The Abortive Insurrection in Zedekiah\u2019s Day (Jer. 27\u201329)
\nOn the second of Adar in the seventh regnal year of Nebuchadnezzar, i.e. on the 15\/16 March, 597 b.c.e., the city of Jerusalem surrendered to the Babylonian army after a brief siege. The short reign of Jehoiachin, son of Jehoiakim, came to an abrupt end, and Zedekiah, son of Josiah, was installed by Nebuchadnezzar on the throne of Judah as a vassal king.
\nIt was not long, however, before the anti-Babylonian party in Jerusalem gained the upper hand and plotted rebellion. Sometime in the last decade of the sixth century b.c.e., there took place a six-power regional conference, the aim of which was to plot coordinated rebellion against Nebuchadnezzar. This event is known to us solely from Jer. 27:2 ff. which relates that the envoys of the trans-Jordanian monarchies of Edom, Moab and the Ammonites, together with those from the Phoenician city-states of Tyre and Sidon, assembled in Jerusalem clearly for that purpose.
\nUnfortunately, the date of this summit meeting is in dispute. In the first place, our received text of Jer. 27:1 assigns it to \u201cthe beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim\u201d, (\u05d1\u05e8\u05d0\u05e9\u05d9\u05ea \u05de\u05de\u05dc\u05db\u05ea \u05d9\u05d4\u05d5\u05d9\u05e7\u05d9\u05dd;). This is clearly impossible in light of the mention of Zedekiah in vv. 3 and 12, of the explicit reference to the exile of Jehoiachin in vv. 16\u201322, and of the fact that Jer. 28:1 identifies \u201cthat self-same year\u201d as \u201cthe beginning of the reign of Zedekiah\u201d. There can be no doubt, of course, that we must either substitute Zedekiah\u2019s name for that of Jehoiakim in Jer. 27:1 (as does the Syriac version) or (with the Greek) omit the line entirely. Either way, we have to explain the scribal error as an inadvertent carry-over from the superscription of Jer. 26:1.
\nHowever, smoothing out this particular textual difficulty by no means settles the question of the date of the seditious conclave, since \u05d1\u05e8\u05d0\u05e9\u05d9\u05ea \u05de\u05de\u05dc\u05db\u05ea itself requires definition and the problem is complicated by the date-line of Jer. 28:1, which identifies this formula with \u201cthe fourth year,\u201d without specifying of what.
\nTHE ASSUMED DATING
\nIt has been the well-nigh unanimous view of modern scholars that the diplomatic summit meeting took place in Jerusalem in the fourth year of Zedekiah\u2019s reign, i.e. 594\/3 b.c.e. This solution to the problem involves the adoption of the Greek text which omits entirely 27:1, deletes the reference to \u05d1\u05e8\u05d0\u05e9\u05d9\u05ea \u05de\u05de\u05dc\u05db\u05ea in 28:1, and inverts the order of the words to read \u2026 \u05d1\u05e9\u05e0\u05d4 \u05d4\u05e8\u05d1\u05d9\u05e2\u05d9\u05ea \u05dc\u05e6\u05d3\u05e7\u05d9\u05d4\u05d5 \u05d5\u05db\u05d5\u05f3. Some would leave intact the received Hebrew text (other than emending Jehoiakim to Zedekiah in 27:1), but would interpret \u05d1\u05e8\u05d0\u05e9\u05d9\u05ea \u05de\u05de\u05dc\u05db\u05ea in a general, rather than a literal, sense, meaning, \u201cthe early years.\u201d
\nSupport for a preferred fourth year dating has been sought in recent times in the Babylonian Chronicle which records in sequence the military campaigns of Nebuchadnezzar during the first eleven years of his reign (605\u2013594 b.c.e.). This document reports that in Kislev and Tebet of his tenth year, i.e. Dec. 595\u2013Jan. 594 b.c.e., Nebuchadnezzar did not campaign abroad but remained at home to suppress a revolt. It has been assumed that the various vassal states in the west were encouraged by this uprising in the very heart of the kingdom to meet in Jerusalem some months later in order to plan their own rebellion on the periphery of the empire.
\nAll the foregoing arguments, however, are open to some very serious objections that cannot be overlooked and that have to be accounted for. Their effect is to make it extremely unlikely that the plot against Babylon did, in fact, take place in Zedekiah\u2019s fourth year.
\nTHE TEXTUAL PROBLEM AND THE GREEK
\nIn the first place, the caption to chapter 27 cannot be dismissed so easily. As has been frequently noted, there are excellent reasons for believing, and these will be adduced later, that chapter 27\u201329, like many other sections of the book, once circulated as a separate pericope. As such, it is extremely unlikely that it would not have had its own superscription. Furthermore, that date-line \u201cin that year\u201d in Jer. 28:1 must refer back to some year already specified in the preceding chapter. To assume that the original title got lost, that 27:1 crept in solely by error as a duplication of 26:1 and that this, in turn, gave rise to a further erroneous insertion in 28:1, is to put an unnecessary strain on one\u2019s credulity. On the other hand, to presume the flagrantly contradictory \u05d1\u05e8\u05d0\u05e9\u05d9\u05ea \u05de\u05de\u05dc\u05db\u05ea and \u05d1\u05e9\u05e0\u05d4 \u05d4\u05e8\u05d1\u05d9\u05e2\u05d9\u05ea in a single context to be the result of \u201charmonization\u201d is to presuppose the complete indifference of the editor or glossator to the unintelligibility and irrationality of the text he produced, a phenomenon for which some explanation ought to be given before it is accepted.
\nThere is no reason to believe that the Greek version of these particular disputed passages represents a superior text. Altogether, the relationship between the Greek translation of Jeremiah and our received Hebrew text is a very complicated one, since the former is shorter than the latter by about one eighth, the omissions including both single verses or parts thereof, as well as entire sections. It is by no means simplified by the Jeremiah fragments from Qumran which now prove that the Greek is not an abbreviated version of the proto-Masoretic text, but is based on a Hebrew Vorlage, and that we are dealing with two distinct redactional traditions of a Hebrew text. The problem of chapters 27\u201329 is particularly thorny for the Greek treatment of 27:1 and 28:1 may itself be nothing more than a redactional attempt at harmonization. In general, it has been observed that the differences in chronological data between the Hebrew text and the various Greek versions chiefly appear in just those passages in which difficulties exist, and the Greek versions frequently constitute attempts to smooth out those disagreements. On the other hand, it should be noted that the Lucianic recension of the Greek, as well as the Latin of Jerome and the Peshitta and Targum are all identical with our current Hebrew text of Jer. 28:1 with its inherent apparent contradiction. As a matter of fact, recent studies have led to a positive reevaluation of the chronological data supplied by the Lucianic recension, at least for the early monarchy period.
\n\u201cRESHIT MAMLEKHET\u201d
\nAs to the meaning of the formula \u05d1\u05e8\u05d0\u05e9\u05d9\u05ea \u05de\u05de\u05dc\u05db\u05ea, it is widely accepted that this is the Hebrew equivalent of the Akkadian re\u0161 \u0161arruti that usually signifies the accession year, i.e. the time that elapsed between the day the king acceded to the throne and his official coronation on the next civil New Year. This period was not counted in the numbering of his regnal years. Now it is perfectly true that the re\u0161 \u0161arruti formula may occasionally be imprecisely used. However, none can deny that the normal and overwhelming usage in Akkadian is very precise, and since the Hebrew equivalent is restricted to superscriptions in the Book of Jeremiah which is characterized by a relatively large number of chronological captions of otherwise invariable exactitude, it would be most strange if \u05d1\u05e8\u05d0\u05e9\u05d9\u05ea \u05de\u05de\u05dc\u05db\u05ea constituted the sole exception. Would anyone seriously question the meaning of this formula were it not for the contradictory \u05d1\u05e9\u05e0\u05d4 \u05d4\u05e8\u05d1\u05d9\u05e2\u05d9\u05ea? And if this phrase means that the events described took place in Zedekiah\u2019s fourth year, then in what way would our knowledge be enhanced by the addition of an ambiguous \u05d1\u05e8\u05d0\u05e9\u05d9\u05ea \u05de\u05de\u05dc\u05db\u05ea; especially since well over a third of the king\u2019s reign would have already elapsed before then?
\nTHE ORACLE AGAINST ELAM
\nAnother argument that has been advanced in favor of the loose usage of this date formula is the oracle against Elam in Jer. 49:34 ff. The Babylonian Chronicle relates that in the ninth year of Nebuchadnezzar (596\/5 b.c.e.) Elam advanced menacingly along the bank of the Tigris only to flee in panic at the appearance of the Babylonian army. It is this event, it is claimed, that provides the historic background to the oracle of Jeremiah, and since Nebuchadnezzar\u2019s ninth year overlapped with Zedekiah\u2019s first and second regnal years, \u05e8\u05d0\u05e9\u05d9\u05ea \u05de\u05de\u05dc\u05db\u05ea cannot be the accession year. However, the content of Jer. 49:34 ff cannot be reconciled with the Babylonian Chronicle, for the latter says absolutely nothing about the utter destruction of Elam and the exile of its people which are the themes of Jeremiah\u2019s prophecy. The precise historical background of that oracle still remains to be determined.
\nTHE BABYLONIAN CHRONICLE
\nNo more convincing is the argument that the insurrection being plotted in Jerusalem, supposedly in the fourth year of Zedekiah, was inspired by the rebellion in Babylon actually recorded in the Chronicle as having taken place in Dec. 595\u2013Jan. 594 b.c.e. It is difficult to understand why a local uprising that proved to be an immediate failure should have inspired other revolts in the west or should have generated false hopes for an early collapse of the Babylonian empire and the prompt return of the Judean exiles. On the contrary, the Babylonian Chronicle gives no indication of any other dissension in 595\/4 b.c.e. or in the succeeding year. The revolt was speedily crushed and Nebuchadnezzar felt sufficiently secure to go to Syria in person and without the army in order to collect tribute, and he was able to return to Babylon before the end of his regnal year, i.e. all within the space of three months after the uprising. This being the case, it is reasonable to assume that the swift suppression of the revolt in the capital would more likely have demoralized and discouraged the conspirators than have inspired their seditious activities.
\nTHE PERICOPE CHAPTERS 27\u201329
\nNo solution to the problem of Jer. 28:1 is possible without an examination of chapters 27\u201329 as a literary unit. As has been mentioned above, this section constitutes a distinct document within the Book of Jeremiah and there is good reason to believe that it must once have circulated separately. Several independent, but complementary, lines of evidence abundantly demonstrate its pericopal nature.
\nWe may cite the consistently exceptional spelling of the name of the king of Babylon as \u05e0\u05d1(\u05d5)\u05db\u05d3\u05e0\u05d0\u05e6\u05e8 as opposed to \u05e0\u05d1(\u05d5)\u05db\u05d3\u05e8\u05d0\u05e6\u05e8 throughout the rest of the book. Then there is the remarkable fact that the abbreviated form of the prophet\u2019s name \u05d9\u05e8\u05de\u05d9\u05d4 occurs here ten times, but never again in the entire work, and the title \u05d4\u05e0\u05d1\u05d9\u05d0 is attached to the name quite disproportionately to its employment elsewhere. The exiled king\u2019s name is extraordinarily given as \u05d9\u05db\u05b4(\u05d5)\u05e0\u05d9\u05d4 in contrast to the forms \u05d1\u05e0\u05d9\u05d4\u05d5, \u05d9\u05db\u05e0\u05d9\u05d4\u05d5 or \u05d9\u05d4\u05d5\u05d9\u05db\u05d9\u05df otherwise used. There is a general predilection for the attenuation of the -yahu names as is evidenced by \u05d2\u05de\u05e8\u05d9\u05d4, \u05d7\u05dc\u05e7\u05d9\u05d4, \u05d7\u05e0\u05e0\u05d9\u05d4, \u05de\u05e2\u05e9\u05d9\u05d4, \u05e6\u05d3\u05e7\u05d9\u05d4, \u05e6\u05e4\u05e0\u05d9\u05d4, \u05e7\u05d5\u05dc\u05d9\u05d4, \u05e9\u05de\u05e2\u05d9\u05d4.
\nEqually decisive for the unity of the section is the subject matter. Each chapter is preoccupied with the same two interwoven themes that derive from a specific political situation. Jeremiah wages a bitter polemic against the activities of the prophets at home and in Babylon who predict a speedy return from exile, and with all the emphasis at his command he seeks to refute the subversive notion that Babylon can be overthrown within the lifetime of the present generation. By emphasizing the inevitability of a long exile he aims at discouraging rebellion.
\nThat the events of chapters 27 and 28 occurred in close sequence is further made clear by the precise formula of 28:1 \u05d1\u05e9\u05e0\u05d4 \u05d4\u05d4\u05d9\u05d0 as by the fact that in his encounter with Hananiah b. Azzur, Jeremiah was still wearing the yoke that he had previously donned for the regional conclave reported in the preceding chapter.
\nTHE EPISTLES TO THE EXILES
\nWhat is the connection between chapter 29 and the preceding two? It shares with them the orthographic peculiarities, the onomastic idiosyncrasies and a thematic unity. The introductory \u05d5\u05d0\u05dc\u05d4 (v. 1) provides a further indication of contextual consecution. But when did Jeremiah send his epistle to the Judean exiles? It must obviously have been some time between the planning of the revolt and the date set for its execution. The only specific chronological notation given is the parenthetic, \u201cafter King Jehoiachin etc. had left Jerusalem.\u201d Unless this formula be intended to indicate \u201cnot long after,\u201d it is difficult to understand its function and its substitution for the usual dating according to regnal years or for a simple, imprecise, \u201cin the days of Zedekiah.\u201d This argument is reinforced by vv. 5 ff., 28, which imply a completely unsettled state of affairs among the exiles, far more in consonance with the first year of Zedekiah than with the fourth. This is in sharp contrast to their more stable social and economic conditions as reflected in the preaching of Ezekiel in the fifth and sixth years of the exile, just one and two years after the purported dating of chapters 27\u201329.
\nBut there are even more serious objections to assigning the epistle of chapter 29 to the fourth year. Jer. 28:1 proves that the insurgents met in Jerusalem either a short while before the month of Ab or in that month, since the prophet was still wearing the yoke. If we insist on 594\/3, we are faced with the unavoidable conclusion that the delegation which carried Jeremiah\u2019s epistle warning against rebellion must have left for Babylon between Ab-Elul 593 b.c.e., otherwise the event would have fallen within the fifth year of Zedekiah. This, in itself, is not impossible except for the report of another delegation from Judea to Nebuchadnezzar in the fourth year of the Judean king, as related in Jer. 51:59 ff. That we are dealing with two distinct and separate commissions is evidenced by the different names of the emissaries involved. On each occasion, Jeremiah used the opportunity to send a message to his exiled countrymen. But the two messages are mutually exclusive in content, the one in complete disharmony with the other. That of chapter 51:59 ff. is a doom prophecy predicting the destruction of Babylon. The epistle of chapter 29, with its emphasis on the futility of rebellion and the long duration of the exile, is its complete antithesis. Did Jeremiah send both messages within a single year? If that of chapter 51:59\u201364 followed the oracle of chapter 29, it would not only have vitiated its effect, but would actually have served to inflame the very revolutionary passions that Jeremiah tried so hard to quell. Moreover, we should be forced to postulate that the two delegations to Babylon bearing contradictory messages from the prophet were simultaneously dispatched or they could not, as we have seen, have gone forth in Zedekiah\u2019s fourth year. This is clearly an absurd and impossible situation.
\nThe delegation of Jer. 51:59 ff. could, of course, have been the earlier of the two and could have set out for Babylon in Zedekiah\u2019s fourth year well before the revolutionary conclave might have gotten under way, although it would have had to reckon with Nebuchadnezzar\u2019s absence from Babylon campaigning in Hatti-land, presumably for a minimum of three months beginning in Kislev (Dec.) 594 b.c.e. However, if it be assumed that the events of Jer. 27\u201328 also belong to the year 594\/3, it becomes inexplicable that at any time in the course of those twelve months Jeremiah should have delivered himself of an oracle the content of which could only have served to reinforce the dangerously optimistic predictions of the false prophets operating both in Judea and Babylon. The entire situation only makes sense if we assume a considerable lapse of time between the two messages of Jeremiah to the exiles, and if the words of Jer. 51:59 ff. were designed to bring a message of comfort to counteract the mood of hopelessness and despair that must have gripped the exiles once the failure of the revolt became apparent and it was realized that the activities of the prophets had been nothing but a snare and a delusion.
\nA RECONSTRUCTION OF THE EVENTS
\nThe evidence would seem to be overwhelmingly against the simple assumption that the events described in Jer. 27\u201329 took place in the fourth year of Zedekiah\u2019s reign, i.e. in the course of 594\/3 b.c.e. There is no good reason either to discard or to explain away the chronological notation [\u05e6\u05d3\u05e7\u05d9\u05d4\u05d5] \u05d1\u05e8\u05d0\u05e9\u05d9\u05ea \u05de\u05de\u05dc\u05db\u05ea (Jer. 28:1) in favor of the apparently contradictory \u05d1\u05e9\u05e0\u05d4 \u05d4\u05e8\u05d1\u05d9\u05e2\u05d9\u05ea. On the contrary, the beginning of Zedekiah\u2019s reign provides a far more satisfactory background to what took place than does the fourth year which creates insuperable difficulties.
\nThe course of events may quite plausibly be reconstructed. Zedekiah came to the throne very soon after the 2nd of Adar, 597 b.c.e., the day when Jehoiachin was deposed, certainly not later than the first of Nisan. The six months that elapsed until his official enthronement in Tishri constitute the \u05e8\u05d0\u05e9\u05d9\u05ea \u05de\u05de\u05dc\u05db\u05ea, a phrase which is the equivalent of the Akkadian re\u0161 \u0161arruti. Nebuchadnezzar must have returned home immediately after exacting the oath of fealty from Zedekiah. This is confirmed both by the report in 2 Chr. 36:10 as well as by the Babylonian Chronicle which makes it clear that the king hurried back to his capital as quickly as possible after each foreign expedition. He would certainly have had little reason to linger in Judea once he had appointed \u201ca king of his own choice\u201d bound to him by oath of vassalage, a known pro-Babylonian and regarded as thoroughly trustworthy.
\nOn the other hand, the fact that Zedekiah was regarded by the Judeans as a puppet of Babylon and was never accepted by them as the legitimate king diminished his authority. It was this more than anything else that accounted for the weak and vacillating rule that characterized his reign. It would be just at the beginning\u2014when he would still enjoy the confidence of the Babylonians, but before he would have had time to consolidate his power internally\u2014that the anti-Babylonian party would find it most convenient to plot rebellion. Since he would certainly have lost his throne, and probably his life as well, had Jehoiachin returned, it must be assumed that Zedekiah was coerced into the insurrectionary conclave against his will and better judgment. The fact that he allowed Jeremiah to make use of his envoys to Babylon to discourage rebellion supports this presumption.
\nIf, now, we refer the events of Jer. 27\u201328 to the period between Nisan and Tishri 597 b.c.e., with the epistle of chapter 29 sent toward the end of this period, a satisfactory reconstruction not only becomes possible, but certain hitherto unexplained facts fall into place.
\nNo acceptable interpretation has so far been adduced for the mysterious \u201ctwo-year\u201d limitation that the false prophets imposed on the exile with a precision that is quite unwonted in those quarters. If it be noted, however, that the prophecy was made in the month of Ab 597 b.c.e., the revolt must have been planned for late in 595 b.c.e. In other words, the Jerusalemites and their allies in the west would really have been engaged in planning for the insurrection that actually took place in Babylon in Dec. 595 b.c.e., a record of which has been preserved in the Babylonian Chronicle. The seditious deliberations in Jerusalem were designed to coordinate the projected uprising in Babylon with a revolt in the west, timed for two years ahead. In this connection, the \u201cuniversalism\u201d of Hananiah b. Azzur, who included \u201call the nations\u201d in his tidings of liberation from the yoke of Nebuchadnezzar, takes on new meaning. The reference would be to the international character of the revolt, to all those peoples whose representatives met in Jerusalem in the summer of 597 b.c.e.
\nJeremiah\u2019s epistle to the exiles certainly presupposes an awareness of some mutinous preparations on their part, spurred on by the local prophets in collusion with their counterparts back home. Jeremiah\u2019s strenuous opposition to Jewish participation, whether at home or in exile, as well as Nebuchadnezzar\u2019s swift suppression of the outbreak in Babylon, were probably the decisive factors in the abandonment of the Jerusalem plot altogether. It was after this, in the year 594 b.c.e., in the fourth year of the Judean king, that a delegation again left Jerusalem for Babylon, perhaps this time headed by Zedekiah himself. Its purpose must have been to reassure Nebuchadnezzar of the loyalty of Judah in the wake of the uprising. Jeremiah now took the opportunity to send a new message to the exiles who were thoroughly demoralized by the collapse of their naive hopes of return. This time the prophet emphasized the certainty of Babylon\u2019s ultimate collapse.
\n\u201cTHE FOURTH YEAR\u201d
\nIt now remains to examine the reference to \u201cthe fourth year\u201d in Jer. 28:1. As we have demonstrated on historical and other grounds, it is this, and not \u05d1\u05e8\u05d0\u05e9\u05d9\u05ea \u05de\u05de\u05dc\u05db\u05ea that is the crux. Stylistically, too, the phrase \u05d1\u05e9\u05e0\u05d4 \u05d4\u05e8\u05d1\u05d9\u05e2\u05d9\u05ea is exceptional. Of the sixteen passages in which superscriptions with date-formulae occur in the Book of Jeremiah, nine conform to the pattern, \u201cin the year X of Y (the king),\u201d three have \u201cin the year X of his reign,\u201d the name of the ruling monarch having been previously mentioned, and four times we find the expression, \u201cin the beginning of the reign of Y.\u201d Only in 28:1 is such an undefined, isolated, disjectum membrum encountered.
\nThe key to the solution of the crux lies in the omission of the expected phrase \u201cof his reign\u201d (\u05d5\u05dc\u05de\u05dc\u05db\u05d5) following the \u201cfourth year\u201d date formula (contrast Jer. 51:59). The reference need not at all be to the regnal years of Zedekiah, but to the fourth year in some other system of dating. Now it has been demonstrated elsewhere that the sabbatical law of Deuteronomy 15 provided the immediate source of inspiration for the emancipation of slaves that took place late in 588 b.c.e. during Nebuchadnezzar\u2019s siege of Jerusalem. The vocabulary and style of Jer. 34:8\u201322 have been drawn directly from Deuteronomy 15 which constituted the legal basis for the events that occurred in that year. This means that Tishri 588\u2013Tishri 587 b.c.e. was a sabbatical year in Judah. It follows, then, that the previous sabbatical year fell in 595\/4 b.c.e., so that the accession year of Zedekiah, which covered Nisan-Tishri 597 b.c.e., constituted the fourth year of the sabbatical cycle that had begun in Tishri 602 b.c.e. In other words, the chronological notation of Jer. 28:1 is no longer self-contradictory. The \u201cbeginning of the reign of Zedekiah\u201d was, indeed, the \u201cfourth year.\u201d
\nThere is one further aspect of the entire episode that can now be clarified in light of this solution, and that is the extraordinary confidence with which Hananiah b. Azzur predicted the imminent downfall of Babylon and the return of the exiles. As has been pointed out above, that prophecy of a \u201ctwo year\u201d limitation on the exile was made in the month of Ab 597 b.c.e. Two years from that date brings us to the last quarter of 595 b.c.e., to the time when the revolt in Babylon actually broke out. It will be noticed at once that this coincided with the advent of the sabbatical year 595\u2013594 b.c.e., the \u201cyear of release,\u201d a date, the theoretical aptness of which was matched only by the ill-timed and impractical nature of the venture. Be this as it may, the date-line of Jer. 28:1 is not internally inconsistent and it also harmonizes well with the events described in chapter 34 and elsewhere. The relevant dates are as follows:
\n602\u2013601 b.c.e.
\n(Tishri-Elul)
\nSabbatical year.
\n597
\n(Nisan-Elul)
\nZedekiah\u2019s accession year = fourth year of Sabbatical cycle. International conclave to plan rebellion.<\/p>\n
(Ab)
\nHananiah b. Azzur\u2019s prediction of a two-year exile. First delegation to Babylon.
\n595\u2013594<\/p>\n
Sabbatical year.<\/p>\n
(Kislev-Tebet)
\nRevolt in Babylon.
\n594\u2013593<\/p>\n
Second delegation to Babylon.
\n588\u2013587<\/p>\n
Sabbatical year.<\/p>\n
(before Kislev 588)
\nEmancipation of slaves.
\nZedekiah\u2019s Emancipation of Slaves and the Sabbatical Year
\nCyrus H. Gordon was one of the first scholars in modern times to express the view that the institution of the sabbatical year may go back to pre-Israelite origins. He pointed to the well established and widely diffused seven year cyclical pattern in the ancient Near East and noted that the narrative of Jer. 34:12\u201316 attests to an attempted revival of the sabbatical obligations which had fallen into disuse.
\nGordon\u2019s interpretations of some of the Ugaritic texts (e.g. UT 52) as having been connected with the inauguration of a new septennial cycle have both won support and encountered challenge. Of greater importance to his thesis are recent studies in the institution known as the m\u012b\u0161arum which was practised in Mesopotamia in the old Babylonian period. J. J. Finkelstein has forcefully argued for the recurrent character of the m\u012b\u0161arum, if only for the reason that this economic reform, which involved the remission of debts and other obligations, must have occurred at predictable intervals, if economic chaos was to be avoided.
\nThe problem of the antiquity of the calculation of the sabbatical year in Israel is complicated by the silence of the sources. Lev. 26:34f., 43 and 2 Chron. 36:21 testify only to the neglect of the obligations of the sabbatical laws, not to the complete ignorance or abandonment of the septennial calculations. Since Jer. 34 can be located in a historic context, it is worthwhile re-examining the relationship of the narrative there to the sabbatical institution.
\nJER. 34
\nAt some period during Nebuchadnezzar\u2019s siege of Jerusalem, King Zedekiah issued a proclamation of emancipation for male and female Hebrew slaves. The mass manumission, apparently initiated by the king and accepted with some reluctance, was put into effect through a solemn covenant contracted within the Temple (Jer. 34:8\u201310, 15, 18\u201319). However, during a temporary lifting of the siege, misinterpreted by the men of Jerusalem (Jer. 34:21\u201322), the former owners violated their commitments and pressed the liberated slaves back into their service (vv. 11, 16, 18).
\nTHE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
\nAlthough these events are not precisely dated by the Book of Jeremiah, the historical background can now be reconstructed with a goodly measure of confidence.
\nNebuchadnezzar began the siege of Jerusalem on the 10th of Teveth in the 9th year of King Zedekiah of Judea (2 Kings 25:1; Jer. 52:4; Ezek. 24:1\u20132; Jer. 39:1). This date may now be fixed as Jan. 15th, 588 b.c.e. It is clear that most of Judea had already fallen by the time the emancipation of the slaves took place; only the fortress towns of Lachish and Azekah still held out (Jer. 34:7). This fact presupposes that quite some time must have elapsed by then since the start of the siege. This would place the mass manumission of slaves toward the end of 588. It cannot be later than December of that year because soon after this, as will be seen, the slave owners found reason to reconsider their decision.
\nIt is beyond doubt that what occasioned the rescission of the emancipation was the entry of an Egyptian relief force into Judea. Nebuchadnezzar had no option but to raise the siege in order to deal with a serious threat to his flanks from the southwest. Jeremiah (34:21\u201322) specifically mentions the departure of the Babylonian army at this time. Elsewhere the prophet reports the Egyptian intervention and denounces it as false hope, predicts its defeat and foresees the Babylonian resumption of the siege (37:5\u201311). A further reference to Zedekiah\u2019s appeal to Egypt for military support is to be found in Ezekiel\u2019s denunciation of the king\u2019s violation of his oath of loyalty to Nebuchadnezzar (Ezek. 17:11\u201318). He too scoffs at the Egyptian ability to aid Judea and, in another prophecy (29:1), this time dated to the 12th of Tebeth in the tenth year of Johoiachin\u2019s exile (= 7th Jan. 587), Ezekiel warns against reliance upon Egyptian help. This oracle comes almost exactly one year after Nebuchadnezzar had arrived at the walls of Jerusalem and its wording (vv. 6\u20137) strongly reflects the optimism that now pervaded the city. It is thus certain that by Jan. 587 the Egyptian relief operation was imminent. Three months later, however, on the 7th of Nisan 587 (= 29th April), the same prophet could proclaim that the arm of Pharaoh had been broken (Ezek. 30:20\u201321). The brief and ineffectual intervention of Pharaoh Hophra (Apries: 589\u2013570) took place, therefore, between January and April 587, just about one year after the Babylonians had first invested Jerusalem. It was sometime in the course of these few months that the sorry events which earned the fierce denunciation of Jeremiah occurred.
\nTo sum up: Nebuchadnezzar invested Jerusalem from the middle of Jan. 588. Toward the end of that year an emancipation of Hebrew slaves, male and female, was effected within Jerusalem. This was rescinded, however, with the raising of the siege following the arrival of the Egyptian expeditionary force sent by Pharaoh Hophra to relieve the city early in 587.
\nIf the historical circumstances surrounding these events are more or less clear, the actual nature of the social institutions involved and their legal basis are far from being so.
\nJER. 34 AND DEUTERONOMY
\nA close examination of the vocabulary and style of Jer. 34:8\u201322 leaves no room for doubt that the literary formulation of the episode there described has drawn its inspiration generally from the Book of Deuteronomy, and specifically from ch. 15 therein.
\nThe opening declaration of the prophet which refers to the covenant at the time of the Exodus (v. 13) corresponds almost word for word to Deut. 29:24. Indeed, the covenant at Sinai is a recurrent theme of the Deuteronomist (cf. 4:23; 5:2, 3; 9:9; 28:69; 29:11, 13, 21; 31:16). The description of Egypt as the \u201chouse of bondage\u201d (Jer. 34:13) is more frequent in D (5:6; 6:12; 7:8; 8:14; 13:6, 11) than in the rest of the Pentateuch (Ex. 13:3, 14; 20:2). The expression \u201cto do what is right in God\u2019s eyes\u201d (Jer. 34:15) is characteristically Deuteronomic (6:18; 12:25, 28; 13:19; 21:9) occurring elsewhere in the Pentateuch but once (Ex. 15:26). Similarly, the phrase \u201ctransgressing my covenant\u201d (Jer. 34:18) occurs in the Torah only in Deut. 17:2. The maledictions of D seem especially to have left their mark on this chapter for the threat of Israel becoming \u201ca horror to all the kingdoms of the earth\u201d (Jer. 34:17) has its source in Deut. 28:25. Likewise, Jer. 34:18 was inspired by Deut. 27:26, while the dire punishment of Jer. 34:20 that the carcasses of those who transgressed the covenant would \u201cbecome food for all the birds of the sky and the beasts of the earth,\u201d has been drawn directly from Deut. 28:26.
\nThese many stylistic parallels reinforce the inescapable conclusions to be derived from a detailed comparison between the legal material of Jer. 34 and Deut. 15. In the aggregate they exclude any possibility of the direct dependence of the events of Jer. 34 upon Ex. 21:1\u201311. The evidence may be subsumed as follows:
\n(i) Jeremiah\u2019s characteristic phrase for manumission is \u0161illa\u1e25 \u1e25of\u0161\u00ee (34:9, 10, 14, 16. cf. v. 10). This is precisely the term employed in Deut. 15:12, 13, 18. In Ex. 21, however, this formula is restricted to the release of a slave in compensation for the infliction of permanent bodily injury (Ex. 21:26f.), whereas the standard technical term for manumission is ya\u1e63a\u2019 (l)\u1e25of\u0161\u00ee (ibid., vv. 2, 5; cf. 3, 4, 7, 11).
\n(ii) In Jer. 34:14 the previously discussed phrase is followed by me\u2019immak which is the characteristic style of Deut. 15 (vv. 12, 13, 18).
\n(iii) The narrative refers to ha\u02bfibr\u00ee weha\u02bfibr\u00eey\u0101h (Jer. 34:9) exactly corresponding to ha\u02bfibr\u00ee \u2019ow ha\u02bfibr\u00eey\u0101h of Deut. 15:12 and in contrast to Ex. 21:2 which provides only for the \u02bfebed \u02bfibr\u00ee.
\n(iv) Even though the prophet\u2019s citation of the law mentions only the male Hebrew slave (Jer. 34:14), vv. 9, 10, 11, 16 leave no doubt that the law in its operation made no discrimination between the sexes. This is the situation that exists in Deut. 15:12, 17. On the other hand, the legislation in Ex. 21:7\u201311 sharply differentiates between the fate of the male and female slave.
\n(v) The Hebrew slave is several times designated \u201cbrother\u201d (Jer. 34:9, 14, 172). This corresponds exactly to the formula of Deut. 15:12. In fact, the use of this appellation is one of the distinguishing features of D, where it appears more than twenty-five times in legal contexts.
\n(vi) Jeremiah\u2019s citation of the law begins with the phrase miqq\u0113\u1e63 \u0161eba\u02bf\u0161\u0101n\u00eem (Jer. 34:14). The same words head the chapter in D (15:1), in which the emancipation of slaves is dealt with and its only other occurrence is also in that book (31:10).
\n(vii) Jer. 34:14 expresses the means of enslavement by \u2019a\u0161er yimm\u0101k\u0113r lek\u0101 and Deut. 15:12 has k\u00ee yimm\u0101k\u0113r lek\u0101. Ex. 21:2, on the other hand, has k\u00ee tiqneh regarding a male slave and k\u00ee yimk\u014dr i\u0161 \u2019et bitt\u00f4 (v. 7) in respect of a female slave.
\n(viii) Both pentateuchal sources limit the term of service to six years. However, while the formulations of Jer. 34:14 and Deut. 15:12 coincide (wa\u02bfabadek\u0101 \u0161\u0113\u0161 \u0161\u0101n\u00eem) the word order of Ex. 21:2 differs (\u0161\u0113\u0161 \u0161\u0101n\u00eem ya\u02bfab\u014dd).
\n(ix) Both Jeremiah (34:13) and D (15:15) associate the emancipation of slaves with the redemption from Egypt, a connection that is wholly absent from Ex. 21.
\nDEUT. 15
\nThe literary analysis as well as matters of substance demonstrate conclusively that the events that occurred in Jerusalem during the Babylonian siege, as detailed in Jer. 34:8\u201310, were grounded in D. This conclusion, however, raises serious problems of exegesis, for at first glance there would seem to be no way of reconciling the action of Zedekiah with the legal provisions of Deut. 15.
\nThe relevant material of that chapter naturally divides into two parts. The first eleven verses deal with the remission of debts in the septennial release; the subsequent seven verses (12\u201318) restrict the service of the Hebrew slave, male and female, to six years. The two institutions would seem to be wholly unrelated. The cancellation of debts took place within the context of a fixed seven-year cycle of universal application. This interpretation is certainly assured by the initial formula miqq\u0113\u1e63 \u0161eba\u02bf \u0161\u0101n\u00eem (v. 1), more closely defined as the \u201cseventh year, the year of the release\u201d (\u0161emi\u1e6d\u1e6d\u0101h v. 9), as well as by the employment of the same expression and definition in Deut. 31:10 in a passage that unambiguously points to the fixed, cyclic and national nature of the institution referred to. On the other hand, the manumission of the slaves would seemingly have had to occur on an individual basis, since each bondman\u2019s six year period of service would naturally be completed at a different time.
\nIn contrast to the apparently plain intent of Deut. 15:12\u201318, the action of Zedekiah took no account of the individual slave\u2019s term of service, but involved the general and simultaneous emancipation of Jerusalem\u2019s entire slave community. Appropriately, the royal edict is repeatedly designated der\u00f4r (vv. 8, 15, 17), a technical term that, to judge from its other biblical usages and ancient Near Eastern analogies, is applicable only to an institution administered on a community-wide basis (Lev. 25:10; Is. 61:1\u20132; Ezek. 46:17). How is this to be reconciled with the indubitable fact that the legislation of Deut. 15 in its substance and literary formulation constituted the legal and theological foundation upon which rested the events that took place during the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem? This problem is exacerbated by another fact. Jeremiah himself acknowledges that Zedekiah\u2019s enactment was in fulfillment of, and in accord with, the provisions of the Sinaitic covenant, which earlier generations had honored more in the breach than in the observance (vv. 13\u201314). He cites directly from the original law code, the quotational form being confirmed by the introductory le\u2019m\u00f4r and by the presence of the 2nd. pers. sing.\u2014lek\u0101, w\u02bfabadek\u0101, we\u0161illa\u1e25t\u00f4\u2014in contrast to the use of the plural in the rest of his oration. Significant, because it is not in D, is the absence of the term der\u00f4r despite its prominence otherwise in the chapter. The question then remains as to the nature of Zedekiah\u2019s edict and its relationship to the legislation of Deut. 15.
\nTHE RELEASE OF SLAVES AND THE SABBATICAL YEAR
\nIn actual fact, no real contradiction between the Deuteronomist and Jer. 34 need be assumed, if the latter be understood to be reflecting an ancient interpretation of the intent of the former.
\nThe phenomenon of debt-bondage in Israel is attested in several sources. The institution is presupposed by Lev. 25:39, which must be understood in the light of the preceding legislation referring to the impoverished Israelite who is not to be subjected to usury (vv. 35f.). Similarly, the sale into slavery of the thief who lacks the means to make restitution for his theft (Ex. 22:2) is nothing but a form of debt-bondage. That the seizure of the defaulting debtor by his creditor was indeed practised in life is clear from the narrative of 2 Kings 4:1 and from the fulminations of Amos (2:6; 8:6) and Deutero-Isaiah (50:1). In the time of Nehemiah people in financial straits were driven to press their sons and daughters into slavery (Neh. 5:5). The proverbial observation that \u201cthe borrower is the lender\u2019s slave\u201d (Prov. 22:7) certainly reflected a sad reality of life, even if the enslavement of a debtor is not officially explicated in biblical legal texts. Although the sources do not say so outright, it is obvious that there must have been an inextricable connection between the remission of debts and the manumission of slaves. Lev. 25:47\u201354 provides for the possible early redemption of an Israelite driven by poverty to sell himself to a resident alien. In 2 Kings 4:1\u20137 the peonage of the sons of the impoverished widow is ended after the miracle performed by Elisha enables her to pay off her creditors. Since the law codes, biblical and Mesopotamian, limit the terms of bondage, they must have looked upon the service as simply a distraint of the debtor\u2019s person for the purposes of liquidating the debt.
\nIt is difficult to believe that one who entered into slavery for debt should have had to continue in bondage beyond the cancellation of the original financial obligation. If, as is certain, insolvency constituted the prime cause of Hebrew slavery, then it is self-evident that the major portion of the slave population would automatically and simultaneously have gained its freedom with the general nullification of indebtedness. For this reason, the juxtaposition of the septennial remission of debts and the manumission of slaves forms a perfectly natural and logical nexus. This is precisely the situation that exists in Deut. 15 and it is not surprising that Jeremiah should quote the legislation of Deut. 15:12 in connection with the mass liberation of slaves and that the entire pericope of Jer. 34 should be saturated with the language of that chapter.
\nIt is apparent, therefore, that in Zedekiah\u2019s day the provisions of Deut. 15:12 were interpreted in the context of the sabbatical year. The prescribed six year limit on debt-bondage was regarded as a maximum that would be reduced by the incidence of the sabbatical year.
\nEvidence for the existence in ancient times of such a correlation between the \u0161emi\u1e6d\u1e6dah and the manumission of slaves is provided by the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan to the Pentateuch. This version has preserved traditions to this effect in its exegetical amplifications of its renderings of Ex. 21:7 and 22:2. In the former passage, the release of a slave-girl is differentiated from that of a bondman. \u201cShe shall not be freed as male slaves are\u201d says the text, to which the Palestinian Targum adds \u201c\u2026 in the year of the \u0161emi\u1e6d\u1e6dah.\u201d The second passage legislates concerning the thief who, lacking the means to make restitution, must be sold into slavery. The Targum again specifies that the term of service lasts \u201cuntil the \u0161emi\u1e6d\u1e6dah year.\u201d
\nNow this exegesis of the Pseudo-Jonathan is in direct contradiction to the Tannaitic halakhah. For this reason it must represent a much earlier legal stratum and reflect a tradition of great antiquity, one that is in direct line with that of Jer. 34 in its interpretation of the legislation of Deut. 15, namely, that the remission of debts in the sabbatical year automatically carries with it the freeing of slaves sold because of insolvency.
\nTHE SABBATICAL YEAR 588\u2013587 B.C.E.
\nIt has been shown earlier that Zedekiah\u2019s proclamation of emancipation must have taken place late in the year 588 b.c.e. The most likely time would have been the Autumn New Year festival. Lev. 25:8\u201310 indicates a Fall to Fall cycle for the sabbatical year. Deut. 31:10 provides for a septennial national assembly in the Fall in connection with the year of release. The national conclave held in Jerusalem in the time of Nehemiah took place in the seventh month (Neh. 8:2; 9:1) and, significantly enough, the provisions of the covenant then drawn up included the fulfillment of the sabbatical year legislation requiring the fallowness of the land and the remission of debts (Neh. 10:32). This last item was directly connected with the distraint of persons for reasons of insolvency (Neh. 5:1\u201313).
\nIt follows from the above that the year 588\u2013587 would have been a sabbatical year in Judea. The Temple would then have fallen in a post-sabbatical year (586). This fact exactly accords with rabbinic tradition. The previous sabbatical year would have been 595\u2013594. From the Babylonian Chronicle we now know that Zedekiah came to the throne soon after Nebuchadnezzar\u2019s capture of Jerusalem on 2nd Adar in his seventh regnal year, i.e., 15\/16 March, 597. His accession year covered Nisan-Tishri 597. This period was known in Akkadian as the r\u0113\u0161 \u0161arr\u016bti for which the Hebrew equivalent is r\u0113\u0161\u00eet maml\u0101k\u0101h (Jer. 27:1; 28:1). The accession year of Zedekiah would then have fallen within the fourth year of the sabbatical cycle 595\u2013594. This indeed provides a satisfactory explanation for the otherwise obscure superscription of Jer. 28:1 which equates the \u201cbeginning of the reign of Zedekiah\u201d (ber\u0113\u0161\u00eet mamleket \u1e62idkiy\u0101h\u00fb) with \u201cthe fourth year.\u201d
\nIn the fight of the evidence here presented it seems clear that Gordon\u2019s original suggestion that Jer. 34 reflects the sabbatical legislation is correct. We now have a fixed date 588\u2013587 b.c.e. as a base for the determination of some other sabbatical calculations.
\nEzekiel 8:17: A Fresh Examination
\nThe theological crisis in Judea occasioned by the destruction of the Temple in the year 587 b.c.e. left its indelible imprint upon the contemporary literature. The conflict between the popular belief in the inviolability of the House of God and the stark reality of the national catastrophe raised fundamental questions about the nature of God and divine justice. The books of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Habakkuk, in particular, bear repeated testimony to the pervasive urgency of the problem. Once the inevitability of the fall became an ineradicable conviction in the prophetic consciousness, the need for an explanation became no less imperious than if the disaster were already an accomplished fact.
\nNaturally, the only satisfactory answer consistent with the national theology was that God himself, by the free exercise of his sovereign will, and for excellent reasons, had abandoned Zion. The physically destructive activities of the Babylonians merely gave concrete external expression to an already existing inner situation.
\nNowhere is this prophetic rationalization more superbly illustrated than in the literary unit Ezekiel 8\u201311. With great clarity, and in logical sequence, these four chapters constitute a sort of telescoped, dramatic and symbolic presentation of the prophetic resolution of the theological crisis in all its aspects.
\nFirst, Ezekiel is transported to Jerusalem to witness, for himself, the \u201cabominations\u201d of the people. Here is the justification for the divine decision to abandon the Temple and Zion. Then comes the execution of the decision, the vision of the imaginary destruction which is, after all, just another way of emphasizing its God-forsaken state. This is confirmed all the more vividly through the description of the divine Presence withdrawing from the Temple in progressive stages. The vision culminates in the climactic declaration that God\u2019s glory had gone up from the midst of the city and was stationed on the mount to the east (11:23).
\nNow, within the framework of the vision the \u201cabominations\u201d recorded in ch. 8 are of great importance. They constitute the real core of the theodicy. But their importance lies less in their historic value than in the genres of sins they are meant to typify. It is one of the outstanding characteristics of Ezekiel that he lays so much stress upon the ritual evils and that he constantly alternates sins of idolatry with violations of the socio-moral code. Ch. 8 exemplifies this pattern, moving from ritual to the socio-moral plane in v. 17. In view of the unambiguous statement in v. 15, \u201cyou will yet see abominations even greater than the foregoing,\u201d it may be safely assumed that the presentation of sins is in ascending order of gravity. That is to say, what is described in v. 17 ought to be regarded as climactic.
\nThat this is indeed the case may be confirmed by the fact that, although the people to be saved sigh and moan over \u201call the abominations,\u201d yet the socio-moral sin is the only one mentioned by God in ch. 9 in justification for his violent reprisals against the city (v. 9). Furthermore, we are explicitly told there that \u201cthe sin of the house of Israel and Judah is exceedingly great\u201d (\u05d2\u05d3\u05d5\u05dc \u05d1\u05de\u05d0\u05d3 \u05de\u05d0\u05d3). What was this sin? The indictment of the prophet leaves no room for doubt. It is bloodshed (or violence) and the perversion of justice. Not a word is said about the foregoing ritual sins.
\nAccordingly, there is every reason to regard 8:17 \u05d5\u05d4\u05e0\u05dd \u05e9\u05dc\u05d7\u05d9\u05dd \u05d0\u05ea\u05be\u05d7\u05d6\u05de\u05d5\u05e8\u05d4 \u05d0\u05dc\u05be\u05d0\u05e4\u05dd, not as a reversion to the list of idolatrous practices, but as referring to a particularly blatant demonstration of the \u201cviolence\u201d of the preceding clause. In fact, \u05d5\u05d9\u05e9\u05d1\u05d5 \u05dc\u05d4\u05db\u05e2\u05d9\u05e1\u05e0\u05d9, \u201cthey provoke me still more,\u201d actually implies that what follows is worst of all. Several additional arguments may be adduced in support of this conclusion.
\nIn striking contrast to the Temple locale of all the other \u201cabominations\u201d in ch. 8, the particular outrage of v. 17 is more generalized, being committed \u201cin the land.\u201d Such a shift of scene would indicate an entirely different category of sin.
\nEzekiel\u2019s theodicy and his impatience with human questioning of \u201cthe ways of the Lord\u201d (18:25, 29; 33:17, 20) led him directly to insist upon the doctrine of retributive justice (3:17\u201321; 14:12\u201323; 18; 33:1\u201320). God metes out to man according to his deeds. No wonder that the phrase \u05d2\u05dd \u05d0\u05e0\u05d9, introducing the divine counter-measure, is so frequently used. If, then, in 8:18, which is the link between the \u201cabominations\u201d and the inevitable retribution, we are told that God says:
\nI, too, will act in anger; my
\neye will not spare, neither will
\nI have pity; and though they cry
\nin my ears with a loud voice, I
\nwill not hear them,
\nwe can assume that the sin of the previous verse involved an act of violence either deliberately provocative of God or performed in the heat of anger without pity or mercy for the victims whose agonizing cries encountered but stony silence.
\nAs if to dispel any lingering uncertainty as to the correctness of this interpretation, 8:18 is repeated in 9:10, again after a description of the sin of Israel and Judah as \u201cviolence,\u201d i.e., lawlessness and injustice. Noteworthy is the significant addition, \u05d3\u05e8\u05db\u05dd \u05d1\u05e8\u05d0\u05e9\u05dd \u05e0\u05ea\u05ea\u05d9 \u201cI requite their deeds upon their heads,\u201d that is, I deal with them measure for measure.
\nThis recognition of the point-counterpoint relationship of chaps. 8 and 9 leads us to a fresh examination of the celebrated crux of 8:17, \u05d5\u05d4\u05e0\u05dd \u05e9\u05dc\u05d7\u05d9\u05dd \u05d0\u05ea\u05be\u05d4\u05d6\u05de\u05d5\u05e8\u05d4 \u05d0\u05dc\u05be\u05d0\u05e4\u05dd. It should be obvious, by now, that none of the cultic explanations of the passage can possibly fit the context. What is required is a rendering that will accord with the strange picture of the angelic demolition squad of chap. 9 and that is contrapuntal to it.
\nFortunately, just such an explanation is at hand if we see in \u05d6\u05de\u05d5\u05e8\u05d4, not the word for \u201cbranch,\u201d but the well known Semitic root \u1e0fmr. This form appears in Arabic \u1e0famir, \u1e0fam\u00eer, \u201cbrave,\u201d and in Old South Arabic m\u1e0fmr, \u201cstrong.\u201d It achieved widespread popularity in the Semitic onomasticon. Witness OSA proper names \u1e0emrmr, \u1e0emrkrb, \u1e0emr\u2019l; Phoenician \u1e0emr and Zmr; Ugaritic \u1e0fmrb\u2019l and \u1e0fmrhd; the West-Semitic Mari names, Zimr\u00ee-abum, Zimr\u00ee-era\u1e25 and Zimr\u00ee-lim; the North Israelite \u05d1\u05e2\u05dc\u05d6\u05de\u05e8 and the biblical \u05d6\u05de\u05d9\u05e8\u05d4 (1 Chr. 7:8), \u05d6\u05de\u05e8\u05d9 (Num. 25:14, et al.) and, possibly, \u05d6\u05de\u05e8\u05df (Gen. 25:2; 1 Chr. 1:32).
\nFurthermore, the Semitic root \u1e0fmr, in the form \u05d6\u05de\u05e8, has been widely recognized as existing in several biblical Hebrew passages with the meaning \u201cstrength.\u201d These are: Gen. 43:11 \u05d6\u05de\u05e8\u05ea \u05d4\u05d0\u05e8\u05e5; Exod. 15:2 (Isa. 12:2, Ps. 118:14) \u05e2\u05d6\u05d9 \u05d5\u05d6\u05de\u05e8\u05ea\u05be\u05d9\u05d4; 2 Sam. 23:1 \u05e0\u05e2\u05d9\u05dd \u05d6\u05de\u05e8\u05d5\u05ea \u05d9\u05e9\u05e8\u05d0\u05dc; Isa. 25:5 \u05d6\u05de\u05d9\u05e8 \u05e2\u05e8\u05d9\u05e6\u05d9\u05dd \u05d9\u05e2\u05e0\u05d4; Job 35:10 \u05e0\u05ea\u05df \u05d6\u05de\u05e8\u05d5\u05ea \u05d1\u05dc\u05d9\u05dc\u05d4.
\nBut it is, above all, in Ugaritic \u1e0fmr that the clue to the meaning of Ezek. 8:17 lies. In several texts this vocable is parallel to mhrm \u201cwarriors,\u201d which itself parallels \u1e63bim \u201ctroops,\u201d and \u1e21zrm \u201cheroes.\u201d These equations leave no room for doubt that Ugaritic \u1e0fmr means, \u201cstrong men,\u201d \u201ctroops,\u201d or the like.
\nAccordingly, \u05d6\u05de\u05d5\u05e8\u05d4 in our passage should be regarded as a derivation of \u1e0fmr meaning, \u201cband of toughs.\u201d The reference would be to the manner by which the rich forcibly dispossessed the poor through the employment of hired thugs or \u201cstrong men.\u201d Such bands of freebooters and opportunists have been known throughout history, and one is immediately reminded of Abimelech (Jud. 9:4f.), Jephthah (ibid. 11:3) and David (1 Sam. 22:2; 25:2ff.). In the prophetic age, Hosea (6:9) and Jeremiah (18:21f.) both mention the \u201ctroops\u201d who attack and pillage the innocent and even commit murder. Job (19:12) refers to the \u201ctroops\u201d of God who harass him at every turn.
\nThe \u05d6\u05de\u05d5\u05e8\u05d4, then, would comprise those \u201cmuscle-men\u201d described elsewhere individually as \u05d0\u05d9\u05e9 \u05d7\u05de\u05e1 (Ps. 18:49; 140:12), \u05d0\u05d9\u05e9 \u05d7\u05de\u05e1\u05d9\u05dd; (2 Sam. 22:49), and \u05d0\u05d9\u05e9 \u05d6\u05e8\u05d5\u05e2 (Job 22:8). It must be obvious that in the prophetic descriptions of the social decay that resulted from the ever-sharpening contrast in the extremes of wealth and poverty the violent injustices ascribed to the rapacious rich were actually carried out by their hired henchmen.
\nThis interpretation of \u05d6\u05de\u05d5\u05e8\u05d4 as a \u201cband of strong men\u201d fits in admirably with the \u201cviolence\u201d mentioned in the preceding clause of v. 17. It also accords perfectly with Ezekiel\u2019s designation of Jerusalem as the \u201ccity of blood\u201d (22:2; 24:6, 9) and his repeated excoriation of bloodshed and injustice in the city and the land. At the same time, it explains the strange nature of the imaginary punishment of the city in chap. 9, in accordance with the doctrine of talion. The punitive band of six men, each with his destructive weapon in his hand (9:1\u20132), corresponds exactly to the form which the sin of violence took in the sending forth of the \u05d6\u05de\u05d5\u05e8\u05d4 on behalf of the exploiters of the poor.
\nIt now remains to explain the phrase \u05d0\u05dc\u05be\u05d0\u05e4\u05dd. We note at once that if we take the noun in the sense of \u201canger\u201d rather than \u201cnose,\u201d it fits in with \u05dc\u05d4\u05db\u05e2\u05d9\u05e1\u05e0\u05d9 in the same verse and \u05d1\u05d7\u05de\u05d4 in the following. The interchange of prepositions \u05d0\u05dc and \u05dc is very frequent in biblical Hebrew, so that \u05d0\u05dc\u05be\u05d0\u05e4\u05dd, if the text be authentic, would mean the same thing as \u05dc\u05d0\u05e4\u05dd, namely, \u201cin the execution of their anger.\u201d The expression is strikingly parallel to Isa. 13:3 \u05d2\u05dd \u05e7\u05e8\u05d0\u05ea\u05d9 \u05d2\u05d1\u05d5\u05e8\u05d9 \u05dc\u05d0\u05e4\u05d9, \u201cI have also summoned my mighty men to execute my anger.\u201d
\nOn the other hand, if the rabbinic tradition be correct that the original text was \u05d0\u05dc\u05be\u05d0\u05e4\u05d9\u05ea we may understand here the commonplace prepositional interchange of \u05d0\u05dc and \u05e2\u05dc. \u05d0\u05dc\u05be\u05d0\u05e4\u05d9 would then mean, \u201cto provoke me to anger,\u201d just as Jer. 32:31, \u05e2\u05dc\u05be\u05d0\u05e4\u05d9 \u05d5\u05e2\u05dc\u05be\u05d7\u05de\u05ea\u05d9.
\nThus the entire phrase should be translated, \u201cand they provoke me still more, for see, they send out the strong men to execute their anger\/to anger me.\u201d The divine counter-action of 8:18\u20139:11 becomes readily intelligible. God, in return, vents his anger by sending in punishment his band of destructive angels.
\nWRITINGS
\nProlegomenon to an Edition of the Psalms
\nMoses Buttenwieser (1862\u20131939) was a product of German scholarship, having acquired his higher education at the Universities of W\u00fcrzburg, Leipzig and Heidelberg. He came to the United States soon after receiving his doctorate from the latter institution in 1896, and was soon appointed to succeed the renowned Max L. Margolis as Professor of Biblical Exegesis at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, a position in which he served for thirty-seven years until his retirement in 1934. His earliest works were devoted to Apocalyptic literature, but Biblical studies soon became his sole field of interest. His three major works in this area were The Prophets of Israel (New York, 1914), The Book of Job (London, 1922), and the Commentary to the Psalms. This latter was published in the year before his death and has long been out of print.
\nButtenwieser stood at the parting of the ways in Psalms scholarship. In many respects he was the embodiment of the classic approach of the nineteenth century, that of the historical-chronological school, and he mainly represented, too, the prevailing text-critical side of exegesis. But he wrote at a time when this school was giving way to a completely new approach, and while in his Commentary he exhibited little consciousness of its existence, he nevertheless struck out on his own in several important and original ways in both Higher and Lower Criticism.
\nThe first stage in Psalms exegesis had led an almost uninterrupted existence for nearly two millennia. It was dominated by the belief in Davidic authorship. \u201cBelief\u201d is perhaps too mild a term; \u201cdoctrine\u201d would probably be more accurate. It is true that there are indications in rabbinic literature that the tradition claiming for David the entire Book of Psalms was but the crystallization of a trend which gradually displaced earlier and variant traditions. But already in the second pre-Christian century the author of II Maccabees refers to \u201cthe books of David.\u201d The rabbis of the Midrash did not shrink from comparing Mosaic composition of the Pentateuch with David\u2019s parentage of the five-book Psalter. Indeed, they noted that David had actually chosen to commence his work with the same work that Moses had used in concluding his farewell address.
\nThe ascription of the Psalter to the shepherd king has its roots already in Biblical traditions. The Chronicler associated David with the establishment of the liturgical-musical tradition of the Temple. The editorial colophon to the second book of Psalms clearly shows that the superscription le-David was very early understood as signifying authorship. The Greek translation did not hesitate to add Davidic titles to many psalms that are anonymous in our Hebrew text, so that the number exceeds by far our seventy-three specifically labeled. How far this process went may be appreciated from the fact that the theory of Davidic authorship was unperturbed even by the presence of several other names in the superscriptions. The Talmud was able to embrace them all under David\u2019s outstretched poetic wing:
\nDavid wrote the Book of Psalms
\nincluding in it the work of ten elders.
\nNot only was Davidic authorship accepted uncritically, but so, too, were the titular notes purporting to describe the actual occasion of their composition. Again, the Greek translation was able to identify still more psalms with incidents in the life of David.
\nThe tendency to claim Davidic authorship for the entire Psalter reaches its ultimate expression in the Psalms scroll from the caves of Qumran in which we are told that the king was responsible for the composition of no less than thirty-six hundred \u201cpsalms\u201d (tehillim) and four hundred and fifty \u201cSongs\u201d (Shir).
\nHow all this colored the interpretation of the Book is obvious. The first task of the exegete was to determine the individual experiences in the life of David to which a particular psalm might correspond. Then, because David was at the same time a dynastic and national symbol and a Messianic figure, the individual becomes collectivized into a corporate personality, so that the composition is simultaneously expressive of Israel\u2019s fate and destiny, and embodies its national experiences and its aspirations for the future. The rabbis formulated this quite precisely when they remarked:
\neverything David said in his Book of Psalms
\nrefers to himself, to all Israel, and to all times.
\nThe study and interpretation of Psalms was thus as much a matter of historicizing the contents as it was an inspirational exercise, and rare was the soul who departed from this exegetical tradition. It is true that as early as the fifth century the Christian theologian of Antioch, Theodore of Mopsuestia, recognized that the titles and superscriptions were secondary, and he even suggested that many psalms were composed as late as the Maccabean period. Much later, Moses ibn Chiqatella (died ca. 1080), the Jewish Grammarian of Moslem Spain, defied accepted belief by ascribing several psalms to the Babylonian exile. But this rationalistic approach was certainly exceptional. It was not until the advent of Benedict Spinoza (who died in 1667) that the Second Temple provenance of the Psalter was scientifically expounded.
\nThis view was slow to be accepted; but with the final abandonment of the traditional approach to the Bible in the nineteenth century and the rise of the critical-historical school of scholarship, the idea of Davidic authorship of the Book of Psalms was almost completely discarded. The headings were no longer taken at their face value. It was assumed to be axiomatic that the Psalms reflect the political and religious conditions of the time of their composition. If, then, they are \u201cthe offspring of moods produced by definite historical circumstances,\u201d it ought to be possible to identify those circumstances. It seemed to one and all in the last century, and in the early part of this, that the post-exilic period of Israel\u2019s history, especially the Maccabean era, was the most likely candidate.
\nThis conclusion, of course, had not been arrived at by objective means. The chronological arrangement of the Pentateuchal documents and their relationship to the prophets was vital to the attempt to reconstruct the history of the religion of Israel, which was the real goal of scholarship. Within this scheme of things, there was little room for the highly individualistic religion that the Psalms seem to mirror except in the late stage of Israel\u2019s religious development.
\nButtenwieser was an enthusiast of the Graf-Wellhausen school of Biblical Higher Criticism. He was convinced that \u201cthe evolutionary process of Israel\u2019s religious life and thought\u201d could be fairly accurately reconstructed by treating the psalms as religious documents which still reflect the period of their composition. Since to him there was \u201cno doubt that monotheism was unknown in Israel\u201d prior to the advent of the prophets, the ninth and eighth centuries, more or less, could be taken as the earliest starting point for Hebrew psalmography, though he did allow for even earlier exceptions. He regarded it as self-evident that the religious ideas of the psalms were influenced by prophetic teaching and that, consequently, stylistic and linguistic parallels between the two bodies of literature were to be explained thereby. This position, incidentally, was still thoroughly respectable until very recently.
\nIt is not surprising that Buttenwieser, a devotee of Wellhausen and trained in Germany, should have held these views. The school of thought that Wellhausen had founded overawed and overshadowed for a good while all Biblical scholarship. The imposing structure, so painstakingly and laboriously put together, and buttressed by undoubted brilliance and prodigious scholarship, was as exciting as it was sophisticated. It took the scholarly world by storm and acquired an almost irresistible authority as a new orthodoxy. What is surprising, in fact, is Buttenwieser\u2019s relative independence and originality in the dating of the Psalms, despite his devotion to the System.
\nWellhausen, himself, had clearly enunciated his own position. \u201cIt is not a question,\u201d he had written, \u201cwhether there be any post-exilic psalms, but rather, whether the Psalms contain any poems written before the exile.\u201d B. Duhm had gone so far as to deny the existence of any pre-exilic psalms and had made Ps. 137 the oldest! To him, only about a dozen or so were even pre-Maccabean and they all belonged to the Greek period. All others he assigned to the Maccabean period or later. R. H. Kennett actually maintained that psalmography in Israel originated in the age of the Maccabees. The Maccabean theory died a long, lingering death, as may be seen from the work of so recent a scholar as R. H. Pfeiffer. It is refreshing, therefore, to find Buttenwieser not only vigorously and completely rejecting the theory, but actually espousing the belief that many of the psalms are pre-exilic and that one or two might even derive from the period of the Judges.
\nCuriously, present-day Biblical scholarship almost unanimously concurs in the rejection of the Maccabean theory, though for different reasons. Buttenwieser had adduced both linguistic and historical arguments. He was sure that by the second half of the third century b.c.e. the Hebrew language had ceased to be a living tongue, had entered upon a stage of rigid decadence, and had given way to Aramaic. Compositions of such exalted Hebrew style could simply no longer be produced. His historical argument bolstered the stylistic criterion. He assumed that the Psalms reflected national political conditions as well as religious developments. The \u201cproper identification\u201d of the historical background was necessary for the chronological sequence that was, in turn, vital to the reconstruction of religious history. Buttenwieser claimed to be able to establish this identification with great precision, and his conclusions simply precluded the Maccabean era. His favorite dating is the Persian period, four-fifths of the entire Psalter, according to him, deriving from this post-exilic, but pre-Hellenistic age.
\nIt is highly instructive, at this point, to review briefly the opinions on the age of Israelite psalmography held by some outstanding representatives of recent trends in Biblical scholarship. S. Mowinckel, the foremost exponent of the Scandinavian \u201cMyth and Ritual\u201d School, states categorically that \u201cby far the larger number of the extant psalms originates from the national Temple of Jerusalem, erected by Solomon.\u2026 Some of the psalms may derive from some North-Israelite sanctuary, such as Beth-el.\u201d No less apodictic is the verdict of Y. Kaufmann, the dominant name in Israeli Biblical scholarship. To him, the \u201ccollections that eventually comprised the Book of Psalms are all pre-exilic. There is no psalm whose plain sense (as distinct from the Midrashic romancing of modern exegetes) requires a dating later than the exilic Psalm 137.\u201d W. F. Albright, the doyen of American scholars, is more cautious, but still unmistakably bent in the same direction, He writes: \u201cThere is no reason to date any of the psalms after the fifth-fourth centuries b.c. and most of them are probably pre-exilic.\u201d
\nThis remarkable re-evaluation of the antiquity of the Psalms is not merely a natural concomitant of a more generally conservative approach to the Biblical materials that has increasingly characterized the field during the past quarter of a century. It is the cumulative effect of a fairly solid body of evidence that has slowly been building up over that period.
\nKaufmann has carefully analysed the religious ideas of the Psalms in relation to the leading motifs of prophetic literature. He has noted that such dominant themes as national moral sin, the supremacy of morality over a ritual that has no intrinsic worth without it, clear eschatological judgment on the wicked, the basic technical terminology of prophetic eschatology such as the \u201cday of the Lord,\u201d \u201cin that day,\u201d \u201cthe end of days\u201d\u2014all these are missing from the Book of Psalms, which must, for this reason, be regarded is belonging to a literary domain completely independent of prophetic influence.
\nKaufmann has further argued that if the Psalms were an exilic or post-exilic production, it would be passing strange that they contain no prayers for the ingathering of the exiles and no expression of the yearning for the restoration of the Davidic line. And as to the attempts to reconstruct the historical circumstances behind a psalm, Kaufmann can find no clear reference to events of the monarchy or post-monarchy period, and he regards it as significant that there are no proper-names later than Davidic-Solomonic times. Taking into account all these facts, there is only one way to explain the numerous and close parallels between the language of Biblical psalmody and that of the prophets. The latter must themselves have been under the influence of the former, rather than vice versa.
\nThis, of course, is the exact opposite of Buttenwieser\u2019s view, but it gives the death blow to the Maccabean theory and, as such, is in line with his own conclusions. The relationships with prophetic literature will be dealt with again in discussion of the work of Hermann Gunkel. For the present, we can supplement Kaufmann\u2019s internal analysis\u2014even if it needs modification in many respects\u2014by much external evidence.
\nThe commanding and prestigious position which the Psalms held in the Hagiographa makes it virtually certain that it would have been the first of that Scriptural division to be translated into Greek. In fact, the Greek version, or part of it, may well have anticipated even the translation of some of the prophets, since liturgical considerations and needs certainly determined the process of translating the Hebrew Scriptures for the Jews of Alexandria, and none can deny that the Psalms played a dominant role in the liturgy of the synagogue in the Second Temple period. Certainly, by about the year 132 b.c.e. the grandson of Ben Sira had the Greek translation before him, so that the original composition of the individual psalms and the canonization of the entire book would have taken place before Maccabean times. It is, moreover, quite apparent that the Greek translators of the Psalms did not know the meaning of the technical Hebrew terms, a sure proof that by their time the living tradition had already been broken.
\nWhatever lingering hesitations about Maccabean psalms may have persisted, they have been finally laid to rest by the discovery of the sectarian Hebrew literature from the Dead Sea region. For the first time, we actually possess a second-century b.c.e. copy of the canonical Psalter. Despite its fragmentary nature, it is clear that the order and titles correspond to our received text. In addition, the Thanksgiving Scroll, not much later than the Hasmonean period, made extensive use of the Book of Psalms. But these imitative hymns are themselves simply archaistic and no longer in classical Hebrew. They represent a later stage of linguistic, literary, and religious development than that of the Psalter. Finally, the fragments of the Wisdom of Ben Sira in the original version, found at Masada in 1964, give us the Hebrew style of a highly educated Jew writing around the year 200 b.c.e. A comparison with the style of the Psalter once again yields a decisive verdict in favor of the greater antiquity of the latter.
\nButtenwieser, then, insofar as he vigorously rejected the Maccabean theory, anticipated in his conclusions, if not in his reasoning, the view that was to become dominant during the next two decades of Biblical scholarship. On the other hand, insofar as he concentrated upon a zeitgeschichtliche approach, attempting to establish a precise historical context for each psalm, he was stoutly resisting a trend that had already gathered momentum in his day and was soon to conquer the field.
\nHermann Gunkel, in the first three decades of this century, had published a series of books and articles that completely undermined the methods and conclusions of the literary-analytical-historical school of Wellhausen; they were destined to revolutionize the interpretation and understanding of Biblical psalmody. Gunkel, first of all, exposed the inadequacies of that school from a methodological point of view. He protested the insularity of Psalms scholarship, insisting that it must encompass not just the Psalter, but the entire genre of psalmody distributed throughout the Bible, as well as the corresponding literature of Egypt and Mesopotamia. Further, he maintained that since the Psalter has its source in the realm of living experience and is not just the aesthetic, literary expression of the free spirit, the ordinary canons of literary criticism applicable to belles-lettres are of little use for this Biblical book.
\nGunkel perceived that the particular experience that calls forth the composition at the same time conditions its literary form. Content, form, and experience all interact and are interdependent, so that by a close examination of the first two we ought to be able to recover the proper setting of the composition in real life. He then proceeded to develop his famous Gattungsforschung, the generic classification of the religious poetry of Israel and the ancient Near East, based upon considerations of passages which share a commonality of theme, mood, and style, the latter being marked by recurrent use of a limited number of fixed patterns, and conventional modes of expression. In this way, Gunkel identified and isolated the individual literary units and was able to categorize them according to a relatively few major and minor types, each of which had its origin in a specific Sitz-im-Leben, a concrete situation in the religious life of the individual and the people. He believed that these types sprang from the cult and were initially transmitted orally by the priests. In the course of time, the poetic units came to be disengaged from their cultic settings to become independently developed \u201cspiritual songs.\u201d This stage of growth began in the seventh century b.c.e. under the influence of the prophets.
\nIt will be seen at once that attempts to place a psalm within a \u201ctime-historical\u201d straitjacket loses all meaning within the context of the form-critical approach. Those songs that originated in the cult may be as old as the cult itself and as fresh as each recurrence of the specific situation for which their recitation may be suited. Those \u201cspiritualized\u201d poems that outgrew the cult, or that were composed in imitation of a cultic prototype, could use terminology that has assumed a purely figurative meaning. Either way, the thoroughly untrustworthy nature of the chronological approach is readily exposed.
\nGunkel\u2019s primary interest had been in writing a history of Biblical literature, and his form-critical techniques constituted the tools of research. But is the history of Israelite psalmody coextensive with the history of the development of the various species? The successors of Gunkel, especially the Scandinavian scholars, became increasingly concerned with the cultic background, and there emerged a \u201ccult-functional\u201d school led by Sigmund Mowinckel that maintained that the Psalms, almost in their entirety, had their origin and permanent existence within the cult. This approach criticized the idea of \u201cspiritualized\u201d psalms freed from formal, organized worship as being a manifestation of a bias that presumes an inverse relationship between genuine piety and cultic ties. Further, precisely by adopting Gunkel\u2019s own comprehensive approach, it is possible to see that the late psalms of Apocryphal and Qumran literature, undoubtedly dissociated from the cult, are not characterized by the earlier, fixed, formalized, literary conventions. The uniformity and formality of Biblical psalms prove their ritual purpose and ties. As to Gunkel\u2019s form-critical methods, while they are the starting point for all subsequent research, they contain certain weaknesses. By concentrating on externals and on formal aspects, Gunkel was accused of having overlooked important inner correspondences that would connect psalms of apparently diverse types. His contention that the mixing of types within a single psalm is proof of an aging of the literature and the oblivion of its original setting in life, was strongly challenged. On the contrary, it was claimed that this mixing of types is already present in one of the earliest poetic documents of the Bible.
\nThe cult-functional interpretation of the Psalms as pursued by Mowinckel developed into a school of its own. It was admitted that the wisdom psalms were indeed non-cultic in origin and purpose, but this was about all. For the rest, it was insisted that the psalms in Israel, as everywhere else in the Near East, had their source in the service of the cult. Therefore, the proper interpretation of each category of psalms isolated by form-critical methods demanded the precise identification of the specific act of ritual that stood behind it. This demand Mowinckel proceeded to satisfy, and he greatly extended, in so doing, both the variety of psalm-types and the number of individual psalms that can be subsumed under each type.
\nThis conviction, that the psalms were inextricably tied to the cult, of course had some important higher critical implications. It made psalmography in Israel as old as the cult itself, and it affirmed the great antiquity of most of the Psalms, even as it thereby testified to the role of the individual early in the history of Israel\u2019s religion. In opposition to the axiom of the school of Wellhausen, it made the Psalms antedate the prophets; and contrary to Gunkel\u2019s view, it made the prophets imitate the psalmodic patterns and style of the cultic psalms of the individual. It was the prophets who were influenced by the public cults and not vice versa. Nevertheless, the cult-functional school looked upon the Israelite cult as having contained several primitive features in common with its Near Eastern contemporaries.
\nMowinckel regarded many psalms as having been designed to neutralize the efficacy of magical spells. At first, he understood the frequently used word \u00e1wen as \u201csorcery\u201d and the po\u2019ale \u00e1wen as \u201csorcerers\u201d who practised their baleful arts upon the worshiper. Later, however, he admitted that this could not be consistently maintained and conceded that the \u201cenemies\u201d in the psalms who wrought \u00e1wen could often be simply the heathen who carried out evil intrigues and destructive activity.
\nThe tendency of Mowinckel to interpret the Psalms in terms of Near Eastern cultic analogues can be seen in his treatment of those classified as \u201croyal.\u201d Gunkel had identified just ten such which mention or refer to the king. Contrary to many of his contemporaries, Gunkel had contended that the royal personage who was the subject of the poem was a specific individual and not the community of Israel metaphorically described; that he was an Israelite king and not a foreigner; and that he was a pre-exilic monarch and not one of the Hasmoneans. These \u201croyal psalms\u201d had to be categorized by the specific occasion for which they were sung, namely, going forth to battle, thanksgiving for a victorious return from a campaign, nuptials, the anniversary of the founding of the kingdom, or the enthronement or annual royal festival.
\nIt is of interest to note that Buttenwieser had regarded only three of these ten as referring to a real king and, as such, pre-exilic. In the others, mention of a royal personage is not to be taken literally. These psalms are post-exilic and relate to a \u201cvisionary\u201d rather than to a genuine historical situation. Mowinckel, on the other hand, fully accepted Gunkel\u2019s point of view, but went much further. He pointed to the various forms of \u201cking ideology\u201d that pervaded all Near Eastern religions. The king was the embodiment of the community and stood in a special relationship to the deity. He occupied a central role in the national cult. Accordingly, the \u201croyal psalms\u201d are certainly concerned with a real king, although they present an idealized portrait of him, not a realistic description. They issue from the celebrations in which the reigning monarch was the principal character. Foremost among these was, he conjectured, an annual commemoration and renewal of the king\u2019s annointment and enthronement ritual. Even when the king is not explicitly mentioned, a psalm may be classified as \u201croyal,\u201d since the use of \u201cwe\u201d or \u201cI\u201d may frequently be the king (or his liturgical representative) speaking as a corporate personality or on behalf of the community and as one through whom the community finds its self-expression. This concept, of course, vastly extends the scope of the limited category as first identified by Gunkel. As a matter of fact, Mowinckel thought that the \u201cDavid\u201d of the psalms\u2019 heading originally indicated a composition intended for the cultic use of the king who is referred to by a generic title.
\nWhat really captured the imagination of the cult-functional school was Mowinckel\u2019s theory of an annual enthronement festival for YHWH. Actually, Gunkel had been the first to postulate such a celebration and he had isolated six psalms as having had their origin in this occasion. All are characterized by the exclamatory \u201cYHWH has become King!\u201d Gunkel noted that ascription of kingship to a deity is found already in the Babylonian Creation epic which portrays the gods in assembly proclaiming \u201cMarduk is king!\u201d as they grant that divinity \u201ckingship over the totality of the entire universe.\u201d The Hebrew prophets used similar language about the God of Israel and frequently referred to His royalty. At the same time, the Biblical sources make it clear that this kind of language must derive from the earthly coronation ceremony of a human monarch.
\nGunkel therefore maintained that these divine enthronement psalms are of a mixed type. They are patterned after the \u201croyal psalms,\u201d but have been transformed in content into eschatalogical poetry under the influence of prophetic teaching. He found proof enough in their universal, cosmic sweep and their concept of the coming of a new world-order under the sovereignty of God. The impetus for the cultic celebration that lay behind these psalms was the desire to fashion a monotheistic, Israelite, if adaptational, response to corresponding Babylonian festivals to which the Judeans had been exposed in the course of their experiences in the Exile.
\nMowinckel accepted the existence of this genre of psalms which Gunkel had isolated, together with the proposed Sitz-im-Leben, but he rejected the historical and eschatological explanation and he elaborated on the nature of the festival and its underlying complex of motifs. As a result, the class of \u201centhronement psalms\u201d was expanded from the originally suggested six to about forty, a clear reflection of the outstanding importance which Mowinckel accorded the festival in the national religion.
\nAs a matter of fact, it was to him the chief festival in the liturgical calendar. It was part of the annual autumnal New Year celebration field in the Jerusalem Temple in conjunction with the \u201cFeast of Tabernacles.\u201d He believed that the main event was a great festal procession, the victorious coronation entry of the Lord whose presence was symbolized by the Ark. The jubilant proclamation, YHWH malakh, characteristic of the enthronement psalms, expressed the renewal of God\u2019s dominion over the world. It is thus to be understood, not in a durative or permansive sense as \u201cYHWH reigns,\u201d but with an ingressive actual and contemporaneous signification, \u201cYHWH has become King.\u201d In addition, the festival expressed the themes of creation and judgment, as well as the historical aspect of the Kingdom of God, namely, divine intervention in history as illustrated through Israel\u2019s experiences. Other elements were the consecration of the Temple and the renewal of the Covenant with David. An important part of the celebrations was the symbolic, ritual, dramatic enactment of a creation myth in which God\u2019s conquest of the primeval forces of chaos is followed by His renewed appearance as King.
\nMowinckel assumed that Israel had derived the conception of God as King from ancient Near Eastern religions mediated through the Canaanites. When Jerusalem, under David, became the official center of the worship of YHWH, the idea came to the fore in Israel. The Canaanite New Year festival was taken over, but was radically transformed in accordance with the spirit of the religion of Israel.
\nIt was no wonder that Mowinckel extended the \u201centhronement\u201d classification to embrace over a quarter of the Book of Psalms, all those that reflected in their contents any of the multiple themes that characterized the festival. It was also not surprising that he reversed Gunkel\u2019s psalms-prophets relationship. He insisted that if these psalms contain some of the conceptual ingredients of eschatology it is not because they are eschatological, but because the prophets drew upon the same cultic experience as do these psalms in developing their doctrine of the \u201cend of time.\u201d
\nMowinckel\u2019s insistence upon a cultic background to each individual psalm and the determined attempt to recover the underlying or accompanying praxis, generated an extremist school now known as \u201cMyth and Ritual.\u201d Its methods and conclusions belong in reality to a discussion of the nature and history of Israelite religion rather than to a survey of Psalms research. But mention of it is relevant to the extent that the understanding of the \u201croyal\u201d and \u201centhronement\u201d psalms is affected.
\nThis school professes to discern a single, common pattern of cultic-mythic expression throughout the ancient Near East which involves, in brief, the victory in combat of a creator-god over his enemies, the forces of aridity and chaos. As a result, the creation of the world and the establishment of the divine kingdom ensues. This primeval struggle is really repeated annually in the death and resurrection of nature, i.e., in the loss and renewal of fertility. Hence, the cult constitutes a form of magic designed to ensure the annual renewal through the reenactment of these dramatic events. The king is the victor-god and he restores, by means of the potent cultic praxis, the creative powers of nature. This pattern is taken for granted as having existed in Israel, and some scholars, though not Mowinckel, even went so far as to hypothesize a dying and rising god-king ideology in Jerusalem.
\nButtenwieser took note of Gunkel\u2019s and Mowinckel\u2019s concepts of \u201croyal\u201d and \u201centhronement\u201d psalms and expressed himself in no uncertain terms. He dismissed them as \u201ca web of fancy, without basis in fact,\u201d and spoke of \u201cthe mythological rubbish\u201d which these scholars had read into the texts. He questioned the value of the Near Eastern analogues, and he maintained that the use of \u201cKing\u201d to describe God was so widespread as to have lost any formal, ideological meaning. He denied that YHWH malakh meant anything but \u201cYHWH is King\/reigns,\u201d and since he dated Psalm 68b to the time of Deborah, he could claim to show that the royal concept of God in Israel antedated and was, hence, independent of the establishment of Davidic kingship in Jerusalem.
\nThese strictures, however dogmatically asserted by Buttenwieser, are not without validity. There has been built up over the years an impressive body of refutatory evidence which raises very serious questions which cannot be evaded.
\nIn the first place, the cultic Sitz-im-Leben of all or even most of the Psalms has not been really demonstrated. Similarities of structure, phraseology, and style between the Psalter and ancient Near Eastern poetic compositions indicate only that Israel shared a common literary heritage with her neighbors. They do not need to imply a common cultic background or, indeed, any such at all. The claim to the existence of cult-free, spiritualized psalms has not been factually invalidated and, any insistence to the contrary, must take cognizance of the complete absence of a recitative component in the provisions of the Priestly Code as well as the ascription of psalm authorship to Levites, but never to Aaronite priests. In fact, no adequate explanation has yet been offered as to why all reference to the cultic setting should have been excised from the superscriptions, or why, if there are apotropaic and purificatory psalms, the allusions thereto should be so veiled and not explicit. The question is all the more pertinent in view of the fact that the Akkadian psalms generally furnish the requisite, self-identifying, typological, and cult-functional information.
\nFurthermore, even if the Biblical psalms, or some of them, did have a cultic background, it could have been very different from that controlling its pagan counterparts, and even in the latter there was not necessarily uniformity. The king-ideology is an excellent case in point. Nowhere in the Near East was kingship a purely secular institution. Some connection between the kingly office and the divine seems to have been a universal conception; but a glance at the evidence shows a wide variety of notions. In Mesopotamia there were basic differences between Babylon and Assyria. In neither place did the position of the king approximate that of the Egyptian monarch who was divinity incarnate, while among the Hittites the king was deified only at death. The evidence from the Syro-Canaanite sphere is too flimsy to permit definite conclusions or the reconstruction of any uniform pattern, and the position of the king is further complicated by political considerations. The area knew sovereign independence but rarely, and it must have been rather difficult for a vassal to claim divinity. At any rate, practically nothing is known of the cultic life of the immediate predecessors and neighbors of Israel.
\nAs to the position of kingship in Israel, it must be remembered that the institution was of late emergence and that, too, only after a very hesitant beginning. The king was not the source of Justice, but was himself subject to the law and was chastised by the prophets for infringing the moral code. He was not the High Priest, though admittedly some kings did fulfil priestly functions. Sacral privileges, however, do not confer divine status. In short, it is methodologically unsound to explain the so-called \u201croyal\u201d psalms by Near Eastern analogues, and it is precarious to extend the \u201croyal\u201d category far beyond those psalms that actually mention the king.
\nNo less uncertain is the evidence for the annual enthronement celebrations. There is nothing in the Biblical sources to suggest the existence in Israel of a New Year festival, much less that such a one was a feature of the Fall harvest celebrations. The use of late rabbinic texts cited by Mowinckel in support of his thesis is a rather specious argument in itself. Actually, these very texts make it all the more difficult to understand why Scripture should have effaced any mention of the institution. Aside from this, there is the basic question as to whether the putative New Year motifs are indeed to be found in those psalms in which Mowinckel and his successors have located them. The fact of the matter is that in none of the \u201centhronement\u201d psalms do all the allegedly characteristic components appear together. For instance, the theme of creation does not feature in Psalms 47, 97, 98, 99, and 149, even though God\u2019s Kingship is stressed. On the other hand, reference to creation is found in Psalms 95 and 96 but without any mention of a divine combat, while the idea of a divine warrior is clearly present in Psalms 97 and 98 but bereft of any notion of a primeval monster. Nowhere is it suggested that God\u2019s sovereignty commences with and derives its legitimacy from a victorious battle against such a foe.
\nAs for the dramatic rituals that supposedly accompanied the presumed enthronement festival, it requires explanation that just this element should have been omitted or expunged from the legislation regulating the festival rites as well as from the narratives that mention popular celebrations. It is surprising, to say the least, that the prophets did not include in their relentless fight against all forms of idolatry a denunciation of mythological features and the ritual presentation thereof, if ritual drama was practised in Israel.
\nIt should not be overlooked that the Biblical mythological material appears invariably in poetic texts and in extremely fragmentary form. The evidence is all against their having constituted living myths. It is hardly likely that such fugitive pieces are the stuff of a mimetic presentation in a ritual context. Even could it be shown that all the basic ingredients of a demonstrably ritual myth were present in a psalm and in proper sequence, it still would not prove a ritual function for that particular composition. We might well be faced with nothing more than a literary fossil, imitative or residual of a standardized pattern, now adrift from its original cultic moorings. This possibility becomes all the more likely the clearer it becomes that Israel was a recent heir to a very advanced psalmodic tradition of hoary antiquity in the ancient Near East.
\nNevertheless, after all has been said and done about modern developments in Psalms research, certain issues of a fundamental importance cannot be ignored. The validity of the form-critical approach as initiated and developed by Gunkel would seem to be incontestable and some explanation has to be found for the remarkable phenomenon that the psalms individually outlived their respective authors, influenced the prophetic style, and survived the corrosive effects of time, to be gathered into collections which achieved sufficiently wide diffusion to be ultimately turned into a canonized Book. What forces, other than the needs of cultic life, could have been at work in ancient Israel powerful enough to have ensured such developments?
\nThe conviction that the psalms were tied to the cult has become strengthened in recent years through studies in the \u201chistory of tradition.\u201d That the cult was the primary influence in the development of numerous specific and identifiable units of tradition, can hardly be doubted. That many of Israel\u2019s basic traditions are prominently manifested in the Psalms is also beyond question. This latter phenomenon would thus seem to be explained by the former. But whether a single autumnal New Year \u201centhronement festival\u201d is supposed by Mowinckel, or an annual \u201ccovenant renewal\u201d feast with its numerous constituent themes as propounded by Arthur Weiser, or the complex autumn festival of H. J. Kraus, is indeed the cultic Sitz-im-Leben for the majority of the psalms, is quite another matter. So little is known about the formal religious life of ancient Israel, that to attempt to compress all phenomena into one procrustean cultic bed is hazardous, to say the least.
\nThe original inspiration for the form-critical and cult-functional approaches to the Psalms owed not a little, it will be remembered, to ancient Near Eastern analogies. There is no question but that this source will continue to enrich the field for a long time to come. Future research will tend, however, toward a more refined and less indiscriminate use of the Sumero-Akkadian material in its relation to the Hebrew psalms than has often been the case in the past. Not every parallel needs to be traced to direct borrowing, nor indeed to any borrowing at all. As has been already suggested, the similarities may often be reflexes of well established liturgical or literary patterns common to the entire Near East. Sometimes one may even be dealing simply with the independent development of analogical cultural features. Furthermore, the evaluation of parallels is an uncertain business, for they might have been mediated through a third culture and have lost much of their significance in the process. They might also, even where directly borrowed, have played a major role in the parent culture, but an inconsequential one in that of the recipient. Finally, the limitation inherent in the tendency to compare a specific genre of Hebrew psalms with Sumero-Akkadian psalms in general is becoming increasingly recognized, and future work in this field will doubtless pay more careful attention to the individual types discernible within the generic classifications.
\nParticularly important for Biblical studies, just because it derives from the very soil which Israel inhabited, would be the literature of the ancient Canaanites. The discovery toward the end of the last century, in the ruins of the ancient city of Akhetaton (Amarna), of the diplomatic archives of the department of state for foreign affairs of the Egyptian government in the 15th and 14th centuries b.c.e., opened new avenues for research into the evaluation of Biblical-Canaanite interrelationships. Those letters which derive from the rulers of the petty city-states of Syria and Palestine were written in Akkadian, but were liberally furnished with Canaanite glosses. Scholars were able to detect behind the epistolary style the use of poetic diction characteristic of religious hymnology. It was assumed, therefore, that in pre-Israelite times, Canaan possessed a psalms literature. An obvious and intriguing question was its bearing upon the origins of Israelite psalmography. The unearthing of the incompatibly rich epigraphic finds from Ugarit-Ras Shamra on the North Syrian coast provided at last some source material and the tools for research.
\nSince the decipherment of the language of Ugarit in the thirties, a huge literature has come into being relating to Ugaritic-Biblical affinities. Because the initial finds were largely poetic, it is not surprising that it is the Hebrew poetic texts that have benefited most from research in this field. Whatever will be decided in the future about the precise affiliations of Ugaritic within the Semitic family of languages, certain conclusions are beyond dispute.
\nBiblical and Ugaritic literatures represent two branches of a single and more diffused literary tradition. They share in common so many stylistic devices, set phrases, figures of speech and phraseological similarities, all of which appear with such frequency and consistency, as to rule out even the remotest possibility of coincidence. To take but one example: both employ the poetic principle of parallelism, and about sixty instances of the same fixed pairs of words in parallel relationship common to Hebrew and Ugaritic have so far been isolated. At the same time, the basic morphological dissimilarities between the two languages, in combination with chronological and geographic differences, preclude the likelihood of direct influence even though a historical connection between the two literatures is undoubted.
\nIn respect to the Book of Psalms, it is clear that Ugaritic has served to illuminate the text in literally hundreds of passages and in a variety of ways that no future commentary can ignore. New features of Hebrew grammar and syntax, new meanings of existing roots, and entirely new vocables have been uncovered. The mythological metaphors have been elucidated and placed in context. A healthier respect for the received Hebrew consonantal text and a corresponding devaluation of the role of the ancient versions in textual criticism have ensued, even as Ugaritic studies have, at the same time, made for many an improved Hebrew reading.
\nThe usefulness of Ugaritic in the exegesis of the Psalms has its definite limitations, however, and a caveat must be entered. Ugaritic has irrigated, with fruitful results, the study of the Psalms, but it must not be allowed to inundate it. Since we are not dealing with dependency through a vertical relationship and we are not at all certain about the channels of transmission, full allowance must be made for Israelite poetic originality and creativity even within the traditional patterns of Syro-Canaanite literary culture. It would be a most serious defect to overlook the fact that, so far, the Ugaritic finds have yielded neither hymns nor prayers, except in negligible fragments; and until we are in possession of such a body of liturgical compositions, we have no material available for the comparative study of Canaanite-Biblical hymnology, and no criteria for the kinds of form-critical and cult-functional studies which the abundant Mesopotamian sources permit.
\nIf the early Ugaritic texts have had far-reaching repercussions for lexical and textual studies, the same may be said of the discoveries in the Judean Desert at the other end of the chronological spectrum. It has become increasingly recognized that, contrary to nineteenth-century scholarly prejudice, Palestinian Tannaitic and Amoraic Hebrew represents what was a living, vibrant language, the direct lineal descendant of the Biblical genre. The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Masada finds have now supplied many missing links between these two stages of growth of the Hebrew language.
\nMention has previously been made of the significance of the Qumran texts in helping to demolish the theory of the Maccabean origin of Psalms. The sectarian Psalter has further important consequences, for it reinforces our renewed respect for the antiquity of our received text, the history and constancy of which can now be traced back to the Maccabean era. At the same time, the sectarian and Masada texts, in conjunction with the undoubtedly post-exilic Biblical books and with Palestinian Rabbinic Hebrew, provide us with fresh and sound criteria for the determination of linguistic strata. An unusual concentration within a single psalm of linguistic phenomena which are otherwise characteristic of the Second Temple period would be indicative of late composition, or at least of late and extensive redactional activity. This type of study, as yet in its infancy, appears to have a promising future.
\nThis brings us back to Buttenwieser\u2019s work. That scholar had recognized the importance of linguistic layers, but did not have at his disposal the tools necessary for their isolation. In addition, and quite out of keeping with the tradition in which he had been raised, he was rather cautious in his approach to the text, which he subjected to careful and painstaking study. It is difficult today to accept his theory of the wholesale dislocation of verses, but his recognition of the precative use of the perfect verbal form was a real contribution to the understanding of the style of the Psalms. His time-historical treatment, irrespective of the unacceptability of his conclusions, has not been invalidated or displaced entirely by the form-critical and cult-functional approaches. Modern commentators may rightly be repelled by the unscientific and extremist application of the method in the past, but they do not need to neglect it entirely. It seems inconceivable that great and historic events should not have evoked creative liturgical responses, or that some psalms, even if tied to the cult, should not betray the influence of important, innovative movements in Israel\u2019s intellectual and religious development. The fact that, for example, a national lament employs a certain conventional literary pattern, does not mean that an inspired poet would not compose such a lament in a specific set of circumstances which it might be possible to reconstruct. Similarly, a strikingly new theological concept might well be traced to its historic setting even though the externals of style and form hew closely to well-documented stereotypes. Finally, Buttenwieser\u2019s appreciation of the Psalms as religious literature has much to commend itself, and the spiritual experience and theological concepts, as distinct from form and use, must be an integral part of all research.
\nIn short, the ideal Psalms commentary of the future must explore all the avenues of research opened up during the past century and must represent a judicious synthesis of the assured conclusions of each.<\/p>\n
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