God in Israel’s Bible:

Divinity between the World and Israel,

between the Old and the New

Mark S. Smith

New York University

I. Introduction:

A Few Reflections as a Catholic Biblical Scholar

This address takes up one piece in a subject of longtime concern to me,

namely God in Israel’s Bible. This is a topic that no matter where one is, it

involves. Before I turn to the specific study, I would like to address my own

involvement. The question for me is more than a question of location; it is

also about what inspires me as a Roman Catholic biblical scholar. In an

address delivered at a number of American universities in 2009,1 Walter

1This article is the presidential address delivered at the Seventy-fourth International Meeting of the Catholic Biblical Association of America, held at Assumption College, Worcester, Massachusetts, 6-9 August 2011.? The version of the talk given as one of the Newman lectures can be downloaded as a pdf: www.bfriars.ox.ac.uk/download_file.php?...timeliness_of_speaking_of_god. The lecture, as delivered at Emory on 9 March 2009, can be viewed on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_V7sk5P5MoA. Excerpts of the lecture as delivered at Yale on 26 March 2009 were published as Cardinal Walter Kasper, “The Timeliness of Speaking of God: Freedom and Communion as Basic Concepts of Theology,” Saint Thomas More: The Catholic Chapel & Center at Yale (Fall 2009) 2-3.

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Cardinal Kasper proclaimed: “It is time, it is the right time, to speak of God.”2

In September of last year,3 in the Apostolic Exhortation Verbum Domini

(which concluded the Episcopal Synod on the Bible), Benedict XVI refers to a

world that often feels that God is “superfluous or extraneous” (Introduction,

paragraph 2). He continues (Verbum Domini, paragraph 2): “There is no

greater priority than this: to enable the people of our time once more to

encounter God, the God who speaks to us and shares...love so that we might

have life in abundance.”

The question is how, for a Roman Catholic biblical scholar or for any of us

who is concerned religiously. Pius XII’s Encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu

(para. 35; see also paras. 36 and 40; note also Dei Verbum, para. 12)

recommended to Scripture scholars: “the interpreter must, as it were, go

back wholly in spirit to those remote centuries of the East and with the aid of

history, archaeology, ethnology, and other sciences, accurately determine

what modes of writing, so to speak, the authors of that ancient period would

be likely to use, and in fact did use.”4 To understand the canonical books of

the Bible, historical criticism is of critical importance for understanding its

languages, its cultures, its worlds of thought and experience. Divine Afflante

2 Cardinal Kasper (“The Timeliness of Speaking of God,” 3) also refers to the doctrine of the Trinity as having passed from “a period resembling the sleep of Sleeping Beauty” to a time now of having “regained actuality once more, in regard to historical research and systematic analysis alike.” Something similar might be said of Catholic study of the Scriptures.3 The text ends: “Given in Rome, at Saint Peter's, on 30 September, the Memorial of St. Jerome, in the year 2010, the sixth of my Pontificate.” It was released on Thursday, November 11, 2010.4 http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xii/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_30091943_divino-afflante-spiritu_en.html <accessed 22 April 2011>.

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Spiritu encourages these fields of historical criticism in order to understand

“the ancient writers, as well as their manner and art of reasoning, narrating

and writing.” In other words, a historical approach draws our attention to the

first witnesses to God. To hear them is the first task; and it is a task that

gives me joy, to hear across the centuries first words about God. In its

basics, our historical work is little different from Clifford Geertz’s description

of anthropology applied to the biblical past: “To discover who people think

they are, what they think they are doing, and to what end they think they

are doing it, it is necessary to gain a working familiarity with the frames of

meaning within which they enact their lives.”5

At the same time, the historical is not the entire task; it is not the end of

the matter. Insofar as historical criticism is part of the understanding of the

literal sense6 in our time, it belongs to a long line of tradition. At the same

time, the interpretations that the canonical makes on the historical remain

critically important. For me as a Roman Catholic, the canonical may not

have the last word, but as Vatican II’s Dei Verbum (para. 11) reminds me,

5 Geertz, “A Life of Learning” (Charles Homer Haskins Lecture for 1999; American Council of Learned Societies Occasional Paper 45; New York: American Council of Learned Societies, 1999) 14.6 For only one classic expression of the literal sense, see Summa Theologica, Prima Pars, first question, article 10 (STh. 1.1.10 ad 1am), here a sample: “in Holy Writ no confusion results, for all the senses are founded on one — the literal — from which alone can any argument be drawn, and not from those intended in allegory, as Augustine says (Epis. 48). Nevertheless, nothing of Holy scripture perishes on account of this, since nothing necessary to faith is contained under the spiritual sense which is not elsewhere put forward by the scripture in its literal sense.”

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the canonical provides a crucial word “for the sake of salvation.”7 To

emphasize the canonical without history may run a risk. Last year in a book

in which he expressed his own views as a private theologian, Joseph

Ratzinger/Benedict XVI stated the importance of the Bible’s “historical

character.”8 What Benedict calls “the historical hermeneutic”9 is

indispensable for Catholic biblical scholarship. Of course, there is nothing

wrong with scholars finding a non-historical focus more amenable,

interesting, or spiritually fulfilling; I often do. Still, the non-historical should

be kept in dialogue with the historical, as Benedict has suggested. As a

biblical scholar, it seems to me that emphasizing the canonical at the

expense of the historical is to run the risk of losing or misunderstanding the

Bible’s historical dimensions. As a Roman Catholic, it appears to me that to

emphasize the canonical without its historical rootedness is to undermine the

Incarnation, if not more broadly biblical revelation rooted in time.

7 Dei Verbum (para. 11): “Therefore, since everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit, it follows that the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully, and without error that truth which God wanted put into the sacred writings for the sake of salvation.” http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651118_dei-verbum_en.html <accessed 22 April 2011>.8 Joseph Ratzinger Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth. Part Two: Holy Week. From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection (translation provided by the Vatican Secretariat of State; San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2011) xiv. I want to thank Fr. Justin Taylor for suggesting that I turn to this work for guidance on this question.9 Benedict (Jesus of Nazareth, xv) explicitly aims for the combination of what he calls a “faith-hermeneutic” and “a history hermeneutic,” “so as to form a methodological whole.”

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In reference to historical criticism, Benedict XVI adds: “It is focused too

much on the past for it to make possible a personal relationship with

Jesus.”10 I agree: historical criticism is focused on the past; in the first

moment, it is not designed to produce a personal encounter with Jesus. Still,

while this is not its aim, historical criticism can assist in the path in a

personal journey toward God. This goal may well be inspired by fresh

encounters in the Word, and these have been aided in no small way by study

informed by historical criticism. Many members of this association have

inspired students through teaching and writing, informed by knowledge of

the languages and cultures of the Word. As Benedict XVI shows in his work,

historical criticism or at least its results need not be “inert” or “mute,”11 two

descriptors of historical criticism’s results pronounced by Brevard Childs. On

this score, Benedict seems to be taking a “both/and” approach rather than

an “either/or” approach, relative to what can arguably be found in some of

Childs’ otherwise magisterial discussions. With Benedict, it seems that the

results of historical research can serve in the task of speaking today. To my

mind, the results of historical criticism when properly considered can be

dynamic; and they can sing.

10 Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth, xvi-xvii.11 Cf.: “Although the historian of religion has every right to employ the term monotheism to the religion of Israel in contrast to polytheistic religions, the term itself is theologically inert and fails largely to register the basic features of God’s self revelation to Israel.” Childs, Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments: Theological Reflections on the Hebrew Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992) 355. According to Childs, the sociological approach “renders the uniquely biblical witness [to divine activity] mute” Childs, Old Testament Theology in a Canonical Context (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985) 25.

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Historical criticism is a scholarly approach, or more accurately, an ever

developing set of approaches rooted in an attention to the past.12 It is one

that Catholic scholars practice in concert with scholars of other faiths and

with scholars of no faith. Indeed, in learning with our Protestant and Jewish

colleagues, we Catholics have often been your students, and gratefully so.

Ours is a practice or a set of practices that allows an encounter refreshed by

the insights of those who read the Bible with the eyes of other religious

traditions or of no religious tradition. For the wellbeing of the life of faith,

Catholic students of the Scriptures, I think, need to be open to all sorts of

people and resources for helping us to think and to understand. We need

help from all quarters, historical and non-historical alike, even where or

perhaps especially where, we do not agree.

As a Catholic Christian for whom the Incarnation of a central mystery of

faith, it seems that in the search for God, little refuge will be found behind

the walls of the text: God is not met in the text without reference to the

world outside the text. God is met in our world, and not only in our canon

and not only in our Church. In our study of the Scriptures, God awaits both

within and without, and perhaps quite notably in the encounter of the two.

This viewpoint, it seems to me, is hardly a modern or secular one. It informs

Israel’s earliest glimpses of God, as identified by historical criticism. I refer

to the main topic of my talk tonight, those poetic texts in Israel’s Bible

thought to contain the oldest trope referring to the deity. These old poetic

12 See John Barton, The Nature of Biblical Criticism (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2007).

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texts include two older exemplars of the trope of the divine warrior’s march

from the south of Israel, namely Judg 5:4-5 and Ps 68:8-9, as well as two

later instances, Deut 33:2-4 and Hab 3:3-7. I wish to explore how these

textual representations as well as prior Egyptian evidence concerning the

name of Yahweh understand and reflect on God, humanity and the world.

What are the contents and contours of such reflections? What is the

theological theorizing about reality embedded in these texts? What

hermeneutical processes in the texts can be seen to be important in these

signal representations of the deity? And, finally, what broader questions

might these hold for reflection today about divinity? The subtitle to this talk

intimates the outline of my answer.

This discussion begins with a brief review of putative Egyptian evidence

for the name of Yahweh. Then I will turn to the two older examples of the

trope of the march of the divine warrior in Judg 5:4-5 and Ps 68:8-9. Finally, I

will address its further transformations in one later instance, in Deut 33:2-4;

time will permit only passing comparison with Hab 3:3-7.13 While I am not

focusing on the overarching canonical framework for Israel’s first meeting

with God in Exodus, it, too, contains an important reflection on this tradition,

13 For recent discussions, see Shmuel Ahituv, “The Sinai Theophany in the Psalm of Habbakkuk,” in Birkat Shalom: Studies in the Bible, Ancient Near Eastern Literature, and Postbiblical Judaism Presented to Shalom M. Paul on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday (ed. Chaim Cohen, Victor Avigdor Hurowitz, and Avi Hurwitz; two vols.; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2008) 1.225-232; Gert T. M. Prinsloo, “Yahweh the Warrior: An Intertextual Reading of Habakkuk 3,” Old Testament Essays 14 (2001) 475-93; and Nili Shupak, “The God from Teman and the Egyptian Sun God: A Reconsideration of Habakkuk 3,3-7,” JANES 28 (2002) 97-116.

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showing Israel’s later recovery and interpretation of its significance for Israel.

The poetic representations of the deity coming from the south show not only

high antiquity – the historian’s concern -- but also Israel’s religious reflection

in process – the theologian’ concern. Taken together, the historical

dimensions of the evidence both inside and outside the Bible as well as its

shifting contours within the canon offers some suggestions for theological

reflection, with which I will conclude my remarks.

II. The Putative Egyptian Evidence and Historical Hypotheses

Standing in a long line of scholarship,14 a 2008 survey of the Egyptian

evidence for the name of Yahweh opens with the claim: “It has become a

commonly accepted view both in Egyptology and Biblical Studies that the

name of the later god Yahweh – the tetragrammaton YHWH – makes an early

14 For example, Shmuel Ahituv, Canaanite Toponyms in Ancient Egyptian Documents (Jerusalem: Magnes; Leien: Brill, 1984) 121-22; Lars Eric Axelsson, The Lord Rose Up from Seir: Studies in the History and Traditions of the Negev and Southern Judah (CBOT 25; Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1987) 48-59; Jean Leclant, “Le ‘Tétragramme’ à l’époque d’Aménophis III,” in Near Eastern Studies dedicated to H. I. H. Prince Takahito Mikasa on the Occasion of His Seventy-Fifth Birthday (Wiesbaden: 1991) 215-219; Manfred Görg, “Jahwe,” in Neues Bibel-Lexikon II (1992) 265, and “YHWH als Toponym? - Weitere Perspektiven,” Biblische Notizen 101 (2000) 8-12; Donald B. Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992) 272-73; Manfred Weippert, Jahwe und die anderen Götter: Studien zur Religionsgeschichte des antiken Israel in ihrem syrisch-palästinischen Kontext (FAT 18; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997) 40 and 97; Frank Moore Cross, From Epic to Canon: History and Literature in Ancient Israel (Baltimore/London: The John Hopkins University Press, 1998) 67 n. 51; K. van der Toorn, “Yahweh,” in DDD (1999) 911-12.

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appearance in Egyptian topographical lists of the New Kingdom, where it is

closely associated with a provenance that is characteristic to statements

about Yahweh’s origins in the Old Testament.”15 The author, the

Egyptologist Thomas Schneider, is referring to the much-cited fifteen-century

list of places produced under Amenophis III at a temple in Soleb and a later

compilation of place-names under Ramesses II at Amara-West, both located

north of the third cataract of the Nile in Nubia (today in Sudan). The lists

include places belonging to Shasu-nomads located in the southern

Transjordan in proximity to Edom.16 These entries include t3 s3sw yhw3,

which Schneiders renders “the Shasu-land, (more precisely:) Yhw3.”17 The

Amara-West version of the list also locates in the “Shasu-land” a place called

sa-‘-r-ir, thought to be related to biblical Seir.18 Schneider accepts the

commonly cited opinion that this “would be a mountainous region linked to

the worship of a god named Yahweh after the place of worship.”19 This

15 Thomas Schneider, “The First Documented Occurrence of the God Yahweh? (Book of the Dead Princeton ‘Roll 5’),” JANER 7/2 (2008) 113-20, here 113. See also Schneider, “Zur Interpretation des Eigennamens des Papyrus-Besitzers,” in Barbara Lüscher, Der Totenbuch-Papyrus Princeton Pharaonic Roll 5 (mit einem Beitrag von Thomas Schneider; Beiträge zum Alten Ägypten (BAÄ) 2; Basel: Orientverlag, 2008) 102-10.16 See below. 17 For further discussion with hieroglyphs represented and transliterated, see R. Giveon, Les bédouines Shosou des documents egyptiens (Leiden: Brill, 1971) 26-28, no. 6a and 74-77 no. 16a, with reading corrected by Manfred Weippert, “Semitische Nomaden des zweiten Jahrausends,” Biblica 55 (1974) 265-80 and 427-33, here 427, 430. See also http://www.divinename.no/archaeology.htm.18 Noted by Redford among others; see Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel, 272. Critics note the irregular spelling; see Cross, From Epic to Canon, 67 n. 51; and as a result some reject the identification; see de Moor, The Rise of Yahwism, 124.19 Schneider, “The First Documented Occurrence of the God Yahweh?” 114.

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place-name in these Egyptian sources has been discussed in conjunction

with the divine name since 1947, when it was proposed first by B. Grdseloff.20

What has given this evidence its particular appeal to biblical scholars is the

combination of the name, which looks quite similar to the biblical divine

name, and its location, which dovetails with the southern locales given for

the biblical tradition enshrined especially in Judg 5:4.

While Schneider’s presentation gives the impression that consensus has

been reached in the matter, it is important to note that some skepticism has

been expressed over the decades about whether this place is to be

associated with Yahweh (in any form), for example, by the Egyptologist,

Hans Goedicke,21 and by the Syro-Palestinian historian, Gösta Ahlström.22

Questions have also been raised about the geographical location of the

place.23 Sixty years after the initial proposal by Grdseloff, Schneiders himself

has identified what he believes to be a further possible reference to Yahweh

in the name of the owner of one papyrus of the Egyptian Book of the Dead,

housed in the Princeton University Library (Pharaonic Roll 5).24 The papyrus

20 Grdseloff, “Edôm d’après les sources égpytiennes,” Revue de l’histoire Juive en Egypte 1 (1947) 69-70.21 Goedicke, “The Tetragram in Egyptian?” Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities 24 (1994) 24-27. See also the cautionary stance assumed by, Cross, From Epic to Canon, 67 n. 51.22 Ahlström, Who Were the Israelites? 57-60.23 See Michael Astour, “Yahweh in Egyptian Topographic Lists,” in Festschrift Elmer Edel: 12 Marz 1979 (ed. M. Görg and E. Pusch; Bamberg: M. Görg, 1979) 17-33; see also Gösta W. Ahlström, The History of Ancient Palestine (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993) 276-77.24 Schneider, “The First Documented Occurrence of the God Yahweh? (Book of the Dead Princeton ‘Roll 5’),” JANER 7/2 (2008) 113-20 and his German presentation in his study, “Zur Interpretation des Eigennamens des Papyrus-Besitzers,” in Barbara Lüscher, Der Totenbuch-Papyrus Princeton Pharaonic

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dates to the late 18th or the 19th dynasty (ca. 1330-1230). According to

Schneider, the name of the owner most commonly rendered j:-t-w-n-j2-r‘3-y-

h, is to be understood as *’adoni-ro‘e-yah,” “my lord is the shepherd of Yah,”

which would reflect the idea of the god as the shepherd of the region called

Yah (Yahweh).25 Schneiders would see the person in question as an

acculturated foreigner and member of Egyptian elite society who owned this

copy of the Book of the Dead.

In general, this Egyptian evidence for Yahweh does not seem particularly

strong. At the same time, it appears consonant with the tradition of Yahweh

known in a southern locale known by various names: Edom (Judg 5:4; cf.

Num 24:18) and Seir (Deut 33:2; Judg 5:4; cf. Num 24:18)26; Teman (Hab 3:3;

cf. “Yahweh of Teman,” yhwh tmn/tymn, in the Kuntillet ‘Ajrud inscriptions27);

Paran (Deut 33:2; Hab 3:3); and the best-known of these locales, Sinai,

attested both as a place-name (Ps 68:18; Deut 33:2; cf. Gal 4:25) and as part

Roll 5 (mit einem Beitrag von Thomas Schneider; Beiträge zum Alten Ägypten (BAÄ) 2; Basel: Orientverlag, 2008) 102-10.25 The more common interpretation, ’aduni-ra‘iyu-hu, “(my) lord is his shepherd,” encounters orthographic, phonological and onomastic difficulties, according to Schneiders.26 Note Edom and Seir not only paired together in Judg 5:4 and Ps 68:8, but also identified in Gen 25:4 (see also 36:8, 21; cf. Isa 21:11; Ezek 35:15). 27 For yhwh tmn on Pithos B, see the synthesis in Othmar Keel and Christoph Uehlinger, Gods, Goddesses, and Images of God in Ancient Israel (trans. Thomas H Trapp; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998) 226-28; and F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp, J. J. M. Roberts, C. L. Seow, and R. E. Whitaker, Hebrew Inscriptions: Texts from the Biblical Period of the Monarchy with Concordance (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 2005) 293-96. For yhwh tymn on a plaster inscription found in the “bench room,” see Dobbs-Allsopp et al., Hebrew Inscriptions, 285-86. For further discussion, see Jeremy Hutton, “Local Manifestations of Yahweh and Worship in the Interstices: A Note on Kuntillet Ajrud,” JANER 10/2 (2010) 177-210.

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of a divine title, “the One of Sinai” (Judg 5:4; Ps 68:8).28 We may also note

the names of Cushan and Midian in Hab 3:7. Scholars have emphasized

three aspects of these passages: the high antiquity of their tradition (despite

some protests); Yahweh’s southern locale in Edom, or as Gal 4:25 says of

Sinai, “a mountain in Arabia” (NAB); and the representation of this deity as a

warrior figure associated with the rainstorm.

While these basic features are very important, in this context I would like

to focus on three related points. First, from the perspective of the poems

and the putative Egyptian evidence, Yahweh is grounded in a place outside

of Israel. By the thirteenth century, Israel is known to be in the land, as

known from the extra-biblical sources not only in the Merneptah stele (ca.

1208), but also possibly earlier, as recently claimed for an Egyptian

inscription (Berlin Statue Pedestal Relief 21687), dating to the reign of

Ramesses II (reigned ca. 1279-1218).29

Second, the evidence presently known gives reason to prefer a more

complex form of what has been come to be known as the “Midianite

28 These names and these texts that contain them are studied by many scholars, including Frank Moore Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic: Essays in the History of the Religion of Israel (Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University Press, 1973) 100-3; Lars Eric Axelsson, The Lord Rose Up from Seir: Studies in the History and Traditions of the Negev and Southern Judah (CBOT 25; Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1987) 48-55; and Henrik Pfeiffer, Jahwes Kommen von Süden: Jdc 5; Hab 3; Dtn 33 und Ps 68 in ihrem literatur- und theologiegeschichtlichen Umfeld (FRLANT 211; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 2005).29 See Peter van der Veen, Christoffer Theis, and Manfred Görg, “Israel in Canaan (Long) Before Pharaoh Merenptah? A Fresh Look at Berlin Statue Pedestal Relief 21687,” Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections 2/4 (2010) 15–25 (http://jaei.library.arizona.edu).

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hypothesis” or the “Kenite hypothesis.”30 According to this approach, either

one or both of these southern peoples known from the Bible, the Midianites

and the Kenites, transmitted the cult of Yahweh to Israel. As noted above,

Midian is one of the old names for the southern mountain of Yahweh (Hab

3:7). The Kenites are the tribe that Moses’ father-in-law is said to come from

(Judg 4:11). The biblical text would then provide a narrative version of how

Moses and then later the Israelites came to know about Yahweh. In other

words, the biblical prose story “narrativized” the ancient tradition of

Yahweh’s origins in the south, the setting of Yahwistic cult among a southern

people other than Israel, and the secondary contact of Israel with this god.

That there seems to be some antiquity to these rather difficult traditions may

be suggested by references to Kenites in Israel’s older literary traditions

(e.g., Judg 5:24).

Both the Midianites and the Kenites are known from the Bible, but are not

associated with the Egyptian evidence about the divine name. Instead, the

name is associated in the Egyptian place-names with the Shasu, who are

themselves associated again in Egyptian sources with Edom and Seir, the

two locations named in Judg 5:4 (and Num 24:18).31 For example, the

30 See Cross, From Epic to Canon, 66-70; Karel van der Toorn, “Yahweh,” in DDD (1999) 911-13; Joseph Blenkinsopp, “The Midianite-Kenite Hypothesis Revisited and the Origins of Judah,” JSOT 33 (2008) 131-53.31 See Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel, 273; de Moor, The Rise of Yahwism, 124-26; Edward Lipinski, On the Skirts of Canaan in the Iron Age: Historical and Topographical Researches (OLA 153; Leuven/Paris/Dudley, MA/Peeters, 2006) 364-66. See the listing in Ahituv, Canaanite Toponyms in Ancient Egyptian Documents, 169. Seir has been identified with Akkadian Sheru in EA 288:26, as discussed by John R. Bartlett, Edom and the Edomites (JSOTSup 77; JSOT/PEF Monograph series 1; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1989) 41;

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“Shasu of Edom” are known from a thirteenth century literary letter: “[We]

have finished letting the Shasu tribes of Edom pass the Fortress of Mer-ne-

Ptah Hotep-hir-Maat.”32 Shasu are associated also with Seir. A thirteenth

century text of Ramesses II mentions together “the land of the Shosu” and

“Mount Seir.”33 An eleventh century boast of Ramesses III mentions the

Shasu in conjunction with Seir: “I brought about the destruction of Seir

among the Shosu tribes. I laid waste their tents with their people, their

belongings, and likewise their cattle without number.”34 The mention of the

Shosu in connection with Edom and Seir in these Egyptian texts is congruent

with the same two place-names in the old poetic tradition of Yahweh’s

southern site in Judg 5:4 (cf. Numbers 24:18). It is to be noted at this

juncture that the names, Edom and Seir, shared by the Shasu (perhaps

including the Shasu of yhw3) and Judg 5:4, is suggestive for the high

antiquity of the trope in this particular biblical passage, in contrast to Ps 68:8

or any other exemplar, which we will examine below.

The association of the Shasu with the yhw3-land in Egyptian sources

coupled with the lack of the name of the Shasu in the Bible suggests a

there the place is represented as a far southern locale from the perspective of a Middle Bronze ruler of Jerusalem: “I am at war as far as the land of the Sheru and as far as Ginti-kirmil” (translation following Moran, The Amarna Letters, 331).32 The text is called in ANET 259 “The Report of a Frontier Official.” See the translation in ANET 259 (see also 259 n. 2); Ahituv, Canaanite Toponyms in Ancient Egyptian Documents, 90; Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel, 228; and Bartlett, Edom and the Edomites, 42.33 See Bartlett (Edom and the Edomites, 42-43.34 See ANET 262; Giveon, “Remarks,” 131-34. The translation follows Bartlett, Edom and the Edomites, 42 (since ANET uses “Bedouin tribes” for “Shasu-tribes”).

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secondary mediation of Yahweh cult to Midianites or Kenites. Accordingly,

scholars might prefer a two-stage hypothesis between the Egyptian and

biblical evidence. The Shasu35 seem to be the best candidate presently for

the old context of Yahweh-cult. Such Shasu may not have been in contact

with early Israel and thus did not provide the point of transmission of the cult

of Yahweh to Israel. Instead, a further cultural conduit that is known in

biblical tradition, in other words a “Midianite” or “Kenite” hypothesis, might

serve to account for the transmission of this cult from some southern Shasu36

to early Israel. If so, biblical memory may recall the southern peoples

involved as ones that Israel knew, but it did not preserve the memory of the

earlier people among whom its deity had earlier enjoyed cultic devotion.

A third and related point concerns the distance between the Egyptian and

biblical evidence in terms of both time and geography. In terms of time-

frame, the Egyptian evidence would suggest at least a fifteenth century date

for the cult of Yahweh if not earlier, while the biblical references even in the

most optimistic scenario would not date prior to the twelfth century. Hence

there are several centuries between the Egyptian evidence and the biblical

record. With respect to geographical markers for this tradition, the Egyptian

35 Cf. Israel as one Shasu group in the reconstruction of early Israel by Avraham Faust, Israel’s Ethnogenesis: Settlement, Interaction, Expansion and Resistance (Approaches to Anthropological Archaeology; London: Equinox, 2007) 177, 183, 186-87 (with citation of earlier scholars who espouse this view). Faust’s emphasis on the Shasu as the original basis for ancient Israel is somewhat belied by the absence of the name of the Shasu compared with the Qenites or Midianites, or with the place-names of Midian, Edom, etc. 36 This is not to ignore the Shasu known also north of this southern region; see ANET 254 and n. 2.

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evidence associating yhw3 with the Shasu of Edom and Seir, links more

closely with Judg 5:4 (and Num 24:18), with its reference to Seir (also Deut

33:2) and Edom, in contrast with the other locations mentioned in the poetic

sources noted above, Paran, Teman, and Sinai. Sinai may represent a

special example within this group, as it is also used in these poems as part of

a divine title, zeh sînay (Judg 5:5; Ps 68:9). We will return to this question

below.

This brings me to a further observation. In noting the distance between

the Egyptian evidence and the biblical evidence, it is evident that there is

much here that we are ignorant about. Our ignorance is an important

datum. In this aspect, Israel’s God – and ours – is something of a mystery to

us. Like modern scholars, the Israelites who composed these relatively

early pieces worked with a certain ignorance of their own about the original

profile of their God. In fact, their understanding of God, which may have

included a lack of knowledge of the old profile of their God, was sufficient for

them. It may have been the very mystery about these old depictions that

made them all the more attractive to later tradition. Moreover, the truth of

God in the prior time was not merely subordinate to the God as known in

their present; the present understanding of God from the composers’

perspective was presumed to be consonant with this prior profile, whatever

was known of it. The truth of God for the religious tradition of Israel did not

depend on full knowledge of origins. It is tantalizing to search for and

discover new evidence for anything of interest, and especially for evidence of

16

origins. Furthermore, learning about origins may contribute to the tradition.

At the same time, for the biblical tradition, the order of the human discovery

of God is not the order of the reality of God for humanity.37 The early biblical

tradition formulates its understanding of this old inherited tradition of God in

terms of its own concerns, as seen in the Bible’s first glimpses of God in

Judges 5 and Psalm 68.

III. Early Fragments of God: First Glimpses in the Bible

At this point we may turn in some detail to the two older exemplars of the

trope of the divine march in Judg 5:4-5 and Ps 68:8-9. These two pieces are

so close in wording that scholars have understood them to be an

independent set piece or trope that the authors of Judges 5 and Psalm 68

inherited and used.38 In other words, the earliest revelation of God comes in

37 Cf. Thomas Aquinas’ observation that the order of human discovery or the learning of reality in historical time is not the order of nature (or reality). Aquinas, Commentary on the Metaphysics, paragraphs 301-305. See also Aquinas, De Trinitate; and his Commentary on Romans 1:20. These references came courtesy of my teacher of metaphysics, Professor John Whipple of The Catholic University of America. He is, of course, not responsible for my simplification of Aquinas’ point here.38 In view of the shared language, some scholars see literary dependence between the two passages. For example, Michael Fishbane (Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985) 54-55, 75 n. 30] sees Judg 5:4-5 as a quotation of Ps 68:8-9, while Herbert Niehr (“He-of-the-Sinai,” DDD 387) views Ps 68:8-9 as the quotation of Judg 5:4-5. However, Judg 5:4-5 and Ps 68:8-9 show enough differences that it seems unlikely one was copied from the other. The theory of copying also does not provide sufficient explanation about the motivation for altering the place-names. Since there are significant differences existing between the two

17

poetic fragments; revelation is a matter in these cases of one old, lost

author’s revelation being received and re-interpreted by other authors.

Revelation is both the older and newer text in tandem, the old providing

horizons for understanding the later time of the poems, and the new one

providing a place in tradition for the oldest revelation of God.

We begin our discussion by reviewing these two older passages and some

of their features, and then we will discuss them in terms of their larger

works, other scholars view the relationship in terms of “reworking.” Thus Michael D. Coogan posits Judg 5:4-5 as the source for Ps 68:8-9. See Coogan, “A Structural and Literary Analysis,” 161-62, and in particular the list of common elements. Coogan suggests a theory of direct literary relationship “quite possibly in written form.” Alexander Rofé similarly understands Ps 68:8-9 as an “Elohistic” reworking of Judges 5:4-5. See Rofé, Introduction to the Literature of the Hebrew Bible (Jerusalem Bible Studies 9; Jerusalem: Simor, 2009) 445. Following another line of scholarship, Israel Knohl has proposed seeing the influence working in the opposite direction, based mostly on the expansion in Judges 5:4-5 relative to Psalm 68:8-9. See Knohl, “Pharaoh’s War on the Israelites: The Untold Story,” AZURE 41 (Summer 2010) http://www.azure.org.il/article.php?id=543 <accessed 23 April 2011>. Knohl believes that Ps 68:5-33 (demarcated by an inclusio) is older than Judg 5:2-30. For a survey of views, see James H. Charlesworth, “Bashan, Symbology, Haplography, and Theology in Psalm 68,” in David and Zion : Biblical Studies in Honor of J.J. M. Roberts (ed. Bernard F. Batto, Kathryn L. Roberts; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbauns, 2004) 351-72. Like the theory of scribal copying, the theory of reworking in either direction suffers, as it provides little explanation for minor differences. For example, the second line ii show the variation of gam and ’ap. These are semantic variants; see C. H. J. van der Merwe, “The Biblical Hebrew Particle ’ap,” VT 59 (2009) 266-83. Neither would have been copied from the other. This case fits Frank M. Cross’ theory of “ancient oral variants”; see Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, 101 n. 35. This would militate against both a theory of scribal copying and a theory of reworking between the two texts (perhaps unless the copying was from memory). Other differences of a very minor sort also do not fit well with a theory of reworking.

18

contexts. The poetic lines of these two biblical contexts describe the divine

march and its effects39:

Judges 5:4-5 Psalm 68:8-9

i yhwh be˘ße¯’te˘kå mis´s´e¯‘îr ’e˘lo¯hîm be˘ße¯’te˘kå lipnê

‘ammekå

ii be˘ßa‘de˘kå mis´s´e˘de¯h ’e˘dôˆm be˘ßa‘de˘kå bîs£îmôn [selåh]

iii ’ereß rå‘ås£åh ’ereß rå‘ås£åh

iv gam-s£åmayim nå†åpû ’ap-s£åmayim nå†e˘pû

v gam-‘åbîm nå†e˘pû måyim

vi hårîm nåze˘lû

vii mippe˘nê yhwh zeh sînay40 mippe˘nê ’e˘lo¯hîm zeh sînay39 See also the layout and discussion of the two passages by Walter Gross, Richter: Übersetzt und ausgelegt (Herders Theologischer Kommentar zum Alten Testament; Freiburg/Basel/Wien: Herder, 2009) 306.40 The phrase zeh sînay in Judg 5:5 is often regarded as a secondary gloss introduced from Ps 68:9. See Moore, Judges, 142; Nowack, Richter-Ruth, 43-44; Burney, The Book of Judges, 113; GKC 137d note 2; Görg, Richter, 31; Christoph Levin, “Das Alter des Deboralieds,” in his Fortschreibungen: Gesammelte Studien zum Alten Testament (BZAW 316; Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2003) 132-35, with older references. This approach assumed that in Judg 5:5 hårîm nåze˘lû mippe˘nê yhwh zeh sînay was overloaded and thus the title zeh sînay must be extra. However, this reading of the lines of the two poems in tandem hardly appears necessary, as the layout here suggests. Some scholars take it as a gloss on the name of the deity (“the One of Sinai”), while others, such as Fishbane, argued for zeh sînay after the reference to the deity as a gloss meaning “this is Sinai,” pertaining to the preceding reference to mountains (hårîm). See Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel, 54-55, 75 n. 30. Again, the layout of lines as understood above, shows zeh sînay in parallelism with ’e˘l o¯ hê yis´rå’e ̄ l . Also problematic for Fishbane’s view, the gloss identifies a singular, while the word putatively glossed, “mountains,” is plural; so, too, is the verb. It also does not serve Fishbane’s case that the gloss does not follow the word that it

19

viiii mippe˘nê yhwh ’e˘lo¯hê yis´rå’e¯l mippe˘nê ’e˘lo¯hˆˆˆˆîm41 ’e˘lo¯hê

yis´rå’e¯l

As commentators have long noted, the precise language shared by the

two passages is remarkable. We will address each bicolon in turn,

highlighting some of their differences.

In lines i-ii, both poems show the same verbal forms, with the same

preposition fronted and the same second person masculine suffix. The deity

heads line i in both passages, but how the deity is referenced differs. The

first uses the specific name of the deity, with no poetic resonance. The

second uses the general word for the divinity, with some alliteration with /m/

in ‘ammekå and bî s£ îmôn . In combination with the same fronted preposition

and the same suffix appended to them, the two verbal forms be˘ße ̄ ’te˘kå

and be˘ßa‘de˘kå enjoy considerable sonant parallelism. The first verb, *yß’,

might denote in itself departure from a place, but the parallel verb, *ß‘d,

denotes the march of the god. In context, the first may be read as no less a

verb of marching, in accordance with its common military usage. The first

verb also shows the same form on the human level for going to battle in 2

Sam 11:1: “It was at the turn of the year, the time when kings go out (ß’e ̄ t )

is supposed to gloss, namely “mountains.” To obviate these problems, Fishbane reads the gloss as “this (refers to the event at) Mount Sinai.” This explanation is not persuasive.41 This is missing from LXX A and so BHS suggests its deletion. However, it works well with the poetic length of lines and parallelism in context. In addition, it has a precise correspondence with the divine name in Judg 5:5.

20

[to battle].”42 The second root in this usage for the deity has been compared

by Aloysius Fitzgerald with “the sound of the march” (qwl ß‘d) of Yahweh in

the wind rustling in the trees in 2 Sam 5:24 = 1 Chron 14:15.43 This usage

also fits three Ugaritic attestations, all predicated of gods: (i) b‘l yß g´´ d in

KTU 1.10 III 7, preceding Baal’s ascent to his mountain (in lines 11-12); (ii)

yß g´´ d gp thm in KTU 1.23.30, used to describe El’s proceeding to the shore;

and (iii) ’il yß g´´ d in KTU 1.174.1, perhaps involving El.44 Of these three

passages, it is the first, with Baal marching and then ascending the

mountain, which seems contextually the most proximate to the march of

Yahweh from his mountain in Judg 5:4 and Ps 68:8. Baal’s march from his

mountain in KTU 1.4 VII 7-13 is also to be noted in this context.

Lines i-ii also differ as to spatial horizons. Judg 5:4 contains place-names

referring to the south. By contrast, Ps 68:8 does not reference a name;

instead, it has a standard expression of the deity going in battle before the

*‘am. The second line of Ps 68:8 instead has a term for a sort of region

42 Compare the full idiom, *låß’e ̄ t lammil ̇ åmâ in Jud 20:14, 20, 28; for the idiom, see also 2 Sam 21:17. For discussion, see Shalom E. Holtz, “The Case for Adverbial ya ̇ ad ,” VT 59 (2009) 211-21, here 211-12.43 Fitzgerald, The Lord of the East Wind (CBQMS 34; Washington, DC: The Catholic Biblical Association of America, 2002) 86 n. 31. See also the root in Hab 3:12. For the expression of the deity going before the people in Ps 68:8, cf. Exod 13:22, etc.; see DCH 4.558.44 There is prima facie a philological difficulty in the comparison between the Ugaritic and Hebrew roots, since the Arabic cognate is ß‘d and not ß g´´ d . See DULAT 780 citing Lane 1687f. and also noting a possible alternative Arabic cognate proposed by Kjell Aartun. There are, however, are other examples of this irregular correspondence (see Ugaritic *n‘m, “to sing,” compared with Arabic *n g´´m . See John A. Emerton, “Some Notes on the Ugaritic Counterpart of the Arabic ghain,” in Studies in Philology in Honour of Ronald James Williams (ed. G. E. Kadish and G. E. Freeman; Toronto: Benben Publishers, 1982) 31-50. Note also Cross, From Epic to Canon, 140 n. 15.

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(“waste-land” or the like). Judges 5 is far more concerned with space, in

providing two clear geographical references, while by comparison Psalm 68

focuses on “the people.” It has been common to lump these descriptions of

under the rubric of God as the divine warrior,45 and in view of the later

exemplars of the trope especially in Deut 33:2-5 as well as other parallel

texts, this is not an unreasonable approach.46 However, what needs to be

noted in the cases of both Judg 5:4-5 and Ps 68:8-9 is that the divine march

involves a great demonstration of power in shaking the heavens and earth,

but it engages no enemies, divine or human. These lines in Psalm 68 do not

show this God as a violent divine warrior fighting enemies, but a powerful

God marching “before your people.” In other words, the picture in Psalm 68

involves divine protection of the people, while Judges 5 by comparison is

open-ended. While these passages have been received and fitted into the

larger military contexts of Judges 5 and Psalm 68 (and perhaps even

belonged to a military context in an older setting), the military is hardly what

is stressed here; instead, the first biblical glimpses of God show divine power

and protection without reference to battle or violence.

In lines iii-iv, both poems have the same words describing attendant

effects of the earth trembling and the heavens flowing. Thus both show

some super-terrestrial perspective as well, with the heavens flowing with

45 For example, Cross, Canaanite Myth, 157; and Patrick D. Miller, Jr., The Divine Warrior in Early Israel (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973; reprinted edition, Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2006) 91, 107. Cross (Canaanite Myth, 100) also sees “heavenly armies” in these passages, but the texts say nothing of the sort. 46 These are addressed by Miller, The Divine Warrior, inter alia.

22

precipitation and the earth shaking. The usual categories of historical versus

mythic do not apply very well to this description. If anything, the trope here

seems only slightly mythic. Despite the clear meteorological effects of the

deity, both passages are fairly terrestrial in the sense that the

representations are tied to earthly locations.47 It is also important to note

that the suffix forms of the verbs in lines iii-iv set the divine march in the

past. Given the location of the trope relative to the rest of the poems, it

would appear that it is understood that this divine victory is regarded as prior

to the time of the victories to which the poems are primarily devoted.

In lines v-vi, Judg 5:4 expands the description as noted by scholars. The

result is a chiastic structure that balances “earth” with “mountains” and

“heavens” with “clouds.” There is not a considerable addition in information

as such, but the fact of the addition is not insignificant. As we will see, all

exemplars of the trope were open to addition. In the case of Judg 5:4-5, it is

internal to the trope; in the other cases, it follows as an external addition to

the trope. Expansion and elaboration are integral to the revelation in these

passages.

47 Cf. the terrestrial march of Baal mentioned above. See also the comparison of Seti I: “He is like Baal (as) he treads the mountains”; see Keiko Tazawa, Syro-Palestinian Deities in New Kingdom Egypt: The Hermeneutics of Their Existence (British Archaeological Reports 1965; Oxford: Archaeopress, 2009) 28, document #62. Cf. “When he [Ramessess III] is sent storming like unto Baal, the lands burn up in their land for terror of him,” in Tazawa, Syro-Palestinian Deities in New Kingdom Egypt, 32, document #79; “His Majesty is like the Baal upon the mountain tops” in Tazawa, Syro-Palestinian Deities in New Kingdom Egypt, 33, document #83.

23

In lines vii-viii, the natural effects are from before the deity, named in

both passages as “the one of Sinai” and “the god of Israel.” Thus in the

earliest biblical glimpses of the deity, this deity is represented in association

with earthly space of Sinai and with Israel. With these earthly locations,

some cultural distance from our Egyptian sources is evident: neither Sinai

nor Israel is known from the specific Egyptian sources that we noted earlier.

For the early tradition that produced this trope, this god was the god of the

people of Israel, and at the same time this god was associated with a place

outside of the land of Israel. We will return to this core point.

In the final bicolon in lines vii-viii, the divine referent in line i in each

poem, yhwh for Judges 5 and ’elohîm for Psalm 68, re-appears. In addition,

the use of mippe˘nê in lines vii-viii links back with lipnê in line I in Psalm 68.

Indeed, it might be thought that the use of mippe˘nê in vii-viii might have

inspired the composer of that poem to use the hardly uncommon

construction, *lipnê ‘amm- in line i.

Having examined the lines of the trope in the two poems, let us turn to

their larger contexts. The trope was fitted within and adapted to the context

of each of the poems. The authors have issues with which they are

concerned, and they show their own mode of reflection. We begin with the

context of the trope in Psalm 68. In Psalm 68, the trope in vv. 8-9 follows a

hymnic introduction in vv. 5-7. It is not well integrated into the preceding

context. By contrast with Judg 5:4-5, Psalm 68 expands on the trope at the

end, in vv. 10-11, in commenting further on the rain provided to the land and

24

the benefit it provides for the people. This focus is missing from the other

exemplars of the trope. The larger context for the trope in Psalm 68 adds a

further focus, with the reiteration of Sinai in verse 18. Here the poem picks

up on zeh sînay, as seen in verse 9. At first glance, the reference to Sinai

seems to name the location of the divine retinue. Sinai seems to be the

mountain mentioned in verse 17 that God “desired for his dwelling.” The

syntax in verse 18b requires some attention; this line may be translated as

follows: “The Lord is among them, at Sinai, among the holy (host)/in the holy

place” (’ad o¯ nåy båm sînay baqq o¯ de s £). The internal rhyme of ’ad o¯ nåy

and sînay is notable, as is the internal parallelism of båm and baqq o¯ de s £.

Still, the line remains difficult. The first prepositional phrase båm seems to

refer back to the thousands and myriads of the divine retinue, while sînay

may be an adverbial accusative (“at Sinai”), in apposition to baqq o¯ de s £,

which may refer a descriptor for the divine mountain, as it is used for Baal’s

mountain (KTU 1.3 III 30), Or, it could be a descriptor for the divine retinue

(cf. q o¯ de s £, in Deut 33:2, discussed in the following section). In this case,

the line might be rendered, “The Lord is among them, at Sinai among the

holy (ones).” As noted in the preceding section, the mountain of Sinai is

contrasted with Bashan.

The trope in Psalm 68 is particularly notable for its lack of geographical

referent to Edom and Seir. The question is why Psalm 68 departs from the

tradition of the trope as seen in both Judges 5 and, to some degree, in its

later exemplars in Deuteronomy 33 and Habakkuk 3. An answer informed by

25

the larger context of the poem has been suggested by a number of scholars.

For example, Alexander Rofé suggests that Edom drops out of the picture in

Ps 68:9 as a conscious effort on the part of the “Elohistc reworking,” in

Rofé’s words, “to eradicate the original connection between YHWH God of

Israel and the field of Edom; God’s abode is in Jerusalem (vs. 30).”48 A

potential problem with this theory is that the poem has no trouble

mentioning Sinai as well, something that it does not only in v. 8 but also in v.

18. The poem does not show a replacement of Edom by Jerusalem (v. 30),

so much as a focus on Sinai and Jerusalem, as coordinated centers of the

deity; in the poem’s perspective one past and one present. It may be that

Edom drops out of the tradition perhaps not so much as a deliberate

reworking but because of a perceived lack of applicability in context.

As in Psalm 68, the larger poetic context in Judges 5 shows both the

reception of the trope as well as the larger role that it exercises in context.

The poem in Judges 5 contains a double introduction (vv. 2-13) that is quite

extraordinary compared with other introductions, both for its length and for

its uneven parts. Within this introduction, the trope is but one piece that

serves to invoke praise of the deity. In Judges 5, it follows a hymnic

invocation of the deity in v. 2 and a first person hymnic address in v. 3, and it

is followed in vv. 6-9 by a second hymnic address that provides the context

for the conflict. Thus the context to which the trope belongs is not a single,

integrated piece. It is also to be noted that the geographical locations

48 Rofé, Introduction to the Literature of the Hebrew Bible, 445.

26

named in v. 4 stands at considerable odds from the location of the battle in

the Jezreel valley described in the body of the poem of Judges 5. Thus it is

not without reason that scholars have seen the trope here as something of a

poetic fragment not related originally to the report of the battle.

Given the independent attestation of the trope in early Hebrew poetry, it

seems to have been known to and used by the composer of the poem, as we

have it now, in order to introduce the themes of the body of the poem, which

runs from verse 14 onwards.49 The introduction’s purpose seems to be to

offer a view of the events in the poem’s body, as showing Yahweh as Israel’s

god and Israel as the overarching social unit, even though the poem’s body

hardly mentions Yahweh (only in the fragmentary v. 23), and it does not

even mention Israel. Thus the introduction sounds thematic notes that are

interpretative for the body of the poem. The poem’s body lays claim to

Yahweh as a military god in the central hill-country in the pre-monarchic

period. In terms of the coordination between the representation of Yahweh

in the introduction and in the body, we might say that the tradition of the

southern sanctuary in v. 4 has come north.50

49 For this proposal, see Smith, “What is Prologue is Past: Composing Israelite Identity in Judges 5,” in Thus Says the Lord: Essays on the Former and Latter Prophets in Honor of Robert R. Wilson (edited by John J. Ahn and Stephen L. Cook; Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies volume 502; New York/London: T & T Clark, 2009) 43-58. 50 I remain quite open to the theory that trade from the south via the Jordan valley might have been the mechanism for the southern god, Yahweh, becoming established in the central highlands. See J. David Schloen, “Caravans, Kenites, and Casus Belli: Enmity and Alliance in the Song of Deborah,” CBQ 55 (1993) 18-38.

27

There may be a further interpretive purpose to adding the trope to the

poem’s introduction. Arguably importantly for the shape of Israelite

polytheism at the time, the stars are said in v. 20 to fight:

The stars, in their courses, they fought;

They fought with Sisera.

The perception is not simply a heavenly one; these stars are said to fight

with Sisera. V. 21 relates how the river Kishon swept “them” (“the kings of

Canaan” of v. 19) away. Thus the divine action is manifest on earth. These

stars are, in other words, the heavenly host, the divine army, which because

of vv. 4-5 is presumed to be led by Israel’s divine warrior. In other words, vv.

4-5 provides the explicit interpretive lens for understanding the divine army

of v. 20.

In the case of both Judges 5 and Psalm 68, the larger context of the

poems affects the sense of the trope, and the trope provides an interpretive

lens for the poems’ larger context. Within the larger contexts of the poems,

the trope provides an antecedent for the divine victory for Israel celebrated

in the body of the poems. As a result, both poems construct a genealogy of

a tradition of divine victory, and define this tradition specifically in terms of

Yahweh for Israel. For Psalm 68, Sinai of the past and Jerusalem of the

present signal the coordination of space and time as a single, continuous

reality of divine aid and acknowledgement. For Judges 5, the trope, which

28

originally had nothing to do with the account of battle in the Jezreel valley,

became a central element in the composer’s larger assertion about the

battle in the past, namely that it was all about God and Israel. In the literary

construction of Judges 5, two different past events, the past event of the

trope with the divine march of the south and the past event of the battle in

the Jezreel, became interrelated parts of a single past. For the biblical

composer, the order of experience as separate events is not the order of

reality as an ultimately related whole.

IV. The Trope in a Later Exemplar:

The Case of Deuteronomy 33:2-5

29

Let’s turn to one later example of the trope, in Deuteronomy 33:2-5.51

Like our other examples, this case likewise belongs to an introduction:

Yahweh from Sinai came,

and he shone from Seir for them (låmô),

he appeared from Mount Paran.52

The immediate context is notable on three counts, compared with what

we saw with Judges 5 and Psalm 68. First, unlike the other exemplars of the

trope, this one fronts the poem. Second, that the trope appears as

something of a fragment (perhaps with vv. 26-2953) assuming that låmô in v.

51 For the text critical issues, see Stefan Beyerle, “Evidence of a Polymorphic Text: Towards the Text-History of Deuteronomy 33,” Dead Sea Discoveries 5 (1998) 215-32, here 223 and 225 n. 52, which notes that of the Qumran material, only 4Q45 provides readings for these verses. For the interpretation of vv. 2-5, see T. H. Gaster, “An Ancient Eulogy on Israel: Deuteronomy 33.3-5, 26-29,” JBL 66 (1947) 53-62; F. M. Cross, Jr. and D. N. Freedman, “The Blessing of Moses,” JBL 67 (1948) 191-210; Patrick D. Miller, “Two Critical Notes on Psalm 68 and Deuteronomy 33,” HTR 57 (1964) 240-43; Horst Seebass, “Die Stammesliste von Dtn XXXIII,” VT 27 (1977) 158-69; Isac Leo Seeligmann, “A Psalm from Pre-Regal Times,” VT 14 (1964) 75-92, republished in Gesammelte Studien zur Hebräischen Bibel (ed. Erhard Blum; FAT 41; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004) 349-64; David Noel Freedman, “The Poetic Structure of the Framework of Deuteronomy 33,” in The Bible World: Essays in Honor of Cyrus H. Gordon (ed. Gary Rendsburg, Ruth Adler, Milton Arfa and Nathan H. Winter; Hoboken, NJ: KTAV Publishing House and The Institute of Hebrew Culture and Education of New York University, 1980) 25-46; Duane L. Christensen, “Two Stanzas of a Hymn in Deuteronomy 33,” Biblica 65 (1984) 382-89; and Adam Simon Van der Woude, “Erwägungen zum Rahmenpsalm von Deuteronomium 33,” in Studies in Deuteronomy (ed. García Martínez Florentino; Leiden : Brill, 1994) 281-88.52 Or, “the highland country of Paran.”53 See Freedman, “The Poetic Structure of the Framework of Deuteronomy 33,” 25-46; and Van der Woude, “Erwägungen zum Rahmenpsalm von Deuteronomium 33,” 281-82. Commentators point to Yeshurun in vv. 5 and

30

2a is the correct reading54; if so, the suffix on the preposition would have no

grammatical antecedent. Whoever inserted the poem at this point in the

narrative may have deduced that the Israelites mentioned in the poem’s

narrative superscription in v. 1 represented the antecedent for the

prepositional phrase. In any case, the grammatical situation would point to a

feature that is no less true of the earlier examples, namely that it represents

a known trope. For the composers of the later exemplars, and perhaps even

for the authors of the older ones as well, the trope seems to have enjoyed a

certain status. It seems to represent a known, traditional text focused on the

deity, which composers might add and elaborate in their descriptions of the

deity and also concerning what they perceived to be Israel. Third, in its

present context, vv. 2-5 is prefixed to a list of sayings about tribes; at this

point, it has little to do with warfare. Whether or not vv. 2-5 and 26-29

constituted a prior piece (or part of one) about military victory (“ein

Kriegslied”55) that was secondarily refitted to this context, the present

context still shows how the trope became applicable to a further setting.

Verse 2, in the initial tricolon, shows the language of divine movement,

fronted by the divine name. At first glance, this seems quite like the older

exemplars. However, there are a number of significant departures. First,

26 among other features linking the opening and closing sections.54 Based on several versions, many wish to read instead l‘mw for MT lmw; see Seeligmann, “A Psalm from Pre-Regal Times,” 76, and Van der Woude, “Erwägungen zum Rahmenpsalm von Deuteronomium 33,” 282-83 (who also considers reading lnw).55 Seebass, “Die Stammeliste,” 160; see also Van der Woude, “Erwägungen zum Rahmenpsalm von Deuteronomium 33,” 285.

31

the initial unit involves a tricolon and not a bicolon. Thus already in this

initial observation, there is a certain development of the trope in

Deuteronomy 33. Second, the divine name is not invoked as a hymnic piece,

but evoked as the beginning of a narrative. The deity is described in the

indicative. Third, as indicated by the fronting of the divine name here, the

focus falls initially on the deity. Fourth, the verbs as well as their forms differ

from the military march that the verbs in the older exemplars of the trope

represent. The verb in the first line of the tricolon is the generic *bw’, “to

come.” It stands in parallelism with an important departure for the trope,

namely *zr ̇ , “to shine.”56 The third verb is *wp‘, which may denote both to

“appear”57 and to “shine.”58 However one understands the third verb,

compared with the older examples of the trope, the language of theophany

here moves away from the meteorological and into the solar.59 With the

difference in verbs, Yahweh moves from being a god on the march issuing in

the storm and shaking of the world to a god of shining appearance, a source

of light.60 Fifth, the initial tricolon lists three locales, Sinai, Seir and Paran.

56 In view of the other suffix forms without prefixed waw, this form may be an unconverted suffix form. If the form was converted, it might suggest durative past during the time designated by the preceding verb. Cross and Freedman (“The Blessing of Moses,” 193) obviate the issue by deleting the waw.57 NJPS.58 BDB 422; Cross and Freedman, “The Blessing of Moses,” 193. For further discussion, see Mark S. Smith Wayne T. Pitard. The Ugaritic Baal Cycle: Volume 2. Introduction with Text, Translation and Commentary of KTU 1.3-1.4 (VTSup 114; Leiden: Brill, 2009) 243-44.59 For a solar interpretation of the deity in Habakkuk 3, see Shupak, “The God from Teman and the Egyptian Sun God,” 97-116.60 Seeligmann, “A Psalm,” 80, 82.

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Sinai is known from Judg 5:4 and Ps 68:8 in the divine title, and in Ps 68:18

apparently as the place-name. Seir is known from Judg 5:4 (also Num 24:18).

Paran is the most notable innovation by comparison to the other older

exemplars. The name appear also in Hab 3:3, another later exemplar of the

trope. The distribution suggests the addition of a name better known later

than the older exemplars of the trope. It is to be noted also that Edom has

dropped out of the later exemplars just as in Ps 68:8. Whether this reflects a

negative perception of Edom in Israelite tradition or not cannot be

determined.

Verse 2b continues the narrative of divine movement with a description of

the divine retinue:

And61 he came62 with myriads of holy (ones),63

At his right hand64 fire flew for/to them.65 61 Deleted by Cross and Freedman, “The Blessing of Moses,” 198 n. 7; see n. X.62 Here MT is defended by Seeligmann, “A Psalm,” 76. Following the Targums, the Vulgate and in part the LXX (sun muriasin kade ̄ s ), Cross and Freedman (The Blessing of Moses,” 198 n. 8) read ’ittô-m (enclitic –m), “with him.”63 Here following Gaster, “An Ancient Eulogy,” 57; and Cross and Freedman, “The Blessing of Moses,” 193, 199 n. 9 (which reconstructs a plural ending, with final –m lost by haplography). See also F. M. Cross, as reported by Patrick D. Miller, “Two Critical Notes on Psalm 68 and Deuteronomy 33,” HTR 57 (1964) 240-43, here 241. LXX instead attests to kade ̄ s (Kadesh) as a fourth place-name. See Seeligmann, “A Psalm,” 76, 78; and Van der Woude, “Erwägungen zum Rahmenpsalm von Deuteronomium 33,” 283.64 For the sense, “at,” Cross and Freedman (“The Blessing of Moses,” 199 n. 10) compare the same form in 1 Kgs 22:19, which also involves a depiction of the heavenly host.65 Here I am following the reading of the second verb of Richard C. Steiner, “Dat and ‘ên: Two Verbs Masquerading as Nouns in Moses’ Blessing (Deuteronomy 33:2,28)” JBL 115 (1996) 693-98. Steiner’s reading enjoys the

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Here the mention of the theophany within the presentation of the trope both

modifies and combines what is separate in Psalm 68 and perhaps Judges 5.

Where Psalm 68 and Judges 5 mention the military retinue only later in their

poems (Ps 68:18, Judg 5:20), Deuteronomy 33 includes the military retinue

with the trope. In short, Deut 33:2 telescopes the retinue with the

theophany, here rendered in terms of fire, which follows thematically the

solar description. The divine march here includes a divine retinue of holy

ones, along with a characterization of the theophany’s fiery character.66 V. 3

expands on the theme of the retinue attending the divine:

Indeed, O lover of peoples/forces (?),

All his holy ones are by your hand;

They prostrate themselves67 at his feet,

They uphold your orders (?).68

particular merit of semantic, morphological and syntactical parallelism. Cf. A. F. L. Beeston, “Angels in Deuteronomy 33 2,” Journal of Theological Studies 2 (1951) 30-31. Beeston believed that LXX aggeloi correctly was rendering an otherwise unknown Hebrew word meaning “warriors” based on Sabean ’sd. If so, the function of the final feminine –t on the BH form is unclear. Beeston also believed that LXX met’ autou presupposes Hebrew *‘immô, “with him,” which he thought ought to be read here.66 Cf. “myriads” in Yahweh’s chariotry in Ps 68:18.67 So Cross and Freedman, “The Blessing of Moses,” 193 and 200-1 n. 16. They note the root *mkk in the meaning “to bend, to be low or humiliated.” See also Freedman, “The Poetic Structure of the Framework of Deuteronomy 33,” 42. Cf. tkwn in 4Q45, in Beyerle, “Evidence of a Polymorphic Text: Towards the Text-History of Deuteronomy 33,” 223.68 The line is most difficult. The plural imperative reading in Samaritan Pentateuch is noted by Seeligmann (“A Psalm,” 77-78), who reads a plural indicative and cleverly suggests translating, “they stalk along behind Him.”

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With this verse, the narrative builds in terms of person, now combining

second person pronouns to the third person that has been the norm up to

this point. The initial line might be read as a hymnic invocation, which would

account for the MT participial form.69 The root is hapax. It is usually taken in

the meaning, “to love,” based on Arabic and Aramaic * ̇ bb .70 David Noel

Freedman instead translates MT ˙o¯ be ̄ b as “the protector,”71 a view for

which he offered no support. Whether or not this is correct, it will be argued

that the use of the word here is to be related to the usage of ˙o¯ pe ̄ p in v.

12,72 which does have this meaning or its like.73

With vv. 4-5, the narrative shifts more explicitly to the human community

of the god. These may be balance the divine forces that attend Yahweh in v.

2. This would fit with the parallel reference here to “all your holy ones.” V. 4

elaborates the trope in a manner not found elsewhere:

69 The MT form is participial, in contrast to the past time-frame form suggested by LXX, Peshitta, Vulgate and Targum (* ̇ åbab ), so Gaster, “An Ancient Eulogy,” 54. 70 See also Akkadian ≈ abåbu B, “to caress (?),” CAD ¢:2. Form the examples cited as well as the lexical equivalence of ≈ a-ba-bu with na- s£ á-qu , “to kiss” (Malku III 38), a term of physical affection appears indicated.71 Freedman, “The Poetic Structure of Deuteronomy 33,” 32 and 42.72 Cf. the polel participle form in 4Q35 (“a tendency in later manuscripts”); see Beyerle, “Evidence of a Polymorphic Text: Towards the Text-History of Deuteronomy 33,” 229.73 As a further alternative, George Mendenhall compared Akkadian ebe ̄ bum , “to be pure”/ubbubum, “to purify.” Following this suggestion, Miller (“Two Critical Notes on Psalm 68 and Deuteronomy 33,” 242-43) renders “the pure ones of the peoples,” parallelism to the preceding “warriors of the gods” (following Beeston’s reading of BH ’ s£ dt ; see n. XX). Cf. the textual surgery by Cross and Freedman, “The Blessing of Moses,” 193.

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Moses74 commanded instruction for us,

As a heritage of the congregation of Jacob.

In this verse, the discussion shifts from the divine party accompanying

Yahweh to Moses and “Jacob.”

Verse 5 further expands the trope with a claim to Israelite unity under

Yahweh’s kingship:

He became king in Jeshurun,

When he assembled the heads of the people,75

The tribes of Israel together.

One may suspect that the reference to Sinai in the trope’s tradition, as seen

in Judg 5:4 and Ps 68:8 and 18, may have triggered in this expansion what

was known to this author of the Mosaic covenant (whatever that may have

74 Gaster (“An Ancient Eulogy,” 58) thought the name is “hypermetrical,” arising either from môrå s£ â or out of the necessity of providing a subject for what he regarded as the “incorrect” verb, which he took as an imperative. Some scholars, such as Karl Budde and Raymond Tournay, believe the name of Moses to be secondary with the deity as the original subject; see Van der Woude, “Erwägungen zum Rahmenpsalm von Deuteronomium 33,” 284. However, no textual-critical evidence is given for this deletion, and the name fits the line length for the two lines. Van der Woude (p. 282; see also p. 286) brackets the entire line as secondary: [“En Gesetz befahl uns Mose.]”; this leaves the following line as a monocolon, which seems dubious. If anything, it would be the entire verse that would be secondary.75 Or, “the heads of the people assembled,” taking the -t- form of the verb as intransitive.

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been). For the author, this was for “us,” specified in the second line as “the

congregation of Jacob.” The “peoples” (‘ammîm) of v. 3a perhaps balances

here with “the heads of the people” (rå’sê ‘åm).

As with the trope in Ps 68:8-9 and Judg 5:4-5, Deut 33:2-5 anticipates

some of the content of the poem’s body. Five points on this score may be

noted. First, and perhaps most explicit, v. 4 anticipates the saying about

Levi, and specifically the allusion to Moses in v. 8, as well as the vocation of

the Levites in v. 10a: “They will teach your decrees to Jacob, your instruction

to Israel.” Second, the “myriads” of v. 2b may be designed to coordinate

with the same numeral said of Ephraim in v. 17b (notably preceding the

“thousands” said of Manasseh there, reversing the traditional poetic

parallelism of “thousands”//”myriads”). Third, we may note the use of

‘ammîm here and in v. 19a and b, in contrast with the usage of the same

form in v. 3a. Fourth, we may note the use of the verb, “to come” (*’th) in

vv. 2b and 21b, which would not be so notable except for the fact that the

phrase rå’ s£ ê ‘åm as seen in v. 5b also occurs in v. 21b.76 Fifth and finally,

Jeshurun serves in the conclusion in v. 26a as it does in the introduction in v.

5a.

Since so many expressions of vv. 3-5 can be found in one form or another

in the sayings about the tribes, it seems that the composer of the poem

knew both the traditional trope of the divine movement from the southern

site as well as the sayings tradition, and that this composer fashioned the

76 See Freedman, “The Poetic Structure of the Framework of Deuteronomy 33,” 33.

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introduction by incorporating the traditional trope into a larger framework

and used language under the influence of a some specific sayings. This may

account for some other word-choices in the introduction. If only for their

sonant resonance, the choice of the unusual and perhaps problematic

˙o¯ be ¯b in v. 3a, usually translated “to love,” may have been inspired in part

under the influence of the same form with proximate consonants, namely

˙o¯ pe ¯p in v. 12b; and one may wonder if the meaning of the latter, “to

protect,” is how the former is to be understood. There may be other

instances of verbal-thematic linkage between the trope and the rest of

Deuteronomy 33, but to a modern critical eye these may seem farfetched.77

In any case, there are some rather clear cases of connection between words

in the introduction of the poem and terms in its body.

IV. Theological Reflections

This final section offers theological reflections on the trope. I would begin

with a canonical reflection, and then I will address two major rubrics of time

and space, or more specifically between the past and present and between

the there and here.

77 In this regard, note whm tkw in v. 3b and tmyk in v. 8a.

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The canonical dimensions of the Bible78 might be thought to belong under

the rubric of theology or theological reflections, as they represent matters of

theological reflection beyond the texts in questions. The notion of canon --

and thus the Bible’s canonical expressions and perceptions -- postdates the

composition of these texts and it largely (though not necessarily entirely)

postdates the basic formation of the biblical books in which these texts

appear.79 The notion or sense of Scripture as a canon at best belongs to a

relatively late period of the Bible, even if some sense of the texts as

authoritative can be traced back to the sixth century, as I believe they can.80

Still relative to the poems themselves (or even their immediate prose

contexts), the canon represents a new “biblical context” for reading these

texts, and it may be understood as part of the theological enterprise of late

biblical times. Accordingly, canonical considerations do indeed belong to the

discussion in biblical studies, and properly so in theological reflections

78 The literature is massive. Fundamental works are Brevard S. Childs, Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments: Theological Reflections on the Hebrew Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992); and Old Testament Theology in a Canonical Context (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985). 79 For the phenomena of “Scriptures” in the Second Temple period and “scripturalizing” activity from the sixth century onwards, see Mark S. Smith “What is a Scriptural Text in the Second Temple Period? Texts between their Biblical Past, their Inner-Biblical Interpretation, Their Reception in Second Temple Literature, and their Textual Witnesses,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls at 60: Scholarly Contributions of New York University Faculty and Alumni (ed. Lawrence H. Schiffman and Shani Tzoref; Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah 89; Leiden: Brill, 2010) 271-98.80 Many scholars regard the term “canon” as a post-biblical anachronism. For this matter, see Eugene Ulrich, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Origins of the Bible (SDSSRL; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; Leiden/Boston/Köln: Brill, 1999).

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demarcated from the historical, literary and religious study of specific biblical

texts.

The first example of the trope is Deut 33:2-5, and as such it marks not

only the heading for tribal sayings in the poem, but also serves to close the

Pentateuch. Indeed, it has been suggested, for example by Isac Leo

Seeligmann, that the insertion of the poem was made precisely at the end of

Deuteronomy because of the reference to Moses and the teaching in v. 4.81

Of course, it might be argued that v. 4 was added secondarily because of the

poem’s position.82 In either perspective, the trope offers a poetic

punctuation point to this larger prose work. It reflects a poetic expression on

the prose origins story of God and Israel meeting and of the divine gift of the

“teaching” to Israel. This giving of the Torah in the figure of Moses serves

not only as a special mark of divine possession given to Israel, but also

marks Israel’s identity. As the first of these exemplars of the trope given a

particular point in the Pentateuch’s ending, Deuteronomy 33:2-5 arguably

looms over the other exemplars, which are sprinkled through the Hebrew

Bible, and its new perspective, especially with v. 4 and the teaching of

Moses, arguably provides the perspective for the others. What may have

been historically last of the exemplars is now canonically first.

The second exemplar in Judges 5 is the single example in the Former

Prophets (or Historical Books). It may be said that the revelation of the God

81 Seeligmann, “A Psalm,” 78-79.82 This would make the deity the subject of the verb in v. 5, which may be arguably preferable. The syntax of v. 4 might also seem to be somewhat dissonant from its context, though this is hardly definitive

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of Israel’s earliest memory extends not only to the Pentateuch but carries

forth in the Former Prophets where God aids Israel in the land. It offers an

expression of divine presence to Israel in the land. Thus the revelation of

God known from the earliest moment continues to be revelation for later

moments in the land. The third and fourth instances further show the

expression of the trope in God’s original revelation in psalms (Psalm 68) and

in prophecy (Hababbuk 3). The revelation for Psalm 68 once again

celebrates divine victory for Israel as well as the prosperity of the rain, which

this exemplar elaborates (in vv. 10-11). For Habakkuk 3, the trope describes

a past victory of mythic proportions, which in turn provides the basis for

hope for the future.

A canonical approach also suggests a consideration together of the

genres named by the various poems in context. According to the prose

superscriptions or introductions of the trope’s four exemplars, this ancient

revelation of God is heard across the Scriptures in the different registers:

“blessing” (Deut 33:1); “song” (Judg 5:1; see vv. 3 and 12); “psalm” and

“song” (Ps 68:1); and “prayer” (Hab 3:1). It is also expressed by four very

different human voices: Moses (Deut 33:1); Deborah (Judg 5:1; cf. v. 12);

David (Ps 68:1), and Habakkuk (Hab 3:1). The original revelation to Israel by

the God of Israel continues to speak to Israel in different ways and voices.

It is also heard in different places and times. Let us turn to the matter of

time in the texts. The trope is a textual occasion or site for both

representation and reflection on the past as represented in the texts. Stated

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differently, there is no past in the trope without further application, reflection

or expansion. In Judges 5, the trope of the march in vv. 4-5 creates new

horizons for the battle described in the rest of the poem, and understands

the two battles as standing in a succession of divine acts on Israel’s behalf.

Psalm 68:9-10 expands on the benefit of the march described in vv. 8-9,

which in turn becomes an ancient precedent for Jerusalem in v. 30.

Compared with Judg 5:4-5 and Ps 68:8-9, Deut 33:2-5 massively expands the

trope. It creates a considerably more mythic past event with the divine

retinue compared with the other examples of the trope, and it includes a

foundational picture of Israel’s relationship with Yahweh under the rubric of

the figure of Moses and the teaching associated with him. In the exemplar of

the trope in Hab 3:3-6, it is to be noted that its picture of the past is far more

mythological than anything found in the older exemplars of the trope. If one

were to read for any developmental trend in the trope, it is the older cases in

Judges 5 and Psalm 68 that are less mythological and the later ones, namely

Deut 33:2-5 and Hab 3:3-6, that are more so.

The temporal horizons of the biblical composers of the poems went back

only as far as the old poetic trope that they incorporated in their

introductions. As far as scholars can tell, these composers had no access to

earlier information. The pre-biblical context that gave rise to the trope and

the older context that transmitted the trope in earliest Israel represented “a

lost world” to the composers of these poems. The trope was a fragment, a

textual totem, of this “lost world,” which the composers connected with their

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present. It may have been the very suggestiveness of the ancient “lost

world” that may have contributed to the trope’s appeal and the lack of

further particulars that opened it to manifold variations and expansions seen

in the three cases discussed above. For the composers, the past’s

importance was not restricted to its “factuality.” Rather, it was true also in

shedding light on the present circumstances of the receivers of that past. In

all three instances of the trope, there are concrete efforts to coordinate its

theme sounded in the poetic introductions with some material further in the

body of the poem that represents the “present” from the perspective of the

composers. Israel expressed its classic trope about God as a matter of

coordinating the past and the present, the old and the new. The poems

assert that what was true in the trope and its time was also true for the

events described in these poems beyond the trope. In the face of

discontinuity or difference of circumstances, the underlying reality, namely

Yahweh’s relationship with Israel, was understood to go back in time to

Israel’s earliest historical memory, and it bore an implicit hope that it would

no less endure in time.

The revelation of God for the biblical authors did not depend on knowing

history fully, whether this is the history of earliest Israel or of the earlier

background of the trope as seen in Egyptian sources. At the same time,

revelation is not claimed to be simply a textual phenomenon; rather, the text

imagines that revelation is matter of God and people meeting in real time in

the past, not only as imagined or fictional time. The Bible understands the

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story of revelation as located in the history to which the text refers. The

representations of the past in the biblical text require a concept of historical

truth that is wider than a simple either/or as to whether events actually

happened in and only the manner described. In order to describe what is

going on in the Bible, we need a wider bandwidth of historical truth that

encompasses both the ancient sense of truth in storytelling and the modern

historian’s criteria for truth, what Laurel C. Schneider has called “a fact-

fiction intercourse.” 83

As for space, we may first note that the different forms of the trope

capture different aspects of Sinai.84 Physically, the places are all understood

to be located in the south of Edom or the like. One of the more interesting

aspects of their referentiality is that it is hardly known. Where these places

83 See Laurel C. Schneider, Beyond Monotheism: A Theology of Multiplicity (London/New York: Routledge, 2008) 128; see also her remarks on pp. 110-11, 114.84 The following reflections are influenced by critical spatial theory known from the French Marxist sociologist Henri Lefebvre (1901-1991) and the geographer Edward W. Soja (b. 1941), who famously used for three types of space the terms, “Firstspace,” Secondspace,” and “Thirdspace.” In the discipline of “Critical Spatiality” the concepts of “First Space” (concrete geophysical reality), “second space” (how such space is conceived), and “third space” (the ways in which such space is related to the ideology of the author and society) help to clarify the use of space in these contexts. See Lefebvre, The Production of Space (trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith; Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1991); and Soja, Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1996). This information is neatly summarized by Christl M. Maier, Daughter Zion, Mother Zion: Gender, Space, and the Sacred in Ancient Israel (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008) 10-14. See also Jon L. Berquist and Claudia Camp, eds., Constructions of Space II: The Biblical City and Other Imagined Spaces (Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies 490; London/New York: Clark, 2008).

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are attested in the biblical texts, their meaning as space involves a

conception of the places as the home of the audience’s deity that is

expressive of that deity’s identity. Indeed, Sinai at the outset of this

tradition appears as the mountain in Ps 68:18, but it is first and foremost a

part of the divine title, “the One of Sinai” (zeh sînay) in Judg 5:5 and Ps 68:9

that this mountain expresses its meaning. Furthermore, these places

function as a spatial marker of the ancient antecedent of divine support.

Psalm 68 understands the ancient modern as the past corollary to Jerusalem

in the present. In the case of Deuteronomy 33:2-5, it generates the

particular foundational story of Sinai in the form for which it is famous,

namely as the site of Moses and the divine teaching. The different forms of

the trope capture what may be called the early history of Sinai, arriving at

the end with its expression in Deut 33:4 approaching what could be

recognized as the canonical sense of Sinai for later audiences.

The biblical trope further suggests that Israel recognized that the God of

Israel came from outside of Israel, from a land that was not Israel’s even

though at the same time God was particularly associated with Israel. In the

perspective of the trope, the people fundamentally belongs to God apart

from the land that is Israel’s. For the poetic trope, Israel’s God came to Israel

from outside of Israel, while for the prose Israel came to God outside of

Israel. The trope perhaps then offers a paradox of purpose, in that God

belonged to Israel in high antiquity and yet God did not come from what

Israel regarded as its homeland. There is a way in which this reality, this

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distance between “the there and the here,” would be a hallmark construction

of God’s relationship with Israel. Whether in the early trope, or in the prose

Exodus story, or in other biblical texts such as Second Isaiah, God comes to

the people of Israel wherever it is, not only in the land of Israel but also when

-- and perhaps especially when -- it is not in the land.

What may be the word in this for us? Israel reached its understandings of

the divine between the then and the now and between the there and the

here. While Israel’s prose tradition recalled Moses first unknowingly coming

to God at the mountain and then led Israel to this mountain to meet God, the

God of Israel of the oldest poetic memory came to Israel. The prose and

poetry suggest a dialogical model, that our human pursuit for God is our

sometimes unknowing response to God’s pursuit of us. An analogous

dialogical movement informs the mystery of the God’s relationship to the

Church and the world. As the Church bears the word in the world, God may

come to the Church from both within and outside of it. Engagement with the

world helps to reveal to the Church the depths of the biblical word and

knowledge of God. For all of us, our love of learning is devoted to the

received text; that is our vocation. As so many of you have done, it is

important additionally to support and participate in the effort to learn what

others in the world may show us about understanding God and the Bible.

When we have engaged both tasks (and many of you have), then -- I think --

we more completely realize our vocation. Then, like David of the Psalm

superscriptions, we too may sing the hymn of our lives in praise of God.

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