourner was economic, suchas the failure to pay a hired servant, who was dependent on his wages, beforesundown. The consequence of that sin was the death of the oppressor, in spe-cific remembrance of the Lords redemption of the Israelites from slavery inEgypt (24:1418).83

Nabal, by reserving for his own shearers the food requested by Davidsdelegation, violated that law about providing for sojourners. His sin was com-pounded by transgression of the law of hospitality for the harvest festival (theoccasion of the sheep-shearing), which had a special code for donating to needyneighbors. Although it originated as a sacral-legal infraction that threatened thecommunity, the law of hospitality would extend under Davids monarchy to allperpetration of grave social-sacral crimes. Nabal sinned by inhospitality,84 aninhospitality that was wanton. (The rapes of Dinah, Tamar, and the Levitesconcubineall folly as hl;b;n (ne ba l)also violated hospitality.) His refusalreverted to his name, for the fool speaks folly, / and his mind plots iniquity: . . ./ to leave the craving of the hungry unsatisfied, / and to deprive the thirsty ofdrink (Isa 32:6).85

When Nabal shut his hand against David he initially hardened his heart, asDeuteronomic law had forbidden. You shall not harden your heart or shutyour hand against your poor brother (Deut 15:7). His immorality of crimeagainst the sojourner, compounded by inhospitality during the harvest festival,was contrasted with Abigails compliance with those laws in supplying provi-sions. Although by her successful negotiation she spared the household retribu-tive justice, Nabal himself did not escape punishment for his sin. Refusing achange of heart even after her action, his hardening of heart against Davidsolidified mortally. Precisely in response to his wifes report about her diplo-matic success, his heart died within him, and he became as a stone. And aboutten days later the Lord smote Nabal; and he died (1 Sam 25:3738).

That was no heart attack or paralytic stroke followed by a fatality. The fail-


83 See D. Kellermann, gr, TDOT 2:44345. The dependence of Samuel on Deuterono-mistic literature has been emphasized by Polzin (Samuel and the Deuteronomist), although deniedby Alter (David Story).

84 Bennett, Wisdom Motifs, 1617; and for the harvest festival, see Alter, David Story, 153n. 8; Smith, Commentary, 221; Hertzberg, Samuel, 202.

85 See Levenson, 1 Samuel 25, 1314.

ure of Nabals heart ultimately corresponded to the root meaning of his namelbn (nbl) as inanimation, whether human corpse, animal carcass, or witheredplant. Stone was basely inanimate. Nabal become stone meant what stonemeant of persons in every other example in the Hebrew Scriptures: obdurate.He refused to accept his wifes intervention in the dispute with David and theagreement she negotiated. Nabal experienced a moral failure of heart causingobstinacy against the law. For this disobedience, prolonged without repen-tance, the Lord struck him. The plot is a moral chain of failure and obstinacy, ofsin and unrepentance, for which obduracy he suffered divine wrath. That wasthe very consequence of violating the law against provision for sojourners.Every man shall be put to death for his own sin (Deut 24:16b).

The lesson is illustrative in the law and later in prophecy, where physicalconditions were appropriated for moral states. Stony hearts, hard hearts, werecompared with shut hands, hostile eyes, defiant shoulders, stiff necks, adamantforeheads, dull ears. The Deuteronomic legal collection, which paired the hardheart with the tight fist (Deut 15:7), paralleled them both with the hostile eye(v. 8).86 The hard heart, closed hand, and hostile eye of the legal code becamethe stony heart, dull ears, and defiant shoulder of prophetic speech. A stonyheartNabals conditionwas synonymous with a hard heart. The corporealcomparisons occurred in the prophet Zechariahs exhortation to judge withtrue justice and act with love and compassion toward one another. Do notoppress the widow and the orphan, the sojourner and the poor; and do notdevise evil in your hearts against one another (Zech 7:910). Those whorefused to heed the prophetic injunction of justice and love were characterizedthus: They set a defiant shoulder. Their ears they dulled from hearing; andthey made their hearts stony lest they hear the Torah and the words which Yah-weh of Hosts sent by his spirit through the earlier prophets (vv. 1112). Thishardness of heart was compared not to ordinary stone (@b,a,) but to adamant(rymiv;), much as stubborn hearts were compared in Ezek 3:79 to adamant fore-heads.87 Unrepentant faces were harder than rock in Jer 5:3 (cf. bronze andiron in 6:28). The stony heart, the hard heart, was not a passive sufferance butan active choice. They made their hearts stony (Zech 7:11). The people chose


86 Hamilton, Social Justice and Deuteronomy, 33. Blindness and deafness were also syn-onyms for injustice in Egyptian literature. See Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature: ABook of Readings, vol. 1, The Old and Middle Kingdoms (Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of Cali-fornia Press, 1973), 174.

87 Carol L. Meyers and Eric M. Meyers, Haggai, Zechariah 18: A New Translation withIntroduction and Commentary (AB 25B; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1987), 399402. See alsoDavid L. Petersen, who writes that the image is one of self-conscious manipulation of ones bodyto prevent response to Yahweh (Haggai and Zechariah 18: A Commentary [Philadelphia: West-minster, 1984], 28994, quotation from p. 292).

this so they would be unable to hear the law and the prophets (v. 12). Jeremiahalso paired not inclining the ear obediently to the covenant with a stubbornheart (11:8; cf. 5:23). Nabalright from the initial pun on his namewas char-acterized by the messenger to Abigail as such a man who would not listen. Heis so ill-natured (lbn, nbl) that one cannot speak to him (1 Sam 25:17). Nabalsrefusal to hear was triple: the request of Davids delegation, the plea of his ownshepherds about its justice, and Abigails report. He would not listen to anyone,especially her, about observance of the law. It was precisely in response to Abi-gails speech to him about her successful negotiation of the law that his heartfailed and became stony.

The prophet Jeremiah also pronounced on the stubborn and rebelliousheart of a people who did not reflect in their heart on the divine appointmentof the harvest and the rights of the needy. He compared their stubborn andrebellious heart to defiant shoulders. His oracle was of punishment, vengeance(Jer 5:23, 24, 2829). The stubborn shoulder was paired by Nehemiah with astiffened neck that refused to obey the law, which it cast behind its back (Neh9:29). In the historical literature a stiffened neck was further compared with ahard heart, concerning the evil king Zedekiah, who failed to humble himselfbefore the words of Jeremiah. He stiffened his neck and hardened his heartagainst turning to the Lord, the God of Israel (2 Chr 36:1113). His punish-ment was divine wrath by slaughter, then exile (v. 16; 17:1). The dulling of theears (cf. Isa 6:10) employed the verb dbk, used also of other bodily members todesignate the impairment of their normal function, such as the dimming of theeyes (Gen 48:10). It most famously denoted Yahwehs hardening of Pharaohsheart (Exod 8:15, 32; 9:34, 35; 10:1), when he would not heed the plea, Let mypeople go (10:3). The stony heart of the Israelite people paralleled Pharaohsheartstubborn, rebellious, defiant, dull, and failed.88 And that was the mean-ing of Nabals failure of heart and stony transformation: not a physical diseasebut an obstinate disobedience to the law. That hardness or stoniness of heartwas explicitly related to provision for the sojourner (Zech 7:9), as David waspetitioning Nabal. Who was David but a sojourner in the wilderness? Hardnessor stoniness of heart was also explicitly located during the harvest (Jer 5:2324),the occasion of Davids petition.


88 Meyers and Meyers, Haggai, Zechariah 18, 402. For Zedekiah, see Sara Japhet, I & IIChronicles: A Commentary (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1993), 106970. Cf. Nebuchad-nezzar, who exalted his heart and hardened his spirit to deal proudly with the people but wasdeposed (Dan 5:20). For the Israelites as a stiff-necked people, deserving of divine wrath, see alsoExod 32:9; 33:3, 5; 2 Chr 30:9. For the stiffened neck of Neh 9:16 in chiasmus with the law castbehind the back in v. 26, see Loren F. Bliese, Chiastic Structures, Peaks, and Cohesion inNehemiah 9.637, BT 39 (1988): 210. For the stubborn shoulder and the image of an animal stiff-ening muscle to refuse the yoke, see Joyce G. Baldwin, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi: An Introduc-tion and Commentary (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1972), 147.

The hardening of Pharaohs heart against the exodus typified moral obsti-nacy.89 Yahwehs order to liberate the Hebrews paralleled the Deuteronomiclaw on the release of slaves: Pharaoh was to behave as a decent master, withgenerosity to his departing slaves.90 Although the history of exegesis since theProtestant Reformation has been preoccupied with the theological problem ofGod as the author of this hardening, divinely predestining Pharaoh to evil,91 thefocus of the biblical texts is not theodicean. At issue is Pharaohs resistance, notwhether God or Pharaoh hardened the heart. The traditions differ; so does thephilology, with both dbeK; (Yahwist) and qz:j; (Priestly usually and Elohist)employed. The plagues function as signs to Pharaoh of Yahwehs power; hishardening resists knowledge and recognition of Yahwehs rivalry to his royalpower. There is a parallelism between Yahweh hardening Pharaoh and Pharaohnot hearkening (7:34; 11:9; 7:13, 22; 8:11, 15; 9:12). In the Yahwist andPriestly traditions the terminology of hardening is functional, not metaphysicalor psychological. Hardness in the Yahwist account obstructs the signs frommanifesting a knowledge of Yahwehs power; in the Priestly it causes the multi-plication of these signs as a judgment. Hardness denotes resistance to the effec-tive achievement of the signs. Despite the repetition of this theme twenty timesin Exodus, the single explicit mention of this phenomenon in the remainder ofthe Hebrew Scriptures is in 1 Sam 6:6, the very book with the tale of Nabal.There the Philistines, plagued by the presence of the ark of the covenant,


89 E.g., Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., Toward Old Testament Ethics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,1983), 255; James Plasteras, The God of Exodus: The Theology of the Exodus Narratives (Milwau-kee: Bruce, 1966), 134. The Egyptian ritual of weighing the heart of the dead in the scales of thegoddess Maat has been proposed as the origin of the biblical hardening of Pharaohs heart againstthe exodus; see Sarah Ben Reuben, And He Hardened the Heart of Pharaoh, Beth Mikra 29(1984): 11218. However, the Egyptian concept is not hardness but heaviness. For the ritual, seeReubens n. 60. For the argument that the Egyptian and Hebraic concepts of justice differ, see alsoAssmann, State and Religion in the New Kingdom, in Religion and Philosophy, ed. Simpson, 60,82; for comparison of Israelite wisdom and the Egyptian concept of Maat, see Gerhard von Rad,Wisdom in Israel (London: SCM, 1972), 7273; R. B. Y. Scott, The Way of Wisdom in the Old Tes-tament (New York: Macmillan, 1971), 26. For the hardening of Pharaohs heart as ironic allusion tothe pharaonic epithet strong of heart, see Alviero Niccacci, Yahweh e il Faraone: Teologia bibli-cal ed egiziana a confronto, BN 3839 (1987): 85102.

90 See David Daube, The Exodus Pattern in the Bible (London: Faber & Faber, 1963),5053.

91 For an introduction to this extensive topic, see Alfred Hermann, Das steinharte Herz: ZurGeschichte einer Metapher, JAC 4 (1961): 7787; Heikki Risnen, The Idea of Divine Harden-ing: A Comparative Study of the Notion of Divine Hardening, Leading Astray, and Inciting to Evilin the Bible and the Quran (Publications of the Finnish Exegetical Society 25; Helsinki: FinnishExegetical Society, 1972), 4566; for a sample of the discussion, see Gregory K. Beale, An Exeget-ical and Theological Consideration of the Hardening of Pharoahs Heart in Exodus 414 andRomans 9, TJ 5 (1984): 12954.

refuse to learn from the divine signs whether they are manifested by Yahwehspower or by chance (v. 9).92

The hardness of Pharaohs heart is dysfunctional. The verb dbk in its Yah-wist tradition emphasizes its failure. It denotes the weight, especially the heavi-ness, of bodily parts. It is also a term of psychic qualities, not as a literalmodification of the basic physical meaning but as an assertion of a new mean-ing. It thus applies also to human activity, such as war and work; to conditionssuch as hunger; further, to sin; and collectively to people.93 This verb is thesame dbk that the prophets employed to describe the failure of bodily mem-bers as metaphors for the popular resistance to the divine law: hard hearts, shuthands, hostile eyes, defiant shoulders, stiff necks, adamant foreheads, and dullears. In an egregious case this resistance is not deliberate. Yahweh commissionsthe prophet Isaiah to make the heart of this people fat [or dull], and their earsheavy, and shut their eyes, lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears,and understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed (Isa 6:910).94 Theclosest parallel to the severity of Isaiahs commission, which affirms the divinesovereignty and its claims to a singular faith, is the complaint of Moses. Heannounces to the Israelites that, although they have witnessed the divine signsagainst Pharaoh, the Lord has yet not granted them an understanding heart,seeing eyes, and hearing ears (Deut 29:24).95 Yet, whatever the agency, themeaning of hardness or stoniness of heart consistently remains obduracy.

The consequence of the hardening of Pharaohs heart was the punishmentat the Sea of Reeds, when the army he had ordered in pursuit of the Hebrewswas dramatically drowned. A simile for the event in the triumphal Song of theSea (Exod 15:118)96 prefigures Nabals stoniness. The Israelites praise their


92 Brevard S. Childs, The Book of Exodus: A Critical Theological Commentary (Philadelphia:Westminster, 1974), 17075. For the hardening as both redactional and theological, see Robert R.Wilson, The Hardening of Pharaohs Heart, CBQ 41 (1979): 1836; and for recent discussion, seeJohn Van Seters, The Life of Moses: The Yahwist as Historian in ExodusNumbers (Louisville:Westminster/John Knox, 1994), 8791, 1056, 1089; Sarna, Exploring Exodus, 64.

93 Wilhelm Caspari, Die Bedeutungen der Wortsippe kbd im Hebrischen (Leipzig:Deichert, 1908), 617, with a heavy heart, 910.

94 Edgar Kellenberger, Heil und Verstockung: Zu Jes 6, 9f. bei Jesaja und im Neuen Testa-ment, TZ 48 (1992): 26875; Beale, Isaiah vi 913: A Retributive Taunt against Idolatry, VT 41(1991): 25778; Craig A. Evans, To See and Not Perceive: Isaiah 6.910 in Early Jewish and Chris-tian Interpretation (JSOTSup 64; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1989), 1752, 81135; for analysis of theaudience and its reception, see Jean-Pierre Sonnet, Le motif de lendurcissement (Is 6, 910) et lalecture dIsae, Bib 73 (1992): 20839. The divine or prophetic causality of hardening recurs in theministry of Jesus (Matt 4:1112; 6:52; 8:17; John 12:40) and is elaborated in a Pauline epistle (Rom911).

95 Evans, To See and Not Perceive, 5051.96 For the state of research, see Mark L. Brenner, The Song of the Sea: Ex 15:121 (BZAW

warrior Lord for casting into the sea the army of Pharaoh: The floods coverthem; / they went down into the depths like a stone (v. 5). The simile of aweight marks the strophic divisions of the poemlike a stone (v. 5), likelead (v. 10), like a stone (v. 16)followed by a verse celebrating Yahwehspower.97 This ancient poem of destruction and deliverance specifies that theenemy was drowned not merely in the depths of the sea but more profoundly inthe cosmic sea beneath the earth. The phrase !y: ble, literally the heart of thesea, describes an upheaval from the hidden and unplumbed mass of primor-dial waterthe abyssonto the billows and swells of the surface.98 The latepenitential prayer that adapted Israelite history to cultic usage99 also recalledthe event: And thou didst cast their pursuers into the depths, as a stone intomighty waters (Neh 9:11b).

The event became a model for the destruction of enemies. The very Songof the Sea located the conquest of Canaan immediately after the crossing,allowing the Israelites to pass through the midst of the land as they had throughthe sea. Just as the Egyptians sank like stone, the inhabitants of Canaan weredestroyed by the same hardness: Terror and dread fall upon them; / because of


195; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1991), 318; for more recent interpretation, see Thomas B. Dozeman,God at War: Power in the Exodus Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 15359; S. E.Gillingham, The Poems and Psalms of the Hebrew Bible (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994),14345; Bernard Gosse, Le texte dExode 15, 121 dans la rdaction biblique, BZ 37 (1993): 26471; Lester L. Grabbe, Comparative Philology and Exodus 15,8: Did the Egyptians Die in aStorm? SJOT 7 (1993): 26369; J. Gerald Janzen, Song of Moses, Song of Miriam: Who Is Sec-onding Whom? CBQ 54 (1992): 21120; Michael S. Barr, My Strength and My Song in Exodus15:2, CBQ 54 (1992): 62337; and for the philology, see Mitchell Dahood, Nad To Hurl in Ex,15, 16, Bib 43 (1962): 24849.

97 Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Poetry (New York: Basic Books, 1985), 5152; rpt. asThe Song of the Sea, in Exodus (ed. Harold Bloom; New York: Chelsea House, 1987), 99103;Maribeth Howell, Exodus 15, 1b18: A Poetic Analysis, ETL 65 (1989): 1011; and for Exod 15 asa heuristic, see Ronald L. Giese, Jr., Strophic Hebrew Verse as Free Verse, JSOT 61 (1994):2938.

98 Al Wolters, Not Rescue but Destruction: Rereading Exodus 15:8, CBQ 52 (1990): 238.For the motif of sinking, see Alan J. Hauser, Two Songs of Victory: A Comparison of Exodus 15and Judges 5, in Directions in Biblical Hebrew Poetry (ed. Elaine R. Follis; JSOTSup 40;Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1987), 27071, 27779.

99 Stanislav Segert, History and Poetry: Poetic Patterns in Nehemiah 9:537, in Storia etradizioni di Israele: Scritti in onore di J. Alberto Soggin (ed. Daniele Garrone and Felice Israel;Brescia: Paideia, 1991), 25566; Waldemar Chrostowski, An Examination of Conscience by GodsPeople as Exemplified in Neh 9, 637, BZ 34 (1990): 25361; Joseph Blenkinsopp, Ezra-Nehemiah: A Commentary (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1988), 304; F. C. Fensham, Neh. 9 andPss. 105, 106, 135 and 136: Post-exilic Historical Traditions in Poetic Form, JNSL 9 (1981): 42;and for context, see Frederick C. Holmgren, Faithful Abraham and the aman Covenant:Nehemiah 9, 610, 1, ZAW 104 (1992): 24954; Gary A. Rendsburg, The Northern Origin ofNehemiah 9, Bib 72 (1991): 34866.

the greatness of thy arm, they are as / still as a stone, / till thy people, O Lord,pass by, / till thy people pass by whom thou has purchased (Exod 15:16).Jeremiah prophesied a parallel desolation of Babylon. When you finish read-ing this book, bind a stone to it, and cast it into the midst of the Euphrates, andsay, Thus shall Babylon sink, to rise no more, because of the evil that I ambringing upon her (Jer 51:63). Yet the Israelites themselves were enemies ofthe divine law by hardening their hearts to the needy. The direct consequenceof this obstinacy was that great wrath came from Yahweh of Hosts (Zech7:12). Similarly, the Lord smote Nabal; and he died (1 Sam 25:38). Hardnessof heart was erroneous and illegal. The Israelites were commanded to worshipGod by heeding his voice, as sheep did their shepherd (unlike Nabal overseeinghis flock not heeding David the shepherd). They were enjoined to harden notyour hearts, as had their ancestors in the wilderness. For God loathed them asa people who err in heart (Ps 95:611).

The original casting of the Egyptians into the sea to sink like a stone was anact of divine war. The deliverance of the Hebrews was military, as developed inthe tradition, especially in the context of Davids victory through Yahwehsintervention over his neighboring enemies.100 The Song of the Sea, climaxing inthe temple (Exod 15:17) echoed the later Davidic conquests.101 David hadbeen first to pick up a stone and cast it against an enemy, when he famouslyslew Goliath with a sling and a stone (1 Sam 17:50). Although the sling was aweapon commonly used by herders for protection of the flock against predatoryanimals, since prehistory it was also the principal weapon of long-range war-fare. With the missile easily attaining a speed in excess of 100 km/hr, even if itdid not penetrate armor, it could inflict a fatal internal injury.102 Davids volun-teering for the task had been an injunction against failure of heart, as in the mil-itary code (Deut 20:3). And David said to Saul, Let no mans heart fail becauseof him; your servant will go and fight with this Philistine (v. 31).

The Canaanites, when confronted with Yahwehs arm, the metonym for hismilitary might, had been seized with terror and dread. Yet fear is not conse-quently the meaning of their becoming like stone. The similitude of fear andstone, as in the common English usage to be petrified, is not an ancientHebraism. It occurs nowhere else in the Bible in this sense. Neither the Greek


100 Sa-Moon Kang, Divine War in the Old Testament and in the Ancient Near East (BZAW177; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1989), 11425; for war and lawsuit, especially Davids wars and Yahwehsinterventions in them, see pp. 193222.

101 Samuel E. Loewenstamm, The Evolution of the Exodus Tradition (trans. Baruch J.Schwartz ; Jerusalem: Magnes Press, Hebrew University, 1992), 259.

102 Manfred Korfmann, The Sling as a Weapon, Scientific American 229 (October 1973):3542; see recently Nikos Vutiropulos, The Sling in the Aegean Bronze Age, Antiquity 65 (June1991): 27986.

nor the Latin lexicon defines its paradigm petra as anything but a rock as anatural formation. Petrification in the English dictionary means the conver-sion into stone or stony substance, in pathology the formation of stone or cal-culus. Fear is very probably only a later derivation, inferred from the nature ofstone as inanimate, lifeless. Fear in modern usage may render a person para-lyzed, inactive and incapable of the movement that characterizes animatebeings. There is no entry in the Oxford English Dictionary for any such conno-tation before the eighteenth century, however. Indeed, the initial such citationunder petrified has an explicit biblical reference, rendering the argument cir-cular. James Weltons Suffering Son of God (1720) ejaculated, Melt the Petri-fied Obduracy of this Hardend Heart! Interpretation of the transformation ofthe Canaanites to stone as stunned into silent trembling . . . terrified . . . para-lyzed,103 as fear,104 imposes modern meaning.

The ancient transformation of the Canaanites to stone meant that Yah-wehs arm had defeated the enemy. It was related to the concept of the harden-ing of the heart. As the account of Joshuas conquest of their land said, For itwas the Lords doing to harden their hearts that they should come against Israelin battle, in order that they should be utterly destroyed, and should receive nomercy but be exterminated, as the Lord commanded Moses (Josh 11:20). Thepurpose of the defeat of the Canaanites was to allow the Israelites passagethrough the land, just as the defeat of the Egyptians become stone had allowedthe Israelites passage through the sea. Similarly the purpose of Nabals trans-formation to stone is to allow Davids passage through the land, ultimately bymarriage to Abigail.

Nabal has no retort to Abigails speech about her disobedient gifts to andnegotiations with David, which have rescued his household from retributivejustice. Nabal hardens his heart against her words unheedingly. In Abigailsprior speech to David she had predicted, The lives of your enemies he willsling out as from the hollow of a sling (1 Sam 25:29). The comparison of thisprediction with Nabals transformation to stone (v. 37) has only been slightlynoticed.105 Yet it has been well understood by one exegete that the true reasonfor Nabal himself becoming a stone is that in that form he fits in the hollow ofGods sling; God intends to fling away his life, into the fathomless depths, awayfrom David. It hardly follows, however, that in reaction to Abigails report he


103 See Loewenstamm, Exodus Tradition, 259. 104 Alter, Art of Biblical Poetry, 54.105 Miscall, 1 Samuel, 154; Polzin, Samuel and the Deuteronomist, 21112. Consider also that

the phrase to do good in Abigails prophecy of the Lord favoring David (1 Sam 25:3031) relatesto the making of covenant and associated obligations, so that the good here is the ascension ofDavid to the throne and the promise of a Davidic dynasty (Antonio Gonzlez Lamadrid, Apuntessobre tb/yb y su traduccin en las biblias modernas, EstBib 50 [1992]: 44356).

has a heart attack. She tells Nabal: heart attack, later Yahweh kills him.106Nabals petrification is obduracy to the law, a moral, not a physical, hardening ofthe heart. This renders him like stone, to be slung away by Yahweh as an enemy,as he had once hurled the Egyptians into the sea and petrified the Canaaniteson the land. Nabal becomes a stone in Yahwehs sling to be cast away fromDavids possession of the land and progress toward the monarchy.

Placement in Yahwehs sling dishonors the fool Nabal. Proverbially, tohonor a fool is to bind a stone in a sling. Like one who binds the stone in thesling is he who gives honor to a fool (Prov 26:8). The sense is the futility, evenabsurdity, of tying a stone in a sling, because the very purpose of a sling is torelease the stone and cast it out. With similar incongruity, because the fool isunteachable and incorrigible, reasonable speech is useless to persuade him.Like a brute animal he lacks understanding and responds only to coercion(v. 3).107 Nabal is flung away from the Rock that is metaphorical for God as asecure refuge, who is not passive but active in delivering people from adversity.God is specifically the rock of the heart that saves, in contrast to the flesh of theheart that fails (Ps 73:26). The title Rock parallels the divine names of Yah-weh, El, and Elohim, in the very books of Samuel: in Hannahs exultation thatthe poor and needy are raised to honor with princes (1 Sam 2:2) and in Davidssong of deliverance from his violent enemies (2 Sam 22:47 = Ps 18:47). Thissalvific encounter with God parallels in 1 Sam 2:2 the term rock with holy,in a concept that is emphasized in Deuteronomy, where moral and even cove-nantal terms express his unique justice and righteousness.108

Nabal as the essential fool has been cast from this Rock by acting true tohis name, by committing hl;b;n (ne ba l), the grievous antisocial sins. For thistransgression of the law, for refusing the sojourner David his rightful provisionsas protector and during the festivalfor his hard heart, tight fists, deaf earshe becomes like a stone to be destroyed by Yahwehs arm. David, by marriageto his law-abiding wife Abigail, passes safely into the inheritance of Nabals richland, just as his ancestors before him in Canaan had been delivered from theirenemies into prosperity.


106 Fokkelman, Crossing Fates, 521, 522.107 Whybray, Proverbs, 37273; Kenneth G. Holland, The Fool and the Wise in Dialogue,

in The Listening Heart (ed. Kenneth G. Holland et al.; JSOTSup 58; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1987),16180; Laurent Nor, Proverbes salomoniens et proverbes mossi: tude comparative partirdune nouvelle analyse de Pr 2529 (Publications universitaires Europennes 23-283; Frankfurt:Peter Lang, 1986), 4142, 4446; William McKane, Proverbs: A New Approach (London: SCM,1970), 34, 59596, 598; R. B. Y. Scott, Proverbs. Ecclesiastes (AB 18; Garden City, NY: Double-day, 1965), 159; C. H. Troy, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Prophets (Edin-burgh: T&T Clark, 1899), 47475. The fool of Prov 26:1, 311 is lysiK].

108 Michael P. Knowles, The Rock, His Work is Perfect: Unusual Imagery for God inDeuteronomy XXXII, VT 39 (1989): 30711.

The antithesis to a heart of stone is a heart of flesh, as in Ezekiels proph-ecy, A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and Iwill take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And Iwill put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be care-ful to observe my ordinances. You shall dwell in the land which I gave to yourfathers; and you shall be my people, and I will be your God (36:2628; cf.11:19). This antithesis of stone and flesh clarifies the context of Nabals death asnot medical but moral. A heart of flesh means obedience to the legal statutesand ordinances, which results in the possession of the ancestral land. The ora-cle culminates in the legal formula of covenant (v. 28).109 Obduracy is to be sup-planted by obedience.110 It is a needless recourse that the verse reflects theword heart as used of the physical organ which beats in the breast.111 And it


109 For general interpretation, see Stefan Ohnesorge, Jahweh gestaltet sein Volk neu: ZurSichtzer Zukunft Israels nach Ez 11, 1421; 20, 144; 36, 1638 (FB 64; Wrzburg: Echter, 1991),23141; Heinrich Gross, Der Mensch als neues Geschpf (Jer 31; Ez 36; Ps 51), in Der Weg zumMenschen: Zur philosophischen und theologischen Anthropologie: Fr Alfons Deissler (ed. RudolfMoses and Lothar Ruppert; Freiburg: Herder, 1989), 98109; M. E. Andrew, Responsibility andRestoration: The Course of the Book of Ezekiel (Dunedin, New Zealand: University of Otago Press,1985), 186; and for Ezek 11:19, see Solomon Freehof, Book of Ezekiel: A Commentary (New York:Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1978), 73.

110 Joseph Blenkinsopp, Ezekiel (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1990), 16768; Paul Joyce,Divine Initiative and Human Response in Ezekiel (JSOTSup 51; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1989), 109,111; Ralph W. Klein, Ezekiel: The Prophet and His Message (Columbia: University of South Car-olina Press, 1988), 46; Walther Zimmerli, A Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel, Chs.2548 (trans. James D. Martin; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979), 249; Keith W. Carley, The Book ofthe Prophet Ezekiel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), 71; Walther Eichrodt,Ezekiel: A Commentary (London: SCM, 1970), 500; John W. Wevers, Ezekiel (London: ThomasNelson & Sons, 1969), 9798; D. M. G. Stalker, Ezekiel: Introduction and Commentary (London:SCM, 1968), 116; Dubarle, Don dun coeur nouveau, 61; John Skinner, The Book of Ezekiel(London, 1895), 337; and for Ezek 11:19, see S. Fisch, Ezekiel: Hebrew Text and English Transla-tion with an Introduction and Commentary (London: Soncino, 1985), 61. The antithesis of thehardening of the heart, noting that the verbal roots are the same as the hardening of Pharaohsheart (Joyce, Initiative and Response, 60 n. 6). The heart which has still now been hard as stoneand has remained deaf to the call to obedience will become alive (Zimmerli, Commentary, 2:249).So callous by continual disobedience that they have become virtually petrified (Donald E.Gowan, Ezekiel [Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1985], 120). But again, the discussion of this conversionburdened with anachronistic philosophy: the human will (Eichrodt, 499); the moral will (Joyce,108, 109); the will (Carley, 71); person, the rational will (Gowan, 120); will (Zimmerli, ACommentary on the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel, Chs. 124 [trans. Ronald E. Clements; Philadel-phia: Fortress, 1979], 262); a new nature (Stalker, 25354). N.B. The new heart extended here tothe Israelites was originally granted to Saul (1 Sam 10:9). See Robert Koch, Il dono messianico delcuore nuovo (Ez 36, 2627), Studia moralia 26 (1988): 314; John B. Taylor, Ezekiel: An Introduc-tion and Commentary (London: Tyndale, 1969), 111; Dubarle, Don dun coeur nouveau, 61. ForNabal as another Saul, see Gordon, Davids Rise and Sauls Demise.

111 Joyce, Initiative and Response, 108.

is needless belief that although a heart transplant operation has become a real-ity only in very recent times, the imagery was known over twenty-five hundredyears ago.112 The same formula of covenant appears in the prophetic promisethat hearts will bear the inscribed law. I will put my law within them, and I willwrite it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people(Jer 31:33b).113 The novelty of this covenant is its inscription on the heart, incontrast to the commandments, which were written on tablets of stone114(Exod 33:2122; cf. 34:1, 4). It is needless again to interpret this as a surgicaloperatio

193833424 journal of biblical literature vol 120 no 3 fall 2001

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