Conceptualizing Biblical Cities: A Stylistic Study [1st ed.] 9783030452698, 9783030452704

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-x
The City for Starters (Karolien Vermeulen)....Pages 1-14
Shaping the City Textually (Karolien Vermeulen)....Pages 15-36
The Personified City (Karolien Vermeulen)....Pages 37-92
The Urban Animal (Karolien Vermeulen)....Pages 93-120
Bodyscapes (Karolien Vermeulen)....Pages 121-141
City Building (Karolien Vermeulen)....Pages 143-158
Container City (Karolien Vermeulen)....Pages 159-181
The Urban Object (Karolien Vermeulen)....Pages 183-200
The Vertical City (Karolien Vermeulen)....Pages 201-224
The City at Last (Karolien Vermeulen)....Pages 225-235
Back Matter ....Pages 237-275

Citation preview

Conceptualizing Biblical Cities

A Stylistic Study k a rol i e n v e r m e u l e n

Conceptualizing Biblical Cities

Karolien Vermeulen

Conceptualizing Biblical Cities A Stylistic Study

Karolien Vermeulen Institute of Jewish Studies University of Antwerp Antwerp, Belgium

ISBN 978-3-030-45269-8    ISBN 978-3-030-45270-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45270-4 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgments

I grew up in a city. At least, I thought so up until I went to college and learned that you have cities and cities. They come in all forms and shapes. They change while you are away, as well as while you are living there. Cities are always in motion. While I was writing this book, this was no different. I lived and worked at various places, at both sides of the big pond. The places were all called cities. They looked different, talked different and smelled different. Yet, at the same time, they all felt familiar, with people who made me feel at home. First and foremost, I wish to thank my supervisor Vivian Liska and my colleagues at the Institute of Jewish Studies at the University of Antwerp, in particular, Annelies Augustyns, Jan Morrens, Sebastian Müngersdorff and Jeremy Schreiber. I enjoyed our conversations, urban and otherwise. In addition, I am grateful for the support and insights of Peter Machinist, Maria Metzler, Gabriel Hornung and David Gurevich during my stay as visiting fellow at Harvard University. My research also greatly benefited from the many conversations I had with people at various conferences over the years, in particular at EABS, SBL and PALA meetings. Thank you, in particular, to the colleagues from the research groups ‘Stylistics and the Hebrew Bible’ and ‘Place, Space and Identity in the Ancient Mediterranean World’ (both SBL); ‘Literary Features: Fact or Fiction’ and ‘Deconstructive Poetics’ (both EABS) and the LAND-SIG (PALA). Special thanks go to my mentor Scott Noegel, who showed me the power v

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of the language of ancient texts, and to my colleague and friend Elizabeth Hayes, who shares my stylistic interest in the Hebrew Bible. This research was made possible with a personal grant of the Flemish Research Foundation (FWO). The Belgian American Educational Foundation (BAEF) supported my stay at Harvard University. Thanks to their support, I could focus on my research on the textual city rather than on how to survive in the extra-textual one. I am also grateful to the people at Palgrave Macmillan for their interest in my work and the support throughout, in particular to Cathy Scott and Alice Green, my editors, for their enthusiasm and practical help. Lastly, city life is not complete without friends and family. To each and every one of you, a wholehearted thank you! My final thanks go to my parents, for listening, for cheering and for taking care of the little citizen whenever this book needed attention beyond day-care hours and nap time. You mean the world to me (and now the city too).

Contents

1 The City for Starters  1 2 Shaping the City Textually 15 3 The Personified City 37 4 The Urban Animal 93 5 Bodyscapes121 6 City Building143 7 Container City159 8 The Urban Object183 9 The Vertical City201 10 The City at Last225

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B  ibliography237 Subject Index261 Scripture Index267

Abbreviations

AB ABD AIL BETL Bib BibInt BibInt BibOr BibSem BKAT BLS BZAW CBQ FAT Greg HBS HBT HCOT HSM HThKAT HUCA ICC

Anchor Bible Anchor Bible Dictionary. Edited by David Noel Freedman. 6 vols. New York: Doubleday, 1992. Ancient Israel and Its Literature Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium Biblica Biblical Interpretation Biblical Interpretation Series Biblica et Orientalia The Biblical Seminar Biblischer Kommentar, Altes Testament Bible and Literature Series Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft Catholic Biblical Quarterly Forschungen zum Alten Testament Gregorianum Herders Biblische Studien Horizons in Biblical Theology Historical Commentary on the Old Testament Harvard Semitic Monographs Herders Theologischer Kommentar zum Alten Testament Hebrew Union College Annual International Critical Commentary ix

x Abbreviations

Iraq ISBL ITQ JANESCU JAOS JATS JBL JHS JNES JSOT JSOTSup LHBOTS NICOT OBO OBT OTE OTL OTS SBLDS Semeia SemeiaSt SJOT SSN StBibLit TynBul VT VTSup WBC ZAW ZTK

Iraq Indiana Studies in Biblical Literature Irish Theological Quarterly Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society of Columbia University Journal of the American Oriental Society Journal of the Adventist Theological Society Journal of Biblical Literature Journal of Hebrew Scriptures Journal of Near Eastern Studies Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies New International Commentary on the Old Testament Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis Overtures to Biblical Theology Old Testament Essays Old Testament Library Old Testament Studies Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series Semeia Semeia Studies Scandinavian Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Studia Semitica Neerlandica Studies in Biblical Literature (Lang) Tyndale Bulletin Vetus Testamentum Vetus Testamentum Supplement Series World Biblical Commentary Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche

1 The City for Starters

Cities. They are our past and our future. They are spaces of human effort, dreams and achievements. Yet also the very spaces of neglect, disillusion and failure. This work focuses on cities. It considers the way in which the Hebrew Bible describes, imagines and uses them, within as well as regardless of a particular time, space and style. In order to do so, the work adopts existing methods from the study of space as a linguistic (stylistic) as well as a social given. This theoretical merger aims to address the question: what is a city according to the Hebrew Bible? This question is not as much involved with a discussion on size and numbers. Nor is it a matter of distinguishing between good and bad cities, or between cities faithful to God or unfaithful. It is not asking for a reconstruction of the (spatial) experience of an original audience. Neither is it a quest for the symbolic role of biblical urban space. Yet, the main premise of the study is conceptual and textual. How is the city conceptualized in the Hebrew Bible, as a category, and how is this category given form in the text with specific language and given a role within a particular paragraph, story, book and ultimately, the biblical corpus? It is a study of urban imagination, addressing both the rules that govern this imagination and the creative bending and mending for purposes beyond simple grammar. As Elaine James © The Author(s) 2020 K. Vermeulen, Conceptualizing Biblical Cities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45270-4_1

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summarizes it in her study on the landscapes of the Song of Songs, it is about “the creative potential of the poet draw[ing] from the resources at hand and [being] at the same time radically free to play with convention to make new meaning to allow the ambiguity and ambivalence to bubble up and surprise the audience” (2017a, 115). The study starts from the idea that the Hebrew Bible displays a coherent city concept, despite its long composition history, its florilegium of genres and likewise styles, and different contextual settings of its various parts. As any concept, it is subject to change internally. However, ultimately, these changes do not affect the overall notion of ‘city’ in the biblical text. It is in that way that I understand Robert Carroll’s statement, In the Bible there is only one city, but it has multitudinous representations, manifestations and instantiations. Of course in topographical terms there are hundreds and thousands of cities in the Bible […], but in the symbolic geography of the Book we may see each and every city as one aspect of the city of humankind. Whether that be the city of dreadful night or the city of peace and harmony or the city of chaos or the strong city or whatever, each city may be at any one time either faithful or whorelike, peaceful or warlike (or perhaps all these different incarnations at the same time). (2001, 56–57)

Whereas Carroll speaks of all cities being somehow Jerusalem, his insight equally applies to the concept of ‘city’ without a specific place in mind. All references to urban space in the biblical text are manifestations of a limited set of imaginations of the city. This set forms the “one city,” textually formed with a variety of words and linguistic constructions and contextually framed within a certain story and setting. Language and story are the plethora of “representations, manifestations and instantiations” mentioned by Carroll. To stick with urban architecture, the urban concept functions in the text as a particular building style, say Romanesque style. All buildings in this style share a set of features, however, none of the buildings looks exactly the same, nor is it placed in the exact same surroundings. What is more, its basic features do not change within a considerable span of time but form the stable core of the style. Where the comparison may fail, is when it comes to the degree of consciousness. Romanesque style was a prescriptive guide for builders, not a set of ideas

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people drew on both consciously and unconsciously. City concepts in the biblical text are not by definition the diligent following of an explicit set of rules, but may also display fundamental, empirically based understandings of urban space. This difference is well illustrated in the history of scholarship on the depiction of cities in the biblical text. The majority of research focuses on the personification of the city as a woman, discussing both its ancient Near Eastern background and its creative manipulation of this metaphor in the Hebrew Bible.1 Such would qualify as a deliberate and conscious use of a prescribed concept of ‘city.’ However, at least as prominent as the city-woman is the idea of the city as a container, a conceptualization that has been described briefly and only recently in an article by Alison Gray (2018, 20–24). This concept of city may have been overlooked in scholarship precisely because it is far less played upon (as in deliberately played upon), but a natural go-to when speaking of cities.2 A second starting point of the study is the idea that language is a powerful tool to construe space and that its resultant city spaces, called textual cities in this work, are worth a study on their own.3 Whereas reading a text never happens in a vacuum and every text carries the traces of its context, historical and background information should not keep us from following the text’s imagination.4 “If a narrative is taken seriously, the world which it creates is not simply something to get behind or unmask, but is itself the site of ‘lived’ experience” (Anderson 2018, 66). What is more, this world does not need to match the real world or experience as we know it. Literary history […] provides ample evidence that spatial imagination is not limited by the physics of Newton and the geometry of Euclid. Long before Einstein, Riemann, or Hawking, literature had represented spaces that are every bit as ‘impossible’ as those described by contemporary physics. (Gomel 2014, 2)

Various studies on biblical cities have identified contradictions in the Hebrew Bible’s depiction of cities, whereas these may be exactly that— contradictions. These can serve a role in the world of the text as spaces of anxiety and uncertainty, or as spaces of possibility and multiple voices.5

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“Analysis of literary space is not simply a matter of our affirming that space is textual and then reading, but of realizing that text is spatial and then exploring” (Meredith 2013, 16). What is more, this literary imagination is assisted by language that is itself spatial by definition. Hence, when we consider a quote as the above, our minds not only consider the changed relationship between space and text in the sentence but also the potential mapping of reading as an exploration, thus as something spatial. While one way of understanding Meredith’s statement is as a call for a breach of the current paradigm of reading, another way emphasizes the rewiring of the paradigm. Language is inherently spatial, and thus so are its very products, texts. The quote then makes explicit what readers should implicitly understand as reading according to Christopher Meredith. It shows that the power of language does not end with textual space and textual cities but is equally present in the analysis of these spaces.

Biblical Cities Before (Briefly) Ample studies exist on the historical aspects of biblical cities. These works consider the city primarily as a geographical place with a particular outlook, populace and functionality.6 Such studies have a long tradition that finds a theological counterpart in the study of the city of God, Jerusalem/ Zion. The latter type of research focuses on the religious significance of Jerusalem and considers the physical aspect of the urban far less.7 Jerusalem is an idea and a symbol for a unifying theological concept in the biblical corpus. A comparable symbolic reading is picked up by later literary approaches of the biblical text, where the city becomes a space of a variety of emotions. Simultaneously, these studies consider the descriptions of material space as the scenery against which the biblical stories develop. Space and time are often treated together, with the latter outweighing the former in terms of scholarly attention. “The biblical narrative is wholly devoted to creating a sense of time which flows continually and rapidly, and this is inevitably achieved at the expense of the shaping of space,” according to Simon Bar Efrat (1989, 196).8 The true potential of what Michael Bakhtin has defined as the chronotope (1981), the

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space-time field, is far less explored in studies on biblical cities, as Hugh Pyper argues (2018, 36).9 All in all, textual cities have not always received attention for their own sake, that is, as spaces created by language and working within text. Two paradigmatic shifts in the humanities have impacted this imbalance positively. More or less simultaneously, although starting in different fields, the cognitive turn and the spatial turn instigated a renewed interest of biblical scholars in the city as imagined by the biblical text.10 The cognitive turn reintroduced the idea of metaphor, well-known from the literary and rhetorical field, in biblical studies as a feature with empirical seriousness and a far wider presence and influence than considered before.11 The framework appears in the introduction of the majority of recent studies on the urban in the biblical text, whether they rely on it explicitly or only vaguely.12 The spatial turn tried to bridge the gap between the literary-theological city of the text and the historical city by focusing on its shared social aspects.13 While these so-called critical-­ spatial studies of the biblical city are text-based, they turn to the historical city and its lived space in the end. Some may consider this a shortcoming of the method (Meredith 2013, 14). Yet, regardless of the criticism (which will be discussed more fully in Chap. 2), critical spatiality has pushed the study of biblical space from an either-or methodological approach to a combination of methods. Building upon these previous studies, this work adopts a method that allows analyzing textual cities as a complex concept wrapped in language. Critical spatiality will offer a basic framework to address multiple levels involved to construe textual space, while cognitive stylistics will provide the analysis with the tools apt for a text and language study. Rather than giving a long bibliographical list of previous research, I prefer to elaborate on the frameworks that are immediately relevant for the study in a separate chapter and mention a few key topics here that recur in the study of cities in the Hebrew Bible at large. These topics can be considered a current state of the art. They will also be addressed and assessed throughout the different chapters following, sometimes elaborating upon them, other times challenging the existing assumptions. In no particular order, these topics are the negative evaluation of cities, the depiction of the city as a woman and the centrality of Jerusalem in the biblical corpus.

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Bad Cities Cities are no good. It is the opening statement of James Aitken’s introduction in one of the latest volumes on the city in the Hebrew Bible. Even though he consequently calls this position into question as “perhaps misplaced” (2018, 4), Aitken gives voice to the common understanding of the Bible’s stance on cities.14 This evaluation often starts with the observation that the first city in the Hebrew Bible is built by a murderer (Gen 4:17). From there it goes rapidly downhill to the story of the Tower of Babel (Gen 11:1–9), where many read the city as the epitome of human hubris and God’s reaction as a condemnation of all things urban.15 Also in the books following upon Genesis, cities are more often than not spaces of conflict, both as the territory to fight for (e.g., Joshua and Judges) and as personified participant in the fight (e.g., in the prophetic books). The prophets’ presentation of the city plays a crucial role in its overall negative evaluation. Their whoring, promiscuous city-women have drawn the attention of audiences over the ages, including scholarly readers.16 These metaphorical cities have hijacked all other appearances of urban space in the biblical corpus. Such is telling in many ways. For one, it reveals the power of effective imagery and its transferability far beyond the immediate context in which these images appear. Furthermore, it shows how a strong figure, linguistically speaking, can distort the natural dynamics of figure-ground, in which images draw attention only temporarily to move to the background with a new image taking its place.17 It equally illustrates the impact of scholarship and interpretation history in which the personified city and her negative portrayal have featured over and over.18 This study will revisit the idea of bad cities in the Hebrew Bible: is the general assumption that they are bad justified? And more importantly, where does this coining between evil and cities come from? Is there an inherent connection, meaning that the biblical concept ‘city’ carries wickedness as identifying characteristic, just like modern cities come with great numbers? Or is it a feature that is added only later in the reading process? And if so, does the Hebrew Bible develop a negative line of thought about cities from Genesis all the way until Chronicles or is it a temporary image that has received more than its share of attention?

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(Bad) City-Women The negative evaluation of cities as evil and wicked goes hand in hand with the personification of urban space in the biblical text, in particular in the Prophets, Lamentations and a few Psalms. The terms are adjectives appearing as well as evoked by the depiction of Jerusalem and other cities as female protagonists. This metaphor, which has been called literary (e.g., Dobbs-Allsopp 2009, 133), rhetorical (e.g., Kelle 2008, 96), as well as cognitive (e.g., Low 2013, 12–17), has formed the center of scholarly debate for quite a few decades now. Starting with more theoretical issues, such as, has grammatical gender of city vocabulary in Biblical Hebrew anything to do with the female personification?, the discussion has moved to the metaphor’s impact in text-worlds and discourse-worlds of various kinds.19 How should readers interpret the portrayal of cities as women? Is this telling us something about the situation of women at the time of the text’s production? And what should a contemporary audience, male and female, do with texts that describe Jerusalem as a whore who is violated by the divine character? How much of the metaphor is cultural code for crisis or vulnerability? Is it literary artistry gone awry, as far as the text goes, or is it contemporary political correctness pushed too far, with regard to the metaphor’s modern interpretation? The scholarship on the female personification of cities, and Jerusalem in particular, is vast and profound. Whereas initially the label ‘bad’ was somewhat ignored, more recent studies have repeatedly drawn attention to it (e.g., Brenner 1996; Exum 1996, 101–28; O’Brien 2008). The suggestions for counter-readings are plenty, even though not necessarily as enlightening when it comes to the function of the urban metaphor in the text. Much of it has to do with the fact that modern scholarship places a lot of emphasis on the female aspect of the personified city. This study will return to the urban part of the same image, not because the female aspect is considered subordinate, but because of the current study’s focus on city space rather than female space. In addition, it will advocate for a revaluation of the metaphor’s target domain, the city, which forms the subject of the texts in which the personified city appears. It sides with Barbara Green’s stance that “overliteralizing and reading too

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narrowly is what led us astray on this metaphor, resulting in our perpetuating what it utilizes, seeing in it nothing more or less than a total denigration of the female” (2012, 37). Steering questions will be: is the female city bad or are all cities bad? And also, how does the city-woman differ from other city images?

Jerusalem, the One Jerusalem is the central urban space in the Hebrew Bible. It appears numerous times, and as some have argued, even when it does not appear, the city space taking its place could be understood as being Jerusalem nevertheless (e.g., Carroll 2001; Biddle 1992). Others have derived the city’s importance precisely from its opposition with other spaces (e.g., Beuken 2011, 79). Jerusalem is not Babylon or Nineveh; it is God’s chosen abode. Jerusalem’s role as principal city has to do with its temple. It forms the center of the cult, materializing the relationship between the city and God. Jerusalem’s distinctive role is at the heart of Zion theology, present in as well as influencing parts of the biblical corpus (Low 2013, 46–52). That Jerusalem is chosen is intrinsically intertwined with the above discussed topics, that Jerusalem is a woman, more precisely God’s chosen spouse, and that any behavior undermining this chosen position and this monogamous relationship is evaluated as bad. Threats involve both engagement with other gods and other nations, emphasizing that religion and politics were closely related so that one and the same metaphor could be used to cover several relationships and their contexts. Thus, God was not only the sole deity to be worshiped, but also the singular leader to trust in matters of peace and warfare. In this study, the uniqueness of Jerusalem will be questioned on a conceptual level. Is the city imagined differently than other urban spaces, such as Babylon, Nineveh, Bethel or Tyre? Do images for cities depend on the exact city addressed or do they, on the contrary, display a general concept of cityness with similar images for all cities that only differs in their final attributes? Is there an ‘us’ and the ‘other’ in terms of city conceptualization, or are we all just city?

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People—City—Empire Various studies try to identify what or who is exactly meant when the text mentions Jerusalem or Babylon, or any other city for that matter. The distinction between place and people has been one that has driven scholarly debate from the beginning.20 Some lines are very clear in terms of their referent, whereas others are ambiguous and open for interpretation. This divide has perhaps become even more apparent with the introduction of critical-spatial theory, which by definition distinguishes between place and people’s experiences. However, the text’s notion of city seems to be more fluid than that of many of its later readers. In a passage such as Nah 3:10, the personified city is removed from her own city, seeing her children dashed on the streets of the same city. Identifying referents for each of the appearances of Nineveh can be done but overlooks that multiple imaginations of the city are at play at the same time. It misses their ingenious interplay to reach the reader. What is more, the division for the city as either people or place is a simplistic one, because at least one extra player is always lingering in the background, the land or empire of which the city forms a metonymy (Chapman 2004, 61; van Wieringen 2011, 49), just as people and city as place are metonymically related. Therefore, the current study will only occasionally mention referents of the city concept. In general, the term ‘city’ will refer to the overarching concept that includes geographical, material place, inhabitants, functionality and at times the larger space of which the city forms the condensation. Rather than distinguishing the parts, the study is interested in the different images for the city as a whole and how this set of images grasps the nature of the biblical city concept. Nancy Stieber rightly points out: “To speak of a city as a whole is to speak in metaphors” (2012, 28).

The City Concept Untangled Textual cities can and have been approached in different ways, with similar questions and topics resurfacing. In what follows, I first explain the approach used in this work. Chapter 2 starts by addressing the semantic

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issues surrounding the concept of city, which are highly influenced by the methodological stance taken by researchers. From there, it introduces the two methods that underlie my study: critical spatiality on the one hand and cognitive stylistics on the other. I review previous ways in which critical-spatial theory has been applied to biblical spaces, including the criticism these studies have received. Afterward I propose my own reading of critical spatiality from a cognitive-stylistic point of view, redefining the three spaces discerned by spatial theorists. The chapter concludes with a brief introduction of the biblical corpus. Chapters 3 to 9 are organized around the dominant ideas about city space in the Hebrew Bible. The seven chapters contain a discussion of seven images of the biblical city, from concrete metaphors to more abstract comparisons. The order of presentation does not reflect the frequency nor the importance of certain images, but aims to present the metaphors in a constellation that focuses on how they make up an overarching city concept rather than how or whether they compete for a position as the metaphor for city in the Hebrew Bible. The seven images are: the city as woman, the city as animal, the city as body, the city as building, the city as container, the city as object and the city as height. Each chapter addresses the defining features of the conceptual metaphor. By means of various examples, both short phrases and longer passages, the chapters analyze the linguistic build-up of the images as well as their use and effect in specific textual circumstances. The discussion centers around topics that are essential to each image. In Chap. 3, for example, on the city as woman, points of attention are: the gender of the personified city (are all images gendered? And if not, why is it the female city rather than the personified city that features in most studies?), the variety of female figures appearing in the text (how are they connected? And what does each of them contribute to cityscaping?), and the conquest of city/woman (is it always in this combination, in other words, are all city conquests imagined as violations of females? And also, is it only about this combination, in other words, is the city-woman the only image for the city in conquest passages or do other images appear in tandem with it?). Finally, in Chap. 10, I bring together the seven identified conceptual metaphors in order to offer a synthesis of what defines the concept of ‘city’ as construed by language in the biblical text. The city deconstructed

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in the previous chapters is reassembled and the Bible’s urban imagination considered as a whole rather than through singular verses and fragments. It is a return to the main focus of this study: cities. They are this study’s point of departure as well as its destination.

Notes 1. Studies include but are not limited to Steck (1989, repr. 1992), Biddle (1991), Galambush (1992), Darr (1994), Day (1995), Heim (1999), Sals (2004), Maier (2008c), Low (2013) and Anthonioz (2014). 2. Gray explicitly addresses the container image as a conceptual metaphor on a par with that of the personified city. Others have pointed out other metaphors for the city in the biblical corpus, although less extensively or specifically as urban metaphor next to the female city. In her study of gendered language in warfare, Cynthia Chapman, for example, states at a certain point that other images occur to express the relationship with the Assyrians, such as, the lion, the flood, or locusts. Yet, after a short discussion, she concludes that the personified relationship offers more opportunities and is more widespread in the corpus (2004, 68). Also in Christl Maier’s study of Jerusalem, it seems that at least one other metaphor is present, that of the city as height, or as she names it, “the sacred mountain.” Maier identifies this image, which she never calls a metaphor or a conceptual metaphor, as typical of preexilic traditions of Jerusalem’s depiction (2008c, 30–59). The conceptual level in her analysis is formed by “identifying the mountain [i.e., the physical mountain on which Jerusalem is located] with Zaphon, the traditional divine abode in Syria, and by relating Jerusalem implicitly to the city surrounded by water, the Mesopotamian temple city” (59). Another example of other metaphors, or at least a suggestion of them, can be found in Stephen Bennett’s piece in The City in the Hebrew Bible (2018, 220–23). In his section ‘Conception of the City’, Bennett discusses conceptions of the biblical city, following John Rogerson’s lead (2009, 21–39). However, a closer look at the analysis of Bennett reveals that the conceptions are closely connected to particular stories, and that they, if expressing larger categories rather than individual ideas, are cityscapes, thus applied concepts rather than the concepts themselves. He mentions, among others, the city as “symbol of human rebellion,” “symbol of greed and oppression,”

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“symbol of universal peace and justice,” and “a link between heaven and earth” (2018, 220–21). 3. This does not mean that reading for historical space in the Hebrew Bible is not valid or useful. Rather the plea is one for a similar self-evidence for literary space. Both have their merits. 4. Mary Mills notes “cities [i.e., textual cities] are constructed via imaginative responses to the space that the urban environment offers” (2012, x). 5. For a problematizing of these contradictions, see, among others, O’Connor (2008, 18–39). Christopher Meredith and Elaine James both adopt approaches that allow textual space to be and remain ambiguous (Meredith 2013; James 2017b). They are accompanied by many modern literary studies of cities, which emphasize the tension present in cities (Anderson 2018, 64–65). Anderson mentions for that matter the works by Oakes (1997), Festa-McCormick (1979), Preston and SimpsonHousley (1994), Lehan (1998) and Alter (2005), but various other titles can be added. A simple look at introductory volumes such as The Palgrave Handbook of Literature and the City (2016) and The Routledge Handbook of Literature and Space (2017) reveals the same paradoxes and complex presentation of urban space. 6. Examples include but are not limited to Frick (1977), Fritz (1990), Herzog (1992), Auffrecht et al. (1997), Arav (2008), and Wilson (2018). 7. See, among others, Ollenburger (1987), Hoppe (2000), and Tilly (2002). 8. For a short overview of literary approaches to biblical narrative space, see Jiang (2018, 25–28). In addition to Bar Efrat (1989, 184–96), a temporal focus can be found in Jan Fokkelman’s work on biblical narrative (1999, 97–111). Luke Gärtner-Brereton has argued against these works and for a more central position of space in biblical narrative, “treating ‘space’ itself as determinate within the biblical text, rather than an ancillary or secondary characteristic” (2008, 5). He is not the first one to do so, as can be seen in Michael Fishbane’s work Biblical Text and Texture, in which both the Garden of Eden and the Exodus are considered as unifying motifs within the biblical corpus rather than simple and unimportant spatial references (1998, 111–40). Likewise, Yairah Amit argues for a reading of biblical space not as “a historical record” but as “always functional … in the story” (2001, 119, 125). 9. William Millar explores this merger, with a Bakhtinian ring, explicitly and this in light of social space (2007).

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10. Both shifts take place in the 1970s and 1980s, with the work by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (2003/1980) as exemplary for the cognitive turn and that by Henri Lefebvre (1974), Yi-Fu Tuan (1977) and Michel Foucault (1984) as paramount for the spatial turn. What is more, cognitive studies pay particular attention to the spatial fundaments of cognition and language in particular (e.g., Haspelmath 1997; Levinson 2003; Evans and Chilton 2009). 11. The cognitive turn itself entailed much more than a focus on ‘metaphors we live by,’ however, in biblical and religious studies this is the idea that has had the most impact. Witness the fact that there are various volumes applying cognitive metaphor theory or conceptual blending to the biblical corpus, but virtually none that adopt cognitive grammar or possible worlds theory. For the former, see, among others, Macky (1990), Van Hecke (2005), Hayes (2008), Jindo (2010), and Howe and Green (2014). To be fair, cognitive grammar does feature in one of the essays in Howe and Green by Ellen van Wolde (2014, 193–222) as well as in van Wolde’s monograph Reframing Biblical Studies (2009). However, she forms the exception rather than the rule. 12. Pace, for example, Galambush (1992, 6–9), Maier (2008c, 19–210), Low (2013, 7–20). 13. This framework will be introduced more fully in the next chapter. The book series ‘Constructions of Space’ forms an excellent starting point to see the framework’s adoption as well as adaptation in the biblical field (Berquist and Camp 2007, 2008; George 2013; Prinsloo and Maier 2013; Økland, de Vos, and Wenell 2016). Similarly informative is the edited volume by David Gunn and Paula McNutt (2002). 14. Nicolae Roddy traces this anti-urban tone throughout the whole Hebrew Bible, concluding: “From the vantage point of Israel’s exiled seers and visionaries, the city remains little more than an inherently incomplete, human-made construct of magnificent emptiness and fleeting shadow” (2008, 21). Earlier, potentially positive city views are negatively colored in later rereadings and editions, according to him. 15. Many scholars defend this position (e.g., Sarna 1989, 80; Hamilton 1990, 356; Arnold 2009, 118–19), although it has been challenged in the past decades, in particular by the studies by Ellen van Wolde (2000) and Theodore Hiebert (2007). Whereas the new readings move away from the idea that Gen 11:1–9 was a story of pride and punishment, their proposed reading (as that of a story of the earth focusing on the

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origin of multiple languages and peoples) still contains an anti-urban ring. God favors the earth over the city, and diversity over unity. Nevertheless, Hiebert concludes “it is doubtful whether the Bible contains any true anti-urban ideology at all” (2007, 40). 16. Carroll, for example, observes that Jerusalem is the city that is portrayed negatively and positively, whereas all other city spaces only appear in negative circumstances (2001, 49). 17. Figure-ground dynamics are used in cognitive stylistics to explain how readers’ attention shifts during reading. The terms are adopted from visual arts and Gestalt psychology (Stockwell 2002, 13–26). 18. Maier points out that “many interpretations, especially feminist ones, focus too much on the negative depiction of the female character without taking into account that the body of this ‘woman’ at the same time represents the space of a city, and even a particular city” (2008c, 112). 19. The terms ‘text-world’ and ‘discourse-world’ are central in Text World Theory, developed in the 1990s by Paul Werth (1999) and further elaborated upon in the 2000s by Joanna Gavins (2007). Simply put, readers juggle two worlds when they read a text: the world in which the characters live, the text-world; and the world in which they themselves are reading the text, the discourse-world. Neither of these worlds is singular or static, meaning that the text-world is constantly updated as readers are given new information. What is more, texts create several text-worlds through which readers have to navigate; for example, when writers include a character’s dream or thoughts, the matrix text-world is temporarily left. As far as discourse-worlds go, the biblical text has had many over the ages. The discourse-world that has received most attention is that of the original audience. 20. It suffices to consult any given commentary on, for example, Isaiah, to find that city references are often disambiguated as either city or people. Some studies even make the distinction crucial to their overall argument (e.g., Low 2013).

2 Shaping the City Textually

From very early on, the material city had a written counterpart. As cities flourished, so did writings about them. From building inscriptions over city laments to current-day city poems, the city has always had an alternative life in texts. This is no different for biblical cities. Jerusalem is a real-­ life urban site at the Gihon spring, but also the primary city locus and focus in the Hebrew Bible. The relationship between these two manifestations of the city plays a role in the majority of research on the topic, sometimes prominently, other times more covertly. It has led to a division between archaeological-historical studies of biblical cities and literary-­ theological ones (O’Connor 2008, 18–23). It has generated debates about the historicity of the Hebrew Bible and led to quests for biblical urban sites true to the Bible. Although both strands of research refer to the places with the same term ‘city,’ their tense relationship already starts with this very term.

© The Author(s) 2020 K. Vermeulen, Conceptualizing Biblical Cities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45270-4_2

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The Issue of ‘City’ in Biblical Hebrew According to dictionaries such as HALOT (1994–2000, II 821–22) and BDB (2001, 1075), ‫ עיר‬is the most commonly used Biblical Hebrew word for ‘city.’ In addition, a few other words occasionally appear in the biblical corpus: ‫ קריה‬and ‫( קרת‬HALOT III 1142–43, 1149; BDB 1419, 1428). As straightforward as these words seem, as complicated are their semantics. That is to say, dictionaries and translations consistently render the above-mentioned Hebrew words as ‘city,’ but what is evoked by the English word ‘city’ is far from what the Biblical Hebrew ‫ עיר‬stands for (O’Connor 2008, 25–27).1 To a certain degree, the biblical ‘city’ is an invention of translators and scholars and may not have existed at all. Historical and archaeological research has shown that the places that are labelled ‫ עיר‬in the Hebrew Bible do not qualify as cities by any of the standards that define a city as the English word has them in mind. Historical biblical cities are not big in size, with thousands if not millions of people living, working and shopping there. The classical urban/rural opposition does not play a primary role in the Hebrew Bible, as it would in later Western culture (Grabbe 2001b, 103–112; see also its role in the discussion on the rise of cities, Soja 2003, 26–34). On the contrary, biblical Jerusalem at its biggest was the size of Central Park in Manhattan, its people fitting in a small theatre in the same city of New York for most of its biblical history (O’Connor 2008, 29–31). City and surrounding countryside were considered part of the same orderly space. If there was an opposition at all, it was with the true wilderness, where any type of civilization was lacking (Grabbe 2001a, 33; 2001b, 114–15). The situation was different for places such as Babylon or Nineveh in their heydays, but their outlook still varied from the early industrial city image that hides behind the English word ‘city’ (O’Connor 2008, 28).2 Yet despite the mismatch between the latter and the historical reality of cities mentioned in the Bible, the ancient and modern city, to use these broad categories for the sake of the argument, actually are very similar. Rather than being preoccupied with exact numbers or specific manifestations of technology or functionality, one should focus more on quality than on quantity. When doing so, biblical cities in fact fulfill many of the basic criteria

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of a city at the beginning of the industrial revolution as defined by V. Gordon Childe (Childe 1950, 3–17):3 1. In point of size … more extensive and more densely populated than any previous settlements (9) 2. In composition and function … full-time specialist craftsmen, transport workers, merchants, officials and priests (11) 3. tiny surplus … as tithe or tax to an imaginary deity or a divine king (11) 4. truly monumental public buildings (12) 5. priests, civil and military leaders and officials … formed a “ruling class” (12–13) 6. writing (14) 7. the elaboration of exact and predictive sciences (14) 8. conceptualised and sophisticated styles (15) 9. regular “foreign” trade over quite long distances (15) 10. a state organisation based now on residence rather than kinship (16) Even though the criteria are not meant to be an urban shopping list, biblical cities would easily tick off quite a few of these characteristics (e.g., societal differentiation, monumental public work, ruling class, and growing population).4 What is more, when it comes to cities in the Hebrew Bible, thus textual cities rather than historical ones, the Hebrew ‫ עיר‬and the English ‘city’ may be far more equivalent than argued before in scholarship. For one, the biblical city is as imaginary as the textual modern city. It is and should be distinguished from its real-life equivalent outside the text-­ world. For sure, the Bible does not envision Wi-Fi or Google in Jerusalem, but it does feature this city as a locus of communication and information (see later). Even though the numbers may not come close to those of any cities nowadays, the biblical text construes textual cities as “great” spaces “full of things and people,” hinting at their size and quantities (Vermeulen 2017c, 235; forthcoming-b) and thus underwriting Childe’s criterion number one of what constitutes a city after all. Secondly, considering the textual city in its own right opens up a conceptualization of the city that is not constrained by the factual data from the outside world. That is not to say that such information does not play a role at all. On the contrary,

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it will consciously and unconsciously feed into the final reading and understanding of textual city space. “We read the Bible with our modern conceptions of city life and are placed in a dialogue with our predecessors in how we envisage ancient urban life” (Aitken 2018, 3). Yet, the city of the mind can take any form, as long as a writer finds words for it. Whether these words generate a concept in the reader’s mind that matches his or her idea on (biblical) cities is a different matter, as is the question whether that idea eventually is congruent with the real-life city in the discourse-­ world (be it ancient or modern). For the remainder of the discussion it is important to keep in mind that this study focuses on the textual city, not on the “city in the dirt” that bears the same name (O’Connor 2008, 34). The language of the Hebrew Bible will serve as primary guide, meaning that all references to ‫ עיר‬or any of the other city vocabulary will be considered, as well as all passages that refer to cities with other terminology, such as personal pronouns and proper nouns. This linguistic-textual city is a city in itself, meaning that the biblical text develops a city space that functions to some degree independently of its real-life counterpart. Looking at the overall portrayal of cities in the Hebrew Bible suggests that the biblical text indeed favors its own imagined city spaces over the latter (George 2007, 21–22). Hence, numbers may be off and various wondrous actions may be performed by urban spaces in the text. These issues of ‫עיר‬/city on the one hand and textual versus historical city on the other hand are intertwined with another important ‘city’ issue not limited to the Hebrew Bible per se: the nature of the semantic domain of the term ‘city.’ Is the city its inhabitants, its geographical location or physical appearance, or a “symbolic space and mythical geography” (Grabbe 2001a, 25–26; quote 26)? The way in which the biblical text treats the city suggests that there are at least two different ways in which the Hebrew Bible reads the term ‘city.’ The most straightforward meaning is the city as specific location, including streets, houses, a palace and so on, such as in Song 3:2: “I must rise and roam the city (‫)בעיר‬, through the streets and through the squares.” At other times, the city is considered an acting character, such as in Isa 1:21: “How she has become a harlot, the faithful city (‫)קריה‬.” In this particular example, the city stands for its people rather than the material construct (Vermeulen forthcoming-b). In

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studies on the personification of Jerusalem, the discussion often centers around the determination of the referent of the city metaphor and its theological implications (e.g., Galambush 1992; Maier 2008c; Low 2013). Other researchers have argued that it is better to define the biblical city by its functions: as cultic center, administrative hub and industrial heart (O’Connor 2008, 31–32). All these approaches show that the semantic domain of the biblical term ‘city’ is very broad and referentially complex. “The city in its complete sense, then, is a geographic plexus, an economic organization, an institutional process, a theatre of social action, and an aesthetic symbol of collective unity” (Mumford 1937, 94). For the biblical city, this list can be complemented with the city as a locus of personification and a religious-ideological reference point.5 Whereas it may be possible to pinpoint the exact referent each time a city appears in the text (as in Low 2013), this study will show that in longer passages several aspects are explored alternately.6 Rather than a way to confuse the reader or presenting him or her with interpretive dilemmas, it is my opinion that these so-called inconsistencies represent the complexity of the biblical city concept. It goes without saying that such insights can only be gained when looking at the whole of the Hebrew Bible and with a focus on city space that goes beyond the (problematic) personification of Jerusalem in particular prophetic books. Building on previous research on the latter, the study aims to further our understanding of language’s capacity to construe city space, far before Childe spoke of an “urban revolution” (1950) and Henri Lefebvre introduced his production de l’espace (1974).

Critical-Spatial Theory and Biblical Cities Critical-spatial theory found its origin in the social sciences and served to express the power relations generated by urbanism and inspired by Marxist and Hegelian thinking. Henri Lefebvre, one of the founding fathers, was a French sociologist, but also an architect and a philosopher (Stanek 2011, 133–64). His ‘production of space’ gave the city back to its people, who used the city on a daily basis. Discussions were no longer about the magnificent architecture or the beautiful drawings of

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machinery, but about what happened when someone would walk through that built environment and made those machines produce something. Lefebvre’s theory centered around three interpretations of space that work together. The first type, that of architecture and material space, Lefebvre labelled l’espace perçu or the perceived space. This type of space can be seen and touched. It takes up literal space as the human body does by which people perceive the city. A second kind, Lefebvre distinguished, is that of the space of ideas, called l’espace conçu. It is thought up by the human mind and put into writing, drawing or anything else but actual building (Lefebvre 1974, 48–49). Both types of space represent the way scholars have looked at space for a long time, dividing themselves into two groups roughly to be identified with historians on the one hand and literary scholars on the other. The revolutionary part of critical-spatial theory consists of a bridging of the longstanding gap between these two approaches through the introduction of a third type of space, l’espace vécu, the lived space or the space of the experience (Lefebvre 1974, 49–50; George 2007, 29; O’Connor 2008, 21). This sociological kind of spatial production draws on the other two interpretations of space but also adds something to the sum of these parts. The user is given power. Especially in the later development of the theory, of which the key figure is the American urbanist Edward Soja, this user becomes more and more a specific individual, often a figure in the margins (Soja 1996, 83–105; 2000, 407–15). Soja initially adopts Lefebvre’s categories, replacing them by English equivalents, named Firstspace, Secondspace and Thirdspace. Soja’s Thirdspace develops into a postmodern space in which everything and nothing is possible, becoming “real-and-imagined, actual-and-­ virtual, locus of structured individual and collective experience and agency” (Soja 2000, 11).7 Whereas Lefebvre and Soja work against a different background, the premises of their theories are similar in their attempt to escape “the tyranny of the binary” (Berquist 2007, 4). Ultimately, their goal is to provide a vocabulary to describe the dynamic and vibrant nature of space and city space in particular, a nature that goes far beyond stunning architecture and lyrical descriptions but highly depends on its use by actual human beings. It is not surprising that when the spatial turn affected biblical studies a number of scholars adopted the theory to overcome a similar dichotomy

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in the study of biblical space (George 2007, 29). On the one hand, historians and archaeologists focused on the physical place and its excavation sites in the Middle East (e.g., Fritz 1990). On the other hand, the spaces in the narratives and poetry of the Hebrew Bible were the object of study for theologians, literary scholars and linguists. They approached the city as a symbol, something beyond or in addition to the material place (e.g., Mills 2012). Given that the focus of these two research lines often seemed incompatible, the fields developed mostly parallel from each other, at least until the spatial turn.8 By focusing on a third type of space, one saw an opportunity to overcome the divide between the two existing views on the space of biblical cities (as in cities mentioned in the Hebrew Bible but which also existed in the real world) (George 2007, 28–29). This boosted the study of biblical cities as appearing in text as well as of biblical space in general.9 Critical spatiality allowed for reading biblical space as “the product of a particular time and place” (George 2007, 29). Previous work, including some of my own, argued that all three spaces of critical-spatial theory are present in the biblical text (Maier 2008c; Prinsloo 2013; Vermeulen 2016; Jiang 2018). Jon Berquist deems it “not an ontology of space but a deconstructive method for spatial discourse” (2007, 8). Whereas the theory itself deemed textual spaces to be Secondspaces, spaces of the mind (Soja 1996, 67), the suggestion of a Firstspace and Thirdspace in the text gave biblical scholarship a new lens to look at textual space. Descriptions of physical cities and spaces, with mentions of walls and streets as well as reference to spatial locations, such as high or far, qualify as the textual equivalent of the architectural Firstspace of Lefebvre and Soja. These passages try to evoke a three-­ dimensional space as real as the one the reader is living in and, especially for the original readership, also the actual space of existing ancient cities. The latter may explain the scarcity of details at times. People knew the places that were mentioned in the text. A few basic references were enough for them to fill in the blanks of the visual picture (Matthews 2009, 152–53). The original readership, contrary to the modern one, was most likely able to actually draw the city based on the biblical description because they could also rely on their sensory and bodily experiences of that location or the memories they had thereof.

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In addition, the biblical text is particularly strong at expressing ideas about cities by means of root metaphors that permeate larger parts of the text, if not the whole of the Hebrew Bible. The image that comes immediately to mind is that of the city as a woman, spouse of God and at times his unfaithful wife (e.g., Darr 1994; Maier 2008c). This metaphor presents a certain idea about the city, which will be discussed further on in Chap. 3. The idea is a Secondspace to the city. It exists in the mind of the writer and the reader only. Obviously, cities are not women. Finally, Thirdspace consists of the use by the writers of the previous two types of space. What do they want to tell the audience when they describe certain Firstspace aspects of the city and infuse that with an underlying image such as the city-woman? What kind of space do they ultimately produce? Is it a space of resilience, comfort or tradition? Is the space hostile or friendly? Depending in which direction scholars have taken their critical-spatial readings (narratological, social, political or ideological), they have addressed Thirdspace differently. Yet, they all consider Thirdspace to be the necessary step for fully understanding biblical spatiality.10 Whereas critical spatiality has offered new insights, biblical scholars have also found the approach problematic for various reasons. The main critique has been formulated as a question with regard to the transferability of this contemporary theory, developed with modern-day cities in mind, to the biblical text (among others, Camp 2002, 66–69; Prinsloo 2013, 8; Meredith 2013, 7–8). This criticism addresses the difference in context as well as the difference in the nature of the analyzed spaces. Regarding the former, critical spatiality was developed to assess social power relations in an urbanized world in which lower classes and individuals were less heard. Hence, the effort to give them a voice and a space, literally. As for the latter, Thirdspace was truly a trans-modal and transdisciplinary space (Soja 1996, 3), bringing together the physical and the mental, object and idea, the construction builder and the poet. In the biblical text, there are for sure power relations and many groups whose voices were considered less important in the patriarchal structure and organization of society. However, the use of space in the biblical text does not seem to be primarily a matter of a way to access their individual experience coming forth from a capitalist urbanization process (Meredith 2013, 8–9, 14).11 This said, space plays an essential role in establishing

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the ideological discourse of the Hebrew Bible. And whereas it may not be the individual and its relation to the city that is at stake, the ultimate relationship, that is, that between the new god and his people, goes through and by means of space. On the one hand, there is the city of Jerusalem/Zion which becomes God’s abode and thus creates a spatial and also power laden dialogue between God and the people in the city. On the other hand, the biblical text blows up the spatial limitations and escapes a spatially informed rhetoric of hierarchy and opposition by presenting God as omnipresent and almighty. He rules over all the space, he is everywhere. He is the space (Vermeulen 2017c, 2019). As to the second criticism, critical-spatial research on the biblical text can turn all the types of space into textual ones. This makes for a richer understanding of textual space, but it simultaneously loses the true blend of fields and the overcoming of the historical-literary gap.12 The physical city is only physical in as far as the text describes it. Even the extra-textual knowledge a reader may bring to the text is still a mental picture rather than a city of flesh and stones.13 This in itself is not a problem, because the Thirdspace of the biblical text is also textual, whereas that of the original theory involves the use of the geographical space as well. Whereas the above criticizes an application of the theory that is considered too free, other scholars have argued the opposite. Maggie Low, for example, when reviewing Christl Maier’s work on the personification of Jerusalem, deems Maier’s application of the theory too rigorous. She argues that it may be better to admit that sometimes the biblical text lacks Firstspace or Secondspace. Not all the types of space need to be present all the time, according to her (Low 2013, 16). A similar position shines through in Aitken’s introduction of The City in the Hebrew Bible: “Zion is an abstract ideal rarely portrayed as a city in terms of streets, people and life experiences … Otherwise, the cities that are portrayed in the Bible for the purpose of expressing urban experiences are envisaged as nameless and timeless” (2018, 8). In both cases, the ultimate argument is not as much about rejecting the theory as a whole, but a call to let the theory not overrule the text.14 Another critique comes from Christopher Meredith who considers critical spatiality to be ill-fitted for a study of the biblical text, among others, because it “encourages to describe a certain modality of power using space rather than to experiment with space in

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order to play with our sense of how power is constituted within a given system” (2013, 185). According to him, the theory does not acknowledge the nature of literary space, but in the end renders it “a kind of supplement to historical space” (2013, 14). In other words, critical spatiality in its current form limits the potential of the biblical text, closing rather than opening doors of interpretation. At the risk of inviting more critique, I will argue that critical-spatial theory can be a valid framework for the study of cities, and space in general, in the Hebrew Bible. That is to say, when the theory undergoes a stylistic makeover. This will require a redefining of the spaces of the theory in order for them to be textual by definition rather than by implication, which indeed may be problematic at times. The current proposal is an attempt to answer the critics and build upon the work that has been done before. It should not be seen as another critique itself, but rather as the next step in the process of rendering critical spatiality linguistic and textual. A redefining of the spaces as textual and linguistic will resolve the issue of not finding space X or Y in a passage. As in the original theory, all types of space will be present by definition. This adaptation frees the framework from its supposed need to be transdisciplinary. I side here with Meredith and Gomel who plea for a rehabilitation of textual space and its study sui generis (Meredith 2013, 9; Gomel, 2014, 2). As explained before, power relations may play a role, but not as externally brought along by the original theory but as internally generated by the text, its story and its language use. Finally, a more radical translation of the theory to textual cities and spaces aspires to be more liberating and open to interpretation than previous applications. Words and text have precisely the power to voice and imagine impossible and impermeable spaces. They can make real what is unreal and evoke space that readers will never be able to fully grasp.

A Stylistic Makeover Grounded in English linguistics and initially inspired by Russian formalism, cognitive stylistics is a fast-growing discipline that studies what happens when we read. In other words, how does text—taken in its broadest

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sense as any type of human discourse, spoken as well as written—produce meaning? Methodologically, the field draws primarily on methods and concepts from cognitive linguistics and cognitive psychology, matching them to key terms in the literary field (Stockwell 2002, 1–11; Jeffries and McIntyre 2010, 1–2).15 For example, literary defamiliarization is analyzed by means of the cognitive figure-ground distinction (e.g., Stockwell 2002, 13–26), and how readers cognitively reposition themselves when following a novel in its temporal and spatial switches is assessed by means of text-worlds and modal worlds (Gavins 2007). Because cognitive stylistics allows untangling coping strategies for reading, it not only leads to fresh analyses of existing works (of any sort) but also gives rise to suggestions for writing future ones. An example of the latter is Elena Semino and colleague’s groundbreaking study on medical metaphors, which resulted in a cooperation with the medical field in order to provide doctors and their patients with a language tool to communicate better about their illness (2018). Another strength of cognitive stylistics is its interest in both the text and its context, as a result of its cognitive-linguistic premise that language is necessarily embodied, even when speaking about such matters as theology that are thought to transcend the bodily world. Given that several methodologies are adopted by cognitive stylisticians, I will address the ones relevant to a stylistic revision of critical spatiality as I merge them with critical-spatial ideas.

Firstspace, Secondspace and Thirdspace Redefined In redefining the spaces of Lefebvre and Soja, I start with l’espace conçu or Secondspace, the space of ideas.16 Not only does the original theory explicitly include textual space in its Secondspace (Soja 1996, 67), it also forms the core of the textual conceptualization of the city in the Hebrew Bible. More than in any other piece of writing perhaps, fictional or otherwise, cities, and in particular Jerusalem, are metaphorized to a great extent in the biblical corpus. As mentioned briefly before, anyone familiar with the biblical text and especially the prophetic writings will think

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of Jerusalem as a woman. I will show that six additional images for cities recur regularly throughout the Hebrew Bible. These images form the main ideas about city space found in the biblical text. They surpass the level of explicit linguistic statements such as ‘Jerusalem is a woman,’ but rather develop a rhetoric and language that draw on such understatements. These Secondspace ideas are conceptual metaphors, from a cognitive-­stylistic point of view. Conceptual metaphors are comparisons in which a more abstract and complex target domain is replaced by a less abstract and complex source domain. These metaphors exist at the level of cognition, structuring the world and the language used to describe this world. They were first described by cognitive linguists but have made their way into various other fields as well. Typical examples are time is money or unhappy is down (Lakoff and Johnson 2003/1980, 7–9, 14–21; Kövecses 2010, 6, 40, 334). These conceptual metaphors underlie expressions such as ‘He is wasting his time’ or ‘she is depressed.’ As the examples show, conceptual metaphors do not necessarily result in literary metaphors. The latter draw our attention because of their unfamiliarity. Rather than relying upon engrained images, they introduce new ideas or new applications of old ideas (Kövecses 2010, 49). Both conceptual and literary metaphors apply the same mechanism of connecting a source and a target domain, yet their function and effect are different. In a piece on apocalyptic cities, Carla Sulzbach has described the difference as follows, “No longer is the—female!—personification a mere metaphor, the city actually ‘plays’ a female character” (2013, 238). Similarly, Ulrich Berges says about the personified Jerusalem in Isaiah, “To speak of a metaphor does not really hit the mark. It is not as if Zion mourns but she is the one who cries bitterly” (2001, 58). In addition, conceptual metaphors subtly frame the world, with a strong embodied, thus spatially experienced, basis (Gibbs and Wilson 2002, 525). Because of this, they tend to be understood fairly easily. Literary metaphors, on the contrary, often challenge generally accepted ideas, as such requiring more of an effort from the reader’s part to be understood (Steen and Gibbs 2004). Given the biblical city’s complexity, it should not come as a surprise that conceptual metaphors underlie the passages speaking about cities.17 What may be more surprising is that this is the case for all of the stories,

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not just the most cited ones or the poetic ones. Consider, for example, the reconstruction of Jerusalem in the book of Nehemiah. The city is presented as a material given, with a focus on what is rebuilt and mentioning typical features, such as walls, gates, streets, and so on. At first sight, all of this seems literal. However, the city is more than a building in Nehemiah. It is also conceived as a container, for example in Neh 2:11: “And I came to Jerusalem (‫ )אל ירושלם‬and I was there (‫ )שם‬three days.” And in Nehemiah 2:12, the city is conceived as a person in the expression ‫לעשות לירושלם‬, “to do to/for Jerusalem”: “I got up at night … and I did not tell to anyone what my God had put into my mind to do for Jerusalem.”18 In addition, even in a book such as Nehemiah which relates the physical reconstruction of Jerusalem, one may wonder whether this description does not also imply a restoration of the people and the cult, and thus affecting other urban referents. In other words, it may be an oversimplification to consider passages with physical descriptions to have only the physical city as referent and a conceptualization of the city as building and those mentioning the people to only speak about the people and conceiving the city as a person. When Nahum, for example, prophecies Nineveh’s pending destruction, he most certainly envisions a destruction of the complete city: the buildings, the people and, most importantly, its leading position, its name and fame, and its gods (Berges 2001, 58). In terms of conceptualization, the prophecy speaks of the city as a container full of troops, a building with gates and a person with enemies, all within one and the same verse, as in Nah 3:13: “Behold your people in your midst (‫ )עמך נשים בקרבך‬are women; to your enemies (‫ )לאיביך‬the gates (‫ )שערי‬of your land have surely opened themselves; fire has consumed your gate bars (‫)בריחיך‬.” Secondspace in stylistic terms is the space of conceptual metaphors. This space is the gateway to understand the textual city. As has been shown by Zoltán Kövecses, some conceptual metaphors are universal, whereas others are not. Furthermore, culture determines which metaphors will be dominant and which ones will be not (Kövecses 2008, 51–74). Since conceptual metaphors come forth from neural pathways that have been primed initially through bodily experience, different experiences due to a changed environment will lead to changing conceptual

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metaphors. This will be of particular relevance for the study of urban space, cross-culturally and over time (e.g., Caballero 2006; Nientied 2016). Whereas Secondspace functions as the core of the textual-spatial production of the city, Firstspace and Thirdspace give it its manifold appearances. Firstspace in the original theory was sensory and experiential. Rendering this stylistically means that the space must be perceivable by a reader. He or she must be able to touch it, to point it out, to name it, just like a visitor of Antwerp would point at its cathedral and feel the cobblestones under his or her feet. This perceivable space of the text, stylistically speaking, consists of particular words in the text. As linguists have shown in the past, some words are far better in evoking space in the reader’s mind than others (e.g., Talmy 1985, 2000; Tally 2013). Space in a text is, first and foremost, linked to place names and spatial vocabulary, that is to say, to the domain of the lexicon. By mentioning the name of a city, the biblical text evokes the whole place in the reader’s mind, such as in Isa 1:9: “Like Sodom, we would be, Gomorrah we would resemble.” A mental picture of these cities is activated when Isaiah names the places.19 Spatial vocabulary does the same but draws the attention to a particular aspect of the picture, for example, the gates or the walls of the city, or its dimensions. Consider for that matter, Deut 3:5: “all those cities were fortified with a high wall (‫)חומה גבהה‬, gates (‫)דלתים‬, and bars (‫ ”)ובריח‬or Zech 2:6: “And I asked, ‘Where are you going?’ And he said to me, ‘To measure Jerusalem, to see how much her width (‫ )רחבה‬is and how much her length (‫)ארכה‬.’” In addition to nouns that describe spatial elements, language also has adjectives such as wide, small, high, full, empty, and so on, which describe the space further. Thus, Firstspace in Jonah 1:2 consists of the place name Nineveh, the word ‘city’ (‫ )עיר‬and the adjective ‘great’ (‫“( )גדול‬Nineveh, that great city”). Two categories worth mentioning separately are motion verbs and spatial prepositions. Whereas they both appear in the lexicon as well, they also form particular parts of speech involving an additional level of language in textual spatial production (Talmy 1983, 229; Svorou 1994; Stockwell 2002, 96). Motion verbs as well as directional prepositions add a layer of movement to the text, rendering the space truly three-­ dimensional and dynamic (Talmy 1985, 68–72; Cadiot et al. 2006, 175–206). They furthermore supplement the place with a position in the

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wider space surrounding it. It is one thing to describe a city and envision its walls and gate, but a whole different thing to move out of one city and through that gate to enter another city. Both motion verbs and directional prepositions add spatial perspective to textual cities. They allow the reader to zoom in and out, look at the city from a distance or from closer by. In Jonah 3:2–4, for example, the repeated preposition ‫ אל‬directs both Jonah’s and the reader’s gaze to Nineveh: “Go to Nineveh, speak to her … and Jonah went to Nineveh.” The passage concludes with the prophet’s arrival in the city, ‫( בנינוה‬v. 4), which introduces another subcategory of spatial prepositions: locational prepositions (Vermeulen 2017c, 236). These function more or less the same as spatial vocabulary. They place the city at a specific spot in the environment or situate a character in a city (Vandeloise 2006, 137–54).20 In addition to these categories, space in a text can be produced by other elements, more precisely by certain literary devices. Especially structural devices add to the textual production of space, such as chiasm, inclusio and parallelism.21 Distance as well as size can be evoked by physically separating what belongs together semantically. Prominence can be given to city space by placing its linguistic denominators proleptically, in chiasm or in parallel with other words. Other devices may contribute to textual space through iconicity. Think of the repetition of sounds in the words of the Babel builders in Gen 11:3–4: “Come, let us make bricks and burn them” (‫ )הבה נלבנה לבנים ונשרפה לשרפה‬and “Come let us build for us a city” (‫)הבה נבנה לנו עיר‬.22 This alliterative repetition iconically represents the growth of the city and its expanding space (Vermeulen 2013). The repetition of keywords may function in the same way. Not only do they emphasize the keyword, they may add to the evocation of textual space. The example that comes to mind is the description of Nineveh in the book of Jonah. The keyword ‘great’ appears frequently in combination with the city, both representing a large city space and stressing the role of greatness in the story as a whole (Vermeulen 2017c, 235–36). The broader story is also where cityscaping happens, and where textual Thirdspace can be seen at work. Whereas cognitive research on conceptual metaphors mainly emphasizes its ubiquity in daily speech and communication, often unknowingly, the Thirdspace of the biblical text is one that is largely shaped deliberately.23 The many examples in which

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metaphors are tweaked and twisted show exactly that common ideas about city space were used as starting point to create a new city space in light of a new message. Such fits the goal of the biblical corpus perfectly, as a book that tries to establish a space for a new god and his people. This process, called framing, is a process of “select[ing] some aspects of a perceived reality and mak[ing] them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation for the item described” (Entman 1993, 52).24 It allows writers to select particular metaphors for a particular context. The notion of framing acknowledges the role of the writer in the final positioning of a conceptual metaphor.25 As such, the three discussed spaces, that is, that of words, ideas and framed usage, complement each other, together constituting textual space. Thirdspace will present itself as crafted by the biblical authors. I will show that this happens with all the images of the city, not only with the obvious one of the city-woman in the prophetic books. For example, the container metaphor is one of the dominant images in the corpus. Things happen in the city, people come and go, goods leave and are brought in, for example, in Josh 15:63: “and the Jebusites dwelt with the Judites in Jerusalem (‫ )בירושלם‬to this day.” The city space is envisioned as a container without further ado. Given the container nature of the city space, however, the following can happen as well: “from Zion instruction shall go out (‫)מציון תצא תורה‬, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem (‫ודברי‬ ‫( ”)יהוה מירושלם‬Isa 2:3). The city is no longer filled with the obvious, but with words. The Secondspace potential is played out in passages such as Isa 13:20–22, where the human inhabitants have left the city (“she will not dwell ever and she will not settle through the ages”), whereupon wild animals invade it (“but beasts will lie down there, and owls will fill the houses”). The contrast between empty and full and between right and wrong adds to a discourse that transcends that of space itself.26 This is not to say that space is subordinate to this message. On the contrary, it forms a crucial part of it. What is more, one way to read the Hebrew Bible is as a narrative of space, not only in the literal sense that people move to and from the Promised Land but also metaphorically as one in which the biblical god is claiming his space amidst other gods, other cultures and even across time and space (given the long reception history of the text).

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The Hebrew Bible as a Spatial Odyssey Speaking of the Hebrew Bible as a spatial narrative is one way to introduce the corpus. For the current study, this narrative is of interest in as far as it affects city spaces.27 The biblical corpus, first and foremost, is here taken as a collection of texts in a particular language, illustrating how language in context functions. The case of the Hebrew Bible is somewhat peculiar in that corpus and language coincide to a large degree (Sáenz-­ Badillos 1993, 52–53). To be precise, except for a few chapters in the book of Daniel and a few lines here and there, the Hebrew Bible is written in Biblical Hebrew. Vice versa, the Biblical Hebrew corpus consists of the Hebrew Bible minus the afore-mentioned passages and lines. No other texts have been transmitted in Biblical Hebrew, which does not mean that there were never other texts, just that they did not make it into our own day and age.28 As a result, the Biblical Hebrew corpus is rather small, consisting of a little under 420,000 words and a total of 24 books, although the term book is somewhat misleading. In terms of length, the biblical books resemble chapters far better than books. That said, the size of the corpus allows one to study it manually. And even though it is small, it excels in variety, including different genres, different layers of the language, different writers and writer schools and different contexts in which the text was produced. At the same time, the Hebrew Bible as we know it today has been transmitted for ages now in its particular form, after it had been compiled and made coherent by a string of writers, redactors and editors (Van der Toorn 2007; Carr 2011).29 This means that the text, despite its long history and many varieties, shows a striking coherence throughout. Hence, looking at its spatial construal of city space is a worthy endeavor that will give insight into the mechanics of Biblical Hebrew spatial production which itself can shed new light on the meaning of the biblical text. The conducted study entails the whole of the Hebrew Bible as far as it forms a specimen of Biblical Hebrew language and focuses on city space. No further limits were set. The examples found and featured in this study come from virtually every book of the Hebrew Bible, regardless of genre, time, writer and context. The examples were collected by means of close

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reading as well as through searching for key terms such as place names, the word ‘city’ and other related vocabulary, such as ‘gate’ or ‘king.’ Computer-generated results (with the Bible software program BibleWorks) were checked manually in order to make sure that they qualified as such. Close reading generated most of the occurrences of city space in the corpus, because very often writers use pronouns rather than names or nouns like ‘city’ in longer passages. The collected data is reproducible but does not claim to be complete or statistically relevant. That is to say, the research is interested in tendencies rather than exact numbers and percentages.

Notes 1. Not only ‘city’ but also ‘town and ‘village’ appear in the lemmas. In other words, the translation already shows the complexity of the term. Obviously, to an English speaker there are substantial differences between a city, town and village, in terms of size and functionality. The single Hebrew entry may obscure the complexity at first. In addition, as Michael O’Connor has noted there is no 100% equivalence between the English ‘city’ and any of the Hebrew city words (2008, 25). 2. Various scholars have pointed out the problem of size when it comes to determining whether ancient places were cities. Typically, they eliminate the size criterion or recontextualize it (e.g., O’Connor 2008, 31–32; Grabbe 2001b, 95–123). What I suggest here is that the idea of size is not only a matter of historical definition but also inherently embedded in the very word ‘city,’ as argued previously by Paul Wheatley: “city … is used generically to denote any urban form and carries none of the ancillary connotations to size, status, or origin implicit in contemporary American and English usage” (2001, xvi). One way to deal with this terminological issue is to detach the term from its modern, or at least post-biblical, connotations. 3. To be fair, Childe’s model was not only about cities, but primarily about the changes that led to the rise of cities and states (Smith 2009, 10). 4. Childe’s work has been criticized over time, both in general and in its particular use in biblical studies (Grabbe 2001b, 97–98). Nevertheless, it remains a starting point in many studies (e.g., Schart and Krispenz 2012, 6–9).

2  Shaping the City Textually 

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5. In his critical introduction in Every City Shall Be Forsaken, Lester Grabbe points exactly at the last element, what he calls “the theology or the ideology of the city” as definitive for ancient cities (2001a, 25). 6. In line with what scholars have argued for specific texts or passages of texts, as, for example, Katherine Darr on Isaiah, “Who ‘Zion’ represents can shift within a single poem, therefore; and thoughts of two or more referents—a city, its populace, a young woman—can be astir simultaneously as the poem foregrounds first one and then another” (1994, 193). 7. Soja’s emphasis on Thirdspace and it “mean[ing] far too much and as a result, not nearly enough for it to be useful as a tool for critical reflection” has given rise to critique both within and outside biblical studies (quote: Meredith 2013, 13; other criticism by, among others, Maier 2008c, 13; Latham 2011, 384). 8. Scholars often incorporate material from both sides, but they tend to prioritize one aspect over the other. For example, Daniel Pioske in his recent study of David’s Jerusalem combines archaeological and textual data. However, this combination ultimately serves to assess place as “more than a lifeless background on which history unfolds, but a decisive agent in the shaping of history itself ” (2015, 2). Pioske is interested in the textual city in as far as it informs the experience of the historical version. 9. A very nice example is John Huddleston’s study of Nineveh that offers a new reading of Nah 3:8–9, joining text and archaeological remains (2003). 10. For a narratological analysis infused with ancient Near Eastern ideas about spatial ontology, see, for example, Prinsloo (2013, 2–25). A combination of critical spatiality with feminist theory can be found in, for example, Maier (2008c). Mark George (2009) relies on a critical-spatial New Historicism, if such a term can be coined, in his study of Israel’s Tabernacle. These ‘critical spatiality-plus’ approaches have prompted Meredith to state that spatial theory is lacking something crucial to be applied to the biblical text (2013, 12). However, I think these combinations arise from the multi-­layered nature of the biblical text on the one hand and the questions it evokes on the other. If these mergers of theories are able to answer the proposed research questions satisfactorily, I do not see why they should not be withheld. 11. Obviously, one can use a spatial reading to uncover these voices, as well as rely on frameworks that focus on minorities, as done, for example, in postcolonial or feminist studies.

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12. Not all scholars would agree with that. Christopher Meredith, for example, considers this development problematic because the adoption of the theory does not come with an appreciation of literary space. “Textual worlds are not simply determined by the economic conditions and social mores surrounding the text’s production but by the demands of plot, by the imaginative impositions of the reader, and by a whole host of subjective factors by which we, as human beings, continually bring spaces into being and then cast them off” (2013, 9). I agree with his shout-out for literary space, but not with his rejection of the theory as a whole. That would imply that all theories that were not developed for the biblical text itself cannot be used (which would also exclude his own dependence on Benjamin and Derrida to analyze the space in the Song of Songs, for that matter). 13. This is the case for all readers coming after the original readership of the text. And even for many belonging to the latter (at times in which the actual city was destroyed), a mental picture, and perhaps a memory, may have informed the textual construal in the end (see, e.g., Edelman and Ben Zvi 2014; Pioske 2015). 14. Aitken, for example, considers Zion mostly as a Secondspace and its lack of Firstspace and Thirdspace (even though he does not name it as explicitly as that) as “a highlighting of the importance of urban experience as lived rather than idealized” (2018, 8). In other words, the biblical text can freely play with the three spaces of critical-spatial theory. Its favoring of one over the other may actually be an exegetical-ideological statement. 15. For general overviews and introductions of the field and its applications, see, among others, Sotirova (2014), Stockwell and Whiteley (2015a), Gibbons and Whiteley (2018) and Burke (2018). 16. I will use the terms Firstspace, Secondspace and Thirdspace over the French terms, mainly for the reader’s convenience. Overall my approach focuses on the similarities between Lefebvre’s and Soja’s interpretation of the different aspects of space, which is where I read them as a “Soja-­ Lefebvre animal” (Meredith 2013, 7). 17. Although Julie Galambush turns to one particular metaphor, that of the city as female, she does acknowledge the city’s complexity: “while ‘city’ is a relatively sophisticated concept, the metaphoric designation of the city as female, and thus as mother, wife, and especially, within a patriarchal culture, as ‘other,’ plays on basic male-female, self-other dualities” (1992, 7).

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18. This expression occurs throughout the biblical text, for example, in Exod 32:14: ‫לעשות לעמו‬, “do to my people”; 2 Sam 13:2: ‫לעשות לה‬, “do to her [i.e., Tamar]; and Jer 18:6: ‫לעשות לכם‬, “do to you.” It is consistently used with people. 19. Whereas the place names themselves are Firstspace, the eventual associations they evoke, especially in terms of a broader concept, are part of Secondspace. What is more, if the framing (and thus the Thirdspace) is done effectively, it may be not only the Secondspace but also the Thirdspace that is remembered. For the quoted example, it is not unlikely that readers will think of the ‘evil city’ rather than the city. This image draws both on the negative appearances of these cities in the book of Genesis and on the later remembering inside as well as outside the biblical text in which Sodom and Gomorrah are synonymous with wickedness (Fields 1997, 25, 155–84). 20. Claude Vandeloise’s study of spatial prepositions uses a more fine-­grained set of categories, in which dynamic and not-dynamic form the main subcategories, both further divided into kinetic and static. The reason for this is that “the conceptualization of space involved in language is not a static topological or geometric representation, but rather a dynamic representation linked to the use of space that hosts our daily experience in the world” (2006, 153). For the current study, the different ways in which space can be construed linguistically are of more importance than their classification. 21. It goes without saying that other devices can contribute to the textual construal of city space. However, they do not in such a systematic way as the ones mentioned in the overview do. 22. The alliteration in the translation takes place with different words and only serves to accommodate those not reading the Hebrew text. However, as I argue, it does not matter which words exactly alliterate in this phrase, as long as they do. The goal is to evoke an iconic growth of sounds, similar to the growth of the city and building activity. 23. This is exactly where cognitive stylistics distinguishes itself from cognitive linguistics. Whereas more work is done nowadays on non-literary texts, one of cognitive stylistics’ primary interests remains the literary or consciously composed text. Through an analysis of these texts, the stylistician lays bare not only the mechanisms of language but also those of manipulating that language in order for it to be called literature (Stockwell and Whiteley 2015b, 1).

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24. This type of framing, adopted from media studies, should not be confused with frames as defined by cognitive studies: “domain[s] of knowledge and experience” on which a reader relies (Stockwell 2015, 238). 25. Galambush speaks of metaphors as “not value-neutral.” Relying on Lakoff and Johnson’s work, she argues that metaphors are a tool of the powerful with moral significance (1992, 9). 26. For an elaborate analysis, see Chap. 4, “The Urban Animal City.” 27. Carroll considers cities/city one of the main themes of the biblical text, “In very general terms it has to be said that one of the main foci of the Hebrew Bible is its focus on ‘cities’, or, if you prefer, ‘the city’” (2001, 47). 28. I follow here Angel Sáenz-Badillos who disregards the Dead Sea Scrolls and some medieval literature as possible manifestations of Biblical Hebrew (1993, 52). 29. I use the terms ‘biblical writers’ and ‘biblical authors’ throughout the book to refer to this conglomerate of people who have contributed to the text that eventually became the Hebrew Bible (as in, the final text referred to with this label). The terms by no means imply that these people knew of this final product nor that they were writers or authors in the modern sense of the word.

3 The Personified City

One of the obvious ways in which the biblical text, in particular the prophetic writings, understands the city is through the conceptual metaphor the city is a woman. It is not “ein Abbild (eben der Stadt), sondern vielmehr ein Denkbild (des Textes, des Autors, der Kommuni kationssituation)” (Häusl 2003, 9). In the opening of the book of Jeremiah, the prophet sets up a dialogue between God, the husband, and Jerusalem, his wife. Ezekiel 16 speaks of the same city’s life as of that of a girl making mistakes while growing up, but eventually coming to her senses and returning to her husband, God. In Psalm 137, Babylon will see her children die and Nineveh is imagined as a raped harlot in Nahum 2. More often than not the biblical prophets turn to the powerful metaphor the city is a woman when they announce their visions to and about cities. This particular perception and its realization in actual expressions in the text have drawn a lot of scholarly attention. Excellent volumes have been published on the presence of the metaphor and its gender-related issues in the biblical corpus (e.g., Galambush 1992; Sals 2004; Maier 2008c).

© The Author(s) 2020 K. Vermeulen, Conceptualizing Biblical Cities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45270-4_3

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Personification of the City Although the existing research on the city as woman in the Hebrew Bible draws on the linguistic concept of personification, very few studies actually pay attention to it as a more generic category to which the depiction of the city as a female person belongs. Discussions move quickly from the city as woman to its consequences for ancient and modern readership. Christl Maier, for example, limits her focus to “passages that personify Zion as female” (2008c, 3).1 Similarly, Ulrike Sals’ study of Babylon is that of “Hure Babylon,” another a priori gendering of the personification (2004, 1). Obviously, these studies have a particular focus in order to tell a particular story, different from the current one; however, they are exemplary for the study of personified city space in the Hebrew Bible in general, in which personification seems to equal feminization.2 Nevertheless, a closer look at the biblical text, both within and outside the prophetic corpus,3 reveals that there are as many references to the city as ungendered person than as woman. I use the term ‘ungendered’ here to indicate that the city is personified, but that the gender of the person is not embedded in the image itself. In personifications “human qualities are given to nonhuman entities” (Kövecses 2010, 39). For example, Isaiah 19:2 states, “And I will stir up Egyptian against Egyptian: they will fight, every man against his brother, every man against his neighbor; city against city (‫)עיר בעיר‬, kingdom against kingdom.” Cities are thus perceived as people who are opposing each other (Secondspace). Whether they are male or female is hard to tell and in this context not relevant at all. It may be more likely that the imagined person behind the city is male, because the previous oppositions in the verse have male referents. In the extra-­ textual world, war was considered a domain of men, so that too adds to an understanding of the city as male rather than female. However, the verse also widens the perspective from the singular Egyptian to the whole kingdom. At a certain point, the broader focus will also include women so that ‘city’ would then be at least male and female. Yet, the important aspect to emphasize here is that, apart from speculation, there is no way to attribute a gender to the personification of the city in this verse.

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Similarly, Lamentations 1:1 opens with the city of Jerusalem sitting lonely. Neither the action nor the attribution of loneliness is gendered. It is only in the later lines of the verse that the city becomes a female, as a widow and a princess. For the sake of coherence, one could argue that, therefore, also the initial personification of the sitting city should be perceived as female. However, that does not undo the fact that the action of sitting itself is not gendered. Moreover, this would require a rereading of the first part of the verse instead of following the linear, spatial set-up as created in the text by the authors. Lamentations opens with a personification of city space to continue with a more specific image, that of a woman.4 This prompts the question whether there is any pattern whatsoever that helps categorizing and even predicting whether writers will turn to a city-as-person or a city-as-woman image. In general, it seems that specification is only offered when it is needed. That is, if personification proper suffices to state whatever it is writers want to state, they will not add feminine labels, such as ‘daughter,’ or actions such as ‘give birth’ (Firstspace markers).5 Arguments with regard to a possible cultic background of the female image have been rejected as “a tacit lack of serious respect for literary figuration as a phenomenon” (Dobbs-Allsopp 2009, 133).6 They have been replaced by insights that consider the female personification of cities as “part of an involved and canonically evolving metaphorical complex that captured the prophets’ imagination in their attempt to grapple with [among others] the power of the Assyrian empire” (Chapman 2004, 60). It is identified as “rhetoric crafted for times of warfare” (Kelle 2008, 96). This rhetoric takes advantage of the blurred conceptual divide between city-as-person and city-as-woman. For one, there is the grammatical gender of cities in Biblical Hebrew, which is feminine by definition. In addition, the Hebrew language marks all of its adjectives and verbs for gender (GKC §40, 145). That means that a text about a city necessarily contains many feminine endings and forms, even without exploiting the city-­ woman metaphor explicitly. Some scholars have used the feminine grammatical gender as motivation for the metaphor of the city as a woman (Fitzgerald 1975; Follis 1987), although there is no consensus on this matter. What is clear, however, is that the presence of feminine forms and endings for cities in the text facilitates an identification of the personified city as woman. Pace the following example from Ezek 22:13–16:

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And see, I will strike my hand against your (fem.) unjust gain that you have gathered (fem.) (city is person), and against your (fem.) bloodshed that is in your (fem.) midst (city is container). 14 Will your (fem.) heart endure (city is person), will your (fem.) hands (city is person) be strong in the days when I deal with you (fem.) (city is person)? I the Lord have spoken, and I will act. 15 I will scatter you (fem.) among the nations (city is person) and disperse you (fem.) in the lands (city is person/city is object); and I will remove your uncleanness from you (fem.) (city is container). 16 You will dishonor yourself (fem.) in the eyes of nations (city is person), and you will know (fem.) (city is person) that I am the Lord.

‫ והנה הכיתי כפי אל בצעך אשר עשית ועל‬13 ‫ היעמד לבך אם‬14 ‫דמך אשר היו בתוכך‬ ‫תחזקנה ידיך לימים אשר אני עשה אותך אני‬ ‫ והפיצותי אותך‬15 ‫יהוה דברתי ועשיתי‬ ‫בגוים וזריתיך בארצות והתמתי טמאתך ממך‬ ‫ ונחלת בך לעיני גוים וידעת כי אני יהוה‬16

First, the prophet envisions Jerusalem as a person with possessions, without further gender specification. He speaks of bloodshed, but instead of continuing the personification, he shifts conceptual metaphors from the city as a woman to the city as a container (more on this metaphor later, Chap. 7). In verse 14, the personification reappears, imagining the city as courageous and having a body with hands. The beginning of verse 15 can be analyzed in two ways: either as a personification or as a metonymic rather than a metaphorical shift to the people of the city who are scattered. The end of the verse draws again on the container metaphor, while verse 16 is another return to the personification of the city. Both shame and knowledge are ungendered capacities. This passage from Ezekiel illustrates well what has been argued above: the personifications themselves are often ungendered, but the presence of feminine endings and forms may prompt readers to envision the city as female anyway, especially if they are familiar with the rest of the chapter, the larger book of Ezekiel, and the prophetic corpus as a whole in which Jerusalem is at various occasions explicitly depicted as woman. Julie Galambush summarizes this effect as follows: The conceptual metaphor of the city as a woman also influences Ezekiel’s depiction of the city in the chapters where the city’s feminine persona is not mentioned explicitly. If the city is always implicitly female, then the use of

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language and imagery drawn from the explicit personifications in chaps 16 and 23 to depict Jerusalem throughout Ezekiel suggests that Ezekiel understands Jerusalem to be, at least implicitly, Yahweh’s wife throughout the book. (1992, 23)

In addition to grammatical gender and forms, readers are assisted by repeated shifts of the specific source domain of the city metaphors from clearly gendered personifications, such as the city as mother or wife, to personifications that are in essence gender-neutral, such as the city as opponent or the city as someone sitting, drinking or thinking. The following passage from Isa 47:6–8 illustrates this point well. I was angry at my people, I polluted my heritage. I gave them into your (fem.) hands (city is person), and you did not show (fem.) them mercy (city is person); upon the old you made (fem.) your yoke (fem.) very heavy (city is person). 7 You thought (fem.) (city is person), “Always I will be the mistress.” (city is woman) You did not pay attention (fem.) to these things, (city is person) you did not remember (fem.) the end of it. (city is person) 8 And now hear (fem.) this (city is person), o voluptuous one (fem.) who dwells (fem.) in security (city is person) and thinks (fem.) to herself (fem.), (city is person) “I am, and there is none besides me. I will not become a widow (city is woman) or know loss of children.7” (city is person) 6

The city Babylon is personified in these verses, but most of the personifications do not require a further gender distinction conceptually. Both men and women can show mercy (v. 6), pay attention to things (v. 7) or think they are infallible (v. 8). Yet these actions and thoughts appear in a chapter that introduces Babylon as ‫בת בבל‬, “daughter Babylon,” and returns to female personification occasionally. The city is a mistress in verse 7 and a widow in verse 8. Because of these explicit female depictions, other personifications that are in se free of gender are easily read as representing a female as well.8

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The City: A Human in Body and Mind9 Personification of cities plays with all aspects of human beings, that is, both the body and the mind are explored. Even though the city has a body of some sort, that is, her physical presence, it is only through the body of the personified city that it can move and act on its own behalf. This split bodily imagination of the city can be seen, for example, in Ezek 28:23. The text goes back and forth between a personified Sidon which is conceived as an opponent (gender-neutral) and a material container city in which bloodshed and dead people reside. I will send in her pestilence and bloodshed in her streets, (city is a container) and the pierced will fall in her midst (city is a container) when the sword comes upon her from around. (city is a person) And they will know that I am the Lord. (metonymic shift to people)

‫ושלחתי בה דבר‬ ‫ודם בחוצותיה‬ ‫ונפלל חלל בתוכה‬ ‫בחרב עליה מסביב‬ ‫וידעו כי אני יהוה‬

The city has two bodies in this verse, although not of the same kind. Drawing on the metaphor the city is a person, the human body is subject to disease and wounds and attacked with a sword. In addition to the specific actions described through the verbs (Firstspace), the body of Sidon is one under what seems like a defenseless attack. Taking into account the previous verse in which verse 23 is presented as punishment, the new cityscape is one of failing agency rather than just a lack of it (Thirdspace). The city is still an actor, as it seemed to have been before, but the divine response is far stronger. As far as the other body of the city is concerned, it is conceived as a container full of bad things (bloodshed and dead people) (see Chap. 7 “Container City”). The body itself remains untouched, which could imply that the outer lines of the verse focus on the physical body of the city and the inner lines on its content. This would be an interesting loop in terms of conceptualization, because the city is a person imagery seems to go exactly beyond the mere geographical-­ material city space. At the same time, it indicates that trying to untangle and categorize individual images does not do justice to the complex

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build-up of the biblical city concept. What the passage ultimately communicates is that this physical attack, be it of the personified city or the container city, prompts a metonymic shift from city to people (“and they shall know”) and a semantic shift from doing to thinking (“and they shall know”). A personified city also gains access to the realm of the mind and emotions. It can be thoughtful, regretful, happy, angry and sad. In Psalm 48:12 Mount Zion is rejoicing; in Zeph 3:2 the city has been disobedient, not trusting in God. Very often body and mind are evoked in one and the same passage, such as in Zeph 3:16: “Do not fear, Zion; do not let your hands fall!” Another example can be found in Zech 9:5: “Ashkelon will see it (i.e., destruction of Tyre) and be afraid, Gaza will tremble extremely, and Eqron, for her hope is put to shame.” The city spaces mentioned experience both fear and (collapsing) hope, as well as a bodily response that exteriorizes these feelings, trembling. Rather than creating spaces of agency, the body of the personified city functions here as the physical pendant of the felt emotion. The city, therefore, explicitly becomes a space of embodied emotion (Thirdspace).

The City as Opponent: Metaphor or Metonymy Personification proper appears when the city is presented as an opponent of other cities, but also of God. In those instances, the writers will not apply specific feminine categories but will adhere to vocabulary that is ungendered. Contrary to the examples presented above where personifications are often gendered contextually, the city-as-opponent lacks such a marker. That is to say, sometimes passages draw on the metaphor the city is a person (opponent), alternating this with images other than the city is a woman. The conquest of the Promised Land in Joshua 10 forms a good example. And Joshua and all Israel passed through from Makkedah to Libnah (city is a container), and he fought against Libnah (city is a person).30 And the Lord gave it also in the hand of Israel and its king (city is an object); they smite it with the sword (city is a person) and all the people who were 29

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in it (city is a container), he did not spare a survivor in it (city is container). And he did to its king as he had done to the king of Jericho. 31 And Joshua went and all Israel with him from Libnah to Lachish (city is a container); he encamped against it (city is a container) and fought against it (city is a person).32 And the Lord gave Lachish into the hand of Israel (city is an object) and they captured it on the second day and they hit it with the sword (city is a person) and all the people in it (city is a container), just as they had done to Libnah.

The narrative shifts between conceptual metaphors as the story unfolds. A personified city occurs when battles are described. Cities are attacked, as people, and approached with swords, as opponents. The verb ‫לחם‬, “fight against,” appears in this setting as well as the noun ‫חרב‬, “sword” (Firstspace). Both require humans to execute the actions. For the biblical text, battle was a personal matter with one opponent facing the other. Conceptualizations of the city as person (opponent) are not limited to prosaic texts but can also be found in the prophetic corpus. In Jeremiah 50:14–16, the prophet announces God’s words about Babylon to his people. His directions draw on the metaphors the city is a person, the city is a container and the city is a building. Arrange yourselves around Babylon (city is a container), all who draw the bow; shoot at her (city is a person), do not spare arrows, for she has sinned against the Lord (city is a person). 15 Shout against her all around (city is container), she has given her hand (city is person); her bastions have fallen (city is building) her walls are thrown down (city is building) For this is the Lord’s vengeance. Take vengeance on her (city is person), as she has done, do to her (city is person). 14

‫ ערכו על בבל סביב‬14 ‫כל דרכי קשת‬ ‫ידו אליה אל תחמלו אל חץ‬ ‫כי ליהוה חטאה‬ ‫ הריעו עליה סביב‬15 ‫נתנה ידה‬ ‫נפלו אשיותיה‬ ‫נהרסו חומותיה‬ ‫כי נקמת יהוה היא‬ ‫הנקמו בה‬ ‫כאשר עשתה עשו לה‬

Depending on the actions or emotions described, the prophet turns to one or the other metaphor. When the focus is on the city as a material structure you can surround and put those inside under pressure, the metaphor the city is a container appears. For images of material man-­ made construction, the metaphor the city is a building surfaces. And

3  The Personified City 

45

for notions of battle, similar to the Joshua passage, the city is conceived as an (human) opponent. Thus, one can shoot arrows at her (v. 14) or do to her as she has done to others (v. 15).10 Opposition is also key to the lines that involve mental actions, such as sinning (v. 14) or taking vengeance (v. 15). Here again, the language implies people behind these actions. A wall cannot sin nor can a bastion rebel. The cityscape is one of retaliation in which agency is reversed (Thirdspace). What the city has done to others, will be done to her. Although Hebrew language marks the city as grammatically feminine, there is no further indication in the text that the reader should understand the image of the city as female. In this particular chapter of Jeremiah, it is not until verse 42 (of 46 verses) that Babylon is explicitly presented as female with the attribute ‫בת‬, “daughter.” Even chapter 51, in which the oracle against Babylon continues, does not turn to female personification until halfway through and this only in one verse, verse 33 (“Daughter Babylon is like a threshing floor, at the time of her treading; in a little while the time of harvest will come to her”). Despite the lack of feminine imagery, scholars have read the personifications mostly as gendered. As suggested before, these interpretations are primarily contextually and intertextually motivated, with Babylon as female city elsewhere and as Jerusalem’s alter ego (Hill 1999; 172–73, 177–80). In cases such as the above, with the city as (ungendered) opponent, the line between personification and metonymy is a thin one. When Joshua 10 describes the attack of a city, it is clear that the actual opponent is not the built environment or the abstract functions of the city but its inhabitants, the people living in the city. The very notion of attack implies the presence of another living being that one can face. It is, therefore, possible to argue that a metonymic shift takes place where the text mentions ‘city’ but means ‘people.’ At the same time, however, an attack of a city is not only directed at the inhabitants. Rather, it is by attacking them that all the other referential domains of the concept ‘city’ can be affected.11 Obviously, the siege of a city involves demolishing walls and tearing down houses. And a destroyed city can no longer function as political or religious center. An additional argument in favor of personification, at least for the above examples, is the fact that the text consistently adheres

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to singular forms and endings. When the personified city appears, it is presented as a unified person, rather than as a group of individuals. There are many other instances in which there is a metonymic shift that is marked in the language by a shift from singular morphology to plural. For example, in the beginning of the book of Jonah, God commands Jonah to call upon (‫וקרא עליה‬, fem. sg.) Nineveh because he has heard their evil (‫רעתם‬, m. pl.). A metonymic shift underlies the shift in number and gender. This shift occurs both in prose and poetry, and in a variety of biblical books. In Genesis 18:20, for example, one reads the following: “And the Lord said, ‘The outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah is so great, and their sin so grave!’” The initial feminine gender of both cities changes into a masculine plural possessive suffix attached to the word ‘sin.’ Thus, the sin is the people’s rather than the city as a whole. Or otherwise put, the writers single out one element of the city concept, its people. Similarly, in Ezek 5:15–16, the initial singular city is replaced by masculine plural references to its inhabitants. And she will be (fem. sg.) reproach and taunt, discipline and horror to the nations around her (fem sg.) when I execute my judgement upon you (fem. sg.) in anger and rage and furious chastisement; I the Lord have spoken. 16 When I sent the evil arrows of famine to them who are destined to destruction, when I sent them against you (m. pl.) to destroy you (m. pl.), I will add more famine upon you (m. pl.) and break to you (m. pl.) the staff of bread. 15

The shift sometimes works in the opposite direction as well, as in Isa 1:9, where the prophet is speaking of the people and then compares them to the city: “Had not the Lord of hosts left us a few survivors, we would be like Sodom, resemble Gomorrah.” Contrary to the personifications discussed previously, the metonymic shift is morphologically marked in the text and shifts from a personified city to one part of the concept, the people. Thus, the city as opponent appears both as metaphor for a general notion of ‘city’ and as a metonymy for its inhabitants. A metonymic shift of city to people is often, but not necessarily, marked in language with a change in pronouns and pronominal suffixes from singular to plural and

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47

from feminine to masculine. In passages in which this shift does not appear, one can equally argue that the writers do not want to focus on the inhabitants, but rather on the city as conglomerate of place, people and functions. In any case, the city as opponent draws on personification proper, without gendering the city explicitly nor implicitly.12

Feminization of the City Whereas personification happens when human characteristics are given to the city, feminization takes place when these features are specifically feminine, or in extension, when they become feminine through a transfer of gendered images to ungendered ones (as explained above). Features that help identify female cities include verbal actions, such as ‘give birth,’ ‘nurse’ or ‘become pregnant’; nominal attributes, such as types of jewelry or dresses for females; body parts, such as breasts and womb; and family-­ based categories, such as daughter or sister (all Firstspace).13 Thus, the city becomes explicitly feminine in Isa 1:8 where she is called “daughter Zion,” in Jer 3:1 where she is conceived as God’s wife, and in Isa 49:21 where she is bereaved and barren. Ezekiel 16:10 speaks of the city’s headdress, while in Ezek 23:3, her breasts and nipples are mentioned. In general, the feminization of the biblical city is easily spotted, with obvious Firstspace markers as the once mentioned above. What is more, the biblical text does not imagine the city as any woman, but as a particular woman (Häusl 2003, 4). Ezekiel 23 frames the story of Samaria and Jerusalem as one about two sisters, both committing adultery. Throughout the chapter, the cities are presented as siblings, but also as wives, adulteresses, mothers and whores. The city as a woman shows a broad variety of subcategories in the text. In search of an answer to Michael Williams’ aptly formulated question: “Is it [i.e., the gendered image] used primarily for the sake of its gendered character, or is it for some other reason?” (1988, 4), all city-women indeed have one element in common: they share a notion of relationality. When the city is a woman, she is a relational entity: She is the wife of somebody, the daughter of someone, the sinner against somebody, and the opponent of someone.14 Or as Christl Maier has put it, “the

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personification of Jerusalem rests on the affinity between the female roles of daughter, lover, wife, and mother and the relations within the triangle of city, ruler, and inhabitants” (2008c, 73).15 In linguistic terms, these relationships could translate into noun phrases (Firstspace), although the biblical text seldom expresses the relationship in that way. Rather, the relational idea is inherent to the categories of women chosen. They are part of the conceptual metaphor (Secondspace). This also has implications for the interpretation of this relationality. To many, especially feminist, scholars, this observation about relationality may be a confirmation of the subordinate role women played both in the text and in the society that produced it.16 A few sidenotes should be added here in order to not come to hasty conclusions. First, there are also ungendered personifications of the city that are relational in nature, for example, the city as opponent. These as well imply another (human) being to complete the picture. Second, several relationships are described; the city is not always the one in the hierarchically lower position. For example, in the parent-­ child relationship, the city is the caregiver. Third, the Hebrew Bible is a tale about God establishing his position, a process that comes with building up relationships with others. For the current study, the other of interest is the city. The biblical God is not depicted as one storming the stage and ruling as a tyrant. Rather, he is gaining ground, literally and figuratively, in a far more subtle way. One of those ways is through relationships.17 The cities in the biblical text act as independently as the human beings in it: they sometimes decide to listen to God; other times they do not. What is more, the city-women do not only have a relationship with God, but also with others: their people, other nations and even other gods.

A Woman with Many Faces The biblical text includes over 15 different types of women (including possibly ungendered people), each of them expressing a different kind of relationship and generating different cityscapes. The categories can be arranged roughly into three groups: family-based relationships, such as wife and mother; religious relationships, such as sinner and worshipper; and military relationships, such as opponent or victim (see before).

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49

Categories sometimes overlap when the second part of the (implied) noun phrase is God, who is husband, divine being and warrior all at once.18 The family metaphor is prominent in the biblical corpus, both with the people and the city as target domain. It is accessible to the majority of readers because of its very familiar source domain, the family. The basic form includes a father/husband, often God, and a mother/wife, either a city or a people.19 When the wife is the city, a third entity may enter the scheme, the children, which then stand for the inhabitants of the city. This is the classic image we find in books such as Jeremiah and Isaiah. In Jeremiah 2:2, the prophet addresses Jerusalem in name of God: “I remembered for you the goodness of your youth, your love as a bride, your going after me in the wilderness, in a land not sown.” The text draws on a metaphorical scheme in which God is the husband and the city its bride. Similarly, in Isa 54:6, God takes back his forsaken wife, whose offspring will inhabit the desolate towns (Isa 54:3) (Fig. 3.1). However, the family entails more than wives and children. What is more, the city is sometimes conceived as wife, such as in Isa 54:5, “For he who marries you has made you,” and other times as child, such as in Isa 60:16: “You will suck the milk of the nations, suckle at breasts of kings.”

adulteress whore

husband

barren bereft

widow

wife

mother

child daughter

Fig. 3.1  Female imagery and relationships

sister

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In addition, the city is also sister, daughter, bride, mother-to-be, and in less fortunate circumstances, adulteress, widow, barren woman and bereft mother. The text often combines several of these images at the same time, which is also reflected in the discussion of them in scholarship (as noted by O’Brien 2008, 132). Occasionally, questions have been raised with regard to “the tendency to conflate the various feminine roles into which Jerusalem [or any other female city] is cast, just because they are feminine” and the argumentation that is built upon this conflation (Floyd 2012, 179).

Wives and No-Wives Central to the family metaphor is the relationship between husband and wife. This relationship is traditionally one between a male and a female (even though the biblical God is conceived as female at times, see Dille 2004).20 A few elements are singled out in the text that set apart this relation and the cityscapes generated from them. For one, there is the simple version of the marriage as a covenant (Day P. 2000, 290; Kim 2012, 139). Ezekiel 16 is especially focused on this aspect, introducing the covenant at the beginning of the chapter (16:8) and returning to it a few times (16:45, 60 and 62). The verses include vocabulary typical of marriage (spreading of the robe, entering a covenant, mention of a husband) (Firstspace). They also draw on first- and second-person address (Firstspace), rendering the whole more intimate, in sync with the covenant idea as some sort of personal deal between two people. 8 I spread my robe over you and covered your nakedness, and I swore to you and entered a covenant with you–declares the Lord God; and you became mine.

You are the daughter of your mother, who rejected her husband and her children. 60 And I will remember my covenant with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish it with you as a covenant forever. 62 And I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall know that I am the Lord. 45

‫ ואפרש כנפי עליך ואכסה ערותך ואשבע‬8 ‫לך ואבוא בברית אתך נאם אדני יהוה ותהיי‬ ‫לי‬ ‫ בת אמך את געלת אישה ובניה‬45 ‫ וזכרתי אני את בריתי אותך בימי נעוריך‬60 ‫והקמותי לך ברית עולם‬ ‫ והקימותי אני את בריתי אתך וידעת כי‬62 ‫אני יהוה‬

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Noticeably, the covenant maker is God, the agent of the action, whereas the city is the one eventually rejecting the same covenant. Hence, the cityscape offers agency for both parties involved, even though the emphasis in Ezekiel 16 is on God’s role as maker and renewer of the covenant (Thirdspace). In the first instance, the covenant results in a metaphorical shift from the city as wife to the city as object (much in line with the objectivizing of women as noticed, among others, by Maier 2008c, 112). Yet, the city regains her personality, first and foremost, as a personified city, in rejecting the covenant and its resultant imagery (which makes up most of the chapter and is explicitly mentioned in v. 45). When Ezekiel returns to the metaphor of the city as wife at the end of the chapter, the city keeps its agency and personification.21 Jerusalem has acquired knowledge (v. 62) in addition to shame (v. 63). While the cityscape may not be very positive in the end, it is fundamentally different from when the covenant was introduced the first time. The city’s unfaithfulness has cut her a better deal in the end, at least conceptually speaking: she is still a person on a par with the other person (a personified deity) of the relationship.22 Building upon the notion of a covenant is the aspect of redemption. In a family context, the redeemer is the one fulfilling the marriage contract when the husband falls out. The typical story to look at is the one told in the book of Ruth. Whereas biblical cities, in particular Jerusalem, are not married to another male related to God (as would be the case in the real-­ life equivalent of redemption), it is God nevertheless who is depicted as redeemer in various places throughout the book of Isaiah. The city as the one to be redeemed generates a cityscape of fulfillment, stressing the added value of marriage. As with the straightforward marriage as a covenant, the passages present God as subject of the action and the city as grammatical object (Firstspace). However, whereas Isa 49:26 states, “I the Lord am your savior…, your redeemer,” the real focus is on the benefit of the city. Even though she is not an active agent, the generated cityscape is about her wellbeing and benefit, not God’s. In passages drawing on this notion, the city-as-wife brings about a cityscape of fulfillment, in which the relationship is primarily assessed from the point of view of the city, the receiving party, as in Isa 52:9.

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Break forth shouting together, ruins of Jerusalem, for the Lord will comfort his people, he will redeem Jerusalem.

‫פצחו רננו יחדו‬ ‫חרבות ירושלם‬ ‫כי נחם יהוה עמו‬ ‫גאל ירושלם‬

Starting with a personification of the ruins of Jerusalem, which shout together, the prophet turns to the metaphor of the city is a woman (Secondspace).23 God will redeem Jerusalem, engaging in a relationship with the city. In a single verse, the cityscape shifts from the ruins of Jerusalem to a comforted and redeemed city (drawing here on the parallelism that connects people and place; Firstspace). The relationship presented is beneficial for the city, the cityscape one of added value (Thirdspace).24 Yet, marriage is not always rosy, as several passages in Isaiah and Jeremiah show. There is a repeated play with forsaking the city and taking her back, with anger and love. The most elaborate passage occurs in Isa 54:6–10, where the dispute ultimately ends with kiss and make up, so to speak. Even though the framing of the city space is here different from the ones mentioned before, the marriage still stands and the city remains God’s wife. Drawing out both opposite positions—wife and no-wife— the text reinforces the wife-space as more preferable.25 Interestingly, it is God who comes to this conclusion, which suggests that the relationality between God and the city should be seen as beneficial for both parties, even though the exact benefits are left unnamed. For as a wife forlorn and grieved the Lord has called you back. The wife of his youth, can she be rejected? said your God. 7 For a little moment I forsook you, but with great mercy I will bring you back. 8 In a downpour of anger, I hid my face for a moment from you; but with kindness forever I have compassion with you, said your redeemer the Lord. 9 For the waters of Noah this is to me, of which I swore that the waters of Noah nevermore would flood the earth, 6

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so I swear that I will no more be angry with you or rebuke you. 10 For the mountains will move and the hills will totter, but my kindness will not depart from you and my covenant of peace will not totter, said the one who has compassion with you, the Lord.

The two images of the city-woman in the passage, of wife (thus with God) and no-wife (thus without God), come with accompanying emotions of “power, pathos and joy” (Darr 1994, 178). Anger goes with the no-wife space whereas the wife space equals love. As such, Isaiah assists in the construal of the city-as-wife space as a positive one, associated with love and kindness (Thirdspace).26 Variations of the imagery in Isaiah 54 appear elsewhere, such as in Isa 60:15, where the city moves from forsaken to pride (rather than taken back), and in Jer 3:1, where the husband wonders whether the forsaken wife should be taken back at all. The idea of choice is implicitly present in all of these images.27 God chooses Jerusalem as his spouse; he decides to step in as her redeemer; and he chooses to take her back after her betrayal.28 God’s choice for Jerusalem/Zion is made explicit in verses, such as Zech 1:17: “He will choose (‫ )בחר‬Jerusalem again” or Ps 132:13: “For the Lord has chosen (‫ )בחר‬Zion; he has desired it (‫ )אוה‬for his dwelling place.” The city space becomes a space of desire and selection, as attractive as the beloved (city) in the Song of Songs (Thirdspace).29 Positive cityscapes are particularly frequent when the city-wife is imagined as a bride. In Isaiah 62:5, God rejoices over Zion as a bridegroom over his bride (Gravett 2017, 161). The conceptual image (Secondspace) is presented as a simile, marked by the conjunction ‫( כי‬Firstspace), assisting the reader in mapping the city as a bride. The terms ‘forsaken’ and ‘desolate’ of verse 4 are replaced by ‘delight’ and ‘espousal’ in verse 5. Rather than playing out negative and positive in the relationship (as in Isa 54:6–10 discussed previously), verse 5 sticks with the simple version of the relation, that of marriage, “as if she had had no previous life” (Galambush 1992, 81). The created cityscape is not only joyous but also peaceful and uncomplicated (Thirdspace). A similar cityscape can be found in Jer 2:2. “I remembered for you the goodness of your youth, your

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love as a bride, your going after me in the wilderness, in a land not sown.” Here the bridal image appears at the opening of the chapter, drawing a picture of the ideal marriage, with love and devotion from the city’s side toward her partner God. In Isaiah 49:18, the city-bride evokes a different cityscape in conjunction with the other imagery used in the larger passage. The passage starts off in verse 14 with Zion thinking that God has forgotten her, whereupon God states the contrary. Relying on several conceptual metaphors, among which the city is a building, the city is a container and the city is a child (Secondspace), God assures the city that he cares for her. The passage does not focus as much on the marital relationship between God and Zion, but more on the caring aspect of a parental relationship, with the city conceived as God’s child in verse 15 (“can a woman forget her baby, or disown the child of her womb? Though she might forget, I never could forget you”) and as a mother in verses 17 and 18 (“swiftly your children are coming” and “all of them are gathered, they come to you”). It is in verse 18 that these very children become part of the bridal dress and adornment of the city. Lift your eyes up around and see, all of them are gathered, they come to you, as I live—declares the Lord; for all of them you shall wear as jewels, and tie them on as a bride. 18

‫ שאי סביב עיניך וראי‬18 ‫כלם נקבצו באו לך‬ ‫חי אני נאם יהוה‬ ‫כי כלם כעדי תלבשי‬ ‫ותקשרים ככלה‬

The text does not say that the city is God’s bride, but brings in the bride as a space of beauty and fulfillment (Thirdspace), even though the cause of this contentment are the children, not a spouse.30 Up until verse 25, child imagery forms a central element in the cityscape of Zion (see below on mothers). Only in the final verse, verse 26, does God identify himself as Zion’s redeemer, at last turning the bride of verse 18 into his bride. As far as the cityscape of verse 18 goes, the bride fulfills a unique position as a conceptual addition to the city as a mother (Thirdspace). Whereas wife and bride form the positive realizations of the marital relationship, the biblical city is often depicted with negative forms as well.31 Interestingly, these negative forms have a wider scope of possible

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referents. The wife/bride metaphors are kept solely for Jerusalem/Zion (Dille 2004, 23), but widows, adulteresses and whores can be any city. Within the larger ideological-theological framework of the Hebrew Bible, reserving the wife/bride role for Jerusalem makes sense. Only one city is chosen; none of the other cities has the same relationship with the biblical God. Yet, at the same time, this exclusion does not carry over to portrayals based on the opposite of the husband-wife relationship. Whereas the categories of widow and adulteress imply a former state of wifehood for the city, the biblical text works its way around this implication by relying on unspecified widows and whores rather than specific ones. Thus, Babylon can be a widow, but not the widow of God. Lamentations 1:1 opens with a personified Jerusalem, “once great with people” and now “like a widow.” This widowhood is associated with a lack of people and of joy (v. 2: “she absolutely weeps … there is none to comfort her of all her lovers”). The developed cityscape is the counterpart of the marital ones that focus on delight and companionship.32 Keeping Jerusalem as referent is also in sync with the imagery discussed previously. Note that the metaphor does not imply that God is dead, but rather that the relationship with God is no longer present (which is a way to interpret widowhood).33 The widow metaphor also occurs in the depiction of Babylon in Isa 47:8–9. 8 And now hear this, o voluptuous one, who dwells in security and thinks to herself, “I am, and there is none besides me; I will not become a widow or know loss of children .” 9 They will come to you, these two things suddenly, in one day: loss of children and widowhood will come upon you completely, despite your many enchantments and despite the great might of your spells.

‫ ועתה שמעי זאת עדינה‬8 ‫היושבת לבטח‬ ‫האמרה הלבבה‬ ‫אני ואפסי עוד‬ ‫לא אשב אלמנה‬ ‫ולא אדע שכול‬ ‫ ותבאנה לך שתי אלה‬9 ‫רגע ביום אחד‬ ‫שכול ואלמן‬ ‫כתמם באו עליך‬ ‫ברב כשפיך‬ ‫בעצמת חבריך מאד‬

As pointed out, widowhood implies a former state of wifehood. Isaiah 47 clearly draws on a personified city space, evoking a marital relationship as well as a parental one. For the former, the reader is left in the dark as far

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as the identity of the husband goes.34 If one draws the parallel with Jerusalem, the husband could be a Babylonian god. These gods are at least part of the cityscape elsewhere, such as in Jer 50:2, where the oracle against Babylon starts with the fall of the Babylonian gods. In Isaiah 47:8, the emphasis is not as much on the husband but on the fact that he is missing, similar to the effect of mentioning the loss of children. Who these children are and how many there are matters less than the very fact of losing them.35 In addition, the cityscape gets its particular coloring through presenting it first as impossible according to the city itself and, consequently, as a future possibility according to the prophecy. This results in a double mentioning of widowhood (vv. 8 and 9), multiplying the loss as spatial experience. Resultantly, the urban experience is one of loss as well as one of fatality (Thirdspace). There is nothing the city can do to prevent this space from becoming realized. Being voluptuous and secure does not help (v. 8) nor does the art of sorcery (v. 9). Contrary to widow city spaces with their focus on the absence of the husband, the adulterous city and the whore city have a present husband.36 Whereas a linguistic distinction can be noticed in terms of vocabulary, with the root ‫ נאף‬for adultery and the root ‫ זנה‬for prostitution, the divide between the two is far less clear-cut in the text.37 In Ezekiel 16, for example, both appear in a long passage that intertwines the city’s role as wife and as worshipper, or rather as the opposite, as adulteress and cultic whore.38 In verses 30–34, Ezekiel seems to separate the two images, identifying the city as an adulteress rather than as a prostitute. How sick was your heart, declares the Lord God, when you did all those things the act of a domineering whore (‫)אשה זונה‬,31 building your eminence at the head of every street and making your height in every square! But you were not like a prostitute (‫)זונה‬, for you disdained wages32; you were like the adulterous wife (‫)האשה המנאפת‬, instead of your husband you took strangers.33 To all prostitutes (‫ )זונה‬they make gifts, but you made your gifts to all your lovers, and bribed them to come to you from all around for your harlotries (‫)תונזת‬.34 You were the opposite of other women: you solicited, they did not solicit you; you paid fees, they did not pay fees to you, you became the opposite. 30

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The passage evokes two subtypes of the city is a woman metaphor, ultimately identifying her as an adulteress rather than a cultic prostitute. The implication for the cityscape is that it becomes a space of willful and cheap betrayal. The city chooses to reject the benefits of marriage. By singling out the family-based relationship, the prophecy points out the fundamentally problematic nature of the created cityscape, identified previously as “unnatural in every respect, an impression achieved by reversing the role of the metaphor’s tenor and vehicle” (Galambush 1992, 98). This affects a basic relationship that relies on choice and personal commitment (contrary to the prostitute’s commitment, which is paid for and requested by others, at least according to Ezekiel’s prophecy).39 At the same time, the space is clearly one of urban agency: the city acts, even though it is against the covenant and agreed rules.40 The way in which the biblical text frames the images prompts the reader to make a negative evaluation of the city. She is not a cultic harlot, which would have justified her actions to a certain degree, but a married woman. The specification functions as a way to shape the cityscape in a particular direction. However, it does not undo the agency of the city, something this passage shares with many of the other personifications, also those that recount despicable behavior that eventually leads to the city’s downfall. In Jeremiah 3:1, the same conflation of marital and cultic relationships appears.41 The prophecy goes as follows, “If a man divorces his wife, and she leaves him and marries another man, can he ever go back to her? Would not such a land be surely defiled? You have whored with many lovers: can you return to me? says the Lord.” The text includes vocabulary of both feminine subcategories: ‫אשה‬, “wife”; ‫איש‬, “husband”; ‫שלח‬, “divorce” and ‫היה ל‬, “belong to (another man)” for the marital image and ‫זנה‬, “whore” for the cultic one (Firstspace).42 By comparing one relationship to the other, the prophet draws a Jerusalemite space that is failing in two areas. The opening line of the chapter is set up as the big question that steers the remainder of the chapter: what shall we do about marital/ cultic problems? Is the relationship strong enough and important enough to survive them or not? So rather than a failed space, it may be better to label it as a questionable space, both in the sense that things are not the way they should be and in the sense that the final outcome is yet to be decided (Thirdspace).

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In the majority of the unfaithful city passages, the Firstspace set-up of the city evokes the image of the urban space as harlot. However, the surrounding verses may add to that image the one of the city as wife, as such mingling the familial and cultic domain. Obviously, the distinction between the two is one that exists merely theoretically, while in the text writers combine these areas or use them alternatingly, simultaneously or alternatively, whichever works best to shape their broader argument. Thus, in Ezekiel 23, Samaria and Jerusalem are introduced as “they were mine” (v. 4), while whoring (v. 5). Again, the unfaithfulness of the city covers two areas, undermining the basis of societal and religious life. At the same time, the double metaphor invites us to reread each of the metaphors separately, meaning that one relationship should be understood through the other. In the end, the cities are not really God’s wives, nor are they regular cultic prostitutes. Yet, they are conceived as spaces drawing on the kind of relationship wives and prostitutes have with their respective husbands and deities. The combination of both emphasizes the complexity of the city’s relation with the biblical God. And the Lord said to me: “Son of man, you will judge Oholah (i.e., Samaria) and Oholibah (i.e., Jerusalem), and tell them their abominations (‫)תועבה‬. 37 For they have committed adultery (‫)נאפו‬, and blood is on their hands; they have committed adultery (‫ )נאפו‬with their idols (‫)גלוליהן‬, and have even made their children, whom they bore to me, pass as food to them. 36

The abominations mentioned in verse 36 leave it open as to whether the charge will involve moral or cultic transgressions. Verse 37 then combines adultery, from the family sphere, with idolatry, from the cultic sphere.43 It even introduces a third type of relationship, that of motherhood. This relationship as well is threatened by the behavior of the cities. In other words, the city is putting all her relationships on the line and the spatial experiences that come with them. Given that relationality is key to the city’s functionality in the biblical text when conceived as woman, this passage deconstructs the city’s identity (Thirdspace). Or rather, the city seems to be doing this itself, as each of the metaphors comes with agency for the city. Whereas the city’s actions do not lead to its wellbeing, the text does attribute power to the city as female figure (Thirdspace). What

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is more, the city takes back some of its agency through a subversion of metaphors that may typically frame it as passive: the city is God’s (v. 4: ‫ )ותהיינה לי‬versus the city commits adultery (v. 37: ‫)נאפו‬, the city bears children to God (v. 37: ‫ )ילדו לי‬versus the city takes them back by offering them as food to the idols (v. 37: ‫)העבירו להם לאכלה‬.44 Just as the primeval couple in Genesis 3, who showcase, if anything, a sense of free will even when they pay double the price for it, the unfaithful city and child-­ sacrificing mother can be read as examples of regained agency. Moral judgment of these actions is entirely the reader’s, even though the biblical text, through its basic premise of siding with the character God, steers the reader in a certain direction. Nevertheless, the reader can, through careful assessment of the underlying conceptualizations and their use and function in actual stories, identify a far more nuanced view on long-standing assumptions that the city/woman in the Bible is necessarily negative.

Mothers and No-Mothers The mother metaphor is one of the more frequently used feminine portrayals of the city, in addition to that of the whore/adulteress and that of the daughter. The metaphor occurs in the prophetic corpus (both major and minor prophets), a few Psalms, Song of Songs and the book of Lamentations. In terms of genre, all of the passages would qualify as poetic.45 The ubiquity of the metaphor should not surprise given the significance of the city’s inhabitants, often the target domain of the child in the metaphor. These people are the ultimate addressees of all speeches to the city and the possible worshippers of the deity.46 However, the latter connection, that with God, should not be overemphasized for this particular image. Contrary to what one would expect, most texts that turn to the city-as-mother focus solely on this conceptualization, eventually combined with ungendered personifications and non-personified metaphors.47 This means that the city is not necessarily seen as wife-mother but as either one or the other, depending on the context. In Psalm 147:13, for example, the psalmist presents the children of the city as blessed. No references are made to the city as wife.

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This fragmentation of wife and mother is striking and creates certain opportunities for the writers. As I have shown above, the wife position in terms of city is almost uniquely connected to Jerusalem, with the biblical God as husband. If the wife city would be by definition also a mother city, this image would also be limited to Jerusalem. However, the mother image focuses on the relationship with the children, in terms of the city, the inhabitants. This relationship is fundamental for cities everywhere. It forms part of its basic conceptual set-up. Hence, the biblical writers will use it throughout, for all cities and in a variety of books, and mostly unconnected to the city as wife. As a result, they can depict Babylon (e.g., Ps 137:9) and Nineveh (e.g., Nah 3:10) as mothers without the risk of implying that God is their husband and/or that the inhabitants are their children. Whereas the biblical text conceptualizes cities as mothers and wives separately in the majority of cases, exceptions can be found primarily in the book of Isaiah.48 In chapters 54 (vv. 1, 3, 13), 60 (vv. 4) and 62 (v. 5), the presentation of Jerusalem draws on both the wife and mother metaphor (although not necessarily with an equal weight).49 All three chapters present the marital relationship through a discourse of forsaking and taking back. They consider the wife city in at least two statuses, one of faithful spouse and one of rejected partner. This talk through opposites also marks the maternal image in Isaiah 54. At first, the city is barren, without children (v. 1). But then, the prophecy exclaims “for the children of the wife forlorn will be more numerous than the children of the espoused.” Splitting the city’s role into a forsaken and married one allows introducing children nevertheless. In addition, it presents a new opposition, that between the barren woman and the mother. In the remainder of the chapter, the wife metaphor continues to draw on opposition, whereas the mother metaphor, once the initial conflict has been resolved, only speaks of “offspring dispossessing nations” (v. 3) and children as “disciples of the Lord” with “great peace” (v. 13). Hence, the mother space focuses on the future. Once the children are there, they can be used to develop future cityscapes with many and happy inhabitants.50 Compared to the wife

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space in this chapter, the mother space is easier to navigate, as if the city as a mother naturally feels how to care for her people (Thirdspace). In Isaiah 60 and 62, this future orientation becomes even more apparent. The opening lines of Isaiah 60 envision the city as a shining center, among others through the metaphor of the mother to whom the sons and daughters return (v. 4). This spatially bringing closer of the children ‫מרחוק‬, “from afar” and ‫על צד‬, “on the side” (carrying them) mirrors the tightening of the relationship between city and people. This results in a spatial experience of homecoming, both within the source and target domain (the child to the mother and the people to Jerusalem) (Vermeulen forthcoming-a).51 Whereas Isaiah 60 has a positive tone, the prophecy does mention a marital quarrel in verse 10 (“for in anger I hit you, but in favor I had mercy on you”). Overall, though, the relationship of marriage plays a secondary role in the chapter. Other conceptualizations and relations are more important.52 For that matter, also the mother metaphor is not the dominant image but serves as a creative addition to the idea of the city as height and center (see later). The chapter picks up the image of children two more times, in verse 14 and verse 16, although not with the city as mother. In verse 14, the children are the city’s tormentors, bowing down for her, underwriting once more the height metaphor. Verse 16 changes the role of the city from mother to child: “You shall suck the milk of the nations, suckle at breasts of kings.” This happens right before the chapter introduces God as savior (‫ )מושיע‬and redeemer (‫)גאל‬. As such, the text counters the previously developed idea of a high city (and thus an important city) with one in which the city is only relatively high and important. Throughout chapter 60, the family-based imagery allows Isaiah to shape and reshape a new Jerusalem that draws on known metaphors in new combinations, however, never without losing sight of the larger picture in which the city is spatially positioned in relation to the biblical God.53 The combination of mother and wife metaphors in Isaiah is not a straightforward adding of images but rather a construct of these and other conceptualizations that lead to the cityscapes produced by the text and experienced by the reader. These cityscapes draw, as all other passages evoking the mother metaphor, on the relationship between an older caring family member and a younger dependent one. For cities, this

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primarily means a relationship between the city as larger physical and functional entity and its inhabitants. Occasionally, the metaphorical child represents a future state of the city as a whole, such as in Nah 3:10. Even she was exiled, she went into captivity. Her babies too were dashed in pieces at every street corner. Over her honored men lots were cast, and all her great ones were bound in chains.

‫גם היא לגלה‬ ‫הלכה בשבי‬ ‫גם עלליה ירטשו‬ ‫בראש כל חוצות‬ ‫ועל נכבדיה ידו גורל‬ ‫וכל גדוליה רתקו בזקים‬

The prophet Nahum personifies Nineveh as a mother in the middle part of verse 10. Its children are apparently not part of the city exiled in the first lines of the verse nor do they belong to the elite mentioned in the last lines. This implies that the children cannot possibly stand for all the inhabitants of the city but represent a future state of the city as a whole.54 The exiled city of the opening of the verse represents the present, the dashed city her destroyed future. To make things even more explicit, a solution brought by the elite is deemed impossible. The text uses the spatial separation between city as mother and city as child as a premonition to the city’s death. In addition, it draws on the theme of promised offspring that runs throughout the biblical text, and especially its foundational chapters in the Torah (Vermeulen forthcoming-a).55 Motherscapes are primarily created through the use of the word ‘child’ (‫ בן‬and occasionally ‫בת‬, ‫עולל‬, and ‫ זרע‬or ‫ )זכר‬and sometimes through particular verbs such as ‘give birth’ (‫)ילד‬. The word ‘mother’ (‫)אם‬, surprisingly, occurs only twice to refer to the city, in Ezek 16:44 in the proverb “like mother, like daughter” and in Isa 50:1, where Zion is called the mother of the addressed people.56 Most of the children appear in a linguistic construction of dependency that expresses the relationship between the city and her children. Whereas the daughters of Zion (‫בנות‬ ‫ )ציון‬in the Song of Songs merely present the city as a general frame of reference,57 the phrases consisting of the child lexeme with an attached pronominal suffix represent a more intimate relationship, as if “the linguistic compactness of the rendering comes with a conceptual tightness between mother and child” (Vermeulen forthcoming-a). Consider, for example, the previously mentioned example from Nah 3:10, where

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Nineveh’s infants are killed in the streets. The city is no longer the almost abstract background against which events happen, but the involved parent witnessing the violent death of her little children. What is more, the transfer in terms of involvement also affects the readership, who are not just spectators but participants who identify with the bereaved mother city.58 As Gray has noted, the mother image also appears in a few passages expressing the relationship between a city and the smaller settlement surrounding it (e.g., Josh 15:45, 2 Sam 20:19). The latter are named daughters (‫)בנות‬. Similar to the previous examples, the city is the caregiver (2018, 25).59 On a few occasions, but far less frequent than with the wife-no wife opposition, the negatives of the mother city are present in the text: both the barren woman and the one bereft function as extensions of the mother metaphor.60 The previously mentioned Isa 47:8–9 envisions Babylon’s loss of children, in addition to widowhood. The chapter thrives on a list of negatives, in which the bereft mother fits perfectly. Repeatedly referring to the city’s confidence and security (v. 7: ‫לעולם אהיה גברת‬, “forever I will be a mistress”; v. 8: ‫הישבת לבטח‬, “who dwells in security” and ‫אני‬ ‫ואפסי עוד‬, “I am and there is none besides me”), the lines reinforce the mother space as home space (Vermeulen forthcoming-a). At least, Babylon self-identifies as such while the prophecy deconstructs this image, leaving her childless and homeless. The message is emphasized through a chiastic repetition of verse 8 in verse 9 (Firstspace), as if the unmentioned partner of the city (evoked by the term ‘widow’) is enveloping the no-children. Or, as if the two terms pointing at different relationships become one and the same in the end, because what distinguishes them is no longer present. A destroyed Babylon is one without god and people, at least according to the discussed lines of Isaiah 47. Isaiah 54:1 also draws on a negative of the mother image, or rather on a combination of both, as discussed before. The addressed Zion is both barren (‫ )עקרה‬and with children (‫)בני‬. Contrary to Babylon in Isaiah 47, where the city transforms from mother to childless woman, Jerusalem’s depiction in Isaiah 54 starts with barrenness but soon enough includes offspring. The imagery used for both cities is similar but depending on the ultimate setting of the images in their respective prophecies, the

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outcome is different. What is more, scholars have pointed at the relationship between these chapters, among others, drawing on their personifications of Babylon and Jerusalem. It has prompted Mark Biddle to introduce the idea of Babylon as Jerusalem’s alter ego (1992, 132–33). With regard to their conceptualization, the ‘alter’ in ‘alter ego’ only applies to the framing of the conceptual metaphors, not to the metaphors themselves, which are the same with the same connotations.61

Daughters and Children In addition to the roles of spouse and mother, the city is also portrayed as a daughter. Passages with this image are numerous throughout the prophetic corpus as well as the books of Psalms and Lamentations.62 The metaphor is easily identified, with the occurrence of the word ‫בת‬, “daughter” in most of these passages (Firstspace).63 Generally, the daughter image has been read as one evoking vulnerability as well as tenderness (e.g., Follis 1987, 177; O’Brien 2008, 127–142).64 The daughter-city is the one in need of (male) protection. The abandoned Jerusalem of Isa 1:8 is “Daughter Zion (‫ )בת ציון‬left like a booth in a vineyard, like a hut in a cucumber field, like a city oppressed.” When Babylon is addressed in Isaiah 47, the oracle against her opens with “Get down and sit in the dust, maiden daughter Babylon (‫)בתולת בת בבל‬.” Daughter-cities seem to appear primarily in unpleasant circumstances (O’Brien 2008, 127, 136), although not necessarily so.65 In Zephaniah 3:14, the prophet calls daughter Zion to rejoice. Daughter Jerusalem is even the one prevailing over the Assyrian king in the prophecy to Hezekiah (Isa 37:22 and 2 Kgs 19:21). It seems therefore that vulnerability is not always what is at stake in daughter cityscapes.66 As with the other female images of cities, the daughter-city draws on a relationship with, in this case, an often older, male relative, who is in charge of the daughter’s protection, education and care.67 Contrary to the mother, who at times could just be a parent, the daughter image is always gendered through the use of the lexeme ‫בת‬, “daughter.” The filial relationship focuses on aspects different from the previously discussed relations as well as on different parties. For Jerusalem/Zion, the other party

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involved is primarily God (Maier 2008c, 92; Chapman 2004, 82), even though none of the passages uses family imagery apart from the term ‘daughter.’ As several scholars have noted, daughter Jerusalem/Zion often appears in military settings in which the city is under duress and without God’s protection (e.g., Chapman 2004, 1–3; Maier 2008c, 92–93). Nevertheless, just like the other female roles evoke a particular kind of relationship with certain associations, the daughter image draws on a filial relationship. It is this very relationship that defines the daughter space as tender and cared for at times and unprotected and vulnerable at other times. These features of the relationship work very well when biblical authors want to raise the readers’ sympathy and empathy (as argued, among others by Maier 2008c, 77; Bosworth 2013, 236–37) or create for them cityscapes of wartime. They are often intertwined with an explicit or more implicit discourse of sexuality, as in the previously mentioned case of Isa 1:8 (Maier 2008c, 74–77). Lamentations uses the daughter metaphor repeatedly in its lament over Jerusalem, especially in chapter 2. Daughter Zion is shamed (v. 1), the addressee of God’s anger (v. 4), whose walls are threatened (v.8) and whose elders are sitting down (v. 10), the one in need of consolation (v. 13), the object of scorn of passersby (v. 15) and the one crying (v. 18). As a daughter, the city needs protection, but this protection is absent in Lamentations 2.68 What is more, God, the one who takes care of Jerusalem elsewhere, is the very one attacking the city. “Alas, the Lord in his anger has shamed daughter Zion” (v. 1). “In the tent of daughter Zion, he has poured out his anger like fire” (v. 4). Whereas God is clearly framed as the warrior in these verses, the one, as verse 5 states, “acting like a foe,” the text builds its cityscape, among others, on the filial relationship between God and the city. This relationship is complicated to say the least. God blows up the existing relationships with the city, as the reversal of other concepts suggests as well: all that was high (and supposedly good) is brought down (O’Connor 2002, 35). Without God’s protection, the city space is indeed vulnerable and in danger.69 In verse 4, the tent of daughter Zion is filled with fire, playing with the connotation of full containers as good, even though this fire will obviously consume the city and hence be bad in the end (see more on container metaphor later, Chap. 7). Again,

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the contribution of the metaphor to the cityscape of the passage is one of reversal (Thirdspace). What is more, the angry God who appears and reappears in the first few verses of Micah 4 is not only an outraged warrior at the battlefield but also an angry father in the household. This evokes a second context, in addition to the just mentioned protective sphere (both militarily and sexually), that of discipline.70 Daughters are children, who make mistakes. One way to react to those mistakes is with violence, verbally and manually. Whereas Lamentations 2 depicts an abusive space in which the protector becomes the attacker, exactly like in domestic violence,71 other passages present the daughter-city in a setting that envisions correction less fiercely. In Ezekiel 16:44–46, the city as daughter appears in a proverbial context, a genre which itself is often didactic in nature. “Like mother, like daughter,” says the text (v. 44). The city has behaved in a way similar to her mother, a way that is considered bad (rejecting husband and children; v. 45).72 God steps in as the parent (not necessarily the other parent in the relationship), who asks the child for an explanation and will come with a punishment deemed appropriate for the committed offense. In what follows, Ezekiel no longer presents this discipline as sexual violence, but rather as a mental shaming: “Be ashamed and bear your disgrace” (v. 52) and also more nuanced: I will be mad and punish you (v. 59) but also honor our covenant (v. 60).73 In all of these verses, the metaphor evoked is no longer the city is a daughter, but that the city is a wife and the city is a sinner, with the whore as the intermediary between the two (see below). In Micah 4 as well, Zion is imagined a few times as daughter, “in a state of current vulnerability” and “threatened with the raping gaze of the nations and subject to exile,” according to Haddox (2017, 173). Yet, in those same verses, the prophet asks questions or gives instructions to daughter Zion, just like a parent would do to a child. So and so will happen to you, says the prophecy in verse 8. Verses 10 and 13 tell Zion what to do: “writhe and scream,” “get up and thresh.” God is giving the city directions. Obviously, other metaphors are present in these verses as well, which together constitute the cityscape. The contribution of the daughter image here does not seem to be that the city is unprotected. In verse

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8, things will happen to her, but she is still imagined as a height while being a daughter, thus eventually powerful (see later). According to verse 10, daughter Zion is a woman in travail. Whereas this evokes notions of pain and vulnerability in some way, this moment of labor also catches a woman at the height of her power, as a being capable of passing on life.74 God seems to be guiding the daughter city through the moment of distress she is in. This becomes even clearer in verse 13, where Micah mixes metaphors of female cities with animal cities. The daughter is not a weak female but a strong woman, crushing the nations (‫)עמים והדקות‬. Not all daughters are God’s, yet the metaphor works in a similar way for other daughter cities.75 In Jeremiah 50:42, the only explicitly female personification of Babylon appears in the chapter: Babylon is envisioned as a daughter. Bow and javelin they grasp, they are cruel and they have no mercy, their sound is like the roaring sea; and upon horses they ride, arranged like a man for war, against you, daughter Babylon.

‫קשת וכידן יחזיקו‬ ‫אכזרי המה ולא ירחמו‬ ‫קולם כים יהמה‬ ‫ועל סוסים ירכבו‬ ‫ערוך כאיש למלחמה‬ ‫עליך בת בבל‬

The city of Babylon is under attack. This is a clear example of the metaphor’s use in a military context, with the city in a vulnerable position. What is more, the daughter metaphor, as elsewhere, evokes a relationship with a parent, who is obviously not capable of protecting his child. The parent is explicitly identified in the following verse, where the king of Babylon is described as “a woman in childbirth” (v. 43). Not only has this comparison been deemed paramount for crisis situations, the shift from the daughter metaphor, implying a male protector, to female imagery for the king, suggests that the king is not able to fulfill his role as protector of the city in a twofold way. For one, representing males in a female role is a way of pointing out failed masculine power. Secondly, turning to the very image of a woman in childbirth evokes a stereotype of parenthood and a notion of primordial care, which contrasts with the king’s behavior.76 This idea of reversal is also what drives the end of Psalm 137, where Babylon, former predator is now called a daughter (v. 8). Contrary to Zion/Jerusalem, Babylon is not guided or instructed. There is no

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alternative, no forgiveness for her mistakes. This underscores the fundamentally different relationship of Zion and Babylon respectively with God. Nevertheless, on a conceptual level, the biblical text applies the same images for both cities, of daughters in this case, yet selecting those attributes that are appropriate for the final framing of the cityscape. Psalm 137 evokes city metaphors for Babylon that are denied and deconstructed consequently.77 The city has everything at its availability, but will be taken apart textually, nevertheless. It is the ultimate revenge for “what [she] has inflicted on us” (v. 8).78 Calling Babylon a daughter at the beginning of verse 8 adjusts her non-personified presentation in verse 1 (Michel 2003, 164–66). The new metaphor works as a premonition for what follows in the remainder of verses 8 and 9. First, the daughter disappears as the unprotected city, then she is erased as the child that held the possible future.79 The address of verse 8 incorporates the different ideas that are following. It is a ‘daughter’ in between quotation marks, breathing the irony of her fate. She will be no longer a daughter, because there will be nothing to protect, including the physical city, its inhabitants and its potential future.80 On a few occasions, the city is imagined as a child, thus ungendered, rather than as a daughter. In all of these passages, primary care is central to the cityscape. The infant-city is completely dependent upon her caregiver for survival. The care is not of a sexual, military or didactic nature, as in the verses relying on a daughter image. In Isaiah 49:15, God compares himself to a woman caring for her baby: ‫התשכח אשה ולה מרחם בת‬ ‫בטנה‬, “can a woman forget her infant, disown the child of her womb?” The image focuses on the natural connection between mother and child, a kind of care that precedes all later ones for the daughter-city that are socially constructed. The produced cityscape is one of care and safety across space and time (Thirdspace).81 Although the addressed Zion is female (given the reference to a bride later on in verse 18), God does not use the word ‘daughter’ in his comparison, but the word ‘child.’ The care at stake is so primary that it seems to transcend gender. Gender is irrelevant when it comes to survival. Likewise, Zion will suck the milk of nations, as a baby does, in Isa 60:16. Again, the gender of the child is not mentioned, because it does not matter. It is about primary care, feeding the child and providing for

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it, so that it can grow up and will not die. “Live in spite of your blood,” says Ezek 16:6, when God has saved newborn Jerusalem from a sudden death. Even other cities are imagined as infants, such as Babylon in Jer 50:12. Self-evidently, the caring parent is not God, but an unidentified protector is implied by the very metaphor. Babylon owns its existence to someone else, as do the cities mentioned in Ps 87:4 which are depicted as born in Zion. The filial relationship creates a cityscape of essentialism and basic care, needed for the city’s survival and growth (Thirdspace). Scholars have argued that the daughter metaphor works in ways different from the wife metaphor for the city. I agree that such differences indeed exist, however, in areas other than the ones that have been suggested before. Whereas O’Brien considers the daughter metaphor to be more general than the wife one and not as much about relationality (2008, 134), I see its main distinction in the fact that it lacks the opposition typical in the wife and mother metaphors for the city. There is no anti-daughter or anti-child; a bad daughter remains a daughter.82 In that respect, even though the daughter city often appears as a young woman rather than a child, the metaphor places itself conceptually on a temporal line where the daughter image precedes that of the wife and mother. Or rather, as the text shows at several instances, the rebellious city is pictured through female depictions other than the daughter.83 Authors incorporate often several subcategories within one passage to overcome and, to a certain degree, obscure the conceptual boundaries between the different images.

Siblings As with daughter, bride and widow, the subcategory of sisters is lexically evoked through the use of its respective lexeme in the text (and this contrary to other categories, such as the mother, that draw on nominal attributes or verbal actions). Sisterhood typically expresses the relationship between cities, such as Samaria and Jerusalem in Ezekiel 23. In Ezekiel 16, three sisters are mentioned: Samaria, Jerusalem and Sodom. Remarkably, in both chapters the sisters are partners in crime and

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whoredom. What is more, they seem to try to beat each other in terms of how sinful they can be, as in Ezek 16:51: “And Samaria did not commit even half of your sins. You made your abominations more numerous than these, and you made your sisters look righteous by all the abominations that you committed.” Similar comparisons appear in Ezek 23:11: “her sister Oholibah saw this, and her lusting was more depraved than hers, and her whoring was more depraved than the fornication of her sister.” This sibling rivalry of a particular sort always seems to be won by Jerusalem. The resulting cityscape is one of being the best at the worst, thus a paradoxical space, longed for but not desired (Thirdspace).

Whore and Worshipper Revisited Other relationships do not draw on the family realm but on the cultic sphere in which there are worshippers, those who refuse to worship, and those worshipped. There is an overlap with the previous group in the image of the whore/adulteress, who plays a dual role, as does the figure of God in that case.84 The woman in this depiction betrays both the husband of the family and the God of the cult. A remarkable example forms the depiction of Nineveh in Nah 3:4–5. 4 Because of the many harlotries of the harlot, the charming mistress of sorcery, who sells nations by her harlotries and peoples by her sorcery, 5 I am going to deal with you—declares the Lord of hosts. I will lift your skirts over your face and I will show your nakedness to nations and your shame to kingdoms.

‫ מרב זנוני זונה‬4 ‫טובת חן בעלת כשפים‬ ‫המכרת גוים בזנוניה‬ ‫ומשפחות בכשפיה‬ ‫ הנני אליך נאם יהוה צבאות‬5 ‫וגליתי שוליך על פניך‬ ‫וממלכות קלונך‬

Nahum uses whoredom as part of the Ninevite cityscape. The term used is the non-family based one, ‫זונה‬, which is in line with the previous observations that the term for adultery only appears with Jerusalem as referent. Yet, whoring is a common image for expressing idolatry of the Israelites

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and their personified cities, even though the background of the image disconnects it from the family realm. This implies that portraying Nineveh as a harlot is still evoking some kind of a relationship with the biblical God, or at least, it triggers such an association.85 Why would Nahum turn to this phrasing if he did not want to evoke this association? Following up on that, the very fact that the biblical God responds to the harlotries with a punishment along the lines of the law of retaliation adds to the suggestion that there is some sort of a relationship going on between Nineveh and God.86 For sure, Nineveh is not God’s spouse nor is she a traditional worshipper breaking a cultic covenant. So, what is she? Starting from the metaphor, the whore is a threat to the preferred relationship between a deity and his servant.87 The whore is the one with a different god/leader. The city space of the whore therefore is outside of the covenant; it is code breaking (Thirdspace).88 Even though Nineveh did not share the relationship of Jerusalem with God, the text seems to presuppose some sort of an agreement.89 Whereas Nineveh is not imagined as God’s spouse, it is depicted as his unfaithful servant. This may imply several things: that the biblical God, as the creator of the universe and the sole deity, rules over all the cities, also the not-chosen ones, and that, if all cities are somehow Jerusalem, similar discourses and cityscapes will be developed with urban spaces other than Jerusalem. As far as the former goes, representing the Assyrian Nineveh as God’s subordinate through the image of the harlot, and even the exposed harlot, is a powerful way of stating God’s supremacy (Chapman 2004, 104–107).90 The metaphor is part of the cityscape of demise that is drawn throughout the book of Nahum. With regard to the latter, Nineveh as Jerusalemite alter ego, the image contributes both to the aforementioned cityscape of destruction as to a more intimate one where divine protection is lacking and the city is on her own. Unfaithfulness is not always portrayed with the whore image, which is explicitly female. There are plenty of examples where the relationship is just that between a personified city who worships or sins against a divine being, mostly the biblical God. In those cases, the person is often not explicitly identified as a female, and if so, only through contextual transfer of the gender of surrounding images. For example, in Isa 4:4, the city is depicted as a sinner:

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When my Lord has washed away the excrement of the daughters of Zion and the blood from Jerusalem has washed off from her midst in a spirit of judgment and in a spirit of purging

‫אם רחץ אדני‬ ‫את צאת בנות ציון‬ ‫ואת דמי ירושלם‬ ‫ידיח מקרבה‬ ‫ברוח משפט‬ ‫וברוח בער‬

This ritual cleansing of the city is envisioned through a mother metaphor (“the daughters of Zion”), a container metaphor (“from her midst”) and a sinner metaphor (“wash away excrement” and “wash off blood”) (Secondspace and Firstspace). Whereas the city as sinner is in itself gender neutral as an image, the metaphor of the mother in the same verse may color the sinner as being potentially female. Emendations of the verse yield in that direction, changing the plural daughters to the single daughter Zion, thus the personified city. However, in the rest of chapter 4 the city is not personified, so that the created cityscape focuses more on aspects associated with conceptual metaphors other than the city is a woman, particularly the city is a container. Isaiah 40:2 is another passage that focuses solely on the cultic relationship between the city and God, without involving the family level. Jerusalem has sinned but has paid off her guilt. Whereas the verse uses feminine forms and endings, there are no other markers that indicate a female personification of the city, let alone that of the whore. Nevertheless, the text sets up a relationship between the city and its deity. This is a relation that involves speaking to each other (‫)דבר‬, doing service (‫)מלא צבא‬ and paying off sins (‫)נרצה עון‬. These elements draw a cultic scene rather than a domestic one.

Conquering Cities, Conquering Women Possibly the most extensively researched topic with regard to the female city is its concurrence with (sexual) violence. As Carolyne Blyth, Emily Colgan and Katie Edwards state, “Turn to the prophetic literature and we are inundated with metaphorical renditions of spousal abuse and

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intimate partner violence, perpetrated (or at least sanctioned) by Israel’s jealous deity” (2018, 1). Scholars have read and counter-read these abuses, labelled as “pornoprophetic” (Brenner 1995a, 34–36), “objectiv[zing] the female” (Gordon and Washington 1995, 317), and “aesthetically pleasing” but “ethical[ly] inferior” (O’Brien 2009, 126). Many studies point out the connection between sex and warfare in the Hebrew Bible, in reality as well as in the mind. Metaphorical mappings equate the city to the woman, the attacker to the man, and the violent overtaking of the city to rape (e.g., Washington 1998, 198). Thus, Nahum 3:4–5 envisions Nineveh’s downfall as an act of rape. In Isaiah 29:2–3 and 7, the harassment of the city and her besiegement are mentioned in tandem. Regardless of the contribution of the above-mentioned studies and the need to offer contextualized and recontextualized readings of these biblical texts, the studies also overlook some aspects that may add to the solution they seek.91 In a nutshell, in order to understand the image of the violated city-woman it is helpful to pay attention to the other conceptual metaphors for the city within these texts, not just the one of the city-as-­a-woman, and take into account other passages relating city conquest, not just those that do so in the way that is deemed problematic. As illustration of the former, Nah 3:5 is often singled out, disconnected from the rest of the book, “as if one could simply bracket out a sexist image from an otherwise acceptable book and Bible” (O’Brien 2009, 86). Although Julia O’Brien focuses on the ideology of the prophecy, shaped by “the patriarchal shape-box” (87–88), to assess the whole book, she is right in moving the discussion beyond singular verses or passages. Also when it comes to city conceptualization, the metaphorical, and thus conceptual, world of Nahum goes far beyond this particularly graphic verse in Chap. 3. It is part of a discourse in which the city is understood as a body in decay. This body appears in various forms and is evoked by means of several metaphors, among which the violation of the city’s (female) body (Vermeulen 2017d). As to the second point, whereas the same, mostly prophetic passages appear in all studies on gender, violence and

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the city, the Hebrew Bible includes many other texts in which cities are conquered. In those texts, cities are not personified nor are they raped. In other words, there is still some ground to cover before one may conclude that the Hebrew Bible turns to personified female cities exclusively in military catastrophe and with the woman as victim (as stated, e.g., by Gordon and Washington 1995, 308; Kelle 2008, 99–100).92 Jeremiah 13:22–27 is one of the often-quoted examples depicting the city-woman as harassed and raped. In verses 22 and 26 the city is violently treated, first by an unnamed opponent (most likely the Babylonians; Scholz 2010, 183–84), later by God himself. The text motivates the action with ‫“ עונך‬your sins” (v. 22) and ‫“ נאפיך ומצהלותיך‬your adulteries and your neighing,” ‫זמת זנותך‬, “the plan of your harlotries” (v. 27). As in other examples, the prophet combines two different roles of the personified city: one as worshipper of God (or sinner in this context) and one as spouse (or unfaithful wife). Note that the latter only appears in the last verses of the chapter, when the agent of violence is explicitly identified as God. In between verses 22 and 26, Jeremiah evokes different urban concepts through comparison. The city is compared to a Cushite trying to change skin color (the city is a person) or a leopard trying to change his spots (the city is an animal) in order to point out the city’s incapacity to do good. The negative image of the rape, presented as a possibility, is taken a step further in this verse, in that there is no other way, even if the city had wanted it. It is nature and instinct that determine the urban cityscape, elements that are foregrounded in other occurrences of animal cities (as will be shown in the next chapter). Note that the text shifts via metonymy to the people at the end of verse 23, as well as in verse 24. The city now becomes explicitly the people. This facilitates the assessment of the imagery used in verse 24, with the city as a container (Secondspace).93 Finally, in verse 25 the text turns to an ambiguous context that can both refer to a family and a ritual setting, which is continued in verses 26 and 27 when the relationship between God and the city is the focus of attention.

3  The Personified City  And when you think by yourself Why do these things happen to me? It is because of your many sins that your skirts are lifted, and your heels exposed. 23 Can the Cushite turn his skin, or the leopard his spots? Likewise, you (pl.) would be able to do good, who are practiced in doing evil. 24 And I will scatter you (pl.) like chaff that passes before the desert wind. 25 This will be your lot, your measured portion from me, declares the Lord, because you forgot me and trusted in lies. 26 And I in turn will strip off your skirts over your face and your shame will be seen. 27 Your adulteries and your lustful neighing, the plan of your harlotries on the hills of the field, I have seen your detested things. Woe to you, Jerusalem, you will not be clean. How much longer? 22

75

‫ וכי תאמרי בלבבך‬22 ‫מדוע קראני אלה‬ ‫ברב עונך‬ ‫נגלו שוליך‬ ‫נחמסו עקביך‬ ‫ היהפך כושי עורו‬23 ‫ונמר חברברתיו‬ ‫גם אתם תוכלו להיטיב‬ ‫למדי הרע‬ ‫ ואפיצם כקש עובר‬24 ‫לרוח מדבר‬ ‫ זה גורלך‬25 ‫מנת מדיך מאתי נאם יהוה‬ ‫אשר שכחת אותי‬ ‫ותבטחי בשקר‬ ‫ וגם אני חשפתי שוליך על פניך‬26 ‫ונראה קלונך‬ ‫ נאפיך ומצהלותיך‬27 ‫זמת זנותך‬ ‫על גבעות בשדה‬ ‫ראיתי שקוציך‬ ‫אוי לך ירושלם‬ ‫לא תטהרי‬ ‫אחרי מתי עד‬

Whereas personification as female indeed dominates the passage in Jeremiah 13, this personification is not a single or monolithic given. The metaphor transforms throughout the verses into different subcategories of females and people and into other city concepts such as the city is an animal and the city is a container (Secondspace). Together, they create a cityscape on the verge of destruction: the raped woman, the white Cushite, the spotless leopard, the unfaithful wife, the sinning worshipper, the emptied container; they are all images for the same. They draw on anti-metaphors, that is, undesirable opposites of conceptual metaphors for the city. Does this mean that the rape of the city is now justified or less bad? No, on the contrary, the whole point of the metaphor, just like of all the other ones just listed, is exactly to generate discomfort and distortion of what ideally could and should happen (Thirdspace).94

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Another infamous passage is Ezekiel 23’s account of the rape of Jerusalem and Samaria (vv. 25–26). The chapter is a long invective against the two cities, called sisters as well as God’s wives/worshippers. The personification as female is carried throughout the whole chapter but intertwined with other imagery at times. Different female roles are explored, shifting attention to different aspects in the cityscape. Family and cultic spheres are interchangeable with the cities both as spouses and as worshippers of God. The text presents female characters with several relationships: one among each other, as sisters; one with the biblical God, as wife/worshipper (or here, unfaithful wife/whore/sinner); and relationships with other nations and gods (the Babylonians, the Assyrians and the Egyptians, among others), represented as whoring. 25

And I will turn my jealousy against you and they will deal with you in rage; your nose and your ears they will cut off and the last one of you will fall by the sword; they will take your sons and your daughters and the last one of you shall be consumed by fire. 26 They will strip off your clothes and take the items of your beauty.

‫ ונתתי קנאתי בך ועשו אותך בחמה אפך‬25 ‫ואזניך יסירו ואחריתך בחרב תפול המה‬ ‫בניך ובנותיך יקחו ואחריתך תאכל באש‬ ‫ והפשיטוך את בגדיך ולקחו כלי‬26 ‫תפארתך‬

The rape passage is part of a reversal-of-fates rhetoric in which the chosen relationship with others, defined as whoring both in terms of familial and cultic relations, is punished by means similar to those of the identified transgression. Crucial in this reversal is the role of agency: when the cities sin against God, they are in charge with God as victim; in the new scenario, it is the other way around. The chapter includes some object metaphors for the city (Secondspace). In addition, it depicts both transgression and punishment as bodily in nature. Adding up all these elements, it should not come as a surprise that this passage is quoted as paradigmatic for the dehumanization and objectivation of female cities in the biblical text.95 This effect is the result of the combination of metaphors used to imagine urban space. They reinforce each other. Ezekiel presents a distorted relationship between the cities and their God, as outset (with the whoring from their side) but also as end result (with God allowing the cities to be raped by others). The only difference is who is in control. As

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such, this passage underwrites traditional opinions on rape as a control mechanism to female sexuality and power. In the cityscaping of Ezekiel 23, violation is emblematic for a relationship in trouble (Thirdspace). The city becomes body; she becomes object; and at the same time, she remains the addressee until the very end, and thus a person, even though with far less agency than initially. The above passages are not the only texts envisioning city conquests, with or without consequent destruction of urban space. Many chapters in the books of Joshua and Judges relate the conquest of cities without personification and rape scenes. The conquest of the Promised Land is conceived through different images, creating different cityscapes. In Joshua 8, for example, the city of Ai is conquered. I and all the people with me will approach the city; and when they come out to meet us, as they did the first time, we will flee from before them. 6 And they will go out after us until we have drawn them away from the city. They will think, “They are fleeing from before us, as they did the first time”; but we will flee before them7 and you will get up from your ambush and seize the city, and the Lord your God will give it into your hands. 5

Whereas the city is sometimes metonymically understood as people, as in verse 5 (shift from singular fem. city to masc. pl. ‘they’), the text does not turn to a personified city space. Rather, it draws on the metaphor the city is a container as well as the city is an object. Both metaphors will be addressed more fully in later chapters. What is of importance for the current discussion is that the conquest of cities is not necessarily conceived through a (violent) conquest of women. The biblical writers had also other conceptualizations at their disposal, which they used as frequently as the city-woman one. In Joshua 8, the conquest of Ai is not a peaceful event. The city is eventually set on fire (v. 19), 12,000 people are said to be killed (v. 25) and the king impaled (v. 29). Thus, the produced cityscape is surely violent, however this violence is not gendered. Similarly, in Jeremiah 32, the siege of Jerusalem is related. The attack is violent, involving fire (v. 29), but the city is not addressed as a person nor is the violence done to it gendered. Rather the city is understood as an object to be captured and as a building to be destroyed. At times, a

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personified, ungendered city appears in expressions that speak of attacking the city (see before, opponent as metaphor or metonymy) (e.g., v. 24) or the city kindling God’s anger (v. 31). Whereas personified cities and violence to them appear far more frequently in the prophetic corpus, the prophets do not solely rely on this understanding when depicting conquests of urban space. As Jeremiah 32 shows, they can also turn to depictions without gendered violence. As a final point, there is a conceptual difference between the rape of the personified city space and the rape of women within the cities as part of the city’s capture. Scholars have connected both, suggesting that the latter, a practice in warfare up until today, informs the former (Kruger 2014, 164). In terms of urban conceptualization, the violation of the city-woman has greater impact on the cityscape than the violation of a part of its inhabitants.96 The former affects the city at its core, deconstructing personified city space into a space without agency and honor, possibly resulting in the collapse of that very space. The latter, that is, the rape of women in the city, may contribute to such a cityscape but may leave some of the city untouched. In Zechariah 14:2, the capture of Jerusalem includes a plundering of houses, a violation of women (‫הנשים‬ ‫ )תשבנה‬and an exile of a part of the city, while the rest remains.97 The city is conceived through several metaphors in this verse: as a container from which one can take goods, as a height forced to lay down (verb ‫שכב‬ denoting forced intercourse) and as a container from which some people are taken and others stay. Whereas the cityscape is clearly affected by all actions, also the rapes, it is not destroyed. As the text states, a part of the city is untouched; and looking at the remainder of the chapter the ultimate cityscape is one of security (v. 11: ‫וישבה ירושלם לבטח‬, “and Jerusalem dwelt securely”). The rapes in the cityscape of Zechariah 14 function in a way similar to the wild animals in cityscapes of desolation and destruction. They become, to a certain degree, stock phrases to evoke a particular setting. They form the building blocks of destruction (Thirdspace). Considering all of this, rape in the Bible is not just a practice of warfare, which happens because that is what men do (Scholz 2010, 9). It is not only about males dishonoring other males through the image and bodies of females (Thistlethwaite 1993; Kelle 2008, 96). It is at no point justified as good, even when considered in a context of retribution in which it often appears or with God as perpetrator. Rather, violating the

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personified city is a disruption of the city concept the city is a woman. It is affecting its key characteristics of agency (whether for the good or the bad), relationality and bodily wholeness (see next chapter). Rape as urban conquest appears alongside other conceptual metaphors that envision the same idea with different nuances.98 Given its negative and destructive connotations, violation of women also appears as part of cityscapes rather than as main metaphor. In those city portrayals, it works within another overarching concept, such as the city is a container or the city is height. And finally, many biblical cities are conquered without personification or rape, indicating that urban violence is not per definition gendered.

Notes 1. Maier includes a chapter on preexilic Zion, identified with Mount Zion (2008c, 30–59), but she presents this as pre-personification rather than as a concept that plays a similar role as the personified city space. 2. As an example, consider Annemarieke van der Woude’s statement about Jerusalem/Zion in Isaiah 40–66: “Whenever Zion is personified, she is invariably sketched as a woman” (2011, 159). Yet even within this limited number of chapters, one can find references to the city as ungendered person. Isaiah 60:1–9, for example, evokes a personified city that is not necessarily female. It is only in verse 10, when the typical phrases of forsake and take back occur, that the person addressed may be identified as the female spouse of the male speaker. 3. Contrary to Galambush, who claims a “total absence of personification of the capital city in the extraprophetic texts” (1992, 36). 4. Such is also the case later on in the lament, as pointed out by Maier in her discussion of Lam 1:11b–16, “To a modern reader, it is striking that the body in this lament is not explicitly portrayed as female, insofar as the body parts mentioned are not gender specific” (2008a, 129). 5. As far as circumstances go where feminization is more appropriate, scholars have suggested that these have to do with “demanding defense and nurture in addition to serving as sources of basic life needs” (Gravett 2017, 153).

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6. For the original proposal, see Lewy (1944) and Fitzgerald (1972). An overview of the later discussion can be found, among others, in Darr (1994, 126–27, 131); Häusl (2003, 10–26); as well as Low (2013, 54–55). 7. The word ‫שכל‬, expressing loss of children here, is often used with a female subject, such as in Isa 49:21, where (female) Zion is bereft. The word is more commonly used in an expression with a bear robbed of her cubs (e.g., 2 Sam 17:8, Hos 13:8, and Prov 17:12), where, again, the bear seems to be the mother rather than the father or a gender-neutral parent. On rare occasions though, the word is used for a more neutral parent, such as in Ps 35:12 (where the Psalmist speaks of himself as bereaved), so that the line in Isa 47:8 should be labelled as ungendered rather than feminine. 8. In her study on Isaiah, Darr draws the ungendered actions into the personification, stating, “Isaiah 47 exploits the conventional personification of cities as females to describe Babylon’s demise in terms of tragedies and afflictions endured by women. Enslaved, exposed, defenseless, and bereaved, she is Yahweh’s victim; and he shows her no mercy” (1994, 174). 9. This subtitle reflects my view and that of my twenty-first century Western discourse-world, in  which one distinguishes between body and  mind, thus between the physical and the mental. I do not consider this dichotomy to be incompatible with a holistic view on human beings, or for this matter, on  the  city. In  her work on  Jerusalem, Maier points out that the Hebrew Bible does not oppose body and soul, but, on the contrary, approaches the body holistically, “as a product of the ideology of a certain society or, at least, of the ideology of the author who is a member of that society” (Maier 2008c, 26). She warns for readings that understand the Bible’s city portrayals, with its sometimes bodily focus, through a  set of  oppositions that come from  a  later discourse-world (26–27). The point of the subsection here in this chapter is to emphasize the totality of the personification, as indeed superseding the merely physical or the primarily psychological level. 10. The presence of multiple images could be connected to Ulrike Sals’ claim that “Jeremiah 50–51 presents a climax in quantity and quality, containing a synthesis of all the concepts of its [i.e., Babylon’s] downfall” (2014, 294–95). 11. As Jacob Wright has argued, urbicide can be considered ritual: “not merely to destroy, but to undo: the city, and the ordered space it represents becomes a disordered, chaotic waste” (2015, 162).

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12. I do not consider the grammatical gender of the verbs with the city as subject to be enough to identify the city as female in these passages. For the Jeremiah oracle against Babylon, it is, according to me, telling that Babylon is not primarily depicted as a woman, whereas she is in other texts. Hill, for example, observes that Jeremiah 50–51 lacks “sexual humiliation or violence” and focuses mostly on spatial references, such as inhabitants, buildings and animals (1999, 190–91). 13. Frederick Dobbs-Allsopp collects a similar list with different labels, including “address,” “signature elements of woman’s physical anatomy,” “culturally gendered roles,” “gender-marked dress and adornment,” “typical female life experiences” and “names” (2009, 2). 14. Note that the last two categories are not necessarily gendered but can be through contextual transfer of gendered images surrounding them. Even when these images are ungendered, they are relational in nature. Other personifications, such as ‘the city sits’ or ‘the city thinks,’ do not have this connotation of relationship. Thus, all feminized images are relational; some, but not all, personifications are relational. 15. Maier, surprisingly, does not include God in the triangle of relationships. Furthermore, she seems to distinguish city, as in ‘geographical location,’ from inhabitants or leadership. Gray considers the relations to be between God and Israel/Jerusalem (2018, 24). 16. Consider Maier’s interpretation of the city’s relations: “Cities, like women, can be desired, conquered, protected, and governed by men. A city provides the main sources of life such as food, shelter, and a home to the people, just as a mother for her children” (2008c, 73). Her formulation, with passive verbs in the first sentence, presupposes subordination of the female city, even though at various occasions, the biblical cities are the ones with desires and performing actions. This is not to say that the actions described by Maier do not happen, but framing the city a priori as a passive subject does not do justice to the agency the biblical text attributes to her at times. Note also that when Maier turns to the maternal role, that she changes mode, thus acknowledging, perhaps unconsciously, that cities not necessarily are cast in a subordinate role in the Hebrew Bible. 17. The biblical text reserves the masculine role for God, whereas in contemporaneous Neo-Assyrian treaty-curses similar language and images are used to “claim the ideological victory” of the masculine Assyrian victor over its feminized victim (Chapman 2004, 1).

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18. Such is precisely the argument Stephen Cook develops against Carleen Mandolfo’s critique that “Husbands should not be their wives’ judges, they should be their partners!” (2007, 126). God is both partner and judge. “Only the presence of the extratextual tenor [i.e., God] explains and justifies the eyebrow-raising (shocking, even appalling!) vehicle that the prophets are daring to utilize. Contrary to Mandolfo, vehicle and tenor must be taken as a package” (2012, 81). 19. The family metaphor is sometimes part of the language of the prophet, as noted by Sarah Dille for the depiction of God in Deutero-Isaiah (2004, 21). 20. This female role of God is mostly one as mother and appears four times in Second Isaiah in particular (Isa 42:14, 45:10, 49:15, 66:13). According to Maier, this role is modelled after that of mother Zion because “it reinforces the idea of a compassionate and forgiving deity” (2008c, 203). 21. Ilona Zsolnay reads the city’s agency as an expression of her suspicion that God is “an ineffectual and inadequate protector” (2010, 58). This is precisely what angers God, that she knows what he knows as well. 22. My reading ultimately differs from that of Tamar Kamionkowski. She argues for “an assertive, sexually active and financially independent” city, “a gendered, if not biological, male” (2003, 151) in Ezekiel 16 initially. However, she concludes that the story is not finished until the reversal of gender roles, representing the cosmic order, is set right (150–52). 23. Interestingly, Maier reads the same passage as a combination of personification of the walls and the city as metonymy for the people (2008c, 171). As noted elsewhere, Maier’s interpretation seems to prioritize the personified city over its other conceptualizations. 24. Cook even speaks of an “ideal future Zion” (2012, 79). 25. Scholarship discusses the contrast mostly in terms of an opposition between past and future rather than drawing out the two feminine roles of the city and their implications for the interpretation (e.g., Darr 1994, 180–81). 26. Brad Kelle has argued that these cities appear in a context of destruction nevertheless. Even though they present a positive future, “they imply a present state of destruction” (2008, 100). This statement fits within his overall claim that cities as females only appear when destruction is the main theme of the discourse. 27. According to Maier, “the metaphor of Daughter Zion is also based on the ideas of Zion’s election and of Mount Zion as a divine abode” (2008c, 73). Whereas she does not further elaborate on this, her position seems

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to support the importance of what I have called ‘choice’ in some of the female metaphors. Additionally, it shows how the different conceptualizations for city space work in tandem rather than in isolation. 28. Brittany Kim brings similar elements to the fore when considering God’s role in the prophetic marriage as that of a jealous husband, “who is extremely concerned to preserve his covenantal relationship with his chosen people and so responds to threats from both inside (e.g., idolatry) and outside (e.g., foreign adversaries) the covenantal community” (2012, 146–47). 29. Carla Sulzbach takes the idea of choice even a step further, arguing that disloyalty from the wife’s side could result in the husband choosing a different wife. “As the metaphorical warning goes: you may be first wife, but you can be replaced, or forced to share the husband’s affections with others” (2018, 160). 30. Maggie Low points at the unusual image drawn with a bride with children (2013, 85, n. 41). Nevertheless, she considers the bride, which she identifies with the city (rather than the people), as God’s in the end (85). 31. Previously, scholars have argued that this extension of the marital relationship is what makes the metaphor in the biblical text unique. According to Galambush, in other ancient Near Eastern texts the metaphor of the wife-city was a dead one. However, in the monotheistic setting of the Hebrew Bible the foregrounding of adultery gained importance. “Not only is the city’s infidelity raised as a possibility in the OT use of the marriage metaphor; condemnation of the city’s ‘adultery’ is virtually the only reason the metaphor is employed in depicting the cities of Israel” (1992, 26–27). 32. Previous scholarship has particularly focused on the lack of protection: “a once independent city […] has lost its independence and is now ­completely dependent upon another state for protection and survival” (Cohen 1973, 78–79). Darr points out that there is, however, a difference between a widow as person and as city, but considers the idea of vulnerability as central and shared by both (1994, 133–34). I see another similarity at play, namely, that widowhood is about loss, whether that is of a husband or of independence. Adele Berlin focuses on its result, loneliness (2002, 50). 33. See also Isa 54:4, where widowhood is part of the marital problems between the husband-God and the wife-Jerusalem. Widowhood represents a period of time in which the city is no longer in a relationship with God, whereas she has been previously.

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34. This absence is part of the prophetic rhetoric to depict foreign cities through negative female figures. These depictions lack their divine status and their marriage to gods (Galambush 1992, 43). 35. In line with Galambush’s reading of the passage as taking away Babylon’s signs as a queen, another story of loss (1992, 42–43). 36. O’Brien has described the whore Nineveh in Nahum as an “anti-type of female,” which together with the typical female “construct[s] a single definition of the female.” She continues by defining the female as the one protected by a male, thus in terms of relationality (2009, 85–86). 37. What is more, Phyllis Bird has argued that also the term ‫ זנה‬should be understood in the sphere of the social, patriarchal structure rather than that of actual or cultic prostitution (1989, 75–94). 38. According to Galambush, this use of the marriage metaphor is intrinsically connected to Ezekiel’s concern with the relationship between God and his temple, in which purity and thus also pollution play an essential role (1992, 78). “For Ezekiel, the exiled priest, Jerusalem represents above all the temple, and it is the fate of the temple—its pollution, destruction, and envisioned restoration—that motivates Ezekiel’s writing” (81). 39. In Kamionkowski’s reading, the transgression is so severe that it upsets the cosmic order, represented in the reversal of gender roles (2003, 7–8). 40. Similar to what O’Brien has noted for the whoring Nineveh of Nah 3:4: “Rather than the object who is bought and sold, she is the agent who ‘sells nations’” (2009, 97). 41. This example shows the close affinity between city, land and people, as mentioned in the introduction. Analyses of Jeremiah 3 illustrate this connection: they mention Judah, both in terms of land and people (e.g., Maier 2008c, 105; Thelle 2015, 83), as well as Jerusalem (taking into account the MT addition mentioning Jerusalem, Allen 2008, 34). 42. Galambush notes that once this connection is made explicit, personified Jerusalem reappears only a few times in the remainder of the book (1992, 57). Indeed, most of the other appearances of Jerusalem in Jeremiah draw on the city is a container metaphor (see later). 43. According to Galambush, verse 37 explains how to understand adultery, that is, as idolatry (1992, 118). In other words, she considers the images to be embedded within each other rather than that they each develop a separate but intertwined storyline.

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44. In that respect I consider the personified cities of Ezekiel 16 and 23 to work in similar ways, with agency as the bargain. What the ultimate effect is on the depiction of God or gender discourse in the chapters is less of my concern (for these matters, see Kamionkowski 2003, 134–49). 45. Whereas the appearance of the mother city may be limited to poetic texts, personifications of cities are also found outside the prophetic corpus, although far less. In Nehemiah 4:1, for example, “healing had come to the walls of Jerusalem.” In addition, the prophets not only envision the city as a woman, but also as a container or object, as will be argued later on. 46. As far as the source domain goes, researchers have noted that this personification as mother is motivated by the fact that “a city offers shelter and food for her inhabitants,” just like a mother does for her children (Maier 2008c, 189). 47. Contrary to Maier’s statement that “in most biblical texts that personify the city the roles of mother, daughter, and wife are intertwined” (2008a, 126). Pace also Sandie Gravett, who describes the general scholarly view on motherhood as the ultimate goal of wifehood (2017, 161). 48. Also in Ezekiel 16:60–61 and Zech 9:11–13 the city is both wife and mother. 49. Noted more generally by Willem Beuken, who considers the double female role in Isaiah 40–66 to “evok[e] a reaction from the reader,” being “love and joy” (2011, 80). 50. Such resonates well with the message of hope generally attributed to the last chapters of Deutero-Isaiah as well as those of Trito-Isaiah (Dille 2004, 151; McKinlay 2013, 102). Maier points out that “in Isa 40–55, the destruction of the city is never explicit. Yet, in the description of the restoration, femininity plays a major role” (2008b, 113). 51. According to Maier, it also emphasizes “a renewal of the divine-human relationship” in Second Isaiah, recalling the image of Lamentations, in which the relationship between people and place is central to the mother metaphor (2008c, 190). 52. Scholars point out the contrast between past and future, the latter coming with attributes such as light, joy and righteousness (Darr 1994, 193–96). 53. In Isaiah 62:5, if following the Masoretic vocalization, wife and mother metaphor are intertwined in a unique way, with the sons marrying the mother. Scholars have addressed this in different ways, emending the

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text (into ‘builders’ or ‘builder,’ as in BHS) or foregrounding the marriage metaphor in the interpretation (e.g., Stienstra 1993, 176–77). Sharon Moughton-Mumby has suggested the verb should be understood polysemous, as a word play. It covers marriage, but also dwelling, possession and ruling (2008, 151). 54. Most studies argue that the children of Nineveh are her inhabitants (e.g., Baker 2009, 38), or even the children among those inhabitants (O’Brien 2009, 63). Such a position is also defended for other personified cities and their children (e.g., Maier 2008c, 189–210). The proposed reading, on the contrary, sides with Othmar Keel’s interpretation of Babylon’s children in Psalm 137: “The inhabitants of the oppressor-city or the children of the ruling dynasty concretize the continuation of the unrighteous empire” (1978, 9). 55. Kathleen O’Connor has explained the idea of children as future in light of the cultural reality behind the text. In her study of Lamentations, she writes, “Without children to populate the city, Zion has no future” (2002, 37). 56. This is contrary to other categories, such as daughter or whore, which are almost always evoked by their respective Hebrew lexemes. 57. According to Michael Floyd, the plural expression in the Song of Songs underlies the singular, personified daughter Zion appearing in contexts of “public rejoicing and public lamentation” and this when “poetically and rhetorically useful” (2012, 185–86, quote 186). 58. This identification happens regardless of the exact referent of the city. Scholars are equally harsh on Nahum’s depiction of Nineveh than on Isaiah’s image of Jerusalem when it comes to this type of imagery (e.g., O’Brien 2009, 80–99; Brenner 1995b, 256–74). 59. Gray adds that the actual relationship may have been the other way around, since the city depended on the produce of its surrounding settlements (2018, 26). 60. Reinoud Oosting has used corpus linguistics to point out the distinction between Zion and Jerusalem in Isaiah 40–55. Zion and Jerusalem are “two sides of the same coin,” but develop different tales (2013, 245). The former uses the image of the barren woman to express the idea of returning exiles, the latter that of the mother to support the idea of rebuilding (242–47). 61. Sals even breaks open the opposition, suggesting that the relationship includes three players, not two. It is the biblical God who plays this third role (2014, 304–305).

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62. Some scholars have called the image a “dead metaphor” (Williamson 2006, 69) or “a favorite trope” (Mandolfo 2017, 204). Whereas such statements downplay the possible rhetorical and literary value of the personification, they simultaneously, and perhaps unwillingly, draw out its conceptual nature. When the imagery becomes part of a shared language rather than standing out as an unusual figure, it starts to function like many of the other conceptual metaphors that do not come with literary expressions. This, however, does not change the violent framing of the metaphor, which is exactly what various scholars have emphasized (e.g., Brenner 2004, 79; Gordon and Washington 1995, 322–25; Kelle 2008, 102). 63. Some translations, such as JPS, consistently translate the word in combination with cities as “Fair Zion” or “Fair Babylon.” Not only do they take away the original filial connotation of the Hebrew, they also add a new connotation of beauty and physical appearance. I side with Chapman that it is important that the text states “daughter, not wife or mother” (2004, 81). 64. Also more historically oriented research has read the daughter-city as one in need of protection, of a mother-city, in this case, for example, in Ezek 26:6 (Gravett 2017, 153, relying on Frick 2000, 533). 65. Sulzbach observes that Babylon as daughter appears in negative circumstances, whereas Jerusalem’s daughter status is more varied: “criticize, praise or mourn” (2018, 160). 66. O’Brien has read Isa 37:22 as yet another example of a vulnerable and weak city after all: “Weakness may not be far removed from this passage, however: the Assyrian king is especially humiliated if even a weak young woman can taunt him” (2008, 136). On the contrary, Maier considers this verse to be different and more positive (2008c, 79–81), due to its setting in exilic times (92). John Hobbins even speaks of her as “an indomitable force to be reckoned with” and “a warrior, like Deborah, Jael, and Judith” (2012, 164–65). 67. O’Brien has argued that the daughter metaphor differs significantly from the city as wife or the father-son metaphor used elsewhere with God as father (2008, 134). According to her, it is not so much about relationships as about “distinctive characteristics associated with daughters in the Old Testament” (134). These features are tenderness and affection, vulnerability, helplessness, dependence and powerlessness (134–42). However, each of these characteristics implies a relationship with some-

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one else, someone who is caring or not protecting. Gods or other leading figures are fulfilling that position with regard to the cities mentioned in the biblical text, even though these figures may not be represented or labelled as fathers per se. What is more, just like the city can be daughter and wife, or for that matter, container or object, almost simultaneously, so can God be both father and warrior (contrary to O’Brien 2008, 137). Maier, on the other hand, considers the relationality of the daughter much broader, as one between “a space, its population, its god, and the recipients of the texts” (2008c, 62). 68. This observation is in line with Jill Middlemas’ comparison of Lamentations 1 and 2, with the latter “becom[ing] the Jerusalem of the first chapter whom the narrator mourned in death” (2012, 48). As Zion’s voice disappears, so its depiction as daughter grows stronger. 69. Or as Mary Conway has put it, Daughter Zion is a suffering figure, “appealing to the mercy of God” (2012, 116). 70. O’Brien speaks of punishment, “although deserved, … tragic” (2008, 139). 71. Others have compared the marital relationship of God and Jerusalem in light of domestic violence (e.g., Weems 1995, Day L. 2000). 72. Maier reads this as a “reassert[ion of the] negative judgement of the city of foreign descent given at the beginning (verse 3)” (2008c, 125). She does not consider the filial relationship that underlies the expression, which adds more than a reference to an earlier verse in the chapter, but also draws on the conceptual construct of a parent/child relationship. 73. See also Chapman, who states “while every Daughter Zion text is military in nature, not every Daughter Zion text exploits the sexual potential of the metaphor” (2004, 94). 74. Claudia Bergmann has argued that childbirth is a metaphor often used in situations of crisis. According to Maria Häusl (pacing Fischer 1999, 248), this interpretation is the result of a “männliche Außenwahrnehmung” which leaves aside the power felt by women (2003, 87). This is no different in Micah 4. My point, however, is that the typical association of the daughter as sexually vulnerable does not seem to be played out here when co-occurring with a mother-to-be metaphor. God, through the prophet, is instructing the daughter, using imperatives. He is giving her directions, out of a dangerous situation, which she seems to have caused herself (as the text states). 75. Foreign cities as daughters only appear in the prophetic corpus, with the exception of the later discussed appearance of Babylon in Psalm 137 (O’Brien 2008, 127).

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76. Note that Babylon is only imagined as a daughter in a few passages. In the Oracle against Babylon in Jeremiah 50–51, for example, this image appears only twice (in Jer 50:42 and 51:33). This suggests that other metaphors were deemed more effective and appropriate by the writers. It also shows that the vulnerability of the Babylonian city space is expressed otherwise in the biblical corpus, because the city appears more often than not in precarious circumstances. 77. Karl Plank explains this “difficult … spatial map” through the opposition of Babylon and Zion/Jerusalem which deconstruct each other’s space (2008, 182). 78. The cry for revenge on Edom and Babylon has often been described as an example of lex talionis (e.g., Anderson 1972, 900; Zenger 1998, 112; Bellinger 2005, 13; Becking 2012, 285). 79. This idea of the city’s future is also played out through imagining Babylon as a mother whose children are killed in verse 9. Both images, that is, the city as daughter and as mother, reinforce each other (Vermeulen 2017b, 170). 80. In that respect, the daughter metaphor adds to the larger discourse of the Psalm that can be read as one of a textual establishing of home space. Babylon, the space that had most of the assets to fulfil this role, eventually fails to live up to the potential, due to the way the psalmist plays with conceptual metaphors for city space and sets them against the idea of home space (Vermeulen 2017b, 169–71). 81. Low considers “vulnerability, dependence and innocence” to be the highlights of the metaphor (2013, 84). 82. The lack of an opposite, however, does not undo the implied relationship that evokes the characteristics considered essential to the metaphor by many scholars. Contrary to Galambush, I do not consider ‘daughter Zion’ to be a “stock expression” and the personification of the city at that point a “dead metaphor” (1992, 37). For one, where these epithets appear, they are rarely the sole indication of personified city space. Secondly, conceptual metaphors are not to be confused with literary metaphors which actively draw readers’ attention. Daughter Zion, even as a dead metaphor, still reveals a city concept that draws on a filial relationship rather than on a marital one or a very different metaphor, such as the city is a container. 83. Consider for that matter the scholarship on Psalm 137, where both mother and daughter images appear for the city. One finds discussions on bad versus good mothers (Couffignal 2005, 68; Lucas 2007, 8) as

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well as mothers with and without children (Bellinger 2005, 13–14), thus on both the type and antitype. However, for the daughter-city, scholars do not speak of good and bad daughters in this Psalm. 84. In her discussion of the root ‫זנה‬, Galambush distinguishes two levels that concur with the above-mentioned dual role of the whore image. On a first level, the metaphor refers to a woman who has intercourse with more than one man, “both the one with authority over her and one without authority over her” (1992, 29); hence a legal violation. On a second level, the metaphor is used for one worshipping other gods (28–35). 85. Others have suggested that it is “a new way to portray the relationship of the different nations among each other” (Kruger 2014, 165; pacing Fabry 2006, 192). 86. According to Pamela Gordon and Harold Washington, what is at stake is patriarchy rather than marriage. This system is also applicable to Nineveh and its cultural context (1995, 318). 87. The word ‘servant’ covers here both a political and cultic interpretation, sometimes labelled as ideological (Chapman 2004, 10). The distinction between both has often been used to explain the image as not at odds with other passages with whoring cities or nations (e.g, Baumann 2003, 210–11; Green 2012, 13). However, given the convoluted nature of the domains of politics and cult, it seems more likely that both were present in the understanding of the text. 88. It has often been described in terms of ‘othering’ Nineveh. Galambush speaks of a “stereotypically seductive but deceitful foreign woman” (1992, 40). 89. This ‘agreement’ is often read as one between the (male) God of the Hebrew Bible and the (male) leadership of Assyria, represented by its king (e.g., O’Brien 2009, 87–89). Even though such interpretations consider the city to be almost of secondary importance, their reading of the text still draws on the notion of relationships, be it between males rather than between a city and a deity. 90. Contrary to Galambush who states, “Yahweh will take responsibility for Nineveh’s punishment (at the hands of the Babylonians), even though he makes no claim to have been personally injured by Nineveh’s infidelities” (1992, 40). 91. As previously argued by rhetorical approaches to the issue, who have pointed out the rhetorical construct of violence against city-women in the Hebrew Bible and the ancient Near East, while simultaneously

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including the caveat that such does not undo “the dangerous potential of such language” (Kelle 2008, 102). 92. In her study on Jerusalem in the book of Ezekiel, Chapman discusses other non-gendered metaphors used in the passages on the Israelite-­ Assyrian encounter (such as the lion, the flood, the locusts and the cedar). She concludes, however, that “the Jerusalem complex (woman) is most sustained and widespread” (2004, 68). The comparison reveals both that other metaphors highlighted different aspects of the Assyrian attack and that the gendered metaphor offered unique connotations deemed important for the story. 93. If one follows the emendation to change the plural suffix to a singular one, the personified city is intended rather than its people. However, in terms of metaphor, the argument stands that several metaphors are used to imagine urban space in this passage. 94. This reading does not side with feminist or other readings, but somehow reconciles both of them. Rape is present in the text and presented as negative for the city-woman in the text and for the God who commits it. It is equally bad for the intended (male) audience who read in it the ultimate emasculation. Whatever lens one wishes to use, placing the metaphor in the list of other metaphors for city used in the passage shows what is at stake: a spatial reversal, which, as in many other passages, forms a response to a deviation earlier on in the text. As O’Brien notes, “the feminine imagery is instrumental rather than fundamental” (2009, 89). 95. This is quite different from the rape scene in Lamentations 1 (v. 8b, 10), where she is not “the object of our gaze” (Dobbs-Allsopp 2009, 9). No object metaphor appears in this passage. 96. Whether this results in a different impact on readers, and whether gender plays a role there, is a different matter. Given the current-day’s sensitivity for gender violence, the violation of women and of a city-woman may achieve effects that are far closer to each other than they would be theoretically. A reader-response study could shed more light on this. As far as academic studies go, most of them focus on the rape of the personified city, which may indicate that this indeed caught readers’ attention more easily and differently than the rape-as-rape passages. Nevertheless, here as well a more thorough analysis of these studies should be conducted in order to come to more conclusive answers. The divide may be influenced by the selection of books (in which either one of them is more prominent), the focus of the study and the methodology used.

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97. Rachel Magdalene notes that this passage is different from the rape of personified cities in the biblical corpus (1995, 334). 98. When discussing Jeremiah 13, Susanne Scholz asks “Do they [i.e., biblical scholars] find it too difficult to go against prophetic authority, which takes for granted androcentric assumptions that portray God as ‘Father, Lord, Master, King, or Judge’?” (2010, 186). The above discussion suggests that the answer might be yes. The metaphorical framing of the city and its connotations are deeply rooted in our way of thinking. To withstand the metaphor would be, to a certain degree, like arguing that up is bad from now on. At the same time, it does not mean that one should accept, let alone live by, the biblical metaphors as they are. The point made here is that their power may have been underestimated.

4 The Urban Animal

A city, by definition, is a human realm. It is a place created and constructed by and for human beings. The city is not a natural environment. It is not a given, but a product. It is associated with security and control, with order also, exactly because it is different from nature. In the midst of a chaotic, uncontrollable and dangerous world, the city is the safe haven (Pearson and Richards 1994a, 52). Witness the defense walls around many of the first cities, as physical barriers between order and disorder (Smith 2007, 23). The world outside the city is the wilderness, ruled by animals of various kinds out of human control (Grabbe 2001a, 18–19; Whitekettle 2006, 750). These animals not only represent power, but also danger (Tucker 1997, 11). They form a threat to the order of the city (Tucker 1997, 14; Galambush 2001, 73; Grabbe 2001a, 20). These presumptions about ancient city space also steered biblical thinking and writing.1 Not surprisingly, the God of the Hebrew Bible will ultimately reside in Jerusalem/Zion, a city, and not in the desert or the woods. It may then come across as a paradox that the biblical writers present the city sometimes as an animal. How can a city be compared to its very opposite? And more importantly, why would one want to merge chaos and order in a text that precisely aims to create order? One way to © The Author(s) 2020 K. Vermeulen, Conceptualizing Biblical Cities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45270-4_4

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answer this question is that the point may have been exactly to shake up existing categories and challenge general assumptions about cities. Another way is to look more closely at the passages where this underlying metaphor is explored and discover the potential of the image for cityscaping. After all, these animals are not just animals, as Ken Stone has noted, Biblical representations of animals were ultimately produced by human beings. These humans were interpreting things they saw in their own world, including other animals; but they were not only doing that. They were also using those interpretations to deal with specific problems and circumstances faced by the humans themselves. (2012, 66)

The Animal City Although the image the city is an animal is not as prominent as the city-woman in the biblical text, it shows a similar diversity. The city can be a heifer (Mic 4:13), but also a lion (Nah 2:13) or a wild donkey (Jer 2:24). The reader is drawn to these animal cities primarily through animal vocabulary (Firstspace). The text explicitly mentions words such as ‫אריה‬, “lion” or ‫פרה‬, “wild ass.” In some passages the comparison between city and animal is made more explicit by using the conjunction ‫כי‬, “like” (Firstspace), for example, when Nahum predicts Nineveh’s downfall: “It will devour you like a locust (3:15( ”)‫)כילק‬. At other times, the comparative marker is not present, such as in Mic 4:13 or Nah 2:13–14. The latter calls on Nineveh as a lion as well as a lion’s den, playing with the multiple referents the word ‘city’ can have. The former, that is, Mic 4:13, does not even apply an animal word but evokes a heifer by mentioning body parts, such as horns and hoofs, and describing typical behavior of a heifer, that is, trampling and crushing. Such is also the case for Jeremiah’s description of Babylon in chapter 50: “I set a snare for you and you were caught, Babylon, and you did not know; you were found and caught, because you opposed the Lord” (50:24). No animal vocabulary appears, but drawing on the broader semantic field of the hunt associated with animals, the text envisions Babylon as an animal trapped in a snare.

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Animal cities are mostly active city spaces, even when their actions lead to no or little result (Thirdspace). These actions are necessarily and prominently bodily in nature. In passages with multiple and changing conceptual metaphors for the city (Secondspace), this aspect of the body facilitates the shift between metaphors. Consider the following passage from the book of Jeremiah (2:23–24): How can you say, “I am not unclean, I have not gone after the ba‘alim”? Look at your ways in the valley, know what you have done. You are a swift she-camel, interweaving her tracks, 24 a wild ass used to the desert, in her desire sniffing the wind, her passion, who can restrain it? All who seek her should not tire themselves, in her season, they will find her! 23

‫ איך תאמרי לא נטמאתי‬23 ‫אחרי הבעלים לא הלכתי‬ ‫ראי דרכך בגיא‬ ‫דעי מה עשית‬ ‫בכרה קלה‬ ‫משרכת דרכיה‬ ‫ פרה למד מדבר‬24 ‫באות נפשה שאפה רוח‬ ‫תאנתה מי ישיבנה‬ ‫כל מבקשיה לא ייעפו‬ ‫בחדשה ימצאונה‬

Verse 23 opens with the city is a woman metaphor (Secondspace).2 Jerusalem is, once more, the unfaithful wife who forsakes her own husband, the Lord, to turn to other lovers, the ba‘alim. To set apart this behavior, Jeremiah changes the initial conceptual metaphor temporarily into one where the city is a camel and a wild ass. Via the passionate body of the woman, he moves to the bodily urges of the beast that are uncontrollable and ever present.3 The new image (Secondspace) allows the prophet to emphasize the necessity of the behavior; it is instinct rather than ratio that steers the city’s actions (Thirdspace).4 Whereas for many psychoanalytical readings the comparison with the female would have been enough to come to such a conclusion, Jeremiah nevertheless made this additional metaphorical shift to the animal kingdom. What is more, he marks this change stylistically with explicit animal vocabulary (Firstspace). He supplements this vocabulary with two phrases that describe the physical behavior of the respective animals (Firstspace). Domesticated camels were used for travel (Sapir-Hen and Ben-Yosef 2013). Mentioning a twisted journey indicates a camel on the loose, following her urges rather than the directions of her human master. The wild ass, on the contrary, is her own master, sticking her nose up in the air to figure out where to go.5 Note that

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the donkey comes with a location, the desert, itself another opposition to the city. It is as if the author wants to highlight the unusual nature of the cityscape: not human and not orderly, a city out of control (Thirdspace). After the animal intermezzo, Jeremiah shifts back to the city-woman in verse 25. The second part of verse 24 (as of ‫כל מבקשיה‬, “all who seek her”) fulfills a pivotal role in that it can describe both the passion of the animal city and of the city-woman. In Micah 4, Jerusalem is again seen as an animal. Here as well, the animal metaphor is used alternatingly with the city is a woman image (Haddox 2017, 173). Compared to the Jeremiah example, Micah’s animal city is even more intertwined with the city-woman. Get up and thresh, daughter Zion! For your horns I will make of iron and your hoofs I will make of bronze, and you will crush many peoples. You will devote to the Lord their things, their wealth to the lord of all the earth. 13

‫ קומי ודושי בת ציון‬13 ‫כי קרנך אשים ברזל‬ ‫ופרסתיך אשים נחושה‬ ‫והדקות עמים רבים‬ ‫והחרמתי ליהוה בצעם‬ ‫וחילם לאדון כל הארץ‬

Micah initially continues the city is a woman metaphor developed in the previous verses of Chap. 4 (Secondspace). Simultaneously, he is already preparing the shift to the metaphor of the animal city by having the personified Zion thresh. The heifer in which Zion is turned in verse 13 is used exactly for that, threshing and trampling grain.6 However, Micah does not stop the comparison there but adds another line with the animal city crushing the people. When the latter’s confiscated goods are given to God, the prophet shifts back to the city-woman metaphor. In a single verse, Micah addresses the complexity of city space in the Hebrew Bible. For one, there is Zion as daughter, a young woman ready to conceive and receive. This may refer to Zion’s role as God’s abode, a place where God’s people will live. It can also indicate the people themselves, through metonymy, who are God’s beloved children, giving their spoil to God. Equally possible the prophet has the physical city in mind with its iron and bronze, the weapons that will keep off the enemy. It is the space that will ultimately hold all the goods as a gift to God. By drawing on different images of the city (Secondspace) at the same time, Micah is

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offering the reader a view into the space of Zion. Or better, he directs them toward a certain vision, one in which the city is both vulnerable as a daughter and strong as a heifer or metal weapon (Thirdspace).7 As for the animal city, the heifer is evoked by means of verbs describing its actions (‫דוש‬, “trample” and ‫דקק‬, “make fine, pulverize”) and by mentioning of particular body parts (‫קרן‬, “horn” and ‫פרסה‬, “hoof ”) (Firstspace). God transforms the city into an animal, rather than the prophet seeing a connection between city and beast (as in Jeremiah 2). It is obvious that a heifer is far better at trampling people than the delicate feet of a daughter. Heifers, by definition, are under control of somebody. The animal city envisioned by Micah is not one spinning out of control; on the contrary, verse 13 imagines the perfect city, serving the biblical God (Thirdspace). Rather than chaos, the animal imagery adds bodily strength to the city,8 something which cannot be evoked by the city is a woman metaphor. Whereas biblical prophets often switch to male language on such occasions (Hill 1999, 169; O’Brien 2008, 137), Micah sticks with female imagery but supplements this with the beastly power of hoofs and horns (Firstspace and Secondspace). Furthermore, he renders these body parts less animal like by giving them unusual material qualities: the horns are made of iron, the hoofs of bronze. These details help to create a city space that draws both on the physical, and perhaps uncontrollable, power of an animal and on the material strength of metal. The heifer becomes God’s tool, his weapon in the encounter with the enemy (Thirdspace).9 While the conceptual metaphor the city is an animal comes with a set of presuppositions, the biblical authors frame the metaphor in the way they deem fitting. The uncontrollable lust of the animal city is a bad thing, but its brute force works well at times. The role of framing in cityscaping seems to be even more prominent when the animal metaphor is applied for cities other than Jerusalem. Jeremiah (50:24) as well as Nahum (2:13–14) envision enemy cities, Babylon and Nineveh respectively, as wild animals (Secondspace).10 Interestingly, the text undoes the threat of these powerful animals, and consequently of the cities they stand for (Thirdspace).

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I set a snare for you and you were caught, Babylon, and you did not know. You were found and caught, because you opposed the Lord.

24

[Where is]11 the lion that tore enough for his cubs and strangled for his lionesses, and filled with prey his lairs and his dens with flesh torn in pieces? 14 Here I am against you, declares the Lord of hosts … And I will cut out from the earth your killings. 13

‫ יקשתי לך וגם נלכדת בבל‬24 ‫ואת לא ידעת‬ ‫נמצאת וגם נתפשת‬ ‫כי ביהוה התגרית‬ ‫ אריה טרף בדי גרותיו‬13 ‫ומחנק ללבאתיו‬ ‫וימלא טרף חריו‬ ‫ומענתיו טרפה‬ ‫ הנני אליך‬14 ‫נאם יהוה צבאות‬ ... ‫והכרתי מארץ טרפך‬

Both the Babylonians and Assyrians used lion imagery in their writings and iconography (e.g., Strawn, 178–80, 182–84).12 Lions typically induce fear and awe, elements that play a prominent role in their appearance in scenes of royal lion hunts. In spite of the danger, the king will overpower and domesticate the wild lion (Dick 2006, 244–56; Weissert 1997, 339–58). Noteworthy is that Nineveh had Ishtar as its local patron deity (in addition to the state god Assur), who herself was associated with the lion (Lambert 2004, 35–39). The passages in Jeremiah and Nahum play of this common knowledge.13 They present the reader with an accessible image of the city as lion, or more generally as predator (Secondspace). Jeremiah does this implicitly, only spelling out the opposite picture, whereas Nahum pictures the lion city explicitly, with cubs and lionesses (Firstspace).14 However, for both prophets, the cityscape does not stop there. They reverse the dynamics of the natural world in which the lion typically is the predator, and a weaker animal is the prey (Thirdspace). Jeremiah depicts Babylon as trapped in a snare. The city is turned into a helpless creature.15 In Nahum, the prophet wonders where the lion (i.e., Nineveh) is and he predicts the end of its killings.16 Here as well, what is supposed to be a cityscape of power is twisted into one in which the predator has become the prey. “The city is destroyed by items of its own production” (Lanner 2006, 237). Because the selected animals themselves initially evoke strength (Tucker 1997, 11) and an “inability to be tamed” (Noegel 2019, 102), the reversal is more striking and the final cityscape more appalling (Thirdspace).

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Note that the image is again evoked by means of references to the animal body, implicitly as well as explicitly. Jeremiah’s lion is caught in a snare (Firstspace), debilitating the animal’s mobility and its capacity to kill.17 Similarly, Nahum presents the reader lions that tore victims and killed all around in the past but no longer have that ability in the present, let alone in the future. The words in the text (Firstspace) evoke the mouth and teeth of the lion, perhaps also the claws, anything used to execute the kill. Both Jeremiah and Nahum play off the bodily strength of the animal city to consequently reverse it or deny its presence. The cityscape is built on contrast and natural dichotomies which are questioned and challenged. What is a lion if it can no longer kill? What kind of a predator does end up in a snare itself? Is this still a lion? And in extension, what about the city it represents? If the DNA of the city is affected, will there still be a city? Jeremiah and Nahum create textual cityscapes that bring up these questions, regardless of whether the demise of the real-life cities they address was near or not. In the text and its language, the prophets explore the essence of the city space; they untangle its DNA, sometimes almost literally when undermining the images they evoke and deconstructing what is deemed essential to the city concept. The predator is not only becoming the prey, which would be a simple shift in power, but the predator is affected in its core, as such questioning its very existence (Thirdspace). Nahum uses a second animal to create this worrisome cityscape (Thirdspace), the locust (Secondspace). In Chap. 3, vocabulary referring to the various developmental stages of locusts appears to describe the downfall of Nineveh (Firstspace). Who or what the animal stands for changes throughout the passage. In previous research, scholars have labeled this change as a “mixed metaphor” (Christensen 2009, 394) or even inconsistent imagery (Spronk 1997, 137, 139). However, in light of the lion examples of Babylon and Nineveh discussed before, the imagery is better described as a deliberate play with the referents of the metaphor. What is more, as with this lion, another intertextual dialogue may be playing in the background, with locusts in Neo-Assyrian treaty-curses and as a more general ancient Near Eastern motif (Lanner 2006, 159).

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There fire will devour you, a sword will cut you off; it will devour you like a grub. Multiply like grubs, multiply like locusts! 16 You made your traders more numerous than the stars of the sky, the grub casts its skins and flies away. 17 Your guards were like locusts, your marshals like piles of hoppers which camp on the stone walls on a cold day. When the sun comes out, they flee away, and their place is not known. 15

The locusts are introduced in the passage with the attackers of Nineveh as the referent, representing a foreign army, like in Joel 1:4 or Jer 46:23 (Andiñach 1992, 434, 438). They will devour the city, as fire does. Nahum consequently changes the referent as well as the focus of the image. Instead of zooming in on the destructive appetite of the locust, he turns to the, equally problematic, multitude. Locusts are a fast breeding species, resulting quickly in a plague (not surprisingly they form one of the plagues in Egypt in the book of Exodus). The encouragement to be many and weigh heavy on the land is directed to the Ninevites and to the city and may serve as a countermeasure to the threat of extinction. Simultaneously, it emphasizes the greatness of Nineveh, number wise as well as metaphorically, to consequently undermine it. No matter how numerous the Ninevites are, no matter how powerful the city is, its end is near. The devouring locusts, supported by the biblical God, will win from the multiplying locusts that do not have the same God’s support. Once more the cityscape draws on the dynamics of reversal, depicting the city as a naturally powerful animal set in a scene in which it loses that power. In verse 17, Nahum continues with more locust imagery and yet another referent: the traders, the guards and the marshals of Nineveh. Emphasis is placed on their numbers as well as their ability to fly away. After the city has lost its greatness, the inhabitants that keep the city alive and thriving leave the place for an unknown destination. The city is

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empty, not a single locust remains; all has been eaten. There is no predator; there is no prey. There is only a non-place, a place without function or meaning: “it exists, and it does not contain any organic society” (Augé 1995, 111–112). What is more, “it is ‘transit’ rather than ‘residence or dwelling’” (Augé 1995, 107) (Thirdspace). The locust imagery is produced with body vocabulary and verbs that describe actions performed by the body (Firstspace). The animals devour and multiply; they cast their skin and fly away; they settle on fences and fly away once more. They have bodies with skins and, through the verbs, also mouths and wings (Vermeulen 2017d, 12–13). Each time the animal is explicitly brought to the readers’ attention using the comparative conjunction ‫( כי‬Firstspace). A similar linguistic build-up can be found for Babylon in Jer 50:11, where the city is depicted first as a heifer and then as a horse. Twice the conjunction ‫ כי‬appears to explicitly draw the parallel between the city and the animals mentioned. The vocabulary consists of both the animal words and verbs that describe their particular bodily actions (Firstspace). For you rejoiced, for you exulted, the plunders of my possession; you stamped like a heifer threshing grain, you neighed like horses.

11

‫ כי תשמחי כי תעלזי‬11 ‫שסי נחלתי‬ ‫כי תפושי כעגלה דשה‬ ‫ותצהלו כאברים‬

The verse consists of four lines (following Dobbs-Allsopp’s terminology [2015, 21–22]) of which the A and B lines envision Babylon as a person while the C and D lines use animal imagery.18 Line A imagines the city as a happy and victorious person, line B explains where this joy is coming from. Line C makes the picture of plundering Babylon more vivid, shifting to an animal metaphor. The verbs ‘stamping’ and ‘treading’ describe the animal’s actions, the conjunction ‫ כי‬and the word for heifer complete the linguistic set-up of the animal city (Firstspace). The plundering was of a beastly nature, destroying everything and leveling God’s possession, being the city of Jerusalem, with the ground. Through the heifer, Jeremiah produces two cityscapes that clash with one another: a violent Babylonian one, taking space that does not belong to it, and one

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of the victim Jerusalem which is flattened like threshed grain. In this new cityscape, there is lots of Babylon and only remnants of Jerusalem. Jeremiah concludes verse 11 with another animal image, a strong horse. Again the destructive power of the animal adds to the overall cityscape of one space overpowering the other (Thirdspace). This time the noise is singled out: the horses make a lot of noise. As such, line D also refers to line A where the personified city was said to rejoice and exult. However, this cityscape, an interesting and positive one for Babylon itself, is not long-lived, a cityscape set up for irony (Van Hecke 2003, 74).— Note that for Jerusalem this cityscape is the complete opposite: undesirable and negative. It is even that negative that one almost overlooks the presence of Jerusalem in the build-up of Babylon, as if the city is wiped out conceptually in the reader’s mind along with the words of Jeremiah on the stamping heifer and the neighing horses.—In verse 12 the city (Babylon) will be ashamed and disgraced to end completely desolate in verse 13. The strength of the animals creates a cityscape of Babylon that is immediately annulled; it belongs to the past. However, its evocation is important because its presence renders the announced cityscape, that of desolation and destruction, more powerfully. Once again, animal imagery plays a role in reversing spaces and diminishing the power of the city (Thirdspace). The animals in the cityscapes are chosen for a particular reason; however, specific animals are not reserved for specific cities. That is to say, Jerusalem is not always the heifer, and Nineveh is not consistently the lion. Whereas the latter definitely has added value against the broader ancient Near Eastern background, as argued before, the biblical writers use this image only when it assists in making their point. Perhaps surprisingly, they prefer to bring up this picture exactly at times when they imagine Nineveh’s fall. Otherwise put, the authors tell a new story drawing on the connotation of an established metaphor (Secondspace); they reshape the city (Thirdspace). In addition to this subversion of existing cultural paradigms, resulting in powerless lions, one can also distinguish a freedom to combine whatever animal with whichever city, including Jerusalem. As far as animal imagery goes, the biblical writers do not distinguish between Jerusalem and other urban spaces. There is no ‘us’ versus the other; there is only city space. Thus, Jerusalem can be a heifer

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(Mic 4:13) but also Babylon (Jer 2:23). What is more, animal cityscapes often result in powerscapes, in which assumed hierarchies are reversed or annulled (Thirdspace). They do not only question the dichotomy between ‘us’ and the other but also between ‘predator’ and ‘prey.’ In Nahum 2:13–14, the prophet evokes both categories in the same passage, generating a cityscape with postmodern characteristics in which Nineveh is both lion and no-lion, leader and no-leader. In general, animal cityscapes underscore the dynamic nature of cities. The produced city spaces in the text are snapshots of spatial change, catching both the past and the future in a transient present (Thirdspace). Although the animal city is the product of the use of a certain image and its cultural connotations in a specific textual frame and thus necessarily unique in the end, the occurrence of two heifer-cities in the biblical corpus deserves a closer look. Both Jeremiah (50:11) and Micah (4:13) apply this picture, using the same verb ‫דוש‬, “trample,” to describe the action of the animal. In Jeremiah the heifer stands for Babylon, in Micah it is Jerusalem. Remarkably, the cityscape in Jeremiah implies a crushed Jerusalem under the hoofs of Babylon, whereas in Micah Jerusalem is the one trampling other nations. Moreover, the beastly behavior of Babylon leads to a short-term victory, followed by shame and desolation, whereas Jerusalem’s animal power is announced as future wellbeing. These conclusions come with the textual frame in which the animal image is placed, not with the image itself. Twice the authors rely on the bodily strength of the heifer, its defining act of crushing and its ability to create a cityscape in which the heifer is filling the space of whatever it has trampled. It is a cityscape of territorial overtaking based on a ‘one or the other vision’ (Thirdspace). Whether that overtaking is evaluated as positive or negative depends on the viewpoint of the reader and its identification with a particular space/city in the text.

City Animals In addition to animal cities, the biblical text includes a wide variety of city animals, that is, animals that appear in an urban setting without representing the city itself (Firstspace). These include but are not limited

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to lions, locusts, cattle, sheep, herd, jackals, owls, wildcats, hyenas, ostriches, horses, birds, rams, lambs, goats, bulls and dogs. The majority of these animals can hardly be considered at place in those cities, a given which plays a role in drawing the reader’s attention as well as in the production of the cityscape in which they feature. There are multiple ways to categorize the presented animals; however, in light of the spatial interest of the study it is more helpful to group them according to the general cityscape (Thirdspace) in which they appear.19 Three particular cityscapes harbor city animals: city spaces of desolation, of destruction and of sacrifice.

Spaces of Desolation When biblical authors imagine desolate cities, they turn to animals and animal vocabulary (Firstspace). The animal that is mentioned frequently in these cityscapes is the beast, ‫בהמה‬, always coined with the humans by whom it is dominated (Galambush 2001, 74; Whitekettle 2006, 751). Together human and beast function as a merism, representing all of the urban population. In Jeremiah 33:10 the prophet mentions a desolate Jerusalem: “in this place, of which you say it is desolate, without man and without beast (‫—)מאין אדם ומאין בהמה‬in the towns of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem that are desolate, without man, without inhabitants, and without beast (‫)מאין אדם ומאין יושב ומאין בהמה‬.” Similarly, Babylon will be “without inhabitant, from man to beast (‫”)יושב למאדם ועד בהמה‬ according to the prophecy in Jer 51:62. And in the book of Jonah, the city is populated with man and beast as well, all of which will die if God decides to annihilate Nineveh (Jonah 3:7–4:11).20 Both man and beast are conceived as the right inhabitants of the city space. Removing them generates a cityscape of desolation.21 As will be shown in Chap. 7, this cityscape draws on the metaphor the city is a container (Secondspace). In the cases mentioned here, the container happens to include animals. Hence the choice to discuss them here. The cityscape of desolation (Thirdspace) is the product of the removal of the urban population. Their absence affects the identity of the city. Is the city truly a city without its inhabitants, human and animal? Does it

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suffice for a city to have towers, streets and houses, all of which are still there when man and beast have left? Even though the animals in this cityscape are not the city itself, they prompt a spatial production that questions the essence of the city concept and creates a space that is only borderline city (Thirdspace). The desolate cityscape separates the possible referents of the city concept (inhabitants on the one hand and physical location on the other hand), problematizing its nature as well as affecting its identity (Thirdspace). In doing so, the city animals have much in common with the conceptual metaphor the city is an animal previously discussed. Both effectively change the textual city space through a process of opposition and mutual exclusion which ultimately results in questionable and surely problematic cityscapes (Thirdspace). Although the biblical writers imagine the city at times through these animals (as a whole or in part), the underlying idea seems to be that cities should not be conceived as animals, if a choice is available. The produced cityscapes based on the animal metaphor or on a different metaphor but with animals in the city space are rarely positive in nature, neither for the city as a whole nor for its population.

Spaces of Destruction The problematizing of city space continues in the creation of a cityscape that often, but not necessarily, follows that of desolation: a cityscape of destruction.22 Once the original inhabitants have left the city space, a new group, of scavenger and night animals, moves in, occupying the urban space.23 In Isaiah 13:21–22, Isaiah predicts Babylon’s future as follows: and wild animals (‫ )ציים‬will lie down there, and flying creatures (‫ )אחים‬will fill their houses (‫)בתיהם‬, and ostriches (‫ )בנות יענה‬will dwell there. and they will dance there, wild goats (‫)שעירים‬. 22 Hyenas (‫ )איים‬will cry in its towers (‫)באלמנותיו‬. and jackals (‫ )תנים‬in palaces of pleasure (‫)בהיכלי‬.24 21

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The animal vocabulary is combined with typical city vocabulary, such as houses, towers and palaces (Firstspace). Contrary to the beast mentioned previously, these animals occupy a habitat that is, for sure, not theirs. Under normal circumstances, wild animals do not live in the city. They are not part of its DNA; on the contrary, wild beasts define the city through opposition. Entering these alien entities into the textual city space is a way of redrawing the city concept. In the new cityscape the animals take over the city, extending the wilderness realm from which they originate (Tucker 1997, 11).25 These animals add to the production of a wild city, so to speak. They produce wilderness, annihilating the city’s identity. Hence, Jerusalem is no longer Jerusalem but “a den for jackals” (Jer 9:10). In addition, scavenger and night animals are associated with death. They come after the kill to feast on the leftovers. The animals literally eat the last bits of the city, evoking a double destruction: populating the city with wild animals (destruction one), while eating what is left (destruction two). Thus, Jeremiah 50:39 reads “wild beast shall dwell with hyenas in Babylon and ostriches shall dwell in it.”26 Babylon becomes the home of wild animals, a wilderness rather than the capital of the civilized world. Exchanging the human inhabitants for animals of this specific kind creates a cityscape in which the DNA of the city is fundamentally changed to the degree that it can no longer be called a city (Thirdspace). Of course, the physical space itself remains, but its nature has been radically changed: it has become an extension of the wilderness. This cityscape shows resemblance with the non-places of modernity (non-lieux) as defined by Marc Augé (1995, 94). People can still pass through the ruins of the city, but the city is no longer the place where they reside and where they derive meaning from, as individuals and as a group. The city has become utopian, ou-topos, a nonexistent place (Augé 1995, 95) that once represented a promising ideal but that turns out to be impossible. The locusts in Nah 3:15 fall in this category as well. Although they go after crops rather than meat, they carry comparable negative connotations and their appetite is emphasized. Nahum describes the destruction of Nineveh as a locust plague, consuming every bit of the city. As far as vocabulary and linguistics go, the text uses animal terminology as well as the verb ‫אכל‬, “eat, consume” (Firstspace). The city animal is introduced

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after a first metaphor (a personification) in which the fire eats the city. From there, it is a short step to another natural phenomenon, the locust, to continue the description and emphasize the inevitability (who can stop nature?), the speed and the scale of the city’s destruction. The locusts in this particular verse are not the city (that would be Secondspace), but they actively contribute to its conceptualization as a site of destruction and disaster (Thirdspace).27

Spaces of Sacrifice When cities become sites of sacrifice, animals can appear once more. Typical animals in this ritual context are lambs, rams, goats and bulls. The books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy deemed these appropriate for sacrifice (e.g., Lev 1, 3; Deut 17:1). In Ezekiel 43, the sacrificial city is created when the prophet envisages the offering of goats, bulls and rams on the altar of the temple (vv. 19–25). This passage represents sacrifice in its purest form: with the right animals in the right place, the temple in Jerusalem. The animal vocabulary is part of the Firstspace build-up of the city space. As with some of the other city animals, the underlying conceptual metaphor of this passage is that of the city is a container. Filling the city container with the right animals creates a space of communication between the realm of the earthly, where the animals and the humans originate from, and the realm of the divine. Mary Mills speaks of a “sky city as opportunity for encounter with the divine transcendence” (2012, 232). The city space becomes an intermediary, liminal space where those two realms meet momentarily (Thirdspace). The presence of animals and sacrifice does not necessarily create the intended space of connection. Even when the right animals are sacrificed, God can still reject the offer. Such is the case in Isa 1:11 where God sends the people of Sodom and Gomorrah home with their animal presents. Intertextuality helps clarifying why: these cities are not the right places to sacrifice. A city cannot be a place of divine communication if it does not live by God’s law. Hence, the animals in Isaiah 1 fail to produce the intended cityscape.28

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Thus, the basic building blocks do not lead to ready-made city spaces. The presence of animal sacrifice is only one element that may prompt a communicative Thirdspace. That there is a fair amount of freedom and creativity available to the biblical writers can also be seen in Isa 34:6–7. The Lord has a sword, full of blood (‫)דם‬ dripping with fat (‫)חלב‬ from the blood of lambs (‫ )כרים‬and he-goats (‫)עתודים‬ from the kidney fat of rams, for the Lord holds a sacrifice in Bozrah and a big slaughter in the land of Edom. 7 And wild oxen (‫ )ראמים‬shall go down with them and young bulls (‫ )פרים‬with mighty ones (‫)אבירים‬ and their land drenches with blood and their soil with fat it is made fat. 6

Rather than the city seeking to communicate with God through animal sacrifice, God communicates with the city via the animals. The passage not only draws on the metaphor the city is a container, full of slaughtered animals in this case, but mixes this with the image of a battle scene. As far as the city animals go, they appear in large numbers, and in addition to animal vocabulary (in terms of naming the animals), there are references to their bodily appearance, such as fat (‫ )חלב‬and blood (‫( )דם‬Firstspace). The produced city space is one of communication: God has a, not so pleasant, message for the city. Later in the chapter more animals will appear in city spaces, in verses 11–15, generating a space of destruction.29 The violent sacrificial scene in verses 6–7 is clearly a prelude to that. One could also argue that the format is more fixed, and that Isaiah presents just a reversal of the paradigm. Ideally, animals are sacrificed by humans to God and may or may not, depending on additional conditions, create a space of communication in the city. When God himself initiates the communication through sacrifice, readers are prepared for an unusual scene. However, this scene is not that unusual that it escapes the original paradigm of which it forms a reformulation.

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Categorizing Animal Cities and City Animals Categorizing the animals used for or in cities is a challenging task. Various possible divisions come to mind: wild versus domesticated animal, predator versus prey, clean versus unclean animals; or sea versus earth versus air animals. As will be illustrated, these distinctions play a role in conceptualizing biblical cities, but not as identifying the city with either one or the other side of the presented dichotomies (or tripartite division in the case of the realm-based categorization). Rather, the city spaces of the biblical text explore both sides of the opposition, challenging the city’s nature as developed by other metaphors. What ultimately decides the choice of the animal is the city’s relationship with God. In this respect, the animal city is conceptually closely linked with the personified city, discussed before, even though the presented relationship is of a different nature. The dichotomy between wild and domesticated seems an obvious one at first sight. Generally, cities are associated with order and the space around it with chaos (e.g., Whitekettle 2001, 28). Wild animals belong to the latter, whereas domesticated animals have a place in the former. The expectation, therefore, is that biblical authors represent the city with domesticated animals and its surroundings with wild ones. However, as shown, this is not necessarily the case. Cityscapes of desolation and destruction indeed seem to support this hypothesis, playing out the inherent tension (Tucker 1997, 10–11). The cattle together with the people function as the urban population that is evacuated from the city space to be replaced by a collection of wild animals. This whole process represents a shift from order to chaos. Yet, at other times the city is a lion (Nah 2:13–14) or a locust (Nah 3:15). These wild animals stand for the city as well. Thus, whereas the city space is associated with domesticated animals at times, other cityscapes see the city as a wild animal. This animal can be wild and chaotic as opposed to the city, but still controlled by God, as in Isa 13:21–22 (Noegel 2019, 108). Yet, it can equally be the Ninevite lion of Nahum 2. In that case, as Julie Galambush has pointed out, the wild city is potentially more dangerous: “Like other embodiments of chaos in the Hebrew Bible, [however,] wild animals are perceived as hostile to Yhwh’s purposes only when they are outside his control” (2001, 74).30

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A partial explanation for this use of both sides of the dichotomy may be found in the fact that when the metaphor the city is an animal is used, human and animal realms coincide. In other words, the assumed dichotomy no longer stands. What is more, there is nowhere a lion threatening a city-cow, or a leopard eating a city-sheep. What the writers do focus on are animal characteristics, such as bodily strength, uncontrollable lust or reproduction. These features equally appear in wild and domesticated animals, and primarily reside in the body (see later on the body metaphor). As such, it seems that the wild-domesticated bifurcation is relevant in as far as it allows discussing a play with its constituents and the boundaries between them. Play is also the key term to describe the use of another binary division among animals, that between predator and prey. There is a larger reference frame in which certain schemas exist to think and speak about predators and prey. The former are stereotypically strong, fast and dominant, whereas the latter are the opposite.31 City animals include animals from both groups, that is, lions and jackals, but also lambs and goats. Just like there are no domestic or wild city spaces, there are no predator or prey spaces. Rather what happens is that city spaces draw on the distinction but include both. How this works exactly can be best illustrated with an example. I set a snare for you (‫ )יקשתי‬and you were caught (‫)נלכדת‬, Babylon, and you did not know; you were found (‫ )נמצאת‬and caught (‫)נתפשת‬, because you opposed the Lord.

24

In Jeremiah 50:24, Babylon is both lion and prey. The language in the text develops the prey image, referring to snares, traps and animals found and caught. All of these belong to typical prey vocabulary. The notion of prey is also further expressed linguistically through the verbal stems and their active or passive voice. God’s active ‫יקשתי‬, “I have set up a snare” stands in sharp contrast with the passive verbs describing Babylon’s reaction (‫נלכדת‬, “you were caught”; ‫נמצאת‬, “you were found”; and ‫נתפשת‬, “you were caught”). Even the only remaining active verb for Babylon is barely to be called active: Babylon’s knowing is denied (‫ואת לא ידעת‬, “you

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did not know”), with the subject ‫את‬, “you” expressed emphatically. What is more, the verse build-up resembles a trap: in the middle Babylon is caught, surrounded by God in the opening and closing line. All of these interventions are of a Firstspace nature. The idea of Babylon as lion is mostly evoked as a Secondspace. On the one hand, the reader knows that Babylon is conceived as a lion, both in its own writings as well as in the biblical corpus. On the other hand, line D of the verse plays upon Babylon’s former strong position, as a predator. This double image is also present in the preceding verse where the city is called both the shatterer and the one to be shattered. Jeremiah continues this line of thought, using animal imagery this time. In terms of city space conceptualization, one can again conclude that it is mostly the tension between both predator and prey that is of importance and the possibility to reverse natural roles, rather than the consistent choice of one category of animals over the other. This is particularly well illustrated in the famous passage of Isaiah 11 where lambs and wolves lie together. With predator and prey sitting peacefully next to each other, the dichotomy undoes itself: “the natural order will be erased, and dangerous animals will cease to threaten” (Borowski 2002, 298). Its prime characteristic, the tension between the two groups, is no longer present, resulting in a space that seems unreal. Discussions on animals in the Hebrew Bible often center around a third distinction, that between clean and unclean animals (Douglas 1966). There is only a small amount of references that places city animals in a ritual context (see the section on sacrifice). In these passages, it seems to be more important that the city is clean rather than the animals. In other words, the focus of the writers is on the city, not as much on the animals. Or also, the animals are tools to shape the city space. Self-­evidently writers will make sure they use the most apt tools to create the desired city. Hence, all of the slaughtered animals in these passages are of the right kind, because the city attempts to be a space of communication. In non-ritual passages, both clean and unclean animals appear. The heifer of Mic 4:13, for example, is considered clean, but the camel of Jer 2:23 is not. What seems to matter is the framing of the metaphor, rather than the metaphor’s intrinsic connection with either purity or impurity.

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Thus, Micah’s heifer represents a powerful city, supported by the biblical God and exemplified with a clean animal. On the contrary, the city imagined as a camel in Jeremiah is a city out of touch with God, aptly presented by an unclean animal. Likewise, the cityscapes with owls describe urban spaces without God, as do those without cattle (clean animals, however, no longer present). A last distinction to be taken into account is that based on the natural habitat of the animals: sea, land or air (Douglas 1966; more recently Deysel 2017). In a recent study, Lesley Deysel has convincingly argued that it is “realm and realm alone” that drives the Biblical Hebrew categorization of animals rather than ritual or biological divisions (2017, 258).32 Proving Douglas’ theory of anomaly right, again, Deysel relies on prototype theory to classify animals in the biblical text.33 Given that the city is a space as well, it is worth looking whether this distinction adds anything to an overall understanding of animal cityscapes. As far as the animal city goes, all animals are land animals, except for the locust which can fly and belongs to the air category. In the group of city animals, the majority are land animals as well, with only a few references to birds, such as owls, with an aerial habitat.34 No sea animals appear for or in cities. In the case of land animals, they are consistently animals of what Deysel has deemed the human realm, different from the ground surface, where creepers and crawlers live, and the wild (2017, 77). The chosen group of animals is, in other words, the group that shares a (conceptual) space with humans already. Despite this spatial proximity or perhaps precisely because of it, the use of animal imagery functions as an intrusion of some sort in biblical cityscaping, as the examples show. The main conclusion to be drawn with regard to a division based on natural habitat is that animals chosen for cityscapes are those living closest to humans. This facilitates the metaphorical transfer. In a few places, the writers have introduced animals from a different realm: the air. This happens in cityscapes of desolation where scavenger animals include ravens and howling creatures, sometimes identified as owls (Deysel 2017, 98). In Isaiah 13:21, both wild animals and howling creatures occupy the city space: “wild beasts will lie down there; their houses will be full of howling creatures.” The former take care of the downward part of the space (see the verb ‫רבץ‬, “lie down”) (Firstspace),

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the latter of the upper part (through the howling creatures, from the air). Considered in full, the verse states that the animals will take over and fill all of the city space. The appearance of air animals next to land animals seems to function as a merism to point to the complete three-­dimensional city space and its total take-over. The inclusiveness of destruction is also what is at stake in Isa 14:22–23. I will rise up against them—declares the Lord of Hosts—and will cut off for Babylon name and remnant, offspring and progeny—declares the Lord. 23 And I will make it a possession of bitterns and pools of water. I will sweep it with a broom of extermination—declares the Lord of Hosts. 22

In verse 22 the city space is cleared of its human population. Their space is taken by animals, birds in this case (air) which like to hold up in marshy areas (Deysel 2017, 98 99). The verse continues with the image of someone sweeping a floor (ground). Again, introducing a different habitat than the human one allows the writers to imagine total destruction.35 The city will be destroyed completely. Even spatial realms beyond the human one, such as the air, will be affected.

Negativity Animal cityscapes carry a notion of negativity, both in their appearance as conceptual metaphor and as part of a cityscape drawing on a different metaphor. The term ‘negativity’ can and should be understood in several ways: as a reference to the general color and evaluation of the city space, as a way to refer to the presence of linguistic negatives and as a term to grasp the relationship of this cityscape with a conceptual ideal.

Color and Evaluation In the above description, the majority of the discussed cityscapes is dark and worrisome. The end of cities is described; their destruction given form with words. The essence of city spaces, that they belong to humans and domesticated animals, is affected. Cities turn into wilderness. When

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animals appear in the city, they are bad news. When cities themselves are conceived as animals, they mostly announce disaster and destruction as well. No matter how powerful the animal chosen in the comparison, all cities will end as lambs and prey of bigger ones. Even the sacrifices in the city space rarely lead to positive cityscapes. Offers are not accepted or completely turned upside down with God sacrificing in a warlike scene. Although there are a few exceptions, the general tendency for animal cityscapes is to produce negativity. Readers come across death, emptiness and destruction, all of which side with the negative.

Linguistic Negatives Negativity is also a way to refer to the Firstspace use of linguistic negatives in the passages with animals as or in cities. Nahum presents Nineveh as a lion but simultaneously he asks where the lion is, stressing its absence (Nah 2:13). In the following verse, the prophet speaks of stopping the killings of the lion (‫)והכרתי מארץ טרפך‬, again negating the essence of the lion-city Nineveh (Nah 2:14). In Jeremiah 2:23, the actions of the city are introduced with negated phrases (with the negative particle ‫)לא‬: “How can you say, ‘I am not (‫ )לא‬unclean, after the ba’alim, I did not (‫ )לא‬go.” After this introduction, the prophet continues stating that the city did behave like a camel and a wild ass. Yet, the city itself seemed to have denied her animality. Turning to cityscapes with animals appearing in them, linguistic negatives keep on featuring. The phrase “without man or beast” (‫ )מאין אדם ומאין בהמה‬is typical of the desolate cityscape. The animals that enter the scene afterward are already negatives in themselves: scavenger animals are the negative of the predators and night animals those of the day animals. They do not come with distinguishable linguistic negatives. Finally, in sacrificial cityscapes, especially those that either fail to be realized or deviate from the intended ideal, the linguistic negative reappears. In Isaiah 1:11, God’s disapproval of the sacrifice concludes with: ‫וכבשים ועתודים לא חפצתי‬, “I do not want rams and goats.” Jeremiah 51:39–40 envisions the inhabitants of Babylon as lions, who will not awake (‫ )ולא יקיצו‬when brought down for sacrifice as lambs (‫)ככרים‬, and as rams with goats (‫)כאילים עמ עתודים‬.

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Negative of the Conceptual Ideal When the biblical authors turn to animal cityscapes, they do not imagine the ideal city. Obviously, cities are not ideals, not even textual ones that one could present as such. Moreover, not all metaphors capture the same aspects of the city nor do they focus on the same characteristics. The point of different metaphors is exactly to differentiate and to be able to select the metaphor that is most fitting for a particular message or text. Although animal cities and city animals are not preserved for particular cities, such as Babylon, or particular groups of cities, such as enemy cities, the produced cityscapes very often form the negative of a conceptual ideal that is to be found in various other passages (as will become apparent in other chapters). This ideal city space is human rather than animal, controllable rather than out of control, orderly rather than chaotic, and full rather than empty. However, since cities are not always obedient, organized full structures, animal metaphors and animals offer an excellent source to produce these unwanted but yet possible city spaces. One passage seems to stand out amidst all of these cityscapes with city animals: the one in Isaiah 11. The prophet envisions the following (Isa 11:6–8): A wolf will dwell with a lamb a leopard will lie down with a kid a calf, a young lion, and a fatling together, with a little boy driving them. 7 A cow and a bear shall graze, their young will lie down together, and a lion, like the cattle, will eat straw. 8 A baby shall play over a viper’s hole, and over a hole of a serpent a weaned one will stretch out his hand. 6

All of this happens on the “sacred mount” of God, identified in other texts as Zion/Jerusalem (see, among others, Ps 2:6, Joel 4:17, and Isa 12:32). Whereas the reader initially imagines a bucolic landscape somewhere in the outdoors, the specification of the location in verse 9 as God’s

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mount turns the picture into an unusual cityscape. In all of the produced city spaces discussed before, animals and the city equaled bad news. The combination generated incorrect, unwanted and disastrous city spaces. In Isaiah 11, the opposite is the case. The peaceful picture resets the animal city as well as the city animals as the reader knows them. “A prediction of transformation in the world of human affairs is articulated with a vision of unexpected happenings in the zoological realm” (Stone 2012, 75). Rather than reversing the role of predator and prey, a distinction with which the authors clearly play, the roles disappear; they no longer exist. The produced space lacks tension of power strife, typical of animal cityscapes with predator and prey animals as described before. In addition, the animals in Isaiah 11 do not create a cityscape of desolation or destruction. Including both predator and prey and placing them side by side generates a unique space, one in which existing oppositions and dichotomies dissolve. This special cityscape where tensions no longer exist and power strife has ended is the ideal city as imagined by Isaiah. It is the city of God, where the wild and tame live together under his rule. Not surprisingly, Third Isaiah (65:25 and 66:20) will pick up both wording (Firstspace) and produced space (Thirdspace) when envisioning Jerusalem’s future.36

Notes 1. They are also present in the wider ancient Near East. See, among others, Van De Mieroop (1997, 42–44). The main difference is that Mesopotamian cities were considered divine creations (61). 2. Others take the primary addressee to be the nation (e.g., O’Brien 2008, xvii). 3. Foreman has argued that it is the continuity of the feminine gender that indicates a relationship between the personified city and the animal (2011, 144). 4. According to Chapman, the metaphor focuses on the city’s inability to change the outcome of events (2004, 122–23). 5. I follow here the suggestion that the word ‫ פרה‬is epicene, hence the use of the pronoun ‘her’ (Foreman 2011, 148 after GKC §122d).

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6. Scholars have shown that imagery with threshing floors typically appears in passages envisioning destruction (as in war or death) (Prosic 2016, 60). Further examples can be found in Hos 13:3 or Judg 8:7. Note that in Jer 51:33, where Babylon is compared to the threshing floor, and in Isa 25:10, where it is Moab, the metaphor appears again with an urban referent. However, in those verses, no animal comparison is made. 7. Judith Gärtner notes that the text shifts its focus from a passive personified city to an active tool of God (2012, 345). 8. Philip Jensen points out that horns function as a “stock symbol of strength” (2008, 154). 9. Commentators speak of “an oracle of salvation” (Andersen and Freedman 2000, 454), a label that carries the positive connotations of the cityscape drawn in the text. 10. The lion imagery in Nahum has been called metaphorical in most commentaries and studies, among others, by Spronk (1997, 105); Lanner (2006, 136, 205). 11. I follow the JPS translation which reads verse 13 as a continuation of verse 12 with an ellipsis of the interrogative pronoun ‫איה‬. 12. The image also frequently appears in the biblical text, with different referents: Israel (e.g., Num 23:24), God (e.g., Isa 31:4), enemies (e.g., Babylon in Jer 4:7) and cities (e.g., Nah 2:13–14). 13. Peter Machinist has pointed out this intertextual dialogue between First Isaiah and Neo-Assyrian writings, as well as the parallel between the able lion of Isaiah 5 and the unable lion in Nahum 2 (1983). 14. This explicit mentioning may have prompted Laurel Lanner to argue for a literal rather than a metaphorical reading (in which ‘metaphorical’ should be understood as ‘literary’ rather than ‘conceptual metaphor’). According to her, the lion is “a metamorphosed goddess,” “contribut[ing] to creating a fantastic hesitation” (2006, 205). 15. Amy Kalmanofsky considers Babylon to be still personified as female in this verse, thus sticking with the female address at the opening of the verse (2015, 117). Thelle even adopts and adapts the animal image, saying that “these accusations … imply that Babylon got caught up in a game, the extent of which she was unable to see” (80). Despite these metaphorical transfers and adaptations by interpreters, the vocabulary used in the Hebrew text is typical of animal hunt. Moreover, as shown in this chapter, animal imagery appears elsewhere to shape textual cities, as do combinations of several metaphors in single verses.

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16. I side with those scholars who read the passage as one about the Assyrians and Nineveh (e.g., Spronk 1994, 104–105; Christensen 2009, 325–26). As far as cityscaping goes, a similar analysis would be made, except for the intercultural dialogue with the Assyrians’ self-identification. 17. Other interpretations read the passage as one about a bird caught in a trap (Foreman 2011, 200). 18. The Masoretes have changed the feminine singular of the verbs into a masculine plural, probably instigated by the masculine plural ‫כשדים‬ in verse 10 and the masculine plural suffix in verse 12 (‫אמכם‬, “your mother”). However, verse 10 also has a feminine singular suffix referring to Babylon (‫שלליה‬, “her spoilers”) which comes after the masculine form and may actually be the reason for continuing with the feminine form rather than the masculine one. In addition, in verse 13 Babylon is mentioned explicitly and all the forms are feminine singular. In my opinion, there is no need to change the feminine forms in verse 11. The city, as more than just its people, is often personified and it is more likely that Jeremiah is scolding the broader concept rather than just its inhabitants. Moreover, animal imagery for cities is used at other occasions as well. 19. I say ‘general’ cityscape, meaning that the cityscapes share general characteristics whereas they differ in their specifics. Ultimately every cityscape is unique, even when one author borrowed an image or even a passage from another author, because the larger frame in which the cityscape appears determines its final reading and thus production. Some of the possible distinctions will be discussed later on, as well as why these dichotomies may not be the best way to consider city animals in the Hebrew Bible. 20. Scholars have understood the inclusion of the animals as a sign of an allinclusive punishment (Perry 2006, 48; Abasili 2017, 244). What is more, according to Yael Shemesh, the animals were not only part of a conceptual and literary construct, but also of an actual practice (2010, 18–19). 21. In the case of Jonah, this cityscape does not imply that the place actually will be desolate. Scholars have taken different stances with regard to the final outcome of the story. In most readings, the animals are saved together with the people and considered part of God’s explanation at the end of book 4 (see, among others, Abasili 2017, 250). Ehud Ben Zvi has argued that there is a double ending to the story, playing with the contrast between a real and an imagined Nineveh (2003, 14–33). Focusing

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on that imagined Nineveh of the text, I have argued that there is no need for a destruction, and thus, no need for salvation of people or animals (Vermeulen 2017c, 243–44). Despite these different readings, all of them underwrite the idea of the human-animal merism in the city as at least suggesting and possibly realizing a desolate cityscape. 22. In the existing research, this cityscape is often labeled as desolate, although the space discussed is mostly the destroyed one. See, among others, Muilenburg (1940, 355), Reimer (1993, 180), and Noegel (2019, 109). 23. These animals have been taken as a stock image for destruction (Galambush 2001, 73) and as numinous (Noegel 2019, 108). They have been identified as typical feature of the city lament genre in the Prophets and Psalms (Dobbs-Allsopp 1993, 123). 24. The exact animals form subject of debate (Deysel 2017, 206–208, 236). 25. Gray speaks of an “antithesis of ‘city’” with parallels in ancient Near Eastern treaty curses (2018, 31). Stone lists other passages within the biblical corpus (e.g., Mic 1:8 or Lam 4:3), which have jackals and ostriches (together or separate) as representing “the antithesis to civilization and order,” thus “desolation and wilderness” (2012, 72, 73). 26. Ostriches are not scavenger or night animals, but they occur together with them because of their habit of eating everything, including leftovers and dead animals, as well as of the scary sound they make. 27. Several scholars have commented on the extensive locust imagery at the end of Nahum 3 and the problems it may raise for interpretation due to shifts in referents (e.g., Spronk 1997, 137–41). O’Brien has listed the comparison of the troops as locusts as a shared feature with Jer 46:23 and 51:14 as possibly typical of OAN (2009, 131–32). 28. And this despite them being “particularly effective in illustrating loyalty and devotion” (Borowski 2002, 297). 29. James Muilenburg speaks of “utter desolation” when he discusses this passage (1940, 355). This shows, once more, the close connection between the cityscapes of desolation and destruction. 30. This is contrary to Scott Noegel, who considers wild animals to be, by definition, within God’s control (2019, 109). “Divine order and wildness are only mutually exclusive categories for humans, for whom the forces of nature are beyond control” (119). 31. The opposition may but does not necessarily coincide with that between wild and domesticated animals. As far as the Ninevite cityscape goes, the

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lion does not live up to its potential nor do the locusts in the end. However, this does not undo the fact that the image itself did evoke a connotation of threat and danger for those siding with the biblical God and his people. Precisely because of that, the city’s envisioned future is rhetorically powerful. 32. Douglas argued for a categorization based on realm and locomotion (2002, 69). Deysel considers the latter to be not necessary. Rather the prototype of the realm defines what is considered conforming to the category and what is not (2017, 257–59). 33. Douglas retracted her theory in 2002  in her foreword (xiii–xv), but Deysel, who developed her classification at first independently from Douglas’ work, reframes this retraction with a theoretical approach that postdates the original theory and offers a foundation for both the foundation as well as some of the problems of Douglas’ theory (2017, 242–67). 34. On Isaiah 34, Blenkinsopp combines the spatial habitat of the animal with that of clean/unclean (2001, 41). 35. In her ‘biography’ of Babylon, Sals comes to a similar conclusion, although not relying on conceptual metaphors used for the city (2004, 436). 36. In scholarship the cityscape has been described as “edenic” (Darr 1994, 145), “Arcadian” (Mills 2012, 209), “the dream of returning to the lost paradise, the peaceful kingdom, the first creation” (Carroll 2001, 43). Although not mentioned explicitly, the commentators seem to imply a return to a pre-urban realm. There are parallels for these scenes in Anatolian and Mesopotamian texts (Borowski 2002, 299).

5 Bodyscapes

The different images for biblical cities are overlapping rather than disjointed. The metaphor the city is a body arises from such an overlap. Both the people and the animal imagery discussed before imply a bodily appearance for the city space. This allows the city to undertake actions otherwise impossible, despite its physical presence in the world. The metaphorical body of the city is animate: it has agency over its movements and is the medium through which emotions are experienced. “Bodies are not inert; they function interactively and productively. They act and react” (Grosz 1994: xi). In the biblical text, the metaphor the city is a body is developed far beyond the logical personification-thus-body or animalization-thus-body connections. They transform the idea of cities as having bodies (inherently present in personification and animalization) into an idea of cities as being bodies. The cityscapes built on this idea are bodies speaking to the bodies of the readers. The (human) body is both the starting point of the metaphor and part of its effect. “For the ancient city … there was a direct correlation between the human body and this built environment” (James 2017a, 97), which rendered the metaphor an easy go-to both for writers and readers. When the prophet Nahum exclaims, “I will lift your skirts over your face, and I will show your © The Author(s) 2020 K. Vermeulen, Conceptualizing Biblical Cities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45270-4_5

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nakedness to nations and your shame to kingdoms” (Nah 3:5), he draws on a particular conceptualization of the city space. Rather than saying that the enemies violently took over the city, or that houses were demolished and people killed, he chose to have his personified city harassed and raped. Moreover, he did not just use the word ‘rape’ but suggested the rape through a bodily description. At that point, the city is envisioned as a body, with an impact on the personification out of which it is drawn.1

Human Bodies, Animal Bodies or Just Bodies Human beings and animals share their bodily appearance. Likewise, cities-­as-people and cities-as-animals have bodies. What is more, each of them draws out this corporeality in specific circumstances. Animal cities, for example, use their body often to occupy space, whereas human bodies are mostly subject to dressing and undressing. Despite these notable differences, however, both metaphors shift to a shared body conceptualization of the city at times. The latter envisions the city, first and foremost, as a living, perishable body subject as well as object of particular bodily actions and experiences. The metaphor renders all city bodies, regardless of their attribute as human or animal, into bodies the reader can relate to (implying thus human bodies, since those are the cognitive reference point of the human reader).2

Human Bodies Whereas personification in itself, as shown, does not necessarily imply that the city space was gendered, the city conceived through the body metaphor very often is.3 At various occasions, the imagined body is female and subject to a particular set of actions. These actions center around dressing and undressing the body. At the far end of what can be considered as a continuum, there is the adornment of the body with beautiful clothes, jewelry and make-up, thus dressing squared, for example, in Jer 4:30: “And you, doomed to destruction, what do you do by wearing scarlet, by adorning yourself with ornaments of gold, by

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enlarging your eyes with kohl?”4 At the other end, undressing can turn into being undressed by others forcefully, resulting in images of harassment and rape, such as in Ezek 16:39: “I will deliver you into their hands, and they will tear down your back and break down your heights; and they will strip you of your clothing and take your items of beauty, and they will leave you naked and bare.”5 City passages that draw on the actions of dressing and undressing intertwine the body metaphor with that of the personified city. Whereas the unwanted removal of clothes deprives the city-woman of agency, the body metaphor turns the reader’s focus to additional aspects that play into the final cityscape. Clothing forms a barrier between the vulnerable body and influences from the world, such as rain, sun, dust, but also blows or cuts. “As humans, we are aware of our ephemeral nature and we have attempted to use dress to prevail upon the passage of time” (Finitsis 2019, 9). Moreover, a dressed body is a public body, to be seen by everyone. “Identities are communicated by dress as it announces social positions of wearer to both wearer and observers within a particular interaction situation” (Roach-Higgins and Eicher 1992, 5). Playing with these notions of protection-vulnerability and public-personal,6 the body metaphor allows creating cityscapes with experiences focused on these matters. In Ezekiel 16:7, the prophet gives a description of the female body growing up: “your breasts became firm, your hair sprouted.” Only after this process has been completed, and the body is sexually mature, with God stepping in as husband, clothes and adornment are mentioned (Ezek 16:10–13).7 The clothes become the public body, what is underneath the private one. In other words, the city has formal contacts with other cities and gods, but she is only in a more personal relationship with one god, the biblical God. Through personification the cityscape becomes one about relationality. Through becoming a body, this relationship can be further specified as being public or personal. To come back to Ezekiel 16:7, the maturing of the body is crucial to the discourse of dressing and undressing later on. It furthermore forms the conditio sine qua non for the different female roles discerned earlier for the personified city. The preferred cityscape of the biblical writers is the one in which the city is protected by God, thus dressed in one way (protection) and undressed in another way (personal relationship). Ezekiel 16 shows how this works

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exactly, returning to the body metaphor at various occasions throughout the chapter. In the beginning of the chapter, Jerusalem becomes God’s spouse: the city is a naked body clothed and adorned by God. 7

You were naked and bare 8 and I passed by you and saw you—see, your time was the time for love—and I spread my robe over you and covered your nakedness, and I swore to you and entered a covenant with you—declares the Lord God; and you became mine. 9 And I washed you in water … 10 And I clothed you with embroidered garments, … 11 And I adorned you with ornaments … 12 And I put a ring in your nose … 13 And you adorned yourself with gold and silver … And you became more and more beautiful and prospered to royalty.

‫ ואעבר עליך ואראך והנה‬8 ‫ ואת ערם ועריה‬7 ‫עתך עת דדים ואפרש כנפי עליך ואכסה‬ ‫ערותך ואשבע לך ואבוא בברית אתך נאם‬ 10 ... ‫ וארחצך במים‬9 ‫אדני יהוה ותהיי לי‬ ‫ ואתן‬12 ... ‫ ואעדך עדי‬11 ... ‫ואלבישך רקמה‬ ‫ ותיפי‬... ‫ ותעדי זהב וכסף‬13 ... ‫נזם על אפך‬ ‫במאד מאד ותצלחי למלוכה‬

Whereas Ezekiel opens chapter 16 with a personification that runs throughout most of the verses, the city-woman is becoming merely body in verses 8 to 13.8 This body is subject to various actions: covering, washing, clothing and putting jewelry on. Contrary to what one would expect, this body is not very mobile. It is imagined as a mannequin dressed by God.9 That is, until verse 13, where the personification surfaces again, turning the body into a body that adorns itself. This shift in use of pronouns and object-subject function (Firstspace) indicates also a metaphorical shift (Secondspace). The personified body is now a mannequin come alive, taking off some of the clothes and turning them into tapestries for other gods (Ezek 16:16) and taking off some of the jewelry and making phallic images of it (Ezek 16:17).10 This flipping of linguistic relations (Firstspace) and combining of conceptual images (Secondspace) allows Ezekiel to develop a cityscape of changeability. Just like a body can be dressed or undressed, so a city space changes over time.11 In addition, the chapter plays with who is dressing or undressing the body. This results not only in a discourse of agency (who decides on the city’s body?), but also one of relationality (is the image describing the relationship between God and the city or between the city and herself?).

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The association of clothing as protection is added to that mix. Turning to the example, initially Ezekiel follows the expected metaphorical evocations: God dresses the city, thus protecting her: apparel is protection and a good relationship with God.12 However, the city distorts this image, further adorning herself (Ezek 16:13–14), drawing protection from elsewhere. Later, she even undresses herself, giving up her godly protection and relationship with God. The dresses and jewelry are given to others (16:16–18). This leaves the city undressed, and thus unprotected. Rather than returning to the body metaphor, Ezekiel has the city built her protection (16:24–25), while continuing the undressing for the enemies. Eventually, this prompts God to turn the tables. After having repeated her offense (the undressing in 16:36), God himself will now expose the city’s body (16:37), followed by the previous lovers (16:39). Thus, God ends the relationship with the city by taking away his protection. The order is reestablished in that the metaphorical associations are again as expected; however, no new clothing is mentioned. That the lovers will follow God in undressing the city seems excessive. Obviously, they are of no importance in the personal relationship between God and the city. Plus, they have never given the city protection through clothes to start with. Rather, what their action answers to is the action the city had performed for them earlier: she exposed herself, they expose her now. In all of this, the body becomes the means through which the city, God and the third party communicate. The text imagines this body, and thus the city in that respect, as instrumental.13 At the same time, Ezekiel offers the body a voice and agency in verses 13 and the following, breaking through a discourse that has been received as highly problematic by modern scholars and readers. The city’s claiming of her own body backfires on her in the remainder of the chapter, but her earlier actions should not be overlooked. The bodily cityscape of Ezekiel is temporarily empowering, suggesting that city spaces have potential agency (Thirdspace). As Maier has argued, the body has “the potential to resist a dominant ideology” (2008c, 28). Besides the (un)dressed body, there are a few occasions on which the body is considered dirty and in need of washing. The dirty body is inherently connected to the sinful body. For that matter, the undressing of the body is mostly seen in that context as well. In Jeremiah 2:22, the city

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washes with natron and lye but cannot wash off her guilt. The body of the city is utterly defiled. It can no longer be the shared ground between the biblical God and the city, because that would require a personal relationship. Now that a third party has interacted with the city through the same body, such is deemed impossible. The washing of the dirty body generates a cityscape of attempted repair, a need to reset things after they have gone awry (Thirdspace). Jeremiah 4:14 focuses on a particular body part for washing, that is, the heart. Again, what has to be rinsed off is wickedness and sin. And again, the cityscape is one of possible renewal. If the body of the city is as new, it can be the common ground between God and the city. Just like washing the feet before entering the temple was an act of purification, so the cleansing of the city-body purifies the city space for future divine encounters.14 Contrary to the example of Jeremiah 2, the city-body in Jeremiah 4 is not explicitly gendered. Although readers may know of the previous chapters in which Jerusalem was personified as a woman, the verses in Chap. 4 that draw on the body metaphor personify the city in a gender-neutral way. Coming up with evil plans (v. 14), being surrounded by enemies (v. 17), even rebelling against God (v. 17), it is not uniquely reserved for females. Similarly, when the body is presented as wounded, the prophets abstain from female identification of the imagined person to whom the body belongs. In Jeremiah 19:8, the prophet says, “everyone who passes by it will be horrified and will hiss over all its wounds,” about Jerusalem. The same phrase is repeated in Jer 50:13, when addressing Babylon. The imagery appears more elaborately in Jer 51:8–9.15 8 Suddenly Babylon has fallen and is shattered; wail over her, take balsam for her suffering, perhaps she can be healed. 9 We tried to heal Babylon but she could not be healed. Leave her and let us go, each to his own land, for her punishment reaches to the heavens, it is lifted up to the clouds.

‫ פתאם נפלה בבל ותשבר‬8 ‫הילילו עליה‬ ‫קחו צרי למכאובה‬ ‫אולי תרפא‬ ‫ רפינו את בבל‬9 ‫ולא נרפתה‬ ‫עזבוה ונלך‬ ‫איש לארצו‬ ‫כי נגע אל השמים משפטה‬ ‫ונשא עד שחקים‬

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First of all, the passage illustrates once more that imagining the city is a constant going back and forth between metaphors. A passage rarely draws on just one image. The beginning of verse 8 still draws on the instrumentalization of Babylon as a cup, fallen (‫ )נפל‬and broken (‫)שבר‬ (Firstspace and Secondspace). Simultaneously, it already looks forward to its personification: the city is someone to howl over (Secondspace). The verse then continues with mentioning her wounds (‫ )מכאוב‬and what to do with them. Rather than the complete person with agency, thoughts and so on, the city is envisioned as a body that can break, just like the shattered cup at the beginning of the verse. The cure is presented as a bodily fix executed by others, but impossible because there is more to be cured than just the city’s body. The cityscape is one of vulnerability: the body is the weak spot. Without it functioning properly, the city has little chance of survival (Thirdspace). The wounds mentioned are not gender specific. They are merely physical injuries, affecting the city in its daily workings.

Animal Bodies Many of the animal bodies fill urban space. Their bodily presence expresses a physicality of the city, an animate container. This simple occupation of space is not even necessarily violent, such as in Jer 50:39 where wild animals are occupying the Babylonian city space. These animals pasture as quietly as the wolf and the lamb in Isa 11:6. Even when the animal is the city itself, being present in the space seems to be one of the main occupations of the city. Thus, in Jeremiah 50:24, Babylon is caught in a snare. There is no fuzz, no big battle; she did not even see it coming. She happened to be in the space of the snare, and she will be caught now forever. This quietness stands in sharp contrast with the image of a wild animal itself, which presupposes noise and turmoil. Occasionally, the animal body indeed does more than filling urban space and is depicted as making noise (roaring, sniffing, etc.). These bodily actions render the story more vivid and with their bodily cues they prime the reader for spaces of instinctive responses (Thirdspace). Like the killing lion in Nahum, whose city space thrived only for so long as instinct

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was enough (Nah 2:13). Or the lustful she-camel in Jeremiah, whose city was endangered because of animal instincts (Jer 2:23). Similar to the human city-body, which was sometimes subject to wounds, the animal body sometimes gets caught. The developed imagery is comparable: the body represents the vulnerability of the city and the danger to get killed, thus destroyed. In Ezekiel 36:4, the body metaphor occurs amidst other urban metaphors that all contribute to an initial cityscape of negativity. Thus says the Lord God to the mountains and the hills, to the streams and the valleys, and to the desolate ruins and deserted cities which have become a prey and a laughingstock to the other nations around.

‫כה אמר אדני יהוה להרים ולגבעות לאפיקים‬ ‫ולגאיות ולחרבות השממות ולערים הנעזבות‬ ‫אשר היו לבז וללעג לשארית הגוים אשר‬ ‫מסביב‬

Imagining the city as a captured animal body (‫ )בז‬degrades the city in two ways.16 First, it takes away its capacities as a rational entity and as a condensation of the human inhabitants within it. Secondly, the text does not focus on the power and danger of the animal, but on its role as a prey. The body in that setting is immobilized, turned into an object that is subject to others. Playing off these two associations, the created cityscape is counterproductive (from the city’s point of view): it deconstructs the city space. This anti-city is characterized by emptiness (evoked by the container metaphor, see later), vulnerability and a lack of agency (evoked by the animal body metaphor), and thingness (evoked by the object metaphor). All of these aspects feed into a larger feeling of discomfort and pessimism (Thirdspace). If this can still be considered a city (which is the question), it definitely is not the one longed for, evoking happiness and positive feelings. It is a “symbolic urban site … in poor condition, owned by outsiders who ravage it” (Mills 2012, 226). Its cityscape is reversed a few verses later (vv. 8–12), drawing on metaphors other than the bodily one and focusing more on the people (Galambush 1992, 145).

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Shifting Bodies What makes the body image an interesting category is its ability to mediate between animal metaphors and personified city spaces. In Micah 4:13, the urban imagery shifts from daughter to heifer and back to person again. As argued before, both the personification and the animalization have their own merits in terms of cityscaping. The body which stands in between them, or rather, is the shared element among them, serves as a facilitator to align the different source domains and produce a coherent cityscape. Get up and thresh, daughter Zion! For your horns I will make of iron and your hoofs I will make of bronze, and you will crush many peoples. You will devote to the Lord their things, their wealth to the lord of all the earth. 13

‫ קומי ודושי בת ציון‬13 ‫כי קרנך אשים ברזל‬ ‫ופרסתיך אשים נחושה‬ ‫והדקות עמים רבים‬ ‫והחרמתי ליהוה בצעם‬ ‫וחילם לאדון כל הארץ‬

The body as metaphor shifter is not limited to changes between the metaphors the city is a person and the city is an animal. This function as in-between image also appears in Ezekiel 27 where Tyre is both container and woman, or as Jacqueline Vayntrub has said, “a ship, a body” (2020, 225). The dirge opens with an address to the personified city, dwelling (‫)הישבת‬, trading (‫ )רכלת‬and speaking (‫( )אצרת‬Firstspace). In verse 3, the metaphor shifts to that of a ship (thus a container) (Secondspace). Throughout the chapter, this container is mainly described physically, as one would describe a body (Firstspace), “perfect in beauty” (‫)כלילת יפו‬ (v. 3). In verse 11, the reference to beauty reappears before all the goods from abroad loaded in the ship are described: ‫המה כללו יפיך‬, “They perfected your beauty.” Rather than mentioning actual body parts, the text exemplifies this beauty through an enlisting of the ship’s parts and goods. Elsewhere this generalizing description of the city as “perfect in beauty” appears also for personified Jerusalem in Lam 2:15.17 Drawing on two conceptual metaphors at the same time may be confusing, but not when they are connected through a body in between. What is more, Ezekiel makes use of the metaphor’s possibilities, creating two parallel stories to maximize the effect.18 On the one hand, the

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personified city is dressed and undressed, as discussed previously, depicting a cityscape of rise and fall, with associations of protection and vulnerability respectively. On the other hand, the city is a container that is filled and emptied, clearly playing with in-out distinctions and their connotations (see container chapter). It is the body, connecting these two metaphors conceptually, that allows the city to be both beautified outside as well as inside.19 In addition, the city’s fall is inherent to the body’s fallibility (Thirdspace). There is only so much material that can be stored inside it; its apparel is prone to decay. Its “fatal flaw” is that “though [it is] depicted as a complete body, is not an intact body” (Vayntrub 2020, 225). The meta-narratological function of the body metaphor becomes especially clear when considering larger passages of text. Chapters 2 and 3 of the book of Nahum develop a cityscape of Nineveh that draws on multiple conceptual metaphors. The most prominent ones are that of the city is a woman and the city is an animal. In their specific realization in the text, there is great variety among the women and animals described. In Nahum 2:14, the city is a lion, whereas in Nah 3:15, it is a locust. Similarly, the city is a harlot according to Nah 3:4, and a captive as well as a mother in Nah 3:10. The rich but seemingly incoherent and especially jumpy imagery has left many readers puzzled. How exactly should they see the city? Can she be both mother and child at the same time (Nah 3:10)? And is she a locust or rather the one invaded by locusts (Nah 3:15)? How to make sense of what has been deemed flawed metaphorical creations (Spronk 1997, 137–39)? The common denominator for all of these examples is the notion of a body.20 The passages on the exposure of the harlot (Nah 3:4: “I will lift your skirts over your face and show your nakedness to nations and your shame to kingdoms”) and the murder of the children (Nah 3:10: “her babies too were dashed in pieces at every street corner”) are so vivid because they focus on the body. Nineveh is not just said to be punished, but physically harassed and attacked. That the body is crucial to understanding Nahum 2 and 3 is further emphasized by the abundance of body parts in these chapters, directing the reader to a possible key to understand the coherence of the chapters. Whereas body parts occasionally appear in Biblical Hebrew as parts of conventional ways to express

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certain prepositions, such as ‫לפני‬, “before” (literally, “before the face of ”) or ‫על פני‬, “upon” (literally, “upon the face of ”), the text of Nahum rarely includes these. In other words, the body parts in Nahum are true body parts, not the by-product of linguistic conventionality (Vermeulen 2017c, 13–14). It is the body that ties together all of the different metaphors, both in terms of conceptualization (the city is a woman, the city is an animal, the city is a container) and in terms of actual language and literary images used in the text. Beyond as well as behind the personification of the city, the conceptual metaphor Nineveh is a body controls the biblical city-scape of the place. As with the life story of Jerusalem, the body image of Nineveh is used consistently, creating the story of a strong and healthy body becoming a sick and bereaved corpse. The image manifests itself in various stylistic and semantic choices. The text of Nahum includes ample metonymies in which the city and the inhabitants are interchangeable, with the former sharing the body of the latter. Likewise, the metaphors and similes in the text explore the same concept: Nineveh is a body. The frequent use of actual body parts further emphasizes a bodily understanding of the city space. (Vermeulen 2017c, 4)

Body Parts For Nahum 2 and 3, the body parts function as guide for the reader. They draw the reader’s attention to the overarching image of the body as a way to coherently conceptualize Nineveh. Yet, also in passages where the body metaphor is evoked on the smaller scale of a single verse or phrase, body parts are often found in the biblical text. Although the text does not need to mention any of them to evoke the image of a body (e.g., Jer 51:17: “you have drunk the cup of wrath,” evoking a body and mouth that drinks), many of the passages with city bodies do so nevertheless. Thus Isaiah 37:22 has daughter Jerusalem shaking the head (‫ )ראש‬and Ezek 16:63 imagines a city too ashamed to open her mouth (‫)פה‬.

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The more prominent the role of the metaphor, the more body parts will appear.21 The connection between the body and body parts on the one hand and the city on the other is particularly clear in Song of Songs 8, where the female lover and the city are mapped onto each other. The text explicitly merges both, “I am a wall, my breasts are like towers” (Song 8:10). “Elements of the city are used to describe the young woman and so the conceptual link between the city and the body is most clearly in view” (James 2017b, 108). For James, the metaphor emphasizes the city’s ambiguity as a protective and vulnerable space.22 Meredith considers its poetic effect, “the body and the landscape rub against each other and, tingling with poetic energy, collapse together only to emerge as discrete categories again a moment later” (2018, 93). The body parts function as a Firstspace marker to evoke the Secondspace of the body.23 Another passage with a female lover being the city and several body parts is the previously discussed opening of Ezekiel 16. Although Ezekiel 16 is not following any particular order in describing the female body, the story does remind of the Song passages that revel in body parts, the waṣf sections in which the lovers are described top-to-bottom or the other way around. Given that some of the literary images in these text passages are using the city as source domain, it is worthwhile to consider the city construal of the Song of Songs and Ezekiel 16 in light of each other.24 Song of Songs 4:4 compares the woman’s neck to the Tower of David. Before, lips and eyebrows are mentioned (4:3), afterward breasts (4:5). The neck is again compared to a tower, of ivory, in Song 7:5, while the eyes of the beloved are described as “pools in Chesbon by the gate of Bath-rabbim.” The verse concludes with “your nose like the Lebanon tower that faces toward Damascus.” In Song of Songs 7:4, breasts are mentioned, in Song 7:6 the head.25 When turning to the beginning of Ezekiel 16, the same body parts can be found: breasts (16:7), head (16:10 and 16:12), neck (16:11) and nose (16:12). What these body parts have in common is their connection to height. If, as Jack Sasson has suggested (1987, 737–38), the female body is lying on the ground, the contours of the body appear as the skyline of a city. This outline should not be seen only as the body lies down; body parts keep their role in the silhouette of the body also when it is in upright position. What is more, a body part

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such as the neck only functions as a tower when considered in a vertical position. This match between the outlines of the female body and the city works in the horizontal and vertical realm, emphasizing the city’s changing outlines depending on the position taken. At the same time, this change never is that major that the city is no longer recognizable as being a city. The latter only is the case when the city herself (in Ezekiel 16) starts to erase her outline, by taking off clothes that accentuate her contours and removing jewelry from body parts. While the opening of Ezekiel 16 is not love poetry, it does generate a cityscape in a way similar to what the Song of Songs does, at least in the previously mentioned sections. The body metaphor (Secondspace) and the occurrence of multiple body parts (Firstspace) draw a cityscape of sensuality and tactility/senses.26 Materials are mentioned to add to the sensory landscape: silver and gold in Ezek 16:12; fine linen and ivory in Song 7:5. In Ezekiel 16, this all serves to contrast it with the cityscape that eventually follows. That is still sensory, but far less pleasant.27 Finally, whereas the whole notion of dressing the body had a defensive and positive connotation in Ezekiel 16—the personal body will only be shared with God, the Song reads the body dressed as a city differently, because it swaps source and target domains of the metaphor. For sure, the city body in the Song of Songs is defensive, with heights to be conquered by the lover. The Song also describes this conquest as enjoyable. Throughout the Song, the body moves from public to private sphere and the other way around (James 2017, 95–96), without a loss of cityness. That is to say, the Song of Songs focuses from the very beginning on the body, not on its external adornment. As a result, there is no defense to be taken care of, except for the defense of the body itself. Since the discourse of dressing and undressing is not present, the city’s identity is never at stake. The Song’s cityscape in the waṣf sections remains positive throughout, a space of enjoyable encounter and changing perspectives.28 What is more, even though the body is clearly gendered, “what is described are not the woman’s breasts, but rather the associations they evoke in her lover’s mind” (Davis, 263).29 Far less pleasant is the cityscape of Lam 1:13–14, in which Jerusalem’s body is affected by God’s punishment, becoming “a battlefield of God’s wrath” (Maier 2008a, 128).

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From a place on high he sent a fire into my bones and he ruled over it, he spread a net for my feet, he made me go backward; he made me desolate, all the day faint. 14 The yoke of my transgressions is bound, by his hand they are intertwined; they are imposed upon my neck, it causes my strength to fall; the Lord has given me into the hands of those I cannot withstand. 13

‫ ממרום שלח אש‬13 ‫בעצמתי וירדנה‬ ‫פרש רשת לרגלי‬ ‫השיבני אחור‬ ‫נתנני שממה‬ ‫כל היום דוה‬ ‫ נשקד על פשעי‬14 ‫בידו ישתרגו‬ ‫עלו על צוארי‬ ‫הכשיל כחי‬ ‫נתנני אדני בידי‬ ‫לא אוכל קום‬

The body parts that occur here are different from the above-discussed cityscapes of love. They entail body parts that are associated with movement, such as feet, and power or rather the lack thereof, the yoke on the neck. Moreover, they are not gendered (Maier 2008c, 154–55). Overall the cityscape is one of torture: the body is under duress with fire in its bones, a net before its feet, a yoke bound on the neck. There is no dressing or undressing. The body attacked is presumably a strong body, but the divine blows are severe and the human body too vulnerable. The city’s power, bodily and therefore also otherwise, is broken.30 Even though no wounds are mentioned, the produced cityscape reminds of that of Jer 51:8–9. In terms of distribution, the city-body has no particular preference for specific body parts. However, given the graphic scenes in which some of the body parts appear, certain body parts have received far more attention from readers, both inside and outside of academia. The violent exposure of city-bodies in Ezekiel and Nahum are exemplary for that matter. These books intertwine the body metaphor with a personification of the city which itself functions as a metaphor for adultery/idolatry. As a harlot, the city is both an unfaithful wife and an unfaithful worshipper of the biblical God. Within this discourse significantly more references are made to breasts (Ezek 23:3, 8, 21) and genitals (Ezek 16:36–37, 23:10; Nah 3:5). In all these passages, the created cityscape forms the antipode of the cityscape as imagined by the biblical God. Ezekiel 23 reminds of the handling of the breasts of Jerusalem by the Egyptians. This scaping of the city by others results in punishment: “I delivered her into the hands of

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her lovers, into the hands of the Assyrians after whom she lusted” (23:9). The initial self-exposure is reversed, becoming forced exposure to the Assyrians (23:10). Similarly, the lifting of Nineveh’s skirt is an answer to her harlotries. The bodily cityscape is one that is often driven by the principle of the lex talionis. The body is the scene of crimes and the retaliation of these crimes. Cityscaping then functions as a judgmental tool to set things right. By redrawing the city map, the biblical text resets not only the spatial but also the conceptual order (Thirdspace).

Shaping the Body, Scaping the City While bodies are undoubtedly material, possessing a range of characteristics such as shape and size and so inevitably taking up space, the ways in which bodies are presented to and seen by others vary according to the spaces and places in which they find themselves. (McDowell 1999, 34)

Various cityscapes can arise from the body metaphor, with the specific textual and contextual setting determining the final interpretation and functioning of a city space. By means of further illustration, consider the following passage from Isaiah 47: 1 Get down and sit in the dust, maiden daughter Babylon, sit on the ground, without throne, daughter Chaldea; for they will no longer call you tender and dainty. 2 Take the hand-mill and grind meal; take away your veil, strip off your skirt, uncover your leg, pass through rivers. 3 Your nakedness will be uncovered, your shame too will be exposed.

‫ רדי ושבי על עפר‬1 ‫בתולת בת בבל‬ ‫שבי לארץ אין כסא‬ ‫בת כשדים‬ ‫כי לא תוסיפי יקראו לך‬ ‫רכה וענגה‬ ‫ קחי רחים וטחני קמח‬2 ‫גלי צמתך‬ ‫חשפי שבל גלי שוק‬ ‫עברי נהרות‬ ‫ תגל ערותך‬3 ‫גם צראה חרפתך‬

This prophecy addressed to Babylon imagines the city as a woman. In the first verses, this woman is sometimes reduced to her physical appearance, a female body. A first hint at that body is found at the end of verse

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1 where Babylon’s beauty is mentioned. Apart from the Song’s somewhat atypical treatment of physical beauty, the biblical text considers this beauty to involve clothes of fine material and jewelry of all sorts. This dressed, and thus protected, city is also what is imagined in the first lines of verse 2. In line with the tone of reversal in verse 1, where the standing city is sitting down (a position conceptually categorized as less favorable), verse 2 orders the city to undress her body. Whereas this initially seems an innocent act to make the passing through the waters easier, verse 3 takes away the ambiguity planted in verse 2: at stake is the ultimate exposure of the female body as an act of vengeance from God’s part. The removal of the veil, a sign of public status (Westermann 1969, 190), indicates a shift in the role of the city woman. She is no longer a woman in function but an exposed body, “a naked object of fascination, contempt and disgust” (Darr 1994, 173). The language that follows is highly suggestive of a sexual context: the verb ‫ גלה‬is frequently used in scenes in which the city is harassed and raped (e.g., Nahum and Ezekiel). The main difference is that the phrase does not occur there in an imperative form but with a subject different from the city (Firstspace). Also the baring of the leg, often a euphemism for genitals, suggests that much more than the leg was uncovered. The removal of the clothes generates a cityscape of vulnerability (Thirdspace). Contrary to the Ezekiel and Nahum passages discussed before, Babylon’s exposure in chapter 47 is not stylistically contrasted with a self-­ exposure (Firstspace), even though the text does speak of vengeance.31 Nevertheless the bodily status of the city changes, from standing to sitting and from clothed to undressed. This results in a space of change in which God sets things right, or rather, sets things as he likes them (Thirdspace). It is not that Babylon had sinned against God, like the pattern for Jerusalem goes. Rather, Babylon had served as God’s mistress for a while, but this instrumental role was only temporary. To indicate the change, the body metaphor is used. The shift in physical appearance of the city-body creates a cityscape of change. From the biblical perspective, that is the writers and their God, this is a change for the good. Babylon’s yoke will be broken. Space will be given to the biblical people and their God, the eventual message of the biblical text.

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Just like Jerusalem is out of God’s protection in Ezek 16:39 when uncovered, so is Babylon. The personal relationship between Babylon and God has ended (Isa 47:7). The undressing of the body generates a cityscape of un-relationality, of disconnection (Thirdspace). Even though Babylon had a far different relation with the biblical God, the text shapes the city space in a very similar way, also when it comes to metaphors of the body. Several explanations can be offered. For one, there are only so many metaphors the biblical text uses to construe city concepts. Thus, the text will draw on the same metaphors and explore the possibilities within them when it comes to specific contexts or referents. Secondly, the biblical text has a preoccupation with Jerusalem/Zion. Other city spaces can be considered as alter egos of this Jerusalem in one way or another (e.g., Biddle 1992; Carroll 2001). Self-evidently, the same metaphors will be applied, even when they express a relationship that would be considered unique to Jerusalem. Thirdly, the biblical text’s concept of cities might be far more coherent than considered in general. What distinguishes Jerusalem from Babylon, for example, is not how their city space is conceived, here as a body, but how these conceptualizations are framed in a specific context.

Notes 1. Following the research of Zainab Bahrani (2001, 40–69), Maier argues that “as image, the body participates in the production of normative concepts of sex and gender” (2008c, 28). Even though her book focuses on the personified city, she acknowledges with this statement that the body can function as an image, in art and text. 2. Bodies play an important role in Lefebvre’s critical spatiality. They are both products and producers of space (1974, 199). According to Maier, “one may conclude that lived space is prior to conceived space,” given Lefebvre’s suggestion of the body preceding thought (2008a, 121). Whereas the body is indeed crucial to experience, it can nevertheless appear as a concept for urban space, that is, experientially based and thus embodied (in line with cognitive-linguistic research, e.g., Lakoff and Johnson 2003/1980, 1999). One does not exclude the other.

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3. In her study of Nahum, O’Brien points out that the bodies in the text are mostly female and only occasionally gender-neutral (e.g., the slain bodies in Nah 3:13). She considers this “sexing of the female body … rhetorically significant and not just a ‘natural’ by-product of language” (2009, 94). 4. Note that in this example, the adornment is not considered something positive. As will be shown later on, this has to do with the fact that it is self-adornment to please others different from God (Maier 2008c, 83–84). 5. For a discussion of rape and violence to city-women/bodies, see the section in Chap. 3. 6. Neil Smith makes a similar argument but does not mention the role of dressing and undressing in the distinction between public and private body. “The place of the body marks the boundary between self and other in a social as much as a physical sense” (1993, 102). 7. The idea of exposure starts even earlier in the chapter, when the city is introduced as a naked newborn (Jacobs 2012, 221). This first appearance of the body is by definition undressed. Yet, immediately the text makes the connotation with vulnerability; however, one that is of a different nature than the later one of the young woman whose naked body also evokes sexual connotations (as argued before for the difference between the city as daughter and the city as infant/child). 8. According to Stéphanie Anthonioz, these verses create both a variation and augmentation of the city’s personification by means of “dress and adornment” (2014, 38–39). 9. Carol Dempsey goes even further in her description, reading the passage as one in which “the woman becomes a reflection of the husband’s care.” This care is controlling, “the intrinsic dignity and beauty of a woman are not respected, acknowledged or affirmed” (1998, 66). 10. Galambush describes this reversal in terms of an initially passive role of Jerusalem turned into an active one (1992, 95). Jacobs speaks of a “transition from dependence to independence” (2012, 209). 11. Alicia Batten has stated, “comparable to an argument, dress can possess rhetorical functions and serve, perhaps even more effectively than language, to convince or dissuade” (2019, x). Such is also the case for dress as part of a conceptual metaphor realized in a particular text, as shown in the examples. If following Batten’s argument, dress of that specific kind would be twice as effective, drawing both on the persuasive power of language and clothing.

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12. What is more, the specific material mentioned is only found elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, when speaking of the tabernacle (Galambush 1992, 95). In other words, “bodies are objects like no others” in Ezekiel 16 (McDowell 1999, 53), the urban body coincides with the temple. 13. Many studies consider the body to be the main focus of attention of Ezekiel 16, “stimulat[ing] androcentric pornographic fantasy” (Scholz 2010, 188). 14. Whereas acts of ritual purification and washing of the body appear throughout the Hebrew Bible, the image of washing away sin is rather unusual within this corpus (DiFransico 2015, 545–47). It only appears in Isa 1:16 (people are subject) and 4:4 (people, but in parallel line Jerusalem), Jer 2:22 and 4:14 (both of which have the city as subject), and Psalm 51:4 (with the Psalmist as subject) (542). 15. Which itself has a parallel in Jer 8:22 and 14:17 where wounded Jerusalem is described (Sals 2014, 305). The difference with the above-­ mentioned example is that Jeremiah speaks here of the people rather than the personified city. 16. Used in this way more explicitly in Ezek 34:8 and 22, where the flock of God has become a prey: ‫אם לא יען היות צאני לבז ותהיינה צאני לאכלה לכל חית‬ ‫השדה‬, “Because my flock has become a prey, and my flock will be food for every living animal of the field” and ‫והושעתי לצאני ולא תהיינה עוד לבז‬, “I will save my flock and they will no longer be a prey.” 17. Thomas Renz noted that the imagery and motifs used for Tyre in the oracles in chapters 26–32 are similar to those for Jerusalem elsewhere, in particular when it comes to their reversal of fates (2000, 45–46). According to John Strong, these similarities serve to develop a story in which Jerusalem prevails over Tyre in terms of “claim[ing] to be the city of the Great King” (2015, 190). 18. This is where the conceptual metaphors are turned into literary language. The metaphors themselves are not literary, but the way in which they appear in their specific form in the text and in which they contribute to the story are. They form the backbone of the “totalizing description” recognized by Vayntrub “as a literary device whose purpose is to claim the success of bodies and other entities” (2020, 215). This device plays both with completeness and with porosity (219–20, 224–25). 19. Vayntrub defines the two metaphors at work in the chapter as “the city as ship” and “the city as body” (2020, 214). In both cases she identifies the specific subgroup of the conceptual metaphor rather than the

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conceptual metaphor itself. What is more, her reading of the city as body seems to be primarily based on a comparison with list-making as found in the Song of Songs, for example, where the object of interest is a human body rather than a ship. She is not pointing out particular lines or words in the text that evoke the metaphor or prompt her to speak of a body rather than a woman (who comes, by definition, with a body). According to me, this shows exactly how crucial the role is the body metaphor plays in this chapter. It allows readers to not only read the city as a ship or the city as a woman, but to conceptualize the urban space as the body of a ship-woman (if such a creature would exist). 20. O’Brien speaks of “faceless bodies,” as part of a “demonization of the Other for purposes of annihilation” (2009, 122). I would rather say they are voiceless. The city is not given the chance to respond. However, several of the images, including the pornographic one in Nah 3:14–15, seem to have achieved the opposite effect: they have hit home with many readers, who recognize themselves as well as any woman in the so-called faceless body that is violated. 21. Previous research has shown that body parts are used as a stylistic and performative device in biblical and ancient Near Eastern texts (e.g., Gillmayr-Bucher 2004; Noegel 2011; Jones 2013; Vermeulen 2017a). 22. James considers the city as woman, as found in the biblical corpus as well as the wider ancient Near East, as the background against which this more specific metaphor has been developed (2017b, 111–113). 23. Hence, the body is not only an interpretation of the “kit form” of the text (Meredith 2013, 150), but also the concept that has given rise to the mentioning of all these separate body parts. There may not be “a bodily whole in the text” (150), but there is definitely a bodily whole underlying the text. 24. James mentions Ezek 16:13 when she discusses Song 4:4. She is not relying on body part references to make this connection, but on the appearance of beauty with a military undertone as present in both verses (2017b, 108). 25. To be complete, body parts also appear in the description of the male lover, with building (or rather decoration) material mentioned in Song 5:14 and “his legs like marble pillars set in sockets of gold” in Song 5:15. As Meredith has noted, the bodies of both lovers are imagined with natural as well as architectural elements (2013, 146). However, in the end the Song equates the female and not the male lover with the city (Song 8).

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26. This cityscape has given rise to several interpretations: more romantic ones (e.g., Munro 1995) and more grotesque ones (e.g., Black 2009). 27. A similar contrastive cityscape is built in Isa 3:18–24. The main difference is that the body is mostly evoked through the clothes and jewelry mentioned, which belongs to particular body parts (like the nose ring or the anklet). Body parts themselves occur only once in verse 24 (the bald head). Nevertheless, the conceptualization is very much like the one of Ezekiel 16. The adorned body is considered good. However, the city used it for wrong purposes (from God’s point of view), so that the adornment (and protection) is taken away, resulting in a cityscape of loss and vulnerability. 28. The afore-mentioned only counts for the listed passages, not necessarily for the full waṣf sections in the Song as considered by Fiona Black. Her reading of the body focuses on the “odd combinations of natural and urban elements [are] imposed upon the body, rendering it a site of confusion, and perhaps unease, for the Song’s lovers and its readers” (2009, 2). 29. As such the Song’s female bodies, including those of the city, seem to stand outside the pornographic view identified in the prophetic corpus (Davis 2000, 263). For the latter, see, among others, Brenner 1995b, 256–74; 1996, 178–93; Carroll 1995, 275–307). 30. Maier considers the bodily representation to depict both the population’s experience of suffering and the ruined city (2008a, 130). Considering the verses in the larger lament, she argues that, in the end, “although bleeding, the city is not dead; although shattered, she is unwilling to be silent and to hope for God’s mercy like the strong man in Lam 3” (135). This unwillingness leads Maier to a reading of “resistance against a hopeless situation” (130). 31. Scholars have considered the Nahum passage to be atypical, with a foreign city, Nineveh, being portrayed as a harlot (even though she is not God’s wife) (e.g., O’Brien 2009, 63).

6 City Building

As of old, cities have been about built environment. Cain builds the first city mentioned in the Hebrew Bible (Gen 4:17). In the story of the Tower of Babel (Gen 11:1–9), it is the same action of building that is central to the city concept. Cities are spaces built by people. These people create a material place within the space that is already there. In the biblical corpus, cities are not necessarily opposed to nature, but they are fundamentally different. Urban spaces come with a notion of structure, of willingly and consciously putting material together. What is more, the created space is human, made by and for people, “human-all-too-human city of humankind” (Carroll 2001, 60).1 These ideas form the background of imagining the city as a building. This conceptual metaphor lingers on the border between animate metaphors, such as the city is a person, and inanimate ones, such as the city is an object. In the actual text, its intermediary nature can be easily spotted, for example, in the prophecy against Babylon in Jer 51:26: “And they will not take from you a cornerstone or foundation stone; for you will be a desolation forever.” This verse draws on three different conceptual metaphors for the city: the city is a person (from whom something is taken), the city is a building (with cornerstones and foundation © The Author(s) 2020 K. Vermeulen, Conceptualizing Biblical Cities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45270-4_6

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stones) and the city is a container (from which something can be removed so that it is found empty). As was the case elsewhere, the shifts between metaphors do not necessarily invite readers to distinguish between the different possible referents of the city concept, but reveal, first and foremost, that the city is a complex being, only to be understood through multiple metaphors. Some of these are concrete, such as the personification of the city space, while others are more abstract such as the container metaphor. The verse from Jeremiah 51 shows that each of the urban metaphors also brings different aspects to the fore: the city’s role as an owner (person), the city as a palpable, material construction (building), and the city as an empty container (container).

The Body and the Building Conceptually, bodies and buildings go hand in hand. In various writings including the Hebrew Bible, metaphors based on their mutual connection appear2: buildings are seen as living bodies, prone to change and with a heartbeat of their own; similarly, bodies are buildings as the houses of our thoughts and feelings. The reason for this connection is obvious: bodies, and in particular human bodies, have a lot in common with buildings. Both take up a position in space as physical volume; they have a physical presence in the world. Furthermore, bodies and buildings have distinguishable parts, such as hands or a head for the human body and rooms and windows for buildings. In addition, the materiality of both plays a crucial role in their survival: a hurt body could die, and a breached building may collapse. The conceptual proximity between the two images shows in various passages where the text shifts from body-based metaphors (such as the city is a person or the city is an animal) to building metaphors.3 In Isaiah 60:10, the prophecy envisages Jerusalem both as built environment subject to processes of construction and destruction and as a person, waited upon and taken back after being rejected (language typical of the marriage metaphor with which the relationship between God and Jerusalem is sometimes described).4

6  City Building  And sons of strangers will rebuild your walls, and their kings will serve you, because in anger I hit you, but in favor I had mercy on you.

145

‫ובנו בני נכר חמתיך‬ ‫ומלכיהם ישרתונך‬ ‫כי בקצפי הכיתיך‬ ‫וברצוני רחמתיך‬

Verse 10 consistently uses the same deictic markers (fem. sg.) (Firstspace), indicating that place and personification are one. The walls function as the female city’s body, reminding of the building of God of the first human beings.5 The rebuilt walls correspond in the parallelism with the smitten city (Firstspace), suggesting that the ‘you’ in the second line also draws on the building metaphor. Line two and four of the verse use the same deictic ‘you,’ but here the choice of the verbs (Firstspace) points in the direction of a personification (Secondspace). Isaiah 60:10 not only shows that metaphorical shifts between building and person go smoothly and quickly, it even hints at their potential merger. The first line already includes both images. As a result, the next line may inherit some of that ambiguity. Similarly, the third line opens with a verbal phrase that can be used with human as well as place objects. Since the ‘you’ throughout verse 10 remains the same, readers will try to unify this referent and the different images evoked throughout their reading. The underlying idea that bodies are like buildings or that buildings are like bodies (depending on which image occurs first in the passage a reader looks at) assists in making metaphorical shifts without much interruption of the reading process. The Thirdspace of Isa 60:10 (and following for that matter) blurs the distinction between the two conceptual metaphors (building and person).6 Such transcendence of existing categories recurs more frequently in the later Isaianic texts, underwriting the idea that new times require new conceptualizations. The connection between bodies and buildings becomes even clearer when the built environment of the city is personified, such as in Isa 3:26. The prophecy envisions Jerusalem first as a woman (Secondspace), drawing her picture with vocabulary that identifies her as such (loincloth, hairdo, garment, beauty; all Firstspace). This image also appears earlier on in Chap. 3 as well as in Chap. 1. Verse 26 replaces the city-as-a-woman metaphor temporarily with a personification of the metaphor the city is a building (Secondspace). In other words, it metaphorizes the active conceptual metaphor, relying on the bodily connection between both

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images.7 This results in an embodied cityscape where experience and physicality are key, whether it entails outside apparel or inside attire (Thirdspace). Remarkably, the feelings of the city are to be found in the personified building image (gates lament and mourn), whereas the perceivable appearance is attached to the conceptual metaphor the city is a person (perfume/rot, loincloth/rope, hairdo/baldness, fine garment/ sackcloth). Together they produce a chiastic and unified cityscape in which body and mind of the city are equally present (Thirdspace). And it will be that instead of perfume, there will be rot and instead of a loincloth, a rope and instead of a hairdo, baldness, and instead of a fine garment, a girding sackcloth, for instead of beauty. 25 Her men shall fall by the sword, and her mighty ones in war. 26 And her gates will lament and mourn, and she shall be emptied; on the ground she will sit. 24

‫ והיה‬24 ‫תחת בשם מק יהיה‬ ‫ותחת חגורה נקפה‬ ‫ותחת מעשה מקשה קרחה‬ ‫ותחת פתיגיל‬ ‫מחגרת שק‬ ‫כי תחת יפי‬ ‫ מתיך בחרב יפלו‬25 ‫וגבורתך במלחמה‬ ‫ ואנו ואבלו פתחיה‬26 ‫ונקתה‬ ‫לארץ תשב‬

The phrase about the gates attracts the reader’s attention, in particular because it deviates from the known and expected metaphors for city space, turning instead to the personified building. Thus, it is not the city-­woman who is lamenting, but her gates.8 The personification of the city as a whole (vv. 24–25) transfers to her physical parts (v. 26). The human body of the city, evoked by the mentioning of clothes, hairdo and a beautiful appearance, has become the built body of the city, with gates, towers and houses. In the remainder of verse 26 the metaphorical shifts continue. After the mourning gates, the city is emptied as a container can be emptied (see later container chapter), whereupon the initial metaphor of the city is a person reappears: ‫לארץ תשב‬, “on the ground she will sit.” The final cityscape is one of nothingness and destruction (Thirdspace): an empty container and a personified city on the ground. Similar to the previous, more positive example, the space created in the text no longer draws on clearly distinguishable categories, such as houses or people. The envisioned destruction undermines such distinctions, affecting the city in all her aspects and all her images.

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Pars Pro Toto The metaphor the city is a building does not only neatly connect with the body metaphor and in extension the personification of cities, it also draws on the physical appearance of text-external cities as built environment. A city consists of a gathering of buildings, making the metaphor a pars pro toto (a part standing for the whole), and thus metonymically linked to the set-up of a physical city. This experiential background of the metaphor sometimes shines through in the text when city parts are used to represent the whole city or its essence. Attacks of cities are often described by mentioning the breach or collapse of their walls. The walls, as the outer boundaries of the city, stand for the city itself, including its people, animals, goods and activities. In Amos 1:7, fire will be sent down upon the wall of Gaza and devour the fortresses. A similar fate is awaiting Tyre in verse 10 and Rabbah in verse 14. These short phrases depict the total destruction of the city space. Everything inside the walls will be affected by the fire as well. Drawing on a building metaphor, the created cityscape focuses on the transiency of cities. With their perishable bodies, they evoke spaces of temporality and vulnerability, as such becoming spatial counterparts of their mortal inhabitants and creators (Thirdspace). Despite the connection with physical space, the building metaphor is more than a description of critical-spatial Firstspace. When enemies attack a city, they obviously want to do more than just destroy the place. Likewise, God aims at much more than the material Sodom and Gomorrah when he sets the cities on fire. As it is said in Gen 19:25: “And he overturned these cities (‫ )ויהפך את העירם האל‬and the whole environs (‫)כל הככר‬, and all the inhabitants of the cities (‫ )כל ישבי הערים‬and the vegetation of the ground (‫)צמח האדמה‬.” In other words, the destruction affects everything in and even around the geographical city space. For that matter, the cause of the annihilation is not to be found in the physical city, but in the behavior of its inhabitants. Nevertheless, the quoted verse, as well as the ones surrounding it, draws on conceptualizations of Sodom and Gomorrah as buildings (and containers) (Secondspace). You can break them down, set them on fire and they will collapse. They generate in Genesis 19 a cityscape of complete destruction (Thirdspace).

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Not all passages drawing on the building metaphor imagine destruction, that is, the opposite of building. When the psalmist in Psalm 48 praises God, he introduces several images for the city of God. In verse 4, he says “through its palaces, God has made himself known as a safe place.” Here, he draws on the metaphor the city is a building to add a notion of safety and physical protection as well as grandeur to the cityscape.9 What is more, God becomes the space, at least the retreat that is created through the fortified citadels.10 And in Song of Songs, it is the occasional mentioning of parts of the physical city (Firstspace), activating the building metaphor (Secondspace), that generates the labyrinthine cityscape of the book (Thirdspace).11 Whereas this urban space is not as friendly as the one in Psalm 48, it does produce a space of actual physicality that can be perceived and experienced. From the streets (Song 3:2) to the mother’s house (Song 3:4) and from the door of the beloved (Song 5:6) to the guards at the wall (Song 5:7), the Song creates a city space that is made and inhabited by its human characters. The city in the Song is cobbles, doors and walls, hard surfaces and physical barriers. But it is also the ivory tower of David, resembled in the body of the beloved (4:4 and 7:5). Thus, the Song not only maps the city as if it is a building, it also maps the city upon the body of its human protagonists.12 This becomes particularly clear in the closing chapter (Song 8), where first the little sister and consequently the female lover are described with city vocabulary. 9 “If she is a wall, we will build upon her a silver battlement; if she is a door, we will barricade her with a plank of cedar.” 10 I am a wall, and my breasts are like towers, so I became in his eyes as one who finds peace.

‫ אם חומה היא‬9 ‫נבנה עליה טירת כסף‬ ‫ואם דלת היא‬ ‫נצור עליה לוח ארז‬ ‫ אני חומה‬10 ‫ושדי כמגדלות‬ ‫אז הייתי בעיניו‬ ‫כמוצאת שלום‬

The city space, roamed before by the characters, now turns into the character of the story. Or rather, the characters become the city space (Thirdspace).13 All the typical features to create the metaphor the city is a building are present: the verb ‫בנה‬, “build,” city parts such as the wall (‫)חומה‬, the door (‫ )דלת‬and the tower (‫)מגדל‬, and material, such as silver (‫ )כסף‬or cedar (‫( )ארז‬Firstspace). Similar to the other descriptions of the

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lovers, the focus is on the bodily presence of the characters. As such, the particular use of the building metaphor is in line with the overall tone of the Song as an expression of sensory perception.14

Parts Just like the body metaphor draws on body parts, the building metaphor does on building parts. These include walls, gates, towers, fortifications and so on. Note that, in order to evoke a building metaphor, the text must play out the material aspect of the city parts and their physical presence (or destruction), rather than their role as markers of a boundary (in which case they evoke the metaphor the city is a container) or its height (in which case the city is conceptualized as a height). In other words, it is the specific context that will determine which image of the city underlies the text rather than the building part itself. Consider, for example, Josh 6:5 in which Jericho’s wall collapses. And it will be, when they make a long blast with the horn of the ram, when you hear the sound of the horn, all the people will shout a great shout; and the wall of the city will fall underneath it, and the people will go up, every man straight before him.

‫והיה במשך בקרן היובל כשמעכם‬ ‫את קול השופר יריעו כל העם‬ ‫תרועה גדולה ונפלה חומת העיר‬ ‫תחתיה ועלו העם איש נגדו‬

The verse focuses on sensory experience of the battle scene with sounds of the horn and of people. It is almost as if this physical sound is what makes the physical wall of the city collapse. Obviously, the passage also plays with the idea of the destruction of the wall as boundary and, therefore, the destruction of the city as container (Secondspace). Yet, the city is a building metaphor is more outspoken than the city is a container metaphor here. Compare for that matter with Josh 6:20 in which the announced downfall of verse 5 is actually taking place. In that verse, other metaphors are explored as well: the container metaphor (‫ויעל העם‬ ‫העירה‬, “the people went up to the city”) and the object metaphor (‫וילכדו‬ ‫את העיר‬, “they captured the city”). In verse 5 though, these aspects are not present, as if the collapse of the wall also stands for the collapse of the city. The space the people go up to does not seem to be identified as city

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anymore, at least not in terms of a container they may enter. The building has been torn down and that seems to be the end of the city as it was. Whereas Joshua 6:5 focuses on the walls, Ezek 26:9–12 mentions several building parts and building material, evoking both the image of a big construction and the equally massive destruction that follows. The blow of his battering rams he will give to your walls (‫)בחמותיך‬, and your towers (‫ )מגדלתיך‬he will pull down with his swords. 10 An abundance of his horses, their dust will cover you; your walls (‫ )חומותיך‬will shake at the sound of horseman, wheel and chariot when he enters your gates (‫)בשעיך‬ as those who enter a breached city. 11 With the hoofs of his horses he will trample all your streets (‫)חוצותיך‬. Your people with the sword he will kill them; and your strong pillars (‫ )מצבות‬will come down to the ground. 12 And they will make a spoil of your wealth and plunder your merchandise, throw down your walls (‫ )חומותיך‬and pull down your pleasant houses (‫)בתי חמדתך‬, and your stones (‫ )אבניך‬and your wood (‫ )עציך‬and your debris (‫ )עפרך‬in the water they will put it. 9

Ezekiel applies the building metaphor to imagine both the constructed and destructed city. Each of the building parts is attacked separately: the walls are facing the blow of the battering rams, the towers those of swords (v. 9). The attack affects the city as building on various sensory levels. The rams and swords of verse 9 play on the sensory field of touch, whereas verse 10 with noise making the walls shake focuses on sound. The movement in the cityscape is counterintuitive to the metaphor used. The city as building typically evokes notions of stability and safety, yet these notions are torn down together with the walls and towers (Thirdspace). The downward movement also continues when Ezekiel shifts from building parts to building material. After the larger constructions have come down to the ground, the parts are thrown into the water. This two-step process adds to the destructive nature of the cityscape. By mentioning multiple rather than one building element, Ezekiel evokes a cityscape of totality that remembers the greatness of the city as well as the complete disaster of its demise. What was and what is are placed next to each other with the latter conceptually taking down the former. The cityscape produced is inherently human, emphasizing that even the strongest city with

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all of these parts and materials remains a human construction, vulnerable to attacks (Thirdspace). In that respect, the imagery fits neatly with the personified city (Secondspace) that plays in this passage a role as well. God is addressing a person (the ‘you’ in the passage). The city-as-building can therefore also be considered as the body of the city-woman. The parallels are obvious. The kind of attack envisioned in the prophecy is the kind a human being would not survive, being literally ripped apart. Resultantly, the city would not survive either. The combination of both metaphors, mediated through the body metaphor, generates a cityscape that expresses mortality, humanity and temporality (Thirdspace). For both metaphors, the opposites of their core values are explored: destruction rather than construction, and down rather than up (for the city is a building); and attacked rather than attack, and death rather than life (for the city is a woman). This double denial on the conceptual level leads to a spatial experience twice as powerful.

Materiality Crucial to the building metaphor is its building material. In this respect, the image fundamentally differs from the container metaphor with which it shows some overlap. The building is not so much about a boundary and a content (characteristic of the container metaphor, see next chapter) but about the boundary itself defining a volume in space and made of particular material. In the city is a building metaphor, the city truly becomes physical, one of stones and cobbles, glass and iron; but also blood and tears, bones and flesh. In Ezekiel 26:12, traditional, real-life building material can be found: “They will throw down your walls and pull down your pleasant houses, and your stones and your wood and your debris in the water they will put it.” However, other material is used as well, as is the case in Josh 6:26: “Cursed before the Lord be the man, who will get up to fortify this city Jericho: with his firstborn he will found it, and with his youngest he will set up its gates.”15 The text imagines here a city space built with dead sons.

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Materiality of the city is part of its conceptualization, and thus Secondspace. When Genesis 11:3 discusses the building of Babel with “bricks as stone and bitumen as mortar,” it envisions a material city space built up through actual labor. Scholars have argued that the mentioned materials express a difference in building practice between Israel and Mesopotamia (e.g., Sarna 1989, 82, Waltke and Fredricks 2001, 178–79), clearly considering the passage describing the city outside the text-world. Whereas this may well be, they overlook that the passage also is part of the textual city building. Each of the words adds to the image of the city as a building, as an environment construed with physical material. Also the frequently repeated verb ‫בנה‬, “build or construe,” and the mention of the tower can be read in that light (Firstspace). As building action and building part, they further develop the concept of the city as a building (Secondspace). They materialize the “there,” ‫שם‬, mentioned at the very beginning of Genesis 11 as the location in the valley of Shinar where the people found their city space. The cityscape is truly one of materializing ideas and localizing identity through a spatial anchor point, the city (Thirdspace). Later on in the chapter, the focus shifts from materiality of the city to other aspects. What is more, in Gen 11:8, it is explicitly stated that there is no further building. The writers make clear to the reader that the previously valid concept of the city as a building no longer is. Other conceptualizations have taken its place, such as the city is a container. However, it should be noted that at no point the story presents the city as a destroyed building. The ultimate attack is of a different nature and is expressed with other conceptual metaphors, as will be shown later.

Construction and Destruction Two processes are intrinsically connected to the building metaphor, that of building or construction on the one hand and that of destruction on the other hand. These processes affect the materiality of the city and the essence of the metaphor, and ultimately the viability of the city. In its Jewish canonical form, the Hebrew Bible opens and closes with cities being built. In Genesis 4, Cain founds Henoch and in 2 Chron 36:23

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Cyrus says to have been charged with the task to build God a house in Jerusalem. Self-evidently, the longer passages drawing on the building metaphor in a positive sense are those where the rebuilding of Jerusalem is described, such as in the book of Nehemiah (Nehemiah 3 in particular) or Ezekiel 40–48.16 In these chapters, a detailed account is given of the renewed Jerusalem and its physical features. By drawing on the building metaphor, the produced space is experienced as total and stable. The laborious work carried out by the builders results in a city that has an identity. This identity is perceived as strong and established (Thirdspace). Overall, though, the metaphor the city is a building is more often used in passages that depict the destruction of the city. First of all, this has to do with the stories in the Bible and their themes. The building of the house of Israel and the kingdom of God, to continue the building metaphor, is a process that involves encounters with other people and other gods. These encounters are not always peaceful; they include destructions of city spaces both of foreign nations and of the city of Jerusalem. For that matter, the Hebrew Bible is not a building account, but an account that draws on a building metaphor. Second, creating cityscapes of destruction with the afore-mentioned metaphor adds an extra dimension to the text. Destruction is conceived in light of construction. Rather than as a strict dichotomy, the building metaphor presents a more holistic approach to city spaces, in which rise and fall are part of one and the same concept. Also, it shows that conceptually the annihilation of city space is seen as an act of building or formation, even though it involves an undoing of previously built space.17 Destruction scenes with the building metaphor typically draw on one of the following features: the collapse of walls or fire as the means to destroy the city. As pointed out already, walls play a dual role, realizing possibly two if not three conceptual metaphors for the city (container, building and height). When considered as Firstspace of the city is a building metaphor, walls are explored for their material presence. The attack of the walls as description of destroyed city space stands for an undoing of urban stability and functionality. They affect the wall, and in extension the city, at its core. Affected city walls generate cityscapes of incompleteness, insecurity and dysfunctionality. This change in physical appearance has far-reaching effects, making other conceptualizations of

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the city, such as the city is a container or the city is a height virtually impossible. Not only the city itself but also its imagination by the reader is affected (Thirdspace). This is well illustrated in Lam 2:8–9, in which the broken walls, gates and bars close off ideas of the city as container. Hence, in verse 9, the text states that the city lacks a king and princes, instruction and divine vision. None of these can reside in the city because its physical presence, which possibly functions both as actual and conceptual container, is no longer. The Lord made a plan to destroy the wall of daughter Zion; he measured with a line, he did not make his hand return from destroying. He has made mourn fortress and wall, together they waste away. 9 They are sunk into the earth, her gates, he destroyed and shattered her bars. Her king and her princes are among the nations, there is no instruction; her prophets do not find vision from the Lord. 8

‫ חשב יהוה להשחית‬8 ‫חומת בת ציון‬ ‫נטה קו לא השיב ידו‬ ‫מבלע‬ ‫ויאבל חל וחומה‬ ‫יחדו אמללו‬ ‫ טבעו בארץ שעריה‬9 ‫אבד ושבר בריחיה‬ ‫מלכה ושריה בגוים‬ ‫אין תורה‬ ‫גם נביאיה לא מצאו‬ ‫חזון מיהוה‬

This impact also works in a different way, in that the text blurs the boundaries between different conceptual images because of the dissolution of one of them (Thirdspace). In Lamentations 2:8–9, the destruction of the wall leads to a blurring of the boundaries between the city as building and the city as a woman. The building parts disappear and become part of the personified city. This reduction of imagery not only emphasizes the unity of the city concept as a whole (with different manifestations for one referent) but also generates a feeling of loss. The destruction of the city as building results in a limitation of the city’s identity and complexity (Thirdspace). What remains are emotions, not physical presence, as if the city-woman has become mind and feeling without body. In addition to the attack of walls, the biblical text often speaks of cities burnt down. This is done both with verbal expressions, such as in Josh 8:28 with the verb ‫“( שרף‬I will burn down Ai”), and with the mention of the noun ‫אש‬, “fire,” such as in Jer 17:27 (“I will kindle a fire in her gates and it will devour the palaces of Jerusalem”) (Firstspace). Fire in the

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155

Bible, just like water, has a double role: life giving as well as life threatening (Fields 1997, 134–35). Both functions appear in relation to God and human beings. However, whereas water keeps its dual role when it comes to textual city space, fire does not.18 Fire and cities equal destruction.19 This fire is always connected to the physical presence of the city space and its perishable materials that can be affected by fire.20 In Amos 1:14, it is the wall that is set on fire, whereas in Neh 2:17 the gates are the ones that burn. In yet other passages, the specific part affected is not mentioned, but rather the whole city seems to be subject to the destroying nature of the fire, such as in Isa 1:7 (“your land is a desolation and your cities are burned down with fire”). Also in the following passage of Jer 21:8–10, fire affects the city as a whole. And to this people you will say: “Thus says the Lord: Behold, I set before you the way of life and the way of death. 9 He who stays in this city will die by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence; but he who goes out and surrenders to the Chaldeans who are besieging you will live and he will have his life as spoil. 10 For I have set my face against this city for bad and not for good, says the Lord: into the hand of the king of Babylon it will be given, and he will burn it with fire.” 8

In this prophecy, several conceptualizations of the city occur: the city is a container (with people in it, v. 9), the city is a person (the opponent of God, v. 10), the city is an object (given to the king of Babylon, v. 10) and the city is a building (all Secondspace). The building metaphor occurs only at the end of verse 10, when the prophecy has taken a clearly negative turn, starting with God considering the city as his opponent at the beginning of the verse, to consequently objectivize it. As a final step, the city already reduced to its material presence will be burnt down, as such wiping out the last bit of its existence. The conceptual metaphors work here in sequence, building up to a cityscape of total destruction via gradual deconstruction of the city’s defining characteristics. This step-by-step process prolongs the image of the downfall. It almost resembles the process of dehumanization that might take place before one person kills another (Thirdspace). By ticking of the city’s primary conceptualizations one by one, the text construes a cityscape that

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not only renders a landscape of desolation in terms of spatial location of the narrative, but also a blank in the conceptualization of the city on a metanarrative level (Thirdspace). How does Jeremiah conceptualize the city at the end of verse 10? He does not! Rather, he turns to the house of Judah, addressing a different referent now that there is nothing to be addressed in terms of city.

Notes 1. A few exceptions can be found when it comes to Zion, God’s abode, which is sometimes said to be established by God (see Isa 14:32). 2. Scholars have noted the body’s role in architecture (e.g., Bloomer and Moore 1977) as well as its role in the language of architecture (Caballero 2006, 17). 3. Examples can be found in, but are not limited to, Isa 49:15–16; 51:20, 23; 52:9; and 54:11–12. 4. In previous research, the shifts have been discussed merely as shifts in referents of Zion, depending on which one the text foregrounds at a particular time (Darr 1994, 193). 5. Gen 2:7: ‫ויצר יהוה אלהים את האדם עפר מן האדמה‬, “And the Lord God formed the human being with dust from the earth” and Gen 2:22: ‫ויבן‬ ‫יהוה אלהים את הצלע … לאשה‬, “and the Lord God built the side … into a woman.” 6. In his analysis of Isaiah 60, Christopher Jones distinguishes the two conceptual metaphors as well, even though he does not refer to them with this very label. He points out that there is a correlation between physical space and conceptual space (2014, 616). Drawing on the changed extratextual circumstances, he argues that for Isaiah 60 “urban imagery dominates, while feminine personification appears only incidentally … Yhwh’s dawning over Zion, and not Zion’s feminine personification, is the controlling metaphor of Isa 60” (618). 7. According to O’Brien (pacing Rachel Magdalene 1995, 333), the opposite process is taking place: the gates are a metaphor for the genitals of the personified city space. In her reading, the passage sticks to the same conceptual metaphor for the city, that of personification (2008, 109). Ulrich Berges considers the walls and gates to be a synecdoche for the personified city (2001, 61).

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8. City gates which mourn have been identified as typical of the city-lament genre (Dobbs-Allsopp 1993, 147). 9. Rebecca Watson speaks of “positive associations” for the word ‫משגב‬, “stronghold” (2018, 209), adding to the overall positive tone of the Psalm (211). Note that the word also has semantic connotations of height (e.g., Low 2013, 46). 10. Frank Hossfeld and Till Steiner call it “a close association of God with the city, whereby the use of ‫ משגב‬serves as a real metaphor for God” (2013, 252). They see the city as a Realsymbol of God himself, with “the earthly temple and heavenly palace … one” (254). 11. In several of his pieces, Meredith interprets the Song’s city as a labyrinth, “a fusing, or better a (con)fusing, of the spatiality of the reading process with the spatiality of sexual relationships” (2013, 3). When discussing the textual city in the Song, he describes it “as an edifice designed to hide the things within it” (2018, 96). This description draws both on a building and container metaphor, which are also found in the text of the Song of Songs. 12. For a discussion of the city as body as well as the city as woman, both of which play a role in the Song of Songs as well, see the respective chapters and mentioned references there. 13. Ellen Davis allegorically considers the female lover in the Song to be a metaphor for daughter Zion throughout the whole Song, “the embodiment of Daughter Zion” (2008, 171). In various other works, the connection between city and (female) character has been discussed, briefly or more elaborately. More recent insights can be found in Thöne (2012), Meredith (2013), James (2017b), Meredith (2018). 14. Ronald Hendel speaks of “the woman’s lovely body, the man’s graceful physicality, the sensory pleasures of love-making” when discussing the associations of the metaphors in the Song of Songs (2019, 64). 15. Standard translations, such as NRSV or JPS, say, “at the cost of,” meaning that he will lose his sons while building. Indirectly they will become building material. I have chosen to express the metaphor more explicitly in my translation with a more openly instrumental use of the preposition. 16. Scholars have noted that the personified city, featuring so prominently in the earlier chapters of Ezekiel is absent in chapters 40–48 (Galambush 1992, 147–57, 160–61). 17. This more holistic view on processes of creation and destruction can also be seen in the account of the flood in Genesis 6–9, where performative

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language similar to that of the creation narratives can be found. The text presents the flood as another creation of God (Vermeulen 2017e, 306–307). 18. In city contexts, water becomes a commodity controlled by its human inhabitants. Nevertheless, the dual role of water remains: water gives life to the city, but in warfare it is often cut off, resulting in the opposite (Vermeulen 2014, 166–74). 19. Fields considers this a motif in biblical storytelling: “the burning of a city is the standard punishment for transgressions perpetrated by its inhabitants” (1997, 135). What is more, “the close actual correlation between fire and destruction in the ancient world would lead the reader of a biblical narrative to anticipate ‘fire’ when he or she is told that a destruction is underway or about to take place” (137). 20. There are no animal cities or female cities burnt alive. There are, however, rare occasions where the city as height is burnt down (e.g., Jer 51:25 with Babylon as a burnt down mountain) or the city as container is filled with fire (e.g., Num 21:28 with fire going out of Heshbon). Yet all in all, the passages with fire and city as buildings are far more numerous, suggesting that the primary connotation for city and fire is set up with the building metaphor.

7 Container City

Cities are home to people and goods, but also emotions and functions. All of these can move in and out of the city space, rendering it full and empty respectively. This very common representation of the city draws on a basic way to speak about cities in terms of containers. Cognitive linguists consider this container metaphor to be one of the basic, ontological metaphors we use to understand a variety of concepts. Drawing on our own container, the human body, we assess events, actions and abstracts as possible containers (Lakoff and Johnson 2003/1980, 29–30; Kövecses 2010, 38–39). Containers typically exhibit certain characteristic. They have a shell, creating a boundary, and a content surrounded by that boundary (Lakoff and Johnson 2003/1980, 29). With the city as target domain, the shell represents the physical city, and in particular its outer boundaries, while the content stands for whatever is inside the city and deserves the reader’s attention, often the inhabitants, as in the following example from Josh 6:21: “They destroyed everything that was in the city from man to woman, from young to old, and from ox to sheep and donkey, with the sword.”1 Scholars have understood many of the passages with the city-as-­ container image as critical-spatial Firstspace or the physical aspect of the © The Author(s) 2020 K. Vermeulen, Conceptualizing Biblical Cities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45270-4_7

159

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city. Christl Maier, for example, considers Isa 49:19, in which ruins and desolate places will become inhabited and crowded again, the perceived space (Firstspace) of the larger passage of Isa 49:14–21. The accompanying Secondspace is the personification of Jerusalem as a woman, according to her analysis (2008c, 166). This example illustrates precisely that conceptual metaphors not necessarily translate into literary metaphors in a text. In addition, it shows that readers are trained to spot the latter because of their defamiliarizing effect, but not the former, exactly because they draw on experientially based images that come across as natural. Thus, Maier discusses the city as a woman, not the city as a container. Despite the general neglect of the metaphor the city is a container in scholarship (apart from Gray 2018), the existing studies offer support for the claim that the container city is a conceptual metaphor found in the text. With one eye on the material city, these studies speak of movements in and out of the city space, as if it is a single box with defined boundaries. Peter Preston and Paul Simpson-Housley call the city “a vessel, filled with human experience” (1994, 1), while Mary Mills states the following on Ezek 5:8–17: “The city of violence is ultimately a city targeted by an enduring anger from the outside” (2012, 225). The container metaphor also underlies images of biblical cities without walls, as in Prov 25:28: “A breached city without wall (‫ )עיר פרוצה אין חומה‬is a man who has no self-control.” The whole image of the city still draws on the container metaphor, with boundaries that are less physically marked, but conceptually still there.2 Furthermore, the city’s borders are permeable. There are many gates and doors, as stated in Neh 7:3: “The gates of Jerusalem will not to be opened until the heat of the day” or 2 Kgs 14:13: “And he made a breach in the wall of Jerusalem from the Ephraim Gate to the Corner Gate, 400 cubits.” Lastly, some spaces in the city are containers themselves, such as the houses or the temple (Gray 2018, 22), while others are open areas becoming containers as the voids in between the actual containers of houses, temple and palaces (think of streets and squares). Thus, the city can be conceived as a collection of containers of which some arise in the negative spaces of others. The opening lines of Song 3 draw exactly on this conceptualization, with the character moving from the container of the house to that of the town, and from that of the house to that of the voids of the streets and squares.

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161

In and Out (Into/Out of) In a recent article on the semantics of ‫עיר‬, Alison Gray argues that the city as container evokes two associations: protection and contents (Gray 2018, 20).3 Yet, she discards the former as not essential to the biblical city because of the lack of walls or fortifications in some text passages and archaeological evidence (Gray 2018, 28, 32). I would like to counterargue that protection is essential to the city concept, especially in light of other conceptual metaphors used for the city, such as the city is a mother. Even when the text does not explicitly mention walls, indeed associated with protection, the metaphor the city is a container itself brings this association to the fore. The container of the city protects whatever is inside its boundaries (whether that be walls or not), just like the human skin forms a protective barrier for the flesh, organs and bones that make up inner parts of the body. Moreover, a concept is not built up by means of singular references of the word ‫( עיר‬with or without walls) but through larger narratives. In those narratives, the notion of protection can be evoked by much more than just the actual word ‫עיר‬. In other words, whether protection is fundamental to the actual biblical city depends on textual cityscaping, that is, its use in a particular text. Finally, a semantic analysis of ‫ עיר‬informed by archaeology has its merits, but also its limits. The textual city does not necessarily have to play by the physical laws of the historical city. It obviously is informed by them, but it can consequently create a different reality. Textual cities are built following different rules, including imagination and association (e.g., Mills 2012; Meredith 2013; Gomel 2014). The cities in the biblical text may well be protected by walls, even when the real-life cities were lacking them, or by people, or words, or God for that matter. In Zechariah 2:8–9, for example, Jerusalem is described as follows: ‫פרזות תשב ירושלם מרב אדם ובהמה‬ ‫בתוכה‬, “as open country Jerusalem will settle a multitude of people and cattle within it” and with God as “a wall of fire all around it.” Both verses draw on the container metaphor to envision the city space, even though the first container lacks material boundaries through its comparison with an open space and the second container has a surreal border with God.4

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The container is evoked textually by means of the lexical items ‫פרזות‬, “open country,” ‫חומה‬, “wall,” and ‫סביב‬, “around” as well as by the prepositional phrase ‫בתוכה‬, “within it” (Firstspace). Whereas protection is a cognate correlate of the city-as-container, the more central element of the metaphor is its possession of a boundary, whatever associations one wants to connect to that. That boundary creates a crucial, spatial division between what is inside the container and what is outside of it (Lakoff and Johnson 2003/1980, 29). Studies on ancient cities have argued that cities function as a safe inner space whereas its surroundings form an unsafe outer space. There is city and there is wilderness (e.g., Pearson and Richards 1994b, 52).5 Walls exteriorize the distinction between the two and have a protective role: they keep the chaos outside of the city space. Cognitive-stylistically speaking, the presence of a boundary allows an exploration, and even a play, with the image-schema of the container. In addition to the basic schema with something in the container, things can move in or out of the container, as represented in the images below (Fig. 7.1). As Alison Gibbons and Sara Whiteley have formulated it, “in and out are dynamic extensions of the containment image-schema which involve motion, …, in to or out of the container” (2018, 211). For the biblical city both the basic schema and its extensions are found in the text. The different forms appear within the same books, both in prose and poetry. Consider the following examples from Jer 49:25–26 and Jer 52:25 respectively.

CONTAINER

Fig. 7.1 

containment

IN

image-schema and extensions

OUT

7  Container City  How has the city of glory (not) been deserted, (static—in) the city of my joy! 26 Surely, its young men shall fall in her squares (static—in), and all her soldiers shall be made silent on that day—declares the Lord of Hosts. 25

25

And from the city (dynamic—in to out) he took a eunuch who was in command of the soldiers; and seven men of those who are intimates of the king, who were found in the city (static—in); and the scribe of the army commander, who waged war against the people of the land; and sixty of the people from the people of the land who were found inside the city (static—in).

163

‫ איך לא עזבה עיר תהלת‬25 ‫קרית משושי‬ ‫ לכן יפלו בחוריה ברחבתיה‬26 ‫וכל אנשי המלחמה ידמו ביום ההוא‬ ‫נאם יהוה צבאות‬

‫ ומן העיר לקח סריס אחד אשר‬25 ‫היה פקיד על אנשי מהלחמה‬ ‫ושבעה אנשים מראי פני המלך‬ ‫אשר נמצאו בעיר ואת ספר שר‬ ‫הצבא המצבא את עם הארץ‬ ‫וששים איש מעם הארץ הנמצאים‬ ‫בתוך העיר‬

In Jeremiah 49, the prophet gives voice to the words of God, who envisions the city as a container, among others (Secondspace). This container is presented as deserted in verse 25, meaning that people, animals and goods have left.6 The verse presents the state after this movement, the result of it, using a passive qal perfect of the verb ‫עזב‬, “leave” (Firstspace). The deserted city is an empty container (or not, depending on whether one follows the suggested emendation; for the metaphor and its discussion this makes no difference). In verse 26, the prophecy continues with another description of the city’s content as static. The young men lie in the squares of the city (‫( )ברחבתיה‬Firstspace). The container is full of dead bodies (on the associations, see below full/ empty). No movement in or out is described. In the second example, from Jeremiah 52, movement is present. The conqueror takes several people out of the city container (‫( )מן העיר‬Firstspace). At the same time, the previous position of the people is depicted through the static version of the containment image-schema, with people in the city (‫( )אשר נמצא בעיר‬Firstspace). This verse combines both treatments of the content of the container city. There is a clear distinction between place and people with the latter never been called ‘city.’ This is very different from the example from Jer 4:29 below, where the different referents are used in a way that blurs the boundaries between them. The city is not just a container of people, but container and people are one.

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From the cry of horseman and bowman the whole city is fleeing. They come into the bushes, and they go up the rocks. The whole city is deserted, and there is not a man dwelling in there.

29

‫ מקול פרש ורמה קשת‬29 ‫ברחת כל העיר‬ ‫באו בעבים‬ ‫ובכפים עלו‬ ‫כל העיר אזובה‬ ‫ואין יושב בהן איש‬

In the beginning of the verse, the whole city flees. The reader will think, first and foremost, of the people, who are the intended opponents of the horseman and bowman attacking the city. However, the whole city also includes animals that may cohabit with the people and perhaps some goods taken on the flight, making the exodus even more dramatic and obvious. In the following lines, it becomes clear that the city at the beginning is indeed its people. The text has changed to plural forms and describes bodily actions of the fleeing city (thus excluding goods) (Firstspace). When verse 26 returns to the deserted city, they use the same word ‫ עיר‬to refer to a different aspect of the larger city concept: the physical space. The buildings, the streets and the squares are deserted. The city is an empty container: no people, probably also no goods (or very little) and no animals, and along with that no cultic aspects, no economic role and no administration to be kept. The whole city fled; the whole city is deserted. The produced cityscape is one that uses the city space as a dynamic entity, which can leave itself (and consequently return). Even when empty, the city remains the point of reference, crucial to define the in/out distinction. The perspective has changed from inside, a here-city, to outside, a there-city, but nevertheless Jeremiah’s gaze, and thus the reader’s, stays on the city, as a space of alienation once its (human) content has left (Thirdspace).7 2 Kings 16:8–9 is similarly ambiguous with regard to what or who is exactly moving out of the city space. Ahaz is threatened by Aram-­ Damascus and Northern Israel, prompting him to ask King Tiglath-­ Pileser of Assyria for help.

7  Container City  8

165

‫ ויקח אחז את הכסף ואת הזהב הנמצא‬8 And Ahaz took the gold and the silver that were found in the house of the Lord and in the ‫בית יהוה ובאצרות בית המלך וישלח‬ ‫ וישמע אליו מלך‬9 ‫למלך אשור שחד‬ treasuries of the royal palace and sent them to the king of Assyria as a present. 9 And the king ‫אשור ויעל מלך אשור אל דמשק‬ ‫ויתתפשה ויגלה קירה ואת רצין המית‬ of Assyria listened to him; and the king of Assyria went up against Damascus and captured it. He deported it to Kir and killed Rezin.

In these lines from 2 Kings 16, the city is conceived as a container, in which there are a temple, a royal palace, treasures (all of which for Jerusalem) and people (for Damascus). Remarkably, in verse 9 the Hebrew text does not shift from singular to plural to indicate that it is the people who are deported. However, many translations chose to render the phrase with the metonymic shift that is found elsewhere in the biblical text.8 They make it clear to the reader that, according to them, the deportation only affects the people, and thus part of the content of the container, rather than other parts of it. The Hebrew text is less concerned with the actual referent of the object of deportation. What is important is that one container, the city Jerusalem, is willingly and partially emptied. The content goes to the king of Assyria, most likely his unnamed city, where it adds to that container’s content (although not mentioned in the text). In response, the king of Assyria attacks Damascus, captures it and deports its people and things; or breaks through the container’s wall and empties the content. In other words, the small gift of Ahaz serves as a conceptual model for the larger act of Damascus’ deportation. Note also that Jerusalem and Damascus are conceived in similar ways, as containers with a certain content that can be removed (Secondspace). What the actual content of the container is, is here less relevant than the action of removal. If the former had been the case, the text would have mentioned the inhabitants or used a metonymic shift (through a switch from singular to plural pronouns or pronominal suffixes), as it does elsewhere. The Thirdspace of verses 8 and 9 is one in which removal is central, whether that is willingly and actively (as with Ahaz) or unwillingly and passively (as with Damascus). Both construe a space of loss, although the losses are not of the same nature and extent. However, something or someone precious to the city leaves in both cases, affecting the wholeness of the city space.

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Therefore, so said the Lord God: “Woe the city of blood, a pot that has rust in it, and her rust does not go out from it. Bring it out piece by piece; no lot has fallen upon it. 7 For her blood is in her; upon a bare rock she set it. She did not pour it out on the ground to cover it with earth. 8 To bring up rage, to take vengeance I give her blood to the bare rock without covering.” 9 Thus, so said the Lord God: “Woe to the city of blood I will make great the pile of wood.” 6

‫ לכן כה אמר אדני יהוה‬6 ‫אוי עיר הדמים‬ ‫סיר אשר חלאתה בה‬ ‫וחלאתה לא יצאה ממנה‬ ‫לנתחיה לנתחיה הוציאה‬ ‫לא נפל עליה גורל‬ ‫ כי דמה בתוכה היה‬7 ‫על צחיח סלע שצתהו‬ ‫לא שפכתהו על הארץ‬ ‫לכסות עליו עפר‬ ‫ להעלות חמה לנקם נקם‬8 ‫נתתי את דמה על צחיח סלע‬ ‫לבלתי הכסות‬ ‫ לכן כה אמר אדני יהוה‬9 ‫אוי עיר הדמים‬ ‫גם אני אגדיל המדורה‬

A last example to illustrate the fluidity of referents as well as metaphors is the above quote passage from Ezekiel 24 (vv. 6–9). Jerusalem is personified as a woman (person) as well as conceived as a container in these verses (Secondspace). Especially the beginning of verse 7 emphasizes the close connection between the different referents within the city concept. Is the first ‘her’ metonymically representing the people who can shed blood and the second ‘her’ the physical place of the city, thus an image of blood laying on the streets? Or is the whole phrase pursuing the city is a woman metaphor with shed blood somehow not leaving the body of that woman, that is, the body as city place? Ezekiel plays out both images very well, using their intricate connection through the idea that human bodies are containers. The double image allows him to emphasize the content of both body and container: a vast amount of blood. This blood would leave the body or container under normal circumstances if it is shed, but not so for this city space where it is unnaturally kept inside. The generated cityscape is one of wrongness and unnaturalness, creating a textual city that defies the physical laws on which its very images are built. Whereas this Thirdspace evokes feelings of uneasiness and impossibility, it is nevertheless produced by the text and thus a possible space.

7  Container City 

167

Entrances and Exits As pointed out before, the boundary of the city is permeable by means of gates and doors. When these entrances (and exits) appear in the text, the city is conceived as a container in the majority of cases.9 The gates function as the lids of the container. In Psalm 100:4, the listeners are invited to enter the gates and praise God, while in Josh 2:7, the spies escape the city with the help of Rahab right before the city gates are closed. One group of gates is particularly interesting conceptually speaking, the gates that metonymically represent the city (Gray 2018, 22), as appearing in Deut 14:28–29. 28

At the end of three years you will bring out the full tithe of your produce in that year and leave it within your gates. 29 And the Levite will come, who has no portion and inheritance like you, and the stranger, the orphan, and the widow who are in your gates, and they will eat and be satisfied, so that the Lord your God may bless you in all the deeds of your hand that you do.

‫ מקצה שלש שנים תוציא את כל‬28 ‫מעשר תבואתך בשנה ההוא והנחת‬ ‫ ובא הלוי כי אין לו חלק‬29 ‫בשעריך‬ ‫ונחלה עמך והגר והיתום והאלמנה‬ ‫אשר בשעריך ואכלו ושבעו למען‬ ‫יברכך יהוה אלהיך בכל מעשה ידך‬ ‫אשר תעשה‬

The basic image of the container is about boundaries, to clearly distinguish between the space in and out of the container and to have the boundary function as a protection of the inner space. Yet simultaneously, the container metaphor is also about crossing that boundary and moving from in to out and vice versa, as illustrated in the example above from Deuteronomy 14. The gates (‫ )שער‬rather than the walls are the impermeable element of the city boundary that are used to represent the city as a container (Firstspace and Secondspace). Resultantly, the container city is, by definition, about exits and entrances. Being within the gates is being within the city, however, always with the possibility to leave again or let other people, goods or entities in. The cityscape of Deuteronomy 14 is one that unites seemingly incompatible spatial elements, envisioning a space of enclosure through its openings (Thirdspace), “a space of responsibility” (Geiger 2013, 42), a space of liminality (Arav 2016, 2).10 Whereas gates are the entry-points of the city space, walls are its no-­ entry places. Walls form the most explicit, physical realization of a city

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boundary. Their function is explicitly foregrounded in passages relating to construction of city space, such as in Ezek 40:5: “and behold a wall outside the temple around and around” or Neh 2:17: “come, let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem.” Similarly, walls play a prominent role in besieging urban ground, such as in Josh 6:5: “All the people will shout and the wall of the city will fall because of it and the people will come up, every man straight ahead.” However, the very existence of gates in the wall creates a paradox: the walls “can only perform their function of separation if they allow penetration and movement … selective penetration” (Pyper 2018, 38). Sometimes walls are not breached, but climbed over, evoking also a height metaphor (see later). When the city is understood through its walls, the cityscape is one of safety and protection, with a static approach to the in/out divide. What is inside is considered to be secured from an unsafe outside (Thirdspace). Thus in 2 Chronicles 14:7, cities are built and surrounded by walls (among others), while in Isa 26:1, the walled city is a strong one. Also the reverse of this image, that is, a breached wall or a lack of walls, draws on the same spatial discourse of protection and security, for example, the breaches in the wall in Amos 4:3 or the lack of walls in Prov 25:28. Occasionally, the walls providing safety are personified, which is the case in Lam 2:8. The Lord made a plan to destroy the wall of daughter Zion; He measured with a line, he did not make his hand return from destroying. He has made mourn fortress and wall, together they waste away.

‫חשב יהוה להשחית‬ ‫חומת בת ציון‬ ‫נטה קו לא השיב ידו‬ ‫מבלע‬ ‫ויאבל חל וחומה‬ ‫יחדו אמללו‬

The verse starts with a personification of the city as daughter with the term ‫בת ציון‬, “daughter Zion” (Firstspace and Secondspace). The wall is introduced as physical structure, prone to destruction and measurable (evoking the metaphor the city is a building). In the third part of the verse, this conceptualization of the city as both woman and building takes a new form: the two metaphors are blended. Or in other words, the city is a building becomes the city is a person. This metaphorization of what is already a conceptual metaphor leads to a cityscape of utter sadness and ephemerality (Thirdspace), perfectly aligned with the city-lament

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genre of which this passage forms an illustration.11 The walls act as the personified city in an emotional way. Their downfall is not that of a material structure breached or collapsing but that of a human body wasting away due to emotional distress. Given that walls are the ultimate protection of the city space, it goes without saying that the depiction of their end also involves the end of the city. Just like the wall was always part of daughter Zion (even though seemingly conceptualized as two different entities at the beginning of the verse), the languished walls mourn over their own death. Rather than a contradiction, the cityscape expresses totality and ubiquity, producing a space where distinctions no longer exist because they no longer matter. In the dead city, all that remains is one, big space of emotion (Thirdspace).

Full and Empty Container metaphors not only create ins and outs; they also invite us to speak of content (Lakoff and Johnson 2003/1980, 30), both in terms of quantity and quality. Cities in the Bible are frequently full one moment and empty another, as in Isa 22:2–3: “Full of shouts, you city that makes noise, you jubilant town … All your leaders have fled together, by the archers they are taken prisoner; all those of you who were found were taken captive together.” Or they are emptied to be refilled again, as in Jer 33:10–11: “Again there will be heard in this place, of which you say it is desolate, without man and without beast—in the towns of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem that are desolate, without man, without inhabitants, and without beast—the sound of joy and the sound of happiness, the voice of bridegroom and the voice of bride.” Full and empty, just like the in/out schema play upon judgments associated with each one of the categories. As Lakoff and Johnson have pointed out, people tend to equate one side with good things and the other side with bad things (2003/1980, 15).12 The biblical writers make ample use of this tendency, evoking a particular association (e.g., a full city container is good) to consequently distort it, resulting in a disorienting effect. The previously discussed animals in the city form a good example of such distortions (see, e.g., Isa 13:19–22). Happy, full cities are attacked and the

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people exiled. As a result, the city container is empty.13 Afterward, wild animals will enter the city space as new inhabitants. The container is full, which should result in a positive association. However, not only the quantity, also the quality matters. The animals are not the right inhabitants for the city space. A container full of animals is as bad, or even worse, than an empty container. In Jeremiah 51, the prophet returns to the container metaphor at various places in the chapter, producing an uncomfortable cityscape for Babylon (Thirdspace).14 3

Destroy all her host (empty)

I will fill you with men like locusts, (full) they will shout against you.

14

26

You will be a desolation forever. (empty)

For the plan of the Lord is fulfilled against Babylon, to make the land of Babylon a waste without inhabitant. (empty) 30 The warriors of Babylon stop fighting, they sit in the strongholds. (full) 29

‫ החרימו כל צבאה‬3 ‫ כי אם מלאתיך אדם כילק‬14 ‫וענו עליך הידד‬ ‫ כי שממות עולם תהיה‬26 ‫ כי קמה על בבל מחשבות יהוה‬29 ‫לשום את ארץ בבל‬ ‫לשמה מאין יושב‬ ‫ חדלו גבורי בבל להלחם‬30 ‫ישבו במצדות‬

Babylon will become a heap a dwelling for jackals, (full) a horror and hissing without inhabitant. (empty)

‫ והיתה בבל לגלים‬37 ‫מעון תנים‬ ‫שמה ושרקה‬ ‫מאין יושב‬

The sea has gone up over Babylon, (full) it is covered by the sound of its wave. (full) 43 Her cities have become desolation. (empty)

‫ עלה על בבל הים‬42 ‫בהמון גליו נכסתה‬ ‫ היו עריה לשמה‬43

37

42

An important step in this process, one which is repeated at several places, is the removal of the original content of the container, the rightful inhabitants. The full containers in these verses are not a restoration of the original content but a distortion of it. Enemies will fill the city in verse 14, resembling a locust swarm, which represents the quantity of the new inhabitants. They will far outnumber the original inhabitants. Whoever is still left at that moment will surely flee. The unfitness of the new content is double: enemies and animals. In verse 30, Babylon’s warriors are hiding in the city, whereas they should be out protecting the city space and the surrounding areas. Once more, the container city is filled with the wrong content. This is also the case in verse 37, where jackals make

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the city their home. No human inhabitants are present; the city has become part of the animal realm, losing more and more of its identifiable characteristics. Similarly, verse 42 speaks of water filling the city, drowning those left behind. Each time the city space is filled with the evocation of a possible positive association, the prophet twists the image, playing with reader expectations. The cityscape of Jeremiah 51 is a dysfunctional one, creating a city space that either lacks content, and thus city, or consists of abnormal and unfit content. The produced Thirdspace deconstructs Babylon textually and conceptually, by undermining its key concepts and redefining them in an un-city or de-city like way.15 In addition to the size of the container and quantity of its contents, the biblical writers play with the quality of the content as well. The quality is often presented through contrast. In addition to animals versus humans, the text includes other opposite contents placed in the city: joy versus sadness, violence versus love, enemy versus ally, and sound versus silence, to name just a few. In Nahum 3:1, Nineveh is called a city “full of violence, where killing does not stop,” while in Ps 147:14, God makes Jerusalem peaceful. Ezekiel describes Jerusalem as “full of lawlessness” (7:23), an image countered by Isa 33:5, where God “filled Zion with justice and righteousness.” Rather than that the inclusion of these opposites renders the city an either-or entity, the different contents present the city space as covering the whole spectrum between those opposites. The city is all-inclusive (Thirdspace). Yet this inclusivity does not become a merism, presenting a totality rather than its parts. The several parts, in this case contents of the container, matter. What is more, they may be opposites, but they are rarely mutually exclusive: joy and sadness can coexist, as do love and violence. As a container of many things, good and bad, the city represents human life, a myriad of concrete and abstract things filling its container.16 As a result, the cityscape is fundamentally human (Thirdspace). Typical spaces within the city that play with the full/empty contrast are streets and squares. Being urban voids, they can easily be filled (or emptied), thus crystalizing the larger city’s container potential in that of particular streets or squares. When characters are roaming the streets, such as in Song of Songs 3 or child murder is happening in those very streets, such as in Nahum 3, the streets are no longer conceived as open

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antipodes of the enclosed spaces of buildings in the city, but as enclosed spaces with the other buildings as their defining boundaries. The streets are filled with chariots in Nah 2:4, while empty streets are pictured in Lam 4:18. Not only people and things fill the container space of the city, but also words and sounds. At various occasions, the biblical text pictures streets or squares to be filled with them (e.g., in Amos 5:16 with wailing in all squares and streets). This is also the case in Prov 1:20–21, where the streets contain the shouts of (personified) Wisdom. Wisdom cries aloud in the streets, in the squares she lifts her voice. 21 At the head of the busy streets she calls; at the entrance of gates, in the city, she speaks. 20

‫ חכמות בחוץ תרנה‬20 ‫ברחבות תתן קולה‬ ‫ בראש המיות תקרא‬21 ‫בפתחי שערים בעיר אמריה תאמר‬

The passage mentions parts of the city as built environment: streets, squares and gates (Firstspace).17 These words are not enough to actually speak of a complete physical description of the city. Rather, they function as triggers to evoke a particular concept of the city. This concept is further construed by means of prepositions (the locational ‫ב‬, “in”) and verbs and their attributes (‫רנן‬, “speak with a ringing tone”; ‫נתן קול‬, “lift the voice” in v. 20; and ‫קרא‬, “cry out” and ‫אמר אמר‬, “speaking words” in v. 21). All of these lead to a concept of the city as a container (Secondspace), particularly, a container full of sound. Wisdom’s voice fills all of the city space, as such reaching every single inhabitant. The spatial experience and its evaluation depend on the viewpoint taken. As argued before, the expected association of the full container is one of positivity and happiness. Such is indeed the case if the experience considered is that of personified Wisdom. She fills the city with her words and insights. The city space becomes the space of wise words, possibly transforming the cityscape. If one takes into account the content of the words (accusations with envisioned punishment, and in the last verse, verse 33, the good fortune of the one who listens), this transformation is indeed intended. Whereas the city at the moment of the utterance of the words is far from a positive space, the words themselves have the power to change the spatial experience to one of happiness and safety. The full container of verses 20 and 21 seems to work as a foreshadowing of the preferred cityscape

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(Thirdspace). This conceptual influence works alongside the long monologue of negative outcomes (vv. 22–32). Whereas the cityscape is positive for Wisdom from the very beginning (just by the very fact that she occupies the place), this spatial experience is only shared by the addressed listener when following the right advice and thus taking the conceptual lead of fullness.

Literal and Metaphorical Content Looking further into the quality of content, biblical cities hold actual or literal content, such as goods or people, and metaphorical content, such as violence or joy. In the case of the former, the phrases are often overlooked as being (conceptually) metaphorical, because the expressions evoke an image of the city that fits neatly with the containment image-­ schema. Thus, in Genesis 18, Abraham negotiates with God about the number of innocent people in the container of Sodom. And in Ezra 5:14–15, the vessels of silver and gold from the Jerusalem temple, taken by Nebuchadnezzar, are set to be brought back to the city. Literal content is also what prompts a division between the geographical aspect of the city, its location and its people, the human capital. When goods are discussed, the referent could be identified in terms of functionality: the city as ritual center (in case of offerings or temple items) or as economic nexus (in case of food, textiles, weapons, precious goods etc.) However, as noted elsewhere, the biblical text does not seem to be too interested in the actual referent of the city space, switching between different source domains throughout even short passages. The container metaphor adds an extra dimension to that with literal and metaphorical content conceptually treated in the same way. The city contains both food and violence, people and joy. The metaphorical content has received more attention than the literal one in research, mostly because it draws readers’ attention more actively. Especially bad and anomalous things seem to have done so. These descriptions deviate from the basic idea that cities can contain people, goods of some sorts and buildings. That is where the text has a whole new city at its availability outside the narrow lines of physical reality. At various

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occasions, the biblical text creates something beyond the memory of a city for the (original) readership.18 Such textual cityscaping becomes a powerful tool to call into being what is not and to shape and experience a textual space rather than a physical one. For the stylistic Firstspace the word ‘people’ is as much a word shaping the city than the word ‘violence.’ Both form the exteriorization of the underlying Secondspace the city is a container, with both people and violence in it. As the reader goes through the text, he or she will experience the content. To illustrate this, consider the following passage from Psalm 144 (vv. 12–14). Make happy our sons like plants,19 brought up in their youth; our daughters like corner-­posts cut the shape of a palace, 13 our storehouses full, providing every kind; our flocks producing thousands, ten thousands in our fields; 14 our cattle laden, there is no breaching and no going out, and no outcry in our squares. 12

‫ אשר בנינו כנטעים‬12 ‫מגדלים בנעוריהם‬ ‫בנותינו כזוית‬ ‫מחטבות תבנית היכל‬ ‫ מזוינו מלאים‬13 ‫מפיקים מזן אל זן‬ ‫צאוננו מאליפות‬ ‫מרבבות בחוצותינו‬ ‫ אלופינו מסבלים‬14 ‫איך פרץ ואין יוצאת‬ ‫ואין צוחה ברחבתינו‬

Psalm 144 ends with an interesting passage, evoking a cityscape that draws on the container metaphor. The city topic is introduced in a peculiar way when the psalmist speaks of the sons and daughters of the people in terms of plants and building material. Note that the people are compared to cities (metonymically) rather than the other way around. The psalmist mentions the corner-posts, giving shape to a palace, thus evoking the image of a container (within the larger container of the city). Verse 13 continues this idea with storehouses full of produce (‫מלא‬, “be full”; Firstspace), equaling the quantity of flock in the fields outside the city (‫אלף‬, “make thousands”; ‫רבב‬, “multiply by ten thousand”; Firstspace). Finally, verse 14 shifts the focus from content to boundary. This boundary is untouched: no bursting through as in the violent attacks of cities (see, e.g., 1 Kgs 11:27 using the same verb ‫ )פרץ‬or the exodus of people (as in Jer 39:4, using the verb ‫)יצא‬.20 In other words, the protective function of the city boundary is intact, which does not necessarily imply that the boundary is locked or closed. People can still freely walk in and

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out of the city space, crossing the boundary. Verse 14 also introduces metaphorical content for the city container that included literal content before, with sound filling the streets (or rather no sound). These three lines in Psalm 144 create a city space that is perfectly built up, full of the right things and lacking the wrong ones, with people as stones, and with the ideal boundary, offering protection but not occlusion. It is a cityscape of hope (Thirdspace).21 The final line of the psalm, calling the people in those places happy (v. 15), does not come as a surprise. It is the conceptual counterpart of the evoked metaphors: full is indeed happy.

Immobility and Mobility The container metaphor renders the city immobile by definition. At least part of the city will be fixed in space, as the shell of the container. Its contents may or may not move and attain some mobility as such. This mobility, however, is not always connected to agency. Very often the contents of the city are moved by others. Think of goods that are taken out of the city after its conquest (e.g., Josh 8:2), or people that are deported from their city (e.g., 2 Kgs 17:6). A nice example of this play with mobility and immobility can be found in Genesis 11, recounting the story of the Tower of Babel. In this story, one of the dominant conceptual metaphors for the city is that of the container. In verse 4, the people imagine the container city as antidote against their fear to be spread out: “Let us build us a city (‫)בננה לנו עיר‬, …; so that we shall not be scattered over the face of the earth (‫נפוץ על פני כל‬ ‫)הארץ‬.” Remarkably, the people imagine that container without having to enter it. They construct its shell around them.22 In verse 7, God picks up on this conceptualization of the city of Babel, although at first seemingly addressing the people’s single language rather than their building activities and place attachment. “He confounds their speech there,” ‫ונבלה שם‬ ‫שפתם‬. The speech of the people (as well as the people that come with it) is conceived as being in the city container. God stirs the pot, but no language or person leaves the container, labeled as “there,” ‫שם‬. Note that the locational adverb ‫ שם‬also occurs at the beginning of the narrative (v. 2)

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when the narrator stated that the people settled there, namely in the valley of Shinar. The city is presented as an immobile entity, fixed in space. After God’s speech, the narrative continues with a summary of the events in verse 8 and an explanatory afterthought in verse 9. Both verses develop the container metaphor further. In verse 8, the people are now said to leave the city (“from there,” ‫)משם‬, switching from immobility to mobility (and from locational to directional adverb; Firstspace), at least for the human part of the city concept.23 What is more, it is God, rather than the people, who is the agent of this mobility. In other words, the city, even in terms of its inhabitants, remains an immobile entity in that it cannot initiate movement itself. Finally, in verse 9, the container of people and the container of languages come together: “There (‫ )שם‬the Lord confused the language of all the earth; and from there (‫ )משם‬the Lord scattered them (‫ )הפיצם‬over the face of all the earth.” The confusion of language was the means by which to get the people out of the city. Furthermore, people and language inhabit the same container. As a result, addressing one element is also affecting the other. Or, turning the language into an incomprehensible mixture inside forces the people out, as if the contents of the container suddenly have become incompatible. The container metaphor also shows very well that the people stopped building (as verse 8 states explicitly) rather than that the city was destroyed. The container remains but its human content is gone. As mentioned elsewhere, such loss touches the city concept at its core: a city without inhabitants is barely a city. This empty container city is a missed chance, urban potential failed to become place (Thirdspace). Most of the metaphorical content of the city lacks mobility. Joy and violence fill the city without entering or leaving, as if they magically appear. They are presented as immobile, even though they were not always there and are not there to stay per se. Thus, Nahum 3:1 mentions a city full of violence, but no entrance or exit of that violence. Similarly, the justice and righteousness of Isa 1:21 dwell in Jerusalem. Even when they are replaced by murders, as stated in the verse, the whereabouts of the previous content are not specified. Gone for sure, but how exactly and where to?24 Also in Isaiah 14:22–23, where God is addressing Babylon, the city is conceived as an immobile entity, subject to God’s actions of cutting, making and cleaning.

7  Container City  22

I will rise up against them—declares the Lord of hosts—and will cut off for Babylon name and remnant, offspring and progeny—declares the Lord 23 and I will make it a possession of bitterns and pools of marshy waters. I will sweep it with a broom of extermination—says the Lord of hosts.

177

‫ וקמתי עליהם נאם יהוה צבאות‬22 ‫והכרתי לבבל שם ושאר ונין ונכד‬ ‫ ושמתיה למורש קפד‬23 ‫נאם יהוה‬ ‫ואגמי מים וטאטאתיה במטאטא‬ ‫השמד נאם יהוה צבאות‬

The container of Babylon holds both metaphorical and literal content (Firstspace). The elimination of both is not presented primarily as a removal, that is, exploring the in/out schema of the city conceptualization (Secondspace). Rather, the contents are destroyed within the container (‫ )הכרת‬to be removed afterward. If the intact contents do not go anywhere, they do not have the opportunity to return or to establish a new city elsewhere (contrary to the Tower of Babel story where the produced cityscape left room for such possibilities).25 In this Oracle against Babylon, there is no getting away or out. The city will die, annihilating itself from within and generating an empty space (Thirdspace). The image is further developed in verse 23, where the deconstruction of the Babylonian city is continued. On the one hand, God will make wrong contents occupy the space, repopulating the container space with animals (‫)קפד‬. On the other hand, he will sweep it. Whether the pile of debris gathered after this sweeping is kept inside or outside the container is not specified. However, it hardly matters because what is left are the pieces of a destroyed city space, synonymous to the lack of name and remnant appearing in verse 22. Mobility is lacking, as is agency. The contents of the city are moved around as a cat plays with a mouse. Conceiving Babylon as such deconstructs the city textually, annihilating it without even touching it (Thirdspace).

Notes 1. Note that the boundaries can but do not have to be city walls. As Alison Gray has pointed out, archaeological research has shown that not all biblical cities had walls. In addition, the biblical text does not always refer to these walls explicitly, when featuring cities (2018, 20, 28–31). In other words, walls may not be essential to the biblical city concept (or at least

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the semantics of the word ‫עיר‬, as Gray has examined), however some sort of a physical boundary is. 2. Lakoff and Johnson argue that humans project the container idea and the notion of boundaries even onto things that do not have boundaries per se (2003/1980, 29). Thus, also fields or forests are conceived as containers, or more importantly for this study, cities, even those without walls. 3. In her piece, Gray focuses on the semantics of the word ‫עיר‬, but given the sort of analysis she makes, with references to archaeology as well as textual material, she also touches upon the conceptualization of city space. This different starting point explains some of my criticism expressed above. 4. Deborah Rooke matches verse 8 with “the idea of suburban sprawl,” linking it to Cornelis de Geus’ observations on the establishment of smaller settlements outside towns (2018, 137; 2003, 172, respectively). Remarkably, both analyses draw on a container conceptualization of urban space, however in a different lay-out. Rooke’s container concept is closer to that of the text, with a boundary that changes (while in the text itself it is denied in one way and present in another), while de Geus proposes additional containers which eventually create a new outer boundary of the city space. 5. This conceptual boundary already existed in pre-urban settings, as the practice of the scapegoat shows in Lev 16:10, 20–22. The sins of the community are transferred upon the goat, whereupon it is sent away from the sanctuary and settlement, unto the desert and realm of the wild. According to Calum Carmichael, “a domestic animal [is] metaphoriz[ed] in an evil devourer of a human being” (2000, 177), a description which underlines the nature of the two spheres involved, civil and wild. Bernd Janowski’s drawing of the spatial symbolism of Leviticus 16 visualizes the container metaphor at work: the enclosed spaces of the sanctuary and surrounding camps release the goat into the open area around it (2014, 209). When the sanctuary is eventually moved to Jerusalem’s temple, thus inside the city, God and city conceptually merge, both representing order. Such does not interfere with the opposition between creation and death, attached to sanctuary and wilderness respectively, as pointed out in previous research (e.g., Zatelli 1998, 262–63; Janowski 2014, 216). What is more, even in Mary Douglas’ interpretation of the scapegoat ritual, the distinction between in and out remains crucial. Douglas opposes the traditional views on the

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punitive interpretation of the scapegoat, with the sins going with the goat into the inaccessible desert. Rather she argues that the “go-away goat” is similar to the freed bird in the ritual of the two birds (Lev 14:6–7) and the ‘freed’ brother in the brother pairs in Genesis (2003, 133–136). The wilderness into which they are sent is only wild to the degree that it does not fall under God’s covenant (2003, 136). 6. Dobbs-Allsopp argues that in verse 25 the gods have left the city, while in verse 26, as a result, people will die. He points at the use of the verb ‫עזב‬ elsewhere to denote divine abandonment, for example, Jer 12:7 (1993, 132). Regardless of the exact content, however, the city is conceived as a container. 7. Maier considers the verse to communicate a state of reversal: “the order of normal life is definitely reversed” (2008c, 83). Whereas she does not mention the container metaphor, her interpretation relies on it nevertheless, assuming that the empty city opposes that of a full city. 8. For example, JPS: “He deported its inhabitants to Kir” (with a note that the Hebrew says “it”), NRSV: “carrying its people captive to Kir,” ESV: “carrying its people captive to Kir.” 9. Exceptions occur, for example, in Gen 22:17 and 24:60, where the gates metonymically represent the city which in turn is conceived as an object (see object chapter). 10. Michaela Geiger’s analysis applies Raumsoziologie as developed by Martina Löw (2001). Gates in Deuteronomy are intrinsically connected to the gate community. In addition, there is a relation with the central sanctuary, the place of God. The ‘synthesis,’ Löw’s term for the process that connects people or objects to a mental representation of space (Geiger 2013, 32), becomes “a realization of the fundamental spacing act of Yhwh who liberated Israel from Egypt” (42). In her analysis, Geiger takes into account both the referents of the textual city concept as well as the role of gates, which she connects with the Exodus tradition. Whereas the expressions in the text focus on being within the city, Geiger interprets the gates as an outward look onto the people as well as the land, all of which fall under God’s commandments (41–42). 11. Dobbs-Allsopp has pointed out several features in this passage that characterize it as Israelite city-lament: “reflexes of the divine-word motif ” with God’s plan (1993, 61), God as divine warrior (61–62), destruction of walls (68), the (weeping) personified city and/or personification of, for example, walls (89). Note that the genre does not restrict itself to one

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particular conceptual metaphor, but rather applies several, even in combination, to achieve its cityscapes of lament. 12. Scholars consider generic-level metaphors to be (near-)universal because of their cognitive rather than cultural basis. The latter plays a role in which conceptual metaphors among these universal ones are used more frequently over others (Kövecses 2006, 157). 13. Although not relying on orientational metaphors, Gray connects “the ultimate judgement on a city” as destruction with an empty container (2018, 31). 14. Throughout the chapter, city and empire are used interchangeably, although with similar imagery. 15. Previous studies of Jeremiah 51 and the city primarily focus on its connection with the city-lament genre and the motifs therein (such as deserted city space) (Dobbs-Allsopp 1993, 112–16). They speak of a literal description of the attack (113). 16. Note that also for life a container metaphor exists, both in English and in the Hebrew Bible. Sometimes life is understood as the container, other times as its content. Think of expressions, such as ‘to live a full life,’ ‘my life is empty without you,’ and ‘life is fleeting (in English); ‫בהתעטף עלי‬ ‫נפשי‬, “when my life was ebbing away (Jonah 2:8) or ‫כל ימי חיי‬, “all the days of my life” (Ps 27:4). 17. Ellen Davis speaks of a public space, “where commercial, legal, and civic affairs were conducted” (2000, 33). She points at the setting’s similarity with prophetic judgment speeches, such as the one in Mic 3:1–4 (34). However, in the latter, explicit reference to an urban context is lacking in the text. 18. On memory and the city, see Edelman and Ben Zvi (2014) and Pioske (2015), among others. In addition, the textual city allows readers to be creative themselves, reading (urban) spaces through a utopian/dystopian/sci-fi or fantastic lens, for example (e.g., Uhlenbruch 2015; Lanner 2006, respectively). 19. I follow here the emendation of the relative pronoun as pointed by MT into a piel second person imperative of the root ‫( אשר‬deClaissé-Walford 2014, 986, 988). 20. Scholars do not agree on the meaning of the verse. There is a tendency to connect the breaching and going out to the cattle bearing offspring, meaning that such goes smoothly without losses (e.g., deClaissé-Walford 2014, 988) or that they are kept within the fences (Alter 2007, 499).

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This is in line with the MT which places an ’atnach after the second line, thus connecting it to the cattle rather than the wailing in the streets. However, the vocabulary found in the middle line of verse 14 is used elsewhere to describe the breaching of city walls, as noted above. The occurrence of squares/streets in the final line of the verse also points in the direction of an urban reading. The word ‫ צוחה‬appears only in urban settings: in Jer 14:2 (‫צוחת ירושלם‬, “the outcry of Jerusalem”), Jer 46:12 (‫צוחתך‬, “your outcry,” i.e., of personified Egypt) and Isa 24:11 (‫צוחה‬ ‫בחוצות‬, “outcry in the streets”). The text seems to be at least ambiguous as to what the breaching exactly refers. 21. The hopeful cityscape found its origin in the particular historical circumstances of the Psalm (post-exilic), as noted by various scholars (e.g., Goldingay 2008, 683; Prinsloo 2019, 141). Yet, as Nancy deClaissé-­ Walford has noted, “our circumstances change, but the words that sustained us in the past continue to sustain in the present and will continue to sustain us in the future” (deClaissé-Walford 2014, 989). It is thanks to conceptual metaphors, such as the city is a container, that this is indeed the case. 22. As I have argued elsewhere, the construal of Babel is a speech act to a certain degree, “as if words suffice to create a city and a tower” (Vermeulen 2017e, 308). Words and concepts are given far more power and emphasis in the text than the actual physicality and historicity of building the city. Claus Westermann, in his commentary, for example, notices that the actual building of the city is not mentioned (1999, 725). 23. According to some scholars, it is this mobility that is central to the story: it is a reminder of the commandment in Gen 1:28 to “multiply and increase and fill the earth” (Van Wolde 1994, 84–109; Hiebert 2007, 29–58). 24. Another example appears in Isa 17:3: ‫ונשבת מבצר מאפרים וממלכה מדמשק‬, “fortresses will disappear from Ephraim and kingship from Damascus.” As in the other examples, the question is whether the content just evaporates or whether it actually moves somewhere else. The text leaves that unanswered, as such underwriting the idea that even though the content seems to move, in the end the city is conceived as immobile. 25. Sals points at both the result and the permanence of the destruction, concluding, “Babylon wird zum Heterotop” (2004, 452). I would add that this ‘other-place’ is, for sure, not urban.

8 The Urban Object

In general, city spaces are associated with size and high numbers. They include many inhabitants and buildings on a large territory. Cities in the Hebrew Bible evoke these associations as well, despite their relatively small (actual) numbers in comparison to their modern-day counterparts. What is more, the biblical text tends to overrule historical reality in its urban construal, imagining an idea of greatness regardless. Hence, Jonah depicts Nineveh as great as “a three days’ walk across” (3:2) with over 120,000 people living there (4:11). When Ezekiel envisions the reconstruction of Jerusalem, he includes sizes of buildings and walls, such as in Ezek 40:5: “and in the hand of the man was a measuring reed of six cubits long, plus one handbreadth for each cubit; and he measured the building (i.e., the temple), one rod deep and one rod high.” The very fact of the long and detailed description, starting from Ezekiel 40 until the end of the book, also emphasizes the vast number of items present. Thus, the images of the city in these texts as building or container are images of very large buildings or containers. Despite the omnipresence of these images, the biblical writers conceive city space sometimes as rather small. In Jeremiah 51:7, “Babylon is a golden cup (‫ )כוס זהב‬in the Lord’s hand.” In Zechariah 9:13, God will © The Author(s) 2020 K. Vermeulen, Conceptualizing Biblical Cities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45270-4_8

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make Zion “like a warrior’s sword (‫)כחרב גבור‬.” In both cases, the city has become an object of a manageable size with well-defined boundaries. Even in passages where the object itself is not named, the context defines the size of the object (and of the city space) as smallish. When Joshua 10:32 states, “And the Lord delivered Lachish into the hand of Israel (‫)ויתן … ביד‬, and they captured it (‫ )וילכדה‬on the second day,” the underlying image is that of a city space passed on from the hand of God to the hand of the Israelites, just like one would do with a small item.

Concise Physicality A large number of passages objectivizes the city without making the object itself explicit, such as in the above-mentioned capture of Lachish in Josh 10:32. In a number of cases, the writers do include the specific object lexically (Firstspace), as shown in the Jeremiah example with the golden cup in Jer 51:7. What is striking is that the same precise object rarely reoccurs elsewhere, which makes the passages stand out more than other phrases where the conceptual metaphor is used in its unspecific realization.1 Scholars have identified these specific-object-passages often as (literary) metaphors and as part of the particular style of a genre (e.g., prophetic writing or poetry) or a particular book (e.g., Jeremiah or Isaiah).2 Whereas such may indeed be the case, these discussions overlook the fact that also these literary realizations of the conceptual metaphor the city is an object are expressions of such a metaphor. They stand out because of their specific word choices and phrasing (Firstspace), not because of the underlying image itself (Secondspace).

General Urban Things Examples of the city-as-object are found particularly in the books of Joshua and Samuel, where the conquest of the land is described. They feature furthermore in many of the prophetic books, where cities often change hands as small goods in trade. In Joshua 8:7, Joshua is giving his men directions: “And you will get up from your ambush and you will

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take possession of the city (‫)והורשתם את היער‬, and the Lord your God will deliver it into your hands (‫)ונתנה יהוה אלהיכם בידכם‬.” The object metaphor occurs twice here, once with the people as capturing the city and once with God giving the city to the people. In both cases, the city acts as a lifeless object, passed from one to the other. Objectivization is not only implicitly connected to ownership, as in the examples above, but sometimes also explicitly mentioned, such as in 2 Sam 5:7. After David’s capture of Zion, the city is named after him, ‫היא עיר דוד‬, “it is the city of David” (Firstspace). The city is an object carrying the name of its owner, as such merging with the identity of that owner (Thirdspace). Object cities are, due to their conceptual size and defined boundaries, also controllable cities. At various occasions, cities are said to be delivered into hands of both enemies and allies. Often the deliverer is God, thus the controller of city space and of spatial order in general (Thirdspace). In Isaiah 36:15, Hezekiah says, “this city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria (‫)ביד מלך אשור‬,” while in Jer 32:36, “the city has been delivered in the hand of the king of Babylon (‫)ביד מלך בבל‬.” Babylon, in turn, is captured in Jer 50:46 (‫)נתפשה בבל‬, so the fate of cities is constantly shifting, as do the metaphors to envision those changed cityscapes. Ezekiel 5:5 offers a somewhat atypical rendering of the object metaphor, not focusing as much on the transportability of the city, but on its position in the larger spatial constellation, envisioned as a map. God says, ‫זאת ירושלם בתוך הגוים שמתיה וסביבותיה ארצות‬, “This is Jerusalem, in the midst of the nations I set it, and countries around it.” The divine character is the handler of the city space, conceived as a dot on a map. Whereas this dot is given the central location, it remains a tiny object in a configuration controlled by someone other than the city itself. The cityscape generates a space of privilege, but also one without autonomy (Thirdspace). Jerusalem is placed in its position, as one would do with a random object. Yet, this imagination of the city does not continue. In verse 6, the metaphor shifts from object to person (Secondspace), having the formerly object city rebel against her handler reclaiming her autonomy and therewith risking her privileges. Most of the phrases mentioned until now use a third-person construction (Firstspace), which in itself already creates a certain distance with

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regard to the reader and adds to the impersonal cityscape the metaphor the city is an object creates (Thirdspace). Nevertheless, more personal constructions do appear with the metaphor, such as in Lam 1:14. Jerusalem says, ‫נתנני אדני בידי לא אוכל קום‬, “My lord has delivered me into the hands of those I cannot withstand.” Merging objectification and personification in the same phrase disempowers the city-woman. Whereas agency and personality are exactly the core characteristics of the personified city, the object imagery renders the contrast more sharply: being objectivized is bad, being objectivized as a person is even worse (Thirdspace).

Unique Urban Things The generality of the ‘thing’ contributes to the impersonality of the cityscapes construed. Yet, also when the object is specified, the object city keeps its general characteristics: subject to others, no innate agency and no autonomy. Even war club Babylon in Jer 51:20 is a tool in God’s hands, with power to be given and taken away as God pleases. As the text states, it is God who destroys kingdoms with it, not the war club itself (51:20–23).3 For sure, Jer 50:23 calls the same Babylon the “hammer of the whole earth” (‫( )פטיש כל הארץ‬Firstspace), but the prophecy does not have that hammer destroy. Rather, it frames it in a situation of “been broken and shattered” (‫)נגדע וישבר‬, becoming “a horror among the nations,” (‫)לשמה בגוים‬.4 Whereas the image of the hammer may evoke power (Secondspace), just like the war club did, none of these images actually further develops the inherent possibilities with regard to power and control. On the contrary, they frame the hammer in the exact same way as the capture of Babylon as unspecified object (e.g., Jer 50:2, 9; 51:31–32, 41): the city is powerless (Thirdspace).5 Specifying the object may not change the connotations of the object metaphor, but it does do something. In Jeremiah’s prophecy against Babylon (50–51), the objects chosen are weapons, associated with supremacy. They stand in sharp contrast with the futile things in which they are turned. The produced cityscape becomes as such a deconstructive one. By distorting the identifying features of an object such as a hammer, the text generates a city with an identity crisis (Thirdspace).

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Simultaneously, it is a way for the biblical writers to combine city conceptualizations from different points of view. Obviously, the weapon-­ based imagery is how Babylon would self-identify, whereas the more general object metaphor is how the opponents would like to see the city space. Another example of this play with perspective can be found in Jer 51:7 where the city is called a golden cup in the hand of God, ‫כוס זהב‬ ‫ביד יהוה‬. The image is ambiguous in that it implies importance through the attribute ‘golden’ but a lack of agency as an instrument used by others (Firstspace and Secondspace). Again, the contrast is played out well in the text, evoking first Babylon’s power to consequently decompose it (Thirdspace) (Vermeulen forthcoming b). Utter deconstruction follows in verse 8, where the cup breaks, whereupon the prophecy switches metaphors (to the city is a person/body metaphor) to repeat the same process: a strong body is now mortally ill. The usage of specific objects is not exclusive to the depiction of Babylon. Ample examples exist for Jerusalem. Consider for example 2 Kgs 21:13: I will stretch out over Jerusalem the measuring-line of Samaria and the leveling instrument of the house of Ahab; and I will wipe Jerusalem as one wipes a dish; one wipes it and turns it on its face.

‫ונטיתי על ירושלם את קו שמרון ואת‬ ‫משקלת בית אחאב ומחיתי את ירושלם‬ ‫כאשר ימחה את הצלחת מחה והפך על פניה‬

Jerusalem’s materiality is already introduced by the beginning of the verse in which the text envisions the city as a building to be sized up.6 The transition to the object metaphor allows readers to reinterpret this physicality of Jerusalem. The dish image renders the city space into a small object that can undergo certain manipulations: first, wiping it clean, then turning it upside down. These actions create a totally new city space, one that is manipulated not once, but twice and in different directions. The image of the plate shares the notion of reducing the city to a tool to be handled with the general representations of object cities. In this specific case, it also adds other aspects, producing a cityscape of total renewal and cleanliness (Thirdspace).7

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A more war-like representation, similar to the ones for Babylon, can be found in Zech 9:13, where Jerusalem is depicted as a warrior’s sword (‫)כחרב גבור‬. However, contrary to Babylon, the city space of Jerusalem is empowered by this image. The sword will remain a sword, or rather, a previously powerless city will now be turned into a sword by God. In that respect, the object metaphor serves again to express a state of reversal, although for the good this time (Thirdspace).8 Note that the power ultimately is God’s, not the sword’s (and thus the city’s) (Reddit 2012, 372–73). Other specific objects are related to the physical appearance of the city. In Jeremiah 3:17, Jerusalem is God’s throne (‫)כסה יהוה‬. After a negative portrayal of a personified city in verses 2 to 5 of the same chapter, repentance and restoration are imagined. That is when the throne image appears in the text. Although this image does not attribute agency to the city, the specific item of the throne, combined with the extension ‘of the Lord,’ renders the city into a rather positive space. It is associated with height, both through the connection with God and the concept of the throne itself as elevated space. The throne becomes the crystallization of the temple and the palace, and thus metonymically an image for the whole city (Thirdspace). The lack of personality and autonomy is made up by the position close to God.9 What is more, the city is also conceived as a full container at that point, another positive element (‫ונקוו אליה כל‬ ‫הגוים לשם יהוה לירושלם‬, “and they will be collected there, all the nations, in the name of the Lord, at Jerusalem”). Positive interpretations of possibly negative urban metaphors can also be found in Isa 62:3. And you will be a beautiful crown in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the palm of your God.

‫והיית תרטע תראפת‬ ‫ביד יהוה‬ ‫וצניף מלוכה‬ ‫בכף אלהיך‬

Again, by defining the object as an object of God, the biblical text lends the cityscape a positive aura. At the same time, the text is very clear about who owns and controls the city space, not the human inhabitants but God. Even when the city is a thing of God, it remains an instrument,

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189

not an active participant in whatever is going on. This is also expressed in the linguistic set-up of the passage (Firstspace), using locational prepositions (‫ב‬, “in”) rather than verbs of motion and directional prepositions (as with the transferable objects before). The object city in Isa 62:3 is, therefore, more fixed than some of the other object cities, being conceptually closer to the city is a building metaphor (Secondspace). The latter appears in verses 6 and 7: “upon your walls (‫)על חומתיך‬, o Jerusalem, I have set watchmen … until he establishes (‫ )יכונן‬Jerusalem.” It is not unlikely that the crown and diadem of verse 3 refer to the mural crown, a crown representing the walls of a city and worn by its patron deity. As Mark Biddle has argued, the motif seems to be picked up in the biblical text although without adopting the idea that it is the deified city wearing that crown. “She [i.e., Zion] is, after all, a personification, a poetic figure” (Biddle 1991, 184).10 Rather, the crown remains an item distinct from God, in his possession but ready to be passed on whenever he deems the time right. In that respect, the crown image is not different from all the other objects God holds in his hands. None of them gives any substantial independence to the city (Thirdspace).11 A very peculiar object occurs in the city conceptualization of Ezek 4:1, a drawing (Firstspace). Afterward, the text continues with the command to besiege the just drawn city, a remarkable shift from two- to three-­ dimensional city space and from spatial idea to spatial physicality. And you, son of man, take a brick and put it in front of you, and incise on it a city, Jerusalem.

‫ואתה בן אדם קח לך לבנה ונתתה אותה‬ ‫לפניך וחקות עליה עיר את ירושלם‬

In verse 1, the city is a line incised by the prophet on city material, that is, a brick. Such evokes both the conceptual metaphor of the city is a building and the city is an object, with the latter as primary concept for verse 1 and the former preparing the imagery of verse 2 (Secondspace). With the outline of the city on a single stone, the city space is any of the aforementioned: portable, controllable and creatable. The drawing on the stone is the physical counterpart of the words in the text that make up a textual picture of the city. The cityscape is lacking explicit positive or negative associations. What is distinct is that neither the city nor her

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creator, the mortal prophet drawing her, has much influence on the cityscape. The city map or outline Ezekiel is inscribing on the brick is not a new creation but more likely a sketch of existing space (similar to those found on ancient Near Eastern clay tablets; Blenkinsopp 1990, 34). Having the prophet manipulate the city as a piece of clay against which he consequently fabricates towers and a mound (v. 2) is a very literal manipulation of the city as of one playing house with city space, or rather war in this case (Thirdspace). Even though the prophet is only following instructions of the divine speaker here, he, as a tool, is still more powerful than the object held in his hands. The city is instrumental instrument, incised on a brick but as easily wiped out again. At the same time, once dry, the city on the brick gains importance, with its lines fixed for as long as the brick stays whole (Thirdspace).

Manipulation and Transport Following the city’s conception as a physical item with defined boundaries, the city acquires two qualities that are partially overlapping: it becomes manipulable and transportable. An object city is small enough to be handled by human as well as divine hands (although the latter would, ontologically speaking, never be a problem). As a side effect of this handling, the city-as-an-object is a city on the move, a characteristic it shares with the animate conceptualizations of the city space discussed before, the city is a person and the city is a woman, and this in contrast with other inanimate conceptualizations for which immobility comes with the basic image, as in the city is a building or the city is a container.

Handing Over and Handling Cities Cities-as-objects always occur in a grammatical object function (Firstspace). This is inherent to their conceptualization. In Genesis 24:60, it is said to Rebekah: “May your offspring take possession of the gates (‫ )ויירש את שער שנאיו‬of their enemies.” Choosing here a metonymic

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191

representation of the city by its gate rather than using the city word itself, the writers assist the readers, consciously or not, in their conceptualization of the city space. The gates are perceivable and even to some degree transportable objects that can indeed be seized. The city is undergoing the action. Similarly, God is giving cities as heritage in Deut 20:16, again drawing on the metaphor the city is an object. “Only from the cities of these peoples, which the Lord your God is giving you as a heritage (‫)נתן לך נחהל‬, you will not preserve a single person.” The towns are passed to the Israelites as a piece of furniture or jewelry that can be part of an inheritance (to stick to that context). This passing along of cities as objects takes many forms: both humans and God can be the givers or takers (as the just mentioned Gen 24:60 and Deut 20:16 examples show); cities can be Jerusalem or foreign places, such as Babylon; and receivers appear on both ends, depending on the context. In other words, the objectivized city is not kept solely to describe typical binary oppositions in the biblical text, such as divine versus human or familial versus foreign. Rather, the city is an object appears as a conceptualization that occurs throughout the biblical text for various referents and under a variety of textual settings. What these passages share is not the final framing (which results in different, specific Thirdspaces), but the linguistic build-up of the metaphor (with certain verbs to be found, the syntactic preference for object functions, the constellation of a giver in the subject function and a receiver marked by a directional preposition ‫ אל‬or ‫ל‬, all of which are Firstspace markers). In addition, the passages draw on associations that come with the image itself, such as the here discussed feature of manipulation and transport. Manipulation, as the word itself suggests, refers to the role of hands in the conceptualization. In many passages, this role is made more explicit by mentioning hands, such as in Josh 6:2: “I will deliver Jericho in your hand (‫ ”)בידך‬or in Ezek 23:28: “I will deliver you (i.e., Samaria and Jerusalem) into the hand of (‫ ”… )ביד‬Yet, also in other passages where the hands are not literally mentioned, they are understood. Consider, for example, Judg 9:45: “he captured (‫ )וילכד‬the city.” Manipulation is not only about the very act of seizing the city, but also any other action with the city as object falls, in a broader sense, in this category. When God is using Babylon as a war club in Jer 51:20, he is manipulating the city.

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The same idea underlies the passages in Deuteronomy 19 where cities of refuge are described as “cities set aside” (e.g., in Deut 19:7: ‫שלש ערים‬ ‫תבדיל לך‬, “set three cities aside”).

Turning Cities into Things Sometimes manipulation changes the nature of the city space radically. The city is not imagined as just an object, but explicitly turned into one, such as in Isa 25:2.12 For you have turned a city into a stone heap, a fortified city into a heap of rubble, [you made] a citadel of strangers [from] a city, never shall it be rebuilt.

‫כי שמת מעיר לגל‬ ‫קריה בצורה למפלה‬ ‫ארמון זרים מעיר‬ ‫לעולם לא יבנה‬

The image of the city before the metamorphosis is unclear, twice called ‫עיר‬, “a city.” Yet, its picture after the transformation offers further insight into how to conceive the initial city: it was a building (Secondspace), as evoked by the notion of fortification (‫)בצורה‬, a feature that buildings have over containers which presuppose possible accessibility, and by the verb ‫בנה‬, “build” (Firstspace). The city after the change is no longer a building, that is a man-made construction that can be inhabited, but it is a pile of stones (‫)גל‬. The image of a (small) heap of rubble draws a cityscape of futility and minimization (Thirdspace). All that is left of the city is a useless collection of stones and debris, similar to a small object. The expression of ‘making the city into something’ also appears with metaphorical objects, as found in Jer 19:8 and 25:18: ‫ושמתי את העיר הזאת‬ ‫לשמה ולשרקה‬, “I will turn this city into a horror and hissing.” Variants of this formulation are ‫ואתנך לחרבה ולחרפה‬, “I will make you into a ruin and mockery” (Ezek 5:14), ‫חרפהה וקלסה‬, “mockery and scorn” (Ezek 22:4; with the verb ‫ )נתן‬and ‫לבז וללעג‬, “a prey and a laughingstock” (Ezek 36:4; with the verb ‫)היה‬.13 Whereas none of these are actual physical objects with defined boundaries, as identified before as characteristic of the concept, these examples seem to draw on the same conceptual metaphor nevertheless. They use a similar linguistic build-up (with the verb ‫ שים‬or a synonym and preposition ‫ ;)ל‬and they express a shift from one conceptual

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193

metaphor for the city to another one. In Jeremiah 25:18, the personified city, drinking from the cup brought by the prophet, will turn into a desolate ruin (thus, an empty container) and a horror and hissing (thus, an object). Both of the new images are inanimate and through their specific realization also negatively colored. The cityscape is one of misery and powerlessness (Thirdspace). In addition, the English translation of these phrases, although always to be treated with some caution, offers further proof of a likely use of the city is an object conceptualization. Rather than the translation presented above, JPS as well as NIV render Jer 19:8, for example, as “turn her into an object of horror and hissing.” Other translations, such as ESV limit the thingness of the city to the hissing part: “I will make this city a horror, a thing to be hissed at.”14 The translators at least read the Hebrew text as objectivizing the city, even though that object is only an object in a figurative way. Metaphorical object cities are not necessarily associated with bad things. In Isaiah 60:15, God is turning the city “into a joy generation after generation.” This image contrasts with the ones evoked earlier in the verse, that of the forsaken wife (“whereas you have been forsaken, rejected”) and the empty container (“with none passing through”). Instead of being left and hated and with none passing through, I will make you a height/pride forever a joy generation after generation.

‫תחת היותך עזובה ושנואה‬ ‫ואין עובר‬ ‫ושמתיך לגאון עולם‬ ‫משוש דור ודור‬

As in the previous examples the conceptual shift is embedded in the semantics of the actual expressions in the text. The negative representations of the city is a woman and the city is a container are replaced by positive ones: the city is a height (see later , Chap. 9) and the city is an object (Secondspace). Whereas object cities tend to generate less favorable cityscapes, Isaiah 60 shows that it is the ultimate framing, and thus the interplay with other conceptual metaphors and the textual content as a whole, that determine the color of the city space. This created city is not only made by God, but is a par with “the everlasting height” mentioned right before it.15 As a result, the city at the end of verse 15 has turned into a good experience, a place people want to stay. Being a high

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and enjoyable object is far more preferable than being left or empty. Due to this contrast, the city-as-object surpasses its own inherent disadvantages and becomes a desirable destination (Thirdspace).16 In Isaiah 65:18, the connection between thing and height is even further developed. Rather than saying anything about the previous state of Jerusalem, the prophecy speaks of a new creation of heaven and earth, but also of the city and its people. For I shall create Jerusalem as joy, and her people as a delight; 19 And I will rejoice in Jerusalem and delight in her people.

‫כי הנני בורא את ירושלם‬ ‫גילה ועמה משוש‬ ‫ וגלתי בירושלם‬19 ‫וששתי בעמי‬

The vocabulary used is similar to that of Isa 60:15, with the recurrence of the word ‫משוש‬, “joy, delight” and the use of the formally similar words ‫לגאון‬, “into a height,” and ‫גילה‬, “joy, exultation” (Firstspace). Jerusalem is part of God’s (new) creation. A turn-over is implied but not specified. Given the history of the textual city, the choice for a high thing over that of a woman, even a faithful one, is telling.17 In the new world order, the city is no longer at risk of behaving badly because such is conceptually impossible. Verse 19 continues the story with a metaphorical shift from object to container (Secondspace). When Jerusalem is this happy, high object, it can be God’s abode, a conceptual container in which the divine as happily as the city will reside. The object city of Isa 65:18 is God’s creation, under his control and in his hands (Thirdspace).

Counting Sometimes object cities undergo a particular action, that of being counted. Whereas one can obviously count also people, the act in itself has a conceptual background that objectivizes whatever is being counted. Turning the city into a number is reducing the city from its possible animate conceptualization to that of a mere object. In Isaiah 33:18, the prophet asks “where is one who could count (‫ ?)סופר‬Where is one who could weigh? Where is one who could count (‫[ )סופר‬all these] towers?” In

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these lines, the towers represent the city metonymically with the towers as object city. No agency is given to them; they are only numbers. Also in Jeremiah 2:28, the cityscape is rather negative with as many gods as Judah has towns (‫)כי מספר עריך היו אלהיך יהודה‬. Once more, the city is a countable object, as despicable, through the comparison, as the gods mentioned in the same verse. While the verses before verse 28 often conceptualize the city as a woman, this image is reserved for Judah in this verse and the following, not for city space. God is doing the counting, thus imposing the idea of city as object. This is different from Isa 22:10, where it is the people of the city counting the houses. 9 And the breaches in the city of David you saw that they were many; and you collected the water of the lower pool. 10 And the houses of Jerusalem you counted, and you pulled the houses down to fortify the wall. 11 And you made a basin between the two walls for the water of the old pool. But you did not pay attention to him who made it, and to him who created it long before, you did not look.

‫ ואת בקיעי עיר דוד‬9 ‫ראיתם כי רבו‬ ‫ותקבצו את מי הברכה התחתונה‬ ‫ואת בתי ירושלם ספרתם ותתצו הבתים‬10 ‫ ומקוה עשיתם בין‬11 ‫לבצר החומה‬ ‫החמתים למי הברכה הישנה‬ ‫ולא הבטתם אל עשיה‬ ‫ויצרה מרחוק לא ראיתם‬

This counting is presented as a good thing, a conscious thing, showing the care of the people for the city, which itself is then contrasted with their carelessness toward God’s plans (v. 11). The chapter goes back and forth between singular and plural references, thus switching between the personified “city so gay” (22:3) and the people living in it. Despite the conceptual divide here between geographical, built environment and the human capital of cities, the text makes it clear that their fate is entangled nevertheless. Objectivizing the city for that matter does not make it more controllable for the people, because even this object still needs to fit God’s larger scheme of things (Thirdspace). Related to actual counting is the use of the distributive ‫כל‬, “every” (Firstspace). In 2 Kings 3:19, the people “will conquer every fortified town and every splendid city” (‫)והכיתם כל עיר מבצר וכל עיר מבחור‬. The cities are imagined as countable objects on a list (Secondspace). In this particular case, all the items on the list will be conquered. By presenting

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them as separate entities, the writers emphasize the multitude of cities captured. Furthermore, the cityscape is one lacking agency and personality. There is no special treatment for individual cities; all of them will be occupied (Thirdspace). A similar impersonal cityscape is produced in 2 Kgs 25:9, where on account of king Nebuchadnezzar, Jerusalem is burned down: its temple, its palace and every single house. The distributive ‘every’ does not only show the totality of the destruction but also the objectivizing of the city space. To the foreign king, Jerusalem is not more than a list of items, some of which he burns down and some of which he will later in the chapter carry off to Babylon (vv. 13–17).

Lack of Agency Readers associate biblical cities with agency. This agency comes forth from a metonymic transfer from the activity of inhabitants to the level of the city as well as from a personification of city space. The conceptual metaphor the city is an object goes against the assumption that cities have agency, by depicting the exact opposite. In the conquest of the Promised Land in the book of Joshua, many cities are captured, as (small) objects to be seized by human hands (e.g., Josh 6:20 or 8:7). They are delivered into the hands of the Israelites, emphasizing not only the incapacity of the city space but also that of the Israelites themselves, who depend for their conquest on God (e.g., Josh 8:18 or 10:30). The cities pass from one hand to another as commodities or exchange goods. Typical verbs found in these passages are verbs of delivering, taking, capturing, seizing and giving, such as ‫ לכד‬,‫נתן‬, and ‫( ירש‬Firstspace). Although these verbs are used for various kinds of transactions, for cities the most common frame of the metaphor the city is an object is warfare, or more broadly speaking conflict. At stake is the rule and dominion over a certain place, including its people and goods. Objectivizing the city allows writers to develop a cityscape in which cities are controllable and manageable. They can be the currency to settle a conflict (Thirdspace), a currency without a voice (as in a personified city space) and without exits through which part of the content can disappear (as in a container city). As an example, consider Ezek 26:14,

8  The Urban Object  And I will make you a bare rock, a place for drying nets you will be; you will never be rebuilt, for I the Lord have spoken —declares the Lord God.

197

‫ונתתיך לצחיח סלע‬ ‫משטח חרמים תהיה‬ ‫לא תבנה עוד‬ ‫כי אני יהוה גברתי‬ ‫נאם אדני יהוה‬

In this chapter, Ezekiel draws on various urban metaphors, among which the city is a woman, the city is a container and the city is a building. When he turns to the city is an object in verse 14, the prophet creates a contrast with the personified ‘you’ who is bereft of autonomy and mobility. Rendering her a bare rock and a place for drying nets, the city is instrumentalized and objectivized (Secondspace). After the container has been plundered and the building has been demolished (e.g., 26:12), God turns whatever is left into an object. He redefines the city, giving her a new shape and function. However, this renewed city is not a happy place nor a place to dream of; it is a negative space, made from the little that has been left. All of the bad things said before about object cities are valid: no control, no agency, no personality. And en plus, the naked rock is not near God. He only turns the city into one and then leaves it on its own (Thirdspace).

Notes 1. Sals sees a connection with other passages through the theme of drinking, in particular a development of Babel’s image from Jeremiah 25 over Jer 51:7 to Rev 17:3–6: “vom trünkenen König von Babel zu Babel as Becher zu Babel mit Becher. Vom nichtreal-realen Teilnehmenden einer schaurigen Handlung zur Personifikation zur Person” (2004, 374). Elsewhere she points out that the cup of wrath has been Jerusalem’s before, as part of the reversal of fates that plays in the Oracle against Babylon in Jeremiah 50–51 (305). 2. Klaas Smelik, for example, points out that the image of the cup appears in several chapters in the book of Jeremiah, most notably in chapters 25 and 51. Yet, Babylon is only the cup itself in Jer 51:7 (2004, 92–94). Else

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Holt deems metaphor as a textual feature to be typical of the prophetic corpus, because it focuses on the relationship between divine and human (2003, 3). 3. God’s agency is apparent throughout Jeremiah 50–51, with regard to both Babylon and Judah (Thelle 2015, 86–87). What is more, in pieces on the passage, scholars often use phrases, such as the following: “Babylon is Yhwh’s tool” (91), thus using the same conceptual metaphor as the biblical text does. 4. As such the metaphor plays into the “revenge fantasy” noted by Kalmanofsky in Jeremiah’s OAN (2015, 119). 5. The metaphor adds to the transformation that scholars have noted previously when discussing the more obvious figurative depiction of Babylon as female. “Throughout the Oracles, Babylon’s transformation suggests emasculation and feminization” (Kalmanofsky 2015, 117). I would add that it also objectivizes Babylon, further adding to the negative portrayal of Babylonian urban space, and in extension Babylonian imperial space. 6. The objects in the beginning of the verse have been understood as metaphors themselves of the moral weighing of Samaria (Hobbs 1985, 307). 7. Other images of houseware appear in Jer 19:11, where Jerusalem is a smashed potter’s vessel, and Zech 12:2, where Jerusalem is a cup of reeling for the other nations. 8. O’Brien discusses this passage together with others that depict the salvation of daughter Zion/Jerusalem. She notes the military context of each of these, concluding “Even when saved, however, daughter Jerusalem remains dependent on the protection of her male patron Yahweh” (2008, 137). Whereas O’Brien focuses on the personification of the city space, her analysis works equally well for the object metaphor that is alternated with the city-as-woman in Zech 9:13. 9. In her analysis of Jer 3:14–18, Maier remarks that Jerusalem becomes a center of pilgrimage: “this Jerusalem is no longer personified” (2008c, 107). Indeed, it is conceived both as an object and as a container. According to Maier, this metaphorical shift, or what she perceives as an abandonment of the metaphor the city is a woman, points in the direction of different sources: the prophet Jeremiah for Jeremiah 4–6 and a later postexilic edition for Jer 3:14–18 (107). 10. The mural crown is probably also hinted at in Isa 49:14–18 and 54:11–13 (Biddle 1991, 182–83).

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11. Maier’s comments on the “interruption” in verse 3 show the metaphor at work. She remarks “a crown belongs on the head and not in the hand,” attributing this change to the personification of Jerusalem and the distinction between inhabitants and place (2008c, 181; 2013, 15). T. David Andersen considers the personified city space of verse 2 and the crown in verse 3 more in line with each other, relying on royal wedding context. “If on his wedding day a bridegroom receives two beautiful things—a beautiful crown and a beautiful bride—it would be tempting for a poet to use one as a metaphor of the other” (1986, 78). 12. For similar transformative uses of the verb ‫ שים‬with object and ‫ל‬, see, for example, Isa 13:9: “The day of the Lord is coming … to make the earth a desolation (‫ ”)לשום הארץ לשמה‬or Mic 1:6: “And I will turn Samaria into a heap of ruins of the field (‫)ושמתי שמרון לעי השדה‬, into a plantation of vineyards (‫)למטעי כרם‬.” 13. Jeremiah 19:8 and Isa 60:15 use almost the same construction and words as Isa 25:2, that is, the verb ‫ שים‬plus the city as grammatical object plus the preposition ‫ל‬. In Jeremiah 25:8, Ezek 5:14, and Ezek 22:4, a synonymous construction appears with the verb ‫ נתן‬rather than ‫שים‬. Ezekiel 36:5 has the cities as subject of the relative clause (and as indirect object of the main clause) with verb ‫היה‬, meaning “become” in combination with the preposition ‫ל‬. 14. Similarly, NASB reads, “I will also make this city a desolation and an object of hissing.” 15. Darr writes on Isaiah 60 as a whole the following, “Isaiah 60 is not about an act of divine deliverance; it is, rather, a ‘sky’s the limit’ description of Jerusalem’s state of glorification consequent upon that deliverance. It therefore moves Lady Zion’s story beyond God’s great salvific act on her behalf, to what will constitute ‘everyday life’ for a redeemed people serving the Lord of all the earth in God’s beautified city” (1994, 196). In her analysis, Darr picks up on the height metaphor as well as on the city as an object of glorification. Her interpretation of the final cityscape is positive, as in the suggested interpretation above. 16. According to Maier, there is a discrepancy between what is and what shall be, that is, between a negative present space of the city and a more positive future one (2013, 112–14). Whereas this opposition is indeed at play in the text, it seems to me that the metaphorical shifts in the text

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exactly aim at facilitating this transfer. The readers are drawn into the joyful city, regardless of its tearful past. Maier’s interpretation of the verse seems to favor the latter, “the city’s real situation,” over the cityscape imagined by the text (114). 17. Maier hints at this evolution in Third Isaiah, where “the motherly role is countered by the spatial depiction of Zion as a pilgrimage site and by the re-emergence of the mountain image” (2008c, 215). The absence of personified city space also is key to the last chapters of Ezekiel (40–48) (Galambush 1992, 129–30).

9 The Vertical City

Ancient cities were often built upon or against a hill or slight elevation. This geographical location presented a double advantage, guaranteeing protection as well as offering an outlook. Sometimes this height was not more than the man-made elevation, called a tel, which was the result of consecutive phases of habitation and the process of building and destruction (e.g., Coogan 1998, 13; Gates 2011, 5–6). Given this extra-textual reality, it should not come as a surprise that biblical writers rely on a metaphor generated by it when imagining city space: the city is height. Jeremiah envisions singing on Mount Zion (31:12), while the Babel builders dream of a city with a tower that reaches the skies (Gen 11:4). “There will not be a city too high for God,” according to Deut 2:36. The height metaphor is about feeling cities, mentally construing them as up-­down exteriorizations and addressing their relationship with the divine, in particular with the biblical God.

© The Author(s) 2020 K. Vermeulen, Conceptualizing Biblical Cities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45270-4_9

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Feeling Geography Psychogeography argues that there is a close connection between space and the mental state of people. Particular spaces evoke particular emotions (Debord 1955). When Jeremiah exclaims: “How has the city of glory (‫ )עיר תהלה‬not been deserted (‫)עזבה‬, the city of my joy (‫”)קרית משושי‬ (Jer 49:25), Damascus’ attributes of glory and joy stand in sharp contrast with the desolate place envisioned. Verses 26 and 27 evoke more upsetting feelings, depicting fallen warriors and a city on fire. Similarly but in reversed order, the resurrection of ruined cities (‫ )וחדשו ערי חרב‬in Isa 61:4 generates hope, happiness and relief against the backdrop of the negative vibes of urban ruins. The city spaces in the text are perfectly aligned with the overall tone of the chapter that is one of hope for the future. The latter points to the other side of the just described process, which is bidirectional in nature: the possibility of a conscious selection of scenery and spatial settings for the feelings they may evoke during reading. Urban space then becomes “a tool for negotiating [their] feelings and place in the world” (Mills 2012, 11). To draw on the same examples, Jeremiah chooses the attributes ‘glory’ and ‘joy’ to evoke a positive response to the Damascene city space, whereas he turns to desolation, falling and consummation by fire to create the opposite effect. Likewise, Isaiah draws a picture of city renewal to announce his message of hope. Regardless of the starting point (place or emotion), it stands to reason that geographical location and feelings are connected, and that because of that, stories and texts can and will draw upon that relation. Mount Zion in the prophetic books and the book of Psalms often features when a positive future is envisioned (e.g., Mic 4:7, 8:3; Ps 2:6). The biblical text mentions various high urban places, each of them bringing other aspects of height to the fore. When parts of the city are envisioned as tall, they metonymically render the city as a whole a high place. This process is facilitated by passages in which the parts explicitly function as metonymy for the entire city. The prototypical example appears in the story of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11), where the tower can be considered a condensation of the city.1 The most noteworthy heights of a city are its (watch)towers. Occasionally, also smaller high places play a role in the construal of city space, such as rooftops or altars.

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Towers Among all high urban spaces, towers occupy a prominent place. The tower draws on its verticality more than on any other aspect, making use of the natural greatness of its very name, ‫( מגדל‬Vermeulen 2017f ). Towers form an unusual bridge between the human realm and the divine realm. These two domains are, by definition, separated from each other. Even though humans aspire to access the divine world, they rarely can. From the very first mentioning of a tower in the Hebrew Bible, the one in Genesis 11, it is clear that the tower’s height is what makes it uniquely qualified as possible gateway to God and his abode, “a human effort to link up heaven and earth” (Kass 2000, 644). As such the tower is associated not only with the divine but also with power: the power to be like and with God (Rogerson 2009, 23).2 As highest point of the city, the tower represents the city in its potential communication with the divine. As will be discussed further on, the deity will be an essential part of the metaphor’s Thirdspace. The high city in the Hebrew Bible can only be produced by God or by his approbation. The tower’s potential is also its weakness. Whereas it may create protection and a divine access point, it simultaneously holds a threat. Its height is not always perceived positively. In Isaiah 2:15, the prophet is speaking “against every high tower and against every inaccessible wall.” In this passage, height is interpreted as too high, turning into arrogance and hubris. The latter also forms an important interpretive position when it comes to the story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11 (Wybrow 1998, 3; Hiebert 2007, 29–30). Given the potential danger of towers, and thus of cities, they are often part of narratives of destruction. Toppling towers undo the primary and defining characteristic of height and affect the towers’ being and all they stand for. In Judges 8:9, Gideon says, “When I return safely, I will pull down this tower” to the people of Penuel. In verse 17, he indeed does, in addition to killing all the inhabitants. The tower in this narrative stands for the city’s well-being, “their [i.e., the people’s] town’s icon” (Webb 2012, 255). By destroying the tower, Gideon annihilates the city and its perceived power as rebellious against him.3 Whereas the city is height initially defined the city of Penuel, the destruction of the physical tower indicates a deconstruction of the cityscape construal.

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Without the tower, the city is no longer conceived as height (Secondspace). The negative outcome, explicitly narrated as the murder of the townspeople (Firstspace), emphasizes the shift in conceptualization. The city after the destruction of its tower is conceived as an empty container (Secondspace). Not only does this new image lack the positive connotations of upness, it evokes also additional negative associations with the introduction of emptiness. The use of both metaphors rather than one or the other multiplies the powerlessness and bereavement of the cityscape. The city once was high, but not anymore; it was also full, but not so in the end. The city-as-height, at least through towers, is a temporary and transitory city (Thirdspace). Despite this patterning of rise and fall, new towers do arise. This is the case in passages describing the restoration of Jerusalem or other towns, either written in a historical fashion (e.g., Nehemiah 3) or as an apocalyptic vision (e.g., Jer 31:38). In both cases, the towers represent a renewed spatial dialogue between God and his people. The towers return to their initial associations, creating urban spaces of happiness and wellbeing, without the risks of becoming too high and too happy (Thirdspace). In 2 Chronicles 14:6, Asa says, “Let us build these cities and surround them with walls and towers, gates and bars, now that the land is still ours.” The construction of new towers follows after the old heights, pillars and sacred posts have been destroyed (vv. 2, 4). The return to God mentioned in verse 3 is conceptually given form in the change in cityscape. The old ‘towers’ are replaced by new towers, restoring the order of the story world spatially and conceptually (Thirdspace). The tower in its purest form evokes good things. Such is exactly what the Song of Song imagines when comparing the beloved ones to towers. The female character has a neck “like the Tower of David … built for weapons, hung with a thousand shields, all the shields of the strong ones” (Song 4:4). In chapter 7, her neck is a tower, “of ivory,” and “her nose like the Lebanon tower that faces Damascus” (Song 7:5). In the last chapter of the Song, the female self-identifies as “a wall, her breasts like towers” (Song 8:10). Although far less, also the male character is towerlike, with “his cheeks like beds of spices, towers of perfume” (Song 5:13).4 All of these passages occur in the so-called

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waṣf parts of the Song, which describe the lovers’ bodies from top to bottom or the other way around (Firstspace). The tower can be both defense (James 2017b, 102) and access point (Landy 2011, 66–67; Davis 2000, 300). Such is apparent in the reading of the Song as a love poem—the towerlike body parts have the potential to offer the lovers “an experience of ecstasy” (Davis 2000, 233) and the readers a likewise understanding of the cityscape.5 Similarly, an allegorical reading considers the tower, and thus the urban landscape, as part of a religious experience involving God and the church (Black 2009, 25–27). Even when one reads these passages as ironic or invective rather than as plain love poetry (Noegel and Rendsburg 2009, 137–140), the tower in the Song still keeps the aforementioned traits. What is more, the Song has an urban setting, despite of it being primarily read as a story of gardens because of its many nature-based images (Meredith 2013, 90–92).6 The city is mapped onto the female character’s body (Sasson 1987, 737–38; Meredith 2013, 172–73), “a platform on which the triumphs of human ingenuity are constructed” (Black 2009, 156). Additionally, recalling the use of body and woman/person metaphors elsewhere for city space, the similes of the Song become even more telling with regard to urban conceptualization. They testify to a complex understanding of city space that draws on multiple metaphors, often used in combination, “explor[ing] various facets of ‘cityness’, celebrating its aesthetic splendor as well as its potential problems” (James 2017b, 90). As far as the tower imagery goes, the Song draws on the positive connotations of elevation and defense.7 The bodily city map imagining towers is the idealized counterpart of the city space in which the characters of the Song are set and which at times reminds much more of the shady back alleys in a modern-day metropolis, as exemplified in Song 5:7: “They found me, the watchmen, who go around in the city; they struck me, they wounded me. They lifted up my garment from me, the watchman of the walls.”8 The towers of the Song do not fall or collapse, nor do the youthful bodies of the characters on which they are ascribed. Nevertheless, the identification between city and human body implies that this state of wellbeing is only a snapshot of a cityscape that is, by definition, ephemeral (see before on body metaphor) (Thirdspace).

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Other Urban Heights Occasionally, biblical writings develop a cityscape with heights other than towers. This is, for example, the case in 2 Sam 11:2, where David, after getting up from his couch (‫)ויקם מעל משכבו‬, is on the rooftop of the palace (‫)על גג בית המלך‬, when he spots Bathsheba (Firstspace). This location evokes positive feelings, pertaining David as well as David’s experience at that moment.9 As a king, David is thought of as an important and morally good person. This position is emphasized through the rooftop location. He has an overview of the spatial order, a privileged position given to him in his role as leader.10 At the same time, David also sees a beautiful woman bathing, something which he experiences as delightful and positive as well. The rooftop scene construes both a social and a personal cityscape, which not necessarily lead to the same response.11 2

And it was at evening that David rose from his bed and walked on the roof of the palace, and he saw a woman taking a bath from the roof. And the woman was very beautiful.

‫ ויהי לעת הערב ויקם דוד מעל משכבו ויתהלך על‬2 ‫גג בית המלך וירא אשה רחצת מעל הגג והאשה‬ ‫טובת מראה מאד‬

In the story, David chooses his personal response and cityscape, over the social one, resulting in the former overriding the structure of the latter. Rather than using his outlook to win the larger battle, David focuses on winning Bathsheba, placing the husband Uriah in an unfortunate battle position so that he dies. The king’s rooftop offers him power: in a sense, he plays god when first taking Bathsheba, whom he should have not seen under normal circumstances, and secondly manipulating Uriah into death. The roof “signif[ies] that devastating human impulse to rise above the confines of earthly power” (Hornung 2017, 2). Whereas the story continues and the spatial distortion is set right (2 Sam 11:27; 12:15), the high city is unaffected. Urban height is what offers David the opportunity to excel either socially or personally. The roof is his space of ruling. It forms a set-up for success and positive emotions. That things turn out quite the opposite is not the metaphor’s fault but depends on

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David’s judgment of the situation and his consequent actions.12 The city is a height is a space of opportunity, for better or for worse (Thirdspace).13 This inherent ambiguity is also present in the lofty places mentioned in Ezekiel 16 (24–25, 31, 39). Whereas this chapter is infamously known for its personification of the cities of Samaria and Jerusalem (e.g., Galambush 1992; Kamionkowski 2003; Maier 2008c, 112–140), the text conceptualizes city space also through additional images, such as the city is height (Secondspace). At first, the cities are said to have made “high places” (‫ )במות‬for pagan sacrifice (16:16) and “a mound (‫)גב‬, a height (‫ )רמה‬in every square” (16:24), “at the head of every street” (16:25) and “at every crossroad” (16:31). Consequently, the cities will have their lofty places torn down (16:39: ‫( )והרסו גבך ונתצו רמתיך‬Firstspace).14 These places contribute to a twisted cityscape, evoking potential power for the builders as well as unwanted height from the biblical God’s point of view. The mentioned places are not dedicated to God but to other deities and rulers, hence also the adultery imagery in this passage (Maier 2008c, 119). Contrary to other passages where there occurred only one tower, as utter symbol of (aspired) power, the elevated places in Ezekiel are numerous. They are everywhere, as such suggesting that the city as a whole becomes one big high space worshipping foreigners, be it gods or kings. This cityscape is extremely problematic in the setting of the biblical narrative: it is not approved by the biblical God, not aimed at coming closer to him, and occupying vertical space as well as horizontal space. Again, the human characters in the story, even though they are personified city spaces themselves this time, recognize the potential of the city-­as-­height, but are not able to develop this idea into a textual space in line with God’s interpretation of that same city space. Resultantly, as was the case for the previous examples, the cityscape of height in Ezekiel 16 is short-lived, an attempt rather than an achievement (Thirdspace).

Mountains Whereas the high city is often ephemeral, it is given a more permanent status when identified with the label ‘mountain’ (‫)הר‬. Contrary to the human constructions of towers, roofs and cultic high places, the

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mountain is a natural entity, which, despite its erosion over times, is less likely to be under attack or threat of destruction.15 When the biblical text turns to this specific image, the high city will not collapse, it will survive.16 The cityscape is one of continuity and stability, with the mountain city as an ever-present reference point (Thirdspace). Resultantly, this specific realization of the city is height metaphor achieves what the other examples attempt to reach: a godly city space. Because the city space is not just high, but naturally high, there seems to be an inherent justification for the presence of this space.17 In Isaiah 2:2–3, the prophet Isaiah prophesies the following: 2 In the days to come, the mountain of the house of the Lord will stand firm on top of the mountains and it will be lifted above the hills; and all the nations will flow to it with joy. 3 And the many peoples will go and say: “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways, and that we may walk in his paths.” Because from Zion instruction will go out, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

‫ והיה באחרית הימים‬2 ‫נכון יהיה הר בית יהוה‬ ‫בראש ההרים‬ ‫ונשא מגבעות‬ ‫ונהרו אליו‬ ‫כל הגוים‬ ‫ והלכו עמים רבים ואמרו‬3 ‫לכו ונעלה אל הר יהוה‬ ‫אל בית אלהי יעקב‬ ‫וירנו מדרכיו‬ ‫ונלכה בארחתיו‬ ‫כי מציון תצא תורה‬ ‫ודבר יהוה מירושלם‬

The text construes a cityscape with typical height vocabulary, such as “mountain” (‫)הר‬, (mountain) “top” (‫ )ראש‬and “hills” (‫)גבעות‬, and motion verbs, such as “be lifted up” (‫ )הנשא‬and “go up” (‫)עלה‬. These words (Firstspace) carry the text’s understanding of the city as height (Secondspace). What is more, the metaphor the city is height merges the different spaces mentioned in the verses: natural mountains (‫)הרים‬, a temple (‫ )בית יהוה‬and a city (‫ ירושלם‬,‫)ציון‬. In Isaiah’s vision of the future, temple, mountain and city become one,18 sharing the fundamental quality of height. This height is furthermore connected to God and his teachings, who and which stand above all other spaces. The produced cityscape is positive, framed as a stable space where order and execution are perfectly aligned (Thirdspace).19 Whereas other passages sometimes seem to distinguish between the human, historical Jerusalem and the divine,

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imagined Zion, these lines of Isaiah blur the boundaries between both. When Jerusalem draws on the height metaphor, it becomes Zion.20 Zion’s loftiness does not safeguard it from threats. In Isaiah 29:8, the prophet speaks of “all the multitude of nations that war upon Mount Zion.” Yet, whereas occasional negative associations are featured together with the city is height, the mountain and thus the city itself is never destroyed.21 The fighting nations in Isa 29:8 are unsuccessful, “like one who is hungry and dreams he is eating, but wakes to find himself empty.” Remarkably, whereas Mount Zion typically appears in passages about future times, Isaiah draws here a comparison that renders the presence a dream and the future reality. As a result, temporality becomes irrelevant, which is exactly the case for all that lasts forever. Spatiality turns into the new time, a measurement that shows God and his city as ultimate height (Thirdspace). Such can also be read in Psalm 137, even though mountain vocabulary is lacking there. Jerusalem is said to be placed above the greatest joy of the psalmist (Ps 137:5: ‫)אם לא אעלה את ירושלם על ראש שמחתי‬. Whereas there is also a temporal discourse going on in the psalm, with references to present, past and future, it is the spatial discourse that eventually shows the order of things: Jerusalem/Zion as utmost high space. Joy, typically associated with height too (see below on orientational metaphors), is not as high as Zion is. Or in English, the city is somewhere above cloud nine. No wonder the Babel builders put aside whatever risks might have come with building a city and tower without divine approval.

Geography and the Mind The association of height and good things is not just a psychological or literary given. Cognitive studies explain the same phenomenon relying on the embodied nature of language and thinking. When we are awake and alive, we are up, whereas down positions of the body come with sleep, illness and death. Resultantly, we associate the former with everything good: joy, success and health, and the latter with all things bad: sadness, failure and illness (Lakoff and Johnson 2003/1980, 14–21). The metaphor the city is height belongs to a particular category of metaphors that draws upon these distinctions. Called orientational metaphors,

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the mappings connect basic spatial oppositions such as up-down, in-out, to-from, and in front of-behind with oppositions from other realms, such as emotions. To illustrate this, consider the following lines from Ps 48:2–3: Great is the Lord and much praised in the city of our God, his holy mountain, 3 lovely in height, joy of all the earth, Mount Zion, remote part of Zaphon, city of a great king. 2

‫ גדול יהוה ומהלל מאד‬2 ‫בעיר אלהינו‬ ‫הר קדשו‬ ‫ יפה נוף משוש כל הארץ‬3 ‫הר ציון ירכתי צפון‬ ‫קרית מלך רב‬

In verse 2, the city of God is perceived and conceived as a mountain (Firstspace and Secondspace). Verse 3 develops this idea further, considering the mountain a space of joy. Resultantly, the city becomes a metaphorical up in a new sense (Secondspace). The Psalmist builds here upon generally accepted ideas that connect the upper spatial realm with happiness. Obviously, the unknown factor in the text is not that joy is uplifting or that a mountain is an elevated space—human beings experience both frequently. What is explored is an understanding of the city of God, and in extension God himself. By mapping the space of Zion unto that of height, both in a literal and figurative sense, the text can construe a cityscape of a place that cannot be accessed and thus assessed through bodily experience. Nevertheless, that is what the Psalmist wants to address. In order to do so, he relies on what is known: that mountains are high and that joy is a metaphorical height. The verses try to bridge the gap between earthly and divine realms through the notion of the city, which is both a mountain and a joy of all the earth, a city of great kings (Thirdspace).22 What these descriptions all have in common is the attribute height, found in the semantics of the words ‫הר‬, “mountain” and ‫נוף‬, “elevation”; in the cognitive set-up of the word ‫משוש‬, “joy”; and in the adjective ‫רב‬, “great,” both covering literal and figurative senses of greatness. Whereas the typical and expected connection is that between height and joy (or for that matter any other positive association), the biblical writers freely adapt this engrained link to further their message. This results in two additional, possible textual scenarios: one in which height is perceived as bad, thus subverting the expected connotation, and one in

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which the connection is questioned in a play with shifting directions. In Ezekiel 16, the previously mentioned lofty places form good examples of the first scenario. While the builders of these places may actually think of them as good spaces, the biblical text adjusts that conceptualization. The high places have to be broken down because they are not good. What is more, they are spatial symbols of the haughtiness of the personified cities Samaria and Jerusalem (Ezek 16:50), causing them to betray the biblical God. Introducing the city is height metaphor in this chapter allows the prophet to construe a cityscape that is counterintuitive. The distorted city space that comes forth from it is necessarily experienced as out of place and spatially wrong (Thirdspace). The relationship with God is not violated once, but twice: The city-woman has not stayed faithful to her husband God; the city-as-height is not a height for God. Both metaphors address God’s connection to the city, playing off the source domains and their opposites. Whereas this cityscape is depressive, it simultaneously lays the foundation for the restorative lines later in Ezekiel 16. Remarkably, the restoration only happens with the metaphor the city is a woman, for whom a new family is built (Ezek 16:61–62). It is but near the end of the book of Ezekiel (40:2) that the text returns to the height metaphor to envision the city: In visions of God, he brought me to the land of Israel, and he set me down on a very high mountain (‫ )הר גבה מאד‬and on it something as a structure of a city (‫ )ועליו כמבנה עיר‬on the south.

In what follows, Ezekiel describes Jerusalem in detail, drawing on a container metaphor (Secondspace), to conclude at the end with “the name of the city from that day will be ‘The Lord is there’ (‫( ”)יהוה שמה‬Ezek 48:35). By naming the city after God, the connection between city and God is formally reestablished. Moreover, the near equation of God and space underscores the spatial nature of Ezekiel’s understanding of God. This understanding appeared first in the opening lines of chapter 4, where Ezekiel was encouraged to “take a brick (‫ …)קח לך לבנה‬and scratch on it a city, Jerusalem (‫( ”)םלשורי תא ריע הילע תוקחו‬4:1) to consequently separate himself from it (4:3). The separation finds its conclusion and resolution

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in the last line of chapter 48. God will become the city, both conceived as immobile and mobile at the same time. The locational adverb ‫שם‬, “there,” expressing a specific and fixed position in space, is accompanied by a ‫ה‬-locale that articulates movement (Firstspace). Literally, the Hebrew does not say “God is there” (equation), but “God is to there” (near equation).23 Despite chapter after chapter on measurements and size of the new Jerusalem, the prophet concludes with a cityscape without measurable form. Not only does the name of the city suggest urban expansion in the space in between God and the ‘there,’ it also conceives the city as twodimensional, lacking height. Given the book’s (problematic) exploration of the height metaphor in chapter 16, it should not surprise that the final cityscape of Ezekiel is one without height, even without mentioning it as much (Thirdspace). Instead, the city is conceived as a container positioned in the human realm (Secondspace), ready to welcome or receive God (Thirdspace). Whereas Ezekiel’s use of the metaphor the city is height is mostly consistent within one passage, the opening lines of Isaiah 26 display a spatial roller coaster. Rather than identifying the height of the city as a vice (thus up is bad), the prophet twists and turns spatial orientations. Starting off with “a strong city (‫ )עיר עז‬we have; salvation he places as walls (‫ )חומות‬and fortress (‫( ”)חל‬Isa 26:1), Isaiah connects city, height and God. This triad recurs in verses 5–7, where he mentions what happened to those people and cities that did not follow God’s way: 5 For he has brought low those who dwelt high up, the exalted city he has made low, he has made it low to the ground, he has made it touch the dust. 6 A foot will trample it, feet of the needy, soles of the poor. 7 The path for the righteous is level; just one, the track of the righteous you clear.

‫ כי השח ישבי מרום‬5 ‫קריה נשגבה ישפילנה‬ ‫ישפילה עד ארץ‬ ‫יגיענה עד עפר‬ ‫ תרמסנה רגל‬6 ‫רגלי עני‬ ‫פעמי דלים‬ ‫ ארח לצדיק מישרים‬7 ‫ישר מעגל צדיק תפלס‬

Height is reversed into lowness. It is not the lofty city that is identified with goodness (v. 5), but the leveled ground which is called the place of the righteous (v. 7). Obviously, the point of view taken here is that of the divine character, for whom high places form potential problems. The mighty city of verse 2, if mighty is read as some form of height, is only

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approved as height because it is made so by God himself. On the contrary, the high city of verse 5 is a product of its inhabitants. The lines rewrite the conceptualization of the city as a height, changing the direction from vertical to horizontal. Goodness is to be found in a horizontal plane, that is, in the human realm, rather than in venturing up the vertical axis toward God (Thirdspace). That is not to say, that people should not try to connect with God, but it does say that this connection can take various spatial forms, each of which is controlled in some way or another by the divine character. Cityscapes as the above come across as unnatural to human beings (Thirdspace) because they go against engrained ideas about directionality (Secondspace). Nevertheless, readers can imagine them, meaning that they pick up on the spatial reversal; however, without any guarantee for them also experiencing the new spaces as good or righteous. Reversing orientations in language and text is one thing, rewiring people so that they also experience and feel that reversal in the intended way is a whole different matter. Hence, the Isaianic city space is potentially revolutionary, a way of reframing the urban landscape (Thirdspace). This is exactly what is at stake in Zeph 3:11–12. This passage combines several aspects of the city is height metaphor. It draws on its connection with pride (‫)גאוה‬, but also on the connotations attached to its appearance as mountain (‫( )הר‬Firstspace and Secondspace). On that day you will not be ashamed of all your deeds by which you rebelled against me. For then I will take away from within you the exulting ones of your pride, and you will no longer be high on my sacred mountain.24

11

‫ ביום ההוא‬11 ‫לא תבושי מכל עלילתיך‬ ‫אשר פשעת בי‬ ‫כי אז אסיר‬ ‫מקרבך עליזי גאותך‬ ‫ולא תוספי לגבהה עוד‬ ‫בהר קדשי‬

The (personified) city as well as her inhabitants are described with height vocabulary (Firstspace), expressing the underlying idea that the city is a high place (Secondspace). This height, as in many of the other examples, is not permanent. God will remove the proud people and resultantly, the city as a whole will no longer be identified as high. Instead of a reversal from high to low, Zephaniah combines the height metaphor with the container metaphor. The answer to height, therefore, is not lowness

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but removal and emptiness. This pattern can be found in other stories as well, most notably that of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11). The perpendicularity of the building activity, aimed at realizing a physical as well as psychological reference point (the ‫ שם‬of place and the ‫ שם‬of fame), is countered by a horizontal spreading of the people (Vermeulen 2013, 385).25 Again, the solution to the haughtiness of the city is a scattering of the people. The shift in focus from vertical to horizontal creates a shift from the divine to the human realm, suggesting that the city should look for its conceptualization using human terms, “to take on the adventure of human life, the adventure of populating, mastering and enjoying the earth” (Wybrow 1998, 17). Hierarchy is key to the height metaphor. Because the image shares an interest with the divine domain and its conceptualization, it necessarily will have to be positioned in relation to that domain. According to Zeph 3:11, the city can only be conceived as height if it is God’s holy mountain. The verse draws on multiple urban metaphors to produce a cityscape of not-haughty height, uniting opposites and logical incompatibilities to result in a meaningful experience. Bringing together the sinful wife, the container full of proud people and the high city, Zephaniah generates a city space that resolves those issues. The new high city space coming forth from that is a space of potential, as verse 12 continues, to welcome a “humble and powerless people” (‫“ )עם עני ודל‬in the name of the Lord” (‫( )בשם יהוה‬Thirdspace). Thus, Zephaniah’s holy city does not need to remain empty—for that matter, that Babel was had everything to do with it being not God’s holy city, but just a city.

The City of God For the biblical writers, height is inherently connected to God, necessarily creating a spatial discourse with all places high in the text. The perceived and conceived urban heights exist only on God’s terms. Very often, “the spatial potential of towers is cut short by the ontological hierarchy between God and the people” (Vermeulen 2017f ). In Genesis 11, the building stops when God intervenes and the dream of a sky-high tower is never realized. Likewise, the towers of the proud enemies fall as soon as God turns to them.

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Jerusalem/Zion as the City in Which God Resides Contrary to the other cityscapes, the metaphor the city is height has a far more delineated context in which it occurs. This context is almost always one in which God plays an important role. The high city is God’s city, implying that cities are high because of God’s presence and that God himself is high because of the spatial location of his abode. The latter idea concurs with the findings of previous studies from an anthropological as well as a cognitive perspective. In his book on spatial understanding in the ancient Near East, Nick Wyatt points out that the vertical axis is the axis that distinguishes between the human and the divine realm. God is placed on top and the human being below (2001, 40). Repeatedly the biblical text identifies God as the God in heavens, such as in 1 Kgs 8:30, “Look down from heaven (‫ )משמים‬and see” or Lam 3:50, “until the Lord looks down and sees from heaven (‫)משמים‬.” The position of God on the upper part of the vertical axis fits with his association with the city as height. Thus, Micah 4:7 has “the Lord reigns … on mount Zion (‫מלך‬ ‫)יהוה … בהר ציון‬, from now until forever.” Zechariah 8:3 speaks of God dwelling in Jerusalem (‫ )ושכנתי בתוך ירושלם‬which is “the mountain of the Lord of hosts, the holy mountain” (‫)והר יהוה צבאות הר הקדש‬. From a cognitive point of view, divine beings belong in the upper realm, or the cognitive domain of up. They exemplify what people aspire. The up space is typically associated with power, life and happiness (Lakoff and Johnson 2003/1980, 14–21; Kövecses 2010, 64–65). Hence, humans do not only want to come closer to God but also to all the positive attributes that come with his space. Such is the case in the closing lines of Psalm 48. Encircle Zion, and go around it; Count its towers 14 Turn your attention to its ramparts, pass between its palaces, that you can tell the next generation 15 that this is God, our God forever and ever. He will guide us until death. 13

‫ סבו ציון‬13 ‫והקיפוה‬ ‫ספרו מגדליה‬ ‫ שיתו לבכם לחילה‬14 ‫פסגו ארמנותיה‬ ‫למען תספרו לדור אחרון‬ ‫ כי זה אלהים אלהינו עולם ועד‬15 ‫הוא ינהגנו על מות‬

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Whereas the opening lines had firmly established the connection between God and the upper realm through Mount Zion (Körting 2006, 164–65), the end of Psalm 48 turns the reader’s gaze to the city with phrases that realize the height metaphor differently. The high places mentioned are human constructions, such as towers (‫)מגדלים‬, ramparts (‫ )חילים‬and palaces (‫( )ארמנות‬Firstspace). Given that the city space has been repeatedly called “the city of our God” in the psalm (vv. 2, 9) and God himself is defined as an elevated space (v. 4, ‫משגב‬, “a high place as refuge”) (Maier 2008c, 33), the text primes the reader for a connection of God and the man-made heights, and for a positive evaluation of the created cityscape.26 As shown in other examples discussed here, spatial and temporal discourses are intertwined, with the apparent verticality of the city space as pendant of the everlasting presence of God in time.27 What is more, the text sets up a cityscape where space and time function together rather than on the two separate realms of verticality and horizontality that typically appear in discussions on ancient Near Eastern conceptions of space and time (e.g., Wyatt 2001, 35–41). By directing the audience’s gaze to the space upward, and thus to God, the psalmist draws the human and divine realm closer to each other. From the countable space of the city, he moves to the unlimited space-time of God. This is the city of God, a space that defies the logic of human physics and language (Thirdspace).28 In later texts envisioning future times, the idea of mount Zion recurs repeatedly, for example in Trito-Isaiah (Maier 2008, 215). What is remarkable is that by conceiving the divine space as urban and natural, God’s space is a merism. It combines mutual exclusive opposites, emphasizing that God’s space includes all the categories the human mind typically distinguishes. Rather than speaking of the tower Zion, the biblical writers prefer to speak of mountain Zion.29 This conceptualization is different from the place identified in earlier times with God, Bethel. Already the very name suggests that this first dwelling of the biblical God focuses more on the container and building metaphor than on the metaphor the city is height. The only story featuring Bethel that includes some references to height, although far less explicitly connected to the city space as the ones mentioned for Jerusalem/ Zion, is Jacob’s sleepover in the city (Gen 28:10–22). Throughout the

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story, the city is referred to with the word ‫מקום‬, “place,” from the root ‫קום‬, “get up.” After his dream, Jacob sets up a ‫מצבה‬, “pillar,” another indication of height (Firstspace). However, instead of tying up these traces of height in the naming of the city at the end of the narrative, the text takes a different direction with the name ‫בית אל‬, “house of God” (Gen 28:19).30 Remarkably, the other references to the place in the remainder of the narrative include ‫עיר‬, “city” (Gen 28:19) and ‫בית אלהים‬, “house of God” (Gen 28:22), no longer ‫מקום‬, “place.” Whereas height functioned throughout the story as a way to God, once Jacob has recognized Bethel as ‫שער השמים‬, “the gateway to the heavens,” the text no longer needs the height metaphor. The connection between earthly and divine realm has been made; the story moves on to a new metaphor, that of the container. That this is indeed the case can be seen in other passages where Bethel features. Each of them draws on the container metaphor rather than on that of height.31 Thus, when the Israelites set up a golden calf in Bethel, they do so in the house, that is, the container, of God, not on its height (1 Kgs 12:29). Similarly, Bethel is the container in which the palm stands under which Deborah sits (Judg 4:5). The exception is Genesis 35, where Jacob travels to Bethel with his family, leaving the idols behind (Gen 35:4). In verses 1 through 7, the altar (‫)מזבח‬, thus a high place, is mentioned three times, bringing to mind the previous connection with God through the city. As in Genesis 28, the story concludes with naming the site, as El-Bethel this time, reinforcing the holiness of the space through a double theophoric element in the name. The name itself reintroduces the container metaphor. Bethel is the house of God, not his mountain. As such the final framing of the city plays into a reading of Bethel’s marginalization when it comes to holy cities in the biblical text.32

Other Cities as Cities Owned and Controlled by God The metaphor the city is height is not used exclusively for Jerusalem. Also in passages featuring other cities, height is what drives the cityscape, as in the depiction of Damascus in Jer 49:25 or of Babylon in Jer 51:25. In those cases, the city space is framed in a way similar to Jerusalem. The text explores the notion of height as positive space, eventually countered

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with its opposite, drawing the biblical God into this picture. Resultantly, even the Babylonian and Damascene city are God’s, in that it is God who decides which shapes the spaces take and which functions they may fulfill. When the prophecy against Damascus calls the city both “the city of glory” (‫ )עיר תהלה‬and “the city of my joy” (‫( )קרית משושי‬Jer 49:25), Damascus is not only described with a rhetoric similar to that of Jerusalem, the city of God, but also connected to God.33 The pronominal suffix links the city space and the deity (Firstspace), however, without calling Damascus ‘the city of God.’ Hence, there is a fundamental difference between a city, such as Damascus, which is owned and controlled by God, and Jerusalem/Zion which is his abode or even his spatial representation at times. This distinction does not come with the chosen conceptual metaphor but with its actual realization in the language and story of the text. This is even more apparent in the Oracle against Babylon (Jeremiah 50–51) where various conceptual metaphors for city space underlie the text. Of interest here is Jer 51:25, where Jeremiah draws, among others, on the height image. See, I am against you, mountain of the destroyer— declares the Lord the destroyer of all the earth, and I will stretch out my hand against you; and roll you down from the cliffs, and make you into a burnt mountain. 25

‫ הנני אליך הר המשחית‬25 ‫נאם יהוה‬ ‫המשחית את כל הארץ‬ ‫ונטיתי את ידי עליך‬ ‫וגלגלתיך מן הסלעים‬ ‫ונתתיך להר שרפה‬

Addressing the personified city space, Babylon is consequently called “mountain of the destroyer” (‫)הר המשחית‬. The text positions the city against God, an opposition that emphasizes the height of both (Babylon’s in the text, Firstspace; God’s through conceptual association and references elsewhere). What is more, rather than relying on human city vocabulary, such as towers or walls, the prophet chooses the natural height of the mountain, which serves as an epithet for the city of God (e.g., Isa 4:5). The initial set-up of the verse with two high spaces soon unravels into a cityscape that undoes the height metaphor. Babylon rolls down (‫ )גלגל‬and ends as a burnt mountain (‫)הר שרפה‬. All of this is achieved by God, the agent of all actions following the opening phrase. What may

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have seemed like a possible power strife turns out to be a way to frame Babylon as God’s inferior, a burnt mountain rather than a holy mountain. A similar intervention can be seen in the already mentioned story of the Tower of Babel. This narrative of height starts off without divine involvement or approval. The story will set this right, because “from God’s point of view, the city of man is, in its deepest meaning, at best a form of idolatry and self-worship, and at worst, a great threat to the earth” (Kass 2000, 635). Even though God still comes down to the city, implying that the city is not reaching the divine realm, the very fact that God interrupts the building process indicates that such would have been the case eventually.34 This prompts him to stop the vertical expansion of the city. For the divine character too, the proverb ‘better safe than sorry’ seems to hold true. Even when cities are not named, the height metaphor comes with a reference to the divine. In Deuteronomy 2:36, the text says, “there will be no city too high for God.” The city space imagined is not the city of God. However, there is a direct relation between the image of a high city, here an unspecified one, and the divine character God. Deuteronomy positions God’s space higher than those of cities, and thus higher than the human realm. Again, the point is to highlight divine control over spatiality, especially human controlled and constructed spaces, rather than to call all cities God’s abode.

Notes 1. What is more, the tower assists, in my view, the reader in his or her (re)construction of the textual cityscape. 2. This is exactly why the tower, as representative of the city, draws God’s attention. As noted by Robert Gordon, the city of Cain in Genesis 4 does not receive the same divine attention in terms of judgment (2018, 174). This has to do with a different focus, which is manifested in different conceptual metaphors for the urban space. Contrary to Gordon’s stance that the city is more important than the tower to the narrative of Genesis 11 (174), the underlying metaphor of the city is height shows that tower and city are far less inseparable from a conceptual point of

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view. The tower envisions the city as a high space, thus possibly divine. Such a height is lacking, or at least not mentioned, in the story of Genesis 4. 3. As Barry Webb has noted, God does not play a role in this part of the narrative, in which Gideon’s violence grows exponentially (2012, 257). Whereas it is usually God who takes issue with towers, this passage shows that also characters with a powerful position can address towers in a similar way. 4. The architectural imagery is not limited to the female character, contrary to what most scholars argue (e.g., Landy 2011, 80; James 2017b, 101). This does not undo the overall argument made in these studies, namely, that the imagery is tied up with the practice of gendering city space; however, it does nuance the view slightly. For more on this, see also the discussion on personifying versus gendering city space (Chap. 3). 5. Focusing on the tower’s connotations, the body imagery in these particular verses of the Song does not come across to me as problematic. Although as a tower, the body can be considered an object, it is not “itemized, objectified and oddly figured” (Black 2009, 8). On the contrary, the urban comparison empowers the body, regardless of its gender. 6. This has changed in the last decade in which the city in the Song has received far more attention, and not just as the opposite of the garden. See, among others, Thöne (2012, 134–41, 215–27, 385–89); Meredith (2013, 90–109); and James (2017b, 88–117). 7. In contrast, Athalya Brenner reads the tower references in Song 7 as humorous (1990, 267). Others, such as Black see “her body [as] a foundation, a platform on which the triumphs of human ingenuity are constructed” (2009, 156). 8. Meredith sees a connection between Song 5:7 and 5:2, the former being “an unconscious inversion” of the latter (2018, 98). James considers the same link, deeming it an example of the city’s ambivalence (2017b, 100–101). 9. Even though it is odd that David is not at the battlefield, as suggested by verse 1, at “the season when kings go out.” On the contrary, he is enjoying his leadership on his roof terrace, “leading a life of idleness in Jerusalem” (Sternberg 1985, 197). 10. Geographically speaking, the palace of David was located on a higher position than the surrounding houses, so that he indeed had a privileged view on the environment (Davidson 2006, 83–84). Although the narra-

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tive answers to a historical situation of “a crisis of failed kingship,” it does build upon the positive image of ideal kingship as exemplified by the figure of David (Flynn 2012, 186). 11. Gabriel Hornung considers, in addition to high and low, also the opposition between in and out, which more or less coincides with the distinction between personal and social in the argument above. “Instead of divorcing personal confession from outward appeal, the cascading echoes of David’s desire and aggression probe the complex interaction between the inner pulls of self and the outer demands of wider environment” (2017, 6). 12. Or on the biblical writers who frame the story of David in the way they do. 13. Most interpretations of the story take into account the outcome of the narrative when assessing the role of height. They define height as dangerous, a danger that is set right by God’s response (e.g., Hornung 2017, 11–12). 14. Galambush distinguishes a chiastic structure in the story for personified Jerusalem (1992, 100–101). The identified pair above creates another, conceptual, chiasm that runs through the sections C’, B’ and A’ of Galambush. 15. There is only one instance in which this height is destroyed. In the Oracle against Babylon in Jer 51:25, it says “I am against you, o destroying mountain (‫ … )הר המשחית‬I will make you a burnt mountain (‫להר‬ ‫)שרפה‬.” The situation described is exceptional, underlining the exceptional power of God turning this mountain into a burnt mountain. Whereas the understanding is that something burnt down is no longer there, thus, the mountain is gone, the very mentioning of a mountain (Firstspace) even in the burnt version still activates a notion of height (Secondspace). This height, however, is paradoxically, down (Thirdspace). What is more, the verse also plays on the active versus passive role of the mountain. The latter is precisely the divine character’s preferred mode when it comes to the city is height. Babylon can be a mountain, but only on God’s terms. 16. Gray notes that this image functions as replacement when the container image, which she connects with a physical Jerusalem, is absent (2018, 23–24).

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17. Yaron Eliav points out that it is exactly the combination of historical topography and the idea of a cosmic mountain that gives rise to the image of God’s mountain in the biblical text (2005, 8). 18. They become one, even though, as Maier has pointed out, the phrase ‘mount Zion’ is not used in this passage (Maier 2008c, 198). Yet, context and intertextual links (with Ps 48:3, among others) prompt the reader to connect the dots. In my opinion, the conceptual metaphor the city is height assists in this process as well. 19. Scholars speak of a cityscape connected to a tradition of the divine mountain and of wellbeing in the far future (Tilly 2002, 161; Eliav 2005, 7–8). 20. This may be partly why Maier, starting from critical spatiality in its social form, thus with a reading of the text informed by historical reality, concludes that the text’s Thirdspace “is hard to establish since the oracle describes a future reality and does not hint at the current state of the mount and the temple” (2008c, 199). However, in the world of the text, a functional Thirdspace is construed that exactly allows bridging the temporal gap between present and future. 21. In that respect, my analysis supports Low’s reading that “there is no indictment against the city” in as far as that the place is not destroyed (2013, 63, n. 33). However, I do not go as far as saying that such is the case because city and people are distinguished from each other and the latter carry the blame. 22. In her discussion of Psalm 48, Maier draws a comparison with a Ugaritic text (CTU 1.3, III: 28–31) to argue that Zaphon stands for the mountain Ğebel el-Aqra’ which is considered a divine abode. She furthermore states that this abode is “outside of human reach and distinct from the city,” this contrary to what Psalm 48 does (2008c, 39). In my interpretation, these two positions are combined: I side with the Ugaritic interpretation that the presented space is not accessible to human beings, but that the text construes this space in such a way that it can be understood, and thus accessed mentally, by means of the conceptual metaphor the city is height. 23. Soo Kim has read the name of the city as “indicat[ing] that Yhwh dwells in temporal, spatial, and spiritual distances from the future City or future City residents” (2014, 199). Of interest for the current discussion is especially his point on spatial distance. By speaking of the city as “acting as a gate to the holy presence” (205), Kim emphasizes the city’s position as “transitional space” (188). This potential not-yet space holds a promise, its textual construal a way to express that promise.

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24. I consider the sacred mount here to be the city rather than the holy land, as suggested by JPS in a note (based on a comparison with Isa 11:9, 57:13 and 65:25). This suggestion is probably prompted by a seemingly referential conflict if both the addressed you and the mountain are identified as Jerusalem. However, this is exactly the point: Zephaniah is talking about the new Jerusalem, the not haughty one but the divine high one. The space of ‘you’ and the space of the mountain become one in the world of the text, regardless of its physical impossibility or its logical paradox. 25. Other interpretations focus on the play of “centripetal and centrifugal forces” (Anderson 1994, 166), stating that the focus on the tower in scholarship has led away from the real theme of the story, “the people’s goal to stay in one place” (Hiebert 2007, 36–37). Similarly, Van Wolde argues that “the human strivings seem not to be directed vertically but rather horizontally… The city and the tower are the representatives of this horizontal ambition” (1994, 88–89). 26. Following the lived space of Lefebvre, Maier argues that verses 13–15 are a “call to explore the heavily secured city,” with the feeling of security as important experience (2008c, 40). Whereas she comes to this conclusion by drawing on the historical context of the fragment, the above proposed text-world analysis comes to a similar overall conclusion, but reads this spatial construal differently, focusing on the linguistic-stylistic creativity within the text to imagine the godly city space. 27. Rebecca Watson has argued that lived and ideal city meet in Zion psalms “where a focus on place often correlates with one on time” (2018, 182). For Psalm 48, she sees a complementarity between “the very localized view of space” and the “equally notable extended perspective of time” (212). Even though she is not mentioning height here, or conceptual metaphors, her words envision the same opposition between the vertical and the horizontal. 28. In his piece on lofty cities, Martti Nissinen writes, “The function of the city as the city of God transcends the limitations of everyday perception and justifies metaphors that violate concrete experience” (2001, 172). Whereas his approach differs from mine, the textual space created as described above indeed aims to give the reader such an otherworldly experience. What is more, one does not even need to match the text with particular historical urban circumstances or details to come to such a conclusion.

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29. This is in line with what Noegel has argued with regard to the association of the divine with wild animals. “Even when worship became an urban reality, the temple’s interior recalled Yahweh’s connection to the wild by evoking the primordial wilderness of the Garden of Eden with its luscious flora and fauna, including aurochs, lions and cherubim (2019, 119). 30. Reineth and Gert Prinsloo discuss the story’s horizontal movements with Bethel as the “off-center” location in Genesis 28 (2013, 173–74). 31. In a few cases, Bethel is personified, such as in Hos 10:15: “Thus has Bethel done to you,” or Judg 1:22: “And the house of Joseph, they too, went up against Bethel.” Overall, though, this city is mostly conceived as a container in which God or a golden calf reside. 32. The above analysis, based on conceptual metaphors for the Bethel space, is in line with one of the common readings of the Bethel story, as one of a suppressed voice. Or as Bradford Anderson summarizes it, “While Bethel was formerly very important, it has been silenced and subjugated by the southern traditions, which wished to preserve the importance of Jerusalem” (2018, 60). It is a narrative strategy to first depict it as space with authority, in order to pass that authority consequently to the space of Jerusalem (Matthews 2009, 165). Contrary to previous readings of Bethel as a negative space, the (near) lack of a height metaphor does not imply a negative cityscape, as shown for Genesis 28 and 35. 33. As, for example, in Isa 62:7 for praise (‫)תהלה‬, and in Isa 60:15, Ps 48:3 and Lam 2:15 for joy (‫)משוש‬. 34. Leon Kass considers this “a wry comment on the gap between their aspiration and their deed” (Kass 2000, 645), thus implicitly rejecting the idea that there could have been a scenario in which God did not intervene and the builders did achieve their goal.

10 The City at Last

Throughout this study, the city of the biblical text formed the focus of attention. Not a specific city nor cities in a particular (prophetic) book, but the city as a unified concept in the text of the Hebrew Bible. This concept stands in between the actual expressions in the text and the stories they produce. It is the backbone of the urban tale of the biblical text. The previous chapters have discussed parts of its constituents. They have showcased their variety, appearing in different biblical books, genres and times. In this final chapter, I will piece together the parts of the concept. In a way, it is representative of the applied methodology which also focused on words (Firstspace) and conceptual metaphors (Secondspace) to consider the different spatial narratives readers create based upon them (Thirdspace).

The Concept of ‘City’ Defined The city in the Hebrew Bible takes various forms and shapes. Behind all these manifestations hides a set of ideas of what constitutes cities according to the text. Most stories draw on a combination of conceptualizations, adapting their view depending on the storyline they develop. They © The Author(s) 2020 K. Vermeulen, Conceptualizing Biblical Cities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45270-4_10

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underwrite the claim that “cities are rich, full, many-­faceted; reducing the city to a single, all-purpose definition seems neither possible nor even desirable” (Gates 2011, 3). The identified images are: the city as woman, as animal, as body, as building, as container, as object and as height.1 The different ideas within the set are related, yet without being identical. Hence, the body metaphor is naturally embedded in the other animate metaphors of the city as woman or as animal, whereas it simultaneously functions as a connection with inanimate metaphors through the similarity between bodies and buildings. Furthermore, height logically comes with an upright human body, conceptually associated with good things, including the divine. Finally, it is also through the body that people (and thus cities) can be objectivized. These relationships among the different sub-ideas of the biblical city emphasize the internal coherence of the city concept, not only conceptually and thus in a somewhat abstract sense, but also textually and thus in an applied sense. After all, the seven images were deduced from the text and not superimposed upon it a priori. The city of the Hebrew Bible is about people (the city is a woman). It is about their actions and feelings, performed and experienced with their bodies. Sometimes this city is a unified whole, other times the representative of many individuals. Although the city is not female by definition, it is often gendered through context, assisted by the grammatical feminine gender of city vocabulary in Biblical Hebrew. When the city is explicitly imagined as a woman, it is about relationships of various kinds and with several others. Most of the relations are family-based, describing connections with the divine (wife), the city’s inhabitants (mother), its future (mother), a human or divine protector (daughter), and other cities (sister). Among these, spousal and maternal roles are mostly separated, indicating that the different relationships matter and simultaneously safeguarding the applicability of the mother metaphor for a variety of cities. The personified city is a city with agency, for the good or the bad, exemplified through types and anti-types, such as the wife and the adulteress, the mother and the barren woman, or the worshipper and the sinner. Remarkably, daughters remain daughters, no matter what they do. The antitype par excellence is the animal city or the city overtaken by animals (the city is an animal). It represents the city upside down, the city as a space of reversal. This urban space is about existing dichotomies

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and the inherent tension between their parts. The city does not choose between wild or domesticated, predator or prey, clean or unclean, and sea, land or air. Rather it challenges these oppositions as a way to question the nature of the city itself. Biblical cities are also about change (the city is a body). They know periods of rise and fall, growth and decrease. Their existence is temporal and subject to various threats from outside as well as from within the city. Like a body, cities need to be taken care of, with clothes and adornment, soap and medicine. They linger between being bodies and having bodies, uniting themselves conceptually in types and antitypes. The city is change, often of a retaliating nature, as if it is the instrument through which a divine being sets the cosmic order right. The Hebrew Bible furthermore understands urban space as man-made (the city is a building). It comes with a physicality and materiality that can be sensed. This physical presence also makes it prone to destruction. Cities are transient and perishable; they are not here to stay. Each of their parts, each of the materials used to construe the city and realize its stability holds at the same time the risk of collapse. Cities in the Bible are about setting boundaries (the city is a container). They create a distinction between what is inside and what is outside, as well as between moving inside or moving outside. This brings the concept naturally back to people, animals and the body, as well as the building, all of which play a role in conceptualizing the city’s content or lack thereof. As with each of the previously mentioned ideas, drawing boundaries also implies its opposite: creating openings. Biblical cities are always shifting positions. They explore both the preferred ideal and its counterpart. Thus, they consider both in and out, entrance and exit, full and empty, and mobility and immobility. Conceived as containers, urban space can hold virtually anything, from people and goods to joy and violence. The city is a commodity (the city is an object). It is handled and handed over between people as well as between people and the divine. Robbed of its agency, the city is the itemized body, the number on a list of things, the object serving a particular role for its user. It is controlled space, sometimes by humans, but ultimately by the biblical God. As commodity, the city represents a vision on urbanity that captures the

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fluctuating nature of a city’s self-governance. As item, the city plays a role in a meta-dialogue beyond the peopled city. It is about urban trafficking, sometimes at the cost of ideas of autonomy and personality. This conceptualization is not at odds with the earlier described concepts, but, on the contrary, shows the city’s inherent human character. That is why the biblical city is also about verticality (the city is height). This idea of height represents both importance in the human realm and a connection with the divine. In both cases, the high city is the powerful city. It is about temporary as well as continuous leadership. What is more, the biblical city is about God, or better, humanity’s relationship with him. It connects the earthly and the heavenly, trying to render eternal what is often ephemeral. Whereas the biblical city is, first and foremost, a human endeavor, it is an endeavor conceived as ultimately controlled by the divine. The city itself is not divine, but its relationship with the biblical God is nevertheless crucial to its overall understanding. As a final thought, let us return to Childe’s contested definition of cities and translate the characteristics into conceptual metaphors in order to see whether and where the biblical city differs. Childe’s city description starts with dense population, thus with people within a certain boundary (1950, nr. 1). It continues with defining it through people (nr. 2), with a relationship to the divine (nr. 3) in a man-made environment with a certain verticality to it (nr. 4). His city is furthermore about people with different roles and relationships (nrs. 5, 9), it is man-made with certain commodities available (nrs. 6, 7, 8, 9).2 Childe concludes his list returning to the initial idea of people living within a certain area (nr. 10). The overlaps between the biblical city and that of Childe are obvious in terms of their conceptualization. Both draw on notions of people, building, container, object and height.3 The biblical city adds body and animal to the list. The lack of the latter in the modern definition is almost self-evident. Focusing on an industrialized city space, Childe is not considering the animal as image for the (anti)city. His definition breathes the positivism of his time, with the city as the final stage in an evolution that started from an agrarian context. Biblical cities, on the contrary, were much more in contact with this side. Using both animal and people imagery, they conceive their cities more holistically.4 This same view

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seems to underlie the presence of the body metaphor as well. The biblical text acknowledges cities’ temporality and their inherent changeability. Rise necessarily comes with fall, growth with decay. What is more, the bodily focus of city conceptualization in the Hebrew Bible shows a bodily awareness and understanding of human mortality, even though it is, at times, brought to us in very graphic and disturbing language. All in all, therefore, Childe did describe a city that could be biblical, if it were not for his (and his time’s) overtly positivist view on urbanity.

Stylistic Spatiality In this study, I relied on a stylistically informed critical spatiality, or perhaps a critical-spatial stylistics, in order to assess the biblical city concept. I adopted the idea of different levels involved in spatial production from critical spatiality. As in the original theory, these levels are distinguishable but ultimately work together in the text to create space and spatial experience in a reader’s mind. Rather than priming the levels, as the social theory does, with a combination of text-external and text-internal spatial construal, the three types of space in this study are all language-based. Thus, Firstspace stands for the actual words used in the text to evoke and describe space. These include spatial vocabulary as well as specific word categories such as motion verbs or spatial prepositions. In addition, syntactical features such as parallelism or stylistic features such as repetition were considered as possible space builders. Secondspace consists of conceptual metaphors for the city. These images are the seven identified metaphors for urban space in the biblical text. They underlie almost all appearances of cities in the Hebrew Bible, sometimes resulting in literary metaphors or other language deemed literary, other times not. Finally, Thirdspace was defined as the realm of textual cityscaping. Here the words and concepts are used within a specific story, passage or book, creating a reader experience that includes as well as supersedes that of the individual parts. The biblical Thirdspace is framed, which means that it is constructed by the text, both consciously and unconsciously. Conscious framing shines through in passages where Secondspace metaphors are reversed or stylistically highlighted, drawing readers’ attention to them. At other times,

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when such markers are absent, city space is still used on purpose in the text-world (which is inherent to the nature of text as a product of human endeavor rather than a naturally grown entity), but the idea underlying it may be less of a deliberate choice. For example, when the writers state there were many people in Jerusalem, it seems unlikely that they thought, ‘let us use the container metaphor for this depiction of Jerusalem.’ Rather they had a scene in mind with many people in Jerusalem, without consciously thinking about a container they can fill. The applied method is, as other cognitive-stylistic methods, a means to track how we read, in this particular case, how we read urban space. Its ultimate goal is to understand spatial construal better, when considering its several components. This is also what critical spatiality had in mind for social space. Yet, the current approach differs from the latter, because it relies far less on actual built space, but redefines Firstspace as linguistic physicality. Consequently, its Thirdspace is far more textual than critical-­ spatial Thirdspace. The study considers this textual experience of space to be of equal importance to social space and, especially for a non-original readership, of great relevance. Every reader can access the Hebrew Bible’s city of the mind, but very few can construct its social cityscapes. Because of its textual—and so you want literary—focus, the stylistic method developed is no longer transdisciplinary (even though such has also been questioned in the case of the original application of the theory in biblical studies, as pointed out before). At the same time, the method is more than a cognitive-stylistic reading of the biblical text. Its attention to the linguistic construal of conceptual metaphors on the one hand and its focus on how these create cityscapes in the text displays a very specific application of conceptual metaphor theory that moves beyond mapping domains. Its spatial focus turns it, indeed, to critical spatiality, yet to read space as language rather than as society.5

The Human City Cities are not bad, they are human. They have their good days and their bad days. The biblical text features episodes of both days. What is more, many of the stories focusing on negative cityscapes include both the bad

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and the good, either as past versus present or as present versus future. The biblical city is not one-sided, it acknowledges its possible changes over time. Did scholars get it wrong then when they speak of a negative view of the urban in the Hebrew Bible? Not entirely. Their conclusion is greatly influenced by their focus on particular stories in the biblical corpus, such as the pride-and-punishment narrative of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11), the divine destruction of sinful Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 18–19) and most importantly the personified cities in the prophetic corpus, appearing as adulteresses and rape victims. They have studied the cityscapes, thus the framed concepts, defined as Thirdspace. As readers, they have experienced the effectiveness of this framing. They have responded precisely as they should, with astonishment, displeasure and disgust. And just like a few gendered images of the city can gender a whole chapter or book, so can a few passages with bad cities color the overall perception of the biblical idea about urban space. However, as this study shows, the epithet ‘bad’ comes with reading, not with the urban conceptualizations themselves. It definitely is part of some of the framings of the biblical city, but not of all of them. As I said, the city has its good days and its bad days. There is no such thing as a consistent negative storyline throughout the biblical corpus, nor is there an exclusively positive one for that matter.

The City-Woman Restored Not all cities in the biblical text are conceived as women, and if they are, they are not by definition negatively portrayed. There are many passages with cities that are just thinking or sitting or walking. Gendering of the city space often happens because of a few clearly gendered appearances of the personified city. These work as oil-stains, spreading their feminine gender over sections, chapters and even whole biblical books. Whereas that is how reading to a certain degree works, as a process of connecting dots and filling in gaps, it has obscured the fact that city space in the Hebrew Bible is not feminine by definition. What is more, cities are not even necessarily personified either. At least as ubiquitous as the city as a person is its appearance as a container.

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When cities are envisioned as females, they appear both as powerful women and as women robbed of their agency and bodily integrity. The biblical text does not consistently frame women negatively or badly. Yes, Jerusalem does appear as adulterous spouse, such as in Ezekiel 16, but even there it is not the concept but the story in which it is used that develops a discourse of wrongness. What is wrong is not the woman, but her behavior affecting the relationship with the biblical God, in the case of the adulterous spouse. On the flipside, when the biblical writers present negative cityscapes, they apply all of the distinguished concepts. If one wants to stick to the label ‘bad,’ for the sake of the argument, the bad city can be an adulterous woman, but also a wild animal captured, an immobilized body, a breached city structure, an empty container, an object taken by others and a lowered height. Thus, when negativity is part of the framing (Thirdspace), there is no reason to assume that the metaphor to go to is that of the feminized city. Such also holds true for city conquests. Within the scholarly discourse on gendered city space, the violent treatment of (metaphorical) city-­ women has received a good amount of attention. Whereas I, by no means, consider that attention to be misplaced or unjustified, I have shown that focusing on the biblical city concept in its entirety rather than in its specific depiction of the attacked city as a raped woman offers new insights. For one, not all conquered cities are conceived as violated females. Aggressive take-overs of urban space also rely on metaphors other than the city is a woman. Second, even within passages with the graphic imagery of rape the writers often apply other conceptual metaphors for the city as well. The image of the assaulted woman stands next to that of the emptied container, the sinning worshipper and the animal with uncharacteristic traits. Third, as far as rape of women in city conquest goes, they are conceptually different from the same violation of a personified city. Whereas the latter indicates a destruction of urban space, the former signposts mostly a partial destruction. Considering all of this, it is therefore safe to say that the biblical city is not a priori about women nor is it about badmouthing them. Yet, it is about finding the right conceptual metaphors for the right circumstances, both textual and contextual.

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We Are All City Cities are cities. Metaphors for Jerusalem do not fundamentally differ from those for other cities: they are all women, objects, heights and so on. They all rise and fall, with happy cityscapes and deathscapes. And whereas Jerusalem is the only one called God’s spouse, even the marital image in its extended sense is not kept solely for this city because antiwife images are equally applied for Babylon and Nineveh. These cities as well are understood as having relationships with a significant other, even though that is not the biblical God. This seeming interchangeability of city spaces has been noticed before by scholars (e.g., Carroll 2001). This has resulted in the claim that there is only one city in the Bible, Jerusalem, with all the others as manifestations of it. The privileged position of Jerusalem is implied here a priori. I would like to suggest another way of interpreting this finding, namely that the urban spaces in the text are conceived and even partially portrayed similarly exactly because they are all cities. What identifies them as one or the other is not the concept, and sometimes not even the story, but a name or a reader’s background knowledge which allows him or her to identify the city. Their similar depiction may not necessarily mean that all urban appearances are Jerusalem’s. At the same time, the coherence of the biblical city concept explains why other scholars and readers do read several roles together, within as well as across biblical books (most notably Mandolfo 2007, but also Maier 2008c). This also counts for reading the conceptual metaphors as one, despite the fact that a few exceptions aside, studies do not take these into account. Hence, there is no ‘us’ or the ‘other,’ but only city, and God of course.

Destination City This book has come to an end, but the study of the biblical city is not. What if the findings of this study on the general concept are brought to specific books or genres? Julie Galambush has argued that the personified city, as featuring prominently in Ezekiel 16 and 23, disappears in Ezekiel

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40–48 (1992, 147–57). In these chapters, metaphors of building and height prevail, with an occasional image of the city as object or animal. What if the evolution of conceptual metaphors or preferences were to be considered over historical time or within a certain canonical reading of the corpus? In her study of Jerusalem, Christl Maier has shown that the city evolves from a sacred mountain to a woman and back to a sacred mountain (2008c, 215). Given the broad variety of different texts used by Maier, it is not possible to offer here a preliminary answer to the proposed question. The previous chapters, however, reveal that Jerusalem appears in a far greater variety of images than the two mentioned by Maier. Another question: can the findings of the current study be put in a dialogue with archaeological findings? Do the latter display the same ideas about cities or different ones, or can such not be deduced at all? And how could the proposed insights help us understand the interpretation and reception history of the biblical city? Do other foundational texts similar to the Hebrew Bible show similar city conceptualizations? What would one find, for example, in the New Testament? There is much more to be explored about the biblical city, or in extension the textual city. This study is but one stop on the way to this destination. A stop that focused on the basic ideas that form the city as a conceptual category found in the biblical text. A stop that looked for the bigger story by sifting through the text’s individual tales and references. A stop that considered past cities with an eye on the future. A stop away from the destination. The city.

Notes 1. A handful of city appearances do not draw on the seven identified images. I consider them to be literary metaphors which the writers deliberately choose over the existing images. They served to draw readers’ attention in general as well as in particular to the new cityscape created. The images are: the city as threshing floor (Isa 21:20 and Jer 51:33), the city as line on God’s hand (Isa 49:16), the city as light (Isa 60:1), the city as planet (Isa 50:20, Jer 2:21, 15:9), the city as ploughed field (Jer 26:18, Mic 3:12), the city as a plant (Jer 51:33, Ezek 16:7), the city as fruit (Lam 1:15), the

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city as tree (through metonymy, in Nah 3:12) and the city as joy (Ps 48:3, Lam 2:15). Some of these images show affinity with one or more of the distinguished seven conceptual metaphors. The line of Isa 49:16 reminds of the incision on the brick in Ezek 4:1 (the city is an object). The ploughed field shows resemblance with an empty container, while the fruit is the content of the container. And joy can be considered a metaphorical object and height, which has been argued for the city’s appearance in Isa 60:15 and 65:18. For a short discussion of the images of the threshing floor, the line on God’s hand and the light, see Vermeulen forthcoming b. 2. Childe’s definition focuses very much on products of human thinking and craft, such as writing, science and artistic expression (1950, 14–15). All of these present the city as man-made; these products are not made by gods. These things are human, even though in ancient times, people did connect all of them to deities. Writing was a skill for the initiated, the word connected to God (Van der Toorn 2007, 10–11; Noegel 2014, 20–26). Science and religion were not strictly separated (which does not mean one cannot study them separately, as Rochberg argues; Rochberg 2017, 7–11). Great art as well seemed to be understood as divinely inspired. Consequently, in addition to ideas of humanity and thingness, these products draw on a third concept, that of verticality. For the ancient context, that verticality covered both the idea of the divine and the idea of excellence. As far as Childe’s context goes, the emphasis may have been more on the latter, although the industrialized city does not necessarily coincide with a secularized city. 3. Note that this is about concepts, not their specific realizations. In other words, I do not suggest that Childe’s definition implies a personified city as it appears in the figure of the city-woman in the Hebrew Bible. Rather, I am saying that for both Childe and the Hebrew Bible people are crucial to the overall concept. How exactly this idea is given form in writing is a different matter. 4. This is not to be confused with the fact that most animal imagery generates negative cityscapes and as such can be considered to form an opposition with some of the positive personified city spaces. 5. It goes without saying that these two are related. In critical spatiality as social theory, language was included as well, mostly as feature of Secondspace (Soja 1996, 67). In other words, what I am hinting at here is that the main focus of this study is language, whereas that of critical spatiality is society. For both, the other element plays a role as well.

Bibliography

Abasili, Alexander I. 2017. “The Role of Non-Human Creatures in the Book of Jonah: The Implications for Eco-Justice.” SJOT 31, 2: 236–53. Aitken, James K. 2018. “Introduction: A City Perspective.” Pages 3–16 in The City in the Hebrew Bible: Critical, Literary and Exegetical Approaches. Edited by James K. Aitken and Hilary F. Marlow. LHBOTS 672. London: T&T Clark. Allen, Leslie C. 2008. Jeremiah: A Commentary. Louisville: Westminster John Knox. Alter, Robert. 2005. Imagined Cities: Urban Experience and the Language of the Novel. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Alter, Robert. 2007. The Book of Psalms: A Translation with Commentary. New York/London: W.W. Norton. Amit, Yairah. 2001. Reading Biblical Narratives: Literary Criticism and the Hebrew Bible. Minneapolis: Fortress. Andersen, T.  David. 1986. “Renaming and Wedding Imagery in Isaiah 62.” Bible 67: 75–80. Andersen, Francis I., and David Noel Freedman. 2000. Micah: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. AB. New York: Doubleday. Anderson, Arnold A. 1972. Book of Psalms. Volume 2. London: Oliphants. Anderson, Bernhard A. 1994. “The Tower of Babel: Unity and Diversity in God’s Creation.” Pages 165–78  in From Creation to New Creation: Old Testament Perspectives. OBT. Minneapolis: Fortress. © The Author(s) 2020 K. Vermeulen, Conceptualizing Biblical Cities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45270-4

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Vermeulen, Karolien. 2017a. “Hands, Heads, and Feet: Body Parts as Poetic Device in Judges 4–5.” JBL 136, 4: 801–19. Vermeulen, Karolien. 2017b. “Home in Antwerp and Biblical City Poems—A Journey.” Arcadia 52, 1: 161–82. Vermeulen, Karolien. 2017c. “Save or Sack the City: The Fate of Jonah’s Nineveh from a Spatial Perspective.” JSOT 42, 2: 233–46. Vermeulen, Karolien 2017d. “The Body of Nineveh: The Conceptual Image of the City in Nahum 2–3.” JHS 17: 1–17. Vermeulen, Karolien. 2017e. “Verbal Creation: From Linguistic Feature to Literary Motif in Genesis 1–11.” SJOT 31, 2: 294–313. Vermeulen, Karolien. 2017f. “Towers in the Hebrew Bible—Dreams of Spaceland, Specimen of Flatland.” Paper presented at the joint meeting of SBL and EABS. Berlin, 9 August. Vermeulen, Karolien. 2019. “Keeping the Story on Track: The Place of God in the Jonah Narrative.” ‫בקש תורה‬: International Conference on the Study of the Hebrew Bible and its Commentaries in Honor of Professor Uriel Simon. Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, 14 June. Vermeulen, Karolien. forthcoming-a. “Of Cities, Mothers and Homes: A Cognitive-Stylistic Approach to Gendered Space in the Hebrew Bible.” In Gender, Methodology and the Ancient Near East, Proceedings of the 3rd Workshop, Ghent April 8–10 2019. Edited by Katrien De Graef, Agnès Garcia-Ventura, Ann Goddeeris, and Beth Alpert Nakhai. wEdge. Münster: Zaphon. Vermeulen, Karolien. forthcoming-b. “Urban Metaphors: Conceptual and Literary Depictions of the City in the Bible.” In Language in Place. Edited by Ernestine Lahey, Daniela Virdis, and Elisabetta Zurru. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Waltke, Bruce K., and Cathi J. Fredricks. 2001. Genesis: A Commentary. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. Washington, Harold. 1998. “‘Lest He Die in the Battle and Another Man Take Her: Violence and the Construction of Gender in the Laws of Deuteronomy 20–22.” Pages 185–213  in Gender and Law in the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East. Edited by Victor H.  Matthews, B.  M. Levinson and Tamara Frymer-Kensky. JSOTSup 262. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic. Watson, Rebecca S. 2018. “‘Therefore We Will Not Fear’? The Psalms of Zion in Psychological Perspective.” Pages 182–217 in The City in the Hebrew Bible: Critical, Literary and Exegetical Approaches. Edited by James K. Aitken and Hilary F. Marlow. LHBOTS 672. London/New York: T&T Clark. Webb, Barry G. 2012. The Book of Judges. The New International Commentary on the Old Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.

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Weems, Renita J. 1995. Battered Love: Marriage, Sex, and Violence in the Hebrew Prophets. Minneapolis: Fortress. Weissert, E. 1997. “Royal Hunt and Royal Triumph in a Prism Fragment of Ashurbanipal (82-5-22,2).” Pages 339–58 in Assyria 1995: Proceedings of the 10th Anniversary Symposium of the Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, Helsinki, September 7–11, 1995. Edited by S. Parpola and R. M. Whiting. Helsinki: The Project. Werth, Paul. 1999. Text Worlds: Representing Conceptual Space in Discourse. Harlow: Longman. Westermann, Claus. 1969. Isaiah 40–66. Translated by D. G. M. Stalker. Old Testament Library. Philadelphia: Westminster. Westermann, Claus. 1999. Genesis Kapitel 4–11. BKAT 1.2. 4th ed. Neukirchen: Neukirchener Verlag. Wheatley, Paul. 2001. The Places Where Men Pray Together: Cities in Islamic Lands. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Whitekettle, Richard. 2001. “Where the Wild Things Are: Primary Level Taxa in Israelite Zoological Thought.” JSOT 25, 93: 17–37. Whitekettle, Richard. 2006. “Taming the Shrew, Shrike, and Shrimp: The Form and Function of Zoological Classification in Psalm 8.” JBL 125, 4: 749–65. Williams, Michael. 1988. “Variety in Gnostic Perspectives on Gender.” Pages 2–22  in Images of the Feminine in Gnosticism. Edited by Karen L.  King. Studies in Antiquity and Christianity 3. Philadelphia: Fortress. Williamson, Hugh G. M. 2006. Isaiah 1–5. ICC. London: T&T Clark. Wilson, Ian D. 2018. History and the Hebrew Bible: Culture, Narrative, and Memory. Brill Research Perspectives. Biblical Interpretation. Leiden/Boston: Brill. Wright, Jacob L. 2015. “Urbicide: The Ritualized Killing of Cities in the Ancient Near East.” Pages 147–66  in Ritual Violence in the Hebrew Bible: New Perspectives. Edited by Saul M. Olyan. New York: Oxford University Press. Wyatt, Nick. 2001. Space and Time in the Religious Life of the Near East. BibSem 85. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic. Wybrow, Cameron. 1998. “The Significance of the City in Genesis 1–11.” Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy 26, 1: 3–20. Zatelli, Ida. 1998. “The Origin of the Biblical Scapegoat Ritual: The Evidence of Two Eblaite Texts.” VT 48, 2: 254–63. Zenger, Erich. 1998. Ein Gott der Rache: Feindpsalmen verstehen. Freiburg: Herder. Zsolnay, Ilona. 2010. “The Inadequacies of Yahweh: A Re-examination of Jerusalem’s Portrayal in Ezekiel 16.” Pages 57–76 in Bodies, Embodiment and Theology of the Hebrew Bible. Edited by S. Tamar Kamionkowski and Wonil Kim. LHBOTS 465. New York: T&T Clark.

Subject Index1

A

Agency, 20, 42, 43, 45, 51, 57–59, 76–79, 81n16, 82n21, 85n44, 121, 123–125, 127, 128, 175, 177, 186–188, 195–197, 198n3, 226, 227, 232 Animal, 10, 30, 67, 74, 78, 81n12, 93–116, 121–131, 139n16, 144, 147, 158n20, 163, 164, 169–171, 177, 178n5, 224n29, 226–228, 232, 234, 235n4 B

Babylon, 8, 9, 16, 37, 41, 44, 45, 55, 56, 60, 63, 64, 67–69, 80n8, 80n10, 81n12, 84n35, 86n54,

87n63, 87n65, 88n75, 89n76, 89n77, 89n78, 89n79, 89n80, 94, 97–99, 101–106, 110, 111, 113–115, 117n6, 117n12, 117n15, 118n18, 120n35, 126, 127, 135–137, 143, 155, 158n20, 170, 171, 176, 177, 183, 185–188, 191, 196, 197n1, 197n2, 198n3, 198n5, 217–219, 221n15, 233 Bad, 1, 6–8, 42, 65, 66, 69, 75, 79, 89–90n83, 91n94, 97, 114, 116, 155, 169–171, 173, 186, 193, 197, 209, 210, 226, 230–232

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

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261

262 

Subject Index

Bethel, 8, 216, 217, 224n30, 224n31, 224n32 Body, 10, 14n18, 20, 40, 42–43, 47, 73, 77, 78, 79n4, 80n9, 94, 95, 97, 99, 101, 110, 121–137, 144–149, 151, 154, 157n12, 157n14, 159, 161, 163, 166, 169, 187, 205, 209, 220n5, 220n7, 226–229, 232 Building, 2, 10, 17, 19, 20, 27, 35n22, 44, 48, 51, 54, 56, 77, 78, 81n12, 108, 140n25, 143–156, 164, 168, 172–176, 181n22, 183, 187–190, 192, 197, 201, 209, 214, 216, 226–228, 234 C

Child, 54, 68 Cityscape, 11n2, 42, 45, 48, 50–57, 60, 61, 64–66, 68–72, 74–79, 96, 98–107, 109, 112–116, 117n9, 118n19, 118–119n21, 119n22, 119n29, 119n31, 120n36, 123–130, 133–137, 141n26, 141n27, 146–148, 150–153, 155, 164, 166–175, 177, 180n11, 181n21, 185–190, 192, 193, 195, 196, 199n15, 200n16, 203–208, 210–218, 219n1, 222n19, 224n32, 230–233, 234n1, 235n4 Concept, 2–6, 8–11, 11n2, 18, 19, 25, 34n17, 35n19, 38, 43,

45, 46, 65, 74, 75, 79, 79n1, 80n10, 89n82, 99, 105, 106, 118n18, 131, 137, 137n1, 137n2, 140n23, 143, 144, 152–154, 159, 161, 164, 166, 171, 172, 176, 177n1, 178n4, 179n10, 181n22, 188, 189, 192, 225–229, 231–233, 235n2, 235n3 Container, 3, 10, 11n2, 27, 30, 40, 42–44, 54, 65, 72, 74, 75, 77–79, 85n45, 88n67, 89n82, 104, 107, 108, 127–131, 144, 146, 147, 149–155, 157n11, 158n20, 159–177, 183, 188, 190, 192–194, 196, 197, 198n9, 204, 211–214, 216, 217, 221n16, 224n31, 226–228, 230–232, 235n1 Critical spatiality, 5, 10, 19–25, 33n10, 34n14, 137n2, 222n20, 229, 230, 235n5 D

Damascus, 132, 165, 181n24, 202, 204, 217, 218 Daughter, 39, 45, 47, 48, 50, 59, 61–69, 72, 76, 82n27, 85n47, 86n56, 86n57, 87n63, 87n65, 87–88n67, 88n68, 88n74, 88n75, 89n76, 89n79, 89n80, 89–90n83, 96, 97, 129, 131, 135, 138n7, 157n13, 168, 169, 174, 198n8, 226

  Subject Index 

126, 129, 131, 133, 134, 136, 137, 138n10, 139n14, 139n15, 139n17, 144, 145, 153, 154, 160, 161, 165, 166, 168, 169, 171, 173, 176, 178n5, 181n20, 183, 185–189, 191, 194, 196, 197n1, 198n7, 198n8, 198n9, 199n11, 199n15, 204, 207–209, 211, 212, 215–218, 220n9, 221n14, 221n16, 223n24, 224n32, 230, 232–234

F

Framing, 2, 26, 30, 35n19, 36n24, 47, 52, 57, 59, 64, 68, 87n62, 92n98, 97, 103, 111, 118n19, 137, 186, 196, 209, 213, 217, 219, 221n12, 229, 231, 232 G

Gomorrah, 28, 35n19, 46, 107, 147, 231 H

Height, 10, 11n2, 56, 61, 67, 78, 123, 132, 133, 149, 153, 154, 157n9, 158n20, 168, 188, 193, 194, 199n15, 201–204, 206–219, 220n2, 221n13, 221n15, 223n27, 224n32, 226, 228, 232–234, 235n1 J

Jerusalem, 2, 4, 5, 7–9, 11n2, 14n16, 15–17, 19, 23, 25–28, 30, 33n8, 37, 39–41, 45, 47, 49–53, 55, 56, 58, 60, 61, 63–65, 67, 69–72, 76–78, 79n2, 80n9, 81n15, 84n38, 84n41, 84n42, 85n45, 86n58, 86n60, 87n65, 88n68, 88n71, 89n77, 91n92, 93, 95–97, 101–104, 106, 107, 115, 116, 124,

263

M

Metaphor, 3, 19, 36n25, 39, 95, 121, 143, 159, 184, 201, 226 anti-metaphor, 69, 75, 226, 227, 232 blend, 13n11, 168 combination/mix, 10, 50, 54, 58, 59, 61, 63, 66, 73, 74, 76, 79, 82n23, 91n93, 95, 117n15, 124, 127, 129, 130, 151, 155, 179n11, 187, 197, 204, 205, 214, 225 conceptual, 5, 7, 10, 11n2, 13n11, 22, 25–27, 29, 30, 37, 39, 49, 87n62, 160, 180n12, 225, 229, 230 framing, 30, 36n24, 52, 64, 68, 81n16, 87n62, 92n98, 97, 111, 191, 193, 217, 229–232

264 

Subject Index

Metaphor (cont.) literary/new, 5, 7, 26, 87n62, 89n82, 117n14, 131, 132, 139n18, 160, 184, 229, 234n1 mapping, 4, 53, 57, 73, 132, 205, 210, 230 orientational, 180n13, 209, 210, 212, 213 personification, 3, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11n2, 19, 23, 26, 37–92, 81n14, 82n23, 96, 102, 107, 109, 116n3, 117n7, 117n15, 118n18, 121–124, 126, 127, 129–131, 134, 137n1, 138n8, 139n15, 144–147, 151, 154, 156n6, 156n7, 157n16, 160, 166, 168, 169, 172, 179n11, 181n20, 186, 188, 189, 193, 195–197, 198n8, 198n9, 199n11, 200n17, 207, 211, 213, 218, 220n4, 221n14, 224n31, 226, 231–233, 235n3, 235n4 referent, 9, 19, 27, 33n6, 38, 45, 55, 70, 86n58, 94, 99, 100, 105, 117n6, 117n12, 119n27, 137, 144, 145, 154, 156, 156n4, 163, 165, 166, 173, 179n10, 191, 223n24 shift, 40, 41, 44, 51, 67, 95, 96, 101, 122, 124, 129–131, 143–146, 156n4, 165, 185, 187, 192, 194, 198n9, 199n16, 200n6, 204

transfer, 47, 71, 81n14, 112, 117n15, 200n16 Metonymy, 9, 45, 78, 82n23, 96, 131, 147, 167, 174, 179n9, 188, 190, 195, 196, 202, 235n1 shift, 40, 42, 43, 45, 46, 74 Mother, 34n17, 41, 47–50, 54, 59–64, 66, 68, 69, 72, 80n7, 81n16, 82n20, 85n45, 85n46, 85n47, 85n48, 85n51, 85n53, 86n60, 87n63, 89n79, 89–90n83, 118n18, 130, 148, 161, 226 N

Nineveh, 7h1, 8, 9, 16, 27–29, 33n9, 37, 46, 60, 62, 63, 70, 71, 73, 84n36, 84n40, 86n54, 86n58, 90n86, 90n88, 90n90, 94, 97–100, 102–104, 106, 114, 118n16, 118–119n21, 130, 131, 135, 141n31, 171, 183, 233 O

Object, 10, 21, 22, 51, 65, 76, 77, 85n45, 88n67, 91n95, 122, 128, 136, 139n12, 140n19, 143, 145, 149, 155, 165, 179n9, 179n10, 183–197, 220n5, 226–228, 232–234, 235n1

  Subject Index 

265

P

S

People, 9, 14n15, 14n20, 16–21, 23, 27, 30, 35n18, 36n29, 38, 40, 42–50, 52, 55, 59, 61–63, 74, 75, 77, 78, 81n16, 82n23, 83n28, 83n30, 84n41, 85n51, 91n93, 96, 97, 106, 107, 109, 118n18, 118–119n21, 120n31, 121, 122, 128, 136, 139n14, 139n15, 143, 146, 147, 149, 150, 152, 153, 155, 159, 161, 163–170, 172–176, 179n6, 179n8, 179n10, 183, 185, 191, 193–196, 199n15, 202–204, 212–215, 222n21, 223n25, 226–228, 230, 235n2, 235n3 Person, 27, 38, 40, 42–44, 46, 51, 71, 77, 79n2, 83n32, 101, 122, 126, 127, 129, 143–146, 151, 155, 157n16, 166, 175, 180n19, 185–188, 190, 191, 193, 195, 196, 198n8, 199n11, 205–207, 211, 213, 218, 220n4, 221n14, 224n31, 231, 233, 235n3, 235n4

Sinner, 48, 66, 71, 72, 74, 76, 226 Sister, 47, 50, 69, 70, 76, 148, 226 Sodom, 28, 35n19, 46, 69, 107, 147, 173, 231

R

Rape, 73–79, 91n94, 91n95, 91n96, 92n97, 122, 123, 138n5, 231, 232

T

Tyre, 8, 43, 129, 139n17, 147 W

Whore, 7, 47, 55–57, 59, 66, 70–72, 76, 84n36, 86n56, 90n84 Wife, 22, 34n17, 37, 41, 47–61, 63, 64, 66, 69, 74–76, 82n18, 83n29, 85n47, 85n48, 85n53, 87n63, 87–88n67, 95, 134, 141n31, 193, 214, 226 Woman, 3, 5, 8, 10, 14n18, 22, 26, 33n6, 37–40, 47–75, 81n12, 81n13, 85n45, 86n60, 87n66, 90n84, 90n88, 91n92, 95–97, 123, 126, 129–133, 135, 136, 138n7, 138n9, 140n19, 140n20, 140n22, 145, 151, 154, 156n5, 156n6, 157n12, 157n14, 159, 160, 166, 168, 190, 193–195, 197, 205, 206, 211, 220n4, 226, 228, 232, 234 Worshipper, 48, 56, 59, 70–72, 74–76, 134, 226

266 

Subject Index

Z

Zion, 4, 8, 23, 26, 30, 33n6, 34n14, 38, 43, 47, 53–55, 62–68, 72, 79n1, 79n2, 80n7, 82n20, 82n24, 82n27, 86n55, 86n57, 86n60, 87n63, 87n68, 87n69, 88n73,

89n77, 89n82, 93, 96, 97, 115, 137, 154, 156n1, 156n4, 157n13, 168, 169, 171, 184, 185, 189, 198n8, 199n15, 199n17, 201, 202, 208–210, 215, 216, 218, 222n18, 223n27

Scripture Index1

11:8–9, 176 11:9, 176 18, 173 18–19, 231 18:20, 46 19:25, 147 22:17, 179n9 24:60, 179n9, 190, 191 28, 224n30 28:10–22, 216 28:19, 217 28:22, 217 35:4, 217

G

Genesis 1:28, 181n23 2:7, 156n5 2:22, 156n5 3, 59 4, 220n2 4:17, 6, 143 6–9, 157n17 11, 219n2 11:1–9, 6, 13n15, 143, 202, 203, 214, 231 11:2, 175–176 11:3–4, 29 11:3, 152 11:4, 175, 201 11:7, 175 11:8, 152, 176

E

Exodus 32:14, 35n18

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© The Author(s) 2020 K. Vermeulen, Conceptualizing Biblical Cities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45270-4

267

268 

Scripture Index

L

Leviticus 1, 107 3, 107 14:6–7, 179n5 16:10, 178n5 16:20–22, 178n5 N

Numbers 21:28, 158n20 23:24, 117n12

8:28, 154 8:29, 77 10:29–32, 43–44 10:30, 196 10:32, 184 15:45, 63 15:63, 30 Judges 1:22, 224n31 4:5, 217 8:7, 117n6 8:9, 203 8:17, 203 9:45, 191

D

Deuteronomy 2:36, 201, 219 3:5, 28 14:28–29, 167 17:1, 107 19:7, 192 20:16, 191 J

Joshua 2:7, 167 6:2, 191 6:5, 149, 150, 168 6:20, 149, 196 6:21, 159 6:26, 151 8:2, 175 8:5, 77 8:5–7, 77 8:7, 184, 196 8:18, 196 8:19, 77 8:25, 44, 77

R

Ruth, 51 S

2 Samuel 5:7, 185 11:2, 206 11:27, 206 12:15, 206 13:2, 35n18 17:8, 80n7 20:19, 63 K

1 Kings 8:30, 215 11:27, 174 12:29, 217 2 Kings 3:19, 195 14:13, 160 16:8–9, 164

  Scripture Index 

16:9, 165 17:6, 175 19:21, 64 21:13, 187 25:9, 196 25:13–17, 196 C

2 Chronicles 14:2, 204 14:3, 204 14:4, 204 14:6, 204 14:7, 168 36:23, 152 E

Ezra 5:14–15, 173 N

Nehemiah 2:11, 27 2:12, 27 2:17, 155, 168 3, 153, 204 4:1, 85n45 7:3, 160

48:2–3, 210, 228n22 48:3, 210, 222n18, 224n33, 235n1 48:4, 148, 216 48:9, 216 48:12, 43 48:13–15, 215, 223n26 51:4, 139n14 87:4, 69 100:4, 167 132:13, 53 137, 37, 67, 68, 86n54, 88n75, 89n83, 209 137:1, 68 137:5, 209 137:8, 67, 68 137:8–9, 68 137:9, 60, 89n79 144:12–14, 174 144:14, 174, 175 144:15, 175 147:13, 59 147:14, 171 Proverbs 1:20, 172 1:20–21, 172 1:21, 172 1:22–32, 173 1:33, 172 17:12, 80n7 25:28, 160, 168 144:13, 174

P

Psalms 2:6, 115, 202 27:4, 180n16 35:12, 80n7 48, 223n27 48:2, 210, 216

269

S

Song of Songs 3, 160 3:1–2, 160 3:2, 18, 148 3:4, 148

270 

Scripture Index

Song of Songs (cont.) 4:3, 132 4:4, 132, 140n24, 148, 204 4:5, 132 5:2, 220n8 5:6, 148 5:7, 148, 205, 220n8 5:13, 204 5:14, 140n25 5:15, 140n25 7, 220n7 7:4, 132 7:5, 132, 133, 148, 204 7:6, 132 8, 132, 140n25, 148 8:9–10, 148 8:10, 132, 204 I

Isaiah 1:7, 155 1:8, 47, 64, 65 1:9, 28, 46 1:11, 107, 114 1:16, 139n14 1:21, 18, 176 2:2–3, 208 2:3, 30 2:15, 203 3:18–24, 141n27 3:24–25, 146 3:24–26, 146 3:26, 145, 146 4:4, 71, 139n14 4:5, 218 11:6, 127 11:6–8, 115 11:9, 115, 223n24

12:32, 115 13:9, 199n12 13:19–22, 169 13:20–22, 30 13:21, 112 13:21–22, 105, 109 14:22, 113, 177 14:22–23, 113, 176 14:23, 177 14:32, 156n1 17:3, 181n24 19:2, 38 21:20, 234n1 22:2–3, 169 22:3, 195 22:10, 195 22:11, 195 24:11, 181n20 25:2, 192, 199n13 25:10, 117n6 26:1, 168, 212 26:2, 212 26:5, 212, 213 26:5–7, 212 26:7, 212 29:2–3, 73 29:7, 73 29:8, 209 31:4, 117n12 33:5, 171 33:18, 194 34:6–7, 108 34:11–15, 108 36:15, 185 37:22, 64, 87n66, 131 40:2, 72 40–55, 85n50, 86n60 42:14, 82n20 45:10, 82n20

  Scripture Index 

47:1, 135, 136 47:1–3, 135 47:2, 136 47:6–8, 41 47:7, 63, 137 47:8, 56, 63, 80n7 47:8–9, 55, 63 47:9, 63 49:14, 54 49:14–18, 198n10 49:14–21, 160 49:15, 68, 82n20 49:15–16, 156n3 49:16, 234n1, 235n1 49:17, 54 49:18, 54, 68 49:19, 160 49:21, 47, 80n7 49:23, 156n3 49:26, 51, 54 50:1, 62 50:20, 234n1 51:20, 156n3 51:23, 156 52:9, 51, 156n3 54:1, 60, 63 54:3, 49, 60 54:4, 83n33 54:5, 49 54:6, 49 54:6–10, 52, 53 54:11–12, 156n3 54:11–13, 198n10 54:13, 60 57:13, 223n24 59:15, 54 60, 156n6, 199n15 60:1, 234n1 60:1–9, 79n2

60:4, 60, 61 60:10, 61, 144, 145 60:14, 61 60:15, 53, 193, 194, 199n13, 224n33, 235n1 60:16, 49, 61, 68 61:4, 202 62:2, 199n11 62:3, 188, 189, 199n11 62:4, 53 62:5, 53, 60, 85n53 62:6, 189 62:6–7, 189 62:7, 224n33 65:18, 194, 235n1 65:19, 194 65:25, 116, 223n24 66:13, 82n20 66:20, 116 J

Jeremiah 2:2, 49, 53 2:21, 234n1 2:22, 125, 139n14 2:23, 95, 103, 111, 114, 128 2:23–24, 95 2:24, 94, 96 2:25, 96 2:28, 195 3:1, 47, 53, 57 3:2–5, 188 3:14–18, 198n9 3:17, 188 4:7, 117n12 4:14, 126, 139n14 4:17, 126 4:29, 163, 164

271

272 

Scripture Index

Jeremiah (cont.) 4:30, 122 8:22, 139n15 9:10, 106 12:7, 179n6 13:22, 74 13:22–27, 74 13:23, 74 13:24, 74 13:25, 74 13:26, 74 13:26–27, 74 13:27, 74 14:2, 181n20 14:17, 139n15 15:9, 234n1 17:27, 154 18:6, 35n18 19:8, 126, 192, 193, 199n13 19:11, 198n7 21:8–10, 155 21:9, 155 21:10, 155 25, 197n2 25:8, 199n13 25:18, 192, 193 26:18, 234n1 31:12, 201 31:38, 204 32:24, 78 32:29, 77 32:31, 78 32:36, 185 33:10, 104 33:10–11, 169 39:4, 174 46:12, 181n20 46:23, 100, 119n27 47:6, 41

47:7, 41 47:8, 41 47:8–9, 56 47:9, 56 49:25, 163, 202, 217, 218 49:25–26, 162 49:26, 163, 202 49:27, 202 50:2, 56, 186 50:9, 186 50:10, 118n18 50:11, 101, 103, 118n18 50:12, 69, 102, 118n18 50:13, 102, 118n18, 126 50:14–16, 44 50:14, 45 50:15, 45 50:23, 186 50:24, 94, 97, 110, 127 50:33, 45 50:39, 106, 127 50:42, 45, 67, 89n76 50:43, 67 50:46, 185 50–51, 80n10, 81n12, 89n76, 186, 197n1, 198n3, 218 51, 180n15, 197n2 51:3, 170 51:6, 144 51:7, 183, 184, 187, 197n1, 197–198n2 51:8, 127, 187 51:8–9, 126, 134 51:14, 119n27, 170 51:17, 131 51:20, 186, 191 51:20–23, 186 51:25, 158n20, 217, 218, 221n15 51:26, 143, 170

  Scripture Index 

51:29–30, 170 51:30, 170 51:31–32, 186 51:33, 89n76, 117n6, 234n1 51:37, 170 51:39–40, 114 51:41, 186 51:42, 171 51:42–43, 170 51:62, 104 52:25, 162, 163 L

Lamentations 1, 88n68, 91n95 1:1, 39, 55 1:8b, 91n95 1:10, 91n95 1:11b–16, 79n4 1:13–14, 133 1:14, 186 1:15, 234n1 2, 87n68 2:1, 65 2:4, 65 2:5, 65 2:8, 65, 168 2:8–9, 154 2:9, 154 2:10, 65 2:13, 65 2:15, 65, 129, 224n33, 235n1 2:18, 65 3, 141n30 3:50, 215 4:3, 119n25 4:18, 172

273

E

Ezekiel 4:1, 189, 211, 235n1 4:2, 189 4:3, 211 5:5, 185 5:6, 185 5:8–17, 160 5:14, 192, 199n13 5:15–16, 46 7:23, 171 16, 37, 41, 50, 51, 56, 69, 82n22, 85n44, 123, 132, 133, 139n12, 139n13, 141n27, 207, 211, 212, 232, 233 16:6, 69 16:7, 123, 132, 234n1 16:7–13, 124 16:8, 50 16:8–12, 128 16:8–13, 124 16:10, 47, 132 16:10–13, 123 16:11, 132 16:12, 132, 133 16:13, 124 16:13–14, 125 16:16, 124, 207 16:16–18, 125 16:17, 124 16:24, 207 16:24–25, 125, 207 16:25, 207 16:30–34, 56 16:31, 207 16:36, 125 16:36–37, 134 16:37, 125 16:39, 123, 125, 137, 207

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Scripture Index

Ezekiel (cont.) 16:44, 62, 66 16:44–46, 66 16:45, 50, 51 16:50, 211 16:51, 70 16:52, 66 16:59, 66 16:60, 50, 66 16:60–61, 85n48 16:61–62, 211 16:62, 50, 51 16:63, 51, 131 22:4, 192, 199n13 22:13–16, 39 22:14, 40 22:15, 40 22:16, 40 23, 41, 47, 58, 69, 76, 77, 85n44, 134, 233 23:2, 191 23:3, 47, 134 23:4, 58, 59 23:5, 58 23:8, 134 23:9, 135 23:10, 134, 135 23:11, 70 23:21, 134 23:25–26, 76, 77 23:28, 191 23:36, 58 23:37, 58, 59 24:6–9, 166 26:6, 87n64 26:9, 150 26:9–12, 150 26:10, 150

26:12, 151, 197 26:14, 196, 197 27:3, 129 27:11, 129 28:23, 42 34:8, 139n16 34:22, 139n16 36:4, 128, 192 36:5, 199n13 40–47, 153, 157, 200, 233–234 40–48, 153, 157n16, 183 40:2, 211 40:5, 168, 183 40–48, 200n17, 233–234 43:19–25, 107 48:35, 211, 212 H

Hosea 10:15, 224n31 13:3, 117n6 13:8, 80n7 J

Joel 1:4, 100 4:17, 115 A

Amos 1:7, 147 1:10, 147 1:14, 147, 155 4:3, 168 5:16, 172

  Scripture Index 

3:4, 84n40, 130 3:4–5, 70, 73 3:5, 73, 122, 134 3:10, 9, 60, 62, 130 3:12, 235n1 3:13, 27, 138n3 3:15, 94, 106, 109, 130 3:15–17, 99, 100, 119n27

J

Jonah 1:2, 28 2:8, 180n16 3:2, 183 3:2–4, 29 3:4, 29 3:7–4:11, 104 4, 118n21 4:11, 183 Z M

Micah 1:6, 199n12 1:8, 119n25 3:1–4, 180n17 3:12, 234n1 4:7, 202, 215 4:8, 66 4:10, 66 4:13, 66, 94, 96, 103, 111, 129 8:3, 202 N

Nahum 2, 37, 109, 117n13, 130, 131 2–3, 130, 131 2:4, 172 2:13, 94, 114, 128 2:13–14, 94, 97, 103, 109, 117n12 2:14, 114, 130 3:1, 171, 176

Zephaniah 3:2, 43 3:11, 214 3:11–12, 213 3:12, 214 3:14, 64 3:16, 43 Zechariah 1:17, 53 2:6, 28 2:8–9, 161 8:3, 215 9:5, 43 9:11–13, 85n48 9:13, 183, 188, 198n8 12:2, 198n7 14:2, 78 14:11, 78 R

Revelations 17:3–6, 197n1

275