When the Morning Stars Sang: Essays in Honor of Choon Leong Seow on the Occasion of His Sixty-fifth Birthday 3110425203, 9783110425208

Table of contents :
Table of Contents
Introduction
Abbreviations
An Intellectual Biography and the Curriculum Vitae of Choon Leong Seow
Choon Leong Seow: An Appreciation
I: Job
The Speaker in Job 28
Metaphors of Illness and Wellness in Job
Blessing and Justice in Job: In/commensurable?
Job Spoke the Truth about God (Job 42:7–8)
The Kerygma of the Book of Job
The Reception of Job in the Dead Sea Scrolls
The Book of Job and Two Twentieth-Century British Oratorios
II: Proverbs and Ecclesiastes
Proverbs 1–9 as Instruction for a Young Man and for “Everyman”
From Epistemology to Wisdom Theology: The Composition of Proverbs 10
On יֵשׁ of Reflection in the Book of Proverbs
Why is it So Difficult to Read Ecclesiastes?
A Rhetoric of Indecision: Reflections on God as Judge in Qoheleth
Solomon’s Wise Words in Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century Literature
When Wisdom Fails
III: Sirach and Wisdom of Solomon
The Formation of the Scribal Self in Ben Sira
Translation, Reception, and the Historiography of Early Judaism: The Wisdom of Ben Sira and Old Greek Job as Case Studies
God and Evil in the Wisdom of Solomon
IV: Wisdom’s Echoes in the Hebrew Bible and Semitic Inscriptions
The Ambivalence of Human Wisdom: Genesis 2–3 as a Sapiential Text
What is the Place of Wisdom and Torah in the Psalter?
Traces of an Original Allegorical Meaning of the Song of Songs
Royal Inscriptions in the Hebrew Bible and Mesopotamia: Reflections on Presence, Function, and Self-Critique
Agriculture and Wisdom: The Case of the “Gezer Calendar”
List of Contributors
Index of Ancient Sources
Index of Subjects

Citation preview

“When the Morning Stars Sang”

Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft

Edited by John Barton, Reinhard G. Kratz, Nathan MacDonald, Carol A. Newsom and Markus Witte

Volume 500

‟When the Morning Stars Sang”

Essays in Honor of Choon Leong Seow on the Occasion of his Sixty-Fifth Birthday Edited by Scott C. Jones and Christine Roy Yoder

ISBN 978-3-11-042520-8 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-042814-8 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-042822-3 ISSN 0934-2575 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck ♾ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com

Professor Choon Leong Seow (August 4, 1952 – ) Photograph courtesy of Princeton Theological Seminary.

William Blake, 1757 – 1827. When the Morning Stars Sang Together. ca. 1805 – 1810. The Morgan Library & Museum. 2001.76. Purchased by Pierpont Morgan (1837 – 1913) in 1909.

Table of Contents Introduction Abbreviations

XI XIII

Christopher Hooker (Society of Biblical Literature) An Intellectual Biography and the Curriculum Vitae of Choon Leong 1 Seow William H. C. Propp (University of California–San Diego, Emeritus) Choon Leong Seow: An Appreciation 17

I: Job Michael V. Fox (University of Wisconsin–Madison, Emeritus) 21 The Speaker in Job 28 Edward L. Greenstein (Bar-Ilan University) Metaphors of Illness and Wellness in Job

39

J. Gerald Janzen (Christian Theological Seminary, Emeritus) Blessing and Justice in Job: In/commensurable? 51 Thomas Krüger (University of Zurich) Job Spoke the Truth about God (Job 42:7 – 8)

71

Manfred Oeming (University of Heidelberg) The Kerygma of the Book of Job 81 Carol A. Newsom (Emory University) The Reception of Job in the Dead Sea Scrolls

99

Katharine J. Dell (University of Cambridge) The Book of Job and Two Twentieth-Century British Oratorios

115

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II: Proverbs and Ecclesiastes Richard J. Clifford (Boston College School of Theology and Ministry, Emeritus) 129 Proverbs 1 – 9 as Instruction for a Young Man and for “Everyman” Bernd U. Schipper (Humboldt University–Berlin) From Epistemology to Wisdom Theology: The Composition of Proverbs 10 143 Agustinus Gianto (Pontifical Biblical Institute) On ‫ ֵישׁ‬of Reflection in the Book of Proverbs

157

Stuart Weeks (University of Durham) Why is it So Difficult to Read Ecclesiastes?

163

James L. Crenshaw (Duke University, Emeritus) A Rhetoric of Indecision: Reflections on God as Judge in Qoheleth

177

Susanne Gillmayr-Bucher (Catholic Private University Linz–Austria) Solomon’s Wise Words in Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century 189 Literature William P. Brown (Columbia Theological Seminary) When Wisdom Fails 209

III: Sirach and Wisdom of Solomon Judith H. Newman (University of Toronto) The Formation of the Scribal Self in Ben Sira

227

Benjamin G. Wright III (Lehigh University) Translation, Reception, and the Historiography of Early Judaism: The Wisdom of Ben Sira and Old Greek Job as Case Studies 239 Markus Witte (Humboldt University–Berlin) God and Evil in the Wisdom of Solomon

255

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Table of Contents

IV: Wisdom’s Echoes in the Hebrew Bible and Semitic Inscriptions Konrad Schmid (University of Zurich) The Ambivalence of Human Wisdom: Genesis 2 – 3 as a Sapiential 275 Text Hermann Spieckermann (University of Göttingen) What is the Place of Wisdom and Torah in the Psalter?

287

Ludger Schwienhorst-Schönberger (University of Vienna) Traces of an Original Allegorical Meaning of the Song of Songs

317

Peter Machinist (Harvard University) Royal Inscriptions in the Hebrew Bible and Mesopotamia: Reflections on Presence, Function, and Self-Critique 331 Raymond C. Van Leeuwen (Eastern University, Emeritus) Agriculture and Wisdom: The Case of the “Gezer Calendar” List of Contributors

381

Index of Ancient Sources Index of Subjects

387

383

365

Introduction Amid the swirling words and creative energy of the first divine speech in Job (38 – 39), God’s reference to the morning stars in 38:7 is particularly wellknown. The popularity of the reference traces back to the King James Version (KJV) of 1611. With a subtle yet significant substitution of the verb “sang” for what earlier translations of 38:7 rendered as “praised,” the KJV captivated centuries of subsequent interpreters: “when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.” The translation inspired renditions and allusions from such remarkable company as John Milton and Friedrich Schiller, Ludwig van Beethoven and Henry Van Dyke, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Emily Dickinson, Francis Bacon and Woodrow Wilson, C. S. Lewis and Lyndon Johnson, James Curnow and Terrence Malick, Martin Luther King, Jr. and William Blake (see frontispiece).¹ Poets and composers, authors and artists, filmmakers and scholars remain enchanted by the image of a radiant and jubilant heavenly chorus celebrating the creative work of God. The image likewise inspires this Festschrift in honor of our beloved teacher and friend, Professor Choon Leong Seow, the Vanderbilt, Buffington, Cupples Chair in Divinity and Distinguished Professor of Hebrew Bible at Vanderbilt Divinity School, on the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday. Assembled here is a chorus of twentythree of Leong’s primary interlocutors in wisdom and wisdom literature in the Bible and ancient Near East over the last four decades. Each scholar accepted our invitation to contribute to this volume without hesitation — to a one expressing gratitude to and affection for Leong. Equally generous was Albrecht Döhnert, the Editorial Director of Theology, Jewish Studies, and Religious Studies at De Gruyter in Berlin. Thankful for Leong’s many contributions to De Gruyter over the years, Albrecht offered not only to publish this work, but to do so as volume 500 in Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft (BZAW), on whose editorial board Leong served for nearly a decade (2003– 2011). The result of this happy convergence of world-class wisdom scholars and a fine publisher is a tribute to Professor Seow that we are delighted and honored to present to him. In the company of many, we celebrate and give thanks for Leong as our teacher—for his infectious joy and passion for the field, his creative and thoughtful pedagogy, his ready availability and wise counsel, his insistence on the highest standards of academic excellence, and his conviction that the work we do

 See the discussion of Job 38:7 in Choon Leong Seow, Job 22 – 42 (Illuminations; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, forthcoming).

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Introduction

matters for the sake of the world. Insisting that his students “check it!” and then walking to the library with them to demonstrate how, Leong conveys time and again his fierce commitment to intellectual rigor and his enduring investment in those who are fortunate to study with him. In the company of many, we celebrate and give thanks for Leong’s remarkable scholarship. Few in our time command his depth and breadth of knowledge, much less sustain comparable research and writing agendas. Leong’s work consistently unsettles settled thought, challenges and inspires his readers, and presses the field in new directions. Imbued with a relentless curiosity, he runs through disciplinary boundaries and ignores the limits of traditional training and methods: Leong simply learns what he needs to learn to better understand and interpret the biblical text. Time and again, the results compel others to follow. In the company of many, we celebrate and give thanks for Leong’s generous collegiality—for his wise leadership on the faculty of Princeton Theological Seminary for thirty-two years and now at Vanderbilt Divinity School, his faithful service on numerous editorial and advisory boards and guild committees, and his encouragement of other scholars and exceptional advocacy on their behalf. Numerous as the stars are Leong’s phone calls and emails, letters of recommendation and cups of coffee, all in the interest of connecting people and building the collegium around the world. Moreover, Leong and his family consistently open their home to others, providing delicious meals and always-inviting space for engaging conversations and new friendships. As two in the chorus of many, we thank you, Leong, beloved teacher and friend. We close with gratitude to those who have made this volume possible. We thank the contributors for their essays and forbearance, and the editorial and production staff at De Gruyter for their attention to every detail—especially Albrecht Döhnert, Sophie Wagenhofer, and John Whitley. F. W. “Chip” Dobbs-Allsopp provided early and helpful counsel about the volume’s design. Ada Yardeni, Martin Heider, Kathy Whalen, and Zoe Watnik of The Morgan Library & Museum kindly aided in securing permissions for the images. Finally, we are particularly grateful for Christopher Hooker, also a student of Leong’s, who tended to formatting and copyediting, and prepared Leong’s intellectual biography and list of publications. Choon Leong Seow, listen now as your morning stars sing for joy. Scott C. Jones Covenant College, Lookout Mountain, GA USA Christine Roy Yoder Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, GA USA

Abbreviations AASF AASOR AB ABD

Annales Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research Anchor Bible Anchor Bible Dictionary. Edited by David Noel Freedman. 6 vols. New York: Doubleday, 1992. AfO Archiv für Orientforschung AHw Akkadisches Handwörterbuch. Wolfram von Soden. 3 vols. Wiesbaden, 1965 – 1981. AOAT Alter Orient und Altes Testament AOTC Abingdon Old Testament Commentaries ATANT Abhandlungen zur Theologie des Alten und Neuen Testaments ATD Das Alte Testament Deutsch ATM Altes Testament und Moderne BAR Biblical Archaeology Review BASOR Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research BBB Bonner biblische Beiträge BBRSup Bulletin for Biblical Research, Supplements BCOTWP Baker Commentary on the Old Testament Wisdom and Psalms BEATAJ Beiträge zur Erforschung des Alten Testaments und des antiken Judentum BETL Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium BHQ Biblia Hebraica Quinta. Edited by Adrian Schenker et al. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2004– BHS Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia. Edited by Karl Elliger and Wilhelm Rudolph. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1983 BI Biblical Illustrator Bib Biblica BibInt Biblical Interpretation BibInt Biblical Interpretation Series BibOr Biblica et orientalia BibRec Biblical Reception BibS(N) Biblische Studien (Neukirchen, 1951–) BJS Brown Judaic Studies BJRL Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester BKAT Biblischer Kommentar, Altes Testament BN Biblische Notizen BTB Biblical Theology Bulletin BThSt Biblische-Theologische Studien BWANT Beiträge zur Wissenschaft vom Alten Testament BZ Biblische Zeitschrift BZAW Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft CAD The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. Chicago: The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 1956 – 2006

XIV

CANE CBET CBQ CBQMS CBR CC CDCH ConBOT COS CRINT CrStHB DCH DCLS DCLY DDD

DJD DSD EBR EdF EDSS EHS.T EJL EncJud ErIsr ETCSL ETL EvT FAT FB FOTL FRLANT HALOT

HAHE HAR HBCE HBS

Abbreviations

Civilizations of the Ancient Near East. Edited by Jack M. Sasson. 4 vols. New York, 1995. Repr. in 2 vols. Peabody, MA: Henderson, 2006 Contributions to Biblical Exegesis and Theology Catholic Biblical Quarterly Catholic Biblical Quarterly Monograph Series Currents in Biblical Research Continental Commentaries The Concise Dictionary of Classical Hebrew. Edited by David J. A. Clines. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2009 Coniectanea Biblica: Old Testament Series The Context of Scripture. Edited by William W. Hallo. 3 vols. Leiden: Brill, 1997 – 2002 Compendia Rerum Iudaicarum ad Novum Testamentum Critical Studies in the Hebrew Bible Dictionary of Classical Hebrew. Edited by David J. A. Clines. 9 vols. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 1993 – 2014 Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature Studies Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature Yearbook Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible. Edited by Karel van der Toorn, Bob Becking, and Pieter W. van der Horst. Leiden: Brill, 1995. 2nd rev. ed. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999 Discoveries in the Judean Desert Dead Sea Discoveries Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception. Edited by Hans-Josef Klauck et al. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2009– Erträ ge der Forschung Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Edited by Lawrence H. Schiffman and James C. VanderKam. 2 vols. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000 Europä ische Hochschulschriften Reihe Series 23: Theology Early Judaism and Its Literature Encyclopedia Judaica. Edited by Fred Skolnik and Michael Berenbaum. 2nd ed. 22 vols. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007 Eretz-Israel Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses Evangelische Theologie Forschungen zum Alten Testament Forschung zur Bibel Forms of the Old Testament Literature Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament. Ludwig Koehler, Walter Baumgartner, and Johann J. Stamm. Translated and edited under the supervision of Mervyn E. J. Richardson. 4 vols. Leiden: Brill, 1994 – 1999 Handbuch der althebrä ische Epigraphik. Edited by Johannes Renz and Wolfgang Rö llig. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2016 Hebrew Annual Review The Hebrew Bible: A Critical Edition Herders biblische Studien

Abbreviations

HBT HCOT HKAT HS HSM HThKAT HTR HTS HUCA IBC IBHS

XV

Horizons in Biblical Theology Historical Commentary on the Old Testament Handkommentar zum Alten Testament Hebrew Studies Harvard Semitic Monographs Herders Theologischer Kommentar zum Alten Testament Harvard Theological Review Harvard Theological Studies Hebrew Union College Annual Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax. Bruce K. Waltke and Michael O’Connor. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1990 ICC International Critical Commentary Int Interpretation IOS Israel Oriental Studies JAB Journal for the Aramaic Bible JAJ Journal of Ancient Judaism JAJSup Journal of Ancient Judaism Supplements JANER Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions JAOS Journal of the American Oriental Society JBL Journal of Biblical Literature JBTh Jahrbuch fü r Biblische Theologie JCS Journal of Cuneiform Studies JHS Journal of the Hebrew Scriptures JJS Journal of Jewish Studies JNES Journal of Near Eastern Studies JNSL Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages JOTT Journal of Translation and Textlinguistics JQR Jewish Quarterly Review JSHRZ Jüdische Schriften aus hellenistisch-römischer Zeit JSJSup Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism JSOT Journal for the Study of the Old Testament JSOTSup Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series JSP Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha KAT Kommentar zum Alten Testament KTU Die keilalphabetischen Texte aus Ugarit. Edited by Manfried Dietrich, Oswald Loretz, and Joaquín Sanmartín. Mü nster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2013. 3rd enl. ed. Of KTU: The Cuneiform Alphabetic Texts from Ugarit, Ras Ibn Hani, and Other Places. Edited by Manfried Dietrich, Oswald Loretz, and Joaquín Sanmartín. Mü nster: Ugarit-Verlag, 1995 KUSATU Kleine Untersuchungen zur Sprache des Alten Testaments und seiner Umwelt LCL Loeb Classical Library LD Lectio divina LHBOTS The Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies LSTS The Library of Second Temple Studies MC Mesopotamian Civilizations MdB Le Monde de la Bible

XVI

MGWJ NBL NEchtB NETS

Abbreviations

Monatschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums Neues Bibel-Lexikon Neue Echter Bibel A New English Translation of the Septuagint. Edited by Albert Pietersma and Banjamin G. Wright. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. NIB The New Interpreter’s Bible. Edited by Leander E. Keck. 12 vols. Nashville: Abingdon, 1994 – 2004. NICOT New International Commentary on the Old Testament NIDB New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible. Edited by Katharine Doob Sakenfeld. 5 vols. Nashville: Abingdon, 2006 – 2009. NJPS Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures: The New JPS Translation according to the Traditional Hebrew Text. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1985 NRSV New Revised Standard Version NSKAT Neuer Stuttgarter Kommentar, Altes Testament OBO Orbis biblicus et orientalis OEBART The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and the Arts. Edited by Timothy Beal. 2 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015 OED Oxford English Dictionary OLA Orientalia lovaniensia analecta Or Orientalia (NS) ORA Orientalische Religionen in der Antike OTL Old Testament Library OTP Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. Edited by James H. Charlesworth. 2 vols. New York: Doubleday, 1983, 1985. OtSt Oudtestamentische Studiën PEFQS Palestinian Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement PSB Princeton Seminary Bulletin PTSDSSP Princeton Theological Seminary Dead Sea Scrolls Project RA Revue d’assyriologie et d’archéologie orientale RB Revue biblique RBL Review of Biblical Literature RGG Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Edited by Hans Dieter Betz. 4th ed. Tü bingen. Mohr Siebeck, 1998 – 2007. RHPR Revue d’histoire et de philosophie religieuses RIMA The Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia, Assyrian Periods RivB Rivista biblica italiana RINAP Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period RSV Revised Standard Version SAA State Archives of Assyria SAACT State Archives of Assyria Cuneiform Texts SAAS State Archives of Assyria Studies SANTAG Santag: Arbeiten und Untersuchungen zur Keilschriftkunde SBAB Stuttgarter biblische Aufsatzbände SBL Society of Biblical Literature SBLDS Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series SBLRBS Society of Biblical Literature Resources for Biblical Studies SBLSCS Society of Biblical Literature Septuagint and Cognate Studies

Abbreviations

SBLWAW SBT SCAN SEG SJOT SSN STAC STDJ SUNT SVF TB THOTC TLZ TOBITH TS TSAJ TUAT TZ UB UF VAB VWGTh VT VTSup WA WBC WMANT WO WTJ WUNT YNER ZAW ZBK ZTK

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Society of Biblical Literature Writings from the Ancient World Studies in Biblical Theology Social Cognative and Affective Neuroscience Supplementum epigraphicum graecum Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament Studia semitica neerlandica Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah Studien zur Umwelt des Neuen Testaments Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta. Hans Friedrich August von Arnim. 4 vols. Leipzig: Teubne, 1903 – 1924 Theologische Bücherei: Neudrucke und Berichte aus dem 20. Jahrhundert Two Horizons Old Testament Commentary Theologische Literaturzeitung Topoi Biblischer Theologie/Topics of Biblical Theology Texts and Studies Texte und Studien zum antiken Judentum Texte aus der Umwelt des Alten Testaments. Edited by Otto Kaiser. Gü ttersloh: Mohn, 1984– Theologische Zeitschrift Kohlhammer Urban-Taschenbü cher Ugarit-Forschungen Vorderasiatische Bibliothek Verö ffentlichungen der Wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft fü r Theologie Vetus Testamentum Supplements to Vetus Testamentum D. Martin Luthers Werke: kritische Gesammtausgabe (Weimarer Ausgabe) Word Biblical Commentary Wissenschaftliche Monographien zum Alten und Neuen Testament Die Welt des Orients Westminster Theological Journal Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament Yale Near Eastern Researches Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft Zürcher Bibelkommentare Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche

Christopher Hooker (Society of Biblical Literature)

An Intellectual Biography and the Curriculum Vitae of Choon Leong Seow “By wisdom a house is built, and by understanding it is established; by knowledge the rooms are filled with all precious and pleasant riches” (Prov 24:3 – 4, NRSV). Though it is perhaps not what the sage had in mind, this proverb serves as a fitting metaphor for the intellectual biography of Choon Leong Seow. The house built by his many writings and intellectual pursuits would be grand indeed. In what follows, we will to undertake a short tour of Seow’s intellectual home, pausing briefly to look at some of its most finely adorned rooms. First, a note about the property as a whole. Over the course of his career, Choon Leong Seow has published extensively. To date, his body of work includes seven full-length books and over forty-five articles and book chapters. Any attempt to summarize his intellectual pursuits and achievement risks overlooking important pieces, simply because the scope of Seow’s career has been so broad. To put it in the language of our metaphor, there are many, many rooms in this house. So while we will only stop in a few places, there is much else that is worthy of note. It is my hope, however, that even this abbreviated tour will give us a sense of the broad design of the house as a whole. In the oldest section of the house, we encounter Seow’s first major publication, his reworked dissertation, Myth, Drama, and the Politics of David’s Dance, published in the Harvard Semitic Monographs series (1989). As one looks at this book with the benefit of the retrospection from the rest of Seow’s career, two things stand out. First, it shows that even as a young scholar, Seow’s was a voice to be reckoned with. This work already shows Seow engaged in deep and thoughtful analysis of his texts. He reads texts carefully and well, but he is also looking for the ways that they might inform our own understanding of the religion, history, and politics of ancient Israel. One can certainly detect the influence of his beloved teacher, Frank Moore Cross. The scholarship is careful and considered—two traits that will come to characterize Seow throughout his career. The second standout feature, however, is that this first book does not have quite the adventuresome spirit or some of the risk-taking that characterize much of Seow’s later writing. But we need not look far to find these traits. As we walk down the hallway to the next room, we might notice that the décor changes. Despite beginning his career in the history of religion of ancient Israel, Seow was not content to stay within those confines. There is perhaps no

DOI 10.1515/9783110428148-001

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Christopher Hooker

greater risk that a scholar can undertake than to leave the area of one’s training. Yet this is precisely what Seow did in becoming a self-taught wisdom scholar. As we arrive at the next large room, we see Seow’s commentary on Ecclesiastes in the Anchor Bible series (1997), one of the works for which he is best known. Here we have the perfect example of Seow’s development into the middle portion of his career. As one would expect from that series, Seow’s commentary showcases the talents of a scholar capable of penetrating analysis and who engages the main tools of the critical Bible commentary. With equal aplomb, Seow dives into textual criticism, philology, and poetic analysis, each at the high level of a master scholar. Yet as he pushes the text for clues as to how a wisdom text might fit the social-economic world of its context, one can also start to see some of the restlessness of Seow’s academic pursuits: it is simply not enough for him to walk again the territory trod by previous scholars. Rather, scholars should always be pushing for new questions and methods that can be rigorously engaged and followed to new and productive directions. Even if one had not undertaken those methods before, each new work is an opportunity to try out new tools. Prior experience is not necessary; what is needed is a willingness to push as far as one can, to take risks, and to be confident in what one discovers. As we continue to explore this house, we start to see the large number of passageways that represent his many and varied writings. At this stage in the tour, it is apparent that Seow’s dedication (along with the self-confidence to voice the fruits of those endeavors) has paid off in remarkable ways. This dedication has led to his Hebrew primer, a book that grew of a need he perceived as a teacher and that has opened the doors of that language to a generation of seminary students. There is the collaborative work on Hebrew Inscriptions (2004) and the continued appearance of inscriptional evidence in nearly everything Seow now writes. There are the commentaries on 1 and 2 Kings (1999) and Daniel (2003), not to mention his annotations to Job and Ecclesiastes in the New Oxford Annotated Bible (2001). Each of these, written for more general audiences, showcases how popular commentaries can be simultaneously erudite and accessible. There are also his many, many contributions, both as an author and an editor, to the massive Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception (2009–). This work, along with his journal publications of late, points to a scholar no longer content with the traditional scope of biblical scholarship. Those fortunate enough to hear a lecture delivered by Seow are now as likely to encounter renaissance artwork or medieval Islamic stories as they are a new text-critical analysis of a text. There is but one explanation for how all of these exploits can be tied together in the writings of one person: for Seow, there is no intellectual field that is off-limits in the service of understanding the biblical text.

An Intellectual Biography of Choon Leong Seow

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At the end of these many hallways and corridors, we have now come to the grandest room yet. The Job commentary, the first volume in the new Illuminations series (edited by none other than Seow himself; 2013), is without a doubt Seow’s magnum opus. This commentary is the work that comes closest to showing the depth and breadth of Seow’s intellectual ambitions. By nearly any measure, this commentary is a phenomenal work of scholarship. As with the Ecclesiastes commentary, Seow here excels in the traditional realms of the biblical commentary. But the volume also does something more. By integrating and conversing with the history of consequences of Job, Seow problematizes the very idea of the text upon which he is commenting. The genre remains that of a detailed commentary on the Hebrew text, but Seow is also asking a more fundamental question: what is Job? So while the Ecclesiastes commentary represents an excellent example of what has been, the Job commentary begins to ask new questions about what a commentary should be. Those may be the highlights of our tour, but there is much in the house that we have not seen. Seow’s curriculum vitae showcases the numerous ways that he has made his mark on the field, but even a list of its length cannot tell the whole of the story. To do that, one would have talk with those who have been influenced by him (see, for instance, the touching letter by William Propp in this volume). One would have to encounter the legion of master’s degree and now undergraduate students for whom the Bible has been opened in new and innovative ways. One would have to hear his doctoral students describe about how they learned from him what it means to be a truly excellent scholar. One would need to speak with colleagues, including many contributors of this volume, whose own work has benefited from their interactions with Seow, both professionally and personally. And, of course, one would need to encounter Seow himself, who would no doubt describe how the influence and benefit has gone both ways. Thus we arrive at the point where our metaphor breaks. We have toured a marvelous home, but even one of such magnificence cannot summarize all that makes Choon Leong Seow remarkable both as a scholar and as a human being. Whether in his writing, his teaching, or in his personal relationships, Choon Leong Seow is one of those rare people who has somehow successfully joined a stunning intellect with a nearly inhumane work-ethic and a generous spirit. On the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday, we celebrate this man whose life and work have been such a tremendous blessing.

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Choon Leong Seow’s Curriculum Vitae Books Job 1 – 21. Illuminations. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013. Hebrew Inscriptions: Texts from the Biblical Period of the Monarchy. With F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp, J. J. M. Roberts, R. E. Whitaker. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. Daniel. Westminster Bible Companion. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2003. “I & II Kings.” Pages 1– 296 in vol. 3 of NIB. Ecclesiastes: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. AB 18C. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997. A Grammar for Biblical Hebrew. Second Edition. Nashville: Abingdon, 1995. First edition, 1987. Also translated into Chinese in Taiwan (2001) and China (2007). Myth, Drama, and the Politics of David’s Dance. HSM 46. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989.

Articles and Chapters in Books “Text Critical Notes on 4QJoba.” DSD 22 (2015): 189 – 201. “Ode to an Awesome Dragon: Rendering the Joban Leviathan in Chinese.” Pages 271– 87 in Festschrift in Honor of Professor Lo Lung Kwong. Edited by Ying Fuk Tsang et al. Hong Kong: Chinese Christian Literature Council, 2014. “Revisiting Behemoth.” Pages 41– 55 in Biblical Essays in Honor of Daniel J. Harrington, SJ, and Richard J. Clifford, SJ. Edited by Christopher Frechette et al. New York: Paulist, 2014. “Exegesis; Footstool (HB/OT, NT); Fraud; Friends, Friendship.” In EBR. Volumes 6 – 7. Edited by Choon Leong Seow et al. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2014.

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“An Exquisitely Poetic Introduction to the Psalter.” JBL 132 (2013): 275 – 93. “Descent into the Netherworld/Hell (HB/OT); Despair (ANE, HB/OT); Devil (Introduction); Directions, Cardinal (ANE, HB/OT); Dishan; Dishon; Door, Doors (HB/OT); Dreams and Dream Interpretation (ANE, HB/OT); Elizur, Emim, Ephod.” In EBR, Volumes 6 – 7. Edited by Choon Leong Seow et al. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2013. “History of Consequences: The Case of Gregory’s Moralia in Iob.” Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel 1 (2012): 368 – 87. “Bisitun; Boar; Breach; Breastplate; Brother, Brotherhood (ANE. HB/OT); Brown, Francis; Caper-berry; Cheran; Cherub (Person); Chesed (Person); Chesil; Chesulloth; Chezib (Person); Chezib (Place); Chidon; Chimcham; Chislon; Col-Hozeh; Cozbi; Coseba; Creeds (Introduction, HB/OT), Cun; Cush, the Benjaminite; Cyaxares; Cypress.” In EBR, Volumes 4– 5. Edited by Choon Leong Seow et al. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2012. “Orthography, Textual Criticism, and the Poetry of Job.” JBL 130 (2011): 63 – 85. “Elihu’s Revelation.” Theology Today 68 (2011): 253 – 71. “Putative Hapaxlegomena in Job.” Pages 145 – 82 in Studien zur Hebräischen Bibel und ihrer Nachgeschichte Beiträge der 32. internationalen ökumenischen Konferenz der Hebräischlehrenden, Frankfurt a. M. 2009. KUSATU 12.13. Edited by J. F. Diehl and M. Witte. Frankfurt: Spenner, 2011. “Speaking Rightly: The God-Talks of Job and His Friends.” Trinity Theological Journal 19 (2011): 70 – 72. “Athlete of God/Christ (HB/OT, Judaism); Balak (HB/OT); Beard (ANE, HB/OT, GrecoRoman Antiquity; Judaism; Christianity, Islam, Visual Arts); Beast (ANE, HB/OT, Judaism); Beer-Lahai-Roi; Beracah (Person); Bildad.” In EBR, Volume 3. Edited by Choon Leong Seow et al. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2011. “Job.” Pages 421– 22 in Dictionary of Scriptures and Ethics. Edited by Joel B. Green et al. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2011. “Poetic Closures in Job.” JSOT 34 (2010): 433 – 46.

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“Hope in Two Keys: Musical Impact and the Poetics of Job 14.” Pages 495 – 510 in Congress Volume, Lubljana 2007. VTSup 133. Edited by Andre´ Lemaire. Leiden: Brill, 2010. “Reflections on the History of Consequences: The Case of Job.” Pages 561– 86 in Method Matters: Essays on the Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Honor of David L. Peterson. Edited by Joel LeMon and Kent H. Richards. SBLRBS 56. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009. “Adoniram; Ahijah (Ahiah, Ahio); Aldebaran; Angel of Death; Antimony; Armor (ANE, HB/OT).” In EBR. Volumes 1– 2. Edited by Choon Leong Seow et al. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2009. “Abir Yaʿaqob; Adonai; Adoniram; Almighty; Ancient of Days; Bethel (Deity); El; El Bethel; El Elyon; El Elohe Israel; El Olam; El Shaddai; Eloah; Elohim; Fear of Isaac; God of the Covenant; God of Gods; Names of God; Gods, Goddesses; Hashem; Holy One; King of Kings; Lord of Heaven; Shield of Abraham; Yahweh.” In NIDB. “The Social World of Ecclesiastes.” Pages 189 – 217 in Scribes, Sages, and Seers: The Sage in the Eastern Mediterranean World. Edited by Leo G. Perdue. Gö ttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008. “Job’s Wife, with Due Respect.” Pages 351– 75 in Das Buch Hiob und seine Interpretationen: Beiträge zur Hiob-Symposium auf dem Monte Verità vom 14.–19. August 2005. Edited by Thomas Krüger et al. ATANT 88. Zurich: TVZ, 2007. “Job’s Gō’ēl, Again.” Pages 689 – 709 in Gott und Mensch im Dialog: Festschrift für Otto Kaiser zum 80. Geburtstag. BZAW 345/2. Edited by Markus Witte. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2004. “The Kingdom that Cannot be Impaired.” Pages 219 – 46 in Studies on David and Zion: Essays in Honor of J. J. M. Roberts. Ed. Bernard Batto and K. L. Roberts. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2004. “West Semitic Sources.” Pages 201– 218 in Prophets and Prophecy in the Ancient Near East. SBLWAW 12. Edited by Peter Machinist. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003.

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“From Mountain to Mountain: The Reign of God in Daniel 2.” Pages 355 – 74 in A God So Near: Essays in Honor of Patrick D. Miller. Ed. Brent A. Strawn and Nancy Bowen. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2002. “Theology When Everything is Out of Control.” Interpretation (July 2001): 237– 49. “Job, Ecclesiastes.” Pages 726 – 74, 944 – 58 in The New Oxford Annotated Bible. Ed. Michael D. Coogan et al. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. “Ecclesiastes.” Pages 466 – 71 in The HarperCollins Bible Commentary. Revised edition. Ed. James L. Mays and Joseph Blenkinsopp. New York: Harper, 2000. “Beyond Mortal Grasp: The Usage of Hebel in Ecclesiastes.” Australian Biblical Review 48 (2000): 1– 16. “Rehabilitating ‘the Preacher’: Qohelet’s Theology in Context.” Pages 90 – 116 in Papers of the 1997 Henry Winters Luce III Fellows in Theology. Volume IV. ATS Series in Theological Scholarship and Research. Ed. M. Zienowitcz. Atlanta: The Association of Theological Schools, 2000. “Qohelet’s Eschatological Poem.” JBL 118 (1999): 209 – 34. “‘Beyond These, My Son, Beware!’: The Epilogue of Qohelet Revisited.” Pages 125 – 41 in Wisdom, You are My Sister: Studies in Honor of Roland E. Murphy O. Carm., on the Occasion of His Eightieth Birthday. Edited by Michael L. Barré. CBQMS 29. Washington, DC: Catholic Biblical Association, 1997. “Dangerous Seductress or Elusive Lover? The ‘Woman’ of Ecclesiastes 7.” Pages 23 – 33 in Women, Gender, and Christian Community. Edited by Jane Dempsey Douglass and James F. Kay. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1997. “Linguistic Evidence and the Dating of Qohelet.” JBL 115 (1996): 643 – 666. “The Socioeconomic Context of ‘the Preacher’s’ Hermeneutic.” Princeton Seminary Bulletin 17 N.S. (1996): 168 – 195. “Textual Orientation.” Pages 17– 34 in Homosexuality and Biblical Ethics: Listening to Scripture Ed. Robert L. Brawley. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1996.

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“A Heterotextual Perspective.” Pages 14– 27 in Homosexuality and Christian Community. Edited by Choon Leong Seow. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1996. “Qohelet’s Autobiography.” Pages 262– 87 in Fortunate the Eyes That See: Essays in Honor of David Noel Freedman in Celebration of His Seventieth Birthday. Edited by Astrid B. Beck et al. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995. “Ugaritic and the Old Testament.” Pages 785 – 86 in The Oxford Companion to the Bible. Edited by Bruce M. Metzger and Michael D. Coogan. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. “ʿAm; Face; Lim; Torah.” In DDD. “Ark of the Covenant; Deep; Hosea; Lord of Hosts.” In ABD. “Literature of the Ancient Near East.” Pages 57– 67 in The Oxford Study Bible: Revised English Bible. Edited by M. Jack Suggs et al. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. “The Ineffable Name of Israel’s God.” Bible Review 7 (1991): 49 – 50. “A Note on Lamentations 1:20.” CBQ 102 (1985): 416 – 19. “The Designation of the Ark in Priestly Theology.” HAR 8 (1985): 185 – 97. “The Syro-Palestinian Context of Solomon’s Dream.” HTR 77 (1984): 141– 52. “Hosea 14:10 and the Foolish People Motif.” CBQ 44 (1982): 212– 24.

Reviews Stella Papadaki-Oekland, Byzantine Illuminated Manuscripts of the Book of Job. Studies in Iconography 332 (2011): 233 – 35. John Sawyer, A Concise Dictionary of the Bible and its Reception. RBL (July 2009). W. H. U. Anderson, Qoheleth and Its Pessimistic Theology: Hermeneutical Struggles in Wisdom Literature. RBL (1999).

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Frederic Clarke Putnam, A Cumulative Index to the Grammar and Syntax of Biblical Hebrew. HS 40 (1999): 265 – 66. Gary Rendsburg, Linguistic Evidence for the Northern Origin of Selected Psalms. JBL 112 (1993): 334– 37. Carola Kloos, YHWH’s Combat with the Sea. CBQ 53 (1991): 472– 74. Sa-Moon Kang, Divine War in the Old Testament and in the Ancient Near East. JBL 110 (1991): 131– 32. Joseph Blenkinsopp, A History of Prophecy in Israel. PSB 7 (1986): 191– 92. Daniel J. Silver, Images of Moses. RelSRev 12 (1986): 174. John Emerton, ed., International Congress for the Study of the Old Testament, Salamanca, 1983. RelSRev 12 (1986): 283. Ralph Smith, Micah-Malachi. PSB 7 (1986): 195. H. G. M. Williamson, Ezra-Nehemiah. PSB 7 (1986): 194. Terence E. Fretheim, Deuteronomic History. PSB 5 (1984): 158 – 59.

Lectures and Papers (selected) “Reading Job Theologically.” Four lectures delivered at the Princeton Theological Seminary Alumni Conference. San Marino, California. November 2013. “The Book of Job.” Azusa Pacific University. November 2013. “Leviathan, Mysterium Tremendum et Fascinans.” University of California-Los Angeles. November 2013. “Job: Interpretation, Reception, Consequences.” Fuller Theological Seminary. November 2013. “Artistic Interpretations of Job.” E. J. Goodspeed Lecture. Denison University. October 2013.

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“Job: Interpretation, Reception. Consequences.” Hebrew Union College. Cincinnati. October 2013. “Job’s Wife in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.” Hartford Seminary. October 2013. “Gregory the Great’s Moralia in Iob.” MAR-SBL Annual Meeting. Baltimore. 2013. “The Danielic ‘Son of Man’ (Dan 7:13 – 14).” Keynote Address at the Society of Asian Biblical Studies Meeting. Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia. June 2012. “The Old Testament in Visual Arts.” The Chinese University of Hong Kong. July 2012. “Job through the Eyes of Artists.” Middlebury College. December 2012. “Theodicy and Antitheodicy in the Book of Job.” Georg-August Universität. Göttingen. December 2012. “Job’s Wife, with Due Respect.” Einstein Forum. Potsdam, Germany. July 2012. “Bible Translations and Their Consequences.” King James Version Conference. Princeton Theological Seminary. March 2011. “Christian Hebraism and Its Impact.” The King James Bible 1611– 2011: Its Champions, Critics, and Continuing Legacy. Princeton University. October 2011. “The Linguistic Profile of the Elihu Speeches.” SBL Annual Meeting. San Francisco. November, 2011. “Hebrew Poetry: Psalm 1.” Trinity Theological College. Singapore. July 2010. “The Many Faces of Job.” Seminari Theoloji Malaysia. July 2010. “The History of Consequences.” Georg-August Universität. Göttingen. December 2009. “Ethics and the Book of Job.” Kitz Family Lecture in Biblical Theology. Boston College School of Theology and Ministry. March 2009.

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“Late Antique and Medieval (Christian) Interpretations of Job.” MacFadin Lectures. Brite Divinity School, Texas Christian University. February 2009. “Job in Second Temple Judaism.” Vanderbilt University. 2009. “In Defense of Elihu.” Colloquium for Biblical Research. Princeton, NJ. 2010. “The Musicality of Hope.” Yale University Divinity School. October 2008. “Theologies in Job.” Georg-August Universität. Göttingen. 2008. “Job’s Wife.” Plenary Lecture, MAR-SBL Annual Meeting. New Brunswick, NJ. 2008. “Afterlife in the Hebrew Bible.” Invited Plenary Lecture, Conference on Death, Burial, and the Afterlife. Jerusalem. January 2008. “Radical Monotheism in the Book of Job.” Conference on Revolutionary Monotheism. Princeton University. February 2007. “Job at the Crossroads.” Special Plenary Lecture given at the Congress of the International Organization of the Study of the Old Testament Studies. Lubljana, Slovenia. July 2007. “Hope in Two Keys.” Plenary Lecture given at the Congress of the International Organization of the Study of the Old Testament Studies. Lubljana, Slovenia. July 2007. “Job’s Wife.” Eberhard-Karls Universität, Tübingen; Ruprecht-Karl Universität, Heidelberg; Ludwig-Maximilians Universität, Munich; Humboldt Universität, Berlin. 2007. “The Poetry of Job.” SBL Annual Meeting. San Diego. November 2007. “Job’s Gōʾēl.” Georg-August Universität. Göttingen. 2006. “Joban Junctures.” University of Zurich. 2006. “Joban Poetry: A Crosscut.” Plenary Address, SBL International Meeting. Singapore. 2005.

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“Elijah’s Ministry.” Inauguration of the Chen Su Lan Lectureship, Trinity Theological College. Singapore. 2005. “Israelite Wisdom Literature as Practical Theology.” Chuen King Lectures, the Chinese University of Hong Kong. 2005. “The Reign of God in the Book of Daniel.” Annual Lectureship, Seminary Theoloji Malaysia. 2004. “Hebrew Lexicography.” SBL Annual Meeting. San Antonio. November 2004. “Wisdom Theology: An Asian View.” Seminari Theoloji Sabah, Kota Kinabalu. Malaysia. 2004. “The Poetics of Job’s Curse.” Harvard University. 2003. “Damn It! Job’s Counter-Cosmic Incantation, Again.” Colloquium for Biblical Research. Amherst, MA. 2003. “The Social World of Qohelet.” Plenary Lecture at the MAR-SBL Regional Meeting. 2002. “Prophecy Amid Messy History and Dirty Politics.” Shoki Coe Memorial Lectureship. Tainan, Taiwan. 2001. “Hebrew Pedagogy.” University of Melbourne, Department of Semitics. 2000. “Hebel: Beyond Mortal Grasp.” Ormond College. Melbourne. 2000. “Preaching the Preacher.” United Theological College. Sydney. 2000. “Wisdom as Practical Theology.” Mackay Distinguished Lectureship. Taiwan Theological College and Seminary. Taipei, Taiwan. 1999. “Teaching Biblical Hebrew.” SBL Annual Meeting. Boston. November 1999. “Optimism, Pessimism, and the Zeitgeist of Qohelet.” Institute of Advanced Study, School of Social Science. Princeton, NJ. 1998. “Qohelet’s Final Poem.” Colloquium for Biblical Research. Amherst, MA. 1997.

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“The Socioeconomic Context of ‘the Preacher’s’ Hermeneutic.” Inaugural Lecture as the Henry Snyder Gehman Professor of Old Testament Language and Literature. Princeton Theological Seminary. 1996. “Spirited Conversations.” Institute of Theology Lectures. Princeton Theological Seminary. 1996. “Restoration, Restitution, and Social Reform.” Conference on Reconciliation and Restitution. University of Stellenbosch. South Africa. 1996. “On the Date of Ecclesiastes.” University of Capetown. South Africa. 1996. “Ecclesiastes.” Rian Lectureship. Princeton Theological Seminary. 1993. “Rhetoric and Subversion in Qohelet.” SBL Annual Meeting. San Francisco, November 1992. “Psalm 132 as a Political Document.” SBL International Meeting, Vienna, 1990. “Myth, Drama, and the Politics of David’s Dance.” Mitchell Dahood Memorial Lecture. SBL Annual Meeting. Anaheim, CA. November 1989. “The Cult of El at Shiloh.” SBL International Meeting. Copenhagen. 1989. “Tradition and Imagination.” Theological Colloquium of Trinity Theological College. Singapore. 1987. “David and the Divine Warrior’s March.” SBL Annual Meeting. Anaheim. 1985. “Solomon’s Dream.” SBL Annual Meeting. New York. 1982. “The Foolish People Motif in Hosea.” New England Regional SBL Annual Meeting. Boston. 1982. “A Theology of the Lost Ark.” Trajectories in Biblical Scholarship: A Symposium. York University. Toronto. 1982.

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Editorial Work Editorial Work General Editor and Main Editor for Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, EBR, 30 Volumes (projected). Walter de Gruyter, 2002– 2015. General Editor, Illuminations Commentary, Eerdmans, 2009-Present. Editorial Board Member, Studies in the Bible and its Reception Series, de Gruyter, 2013-Present. Editorial Board Member, BZAW, de Gruyter, 2003 – 2011. Editorial Board Member, Maarav, 2002-Present. Editorial Board Member, CBQ, 1998 – 2004. Editorial Board Member, JBL, 1998 – 2004. Editorial Board Member, SBLWAW, Society of Biblical Literature, 1998 – 2004. Editorial Board Member, Abingdon Old Testament Commentaries, Abingdon, 1998-Present. Editor, Homosexuality and Christian Community. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1996.

Awards, Honors, Grants National Endowment for the Humanity Faculty Research Fellowship, 2007– 08. Wabash Center for Teaching Theology and Religion Grant, 2000 – 02. Member, Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton, 1997-Present. Henry Winters Luce III Fellowship, 1997– 98. Mitchell Dahood Memorial Prize in Northwest Semitic Philology, 1989.

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NEH/ASOR Fellow, W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research, Jerusalem, 1986 – 87. Distinction in Comprehensive Exams, Harvard University, 1983. First in Graduating Class, Princeton Theological Seminary, 1980. George S. Green Fellowship (declined), Princeton Theological Seminary, 1980. Graduate Fellowship (Best Thesis in Old Testament), Princeton Theological Seminary, 1980. Henry Snyder Gehman Award in Old Testament, Princeton Theological Seminary, 1979. Departmental Scholar, Pepperdine University, 1977.

Teaching Vanderbilt, Buffington, Cupples Chair in Divinity and Distinguished Professor of Hebrew Bible, Vanderbilt University, August 2015-present. Henry Snyder Gehman Professor of Old Testament Language and Literature, Princeton Theological Seminary, 1995-June 2015. Associate Professor of Old Testament, Princeton Theological Seminary, 1990 – 95. Assistant Professor of Old Testament, Princeton Theological Seminary, 1984– 90. Instructor in Old Testament, Princeton Theological Seminary, 1983 – 84. Lecturer in Intermediate Hebrew, Harvard Divinity School, Summer 1982 and 1983. Teaching Fellow in Hebrew Bible, Harvard University, 1981– 83. Teaching Assistant in Hebrew Exegesis, Princeton Theological Seminary, 1980. Teaching Assistant in Biblical Hebrew, Princeton Theological Seminary, 1978 – 79.

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Visiting Professor, Princeton University, Spring Semester, 2012. Visiting Professor, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Divinity School, Summer, 2011, 2012. Visiting Scholar, Harvard University, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Spring, 2011. Visiting Professor, Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Spring, 2010. Visiting Lecturer, Trinity Theological College, Singapore, Summer, 2010.

Degrees Ph.D. Harvard University, 1984, Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. M.Div. Princeton Theological Seminary, 1980. B.A. Pepperdine University, 1977.

William H. C. Propp (University of California–San Diego, Emeritus)

Choon Leong Seow: An Appreciation

Dear Leong, I was honored to be invited to contribute a brief prologue to this volume. I hope everyone has kept the secret well, and you are surprised. You really shouldn’t be, though. We first met in September 1980, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I was in my second year of Harvard’s doctoral program in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, while you were just entering NELC coming out of Princeton Theological Seminary. I was a very green 22-year-old, and you must have been about 28. I have heard you recount (very amusingly and embarrassingly) your first impressions of me; I do not retain a memory of my first impressions of you, except that, at an early department social event, you introduced me to your wife, saying, as I assume you routinely do, “You’ll find her name easy to remember: it’s Lai King”—I have always assumed because everyone finds themselves immediately liking her, as we all did. Whenever it happened, by the end of that first year we had become best mates. I loved your manic enthusiasm for whatever we were learning; I envied your devotion to classwork; I found you always ready to listen to whatever was on my mind, whether academic or otherwise, and I hope I reciprocated. I was also fascinated by your life history and family, so different from my own. In terms of work ethic we were truly yin and yang. I found your ability to plan several steps ahead somewhat alien, while you probably found my desultory approach more than a little frustrating. I still remember you once expostulating, “If you devoted to your scholarship one tenth the effort you apply to those drawings of yours…” I eventually learned to, largely by following your example. Despite your focus, dynamism, and academic success, you were never a drone. What I really loved about you (and not everyone saw this in our school days) was how eager you were to burst out of the confines of our somewhat anachronistic 19th-century philological training. Yes, you’ve always been more than eager to discuss the grammar of an obscure phrase, the precise meaning of an unknown word, the ancient context of an Israelite institution. But what has really excited you over the years is learning a whole new field, whether on your own or through formal instruction. It could be political theory, sociology, economic theory, rabbinic biblical interpretation, the history of Western visual arts and music, Muslim reception of biblical traditions, etc.—there was always this tendency, like the “gracious gods” of Ugarit, to swallow everything whole DOI 10.1515/9783110428148-002

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and to revel in it. “Fun” is in fact how I would chiefly characterize our relationship over the years, at least from my perspective. Princeton Theological Seminary was lucky to have had you for so many decades, both “man and (loosely speaking) boy”; Vanderbilt is lucky to have you now. You and I would sometimes compare our dissatisfactions with our institutional environments. You would lament that so many seminary students seemed just not to be interested in the academic study of the Scriptures; I would rejoin that, at least they have to take your courses—and surely they have some interest in the Bible—whereas at my science-oriented, public university it can be a struggle to fill the seats. One would think and hope that, going forward, Vanderbilt will prove to be the perfect compromise between these extremes. Just as you devoted enormous care and thought to your classes when you were a student, you have always been equally self-conscious with your own pedagogy. You probably don’t know this, but it was through our many conversations about teaching strategies that I began to conceive how I might train my own graduate students one day. When I meet your past and present students and colleagues at conferences, or when I read online tributes they have written to you, I am continually moved by how much they value and love you. For some of your admirers, you are not just a person but a symbol, your whole life story an inspiration. But for those who’ve gotten to know you more intimately—your warmth, your hospitality, your rich family life, your mindfulness of your roots—the appreciation runs much deeper. Just like me back in Cambridge in the 1980s, your students and colleagues have come to appreciate that, in all his variegated facets, Choon Leong Seow is one of the most remarkable people they have ever met. And always fun (at least by my possibly eccentric conception). So congratulations, my dear friend—first on reaching the medium-ripe age of 65, and second for achieving the degree of eminence we must have fantasized about back in the Harvard Semitic Museum. Your scholarly career is far from over (you owe the world the rest of Job, after all!), but already your contributions have fixed your star in the firmament of those meriting a celebratory volume— which I always think of as The Genre With No English Name. For you, may “When the Morning Stars Sang” put the Fest back in Festschrift! ‫מזל טוב‬, my friend; ‫עד מאה ועשרים‬. (You’re just over halfway there!) Yours in gratitude for everything, Bill

I: Job

Michael V. Fox (University of Wisconsin–Madison, Emeritus)

The Speaker in Job 28

Who is speaking in Job 28? Job? The author? A later writer? Elihu? Or, as I will argue, Zophar? The answer requires us first to identify the speakers of Job 27.

1 Who is Speaking in Job 27? Chapter 27 begins “And Job again took up his discourse and said” (v. 1). There is no further identification of the speaker until 29:1, which is introduced by the same words. In both cases, there is some uncertainty as to the identity of the preceding speaker.¹ In any case, since Job is identified as the speaker in 27:1, then Job might be speaking through all of chapters 27 and 28 (as well as 29 – 31). In that case, Zophar lacks a third speech (Zophar III), and most of Job’s third speech is out of character and incoherent. In MT, the friends’ speeches are: Eliphaz Eliphaz I: 4:1– 5:27² Eliphaz II: 15:1– 35 Eliphaz III: 22:1– 30 Bildad Bildad I: 8:1– 22 Bildad II: 18:1– 21 Bildad III: 25:1– 6 Zophar Zophar I:11:1– 20 Zophar II: 20:1– 29. To this I add Zophar III: 27:13 – 28:28. Job begins chapter 27 by swearing by the very God who has violated his rights that as long as he lives, he will never speak dishonestly, never deny the truth as he knows it (vv. 2– 5). He will always maintain his innocence (v. 6). This is the Job we have come to know.

 Job 26:5 – 14, which speak of God’s fearsome power, sound as if they belong to Bildad and could be a natural continuation of Bildad’s speech in chapter 25. Clines assigns all of chapter 26 to Bildad (D. J. A. Clines, Job 21 – 37 [WBC 18A; Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2006], 629).  But see n. 47. DOI 10.1515/9783110428148-003

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A problem arises in 27:13, “This is the portion of the wicked man from God, and the inheritance of his word from God.”³ The speaker, supposedly Job, starts to sound exactly like his friends in describing at length the terrible punishment of the wicked, and indeed Zophar said this same sentence when he last spoke, in 20:29. This continues throughout the remainder of the chapter. If we saw the line “And Zophar the Naamathite spoke up and said” after v. 12, the rest of the chapter would make perfect sense, and many commentators have provided the missing introduction of Zophar here. The absence of Zophar’s third speech in MT violates the symmetry of the dialogue for no discernable reason. For the author to omit Zophar III and instead extend Job’s speech by eleven verses in which he reiterates the suffering of the wicked, a point that Zophar makes elsewhere (11:20a; 20:4– 29), would achieve nothing more than confusion. Complicating the matter is that 27:7– 10 also assume the law of retribution. Hence some commentators who would restore Zophar III start it after v. 6.⁴ I think it begins after v. 12, because vv. 11– 12 are addressed to a plurality, namely the friends. Job 27:7– 10, are, as Norman Habel says, not a statement of fact but a formal imprecation, in which Job wishes his misfortunes on his enemy. Job’s enemy at law is God himself. Job has just sworn by the God who has “removed the justice due me [‫( ”]משפטי‬27:2) and will later call God “my opponent” (lit. “the man of my conflict”; 31:35). Habel says that Job here comes “perilously close” to cursing God, and in fact this is not the first time.⁵ Still, Job could not believe that these misfortunes can conceivably befall God. The imprecation is a formality that expresses anger but can have no effect. Continuing in 27:11– 12, Job, speaking in the second plural (as in v. 5), tells his friends that he will teach them the truth, namely that he is innocent. (He does so when he next speaks, in chapters 29 – 31.) They, for their part, have spoken nonsense (v. 12). Here Job’s third speech ends, appropriately, with an insistence on his innocence and a decisive dismissal of his friends’ hot air. Thus, we should restore “And Zophar the Naamathite spoke up and said” after 27:12. Whether we begin Zophar III with v. 7 or v. 13, the rest of the chapter is not Job’s. Job believes that the wicked are not receiving the punishments they deserve but, on the contrary, are made to prosper (as he states emphatically in

 The difficult clause in 20:29b, ‫ונחלת אמרו מאל‬, must be a restatement of v. 29, so that ‫אמרו מאל‬ means “that is spoken about him,” or “decreed for him,” by God.  Thus, e. g., S. R. Driver and G. B. Gray, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Job (ICC; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1921), 227; and Clines. Clines, however, has a more complicated reconstruction of Zophar III, namely 27:7– 10, 13 – 17; 24:18 – 24; 27:18 – 23 (Clines, Job 21 – 37, 661– 63).  Norman Habel, Job: A Commentary (OTL; Philadelphia: Westminster John Knox, 1985), 382.

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21:7– 17). He does occasionally express the belief that evildoers, or at least hypocrites, will be in some way punished. He believes that God favors honesty and despises hypocrisy (13:16). He also warns his friends that if they persecute him, they should fear God’s wrath (19:29). These are angry words in the heat of argument with the pragmatic goal of establishing Job’s right to speak honestly; they are not considered theological statements. Job 24:18 – 24 does warn of punishment, at least in vv. 20b and 24,⁶ and in my view (see above), Job does so in 27:7– 10 as well. In 31:2– 3 he asserts that in the past he made a covenant with his eyes to avoid evil, because disaster awaits evildoers. To be sure, this statement belongs to the past, but he cannot be repudiating it now or his oath of current innocence would not mean anything. Indeed, the entirety of his oath in 31:1– 33 assumes that God will carry out the punishments that Job conditionally calls upon himself. Job unquestionably believes that God punishes wickedness in principle, though he believes that God executes punishment inconsistently. Nevertheless, 27:13 – 23 is too extended, vehement, and deliberate an assertion to be Job’s words. A lengthy description of the evildoer’s disasters does not serve any of Job’s purposes, such as reinforcing his oaths of innocence or his right to honest speech. If Job is speaking in 27:13 – 23, and doing so sincerely, he has capitulated to the friends’ doctrine of retribution and is now uttering words such as they would say (and indeed have said). Why would he suddenly do this? One theory maintains Job as the speaker of 27:7– 23 or, in a variation, of 27:13 – 23 by claiming that he is speaking facetiously, mouthing the friends’ doctrine in a way that shows its hollowness. Alison Lo thinks that Job’s pronouncement of judgment on his friends, which is supposedly what he is doing in 27:13 – 23, “shows a strong mockery of their misapplication of theology.”⁷ But these verses do not differ from the way the friends describe the punishment of the wicked. Neither the friends nor the readers would hear Job’s words as mockery, but only as the flattery of imitation. And how could the friends tell that Job is referring to their fate? If what the friends say is wrong, it would hardly establish Job’s truthfulness to say wrong things too. The mockery would just be pointless sneering.

 Quite possibly these verses have been displaced from one of the friends’ speeches. For a survey of proposals, see Clines, Job 21 – 37, 589 – 91. Clines moves them to follow 27:17. I consider it likely that they belong in Bildad’s overly short speech in chapter 25. According to Robert Gordis (The Book of Job [New York: Jewish Theological Society of America, 1978] 269, 533 – 34), Job is here quoting the friends’ thoughts in order to refute them. However, he never does so, and the words stand unchallenged.  Alison Lo, Job 28 as Rhetoric (VTSup 97; Leiden: Brill, 2003), 194.

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Carol A. Newsom too explains the orthodox sentiments that Job appears to speak on the fate of the wicked in 24:18 – 25, 26:14– 15,⁸ and 27:7– 23 as a form of irony: “Job wishes to expose God’s incoherency, by speaking a language of inverted coherency.… In such a ‘Wonderland’ world, Job speaks the only speech possible—an insanely inverted speech in which everything shadows and gestures to its opposite and in which one naturally swears by one’s betrayer.”⁹ But speaking incoherently does not expose incoherency; it only adds to it. It makes the speaker incoherent and undermines his own ethos. Job would be mocking the integrity of his own words. The man who has been until now so bold and forthright would suddenly become clever and circuitous. And could the friends be counted on to be subtle enough to understand such an inverted tactic? Could the readers? In the past, none ever has. The friends could only congratulate Job on his return to good sense. Zophar III probably begins in 27:13 with a Wiederaufnahme (resumptive repetition) of 20:29, where Zophar II ends by saying, ‫זה חלק אדם רשע מאלהים ונחלת‬ ‫“( אמרו מאל‬This is the portion of a wicked man from God, and the portion ordained for him from El”). In almost the identical words, at 27:13, Zophar starts, ‫“( זה חלק אדם רשע עם אל ונחלת עריצים משדי יקחו‬This is the portion of a wicked man from God,¹⁰ and the inheritance that violent men take from Shadday”). The first part of Zophar IIIa continues the theme of Zophar II: the chastisements visited upon the wicked. If Zophar is speaking in chapter 27, we can reasonably consider whether he continues in chapter 28, as I will argue below. But the speaker of that chapter is still much open to debate.

2 Who is Speaking in Job 28? 2.1 Job? Job 27:1 identifies Job as the speaker. There is no further ascription until 29:1. Hence most traditional commentators and many modern scholars argue (or assume) that Job is the speaker in chapter 28 as well. But this seems to mean

 However, 26:14– 15 speak of God’s power in creation and managing nature, which Job has never doubted; see 9:5 – 10.  Carol A. Newsom, The Book of Job: A Contest of Moral Imaginations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 166 – 68, here 168.  Literally, “with God,” that is, laid up with God in readiness for use.

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that Job has suddenly, without preparation, become accepting of his ignorance and devoted to humble piety. The medieval commentators do not seem to have found chapter 28 problematic. Job, assumed to speak throughout chapters 27 and 28, is thought to warn against wickedness and to recognize the limitations of human wisdom and its preciousness. For Moshe Qimḥi, Job is saying that the wicked will perish for lack of wisdom (chapter 27) because wisdom is more precious than all valuables (chapter 28). Rashi casts chapter 28 as a continuation of Job’s declaration of innocence in 27:6. Job insists that he has always treasured wisdom (= Torah) above wealth and so spent his days studying it. In 28:12, Job says that wisdom has no source except for God’s mouth, and it has no end, an idea reinforced by v. 28. Few modern scholars maintain that Job speaks and ascribes to the words of chapter 28 in a straightforward sense. Tremper Longman does so by employing a “psychological explanation.”¹¹ Longman explains that sufferers have “up and down moments, with this chapter a time of calm in the emotional storm.”¹² Still, if Job really is speaking in chapter 28, he has been humbled and is repudiating his attempt to search for a deeper understanding of God’s ways. This humbling, or at least taming, is premature. Job is still angry in chapters 29 – 31. In 31:35 – 37, as S. R. Driver and G. B. Gray observe, Job still regards God as his “man of conflict.”¹³ And when God appears in chapter 38, how can he scold Job for obscuring “counsel” (38:2 and 40:2) if Job has already given up expectations of wisdom other than knowing the importance of simple piety and virtue? If so, in the theophany God would be blaming Job for a fault that Job has already disavowed, and his friends could only congratulate him on his change of heart. A recent approach ascribes the chapter to Job while distancing him from the view it expresses, doing so by taking his words as an ironic repudiation of its apparent viewpoint. Lo regards Job’s affirmation of traditional wisdom in chapter 28, especially v. 28, as contradicting the tenor of his earlier words as well as his subsequent complaints and challenges to God (30:20 – 23 and 31:35 – 37). Chapter 28 thereby presents a “pseudo-climax” that demonstrates that traditional wisdom has not solved his problem.¹⁴ By means of these tensions “the author uses Job 28 to stimulate the audience’s thought and to prepare them to adopt the evaluative worldview expressed by Job’s final confession (42:2– 6).”¹⁵ Lo does not identify any audience that has ever followed this train of thought, but perhaps     

Tremper Longman, III, Job (BCOTWP; Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic Press, 2012), 327. Longman, Job, 327. Driver and Gray, Job, 227. Lo, Job 28 as Rhetoric, 222. Ibid., 222– 23.

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the tortuous rhetorical tactic she assigns to the author was intended but has failed. Still, the pieties in chapter 28 could just as well be understood as an expression of Job’s faith, like 13:15 – 18 and 19:25. Nothing Job says elsewhere, it could be argued, contradicts the premise of human ignorance. Indeed, in large measure, this is Job’s own complaint, for he seeks knowledge (e. g., 13:2– 3), not relief. However, chapter 28 is not a complaint but a gentle acceptance of human limitations. This awkwardly reintroduces Job the patient, who disappeared after chapter 2. As Scott Jones understands chapter 28, Job is speaking ironically. Job first criticizes his friends’ clambering after traditional wisdom. Job 28:28 is spoken by Job as the “first man,” the role sarcastically imputed to him by Eliphaz in 15:7. This verse is also spoken to Job, in a sort of revelation that will be echoed in Yhwh’s evaluation of Job in the prose tale. Job thereby “slyly rewrites the content of God’s revelation of wisdom in v. 28 to match his own persistent claims to righteousness and his unabated and unrestrained terror of God throughout the dialogues—his ‘fear of God.’”¹⁶ And again, “With this charade, Job appeals to his friends’ means of legitimating authority through antiquity, but as the ‘first man’ he is much older than they or their fathers. By extension, he is wise even by their standards. Now Job’s life is, despite their protests, the ideal of ‘pious wisdom.’”¹⁷ Jones concludes, “Since he is both a ‘God-fearer’ and one who ‘turns away from evil,’ now Job is also truly wise.”¹⁸ Jones’s exposition blurs the character of Job. Job, hitherto stringently straightforward, becomes tortuous and sly. He parodies his friends for asserting a wisdom they never laid claim to. For the friends, in fact, wisdom is not something attained by strenuous investigation, but rather by the recognition of obvious truths. They would be pleased to think that Job has despaired of understanding the enigmas of God’s ways and has instead chosen to embrace the simple wisdom of piety and moral behavior. And, again, if chapter 28 is Job’s, it is hard to see why Yhwh could do other than praise him for his newfound humility. Choon Leong Seow, in his magisterial commentary on Job, also assigns chapter 28 to Job.¹⁹ There are several passages, Seow says, in which Job expresses an ideology similar to his friends, namely 24:18 – 25, 26:3 – 14, 27:8 – 23, and 28:1– 28. Job herein expropriates the friends’ viewpoint, restating it so as to prevent the deteriorating dialogue from ending before he has refuted their argu Scott C. Jones, Rumors of Wisdom: Job 28 as Poetry (BZAW 398; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2009), 103.  Ibid.  Ibid., 104.  Choon Leong Seow, Job 1 – 21: Interpretation and Commentary (Illuminations; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2013), 29 – 30.

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ments.²⁰ One problem with Seow’s approach is that the dialogue has long since “deteriorated,” for the friends have consistently failed to respond to Job’s actual words and situation. Also, Job never implies that he is restating the friends’ positions in these passages, nor does he refute the supposedly restated views. How are the friends (or the readers) to know that Job is summarizing things the friends do not actually say in order to refute them? According to Seow, in chapter 28 Job “climaxes with a further expropriation of their viewpoint, thereby ending dialogue.”²¹ But if Job has indeed expropriated their viewpoint, what more could they want? Again, the attempt to retain these passages for Job makes Job just too clever, unlike the serious and indefatigably outspoken and straightforward man he most clearly is elsewhere. Job has greater things on his mind than devising ingenious devices of disputation. He must insist boldly, with no indirection, on his own innocence and demand a hearing from God. And he demands that his friends understand him well. If chapter 28 is read ironically, Job becomes an unreliable witness, a man who can say the opposite of what he must mean, thereby creating paradoxes that contribute nothing substantive to his argument. It is interesting to note that this deconstructive rhetoric went unnoticed until the present century.

2.2 The Author? The speaker in Job 28 may be the author in his own voice (the one heard in the narrative sections, chapters 1– 2 and 42:7– 17). If so, the chapter is an interlude at a pivotal point. H. H. Rowley regards the chapter as “a magnificent poem, worthy of the genius of the author of Job, and possibly composed by him, though scarcely for its present place.”²² The chapter teaches that “in humble reverence towards God and obedience to His will man’s truest wisdom is to be found.”²³ This is indeed the chapter’s message, but if it is the author’s as well, it is out of place (as Rowley says) and off the mark (as Rowley does not concede). First of all, if the author is speaking in his own voice, as he is in the Prologue and Epilogue, the information he gives is authoritative and thus obviates the need for God’s response. It also supplies a conclusion the friends would find satisfactory: the only wisdom for humans is pious fear of God and moral behavior. But this    

Ibid. Ibid., 30. H. H. Rowley, “The Book of Job and its Meaning,” BJRL 41 (1958): 167– 207, here 191. Ibid., 192.

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message is beside the point. The friends are not searching for wisdom, for they assume they have it. Nor is Job searching for wisdom, except insofar as he wants to know the reasons for his afflictions, but he does not call this knowledge “wisdom.” Were Job 28 the author’s message, and thus the meaning of the book, it would belong after Yhwh’s speeches as a summary of the book’s teaching. Newsom says that whether Job 28 was composed by the original author or an interpolator, it creates an anonymous persona who adds a new voice to the dialogue.²⁴ According to Newsom, the poem’s main point seems to be a critique of the wisdom dialogue as a generic form for being futile and misguided.²⁵ The poem is not saying that humans have no access to wisdom, but they will not find it by seeking it as an object. As Newsom states, “The disposition of piety and the moral habit of turning from evil are the way in which one will know wisdom and understanding.”²⁶ This interpretation is close to the traditional reading of the poem. But a decision as to its originality cannot be avoided. If it is the author’s, it is subject to the objections raised in the present section. If it is an interpolator’s but is read as authorial, it may in effect expropriate and distort the author’s work.

2.3 An Interpolator? Many commentators consider chapter 28 a later addition intended as a corrective to the supposed probing for wisdom in the dialogue. In Édouard Dhorme’s words, the author “wished to show that wisdom is not found at the end of human seeking and that God alone, who possesses it, can impart it to man’s understanding,” and this wisdom is only fear of God and avoidance of evil. ²⁷ Bruce Zuckerman says that the “contemplative tone of this meditation on the inaccessibility of Wisdom should signal to the reader the presence of a new voice that has drawn back from the rough-and-tumble of debate to see things from a more dispassionate perspective” and “seems particularly anxious to emphasize that mere mortals cannot hope to find resolution to the issues raised by Job and

 Newsom, The Book of Job, 170.  Ibid.  Ibid., 180.  Édouard Dhorme, A Commentary on the Book of Job (trans. Harold Knight; London: Thomas Nelson, 1967), li; trans. of Le livre de Job (E´tudes Bibliques; Paris: Gabalda, 1926).

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his three friends.”²⁸ Though wisdom is precious, humans do not have the intellectual powers to acquire it.²⁹ The assignment of this passage to an interpolator has a certain plausibility that the original-author hypothesis does not: an interpolator need not have agreed with the ideas of the original text, and he may have sought to reshape the book’s message to something he found more palatable. Moreover, the chapter’s pious message sounds like the kind of cautionary note likely to come from a later reader, who (like many later readers) might find much discomforting in Job’s words. Nor need the interpolator have been sensitive to the literary dynamics of the book, which would be marred by an anticlimax and a pre-emption of God’s speeches. As for the similarities in language and style between chapter 28 and the other units of the book, these do not necessarily show that it was written by the same poet (as argued by Gordis³⁰ and Habel³¹), since whoever wrote the passage had certainly read the rest of the book and had absorbed its diction. The thesis of interpolation cannot really be disproved, since a pious interpolator could easily be the source of what Zophar is saying in ch. 28, and for the same reasons: to cap off the debate by firmly warning Job and the readers away from striving for an understanding of the world other than religious virtues. Still, one may wonder how the interpolator would expect the reader to identify this passage as authorial, and if not, why would the interpolator expect us to believe him? The logical place for an interpolation of this sort would be after 42:7 or, better, 42:17, as a pious summation of a pious book. Naphtali TurSinai suggests as much when he states, “[T]his portion forms the conclusion of the book and God’s final answer to Job’s doubts.”³²

 Bruce Zuckerman, Job the Silent: A Study in Historical Counterpoint (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 141.  Ibid.  Gordis recognizes that the poem would be anticlimactic here, for which reason he proposes that it was introduced only later by a copyist (Robert Gordis, The Book of God and Man [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966], 298).  Habel mentions “wild/proud beasts” (28:8; 41:26); “thunderstorm” (28:26; 38:25); “way,” “place,” “discernment” (38:12, 19, 20, 24, 36; 39:26; Habel, Job, 391– 92).  Naphtali H. Tur-Sinai, The Book of Job: A New Commentary (rev. ed.; Jerusalem: Kiryath Sepher, 1967), 395.

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2.4 Elihu? David Clines³³ and Edward Greenstein³⁴ independently concluded that Elihu’s speeches (chapters 32– 37) originally preceded chapter 28. This theory requires a major rearrangement of chapters that is difficult to justify. Clines finds certain themes in chapter 28 to be characteristic of Elihu: God as the great teacher of humans (28:28 and 37:24 [but see also 11:6 in Zophar I]); wisdom and the fear of God (28:28 and 37:4); and the wisdom of animals (28:7– 8 [but the point there is that they are not wise]); and meteorology (28:25 – 26 and 36:27, 30, 32; 37:2– 6, 9 – 12, 15 – 16 [but also outside of Elihu, in 22:11, 14; and 25:8]).³⁵ In any case, these parallels are only to be expected, because whoever wrote Job 32– 37 had read the rest of the book, including chapters 28 and 38 – 41. Moreover, Elihu does not deny that humans can have wisdom; see 32:7, 9; 33:33; 35:11. Still, it is noteworthy that Clines and Greenstein recognize that Job 28 is spoken by one of the friends (whose views in the end are not significantly different). The chapter belongs to someone who wishes Job to leave off his arrogant probing into divine intentions and to humble himself before God.

2.5 Zophar? It is Zophar who comes closest to the teaching of Job 28. Heinrich Graetz in 1872³⁶ and Johann G. E. Hoffmann in 1891³⁷ assigned 27:7– 28:28 to Zophar, a proposal that has rarely been accepted or even noticed by later commentators.³⁸

 David J. A. Clines, “Putting Elihu in his Place: A Proposal for the Relocation of Job 32– 37,” JSOT 29 (2004): 243 – 53.  Edward L. Greenstein, “The Poem on Wisdom in Job 28 in its Conceptual and Literary Contexts,” in Job 28: Cognition in Context (ed. Ellen van Wolde; BibInt 64; Leiden: Brill, 2003), 253 – 80.  See Clines, “Putting Elihu in his Place,” 250 – 51.  Heinrich Graetz, “Die Integrität der Kapitel 27 und 28 im Hiob,” MGWJ 21 (1872): 241– 50.  Johann G. E. Hoffmann, Hiob (Kiel: Haeseler, 1891), 28.  A few minor commentaries have assigned some of Job 27 and all of Job 28 to Zophar. For example, Francis H. Wilkinson (The Book of Job [London: Skeffington & Son, 1901]) prefixed the header “Zophar (interrupting)” to 27:13 and continued Zophar’s speech, without comment, through chapter 28.

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3 Reading Job 28 as Zophar’s Third Speech 3.1 Zophar 11:5 – 9 In his first speech (Zophar I = 11:1– 20), Zophar says (emended words in angle brackets): ‫ ואולם מי יתן אלוה דבר ויפתח שפתיו עמך‬11:5 ‫ ויגד לך תעלמות חכמה כי כפלים לתושיה‬6 .‫ודע כי ישה לך אלוה מעונך‬ ?‫ החקר אלוה תמצא אם עד תכלית שדי תמצא‬7 ?‫ גבהי שמים >גבהה משמים< מה תפעל‬8 ?‫עמקה משאול מה תדע‬ .‫ ארכה מארץ מדה ורחבה מני ים‬9

I first translate literally to show the recurrent words: 11:5 But would that God would speak, and open his lips with you, 6 and he would tell you the mysteries of wisdom, for/that there is doubleness to resourcefulness! And know that God makes some of your sins to be forgotten for you. 7 Can you find out the deep things of God, reach the limit of Shadday? heaven—what can you do? 8 Deeper than the underworld—what can you know? 9 Longer than the earth is its [fem. sg.] measure, and its [fem. sg.] breadth greater than the sea.

More idiomatically this reads: 11:5a If only God would speak, 5b and open his lips to speak with you. 6a He would tell you the mysteries of wisdom, 6b for resourcefulness is twofold (?). 6c And you would realize that God lets some of your sins be forgotten. 7a Can you plumb Eloah’s intentions 7b or discover the far reaches of Shadday’s mind?” 8a Wisdom is heaven, 8b so what can you achieve (in understanding it)? 8c It is deeper than the underworld, so what can you know (of it)? 9a Its length extends beyond the earth, 9b and its breadth beyond the sea.

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3.1.1 Comments 11:6b. ‫ כפלים‬would normally mean “double.” While it must be admitted that neither sense fits well in this sentence, the best surmise is that ‫כפלים לתושיה‬ means that resourcefulness—a type of wisdom—has two aspects: the esoteric divine wisdom and the accessible human wisdom. It is the hiddenness of the former that is Zophar’s message. To be sure, ‫ לתושיה‬is not entirely suitable to context. The term denotes clear, efficient thinking in the exercise of power and practical operation.³⁹ It is used in determining the best course of action and dealing with difficulties rather than in comprehending intricacies or deducing conclusions. It is not this kind of wisdom that Zophar considers inaccessible. However, as a word belonging to the semantic field of wisdom, ‫ תושיה‬may simply reprise ‫חכמה‬. 11:6c. This verse is ambiguous. It means either that God “forgets” some of Job’s sins by punishing him less than he deserves (Pope), or that he makes Job forget some of his sins, so that he is worse than he realizes. One is responsible even for sins one is not aware of. Thus the psalmist prays in Ps 19:13: ‫“— מנסתרות נקני‬cleanse me of hidden sins.” 11:7a-b. ‫ מצא‬can mean “find” or “reach.” The senses are actually homonyms from different roots,⁴⁰ but the roots have become conflated in Hebrew ‫ מצא‬and are close enough semantically to allow for double meanings. One can neither “find” nor “reach” the totality of God, which is to say, fathom his mind (which is the only aspect of God relevant here). In Job 38:16 ‫ חקר‬means “deep things” (RSV) or “far reaches.” The cognate verb means “investigate” in 28:3. 11:8 – 9. The adjectives and possessive pronouns are feminine singular and refer to ‫חכמה‬. (‫ תושיה‬is also feminine singular but is the less prominent synonym and is used simply to provide a parallel to ‫חכמה‬.) In MT, 11:8a could be an exclamation (“The heights of heaven!”) serving as an adverbial predicate to “wisdom.”⁴¹ More likely we should emend to ‫גבהה‬ ‫משמים‬, “higher than heaven” (thus Duhm, Driver-Gray, Seow, etc.), parallel to vv. 8c, 9a, and 9b, though the mechanism of this error is difficult to determine.

 Michael V. Fox, “Words for Wisdom,” ZAH 6 (1993): 149 – 69, here 161– 65.  Proto-Semitic m‐ṣ‐ʾ “find” and Proto-Semitic m‐ẓ‐y (whence Aramaic m‐ṭ‐y) “reach.”  IBHS §40.2.3 has a few examples of nominal exclamations, but the relation to the present construction would be vague.

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3.1.2 Summary of Zophar’s Teaching in Job 11:5 – 9 Zophar teaches several things: (1) God alone has wisdom. (2) This wisdom is mysterious, far beyond human grasp. (3) The aspiration to reach and comprehend wisdom is equivalent to the attempt to understand God’s mind in its totality. However, to say that one cannot discover the entirety of God’s thought seems too obvious to state. More likely, Zophar is doubting that Job truly understands anything within this scope; in other words, any part of God’s vast mind. (4) If God were to speak, he would reveal some of his wisdom by giving Job an accounting of his sins and punishments (such as Job demands), and Job would learn that the balance is actually in his own favor. This means that Job’s great suffering is evidence of an even greater sinfulness. In spite of his insistence that wisdom is hidden, Zophar assumes that he knows something significant about it. It is unclear whether the author intends this irony (Zophar certainly does not). But in fairness to Zophar, we should observe that he does not claim to know the fullness of God’s wisdom but only one component of it, namely the certainty of divine justice. The friends could hardly make their case, nor could Job oppose it, if they all believed that God’s will was completely and permanently inscrutable. Nor, it seems to me, would there be any use in a religion that was so resolutely agnostic. (5) God’s wisdom includes (but is certainly not limited to) the exact calibration of deeds and consequences. Humans can know this fact only in principle. When deed and consequence are commensurate, justice is clearly at work. When they seem to be incommensurate, the failure is not in God’s justice but in human wisdom.

3.2 Zophar IIIB (chapter 28) In chapter 28, after two-and-a-half speeches describing justice obviously at work (especially in the brutal punishments inflicted on the wicked), Zophar returns to the lesson of wisdom’s impenetrability. Job has been demanding that God answer for his undeserved suffering. To this Zophar responds that Job, like all humans, lacks the wisdom to understand such things. The first section of chapter 28, vv. 1– 12, speaks of efforts to attain a goal, specifically valuables that can be reached only by long journeys. Scott Jones has argued convincingly that this section is based on accounts of royal expedi-

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tions to distant regions in pursuit of wealth.⁴² The journey in this section is a literal one, but a metaphorical meaning emerges, for it is also a trope for the search for wisdom.⁴³ The poem opens with a puzzling ‫כי‬. Τhis is not a causal particle, because it in no way introduces a reason for the preceding description of the punishment of the wicked. Nor is it a temporal particle, for “when” would have no role here. Most commentators translate it as emphatic or asseverative. The problem with emphasis is that it is rather too easy to find. One can add “indeed” to almost any sentence without much effect on its meaning. Still, there are occurrences of ‫ כי‬that can be assigned no other function. But if we designate an otherwise well-known particle as emphatic we should at least decide exactly what is emphasized. An exact syntactic parallel is Job 14:7a—‫—כי יש לעץ תקוה‬which should be translated, “but a tree has hope.” The emphasis is on a tree in contrast to humans who, unlike a tree, have no hope of revivication. Another example of ‫כי‬ without a motivating or temporal function is Isa 15:1, where it follows immediately upon the heading of the unit and emphasizes “at night.” The repetition of this phrase shows its importance to that passage. In Job 28:1 the emphasis is on “silver”/ “gold,” a pair which is contrasted to something mentioned only later: wisdom. “Silver and gold have a source,” but “Wisdom—where can it be found/ drawn out, and where is the place of understanding?” (28:12a). The paronomasia of ‫ מוָֹצא‬and ‫ ִתּ ָמֵּצא‬as well as the semantic relation between being “a source” and being “found” tie vv. 1 and 12 together as two halves of a proverb.⁴⁴ The strong linkage between these verses allows the ‫ כי‬in v. 1 to emphasize something at a distance. The question in 28:12a literally is: “Whence (‫ )מאין‬can wisdom be found [‫ ”?] ִתּ ָמֵּצא‬This suggests that ‫ תמצא‬harks back to ‫“ מוצא‬source” in v. 1 and means both “be found” and “be extracted” (as if from a source). The replacement of ‫ תמצא‬by ‫ תבוא‬in the restatement of the question in v. 20 shows that these verbs are near-synonyms. The fact that there are two different roots in play, ‫ יצא‬and ‫מצא‬, would not have been known to the ancient author, for whom paronomasia would have made ‫ תמצא‬seem to mean both. This word is of importance in Zophar II as well: ‫“( החקר אלוה תמצא אם עד תכלית שדי תמצא‬Can you find out the deep things of God, reach the limit of Shadday?” [11:7]). As the next verse shows, Zophar is speaking about God’s wisdom. Such wisdom, both poems agree, cannot be “found.”

 Jones, Rumors of Wisdom, 43 – 62.  Ibid., 58.  Ibid., 40.

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Verses 12 and 20 ask a single question: where does wisdom come from? It is not clear at first whether this is a rhetorical question, calling for the answer “nowhere,” or an actual question that requires an answer. It is, in fact, an actual question, because it will receive an answer at the end of the poem. But first the poem responds by telling the places and means which do not bring wisdom. The second section of the poem, vv. 13 – 20, says that wisdom is precious beyond all material wealth. Neither great journeys (vv. 1– 11) nor vast wealth (vv. 13 – 20) can secure wisdom. The third section, 28:21– 22, raises another possibility: wisdom can at most be slightly perceived by some beings. Not by birds and beasts (see 11:8a), but only by Abaddon—the underworld—and Death—who rules there. Even these entities (who are really one and the same), who have the greatest reach and power of any being besides God, barely know of it. But it does exist. The fourth section, 28:23 – 28, explains how God came to know wisdom and defines what part of it he imparts to humanity. It answers the question of vv. 12 and 20. Whereas God saw wisdom in the act of creation, humans gain wisdom only in fear of God and avoidance of evil.

3.2.1 How Creation Proceeds (28:23 – 28) God understand the way to it [fs: wisdom], ‫אלהים הבין דרכה‬ and he knows its place, ‫והוא ידע את־מקומה‬ for he looks to the ends of the earth, ‫כי הוא לקצות־הארץ יביט‬ sees all that is under the heavens, ‫תחת כל־השמים יראה‬ to make a weight for the wind, ‫לעשות לרוח משקל‬ and measure water with a gauge. ‫ומים תכן במדה‬ When he made a rule for the rain, ‫בעשתו למטר חק‬ and a way for the lightning of thunder, ‫קלות ודרך לחזיז‬ then he saw it and counted it, ‫אז ראה ויספרה‬ it and also examined it, ‫>הבינה< וגם־חקרה‬ and he said to man, ‫ויאמר לאדם‬ “The fear of the Lord—that is wisdom, ‫הן יראת אדני היא חכמה‬ and the avoidance of evil – ‫וסור מרע בינה‬ that is understanding.” (28:23 – 28) God alone knows the place of wisdom, because God sees all and knows all (28:23), because God observed the entire world as God formed it (vv. 24– 27). God created wisdom (as in Prov 8:22) and used it in creation (as in Prov 3:19), and (using wisdom) he investigated it thoroughly. Nothing says that wisdom

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does not exist or that it is nowhere, but only that humans cannot achieve it by exploration, technology, or wealth. The answer to the question “Whence does wisdom come, and where is the place of understanding” (v. 20) is: Wisdom exists but is not localized. (Thus it can be “heard of” but not seen by Abaddon/Death [v. 22].) It is not even “everywhere.” Wisdom exists where it was and is used. It is a quality of processes. For God, wisdom resides in the creative process; for humans, in piety and moral behavior.

3.2.2 The Steps of the Creative Process The steps in the creative process in Job 28:23 – 28 may be summarized as follows: (1) God’s first act was to study the territory. God looked everywhere, so as to produce the phenomena of nature. Creation was a studied deed. (2) Then God created the world, of whose phenomena wind, rain, and lightning are mentioned. (3) Then (emphatically) God observed and studied wisdom. God saw it, counted it, prepared or, better, “understood” it [‫]הבינה‬,⁴⁵ “and also investigated it [‫]חקרה‬.”⁴⁶ (The “also” suggests that such investigation is different from the other acts of perception.) This verse recalls the midrash on Gen 1:1 in which God consults Wisdom (understood to mean Torah) as a blueprint for his project (Gen. Rab. 1.2). (4) Finally, God tells humans what their portion in wisdom is. This answer is in line with the principle of Prov 1:7 and 9:10. Wisdom begins with a dual virtue: fear of God and avoidance of evil. All genuine wisdom must derive from these virtues. The pronoun ‫ היא‬in Job 28:28 is emphatic: it is this—the double virtue of fear of the Lord and the avoidance of evil—that will be wisdom for humanity. There is no contradiction between the culminating declaration in 28:28 and the poem before v. 23. The kind of wisdom that humans can achieve, according to v. 28, comes not from striving or buying but from obedience to God’s word, which comes as revelation. A similar distinction between what is wisdom and what will be reckoned as wisdom is drawn by Deut 4:6: “And you shall keep

 MT’s ‫“ הכינה‬prepared it” or “set it up” comes too late, for God is already creating the world. It also does not fit in the list of verbs of perception. We should read ‫הבינה‬, “understood” or “perceived,” a simple error due to graphic similarity between kap and bet.  As Pierre van Hecke says, God “also explores the inner space of wisdom itself, as the verb ‫ חקר‬indicates.… ‫ חקר‬has the metonymically derived meaning of knowing something to its full content and depth” (“Searching for and Exploring Wisdom: A Cognitive-Semantic Approach to the Hebrew Verb ḥāqar in Job 28,” in van Wolde, Job 28: Cognition in Context, 139 – 62, here 159).

The Speaker in Job 28

37

and perform [this instruction] because it is your wisdom and understanding in the eyes of the nations, who will hear all these ordinances and say: ‘This great people must be a wise and understanding nation.’” The (Deuteronomic) Torah is in the same category as wisdom, and the nations will identify it as such; but it is vastly greater, and the nations will realize this. Zophar III is relatively long—37 verses, in two parts: 27:13 – 23 and 28:1– 28. This is essentially the same as Eliphaz II (15:1– 35) at 35 verses (not counting the speaker identification). As the last of the friends’ speeches, Zophar III (27:13 – 28:28) balances the first one, Eliphaz I (4:1– 5:27), at 47 verses (4:1– 21; 5:1– 27).⁴⁷ Zophar IIIb is also a suitable conclusion to the friends’ speeches, because it is the most thoughtful of them. Instead of simply castigating Job, it offers what many would consider the best approach to inexplicable human suffering: the acceptance of human ignorance before God’s wisdom. Those who find in Job 28 a significant teaching (as many do) may hesitate to concede it to Zophar, because the friends are commonly mistaken for fools, and something as thoughtful as chapter 28 should not belong to them. One may also object that it does not fit Zophar’s character. “The broad serene spirit of the ‘hymn to Wisdom,’” Gordis feels, “quite aside from its lyrical form, is entirely inappropriate to the impetuous, hot-headed Zophar.”⁴⁸ But the same could be said of the philosophical Zophar (11:5 – 9) or the consolatory one (11:10 – 19). In fact, the entirety of chapter 28 returns to the message and the tone of 11:5 – 9. Some may feel that the Poem on Wisdom is just too beautiful to be Zophar’s. I have not seen this argument put quite this way in writing, but I believe it is implicit in the praise that commentators lavish on the so-called Hymn to Wisdom, while routinely condemning the friends’ speeches as mindless. I will concede the aesthetic point. Job 28 was written by a great poet. In fact it was the same poet who wrote the glorious doxology in 5:9 – 16 and the disturbing description of the fate of the wicked in 20:5 – 29. Anyway, aesthetic judgments are subjective and dependent on context, which includes the identity of the speaker. The power and energy of the War Horse poem (39:19 – 25) is widely recognized, but if it were spoken by Bildad as a way of making vivid the kind of dangers the wicked suffer, it might be judged overwrought and redundant. Indeed, some might find the Poem on Wisdom itself banal and irrelevant. After all, Job knows that he lacks wisdom (26:3a). Greenstein, who ascribes the  This is the count in MT. Edward L. Greenstein makes a good case for moving 4:12– 21 to follow chapter 3, in which case the vision report in 4:12– 21 is not Eliphaz’s but Job’s (“The Extent of Job’s First Speech,” in Studies in Bible and Exegesis VII: Presented to Menachem Cohen [ed. Shmuel Vargon et al.; Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University, 2005], 245 – 52 et passim) [in Hebrew].  Gordis, The Book of God and Man, 102.

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chapter to Elihu, says, “[i]n the end, Elihu, for all his bluster, has nothing really new to say to Job. He advises him to preserve his piety and avoid wrongdoing. It is precisely this that Job was advised by Eliphaz at the beginning of the discussions.”⁴⁹ This fits Zophar’s message too. In chapter 28, he tells Job to stop trying to probe God’s wisdom but simply to live in piety and faith. Zophar told him this already in chapter 11. And if Zophar tells him again, is that beautiful or is it irrelevant? Or both?

 Greenstein, “The Poem on Wisdom,” 276.

Edward L. Greenstein (Bar-Ilan University)

Metaphors of Illness and Wellness in Job It is by now well known that we conceptualize the world by means of figures— through images and metaphors.¹ Certain metaphorical mappings of reality, such as LIFE IS A JOURNEY, become commonplace. Poets often exploit conventional metaphors, as well as original ones, in their work.² In the present study I examine the ways that the poet of the book of Job employs figurative language deriving from a conventional metaphor concept toward a profoundly ironic end. There are at least two prominent concepts of disease in ancient Semitic literature. One is that illness is an attack by an outside agent, such as a god, demon, or personified disease.³ Consider, for example, these lines from the Babylonian poem of the pious sufferer, Ludlul bēl nēmeqi, “Let Me Praise the Lord of Wisdom”: A malevolent demon clothed my body as a garment, Sleep covered me like a net… Numbness had seized my entire body, Paralysis had fallen upon my flesh.

 See, e. g., George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). For additional bibliography and discussion, see Edward L. Greenstein, “Some Metaphors in the Poetry of Job,” in Built by Wisdom, Established by Understanding: Essays on Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Literature in Honor of Adele Berlin (ed. Maxine L. Grossman; Bethesda, MD: University of Maryland Press, 2013), 179 – 95, esp. 179 n. 1. The approach taken here is conceptually similar to the one I took in my essay, “The Poem on Wisdom in Job 28 in Its Conceptual and Literary Contexts” (in Job 28: Cognition in Context [ed. Ellen van Wolde; BibInt 64; Leiden: Brill, 2003], 253 – 80). The present study originated as an invited presentation at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, November 2014. I am grateful to Dr. Yitzhaq Feder for some assistance in the preparation of that paper. It is a distinct pleasure to publish this study in honor of my esteemed colleague and friend, Choon Leong Seow.  George Lakoff and Mark Turner, More than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989); cf. Elena Cimino and Gerard Steen, “Metaphor in Literature,” in The Cambridge Handbook of Metaphor and Thought (ed. Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr.; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 232– 46, esp. 236.  See, e. g., Hector Avalos, Illness and Health Care in the Ancient Near East: The Role of the Temple in Greece, Mesopotamia, and Israel (HSM 54; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995). For biblical examples, see, e. g., Pss 38, 41, 88; cf., e. g., David A. Bosworth, “Ancient Prayers and the Psychology of Religion: Deities as Parental Figures,” JBL 134 (2015): 681– 700. For the biblical skin disease ‫ָצ ַרַעת‬, discussed below, as a divine affliction, see, e. g., Anne Marie Kitz, Cursed Are You! The Phenomenology of Cursing in Cuneiform and Hebrew Texts (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2014), 144– 49, 341– 47. DOI 10.1515/9783110428148-004

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Stiffness had seized my arms, Impotence had fallen upon my loins, My feet forgot mobility. [A b]low overtook me, I was choking like one fallen, The edict of death had covered my face. (tablet II, lines 71– 72, 75 – 81)⁴

Disease as a malady that is inflicted by an outside agent stands out in the book of Job as well. Thus the Satan acting as an agent of the deity afflicts Job with “terrible ‫—” ְשִׁחין‬a constantly irritating inflammation of the skin⁵—and the act of affliction is described as a “striking,” using the verb ‫“ ִה ָכּה‬to strike” (Job 2:7). Not coincidentally, the same verb is used often to denote the infliction of the plagues upon Egypt,⁶ while “striking” with “terrible ‫ ” ְשִׁחין‬is counted among the severe curses accompanying the covenant (Deut 28:35). More pertinently, in the frame tale of Job the verb used to relate the massacre of Job’s servants by the Sabaeans and then later by the Chaldeans is ‫“—ִה ָכּה‬they struck them” (1:14– 15, 17). These were quasi-military “strikes.” The verb ‫ָמַחץ‬, an exclusively poetic term for “striking,”⁷ is used of divine affliction with disease in the classic Song of Moses (Deut 32:39) and in the first discourse of Eliphaz, in his feeble attempt to characterize Job’s malady (Job 5:18; see further below).⁸ In Job 19:21, Job begs his companions for compassion because “the hand of Eloah has affected me,” employing the verb ‫ ָנ ַגע‬.⁹ The same stem is used to denote the plagues in Egypt (‫ ֶנ ַגע‬in Exod 11:1; cf. Gen 12:17) as well as various kinds of skin disorder elsewhere in the Bible (e. g., Lev 13:2– 6). Most poignantly for our discussion, the verb ‫ ָנ ַגע‬is used to relate the afflictions of Job’s property

 Translation of Amar Annus and Alan Lenzi, Ludlul bēl nēmeqi: The Standard Babylonian Poem of the Righteous Sufferer (SAACT 7; Helsinki: Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 2010), 36 – 37; cf. Takayoshi Oshima, Babylonian Poems of Pious Sufferers (ORA 14; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014), 90 – 91. The first word in line 80, which is partly broken, Annus and Lenzi read miḫṣu, “blow,” while Oshima reads it murṣu, “illness.”  E. g., DCH 7:322a; cf., e. g., William H. C. Propp, Exodus 1 – 18 (AB 2; New York: Doubleday, 1999), 332.  E. g., Exod 3:20; 7:25; 9:15; 12:12, 13, 29; Num 3:13; 8:17; 33:4.  See, e. g., Edward L. Greenstein, “Hebrew Poetry: Biblical,” in The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (ed. Roland Greene; 4th ed.; Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), 602b.  Cf. the use of Akk. maḫāṣu, “to strike,” in the Ras Shamra version of Ludlul (rev. line 34’): [š]a imḫaṣanni u irēmanni, “(Marduk) who has struck me but was then compassionate toward me”; see Yoram Cohen, Wisdom from the Late Bronze Age (SBLWAW; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2013), 168 – 69.  On the physical assaults on Job by the hand of the deity, see, e. g., Scott C. Jones, “Corporeal Discourse in the Book of Job,” JBL 132 (2013): 845 – 63, here 850.

Metaphors of Illness and Wellness in Job

41

and person in the frame tale (Job 1:11, 19; 2:5). It is also used by Eliphaz to represent both the afflictions that have affected Job (4:5) and the disasters from which Job will be rescued by God in the future (5:19). Job’s skin disease is, as was said, inflicted by an act of ‫— ָנ ַגע‬an assault delivered by a divine agency (2:5). Job understands his afflictions to be an attack by the deity, who fires poisoned “arrows” (6:4) at him, having set him up as his “target” (7:20; more on this below). I could go on and enumerate the many passages in which Job’s afflictions are depicted as a military assault by God,¹⁰ but they have been enumerated elsewhere, and that is not the image I want to dwell on here. Nevertheless, we shall find that the Joban poet combines the metaphor of affliction as assault with another, more sensitive image. There is another manner of conceiving of disease in ancient Semitic literature, in the Hebrew Bible, and especially in Job, and it is on this metaphorical conception that I shall focus in this essay. The complainant in the Babylonian poem of the pious sufferer quoted above also describes his ailments as follows: My flesh had wasted away, my blood drai[ned]. My bones became visible, covering [my sk]in… Through constant turning my sinews/joints [riksūʾa] were loosened/parted [puṭṭurū], My limbs were splayed, just hanging apart. (II 92– 93, 104– 5)¹¹

The body is said to deteriorate and pull apart. The process delineated is one of disintegration. The body is imaged as a solid corpus, a whole, and its illness is imaged as fragmentation—an erosion and disintegration of that corpus.¹²

 See in brief Edward L. Greenstein, “A Forensic Understanding of the Speech from the Whirlwind,” in Texts, Temples, and Traditions: A Tribute to Menahem Haran (ed. Michael V. Fox et al.; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1996), 241– 58, here 248 with references in n. 43; see further, e. g., Jones, “Corporeal Discourse,” 851– 53; Choon Leong Seow, Job 1 – 21: Interpretation and Commentary (Illuminations; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2013), 455 – 56, 795 – 96.  Translation from Annus and Lenzi, Ludlul, 37; cf. Oshima, Babylonian Poems, 90 – 93.  Cf. Alex Basson, “Just Skin and Bones: The Longing for the Wholeness of the Body in the Book of Job,” VT 58 (2008): 287– 99. Mary Douglas utilizes a similar construct—wholeness—to explain the holiness of the physical body; see her Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London: Routlege and Kegan Paul, 1966), 52; cf. Saul M. Olyan, Disability in the Hebrew Bible: Interpreting Mental and Physical Differences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 93 – 100. Pierre van Hecke has made a similar observation concerning the metaphorical representation of physical health in Job, but in his analysis the wholeness is rather “solidity” and its opposite is not disintegration but “fluidity”; see Pierre van Hecke, “‘Is My Flesh Bronze?’ (Job 6:12): Metaphors of Fluidity and Solidity in the Description of the Body in the Book of Job,” Classical Bulletin 86 (2010): 101– 15.

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Isaiah (1:6) makes use of this conception in his metaphor of the moral decrepitude of the body politic in Judah: / ‫ ֶפַּצע ְוַחבּוּ ָרה וַּמ ָכּה ְט ִר ָיּה‬/ ‫תם‬ ֹ ‫ ֵאין־בּוֹ ְמ‬/ ‫ִמ ַכּף־ ֶר ֶגל ְוַעד־ר ֹאשׁ‬ ‫ ְול ֹא ֻר ְכָּכה ַבּ ָשֶּׁמן׃‬/ ‫ל ֹא־ֹזרוּ ְול ֹא ֻח ָבּשׁוּ‬ From the sole of the foot to the top of the head, There is no part left whole; Laceration and bruise and oozing wound, Were neither soothed nor bandaged, / Nor softened with oil.¹³

In this well-known image, a healthy spot is called a whole one (‫)ְמתֹם‬, while the injuries enumerated are all a form of fragmentation—a breaking or discoloration of the skin. Accordingly, a lack of “wholeness (‫ ”)ְמתֹם‬in the “flesh (‫ ”) ְבּ ָשׂ ִרי‬is paralleled by a lack of “wellness (‫ ”) ָשׁלוֹם‬in the “limbs (‫ ”)ֲעָצַמי‬in Ps 38:4 (cf. v. 8b; see further below). The treatment for a flesh wound is binding with a bandage—trying to pull the parted skin back together. Compare Eliphaz’s language in describing God’s tendency to heal after having afflicted someone in 5:18: ‫ יְִמַחץ ] ְו ָי ָדו[ ְו ָי ָדיו ִתּ ְר ֶפּי ָנה׃‬/ ‫ִכּי הוּא ַיְכִאיב ְו ֶיְח ָבּשׁ‬ For once he inflicts pain, he binds up; Once he strikes, his own hands heal.¹⁴

Job, too, makes use of the same metaphor when he refers to the prime of health as ‫תּם‬ ֹ , “wholeness,” in describing the unfair case of the wicked person who “dies at the height of his wholeness, / completely at ease and at peace” (21:23). When Job’s story begins, he is whole in body and in conduct (‫ ; ָתּם‬1:1). (I shall be returning to this point below.) Job has a complete family—ten children—and a complete estate the wealth of which made him greater than any other in his region (1:2– 3). And then he loses his estate and his children, and he is stricken with “terrible ‫( ” ְשִׁחין‬2:7). “Terrible ‫ ְשִׁחין‬,” as was said above, is a curse with which Israel is threatened in Deut 28:35—“May Yhwh strike you with terrible ‫ ְשִׁחין‬on your knees (or: your genitals)¹⁵ and your thighs, from which you cannot be healed—from the sole of your foot to the top of your head.” Job too is stricken

 All biblical translations are mine unless otherwise indicated.  Compare Deut 32:39; Hos 6:1.  Compare Akk. birku, “knee, lap, genitals”; see CAD B, 255 – 57; cf. Hayim ben Yosef Tawil, An Akkadian Lexical Companion for Biblical Hebrew (Jersey City, NJ: Ktav, 2009), 58—although I do not agree with Tawil that the phrase “born on So and So’s knees” refers to genitals. In any event, a skin disease in the groin would seem more severe and frightening than one on the knees.

Metaphors of Illness and Wellness in Job

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“from the sole of his foot to the top of his head” (2:7). We may not know exactly what is meant by ‫ ְשִׁחין‬, but we know it is closely associated in the Torah with ‫ָצ ַרַעת‬, traditionally rendered as “leprosy” (Lev 13:20) but apparently a scaly skin condition.¹⁶ It will be helpful to recall at this juncture that the ‫ ָצ ַרַעת‬with which Miriam was afflicted is described as an aborted fetus “half of whose flesh has been consumed” (‫ ; ַו ֵיָּאֵכל ֲחִצי ְב ָשׂרוֹ‬Num 12:12).¹⁷ Severe skin disorders were understood as the decimation of the body, a progressive deterioration toward death. Job describes it this way: ‫ ְוַעְצִמי־ָח ָרה ִמ ִנּי־חֹ ֶרב׃‬/ ‫עוֹ ִרי ָשַׁחר ֵמָעָלי‬ My skin has blackened off from me, And my body (lit., limb) has burned off me from heat. (30:30)

Job’s blistering skin reduces him to a fraction of his former self. He becomes so emaciated that his “bone sticks to [his] skin and [his flesh]” and protrudes (19:20).¹⁸ God, Job says, has “shriveled” him (‫ ; ְו ִתְּקְמֵט ִני‬16:8). And “shriveling,” as Eliphaz points out (22:16), leads to death.¹⁹ Job portrays the body he must live with above the ground as the image of the corpse that will one day lie below the ground: ‫ עוֹ ִרי ָר ַגע ַו ִיּ ָמֵּאס׃‬/ ‫ָלַבשׁ ְבּ ָשׂ ִרי ִר ָמּה ְוגוּשׁ ָעָפר‬ My flesh is cloaked with worms and lumps of dirt;²⁰ My skin is welted and decays. (7:5)

 See the discussion in Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 1 – 16 (AB 3; New York: Doubleday, 1991), 816 – 20; cf., e. g., Avalos, Illness and Health Care, 311– 16, 362– 68.  For consumption of flesh as a sign of disease in the ancient Near East, see J. N. Ford, “‘Ninety-Nine by the Evil Eye and One from Natural Causes’: KTU² 1.96 in Its Near Eastern Context,” UF 30 (1998): 201– 78, here 234 ff.  Compare Ps 102:5 – 6: “My body is stricken and withered like grass; / too wasted to eat my food; / on account of my vehement groaning / my bones show through my skin” (NJPS, with a gloss on the last phrase: “Lit., ‘cling to my flesh’”). Cf. Jones, “Corporeal Discourse,” 847– 48.  Cf. Basson, “Just Skin and Bones,” 292.  Compare the Neo-Assyrian curse from the Succession Treaty of Esarhaddon: “Just as a worm eats fresh cheese, may worms eat while you are alive, your (pl.) flesh, the flesh of your wives, of your sons and daughters” (Simo Parpola and Kazuko Watanabe, Neo-Assyrian Treaties and Loyalty Oaths [SAA 2; Helsinki: University of Helsinki Press, 1988], 53, lines 570 – 72; translation in CAD T, 466b).

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Job’s metaphorical clothing is his decaying flesh. To Job, the deteriorating body is “worn away by rot; / like a garment that is eaten by a moth” (13:28).²¹ Accordingly, the way to make himself physically whole again and repair his flesh is to try to cover his disintegrating skin with a layer of manufactured fabric: “I sewed sackcloth onto my hide” (‫ ; ַשׂק ָתַּפ ְר ִתּי ֲעֵלי ִגְל ִדּי‬16:15). In conformity with the metaphor SKIN IS A GARMENT,²² Job must be a tailor to himself. Job indeed images his body in its ideal state as a solid mass. He conceives of himself as liquid congealed into a solid²³ and as a skeletal frame made by weaving together sinews and bones and clothing them with a layer of flesh: ‫ ְוַכ ְגִּב ָנּה ַתְּק ִפּיֵא ִני׃‬/ ‫ֲהל ֹא ֶכָחָלב ַתּ ִתּיֵכ ִני‬ ²⁴‫שֲׂכֵכ ִני׃‬ ֹ ‫ וַּבֲעָצמוֹת ְו ִגי ִדים ְתּ‬/ ‫עוֹר וָּב ָשׂר ַתְּל ִבּי ֵשׁ ִני‬ Have you not poured me out like milk, And jelled me like cheese? Clothed me in skin and flesh, And woven me in bones and sinews? (10:10 – 11)

God is not simply a molder of clay into a human form in the fashion of Gen 2:7, although there are plenty of references to humanity’s origins and essence as dust and clay in Job.²⁵ Here the deity is metaphorically both a cheese-maker and a weaver.²⁶ But neither cheese nor fabric is indestructible.

 Forti dwells on the image as a figure of transient life (Tova Forti, “Human Tribulation and Transience in Job: The Metaphor of the Moth,” in Marbeh Ḥokmah: Studies in the Bible and the Ancient Near East in Loving Memory of Victor Avigdor Hurowitz [ed. S. Yona et al.; 2 vols.; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2015], 1:161– 69). However, one should not lose sight of the immediate image of deterioration.  Recall McLuhan’s point that clothing is an extension of the skin (Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore, The Medium is the Massage [London: Penguin, 1967], 31– 40).  Pace van Hecke, “Is My Flesh Bronze?” 101– 15.  I follow the Aleppo Codex in reading ‫ שׂ‬here; the Leningrad Codex and some other Masoretic manuscripts have ‫ס‬.  E. g., Job 1:21, 10:9. See further the dissertation of my student, Adiel Cohen, “Creations Traditions in Psalms, Proverbs, and Job in the Light of Creation Models from the Ancient Near East and the Bible” (Ph.D. diss., Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel, 2011) [in Hebrew].  For similar figurations in Psalm 139, see William P. Brown, “Creatio Corporis and the Rhetoric of Defense in Job 10 and Psalm 139,” in God Who Creates: Essays in Honor of W. Sibley Towner (ed. William P. Brown and S. Dean McBride Jr.; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000), 107– 24. Compare the creation of the first human in Enuma Elish VI 5: “I will bring together blood and form bone”; W. G. Lambert, Babylonian Creation Myths (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2013), 110 – 11; cf. Leo G. Perdue, Wisdom in Revolt: Metaphorical Theology in the Book of Job (JSOTSup 112; Sheffield: Almond, 1991), 41.

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45

In trying to cope with his physical and psychic abuses, Job is quite aware of his fragility. He plaintively asks: ‫ ִאם ְבּ ָשׂ ִרי ָנחוּשׁ׃‬/ ‫ִאם־ ֹכּ ַח ֲאָב ִנים ֹכִּחי‬ Is my strength the strength of stone? Is my flesh made of bronze? (6:12)

Unfortunately Job’s body is not made of non-degradable material like the Leviathan (41:16), who is “hard as stone,” and Behemoth (40:18), whose limbs are like bronze and iron.²⁷ Job’s body is vulnerable to disintegration. His limbs, says Job, are wearing away: ‫ ִויֻצ ַרי ַכּ ֵצּל ֻכּ ָלּם׃‬/ ‫ַו ֵתַּכּה ִמ ַכַּעשׂ ֵעי ִני‬

Reading ²⁸‫ ָכִּלים‬from ‫ כלה‬for ‫ ֻכּ ָלּם‬with several other scholars,²⁹ one gets: My eye has gone dim from anguish, And my limbs³⁰ wear away like a shadow. (17:7)³¹

In her analysis of the metaphors used in regard to the most dramatic of modern illnesses, Susan Sontag observes that tuberculosis is said to “consume” from within—and has therefore been known for several centuries as “consumption”—whereas cancer is said to “attack” from without.³² These are perhaps not entirely coincidentally the two models of disease I am discussing in connection with Job. In accordance with the metaphor of disintegration, Bildad de-

 Cf. Jones, “Corporeal Discourse,” 861– 62.  Compare the use of ‫ ָכָּלה‬, “wear away,” in 33:21.  E. g., Arnold B. Ehrlich, Randglossen zur hebräischen Bibel (7 vols.; Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1913; repr., Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1968]), 6:250; Samuel R. Driver and George B. Gray, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Job (ICC; 2 vols.; New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1921), 2.112; C. J. Ball, The Book of Job (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1922), 258; Édouard Dhorme, A Commentary on the Book of Job (trans. Harold Knight; London: Thomas Nelson, 1967), 248; N. H. TurSinai, The Book of Job: A New Commentary (rev. ed.; Jerusalem: Kiryath Sepher, 1967), 279; David J. A. Clines, Job 1 – 20 (WBC 17; Dallas, TX: Word, 1989), 373; Seow, Job 1 – 21, 764.  For this rendering, see, e. g., Dhorme, Job, 247– 48; cf., e. g., Driver and Gray, Book of Job, 2.112; Clines, Job 1 – 20, 373; Seow, Job 1 – 21, 764.  Compare 7:9, where the verb ‫ ָכָּלה‬, is used of a cloud.  Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors (New York: Picador, 1990). Beginning in the sixteenth century cancer too was sometimes said to “consume”; see Sontag, Illness as Metaphor, 10.

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scribes the fate of the wicked as a deterioration of their limbs by a personified disease called here “the Firstborn of Death”:³³ ‫ י ֹאַכל ַבּ ָדּיו ְבּכוֹר ָמ ֶות׃‬/ ‫י ֹאַכל ַבּ ֵדּי עוֹרוֹ‬ One consumes the limbs of his skin,³⁴ Death’s Firstborn consumes his limbs. (18:13)

Perhaps out of fear of mentioning death, the explicit subject of the first clause is deferred to the second clause. “Skin” I understand as a metonym for the body as a whole. What is clear is that the progressive destruction of the body is here represented by the metaphor of eating—it is “consumption.” Job also sees the destruction of his body as consumption. He correctly identifies the agent of that consumption as God, saying that he “wasted” him, using the piʿel form of ‫בלע‬, which in the qal means “to swallow” (10:9). Job had no way of knowing that that is the same metaphor of devastation that Yhwh had used to describe what was being done to Job in the prologue of the book (2:3). Job sees his afflictions coming at him from the deity in two hostile forms. In one, God is a warrior who perceives Job to be his enemy (see esp. 13:23; 19:11; cf., e. g., 7:12). Accordingly, God pierces his skin with arrows:³⁵ / ‫ ָיסֹבּוּ ָעַלי ַר ָבּיו‬/ ‫ַו ְיִקיֵמ ִני לוֹ ְלַמָּט ָרה׃‬ ‫פְּך ָלָא ֶרץ ְמ ֵר ָרִתי׃‬ ֹ ‫ יִ ְשׁ‬/ ‫ְיַפ ַלּח ִכְּליוַֹתי ְול ֹא ַיְחמֹל‬

 Seow (Job 1 – 21, 785 – 86) reviews several suggestions as to the reference of “Firstborn of Death,” rightly observing that we have “no convincing mythological parallel.” However, the plain meaning of the terms indicates a personified being, apparently a plague or disease; cf., e. g., Carol A. Newsom, “The Book of Job: Introduction, Commentary, and Reflections,” in NIB 4:317– 637, here 469b. Gordis compares Arabic bint al maniyya (the reader should correct his transcription), “daughter of fate,” a locution denoting a fever (Robert Gordis, The Book of Job: Commentary, New Translation, and Special Studies [New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1978], 192). (I am grateful to my student Kristina Toshkina whose expertise has documented for me the use of this Arabic expression.) I understand the unidentified subject of the first line (“One”) as a timid reference to a demonic agent, identified with less trepidation in the second line.  It is possible that the poet avoids using a phrase such as “consume the flesh” (‫ )אכל בשר‬because such an expression might idiomatically refer to calumniation rather than physical consumption (e. g., Ps 27:2); cf. the Aramaic idiom ‫ אכל קרצי‬and its Akkadian parallel karṣī akālu; see, e. g., Tawil, Companion, 452.  For the metaphor of God’s arrows in Job, see Nehamit Perry, “Conceptual Metaphors as a Means of Discourse in the Book of Job,” Teʿuda 24 (2011): 30 – 31 [in Hebrew]. For images of military assault in Job, see above with n. 10.

Metaphors of Illness and Wellness in Job

47

He set me up as his target. / His archers surround me; He pierces my innards, showing no mercy; He spills my gall to the ground. (16:12– 13; cf. 6:4; 7:20)

Job imagines that God has brought an army to surround and lay siege to his home (19:12). Job’s home is, as far as he can see, regarded by the deity as an enemy town, the city-wall of which needs to be broken and penetrated. Again we find the metaphor of the body, or in this case its extension as protective wall—like the skin—to be segmented and invaded: ‫ ָיֻרץ ָעַלי ְכּ ִגבּוֹר׃‬/ ‫יְִפ ְרֵצ ִני ֶפ ֶרץ ַעל־ ְפּ ֵני־ָפ ֶרץ‬ He opens breach upon breach against me; He runs at me like a warrior. (16:14)³⁶

In another figuration of God as Job’s mortal enemy, the deity is a predatory animal, apparently a lion,³⁷ mauling its prey: :‫ ְוָאַחז ְבָּע ְר ִפּי ַו ְיַפְצ ְפֵּצ ִני‬/ ‫ָשֵׁלו ָהיִיִתי ַו ְיַפ ְר ְפּ ֵר ִני‬ I was tranquil, then he tore me apart, Seized me by the neck and ripped me apart. (16:12; cf. 10:16)

The figure of God as predator is juxtaposed in chapter 16 with the figure of God as warrior, so that in Job’s mind, as it is reflected in his metaphorical conception, the various acts of destroying him—piercing him and tearing him apart—are for all intents and purposes the same. Wellness is wholeness, and illness is disintegration.³⁸ There is a passage in Psalms that adopts the same image: ‫ ֵאין־ ָשׁלוֹם ַבֲּעָצַמי—ִמ ְפּ ֵני ַח ָּטאִתי׃‬/ ‫תם ִבְּב ָשׂ ִרי—ִמ ְפּ ֵני ַזְעֶמָך‬ ֹ ‫ֵאין־ְמ‬ No part of my flesh is left whole—on account of your rage; No part of my body (lit., my limbs) is complete—on account of my sin. (Ps 38:4)

 Here Job echoes Eliphaz in 15:24.  For the several uses of the lion metaphor in Job and elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, see Brent A. Strawn, What Is Stronger than a Lion?: Leonine Image and Metaphor in the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East (OBO 212; Fribourg: Academic Press / Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2005); cf. Greenstein, “Some Metaphors,” 188 – 89.  Cf. Rebecca Raphael, Biblical Corpora: Representations of Disability in Hebrew Biblical Literature (LHBOTS 445; New York: T&T Clark International, 2008), 87, 89 – 90. For the strong association between emaciation and dismemberment, see, e. g., Lam 3:4.

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The psalmist draws a direct connection between the health and wholeness of his body—using the same term, ‫ְמתֹם‬, that had served Isaiah, as cited above—and his being at one with God, using the stem ‫ ָשֵׁלם‬, which is in this context synonymous with ‫ ָתּם‬, “being whole.” Physical wholeness is dependent, in this theological perspective, on the wholeness of one’s conduct—on one’s integrity. We find the very same association of ideas in Job. Job is introduced by the narrator as ‫ ָתּם‬, “wholesome,” and ‫ ָי ָשׁר‬, “straight”—two ways of conveying Job’s integrity (Job 1:1). Job’s integrity is widely acknowledged—by God (1:8; 2:3); by Job’s wife (2:9), who, like the deity in 2:3, uses the feminine noun ‫; ֻתּ ָמּה‬ and by Eliphaz in his first discourse (4:6) and even in his harsh third discourse (22:3)—although there Job’s integrity is placed in doubt. Job insists that he is “whole” (‫ ) ָתּם‬in his conduct (9:20 – 21; 27:5) and that the deity knows it (31:6). This is of course the basis of Job’s claims against God.³⁹ Conventional wisdom (e. g., Prov 10:29), as reiterated by Bildad in 8:20, maintains that “God will never reject the whole (of heart).”⁴⁰ But Job is convinced that the deity has knowingly treated Job as an evildoer (e. g., 9:21), making no distinction between the ‫ָתּם‬ and the wicked (9:22). There is a disturbing dissonance between Job’s inner wholeness and his outer disintegration. By afflicting Job, God has stigmatized him.⁴¹ Job’s appearance had so deteriorated that his friends could not at first recognize him (2:12). Job rails at the deity for disfiguring him: You assault (a man) continually—and he passes on; You change his appearance⁴²—and then you dispatch him. (14:20)⁴³

Job’s neighbors, friends, and even family members look at Job’s abject, horrifying appearance, and they recoil from him (19:13 – 19). Note that none of Job’s interlocutors refers directly to his malady, and that in the epilogue to the book, no mention is made of God ever healing him. The typical reaction to dreadful disease is avoidance. The leper is, so to speak, treated like a leper. As Sontag writes,

 Cf., e. g., David Penchansky, The Betrayal of God: Ideological Conflict in Job (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1990), 46 – 47; William P. Brown, Character in Crisis: A Fresh Approach to the Wisdom Literature of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996), 71.  For the full phrase, see especially 1 Kgs 9:4.  Cf., e. g., Norman Habel, “‘Only the Jackal Is My Friend’: On Friends and Redeemers in Job,” Int 31 (1977): 227– 36; Ed (Eliezer) Greenstein, “The Loneliness of Job,” in Job: In the Bible, Philosophy, and Art (ed. Lea Mazor; Jerusalem: Magnes, 1995), 43 – 53 [in Hebrew]; Seow, Job 1 – 21, 800.  ‫ְמ ַשׁ ֶנּה ָפ ָניו‬.  Cf. Job 8:4 for ‫ ִשׁ ַלּח‬, “to dispatch,” in the sense of delivering to death.

Metaphors of Illness and Wellness in Job

49

even in modern societies, “the move from the demonization of the illness to the attribution of fault to the patient is an inevitable one.”⁴⁴ Job’s so-called friends assume that his physical deterioration is a result of his own moral depravity. They believe that only if Job makes a clear commitment to his erstwhile righteous living—to his integrity—will he enjoy physical wholeness again. Job must be whole with God if he wants his estate and his person to be whole: ‫ ָבֶּהם ְתּבוַֹאְתָך טוָֹבה׃‬/ ‫ַהְס ֶכּן־ ָנא ִעמּוֹ וּ ְשָׁלם‬ Trust in him—and become whole again. That is how goodness will come your way. (22:21; cf. 5:24; 8:24; 21:9)

Zophar in his first appeal to Job engages the imagery of wholeness and disintegration that pervades the Joban discourse: ‫אָהֶליָך ַע ְוָלה׃‬ ֹ ‫ ְוַאל־ ַתּ ְשׁ ֵכּן ְבּ‬/ ‫ִאם־ָא ֶון ְבּ ָי ְדָך ַה ְרִחיֵקהוּ‬ ‫ ְוָהיִיָת ֻמָצק ְול ֹא ִתי ָרא׃‬/ ‫ִכּי־ָאז ִתּ ָשּׂא ָפ ֶניָך ִממּוּם‬ If you put evil far from your hand, That no corruption reside in your tents, Then will your estate be bare of blemish;⁴⁵ You will be rock-solid, and you will not fear. (11:14– 15)⁴⁶

However one construes the verse, Zophar contrasts a situation of physical defect (be it literal or metaphorical) with one of complete integration.⁴⁷ By making extensive use of the imagery of wholeness as wellness and disintegration as illness, the Joban poet is able neatly to connect throughout the discourse the theological notion that there should be a correlation of physical wellness with moral rectitude, but that in the case of Job, the relationship is

 Sontag, Illness as Metaphor, 99.  The received text, which has been transcribed above, may be glossed as: “Then will you raise your face without blemish” (‫) ִכּי־ָאז ִתּ ָשּׂה ָפ ֶניָך ִממּוּם‬. However, in view of Zophar’s reference to Job’s habitation, lit. “tents,” in the preceding line, the intention seems to be something like what both Eliphaz and Bildad had assured Job at the end of their speeches: that he will enjoy a restored life and a rebuilt household (see especially 5:24). Accordingly, I divide the words slightly differently and read a few of the letters slightly differently: ‫ ִתּ ְשׁ ֶפּה ָנ ֶוָך ִממּוּם‬, lit. “your estate will be bare (pristine), without blemish.” For ‫ ִנ ְשֶׁפה‬describing a bare (unforested) hill, see Isa 13:2; cf. HALOT 2:1628. For ‫ נוה‬in the feminine, see, e.g., Job 8:6. Zophar would seem to blame the destruction of Job’s estate on his having committed some trespass thereon.  This is a response to Job’s expression of fear in 9:34– 35 and elsewhere.  For ‫מוּם‬, “defect,” as the antithesis of physical wholeness in the Bible, see, e. g., Olyan, Disability, 5, 26 – 46.

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egregiously awry.⁴⁸ Job cannot reconcile his physical disintegration with his personal piety and integrity. For the reader of Job, the case of Job is itself a metaphor of the breakdown of the social, if not the natural, order.⁴⁹ Job had enjoyed the providence of the deity—he was “hedged about” in the sense of protection (e. g., 1:10). The same verb stem ‫ סכך‬is used by Job to describe his having been “woven together” as a creature by God (see 10:11, presented above). It was the special care of the deity that had put him together and held him together. And now, Job blames God for pulling him apart. Job is in some ways a mirror of the world at those times when it seems to be disintegrating. Or in Joban terms—when the world is unwell.

 Cf., e. g., Avalos, Illness and Health Care, 373.  Cf. C. Fred Alford, “Job, Abjection, and the Ruthless God,” Psychoanalytic Review 96 (2009): 431– 59, esp. 436.

J. Gerald Janzen (Christian Theological Seminary, Emeritus)

Blessing and Justice in Job: In/commensurable?

In his essay, “Reading and Misreading the Prologue to Job,”¹ Alan Cooper offers a perceptive and probing clarification of the theological issues at stake in interpreting not only the prologue, but the book of Job as a whole. In this essay, I press Cooper’s analysis at two or three crucial points to collaborate further in our efforts to sound the depths of this unfathomable book and the perplexing quandaries of existence that it confronts. The dilemma facing all interpreters is exemplified in the way Eliphaz and Job agree that God “does great things and unfathomable (‫)ֵאין ֵחֶקר‬, marvelous things without number” (Job 5:9, 9:10), but differ in how they construe that unfathomability. I begin with a brief summary of Cooper’s main points, and then offer a critique of his pivotal move and question one of his unexamined assumptions as an entrée into my own proposals. My thesis is that, so far as the book of Job is concerned, God’s blessing and God’s justice are in fact commensurable. To put the matter in what is only superficially an oxymoron, “one good non sequitur deserves another.”

1 Cooper on God’s Relationship with Humanity Cooper takes as his starting point “[t]he cause-effect relationship supposedly inherent in Job 1.1– 3, which [D. J. A.] Clines calls ‘the act-consequence nexus’,” a nexus which is, “in his [Clines’s] words, ‘the primary ethical problematic of the book.’”² Cooper proceeds by examining the three main characters in the prologue— Satan, Job, and God—for their respective views on the supposed cause-effect nexus. He concludes: One reading [of the book of Job] concludes that there is, after all, predictable causality in God’s dealings with humanity; one finds causality but no predictability; and one finds neither causality nor predictability. Each of these readings, I suggest, is rooted in the reader’s empathy (whether conscious or not) with the point of view of one of the three main char-

 Alan Cooper, “Reading and Misreading the Prologue to Job,” JSOT 46 (1990): 67– 90.  Ibid., 69, quoting David J. A. Clines, “False Naivety in the Prologue of Job,” HAR 9 (1985): 127– 36, here 133. DOI 10.1515/9783110428148-005

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acters in the prologue: Satan (predictable causality); Job (causality but no predictability); or God (neither causality nor predictability [ḥ innā m]).³

Although Cooper indicates that his “own sympathies lie with the third sort of reading” (following Matityahu Tsevat), the point of his analysis is to show that “the prologue of Job is, by design, the introduction of all three.”⁴ This leaves the reader in the position to which Stanley Fish consigns readers of Milton’s Paradise Lost, a position in which (as Cooper quotes Fish), “‘by deciding … exactly what the poem means, [the reader] decides between the philosophical and moral alternatives mirrored in the interpretive possibilities.’”⁵ Cooper’s acknowledgment that interpretive readings of texts like Job are “rooted in the reader’s empathy,” and his confession as to where his “own sympathies lie” are refreshingly candid. My own sympathies no doubt underlie the analysis that follows. Yet I trust that our respective sympathies do not seal us off hermetically and hermeneutically from one another, and that the text is not limitlessly patient of any and all construals. Further, I assume that the identification of reasonably stable usages of multivalent terms is a necessary point of departure in any interpretive exercise. As a case in point, I assert that Cooper’s analysis rests on a demonstrable misreading of the key term ‫ִח ָנּם‬, when God says to Satan in 2:3, “[Job] still holds fast his integrity, although you moved me against him, to destroy him without cause (‫)ִח ָנּם‬.” Cooper leads up to his construal of ‫ ִח ָנּם‬in 2:3 by observing that in the prologue “God … never claims any credit for Job’s prosperity.”⁶ That Job’s prosperity somehow derives from God is assumed by both Satan and Job. He continues, “But when God Himself gives His reason for permitting Job’s suffering, it turns out to be ḥ innā m, ‘no reason’ (2:3). The logical inference, as I understand it, is that Job’s prosperity was equally ḥ innā m.”⁷ Let us suppose, for a moment, that Cooper has construed ‫ ִח ָנּם‬correctly here. By what principle of textual interpretation does the use of ‫ ִח ָנּם‬in this context carry with it the logical implication he infers? It could conceivably do so, but it need not; usage elsewhere suggests that, in fact, it does not. Further, I do not find Cooper’s argument from silence compelling. It strikes me as reflecting a hermeneutic of suspicion that prematurely calls into question stable meanings

 Cooper, “Reading,” 73.  Ibid. (emphasis original).  Ibid., 75, quoting Stanley Fish, Surprised by Sin: the Reader in Paradise Lost (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), 272. (Bracketed insertion is Cooper’s.)  Cooper, “Reading,” 70.  Ibid., 71.

Blessing and Justice in Job: In/commensurable?

53

and conventional usages that rely on unspoken assumptions and that make communication and discourse, however imperfect, possible. As a long-standing principle has it, “silence implies consent.” I have in mind here also Wayne Booth’s basic thesis in his Modern Dogma and the Rhetoric of Assent, where he argues, in essence, for a practice of assent to stable utterances unless one is given clues in the utterance or its environment that it is to be taken ironically or with some novel twist.⁸ Any ancient reader coming to Job 1:1– 3 from the books of Proverbs or Deuteronomy would assent to Clines’s construal of these opening verses as involving some form of “act-consequence nexus.” Cooper, however, takes ‫ִח ָנּם‬ in 2:3 as a clue inviting—indeed, logically entailing—our dissent. But Cooper’s analysis of ‫ ִח ָנּם‬rests on too narrow a range of semantic possibilities, and it ignores an established usage of the term that should at least initially guide the reader of 2:3. Following Weiss, he takes it that this term “means both ‘for no purpose’ and ‘with no result.’”⁹ But ‫ ִח ָנּם‬carries other meanings as well. When Israel says, “We remember the fish we ate in Egypt ‫ִח ָנּם‬, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic” (Num 11:5), they hardly mean either “for no purpose” or “with no result,” but rather, “freely, at no cost.” (The disparity between their nostalgic recollection and their actual experience does not affect the meaning of ‫ ִח ָנּם‬here.) And, with yet another connotation, in numerous passages the term refers to actions of one party against another that have no basis in the second party’s character or behavior. When Prov 3:30

 Wayne C. Booth, Modern Dogma and the Rhetoric of Assent (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1974), especially 194: “There is a sense in which assent and affirmation are more fundamental than negation, in both logic and experience. … From birth our primary movement is toward the world, to grasp it, assenting to it and taking in other selves, new truths, the whole world. Our withdrawals and rejections come always in the light of some affirmation that has been denied or is being threatened… Each of us makes himself or herself by assenting to and incorporating whoever and whatever represents life at its most immediate and persuasive.” With the thrust of Booth’s argument one may compare Gabriel Marcel’s essay, “Peter Wust on the Nature of Piety,” in Marcel’s Being and Having: An Existentialist Diary (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), 213 – 36. These authors give better expression than I could to the “sympathies,” the “empathy,” that underlie my hermeneutics. In this connection, one may characterize a hermeneutics of suspicion as founded on antipathy. That antipathy may have its justifiable reasons. But, as Booth might argue, antipathies, like denials, are logically and experientially parasitic on sympathies. Another way of characterizing Job’s crisis, then, is to say that the sympathies by which he has lived since birth are, by the calamities that have befallen him, displaced by a profound antipathy to life itself, an antipathy the concrete taste of which is the bitterness of soul to which he gives voice in 3:20 and several times thereafter. The question is how, if at all, he will recover the primal sympathy that hitherto has held him in the web of life.  Cooper, “Reading,” 70, and footnoting: “So rightly Weiss, Ha-sippur, p. 70 (ET, p. 65).”

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counsels, “Do not quarrel with anyone without cause (‫)ִח ָנּם‬, when no harm has been done to you” (so NRSV), it is clear that such a quarrel or dispute should arise properly only (as RSV implies) “for a reason,”¹⁰ such a reason consisting in some harmful activity on the other person’s part. Psalmists repeatedly complain of being attacked ‫ִח ָנּם‬, that is, for nothing the psalmist has done to deserve such attack. And that is also Job’s complaint: despite his innocence (9:15, 20), God “crushes me with a tempest, and multiplies my wounds ‫( ”ִח ָנּם‬9:17). In view of this latter group of texts, I propose a qualification in Cooper’s conclusion that when God acts ‫ִח ָנּם‬, “he acts … for no reason, whether comprehensible or not. This view of God [sees God] as radically free, unfettered by causality or predication.”¹¹ I propose that God’s actions, insofar as they are characterized as ‫ִח ָנּם‬, are actions that arise in no necessary logical relation to the moral character of the recipient of those actions. This is not to say that they arise “for no reason.” It is to say only that their reason lies within God rather than within the other party. To paraphrase Pascal, such divine actions embody reasons that “act-consequence” and “just desserts” reasonings know not of. It may be helpful to come at the issue from another angle, suggested by the way Cooper connects his discussion of God’s acting ‫ ִח ָנּם‬to the question of blessing. He notes that Satan attributes Job’s prosperity to God’s blessing (1:10), and that Job likewise attributes his prosperity to God (1:21, 2:10). But, he says, “God never says anything in the prologue about having ‘blessed’ Job.”¹² And he ends a long footnote on the topic of blessing by saying, “It seems to me that Job 1– 2 is raising profound questions about what *b-r-k really means. Is it, after all, so obvious what (sic) it means to bless, or to be blessed?”¹³ In the next section, I begin my own constructive proposal with a discussion of blessing. But first, I want to juxtapose Cooper’s comment about the “unobvious” meaning of blessing with a comment that he later makes about justice. Addressing interpretations of Job which conclude that “there is a moral order in the universe, but … it is unfathomable to human beings,” he writes, “I have often heard the ‘teaching’ of the book of Job characterized as the idea that ‘God is just, but not in the sense that “we” use the term.’ But what other sense is there?”¹⁴

 As Cooper’s comment quoted in the previous paragraph shows, he recognizes that “[for] no reason” is a possible—and indeed in this instance the likely—meaning of ‫ִח ָנּם‬. But he seems not to see the possible import of this meaning for his initial analysis of the sentence.  Ibid., 73.  Ibid., 70.  Ibid., 76 – 77, n. 17.  Ibid., 72.

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In light of Cooper’s comments about blessing, his comment about justice is breathtaking on two counts. First, justice is an “essentially contested concept.”¹⁵ Which of the senses of justice on offer in the long history of its discussion does Cooper have in mind? Second, if, as Cooper’s footnote implies, one function of the book of Job is to problematize our notions of what it means to bless or be blessed, why may it not also be a function of the book, as signaled by Job 40:8, to problematize our notions of what divine justice—‫—ִמ ְשׁ ָפּט‬means? In an essay the chief thrust of which is to show how the book of Job “by design”¹⁶ poses ambiguities that the reader must decide, it is strange that Cooper exempts justice from this agenda. There is no space in this essay to undertake a comprehensive analysis of either “blessing” or “justice” in the Bible. By way of sketching another approach to the issues Cooper raises, I instead offer brief probes into the meanings of blessing and of justice as these two concepts are set forth in two of ancient Israel’s mature products of theological reflection: the Priestly tradition in the instance of blessing, and the book of Deuteronomy in the instance of justice. The question I pose, without pretending to offer more than a heuristic proposal, concerns the in/commensurability of blessing and justice.

2 The Priestly Relational “Logic” of Blessing The Priestly theology of blessing comes to definitive expression in two major texts, Gen 1:1– 2:4a and Num 6:24– 26. By the logic of narrative sequence, the latter text is to be understood as grounded in the former.¹⁷ In Genesis 1, the verb

 I draw the phrase “essentially contested concept” from William E. Connolly, who gives a useful outline of its applications in his book, The Terms of Political Discourse ([Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath, 1974], 10). Connolly references W. B. Gallie, “Essentially Contested Concepts,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 56 (1955 – 56): 167– 98; re-printed in The Importance of Language (ed. Max Black; Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1962), 121– 46. One could also invoke John Caputo’s discussion of justice, where he quotes Derrida as saying, “Justice in itself, if such a thing exists, outside or beyond law, is not deconstructible. No more than deconstruction, if such a thing exists. Deconstruction is justice” (John D. Caputo, Against Ethics: Contributions to a Poetics of Obligation with Constant Reference to Deconstruction [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993], 86). I am by no means a Derridean; but I do think that the book of Job, by design, works to deconstruct certain understandings of justice, of ‫ִמ ְשׁ ָפּט‬.  Cooper, “Reading,” 73 (emphasis original).  The following remarks presuppose my discussion in the paper, J. Gerald Janzen, “What Does the Priestly Blessing Do?” in From Babel to Babylon: Essays on Biblical History and Literature in Honour of Brian Peckham (ed. Joyce Louise Rilett Wood, John E. Harvey, and Mark Leuchter;

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“bless” occurs at three points. On the fifth day God blesses the animate creatures of sea and sky with the blessing of fruitfulness in perpetuating their species (1:22); on the sixth day God blesses humankind with the same blessing of fruitfulness, and also (as imago dei) with the vocation and commission to have dominion in the earth (1:28); and finally, God blesses the seventh day and hallows it in resting from God’s creative work (2:3). But the characterization of blessing as “fruitfulness,” in the first and second instance, implies that the seed-bearing fruitfulness of the vegetation arising on the third day is also an incipient sign of divine blessing. And what is perhaps even more remarkable on that third day is God’s prior address to the earth in calling it to bring forth vegetation. For earth to bring forth vegetation is for it to transcend its mineral self in virtue of the divine command/invitation to it to do so. The “logic” of blessing is, in this sense, a logic of over-plus, of generosity–I would say, of non sequitur. By the latter I mean that vegetation in no way “follows” as a necessary or logical implication of mineral earth. Indeed, all of the divine creative actions in this account arise as non sequiturs so far as the non-divine situation at the time of that action is concerned. If they follow from anything, they follow from something in the divine actor, something I would call generosity—a free, generous conveying of existence where there was no existence, for reasons the reason knows not of. In short, blessing, as a prime emblem of divine creativity, is bestowed ‫ִח ָנּם‬. (I pause here to observe that the semantic range of the Hebrew adverb ‫ ִח ָנּם‬is homologous with the semantic range of the English adverb “gratuitously,” as the Oxford English Dictionary summarizes the latter’s meanings: “1. Without cost to the recipient; without any claim or merit on his part; free of charge. 2. Without sufficient cause, reason, or ground; unjustifiably, unwarrantably, unnecessarily.”¹⁸ The respective verbs, nouns, and adjectives in Hebrew and English similarly are largely homologous. Thus, the adjective “gratuitous” means “1. Freely bestowed or obtained; granted without claim or merit; provided without payment or return; costing nothing to the recipient; free. 2. Done, made, adopted, or assumed without any good ground or reason; not required or warranted by the circumstances of the case; uncalled-for; unjustifiable.”¹⁹ The first meaning of the adverb, which I take to be exemplified primordially in Genesis 1, is illustrated especially well by the first OED citation under that meaning, which is from an early eighteenth-century sermon: “Gratuitously given us by the good-will of our

LHBOTS 455; New York: T&T Clark, 2006), 26 – 37; repr. in J. Gerald Janzen, When Prayer Takes Place: Forays into a Biblical World (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2012).  The Oxford English Dictionary, 2d. ed., s.v. “gratuitously.”  Ibid., s.v. “gratuitous.”

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Maker.”²⁰ Such gifts have no ground in the recipient; but they do have a ground in the Maker’s goodwill.) If blessing primally has to do with the conferral of “fruitfulness” as generativity, what might it mean that God blesses the seventh day and hallows it? May this imply that time, which during the preceding six days is marked by work, during that seventh day takes on a self-transcending quality, such that time on the Sabbath is different from time during the six-day week? And that this self-transcending quality has a generative, or regenerative, character in contrast to the degenerative effects of time where life (as under Pharaoh) is only work and no Sabbath? And is the re/generative power of the Sabbath connected with the enjoyment of the whole creation as God’s activity and gift ‫ ?ִח ָנּם‬Does Sabbath, then, enshrine time as the temporal mode of God’s creation as ‫ִח ָנּם‬, a time which the Wisdom of Prov 8:30 – 31 takes to be marked properly by play, in a world where, otherwise, time is enshrouded by the result-driven purposes of work? I take it, then, that to be aware of being blessed is to be aware of being the recipient of the marvel of existence, and of the means to one’s continued existence, by a logic that stands in no necessary relation to one’s deserving and testifies to the mystery of a divine generosity at the heart of things. Like the (nodoubt refracted) memory of the Hebrews recently escaped from Egypt, the sense of being blessed is the sense of receiving life and its benefits freely (‫ )ִח ָנּם‬from God. One can, of course, question whether this sense of blessing as gratuity is any less refracted than that of those slaves. This is to raise the question of the epistemological significance of the experience of the upsurge of overwhelming gratitude as a primal datum of experience that formulates itself as “having received what one has not earned,” of “being the recipient of another’s bounty.” And the book of Job sets over against such an experience of gratitude (to Shadday–see ch. 29) the question of the epistemological significance of bitterness—especially of moral bitterness—that arises in one’s throat over life’s dark vicissitudes (see ch. 30). Which sense of life most deeply informs what Cooper calls “the reader’s empathy”? Or antipathy? The non sequitur generosity at the heart of blessing is encountered in another form in the words uttered at the center of the high priestly blessing of Num 6:24– 26. The sentence, “be gracious to you” (‫) ִויֻח ֶנּ ָךּ‬, framed as it is by “shine his face on you” and “lift up his face to you,” evokes the memory (narratively speaking) of Exod 33:19 and 34:6 vis-à-vis Exod 32:11, where Moses’ intercessory attempt to “sweeten the face” (so the Hebrew) of God implies that the divine face

 Richard Bentley, “A sermon [on Rom. xiv. 7] preach’d before king George” (1717). Quoted in The Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “gratuitously.”

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has darkened in response to the making of the golden calf. God’s response to Moses as “a God merciful and gracious (‫)ַחנּוּן‬,” who “will be gracious to whom I will be gracious (‫חן‬ ֹ ‫ ”) ְוַח ֹנִּתי ֶאת־ֲא ֶשׁר ָא‬is the quintessence of divine actions that deserve to be labeled ‫ִח ָנּם‬. This is to say that such actions arise not in relation to the merit of the recipients, but in relation to the character (the “goodwill”) of the divine actor who is by nature ‫( ֵאל ַרחוּם ְוַחנּוּן‬Exod 34:6). In so acting, God has divine reasons that act-and-consequence and just-desserts reasonings do not know. The generous freedom that lies at the heart of divine blessing upon the creation is mirrored, I submit further, in Israel’s actions (as imago dei?) in the construction of a sanctuary within which God may dwell in their midst. I have argued this point more fully elsewhere,²¹ and here will observe only that the sanctuary is to be constructed out of materials freely offered–by those whose hearts make them willing, as the Hebrew idiom has it in Exod 25 and 35. And the scenario is similar in 1 Chr 29, where David, at the heart of his prayer (29:14), exclaims in amazement over the human power to offer freely to God, out of all that God has given in creation, for the building of the temple. That power, that freedom, is itself one of God’s gifts; yet the nature of this gift, once freely given, is that it becomes a genuine human possession and capability whose enactments, we may say, arise ‫ִח ָנּם‬. One could, of course, like Satan in Job 1:9, ask, “Does Israel build a sanctuary for God ‫ ?ִח ָנּם‬Does David ask Israel to build a temple for God ‫ ”?ִח ָנּם‬And at one level the logic driving Satan’s question would be persuasive. Gratitude for divine benefactions—blessings—does spur one to offer thanks, and to make material offerings conveying those thanks. But to characterize such a response as only a quid pro quo is to do an injustice to the inner character of the consciousness, and more than consciousness, of gratitude. For when gratitude wells up within one, it moves out toward the other as carrying one freely toward the other with no sense of dutifulness or repayment. To call this response, when “unfeigned,”²² a quid pro quo is to rob that response of the dimension of freedom that lies at its heart, a dimension that partakes in its own way of the character of generosity. However derivative that responsive generosity is, it nevertheless in some measure is genuinely free, genuinely self-generated. To put the matter in what is only superficially an oxymoron, “one good non sequitur deserves another.” It is part of the mystery of moral and spiritual relations, defying explanation or adequate analysis, but knowable in  Janzen, “What Does The Priestly Blessing Do?,” 30 – 32.  I have in mind here the use of this term in the old Book of Common Prayer, where the Prayer of General Thanksgiving, in the service of Morning Prayer, contains the clause, “that our hearts may be unfeignedly thankful.”

Blessing and Justice in Job: In/commensurable?

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participation, that such relations at their heart arise and are sustained through “answering” acts of generosity which, when subjected to a calculus of act-andconsequence or reward-and-punishment, become misperceived and misinterpreted. Whatever else we may make of the figure of Satan in Job, he stands, I suggest, for the misperceptions and misinterpretations that, obtusely knowing nothing of such a reciprocal dance, throw up such questions as Satan poses in Job 1:9. Such moral and spiritual relations come to exemplary embodiment when persons, as imago dei, bless one another, invoking God in the process (as in Gen 48:15 – 16). One can, of course, analyze an ancient Israelite father’s blessing of his inheriting son as simply a sacral sanction for social conventions of the transfer of property and authority; and that no doubt is what it often becomes in practice.²³ But the theology, the ideal, even then remains as a possibility sleeping within that routinized, no doubt at times quid pro quo practice—a possibility which, when one wakens to its presence, can evoke an amazed response, like Jacob’s at Bethel, “Surely Yhwh is in this place; and I did not know it” (Gen 28:16). One sign that the deep character of intra-human blessing can break through its routine practices in this way, with a logic of freedom that overturns conventional expectations, is the repeated instance (such as Gen 48:17– 20) where primogeniture is overturned. There remains the question of what it means when Israel blesses God. Commentators and lexicons routinely equate blessing in those instances with thanks or praise. What if the act of blessing God is the act of offering one’s freedom— oneself in freedom—to God as embodied in such material acts as building a sanctuary, or allowing one’s slaves to rest on the Sabbath, and clothing and feeding the needy? And what if Satan’s challenge to God in Job 1:9, “Does Job fear God ‫ִח ָנּם‬,” manifests an obtuse inability to perceive and interpret Job’s piety as anything other than quid pro quo? The terrible dignity of the human vocation, and

 In this connection, one may revisit Ephraim A. Speiser’s scattered remarks on the act of blessing in his commentary on Genesis (Genesis [AB 1; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1964]). At various points he translates the verb as follows: “greeted” (28:1, p. 214); “good-by” (32:1, p. 252); “bade him good-by” (32:30, p. 254); “paid respects” (47:7, p. 348); “took his leave” (47:10, p. 349), thereby distinguishing what he takes to be a mere social convention of courtesy from a more formal, substantive act of blessing. Phenomenologically, Speiser’s point is illustrated in the fact that “God be with you” became such a cliché that few who now say “goodbye” are even aware of its roots. But the thicker meanings of terms can lie dormant under their thinned-out uses, attesting mutely to the deep sacral roots of deracinated secular existence, and under the press of circumstance can suddenly “flame out like shining from shook foil” (to evoke Gerard Manley Hopkins). In any case, exegetical analysis and theological reflection on such terms is by definition an exploration of their semantic and epistemological potential “at full stretch.”

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the terrifying seriousness with which God takes what David calls the power to give freely (‫ )ְלִהְת ַנ ֵדּב‬to God (1 Chr 29:14), is signaled in the fact that God will not refute Satan over Job’s head, but trusts Job to answer Satan for God—trusts Job with the freedom that is a part of the blessing that God bestows upon him and upon every person. It is the terrible dignity implied in Robert Frost’s poem, “The Most Of It,” whose central character (construing it for now as God in the interval between Gen 1:25 and 1:26 – 28) thought he kept the universe alone; For all the voice in answer he could wake Was but the mocking echo of his own From some tree-hidden cliff across the lake. Some morning from the boulder-broken beach He would cry out on life, that what it wants Is not its own love back in copy speech, But counter-love, original response.²⁴

The last two lines pose the Joban question from Satan’s point of view and from God’s.

3 The Deuteronomic Relational “Logic” of Justice At first blush, the Deuteronomic and Priestly logics of blessing would seem to be diametrically opposed to one another, without possibility of harmonization. Over against the unconditionality of the Priestly blessing in Gen 1:1– 2:4a and Num 6:24– 26 we must acknowledge the dire conditionality of blessing-and-curse in passages like Deut 11:26 – 32; 28; and 30:15 – 20, where the blessings and the curses set before the people turn very much on the merits and demerits of their covenant response. Do such passages not make a strong case for understanding the logic of blessing within the logic of act-consequence and reward-punishment? And ought we not to conclude that the Priestly and the Deuteronomic understandings of the logic of blessing are incommensurable? Let us suppose that this is so. In this case, the logic of blessing in Deuteronomy is very much of a piece with what the Deuteronomist understands in having Moses say, “The Rock, his work is perfect (‫ ;) ָתִּמים‬for all his ways are justice (‫)ִמ ְשׁ ָפּט‬. A God of faithfulness (‫ )ֱאמוּ ָנה‬and without iniquity, just and right (‫ַצ ִדּיק‬ ‫ ) ְו ָי ָשׁר‬is he” (32:4). Given how often interpreters cite the reward-punishment  Robert Frost, “The Most of It,” in Robert Frost: Collected Poems, Prose, & Plays (New York: The Library of America, 1995), 307.

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theme in Deuteronomy as a foil for the book of Job, why not take Job to have as part of its “design” to deconstruct Deuteronomy’s understanding of blessing and of ‫ ?ִמ ְשׁ ָפּט‬As Robert Frost has God say to Job in heaven, “I have no doubt / You realize by now the part you played / To stultify the Deuteronomist / And change the tenor of religious thought.”²⁵ If this is the case, why not take the book of Job, which Cooper takes to ambiguate the meaning of blessing, to ambiguate also the meaning of justice? One could, of course, argue that the construal of the book of Deuteronomy solely in reward-punishment terms is a gross over-simplification of the book’s complex logic. Granted the prominence in it of the reward-punishment logic, and the rhetorical force of the double-climax in chapter 28 and 30:15 – 20, several clues sprinkled throughout the book invite a more nuanced reading. For instance, nowhere does Deuteronomy assert that Israel’s oppression in Egypt was a just dessert for Israel’s sinfulness. Conversely, neither does the book assert that Israel’s liberation from that oppression was a just dessert for Israel’s righteousness. In fact, the latter is explicitly negated (Deut 7:7, 9:5). In a refrain that is repeated over a score of times throughout the book, God’s motivation arises out of God’s promise to the ancestors—and that promise is itself rooted in the divine generosity which responds to the ancestral situation of barrenness with the promise of blessing—a repetition, one might say, of God’s primal non sequitur logic in creation. Again, Moses recalls at length God’s free graciousness in the face of the golden calf incident (Deut 9:12– 21) and the rebellion following the return of the spies (Deut 9:23). Finally, for all the prominence of Deut 28 and 30:15 – 20, and the graphic portrayal of the dire consequence of covenant disobe Frost’s divine character goes on to say, My thanks are to you for releasing me From moral bondage to the human race. The only free will there at first was man’s, Who could do good or evil as he chose. I had no choice but I must follow him With forfeits and rewards he understood— Unless I liked to suffer loss of worship. I had to prosper good and punish evil. You changed all that. You set me free to reign. You are the emancipator of your God, And as such I promote you to a saint.” (“A Masque of Reason,” in Robert Frost: Collected Poems, Prose, & Plays [New York: The Library of America, 1995], 374.) Frost here anticipates Herbert Fingarette’s argument in the latter’s “The Meaning of Law in the Book of Job,” (The Hastings Law Journal 29 [1978]: 1581– 1617; repr. in Revisions: Changing Perspectives in Moral Philosophy [ed. Stanley Hauerwas and Alasdair Macintyre; Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983]).

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dience in 32:1– 43, the latter poem is followed by Moses’ unqualified blessing in chapter 33. Further, there is the matter of the use of ‫ ִמ ְשׁ ָפּט‬in Deuteronomy. Of its thirtyseven occurrences, in twenty instances it occurs in the plural to refer to “ordinances” which, along with commandments and statutes, God gave to Israel to regulate its conduct. The purpose of these ordinances is “so that you may live, and go in and take possession of the land which Yhwh, the God of your ancestors, gives you” (4:1). As connected with the land and the ancestors, and as given to foster the community’s life, the ordinances become a socially structuring reticulation of the divine blessing bestowed on the ancestors in promise and then in realization. As such, these ordinances govern the people’s relations with one another and embody the people’s covenant response to God; and it is in this respect that the logic of reward enters into the Deuteronomic theology of blessing and curse. Where the noun occurs in the singular, once it refers to what is due to the priest; thirteen times it refers to Israel enacting justice in accordance with the ordinances; and three times the noun refers to actions of God. While Israel’s actions vis-à-vis one another are to be regulated in accordance with the ordinances, it is not clear that God’s actions in ‫ ִמ ְשׁ ָפּט‬are so calibrated. When God follows the divine judgment on idolatry (Deut 32:19 – 25) with the resolve to “take hold on ‫ ”ִמ ְשׁ ָפּט‬and deliver the people (32:43), is this for their deserving? According to 32:36, God’s ‫ ִמ ְשׁ ָפּט‬is an expression of God’s compassion. This accords with 32:4, where God’s ‫ ִמ ְשׁ ָפּט‬embodies God’s faithfulness. If that faithfulness includes within its logic the theme of reward-punishment so prominent in Deuteronomy (see 7:9), then that logic is itself bosomed in God’s love for the people and promises to the ancestors (7:7– 8). The preceding sentence calls for a return to the usage of ‫ ִמ ְשׁ ָפּט‬in Deut 32:43, where it can be argued that the term unambiguously carries the univalent connotation of punishment visited upon Israel’s enemies who “hate me” in oppressing Israel. If there is such an act-consequence connotation in ‫ִמ ְשׁ ָפּט‬, that connotation is secondary and instrumental to its primary connotation as indicated in the wider context. That context may be characterized as follows: First, the whole poem is addressed as a “covenant lawsuit,” or as a wisdom instruction applying the lawsuit form, not to Israel’s enemies but to Israel. Its purpose is to call Israel to account for Israel’s response to God who, as covenant lord, is more deeply Israel’s (clan) Father (32:4). (Here, the ethos of clan religion, centering in ‫ֶחֶסד‬, ‫ֱאֶמת‬, and ‫— ַרֲחִמים‬loving kindness, faithfulness, and compassion—undergirds and informs the ethos of Sinai covenant theology as in the ‫ ֻח ִקּים‬and ‫ ִמ ְשׁ ָפִּטים‬so fully articulated in Deuteronomy.) Second, when God takes up the topic of the nations and their gods in Deut 32:37– 39, as a preface to 32:40 – 42, this preface is lodged in the divine motivation set forth in 32:36: “For Yhwh will vindicate (‫ ) ָי ִדין‬his peo-

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ple / and have compassion (‫ )יְִת ֶנָחם‬on his servants, / when he sees that their power is gone, / and there is none remaining, bond or free.” And 32:40 – 42 is followed in 32:43 by the call to Israel (in the MT), “Praise his people, O you nations; / for he avenges (‫ )יִקּוֹם‬the blood of his servants, / and takes vengeance (‫ָנָקם‬ ‫ ) ָי ִשׁיב‬on his adversaries, / and makes expiation (‫ ) ִכּ ֶפּר‬for the land of his people.” If this verse, again, contains act-consequence aspects of the divine action vis-àvis God’s adversaries, the primary focus is on what God does for “his people,” in acts of expiating or cleansing the land and the people of the consequences (sic) of their covenant infidelities. It is in this larger context, and in view of its primary focus on God’s dealings with Israel, that we are to take the force of ‫ ִמ ְשׁ ָפּט‬in 32:4, “I whet my glittering sword, / and my hand takes hold on ‫ִמ ְשׁ ָפּט‬, / I will take vengeance (‫ )ָא ִשׁיב ָנָקם‬on my adversaries, and will requite (‫ )ֲא ַשׁ ֵלּם‬those who hate me.” Thus, ‫ ִמ ְשׁ ָפּט‬here is multivalent, the explicit but secondary retributionist connotation bosomed in the implicit and primary connotation of (unmerited) compassion as expressing the divine faithfulness to the gratuitous (‫ )ִח ָנּם‬promises to the ancestors. It may seem that in the preceding paragraph I have stressed the word ‫ִמ ְשׁ ָפּט‬ in a multivalent way that distorts the term’s meaning within its immediate sentence. As James Barr might say, I am attempting to overload a given usage with too many of its possible connotations, when I should restrict my identification of its meaning in 32:41 to the sentence in which it occurs. (A word is not a bucket of water standing on a stoop somewhere between Hopkinton and Back Bay, independent of the reasons for its being placed there. It has been placed there, say, preliminarily for coming out and watering the roses; and if thirsty Boston Marathoners stop and empty the pail of its contents, they have put it to a use for which it was not intended.) But sentences are themselves embedded in contexts; they do not have their meaning independent of those contexts; and so the words in a given sentence carry the meanings appropriate to those contexts. In the present instance, I suggest, if we work from the widest context inward—that is, from the poem as a whole inward to v. 41—we divest the term ‫ ִמ ְשׁ ָפּט‬of its full meaning unless we see its multivalence and also the relation between its connotative valences. I offer the following “backing” for the non-retributive, gratuitous (‫ )ִח ָנּם‬valence of ‫ ִמ ְשׁ ָפּט‬in Deut 32:41. The latter term occurs frequently in the Deuteronomistic tradition (but not only there), in the idiom, “do ‫ִמ ְשׁ ָפּט‬,” “do ‫ ִמ ְשׁ ָפּט‬for x,” or “do x’s ‫ִמ ְשׁ ָפּט‬.” The idiom may be construed as a periphrasis for the verb ‫ָשַׁפט‬ (“judge”) which itself can mean “adjudicate a legal dispute” between contending parties or “act to deliver an oppressed people or individual from its enemy or oppressor.” The latter action may be motivated by the “justness” of the cause (‫ )ִמ ְשׁ ָפּט‬of the oppressed, or by considerations internal to the judge (such as com-

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passion), where the oppressed are in that plight because they have brought it upon themselves. Where the periphrastic idiom occurs, it can display any one of these connotations. In the foundational prayer of Solomon in 1 Kgs 8, the idiom occurs three times. In 1 Kgs 8:59 it occurs where Solomon prays that the words of the sevenfold intercession he has just offered on behalf of the people “may be near to Yhwh our God day and night, and may he maintain the cause of (‫ )ַלֲעשׂוֹת ִמ ְשׁ ַפּט‬his servant, and the cause of his people Israel, as each day requires.” Several things in this “prayer about his prayer” are noteworthy. First, the collocation of “word(s)” and “near” comes almost as a cheeky echo of the only other place that they occur together in the Deuteronomistic tradition—Deut 30:14, “the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.” Second, it is a prayer that Solomon’s intercession may stand before God “day and night,” as a “standing intercession” —a Deuteronomistic equivalent to the Priestly temple services and sacrifices that, like those in the tabernacle, are to be offered day and night. This means that this prayer is the foundation, in several senses of the word, of all for which the temple being dedicated that day stands. Third, the prayer asks that God “do ‫ ִמ ְשׁ ָפּט‬for [the] people … as each day requires.” The latter Hebrew idiom is itself laden with connotations depending on various contexts of its usage, but there is no space to go into them here. Suffice it to note the connotation: that Solomon asks God to, as it were, identify in each day what kind of divine action is called for among the seven kinds of need specified in the seven-fold intercession. Among those seven, the seventh and most lengthy—one may suspect, the most important one from the point of view of the so-called Deuteronomistic History taken as a whole (ending as it does with Israel in exile)—reads: 46

If they sin against you—for there is no one who does not sin—and you are angry with them and give them to an enemy, so that they are carried away captive to the land of the enemy, far off or near; 47 yet if they lay it to heart in the land to which they have been carried captive, and repent, and plead (‫ ) ְוִהְתַח ְנּנוּ‬with you in the land of their captors, saying, ‘We have sinned, and have done wrong; we have acted wickedly’; 48 if they repent with all their heart and soul in the land of their enemies, who carried them captive, and pray to you toward their land, which you gave to their ancestors, the city that you have chosen, and the house that I have built for your name; 49 then hear in heaven your dwelling place their prayer and their plea (‫) ְתִּח ָנָּתם‬, maintain their cause (‫ ) ְוָע ִשׂיָת ִמ ְשׁ ָפָּטם‬50 and forgive your people who have sinned against you, and all their transgressions that they have committed against you; and grant them compassion in the sight of those who carried them captive, so that they may have compassion on them 51 (for they are your people and heritage, which you brought out of Egypt, from the midst of the iron-smelter). 52 Let your eyes be open to the plea of your servant, and to the plea of your people Israel, giving ear to them whenever they call to you. 53 For you have separated them from among all the peoples of the

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earth, to be your heritage, just as you promised through Moses, your servant, when you brought our ancestors out of Egypt, O Lord GOD. (1 Kgs 8:46 – 53 NRSV, altered)

Here, to “do ‫ ”ִמ ְשׁ ָפּט‬is not a quid pro quo or reward for meritorious behavior in accordance with the ‫ ֻח ִקּים‬and ‫ִמ ְשׁ ָפִּטים‬, but rather a compassionate, forgiving suspension of the full consequences of the people’s covenant infidelity, motivated by the reasons for God’s actions on Israel’s behalf through Moses in the exodus from Egypt—actions in turn undertaken in “remembering” the promises made to the ancestors (Exod 2:23 – 25 and often). Solomon’s prayer here (like the prayer of Moses in Psalm 90) is then a royal analog to the intercession of Moses after the sin of the calf in Exod 32 and after the rebellion in the wilderness in Num 13 – 14 —intercessions recalled at length in Deut 9 – 10. The fundamental drive of the divine ‫ ִמ ְשׁ ָפּט‬is not, then, a coldly dispassionate, mechanical dispensation of rewards and punishments in the spirit of late modern free-enterprise capitalism, where the impersonal logic of “market forces” and the “law of supply and demand” are claimed to mandate downsizing of work-forces and closing of plants at whatever expense of hardship wreaked on workers, who are thereby thrown into dire economic straits. The fundamental drive of the divine ‫ ִמ ְשׁ ָפּט‬is to secure life; and the fundamental rationale for the ordinances is to prevent the rich and powerful from claiming any ancient analog to late-modern capitalistic logic as a rationale for their treatment of the poor and the powerless. If Israel is charged not to pervert the ‫ ִמ ְשׁ ָפּט‬due the sojourner, orphan, or widow (24:17), on pain of being cursed (27:19), it is not simply because this would violate a commandment, statute or ordinance, though it would. More deeply, it is because “[God] executes ‫ ִמ ְשׁ ָפּט‬for the orphan and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing” (10:18). This is simply a specific extension or prolongation of the divine generosity displayed ‫ ִח ָנּם‬in the creation of a world charged with blessing and fruitfulness that life may flourish. At the heart of the divine passion for ‫ ִמ ְשׁ ָפּט‬is not an accountant’s fondness for a kind of moral “bottom line” where the books all balance, but the same generosity that the priestly account of creation in Genesis 1 speaks of in terms of blessing. (The “silence” of Deut 5:12– 15 on God’s blessing of the Sabbath [as the Priestly version in Exod 20:8 – 11 has it] is not to be construed suspiciously; we need only read Deut 5:12– 15 against the background of Exodus 5. The two rationales for the Sabbath converge, along different thematic axes, on the same fundamental celebration of divine generosity toward Israel.) In view of the preceding paragraphs, I would—for once!—take issue with Robert Frost and propose that Job did not so much emancipate God from the stultifying logic of the Deuteronomist as emancipate the Deuteronomist from the stultifying logic of slide-rule and bookkeeping exegetes who, enamored of

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a theology that would (as Frost and Fingarette cogently argue) give people control over God, ignore the abundant evidence in Deuteronomy that the divinehuman relation is founded ultimately on divine generosity and solicits an answering generosity whose bare minimum expression is indicated in this book’s laws.²⁶

4 The Relational Logic of the Divine Speeches It is a commonplace to observe that the divine speeches in Job (chs. 38 – 41) portray God’s creation and maintenance of the cosmos. It is also commonly asserted that there seems to exist a profound disconnect between the issues over which Job and his friends have argued and the scene that God paints. The significance of this disconnect is easy to misconstrue, and that is because readers come to it directly from the human dialogues and assume that the divine speeches must settle that debate on its own terms, or be deemed either irrelevant or a blustery shout-down of poor Job. What if one were to bracket all that has gone before, and read the divine speeches in and for themselves, in the spirit of Gen 1 or Pss 104 and 148, as evocations or expressions of wonder at the sheer exuberant dynamism of the cosmos, bursting with life, and indeed threatening at times to burst through the

 It is not without interest that the exegetical-theological point I am arguing for has its anthropological parallel in a comment by Meyer Fortes as quoted by Frank Moore Cross: “Kinship predicates the axiom of amity, the prescriptive … altruism exhibited in the ethic of generosity…. Kinsfolk are expected to be loving, just and generous to one another and not to demand strictly equivalent returns of one another” (Meyer Fortes, Kinship and the Social Order: The Legacy of Lewis Henry Morgan [Chicago, IL: Aldine, 1969], 237– 41; quoted in Frank Moore Cross, From Epic to Canon: History and Literature in Ancient Israel [Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998], 5, in a discussion of “kinship and covenant in Ancient Israel”). Is it pressing Fortes’s language too hard to observe that the manner in which the term “just” is used, sandwiched between the terms “loving” and “generous,” gives the middle term a meaning that contrasts with construals of justice involving “strictly equivalent returns”? In connection with the term ‫ ִח ָנּם‬in Job as connoting (like blessing) free, generous action, one may compare the connotations of the expression ‫“( ָמָצא ֵחן ְבֵּעי ֵני‬find favor in the eyes of”). In Gen 19:19, 47:49 it is glossed with the expression, “to have kindness [‫ ]ֶחֶסד‬done to one.” “To find favor in the eyes of” occurs repeatedly in Exod 33 (vv. 12, 13, 16, 17) in the run-up to 33:19, and in the sequel to Exod 34:6 (34:9), while in 34:6 the characterization of God as ‫“( ֵאל ַרחוּם ְוַחנּוּן‬a god merciful and gracious”) is glossed with ‫“( ֶא ֶרְך ַא ַפּיִם ְו ַרב ֶחֶסד ֶוֱאֶמת‬slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness”). Cross follows the words of Fortes quoted above by saying, “ḥ esed as used in early Israel, a society structured by kinship bonds, covers precisely this semantic field” (Cross, From Epic to Canon, 5).

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seams (cf. 38:8 – 11, and 40:9 – 41:26 [Eng. 34])? The word “bless” does not occur in Job 38 – 41; yet the reality of blessing is as palpable as it is in Gen 1, or in Gen 2 where the term likewise is not used. And what if the apparent disconnect between the issues preoccupying Job and his friends in the dialogues and the content of the divine speeches signals an abrupt shift in Job’s consciousness, a shift occasioned by the onset of a Fall sirocco in all its import for the end of the long, hot, dry summer and the coming of cool, rejuvenating rains from across the eastern Mediterranean?²⁷ Might that shift in consciousness so absorb Job in its sublimity as, for the time being, to bracket those debated issues and even, momentarily, his deeper physical agony, until finally God brings him back to them in 40:8? For, after all, the divine speeches come in response to the dialogues. And, despite what is often asserted against them, the speeches do address the question of justice. The point is, however, that they do not answer the question within the confines of how justice is too often understood—as a blindfolded lady with balances in her hands—as though justice were adequately understood by such quantifying mentalities. I suggest that the divine “justice” set forth in the divine speeches is to be identified as a fundamental drive toward teeming life, a drive that issues in a cosmos that itself is not exhaustively inventoried by identifying structures and dynamics of order, but whose dynamism is displayed in part by the presence within it of energies of disruption and disorder that nevertheless are bounded. In approaching 40:8, I begin by observing that the God who speaks there, and ever since the onset of the sirocco and its following rains, speaks as Shadday (40:2). This is the name with which the Priestly tradition distinctively associates God’s blessing of the ancestors in Genesis (17:1, 28:3, 35:11, 48:3), a name under whose aegis the blessings of breast and womb are connected intimately, as by an umbilical cord, with the generativity of the whole cosmos (Gen 49:25).²⁸ As I have argued elsewhere,²⁹ Job 40:8 may be translated, “Will you even nullify my justice (‫ ?)ִמ ְשׁ ָפּט‬/ Do you have to condemn me in order for your own righteousness to be affirmed?” And I have argued that what God objects to in Job’s repeated accusa-

 For more on the significance of the storm imagery in the divine speeches, see most recently J. Gerald Janzen, At the Scent of Water: The Ground of Hope in the Book of Job (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009), 99 – 104.  With an eye to the connection between the core of the priestly blessing in Num 6:24– 26 and the descriptions of God in Exod 33:19, 34:6, we may note that in Gen 43:14, the Priestly tradition also associates those descriptions with Shadday, this time with the noun ‫“( ַרֲחִמים‬mercies”), which is cognate with the verb ‫ רחם‬in Exod 33:19.  J. Gerald Janzen, “Job and the Lord of the East Wind,” HBT 26 (2004): 8 – 13 and n. 10.

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tions is his assumption—set forth in courtroom imagery—that justification between them is a zero-sum game in which one party’s vindication necessitates the other party’s impeachment. To assume that at heart justice operates on such a calculus is to misconstrue and misrepresent God’s ‫ִמ ְשׁ ָפּט‬. That ‫ ִמ ְשׁ ָפּט‬is to be understood, or rather experienced—as the widow, orphan and sojourner of Deut 10:18 might hope to experience it—against the backdrop of God’s creative activity as set forth in the divine speeches, a creative activity that, beginning with the autumn sirocco that signals the coming of the rejuvenating rains, gives all creation its vegetative verdancy, which in turn provides food for all animal life. The ‫ ִמ ְשׁ ָפּט‬of God, like God’s blessing, is at heart a work of divine generosity that stands in no logically necessary relation to human deserving.³⁰ So viewed, I take it that God’s justice and God’s blessing—so far as the book of Job is concerned—are commensurable. What then of those people in whose circumstance all trace of such generosity has been erased by the ravages of natural catastrophe and/or human violence and injustice, or simply by the unalleviated grind, amounting to a sense of futility, of what Qohelet in the book of Ecclesiastes calls existence “under the sun”? At such a time, dare one talk of divine blessing and generosity—let alone quote Deut 10:18 and 32:4 so construed? That is Job’s agonized question. Perhaps the initial response of the friends was their deepest wisdom, insofar as they remained mute for seven days, simply condoling with him; and no doubt the wisest response of all was that of his brothers and sisters and acquaintances in the Epilogue, who came and ate bread with him and offered material assistance, enacting in these ways the free generosity that lies at the heart of both blessing and justice. But is that not what the divine speeches do, in presenting a rain-rejuvenated world to the Job who had longed (14:7– 9) that, his life having become like a tree that had been hewn down, he might yet gain the scent of water and be renewed? The divine speeches, as I have most recently come to read them, make no attempt to answer Job’s theological question within the terms by which he frames it, but instead invite Job to allow himself to be drawn back into the web of a rejuvenated creation sufficiently to be renewed from his own embittered appetite for life. That Job’s sense of ‫ ִמ ְשׁ ָפּט‬does not remain stuck in the quid pro quo logic in which he and his friends had been mired is suggested by the way in which he deals with his friends when they come to him in the epilogue (42:9). A

 As a later participant in this debate between Job and his friends will put the matter, “he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matt 5:45).

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morally embittered person typically demands justice as weighed out on the finest scales, for “what other sense is there” (to reprise Cooper’s comment)? But the Job who has heard God speak in and through a rejuvenated cosmos deals with his friends by praying to God on their behalf. In and through that act of generosity, carried out ‫( ִח ָנּם‬that is, for his own reasons, which the friends’ erstwhile act-consequence reasonings know not of), Job answers Satan’s questioning on his own behalf and therein on behalf of God. Having said all this, I have the feeling that at some very deep level Cooper and I are not that far apart, insofar as we agree that the term ‫ ִח ָנּם‬is a key to the interpretation of the whole book and therefore to our understanding of both blessing and justice. We have the right term as a common ground; it is only the multivalent connotations that remain to be heard rightly and weighted visà-vis one another.

Thomas Krüger (University of Zurich)

Job Spoke the Truth about God (Job 42:7 – 8) 1 The Problem¹ At the end of the book of Job, Yhwh says to Eliphaz the Temanite: I am incensed at you and your two friends, for you have not spoken the truth about me as did my servant Job. Now take seven bulls and seven rams and go to my servant Job and sacrifice a burnt offering for yourselves. And let Job, my servant, pray for you; for to him I will show favor and not treat you vilely, since you have not spoken the truth about me as did my servant Job. (Job 42:7– 8)²

The statement that Job has spoken the truth about Yhwh comes as a bit of a surprise after Job’s final speech in 42:1– 6, in which he qualified—if not revoked—all his former comments: “Indeed, I spoke without understanding of things beyond me, which I did not know” (42:3). Is Job’s final self-criticism in this verse wrong in the eyes of Yhwh? Was Job right when he said that God “destroys the blameless and the guilty” and mocks the plight of the innocent “when suddenly a scourge brings death” (9:22– 23)? Is it true that God does not take action against evil and does not care about the victims of injustice (Job 21; 24)? Has God “disarmed and humbled” Job, “regarded him as clay,” and made him “like dust and ashes” (30:11, 19) without cause? Modern commentators have often found it difficult to imagine that this was the opinion of the authors or editors of the book of Job. In 1895 Duncan Macdonald wrote: Either there is here the most absolute contradiction or there is the most tremendous irony on the part of the author. There is no escape from this dilemma; either we have some structural confusion that annihilates sense, or the indictment of the rule of the universe is crowned by a plea of guilty from its Ruler…. It is true that exegetes make the most ingenious attempts to smooth out this contradiction, but what will not exegetes attempt?³

 I would like to thank Sarah Shectman and Scott C. Jones for editing my English.  All citations from the Hebrew Bible are direct quotations or adaptations from the NJPS, unless otherwise noted.  Duncan B. Macdonald, “The Original Form of the Legend of Job,” JBL 14 (1895): 63 – 71, here 66. DOI 10.1515/9783110428148-006

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In this essay, I argue that one should take the final words of God in the book of Job seriously: Job did speak the truth about God, and God’s acknowledgment of that fact means, as Macdonald stated, that Job’s “indictment of the rule of the universe is crowned by a plea of guilty from its Ruler.”

2 Common Exegetical Solutions Macdonald holds that Job 42:7– 8 can only be understood as the literary residue of an earlier version of the book of Job in which Job had taken God’s part, while his friends had followed more or less implicitly the course of Job’s wife in our prologue…. In this form of the story he is patient throughout. He endures the trials of the Satan, the querulousness of his wife,… the compassion of his friends, how expressed we cannot now know, and we can only conjecture that it must have contained murmurs against God; he endures all and in the end receives his reward. He has spoken of God that which is right.⁴

Even if one agrees with this explanation, the question of how to understand Yhwh’s statement that Job has spoken the truth about him in its present context remains open–unless one follows Macdonald in thinking that the book of Job from ch. 27 on is “a chaos” consisting of “fragments dating from different periods in his [the book’s author’s] development.”⁵ Could it be that the current translation of the Hebrew sentence ‫ל ֹא ִד ַבּ ְר ֶתּם ֵאַלי‬ ‫ ְנכוֹ ָנה ְכַּעְב ִדּי ִאיּוֹב‬as “you have not spoken the truth about me as did my servant Job” or the like is simply wrong? Manfred Oeming suggests that the proclamation should instead be translated, “ihr habt nicht recht zu mir geredet wie mein Knecht Hiob.”⁶ According to Oeming, God does not say that what Job has spoken about him was true, but rather that it was right that Job spoke to God, even if Job accused God of injustice and mercilessness. Indeed, in chs. 3 – 27 (and in

 Macdonald, “The Original Form,” 66 – 67. For other commentators who share this view, see Hans-Peter Müller, Das Hiobproblem (3d ed.; Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1995), 36 – 48; Choon Leong Seow, Job 1 – 21: Interpretation and Commentary (Illuminations; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2013), 28 – 29.  Macdonald, “The Original Form,” 69.  Manfred Oeming, “Ihr habt nicht recht von mir geredet wie mein Knecht Hiob,” EvT 60 (2000): 103 – 116, here 113 [“you have not spoken rightly to me as did my servant Job”]. Cf. Dale Patrick, “Job’s Address to God,” ZAW 91 (1979): 268 – 282, esp. 269; Kenneth N. Ngwa, The Hermeneutics of the ‘Happy’ Ending in Job 42:7 – 17 (BZAW 354; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2005), 11– 12.

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chs. 32– 37) the friends never address God directly, whereas Job does so several times. In particular, they never pray for Job as Job does for them in 42:8. Oeming argues that the preposition ‫( ֶאל‬not ‫ )ַעל‬after ‫( דבר‬piel) or ‫( אמר‬qal) usually (and in the book of Job always) means “(to speak) to somebody” (not about somebody or something).⁷ But in the Hebrew Bible, ‫ ֶאל‬and ‫ ַעל‬are often confused,⁸ and in a considerable number of instances ‫ ֶאל‬obviously means “about, concerning” instead of “to, toward.”⁹ Most notably, even if one agrees with Oeming’s interpretation of the preposition ‫ ֶאל‬in Job 42:7– 8, one must reckon with the fact that Yhwh claims not only that Job has spoken to him (unlike his friends), but also that Job has spoken “the truth” (‫) ְנכוֹ ָנה‬¹⁰ to him. Since Job did not hold back from saying to Yhwh what he had already said about God to his friends, Oeming’s interpretation of Job 42:7– 8 does not altogether solve the difficulties that passage poses. One is still left with the question: How does Job speak “truth” to God? Some exegetes assume that in Job 42:7– 8 Yhwh refers not to Job’s speeches in Job 3 – 31 but to his final statement in 42:1– 6, which revokes Job’s earlier comments.¹¹ However, the beginning of 42:7– 8 (“after Yhwh had spoken these words to Job, Yhwh said to Eliphaz the Temanite …”) connects these lines to the end of Job 41 and virtually ignores 42:1– 6, which would be odd if 42:7– 8 were meant to make specific reference to Job’s statement in 42:1– 6. Others think that ‫ ְנכוֹ ָנה‬in 42:7– 8 does not mean “the truth” or “what is true” but something like “honestly” or “with understandable motives” or even “constructively.” But these appear to be ad hoc hypotheses.¹²

 Oeming, “Ihr habt nicht recht von mir geredet,” 113.  In the book of Job, compare the BHS apparatus for 1:8; 2:5; 15:13, 25, 26; 34:28. In 2 Chr 32:19, ‫( דבר‬piel) is used with ‫ ֶאל‬and ‫ ַעל‬in one sentence, both times meaning “(to speak) about.”  See DCH 1:260–71, s.v. “‫ֶאל‬.”  See CDCH, s.v. “‫” ְנכוֹ ָנה‬: “that which is right, the truth” (differing from DCH 1:373, meaning 2b: “correctly, certainly”). For a defense of the traditional translation, “the truth,” compare Edward L. Greenstein, review of Duck Woo Nam, Talking about God: Job 42:7 – 9 and the Nature of God in the Book of Job, RBL 7 (2004): 3; cited 29 April 2016; online: http://www.bookreviews.org/pdf/ 3195_3573.pdf; also Ngwa, Hermeneutics, 13.  See Georg Fohrer, Das Buch Hiob (KAT 16; Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, 1963), 539: “Eigentlich enthalten nur die Hiobworte in 40,4– 5; 42,2– 6 das ‘Wahre’ über Gott” [“only Job’s words in 40:4– 5; 42:2– 6 contain ‘what is true’ about God”]. In Fohrer’s view, this is true for the present edition of the book of Job. In an earlier edition, 42:7– 8 referred to a dialogue between Job and his three friends that has been replaced by ch. 3 – 31 (and 32– 37).  Cf. the literature cited in n. 10 above.

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3 An Attempt to take Job 42:7 – 8 Seriously In Job 42:7– 8, Yhwh draws a contrast between what Job said about him and what Job’s friends said about him. It therefore seems likely that Yhwh refers here to what Job and his friends said in the poetic dialogue (Job 3 – 31).¹³ Job 42:7– 8 clearly states that what the friends said about God is wrong. Thus it is wrong, among other things, that (1) God regularly rewards or punishes humans according to their good or bad conduct; (2) no human being can be righteous and innocent before God; (3) people who are suffering may not accuse God; (4) traditional knowledge about God and the world has more weight than one’s own experience; and (5) humans are not able to make true statements about God and the world because of their limited knowledge.¹⁴ Conversely, Job 42:7– 8 states that what Job said about God is correct. But doesn’t Job appear in some instances to say the same thing as his friends? So, for example, in 24:13 – 24 and 27:13 – 23 what Job says about the fate of the wicked is virtually the same as what the three friends said in their preceding speeches. This has led some exegetes to conclude that the present shape of Job 22– 28 is a result of (accidental or intentional) editorial confusion or supplementation.¹⁵ But these passages are perhaps to be taken ironically (cf. 24:25 and 27:7) as meaning the opposite of what they are saying. Job 24:13 – 24 may also be interpreted not as a description of how things are but as a description of how things should be.¹⁶ Similarly, Job 27:7 may be a clue that the following is to be read in an optative sense: “May my enemy be as the wicked; my assailant, as the wrongdoer.” Here Job may have both his friends and God in view as enemies and assailants (cf. 13:24, 19:11, 30:21). Job also appears to agree with his friends that no human being can be completely righteous and innocent before God (14:4, 16 – 17). But if so, Job argues, God should not meticulously punish every single wrongdoing but forgive

 Among others, see Seow, Job 1 – 21, 87– 92; Edward L. Greenstein, “Truth or Theodicy? Speaking Truth to Power in the Book of Job,” PSB 27 (2006): 238 – 58, here 256 – 58; Norman C. Habel, The Book of Job (OTL; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1985), 583 – 84; Marvin H. Pope, Job (AB 15; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1965), 290.  These basic theological opinions of Job’s friends are expounded in their first speeches (on 1– 3, cf. Job 4– 5; on 4, cf. Job 8; and on 5, cf. Job 11) and repeated and elaborated in the following rounds of talks.  See Seow, Job 1 – 21, 29 – 30.  Compare the Old Greek translation of vv. 18 – 19 and 20: “May their earthly portion be cursed, and may their plants on earth appear withered … may what he did be paid back to him, and may every unjust person be crushed like an incurable tree” (NETS).

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human sins and overlook minor errors (7:17– 21). Moreover, Job holds on to his innocence in the sense that his disaster cannot be reasonably understood as an adequate punishment for his wrongdoing (13:18, 23). In so doing, Job clearly contradicts his friends.¹⁷ Like his friends, Job states that humans cannot argue with God; however, in Job’s view this is not because God is always in the right, as Bildad says in 8:3, but because God is so mighty that no one can put him on trial (9:2– 20) or sit in judgment against him (9:32– 33). Job also agrees with his friends that humans only have limited knowledge about God and the world (23:8 – 9; 28). But in Job’s view this does not compromise his ability to judge whether God is treating him justly or unfairly or whether the world is just. Whereas Job’s friends are convinced that traditional knowledge about God and the world has more weight than one’s own experience (8:8 – 10), Job insists that his experiences are valuable sources of knowledge (6:30, 12:11, 13:1). When God acknowledges in 42:7– 8 that Job has spoken the truth about him, the main points in view appear to be the following: (1) Every statement about God is perspectival. (2) God is ambivalent and sometimes self-contradictory. (3) God is not fair (at least not always). (4) When humans are confronted with God’s injustice, they may appeal to God against God. I now treat each of these in turn.

3.1 Every Statement about God is Perspectival¹⁸ Job’s friends talk about God in the third person. They speak of God as if they were standing on the sidelines as uninvolved onlookers. When they do refer to their own experiences (in the first person), it is only to confirm traditional and “objective” knowledge (cf., e. g., 5:27; 15:17– 19). Job’s speeches, however, challenge his friends’ “objective” knowledge (15:4). They respond by attempting to devalue and invalidate Job’s arguments, drawing on the traditional and collective knowledge of past generations (8:8 – 10). Job is well aware of the differences between his own point of view and that of his friends (16:4). He insists on his own experience yet admits that his words  In their first speeches, Job’s friends appear to be convinced of his innocence (cf. 4:6; 8:6; less clearly, 11:14). But as the dialogue goes on, they are more and more convinced of Job’s guilt (cf. 15:5 – 6).  See Carol A. Newsom, The Book of Job: A Contest of Moral Imaginations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).

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may be rash because he is in his distress (6:2– 5). Unlike his friends, Job does not urge them to adopt his perspective, but he asks them to accept that what he says about God is true to his experience and thus not without reason (21:2– 5). So they should tolerate his talk, even if they disagree (6:14).¹⁹

3.2 God is Ambivalent and Sometimes Self-Contradictory²⁰ Job’s friends are convinced that God is always and unambiguously just and fair in his interactions with humans (see, e. g., Job 8). If his actions sometimes seem to be opaque or unfair, this is only because God is so great that humans cannot grasp his motives and deliberations (see, e. g., Job 11). In that case, humans ought to humble themselves before God (see, e. g., Job 5). To doubt God’s justice is out of the question (cf. 8:3). God’s actions are sometimes constructive and sometimes destructive, but they are always fair (see, e. g., 5:10 – 16). In contrast, Job insists that God acts destructively or constructively²¹ without any understandable reason (see, e. g., 9:3 – 9, 17).²² Eventually God destroys what he has carefully created (see, e. g., 10:8 – 19). God blessed Job and protected him, his household, and his possessions (1:10; cf. Job 29), but there came a day when God stripped Job of everything he had and struck him with deadly illness (Job 1– 2; cf. Job 30). God requires humans to fear him and to shun evil (28:28; cf. 1:8; 2:3), but God also destroys the blameless and the guilty without distinction (9:22). God is thus ambivalent and even self-contradictory.

3.3 God is Not Fair (At Least Not Always) Statements such as those found in 9:22– 23 no doubt make it difficult for some interpreters to accept Yhwh’s judgment that Job’s God-talk was “truth.” There

 That every statement about God is perspectival is confirmed and underlined by the composition of the book of Job. Not only do Job and his friends have different points of view, but so do the narrator and God. One of the unsettling effects of this literary device is that readers of the book are left to wonder why God discloses to Job that he was testing him and whether God thinks that Job has passed the test.  See Katherine J. Dell, The Book of Job as Sceptical Literature (BZAW 197; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1991).  Accordingly, God shows in his speeches in Job 38 – 41 that he likes order (38:4– 38) as well as chaos (represented by Behemoth and Leviathan in 40:15 – 41:26).  Compare God’s own confession to having mistreated Job without reason (2:3).

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Job says that God “destroys the blameless and the guilty. When suddenly a scourge brings death, He mocks as the innocent fail.” It is indeed difficult to see why God would ultimately agree with such statements. However, in the speeches in Job 38 – 41 Yhwh does not show the slightest interest in human beings who are suffering, exploited, and oppressed. And in the prologue (Job 1– 2), Yhwh does not shy away from allowing countless humans and animals to be killed, just to determine whether Job fears God only because God cares for him. Thus the dire picture of God in some of Job’s speeches is in fact compatible with the views of God exhibited by the narrator of Job 1– 2 and the poet of Job 38 – 41. Indeed, this gloomy picture of God is brightened little by God’s final confession in 42:7– 8 (cf. 31:33 – 34). In 2:3, Yhwh says to the Satan: “You have incited me against [Job] to destroy him for no good reason.” In 42:7– 8, Yhwh frankly admits that he is in danger of doing foolish or outrageous things (‫) ְנָבָלה‬²³ when he is infuriated. Moreover, the double restitution of Job’s property in 42:12 can be understood as an admission of guilt on the part of Yhwh and as an attempt to propitiate Job (cf. Exod 22:2– 3). In view of these strikingly self-critical statements by Yhwh, it is not completely inconceivable that in 42:7– 8 “the indictment of the rule of the universe is crowned by a plea of guilty from its Ruler,” as Macdonald argued.²⁴ Moreover, this plea of “guilty” from the ruler of the universe may be the real happy ending of the book of Job. It is obvious to Job that this world is not just (Job 21; 24). Its creator and ruler by all appearances only occasionally steps in against injustice, if at all (38:12– 15). But God also never claims to be fair. Nevertheless, God does at least occasionally listen to human laments, complaints, or even accusations and change his course of action, as in the case of Job. (Sadly, after Job’s restoration neither God nor Job appears to care for the multitudes of suffering, exploited, and oppressed humans whose lot Job bewailed so impressively in Job 24.)

 According to CDCH, ‫ ְנָבָלה‬means “sacrilege, outrage, serious disorderly conduct, rather than folly” (s.v. “‫)” ְנָבָלה‬. For Job 42:8, CDCH suggests the translation “disgrace,” but when someone does ‫ ְנָבָלה‬with/to others, the “disgrace” is on the side of the acting subject, not on the side of the objects. Cf. Ngwa Hermeneutics, 16 – 18.  Macdonald, “The Original Form,” 66.

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3.4 Appealing to God against God²⁵ Not only does Job state that God is ambivalent and unfair (at least sometimes), but he also hopes that God can be moved to change his mind and (re‐)establish justice. Job’s friends express the same hope, at least in their first speeches (cf. e. g., 4:6 – 7; 5:8 – 26). But they are reluctant to argue with God and to address their reproaches to him (cf. 5:1– 7). Instead, they try to defend God and answer for him (13:7– 8; 36:2). Job, however, wants to argue with God. In the course of the dialogue with his friends, Job is at first highly skeptical about the possibility of bringing God before the court (9:32– 33). But he grows increasingly confident that God (or some heavenly being) will eventually vindicate him (16:19 – 21; 19:25 – 27) or at least answer him (31:35 – 37). Thus Job not only complains about God but also tries to influence God to change his mind and behavior. Job’s efforts are at least partially successful. In 42:7– 8, Yhwh finally accepts Job’s verdict that he is a wicked wrongdoer and eventually confesses that he mistreated Job and wronged him. As a result, Yhwh “restored Job’s fortunes” and “blessed the latter years of Job’s life more than the former” (42:10, 12). Apparently such an attitude change cannot be expected regularly, as Job’s friends had suggested (cf. 5:8 – 26; 8:5 – 22); it is exceptional and unreliable. Nevertheless, it may be something of a silver lining at the end of the book of Job: God may not be fair, but sometimes humans who confront him as Job did can move God to intercede against injustice. And sometimes, as in 42:7– 8, God even asks humans to step in to prevent him from acting foolishly and vilely when he is incensed.²⁶

4 Conclusion If the above considerations are correct, the picture of God drawn by the book of Job is similar to divine depictions in the most prominent “Joban” literary works of the ancient Near East. Thus the Poem of the Righteous Sufferer, Ludlul bēl nēmeqi,²⁷ begins with a hymn on the ambivalence of Marduk:

 According to Jörg Jeremias, this is one of the theological highlights of the book of Job (Theologie des Alten Testaments [Grundrisse zum Alten Testament 6; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015], 472– 73).  Remarkably, after Job had already desisted from arguing with God in 40:3 – 5, Yhwh again incited him to continue the dispute (40:6 – 7).  Benjamin R. Foster, Before the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian Literature (3d ed.; Bethesda: CDL Press, 2005), 392– 409.

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Furious in the night, growing calm in the day: Whose anger, like a raging tempest, is a desolation, But whose breeze is sweet as the breath of morn. (I 4– 6)²⁸

Human beings and their opinions are similarly inconstant: Suddenly one is downcast, in a trice full of cheer, One moment he sings in exaltation, in a trice he groans like a professional mourner.… Starving, they become like corpses, Full, they would rival their gods. In good times, they speak of scaling heaven, When it goes badly, they complain of going down to hell. (II 40 – 47)²⁹

What appears to be true depends on one’s perspective and personal circumstances. Toward the end of the so-called Babylonian Theodicy,³⁰ the friend of the sufferer blames the main creator gods for human injustice: Enlil [Narru], king of the gods, who created teeming humankind, Majestic Ea [Zulummar], who pinched off their clay, The queen who fashioned them, mistress Mami, Gave twisted words to the human race, They endowed them in perpetuity with lies and falsehood. (276 – 80)³¹

Nevertheless, the only way out for humans is to ask the gods for help, as the sufferer does at the end of the poem: May the god who has cast me off grant help, May the goddess who has [forsaken me] take pity, The shepherd Shamash will past[ure] people as a god should. (295 – 297)³²

The depiction of God in the book of Job is different from the depiction of God as a good and fair ruler of the world, which is more prominent elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible (cf. e. g., Ps 145). But the idea that God is ambivalent, causing good and bad alike (Job 2:10, 42:11), is not completely foreign to the Hebrew Bible (e. g., Isa 45:6 – 7: “I am Yhwh and there is none else, I form light and create

    

Ibid., 394. Ibid., 399. Ibid., 914– 22. Ibid., 921. Ibid., 922.

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darkness, I make weal and create woe–I Yhwh do all these things”; and Amos 3:6: “Can misfortune come to a town if Yhwh has not caused it?”).³³ The depiction of God in the book of Job is approximated in the New Testament’s comparison of God to an unjust judge moved to carry out his duty by the persistent pleas of a widow (Luke 18:2– 5).³⁴ The insight that God is not fair (at least not in the sense of retributive fairness or justice³⁵) is not completely foreign to Christian theology.³⁶ Arguing with God is an important part of Jewish tradition.³⁷ The book of Job is an impressive encouragement to struggle with an unfair God, and an expression of hope that God will not ignore human arguments or even indictments.³⁸ Instead of defending God’s fairness, as Job’s “counsellors” do, people should help those who are in distress, like Job’s relatives and friends, who plainly act against God and thereby move Yhwh to change his mind: All [Job’s] brothers and sisters and all his former friends came to him and had a meal with him in his house. They consoled and comforted him for all the misfortune that Yhwh had brought upon him. Each gave him one kesitah and each one gold ring. Thus Yhwh blessed the latter years of Job’s life more than the former. (Job 42:11– 12)

 A passionate plea against this view can be found in Sir 39:16 – 35: “all the works of the Lord are (very) good” (vv. 16 and 33, NRSV).  According to François Bovon (Luke 2 [Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013], 532), Luke 18:2– 5 “may go back substantially to the historical Jesus (although it is true that some of the wording results from successive rereadings).” In the original parable, the relationship between the judge and the widow appears to be a model for the relationship between God and humans, whereas the present context stresses the difference between the unjust judge and God.  For Paul, “‘the righteousness of God,’ … means God’s saving activity (Rom. 1.18), characteristically seen in justification by his grace through faith (Rom. 3.21– 6). Indeed one of the reasons why the apostle is often held to be quoting a pre-Pauline formula in the last passage is that in v. 25 God’s righteousness can be held to mean God’s justice in a strictly judicial sense and not his saving activity” (John Ziesler, “Righteousness,” in The Oxford Companion to the Bible [ed. Bruce M. Metzger and Michael D. Coogan; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993], 655 – 56, here 655).  See Andreas Beck, Gott ist nicht gut und nicht gerecht: Zum Gottesbild der Gegenwart (Düsseldorf: Patmos, 2008).  See Anson Laytner, Arguing with God: A Jewish Tradition (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1990).  See David R. Blumenthal, Facing the Abusing God: A Theology of Protest (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1993).

Manfred Oeming (University of Heidelberg)

The Kerygma of the Book of Job

He is very successful: his name has become a book. “The Seow” is now synonymous with Choon Leong Seow’s commentary on the book of Job. This impressive work offers an amazing amount of learned material about Job—including the history of historical-critical research; the history of the book’s reception in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam; philological annotations; and thoughtful literary analyses.¹ In an admirable way, Seow knows how to interpret the book as a meaningful unity written by one author! The most stimulating and, theologically speaking, provocative element of Seow’s commentary on Job is his implicit theory of truth. Seow argues that the one author of Job provides a multiplicity of answers to the question of the meaning of suffering without favoring any one of them. As a gesture of congratulations to my esteemed colleague on his birthday, this essay (1) defines the framework of research concerning the intention(s) of the book; (2) systemizes the different interpretations; and (3) attempts to demonstrate that there is indeed one message of the book—a kerygma. My thesis is that the book is composed, in part, to show Job’s development (the character of Job is not the same at the end as he was at the beginning), to convince the readers about Yhwh’s intentions, and to take readers on a similar spiritual journey.

1 The Message of the Book of Job: A Riddle of Research Like Gen 18:24– 33, the book of Job questions the justice of God in a radical manner. The story of the righteous and exceptionally rich paragon who experiences a sudden downfall into poverty and disease is crafted so wonderfully that it offers a forum for discussing the multifaceted field of theodicy. The book addresses “the problem of Job”² from very different points of view and through a variety of literary figures: Why and to what end does all this evil strike Job? This is disputed in the narrations, complaints, lawsuits, speeches (between God and Satan, between Job and his wife, as well as in the ferocious disputes of Job and his

 See my longer review article: “Die konservative Revolution: zum neuen Ijob-Kommentar von C. Leong Seow,” BZ 60 (2016): 228 – 47.  Hans-Peter Müller, Das Hiobproblem: Seine Stellung und Entstehung im Alten Orient und im Alten Testament (EdF 84; Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1978). DOI 10.1515/9783110428148-007

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friends), and three monologues (of Job, Elihu, and God). Finally, what response does the book of Job as a whole give to the fundamental question of theodicy? Does the book even want to give one clear message—a kerygma? As Karl Günther argues in a recent article, the interpretation of Job was already a point of controversy in the ancient period.³ The Greek, Aramaic, and Syriac translations, as well as the reception of Job in early Judaism, attest to highly divergent interpretations. This is also the case in the Christian church, in philosophy, poetry, painting, and music down to the present.⁴ (Maybe) surprisingly, after 2200 years of reception history and 300 years of historical-critical research, solutions to this central problem still vary greatly. The only certainty of this research is the great discrepancy between the assessments of intention(s) in meaning. One catalyst for this wide array of opinions is the fact that scholars employ divergent interpretive methods. The book of Job can, for example, be considered from the perspectives of literary criticism and redaction history to be the work of many different authors who wrote diverse supplements and arranged the text over and over again in multiple editorial layers.⁵ For these approaches, it is questionable whether the book has one meaning or rather a choir of many voices. Some scholars even contend that the search for one meaning is a modern anachronism because the style of reading in antiquity was atomistic.⁶ According to them, the book’s avoidance of a clear solution corresponds to the culture of debate as found in the Talmud. Thus the reader witnesses a multiplicity of opinions, arguments, and a dramatic discussion, but the long dialogues do not have a development of thought or reach a settled conclusion. In the end, the dis Karl Günther, “Hiob—Gestalt und Buch in der jüdischen Schriftauslegung,” in Die Welt ist in Verbrecherhand gegeben? Annäherrungen an das Theodizeeproblem aus der Perspektive des Hiobbuches (ed. Axel Graupner and Manfred Oeming; BThSt 153; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 2015), 75 – 110.  Cf. Stephen J. Vicchio, The Image of the Biblical Job: A History (3 vols.; Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2006); Choon Leong Seow, Job 1 – 21: Interpretation and Commentary (Illuminations; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2013), 110 – 248, summarizing an astonishing amount of literature; and Manfred Oeming, “Job in Christian Reception,” in EBR (ed. Christine Helmar et al.; Berlin: de Gruyter, forthcoming).  Cf., e. g., Stephan Lauber, Weisheit im Widerspruch: Studien zu den Elihu-Reden in Ijob 32 – 37 (BZAW 454; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2014); Roger Marcel Wanke, “Die Redaktionsgeschichte des Hiobbuches als Spiegel des Ringens um eine theologische Lösung des Theodizeeproblems,” in Graupner and Oeming, Die Welt ist in Verbrecherhand gegeben?, 43 – 74.  For example, Erhard Blum pointed out that in antiquity commentators were often concerned with single verses. The question of the larger composition or even a total intention is, for him, a modern one (Studien zur Komposition des Pentateuch [BZAW 189; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1990], 361– 81, especially 380 f).

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putants stick to their points of view, and the reader must form his or her own opinion.⁷ Without going into detail, I would like to emphasize the following four points: (1) The complex text of Job has a clear structure, even if this structure is comprised of distinct elements. The composition is well-balanced, almost geometrical in its structure, and thoroughly wrought.⁸ (2) All elements of this composition make sense, in my judgment. Even if the book’s intention cannot be determined at every point with the same precision (because of the lack of meta-texts), the book as a whole does not present itself as a heap of rubble pieced together out of fragments of a great confession. The oddities and strange phenomena in the book should be interpreted as significant poetic devices.⁹ This suggests a single intention of meaning. (3) The book contains a vivid development of speeches. It is not true that the participants are talking at cross-purposes. Job is capable of arguing directly with his friends, and they in return understand perfectly well what Job is rebelling against. The difference in length between the speeches does not mean that the characters are not referring to or engaging with one another. That the discussion terminates in some kind of bewildered silence, criticizing human reason (ch. 28), appears intentional. (4) The story of the book follows a dramatic development. The plot opens in chs. 1– 2 and reaches its conclusion in ch. 42. Initially, Job is depicted as an extraordinarily blessed man—unsurpassed in social standing and health—until  Seow argues for a compilation of different points of view and against a synthesis. This polyvalent reading is based often on Mikhail Bakhtin and his polyphonic theory of truth. See Walter L. Reed, “Dimensions of Dialog in the Book of Job: A Topology according to Bakhtin,” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 34 (1992): 177– 96; Carol A. Newsom, “Re-considering Job,” CBR 5 (2007): 155 – 82.  Extreme positions are taken by Jan P. Fokklemann (The Book of Job in Form: A Literary Translation with Commentary [SSN 58; Leiden: Brill, 2012]) and Aris Margianto (Antike Seelsorge heute? Studien zum Umgang mit Verlust, Krankheit und Tod im Buch Hiob, in der modernen Seelsorge und bei HIV-Patienten in Indonesien [ATM 28; Münster: LIT, 2016]), both of whom regard every single verse as original; similar are Gerhard Kaiser and Hans-Peter Mathys (Das Buch Hiob: Dichtung als Theologie [BTS 81; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 2006]), who assume that the book not only became an integrated whole but was supposed to be a unit from the beginning. Seow (Job 1 – 21) also assumes one author for the entire book.  In numerous case studies, I have shown this interrelation: Job’s sacrifice at the start and the end of the book, the function of Job’s wife, the lament of Job, the song of Wisdom (Job 28), the speeches of Elihu, God’s reply, and the rehabilitation of Job. These papers will soon be published in an anthology in the series Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht).

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misfortune and severe illness come crashing down on him. This throws Job into a deep depression and even causes him to despise his own existence. Job’s harsh and bitter accusation against God because of his undeserved suffering borders on blasphemy; eventually he crosses this line as well. Nevertheless, through sorrow and rage, Job still holds on to God. In the end, Yhwh reveals himself out of the storm, and teaches Job an exhaustive lesson. Even when God’s message remains an enigma, Job is able eventually to make his peace with God. After Job ultimately intercedes for his friends, he is more exalted than before. In conclusion, it is possible to interpret all of the book’s elements—even its repetitions, contradictions, and deviations in thought—as expressions of a developing process. The function of the particular features can be understood by keeping the big picture in view. The problem of the meaning of the whole story is not an anachronistic trap on the road to interpretation, as numerous examples in the Hebrew Bible show. For example, the entire narrative of Joseph in Egypt (Gen 37– 50) should be understood in light of Gen 50:24. The great reflections on the downfall of the kingdom of Israel (2 Kgs 17:7– 21) and the destruction of the kingdom of Judah (2 Kgs 24:1– 4) span a large quantity of texts and provide a hermeneutical key to it. Grasping the meaning of complex master compositions is part of Scripture itself and thus belongs to inner-biblical exegesis. Holistic interpretations of Job begin with Jewish and Christian reception of the book in antiquity (incidentally, this is true for rabbinical scholarship as well).¹⁰ The sheer number of holistic interpretations, however, is confusing, even obscure. On one side of the spectrum, Job is viewed as the perfect example of a patient, God-fearing man. On the other side, he is a dismissible heretic. According to my analysis of the text, the book’s writers, or rather its final editor, sought to express the development that Job himself underwent. The Job at the end of the book is not the same figure as the Job at the beginning. The last words of Job in which he evaluates his recent history are decisive in determining the meaning: From hearsay I heard of you, But now my eye has seen you. Therefore, I repent and comfort myself in dust and ashes. (42:5 – 6)

 See Müller, Das Hiobproblem; and Günther, “Hiob—Gestalt und Buch in der jüdischen Schriftauslegung,” 75 – 110.

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“But now” occurs 267 times in the Hebrew Bible. The waw is often an adversative waw, used to signal a profound change (e. g., Gen 3:22, 4:11). This “but” marks Job’s perception of God that is remarkably different than his previous opinion.

2 What Did Job Learn about God and Divine Justice? After a long dramaturgical development and lengthy debates, and informed by numerous thoughts, arguments, and emotions, Job now thinks differently about God.¹¹ Sadly, however, the text offers no clear explanation for this sudden change. Each reader must come up with his or her own theory about the catalyst for Job’s epiphany in 42:5 – 6. In every evolution of theory, the guiding principle is that as many phenomena as possible should be explained by as few assumptions as possible. In the next section, I briefly outline nine different positions and identify a few representatives of each.

2.1 The Book of Job is Instruction on Setting Aside Traditional Viewpoints. The Deed-Consequence Nexus Does Not Exist at All¹² The religious tradition in which Job was raised and which influenced his daily life is a kind of classical school knowledge. According to this tradition, there is a just world order, the so-called Deed-Consequence Nexus. The underlying concept is that God rewards good deeds with wellbeing and repays bad deeds with ill consequences. Through ethically good behavior, constant repentance,

 In the language of the Bible, this juxtaposition of two sets of times can be found frequently. It occurs prominently in Rom 3:21: Νυνὶ δὲ χωρὶς νόμου δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ πεφανέρωται μαρτυρουμένη ὑπὸ τοῦ νόμου καὶ τῶν προφητῶν (“But now apart from the law the righteousness of God is revealed, to which the Law and the Prophets testify”).  This interpretation is represented especially by Matitiahu Tsevat, “The Meaning of the Book of Job,” HUCA 37 (1966): 73 – 106. See also B. Lynne Newell, “Job: Repentant or Rebellious?” WTJ 46 (1984): 298 – 316; Stephen A. Geller, “Nature’s Answer: The Meaning of the Book of Job in its Intellectual Context,” in Judaism and Ecology: Created World and Revealed Word (ed. Hava Tirosh-Samuelson; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 109 – 32; Jean Lévêque, Job ou le drame de la foi: Essais (ed. Maurice Gilbert and François Mies; LD 216; Paris: Cerf, 2007); and Daniel C. Timmer, “God’s Speeches, Job’s Responses, and the Problem of Coherence in the Book of Job: Sapiential Pedagogy Revisited,” CBQ 71 (2009): 286 – 305.

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and ritual sacrifices, one can influence favorably the process of forgiveness. The hope that God will prove to be a just judge, and that God will repay everyone’s deeds justly, is taught especially to young people in Israelite pedagogy so that they may orient their lives accordingly. It is never too late to repent and improve oneself‒and thereby gain rewards for it. Life experience, however, showed Job that this is an inappropriate theory; it is merely wishful thinking. As Michael V. Fox says, “There is now a near-consensus that the Book of Job teaches that the universe lacks a moral economy in which deeds are met by appropriate and commensurate reward and punishment.”¹³ God acts in sovereign capriciousness. God may dethrone the mighty, pour loathing over the elites, give success to villains, or make the wise dumb, and vice versa.

2.2 The Book of Job Teaches that the Deed-Consequence Nexus is Imperceptible to Humans Job must accept it: The Deed-Consequence Nexus does exist, but it is not perceptible to humankind (Job 28). Trying to fathom the will of God is hopeless and futile. Even in God’s self-revelation in the storm, Yhwh does not reveal the logic of the events (Job 38 – 41). For instance, Job is never told about the wager between God and Satan to test his faith. All that remains for humans is to submit to God’s reign. Just as the prayer in the cuneiform wisdom text Ludlul bēl nēmeqi,¹⁴ the mortal Job had to learn that the acts of God are simply to be accepted; life runs only according to the will of Yhwh. An essential element of the deity of God is the freedom of God.¹⁵

 Michael V. Fox, “God’s Answer and Job’s Response,” Bib 94 (2013): 1– 23, here 1.  See especially the translation by Wolfram von Soden, “Der leidende Gerechte: Ludlul bēl nēmeqi,” TUAT 3/1: 110 – 35; as well as the studies of Hermann Spieckermann, “Ludlul bel nemeqi und die Frage nach der Gerechtigkeit Gottes,” in Gottes Liebe zu Israel: Studien zur Theologie des Alten Testaments (FAT 33; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001), 103 – 18; Rainer Albertz, “Ludlul bel nemeqi—eine Lehrdichtung zur Ausbreitung und Vertiefung der persönlichen Mardukfrömmigkeit,” in Geschichte und Theologie: Studien zur Exegese des Alten Testaments und zur Religionsgeschichte Israels (ed. Ingo Kottsieper and Jakob Wö hrle, with Gabi Kern; BZAW 326; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2003), 85 – 105; and Meik Gerhards, “Lob des unverständlichen Gottes: Annäherung an die babylonische Dichtung Ludlulbēlnēmeqi,” in Der undefinierbare Gott: Theologische Annährungen an alttestamentliche und altorientalische Texte (Rostocker Theologische Studien 24; Berlin: LIT, 2011), 93 – 152.  See Angelika Berlejung, “Sin and Punishment: The Ethics of Divine Justice and Retribution in Ancient Near Eastern and Old Testament Texts,” Int 69 (2015): 272– 87.

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Indeed, Job suffers a cruel and, in his view, unjust fate. As a paradigmatic figure, Job must learn to trust and accept. God alone knows the purpose behind all this. In any case, God has the right to do whatever God wants. Job has to learn (as Jesus did in Gethsemane) that not his will but the will of God alone be done (Matt 26:39). That is how Job is understood in Jas 5:11: Behold, we count those blessed who have endured. You have heard of the endurance (ὑπομονὴν) of Job and you have seen the end (τέλος) of the Lord, for the Lord is gracious and compassionate.

The Qur’an interprets Job similarly: Indeed, we found Job patient, an excellent servant (of Allah)! Indeed, he was one repeatedly turning back. (Q Sad 38:44; cf. Q Al-Anbiya 21:83 – 84)

Modern philosophical readings are often much the same. For example, Paul Ricoeur states that Job has to learn to believe “in vain”; that is, Job must endure the hardship of life without hoping for compensation or reward.¹⁶

2.3 There is a Deed-Consequence Nexus. However, what Seems to Be Evil has Positive Intentions (at Least in Part) and Helpful Effects: Education and Endurance in Temptations and Difficult Tests¹⁷ This interpretation is formulated in two different ways:

2.3.1 Even if Life Includes Hardships and Cruelties, in the Big Picture Everything is Part of a Good Order As Fox states, In the theophany, God speaks in the tone of a wise teacher, who scolds the pupil for his ignorance, but does not rage, shout, or threaten … God creates an orderly, elegant world,

 Manfred Oeming, “Paul Ricoeur als Ausleger des Alten Testaments—unter besonderer Berücksichtigung seiner Interpretation des Buches Hiob,” EvT 68 (2013): 245 – 58.  See Nicholas Ellis, The Hermeneutics of Divine Testing: Cosmic Trials and Biblical Interpretation in the Epistle of James and Other Jewish Literature (WUNT 2/396; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015).

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one he takes pride in and cares for, all without much violence. If it be objected that this picture is irrelevant to humans because they are not mentioned, consider what an uncontrolled sea would do to them.¹⁸

In the context of creation, humanity is protected—a moderate formulation of the axiom of Leibniz: overall, this world “is the best of all possible worlds.”

2.3.2 God Aims to Educate Humanity through Suffering.¹⁹ Humans are Either to Acknowledge the Distinction between Creator and Creature or Recognize their Solidarity with the Animals As Job sacrifices on behalf of his friends, his fate shifts (42:7– 10). Misfortune guides Job into humility and acknowledgement of others.

2.4 Humanity is Inherently Evil. Therefore Every Calamity that Humans Suffer is “Deserved” According to this interpretation, the Deed-Consequence Nexus does exist. Nevertheless, human nature is evil, and humans reap the consequences of their depravity. Strictly speaking, then, no one suffers unjustly. This argument, born of a very pessimistic anthropology (cf. Gen 6:5), becomes increasingly cogent if one assumes that the book of Job is built upon the concept of structural sin. It is not actual deeds that turn an individual into a “sinner,” as Job thinks, but being part of an unjust and exploitative structure, which leads to a life of poverty and hardship (cf. 22:5 – 11). Being trapped in this structural sin changes the question from “Why do I suffer?” to “Why do I myself not have to suffer?” Everyone deserves to suffer and die. The fact that I must suffer and die is not mystifying at all, whereas the circumstance by which I may live through grace remains a mystery (cf. Gen 8:21).

 Fox, “God’s Answer and Job’s Response,” 4.  Cf. Theresia Mende, Durch Leiden zur Vollendung: Die Elihureden im Buch Ijob (Ijob 32 – 37) (Trierer Theologische Studien 49; Trier: Paulinus-Verlag, 1990); Harald Martin Wahl, Der gerechte Schöpfer: Eine redaktions- und theologiegeschichtliche Untersuchung der Elihureden—Hiob 32 – 37 (BZAW 207; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1993); Eva Jenny Korneck, “‘Wer ist ein Lehrer wie du?’ Das Hiobproblem im Religionsunterricht,” in Graupner and Oeming, Die Welt ist in Verbrecherhand gegeben?, 171– 204.

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According to this reading, Job is pointed away from the problem of theodicy and fixes instead on the problem of anthropodicy. Humans must realize that they cannot free themselves of this responsibility by blaming God. In “a century like ours which added to the history of human suffering places of horror like Verdun, Stalingrad, Hiroshima, Auschwitz, and the Gulag Archipelago (Solzhenitsyn),” one cannot blame God for injustice, but rather must cry out to God because of the injustices of humanity.²⁰ Job is the consummate literary character who “expresses the cry out to God, which does for some sink into silence in the presence of suffering.… As Nelly Sachs said about Job: Your voice turned silent, for too often it asked ‘Why?’”²¹ As such, Job as an individual must be a sinner in disguise whose concealed sins have finally caught up with him. The traditional “theodicy” turns into a “Job-dicy.” As Georg Fohrer stressed, Job’s insistence on being free of guilt (9:21; 10:7; 16:17; 23:10 – 12; 27:5; 31) is the highest form of sin.²² Elihu summarizes the speeches of Job in a condensed “quotation” that states the heart of the matter: “I am pure and without wrong, unblemished and free from sin” (33:9). That is sin! It is the very attitude that Job must leave behind.

2.5 God is not Omnipotent. There are Satanic and Chaotic Powers besides God In an influential study, Othmar Keel demonstrates that ancient Near Eastern iconography provides the decisive background for understanding the message of Job.²³ The motif of “Master of the Animals” in God’s monologues clarifies

 Georg Langenhorst, Hiob unser Zeitgenosse: Die literarische Hiob-Rezeption im 20. Jahrhundert als theologische Herausforderung (Theologie und Literatur 1; Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald, 1995), 16 (my translation).  Langenhorst, 16, citing Nelly Sachs, “Hiob,” in Werke: Kommentierte Ausgabe in vier Bänden —Band 1. Gedichte: 1940 – 1950 (ed. Matthias Weichelt; Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2010), 59 – 60 (my translation; German original: “Deine Stimme ist stumm geworden, / denn sie hat zuviel Warum gefragt.”)  Georg Fohrer, “The Righteous Man in Job 31,” in Studien zum Buche Hiob, (BZAW 159; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1983), 78 – 93. Fohrer advocates the theory that Job’s good deeds entice him into the illusion of being free of sin: “His ethically perfect behavior would lead him into the worst kind of sin” (93).  Othmar Keel, Jahwes Entgegnung an Ijob: Eine Deutung von Ijob 38 – 41 vor dem Hintergrund der zeitgenössischen Bildkunst (FRLANT 121; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1978); Jon D. Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil: The Jewish Drama of Divine Omnipotence (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994).

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that God is trying to tame the chaotic and life-threatening elements of creation, but God is not able to subdue them completely. There are other powers in the world that possess some degree of sovereignty and authority. The God-speeches respond to the lament of Job with a proto-apocalyptic dualistic cosmology.²⁴ According to this point of view, God is battling constantly the powers of chaos for humanity’s sake, but God must struggle and suffer various setbacks. God depends on human assistance to subdue chaos.

2.6 God is Not Good, but Wicked. YHWH and Satan are Identical The problem of the satanic is even more striking if one does not assume, as Keel does, a chaos-cosmos dualism. In the view of strict monotheism, Yhwh is the sole suzerain. Does this mean that God is also “the Adversary” in the book of Job? If one accepts this view, then what appears to be “deeds of God” and what masquerades as “godly acts” are merely the actions of a finely disguised Satan.²⁵ Just as Job is the personification of a theological problem, so also God, in the role of tempter, and Satan, as God’s instrument, are theoretical metaphysical productions of a critical interpretation of suffering. Although Satan is the agent of evil in the first two chapters (1:12– 19; 2:7), God laments that he allowed himself to be incited against Job “to ruin him without reason” (2:3). Neither Job nor his neighbors and relatives could distinguish between God and Satan on account of their monotheistic framework. Matching the epilogist’s point of view at the end of the book, their discussion assumes that Job’s sufferings are ultimately attributable to Yhwh—“all the evil that Yhwh had brought upon him” (42:11). This viewpoint is expressed clearly in Job’s speech in 9:22– 24:

 Criticized by Manfred Oeming, “‘Kannst du der Löwin ihren Raub zu fressen geben?’ (Hi 38,39): Das Motiv des ‘Herrn der Tiere’ und seine Bedeutung für die Theologie der Gottesreden Hi 38 – 42,” in “Dort ziehen Schiffe dahin…”: Collected Communications to the XIV Congress of the International Organization for the Study of the Old Testament, Paris 1992 (ed. Matthias Augustin and Klaus-Dietrich Schunck; BEATAJ 28; Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1996), 147– 63. According to Ute Neumann-Gorsolke (Wer ist der Herr der Tiere? Eine hermeneutische Problemanzeige [BTS 85; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 2012]), it is the proprium of God’s speeches that God is granting protection and nutrition for nature, that God is acknowledging nature’s rights and care, and that God is not fighting against it.  Cf. Hermann Spieckermann, “Die Satanisierung Gottes: Das Buch Hiob,” in Lebenskunst und Gotteslob in Israel: Anregungen aus Psalter und Weisheit für die Theologie (FAT 91; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014), 80 – 92.

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It is all the same! Therefore, I say: He consumes both the guiltless and the guilty. When the scourge suddenly kills, he mocks the despair of the innocent. The earth is given into the hand of a wicked one; he veiled the face of the judge. If it is not he, then who else is it?

These verses are extraordinarily harsh. They may contain the most severe statements about God found in the Bible. Contrary to Bildad’s classical proposition that God does not support the godless (8:20 – 22), Job in 9:22 denies both that God differentiates between the blameless and the guilty, and that God alters people’s fate according to their personal moral worth. Eventually, it does not matter if one was perfectly good (‫ )תם‬or completely evil, a sinner (‫)רשע‬. God does not discriminate and deals with everyone the same way—that is, unjustly. God “consumes” (‫ )כלה‬them. Like the cruelest of tyrants, God sadistically revels in destroying life. God laughs satanically at the lamentation and sighing of those who suffer unjustly. As a key to interpreting 9:22– 24, one could cite Shakespeare’s King Lear. As Gloucester says in Act IV, Scene 1, “As flies to wanton boys are we to th’ gods. They kill us for their sport.” Job appears to have learned that God is, at least ethically speaking, indifferent. When great catastrophes (e. g., a flood or an earthquake) strike, the righteous die along with the wicked. God even mocks the trials and crises of faith among the despairing believers. In stark contrast to the statement of Bildad and Elihu that God never oppresses justice (8:3, 37:23), Job expresses the consequences both of his own experience and the experiences of others: God has given the earth into the hand of the wicked. Indeed, the Hebrew phrasing allows for the reading: It is God who is this wicked one. Since God holds the whole earth, poor earth is destined for misfortune. This bitter truth is, as Fohrer says, “a final, pointed summary” of Job’s accusations.²⁶ To a suffering person, especially if that person is faithful and believes in an omnipotent God, the situation presents itself in such a way that either Satan is part of God, or Satan merely disguised himself as God. Job must resist this thought.²⁷

 Georg Fohrer, Das Buch Hiob (KAT 16; Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1988), 210: “ist eine letzte, zugespitzte Zusammenfassung.” See also Robert M. Polzin, Biblical Structuralism: Method and Subjectivity in the Study of Ancient Texts (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977), 106.  Cf. Philipp Stoellger, “Anfechtung Gottes: Zur Gotteslehre vom Pathos Gottes aus,” in Die Anfechtung Gottes. Exegetische und systematisch-theologische Beiträge zur Theologie des Hiobbuches (ed. L. Ratschow and H. von Sass; ABG 54; Leipzig: Evangelische, 2016), 163–92, who criticizes the “Satanization” of God (cf. Spieckermann, “Die Satanisierung Gottes”) as an inappropriate

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2.7 The Deed-Consequence Nexus is not Realized in this Life but Only in the Eschaton In 19:25 – 26, Job famously states: But I know that my redeemer lives; And as the last One, he will raise above the dirt. And after this my skin has been stricken off, I will see God without my flesh.

Although the philological problems of these verses are significant (I think that Job hopes to be justified in the presence of God in this life), tradition has understood his words as a hope beyond death itself.²⁸ The book is influenced through and through by Egyptian thought; therefore hope in the afterlife is plausible.²⁹ According to many scholars, 19:25 – 26 provides the hermeneutical key to the whole book of Job, at least in view of the Septuagint text.³⁰

2.8 The Deed-Consequence Nexus Must be Thought of in a More Complex Way According to many textbooks, the wisdom literature of the Hebrew Bible developed in three phases: (1) Birth (Proverbs); (2) Crisis (Job; Ecclesiastes; Pss 37, 49, 73); (3) Renaissance (Sirach; Pss 1, 119), and then a new and final chapter in the New Testament.³¹ Following this, the oldest parts of Proverbs (chs. 10 – 31) represent an optimistic (naïve) wisdom. Like all wise men from the Hebrew Bible and the ancient Near East, the friends of Job hold on to this unrealistic position. Even

concept, instead proposing the category of God’s trial of humans (subjective genitive versus objective genitive).  See, e. g., 1 Clement 26:3, where the author cites Job 19:26 (LXX) as proof for the resurrection of the body.  Cf. Christopher B. Hays, “‘There Is Hope for a Tree’: Job’s Hope for the Afterlife in the Light of Egyptian Tree Imagery,” CBQ 77 (2015): 42– 68.  Cf. Johannes Schnocks, “The Hope for Resurrection in the Book of Job,” in The Septuagint and Messianism (ed. Michael A. Knibb; BETL 195; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2006), 291– 99.  E. g., Gerhard von Rad, Weisheit in Israel (Neukirchener: Neukirchen-Vluyn 1970); Horst-Dietrich Preuß, Einführung in die alttestamentliche Weisheitsliteratur (Urban-Taschenbücher 383; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1987); Markus Saur, Einführung in die alttestamentliche Weisheitsliteratur (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2012).

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Job thinks along these lines while accusing God and lamenting. Until now, Job experienced this relationship as a faithful sage, and he assumed the existence of the Deed-Consequence Nexus. Job’s thoughts and arguments were relatively simple:

Reality is far more complex, however. The book of Job wants to show that factors other than individual deeds are involved in the human condition. Therefore, it is erroneous to extrapolate from wellbeing or suffering back to some deed that brought about those circumstances. The book of Job names celestial powers (Satan [chs. 1– 2] and angels [especially the angelic mediator in 33:23]), other human agents (e. g., the raiding enemies in ch. 1), and various creatures which God cares for and nurtures (e. g., chs. 38 – 39). Job had considered himself alone, but Yhwh’s speeches in chs. 38 – 41 opened Job’s mind to other factors that should be taken into account. In this way, Job is freed from his egocentrism and finds new courage. The book’s nucleus is the modification of the Deed-Consequence Nexus into a Greater Deed-Consequence Nexus. This insight liberates humans both from the calculating logic of human deeds and fixation on one’s own acts (anthropocentrism).³² One’s wellbeing is dependent on a multi-systemic social and global structure.

2.9 Job Lived through a Long Process in Order to Change Himself Internally The point of the book of Job is personal change, particularly Job’s. The numerous changes give Job’s character depth and complexity. Just as he converts from the patient and silent sufferer to the impatient and vociferous rebel, he changes his worldview at the end. The “solution” to the problem of Job is not found theoretically, but rather in his existential and manifold suffering. Job’s journey can be understood as a long-term process of problem solving, as Oeming and Schmid

 Cf. Axel Graupner, “‘Die Welt ist in Verbrecherhand gegeben’: Hiobs Anklage und Gottes Antwort,” in Graupner and Oeming, Die Welt ist in Verbrecherhand gegeben?, 1– 20.

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show.³³ This approach is quite close to the results of modern thanatology, which differentiates five stages: (1) suppression and denial; (2) anger (“Why me, of all people?”); (3) bargaining with God (lamentations and requests); (4) depression; and (5) acceptance.³⁴ Job does not climb rapidly from a state of ignorance to a state of wisdom. His journey is therapeutic and time-consuming. Job’s many conversations throughout the book gradually put him in a position to bear his trauma. Even after his restitution and renewed blessing by Yhwh, he continues to talk to friends and neighbors “about the bad things that Yhwh has done to him” (42:11).

3 Conclusions: The Logic of Exegetical Dissent and the Kerygma of the Book of Job The “Problem of Job” (How can an almighty and loving God be just in light of all the suffering in the world?) places the hero—and modern readers —in the pit of despair. There are only a few cogs that can be altered in its theological train of thought: (1) God is not omnipotent. (2) God is neither just nor lovingly gracious. (3) Suffering is not purely evil because it has further functions which are compatible with God’s grace, e. g., education and trial. (4) Humans are not righteous but sinful, and therefore “deserve” the punishment of suffering (anthropodicy).

This survey of modern research on Job shows that these conflicting interpretations result from turning one of the above-mentioned cogs. This in turn demonstrates how completely exegesis and systematic theological reflection are entwined. According to Seow, the book’s author offers no final answer to the “Problem of Job.”³⁵ This one author behaves, rather, as if he were five writers; he juxtaposes five very different positions. According to my reading of the book of Job, how Cf. Manfred Oeming and Konrad Schmid, Hiobs Weg: Stationen von Menschen im Leid (BTS 49; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 2001); trans. as Job’s Journey: Stations of Suffering (CrStHB 7; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2015).  Cf. the description of the journey of terminally ill persons by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (Interviews mit Sterbenden [West Berlin: Kreuz, 1971]), who poignantly showed how deeply they are torn between denial and faith, accusing rebellion and reconciled acceptance.  Seow, Job 1 – 21, 87– 110.

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ever, the book does have a final intention—a kerygma—that encompasses the whole. The methodological access to this kerygma is to read the book as a whole. The final chapter is the key but, unfortunately, many commentators do not take it seriously. Scholars often treat ch. 42 as a fairy tale in the vein of a “Hollywood” ending—a late sugar coating that covers the bitter reality of the rest of the book. If the book of Job did not include 42:7– 17 but rather concluded with 42:6, I would agree with Seow’s interpretation of the book as one whose meaning is fundamentally open. However, in the end, the different voices are in fact weighted, and readers are given a final orientation: Job acknowledges that he wronged Yhwh and tried to force God into stereotypes (42:2– 6). In 42:7, God justifies Job’s speeches by calling them ‫נכון‬. Job won the case—not for speaking theoretically correctly about God in his sufferings and sorrows, but rather for speaking rightfully to (‫ )אל‬God. Contra deum in deum. ³⁶ His friends are scolded harshly for their reserved theologizing, but they are recognized as friends of Job and of God, and their relationships can be fixed through Job’s sacrifice (42:8).³⁷ Elihu is not mentioned explicitly in 42:7– 9; therefore the wrath of Yhwh is not directly against him but with him (cf. 32:3). Job approves Elihu’s opinion indirectly by acting on behalf of his friends, that is, on behalf of others and not just for himself. Thus at the end, Job heeds Elihu’s implicit warning (33:17– 19, 26 – 28; 37:14). The evil side of God is not covered over but is named as “evil” (‫הרעה‬, 42:11). Without knowledge of the celestial trial, God remains “evil.” The reader, however, is informed about everything. The rich blessing of Yhwh in 42:12– 17 is the sign that the cruel ordeal is terminated. The Greater Deed-Consequence Nexus, suspended throughout the majority of the book, is finally reinstated. The Deed-Consequence Nexus was interrupted only for a period of time, but the interruption was purposeful. The book of Job portrays Job as a paradigmatic sufferer in order to teach that both those who suffer and those who comfort the suffering are able to overcome these difficulties. The narrative and poetic portions have one goal in mind: to comfort. Therefore, one must not imagine that the book of Job is a theoretical

 The usual translation that Job had spoken truthfully about God is wrong in my opinion; cf. Manfred Oeming, “‘Ihr habt nicht recht vor mir geredet wie mein Knecht Hiob’ (Hi 42,7): Gottes Schlußwort als Schlüssel zur Interpretation des Hiobbuchs und als kritische Anfrage an die moderne Theologie,” EvT 60 (2000): 95 – 108.  Cf. Manfred Oeming, “‘Il offrait un holocauste pour chacun d’eux’ (Job 1,5), Pourquoi pas pour lui-même?,” RHPR 93 (2013): 49 – 65.

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treatise; rather, it is a work inspired through and through by poimenic praxis.³⁸ There is not one correct theoretical solution, but this does not mean that the author of the book has no overarching kerygma. The book portrays Job as having undergone a journey through which he developed his perception of God. At each stage along the way, Job lives through and rethinks the central answers of systematic theology to the problem of theodicy. Every answer is part of a poimenic process; each stage has its own truth. The overarching message, however, is conveyed primarily at the end of the book—a fact that is often neglected. Once God and Job had taken all routes and detours, Job is finally able to enjoy a long and fulfilled life. The Septuagint underscores this interpretation by adding in 42:17: “And it is written that he will rise again with those the Lord raises up” (NETS). This is more than cold comfort. Rather, the final shape of the book is filled with the certainty that, in the end, all will be well. If the righteous is not rewarded in this life (like the biblical Job), he or she will nonetheless receive God’s grace in the next. This certainty is the driving force behind all pastoral care.

Summary of Views Fundamental Thesis

Basic Text

Representative Human Reaction

 There is no Deed-Consequence : – Majority of ex- Despair, cynicism, (dark) Nexus.  egetes humor. God acts in sovereign capriciousMargianto Rebellion. ness.  There is a Deed-Consequence :; Nexus, but it is not perceptible to : humans. God has the right to do as God pleases.

Letter of James, Quran Popular belief

 There is a Deed-Consequence : –  Wahl Nexus. However, what seems to Mende be pure evil has positive effects: Ricoeur education and endurance in trials.

Humble devotion, Faith in God.

Believing “for nothing” (Job :), awaiting God’s intervention.

 Cf. Manfred Oeming and Wolfgang Drechsel, “Das Buch Hiob—ein Lehrstück der Seelsorge? Das Hiobbuch in exegetischer und poimenischer Perspektive,” in Das Buch Hiob und seine Interpretationen: Beiträge zum Hiob-Symposium auf dem Monte Verità vom 14.–19. August 2005 (ed. Thomas Krüger et al.; ATANT 88; Zurich: TVZ, 2007), 421– 40.

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Continued Fundamental Thesis

Basic Text

Representative Human Reaction

 Humans are inherently evil. : – Therefore every calamity that hu-  mans suffer is “deserved” (anthropodicy).

Evangelical ex- Thankful bewilderment if one egesis is graciously saved from misfortune, constant penance.

 God is not omnipotent; there are chs. satanic and chaotic powers be –  sides God.

Keel (Sölle)

Struggle against evil alongside God.

 God is not good, but evil. God and : – Satan are identical. 

Jung Bloch

Harsh criticism: God must change; otherwise one must move away from God.

 The Deed-Consequence Nexus is : – Early Christinot realized in this life but only in  anity the eschaton. Kant

Hoping for post-mortem existence.

 The Deed-Consequence Nexus must be modified in light of the Greater Deed-Consequence Nexus. No anthropocentrism!

: – ; : – .

Oeming

Humble restraint in accusing God, wise broadening of horizons.

 The book encourages humans to trust in God through all temptations. In the end all will be well, and humans will receive God’s grace.

: – .

Oeming / Schmid

Courage in the face of suffering, expectation of God’s help.

Carol A. Newsom (Emory University)

The Reception of Job in the Dead Sea Scrolls It might seem that there isn’t much to say about the reception of Job in the Dead Sea Scrolls.¹ In contrast to the figure of Daniel, for example, Job appears not to have generated much interest among Hebrew and Aramaic speaking Jews of the late Second Temple period. This disinterest is in apparent contrast to the richer reception of Job among the Greek-speaking Jews of Egypt. Most famously, the Testament of Job presents Job himself, shortly before his death, retelling his own story to his children in a way that highlights the virtue of patient endurance.² But even the LXX translation of Job gives evidence of active and creative reception. It is composed in good Greek style, and displays the translator’s own literary sensitivities in smoothing out difficulties in the Hebrew, shortening the text, relocating some verses, enhancing the text with citations to other Septuagint texts, and adding narrative details, including a poignant speech by Job’s wife (2:9a–e) and a genealogy that links Job to Abraham via Esau (42:17b–e).³ By contrast, both of the Hebrew manuscripts of Job at Qumran and the Aramaic translations found there appear to hew closely to the Masoretic text tradition. Nor is there any apocryphal material comparable to the Testament of Job. Nevertheless, there are some points of interest in these materials, as well as some unexplored evidence for a distinctive exegetical use of Job in certain Qumran sectarian documents. In the overview that follows, I look at the relevant data in four categories: (1) Hebrew manuscripts of Job; (2) Aramaic translations of Job; (3) narratives reflecting influence of the story of Job; and (4) intertextual allusions to Job in other compositions. Although the textual differences between the Hebrew and Aramaic manuscripts of Job from Qumran and those of the Masoretic tradition are only modest, the very fact of the existence of paleo-Hebrew and Aramaic texts proves

 I am delighted to contribute an essay to a volume honoring Choon Leong Seow, whose work in promoting the history of reception and consequences has been so important in transforming the disciplines. I also thank Justin Pannkuk, my research assistant and a former student of Seow’s, for his help in the research that informs this essay.  The Testament of Job has received a thorough treatment in the recent monograph by Maria Haralambakis, The Testament of Job: Text, Narrative and Reception (LSTS; London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2012).  Claude E. Cox, “To the Reader of Job,” in A New English Translation of the Septuagint (ed. Albert Pietersma and Benjamin G. Wright; New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 667– 70. DOI 10.1515/9783110428148-008

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to be significant. Evidence also exists that the tale of Job was sufficiently familiar to influence the ways in which the story of Abraham was told. And perhaps most intriguingly, at least in a certain segment of Qumran sectarian documents, the book of Job was mined for clues to the origin of human moral incapacity, as Joban texts were strategically used to construct a radical reinterpretation of Genesis 1– 3.

1 Hebrew Manuscripts of Job Four Hebrew manuscripts of Job were found at Qumran: one in Cave 2, the others in Cave 4.⁴ Although the texts are quite fragmentary and contain only a relatively small proportion of the book, they do attest to the fact that the Elihu speeches in Job 32– 37, which are often seen as a late addition, were already part of the manuscript tradition by the last century of the Common Era. The text of the manuscripts adheres closely to that of the MT, with only a small number of divergent readings.⁵ The Cave 2 Job (2Q15), written in Herodian script, is preserved only in a single small fragment, containing portions of five words from Job 33:28 – 30. From Cave 4, 4Q99 (4QJoba) is written in Hasmonean script and consists of twenty-two fragments. This text is written stichometrically, with each line normally containing two cola. The manuscript preserves portions of Job 31:14– 19; 32:3 – 4; 33:10 – 11, 24– 30; 34:28 – 30; 35:16; 36:7– 11, 13 – 24, 25 – 27; 36:32– 37:5; 37:14– 15.⁶ In these fragments there are several textual divergences from the MT, mostly in orthography and grammatical forms. In a recent article, however, Choon Leong Seow carefully analyzes the text, concluding that several of the differences are text-critically significant and “at least viable if not even superior to what one finds in the MT.”⁷ 4Q100 (4QJobb) is also dated paleographically to the

 Publication in DJD is as follows: 2Q15 by Maurice Baillet in Maurice Baillet, Jo´zef T. Milik, and Roland De Vaux OP, Les ‘Petites Grottes’ de Qumrân (DJD III; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962), 71 and pl. XIII; 4Q99 and 4Q100 by Eugene Ulrich and Sarianna Metso in Eugene Ulrich et al., Qumran Cave 4. XI. Psalms to Chronicles (DJD XVI; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), 171– 86 and pls. XXI–XXII; 4Q101 by Eugene Ulrich in Patrick W. Skehan, Eugene Ulrich, and Judith E. Sanderson, Qumran Cave 4. IV: Palaeo-Hebrew and Greek Biblical Manuscripts (DJD IX; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 155 – 60 and pl. XXXVII.  See Eugene C. Ulrich, ed., The Biblical Qumran Scrolls: Transcriptions and Textual Variants (VTSup 134; Leiden: Brill, 2010), 727– 31.  Information on the contents of the Cave 4 Job manuscripts follows Ulrich, The Biblical Qumran Scrolls, 727– 31.  Choon Leong Seow, “Text Critical Notes on 4QJoba,” DSD 22 (2015): 201. The cases in point occur in Job 31:15; 36:23, 24; and 37:1, 2.

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Hasmonean period. It is written as continuous prose, and its six fragments preserve portions of Job 8:15 – 17; 13:4a; 14:4– 6; 31:20 – 21. The text is essentially identical to the MT. The most intriguing of the manuscripts is 4Q101 (4Qpaleo-Jobc), which is written in paleo-Hebrew script. Only three fragments remain, preserving Job 13:18 – 20, 23 – 27; 14:13 – 18. Paleo-Hebrew scripts are difficult to date, but Mark McLean argues that 4Q101 should be dated somewhere in the period 225 – 150 B.C.E., and probably toward the earlier part of that time period.⁸ If he is correct, then it is the earliest of the preserved manuscripts by perhaps a century. The significance of the use of paleo-Hebrew, as opposed to the square script, is not well understood. During the later Second Temple Period, paleo-Hebrew was used for a number of functions, even though it was far less common than the Aramaic square script. Paleo-Hebrew appears on official objects, such as coins and administrative stamps, on inscriptions, including ossuaries and sarcophagi, and in scriptural scrolls (attested at Qumran and Masada).⁹ Although for the later Rabbis the Aramaic square script was used for sacred purposes and scripture was not to be written in paleo-Hebrew characters (b. Sanh. 21b–22a; t. Sanh. 4:7; y. Meg. 1:8b), one should not assume that earlier Jews and closely related communities shared the same views. Eventually, the choice of script seems to have become a sociological marker of religious community. Most notably, the Samaritan community preserved the use of paleo-Hebrew for its scriptural texts. Thus, the choice of paleo-Hebrew for certain scriptural texts found at Qumran might—though we cannot know with certainty— have had a social or ideological significance for those who produced them. Steve Delamarter argues that paleo-Hebrew may have represented a combination of antiquity and nationalism, and he suggests that the Sadducees may have been the source of the paleo-Hebrew manuscripts at Qumran.¹⁰ The most intriguing speculation, however, derives from the profile of the manuscripts attested in paleo-Hebrew at Qumran and Masada. With the exception of Job and a very fragmentary parabiblical Joshua text, all are pentateuchal. Thus the suggestion has been made that the writing of Job in paleo-Hebrew may reflect the tradition that

 Mark D. McLean, “The Use and Development of Paleo-Hebrew in the Hellenistic and Roman Period” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1982), 52.  Joseph Naveh, Early History of the Alphabet: An Introduction to West Semitic Epigraphy and Paleography (2d rev. ed.; Jerusalem: Magnes; Leiden: Brill, 1987), 119 – 23.  Steve Delamarter, “Sociological Models for Understanding the Scribal Practices in the Biblical Dead Sea Scrolls,” in Rediscovering the Dead Sea Scrolls (ed. Maxine Grossman; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010), 197. See the discussion in Emanuel Tov, Scribal Practices and Approaches Reflected in the Texts Found in the Judean Desert (STDJ 54; Leiden: Brill, 2004), 248.

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Moses was the author of Job, a tradition otherwise only attested in the Babylonian Talmud (b. B. Bat. 15b). While that is an attractive hypothesis, one might argue that the parabiblical Joshua text suggests that paleo-Hebrew only connotes antiquity, not necessarily Mosaic authorship. One other piece of evidence might point toward the hypothesis of putative Mosaic authorship, however, and that is the fact that only Job and Leviticus, a text attributed to Moses, are represented at Qumran by Aramaic translations. Were Aramaic translations thus initially undertaken only for works deemed to be of Mosaic authorship? Whatever one makes of the implications of the evidence, the fact that Job is preserved both in paleo-Hebrew and in Aramaic translation suggests some special regard for the book and its status.

2 The Aramaic Translations of Job Two manuscripts containing Aramaic translations of Job were found in the scrolls. The material from cave 4 (4Q157) consists of only two fragments, one of which (Frg. 2) is so small that it is not possible to say what part of Job it translates. The other fragment (Frg. 1) preserves a translation of Job 3:5 – 6 and 4:17– 5:4. The manuscript from Cave 11 (11Q10) is much more extensive.¹¹ Adam S. van der Woude estimates that about 15 % of the manuscript is preserved.¹² According to the DJD edition, the extant remains contain portions of text corresponding to Job 17:14– 18:4 (col. 1); 19:11– 19 (col. 2); 19:20 – 20:6 (col. 3); 21:2– 10 (col. 4); 21:20 – 27 (col. 5); 22:3 – 9 (col. 6); 22:16 – 22 (col. 7); 23:1– 8 (col. 7 A); 24:12– 17 (col. 8); 24:24– 26:a (col. 9); 26:10 – 27:4 (col. 10); 27:11– 20 (col. 11); 28:4– 13 (col. 12); 28:20 – 28 (col. 13); 29:7– 16 (col. 14); 29:24– 30:4 (col. 15); 30:13 – 20 (col. 16); 30:25 – 31:1 (col. 17); 31:8 – 16 (col. 18); 31:26 – 32 (col. 19); 31:40 – 32:3 (col. 20); 32:10 – 17 (col. 21); 33:6 – 16 (col. 22); 33:24– 32 (col. 23); 34:7– 17 (col. 24); 34:24– 34 (col. 25); 35:6 – 15 (col. 26); 36:7– 16 (col. 27); 36:23 – 33 (col. 28); 37:10 – 19 (col. 29); 38:3 – 13 (col. 30); 38:23 – 34 (col. 31); 29:1– 11 (col. 32); 39:20 – 29 (col. 33); 40:5 – 14 (15?) (col. 34); 40:23 – 31 (col. 35); 41:7– 17 (col. 36); 41:25 – 42:2; 40:5; 42:2– 6 (col. 37); 42:9 – 12 (col. 38).¹³ The Hebrew text from which the translation was made appears to

 Florentino García Martínez, Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar, and Adam S. van der Woude, Qumran Cave 11; II (DJD XXIII; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 79 – 180 and pls. IX–XXI.  Adam S. van der Woude, “Job, Targum of,” EDSS 1:413.  García Martínez, Tigchelaar, and van der Woude, Qumran Cave 11, 86. The editors calculate that missing columns should be reconstructed as 1 A (18:15[?]–19:10), 3 A (20:15[?]–21:2), and 7B (23:15[?]–24:11).

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be “quite close to MT.”¹⁴ Since so little of 4Q157 is preserved, it is not possible to determine whether the two manuscripts are copies of the same work or different translations. Both are dated paleographically to the mid-first century C.E. The most perplexing issue concerning the extent of 11Q10 is the question of the end of the manuscript. In the material preserved in 11Q10 xxxviii 1– 10 there is evidence of a somewhat more free or paraphrastic translation. Or perhaps the translator’s Vorlage differed from that of the MT in these verses. Some parts of the translation of Job 42:9 agree more closely with the LXX than with the MT, and v. 10 is characterized by the editors as “a free translation which does not correspond exactly to MT.”¹⁵ Michael Sokoloff characterizes the Aramaic of 42:9 – 12 somewhat differently, noting that “the divergences between Tg1 and MT are unique and not attested in the other ancient versions.”¹⁶ Despite some phrases that are similar to LXX, Sokoloff’s judgment seems warranted. Frustratingly, the final ruled column of 11Q10 preserves no writing, though it is possible that some was preserved in the lines now broken off at the top of the column. Would there have been space at the bottom of col. xxxviii and the top of xxxix for the completion of the prose narrative as it is found in MT? The remaining Hebrew text extends for 263 characters and 65 inter-word spaces. Although Hebrew and Aramaic would differ somewhat in the number of words and letters, one can use the Hebrew as a rough approximation of the space required, if the Aramaic translated the Hebrew text as we have it in the MT. Given the editors’ calculation of somewhere between 15 and 18 lines per column and the average of 37 letter spaces in col. xxxviii, there is room for the remainder of the prose tale to have been translated.¹⁷ In view of the divergences between MT and Aramaic in vv. 9 and 10, however, one cannot rule out the possibility that the conclusion differed and was perhaps briefer than the remaining Hebrew Text.¹⁸ While the paleographic dates of the manuscripts set the latest date for the Aramaic translation in the early first century C.E., the translation itself might be somewhat older. Unfortunately, the only way of dating the origin of the translation is through linguistic criteria, and estimates vary between the mid-third and the first centuries B.C.E.¹⁹ Prior to the discovery of the Aramaic versions

 Michael Sokoloff, The Targum to Job from Qumran Cave 11 (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University, 1974), 6.  García Martínez, Tigchelaar, and van der Woude, Qumran Cave 11, 171.  Sokoloff, Targum to Job, 7.  See also the calculations of David Shepherd, Targum and Translation: A Reconsideration of the Qumran Aramaic Version of Job (SSN 45; Assen: Van Gorcum, 2004), 46 n. 21.  Sokoloff, Targum to Job, 7.  See the summary of the discussion in Shepherd, Targum and Translation, 3 – 6.

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of Job and Leviticus (4Q156) from the Qumran caves, there had been no direct evidence for such translations before the Peshitta (usually dated to the 2nd c. C.E.), although the talmuds (b. Shab 115a; j. Shab. 15c) refer to an Aramaic book of Job that Gamaliel the Elder (1st c. C.E.) ordered to be buried under stones in the Temple area. Whether this was the same translation as that represented at Qumran cannot be known, of course. The Qumran text, however, is clearly not related to the later rabbinic targum of Job.²⁰ But is 11Q10 the source of the additional information referred to as coming from a “Syriac book” at the end of LXX Job? That depends in part on what the LXX 42:17b actually says. Most expansively, Ben Zion Wacholder suggests that the allusion in LXX Job might be to a lost apocryphal work from Palestine that influenced Aristeas the Exegete, the Testament of Job, b. B. Bat. 15b, Targum Job 2:9, and Jerome.²¹ If so, that would be a different work than 11Q10, which is mostly a faithful translation of a text like that of MT Job. Somewhat more cautiously, but still intriguingly, Robert Doran translates the OG 42:17b as, “This [i. e., the following material] is translated from the Syriac book,”²² implying that the details of marriage, genealogy, and geographical location of Uz were excerpted from that source. Again, if that were the case, then it would seem unlikely that 11Q10 could be the source, and one would need to posit the existence of another, still lost, Aramaic work. In a recent article, however, Annette Yoshiko Reed argues on grammatical and syntactical grounds that the verse is better translated as “This man [i. e., Job] is interpreted in an Aramaic book as dwelling in the land of Uz, on the borders of Idumea and Arabia.”²³ If she is correct, then the only additional information provided by the Aramaic book is the location of Uz, which would entail only a small gloss. Since the beginning of Job is not preserved in either 4Q157 or 11Q10, it is not possible to say whether this translation was the source of the information, though such a detail might certainly have been included. Moreover, Yoshiko Reed argues rather persuasively that most of the information about Job’s genealogy that follows is better understood as deriving from LXX Genesis and other passages in LXX Job, not from a putative Aramaic source.²⁴ Whether one follows Wacholder or Yoshiko Reed, the Job manu-

 Sokoloff, Targum to Job, 5.  Ben Zion Wacholder, “Aristeas the Exegete,” EncJud (2d. ed., 2007), 2:456.  Robert Doran, “Aristeas the Exegete,” in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (ed. James Charlesworth; 2 vols.; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1983 – 85), 2:859.  Annette Yoshiko Reed, “Job as Jobab: The Interpretation of Job in LXX Job 42:17b–e,” JBL 120 (2001): 31– 55, here 37.  Yoshiko Reed, “Job as Jobab,” 37– 38.

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scripts from Qumran seem to play no significant role in developing Job traditions. Although the official designations of the Aramaic Job texts from Qumran are 4QTargum Job (4Q157) and 11QTargum Job (11Q10), scholars have recently questioned whether one should distinguish between a simple translation into Aramaic (like the Peshitta) and a targum proper, and if so, to which category the Aramaic Job belongs.²⁵ Alexander Samely posed the question by defining a targum as “an Aramaic narrative paraphrase of the biblical text in exegetical dependence on its wording.”²⁶ On this basis he declines to label 11Q10 a targum, concluding that it is “that elusive animal, a translation of a biblical text into Aramaic.”²⁷ The most recent scholars to take up this question come to opposite conclusions from one another. David Shepherd approaches the issue by examining the translation techniques in 11Q10, the Peshitta, and the rabbinic targum, concluding that 11Q10 and the Peshitta of Job follow similar practices, whereas both diverge from the practices of the rabbinic targum. Thus he opts to identify 11Q10 as a translation rather than a targum, much as Samely did.²⁸ Sally Gold, however, takes up that part of Samely’s definition that focuses on the exegetical concerns of a targum and asks whether there is in fact evidence for exegetical interests in 11Q10. She recognizes, of course, the significant differences between the rabbinic targum and 11Q10 but says that “rather than asking whether, or how far, 11Q10 fits a particular model of rabbinic targum, my approach is to ask of 11Q10 on its own merits what it shows us about how the process of understanding, explaining and translating Scripture was undertaken before that process had achieved the sophistication of the targumim of the rabbinic schools.”²⁹ Other scholars, of course, have pointed to interpretive elements in 11Q10. Adam van der Woude notes the translator’s tendency toward rationalization, exemplified in 11Q10 xxx.4 (= Job 38:7), where the morning stars are said “to have shone” rather than “to have sung,” making them less anthro Sebastian P. Brock, “Translating the Old Testament,” in It is Written: Scripture Citing Scripture; Essays in Honour of Barnabas Lindars (ed. D. A. Carson and H. G. M. Williamson; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 87– 98, here 95; Alexander Samely, The Interpretation of Speech in the Pentateuch Targums: A Study of Method and Presentation in Targumic Exegesis (TSAJ 27; Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1992), 159 n. 7.  Samely, The Interpretation of Speech, 180.  Samely, “Is Targumic Aramaic Rabbinic Hebrew? A Reflection on Midrashic and Targumic Rewording of Scripture,” JJS 45 (1994): 98 n. 18.  Shepherd, Targum and Translation, 284.  Sally L. Gold, “Targum or Translation: New Light on the Character of Qumran Job (11Q10) from a Synoptic Approach,” JAB 3 (2001): 101– 20, here 103.

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pomorphic.³⁰ Other verses emphasize divine sovereignty (11Q10 x.2 = Job 26:11a) and creativity (11Q10 xxix.2– 3 = Job 37:12) or omit offensive sexual content (11Q10 xviii.3 = Job 31:10).³¹ Gold extends this inquiry into interpretive activity on the part of the translator and argues for the presence of four techniques: (1) double translation of a single Hebrew word, as in xxx.5 = Job 38:7, where “together” is repeated in the second colon; (2) deliberate misreading of the Hebrew text, a version of the rabbinic technique of ‫אל תקרא‬, as in xxix.2– 3 = Job 37:12, where the Hebrew ‫ יצום‬is rendered by Aramaic ‫( ;ברא‬3) scriptural association, as in xxxii.7– 8 = Job 39:8, where ‫ יתור‬is rendered as ‫ויבחר לה‬, apparently by comparison with the nuance of ‫ תור‬in Prov 12:26 and/or 2 Sam 22:33; (4) exegetically determined word choice, as in xxx.2 = Job 38:4, where Hebrew ‫ אם ידעת בינה‬is rendered by ‫הן ידעת חכמה‬, a lexical choice determined by other creation passages in the Hebrew Bible and their vocabulary.³² Arguments for interpreting the basis and motivation of word choices in an Aramaic translation are difficult to make, and the evidence for Gold’s claims is far from conclusive. Every translation involves some interpretation, of course, and so it seems that if the designation “targum” is to be useful, it should be reserved for those texts in which the exegetical elements are clearer and more extensive than appears to be the case with 11Q10.

3 Influence of the Joban Narrative Although there is no literary reworking of the Job story in Hebrew or Aramaic sources comparable to the Greek Testament of Job, evidence exists that the story of Job and its characters were well known and influential to a degree. The earliest attested implicit comparison between Abraham’s test of faith and that of Job is found in the book of Jubilees (Jub 17:15 – 18:19), portions of which are attested in the Dead Sea Scrolls (4Q216 – 224), as well as in closely related material designated as Pseudo-Jubilees (4Q225, 4Q226, and possibly 4Q227).³³ Jubilees exploits the ambiguity of the opening of Gen 22:1 (“And after these things/ words”) to develop two motifs. One is the repetitive testing of Abraham (i. e., after

 van der Woude, “Job, Targum of,” 413.  Ibid., 414.  Gold, “Targum or Translation,” 106 – 18.  Although the extant fragments of Jubilees from Qumran do not preserve this passage, the closely related 4Q225 2 I 9 – 10 contains the following: “And Prince Ma[s]tema came [to G]od and accused Abraham with respect to Isaac.” Then God gives the command for Abraham to offer Isaac.

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previous tests there was yet one more to come; Jub 17:17– 18; cf. m. ʾAbot 5:3); the other is the instigation of the Aqedah because of “words” spoken in heaven.³⁴ The evil angel Mastema, prince of the demonic spirits, whose purpose is “to corrupt and lead astray” human beings (Jub 10:8), is naturally the agent to whom such words would be attributed. This scenario provides a key point of comparison between the story of Job’s testing and that of Abraham’s. Indeed, the comparison between the two is over-determined by several features, as James VanderKam argues: We recognize the influence of Job 1– 2 not only from the title of the malicious individual who challenges God to try Abraham—the prince (of) Mastema, reflecting Job’s ‫—השטן‬but also from the nature of the conversation that takes place between him and God. Here we discover that Abraham’s virtues were being reported in heaven: he was faithful, loved by the Lord, and successful in all trials. The sorts of virtues that Abraham is said to possess are not the very same but are similar to those the deity specifies for Job who is blameless, unique, fears God, and turns aside from evil (e. g., Job 1:8).³⁵

Thus it would appear that two features from the Job story attracted attention— the virtues of Job and the role of the angelic accuser, which are also the features that were developed by the author of the Testament of Job, though these are appropriated for Abraham in Jubilees.

4 Intertextual Allusions to the Book of Job While scholarly attention has previously been given to the Job manuscripts, the Aramaic translation, and the influence of Job on the book of Jubilees, no previous attempt has been made to assess the ways in which texts from Qumran have made intertextual allusions to Job. To be sure, studies of specific texts from Qumran mention allusions to Job in passing, but there has been no analysis of the significance or insignificance of such allusions. Recently Armin Lange and Matthias Weigold attempted a comprehensive survey of quotations and allusions,

 James L. Kugel, A Walk through Jubilees: Studies in the Book of Jubilees and the World of its Creation (JSJSup 156; Leiden: Brill, 2012), 108 – 9.  James VanderKam, “The Aqedah, Jubilees, and PseudoJubilees,” in The Quest for Context and Meaning: Studies in Biblical Intertextuality in Honor of James A. Sanders (ed. Craig A. Evans and Shemaryahu Talmon; Leiden: Brill, 1997), 241– 61, here 249. Though this view is widely shared, some, such as Jacques T. A. G. M. van Ruiten, are less persuaded of the influence of Job (Abraham in the Book of Jubilees: The Rewriting of Genesis 11:26 – 25:10 in the Book of Jubilees 11:14 – 23:8 [JSJSup 161; Leiden: Brill, 2012], 214).

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though the list they produce is not complete.³⁶ Moreover, scholars differ as to whether some of the items do indeed represent allusions.³⁷ The more rigorous criteria for identifying an allusion in Julie Hughes’ study results in fewer examples, and it is her set of criteria that I find most persuasive.³⁸ Nevertheless, the work of Lange and Weigold provides a helpful starting point. Setting aside the general references to the Job story in Aristeas the Exegete, the Testament of Abraham, Pseudo-Philo, and Sirach’s praise of the ancestors, they list some sixty-one allusions to Job in Second Temple Literature. Closer inspection of these “allusions,” however, often turns up only idioms and poetic phrases that are unlikely to be intentional references to Job. Very few would meet the criteria established by Hughes. If one simply looks at the allusions that Lange and Weigold identify in texts from Qumran that are either sectarian or have some similarity to sectarian ideology, a surprising pattern appears. Of the twenty-four allusions, ten are from the Hodayot, plus one from the maskil’s hymn in 1QS xi 22, a text that is typologically similar to the Hodayot. Six are from 1 Enoch, two from the Damascus Document, and one each in the rest of 1QS, and in 11QPsa (Plea for Deliverance), Barkhi Nafshi (4Q434), 4QInstruction (4Q418), and 1QApocryphal Prophecy (1Q25). The allusions in 1 Enoch, when they are examined, do not appear to have exegetical significance. But in the Hodayot at least some of the allusions do appear to be exegetically consequential.³⁹

 Armin Lange and Matthias Weigold, Biblical Quotations and Allusions in Second Temple Jewish Literature (JAJSup 5; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011). They discuss their method of identifying quotations and allusions on pp. 17– 19.  An even more expansive list of possible allusions to Job in the Hodayot than that of Lange and Weigold is provided by Svend Holm-Nielsen (Hodayot: Psalms from Qumran [Aarhus: Universitetsforlaget I Aarhus, 1960], 358 – 59]. Holm-Nielsen’s list, however, includes many instances of slight verbal similarity that are unlikely to be true allusions, so his suggestions must be carefully evaluated.  Julie A. Hughes, Scriptural Allusions and Exegesis in the Hodayot (STDJ 59; Leiden: Brill, 2006). Hughes lists four criteria beyond simple verbal similarity: “(1a) A correspondence with a hapax legomenon in the Hebrew Bible.… (1b) A group of words which stand in a similar syntactical relationship in both passages and occur in this combination in only one identifiable scriptural passage (e. g., Isa 9:6 “wonderful counselor … mighty/might”); (1c) A more commonly occurring phrase which nonetheless has similarities of meaning or context with one identifiable scripture passage. This would include the case where other more certain allusions to this particular scriptural passage or book have been identified within the poem” (53).  All references to and translations of the Qumran Hodayot in this essay follow the recent DJD edition: Hartmut Stegemann, with Eileen Schuller, and translation of texts by Carol A. Newsom, 1QHodayota, with Incorporation of 1QHodayotb and 4QHodayota-f (DJD XL; Oxford: Clarendon,

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Lange and Weigold’s list of putative allusions to Job in the Hodayot is as follows: Job 3:5 Job 3:10 Job 30:3 (= 38:27) Job Job Job Job Job Job

30:9 31:22 31:22 33:28 38:27 (= 30:3) 38:27 (= 30:3)

1QHa 1QHa 1QHa 1QHa 1QHa 1QHa 1QHa 1QHa 1QHa 1QHa

xiii 36 xix 22 xiii 32 xvii 6 x 13 xv 5 xvi 34 xi 20 xiii 32 xvii 6

To these one should add the Hymn of the Maskil from 1QS, since it is a hodayahstyle composition: Job 33:6

1QS xi 22

My own investigation of intertextual allusions to Job in the Hodayot adds the following: Job 3:4– 5, 24 Job 14:1 (= 15:14; 25:4)

Job 30:19 (= 42:6) Job 33:6

1QHa 1QHa 1QHa 1QHa 1QHa 1QHa 1QHa 1QHa

xiii 35 v 31 xix 9 – 10 xxiii 13 – 14 xviii 7 xx 30 xviii 8 xx 28 – 29

Moreover, one should also include two citations from a passage from the Songs of the Maskil (4Q511), which is influenced by the Niedrigkeitsdoxologien of the Hodayot, those passages that praise God by stressing the lowliness of humans: Job 4:19

4Q511 28 – 29 3

2009). A manual edition is also available: Eileen M. Schuller and Carol A. Newsom, The Hodayot (Thanksgiving Psalms): A Study Edition of 1QHa (EJL 36; Atlanta: SBL Press, 2012).

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4Q511 28 – 29 4

That the Hodayot and closely related texts have an interest in Job is evident. But for what purpose? I would argue that there are two types of allusions to Job, only one of which has exegetical significance. In one group I would place those allusions that merely appropriate language from Job that speaks of physical or emotional suffering (or, in one case, salvation). Job does, after all, provide some exquisite language by which to articulate suffering. This category includes all of the citations identified by Lange and Weigold in the Hodayot, plus the additional citations I identified in 1QHa xiii 35 to Job 3:4– 5, 24. It should be noted that all but one of these occurrences in the Hodayot are in the Hodayot of the Teacher, the collection that focuses on the suffering and persecution of the leader. The second group of intertextual allusions is far more significant. These include the allusions in the Hymn of the Maskil from 1QS xi and the Songs of the Maskil in 4Q511 28 – 29, as well as those in 1QHa v, xviii, xix, xx, xxiii. All of these citations occur in passages that are concerned with human nature as such, especially as it is contrasted with divine nature. Most, but not all, occur in the Niedrigkeitsdoxologien. To understand the significance of these allusions, they need to be situated in relation to the concern for anthropology that is attested not only in the Hodayot but also in several other Second Temple texts, most of which have wisdom elements. Shane Berg, among others, has observed the interest shown by many of these texts in engaging the creation traditions of Gen 1– 3 in order to construct a view of human nature and the human situation in the world.⁴⁰ One can find such reflections in Ben Sira, 1Q/4Q Instruction, the Two Spirits Teaching of 1QS 3 – 4, and the Hodayot. Yet even though all of the texts orient themselves to Gen 1– 3, each text arrives at a strikingly different anthropology. Moreover, none of the anthropologies is in agreement with a straightforward reading of the accounts of human creation in Gen 1 and Gen 2– 3. What seems to be happening in these texts is the sense that new ideas about anthropology require grounding in the authoritative texts of Gen 1– 3, but that the freedom to develop new claims is provided by creative exegesis. The exegetical techniques often involve the combining of phrases from the creation accounts, other anthropologically relevant passages within Genesis, and sometimes texts from elsewhere in scripture. The most striking contrast can be illustrated by comparing the use of Genesis and other intertexts in Ben Sira and in the Hodayot.

 Shane A. Berg, “Religious Epistemology in the Dead Sea Scrolls: The Heritage and Transformation of the Wisdom Tradition” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 2009), 21– 23.

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Ben Sira constructs a positive anthropology with a free moral agency by drawing together Gen 1– 3 with Deut 30. He recasts the curse of return to the dust in Gen 3:19 into a neutral statement of mortality (Sir 17:1), common to humans and all creatures (Sir 16:30). Similarly, the limit to human lifespan is not a reaction to a breach of the lines between the divine and the human as in Gen 6:3 but part of the divine design (Sir 17:2), along with the dominion granted in Gen 1:26 – 28 and Gen 9:2 to the human made in the divine image (Sir 17:2– 4). Most strikingly, Ben Sira insists that God “filled [humans] with knowledge and understanding, and showed them good and evil” (Sir 17:7) as a part of creation, contra the prohibition of Gen 2:17. Where does Ben Sira get the justification for this reading? Apparently by drawing on Deut 30:15: “See I set before you today life and good, death and evil.” Ben Sira also uses the pairs of expressions, “good and evil, life and death,” in Sir 11:14 and 37:17– 18. That Deuteronomy stands in the background of Ben Sira’s remarkable claim in Sir 17:7 is underscored by the way that passage transitions to the giving of the law to humans in Sir 17:11– 14. As Berg observes, Ben Sira demonstrates “the lengths to which a Hellenistic theologian was willing to go to remove the perceived offense of the withholding of the knowledge of good and evil from Adam. The knowledge of good and evil is necessary for proper moral discernment and covenant obedience.”⁴¹ Genesis 2– 3 can only be properly understood, Ben Sira implicitly claims, by means of its correction by Deut 30. The Hodayot, by contrast, present a highly negative anthropology, denying that human beings, as created, are capable of exercising free moral agency and choosing good over evil.⁴² This negative anthropology is constructed by drawing together Gen 1– 3 with selected passages from Job and certain other sources. The product of the exegetical work is not presented in such a concentrated fashion as in Ben Sira but is rather distributed over numerous passages in several compositions. In the Hodayot negative anthropology is not traced back to some primeval “fall,” but is the condition in which God created human beings. Humans’ physical and material nature is itself an emblem of their moral incapacity, as the terms “dust,” “clay,” and “flesh” are all marked negatively. This is not simply a body/spirit dualism, however, for the human spirit is also negative: it is a “perverted spirit” (v 32; viii 18; ix 24; xi 22) and a “spirit of flesh” (iv 37; v 15, 30). As sinful beings, humans are also characterized by disgusting impurity, since at Qumran moral and cultic impurity are conflated into

 Berg, “Religious Epistemology in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” 144.  Carol A. Newsom, “Models of the Moral Self: Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Judaism,” JBL 131 (2012): 5 – 25, here 21– 24.

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a single system.⁴³ Only those elected and transformed by God’s own spirit can transcend their created nature, and even then they are not wholly free from it. Two samples of the Niedrigkeitsdoxologien will suggest the flavor of the negative anthropology and its favored images: What is one born of woman amid all your [gre]at fearful acts? He is a thing constructed of dust and kneaded with water. Sin[ful gui]lt is his foundation, obscene shame, and a so[urce of im]purity. And a perverted spirit rules him. (v 31– 33) As for me, from dust [you] took [me, and from clay] I was pin]ched off as a source of impurity and obscene shame, a heap of dust and a thing kneaded [with water, a council of magg]ots, a dwelling of darkness. And there is a return to dust for the vessel of clay at the time of [your] anger […] dust returns to that from which it was taken. What can dust and ashes reply [concerning your judgment?] (xx 27– 30)

This account of human creation is as far from Gen 1– 3 as Ben Sira’s account is, though in the opposite direction. Although a full discussion of the exegetical basis of the Hodayot’s negative anthropology requires more space than is available here,⁴⁴ a summary will demonstrate the critical role played by Joban intertexts. That Gen 2– 3 is the starting point for the Hodayot is evident from the multiple clear allusions to Gen 3:19 (“until you return to the ground from which you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return”; see 1QHa xviii 6, 14; xx 27, 29 – 30, 34; xxii 8; xxiii 24, 29). The trope of humans as formed from dust and clay is developed through a series of intertexts linking Gen 2:7 with Isa 29:16; Ps 103:14; Jer 18:3 – 6; and Isa 45:9, as well as Job 33:6 (“pinched off from clay”). But none of these biblical passages construes human physicality as indicating moral incapacity, much less moral impurity. Nor can such matters simply be asserted without scriptural justification. It is the Joban texts that provide the critical fulcrum from which to present a negative anthropology in much the same way that Deut 30:15 provided a fulcrum for Ben Sira’s rereading of Genesis. As is well known, the negative anthropologies of Eliphaz and Bildad in Job 4:17– 19; 15:4– 6; 25:4– 6 are unparalleled in the Hebrew Bible. Critically, they present their negative anthropology in terms of the ontological contrast between

 Jonathan Klawans, Impurity and Sin in Ancient Judaism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 75 – 88.  I give a more detailed account in my essay: Carol A. Newsom, “Deriving Negative Anthropology Through Exegetical Activity: The Hodayot as Case Study,” in the forthcoming Festschrift for George Brooke.

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what is divine and what is human, using a chain-of-being trope that contrasts the purity of God with the lesser quality of the angels and the utter negativity of humans. Similarly, the Hodayot operate primarily with a divine/human ontological contrast. One can see how these negative anthropologies are drawn into the Qumran texts in the Songs of the Maskil (4Q511 23 – 29 3 – 4). In thanking God for his transformation, the speaker characterizes his created being in terms drawn from Eliphaz’s speech in Job 4:17– 19 and Elihu’s characterization of human origins: “You have [pla]ced knowledge in my foundation of dust (cf. Job 4:19), to […], even though I am spat saliva, (and) I was pinched off as a vessel of [clay] (cf. Job 33:6), and knea[ded] from darkness….” The frequent references to dust (‫ )עפר‬and clay (‫ )חמר‬in the Hodayot also invite the link with the phrase “dust and ashes” (‫)אפר ועפר‬, which occurs in the biblical text only in Gen 18:27 and Job 42:6, to establish a strong contrast between the divine and the human, and in Job 30:19 (also with ‫)חמר‬, where it also connotes a sense of divine disdain or disgust. Finally, one of the distinctive features of the anthropology of the Hodayot is the use of pollution and sin terminology associated with female sexuality to negatively characterize human beings. One sees this in such phrases as “pudenda of shame” (v 32; xx 28; cf. ix 24), “source of menstrual impurity” (v 32; ix 94; xx 28), “crucible (= womb) of iniquity” (ix 24). The link that designates all human beings as characterized by this pollution seems to be the idea that all are born from a woman, whose body is marked by sexual impurity. Thus it appears that a critical role is played by the phrase “born of woman,” which occurs in the Bible only in Job 14:1, 15:14, and 25:4. Although the phrase itself, even in Job, signifies only a mortal being, the contexts in which it occurs are all negative and associated with imagery of disgust and uncleanness. In Job 14:1, 15:14, and 25:4 the phrase occurs in contexts in which humans are characterized as “unclean” (‫)טמא‬, “abominable” (‫)נתעב‬, “foul” (‫)נאלח‬, and “impure” (‫)לא־זכו‬. Moreover, the book of Job makes other references to birth from the female body that provide links to creation accounts, as in 1:21, where mother’s womb and return to the earth are paralleled. Job 10:8 – 15 details the formation of the human as a fetus, using the poetic pair of dust and clay to describe a being who is judged by God for its inevitable sinfulness. Job is not the only intertext alluded to in these passages. It is likely that Ps 51:7, which associates sinfulness as existing since gestation, and Lev 20:18, which includes terminology of pudendum (‫)ערוה‬, and source (‫ )מקור‬of menstrual blood are also in view. But it is the Joban phrase that serves as the nexus for the connections between Genesis, Leviticus, Psalms, and possibly other texts and generalizes the condition to all humanity. Although the number of distinctive phrases from Job invoked by the Hodayot is relatively small, and even though these phrases occur in the Hodayot and re-

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lated texts only a limited number of times, they play a critical role in facilitating a stunning re-reading of the Genesis creation accounts that stands diametrically opposed to the rereading presented by Ben Sira. We cannot know, of course, whether those who read and recited the Hodayot were conscious of Ben Sira’s exegesis, much less whether their own exegetical tour de force was an intentional riposte. But what these two texts demonstrate is a common culture of interpretive activity in which key texts could be re-interpreted in significant ways so long as one could ground the interpretation in hermeneutical practices that involved intertextual exegesis. But would such a re-interpretation based on Job be as strong as one based on Deuteronomy? Here one is led back to the hints provided by the paleo-Hebrew manuscript of Job and the presence of two copies of Aramaic translations or targums, marks of distinction that otherwise seem largely associated with texts linked to Mosaic authorship. If Job was understood as a text of Mosaic authorship, then its citation may have carried that authority with it. Thus even though Job would not initially seem to have had much of a reception among the Dead Sea Scrolls, closer examination discloses that it may well have been a text of significant importance.

Katharine J. Dell (University of Cambridge)

The Book of Job and Two Twentieth-Century British Oratorios 1 Job Oratorios in Twentieth-Century Britain This essay is a companion to my previous article on the book of Job in Nineteenth-Century British oratorios.¹ In that article I made use of the definition of oratorio as provided by the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians: “An extended musical setting of a sacred text made up of dramatic, narrative and contemplative elements.”² Whilst this is a helpful broad definition, it does not get across the complexity of the development of the genre in different parts of Europe—a complexity that I explored in an article on oratorio in OEBART ³ and that is treated very fully in the five-volume work on the history of oratorio by Howard Smither.⁴ The book of Job lends itself well to the oratorio genre because it contains both narrative and contemplative aspects. In some ways, the narrative element is rather lacking in comparison to the more reflective sentiments of the main dialogue section and the speeches of God. In twentieth-century Britain I have found only two major works of oratorio based on Job—one at the beginning of the century and the other at the end.⁵ The other famous non-oratorio British piece of the

 Katharine J. Dell, “Nineteenth-Century British Job Oratorios,” in Interested Readers: Essays on the Hebrew Bible in Honor of David J. A. Clines (ed. James K. Aitken, Jeremy M. S. Clines, and Christl M. Maier; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2013), 415 – 29.  Howard E. Smither, “Oratorio,” in New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (ed. Stanley Sadie; 2d ed.; 29 vols; London: Grove, 2001), 18:503.  Katharine J. Dell, “Oratorio,” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and the Arts (ed. Timothy K. Beal; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 175 – 84.  Howard E. Smither, A History of the Oratorio (5 vols.; Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1977).  There are others in Europe more generally. See Michael Heymel, “Hiob und die Musik. Zur Bedeutung der Hiobgestalt für eine musikalische Seelsorge,” in Das Alte Testament und die Kunst. Beiträge des Symposiums “Das Alte Testament und die Kultur der Moderne” anlässlich des 100. Geburtstags Gerhard von Rads (1901 – 1971), Heidelberg, 18.–21. Oktober 2001 (ed. John Barton, J. Cheryl Exum, and Manfred Oeming; Münster: LIT Verlag, 2005), 129 – 64. See especially the treatment of Dallapiccola’s Job in Helen Leneman, “Musical Paths to Experiencing Job,” BibRec 2 (2013): 175 – 202. She also features the Peter Maxwell Davies’ Job oratorio discussed in this article. Finally, there is the American, Frederick Shepherd Converse’s, Job (London: Novello; New DOI 10.1515/9783110428148-009

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period is Job: A Masque for Dancing by Ralph Vaughan Williams (1934),⁶ which shows how the book was of interest to composers of more than simply choral music.⁷ For this, Vaughan Williams produced movements based around the main narrative sections of Job including “Job’s dream,” in which Job’s misfortunes are a bad dream, as well as dances by the “three comforters.” Elihu has a separate dance called the “dance of youth and beauty.” Vaughan Williams takes some licence with the biblical story in that God is usurped in heaven by Satan at one point, but ultimately Satan is driven out and banished. He uses the varying moods of the music rather than the written word to convey sentiments, although this work was always conceived of as a staged dance.⁸ Turning back now to oratorio, my aim is to show how the libretto of each oratorio relates to the biblical text—and such librettos are not always from the book of Job itself. By the twentieth century, some composers were content to branch away from the biblical text per se and to use other translations or poetry that were based on biblical stories, thus taking more licence with the biblical text. They were also less keen to make up additional material (although that is still found in part). The composers still needed to excise and prune the libretto text, whether biblical or simply biblically-based and to make a careful selection. This prompts questions about how the different sections of the book of Job and its characters are portrayed, and therefore where the emphasis lies in the presentation of the book in terms of themes and characterization. The two oratorios I focus on in this essay are by David Jenkins (1848 – 1915) and Peter Maxwell-Davies (1943–). I found another Job oratorio from 1962 by the

York: H. W. Gray, 1908; performed in Hamburg, 1908). Interestingly, the words are passages from Job and the Psalms, as with Jenkins’ work, although Latin and English are used.  Ralph Vaughan Williams, Job: A Masque for Dancing (London: Oxford University Press, 1934). This work was based more on William Blake’s Illustrations of the Book of Job, in Twenty-One Plates, Invented and Engraved by William Blake (London: Blake and Linnell, 1826) than directly on the biblical text, and so it represents an interpretation of the book that builds on another interpretation but in a different art form. See the detailed summary (with some of Blake’s illustrations) of Max Stern, Bible & Music: Influences of the Old Testament on Western Music (Jersey City, NJ: KTAV, 2011), 369 – 81.  Less well known is that Vaughan Williams also wrote a motet titled “The Voice out of the Whirlwind,” (1969) for choir and organ. It was adapted from scene VIII of his Job: A Masque for Dancing, titled “Galliard of the Sons of the Morning.”  Choon Leong Seow (Job 1 – 21: Interpretation and Commentary [Illuminations; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2013], 410 – 11) identifies the Vaughan Williams’ Job as the most interesting in a list of a good number of musical works based on Job. It is a great pleasure to dedicate this article to Professor Seow, whose scholarship I much admire.

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Welsh composer Alun Hoddinott,⁹ but I exclude consideration of it due to its Welsh language and general obscurity (though Jenkins is also Welsh, his is not similarly obscure). The sole copy of Hoddinott’s work is in Toronto, and the oratorio was performed only once. David Jenkins wrote his Job: An Oratorio in Aberystwyth in 1903, and it was performed first in Wales in 1904. Sadly, no recording of it exists. Peter Maxwell Davies (1934–), once Master of the Queen’s music (2004– 2014), wrote Job: An Oratorio in 1997. There is a live recording of its premiere by the Vancouver Bach Choir and CBC Vancouver Chamber Orchestra (1997) on May 11, 1997, at the Chan Center in Vancouver, British Columbia.¹⁰ It will be seen in this essay that some surprising elements of interpretation of Job come to light in these musical “readings.” One is their use of a deep (and unBritish) pathos, achieved through a focus on the lament aspects of the plight of Job. A second related, emphasis is an intertextual richness used to highlight the lament, notably in Jenkins’s case by drawing from Psalms and Lamentations to supplement Job’s own emotions. A third is a selective use of texts that commonly omits sections such as the Elihu speeches and hymn to wisdom, a choice that nods in the direction of source-critical biblical scholarship. A fourth is a creative use of the dialogue with the friends, in the case of Maxwell-Davies combining the three into one by the use of a polyphonic composition – three into one and yet three discordant “voices.” This polyphonic approach when applied to the character of Job himself also emphasizes the aspect of internal dialogue, an approach that may be seen to anticipate recent dialogical and polyphonic approaches to the book in modern scholarship.¹¹ Finally, the portrayal of the character of God, usually represented by a chorus or by angelic intermediaries, is of interest in the light of religious sensibilities over the presentation of the divine within the musical milieu.

 Seow mentions Hoddinott on his list, although he doesn’t mention Jenkins. Nor is Jenkins mentioned in the otherwise full list of works based on Job in Stern, Bible & Music, 382– 86.  Valdine Anderson (soprano), Linda Maguire (mezzo-soprano), Paul Moore (tenor), Kevin McMillan (baritone), Vancouver Bach Choir, CBD Vancouver Chamber Orchestra, Peter Maxwell Davies, conductor and composer, 1997; Collins Classics. The CD contains program notes by the composer and biographical notes on him by David Nice in English, French, and German, also featuring the libretto in English.  E. g., Carol A. Newsom, “The Book of Job as Polyphonic Text,” JSOT 26 (2002): 87– 108.

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2 David Jenkins’s Job Oratorio The characters in Jenkins’ oratorio are mainly true to the book of Job, with added angels and a couple of extras: the voice from the throne (God) and one of the “inhabitants” (of what place is not stated, presumably of the land of Uz where Job is said to dwell). The oratorio is much longer than most Job oratorios (which are typically an hour or less), and it adheres closely to the biblical text in all of its sections and sentiments. That said, the oratorio occasionally branches away from the text of Job to include other biblical texts, mainly laments. It will be seen that even though the book of Job is filled with pathos, especially from the title character, this oratorio still supplements the book of Job (both in its depiction of the prologue and its depiction of the dialogues) with laments from outside of Job, from the Psalms and Lamentations in particular. The oratorio focuses on the narratives of the Joban prologue and epilogue, as so often before, but there are now some extensive excerpts from the dialogue section of Job and the God speeches. It is interesting that Jenkins avoids the figure of God (possibly for reasons of religious sensibility) but not that of the Satan. The characters of the oratorio are as follows: Raphael (the Angel, soprano); Job’s wife (soprano); one of the inhabitants (soprano); Michael (the Angel, contralto); Gabriel (the Angel, tenor); a voice from the throne (tenor); Job (tenor); A Messenger (tenor); Bildad (tenor); Zophar (tenor); Satan (baritone); and Eliphaz (bass). The chorus is comprised variously of angels, Job’s household, inhabitants, and the Lord who answers out of the whirlwind. The opening scene (Prologue, sections 1– 4) takes place in heaven. The chorus begins by praising God with “Holy Lord of Sabaoth!” The trio of angels—Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael—sing to God’s glory using different divine appellations: Holy Lord God Almighty! (Rev 4:8); Holy Lord God of Hosts (Lord of Hosts, e. g., Isa 5:16; 48:2; 54:5; and Jer 51:5); and Holy God of Love. The appellations are developed with descriptions of the heavenly realm. None of this is found in the book of Job, nor are the phrases biblical quotations (although they echo biblical sentiments, e. g., the phrase, “Praise Thy name” is found in numerous psalms, and “heaven and earth” is also found in the context of praise). The purpose appears to be to situate the story more firmly in a glorious heavenly realm where “the shining spheres … praise Thy name for aye,” the “countless host of heaven bow down in awe before the throne,” and “the messengers of light from boundless space bring songs of joy from all who Abba call Thy Name.” The scene ends with a trio of angels and the chorus singing “Heaven and earth are full of Thy glory, Holy, Holy, Holy, Holy” (cf. Isa 6:3).

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A recitative from Satan follows in which he appears before the throne amongst the sons of God. The voice from the throne asks the question from Job 1:6, “Whence comest thou?” to which Satan replies, “from going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.” These statements closely follow the text of Job (mainly in the KJV, although there is variance probably due to the demands of musical metre). The main difference is that the “voice from the throne” replaces “the Lord” of the original. The voice represents God but is not God. The voice poses a second question—“Hast thou considered my servant Job…?” (1:8), to which Satan responds with the question, “Doth Job fear God for naught?” (1:9). All is then placed in Satan’s hand with permission for him to smite Job (cf. 1:12). The section ends with Raphael and the chorus singing “Holy, Holy, Holy, Holy Lord,” echoing the start of the piece and rounding off the section with a positive ending to the prologue. Scene 2 opens with Job’s daily morning sacrifice. Here again, Jenkins moves away from the book of Job in order to express his sentiments. Jenkins makes use of Ps 5:1– 4 and has Job sing, “Give ear to my words, O Lord, consider my meditation” (Ps 5:1). The song is at first a solo, and then the chorus joins in: “For Thou art not a God that hath pleasure in wickedness, evil shall not sojourn with Thee” (Ps 5:4). The text then cuts to Ps 5:11, with Job saying, “Let those that put their trust in Thee rejoice,” and the chorus responding with an adaptation of Job 5:12, “For thou wilt bless the righteous Job.” This verse, which refers generally to “the righteous,” here applies specifically to “the righteous Job.” The use of psalms to insert suitable sentiments into an oratorio libretto is very common, though this tack is used normally with narrative texts that state little emotion.¹² The book of Job, of course, is not one of these, so it is especially interesting that in the narrative section of the prologue here, such sentiments are added from other corpora rather than from the dialogue section of Job itself. Scene 3 portrays the trials of Job. It returns to the Joban prologue (1:14), with a messenger singing about the fate of Job’s children in a piece titled “The oxen were ploughing.” The messenger describes the Sabean sabotage of 1:14– 15. Then the chorus echoes the messenger with repetition of “The Sabeans fell upon the oxen” elided with “The Chaldeans fell upon the camels” (1:17). The fire of God (1:16) is saved until after the account of the Chaldeans. Finally, the chorus describes the “wind from the wilderness” (1:19) that caused the house to fall upon Job’s children. Some of the repetition of this section of the prologue in

 See in particular Edmund Chipp’s Job (1875) (cf. Dell, “Nineteenth-Century British Job Oratorios,” 421– 24).

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the biblical text (e. g., “I only am escaped alone to tell thee”) is removed. The phrase occurs only once in the messenger’s initial announcement. The next scene depicts “The Sorrows of Job.” “Naked came I” features Job’s reaction (1:23), followed by a solo and female chorus. The tenor playing the part of Job repeatedly sings, “Blessed be the name of the Lord!” (as in the biblical book), whilst the chorus sings, “Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity and in whose spirit there is no guile,” a direct quotation from Ps 32:2. The second heavenly scene of the Joban prologue is omitted entirely. Abruptly, the oratorio cuts to the scene with Job’s wife (2:9 – 11). Job’s wife (soprano) sings “Dost thou still hold fast thine integrity?” (2:9). Rather than using the LXX expansion, Jenkins then has Job’s wife summarize events: Was not thy substance torn from thy hands, And thine old age left in penury? Were thou not bereft of thy sons and daughters in a day, and thy grey hairs brought with sorrow to the grave? Has he not smitten thee with sores, and has he not cast thee in shame among the ashes?

Some of her summary covers the omission of 2:1– 8 in which Satan inflicts the sores on Job, and Job sits among the ashes. The wife’s final words are “Renounce God and die” (2:9b). Job’s response matches the biblical text when he talks about “foolish women,” suggesting that his wife is one of them; he then accepts good and bad alike from God (2:10 – 11). Job’s solo “Blessed be the name of the Lord” follows. Here he echoes the words of 1:21 again in the first line, but the libretto moves again to the psalms for inspiration: first to Ps 27:5, “For in the day of trouble He shall keep me secretly in his pavillion, in the covert of his tabernacle shall he hide me” (the very last phrase of 27:5 is omitted); and second to Ps 32:7, “Thou art my hiding place.” The next section, “Job’s friends arrive,” opens with an orchestral piece to indicate their arrival. Eliphaz, the first friend, appears and sings “Remember I pray thee…” (4:7), “Now a thing was secretly brought to me…” (4:12), and ends with “Then I heard a voice” (4:12– 16). This is a dramatic section of description, followed by a chorus playing out “the voice,” “Shall mortal man” (4:17– 18). The section then features short excerpts of the friends’ speeches in the order of Eliphaz, Job, Bildad, Zophar, Job, and finally Eliphaz. These excerpts convey a sense of dialogue, although they often alter the order of the sentiments in the biblical text. Eliphaz’s next “recit” is from his second speech in ch. 5 (cf. 5:17), to which Job responds with a recit of 7:1– 3. Job’s next solo piece goes back to 3:3 – 5, “Let the day perish,” and then turns to 3:24– 25, “For my sighing cometh before I eat and my roarings are pour’d out like waters, for the thing which I fear

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cometh upon me, and that which I am afraid of cometh unto me.” Bildad’s recit follows, “How long..,” based on 8:1– 2. He is followed by Zophar, “Canst though by searching find out God!” (11:7– 8a). Job then responds, “No doubt that ye are the people, and that wisdom shall die with you” (12:2– 3), invokes a sentiment from 13:1, “Lo! Mine eye hath seen all this, mine ear hath heard and understood it,” and finishes with “Hold your peace” (13:13). The scene ends with a solo and trio combination—a solo by Job and a trio of the friends, with Job singing “man that is born” (14:1– 2) and the friends singing, “Thou art the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of His wrath” (Lam 3:1, 4a, 6). These sentiments are repeated. It is fascinating that the libretto draws on Lamentations this time, showing the close link of the lament genres between these books and with psalms of lament, thus confirming the close intertextuality of these books.¹³ This cleverly gets across the sense of neither party listening to the other, as is very apparent in the Job dialogue. Job replies with “Miserable comforters are ye all” (16:2), followed by “How long will ye vex my soul and cut me in pieces with words” (19:2). Job’s next solo asks the friends to “Have pity upon me…” (19:21). The following solo invokes 23:3 – 5; 29:2– 8; and 30:1, passages that recall past days when God protected Job, to highlight his sorry state now. Job 30:16 and 31:35, juxtaposed with 23:3, round off with the challenge of 31:35 “Let the Almighty answer me.” The Lord then answers Job out of the whirlwind, represented by the chorus who utter quite a few of God’s sentiments. God’s answer starts with “Who is this that darkeneth …?” (38:2– 6), and continues with repetition of 38:7, “When the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy.” The next movement uses 38:16 – 17, 34– 35, followed by 38:25 – 26, with a semi-chorus or quartet responding with v. 27, “To satisfy the waste and desolate ground and to cause the tender grass to spring forth.” This is done, no doubt, to break up the length of the tirade from God, which is already edited carefully. The full chorus now ends with what are to be God’s final words from 38:21 and 40:2: “He that argueth with God let him answer it.” As in the biblical book, Job’s repentance follows. Job utters “Behold I am of small account…” (40:4), his first response. The epilogue is Job’s restoration. The chorus playing God comes in with, “My wrath is kindled”—the object of this wrath being the three friends. God commands that Job sacrifice on their behalf (42:7). We are told in a bracketed aside that Job’s friends are rejoicing in Job’s restoration—an aspect of the “happy ending” not conveyed in the biblical text. Then a solo soprano “inhabi-

 See Katharine Dell and Will Kynes, eds., Reading Job Intertextually (LHBOTS 574; London: Bloomsbury / T&T Clark, 2012).

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tant” narrates (for the first time in this oratorio), “And the Lord turned the captivity of Job” (42:10, 12). Job’s household are also represented in a final chorus piece—“Blessed is the man!” (based on Ps 32:2, “Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity and in whose spirit there is no guile,” and most of Ps 32:7). The chorus get carried away with the repetition of “Blessed” many times, which the solo voice also takes up: “Blessed Blessed, He that kept thee in the secret of his presence” (part of Ps 31:20). Then the chorus declares, “For he hath kept thee in the day of trouble, in the secret of his presence” (“the day of trouble” being a regular phrase in the psalms, elided once again with an echo of 31:20). Turning back to the heavenly scene (here is a significant departure from the biblical book), there is a final chorus and angel quartet (the three angels plus one other). The chorus sings, “True and righteous are thy judgements, Heaven and earth are full of thy glory”; the first half of this phrase is familiar from Rev 16:7 and 19:2, and the phrase “heaven and earth” is common in the Psalter and other biblical texts. The chorus is then echoed by the quartet of angels. The chorus repeat again in a positive note affirming Job’s righteousness. The epilogue ends with the quartet saying, “Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty,” as in Rev 4:8. This use of Revelation points forward to a final deliverance that is unstated but implied. In sum, Jenkins’s Job oratorio puts particular emphasis on angelic mediators. It features the dialogue of Job and demonstrates a good sense of their disagreement. Elihu, the fourth friend, is omitted altogether. The chorus stands in for God, but there is some discomfort with this role. Jenkins’s Job oratorio engages more with the dialogues and God speeches than I have seen in other pieces of this kind. The oratorio draws extensively on Psalm 32, but also uses snippets from elsewhere, such as Lamentations and Revelation, giving the whole piece a rich intertextuality and highlighting the particular intertextual relation of Job with the lament tradition. We know little of the context and why this subject matter appealed to the composer. Jenkins was a lecturer in Music at University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, and the work was published by the composer. It is dedicated to the Right Honorable Lord Rendel of Hatchlands, President of the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, “As a slight token of the composer’s esteem for his valuable service to Welsh Education” (Oct 1, 1903).

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3 Peter Maxwell-Davies’s Job Oratorio Peter Maxwell Davies’ Job oratorio (1997) adheres closely to the biblical text, although he uses the distinct (and fairly free) modern translation of Stephen Mitchell (1992),¹⁴ the texts being selected by David Lemon, the sponsor of the work. In fact, the chosen texts dot around and are not necessarily in chronological order, as will become clear. Unlike in many previous oratorios, the whole book of Job is considered; only the scenes with the messengers and the young Elihu, the fourth friend—who is also omitted in Mitchell’s translation—and the Epilogue are omitted. As in Jenkins’ Job oratorio, God is not a character, but is represented by the chorus and replaced in heaven by the presence of angels. Interestingly, the Accuser (the Satan) is represented by differing voices in a gentler tone than the voice of God. In fact, Maxwell-Davies’s oratorio reveals a different approach to voices and the mixing of them. Past oratorios assigned one voice to each part. In MaxwellDavies’s case, however, voices are changeable for one character, which gives the sense of a polyphonic text. The use of voices conveys a sense of dialogue, both between characters, but also the impression of an internal debate in the main character of Job, which highlights his shifts in mood: there is a sense of inner voice and outer voice. Moreover, the same character is represented often by more than one voice, especially Job. The different voices often move together in time, although there is deliberate dissonance in the notation, which leads to the effect of a kind of modern chant or plainsong. God is represented by the chorus here, as elsewhere, but also by other voice types.¹⁵ In Part 1, the Introduction follows parts of Job 1, notably 1:4– 5, and then moves to the scene in heaven with angels and the Accusing Angel coming into their midst (1:6). These first few lines are a paraphrase of Mitchell’s translation. In the conversation between God and the Accuser (based on 1:7– 12 and following Mitchell exactly), God is represented by the chorus and the Accuser by both a soprano and a contralto. The dialogue ends with the command “Don’t lay a hand

 Stephen Mitchell, The Book of Job (London: Harper Collins, 1992). This translation is quite different from most standard texts and often uses non-traditional variants, e. g., Mitchell often selects variants from the Septuagint. It also does not include the entirety of the biblical book of Job. Notable omissions are the so-called “hymn to wisdom” in ch. 28 and parts of the third cycle, as well as the Elihu speeches in chs. 32– 37. These omissions are based on sound source-critical theory. In a sense, Mitchell’s work is not a strict translation of the book but a literary rendition in its own right.  For more commentary on the musical aspects of this work see the program notes by David Nice in the CD notes. See also Leneman, “Musical Paths to Experiencing Job,” 175 – 202.

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on him,” and then cuts to Job’s reaction. Strangely, the disasters of 1:13 – 20 are not featured, nor is Job’s act of mourning in 1:20 (these do feature, however, in Mitchell’s translation). Then Job (a bass voice here) speaks his acceptance of whatever happens to him as the hand of God: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb and naked I will return there. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken: may the name of the Lord be blessed” (1:21). Scene 2 takes place in heaven and is a second dialogue between God (chorus) and the Accuser (solo tenor and bass), as in the biblical book (2:2– 6). The scene ends with “All right; he is in your power. Just don’t kill him.” Job’s response, which starts with the solo bass, is basically the text of 3:1– 10, 20 – 26 but is interspersed with other voices and ends with chorus accompaniment. It is interesting that the selection does not include Job’s personal sentiment of wishing for non-birth or non-existence (3:11– 19), although Mitchell includes this material in his translation. There are a number of times in this section when the chorus quietly yet emphatically echoes and repeats Job’s words. The first round of speeches features the friend (in the singular) as a solo soprano, contralto, tenor, and bass—each as a different voice and hence representing the friends (plural). There is a disjointed orchestral introduction, and the self-righteous tone of the piece is very different from Job’s laments. The friend begins with Eliphaz’s words in his first speech (4:6), and asks “Can an innocent man be punished?” (4:7). Then follow words based on 5:6 – 7 and 5:17– 21, 26. The chorus echoes “blood” and “death.” Job (this time, the bass voice) complains, “If my grief were measured” (6:2– 4; 7:1– 6, 11), interspersed with a solo tenor echoing key words. Job’s words to God are varied by the mixing of voices: chorus and tenor, and baritone; also soprano and contralto. Job sings “Remember life is a breath” (7:16), and the chorus takes up the sentiment (based on 7:7– 10). The solo baritone returns to ask, “What crime have I committed?” (13:23 – 4). The speeches of Bildad and Zophar are entirely omitted in this first round (only in this selection; Mitchell’s translation includes them), but parts of them appear later, though out of order. So the presence of all of the friends is indicated in the rich mixture of voices that makes up the “friend.” The call to “Remember” is reiterated, followed by 10:9, 12– 15. The line “You set me free, then trap me, like a cat toying with a mouse” follows Mitchell’s translation (which is very free here— the word “cat” never appears in the Hebrew Bible).¹⁶ The words of Job continue  This is a curious omission, since there were clearly many cats in neighbouring Egypt. See Edward Ullendorff, “Is Biblical Hebrew a Language?” Bulletin for the School of African and Oriental Studies 2 (1971): 3 – 17, on such omissions. He notes that the Hebrew Bible has no word for “spoon,” “niece,” “hour,” “comb,” “needle,” and so forth, though they undoubtedly existed.

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with “Why did you let me be born!” (10:18) and the desire for a moment’s peace (10:20 – 22). Part 2 features another round of speeches between the “friend” and Job, although featured now is the second friend (Bildad) of the first speech of the Joban dialogue, rather than the second round of speeches in the biblical text. Here the “friend” (contralto) learns from the wisdom of the ages (i. e., Bildad in 8:8), and other voices are interspersed. Job responds that no one can argue with God (9:2), harks back to the past and his past relationship with God (ch. 29), and uses some of the final “summation” (as Mitchell calls chs. 29 – 31). Other voices are again interspersed with the bass voice. In Part 3—the third set of speeches (in fact the opening of the second round in the biblical book)—the “friend,” represented by a solo soprano and contralto, asks, “How can a man be pure?” (Bildad in 25:4, followed by Eliphaz in 22:5, 10 – 11). Job (as solo tenor) responds, “I want to speak before God” (again a short paraphrase of Mitchell’s words, followed by Job 31:2– 4), and, as solo bass, “I swear by God who has wronged me.” This is Job’s third speech in Mitchell’s translation (27:1– 6), which is a much-shortened version of the final speeches of Job. Mitchell restores a third speech to Zophar from Job’s words in ch. 27 (which have long been noticed to contradict his usual sentiments). He excludes the “hymn to wisdom” in ch. 28. Each round of speeches gets shorter as is the case in the book of Job. This rendition is a much truncated dialogue compared to the biblical book, but it cites entirely from Job (or rather Mitchell’s abbreviated version of it) rather than interspersing suitable texts from the psalms texts or elsewhere. “The Unnamable” appears out of the whirlwind, represented by both a chorus and individual soloists, and featuring the text of Job 38 interspersed by a verse from ch. 40 and animal descriptions from chs. 38 and 39. Job’s response (as solo bass) is, “I know you can do all things…” Job’s second response in the biblical text is moved here (omitting Job’s first response in this selection from Mitchell). There is no justification of the friends by God (as in the biblical text and in Mitchell’s translation). The work ends with the chorus echoing Job and singing, “You can do all things,” and the final words, “I am dust. I will. I am.” (“I am dust” are in fact the final words of Job’s second response in Mitchell’s translation). The Epilogue is omitted. Accordingly, the piece ends with Job acknowledging his human frailty and nothingness in the presence of God. We know of the context of the writing of this work from Maxwell-Davies’s own comments about the recording. He wrote, “I have been interested in Job since I was eighteen and at university, initially from the book itself and its unresolvable moral questions. This interest was further stimulated by reading Jung’s

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Answer to Job, and has remained keen ever since. I welcomed the opportunity to investigate the work with abstract music rather than concrete words.”¹⁷ This point about the music is important, for there are some key “events” that are represented more in the music than in the words. As Maxwell-Davies wrote: Some of the main musical argument occurs in purely orchestral passages – most notably, where God appears in the whirlwind in Part 3 and between the last words of Job and the final plainsong-like chorus. The work progresses with musical material in a continuous state of transformation: there are few points of recapitulation where the listener feels on safe and familiar ground.¹⁸

One of the most interesting points Maxwell-Davies makes is that, “I saw the work as an internal drama that occurs inside Job’s head.”¹⁹ This has similarities to Vaughan Williams’s “dream” emphasis. The sense of internal dialogue is heightened by the mixed use of voices: for the first time, it is not one character, one voice, but a mixture of voices for one character, notably for Job and for the friends an uneasy blending into one, perhaps to indicate that their approaches are not that different from each other. The chorus, though, speaks God’s words. Maxwell-Davies mentions in his notes his attempt to frame the work in passages that are for almost unaccompanied chorus: “This gives it something of the character of plainsong, and contains the musical seeds from which the whole structure grows, and into which it finally dissolves.”²⁰ With the emphasis of both these oratorios falling on the sentiments of the Job character himself, music is a very appropriate medium for conveying emotion and hence adding to the power of the written words. The combination of music and poetry in oratorio is a heady mixture and probably contributed to the popularity of the genre over a good two centuries. Through this genre we as reader, audience, or listener can engage with the depths of Job’s pathos, with the hollow platitudes of the friends, and with the greatness of God’s power. These elements bind these two British oratorios together—British, but so unlike “Britishness” in their deep emotional appeal.

 Since Maxwell-Davies knew of Vaughan Williams’s work, there is a suggestion from David Lemon (sponsor of the commissioning of the piece) that Maxwell-Davies was also influenced by the Blake engravings. However, he does not so obviously link his work to these masterpieces.  Pages 8 – 9 of the program notes by David Nice in the CD notes.  Ibid.  Page 8 of the program notes by David Nice in the CD notes.

II: Proverbs and Ecclesiastes

Richard J. Clifford (Boston College School of Theology and Ministry, Emeritus)

Proverbs 1 – 9 as Instruction for a Young Man and for “Everyman” 1 Proverbs 1 – 9: Literal, Metaphorical, Allegorical, or Analogical?

Nearly all scholars agree that the final editor or editors of the book of Proverbs intended that chs. 1– 9 introduce chs. 10 – 31 by establishing basic premises such as the authority of the parents and personified Wisdom, highlighting recurrent metaphors such as the path or way (of life), and underlining the necessity of actively seeking wisdom. But on other matters of introduction, scholars’ opinions vary somewhat, depending on their views of the recipient of the instructions, Woman Wisdom, the “strange” woman, the editing of chs. 1– 9, and the most suitable lens for interpreting the book (literal, metaphorical, allegorical, or analogical).¹ Some commentators stress the literal and down-to-earth aspect of Proverbs 1– 9,² whereas others allow for or even emphasize the metaphorical³ or allegorical⁴ aspects. In this essay, I argue that Proverbs 1– 9 offers a basis for both literal and more-than-literal interpretations when its later editing is given due weight,

 It is a pleasure to dedicate this study to Professor Choon Leong Seow, long-time friend and fellow student of biblical Wisdom literature. His commentaries on Qoheleth and, more recently, on the book of Job, are models of a scholarship that is probing, attentive to a text’s reception, and accessible. As a commentator, he brings ancient texts to life and enables them to speak to modern audiences.  Among them, Michael V. Fox, Proverbs 1 – 9: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB 18A; New York: Doubleday, 2000), esp. 319 – 59; Fox, Proverbs 10 – 31: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB 18B; New York: Doubleday, 2009), esp. 902– 17; and Tova Forti, “The Isha Zara in Proverbs 1– 9: Allegory and Allegorization,” HS 48 (2007): 89 – 100.  Several commentaries espouse metaphorical interpretations to different degrees: Arndt Meinhold, Die Sprüche (ZBK; Zurich: TVZ, 1991); Roland Murphy, Proverbs (WBC 22; Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1998); Richard Clifford, Proverbs (OTL; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1999); Raymond C. Van Leeuwen, “The Book of Proverbs,” NIB 5 (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1997), 17– 264; and Christine Roy Yoder, Proverbs (AOTC; Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 2009).  Thomas P. McCreesh, “Wisdom as Wife: Proverbs 31:10 – 31,” RB 92 (1985): 25 – 46; repr. in Learning from the Sages: Selected Studies on the Book of Proverbs (ed. Roy B. Zuck; Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1995), 391– 410. DOI 10.1515/9783110428148-010

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and that commentators must reckon with both interpretations. In sections 2 and 3, I argue that the ten original father-son instructions⁵ contain hints of a broad application even prior to the later editing that made them applicable to a wide audience. One hint of the broad application is the instructions’ dramatic structure, which is signaled by their several characters, dramatic tension, and resolution. Section 4 analyzes the arrangement of chs. 1– 9 and suggests an apt term for explaining how the situation of a young man has been made applicable to “everyman.”

2 The Drama If one compares Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and Aramaic (chiefly Aḥ iqar) instructions with those in Proverbs 1– 9, one notices amid the similarities one distinctive difference. Non-biblical instructions generally have relatively brief introductions that identify the speaker, recipient, and aim of the instruction. Proverbs, however, has no less than ten instructions (plus other material) performing the introductory task. The drama that unfolds in Proverbs 1– 9 is easy to miss, because it is unexpected in the genre of instruction. Though the conventions of the genre lead one to expect a father (or senior) instructing and warning his son (or junior) about a variety of matters in a long speech, in Proverbs 1– 9 several speakers address the son directly or in quotation. The son hears his father (jointly with the mother on two occasions) exhort him to a virtuous way of life and warn him against others, and he hears a gang of men and a seductive woman exhort him to the opposite. Which counsel will the young man “hear,” or, given the prominence of the metaphor for conduct in Proverbs, on which path will he walk? The youth can choose to walk on “the way of the righteous” (e. g., 2:20; 4:18), but can as readily choose “the way of the wicked” (e. g., 4:14, 19). Each way has a trajectory—toward life or toward death—and the trajectory is not obvious to the naïve and untutored youth who walks on it. He needs instruction from experienced guides, for a “way” in Proverbs is not an immutable destiny; one can step on and off it by one’s choices. In 1:8 – 19, for example, the parents unmask the trajectory of the path of violence and urge their son not to walk on it; in 6:20 – 35, they do the  R. N. Whybray located “ten ‘discourses’ of similar form and length spoken by the teacher” and then expanded, in The Book of Proverbs: A Survey of Modern Study (History of Biblical Interpretation Series 1; Leiden: Brill, 1995), 64. Though Whybray’s analysis of the expansions was not accepted by all, many scholars share his identification of ten instructions: 1:8 – 19; 2:1– 22; 3:1– 12; 3:21– 35; 4:1– 9; 4:10 – 19; 4:20 – 27; 5:1– 23; 6:20 – 35; 7:1– 27.

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same regarding the path of adultery. Choosing the right path, as we might expect in the Bible, was not a private affair. One must listen to tradition as articulated by parents and scribal sayings. Proverbs 1– 9 has characters, conflict between them, and sufficient dramatic tension to hold the reader’s attention. The protagonist, who never speaks, is a typical young man, untutored and inexperienced. As his parents urge him to take the right path and seek wisdom, he faces two enemies who will do all they can to obstruct his quest—violent men (1:8 – 19; 2:12– 15; and 4:14– 19, always plural) and a seductive woman (2:16 – 19; ch. 5; 6:20 – 35; ch. 7, always singular). (The woman in 9:13 – 18 belongs to later editing and should not be listed with the original instructions.) Contrasts between these two voices are maximized for dramatic effect: male versus female, singular versus plural, parental voices versus strangers’ voices, adultery versus marital fidelity, and honor versus shame. The drama begins almost immediately. By the end of ch. 2 all the characters and main concepts have been introduced. Proverbs 1:8 – 19 introduces the father and mother, the young man, the violent men, the metaphor of the two ways, and the hidden justice operative in the world. Chapter 2 introduces the deceiving woman (vv. 16 – 19), places her in parallel to the men (vv. 12– 15), and holds up the ideal of revering the Yhwh above all else and seeking wisdom with total devotion. These actors will relate to each other and the concepts will remain vivid until the end of ch. 9.⁶

3 The Characters in the Drama 3.1 The Young Man, Recipient of the Instructions Proverbs’ ten instructions consistently focus on a young man as the recipient of the teaching, referring to him by the Hebrew terms ‫ ַנַער‬, ‫ ֶפִּתי‬, and ‫ ֵבּן‬. ‫ ַנַער‬occurs twice in chs. 1– 9 and five times elsewhere, always in its meaning of “adolescent, young man,” never in its other common meaning of “servant, retainer.” ‫ ְפִּתי‬is a person inexperienced but capable of learning; the term occurs fifteen times, nine of them in chs. 1– 9. ‫ ֵבּן‬, “son,” occurs sixty times in the book and twenty-three of its relevant occurrences are in chs. 1– 9. Unlike Mesopotamian and Egyptian instructions in which the recipient of instructions can be a non-family member (a “junior” instructed by a “senior”), the recipient of Proverbs’ exhortation is al-

 Also noted by Meinhold, Die Sprüche, 1:43 – 44.

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ways called “son.” The instructions are all father-to-son. Family relationships dominate later chapters of Proverbs as well; the sayings of chs. 10 – 22 contain over fifty references to father, mother, son, house, wife or (family) servant; only ch. 16 is without a family reference. Chapter 5 seems to be addressed to a married man (though it could be a pre-marriage caution); other instructions are appropriate for a married man, but could conceivably be addressed to a young man on the way to marriage (2:16 – 19; 6:20 – 35; ch. 7). The nature of the warnings offers further evidence of the age and gender of the recipient of the instructions. They are tailored for virile youths: don’t join a gang, avoid adultery, and care for your wife. The intended recipient of the instructions in chs. 1– 9 is thus a young man, untutored and needing to be socialized, married or ready for marriage.⁷ I will address the objection to this view— that such a specific reading makes the instructions inapplicable to readers who are female or men who are no longer “youths”—later in this essay.

3.2 The Gang of Men The gang of men, the first obstacle to acquiring wisdom, should not be considered separately from the other great obstacle to wisdom with which it is paired in ch. 2 (vv. 12– 15 // 16 – 19), namely, the deceptive woman. The men appear in 1:8 – 19; 2:12– 15; and 4:10 – 19. Unfortunately, the men have received much less scholarly attention than the woman, thereby obscuring the intended parallel between them. Of the three warnings to the youth to avoid the men, the first (1:8 – 19) is the most detailed; the parents quote at length the men’s recruiting speech. In the parents’ quote, the men brazenly boast of killing unsuspecting victims in order to fill their own houses with loot. Significantly, the men do not ask the youth to take part in an isolated crime, but to join their gang, share their purse, and take his share of the loot. Proverbs regards the moral life as a path or way largely shaped by others on the same path. The book frequently exhorts its hearers to avoid the company of the wicked (e. g., 22:24; 23:17; 24:1– 2). The men invite the youth to live in their house and share their money. Their distinctive trait is violence, so much so that the sixth instruction, 4:10 – 19, says of them: “they eat the bread of wickedness, / and drink the wine of violence (‫( ”)ֲחָמִסים‬v.  In the light of the age and gender of the addressee, the NRSV translation “child” for ‫ ֵבּן‬, “son,” is seriously misleading, for “child” in its first meaning refers to an unborn or recently born person, a young person between infancy and youth, or a person not yet of age. The “son” in Proverbs 1– 9, however, is a person recognized in society, capable of taking action—including getting married.

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17), i. e., violence is part of their daily life. The men are more than violent, however. As the parents point out to the son, they are most of all deceivers, for they invite the son to take a path that will ultimately lead to his death. The men are oblivious to the unseen justice operating in the world by which evil deeds recoil upon perpetrators; those shedding the blood of others will suffer the loss of their own life (1:18 – 19).

3.3 The Strange Woman As noted, the “strange” or “foreign” woman has received far more scholarly attention than the violent men, thereby obscuring the parallel between them and weakening the symbolic dimension of both. References to the strange woman or foreign woman and related female figures are found in 2:16 – 19; ch. 5; 6:20 – 35; and ch. 7. One reason that the strange woman has received so much attention is that the meaning of “strange” and “foreign” was for so long the subject of debate.⁸ Michael V. Fox has helpfully summarized scholarly views under six headings: (1) a foreign woman; (2) a seductress based on a foreign goddess; (3) a foreign cult prostitute; (4) a social outsider; (5) a prostitute, not necessarily foreign; and (6) someone else’s wife.⁹ Correctly in my view, Fox concludes that the “strange woman” or “foreign woman” is another man’s wife. As he analyzes the terms, ‫ ָזר‬is not so much “strange” as “something that does not properly belong to or in a situation—an other.”¹⁰ ‫ ָנְכ ִרי‬, conventionally “foreign,” “can by ex Nancy Nam Hoon Tan (The ‘Foreignness’ of the Foreign Woman in Proverbs 1 – 9 [BZAW 381; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008]) gives a survey of the history of interpretation. She concentrates on the notion of foreignness within the Bible rather than in neighboring literatures and attends to the development of “foreign” as a symbol, from pre-exilic Deuteronomistic sources in which it was symbolic of apostasy, to post-exilic literature in which “foreign” meant ethnically different (though not in a modern sense of ethnic) as in Ezra-Nehemiah. In post-Proverbs literature, its meaning changed again—to sexual promiscuity tout court. In her survey, Tan misstates my position on the strange woman: I did not state that the strange woman is “the mythological goddess of the ancient Near East” (41). Rather, my position was that the woman is a flesh and blood woman who is “strange” like the woman in the Instruction of Any, not known in her town and therefore unsuitable as a marriage partner. The language of life and death that is used of her, I suggested, may have come from a type scene found in the genre of epic in which a goddess offers love or marriage (deceptively) to a young hero (Clifford, Proverbs, 27).  Fox, Proverbs 1 – 9, 134– 41. Though in my commentary I interpreted the foreign woman as a social outsider and hence an unsuitable marriage partner (as described in the note immediately above), I now accept Fox’s view that she is a married woman.  Ibid., 139.

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tension be used of locals or indigenous people who are alien to the relationship in question.”¹¹ Fox explains: “every wife is an ʾiššah zarah (sic) to all men but her husband”;¹² “The strange woman in Proverbs is married (see 2:17; 6:26, 29, 34; 7:19; possibly 5:10 as well).”¹³ Though some assume that Proverbs warns against a one-night stand with an adulterous woman, its warning is rather against a sustained relationship with the woman. We should expect as much from the parallel drawn between the woman and the violent men in which the men invite the youth into a long-term relationship. “Come with us,” they say, “throw in your lot with us,” and they promise, “we shall all have a common purse” (1:11, 13 – 14). The passages about the men, 2:12 – 15 and 4:10 – 19, warn against their violent way of life rather than against a violent act. Similarly, when 2:16 – 19 speaks of the woman, it warns the youth against the path she invites him to take, a path that leads to death. Chapter 5 proposes that the best defense against an adulterous union is deepening one’s appreciation of one’s wife, a process that unfolds over time. The warning is thus not primarily against a single sexual encounter, but against a way of living that includes adulterous involvements. Chapter 7, it is true, describes a single instance of seduction, but it is a typical instance, and, besides, the chapter is prefaced by a statement that the best way to avoid adulterous relationship is to make wisdom an intimate friend. In summary, the strange woman plays a role in chs. 1– 9 analogous to that of the men; as a naïve young man will be tempted to join a gang of law-breakers for companionship and loot, so will he be tempted by the sex and excitement of an affair with a married woman.

3.4 The Father and Mother “Father” is mentioned five times in chs. 1– 9 (1:8; 3:12; 4:1, 3; 6:20) and “mother” three times (1:8; 4:3; 6:20). “Son” occurs twenty-three times apart from the introductory verse (1:8, 10, 15; 2:1; 3:1, 11, 12; 4:1, 3, 10, 20; 5:1, 20; 6:1, 3, 20; 7:1). Most occurrences of “son” have the possessive suffix “my son”; a few occurrences are plural (5:7; 7:7, 24; 8:4 [‫] ְבּ ֵני ָא ָדם‬, 31), which extend the exhortations to sons generally. Significantly, two instructions are given jointly by the father and mother (1:8 – 19 and 6:20 – 38). Their nearly identical opening lines underline the parity between the two enemies of wisdom:

 Ibid.  Ibid., 140.  Ibid., 141.

Proverbs 1 – 9 as Instruction for a Young Man and for “Everyman”

My son, hear your father’s instruction, do not reject your mother’s teaching. For they are a graceful wreath upon your head and a pendant for your throat. (1:8 – 9) My son, keep your father’s commandment, do not reject your mother’s teaching. Fasten them on your breast always, bind them around your throat. (6:20 – 21)

135

‫שמע בני מוסר אביך‬ ‫ואל־תטש תורת אמך‬ ‫כי לוית חן הם לראשך‬ ‫וענקים לגרגרתיך‬ ‫נצר בני מצות אביך‬ ‫ואל־תטש תורת אמך‬ ‫קשרם על־לבך תמיד‬ ‫ענדם על־גרגרתך‬

The first joint instruction warns against violent men, and the second, against the seductive woman. Violent men and a married woman are not the only dangers a young man desirous of acquiring wisdom must face, but the persistent focus on them endows them with a representative quality.

4 Expanding the Audience While the instructions of Proverbs 1– 9 we have examined up to this point depict a father speaking to his son, there are hints that these instructions are applicable to others besides a young man. One such hint is the instructions’ constant insistence on acquiring wisdom before all else and on befriending wisdom, though without defining it in detail. This creates the impression that avoiding obstacles to wisdom is in service of a quest for something more profound. A second hint of broadening is the paralleling of the two obstacles to its acquisition—violent men and deceptive woman—making them somewhat abstract and capable of symbolizing another reality. A third hint is the competing voices in the chapters, which lifts up the instructions from advice-giving to drama.

4.1 The Effects of Editing We now turn to the later editing of the instructions. That Proverbs 1– 9 underwent editing requires little demonstration. The instructions do not personify wisdom, focusing rather on the wisdom contained in the parent’s words. It was the editors who linked Wisdom’s speeches (1:20 – 33; 8:1– 36) to the instructions with the intention of grounding the parents’ wisdom in divine wisdom. R. N. Whybray examined the editing and concluded that extensive additions were made in two stages: first-stage additions aimed to enhance the authority of the speaker, and

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second-stage additions that affirmed wisdom as an attribute of Yhwh.¹⁴ Some of Whybray’s conclusions were undercut by debatable speculations about the author’s original intent. Fox’s handling of the editing of chapters 1– 9 is simpler and more persuasive: the “base text” was the prologue (1:1– 7) and the ten instructions; later, “interludes” (1:20 – 33; 3:13 – 20; 6:1– 19; 8:1– 36; 9:1– 5 + 11, 13 – 18) were added at different times; still later came minor insertions and Septuagintal additions.¹⁵ For the purposes of this essay, we can leave aside the precise dating of the additions and say simply that they were added later. Perhaps the most striking feature of the editing was the new audience envisioned by the added material (the two speeches of Woman Wisdom [1:20 – 31; ch. 8], hymn to wisdom [3:13 – 20], and competing invitations of the foolish and wise woman [9:1– 6, 11, 13 – 18]). The instructions were addressed to an audience of one—a young man, married or on the way to marriage. He is called “son” or “my son” by his father, and the instructions and warnings directed to him nearly always employ second person masculine singular verbs and suffixes. The instructions are tailored to a youth’s passions, either for honor and a happy household or (less wisely) for “macho” companions and adulterous adventures.¹⁶ The passages added to the instructions, however, are intended for a much different audience—a large and diverse group addressed with plural verbs and suffixes. This audience includes many kinds of people: “the wise person” and “the discerning person” (1:5), anybody who walks on city streets (1:2– 21; 8:1– 3), “the untutored” (1:22, 8:5, 9:4), “men” (8:4), “dullards” (1:20 – 21; 8:2– 3); “those devoid of sense” (9:4), “passers-by” (9:15 – 16), every human being (‫ָא ָדם‬, 3:10, 8:34), in fact the entire human race (‫ ְבּ ֵני ָא ָדם‬, 8:4, 31). There is also a difference in content: instead of the youth-oriented instructions, we find insistence on devotion to Wisdom and obedience to her voice along with promises of success and loving companionship with Wisdom. Editing made the specific instructions suitable for a general audience, and it added a symbolic dimension by putting stress on the deception of the words of the woman and the men rather than on violence or sex alone. The literal meaning was not lost, however; it was simply deepened and made more broadly applicable. Editors personified Wisdom and linked her speeches to the instructions. Woman Wisdom joined the cast of characters in the drama of chapters 1– 9, mak Whybray, The Book of Proverbs, 63 – 64.  Fox, Proverbs 1 – 9, 322– 24.  An exception is 4:1– 12, which begins with “Listen, my sons” (plural) and then reverts to the singular. Another is 7:24– 27, where the lesson of the impetuous young man is deliberately applied to other young men, not to others in general.

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ing possible a conclusion to the plot. Her speeches were fitted to the flow of the drama. In her first speech, 1:20 – 33, which follows the parents’ warning about the gang, Woman Wisdom seconds the severe tone of the parents’ speech. Presuming that the youth will disregard her teaching, she pours scorn upon him and threatens to abandon him when the trouble he is courting by his conduct finally comes down on his own head. In the last verse (1:33), however, Woman Wisdom abruptly changes her tone from scorn to welcome: “But the one who listens to me will dwell secure, / will be at rest, past fearing disaster.” Wisdom’s second speech in ch. 8 reverses the “threat-welcome sequence” of the first; it is entirely welcoming and threatens only in its last line (8:36): “But whoever passes me by harms himself; / all who hate me love death.” The speech in ch. 8 is of extraordinary importance for the meaning of wisdom, for it makes clear that the wisdom that the parents urge the young man to acquire is the wisdom that comes from God. Woman Wisdom bases her authority in the fact that she was with God from the beginning, the first thing created. The paired cosmogonies in 8:22– 31 demonstrate that divine wisdom is superior to all else in the universe because it was created prior to all other created things.¹⁷ In that culture, origins were exceedingly important, for it was then that things were created and imprinted with their destinies. Being created first was the highest honor that could be imagined, for the first created thing was the most authoritative in the entire creation. The first cosmogony in ch. 8 (vv. 22– 26) depicts pre-creation chaos concretely by listing cosmic elements that did not yet exist (“when there was not . . .”), whereas the second (8:27– 31) employs positive terms.¹⁸ Chapter 8 makes clear that wisdom has a divine origin. The ancient Near Eastern source of the concept of personified Wisdom is debated,¹⁹ but resolving the debate is not essential to my argument. The important

 Rabbinic tradition extended the privilege to other realities: “Seven things were created before the world, and these are they: the Torah, repentance, the garden of Eden, Gehenna [Hell], the Heavenly Throne, the Temple, and the name of the messiah” (b. Pesaḥ . 54a, cited in James Kugel, Traditions of the Bible: A Guide to the Bible As It Was at the Start of the Common Era [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998], 54).  For other instances of negation in creation accounts, see Richard Clifford, Creation in the Ancient Near East and in the Bible (CBQMS 26; Washington, DC: Catholic Biblical Association, 1994), 36 – 38, 62– 64. Negation in creation accounts occurs in the Bible in Gen 2:5. For its use in Prov 8, see my Proverbs, 95 – 101.  I argued in my Proverbs, 23 – 27, that the most likely ultimate origin of Hebrew ʾā mô n in Prov 8:30, was the Mesopotamian post-diluvian sage, ummâ nu, which occurs in lists of kings and their counselors. The translation of 8:30 should be, “I was at his side, a sage.” The derivation ʾā mô n from ummâ nu, linguistically impeccable, is held by an impressive number of distinguish-

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point is that Woman Wisdom mediates God’s wisdom and that her speeches ground the parental instructions in the divine will.²⁰ The parents’ advice mediates God’s wisdom to him,²¹ which is shown by the placement of Wisdom’s speeches. After the parents unmask the deceptive speech of the violent men in 1:8 – 19, Woman Wisdom continues the parents’ somber tone and endorses their assertion that violence recoils upon its perpetrators: “they shall eat the fruit of their way” (1:31). Wisdom’s second speech, ch. 8, contrasts effectively with the father’s tale of the solitary youth’s night-time seduction: Woman Wisdom enters the city square at high noon and invites everyone there to become her disciple (instead of her prey as does Woman Folly in ch. 7). Editors also added ch. 9 in which Woman Folly and Woman Wisdom invite passers-by to enter their house and partake of their food. One woman offers life (9:11), and the other, death (9:18). That last scene does not, however, definitively conclude the drama, for the chapter does not tell us which of the two houses the youth finally enters. The dramatic tension is thus not completely resolved within Proverbs 1– 9. In my view, we must look beyond chs. 1– 9, to 31:10 – 31, to the

ed Semitists and biblicists of the last two centuries—Heinrich Ewald, William F. Albright, Sidney Smith, Jonas Greenfield, Raymond C. Van Leeuwen, Knut Heim, and Alan Lenzi, among others. Woman Wisdom’s authority lies in her relationship to Yhwh; she represents the wisdom of Yhwh. For an up-to-date summary of the question, Jonas C. Greenfield, “Apkallu,” DDD (2d ed.; Leiden: Brill, 1999), 72– 74. For a recent treatment of the Uruk list of kings and sages, Alan Lenzi, “The Uruk List of Kings and Sages and Late Mesopotamian Scholarship,” JANER 8 (2008): 137– 69. Among recent commentators, Michael V. Fox is notable for demurring from this view, holding rather that in ch. 8 “Wisdom Speaks Wisdom, not God’s Word,” (Proverbs 1 – 9, 293). The personification of wisdom is inner-worldly, knowledge imposing itself upon the knower: “In other words, a learner may have the sensation that the field of knowledge is cooperating in clarifying itself, at least in the territory one has already traversed. While such an abstract formulation would have been foreign to the sages, they are expressing a similar experience of learning in terms of the reciprocal love of wisdom and the wise” (Proverbs 1 – 9, 276). Positing an inner-worldly origin of personified wisdom, however, breaks the link between the parents’ instructions and the teaching of Woman Wisdom.  Implicitly, they also ground the authority of their royal scribe-authors, for the king is the agent of the gods.  For Mesopotamia, Claus Wilcke argues for a great chain of transmission of divine wisdom mediated to humans through the apkallu (= counselors to kings in the pre-flood period) and ummâ nu (= counselors to kings in the post-flood period). One is not surprised in that hierarchical world to find heavenly wisdom contained in the writing of royal scribes and the instructions of fathers of families (“Göttliche und menschliche Weisheit im Alten Orient: Magie und Wissenschaft, Mythos und Geschichte,” in Weisheit: Archäologie der literarischen Kommunikation III [ed. A. Assmann; Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1991], 259 – 70). See also Kenton L. Sparks, Ancient Texts for the Study of the Hebrew Bible: A Guide to the Background Literature (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2005), 57.

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praise of the capable wife, for the final resolution. Arndt Meinhold has correctly seen that the book of Proverbs is framed by two major poems, 2:1– 22 and 31:10 – 31, which significantly are the only acrostic poems in the book.²² The first poem, Proverbs 2, invites the youth to seek wisdom earnestly in order to be protected from wicked men (vv. 1– 15) and the seductive woman (vv. 6 – 19) and receive wisdom as a gift from the Yhwh. The poem stresses the importance of revering Yhwh and assures the youthful hearer that the upright will dwell in the land and the wicked will vanish (vv. 21– 22). The final poem, Prov 31:10 – 31, describes a wife who reveres the Yhwh (31:30) and protects and nurtures her husband and family, enabling him to enjoy the gifts of wealth, honor, sons, and contentment. The poem tells us what happens, or rather what typically happens, to a young man who enters a house ruled by Wisdom. The book’s own editing process thus offers a guide to modern interpreters, validating both literal and symbolic interpretative tendencies. As was pointed out at the beginning of this essay, several recent commentators on Proverbs have tended in either of two directions that might at first seem antithetical—literal or symbolic. It is a false dichotomy.

4.2 An Interpretive Lens: Analogy between the Young Man and “Everyman” Neither an exclusively literal or allegorical interpretation sufficiently accounts for Proverbs 1– 9 because of the editing process that reframed the instructions. I would like now to suggest an interpretive term that, it is hoped, best respects the complexity of Proverbs 1– 9: analogy. A dictionary definition of analogy suffices: “An analogy is a comparison between two things, typically on the basis of

 Meinhold, Die Sprüche, 2:521. Proverbs 2 is an acrostic poem of twenty-two lines (the number of consonants in the Hebrew alphabet). Acrostic poems use the alphabet in a variety of ways as is shown by the acrostic poems in the Psalter. Some begin each line with a successive letter in the alphabet exactly like Prov 31:10 – 31; others simply have twenty-two lines; and one psalm (25) has an ‫ א‬heading the first line, a ‫ ל‬the middle line, and a ‫ פ‬the final line (= ‫אלף‬, probably standing for the entire alphabet). Proverbs 2 uses only two letters of the alphabet, the first letter of the first half of the Hebrew alphabet and the first letter of the second half, ‫ א‬and ‫ל‬. Initial ‫ א‬predominates in the first half of the poem (vv. 1– 11, ‫ִאם‬, “if” [three times] and ‫ָאז‬, “then” [two times]), and initial ‫ ל‬predominates in the second part (vv. 11– 22, ‫ְלַה ִצּיְלָך‬, “to save you” [vv. 12 and 16] and ‫ְלַמַען‬, “thus, so” [v. 20]). The initial letters divide the poem into two equal parts.

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their structure and for the purpose of explanation or clarification.”²³ I suggest that the scribal authors compared the situation and hopes of a young man in that culture with the situation and hopes of any human being. In the male-oriented and hierarchical ancient Near East, a widely used genre for reflection on moral life was the father-son instruction. The father-son instruction was ready at hand for talking about the moment when a youth became an adult, leaving childhood for adult responsibilities, and facing obstacles to genuine adulthood and family commitment. Proverbs’ instructions conceive the transition to adulthood largely in terms of marriage and establishing a household. Paradoxically, the very concreteness of the instructions to a young man makes them apt for new settings. Enlargement of specific practices and perspectives was not uncommon in antiquity, nor is it absent from contemporary life. In the view of many scholars, the Holiness Code in Leviticus 17– 26 broadened the exclusive priestly focus on the Temple, making it applicable to lay people living outside the Temple precincts. As Jacob Milgrom observes about the Holiness Code in Leviticus, “Two critical changes occur: ritual impurity becomes moral impurity, and the domain of the sacred expands, embracing the entire land, not just the sanctuary, and all of Israel, not just the priesthood.”²⁴ Another example is Christians in the Middle Ages who adapted for their own lives prayers and practices originally used only in monasteries, for example, the method of lectio divina for reading the Bible. In our own day, a large number of young men imitate the dress and hair styles of professional athletes. Proverbs 1– 9 draws an analogy between a father’s wise instructions to his son on how to succeed in life and wise instructions to any person on how to succeed in life. A large and diverse group of people heard what a father said to his son and found it applicable. The widespread popularity of the instruction genre indicates that a young man’s state was regarded as the very definition of “liminal” in the ancient Near East. A young man is at the point of crossing a threshold (Latin limen, “threshold”) from boyhood to adulthood, facing the tasks of taking a marriage partner and building and maintaining a household. As Raymond Van Leeuwen has perceptively recognized, “‘ways,’ ‘women,’ and ‘houses’ in relation to the young male addressee form a metaphorical system for Wisdom and Folly

 New Oxford American Dictionary (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 55. The dictionary goes on to give examples of uses of “analogy”: “an analogy between the workings of nature and those of human societies”; “he interprets logical functions by analogy with machines.”  Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus (CC; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2004), 175.

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that communicates the basic character of life in God’s world.”²⁵ Many people evidently found the young man’s liminal situation to be analogous to their own, for they too see themselves as walking a path, being tempted by various deceptions, and needing to re-focus on their goals. Let me end with a succinct and unadorned comment on the final poem in the book—on the capable wife in 31:10 – 31. As noted above, Meinhold sees the final poem as a bookend, linking back to the great poem in ch. 2. His concise summary of the two poems illustrates exceptionally well the value of analogy and its difference from literal and allegorical interpretation: “As ‘(Woman) Wisdom’ builds her house and busily attends to her guests (9:1– 6), so does this wife work even more for the benefit of the men of her house (cf. also 12:4a; 14:1).”²⁶ Proverbs 1– 9 again and again urges the recipient of the instructions to acquire wisdom above all things. The final poem gives form to the results of following that exhortation. There is no need, I submit, to spell out in more detail the relationship of Woman Wisdom to the capable wife. Once given the clue, the reader can imagine the happy result of casting aside false enticements and entering Wisdom’s house.

 Raymond Van Leeuwen, “The Book of Proverbs,” NIB 5:24. See also his “Liminality and Worldview in Proverbs 1– 9,” Semeia 50 (1990): 111– 44.  Meinhold, Die Sprüche, 2:521 (my translation). “Wie ‘(Frau) Weisheit’ ihr Haus baut und zum Wohl ihrer Gäste tätig ist (9,1– 6), so wirkt aus diese Frau zum Besten der Menschen ihres Hause und darüber hinaus (vgl. auch 12,4a; 14,1a).”

Bernd U. Schipper (Humboldt University–Berlin)

From Epistemology to Wisdom Theology: The Composition of Proverbs 10 1 Proverbs 10: A Collection of Disparate Sayings or a Coherent Composition?

For decades the first chapter of the so-called “Solomonic collection” of the book of Proverbs (10:1– 22:16) has been seen as a collection of highly disparate proverbs.¹ In his 1984 commentary, Otto Plöger, for example, argued that Prov 10 does not have a continuous theme. Rather, the chapter should be seen as a simple collection of sayings (“eine Spruchsammlung”).² Other scholars stressed the same for the Solomonic proverbs in general. The variegated content of Prov 10:1– 22:16 has been taken primarily as a collection of individual proverbs and not as a planned and coherent composition. As a result, scholars have tended to direct their inquiries to formal aspects of the combination of individual sayings, such as keywords or phonetic similarities.³ In a groundbreaking article in 1995, Thomas Krüger presented a different view.⁴ He argued that one should not speak of a collection of single proverbs but instead of a masterful composition. By analyzing the first chapter of the Solomonic collection (Prov 10), Krüger demonstrated that the composition can be explained if one accepts that the text presents different points of view rather than only one. The chapter can be interpreted as an example of a discursive type of wisdom in which the author intentionally combined different perspectives.

 This essay was presented in November 2015 at the SBL Annual Meeting in Atlanta where I had the honor of presenting in the same session as Choon Leong Seow.  Otto Plöger, Sprüche Salomos (Proverbia) (BKAT 17; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1984), 122. See also Claus Westermann, “Weisheit und praktische Theologie,” Praktische Theologie 79 (1990): 515 – 16, and Leo G. Perdue, Proverbs (IBC; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2000), 163 – 64.  See the overview by Roger N. Whybray, The Book of Proverbs: A Survey of Modern Study (History of Biblical Interpretation Series 1; Leiden: Brill, 1995), 34– 61, and Ruth Scoralick, Einzelspruch und Sammlung: Komposition im Buch der Sprichwörter Kapitel 10 – 15 (BZAW 232; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1995), 127– 29, 161– 81.  Thomas Krüger, “Komposition und Diskussion in Proverbia 10,” ZTK 92 (1995): 413 – 33. DOI 10.1515/9783110428148-011

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In this essay, I take Krüger’s observation as a point of departure. I argue that Prov 10 is a masterful composition that presents a hermeneutical approach that combines three different levels of sapiential thought. The concept of empirical wisdom is combined with a discourse approach where, over the course of the chapter’s thirty-two verses, the paradigm of sapiential epistemology is challenged gradually by highlighting the theological dimension of wisdom. The essay has three parts. I begin with a brief look at the structure of Prov 10. I then follow with a more detailed discussion of the author’s compositional strategy. The final section summarizes the main argument and proposes how Prov 10 functions as an introduction to the so-called “Solomonic” collection (Prov 10:1– 22:16).

2 The Structure of Proverbs 10 2.1 Formal Analysis On first glance it is clear that Prov 10 is shaped by a sharp antithesis: the wisdom student on one side and the fool on the other. Both types are characterized by a number of terms.⁵ The wisdom student is called a “wise son” (‫) ֵבּן ָחָכם‬, “an insightful one” (‫) ָנבוֹן‬, and a “prudent son” (‫) ֵבּן ַמ ְשׂ ִכּיל‬. In contrast, the evildoer is labeled as a “foolish son” (‫) ֵּבן ְכִּסיל‬, a “shameful son” (‫) ֵבּן ֵמִבישׁ‬, as “stupid” (‫)ֱא ִויל‬, or as “one who lacks sense” (‫)ֲחַסר־ֵלב‬. If one looks at the other words with which these descriptions occur, it is clear that the wisdom student is not only wise but also “righteous”; likewise, the fool is also “wicked”. The words ‫ ַצ ִדּיק‬and ‫ ְר ָשִׁעים‬/‫ ָר ָשׁע‬are the most frequently used words in the chapter (‫ ַצ ִדּיק‬is used 13 times, ‫ ָר ָשׁע‬is used 12 times).⁶ This antithetical presentation of the two types is combined with a remarkable number of wisdom terms: the word ‫“( ָחָכם‬wise”) in vv. 1, 8, and 14; the noun ‫“( ָחְכָמה‬wisdom”) in vv. 13 and 23; ‫“( ַדַּעת‬knowledge”) in v. 14; ‫“( מוָּסר‬discipline”) and ‫“( תּוַֹכַחת‬reproof”) in v. 17; and the participles ‫“( ָנבוֹן‬insightful”) in v. 13 and ‫“( ַמ ְשׂ ִכּיל‬prudent”) in vv. 5 and 19.

 Cf. the list of terms in Magne Sæbø, Sprüche (ATD 16/1; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2012), 165; and Andreas Scherer, Das weise Wort und seine Wirkung: Eine Untersuchung zur Komposition und Redaktion von Proverbia 10,1 – 22,16 (WMANT 83; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1999), 52.  ‫ ָר ָשׁע‬/ ‫ ְר ָשִׁעים‬is mentioned in vv. 3, 6, 7, 11, 16, 20, 24, 25, 27, 28, 30, 32 and ‫ ַצ ִדּיק‬in vv. 3, 6, 7, 11, 16, 20, 21, 24, 25, 28, 30, 31, 32; see also Richard J. Clifford, Proverbs: A Commentary (OTL; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1999), 111.

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The two lexical fields of wisdom terminology and the opposition between the wise and the fool are combined with different subjects. In vv. 1– 5, 14– 15, the sapiential antithesis is connected with the subject of poverty and wealth.⁷ Verses 6 – 11 illustrate the consequences of one’s speech and behavior; vv. 19 – 21, 31– 32 take up the subject of true and false speech; and vv. 23 – 30 are about legitimate and illegitimate expectations.⁸ In sum, there is little doubt that the author of Prov 10 composed the text by combining different subjects in light of the general antithesis of the righteous and the wicked. An even more detailed analysis reveals that the subjects in these verses are not presented in a single way but through a combination of different perspectives. This is illustrated by the example of wealth and poverty. Generally speaking, vv. 1– 5 present a positive view of wealth on the one side, and a critical view of wealth on the other: 1 A wise son (‫ ) ֵבּן ָחָכם‬makes a⁹ father rejoice, but a foolish son (‫ )ֵבן ְכִּסיל‬is the grief of his mother. 2 Treasures of wickedness (‫ ) ֶר ַשׁע‬are not useful, but righteousness (‫ )ְצ ָדָקה‬saves from death. 3 Yhwh does not let the appetite of the righteous (‫ )ַצ ִדּיק‬starve, but he rebuffs the greed of the wicked ones (‫) ְר ָשִׁעים‬. 4 Poor is the one who works with a hand of laxness,¹⁰ but the hand of diligent (people) brings wealth. 5 He who gathers in summer is a prudent son (‫) ֵבּן ַמ ְשׂ ִכּיל‬, he who sleeps¹¹ in harvest is a shameful son (‫) ֵבּן ֵמִבישׁ‬.

 See Timothy J. Sandoval, The Discourse of Wealth and Poverty in the Book of Proverbs (BibInt 77; Leiden: Brill, 2006).  See the structure suggested by Arndt Meinhold, Sprüche Kapitel 1 – 15 (ZBK 16; Zurich: TVZ, 1991), 163 – 64; and Bruce K. Waltke, The Book of Proverbs: Chapters 1 – 15 (NICOT; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004), 450 – 51.  Some scholars add a masculine suffix “his father,” but this is no more than a hypothesis without textual witnesses. See Waltke, Proverbs 1 – 15, 447 with n. 3; and Michael V. Fox, Proverbs 10 – 31: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB 18B; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 510.  Lit. “Whoever works with a lazy hand will become poor.” Cf. Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Proverbs of Solomon (trans. Matthew G. Easton; Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1874), 210 – 11, followed by Knut M. Heim, Like Grapes of Gold Set in Silver: An Interpretation of Proverbial Clusters in Proverbs 10:1 – 22:16 (BZAW 273; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2001), 111.  The Hebrew word ‫ רדם‬expresses that the shameful son sleeps soundly; cf. Christine Roy Yoder, Proverbs (AOTC; Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 2009), 119.

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The five verses have a double concentric structure.¹² The outer frame (vv. 1 and 5) is composed by the contrast of the two sons (expressed by the keyword ‫) ֵבּן‬, while the inner frame (vv. 2a and 4b) is linked by the subject of “wealth”. The Yhwh‐saying in the middle (v. 3) is connected chiastically to v. 2 by the keywords ‫ ְצ ָדָקה‬/ ‫( ַצ ִדּיק‬righteousness / the righteous one) and ‫ ָר ָשׁע‬/ ‫( ֶר ַשׁע‬wickedness / the wicked one). The masterful composition of the unit can be seen also in the thematic link between vv. 4 and 5, both of which present a contrast between the lax person and the diligent person.¹³

2.2 Thematic Analysis Moving from formal aspects to the claims of the text, there are two different perspectives.¹⁴ According to the outer frame (vv. 1 and 5), a wise son is diligent whereas a foolish son is lazy. This is specified in v. 4, which states that the diligent person becomes rich and the lazy person becomes poor. The wording of the Hebrew text underlines that wealth or poverty is in a person’s “hands”.¹⁵ Thus, the moral of the text is that a wise and diligent person will receive respect and wealth, whereas the foolish and lazy person comes into poverty. In contrast to this, vv. 2– 3 present a different view. Only righteousness can save from death because the treasures of wickedness are not useful (‫)ל ֹא־יוִֹעילוּ‬. This is connected to what God gives: “[God] does not let the appetite of a righteous person starve” (v. 3). The two perspectives in vv. 1– 5 create a critical dialogue: vv. 2– 3 relativize the positive view of wealth in vv. 4– 5 insofar as wealth is only legitimate if it is not connected to wickedness.¹⁶ What vv. 4– 5 present as general wisdom appears almost naïve in light of vv. 2– 3. The hand of the diligent not only brings wealth (v. 4b) but a specific type of wealth. Only if wealth is connected to righteousness (‫ )ְצ ָדָקה‬can it lead to a successful life before Yhwh.

 Cf. Knut M. Heim, “Coreferentiality, Structure and Context in Proverbs 10:1– 5,” JOTT 6 (1993): 199 – 203; Yoder, Proverbs, 118 – 19.  See Waltke, Proverbs 1 – 15, 454.  See for this Krüger, “Komposition,” 417– 22.  Cf. Clifford, Proverbs, 112– 13 who refers to “oral communication from Prof. Choon-Leong Seow” for his paragraph on the structure of vv. 4– 5. For the structure of Prov 1– 5 see also Theodore A. Hildebrandt, “Proverbial Strings: Cohesion in Proverbs 10,” Grace Theological Journal 11 (1990): 171– 85, esp. 174.  See Krüger, “Komposition,” 421– 22.

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At the same time, vv. 4– 5 correct vv. 2– 3. Reading the two verses in sequence with vv. 2– 3, it is clear that one cannot simply expect everything from Yhwh while twiddling one’s thumbs. One’s work must correspond to what one receives from God. Verses 15 – 16 elaborate on this claim. Both verses connect to the subject of wealth and poverty in vv. 1– 5 through the use of catchwords.¹⁷ Verse 15 compares the wealth of a rich person positively with a fortified city; however, v. 16 explains that only the wage of the righteous person leads to life, whereas the produce of the wicked leads to sin. What we have in the text, then, is a discursive type of wisdom where different perspectives are combined intentionally. This is done at the textual level by a conscious principle, as can be seen in the structure of the next section (vv. 6 – 11): 6 Blessings (‫( ) ְבּ ָרכוֹת‬come to) the head of the righteous (‫)ַצ ִדּיק‬, but the mouth of the wicked ones (‫ ) ְר ָשִׁעים‬covers up violence.¹⁸ 7 The memory of the righteous (‫ )ַצ ִדּיק‬is to a blessing (‫) ְבּ ָרָכה‬, but the name of the wicked ones (‫ ) ְר ָשִׁעים‬will rot. 8 The wise in heart accepts commands, but one stupid of lips comes to ruin. 9 He who goes in blamelessness walks securely, but he who makes his ways crooked will be known. 10 He who winks his eye causes pain, but one stupid-of-lips comes to ruin.¹⁹ 11 The mouth of the righteous (‫ )ַצ ִדּיק‬is a fount of life, but the mouth of the wicked ones (‫ ) ְר ָשִׁעים‬covers up violence.

Like vv. 1– 5, vv. 6 – 11 have a double concentric structure. In contrast to vv. 1– 5, however, this structure contains quotations of half-verses: v. 6b (“but the mouth of the wicked covers up violence”) is identical to v. 11b, and v. 8b (“but one stu-

 Cf. Knut M. Heim, Poetic Imagination in Proverbs: Variant Repetitions and the Nature of Poetry (BBRSup 4; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2013), 121; Plöger, Sprüche Salomos (Proverbia), 126; and Waltke, Proverbs 1 – 15, 463 – 64.  BHS (Fichtner) suggests an emendation in vv. 6b and 11b from ‫ ָחָמס ְיַכ ֶסּה‬to ‫חֶֹמץ כּוֹס‬. For the meaning of ‫ כסה‬in the Piel, see Jutta Hausmann, Studien zum Menschenbild der älteren Weisheit (Spr 10 ff) (FAT 7; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1995), 194 with n. 59.  The Septuagint of 10:10b reads antithetically ὁ δὲ ἐλέγχων μετὰ παρρησίας εἰρηνοποιεῖ (“but he who reproves openly makes peace” [NETS]), which was used by some commentators for an emendation of the Masoretic Text. See Crawford H. Toy, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Proverbs (ICC 16; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1899), 204. See the discussion of Michael V. Fox, Proverbs: An Eclectic Edition with Introduction and Textual Commentary (HBCE 1; Atlanta: SBL Press, 2015), 176 – 77, and Dominique Barthélemy, Job, Proverbes, Qohélet et Cantique des Cantiques (OBO 50/5; Fribourg: Academic, 2016), 546 – 48.

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pid of lips comes to ruin”) corresponds to v. 10b.²⁰ Verses 6, 7 and 6, 11 are also connected by catchwords such as “the righteous one” (‫ ַצ ִדּיק‬in vv. 6a and 11a), the word “blessing” (‫) ְבּ ָרָכה‬, and the wicked ones (‫ ) ְר ָשִׁעים‬in vv. 6a and 7a. The author did all of this to make clear the fundamental connection between speech and action. The one with stupid lips comes to ruin (v. 10), whereas the mouth of the righteous one is a fount of life (v. 11). Like vv. 1– 5, the subject of the unit is presented with different perspectives, as is evident with the similar half-verse in vv. 8 and 10.²¹ In v. 10 the aforementioned phrase “but one stupid-of-lips comes to ruin” is contrasted with “he who winks his eye causes pain,” whereas in v. 8 the same sentence stands in contrast to the phrase “the wise in heart accepts commands.”²² Furthermore, in vv. 8 and 10 we have two different levels of thinking: a level of basic life experience (v. 10) and a sapiential category (v. 8). The phrase “he who winks his eye causes pain” expresses a life experience, whereas the phrase “the wise in heart accepts commands” is on the level of sapiential thought.

3 The Three Levels of Sapiential Thought of Proverbs 10 If one looks at the thirty-two verses of Prov 10, it can easily be seen that the verses function on different levels. First, there are sayings that present behavior that is simply recommended or (even) discouraged. Verse 4, for example, stresses that “poor is the one who works with a hand of laxness,” whereas the “hand of diligent people brings wealth.” Another statement about a basic life experience is v. 12: “Hatred awakens conflicts, but love covers up all transgressions.” An aphorism in a metaphorical style is found in v. 26: “Like vinegar to the teeth and smoke to the eyes, so is the sluggard to those who send him.” Second, Prov 10 contains verses that classify a certain behavior as wise or unwise. For instance, v. 5 declares, “The one who gathers in summer is a prudent son, whereas the one who sleeps in harvest is a shameful son.” Unlike those mentioned above in vv. 4, 12, and 26, this statement does not reflect general life experience. Rather, the particular behavior it highlights is classified as

 For this see the detailed analysis of Heim, Poetic Imagination in Proverbs, 218 – 23 (Set 28) and 224– 27 (Set 29).  Cf. Hans F. Fuhs, Das Buch der Sprichwörter: Ein Kommentar (FB 95; Würzburg: Echter, 2001), 181.  See Fox, Proverbs 10 – 31, 515 – 16.

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wise or foolish, expressed in the antithesis between the prudent and the shameful son (‫ ֵבּן ַמ ְשׂ ִכּיל‬and ‫) ֵבּן ֵמִבישׁ‬. The same can be seen in v. 9, which expresses the foundation of the sapiential world in general, namely, the “deed-consequencenexus”:²³ “He who goes in blamelessness walks securely, but he who makes his way crooked will be known.” Finally, on a third level, the chapter contains verses which qualify a behavior as good or bad before God.²⁴ Hence v. 27 stresses: “The fear of Yhwh adds days (of living), but the years of the wicked are short.” As can be seen also in v. 3, this level is connected to the antithesis of the righteous one (‫ )ַצ ִדּיק‬and the wicked one (‫) ָר ָשׁע‬: “Yhwh does not let the appetite of a righteous person starve, but he rebuffs the greed of the wicked.” The same antithesis is emphasized in v. 16: “The wage of the righteous leads to life, the produce of the wicked to sin.” If we put all the simple sayings—that is, the phrases which present basic life experience—together, five aphorisms emerge:²⁵ Poor is the one who works with a hand of laxness, but the hand of diligent (people) brings wealth. (v. 4) He who winks his eye causes pain, but one stupid of lips comes to ruin. (v. 10) Hatred awakens conflicts, but love covers up all transgressions. (v. 12) The wealth of a rich person is his fortified city, the poverty of the poor is their ruin. (v. 15) Like vinegar to the teeth and smoke to the eyes so is the sluggard to those who send him. (v. 26)²⁶

 Bernd Janowski, “Die Tat kehrt zum Tä ter zurü ck: Offene Fragen im Umkreis des ‘Tun-Ergehen-Zusammenhangs’,” ZTK 91 (1994): 247– 71.  Previous research attempted to connect this theological level to a particular redactional layer. See, e. g., Roger N. Whybray, “Yahweh-Sayings and their Context in Proverbs 10:1– 22:16,” in La Sagesse de l’Ancien Testament (ed. Maurice Gilbert; BETL 51; Leuven: Peeters, 1990), 153– 61.  See also R. B. Y. Scott, “Wise and Foolish, Righteous and Wicked,” in Studies in the Religion of Ancient Israel (VTSup 23; Leiden: Brill, 1972), 146 – 65, with a differentiation between “folk sayings” and “teaching Proverbs” (154).  LXX translates differently and makes the message of the verse more coherent with the context: καὶ καπνὸς ὄμμασιν οὕτως παρανομία τοῖς χρωμένοις αὐτήν (“and as smoke to the eyes, so transgression is to those that practice it” [NETS, altered]). Cf. Heim, Like Grapes, 127 n. b.

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These aphorisms are connected to the subjects of wealth and poverty, hatred and love, and different types of communication—both nonverbal (v. 10a, the one who winks his eye) and verbal (10b, the lips).²⁷ Interestingly, the simple sayings run through the whole composition. We find them in each larger unit of the text: vv. 1– 5, 6 – 11, 12– 21, and 23 – 30.²⁸ In other words, there are sayings that can be called “aphorisms” through the entire chapter. If we go one step further and look at the context of these sayings, we see that they are combined with the two other types of sayings, namely, sapiential sayings and theological proverbs:²⁹ Yhwh does not let the appetite of the righteous starve, but he rebuffs the greed of the wicked ones. (v. 3) (level 3 – theological proverb) Poor is the one who works with a hand of laxness, but the hand of diligent (people) brings wealth. (v. 4) (level 1 – simple aphorism) He who gathers in summer is a prudent son, he who sleeps in harvest is a shameful son. (v. 5) (level 2 – sapiential proverb)

Or in vv. 9, 10, and 11: He who goes in blamelessness walks securely, but he who makes his ways crooked will be known. (v. 9) (level 2 – sapiential proverb) He who winks his eye causes pain, but one stupid-of-lips comes to ruin. (v. 10) (level 1 – simple aphorism) The mouth of the righteous is a fount of life, but the mouth of the wicked ones covers up violence. (v. 11) (level 3 – theological proverb)

These lines combine a single aphorism with a proverbial saying and theological reflection.³⁰ With this combination, the author created a line of argument: a par-

 For this distinction cf. Meinhold, Sprüche Kapitel 1 – 15, 171.  On the structure of the chapter see also Scherer, Wort, 64.  Cf. Sæbø, Sprüche, 169, who sees two types of wisdom: (1) “eine ältere Erfahrungsweisheit” and (2) “einen ethisch-religiösen Rahmen.”  Cf. Luis Alonso Schökel’s phraseology for vv. 1– 3: the sapiential (v. 1), the ethical (v. 2), and the religious (v. 3). See Luis Alonso Schökel and José Vilchez Lindez, Proverbios (Nueva Biblia

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ticular behavior is not only useful in terms of life experience, it is wise in the categories of sapiential thought, and has consequences for the relationship between humans and God. There is, then, a shift in argumentation from an empirical level to the level of theological reflection. A certain behavior is recommended not only in light of basic human knowledge; rather, a person who acts this way is wise in the eyes of other people and, on a theological level, becomes a ‫( ַצ ִדּיק‬a righteous person) before God. The way of thinking presented in Prov 10 is typical for the world of wisdom. Wisdom reflects basic human knowledge that is grounded in experience.³¹ The crucial point, however, is that the author of Prov 10 combined this position with a line of argumentation. Starting with a general position which is indisputable for everyone who recognizes life experience, the author moves to a second level—the level of wisdom—and concludes with a theological reflection. This creates a kind of epistemology that is grounded in an empirical approach. As a consequence of this line of thought, being a good person before others and a righteous person before God becomes possible for every student of wisdom who is willing to act according to the instruction.³² One only has to study the sapiential instruction to attain the correct relationship with other people and with God. Therefore, becoming a ‫( ַצ ִדּיק‬a righteous person) is possible by means of wisdom. It is well known that this concept differs from other traditions in the Hebrew Bible. In the so-called Deuteronomistic History, for example, the divine will is revealed by God and distinguished sharply from what a human alone can achieve. The whole narrative in the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings presents a line of thought in which humans have failed to act according to the will of God as codified in the commandments. The same could be said for some of the prophetic books, especially those which are re-shaped on a redactional level by Deuteronomistic ideas, such as Jeremiah, Amos, and Hosea.³³ The most remark-

Española. Sapienciales 1; Madrid: Ediciones Cristiandad, 1984), 78. Cf. also Meinhold, Sprüche, 165, who sees in vv. 1bc-3 “weisheitliche, religiöse und moralische Begrifflichkeit.”  Egyptian wisdom instructions make this very clear when they designate a certain behavior as “useful” and another behavior as “harmful.” See, e. g., the introduction of the Instruction of Ptahhotep (Papyrus Prisse 5.7– 8) with the Egyptian terms Ꜣḫ.t and wgꜢ.t: The instruction is classified as “useful (Ꜣḫ.t) for him who will hear, as harmful (wgꜢ.t) to him who would neglect him.” See Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, Volume 1: The Old and Middle Kingdoms (2d ed.; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), 63.  Cf. Perdue, Proverbs, 164– 65.  See, e. g., Christl M. Maier, Jeremia als Lehrer der Tora: Soziale Gebote des Deuteronomiums in Fortschreibungen des Jeremiabuches (FRLANT 196; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2002), 34– 37, and Konrad Schmid, Buchgestalten des Jeremiabuches: Untersuchungen zur Redaktions-

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able expression of this thought can be found in the so-called “new covenant” passage in Jer 31. There, the prophet states that Yhwh will cut a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah that is different from the old covenant that God’s people broke:³⁴ Look, days are coming—oracle of Yhwh—when I shall make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. Not like the covenant that I made with their ancestors in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke though I was their master—oracle of Yhwh. But this is the covenant that I shall make with the house of Israel after those days—oracle of Yhwh. I shall put my Torah in their inward parts, and upon their hearts I shall write it. And I shall be God to them, and they, they shall be a people to me. And they shall not again teach one another. (vv. 31– 34a)

Against the backdrop of the history between God and humanity in the past—the so-called “old covenant”—there can be no doubt that the human being is eo ipso not able to live according to the will of God. Consequently, God must put the Torah—that is, the divine will—in the human heart. The theology of Prov 10 is a far cry from this position. The chapter’s thirtytwo verses reflect a strong belief in the foundations of traditional wisdom.³⁵ In contrast to Jer 31, certain behavior is useful in terms of human life experience. Even more, it helps humans act in terms of wisdom and according to the will of God.³⁶ The author of Prov 10 believes in a positive anthropology. Because humans are able to act according to the will of God, it can be said that the memory of the righteous one (‫ ) ֵזֶכר ַצ ִדּיק‬is a blessing (v. 7). But how does this fit, one might ask, with the different perspectives of the text and the aforementioned phenomenon of discursive wisdom?

4 From Epistemology to Wisdom Theology In order to understand the line of argumentation in Prov 10, it is necessary to take into account literary evidence that we have not considered so far, namely, und Rezeptionsgeschichte von Jer 30 – 33 im Kontext des Buches (WMANT 72; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1996).  Bernd U. Schipper, “When Wisdom is not Enough! The Discourse on Wisdom and Torah and the Composition of the Book of Proverbs,” in Wisdom and Torah: The Reception of “Torah” in the Wisdom Literature of the Second Temple Period (ed. Bernd U. Schipper and David A. Teeter; JSJSup 163; Leiden: Brill, 2013), 55 – 80, esp. 63 – 65.  See, e. g., Fox, Proverbs 10 – 31, 520.  Cf. Yoder, Proverbs, 115 – 17.

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the relationship between Prov 10 and the following chapters of Prov 11– 22. We have already seen that the author of Prov 10 worked with quotations. Verses 6 – 11, for example, are composed of a double ring structure. Verse 6b is identical with v. 11b, and v. 8b is identical to v. 10b. But these are not the only quotations in the text. Proverbs 10 contains quotations of half- and full verses from other chapters within the larger composition of Prov 10 – 22: full verses in 10:1 (15:20), 10:2 (11:4), and 10:28 (11:7), and half-verses in 10:13b (26:3b), 10:15a (18:11a), and 10:29b (21:15b).³⁷ It is beyond the scope of this study to evaluate the literary evidence in detail, but examination of the passages suggests that the direction of dependence is from the other texts to Prov 10, not the other way around. That is, Prov 10 drew on the verses of Prov 11, 15, 18, and 21.³⁸ Through these quotations, a network is established between Prov 10 and other chapters. This can also be seen in the topics that Prov 10 shares with other texts in Prov 11– 22. Strictly speaking, we have in the following chapters parallels for all of the subjects dealt with in Prov 10: (1) Wealth and poverty (10:1– 5 // 11:28 – 30; 14:31; 17:5; 20:4; 22:1– 2) (2) The consequences of hard work (10:4 // 12:24; 13:11) (3) The consequences of false speech and wrong communication (10:6 – 11 // 11:9 – 15; 12:13 – 23; 17:7– 15; 18:1– 9) (4) Expectations and their fulfillment (10:23 – 30 // 11:23 – 27; 13:12– 19; 14:19 – 24)

There can be no doubt that Prov 10 is connected closely to Prov 11– 22. The thirtytwo verses present the main subjects of the following chapters in a specific way.³⁹ This includes, on the one hand, logical argumentation with the aforementioned three levels of sapiential thought—the aphorism, the proverbial saying, and the theological reflection; and, on the other, the combination of different perspectives—that is to say, it is discursive wisdom.⁴⁰ As we saw in vv. 1– 5, the author connects two points of view to create a critical dialogue. The perspective of vv. 2– 3 corrects vv. 4– 5 and vice versa. The cluster can be seen as a critical dialogue in which one position is complemented by another. If we combine this with the three different categories of sapiential

 For this evidence see Heim, Poetic Imagination in Proverbs, Sets 26, 27, 30 – 33.  For a detailed evaluation, see the first volume of my commentary on Proverbs (Sprüche 1 – 15 [Proverbien] [BKAT 17.1; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, forthcoming]).  In this regard Prov 10 seems to have a similar function for the following chapters in Prov 11– 22 as Prov 2 does for the so-called “ten instructions” of Prov 1– 9. See my Hermeneutik der Tora: Studien zur Traditionsgeschichte von Prov 2 und zur Komposition von Prov 1 – 9 (BZAW 432; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2012), 198 – 201.  For this “discursive wisdom” see again Krüger, “Komposition,” 431– 33.

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thought, an interesting textual strategy emerges. The epistemology in which human knowledge, through systematic reflection, leads to fundamental insights about humans and God turns out to be only one possible point of view alongside another. This different point of view is a theological one, emphasizing in particular that true wealth comes only from Yhwh. This can be seen in v. 22: “The blessing of Yhwh—it makes one rich, and striving adds nothing more thereto.” Whereas vv. 1– 5 present two arguments in the form of discursive wisdom, v. 22 leaves no room for debate: Only the blessing of Yhwh makes a person rich.⁴¹ By emphasizing what God gives, the verse calls the epistemological approach into question. This accentuation stands in the context of a general shift within Prov 10. The theological level, connected to the relationship between the wisdom student and God, comes more and more into focus. Thus, in vv. 27– 32 the contrast between the two types of persons is described by the terms ‫ ַצ ִדּיק‬and the ‫ָר ָשׁע‬ (“righteous” and “wicked”), not by the terms ‫ ֵבּן ָחָכם‬and ‫“( ֵּבן ְכִּסיל‬wise son” and “foolish son”).⁴² The theological dimension of the final part of Prov 10 is expressed also by two other Yhwh-sayings: v. 27, which stresses that the “Fear of Yhwh adds days of living,” and v. 29 with the message that the “Way of Yhwh is a stronghold to blamelessness.”⁴³

5 Conclusions Regarding the line of thought in Prov 10, Franz Delitzsch stressed in his 1873 commentary that “the progressive unfolding follows no systematic scheme, but continuously wells forth.”⁴⁴ Delitzsch’s observation is to some extent correct and to some extent incorrect.

5.1 Epistemology Delitzsch’s opinion is correct insofar as one can discern a structure within Prov 10 in which three levels of sapiential thought are combined—the simple aphorism, the proverbial saying, and the theological reflection. Proverbs 10 presents a concept of wisdom which is grounded in an empirical approach, that is, an  Cf. Perdue, Proverbs, 164– 66, and Yoder, Proverbs, 116.  See Meinhold, Sprüche Kapitel 1 – 15, 180, 184– 85.  For the three Yhwh-sayings cf. Waltke, Proverbs 1 – 15, 477– 80, and Fuhs, Das Buch der Sprichwörter, 187– 88.  Delitzsch, Proverbs, 208.

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epistemology. A certain behavior is not only useful, it is also wise in sapiential categories and can lead to the status of being a righteous person (‫ )ַצ ִדּיק‬before God. The author connects this line of argumentation to a discursive type of wisdom: as the example of wealth and poverty shows, there is not only one point of view but two. Both are connected and create a critical debate. Thus, being a wealthy person is good if that wealth is connected to righteousness. But it would make no sense to hope only for God’s help without doing one’s own work.

5.2 Wisdom Theology If one focuses only on the Yhwh-sayings in Prov 10, however, an interesting development appears, and this is where Delitzsch’s observation that there is no systematic scheme proves incorrect. Beginning in v. 22, the text gradually begins to emphasize the theological dimension of wisdom. The blessing of Yhwh makes one rich (v. 22), the fear of Yhwh adds days of life (v. 27), and the way of Yhwh is a stronghold of blamelessness (v. 29). In a nutshell, Prov 10 contains a development from epistemology to wisdom theology. It is a development in which a traditional approach to sapiential thought is gradually called into question. Since true wealth comes only from Yhwh, Prov 10 emphasizes that one’s way of life must be connected to God. This is because the person who acts in this way is a righteous one and an enduring foundation (v. 25).

5.3 Proverbs 10 as an Introduction to the Solomonic Collection in Prov 10:1 – 22:16 With this concept of wisdom, Prov 10 becomes an introduction to the so-called “Solomonic collection” of the book of Proverbs (10:1– 22:16).⁴⁵ On the one hand, the chapter presents a concept of wisdom that is grounded in an empirical approach; on the other hand, it calls this epistemology into question by highlighting the theological dimension of wisdom. Therefore, Prov 10 presents not only different perspectives, but also reflects a form of critical wisdom that is aware of the fundamental difference between God and humans, between divine knowledge and what humans can achieve.

 See Sæbø, Sprüche, 165, who called Prov 10 a “portal” to the following collection.

Agustinus Gianto (Pontifical Biblical Institute)

On ‫ ֵישׁ‬of Reflection in the Book of Proverbs 1 Three Categories of ‫ ֵישׁ‬in the Book of Proverbs The use of ‫ ֵישׁ‬in the book of Proverbs falls into three categories: (1) as a common noun meaning “property/wealth” (8:21); (2) as a particle of existence (3:28; 19:18; 23:18; 24:14); and (3) as a particle to introduce a reflection (11:24; 12:8; 13:7, 23; 14:12; 16:25; 18:24; 20:15). In this third category, ‫ ֵישׁ‬signals a reflection on some opposing situation or paradox. Though not completely unknown, this last usage deserves further discussion.¹ After a brief description of the first two categories, this essay identifies and analyzes this less known third usage—the ‫ ֵישׁ‬of reflection.

2 ‫ ֵישׁ‬as a Common Noun and Particle of Existence The use of ‫ ֵישׁ‬to denote property or wealth is found in Prov 8:20: ‫אֲהַבי ֵישׁ‬ ֹ ‫ְלַה ְנִחיל‬ ‫אְצר ֵֹתיֶהם ֲאַמ ֵלּא‬ ֹ ‫…“( ְו‬to endow those who love me with wealth, and their treasuries I fill”). Elsewhere this usage is found in only two other places, both in the book of Sirach: namely, Sir 42:3 MSMas,B ‫…“( ועל מחלקות נחלה ויש‬and of dividing inheritance and property”) and Sir 25:21 MSC ‫“( ועל יש לה‬and for [a woman’s] wealth [do not be greedy]”).²

 Diethelm Michel (Untersuchungen zur Eigenart des Buches Qohelet [BZAW 183; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1989], 184– 85) isolated these cases based on a lead from Hans-Jürgen Hermisson (Studien zur israelitischen Spruchweisheit [WMANT 28; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1968], 148). Michel’s rendering of ‫ ֵישׁ‬as “Es kommt vor” makes it clear that the particle in these verses means neither “there is/are” nor “property.” He also finds this usage in Eccl 1:10; 2:21; 4:8, 9; 5:12; 6:1, 11; 7:15; 8:6, 14; 9:4; 10:5 (Untersuchungen, 185 – 99). I have previously discussed ‫ ֵישׁ‬in the Ecclesiastes and Proverbs passages dealt with by Michel (Agustinus Gianto, “Some Notes on Evidentiality in Biblical Hebrew,” in Biblical and Oriental Essays in Memory of Willian L. Moran [ed. Agustinus Gianto; BibOr 48; Rome: Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 2005], 133 – 53, here 144– 45). This essay looks into more details of the individual cases in the book of Proverbs that Michel does not discuss.  Sir 25:21 could also be interpreted as particle of existence: “for what she has do not be greedy.” But since it is a parallel to ‫“( יפי אשת‬beauty of a woman”) in the first half of this colon, ‫ ֵישׁ‬here is more a noun than a particle of existence. Michael V. Fox observes that ‫ועל יש‬ DOI 10.1515/9783110428148-012

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In Hebrew, stating the existence of something is the most common use of ‫ ֵישׁ‬. This is clear from Prov 19:18: ‫“( ַי ֵסּר ִבּ ְנָך ִכּי־ ֵישׁ ִתְּק ָוה ְוֶאל־ֲהִמיתוֹ ַאל־ ִתּ ָשּׂא ַנְפ ֶשָׁך‬Just discipline your son, for there is hope, and do not wish to put him to death!”). This is the opposite of the particle of non-existence, ‫“( ֵאין‬there is/are no”). The other occurrences of this second usage are found in three texts: Prov 3:28, 23:18, and 24:14. First is Prov 3:28: ‫תּאַמר ְל ֵרֲעָך ֵלְך ָושׁוּב וָּמָחר ֶא ֵתּן ְו ֵישׁ ִא ָתְּך‬ ֹ ‫“( ַאל־‬Do not say to your neighbor, ‘Please, come back, and tomorrow I will give!’ while you have it with you”); second is Prov 23:18: ‫“( ִכּי ִאם־ ֵישׁ ַאֲח ִרית ְוִתְק ָוְתָך ל ֹא ִת ָכּ ֵרת‬for there is surely a future, and your hope will not be cut short”); finally, Prov 24:14, which offers practically the same affirmation as in 23:18: ‫ְו ֵישׁ ַאֲח ִרית ְוִתְק ָוְתָך ל ֹא‬ ‫“( ִת ָכּ ֵרת‬and there is a future, and your hope will not be cut short”). In these four cases, the particle clearly states the existence of hope or a future. As a noun meaning “property/wealth” and as particle of existence, ‫ ֵישׁ‬cannot be left untranslated. Other occurrences of ‫ ֵישׁ‬in the book of Proverbs are not used in the same way and need to be represented in translation differently.³

3 ‫ ֵישׁ‬as a Particle to Introduce a Reflection The saying in Prov 11:24 illustrates well the use of ‫ ֵישׁ‬to introduce a reflection. For the sake of argument, this special use of ‫ ֵישׁ‬is reproduced as “there is this,” though it can also be left untranslated: ‫ֵישׁ ְמַפ ֵזּר ְונוָֹסף עוֹד ְוחוֹ ֵשְׂך ִמיּ ֹ ֶשׁר ַאְך־ְלַמְחסוֹר‬ (“There is this: one who gives lavishly and gains even more; but one who withholds more than what is due only falls victim to shortage”). The saying does not state the existence of someone who generously gives away. Rather, it highlights the fact that someone grows richer despite the person’s liberalities, and that the reverse is also true—that is, holding back what is not rightful will only lead to

‫“ לה‬shows an intermediate step between ‫ ֵישׁ‬as an existential particle and as a noun meaning possessions” (Proverbs 1 – 9 [AB 18A; New York: Doubleday, 2000], 278). On the connection between the two meanings, see the remarks at the conclusion of this essay.  Authoritative translations vary in rendering the particle. RSV, NRSV, NIV, and NJPS give no rendering of ‫ ֵישׁ‬as a particle of existence for Prov 11:24 and 13:7, 23. These translations (except NRSV) give a rendering for 18:24; for 14:12 and 16:25, only NJPS; for 20:15, only NIV and NJPS; for 12:8, only NRSV and NIV. Recent commentators also differ among themselves. Richard J. Clifford translates ‫ ֵישׁ‬as a particle of existence only in Prov 14:12, 16:25, and 18:24 (Proverbs [OTL; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1999). Bruce K. Waltke consistently renders ‫ ֵישׁ‬as a particle of existence (The Book of Proverbs: Chapters 1 – 15 [NICOT; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans 2004] and The Book of Proverbs: Chapters 15 – 31 [NICOT; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005]), as does Fox (Proverbs 1 – 9); cf. Fox, Proverbs 10 – 31 (AB 18B; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009).

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159

destitution. This thought is introduced by the particle ‫ ֵישׁ‬, rendered here as “there is this” as above. In other words, rather than qualifying a single word (i. e., ‫ְמַפ ֵזּר‬ “one who gives lavishly”), the particle ‫ ֵישׁ‬qualifies the whole statement. In this way the particle introduces a reflection on a paradoxical state of affairs.⁴ The saying invites the reader to choose the first paradox—to be generous—as this will increase fortune rather than diminishing it. The theme that giving generously has its rewards continues in the subsequent context, as is clear from v. 25: ‫“( ֶנֶפשׁ־ ְבּ ָרָכה ְתֻד ָשּׁן וַּמ ְר ֶוה ַגּם־הוּא יוֹ ֶרא‬A giving character will prosper, and one who offers drink—he, too, will be given drink”). A similar reflection on wealth or poverty introduced by ‫ ֵישׁ‬is found in 13:7: ‫“( ֵישׁ ִמְתַע ֵשּׁר ְוֵאין ֹכּל ִמְתרוֹ ֵשׁשׁ ְוהוֹן ָרב‬There is this: some pretend to be rich but possesses nothing; some claim to be poor but have great fortune”). Again, this saying is not about the existence of someone pretending to be rich while having no possessions. Rather it presents two kinds of characters—a poor man playing the part of rich man, and a rich man acting like a man of fortune claiming to be poor. The particle ‫ ֵישׁ‬puts this thought into relief. The subsequent context in 13:8 continues along the same lines: ‫ֹכֶּפר‬ ‫“( ֶנֶפשׁ־ִאישׁ ָע ְשׁרוֹ ְו ָרשׁ ל ֹא־ ָשַׁמע ְגָּע ָרה‬The ransom for a person’s life is his wealth, but the poor hears no threat”). Each of these two examples contains two pairs of paradoxical situations. The second part of each pair reaffirms the first by stating the reverse: generous giving and yet growing richer combined with its reverse, that is, taking more but growing ever needier (Prov 11:24); rich in appearance but poor in reality combined with its reverse, i. e., poor in appearance but rich in reality (Prov 13:7). In Prov 12:18, a thoughtful observation is made on the opposing effects of speech. One hurts, the other heals, depending on who utters it. Unlike the two examples above, here only a pair of opposing situations is given: ‫ֵישׁ בּוֶֹטה‬ ‫“( ְכַּמ ְדְקרוֹת ָח ֶרב וְּלשׁוֹן ֲחָכִמים ַמ ְר ֵפּא‬There is this: one who utters gossip is like sword thrusts, but the tongue of the wise is a cure”). The saying highlights the contrast between rash talk that hurts and wise words that heal rather than stating that there is someone uttering insistent words. This theme continues in 12:19: ‫“( ְשַׂפת־ֱאֶמת ִתּכּוֹן ָלַעד ְוַעד־ַא ְר ִגּיָעה ְלשׁוֹן ָשֶׁקר‬Truthful lips stay firm forever, but a lying tongue lasts only for a moment”).

 While rendering ‫ ֵישׁ‬in Prov 11:24 as “there is” (thus as a particle of existence), Fox notes that this particle “is used to introduce a paradox or anomaly” that becomes prominent in Egyptian and Jewish wisdom during the Hellenistic period. He also cites other passages in this connection (e. g., Prov 13:7, 24; Eccl 2:21; 7:15; 8:14; Sir 4:21 [2x]; 6:9, 10; 10:30 [2x]; 11:11, 12) (Fox, Proverbs 10 – 31, 543). Hermisson (Studien zur israelitischen Spruchweisheit, 148) notes that ‫ ֵישׁ‬at the beginning of Prov 13:7, 11:24, 18:24, etc. makes the conjoining of paradoxical appearances especially clear, an observation quoted by Michel (Eigenart des Buches Qohelet, 185).

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The value of wise words is underlined in Prov 20:15. Here too the saying contains a pair of opposing situations: ‫“( ֵישׁ ָזָהב ְו ָרב־ ְפּ ִני ִנים וְּכִלי ְיָקר ִשְׂפֵתי־ ָדַעת‬There is this: gold and abundance of pearls – yet truly rare adornment are lips that utter knowledge!”). The statement after the particle ‫ ֵישׁ‬regarding “gold and abundance of pearls” is understood best as a description of the great value of knowledgeable words. This is not enough, however. Wise words outshine gold and pearls; they are said to be ‫“( ְּכִלי ְיָקר‬rare adornment”) without specifying further how this is the case. The reader is thus left to imagine the superiority of the wise words. If, however, ‫ ֵישׁ‬is interpreted as a particle of existence in this saying, the particle states that gold and an abundance of pearls exist but that they fail to highlight the superiority of wisdom that goes beyond imagining. Another saying introduced by ‫ ֵישׁ‬in Prov 14:12 also introduces a pair of opposing situations: ‫“( ֵישׁ ֶדּ ֶרְך ָי ָשׁר ִלְפ ֵני־ִאישׁ ְוַאֲח ִריָתּה ַדּ ְרֵכי־ָמ ֶות‬There is this: a road appears straightforward, but it ends in pathways to death”). Again, rendering ‫ ֵישׁ‬in the first part of the verse as a particle of existence—thus stating that there is a straight road as such—does not convey the thrust of this saying, which is to create a contrast between appearance and reality. Such a contrast is also the topic of the following verse in 14:13: ‫“( ַגּם־ ִבּ ְשׂחוֹק יְִכַאב־ֵלב ְוַאֲח ִריָתּה ִשְׂמָחה תוּ ָגה‬Even in laughter the heart may ache, and joy may end in sorrow”). Prov 16:25 is an exact duplicate of 14:12. Here also the verse following the saying expresses a contrast: ‫“( ֶנֶפשׁ ָעֵמל ָעְמָלה לּוֹ ִכּי־ָאַכף ָעָליו ִפּיהוּ‬The laborer’s appetite toils for him; as a matter of fact, it is his hunger that presses on him,” Prov 16:26). The particle ‫ ֵישׁ‬in the cases discussed thus far stands at the beginning of a saying, which is the natural position to introduce some important reflection given either in the form of two pairs of opposing situations (Prov 11:24, 13:7) or as a single pair of opposing situations (Prov 20:15, 14:12, 16:25). Moreover, in all these cases the subsequent context continues the contrast. In two other cases, the particle is found in the middle of a saying. The first is Prov 13:23: ‫אֶכל ִניר ָרא ִשׁים ְו ֵישׁ ִנְס ֶפּה ְבּל ֹא ִמ ְשׁ ָפּט‬ ֹ ‫“( ָרב־‬The tillage of the poor can yield plenty of food, yet the fact is, it can be swept away by injustice”). As in the previous cases, the particle does not indicate the existence of something; instead, it introduces a reflection—in this case, on the vulnerability of the fortune of the poor affirmed in the previous half. These are the two opposing situations highlighted in this saying introduced by ‫ ְו ֵישׁ‬, reproduced here somewhat artificially as “the fact is.” It can be also left untranslated. The second occurrence of ‫ ְו ֵישׁ‬stating the connection between affirmation and an opposing situation is found in Prov 18:24: ‫אֵהב ָדֵּבק ֵמָאח‬ ֹ ‫ִאישׁ ֵרִעים ְלִהְתר ֵֹע ַע ְו ֵישׁ‬ (“An amicable man is for socializing with, yet the fact is, a real friend stays closer than a brother”). In contrast to the cases where ‫ ֵישׁ‬stands at the beginning of the

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161

saying, here the reflection that is introduced by the particle does not extend to the subsequent context. It will be observed that in Prov 18:24, ‫“( ִאישׁ‬man”) corresponds to Syriac and Targumic ʾîṯ “there are,” and is thus a particle of existence. For the Masoretic ‫ִאישׁ‬ there is a sebir ‫יש‬, thus hinting at an interpretation as a particle of existence as in the Aramaic translations, in this case “there are.” If accepted, however, this will simply be a particle of existence, and not the ‫ ֵישׁ‬of reflection as in the second part of the same verse. This interpretation yields the rendering: “There are companions for socializing with, yet the fact is, a real friend stays closer than a brother.”

4 Conclusion At the end of this short note written in honor of Choon Leong Seow, it is worth asking, in accordance with his continuous intellectual pursuits, if the three uses of ‫— ֵישׁ‬as a common noun, a particle of existence, and a signal of reflection—are indeed related to each other. And if they are, how can the difference in meaning and function can be accounted for? Semantically speaking, the use of ‫ ֵישׁ‬to introduce a reflection can be explained as a process in which the usual sense “there is/are” has weakened to the extent that it no longer expresses the existence of something. Such a process is generally labelled “semantic bleaching.”⁵ Words that are “bleached” normally gain another function. In this case, they introduce a reflection on some opposing situation or paradox. The process also explains that the existential ‫ ֵישׁ‬develops from a noun meaning “something that exists.” In the concrete it refers to property, possessions, and wealth as in Prov 8:21. Thus the noun becomes a particle of existence as in Prov 3:28, 19:18, 23:18, and 24:14, and from there it develops into a particle of reflection as in Prov 11:24; 12:8; 13:7, 23; 14:12; 16:25; 18:24; 20:15. All three stages are documented in the book of Proverbs. Though not found in the book of Proverbs, ‫ ֵישׁ‬develops further into a kind of copula, hence it becomes equivalent to “to be,” as in Gen 28:16: ‫ָאֵכן ֵישׁ ְיה ָוה ַבּ ָמּקוֹם‬ ‫“( ַה ֶזּה‬Surely Yhwh is in this place”). This copula can also take a pronominal suffix as in Judg 6:36: ‫“( ִאם־ ֶי ְשָׁך מוֹ ִשׁי ַע ְבּ ָי ִדי ֶאת־יִ ְשׂ ָרֵאל‬Are you going to save [lit. are you a savior to] Israel through me…?”); 1 Sam 23:23: ‫“( ִאם־ ֶי ְשׁנוֹ ָבָא ֶרץ‬if he is in the

 For other examples of semantic bleaching in Biblical Hebrew, see my “Semantic Bleaching,” in Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics (ed. Geoffrey Khan et al.; 4 vols.; Leiden: Brill, 2013), 3:524– 26.

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land”); and Deut 13:4: ‫אֲהִבים ֶאת־ ְיה ָוה ֱאל ֵֹהיֶכם‬ ֹ ‫“( ָל ַדַעת ֲהיִ ְשֶׁכם‬to know if you love [lit.: you are lovers of] Yhwh your God”).

Stuart Weeks (University of Durham)

Why is it So Difficult to Read Ecclesiastes? 1 Ecclesiastes as a “Difficult” Book When people talk about Ecclesiastes as a “difficult” book, they are usually referring to its ideas. Nobody who has taught the book to students of Hebrew, however, or who has engaged closely with it in their own research, will be under any illusion that the difficulties are confined simply to the awkwardness or outrageousness of some of the things that its protagonist, Qohelet, has to say—even if it is sometimes very hard to distinguish the many textual and linguistic difficulties from those much broader issues of interpretation. In the sixteenth century, the preface to the English version of Luther’s commentary complained that: Because this booke hath beene obscurely & darckly translated out of the Hebrew tounge, every learned ma(n) hath greedyly gone aboute to expou(n)de and declare it, eche man labouryng to frame diverse of the thynges therin to his owne profession, or rather opinion whether for that their curiositie was delighted in strange, obscure and unwonted matters: or els for that in such obscure and darke wrytyngs, it is easie for a man to fayne what he phansieth and supposeth.¹

Although Luther takes a swipe in passing at those who found speculative philosophy or Epicureanism in the book, his target here is a view which he associates with St. Jerome, namely, that the book teaches a contempt for the world which can be used to justify the separation of religious orders from that world: “… they have drawne us out of this most goodly and profitable booke,” Luther concludes, “nothyng but monsters, and of most fine and pure gold have made abhominable Idoles.” His subsequent explanation allows that “This booke is one of the moste difficulte bookes of the whole Scripture, whiche no man hath hetherto fully attayned unto.” But the real problem is that “it hath been depraved with the unworthy commentaryes of diverse men: in so much that it is a more trouble to purge the author thereof from the dreames wherewith they have defaced it, then to restore the true sense therof agayn.” These commentators

 Martin Luther, An exposition of Salomons booke called Ecclesiastes or the preacher. Seene and allowed (London: John Daye, 1573), 3. Luther’s notes were published originally in Latin in 1532, with a German translation appearing the following year. The English version was probably based on a Latin edition of 1548; see Stuart Weeks, The Making of Many Books: Printed Works on Ecclesiastes 1523 – 1875 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2014), 10, 19. DOI 10.1515/9783110428148-013

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have committed, Luther claims, the double fault of (a) failing to perceive the author’s original intention and meaning, and (b) being ignorant “in the Hebrew toung, & in the auctors peculiar phrase, which many tymes swarveth from the common phrase of speech, and differeth much from the custome of our tounge.”² There is a certain optimism implicit in Luther’s complaint, both that the original meaning of the text can be established—he goes on to offer his own very confident interpretation—and that the peculiarities of its language need not stand in the way of understanding it. It is now nearly half a millennium, however, since Luther first delivered his comments in the form of lectures at Wittenberg in 1526, and it would be difficult to say either that scholarship has achieved anything close to a consensus around the interpretation of Ecclesiastes, or that the many commentaries written since then have made significant inroads into an understanding of the author’s “peculiar phrase,” despite the much greater linguistic resources that have become available. If anything, indeed, interpreters acknowledge more questions and problems than ever before, and, as the number of studies and commentaries has grown relentlessly, so too has the number of solutions they propose to many of those problems. Certainly, questions of meaning and interpretation continue to surround other biblical texts. Moreover, scholars in the humanities do not expect to reach resolutions when the texts and issues with which they work are exposed constantly to new contexts and questions. It is no less true, however, that we expect text-critical and philological investigations to yield at least some progress in the establishment of a text and its meaning. The problem with Ecclesiastes is not so much that scholars still debate its message against an ever-shifting background, as that they struggle to understand many of the words and phrases crucial to the expression of that message. One consequence of this, of course, is that it has proved difficult to achieve an agreed critical mass of comprehension whereby individual problems can be addressed through an interpretation of the whole. Another more practical consequence is that almost every serious scholar working with the text is compelled either to engage in extensive philological investigation on their own behalf, or to be forced into a precarious reliance on the inevitably contested opinions of others—open to the accusation that they have simply cherry-picked interpretations of individual verses to accord with their perceptions of the work as a whole. Having been engaged myself in preparing a commentary on Ecclesiastes for some years now, and writing here in honour of one of the most notable recent commentators on the book, I should like to

 Luther, Exposition, 5 – 6.

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be able to claim that this is a temporary problem, and that one day soon all will be clear, or at least much more clear. If we are to evaluate the prospects, however, we need first to understand the nature of the problems, and that is more difficult than it sounds. As I argue here, the history of the text suggests that it presented formidable difficulties even to very early tradents and translators, despite their familiarity with later forms of Hebrew. Although the waters have undoubtedly been muddied yet further by subsequent commentators, therefore, many of the most significant problems seem to flow from the idiosyncracy of the book’s language, and from its dependence on idioms and usages that may have belonged to a very specific period or context. Accordingly, it is likely that much about Ecclesiastes will always remain obscure or elusive.

2 What Sorts of Difficulties Does Ecclesiastes Pose? 2.1 Problems in Textual Transmission At least since the late nineteenth century, many commentators have been inclined to suppose that the difficult text of Ecclesiastes that we now possess was originally more straightforward, and that the earlier version could be retrieved, at least in large part, by the removal of editorial accretions and the correction of errors made by copyists. This is, of course, not an assumption confined to the study of Ecclesiastes alone, but it did prompt many commentators to undertake an extraordinary amount of speculative emendation, some of which has left its mark on the apparatus of BHS. Even among more recent commentaries, written by a generation now less inclined to reach so swiftly for the correction fluid and scissors, a great number of textual emendations continue to be proposed, or at least discussed, and many or most of these have no basis in the witness of the ancient versions. To be sure, the publication of fragments from at least two texts of Ecclesiastes found at Qumran has thrown light on rather greater variability in the early Hebrew textual tradition than had been appreciated previously.³ It is also true that, even though the Septuagint translation was

 See Eugene Ulrich, “109. 4QQoha,” and “110. 4QQohb,” in Qumran Cave 4 XI: Psalms to Chronicles (DJD XVI; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), 221– 27, pls. XXV–XXVI. A few words from 1:8 – 9 are possibly preserved also in 4Q468 l, although the lack of correspondence between letters on the preceding line and the MT of Ecclesiastes suggests that this is at most a citation. See Doro-

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made probably relatively late and from a form of the text quite similar to that which was fixed by the Masoretes, it too shows a significant number of minor variants and some more major ones. Not all of these have been evident to scholars in the absence of a proper critical edition, in part because of flaws in Rahlfs’ manual edition, and in part because of apparent hexaplaric influence on many of the witnesses—both of which have tended to make the Greek seem closer to the Hebrew than it often is.⁴ Accordingly, it would be foolhardy to presume that the Hebrew text of Ecclesiastes has been transmitted somehow without error or variation, and there are many points not only at which versions other than the MT seem to offer better readings, but at which emendation offers a very plausible route to elucidation, even without support in the versions. It is by no means my intention, therefore, to deny that some of our problems may stem from errors in transmission, or even occasionally from the incorporation of glosses and the like. Many of the minor variations, indeed, reflect such basic and common problems as the confusion of ‫ ב‬with ‫ כ‬in Hebrew manuscripts, or different divisions of the text into words. It would be difficult, however, to claim that Ecclesiastes is marked by some abnormally high number of such variants; the visible differences between the versions do not themselves suggest that its text is in particularly bad shape. This does not wholly preclude the possibility that extensive corruption took place prior to any of our witnesses, or that the versions all derive from some deeply flawed branch of transmission. If that is the case, however, then the problems must have arisen very early; I am aware of no serious challenge to the palaeographic dating of 4QQoha to the first half of the second century B.C.E., which places it very near the time to which some commentators have dated the composition of the book itself, and the differences between 4QQoha and MT are not so great as to suggest some intervening catastrophe in transmission. We should probably not assume, then, that the Hebrew text was badly damaged in transmission. That makes it all the more interesting and important to observe the many indications within the various traditions that Ecclesiastes proved difficult and challenging even to relatively early translators and copyists. We find, for in-

thee Ernst and Armin Lange, “468 l. 4QFragment Mentioning Qoh 1:8 – 9,” in Qumran Cave 4 XXVI Cryptic Texts and Miscellanea, Part 1 (ed. Stephen Pfann; DJD XXXVI; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), 422, pl. XXIX.  There is a helpful overview in Peter J. Gentry, “Issues in the Text-History of LXX Ecclesiastes,” in Die Septuaginta – Texte, Theologien, Einflüsse: 2. Internationale Fachtagung veranstaltet von Septuaginta Deutsch (LXX.D), Wuppertal 23.–27. Juli 2008 (ed. Wolfgang Kraus, Martin Karrer, and Martin Meiser; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), 201– 22.

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stance, mixed readings in the Syriac tradition that could be taken to indicate use of the Septuagint translation as a sort of “crib” for the Hebrew, and a significant reliance in Jerome’s Vulgate (and to a lesser extent his earlier commentary) on the more paraphrastic Greek translation of Symmachus.⁵ It is naturally more difficult to appraise the attitude of even earlier copyists, but it would not be unreasonable to suggest that textual problems and variations in the book simply reflect its obscurity at least as much as they contribute to that obscurity: working with a text that they sometimes struggled to understand, the early transmitters of Ecclesiastes compounded the difficulties, but probably did not create them.

2.2 Have Modern Commentators Made Matters Worse? 2.2.1 “Solving” Inherent Ambiguities Modern commentators are not themselves immune, perhaps, from a similar charge that they have made matters worse. Just staying with text-critical matters for the moment, it is not uncommon to encounter “difficulties” that have no basis except in false or anachronistic assumptions. To take a simple example, in Eccl 5:11 (Eng. 5:12), ‫ העבד‬can be vocalized as a participle, “the one who serves” or “works,” which is how MT points it, or as a noun, “the servant,” which is how the Septuagint (τοῦ δούλου) reads it. Neither vocalization is strictly “correct” or “incorrect” here, even if we assume that the two words actually were distinguished at the time when the book was written: exploiting what is a basic feature of consonantal scripts, the writer has simply left both readings open, and provided no contextual guidance to make a choice between them. When Gordis, for example, implies that the Greek translator must have misread the Hebrew,⁶ he is asking the consonantal text to carry a weight that it was not designed to bear—and perhaps also perpetuating a common confusion between, on the one hand, the text that was interpretatively vocalized and transmitted by the Masoretes and, on the other, the earlier consonantal text that formed the basis for

 On the Syriac, see, e. g., Robin B. Salters, “Observations on the Peshitta of Ecclesiastes,” OTE 8 (1995): 388 – 97, who notes that “on occasion the P translator, faced with a difficult Hebrew passage, turned to the LXX for elucidation” (396). For Jerome’s reliance on Symmachus, see W. W. Cannon, “Jerome and Symmachus: Some Points in the Vulgate Translation of Koheleth,” ZAW 45 (1927): 191– 99.  Robert Gordis, Koheleth – The Man and His World: A Study of Ecclesiastes (3d ed.; New York: Schocken, 1968), 252.

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their work, both of which hide behind the label “MT.” In any case, this is not a textual problem, or even a problem inherent within the original text; it seems unlikely that the writer cared whether we read “worker” or “servant” here, but it becomes an interpretative issue when we try to vocalize or translate the text, and thereby go beyond the limits of the information that the writer provided to us.⁷ In fact, Eccl 5:11 as a whole demonstrates the need to work with the Hebrew text with a proper alertness to the different characters of the vocalized and unvocalized forms. MT reads: ‫ְמתוָּקה ְשׁ ַנת ָהעֵֹבד ִאם־ְמַעט ְוִאם־ַה ְרֵּבה י ֹאָכל ְוַה ָשָּׁבע ֶלָע ִשׁיר ֵאי ֶננּוּ ַמ ִנּי ַח לוֹ ִלישׁוֹן‬

This probably means “Sweet is the sleep of a worker, whether he eats little or much; but the plenty of the rich gives him no chance to sleep.” Usually, the statement is understood to mean that the rich man is kept awake either by a surfeit of food or, as the uses of ‫ ָשָׂבע‬elsewhere suggest, by concerns about his property. At first glance, the Septuagint appears simply to have opted more explicitly for the former: καὶ τῷ ἐμπλησθέντι τοῦ πλουτῆσαι οὐκ ἔστιν ἀφίων αὐτὸν τοῦ ὑπνῶσαι (“and for one who is filled by being rich, there is no letting him sleep”). The Septuagint translator’s use of verbs where MT has nouns, however, suggests that his reading is influenced by the accurate perception that the lamed in ‫ השבע לעשיר‬is redundant, and that “the plenty of a rich man” could have been expressed with a simple construct, leading him to take the second word as a hiphil infinitive (with syncopation, thus: *‫)להעשיר‬.⁸ Working with an unvocalized text, in other words, the translator sees here a cue not to take the consonants ‫ השבע לעשיר‬simply as a late construction of the genitive with lamed, but as a verbal construction. This solution is probably not correct, but then neither, in all likelihood, is the understanding of MT, which, by pointing ‫ שבע‬as the very unusual form ‫( ָשָׂבע‬which

 There are similar examples elsewhere in the book, e. g. at 1:9 where the parsing of ‫ נעשה‬has been much discussed. On the mechanics of reading unvocalized texts, see especially James Barr, “Vocalization and the Analysis of Hebrew among the Ancient Translators,” in Hebräische Wortforschung: Festschrift zum 80. Geburstag von Walter Baumgartner (ed. Benedikt Hartmann et al.; VTSup 16; Leiden: Brill, 1967), 1– 11. See also his essay, “Reading a Script Without Vowels,” in Writing Without Letters (ed. William Haas; Mont Follick Series 4; Manchester: Manchester University Press; Totowa: Rowman and Littlefield, 1976), 71– 100.  The first word, ‫השבע‬, has correspondingly been read as ‫“( ַה ָשֵּׂב ַע‬the one who is satisfied”), and the adjective rendered with a participle (τῷ ἐμπλησθέντι); cf. Yun Yeong Yi, “Translation Technique of the Greek Ecclesiastes” (Ph.D. diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2005), 25.

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only occurs twice outside Gen 41, in Prov 3 and Eccl 5), effectively renders irrelevant the reference to eating in the first half of the verse. The most plausible reading of 5:11, in fact, is that of Symmachus, who renders ἡ δὲ πλησμονὴ τοῦ πλουσίου οὐκ ἐᾷ καθεύδειν, “but the satisfying of the rich man does not permit sleeping.” This takes ‫ שבע‬as the much more common (and hence natural) noun ‫“( שַׂבע‬satiation”), which indicates neither plenty nor surfeit but rather the point at which one’s appetite is satisfied. It also recognizes the function of lamed in the phrase ‫ השבע לעשיר‬as indicating not what the rich man has, but what he needs. The verse, then, picks up the theme of the preceding verses, kicked off in 5:9 (Eng. 5:10) by Qohelet’s declaration that “one who loves money will not be sated by money,” and concerns the relentless, injurious pursuit of wealth by those who are already wealthy. However we choose to understand it, though, the most important thing that this verse illustrates is the openness of the consonantal text to at least three different understandings, and the way in which the different versions have negotiated between them by weighing individually such factors as the familiarity of words and constructions, or the implications of the context. By behaving as though there are straightforwardly right or wrong meanings in every case, commentators often treat the consonantal text as though it were something both more precise and less subtle than it actually is, and thereby turn a process of interpretation into a misplaced quest to establish a single possible reading.

2.2.2 Imposing Context Upon the Text If variants amongst the ancient versions sometimes point to difficulties or ambiguities inherent within the texts that they received, variants also sometimes offer early examples of what Luther called “eche man labouryng to frame diverse of the thynges therin to his owne profession.” We see this in Eccl 10:1, where the RSV has “Dead flies make the perfumer’s ointment give off an evil odor; so a little folly outweighs wisdom and honor.” I shall not go into the difficulties here in detail, beyond noting that the Septuagint and the MT have very different readings, both of which probably go back to an original that is represented in none of the ancient versions. The verse has been adapted in different directions as a result of ancient efforts to link it more explicitly with 9:18, where “one sinner destroys much good,” and to make it say either that a little wisdom is better than a lot of folly (LXX), or that a little folly is better than a lot of wisdom (MT). My suspicion is that Qohelet originally considered a little embalming oil to be of more value to the dead than either wisdom or folly, but the situation in 10:1 is

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so difficult that we may never be able satisfactorily to relate the Hebrew to the Greek, or to reconstruct a text from which they are both derived. Such problems often seem to have arisen, as in this case, from an extension of the need to account for context in any reading of the consonantal text; they reflect the frustration experienced by anyone who seeks such context and encounters instead the book’s proclivity for aphorisms and sudden changes of direction. Amongst both early and modern readers, however, there is often also in evidence a strong tendency to impose contextual constraints that override or problematize the text, even when the text is not especially difficult. As I have argued elsewhere, the interpretation of 1:4– 7 has long been influenced by a detrimental effort to find circularity in Qohelet’s imagery that simply is not there.⁹ Likewise, few commentators would deny, I think, that allegorical readings of 12:2– 7 have done much to complicate the study of a passage that is already fearsomely difficult. If there are at least elements in the text itself that encourage those attempts, the same cannot always be said elsewhere—and the most obvious example is 4:13 – 16, where the many efforts to find a narrative, or even a lengthy historical reference, have achieved little more than an impressive display of exegetical gymnastics around a text that neither invites such an interpretation nor, truth be told, presents any very significant difficulties otherwise.¹⁰ In short, then, more than a few of the problems and uncertainties that surround the text of Ecclesiastes are iatrogenic: they exist not because the text yields no good sense, but because readers past and present have sought either to find greater precision than the text can offer or because they have tried to impose broader patterns and contexts than it can accommodate. It is correspondingly true that many passages of Ecclesiastes would be less “obscure and darke,” as Luther puts it, if scholars had not spilled quite so much ink over them.

2.3 “The Auctors Peculiar Phrase” 2.3.1 Difficult Words Although the fault may lie technically on the side of commentators rather than the author, however, commentators can hardly be held responsible for what is undoubtedly one of the other most significant problems: the fact that we simply  Stuart Weeks, Ecclesiastes and Scepticism (LHBOTS 541; New York: T&T Clark, 2012), 46 – 53.  See, e. g., Michael V. Fox, “What Happens in Qohelet 4:13 – 16,” JHS 1 (1997), http://www. jhsonline.org/Articles/article4.pdf; which envisages the involvement of no fewer than three distinct “youths.”

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cannot catch nuances, or even the basic meanings, of many words and expressions in the book. In this respect, much attention has been focused upon Qohelet’s use of ‫הבל‬, but there are many less famous instances which create considerable difficulties. In 5:10 (Eng. 5:11), for example, the meaning of Qohelet’s question turns on the sense of ‫ ִכּ ְשׁרוֹן‬, which, although it appears also in 2:21 and 4:4, is quite obscure, and in 7:27 and 7:29, it would be nice to know what a ‫ ֶח ְשׁבּוֹן‬is, especially since everybody is apparently looking for one. In 6:9 and 11:9, we know that Qohelet is talking about the “sight of the eyes,” but we do not know what the expression implies for him, and when it is contrasted with the “going of the ‫ ” ֶנֶפשׁ‬in the first of those verses, commentators have seen everything from an opposition between life and death to a warning against intellectual curiosity. In the preceding 6:8, it is quite unclear what it might mean for a poor man to know how, or that, he is going to “go before the living,” and in 9:3 – 4 there are similarly obscure statements concerning the living and the dead. Further, I hardly need mention the notorious ‫ ִשׁ ָדּה ְו ִשׁדּוֹת‬of 2:8, about which scholars have argued for centuries; the use of ‫ חוּשׁ‬in 2:25, about which Friedrich Ellermeier managed to write a short book;¹¹ or the “daughters of song” in 12:4, which are reckoned variously as birds, singers, or songs. Without multiplying the examples further, it may be clear not only that Qohelet uses many expressions that we struggle to understand, but also that this is not a matter merely of obscure vocabulary or of hapax legomena; in many cases, all the words are familiar, but we have little idea what they mean in combination. Again, Luther put it succinctly when he talked of “the auctors peculiar phrase, which many tymes swarveth from the common phrase of speech.”¹²

2.3.2 Chronological and Dialectical Difficulties The language of Ecclesiastes has been the subject of intense scrutiny ever since Hugo Grotius expressed doubts in 1644 about the book’s Solomonic authorship, noting that it contained many words found otherwise only in Daniel, Ezra and the Targums, and preferring to view it as a pseudonymous collection put togeth-

 Friedrich Ellermeier, Qohelet: Teil 1 Abschnitt 2. Einzelfrage Nr. 7. Das Verbum ‫ חוּשׁ‬in Qoh 2,25. Akkadisch ḫâšu(m) “sich sorgen” im Lichte neu veröffentlicher Texte (2d. ed.; Herzberg am Harz: Erwin Jungfer, 1970).  Luther, Exposition, 6.

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er by Zerubbabel.¹³ Correspondingly, that scrutiny has tended to focus on questions of date, although it has been complicated since the 1920’s by arguments and counter-arguments for an idea that the book was written originally in Aramaic,¹⁴ and then later by reactions to a series of articles published by Mitchell Dahood from the 1950’s to the early 1970’s, in which he claimed that its language was heavily influenced by Phoenician usages.¹⁵ Franz Delitzsch wrote in 1875 that “If the Book of Koheleth were early Solomonic, then there would be no history of the Hebrew language,”¹⁶ and has been widely quoted ever since. But while the many studies of its language have tended to affirm a late date for the book, they have also underlined both the complexity of the problems and the need to avoid portraying the linguistic development of Hebrew simply as a sort of straight line along which particular compositions can be set in order. In this respect, it is especially striking that, although the language of Ecclesiastes has a number of features in common with mishnaic Hebrew, these features are not always found in texts which must be dated between Ecclesiastes and the rabbinic compositions, most notably the Hebrew Ben Sira and the non-biblical texts from Qumran. Along with the Song of Songs, moreover, with which it shares some of its linguistic peculiarities, Ecclesiastes is often excluded from the canon of Late Biblical Hebrew texts. Ian Young and Robert Rezetko claim that both works must be “treated as special cases. There is no historical period of

 Hugo Grotius, Annotata Ad Vetus Testamentum. Tomus I (Paris: Sebastian & Gabriel Cramoisy, 1644), 521, 540.  The key studies are listed in Weeks, Ecclesiastes and Scepticism, 6 – 7 n. 5.  The relevant essays are: Mitchell J. Dahood, “Canaanite-Phoenician Influence in Qoheleth,” Bib 33 (1952): 30 – 52, 191– 221; Dahood, “The Language of Qoheleth,” CBQ 14 (1952): 227– 32; Dahood, “Qoheleth and Recent Discoveries,” Bib 39 (1958): 302– 18; Dahood, “Qoheleth and Northwest Semitic Philology,” Bib 43 (1962): 349 – 65; Dahood, “Canaanite Words in Qoheleth 10,20,” Bib 46 (1965): 210 – 12; Dahood, “The Phoenician Background of Qoheleth,” Bib 47 (1966): 264– 82; Dahood, “The Phoenician Contribution to Biblical Wisdom Literature,” in The Role of the Phoenicians in the Interaction of Mediterranean Civilizations: Papers Presented to the Archaeological Symposium at the American University of Beirut, March 1967 (ed. William A. Ward; Beirut: American University of Beirut, 1968), 123 – 48; Dahood, “Three Parallel Pairs in Eccl 10:18: A Reply to Prof. Gordis,” JQR 62 (1971): 84– 87; Dahood, “Northwest Semitic Philology and Three Biblical Texts,” JNSL 2 (1972): 17– 22.  Franz Delitzsch, Hoheslied und Koheleth: Mit Excursen von Consul D. Wetzstein (vol. 4 of Biblischer Commentar über die poetischen Bücher des Alten Testaments; Leipzig: Dörffling & Franke, 1875), 197: “Wenn das B[uch] Koheleth altsalomonisch wäre, so gäbe es keine Geschichte der hebräischen Sprache.”

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which we have knowledge when their variety of Hebrew was the normal language of literature.”¹⁷ Some scholars have found in this a license to date the book much earlier: Young himself has argued for a pre-exilic dating on the basis of its advice about behavior before a king in chapter 8, while David Carr has more recently toyed with an early origin for Ecclesiastes and come down more firmly on the side of such a dating for an early version of the Song.¹⁸ I myself very much doubt that such opinions are tenable, not least because of the Persian loanwords in each text. But for our present purposes, the key point is that recent scholarship tends to talk about the linguistic character of Ecclesiastes not solely in terms of date, but also in terms of dialect and register. This, of course, brings a whole new set of problems. Discussions of dialect in particular often rest not only on the assumption that we can accurately locate the composition of particular biblical books or their contents (an assumption held with less confidence these days than in the past), but that any unusual linguistic features found in those books must be dialectal rather than a result of poetic usage or the influence of colloquial speech.¹⁹ Discussions of register, most commonly in the form of a suggestion that Qohelet’s speech is itself colloquial, run into the difficulty that we have no early corpus of colloquial language,²⁰ and there are no particularly striking points of contact between the language of Ecclesiastes and that of the early letters

 Ian Young and Robert Rezetko, with the assistance of Martin Ehrensvärd, Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts (2 vols.; London: Equinox, 2008), 2:77. It is not clear that Young’s move from an early dating of the Song to a position of “complete agnosticism” has also affected his view of Ecclesiastes; see Ian Young, “Notes on the Language of 4QCantb,” JJS 52 (2001): 122 – 31, esp. 130 n. 50. From the other side of the current debate about linguistic dating, Jan Joosten says of Ecclesiastes that, “many features of Qoheleth are neither late nor early, but more or less unique” (“The Syntax of Volitive Verbal Forms in Qoheleth in Historical Perspective,” in The Language of Qohelet in its Context: Essays in Honour of Prof. A. Schoors on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday [ed. Anjelika Berlejung and Pierre van Hecke; OLA 164; Leuven: Peeters, 2007], 47– 61, esp. 47).  Ian Young, Diversity in Pre-Exilic Hebrew (FAT 5; Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1993), 140 – 57; David M. Carr, The Formation of the Hebrew Bible: A New Reconstruction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 432– 55.  These objections can be raised against, e. g., James Davila, “Qoheleth and Northern Hebrew,” Maarav 5 – 6 (1990): 69 – 87.  So, e. g., Choon Leong Seow, “Linguistic Evidence and the Dating of Qohelet,” JBL 115 (1996): 643 – 66, esp. 664– 65. Seow goes on to note a number of features that “may all be explained as vernacular elements,” but, although we may suspect that some of these represent a loosening of grammatical rules that might well be considered typical of colloquial speech, there is no way actually to demonstrate such an origin.

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that we do possess, which might themselves be expected to display a less elevated register than the biblical literature.²¹ It is true, to be sure, that the Mishnah and Talmud claim to report the oral and conversational pronouncements of the rabbis, but we may reasonably ask what we might mean by “colloquial Hebrew” in the Tannaitic period—or perhaps, indeed, for quite some time before that—when it is hard to say who might have been speaking Hebrew in what contexts, at least as an everyday language distinct from Aramaic. It is also important to be clear, furthermore, that the language of Ecclesiastes seems to have presented many problems both to the various translators of Ecclesiastes into Greek during the first and second centuries C.E., who were no slouches, and to the “Hebrew” who advised Jerome, at least judging by the latter’s constant puzzling over the text in his commentary. We cannot simply suppose that the book manifests a type of Hebrew that persisted into Tannaitic times and would have been familiar to speakers of Hebrew in that period, even if it shares many features with the language of rabbinic literature. Of course, it is also important to be aware that colloquial speech is by its very nature less static than literary language. This means not only that what might have been deemed formal or colloquial in one period could have been regarded quite differently several centuries earlier or later, but also that the colloquial language of the Persian or Hellenistic periods might have been related to the language of later periods but not instantly transparent to speakers of that later language. Common sense and the subsequent, positive reception of Ecclesiastes both affirm that, to whatever extent the author might have sought to be enigmatic or ambiguous, it is unlikely that the original readers struggled as much as we do to understand his vocabulary or turns of phrase. Also clear, however, is that readers with considerable competence in Hebrew found the book difficult within a few centuries—and not simply because of its epigrammatic style. The difficulties that the book posed to these later readers do not exclude the pos-

 Points of contact between epigraphic sources and standard/late Biblical Hebrew are discussed in Ian Young, “Late Biblical Hebrew and Hebrew Inscriptions,” in Biblical Hebrew Studies in Chronology and Typology (ed. Ian Young; JSOTSup 369; New York: T&T Clark International, 2003), 276 – 311. Of the data collected there, Jan Jooosten notes: “The sporadic use in the inscriptions of expressions that appear in language-historical perspective to be later may be due: (a) to the fact that the inscriptions do not, for the greater part, reflect literary Hebrew—linguistic innovations tend to affect the vernacular before they penetrate into the literary form of a language; (b) to the relatively late date of the inscriptions, the bulk of which belongs to the late seventh and early sixth century (the time of Jeremiah)” (“The Distinction between Classical and Late Biblical Hebrew as Reflected in Syntax,” HS [2005]: 327– 39, here 336).

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sibility that its Hebrew was colloquial, but they do caution us against basing such a characterization too simply on resemblances to later usage. The link with the language of the Song of Songs must also be treated with some ambivalence. If that work is indeed a repository of popular love poems, or at least of poems trying poetically to represent popular speech, then it lends some weight to the idea that Qohelet is talking colloquially. At the same time, we must not forget that such highly structured and stylized verse would not normally be the first place to look for the way that people commonly spoke. The most we can really say is that both books represent a variety of Hebrew different from that found in other Hebrew literary compositions. This distinctive character may have been colloquial, dialectal or sociolectal, but it is also possible that at some specific point in time, or within some particular context, it marked a different sort of style or literary register. In the case of Ecclesiastes, at least, it may be an aspect of characterization, and represent the way in which the author feels that Qohelet should speak in order to convey aspects of his background or personality. In that case we would potentially be dealing with a more-or-less artificial creation, and if we consider how quickly the nuances of such idiolectal speech have become lost on, say, present-day readers of Dickens, then it is not difficult to see how a strategy that could have conveyed much to the author’s contemporaries could also have become quite obscure to their successors. In any case, it would be wrong to speak of the problems that we have in understanding the language of the book solely in terms of a deficit on our side. Indeed, we should perhaps think more than we do about the reasons why Ecclesiastes should have been written in such a way, when there is nothing in its message or its relative sophistication to suggest that it was composed by someone ignorant of or incapable of writing in a more classical style. Whether it is a calculated literary device or simply a mark of context and function, this distinctive language is surely significant for more than just the dating of the book. For all that it raises such interesting questions, however, the recognition that Ecclesiastes employs a type of Hebrew that is non-standard also makes it very probable that we shall never recover the precise meaning of many words and expressions used by its author, and that we shall have to content ourselves forever with more or less plausible guesses at most of them.

3 Conclusions For those scholars who clearly revel in the very difficulties of the book—whose curiosity is, as Luther puts it, “delighted in strange, obscure and unwonted mat-

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ters”—this is all surely good news, and I daresay that few publishers will be upset by the prospect of endless future commentaries, whatever wearying of the flesh these might induce in others. No doubt, there is still much progress to be made in those areas where progress can be made, and we may surely hope for such progress in those many cases where the problems arise not from the text so much as from its interpreters and their presuppositions. In the end, however, much of this book is likely to prove as elusive to future generations as it has to those that have gone before, and, in that respect, scholarship on Ecclesiastes rather neatly exemplifies Qohelet’s own vision, of futile human attempts to master an endlessly unknowable world.

James L. Crenshaw (Duke University, Emeritus)

A Rhetoric of Indecision: Reflections on God as Judge in Qoheleth 1 Querying Qoheleth Perhaps more than any other biblical scroll, Qoheleth has encouraged a rhetoric of indecision among interpreters. Was the author engaged in a dialogue with himself or with others?¹ Did he quote traditional sayings in order to refute them?² Did he change his own views, deconstructing them one by one as time passed?³ Did he arrange his teachings to emphasize the contradictions?⁴ Did he move from negative to positive views as the scroll progressed toward the end?⁵ Were his ideas subjected to corrective glosses to lessen their volatility?⁶ Is he merely

 T. A. Perry (Dialogues with Kohelet: The Book of Ecclesiastes [University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993]) continues a mode of interpretation that began in the patristic period. He imagines a debate between Qoheleth and a pious antagonist.  The advantage of a theory of quotations is that it gives a plausible explanation for the many contradictions in Ecclesiastes. Although largely out of fashion today, the theory has been exploited recently to defend Qoheleth from charges of misogyny (cf. 7:26 – 29). See Roland Murphy, Ecclesiastes (WBC 23A; Dallas: Word Books, 1992), 77; Peter Enns, Ecclesiastes (THOTC; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011), 88; and Anton Schoors, Ecclesiastes (HCOT; Leuven: Peeters, 2013), 582– 85. Schoors acknowledges that the misogyny is not entirely removed. The difficulty of detecting a quotation is ably discussed by Michael V. Fox (“The Identification of Quotations in Biblical Literature,” ZAW 92 [1980]: 416 – 31) and R. N. Whybray (“The Identification and Use of Quotations in Ecclesiastes,” Congress Volume, Vienna 1980 [ed. J. A. Emerton; VTSup 32; Leiden: Brill, 1981], 435 – 51). Note also Robert Gordis’s classic essay, “Quotations as a Literary Usage in Biblical, Oriental, and Rabbinic Literature,” HUCA 22 (1949): 157– 219.  Thomas Krüger (Qoheleth [Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2004]), employs this method of interpretation throughout his commentary to good advantage, tracing a movement from disorientation to reorientation.  The structure of the book has baffled interpreters. Although not a sustained treatise, it has unusual thematic unity. Still, small collections of sayings unrelated to the context seem intrusive. Proposed structures abound. They employ various interpretive clues—e. g., refrains, a palindrome, a theory of polarities—without real persuasiveness.  The change in the statements about enjoying life to exhortations toward the end of Ecclesiastes convinced R. N. Whybray that Qoheleth was a “preacher of joy,” and Norbert Lohfink found a similar message in 5:17– 19 (Whybray, “Qoheleth, Preacher of Joy,” JSOT 23 [1982]: 87– 98; and Lohfink, “Qoheleth 5:17– 19—Revelation by Joy,” CBQ 52 [1990]: 625 – 35).  The earlier view, based on demonstrations of glosses in the Torah and Prophets, has come under attack by interpreters who approach the text holistically. Virtually everyone concedes at DOI 10.1515/9783110428148-014

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a figment of the imagination, a “straw figure” created to discourage the young from entertaining certain attractive concepts?⁷ In their quest to grasp the import of Qoheleth’s thoughts, individual scholars have seldom hesitated to choose one option and reject the other. Yet, collectively they have failed to reach consensus on a single one of these issues. However much they think they have solved the riddle of the scroll’s structure and argument, Qoheleth’s own words reign supreme: “And even though a sage claims to know, he cannot discover it” (8:17b). Potentiality does not achieve actuality, on which I have reflected in the following poem: Potentiality The Lord of life saw the product of the creative impulse before infusing it with self-creative energy. Freed from the mind of their Maker, galaxies reach for eternity. Sun and stars dazzle, gradually darkening. Far below, earthlings create a painting of their own. The artist, too, sees an image before it takes shape on a canvas. Light and shadows, colors, lines, open spaces, figures, human and non-human. Though non-existent, all are present. Deft fingers transfer this private treasure to another medium, now visible to others.

least one gloss, the epilogue. The radical nature of Qoheleth’s thoughts invited a response from those who held more conventional views, as the Septuagint shows.  The innovative suggestion by Michael V. Fox that Qoheleth is a figure who has been framed in negative fashion by the teller of tales has parallels in ancient Near Eastern literature, although they are less exact than one could wish (Fox, “Frame-Narrative and Composition in the Book of Qohelet,” HUCA 48 [1977]: 83 – 106).

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Whereas the Priestly account of creation stresses the achievement of actuality (“and God saw everything he made, and it was very good” [Gen 1:31a]), the story also mentions the potential for continual creation. We moderns marvel at the evolution of species over millions of years, changes that highlight the seemingly limitless capacity for adaptation. Did the Creator envision these improvements prior to the spoken word? Who knows?⁸ In the other instance captured by the poem, potentiality never achieves complete actuality, for humans are by nature finite, and so is everything they produce. That includes the justice they both imagine and dispense. In ancient Israel the question of divine justice was widely disputed and just as widely defended. This difference in view existed within professional groups, prophetic and sapiential. On which side did Qoheleth place himself? In my view, the evidence locates him on the negative side. A single verse, Eccl 11:9b, has been used to argue that Qoheleth believed God would execute judgment on humanity. The words can be read, however, as a statement that God puts people in the proper position to enjoy life; or, alternatively, that God will sit in judgment, a sentiment expressed by the second epilogist in nearly the same language. If the verse is really from Qoheleth, it implies that he could not make up his mind on this theological issue. Hence he may have employed rhetoric of indecision.

2 A Presumption of Divine Justice In Gen 18 Abraham seems oblivious to unrealized potentiality when questioning the rightness of Yhwh’s decision to annihilate the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is right?” (Gen 18:25b) implies that the patriarch thinks he knows the full meaning of ‫ִמ ְשׁ ָפּט‬. At the very least, for this author in Genesis, it should exclude the indiscriminate destruction of human beings, among whom there would surely have been a few innocents (‫)ַצ ִדּיִקים‬. Others saw things differently, arguing for trans-generational punishment (Exod 33:7) or even denying that anyone could lay claim to innocence (Eccl 7:20).

 The astonishing admission, for some, in Gen 18:21 that Yhwh’s knowledge is incomplete bodes ill for a theology of omniscience. A lifetime of struggling with difficult scriptural texts has taught me that a simple “‫ ”ִמי יוֹ ֵד ַע‬suffices with respect to most theological questions. On this, see James L. Crenshaw, “Qoheleth and Scriptural Authority,” in Scriptural Authority in Early Judaism and Ancient Christianity (ed. Isaac Kalimi, Tobias Niklas, and Geza Xeravits, in collaboration with Heike Hötzinger; DCLS 16; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2013), 17– 41.

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For some, a delay in punishment served as an invitation to amend one’s ways and effect reconciliation. Even the much maligned Manasseh became a paradigm for Yhwh’s willingness to forgive. The Testament of Abraham graphically demonstrates the devastating effects of instantaneous punishment for sin. Carried to its logical conclusion, it would bring an end to civilization.⁹ For the author of this story of a patriarch whose impatience left no room for repentance and forgiveness, justice needed to be tempered with mercy.¹⁰ Keeping both in balance was an impossibility, as the angels recognized, according to a Midrashic tradition. In it, they warned Yhwh that he could not have both a world and justice.¹¹ The problematic nature of divine justice spilled over into every attempt to establish justice on the human scene. Yhwh may have been exempt from influence by power, wealth, and sex, but judges of flesh and blood certainly were not. The story of Susanna illustrates the appeal of only one of these influences: sex. In real life, the innocent are not saved from the ruinous consequences of powerful men whose passions have run amok. No divinely commissioned defendant appears, even if to argue a case on rational grounds. The rich and powerful frequently escape the noose that comes to the defenseless.

3 A Lively Debate Perhaps the failure to achieve a just society partly explains why so much emphasis shifts to an insistence that equity exists somewhere, even if in another world.  While being taken on a heavenly journey by the angel Michael, Abraham saw robbers, adulterers, and thieves engaged in their nefarious activities. He asked the Yhwh to destroy them immediately, which God did. Abraham’s lack of mercy prompted this heavenly command to the angel: “Turn the patriarch away lest he see all who pass their lives in sin and destroy everything that exists” (Testament of Abraham 10:12– 13).  A trend in this direction can be detected in Sirach and Wisdom of Solomon. Ben Sira brings his teachings to a close with the exhortation to rejoice in Yhwh’s mercy and to do work in a timely fashion (Sir 51:29 – 30). Yhwh’s harsh treatment of indigenous peoples troubled the sensitive author of Wisdom of Solomon so much that he created a “mercy dialogue” accentuating the divine readiness to forgive even in the face of heinous conduct by the victims of freed slaves from Egypt. On this theme, see Moyna McGlynn, Divine Judgement and Divine Benevolence in the Book of Wisdom (WUNT 2/139; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001), 25 – 53.  As the Genesis Rabbah states, “If you want a world, you will not have justice; if it is justice you want, then there will be no world. You are taking hold of the rope by both ends—you desire both a world and justice—but if you do not concede a little, the world cannot stand” (Gen. Rab. 49:9). A world in which exact justice, measure for measure, exists leaves a place neither for growth through suffering nor for forgiveness.

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That desire for true justice eventually pushed the time of reckoning beyond death. This solution to life’s unfairness is both comforting and disturbing. Comforting because it ties up all loose ends; disturbing because it cannot be confirmed and because delayed punishment has allowed injustice to ruin countless lives. How will that injustice be undone? Small wonder that those who reflected on Yhwh’s justice were divided.¹² On one side stood people like Job¹³ and Jonah¹⁴ who took a dim view of the prospects, denying divine justice. On the other side were those who continued to affirm divine justice, imagining a just world despite its cracks. The liturgical prayers in the ninth chapters of Daniel, Ezra, and Nehemiah use both direct address (‫ַצ ִדּיק ַא ָתּה‬, Ezra 9:15, Neh 9:8b) and indirect address (‫ ִכּי ַצ ִדּיק יהוה ֱאל ֵֹהינוּ‬, Dan 9:14b). Psalmists take the same approach, although direct address is rare (‫ַצ ִדּיק‬ ‫ַא ָתּה יהוה ְו ָי ָשׁר ִמ ְשׁ ָפֶּטיָך‬, Ps 119:137). The burden of explaining the events surrounding the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem weighed heavily on these thinkers, for whom ‫בּ ֶשׁת‬ ֹ characterized humankind so that ‫ ַצ ִדּיק‬could be applied to Yhwh.¹⁵ Was Qoheleth immune from this discussion? Did he believe Elohim was just?¹⁶

 On divine justice, see James L. Crenshaw, Defending God: Biblical Responses to the Problem of Evil (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) and several of my entries on theodicy (ABD 6:444– 47; NIDB 5:551– 55; The Routledge Encyclopedia of Ancient Mediterranean Religions [ed. Eric Orlin et al.; New York: Routledge, 2016], 945 – 46; and Oxford Encyclopedia of Bible and Ethics, and Routledge Dictionary of Mediterranean Civilizations, forthcoming).  On Job, see the fine commentary by Choon Leong Seow, Job 1 – 21: Interpretation and Commentary (Illuminations; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2013). My own modest contribution to Joban scholarship addresses a broader clientele than Seow envisions (James L. Crenshaw, Reading Job: A Literary and Theological Commentary [Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys, 2011]).  Jonah’s anger at Yhwh for merciful treatment of the inhabitants of Nineveh is contested in the story despite the actual history of the city, which was destroyed in 612 B.C.E. A perceptive treatment of the book is that by Jack M. Sasson (Jonah [AB 24B; New York: Doubleday, 1990]).  The fervent desire to absolve Yhwh of any guilt produced fanciful anecdotes but also had serious consequences. Among the former is the explanation for Babylonian victory over Jerusalem (Yhwh breached the wall of the city and departed, leaving Zion vulnerable). The most egregious consequence is the burden of believing that the people of Yehud were inveterate sinners. In short, humans were damned so that Yhwh could be exalted. Anson Laytner (Arguing with God: A Jewish Tradition [Northvale, NJ: Aronson, 1970]) shows how Jews through the centuries endeavored to balance competing explanations for the Exile, pogroms, and the Holocaust. Extreme suffering rendered inadequate the argument attributed to Akiba—that it was the result of sin—and cast suspicion on God’s failure to exact justice. Patience in suffering gave way to protest hurled at the deity. Laytner describes modern Jewry as follows: “questioning the apparent judgments of the Judge, questioning the existence of the Judge Himself by demanding a hearing in His Presence, or asserting that there is neither Judge nor judgment…” (Arguing with God, 229).

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4 Qoheleth Weighs In This much can be ruled out: Qoheleth did not anticipate a judgment in another life. In three places (Eccl 6:12, 8:7, 10:14) he uses the expression ‫ ִמי־ ַי ִּגיד ָלָא ָדם\לוֹ‬as a negation just as he used ‫ִמי יוֹ ֵד ַע‬.¹⁷ In 6:12 Qoheleth combines the two: “Who knows what is good … and who can tell anyone what will occur after him (or what) will be afterward?” In short, Qoheleth strongly denied that anyone could possibly know the future. Justice, if it ever occurs, will take place in the observable realm, that is, under the sun. Then did Qoheleth think divine judgment happened at the time of death, an early death indicating heavenly displeasure? That idea was clearly accepted by many, most notably by the later scribe Ben Sira. In 5:1– 6 Qoheleth appears to accept this notion when warning against conduct that incurs divine wrath. This explanation for dying before one’s time troubled the author of Wisdom of Solomon¹⁸ just as it did Egyptian writers of tomb inscriptions.¹⁹ For the former,  The fullest discussions come from Michael V. Fox and Stuart Weeks. Fox thinks Qoheleth “maintains a single, but conflicted, view: God is just, but there are injustices,” and on these Qoheleth focuses his attention (A Time to Tear Down & A Time to Build Up: A Rereading of Ecclesiastes [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999], 69). Weeks believes divine judgment “is a theological datum which Qoheleth feels obliged to square with his ideas” (“Divine Judgment and Reward in Ecclesiastes,” in Goochem in Mokum, Wisdom in Amsterdam: Papers on Biblical and Related Wisdom Read at the Fifteenth Joint Meeting of the Society for Old Testament Study and the Oudtestamentisch Werkgezelschap, Amsterdam, July 2012 [ed. George J. Brooke and Pierre van Hecke; OtSt 68; Leiden: Brill, 2016], 155 – 66, here 156) although he “asserts no knowledge of the mechanisms” (ibid., 164). Weeks admits that divine judgment “seems not only ill-fitting in the monologue, but also ill-defined,” but for Weeks that is precisely its point: “the indubitability of that justice illustrates the faultiness of human perception” (ibid., 165). He concludes that “if we believe God to be just, but perceive the world to be unjust, then the fault lies with our perception, not with our belief” (ibid., 166). Neither response is entirely convincing. If injustices exist, they must throw into question the deity’s governance of the universe, and the language in 3:17 (“I said in my heart”) and 8:12b (“for I know”) involves personal reflection, not a theological datum forced on him. Antoon Schoors (Ecclesiastes, 290) rightly notes that divine retribution is “hard to reconcile with Qoheleth’s ideas.” Perhaps for this reason, Choon Leong Seow (Ecclesiastes [AB 18C; New York: Doubleday, 1997], 166) is content to say that God will judge in God’s own time.  On the variant, “Who knows?,” see James Crenshaw, “The Expression mî yô dēaʿ in the Hebrew Bible,” VT 36 (1986): 274– 88.  “In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to have died, and their departure was thought to be an affliction, and their going from us to be their destruction; but they are at peace. For though in the sight of men they were punished, their hope is full of immortality” (Wis 3:2– 4, RSV).  “Who hears my speech, his heart will grieve for it, for I am a small child snatched by force, abridged in years as an innocent one, snatched quickly as a little one, like a man carried off by

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the potential shame of a premature demise was erased through a clever conceit: departed children were said to have been removed from this world to prevent them from falling into sin. The pathos of Egyptian inscriptions indicates that nothing relieved the pain caused by the early death of children. Returning to the question, “Did Qoheleth believe God was just?,” remarkably, he never mentions a single instance in which the deity bestows a favor on the basis of good conduct.²⁰ Like the Father in Jesus’ teachings (cf. Matt 5:45), Qoheleth’s God lets the sun shine on the good and the bad. To be sure, Qoheleth spoke often of divine gifts,²¹ but these fell on the undeserving in the same way they did on the deserving. For him, as for the author of the prologue to the book of Job, ‫ ִח ָנּם‬was the operative word.²² Moreover, Qoheleth recognized occasions of egregious injustice in society that implicated the supreme ruler, arguably the deity (4:1– 3). Two things stand out in this context: Qoheleth’s keen sense of the multi-tiered system of government under Ptolemaic rulers, and his conviction that nothing will be done to correct the appalling injustice. Even then he did not feel compelled like some prophets to adopt a mediating role on behalf of those without a comforter.²³ Instead, he viewed death as deliverer from such wretched conditions.

sleep … without having had my share” (Thotkrekh, son of Petosiris). Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, Volume 3: The Late Period (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 53. “Harm is what befell me, when I was but a child! … I was driven from childhood too early?” (Stela of Isenkhebe). Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, 3:58−59. “It is god’s skill to make the hearts forget it, but a torn up plant is he who is taken young” (Inscription 127, Sishu, father of Petosiris). Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, 3:51. On these inscriptions, see Shannon Burkes, Death in Qoheleth and Egyptian Biographies of the Late Period (SBLDS 170; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 1999).  In 2:26 Qoheleth strips ‫ טוֹב‬and ‫ חוֶֹטא‬of all moral connotations. Those who are “good in God’s face” are simply persons who enjoy divine favor, which has nothing to do with conduct. “Sinners” are merely those who are not favored by God. For a similar idea, see Inscription 127 mentioned in the previous footnote where it is said that “God puts it (death) in the heart of him whom he hates so as to give his goods to another whom he loves….”  Qoheleth did not question divine generosity; he was, however, troubled by his inability to comprehend the criterion governing the distribution of good things.  I have discussed the role of ‫ ִח ָנּם‬in Job and Qoheleth in James Crenshaw, “Sipping from the Cup of Wisdom,” in Jesus and Philosophy: New Essays (ed. Paul K. Moser; Cambridge: University Press, 2009), 41– 62.  His failure to do so has brought censure from Frank Crüsemann (“Die unveränderbare Welt. Überlegungen zur ‘Krisis der Weisheit’ beim Prediger [Kohelet],” in Der Gött der kleinen Leute [ed. Willi Schöttroff and Wolfgang Stegemann; Munich: Kaiser, 1979], 80 – 104, translated by Matthew J. O’Connell as God of the Lowly: Socio-Historical Interpretations of the Bible [Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1984]).

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For Qoheleth, injustice was no anomaly.²⁴ Life was full of absurdities that defied explanation.²⁵ The thematic statement in 1:2 and 12:8 aptly sums up his view of reality, a world devoid of meaning and wholly irrational. No amount of philosophical speculation²⁶ could make a dent in the underlying mystery, for the deity had stacked the deck against successful intellectual pursuits (3:11). Miserable toil (‫)ָעָמל‬,²⁷ affliction (‫)ָע ָנה‬, and fate (‫ )ִמְק ֶרה‬were the lot of humankind. Then off to the grave; Qoheleth’s sentence breaks off like life itself (9:3). Hatred of life under these circumstances is understandable (2:17).

5 Was Qoheleth of Two Minds? Did Qoheleth think the deity would ever correct these injustices? Four texts come into play here: Eccl 3:16 – 17; 8:14; 11:9; and 12:14. The last of these comes from an epilogist²⁸ who sums up what is taken to be the gist of Qoheleth’s teachings as fearing God and keeping his commandments (12:13b). In a pinch, one can argue that both ideas go back to Qoheleth. His discussion of ways to avoid angering the deity—not being quick to address a distant God and carrying through on a promise to the deity—ends with this advice: “Fear God” (5:1– 6). Keeping a vow is

 James L. Crenshaw, Qoheleth: The Ironic Wink (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2013).  Fox thinks “absurdity” best conveys the irrational aspect of ‫ֶהֶבל‬, the affront to reason (A Time to Tear Down, 30 – 42).  On Qoheleth’s attempt to find an adequate language for philosophical reasoning, see Peter Machinist, “Fate, miqreh, and Reason: Some Reflections on Qohelet and Biblical Thought,” in Solving Riddles and Untying Knots: Biblical, Epigraphic, and Semitic Studies in Honor of Jonas C. Greenfield (ed. Ziony Zevit, Seymore Gitin, and Michael Sokoloff; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1995), 159 – 75.  James L. Crenshaw, “Qoheleth’s Hatred of Life: A Passing Phase or an Enduring Sentiment,” in Wisdom for Life: Essays Offered to Honor Prof. Maurice Gilbert, SJ on the Occasion of his Eightieth Birthday (ed. Nuria Calduch-Benages; BZAW 445; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2014), 119 – 31. Whereas the books of Job and Psalms use ‫ ָעָמל‬to indicate the human condition (as in Genesis), Qoheleth always uses ‫ ֶהֶבל‬to connote misery. For him, ‫ ָעָמל‬has the exceptional senses found in Job: toil and the fruit of that labor, wealth.  Although the two epilogists begin with the same phrase, subtle differences are detectable in what is said. The first widens the purview to place Qoheleth in a larger professional group whose teachings, while profound and true, carry a hidden sting. The second epilogue uses ‫( ְבּ ִני‬12:12) to personalize the instruction like the initial collection in Proverbs and warns against a lax attitude toward the process of canonization. For this epilogist, there remains nothing more to be said. Like the earlier thematic statement, the curt “Fear God and keep his commandments” is a selective summation.

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mandated in Deut 23:22, but true to earlier sapiential tradition, Qoheleth’s anthropological argument differs from the theological one there.²⁹ As has been recognized, readers enter a different world in this second epilogue, one closer to the theology of Ben Sira and one tuned to the process of forming a canon of scripture.³⁰ The surprising statement that “the Deity will bring every work into judgment concerning everything hidden, good or bad” (12:14), raises a question about whose view is being voiced, Qoheleth’s or that of someone who wishes to replace his unorthodox teaching with a more traditional one. For this person, ‫ טוֹב‬and ‫ ַרע‬have taken on a moral connotation not found in Qoheleth’s own ruminations. The form ‫ ָיִבא ְבִמ ְשׁ ָפּט‬in 12:14 echoes ‫ ְיִביֲאָך ָהֱאל ִֹהים ַבּ ִמּ ְשׁ ָפּט‬in 11:9b. This linguistic affinity between the two texts has been differently explained as support for the claim that Qoheleth believed God would judge humans,³¹ and as another instance of tampering with his views.³² Similarly, the thought expressed in 11:9a has either been taken as advocating conduct that is condemned in Num 15:39,³³ or as innocent encouragement to benefit from all the good things God makes available.³⁴ The waw (conjunctive or adversative?) supports either interpretation. Those who are reluctant to see glosses, but who do not think Qoheleth believed God would eventually set things right, have yet another way of regarding 11:9b: the noun ‫ ִמ ְשׁ ָפּט‬can refer to one’s proper condition. If that is its sense here, Qoheleth observes that God places persons in a condition that makes possible

 In short, Qoheleth’s reason for fulfilling a vow is personal safety, while Deuteronomy emphasizes the divine mandate as the basis for action.  Gerald T. Sheppard, “The Epilogue to Qoheleth as Theological Commentary,” CBQ 39 (1977): 182– 89. Thomas Krüger finds Sheppard’s observations an exaggeration of the differences between Qoheleth’s teachings and those in the final dialogue (Qoheleth, 213 – 14).  Krüger, Qoheleth, 213 – 14, and Seow, Ecclesiastes, 394. According to Seow, the perspective in 12:13b-14 is different from the rest of the book, and the lack of connection with 12:13a makes 12:13b-14 look as if it were “tacked on at the end.”  The issues are conveniently treated in Schoors, Ecclesiastes, 847– 54. Even Fox admits that the second epilogue comes from a different person than the rest of the book (A Time to Tear Down, 358 – 63).  Ben Sira took umbrage at Qoheleth’s advice that went against Num 15:39. In Sir 5:2 he writes: “Do not follow your heart and your eyes, to go in evil delights” (MS A). In Sir 5:3, he uses the unusual phrase ‫ )ְמַב ֵקּשׁ ִנ ְר ָּדִפים =( מבקש נרדפים‬that echoes the expression in Eccl 3:15 (‫ְיַב ֵקּשׁ‬ ‫)ֶאת־ ִנ ְר ָדף‬.  Robert Gordis, Koheleth: The Man and His World (New York: Schocken, 1968), 336: “It introduces the heart of Koheleth’s viewpoint, ‘and know that for all these God will bring you to judgment,’ i.e., for all the joys which he has extended to you and which it is his will that you enjoy.”

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the enjoyment of deepest desires.³⁵ The difference between 11:9 and 12:14 is significant. In the former, God does something about a person; in the latter God judges actions. The earliest interpretations of 11:9, however, negate what the translators took to be dangerous advice. Most of the Greek witnesses add “blameless” after “the ways of your heart,” and they insert the negative particle μή before “the sight of your eyes.”³⁶ A similar softening of Qoheleth’s words occurs in the Targum, as does the warning in Sir 5:2 against following your heart and eyes. Wis 2:6 – 9 adopts a harsher tone even while distorting the position advocated by Qoheleth in what immediately follows.³⁷ According to Eccl 6:9a, the sight of the eyes is better than the roving of desire, which would seem to support a favorable interpretation of Qoheleth’s words in Eccl 11:9. The sequel in Eccl 6:9b, however, suggests otherwise: all this is ‫ ֶהֶבל‬and ‫ ְרעוּת רוּ ַח‬. The injustices of Qoheleth’s world were too real to be ignored. The obvious miscarriages of justice would seem to indict the deity. In 8:14 Qoheleth describes an affront to rational expectation. It begins with a particle of existence and characterizes the reality as absurd. Simply stated, the righteous receive what should befall the wicked, and vice versa. The conclusion, like the beginning, emphasizes the absurdity of this mismatch between expectation and result. The same offense to rationality is highlighted in 7:15: “In my brief/empty life I have seen everything; there are (‫ ) ֵישׁ‬righteous people who perish in their innocence and there are (‫ ) ֵישׁ‬wicked people who thrive in their wickedness.” The twofold use of the particle ‫ ֵישׁ‬emphasizes the reality of such a breach of justice.³⁸ Qoheleth considered the delay in punishment for evil conduct an encouragement to sin freely (8:11).³⁹ To counter this reading of the situation, he makes an audacious claim

 Schoors, Ecclesiastes, 792 (after Leo Gorssen, “La cohérence de la conception de Dieu dans l’Ecclésiasté,” ETL 46 [1970]: 301– 5).  See discussion in Seow, Ecclesiastes, 349 – 50. As Y. A. P. Goldman notes, this results in the following text: “walk in the ways of your heart blameless and not in the sight of your eyes” (BHQ, 109*).  The sentiment—enjoy life, for death is coming—is akin to that of Qoheleth, even the concluding reminder that enjoyment is our portion. But pleasure gained at the expense of others is alien to Qoheleth.  The philosophy behind Qoheleth’s use of the existential particle and terms for quantity is examined in James L. Crenshaw, “Qoheleth’s Quantitative Language,” in The Language of Qohelet in Its Context (ed. Angelika Berlejung and Pierre van Hecke; OLA 164; Leuven: Peeters, 2007), 1– 22.  The Apostle Paul recognized the inherent danger in divine forbearance and challenged the conclusion that one should sin freely so as to maximize grace (Rom 6:1). A later rabbinic tradition puts a positive spin on transgression: sin is necessary for the divine Name as disclosed to

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to possess knowledge about the destiny of good people: “Even if a sinner multiplies transgression and prospers, I know it will go well for those who fear God and badly for those who do not” (8:12). Elsewhere Qoheleth insists that the future lies hidden. Has he forgotten his own insight? In 3:16 Qoheleth observes that wickedness has even taken a seat where judgment should reside. The absurdity of villainy replacing righteousness is underscored by the repetition of the noun ‫ ֶר ַשׁע‬: “The place of judgment, there wickedness (‫ ;)ָה ֶר ַשׁע‬the place of righteousness, there wickedness (‫)ָה ָר ַשׁע‬.” A corrupt judicial system does not lead him to give up hope. Instead, he reasons that the deity will judge both the righteous and the sinner. How did he arrive at this unexpected conclusion? Interpreters have looked to 3:1– 8, a time for everything, which, it is argued, would include a day of judgment.⁴⁰ Where did Qoheleth think that judgment would take place? The final ‫ ָשׁם‬in 3:17 has been understood as an allusion to Sheol (“over there”)⁴¹ either ironically⁴² or otherwise. Nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible does divine judgment involve the next life. Is there another way to read the final colon? Instead of an adverb, ‫ ָשׁם‬may be a verb that Masoretes have erroneously vocalized. One can translate Eccl 3:17b this way: “And he will appoint a time for everything and every work.”⁴³ Has Qoheleth’s inner dialogue confused a catalog of times for humans with one that also applies to God’s actions, or has a later author seized this opportunity to attribute an orthodox view to Qoheleth?

Moses in thirteen attributes; without sin, the attributes would be diminished by two, forbearance and forgiveness.  The list in 3:2– 8 is not comprehensive, as it omits things such as eating and sex that are essential for the survival of civilization. Ben Sira’s stoic philosophy is far more embracing, leaving no room for doubt about the just order of the universe. In his view, good things were created for the devout and bad things were created to punish evildoers.  Gordis thinks of this remark as satirical: justice will take place over there! (Koheleth, 235).  I think of Qoheleth’s irony as similar to a grandfather’s wink, intended to communicate to a child that “you and I know better.” Carolyn J. Sharp considers Qoheleth’s irony more serious than this (“Ironic Representation, Authorial Voice, and Meaning in Qohelet,” BibInt 12 [2004]: 37– 68).  RSV construes the consonantal ‫ שם‬as past-tense verb from the root ‫…“( שים‬for he has appointed (‫ ) ָשׂם‬a time for every matter, and for every work”). If ‫ שם‬is instead an adverb (‫) ָשׁם‬, it may mean that justice will take place in the court where, according to 3:16, injustice also occurs (Krüger, Qoheleth, 91).

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6 Conclusion The title of these reflections on God as Judge in Qoheleth is chosen to describe a rhetoric among interpreters, an indecisiveness that is necessitated by Qoheleth’s own rhetoric.⁴⁴ The combination of textual witnesses, linguistic peculiarities, and multiple voices demands openness. Did Qoheleth’s honesty compel him to entertain opposing views about things beyond human ken,⁴⁵ or did his unorthodox thoughts evoke attempts by others to bring his views into line with conventional theology? Did his skeptical bent give way at crucial moments to allow more palatable teachings to be heard? We do not know. This much we do know: The many contradictions in the scroll exercise a powerful effect on interpreters, re-energizing convictions, both positive and negative. Did Qoheleth really believe God would correct all wrongs that were an affront to his sense of rationality? That belief would have required him to reconcile it with the conviction that everything is ‫ ֶהֶבל‬and ‫ ְרעוּת רוּ ַח‬as well as with his assertion that nobody can know what will be. If he failed to reconcile these negative assessments of reality with a comforting promise of better things, he was either a victim of indecision, or the sayings about God as judge do not represent his own views.

 Benjamin I. Berger uses the felicitous phrase “a rhetoric of erasure” when describing Qoheleth’s proclivity toward deconstruction (“Qoheleth and the Exigencies of the Absurd,” BibInt 8 [2001]: 141– 79). Gary D. Salyer prefers “vain rhetoric” because “I” discourses imply their own limitation and invite dialogic discussion with their major premises and conclusions (Vain Rhetoric: Private Insight and Public Debate in Ecclesiastes [JSOTSup 327; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001], 390).  “Master of the Universe, I do not ask that you reveal to me the mysteries of your ways—I could not comprehend them. I do not want to know why I suffer; my only desire is to know that I suffer for your sake” (Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev). This knowledge that the intellect has its limits where God is concerned need not lead to despair (cf. Ps 131:1b–2, “I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a child quieted at its mother’s breast, like a child that is quieted is my soul” [RSV]).

Susanne Gillmayr-Bucher (Catholic Private University Linz– Austria)

Solomon’s Wise Words in Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century Literature 1 The Ancient-Modern Solomon Gamal, der die Handelsgeschäfte mit Weihrauch mit den zivilisierten Höfen des Vorderen Orients führte, hatte der Königin von seiner letzten Jerusalemreise die “Sprüche Salomos” mitgebracht, die gerade auf dem Markt erschienen waren. Gamal wußte, daß die Königin gerne las und auf Neuerscheinungen erpicht war. Doch die “Sprüche” hätte sie beim ersten Durchfliegen fast beiseite gelegt. In jedem Land mit verfeinerten sittlichen Ansprüchen gab es—fast gleichlautend —einen solchen Kodex für die heranwachsende Jugend als Leitfaden der Moral, auch in Saba, und wie gesagt die Königin wollte die Schrift schon weglegen, da stieß sie, nicht recht eingepaßt in den Text, auf einen Passus, der sie innehalten und aufmerken ließ. Sie las mehrmals die Stelle, und was sie da las, das nahm sie gefangen und ließ sie nicht mehr los.… Und schließlich wuchs in ihr ein drängendes Verlangen nach einem Gespräch mit diesem Mann.¹ … Gamal, who conducted the incense business with the civilized courts of the Near East, had been to Jerusalem and had brought back with him the recently published “Proverbs of Solomon” for the queen. Gamal knew that the queen liked to read and was eager for new publications. When first glancing through the “Proverbs,” however, she had come close to putting them down. There was a similar codex in every country with refined moral standards—in almost identical wording—as a moral guideline for youths. There was one in Sheba, too. And as mentioned previously, the queen was ready to set the writing aside, when she came across a passage that did not fit too well into the text. It made her pause and take notice. She read the passage several times, and she was captivated by what she was reading. It did not let her go.… Finally, she felt a deep craving to talk with this man.² This description of the queen reading the Proverbs of Solomon opens the novel Sie kam zu König Salomo by the Austrian writer Inge Merkel (1922–

 Inge Merkel, Sie kam zu König Salomo (Salzburg: Jung & Jung, 2001), 8 – 9.  Translation by Susanne Gillmayr-Bucher. DOI 10.1515/9783110428148-015

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2006). Affected by Solomon’s words, the (unnamed) Queen of Sheba sets out to meet him in person. The interest that Merkel’s queen shows in the king’s words is typical for many literary depictions of Solomon in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, in which the legendary wise king is viewed from different angles in order either to reveal or to deconstruct his wisdom. This type of literary composition brings Solomon’s royal actions into focus, but even more so his thoughts— especially his philosophical and theological (but also political and economic) reflections. Such portraits often blend biblical images of King Solomon with modern images of monarchs and/or political leaders. The foundation for such a blend is the common elements all sovereigns share: they are responsible for their land and people, and their decisions have an immediate impact on everyday life. Furthermore, their way of life often resembles the wishful aspirations of ordinary people, and so monarchs typically garner wide interest. When biblical and modern images of rulers blend in literature, fictive images emerge that bear traits of both. Sometimes the biblical figure provides the organizing frame for the modern novel; at other times, the image of the contemporary ruler is more dominant. Biblical figures can be developed and brought to life for modern readers (e. g., in historical novels). Contemporary rulers can be praised, challenged, or even deconstructed in the form of a re-narration of the biblical tradition. And, as in Merkel’s story, the biblical protagonist may represent the pressing concerns of the novel’s contemporary audience. Such literary images of King Solomon do not claim to offer an exegetical interpretation of the biblical story. Nevertheless, the literary images emphasize selected aspects of the biblical text. Thus, they provide insight into a possible (but not all-encompassing) reconstruction of the biblical king. When literature reflects on its contemporary culture through the lens of biblical texts, it engages the biblical texts in a creative dialogue.³ This affects both one’s view of contemporary culture and one’s perspective on the biblical figures. Furthermore, these literary presentations might encourage new reading strategies for the biblical texts themselves.⁴ In this way, every new text that features King Solomon has the ability to modify the intertextual web of representations which make up the Solomon figure—by adding new aspects, suggesting new perspectives, or raising new questions.

 Cf. Timothy K. Beal, “Reception History and Beyond: Toward the Cultural History of Scriptures,” BibInt 19 (2011): 357– 72, here 368 – 69; Brennan W. Breed, “Nomadology of the Bible: A Processual Approach to Biblical Reception History,” BibRec 1 (2012): 298 – 320, here 308 – 11.  Cf. J. Cheryl Exum, “Toward a Genuine Dialogue between the Bible and Art,” in Congress Volume, Helsinki 2010 (ed. Martti Nissinen; VTSup 148; Leiden: Brill, 2012), 473 – 503.

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In this essay I focus on one aspect of the multifaceted image of King Solomon in modern literature: Solomon’s wise words. After an overview of the connection between wisdom and language in the sapiential tradition and a survey of Solomon’s wisdom in the biblical texts, I analyze the presentation of Solomon’s wise words in the literary works of Inge Merkel, Stefan Heym, Siegfried Obermeier, Sammy Groneman, and Friedrich Dürenmatt. Each of these works re-imagines Solomon so as to extol his wisdom or to deconstruct it (or both), all the while re-creating a figure who is relevant to the author’s contemporary situation.

2 Wise Words in the Sapiential Tradition The close connection between wisdom and language is obvious even upon a cursory reading of the book of Proverbs. As Michael Kolarcik states, “To be able to speak well and to express oneself with convincing artistry was a particular value of the sapiential tradition.”⁵ Hence, one characteristic feature of every wise person is his or her masterful use of language. This is considered a trademark of wise people, while a lack of communicative abilities is typical for a fool (cf. e. g., Prov 10:31– 32; 15:2, 7). Wise words are thus one of the most precious things (e. g., Prov 20:15).⁶ The high appreciation of communicative skills emphasizes that the use of language is one of the essential features of human life, as language creates, determines, and changes reality.⁷ Thus language is also a key issue for wisdom, which manifests itself in language and is transmitted by language.⁸ The ability to construct wise words is not only a rhetorical art but a fundamental attitude. Consequently, words have to meet several criteria in order to be considered wise. Wise words are reliable and trustworthy (e. g., Prov 11:13, 12:17, 24:26).⁹ They are beneficial and encourage life to unfold. They bring joy (Prov 12:25; 15:23, 30). They are delicious (Prov 16:24) and nourishing (e. g., Prov 12:14, 13:2, 18:20). They maintain peace (e. g., Prov 15:1, 17:27). While wise words protect or heal their speaker, imprudent speech can be life-threatening (e. g., Prov 12:13, 18; 13:3;

 Michael Kolarcik, “The Book of Wisdom,” NIB 5:437– 600, here 502.  Walter Bühlmann, Vom rechten Reden und Schweigen: Studien zu Proverbien 10 – 31 (OBO 12; Fribourg: Universitätsverlag, 1976), 82.  Maria Häusl, “Zuraten, zurechtweisen und sich zurückhalten: Sprüche zur Sprache aus der älteren Weisheit (Spr 10 – 22 und 25 – 29),” BZ 49 (2005): 26 – 45, here 28 – 29.  Jutta Hausmann, Studien zum Menschenbild der älteren Weisheit (Spr 10 ff) (FAT 7; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1995), 186.  Cf. Bühlmann, Vom rechten Reden, 100 – 109.

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18:7). Sage words support the wise speakers themselves but also the community.¹⁰ Wise words also offer advice, reprimands, and warnings in order to educate the addressees, guiding them towards a peaceful social existence (e. g., Prov 4:4, 16:20). Furthermore, wise words are inseparably connected with understanding. Knowledge of the past, present, and future often stands behind wise words (e. g., Ps 78:2; Wis 8:2– 8). And last but not least, wise words are powerful and persuasive (e. g., Prov 25:15; 26:9; Eccl 8:4).

3 Solomon’s Wisdom in the Biblical Tradition 3.1 Solomon’s Desire for Wisdom in 1 Kings 3:5 – 14 and Wisdom 7 When looking in 1 Kings for traces of Solomon’s wise words, a few references attract attention. The core of Solomon’s wisdom is presented as a dream-dialogue with Yhwh (1 Kgs 3:5 – 14) and hence an intimate point of contact between Solomon and God.¹¹ In this story, the narrating voice presumably offers the readers insight into Solomon’s inner life—his innermost thoughts and wishes. And there, at the very center of Solomon’s mind, lies a longing for wisdom. When invited by the deity to name a wish, he asks for a “hearing heart” (‫שֵׁמ ַע‬ ֹ ‫ )ֵלב‬to be ¹² able to judge the people and to discern between good and evil (v. 9). This reply already bears witness to Solomon’s aspiration for wisdom.¹³ With his words, he offers a window into his own inadequacy, but he also presents himself as someone eager to learn. Not only is a wise heart most desirable (e. g., Prov 23:12, 15; Eccl 9:1), but the skill of listening (‫ )שמע‬is also considered wise behavior (e. g., Prov 8:33, 15:31, 22:17). What on first sight appears to be a humble wish is nothing

 Cf. Häusl, “Sprüche zur Sprache,” 44; Hausmann, Menschenbild, 194– 95.  “What God gives in a dream is beyond human control or exploitation or manipulation or resistance. It is, so to speak, the real thing” (Walter Brueggemann, 1 & 2 Kings [Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys, 2000], 46).  In this request, wisdom and the ability to reign are closely connected. This combination is also typical for royal images in Egypt and Mesopotamia. As in Mesopotamian royal ideology, the king must receive wisdom from a deity as a gift (cf. Stefan Wälchli, Der weise König Salomo: Eine Studie zu den Erzählungen von der Weisheit Salomos in ihrem alttestamentlichen und altorientlischen Kontext [BWANT 141; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1999], 163).  Cf. Susanne Gillmayr-Bucher, “Solomon: Wisdom’s Most Famous Aspirant,” in Interested Readers: Essays on the Hebrew Bible in Honor of David J. A. Clines (ed. James K. Aitken, Jeremy M. S. Clines, and Christl M. Maier; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2013), 73 – 85, here 78 – 79.

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less than a request for all-encompassing wisdom.¹⁴ The wish for a “hearing heart” in order to discern good and evil presents Solomon’s desire for wisdom in a nutshell: it is a wish for a critical awareness, combined with the ability to understand and to evaluate all things perceived.¹⁵ Solomon’s dream-words—telling his wish to God—are his first wise words. Commenting on these words, the narrating voice points out that they were “good in the eyes of Yhwh” (1 Kgs 3:10), thus reinterpreting God’s offer for Solomon to express his wish as if the exchange were a riddle.¹⁶ In reply, God grants Solomon even more than he had asked for, promising him not only a hearing heart which has the ability to learn wisdom but a heart that is already wise and discerning (vv. 12– 13). Following the dream’s promise, the stories of Solomon unfold the image of a king who possesses knowledge and wise words.¹⁷ The book of Wisdom retells this story in retrospect. In Wis 7 an anonymous speaker, who bears a striking resemblance to Solomon, looks back on his youth and his experience with wisdom. First he emphasizes his equality to all human beings and points out that his wisdom is attainable by everybody (Wis 7:5 – 6). After he prayed, God gave him understanding and sent him the spirit of wisdom (v. 7). He embraced this gift with a declaration of his love of wisdom,¹⁸ emphasizing that he preferred wisdom to all other goods, wealth, health, beauty, and even eyesight. Because of this, all good things came into Solomon’s possession, and he enjoyed everything because wisdom had brought them (v. 12). Furthermore, Wis 7 points out that Solomon relies on God as provider of wisdom and as a guide for the wise and their words (vv. 15 – 16).¹⁹ This Solomonic speaker thus presents himself as a role model of a sage.

 The narration in 2 Chr 1:10 is less demanding; there Solomon asks only for ‫“( ָחְכָמה וַּמ ָדּע‬wisdom and knowledge”).  Hugh Pyper reads the allusion to Gen 3 as a challenge to the appropriateness of desiring wisdom (Pyper, “Judging the Wisdom of Solomon: The Two-Way Effect of Intertextuality,” JSOT 59 [1993]: 25 – 36, here 31).  Cf. Martin Nitsche, “Und das Königtum war fest in der Hand Salomos”: Untersuchungen zu 1 Kön 3 (BWANT 11/5; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2015), 95.  The close connection between a wise heart and wise words is also emphasized in Prov 16:23; cf. Prov 15:28; 16:21.  Hans Hübner, Die Weisheit Salomos (ATD-Apokryphen 4; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999), 96.  Cf. Martin Neher, Wesen und Wirken der Weisheit in der Sapientia Salomonis (BZAW 333; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2004), 107.

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3.2 Solomon’s Judicial Wisdom in 1 Kings 3:16 – 28 The second incident in 1 Kings when wise words of Solomon are reported is the judicial hearing of the two women (1 Kgs 3:16 – 28).²⁰ In this scene, Solomon appears in the role of a wise king delivering a righteous decision (cf. Prov 16:10).²¹ Although this judgment is widely considered to be Solomon’s most famous display of wisdom,²² the story itself is ambivalent. Solomon’s first words (1 Kgs 3:25) after hearing the women’s case are harsh, even brutal, but they provoke a reaction from the two women, which in turn allows Solomon to deliver a verdict. Although the story does not reveal if the living child is given to the biological mother, the woman who meets the expectations of the self-sacrificial love of a mother for her child is proved right. The wisdom of Solomon’s words is probably more obvious to the observers of the process than to the two women involved. The pivotal wisdom of the king’s verdict lies in the ability to interpret the women’s reactions in a way which convinces the audience that the ideal conception of a “true mother” is still valid. The verdict thus confirms the common idea of a reliable and stable human nature.²³ Solomon recognizes the people’s need for dependability. His words re-establish confidence in traditional social values and bring order into a chaotic situation.²⁴

3.3 The Catalogue of Solomon’s Wisdom in 1 Kings 5:12 – 13 The next reference to Solomon’s wise words is a summary presented by the narrating voice in 1 Kgs 5:12– 13. The quantity of Solomon’s proverbs and songs mentioned there—3,000 proverbs and 1,005 songs—is overwhelming. Furthermore, the passage emphasizes two spheres of his knowledge: flora and fauna. According to Prov 25:2– 3, scientific curiosity is the glory of a king. In contrast to other people, he tries to search things out.²⁵ Thus a king’s heart is unsearchable, like the heavens’ heights and the earth’s depth. This line of thought is also present in the fictive speech of Solomon in Wis 7, where Solomon is granted universal

 This image is repeated in Sir 47:14– 17.  Cf. Hausmann, Menschenbild, 135.  The literary receptions of this verdict are numerous. This article, however, does not include this tradition.  Pyper, “Judging the Wisdom of Solomon,” 26.  Cf. Claudia Camp, Wise, Strange and Holy: The Strange Woman and the Making of the Bible (JSOTSup 320; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), 168.  Cf. Wälchli, Der weise König, 182.

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knowledge, including almost all areas of (Greek) science (vv. 17– 20): cosmology, physics, calculation of the calendar and determination of the time of the year, astronomy, psychology, botany, zoology, demonology, and medicine.²⁶ Wis 7:21 concludes the list with a merism emphasizing that Solomon’s wisdom covered “whatever is hidden or apparent” (ὅσα τέ ἐστιν κρυπτὰ καὶ ἐμφανῆ). The book of Sirach offers a similar image of Solomon, describing him as filled with wisdom and wise words in their various forms (Sir 47:14– 17). In the end, however, Solomon is portrayed as a failure, despite his extraordinary wisdom.²⁷

3.4 Solomon’s Sapiential Contest with the Queen of Sheba in 1 Kings 10 In 1 Kgs 5 and 2 Chr 9, Solomon’s remarkable wisdom is highlighted further by stating that all kings came to hear it (1 Kgs 5:14 [Eng. 4:34]; 2 Chr 9:22– 23). With this external evidence that Solomon’s wisdom did not go unnoticed, the narrating voice confirms its evaluation. The most elaborate example of such a visit is the story of the Queen of Sheba traveling to Jerusalem to test Solomon with her riddles (1 Kgs 10:1– 12; 2 Chr 9:1– 14). The story focuses solely on the queen as she meets Solomon and sees his royal court and temple. According to her perception, Solomon exceeds everything she has been told about him. However, the exact content of Solomon’s wisdom which the Queen of Sheba hears is never specified in the biblical narratives, and Solomon’s answers to her riddles are never quoted. This indifference to content is typical for the depiction of Solomon’s wisdom in the books of Kings and Chronicles. Besides pointing out the obvious—that a wise king has to speak wise words—the interest in his wise sayings and their content is almost non-existent.²⁸ For centuries, this gap in the narrative has stimulated the imagination of readers and has encouraged them to fill in the gap by

 Pablo Torijano points out that “all the elements of Solomon’s knowledge are based on the same concept: cosmic sympathy. Thus, Solomon is described as a very special type of Magister omnium physicorum (‘Master of all natural things’), as a model hermetic sage” (Solomon the Esoteric King: From King to Magus, Development of a Tradition [JSJSup 73; Leiden: Brill, 2002], 94– 95).  Against the general post-exilic trend, Ben Sira follows the pattern of 1 Kings in emphasizing the negative image of Solomon. Cf. Torijano, Solomon, 35.  1 Kgs 11:41 already acknowledges that this report is incomplete, and it points out that there exist more written accounts on Solomon’s wisdom.

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providing Solomon’s wise speech.²⁹ Already from the fourth century B.C.E. onwards, a discourse on Solomon developed which unfolded the image of the wise king. During this time, other texts are attributed to Solomon as an author. Such a process affects the image of Solomon and also the evaluation of the texts ascribed to him. On the one hand, Solomon serves as a patron of these words of wisdom and thus lends them substance and prestige.³⁰ On the other hand, the figure of the king is developed. As his words, thoughts, and reflections are disclosed, they become an essential part of his image.³¹ In this way, the lore of Solomon’s wisdom is complemented by his wise words.

3.5 The Books of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes as Corpora of Solomon’s Wise Words When the book of Proverbs presents Solomon as a teacher of wisdom, it takes up the image of Solomon as a wise man (1 Kgs) and develops it further. In addition to being called a wise king who has a wide range of knowledge and is able to make wise decisions, the image of Solomon as a wisdom teacher³² expands the sphere of his influence beyond his reign.³³ The sayings can also provide a (critical) mirror for the actions of Solomon, insofar as the readers may compare Solomon’s words and actions. This is even encouraged, as the book of Proverbs presents a rather critical image of a king. According to Proverbs, a king is not necessarily an exemplary wise man (e. g., Prov 28:15 – 16; 29:2, 12).³⁴ In contrast, the book of Ecclesiastes draws on the

 Taking 1 Kgs 5:10 – 14 as starting point, Solomon was used as an ongoing source of wisdom (Walter Brueggemann, Solomon: Israel’s Ironic Icon of Human Achievement [Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2005], 201).  As Choon Leong Seow states, “Wisdom texts frequently are associated with royalty because kings were supposed to be responsible for preserving the social order that wisdom was supposed to achieve” (Ecclesiastes [AB 18C; New York: Doubleday, 1997], 99).  Cf. Melanie Köhlmoos, Kohelet: Der Prediger Salomo (ATD 16.5; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015), 41– 42.  The prologue in Prov 1:2– 6 states the purposes and the addressees of the proverbs, namely to provide ethical skillfulness and understanding. Cf. Hermann Spieckermann, “Die Prologe der Weisheitsbücher,” in Schriftauslegung in der Schrift: Festschrift für Odil Hannes Steck zu seinem 65. Geburtstag (ed. Reinard G. Kratz and Thomas Krüger; BZAW 300; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2000), 291– 303, here 293.  Prov 1:1– 7 is composed as a preface to the book stating its purpose. Cf. Roland E. Murphy, Proverbs (WBC 22; Waco, TX: Word Books, 1998), 4– 5.  Hausmann, Menschenbild, 147.

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image of wisdom as a royal ideal in the so-called “royal fiction” found in Eccl 1:12– 2:26. Presented as a homodiegetic narration, the words of Qohelet prompt the readers to imagine that this is King Solomon, the sage-king par excellence. The focus of Ecclesiastes, however, lies on the deconstruction of any confidence in wisdom. Wisdom is not presented as a guarantee for a successful life but as something ephemeral, like other things humans may accomplish.³⁵

4 Reconstructing or Deconstructing the Biblical Image of the Wise King 4.1 Transforming Solomon’s Wise Words The biblical portraits of Solomon in all his wisdom and grandeur but also his guilt and failure offered a multifaceted starting point for later traditions, which further modified and expanded Solomon’s image. In many literary portraits, Solomon’s words and writings are an essential part of his character, as they shed light on his thoughts and frame of mind.³⁶ When presenting Solomon’s words, these later authors often draw upon quotations or paraphrases of the biblical texts, combining them with new words and speeches. Since they use only small samples from the biblical text, these words are easily adapted to fit different contexts. In this way, the readers are seemingly presented with “original words of Solomon,” which lend authenticity to the figure of Solomon in the literary work in question. Although Solomon’s wisdom is one of his main characteristics, his speech is not unqualifiedly positive; the persuasive power of wise words is ambivalent. As such, later literary portraits both construct and deconstruct the image of Solomon as a speaker of wise words.

 Cf. Choon Leong Seow, “Qohelet’s Autobiography,” in Fortunate the Eyes that See: Essays in Honor of David Noel Freedman in Celebration of His Seventieth Birthday (ed. Astrid B. Beck, et al.; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995), 257– 82, here 275 – 78.  Literary portraits of Solomon usually assume that the figure in 1 Kings and the books of Chronicles is also the author of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, and Wisdom of Solomon.

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4.2 Solomon as Contemporary Sage in Inge Merkel’s Sie kam zu König Salomo If a literary work presents a positive image of Solomon, the author typically uses the biblical portrait of the wise king as an ideal frame. As a result, Solomon appears as a wise man according to contemporary standards. He is portrayed as a successful, though self-critical, sovereign and as a wise dialogue partner. His words are inspiring and instructive; they are mediatory yet clear; they are authentic and carefully considered. Nevertheless, he also shows self-doubts, and he is willing to listen and learn. Such positive literary portraits are based often on the story of the visit of the Queen of Sheba. Like Inge Merkel’s work, several novels of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries start their exploration of Solomon’s wisdom by retelling the story of the Queen of Sheba’s visit in Jerusalem. The lore of King Solomon’s wisdom awakens the interest of the queen and induces her to undertake a long journey to visit him. Wisdom as a character trait is considered attractive in a man, especially a king, and hence held in high esteem. In Inge Merkel’s story, the Queen of Sheba’s questions structure the novel, as each chapter unfolds as a discourse between her and Solomon about the subject she broaches. In these dialogues, they address various issues a monarch has to deal with, they share their experiences, discuss different ways to solve emerging problems, and add critical reflections while recalling their respective histories and traditions. In this way, the wisdom of both Solomon and the Queen of Sheba unfolds before the eyes of the readers, allowing them a seemingly unmediated insight into a private exchange of thoughts. Throughout the story, Solomon and the Queen of Sheba are portrayed as equally wise in their governance and well-versed in all fields of knowledge. In addition, Solomon is also portrayed as a man of wise words, who is able to verbalize his thoughts and formulate them as general reflections, thus sharing and passing down his wisdom. With this characterization, Merkel follows the tradition of combining the stories of the first books of Kings with the tradition of the books whose authorship is ascribed to Solomon (Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, and Wisdom of Solomon).

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4.3 Solomon as Ignorant Dictator in Heym’s The King David Report By contrast, very critical or negative portraits of Solomon often deny him wisdom. One of the most famous novels to do so is Stefan Heym’s (1913 – 2001)³⁷ The King David Report (1972/1973).³⁸ In this story, Ethan ben Hoshaja, the main protagonist of the book, is given the task of writing “the proper” version of King David’s biography in order to support King Solomon’s claim to the throne. Heym’s portrait of Solomon combines the image of the biblical king with the political situation of the former Eastern Bloc totalitarianism. In doing so, Heym satirically deconstructs the positive images presented by dictatorial regimes and their rulers.³⁹ The character of Nathan offers true insight into Solomon’s character, which stands in stark contrast to his official image as a glamorous and peaceful king: “This one is an imitator, vain, without vision, his dreams mediocre, his verse trite, his crimes growing from fear, not from greatness.”⁴⁰ Nevertheless, Solomon’s inadequacy is veiled behind his despotic use of power. To demonstrate his wisdom, Solomon uses other men’s wise words and adorns himself with their wisdom. (Ethan) I thanked him, saying that the King’s wrath was as a roaring of a lion, but his favour as dew upon the grass. “That sounds like a good adage,” said Solomon, pleased. And to Elihoreph and Ahiah b’nai Shisha, the scribes, “Mark it down well, for I am planning a collection of pithy proverbs to evidence my exceeding wisdom.” I said I was deeply honoured by the King’s wish to include my poor saying in his collection; also, whenever another occurred to me that was of the proper spirit, I would joyfully let him have it.⁴¹

 Heym was born to a Jewish family in Germany 1913, emigrated to the United States in 1935, but returned to Germany in 1952. He settled in East Berlin, where he soon established himself as a prominent writer. However, his critical writings soon aroused critique, and his works could only be published in West Germany.  Stefan Heym, The King David Report: A Novel (London: Hodder and Stoughton; New York: Putnam, 1973). Heym’s own German translation of the English original was published one year earlier as Der König David Bericht (Munich: Kindler, 1972).  The parallelism of past and present uses history as a mirror and parable, and it also implies a view of history as repetition (David Roberts, “Stefan Heym: Der König David Bericht,” Journal of Language, Literature and Culture 48 [1977]: 201– 11, here 207).  Heym, The King David Report (London: Sphere, 1984); repr. of The King David Report: A Novel, 237.  Ibid., 178.

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Behind such seemingly friendly dialogues between the king and his subordinates, the readers are able to see the king’s wise words for what they truly are —a façade, hiding oppression and abuse of power.

5 Solomon’s Doubts, Catharsis, and Newfound Tolerance in Obermeier’s Salomo und die Königin von Saba When literary works emphasize a self-critical element of Solomon’s wisdom, they may present his wisdom as a challenge or a threat. Such works tend to portray Solomon in light of the self-critical lyrical speaker of the book of Ecclesiastes.⁴² In Siegfried Obermeier’s (1936 – 2011) novel, Salomo und die Königin von Saba,⁴³ the king struggles with severe doubts about his mission and his faith.⁴⁴ To overcome his low spirits, he learns to accept his dark thoughts; he pursues them to their end, and he even writes them down. His struggles unfold as short reflections on sense and nonsense, on the purpose of and futility of life, and implications he draws from these thoughts. These reflections are recounted as a collage of quotations, paraphrases, and summaries from the book of Ecclesiastes,⁴⁵ thus creating the impression of direct insight into Solomon’s thoughtworld. Finally, Solomon’s strategy of coming to grips with his troubling thoughts and recording them brings the hoped-for cure and enables him to overcome his distressful situation and mournful moods. Since they are ultimately beneficial for him, even this record of the king’s troubles may be considered wise words. Later in the novel, these thoughts are published, and they are presented as educational and even exemplary. Reflecting on his writings, Solomon proposes his cathartic experience as a stimulus for others. Solomon is thus a wisdom teacher who offers words and thoughts as an example for others to follow.

 Cf. Elisabeth Birnbaum and Susanne Gillmayr-Bucher, “The wise king’s vanity: The ‫ הבל‬motive in the reception of King Solomon,” BibRec 3 (2015): 265 – 90.  Siegfried Obermeier, Salomo und die Königin von Saba: Roman (Munich: Nymphenburger, 2004).  Obermeier’s story is told in the tradition of the historical novel. It skillfully creates a vivid story of King Solomon, including plenty of biblical-historical information on Solomon and ancient Israel. It thus gives readers the impression that they are given an in-depth look into the events on Solomon’s court and the king’s character.  Ibid., 108 – 10.

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Obermeier uses these references to Ecclesiastes to paint a portrait of one phase in the career and life of the still-young king. After his struggle with these dark thoughts, Solomon leaves the biblical concept of a personal God behind, and he adopts a remarkably tolerant stance towards different religions. Thus from a biblical perspective, Solomon deviates from the right course after his crisis; in the depiction of the novel, however, he evolves into a liberal ruler. Solomon’s thoughts and wise words indicate the transition to a modern and enlightened sovereign.⁴⁶ This modern reinterpretation of Solomon’s words makes it easier for contemporary readers to view them as wise. By combining a contemporary attitude toward liberality and tolerance with the positive portrait of the biblical king, Solomon’s image as a wise man and wisdom teacher is confirmed.

6 What is Wisdom? Between Irrelevant Reflections and Drunken Witticisms in Groneman’s Der Weise und der Narr The proverbial distinction between sage and fool, or between wise words and foolish ones, can be blurred humorously in literary works that present a more critical portrait of a ruler. This approach uses the example of Solomon in order to scrutinize different forms of wisdom, and to contrast royal and popular wisdom, as well as philosophical and political acumen. Such a critical portrait does not deny the value of wisdom altogether; rather, wisdom is determined by its usefulness. In this way a critical perspective on all claims of wisdom becomes possible. Sammy Groneman’s (1875 – 1952)⁴⁷ play, Der Weise und der Narr,⁴⁸ uses such an approach to hold up a mirror to its audience and to reflect critically on Jewish society in Palestine in the early 1940’s. The play opens with Joram, a scribe, reading from Solomon’s recent text:

 This development might be inspired by the older exegetical assumption of a “Solomonic enlightment.” Cf. Wälchli, Der weise König, 162– 63.  Samuel Gronemann was born in 1875 to an orthodox Jewish family in West Prussia. He worked as a lawyer and writer. In 1933 he fled to Paris, and in 1936 he emigrated to Palestine.  Gronemann, Der Weise und der Narr. König Salomo und der Schuster: Ein heiteres Versspiel in sieben Bildern (Tel Aviv: Palestinian Play Publishers, 1942). This play was translated into Modern Hebrew and performed 300 times in the Ohel-theatre—a record at the time. Cf. H. Mittelmann, Sammy Gronemann (1875 – 1952): Zionist, Schriftsteller und Statiriker in Deutschland und Palästina (Campus Judaica 21; Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 2004), 138.

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Wie Stacheln sind der Weisen Worte Und wenn die Grossen sich versammeln, Im hohen Rat, am feierlichen Orte Mit Nägeln wissen zu verrammeln Sie jeglicher Erkenntnis Pforte. Nie kommen sie zur echten Klarheit Zur schlichten, ungetrübten Wahrheit, Die wohl ein armer Hirte leicht In seiner Einsamkeit erreicht.⁴⁹ … The words of the wise are like goads, and when the important people gather in the council, in a solemn place, they know how to close all gates of knowledge with nails. They never find true clarity, and the simple and unclouded truth a poor shepherd will easily reach in his solitude.⁵⁰

From the beginning, the play expresses a critical view of the words of intellectual and influential people, coupled with an idealized and nostalgic image of the poor and simple. The king, as head of the powerful people, mistrusts official consultations. Besides, with his words he claims the ability to recognize wisdom and to unmask mere pretense. Despite his claims, however, the royal court does not appreciate his wise words. In fact, contrary to the image of Solomon in the book of Proverbs, his words seem to offer no advice or guidance. Both his family and his servants perceive Solomon as naïve and disinterested in all practical issues, often lost in his own thought-world. Their inability to appreciate Solomon’s philosophical efforts is presented humorously in Joram’s commentary on Solomon’s latest writings:⁵¹ Wenn Ihr dem Starken seine Hoffnung stehlet Wenn Leichtsinn gar mit Tiefsinn sich vermählet Und er im Spiel sich noch mit Skrupeln quälet, Ja, dann entsteht wohl solch ein Buch Koheleth.⁵²

 Gronemann, Der Weise, 9.  Translation by Antonia Krainer.  The difference between the king’s poetry and the scribe’s ironic commentary is marked by the rhyme scheme. While Solomon uses an elaborate rhyme scheme, Joram’s commentary consists of a simple monorhyme.  Gronemann, Der Weise, 13.

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… When you steal the hope of the strong When carelessness is wedded to profundity And even in jest he is agonized by qualms Yes, this then might form a book such as Ecclesiastes.⁵³

This humorous but severe criticism ripostes Solomon’s self-critique. Just as Solomon denied others’ wisdom, his own sophisticated reflections are here ridiculed as an irrelevant or even malevolent play of words and moods. This tension between the king’s isolated thought-world and the popular opinion of the royal court opens the plot of the play. To allow her son some insight into the true nature of his subjects, Bathsheba resorts to a trick. She urges a cheeky cobbler, who bears a great resemblance to Solomon and loves to imitate the king for fun, to change roles with Solomon. Solomon, who is not privy to this plan, finds himself in town, dressed as a cobbler and observing the royal court from the perspective of the larger populace. He is thereby not only confronted with their way of thinking, but he also realizes that nobody seems to notice that he has been replaced by a jesting cobbler. It becomes clear that the people only know the king by his glamorous appearance; they do not know him by his sophisticated words. Most revealing is the scene when the questions of the Queen of Sheba are read to the people and the answer of the alleged king—the cobbler—is proclaimed publicly. Solomon, on the other hand, is in the midst of the masses, disguised as a cobbler. In this disguise, Solomon solves the riddles with sophisticated reflections; by contrast, the fake king’s answers are simple and witty. Although both answers fit the riddle, the people cheer for the witty solutions, while Solomon’s answers are deemed silly by those surrounding him in the crowd. When the scene switches to the palace, a dialogue between Bathsheba and the cobbler reveals yet another perspective on the cobbler’s “royal” answers. Now it becomes obvious that these supposed “answers” were no more than spontaneous gesticulations of a slightly drunken cobbler. Since the royal court was expected to give answers to riddles, however, the people interpreted his gestures as genuine answers. When, for example, the cobbler grimaces with an outstretched tongue, the onlookers interpreted this gesture as his answer to a riddle, the solution being “tongue.”⁵⁴

 Translation by Antonia Krainer.  Gronemann, Der Weise, 35.

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With such a humorous deconstruction of expectations and presuppositions, the appraisal of wise words is put into perspective. The diffuse and seemingly hopeless search for wise words in this play is open to contemporary discourse.⁵⁵ The play combines elements from the biblical tradition and a contemporary search for wise words which offer orientation and guidance. Gronemann combines aspects of the legendary wise King Solomon and the widespread prejudice that the book of Ecclesiastes is difficult to understand to create an ambiguous image of the biblical king. He might be wise, but he is also esoteric; he is convinced of his own wisdom and deeply distrusts all other opinions. Solomon’s view of wise words is set in contrast to two other assessments. On the one hand, Solomon’s mother and wife present a pragmatic and self-centered approach to wisdom and dominion. In their opinion, wise words must directly serve state affairs and the retention of power. In the eyes of the people, on the other hand, every word of the king is per se wise, while words of common people are foolish. The play offers no decisive perspective on the matter but simply presents a mixture of incompatible opinions without a final evaluation. There is no instance deciding which words are wise and which are not. The readers are left to decide. They are drawn into the play, and they must determine whose words, if any, are wise. The play thus offers a mirror to society which demonstrates how easily one can ascribe wisdom to rulers merely on the basis of outward appearance, and it encourages them to search for truly wise words.

7 Solomon’s Wise Words as Delusion in Dürrenmatt’s The Physicists In his play, The Physicists,⁵⁶ Friedrich Dürrenmatt⁵⁷ introduces Solomon as a figment of the imagination of Möbius, a brilliant physicist. Möbius is so concerned to hide his discoveries and so to protect the world from their potentially negative consequences that he has himself committed to a mental asylum by pretending  Gronemann was convinced that the history of the Jewish people could not be separated from their religious tradition. In his works he thus tried to recall this tradition and to show its relevance for the present time, thereby acting as a mediator between old and new. Cf. Mittelmann, Gronemann, 128.  Friedrich Dürrenmatt, The Physicists (trans. J. Kirkup; London: Samuel French, 1963); trans. of Die Physiker: Eine Komödie in 2 Akten (Zurich: Verlag die Arche, 1962).  Dürrenmatt is one of the most famous Swiss authors and playwrights (1921– 1990).

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that King Solomon is speaking to him in visions. He masks his own scientific records as if they were Solomon’s words, dictated to him by the biblical king. Möbius’s attribution of his own revolutionary discoveries to Solomon colors his records as wise words, albeit only in his fabricated illusion. While the Solomon invented by Möbius is an utterly fictitious figure who has no impact on the real world, Mathilde von Zahnd, the head doctor, turns out to be a true believer in Möbius’s visions. She is convinced that Solomon is the one who communicates these potentially world-changing discoveries to Möbius and she considers it her task to make Solomon’s wisdom known to the world and to translate his words into practice. The main theme of the play is the relation between science and responsibility, a challenging question of its time. The play was written and performed in the middle of the Cold War, when the Berlin Crisis of 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 brought the world to the brink of another devastating war. Furthermore, the nuclear strikes on Japan during the Second World War and the wellknown scruples of scientists like Robert Oppenheimer about the atomic bomb had shattered the undaunted belief in technical progress.⁵⁸ Dürrenmatt masterfully unfolds this theme on different levels of reality. The scientific, economic, and social reality is set in contrast to the world inside the asylum and, furthermore, mirrored in the biblical world of King Solomon and his wisdom. None of these worlds exists independent of the other; rather, they are closely interwoven and interpret each other. Dürrenmatt’s satirical comedy on the consequences of scientific discoveries uses the image of King Solomon as a reflective element, putting some distance between his wise words and their effects. Nevertheless, the play emphasizes that words, once they are spoken, will have an impact; the consequences are inevitable. The biblical figure of Solomon encourages further evaluation of the benefit of scientific discoveries. The reference to the Scriptures prompts one to ask whether Möbius’s discoveries deserve to be called “wisdom.” From the perspective of the biblical proverbs, words whose consequences bring harm are not wise words; rather, they are the words of fools. With the biblical texts as a mirror, the brilliant physicist Möbius is exposed as one whose words are destructive. His masquerade as a fool is now more than just a masquerade; he is a fool. The play takes the allusions to the biblical figure of Solomon still further. In his final monologue, Möbius identifies his fate with Solomon’s. He muses that,

 Cf. Claudia Maxones, Theatertheoretische Konzeption im dramatischen Werk Friedrich Dürrenmatts (Diplomarbeit, Philologisch-Kulturwissenschaftliche Fakultät, Universität Wien, 2010).

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like the biblical king, he failed. Echoing the critical reflections of Qohelet, Möbius bemoans that his wisdom led him astray: (Möbius) I am Solomon. I am poor King Solomon. Once I was immeasurably rich, wise and God-fearing. The mighty trembled at my word. I was Prince of Peace, a Prince of Justice. But my wisdom destroyed my wealth. Now the cities over which I ruled are dead, the kingdom that was given into my keeping is deserted: only a blue shimmering wilderness. And somewhere, round a small, yellow, nameless star there circles, pointlessly, everlastingly, the radioactive earth. I am Solomon. I am Solomon. I am Solomon. I am poor King Solomon.⁵⁹

With this bleak retrospect, Möbius’s initial mistrust in wisdom is confirmed. Wisdom consists not only of innovative new ideas; it also has to answer for the impact of these ideas. If wisdom is misconceived, seemingly wise words will lead to disastrous consequences.

8 Conclusions Putting words of wisdom into the mouth of Solomon is a favorite literary device to develop and shape the character of this royal figure. Solomon’s biblical portrait with its variations in the so-called books of Solomon remains a pattern for further developments of this figure. The main elements of the literary adaptations usually follow the biblical storylines. As in the biblical tradition, the narrative outline is the starting point which can be filled and embellished with insights into Solomon’s thought-world. The resulting portraits of Solomon, ranging from a malicious dictator to an exemplary modern sovereign, are based on the different contemporary images being blended with the biblical version(s). The essential literary device to achieve such different portraits is to build up Solomon’s character by adding his words as they provide a seemingly direct insight into Solomon’s reflections, his knowledge, his intentions, and his wishes. Furthermore, the context in which these words are spoken and the comments by other figures in the respective text present the readers with a broad view and encourage them either to recognize Solomon’s words as wise or to deny him wisdom. This differentiation, however, is not easy, because modern literary works usually do not present a black-and-white portrait of Solomon. His words may sound wise and sophisticated, yet their usefulness may not be obvious, or they may even turn out to be hollow. Solomon’s words can also reveal him to be a cautious and self-critical king, whose words, nevertheless, offer learned in-

 Dürrenmatt, Physicists, 53.

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sights into human nature. Hence the readers are drawn into a process in which they often have to recall and reconsider their own understanding of wise words before they are able to decide if the royal figure of the text fulfills these criteria. Thus the readers must apply a basic approach of wisdom, namely to distinguish wisdom and foolishness.⁶⁰

 This essay is part of the research project, “Ruler, Lover, Sage and Sceptic: Receptions of King Solomon,” funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF).

William P. Brown (Columbia Theological Seminary)

When Wisdom Fails

1 Falling and Failing in the Quest for Wisdom Nestled in a collection of biblical admonitions that draws from the Instruction of Amenemope is a remarkable comparison between the wicked and the wise: For though the righteous person falls seven times, he will rise back up. But as for the wicked, they will stumble in¹ evil. (Prov 24:15 – 16)

The wicked and the righteous evidently share one thing in common: they fall. Nowhere else in Proverbs does the verb ‫ ָנַפל‬apply to the righteous, and its poetic counterpart, “stumble” (‫) ָכּ ַשׁל‬, never refers to the righteous.² In contrast, references to the wicked “falling” into (or by) calamity are well attested throughout Proverbs.³ But as our passage makes strikingly clear, the proclivity to fall does not in itself distinguish between the righteous and the wicked. The misfortune of “falling” is an equal opportunity possibility, regardless of one’s sapiential status. What does distinguish the righteous from the wicked is that the former are able to “rise up” (‫)קוּם‬.⁴ The righteous are known by their resilience.⁵ In the wisdom corpus the metaphor of “falling” often has to do with encountering misfortune of some sort. In Proverbs, the metaphor is associated also with failure. For example, “Pride (‫ ) ָגּאוֹן‬goes before destruction, and arrogance (‫ֹגַּבּה‬ ‫)רוּ ַח‬⁶ before stumbling (‫( ”) ִכּ ָּשׁלוֹן‬16:18).⁷ If the wise “fall” as readily as the wicked, can they also fail? Is “failure” also an equal possibility for the wise?⁸ Failure, I

 For use of the preposition ‫ ְבּ‬, see Prov 28:14.  See Prov 3:23; 4:12. The case is different in the Psalms, in which the speaker or the righteous one frequently admits to falling: Pss 37:23 – 24; 118:13; 145:14; cf. 73:2.  Prov 11:5; 26:27; 28:10, 14, 18.  Cf. Pss 20:8, 41:8. Only twice in Proverbs, in similar clauses, is it said that the wicked “rise” or “prevail”: Prov 28:12b, 28a. Here, the “rising” of the wicked presents a dire societal threat.  Note that nothing is said about God rescuing the righteous, in contrast to Ps 34:20.  Jeremiah speaks of the wise man “boasting in his wisdom” (9:22).  See also 11:5 (“wickedness”); 17:20 (“duplicitous tongue”); 26:27 (digging your own pit); 28:10 (“misleading the upright”); 28:14 (“hard-hearted”); 28:18 (“crooked ways”).  In the Instruction of Amenemope, upon which much of Prov 22:17– 24:22 is based (particularly 22:17– 23:11), we find the following lines from §18, translated by Miriam Lichtheim: “God is ever DOI 10.1515/9783110428148-016

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hope to show, is acknowledged throughout the Hebrew sapiential corpus as an inevitable and even integral part of the quest for wisdom, although that quest takes different paths among the wisdom books. We see this most clearly in: (1) the rhetoric of rebuke in Proverbs; (2) the words of Agur in Proverbs 30; (3) the speculative wisdom poem in Job 28; and (4) Qoheleth’s failed “experiment” in Ecclesiastes.

2 Wisdom’s Rebuke The first words uttered by Wisdom in Proverbs are condemnatory (1:22– 33); they constitute a wrenching “rebuke” (‫תּוַֹכַחת‬, v. 23), an admonition that is consistently “critical and negative.”⁹ Wisdom directly addresses the “simple ones” (‫) ְפָּתיִם‬, persons characterized by inexperience and gullibility.¹⁰ She condemns them, along with “scoffers” and “fools,” for having rejected her “counsel” and “rebuke” (vv. 24– 25; cf. 29). Disaster awaits them all (vv. 26 – 28). Toward the end of her rebuke the theme of disaster returns but with a different slant: instead of acting as an external force, disaster is self-inflicted: “the fruit of their way” and “their own devices” they shall “eat” (v. 31). The danger is now internally derived; folly itself is the threat (v. 32). The last two verses summarize the lesson: whereas folly kills, attending to Wisdom yields security. For all its dire warnings and indictments, Wisdom’s initial discourse ends positively, balancing the consequences of folly and wisdom. Prov 1:33, in other words, provides an exit strategy. On the one hand, Wisdom resolves not to listen when called upon (v. 28). On the other hand, she insists that she be heard (v. 33). Safety follows Wisdom’s Shema. Wisdom’s rhetoric is both masterful and subtle. While her words spell certain doom, they also preserve a measure of hope to those who would (re)turn to Wisdom and “listen.” Wisdom claims that she spoke earlier, in her previous rebuke, but met intractable resistance, hence her indictments (vv. 24– 25, 29 – 30). This can be taken in one of two ways: the reader, inscribed as the silent son addressed by the father in 1:8 – 19, overhears Wisdom addressing others who have senselessly rejected her teaching. As Michael Fox contends, Wisdom addresses “a hypothetical audience.”¹¹ Or Wisdom’s audience includes the silent son, as one of the “simple ones” in v. 22, such that the reader “discovers himself in his perfection, Man is ever in his failure” (lines 14– 15; cf. 22– 23) (COS 1:120). This, of course, applies to the wicked and righteous alike.  Michael V. Fox, Proverbs 1 – 9 (AB 18A; New York: Doubleday, 2000), 99.  Ibid., 42– 44.  Ibid., 101.

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in the text as always, already at fault,” so Carol Newsom suggests.¹² To press the issue: Is the reader (i. e., the “son”) addressed or not addressed by Wisdom in ch. 1? Is the “son” to learn from the negative example of others (hypothetical or not), or is he indicted directly in Wisdom’s rebuke? Yes. The position of the implied reader vis-à-vis Wisdom remains ambiguous in the transition from parental to sapiential address, and deliberately so in order to prompt the reader toward self-critical reflection. “Is it I?” So Wisdom forces the reader to ask. “Am I to be counted among fools and scoffers, destined for destruction?” The reader stands at the threshold of Wisdom’s rebuke, thrown into a state of bewilderment as to whether he or she has knowingly or unknowingly failed to heed Wisdom. A guilty conscience from the get-go is a powerful motivator. Coupled with dire warnings, Wisdom’s rebuke aims ultimately to move those who teeter on the edge of folly to turn back, acknowledging that falling (and failing) is an ever present threat. For the “son,” at least, the last two verses lay out the roadmap for a positive outcome, as the move from plural to singular circles back to the silent son, who is handed back to the father in the next chapter. Put another way: at the conclusion of her discourse, Wisdom turns her steely gaze from those she has roundly condemned and directly faces the “son,” who is spared and yet forced to wonder whether he too is guilty. So too the reader.

3 The Rhetoric of Rebuke With this most dramatic example from the lips of Wisdom herself in mind, one must ask more generally about the nature of sapiential “rebuke” (‫ )תּוַֹכַחת‬and its rhetorical aim.¹³ Within Wisdom’s first discourse, the term is twice paired with

 Carol A. Newsom, “Woman and the Discourse of Patriarchal Wisdom: A Study of Proverbs 1– 9,” in Gender and Difference in Ancient Israel (ed. Peggy L. Day; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989), 142– 60, here 146.  The noun ‫ תּוַֹכַחת‬is most widely attested in Proverbs, containing 2/3 of all occurrences in the Hebrew Bible (16x). Outside of Proverbs, the noun denotes punishment or chastisement from God (Ps 39:12; Ezek 5:15; 25:17) or from the wicked (Ps 73:14). In two cases, it designates a complaint or retort that either is a response or expects a response (Ps 38:15; Hab 2:1). In Job, the term has more to do with legal argumentation (13:6; 16:4; see below). The participial form of the verb frequently takes on substantive force (‫)מוִֹכי ַח‬: e. g., Job 9:33 (heavenly arbiter); 32:12 (an arguer with Job [from Elihu]); 40:2 (one who disputes with God); Ezek 3:26 (the rebuker Ezekiel); Amos 5:10 (rebuker at the city gate). In Proverbs, the wise rebuker is commended (25:12; 28:23). The verb ‫ יכח‬has as subject Yhwh “as a father” (3:12; cf. 30:6) and more typically the wise. Targets include the wicked (24:25), the scoffer (15:12, 9:7), the wise or “intelligent” (9:8b;

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“counsel” (‫)ֵעָצה‬. Beyond chapter 1, however, ‫ תּוַֹכַחת‬is typically paired with “discipline” (‫)מוָּסר‬, as in 3:11.¹⁴ My son, do not despise Yhwh’s discipline, or disdain his rebuke.

“Discipline” or “correction” (‫ )מוָּסר‬is “always given by a superior to an inferior.”¹⁵ It can even designate punishment. The close connection between ‫ תּוַֹכַחת‬and ‫מוָּסר‬ is illustrated in 6:23, which pairs them together in grammatical construct: the “rebukes of discipline” (‫)תּוְֹכחוֹת מוָּסר‬. Proverbs 15:10 adds a telling qualifier: There is severe discipline (‫ )מוָּסר ָרע‬for one who forsakes the way (‫א ַרח‬ ֹ ‫;)ְלעֹ ֵזב‬ but one who hates a rebuke (‫ )תּוַֹכַחת‬will die.

A rebuke can be severe, but resisting it entails death (see also 29:1). In 29:15 “rebuke” is paired with “rod” (‫) ֵשֶׁבט‬, and in 19:25 the verb (‫ )יכח‬is poetically correlated with “strike” (‫)נכה‬: Strike a scoffer, and the simple will learn shrewdness (‫;) ַיְע ִרם‬ rebuke the intelligent, and he will gain knowledge.¹⁶

Here there may be more by way of contrast than equivalency between “strike” and “rebuke,” given that the “intelligent” and the “scoffer” are opposing characters. Moreover, in 15:31 ‫ תּוַֹכַחת‬is set grammatically in construct with “life”: “The ear that heeds life-sustaining rebuke (‫ )תּוַֹכַחת ַח ִיּים‬will abide among the wise” (cf. 6:23). In any case, rebuke is far from flattery (28:23). It excels in the art of critique for the sake of correction, painful as it may be. But most telling, as 19:25 and 15:31 cited above attest, the wise one is the expressed target of rebuke. Rebuke is reserved not just for the fool, the simple, and the wicked (24:25). The wise, too, are fair game: Whoever corrects (‫ )י ֵֹסר‬a scoffer wins disgrace; whoever rebukes the wicked gets damaged. Do not rebuke (‫ )ַאל־תּוַֹכח‬a scoffer; otherwise, he will hate you;

19:25b), as well as the “listening ear” (25:12) and anyone else who might need a good rebuking (28:23).  See also Prov 5:12; 10:17; 12:1; 13:18; 15:5, 32; Job 5:17.  Fox, Proverbs 1 – 9, 34.  See also Ps 141:5a.

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Rebuke a wise man, and he will love you (‫) ְו ֶיֱאָהֶב ָךּ‬. Instruct the wise (‫) ֵתּן ְלָחָכם‬, and they will become wiser; teach the righteous, and they will gain insight. (9:7– 9)

This admonition, in fact, discourages rebuking the “scoffer” and the “wicked” (cf. 26:5); not only is rebuking them a lost cause, one does so at one’s own peril. “Rebuking” or critiquing the wise, however, fulfills its corrective goal and fosters appreciation, if not affection (“love”). Among the wise, the sharp rhetoric of rebuke is recognized as double-edged: rebuking is an equal opportunity right, a sapiential exercise in reciprocity. To count oneself among the wise is to be able to give as well as to receive rebukes. Indeed, what distinguishes the wise from the scoffer and the wicked is that the wise respond in grateful appreciation. The practice of rebuke among the wise, thus, is given a collegial context. Here “rebuke” finds a home in mutual edification rather than in hierarchically structured pedagogies that are practiced from “father” to “son,” from the “wise” to the “fool,” from Wisdom to simpletons.¹⁷ Among the wise, however, the rhetoric of rebuke turns dialogical; it serves to sustain a collegium of mutual learning, of “iron sharpening iron” (27:17), for the wise know that wisdom is their gain even at the cost of self-certainty and at the prospect of failure. What kind of “rebuke” is this that is given by a superior to a superior, a ‫ תּוַֹכַחת‬among equals? Perhaps “rebuke” may not be the best translation in the context of the wise instructing the wise. A “rebuke” among equals is more akin to a “dispute,” as in the case of Job and his friends (see below).

4 Failure behind the Rebuke So what warrants a “rebuke” to the wise? Given the dichotomous moral world of Proverbs, it would seem that the wise, by virtue of being wise, would be too big to fall, too wise to fail. Not so. The wise do fail, thus warranting rebuke. The pedagogy of rebuke complicates the figure of the wise as one who can still fall short of sapiential norms and goals. Indeed, the prologue to Proverbs makes clear that the wise, as also the simple, remain ever in need of learning (1:5). But within the rhetoric of rebuke, such “gain in learning” is not simply a matter of gradual, incremental improvement over a long period of time. No. Gaining

 By contrast, it is “discipline” (‫ )מוָּסר‬that is primary in hierarchically structured pedagogies. For the noun ‫מוָּסר‬, see 1:8; 3:11 (parallel with ‫ ;)תּוַֹכַחת‬4:1, 13; 5:12 (parallel with ‫ ;)תּוַֹכַחת‬12:1 (parallel with ‫ ;) ַדַּעת‬22:15; 23:12, 13; 24:32. Typical objects of the verb ‫ יסר‬include children, simple ones, and scoffers (9:7, 19:18, 29:17).

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wisdom sometimes requires a “punctuated equilibrium” (to borrow from Stephen Jay Gould), an occasion of disruptive reorientation, which begins by heeding the sharp “rebukes” of others. Given by the wise to the wise, the rebuke serves, among other things, as a check on sapiential pride (cf. Prov 16:18). The sapiential ideal is to cultivate a self-critical posture, to internalize rebuke. And there is no more extreme example in Proverbs than in the opening words of Agur,¹⁸ which offer self-deprecating testimony to the insurmountable limits of human knowledge. His opening discourse is a confession of ignorance, if not failure, in the face of questions comparable to those that issue from the whirlwind theophany in Job (Prov 30:2– 4).¹⁹ Agur’s confession is, in short, a self-rebuke in which he bitterly laments his inability to attain wisdom.²⁰ His words bespeak humility to the point of self-debasement.²¹ I find it significant that Agur’s self-deprecation begins, rather than concludes, the collection attributed to him in chapter 30. What follows his self-rebuke is an eclectic mix of evocative sayings, admonitions, observations, and, unique in Proverbs, a prayer.²² Consonant with his opening words is the prominent theme of humility: Agur warns against those who “are pure in their own

 The opening verse of ch. 30, particularly the second half, is fraught with textual and interpretive challenges. The translation “I am weary, O God, I am weary, O God, and have wasted away” involves slight emendation (from the verbs ‫ לאה‬and ‫[ כלה‬so Fox, Proverbs 10 – 31, 854]: ‫)ָלִאיִתי ֵאל ָלִאיִתי ֵאל ָוֵאֶכל‬, a translation preferable to taking the words as proper names, as in NJPS et al. See also discussion in Christine Roy Yoder, Proverbs (AOTC; Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 2009), 280.  Of note, Job’s final words also indicate an internalization of God’s rebuke (see Job 42:3a, 4). For similarities between Agur and Job, see James L. Crenshaw, “Clanging Symbols,” in Justice and the Holy (ed. Douglas A. Knight and Peter J. Paris; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1989), 51– 64, here 55 – 57; repr. in Urgent Advice and Probing Questions: Collected Writings on Old Testament Wisdom (ed. James L. Crenshaw; Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1995), 371– 82, here 376 – 78. The questions are cast rhetorically (“no human being” or “God” is the answer). The answer regarding the “name of his son” (v. 4), however, is possibly Agur himself, since “son” is consistently the student of wisdom throughout Proverbs (so Christine Roy Yoder, “On the Threshold of Kingship: A Study of Agur [Proverbs 30],” Int 3 [2009]: 254– 63, here 261).  Fox contends that Agur’s ignorance has to do with unattainable “erudition,” specifically theological erudition (Proverbs 10 – 31, 861). However, v. 2 suggests that the entire span of wisdom is covered in Agur’s lament, from “human understanding” to “knowledge” of God.  Yoder, “On the Threshold of Kingship,” 263.  Due to the lack of superscriptions within the chapter and any literary markers signaling a change in speaker, I take all of chapter 30 to be attributed to Agur, despite the separation of vv. 1– 14 from vv. 15 – 33 by 24:23b–33 in LXX, which is arguably a secondary rearrangement (Yoder, Proverbs, 278).

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eyes” (v. 12) or have “lofty” eyes (‫ ;ָמה־ ָרמוּ ֵעי ָניו‬v. 13). He petitions God for only adequate sustenance, not too much, not too little, so as to avoid prideful delusion (“Who is Yhwh?”) and “seizing” (‫ )תפש‬God’s name (v. 9). Agur’s final admonition warns against the folly of self-exaltation (v. 32). Agur’s initial confession of ignorance thus serves as a fitting hermeneutical entry point for the various admonitions and testimonies that follow. The admonition in vv. 5 – 6 lifts up the sufficiency of God’s “word”: adding to divine discourse warrants “rebuke” from God. Slandering and cursing, mocking and scorning, whether of servants or parents, are forbidden acts of hubris, committed with flagrant impunity. On the flip-side, distinctive of the Agurian collection is a series of observations cast numerically (vv. 15 – 16, 18 – 19 [20], 21– 23, 24– 28, 29 – 30), each of which conveys a sense of awe or shock, whether it is the insatiable appetite of Sheol (v. 16), the “way” of a soaring eagle (v. 18), the “way” of an adulteress (v. 20), the overturning of social hierarchies (vv. 21– 23), the wisdom of God’s smallest creatures (vv. 24– 28), or the royal bearing of various animals (vv. 29 – 31). As Agur recognizes the insurmountable gulf between Creator and creature, so also he lumps together animals and humans, including kings, with little distinction.²³ In his discourse, humility and wonder, abasement and amazement, are tightly connected, more so than anywhere else in Proverbs. As a whole, Agur’s discourse moves from ignorance to insight. Ignorance, in fact, is confessed both in the sage’s opening statement (vv. 2– 3) and in the numerical list of wonders in vv. 18 – 19 (“Three things are too wonderful for me; four I do not understand”). But whereas the former is cast as a self-deprecation, the latter gives testimony to the marvelous. The rhetorical movement of the chapter suggests that self-abasing humility yields to new perception, the perception of wondrous things around and above. To put it paradoxically, the lowering of pride leads to the lifting of eyes to see new things. In fact, the “eye” is referenced repeatedly in Agur’s discourse: the eyes of those who see themselves pure (v. 12), the eyes that are lofty (v. 13), and the eye that mocks (v. 17). It is no coincidence that in addition to such “eye” references the Agurian collection is filled with arresting imagery. A visual feast of wisdom is laid out before the reader in chapter 30, all to suggest that in humility—that is, humility gained from failure—one is able to see the world afresh with wonder. It is highly significant that Agur’s sayings are placed near the end of Proverbs, effectively casting a shadow over all that precedes it. If the objective of  As Yoder points out, Agur ascribes human qualities to animal creatures (30:15, 25 – 26, 30) and likens the king to stately striding animals (30:29 – 31; “On the Threshold of Kingship,” 261). Indeed, Agur comes close to identifying himself with an ignorant beast in his opening words (‫ ַבַּער‬in v. 2; cf. Ps 73:22).

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Proverbs is the appropriation of wisdom, Agur’s confession takes the reader back to the drawing board, to a sense of sapiential impotence. The “fear of Yhwh” as the beginning of knowledge/wisdom is heightened all the more by failure.

5 Job and Wisdom’s “Inaccessibility” If the book of Proverbs is about prudential wisdom, the book of Job is distinctly jurisprudential. The rhetoric of “rebuke” in Job, for example, takes on a distinctly legal nuance, as in Job 23:3 – 4: Would that I knew where I might find him, that I might come even to his dwelling! I would lay (‫ )ֶאֶע ְרָכה‬my case (‫ )ִמ ְשׁ ָפּט‬before him, and fill my mouth with rebukes (‫)תּוָֹכחוֹת‬.

Such “rebukes” refer to arguments or disputations that Job hopes to marshal against God in his own defense. Indeed, I would speak to Shadday, and desire to argue (‫ )הוֵֹכ ַח‬with God. (13:3) See, he may well kill me; I have no²⁴ hope; but I will argue (‫ )אוִֹכי ַח‬my ways to his face. (13:15) There an upright person could argue (‫ )נוָֹכח‬before him, and I would be acquitted forever by my judge. (23:7)

Job’s desire to argue with or “rebuke” God inspires his discursive audacity, at which his friends take grave offense (cf. 5:17). Job accuses God of having failed in upholding justice, both for himself and for the world (e. g., chs. 9 – 10; 12:13 – 25; 16:6 – 22; 21:2– 26). In God’s world the righteous suffer and the wicked prosper, and in Job’s eyes this is nothing short of a travesty. But without opportunity to direct his charges against God, to call God to court, Job and his friends trade rebukes with increasing vehemence. Eventually, the circling “dialogue” between Job and his friends runs itself into the ground, resulting in confusion, and another voice intervenes, one that

 Reading ketiv: ‫ל ֹא‬. Qere is ‫לוֹ‬.

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presents the uniquely evocative speculative wisdom poem in ch. 28.²⁵ Following Job’s jumbled discourse in the previous chapter, concluding with his rant against the wicked,²⁶ this intricately crafted poem strikes a markedly different tone, suspending itself above the fray of rancorous disputation. The poem stands out, and thus stands alone, in character and content. Even if the poem is understood to come from Job’s lips in the book’s final arrangement, its critical edge spares neither Job nor his friends. The poem opens with rich imagery highlighting the daring nature of exploring (‫חקר‬, v. 3) remote regions for valuable minerals (‫)ֶאֶבן‬. But half-way through the poem, the rugged and remote landscape of precious stones gives way to the hidden topography of wisdom’s domain. Compared to precious metals and their hidden locations, wisdom is eminently more valuable (vv. 15 – 19) and more concealed (vv. 12– 13, 20 – 22). Priceless yet inaccessible is wisdom. No one, animal or human, knows its place (vv. 7– 8, 13, 21), not even the most intrepid of explorers.²⁷ Only God knows the way to wisdom (vv. 23 – 27). Overall, the poem serves to subvert the sapiential trope of searching for wisdom.²⁸ The poet effectively arouses the reader’s desire for wisdom by casting wisdom as invaluable (vv. 15 – 19; cf. Prov 3:13 – 15) and as the object of arduous,

 Its closest parallels can be found in Prov 8; Sir 1, 24; and Bar 3:9 – 4:4. For discussion, see Carol A. Newsom, The Book of Job: A Contest of Moral Imaginations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 172– 74, who identifies the genre as a “speculative wisdom poem.”  The lack of a heading for ch. 28 suggests that the chapter either belongs to Job or to an unidentified voice. I opt for the latter, given the markedly different tone and perspective it offers. Scott C. Jones suggests that the poem may be read as Job’s critique of his friends (Rumors of Wisdom: Job 28 as Poetry [BZAW 398; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2009], 103, 241– 44). However, the poem equally serves as a critique of Job’s own claim to possess wisdom over and against his friends (see, e. g., 12:3, 11– 12; 13:2; cf. 15:7– 8). Edward L. Greenstein argues that Job 28 is a dislocated section of Elihu’s discourse in 32:6 – 37:24 (“The Poem on Wisdom in Job 28 in Its Conceptual and Literary Contexts,” in Job 28: Cognition in Context [ed. Ellen van Wolde; BibInt 64; Leiden: Brill, 2003], 253 – 80). See also David J. A. Clines, who independently came to the same conclusion in his essay “‘The Fear of the Lord is Wisdom’ (Job 28:28): A Semantic and Contextual Study,” (in van Wolde, Job 28, 57– 92, esp. 78 – 85). Regardless, the poem’s (re)positioning is by no means accidental. Its evaluative reach extends to all the preceding material, and it builds a bridge to all that follows, including the divine speeches (see below).  Greenstein argues that God is the subject of Job 28:3 – 11 (“The Poem on Wisdom in Job 28,” 267– 69), and indeed that is possible given the verbs featured in this section. However, what God has to do with discovering precious metals is left unexplained. Why would God be portrayed as a miner? See the more balanced discussion in James L. Crenshaw, Reading Job: A Literary and Theological Commentary (Reading the Old Testament; Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys, 2011), 122 – 25.  Newsom, Book of Job, 179 – 80.

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nearly super-human exploration (Job 28:3 – 11; cf. Prov 25:2), only to frustrate such desire by placing wisdom out of reach and in a different definitional realm.²⁹ Compare the contrastive parallel in Prov 2:4– 5: If you seek (‫[ )בקשׁ‬wisdom] like silver, and search (‫ )חפשׂ‬for it as for hidden treasures, then you will discern the fear of Yhwh, and find the knowledge of God.

The point of Job 28, however, is that wisdom cannot be sought like “silver” and “hidden treasures.” Wisdom is of a different order; it is transcendentalized to the point of being unattainable to human probing and possession. Wisdom is not an object of human discovery and extraction at the ends of creation; rather, it is the object of divine ordering at creation in which God sees and secures wisdom, establishes and explores it (Job 28:23 – 27). The last line of the poem takes an even sharper, more surprising turn, evoking another level of frustrated desire or disappointment, but this time shared almost exclusively among modern exegetes.³⁰ It is as if wisdom, deemed inaccessible to human reach and inquiry, now slips through the back door in the form of embodied piety. Wisdom, it turns out, is nothing more (and nothing less) than awe-filled humility. The conclusion about wisdom in the last verse is not so much an intellectual “let-down” as an anti-speculative subversion. Job 28:28 identifies the one and only point of “access” to wisdom made available to human beings, namely a posture of “fear” before God and dissociation from evil. Wisdom, in other words, was “there” all along, to be embodied from within, not sought from without. Because only God can search out wisdom, the wisdom that lies beyond human apprehension, human beings must take their sapiential cue in deference to the God of wisdom. The motto-like statement at the end of ch. 28 both echoes the proverbial sense of fear as the epistemological beginning point of wisdom (e. g., Prov 1:7; 9:10) and recalls the “fear” that characterizes Job in the Prologue (Job 1:1, 8; 2:3). Distinctive of Job 28 is that such piety is deemed the result of failure, the outcome of failing to find wisdom through heroic acts of exploration. Human be-

 See also Carol A. Newsom, “Dialogue and Allegorical Hermeneutics in Job 28:28,” in Job 28: Cognition in Context, 299 – 305, here 303; and Book of Job, 179 – 80.  For example, James L. Crenshaw calls the conclusion of this “majestic poem” as “something of a let-down . . . a cliché [that] brings readers back to earth” (“Job,” in The Oxford Bible Commentary [ed. John Barton and John Muddiman; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001], 345). See the similar comments of Carol A. Newsom, “The Book of Job,” in NIB 4:533.

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ings, the poem claims, have been searching for wisdom in all the wrong places. The poet of Job 28 effectively subverts Prov 2:4– 5, quoted above, so that it reads with the following revision: when you fail to “seek wisdom like silver and search for it as hidden treasures, then you will discern the fear of Yhwh.” Without wisdom as an object of search and extraction, without wisdom as the prize of heroic exploits, what is left is reverential “fear”—that is wisdom. “The fear of the Lord” is the beginning and the end of wisdom, a posture of awe and the embodiment of virtue coram deo. ³¹ At the end of the day (and at the end of the poem), appropriating wisdom is not about extracting knowledge but about exercising piety. It is a matter of “moral creation,” not cosmic creation.³² Appropriating wisdom involves acknowledging, fully and freely, human limitation and ignorance, setting in stark relief wisdom’s ethical import. In the quest for wisdom, according to Job 28, it all comes down to virtuous “fear.” By its strategic placement in the larger Joban narrative, the poem highlights the failed attempts on the part of the friends to make sense of Job’s suffering, not to mention offer comfort (2:11). But Job is also incapable of giving account of his predicament. He remains in the dark regarding the warrant of his suffering, and any admission of failure on his part is precluded by his caustic defense before his friends. Job’s search for an explanatory answer “out there,” an answer that would vindicate him before God, is also squelched. As Alan Cooper states, “If Job represents virtue without wisdom, then surely his friends represent ‘wisdom’—in quotation marks—without virtue.”³³ According to Job 28, wisdom is a matter not of discovery but of disposition, not of possession but of practice. It is perhaps one of the great, albeit unrecognized, ironies of Job that the book does not end with the virtue-istic chapter 28, which points back to Job’s piety as framed in the Prologue (1:2). Instead, the book trudges on, still on a quest—from Job’s perspective a quest for vindication and perhaps from the reader’s perspective a quest for something more than pious “fear” to provide resolution to Job’s case. Even more ironic, the theophanic climax of the book takes Job on a virtual, poetic tour of creation’s extremities, recalling the failed attempt at finding wisdom in chapter 28.³⁴ But this time there is no failure; cosmic extremities are now taken up into God’s sapiential disclosure of creation beyond human

 Note, however, the subtle but critical difference between fear “as the beginning (‫ ֵרא ִשׁית‬/‫) ְתִּח ַלּת‬ of knowledge/wisdom” (Prov 1:7, 9:10; cf. 111:10) and fear as “wisdom” (Job 28:28).  Newsom, “Dialogue and Allegorical Hermeneutics,” 304.  Alan Cooper, “The Sense of the Book of Job,” Proof 17 (1997): 227– 44, here 237.  God, for example, makes repeated reference to extreme locations that lie far beyond human reach: 38:4, 16 – 18, 19, 22, 24, 35 – 37.

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ken (see 40:2b). God’s answer is creation’s self-revelation.³⁵ Creation is revealed in all its depth and breadth not in order to find wisdom located somewhere in these remote areas but to reveal something of wisdom from the inside out to Job, something of wisdom writ cosmically.³⁶ Wisdom, God demonstrates, is all around and beyond, not something discretely “over there.” Although Job can lay claim to his integrity, he cannot lay claim to wisdom. Job’s own wisdom has failed, as indicated in his penultimate words and framed by his own internalization of God’s rebuke (42:3a, 4): Therefore, I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. (42:3b)

In rebuke, God exposes the failure of Job’s own knowledge of the world and at the same time instructs Job in divine wisdom, the wisdom of creation. In doing so, God opens Job’s eyes, affording him a whole new view of the world, as well as a new beginning.³⁷

6 A Royal Failure Qoheleth, the spokesman of Ecclesiastes, introduces himself as a sage of Solomonic stature who conducts his own ambitious quest “to inquire (‫ )ִל ְדרוֹשׁ‬and explore (‫ ) ְוָלתוּר‬by wisdom everything that is done under the heavens” (1:13). As Job 28 describes a quest that extends to the most remote areas in terms of breadth and depth, so also Qoheleth’s search strives to be the most comprehensive in scope. Scholars have long recognized that Qoheleth’s distinctive manner of discourse is his appeal to “personal observation.”³⁸ Some argue, further, that Qoheleth’s approach is not just experiential but decidedly experimental: “Qoheleth undertakes a personal experiment ‘to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven’ (1:13).”³⁹ Indeed, Samuel Adams titles the autobio-

 Gerhard von Rad, Wisdom in Israel (trans. James D. Martin; Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1972), 144– 76.  Hence, the repeated questions concerning knowledge in and of creation: e. g., 38:5 – 7, 8 – 11, 18, 24, 25, 29, 33, 36 – 37, 41; 39:1– 2, 5, 26.  The Epilogue is not a recapitulation of the Prologue but a replacement in which Job, still the patriarch, reenters his familiar world utterly transformed.  James L. Crenshaw, Ecclesiastes: A Commentary (OTL; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1987), 28.  Samuel L. Adams, Wisdom in Transition: Act and Consequence in Second Temple Instructions (JSJSup 125; Leiden: Brill, 2008), 105.

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graphical section of 1:12– 2:10 as “Qoheleth’s Royal Experiment,”⁴⁰ which “reads as the personal experiment of a critical thinker who conveys a unique set of conclusions,” including “inconsistency and death in the human experience.”⁴¹ R. J. Berry, however, goes the farthest along this line: One of the most detailed examinations involving experimental testing was by Qoheleth.… Ecclesiastes describes a series of experiments carried out by the narrator on different facets of human existence.… Where a mathematician writes ‘QED’ at the end of a proof, Qoheleth wrote “futility” or “vanity.”⁴²

While the language of experimentation smacks of anachronism,⁴³ it cannot be denied that Qoheleth’s rhetoric takes up the language of personal observation and assessment, “empirical” to a degree.⁴⁴ What has not been appreciated in attempts to cast Qoheleth as the Bible’s first and only “empiricist” is that his “experiment,” if one must call it that, fails. Qoheleth’s intention to apply his heart “to know wisdom” amounts to mere “wind chasing” (1:17). Qoheleth frets over this: “So I turned to let my heart despair concerning all the toil that I had toiled under the sun” (2:20). The results of the sage’s “experiment” proved fundamentally disappointing, tantamount to failure. “For in much wisdom is much grief (‫) ַכַּעס‬, and when one increases knowledge, one increases pain (‫( ”)ַמְכאוֹב‬1:18). Certainly this was not the desired result the sage was seeking. Despite all the king’s monumental achievements and heroic exploits, even pleasure proves inefficacious. The testimony of failure, it turns out, is Qoheleth’s crowning achievement.⁴⁵ But there is more. Through his failure Qoheleth comes to new understandings: the value of a “non-profit” (i. e., non-‫ )יְִתרוֹן‬existence, the redemptive import of enjoyment, the dangers of extreme righteousness (7:16), and perhaps most  Ibid., 110.  Ibid., 107.  R. J. Berry, God’s Book of Works: The Nature and Theology of Nature (London: T&T Clark, 2003), 219.  The scientific method begins with a hypothesis, a proposed means of testing the hypothesis, and an evaluation of the hypothesis in light of the experimental data. Qoheleth lacks such systematic analysis.  Cf. Michael V. Fox, Qoheleth and his Contradictions (Sheffield: Almond Press, 1989), 80; Fox, “Wisdom in Qoheleth,” in In Search of Wisdom: Essays in Memory of John G. Gammie (ed. Leo G. Perdue et al.; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1993), 115 – 31.  For Qoheleth’s testimony as subversive satire in comparison to ancient Near Eastern royal annals, see Choon Leong Seow, “Qohelet’s Autobiography,” in Fortunate the Eyes that See: Essays in Honor of David Noel Freedman in Celebration of his Seventieth Birthday (ed. Astrid B. Beck et al.; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995), 257– 82.

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profound of all: “a living dog is better than a dead lion” (9:4). Through his failures, Qoheleth finds ways to navigate life after all.

7 Conclusion The quantum physicist Max Planck famously observed that “science progresses funeral by funeral.” When new data undermine settled theories, new theories and even paradigm shifts can occur. Something similar could be said for biblical wisdom in the Hebrew Bible: it advances failure by failure. In sapiential failure, there are unexpected outcomes. The wise not only “rise up” after falling; they rise up with new eyes, new orientation. “Rising up” does not mean being restored; it means being reoriented. If we line up Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes sequentially, as scholars typically do in their introductions, we find the theme of failure increasingly evident and wisdom increasingly elusive. To put it another way, the blame of failure shifts from sage to sapientia, from the wise to wisdom. The journey of failure leads to greater recognition of human limitation, on the one hand, and greater awareness of wonder, on the other, wonder of the inscrutable God and the created order.⁴⁶ As a whole, then, the wisdom corpus acknowledges failure as endemic to the sapiential enterprise. Failure ranks up there with virtue and “fear” as central sapiential issues. Sapiential failure, moreover, is a special kind of failure. It is something for which the sage need not ask forgiveness. The need for repentance is also questionable, perhaps because failure is found to be integral to the sapiential enterprise. Job does not ask for forgiveness when he acknowledges before God his failure to understand, and it is doubtful whether he repents (42:1– 6).⁴⁷ The same could be said of Agur and Qoheleth. Wisdom does not require penance from her followers. Instead, she demands that they listen, again and again, even as her voice becomes faint and the world proves to be more ambiguous. Sapiential failure, when acknowledged, becomes the catalyst for new insight, indeed new wisdom. Just ask Agur. The “return” to wisdom is not really a turn backward but a turn outward, a turning toward new orientation. Indeed, the connection between wisdom and failure, according to the larger biblical narrative, goes back to

 For an examination of the theme of wonder in the wisdom corpus, see William P. Brown, Wisdom’s Wonder: Character, Crisis, and Creation in the Hebrew Wisdom Literature (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2014).  See most recently Thomas Krüger, “Did Job Repent?” in Das Buch Hiob und seine Interpretationen. Beiträge zum Hiob-Symposium auf dem Monte Verità vom 14.–19. August 2005 (ed. Thomas Krüger et al.; ATANT 88; Zurich: TVZ, 2007), 217– 29.

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humanity’s very origins. In the Garden, partaking from “the tree of knowledge of good and bad” was a failure in obedience whose results were eyes opened wide (Gen 3:7). And the rest is history.

III: Sirach and Wisdom of Solomon

Judith H. Newman (University of Toronto)

The Formation of the Scribal Self in Ben Sira 1 The Scribal Self

The role of scribes in the production of the Hebrew Bible has attracted considerable scholarly attention in recent years. We rightly assume that learned scribes were responsible for the composition and transmission of scriptural texts.¹ The characterization of scribes and their roles are inferred by comparison with Babylonian, Assyrian, Egyptian, or Greco-Roman scribes, yet we know very little about the actual lives of Israelite or later Jewish scribes. One notable exception comes from the book of Sirach, a wisdom collection originating in the second century B.C.E. that contains a scribal colophon. In this essay, I draw attention not to Ben Sira’s scribal hand, but to the scribal body that the book evokes. What we learn about the scribe and his habits reveals something about the composition and transmission of wisdom and the formation of early Jewish texts. I argue that the sage’s daily prayer—in particular, his movement from confession to praise—plays a central role in the formation of this scribal self. Prayer is a prominent feature of Sirach. The structure of the book found in the Greek is defined by prayers and psalms (Sir 23:1– 6; 42:15 – 43:33; 51:1– 12); there is teaching about prayer in the book (e. g., Sir 2:10 – 11; 4:5 – 6; 15:9 – 10; 21:5; 32:13; 37:15; 39:12– 35) and, significantly, description of the scribe at prayer (Sir 39:5 – 6). This practice of prayer is a crucial stimulus to the sage’s sense of attaining the “wisdom” named as the source of his teaching. The wisdom instruction stemming from the scribe in turn results in the formation of a text, namely, the book of Sirach. In short, according to its own portrayal, the formation of the scribe through prayer and paideia results in the formation of Scripture. To develop this argument about scribal formation, I consider traditional, literary, and philological matters of the text and, in a new key, draw on perspectives from embodied cognition, especially cognitive neuroscience and anthropological studies of prayer.

 I am pleased to offer this essay in honor of Choon Leong Seow, whose contributions to our scholarship on wisdom, not to mention biblical studies more broadly, far exceed the river pouring forth from the mouth and pen of Ben Sira. DOI 10.1515/9783110428148-017

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2 Ben Sira the Pious Scribe I begin by introducing the pious scribe encountered in Sirach.² The book depicts the sage as a creature of transformative daily habit. In the middle of a long passage in chapter 39 that describes the scribe’s occupation, we learn that the ideal sage followed a certain morning routine. While sipping a cup of coffee may be the first morning ritual for many in the twenty-first century, the ideal scribe in the Hellenistic period is said to occupy his mouth in another way: “He sets his heart to rise early to seek the Lord who made him, and he petitions in the presence of the Most High; he will open his mouth in prayer and entreat concerning his sins” (Sir 39:5 – 6).³ Ben Sira’s daily prayer is not surprising given that daily prayer as an individual and communal practice appears to have been customary in many parts of Judea and the diaspora in the late Second Temple period.⁴ Yet the significance of daily prayer as a practice has been largely ignored. Three aspects of prayer here are notable: First, Ben Sira petitions in the presence of the Most High; that is, the God to whom he prays is named, and with that is an immanent sense of the deity. Second, the sage opens his mouth; he gives voice to prayer—it is a physical activity that requires breath, not silent or contemplative prayer. Finally, and most significantly, Ben Sira requests forgiveness of sins. He offers a confession for his errant ways. Thus, as he starts each day, Ben Sira is

 I use the Hebrew “Ben Sira” to refer to the persona of the author of the work. Although the work was initially composed in Hebrew, I refer to the textual product using the Greek “Sirach” in order to distinguish the constructed notion of author found in the book from the textual compilation found in the NRSV and other Bibles.  All translations in this essay are from the NRSV with some adjustments as noted.  Daniel K. Falk has argued that daily prayer in the morning and the evening came to be practiced by a variety of Jews in the late Second Temple period (Daily, Sabbath, and Festival Prayers in the Dead Sea Scrolls [STDJ 27; Leiden: Brill, 1998], 47). Daily prayer was also a diverse phenomenon without as yet universally fixed texts, as Jeremy Penner’s recent book has argued cogently. There is no legal mandate for daily prayer in the Pentateuch. Penner has identified three different rationales for its practice: (1) modeled on sacrificial times; (2) grounded in scripture (especially Deut 6:7); and (3) connected to the luminary cycles (Patterns of Daily Prayer in Second Temple Judaism [STDJ 104; Leiden: Brill, 2012], 208). The “Words of the Luminaries” (4Q504– 506) found at Qumran provides the earliest extant communal set of daily prayers to be said during the course of a week. See Esther G. Chazon, “The Words of the Luminaries and Penitential Prayer in Second Temple Times,” in Seeking the Favor of God, Volume 2: The Development of Penitential Prayer in Second Temple Judaism (ed. Mark Boda, Daniel Falk, and Rodney Werline; EJL 22; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2007), 177– 86.

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focused intently on his relationship to his creator, whose imagined proximity is portrayed clearly despite the epithet “Most High.” Most commentators have assumed that the passage describes not just an exemplary scribe and his activities, but the author Ben Sira himself. While I would not collapse the authorial voice with a historical Ben Sira of Jerusalem too neatly, I assume that the learned person who wrote this passage lived it.⁵ This description represents the activities of a typical scribe of an elevated social status. The first part of chapter 39 mentions Ben Sira’s curriculum: the study of the law, wisdom of the ancients, histories and famous sayings, prophecies and parables, proverbs and riddles. The sage also serves among high-ranking officials and travels abroad to learn about other cultures as part of his profession. Such academic and political activities, however, do not comprise fully the scribe’s job description because they do not include his personal worship regimen. But what exactly does praying have to do with the scribal vocation? Sir 39:6 – 8 continues: If the great Lord wishes, [the scribe] will be filled with a spirit of understanding; he will pour forth his words of wisdom and give thanks to the Lord in prayer. He will direct counsel and knowledge, and meditate on his hidden things. He will show forth the instruction of his training, and in the law of the Lord’s covenant he will boast.

The sage clearly depicts prayer as a catalyst for divine inspiration. Like the Ursage King Solomon, if the deity desires it, Ben Sira will receive a spirit of understanding and, as in the later work Wisdom of Solomon, prayer is the key to acquiring it (cf. 1 Kgs 3, Wis 7:7). Granted the spirit of understanding, Ben Sira is said to “pour forth” wisdom, which he acknowledges with thanksgiving and praise. As James Crenshaw has observed about the book as a whole: “Ben Sira places prayer and praise at the very center of the intellectual endeavor.”⁶ The gift of inspiration amplifies his own wisdom, enabling his teaching and underscoring the divine role at work in his efforts. Divine revelation, here described in terms of wisdom, is thus mediated by the person of the scribe.

 Benjamin Wright’s recent work has pointed in a helpful new direction by cautioning against reading the autobiographical material in the book at face value. Rather, the first-person sections of the book must be assessed according to their rhetorical end of shaping an exemplary character worthy of emulation. See Wright, “Ben Sira on the Sage as Exemplar,” in Praise Israel for Wisdom and Instruction: Essays on Ben Sira and Wisdom, the Letter of Aristeas and the Septuagint (JSJSup 131; Leiden: Brill, 2008), 165 – 78.  James L. Crenshaw, “The Restraint of Reason, the Humility of Prayer,” in The Echoes of Many Texts: Reflections on Jewish and Christian Traditions: Essays in Honor of Lou H. Silberman (ed. William G. Dever and J. E. Wright; BJS 313; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997), 81– 97, here 93.

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Although petition, confession, and praise are mentioned in Sir 39:5 – 8 and amply elsewhere in the book, and another prominent passage describes prophetic-like inspiration (Sir 24:31– 33), interpreters pay little attention to the role of worship in relation to the scribe’s compositional activities and the formation of the book.⁷ I argue, however, that the practice of daily prayer is the indispensable starting point for understanding the formation of the scribal self in Sirach. If the depiction of the sage in Sirach can be understood to represent the activities of learned Jewish scribes more generally in the Greco-Roman period, then, in fact, prayer is an important ingredient in the composition of scriptural texts. The discussion so far begs other questions: what is the nature of this scribal self of the Greco-Roman era? How can we understand this description of the sage’s prayers and his engagement with the cultural repertoire not simply from a rhetorical or literary standpoint, but from one that takes account of an embodied praying figure in relation to his physical and cultural environment? Following a methodological lead mapped in part by Carol A. Newsom in her work on the moral self in early Judaism, I turn now to situate the self, first from a neurocognitive perspective and then from a cultural standpoint.

3 The Self through Neurocognitive and Cultural Lenses 3.1 The Self as a Neurocognitive Achievement From a neurocognitive perspective, the self can be understood according to the definition of Todd Feinberg as “a unity of consciousness in perception and action that persists in time.”⁸ “Self”-consciousness is that which gives an animate mass of bones, flesh, nerves, and organs the ability to speak as an “I.” Although we may take the sense of selfhood and “I”-ness for granted, such “self”-consciousness is the result of a costly struggle from a biological point of view. The default state of the self is one of fragmentation: of conflicting desires, impulses, and other sensory inputs. Neuroscientist Patrick McNamara understands the problem of the divided or fragmented self as a central factor inhibiting the development

 For a review of scholarship on prayer in Sirach, see Werner Urbanz, Gebet im Sirachbuch: Zur Terminologie von Klage und Lob in der greichischen Texttradition (HBS 60; Freiburg: Herder, 2009), 4– 19.  Todd E. Feinberg, From Axons to Identity: Neurological Explorations of the Nature of Identity (New York: Norton, 2009), xi.

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of a healthy sense of self with unified aims and goals.⁹ The antidote for a fragmentary self with its default state is the strengthening of what he terms the executive self, or what can be understood as “conscious agency.”¹⁰ In his book The Neuroscience of Religious Experience, McNamara argued that participation in individual and communal practices, private or public, that engage religious narratives and ideals can provide a means of achieving a strong sense of self—a unified conscious agency. Through the process he calls “decentering,” the divided or current self can be integrated with an ideal self to become more focused and able to achieve goals. Decentering is the neurological means of achieving such an end, as the brain moves through a process of releasing control in order, ultimately, to gain more control. Decentering involves four stages which occur in the frontal and temporal regions of the brain.¹¹ The first stage is the state of impasse, or the experience of a conflicted self that results in a suspension of agency. Suffering or depression can also result in this reduction in agency. Suffering allows the brain to go “offline” in the sense that it suspends intentionality. This may occur as well through religious practices, such as prayer or ascetical denial of food, or through externallyinduced substances like hallucinogenic drugs. In the second stage, such “decoupling” of the self from agency permits access to what McNamara terms a “suppositional space.” The third stage is the search for “ideal” selves which are considered to be possible solutions to the conflicted or fragmented current self. The ideal self is not imagined consciously, and the search is constrained by the number of ideals contained in the individual’s semantic memory. Mythic figures or supernatural agents can factor in and serve to figure an ideal. The fourth and final stage is that of binding, in which the old self or identity is integrated with the new self into a kind of “new and improved” self. McNamara’s representation of religion is less sophisticated than his scientific work, but the cognitive process of decentering and reintegration that he describes provides a fitting model for understanding the process of confession and praise and teaching that marks the sage’s daily routine. I will return to evaluate this in more detail, but first I need to take account of another aspect of the

 The term “central executive self” was coined by Patrick McNamara to refer to the developable results of the executive cognitive functions of the brain (Neuroscience of Religious Experience [New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009], 156 – 66).  This is the phrase coined by Carol A. Newsom in her groundbreaking study of moral agency, “Models of the Moral Self: Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Judaism,” JBL 131 (2012): 5 – 25, here 6.  The process of decentering is described in McNamara, Neuroscience, 44– 58.

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self and its formation that is not charted by McNamara—the self as a cultural achievement.

3.2 The Self as a Cultural Achievement The self is also a dynamic cultural achievement in that the self is constituted in relation to specific social and historical contexts. As such, it is possible to refer to a “local theory of the person,” as ethno-psychologists do in their quest for understanding the self in diverse cultures.¹² Modern, western notions of the self entail a sense of inwardness, freedom, and individuality—with clear demarcations between self and others.¹³ By contrast, to take one well-known example, the traditional Dinka people of southern Sudan have no modern conception of the “mind” or inwardness as a mediating experience of the self.¹⁴ The self that Sirach portrays, as we shall see, falls somewhere in-between. The way in which the self is conceived in relation to the human body also differs because the body as a social construction varies considerably. The idea of the modern Western self generally presumes that the individual skin-encased body contains the self with no remainder, though “local theories” may depart from that. The conceptions of the self in relation to the body in Greco-Roman antiquity exhibit a range of local conceptions.¹⁵ For example, a self that envisions participation in common human and angelic worship and, arguably, even angelic transformation such as we see in the Qumran Yahad movement, has a differ I am here indebted to Carol Newsom’s discussion of ethno-psychology in “Models of the Moral Self,” 6 – 7.  Charles Taylor, Sources of The Self: The Making of Modern Identity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989).  The British anthropologist Godfrey Lienhardt conducted a study of the Dinka people and their culture in the mid-twentieth century. See Lienhardt, Divinity and Experience: The Religion of the Dinka (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961). I owe my awareness of this study to James L. Kugel and his discussion of consciousness in his chapter “Who Shall I Say Is Calling?” in In the Valley of the Shadow: On the Foundations of Religious Belief (and their connection to a certain, fleeting state of mind) (New York: Free Press, 2012), 73 – 88.  Although understanding the self from the perspective from neuroscience is a new trend in scholarship, the literature on the self and body is now vast. One signal contribution is the collection of essays in David Brakke, Michael L. Satlow, and Steven Weitzman, eds., Religion and the Self in Antiquity (Bloomington, IN.: Indiana University Press, 2005). Two books that concern the ritual or liturgical shaping of the self are Gavin Flood, The Ascetic Self: Subjectivity, Memory, and Tradition (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004) and Derek Krueger, Liturgical Subjects: Christian Ritual, Biblical Narrative, and the Formation of the Self in Byzantium (Divinations; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014).

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ent construction of the self from a Hellenized Alexandrian Judean citizen visiting synagogue each week to study the Torah of Moses in Greek. Specific beliefs and practices allow each particular self to take shape.

4 The Indigenous Psychology of Ben Sira In order to map the “local theory of person” in Sirach we should begin with the bodily site that we might identify as the center of conscious agency. Modern neuroscientific accounts locate the fragmented self of the divided consciousness and impaired agency in parts of the brain. Yet neither Hebrew nor Greek has a particular word for “brain.” The most important part of the body in terms of receiving, comprehending, and transmitting wisdom and cognition in ancient Israelite culture was the heart (‫לב‬, καρδία). Ben Sira maintains this traditional view. The passage about the scribe’s daily prayer, cited at the beginning, includes the phrase “He sets his heart to rise early” (Sir 39:5). The heart is the seat of volition which enables the person to think and act virtuously.¹⁶ Other features of the anthropology of Sirach can be seen perhaps most clearly in the account of human creation in chapter 17. Humans are made in the divine image (Gen 1:26 – 27), and that involves the capacity for cognitive reflection: God endowed them with “Deliberation and a tongue and eyes, ears and a heart for thinking” (Sir 17:6 of the Greek I manuscript). Sirach has a more positive perspective on the ability of human beings to restrain from wrong-doing than we see, for example, in the anthropology of the Qumran Hodayot (Thanksgiving hymns). Sirach 17 depicts humans as endowed with knowledge by God from their creation. Free moral agency is assumed: “He filled them with knowledge and understanding, and showed them good and evil” (Sir 17:7). Elsewhere, agency is stated explicitly: “If you choose, you can keep the commandments” (Sir 15:15). Discipline and training, however, are needed in order to observe them continually and, ultimately, in order to obtain wisdom. Another way in which humans are like God is that they are made to inspire fear in other living creatures. In turn, humans fear the Most High, because it is said “[The Lord] put the fear of him upon their hearts, to show them the majesty of his works. And they shall praise a name of holiness in order to recount the majesties of his works” (Sir 17:8 – 10). Thus fear of God is said to be the impetus for praise, and it reflects an attitude of deference rooted in worship of God as

 Leo G. Perdue, The Sword and the Stylus: An Introduction to Wisdom in the Age of Empires (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008), 10.

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creator and sustainer of the cosmos.¹⁷ A distinctive aspect of Sirach’s perspective is that the liturgical disposition is built into humanity from creation. Human beings are, in a sense, born with the purpose of praising God: Sir 17:8 – 10 contains the image of the ideal self. Such an ideal represents the “aspirational self” that is identified in the third stage of McNamara’s decentering process—before the final integration process and strengthening of conscious agency. I should say a word here as well about the nature of the God to whom the sage prays. The “Most High” is a frequent expression for God, and the fear of the Lord is an important attitude to hold in relation to him, but God is also cast as a divine pedagogue, a divine teacher like the sage himself, as in Sir 18:13 – 14: The compassion of human beings is for their neighbors, but the compassion of the Lord is for every living thing. He rebukes and trains and teaches them, and turns them back, as a shepherd his flock.

According to recent studies, the way in which people name and characterize a deity has effects on their cognition and embodied states. One neurocognitive study from Denmark found that those who believe God to be real and capable of reciprocating requests use certain brain areas when they pray, including the frontal lobe related to social cognition.¹⁸ They are in effect imagining a personal God in relationship to them. Unsurprisingly, the contrast with the control group was marked. The control group comprised atheists or non-theists, and they, unlike the experimental group, did not engage social cognition. Another study by Anna Corwin assessed the differences in a group of nuns and the way in which pre- and post-Vatican II theological conceptions shaped their prayers and their sense of embodied self.¹⁹ Imagining and praying to a God as an authoritarian omnipresent judge, characteristic of their training in pre-Vatican II theology, had quite different effects than the post-Vatican II shift to conceiving and invoking an indwelling, accompanying, gentle divine presence. This has changed the embodied emotions of the nuns, their self-understanding, and their dispositions toward the world. Corwin concludes: “This transformation has afforded new subjectivities.… [It] has also influenced their ex-

 Leo G. Perdue, Wisdom and Cult: A Critical Analysis of the Views of Cult in the Wisdom Literatures of Israel and the Ancient Near East (SBLDS 30; Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1977).  Uffe Schjoedt et al., “Highly Religious Participants Recruit Areas of Social Cognition in Personal Prayer,” SCAN 4 (2009): 199 – 207.  Anna I. Corwin, “Changing God, Changing Bodies: The Impact of New Prayer Practices on Elderly Catholic Nuns’ Embodied Experience,” Ethos 40 (2012): 390 – 410.

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periences of the world, their experience of their bodies, and ultimately their ideologies and experiences of illness and chronic pain.”²⁰ To sum up the presentation of the ideal self in Sirach: the scribal figure is a sage who prays to a God Most High who inspires fear, a god who is a divine pedagogue teaching through bodily disciplines. This god is most worthy of praise from a human self who is free from sin.

5 Sin and the Heart in Sirach Up to this point, I have considered only one pole of the confession-praise spectrum, namely, confession. So, how does one arrive at praise, whether praise of God by the sage or the sage himself being praised as full of wisdom? The conflicted nature of the default self (stage one of McNamara’s decentering process) emerges again in language of the heart in Sirach. It appears in the admonition in Sir 1:28: “Do not disobey the fear of the Lord; do not approach him with a divided heart.” A “divided heart” (or literally: a “double heart” καρδία δισσῇ cf. Jas 1:7, ἀνὴρ δίψυχος) inhibits the possibility of exhibiting the fear of the Lord. Sirach 1:30 also locates the conflict that prevents a proper relationship to God in the heart: Do not exalt yourself, or you may fall and bring dishonor upon yourself. The Lord will reveal your secrets and overthrow you before the whole congregation, because you did not come in the fear of the Lord, and your heart was full of deceit.

6 Acknowledging God through Thanksgiving and Praise Scholars have long noted the importance of praise in Sirach.²¹ But certain people are not able to praise. A telling passage occurs toward the beginning of the book:

 Corwin, “Changing God,” 406.  Dieter Lührmann, “Ein Weisheitspsalm aus Qumran (11QPsa XVIII),” ZAW 80 (1968): 87– 97; Johannes Marböck, “Structure and Redaction History of the Book of Ben Sira: Review and Prospects,” in The Book of Ben Sira in Modern Research: Proceedings of the First International Ben Sira Conference 28 – 31 July 1996 Soesterberg, Netherlands (ed. Pancratius Beentjes; BZAW 255; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1997), 61– 80; Michael Reitemeyer, Weisheitslehre als Gotteslob: Psalmentheologie im Buch Jesus Sirach (BBB 127; Berlin: Philo, 2000); Jan Liesen, “‘With All Your Heart’: Praise in the Book of Ben Sira,” in Ben Sira’s God: Proceedings of the International Ben Sira Con-

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“Praise is unseemly on the lips of a sinner, for it has not been sent from the Lord” (Sir 15:9). From the perspective of Ben Sira, sin and praise are incompatible. Since human beings were born to praise the God who created them, sin detracts from their telos. Thus confession performs a purgative function that allows for the free expression of the praise of God. To be burdened by sin is, in effect, to have a less-than-unified consciousness. Awareness of something called sin indicates an awareness on the part of the current self of the suppliant that something is less than ideal; something impinges on his or her agency and prevents the attainment of goals. According to McNamara’s model of decentering, this relates to the default fragmentary nature of the self. The means to achieving a strong self is through the daily regimen of prayer: petition, confession, and ultimately thanksgiving and praise. More than simply the sage’s response to God, praise becomes a subject for teaching. The most prominent example of this is Sir 39:12– 35, a text that follows shortly after the characterization of the sage’s activities. The sage himself is assured his praise (Sir 39:9) will be an enduring memory: “Nations will speak of his wisdom, and the congregation will proclaim his praise” (Sir 39:10). The third-person description of the sage gives way to first-person instruction, as the persona of the sage takes over and he exhorts the audience to praise. The teaching (Sir 39:12– 15, 32– 35) frames a sapiential poem (Sir 39:16 – 31). Thus the text not only contains a hymn of praise, but is itself instruction in the practice of praise. ²² Likewise, the sage teaches students about the need for confession (Sir 4:26a; 5:7a; 18:21; 21:1; 34:30 – 31; 38:10).²³

7 Communal Dimensions of Self Formation: Honor and Shame The theory of self that is capable of sin envisioned in Sirach is framed most broadly in terms of a patriarchal honor and shame polarity that was common

ference, Durham – Ushaw College 2001 (ed. Renate Egger-Wenzel; BZAW 321; Berlin: de Gruyer, 2002), 199 – 213.  Jan Liesen, Full of Praise: An Exegetical Study of Sir 39, 12 – 35 (JSJSup 64; Leiden: Brill, 2000), 281. Cf. also Matthew E. Gordley, Teaching through Song in Antiquity (WUNT 2/302; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 208 – 14.  Maurice Gilbert, “Prayer in the Book of Ben Sira: Function and Relevance,” in Prayer from Tobit to Qumran (ed. Renate Egger-Wenzel and Jeremy Corley; DCLY; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2004), 117– 35, here 129 – 30.

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throughout the Mediterranean.²⁴ These values are deeply socially embedded, and they are enacted communally.²⁵ The scribal self of Ben Sira thus does not experience shame or honor independently of the larger social context, but both are brought about by external factors: social recognition or stigma. While, as a whole, Ben Sira’s teaching contains much in the way of practical advice on a range of topics—social conduct, friendship, domestic matters and so on —the framework within which he works is most studiously aimed at avoiding shame and maximizing honor. The honor-shame polarity undergirds his concept of self and serves as the chief motivator for his actions. Shame therefore can be considered to be closely intertwined with sin. Shame is that which is brought about by sin, while that which bestows honor elicits praise in the assembly. For Ben Sira in particular, the honor/shame dichotomy is a gendered value system—an important factor that must be considered in relation to the teaching of Ben Sira. While honor is that which is conferred on those who have avoided shame, as Claudia Camp has argued, shame in Sirach has a clear misogynistic strain that I will not detail in this essay.²⁶ Suffice it to say that women and their sexuality are viewed as an erotic threat to males, and they are also unworthy of praise. The final chapters of Sirach 44– 51 contain a long of list of Israel’s ancestral men, who are worthy of praise in the public assembly. The social manifestation of that is praise by members of the community.

8 Conclusion According to the authorial self-presentation, the discipline of prayer permits the scribe’s central activities of teaching and learning in the pursuit of wisdom and observance of the commandments. This is evident in the first instance through his daily routine. Petition and confession of sins are understood to prime the pump of sapiential disclosure for the sage. Confession of sins and praise of the deity are two liturgical poles within the sage’s daily prayer. Confession and praise are inculcated through both practice and teaching. Not only do

 For the pervasiveness of honor and shame in Ben Sira particularly as it relates to the construction of gender, see the cogent arguments of Claudia Camp, Ben Sira and the Men Who Handle Books (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2013).  On the cultural framework of honor and shame, see the seminal work of Bruce J. Malina, The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural Anthropology (rev. ed.; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1993), 28 – 62, and Philip F. Esler, The First Christians and Their Social World (London: Routledge, 1994). Cf. also Halvor Moxnes, “Honor and Shame,” BTB 23 (1993): 167– 76.  Camp, Ben Sira and the Men who Handle Books, especially 38 – 81.

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they serve to decenter the sage, thus allowing him to identify an ideal on which to focus and orient action, but they articulate a larger pattern manifest in the production of the book itself, as a collection of learning aimed at training the next generation of sages. The acts of confession and praise are signposts of the transformation of the sage that is most fully manifest in the embodied character of the sage’s life. Ben Sira’s account of confession and its effects constitute a reorientation of his consciousness. It permits a deeper meditation on both exoteric (“law of the Lord’s covenant”) and esoteric (“hidden things”) divine teaching. The formation of the scribal self through prayer is thus centrally implicated in the generation of sapiential wisdom, scribal teaching, and hence, the scribe’s textual product that results from it. Engaging in prayer, including a daily confession, can be understood to represent the process of strengthening the central cognitive functions of the brain, which serves to re-form the current self of the sage. This realignment results in a more perfect, or perfecting, ideal self with a unified consciousness and focus, capable of acquiring wisdom, teaching others, and penetrating ever deeper into divine teaching. Thus, to understand prayer in relation to the scribe is not only to consider the decentering effects of daily prayer, but also to consider the way in which the ideal self is shaped in relation to the continuing formation of Jewish scripture in the Greco-Roman period.

Benjamin G. Wright III (Lehigh University)

Translation, Reception, and the Historiography of Early Judaism: The Wisdom of Ben Sira and Old Greek Job as Case Studies “The source language is the first thing to go.”¹

1 Translation and Method Those who study ancient Israel and early Judaism must reckon with translations at almost every turn.² In some cases, particularly in early Judaism, the only text that has survived intact is a translation of a translation. One example is the Enochic Book of the Luminaries (1 Enoch 72– 82), which is extant in an Ethiopic translation of a Greek translation of an Aramaic original.³ While this observation might seem banal and so obvious as to be unnecessary, ancient historians tend to read translations as if they were one and the same as the source texts that they render. Yet, we scholars do not attend sufficiently to the methodological problems attached to considering translations as primary windows into antiquity. The recent work of translation theorist and practitioner Lawrence Venuti on the hermeneutic model of translation has important implications for thinking about the relationship between a translation and its source text, which call into question the way that we treat translations as evidence in our historiography and how we think about reception history. The way scholars think about translation affects how they write their histories. Within a hermeneutic model of translation, the translator inevitably transforms the source text in a process that is always interpretive. The resulting translation decontextualizes the source text from its culture and recontextualizes it in the receiving culture. On the one hand, in cases where only translations survive, historians need to be self-conscious about the effects of translating a text and

 Lawrence Venuti, Translation Changes Everything: Theory and Practice (London: Routledge, 2013), 109 – 15, here 110.  I am honored to contribute to a Festschrift for Choon Leong Seow, with whom I have worked and from whom I have learned as both colleague and friend.  For this work, the few fragments that do exist from Qumran provide evidence that the length of the Aramaic text exceeded that of its Ethiopic descendent. DOI 10.1515/9783110428148-018

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exercise methodological caution when using translations as evidence for the historiography of the source culture and society. On the other hand, translations constitute useful witnesses to the receiving society and culture.

2 Lawrence Venuti on Translation 2.1 Two Models of Translation: Instrumental and Hermeneutic Venuti describes two models of translation: the “instrumental” and the “hermeneutic.” Whereas some theorists maintain that the two models are complementary, Venuti argues that they are mutually exclusive, and that the hermeneutic model alone accounts for the ways that translators work. Although both models assume that translation communicates, each depends on a different theory about language and communication. The instrumental model relies on an empiricist understanding of language as direct expression, and in this view translation reproduces in or transfers to the target text some invariant in the source text’s form, meaning, or effect (or some combination of the three). The hermeneutic model, on the other hand, depends on a materialist theory in which language is thought of as mediated by linguistic and cultural determinants. Venuti argues that in this model translation cannot transfer some invariant, because no invariant exists to transfer. Rather, a translation inscribes a particular interpretation of the source text—one among many possible interpretations—whose form, meaning, and effect are variable and are transformed in the process of translating.⁴ Since the source text and the translation are linguistically, socially, culturally, and historically contingent, no thing or essence exists to be transferred from source to target. The hermeneutic model, then, in Venuti’s view, demystifies the work of the translator and makes translation accessible to analysis of how any particular interpretation of the source text gets inscribed in the process.

 Venuti lays out this view in several publications. This particular articulation comes from “Genealogies of Translation Theory: Jerome,” in The Translation Studies Reader (3d ed.; London: Routledge, 2012), 483 – 502, here 483. On communication, Venuti writes, “In the instrumental model, translation conveys an unchanging essence inherent in or produced by the source text, so that even if assimilated to the receiving language and culture that essence is transmitted intact. In the hermeneutic model, translation conveys no more than an interpretation of the source text, one among other possibilities, each of which transforms that text by reflecting the receiving language and culture at a particular stage of development, in a specific social situation at a specific historical moment” (Venuti, “Genealogies,” 484).

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2.2 Translation as Loss and Gain Even translations that attempt to maintain a close semantic relationship with their source text inscribe particular interpretations of that text. This inscribing happens because the receiving language and culture determine any correspondences between the source text and the receiving language, all the way from the choice of what to translate to the particular techniques that any translator employs in the process of translating.⁵ Because a translation inscribes an interpretation of the source text, translations “can never be literal, only figurative, or more precisely inscriptive of effects that work only in the translating language and culture.” This claim applies equally to translations that adhere so closely to the source as to become almost calques of them, as well as to those that strive for a more adaptive rendering.⁶ A translation, then, radically decontextualizes the source text and then re-contextualizes it in the receiving culture. The translator must “dismantle, rearrange, and finally displace the chain of signifiers that make up the source text,” which results in the loss of three source language contexts: (1) the intratextual (its linguistic patterns and discursive structures); (2) the intertextual and interdiscursive (its relationships to pre-existing texts, forms, and themes); and (3) the intersemiotic (the contexts of its reception in the source culture through which it receives its significance).⁷ At the same time, however, the translation gains new contexts of form, effect, and meaning that are specific to the target language and culture and that differ from the source. All translation is a process of this loss and gain.⁸

2.3 Translator as Mediator A translator, then, “is a special kind of writer, possessing not an originality that competes against that of the source-text author, but rather an art of mimicry, aided by a stylistic repertoire that taps into the literary resources of the translating language.”⁹ In other words, the translator functions as a mediator, a cultural go-between. In the hermeneutic model, as an interpreter of the source text for the receiving culture, the translator applies two types of interpretants, which mediate between the two cultures: formal and thematic. Inter    

Venuti, Translation Changes Everything, 173 – 92, see especially 179 – 80. Ibid., 180; cf. 113 – 14. Ibid., 180; cf. 495 – 96. Ibid., 496. Ibid., 113 – 14.

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pretants derive from the receiving context and are primarily intertextual, although they might incorporate elements from the source culture. Formal interpretants consist of concepts of equivalence, such as an approach to semantic correspondence, style, or syntax related to a specific genre or discourse. Thematic interpretants are codes that entail “specific values, beliefs, and representations; a discourse in the sense of a relatively coherent body of concepts problems, and arguments; or a particular interpretation of the source text that has been articulated independently in a commentary.”¹⁰ The re-contextualization of the source text comes from the translator’s application of these interpretants, which substitute intertextual relations in the source text and culture “with a receiving intertext, with relations to the translating language and culture which are built into the translation.”¹¹ Within a hermeneutic approach to translation, the translation becomes susceptible to analysis in order to see what interpretants the translator applied and, as a result, to locate and examine the specific interpretation(s) that the translator has inscribed without having to claim that some “thing” has passed from the source to the translation. Careful comparison of the source and target texts reveals at every turn that “the gain is everywhere apparent, although only if the reader looks”¹²—even in those cases where translations are easily readable and apparently familiar, appearing as if they might not even be translations.

3 Ben Sira as an Illustration of Venuti’s Model 3.1 The Grandson’s Translation For many ancient texts, however, close comparison with the source text is impossible, since the source has not survived at all, is extant only in fragments, or exists in manuscript copies hundreds of years removed from its composition. One such example is the Wisdom of Ben Sira, a wisdom text written in Hebrew around 180 B.C.E., which was translated into Greek, ostensibly by the author’s grandson around 117 B.C.E., and this form of the text constitutes our earliest witness to it as a whole. Approximately 70 % of the book survives in some Hebrew form, although all scholars agree that the Hebrew texts, par-

 Venuti, “Genealogies,” 497. See also Venuti, Translation Changes Everything, 181.  Venuti, “Genealogies,” 497. See also Venuti, Translation Changes Everything, 181.  Venuti, Translation Changes Everything, 110.

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ticularly the Cairo Geniza manuscripts, contain many corruptions and other textual difficulties.¹³ Because we have a source text in some places and not in others, Ben Sira can illustrate Venuti’s hermeneutic model at the same time it exemplifies the problematic relationship between translation and historiography. Unlike practically all ancient translations, we are fortunate to have a prologue from the translator of Ben Sira, which is made up of three periodic sentences in good Koine Greek. In it, the translator claims to be the grandson of the author, who translated the book after he arrived in Egypt and chanced upon “an exemplar of no little education” (line 29).¹⁴ He attributes his motivation for undertaking the task to making his grandfather’s work available “to those living abroad if they wish to become learned, preparing their character to live by the law” (lines 34 – 35). Several other passages in the Prologue assist in understanding how the translator understood the translation process, as we shall see. If we examine carefully the grandson’s rhetoric in the Prologue, we find that he works with an instrumental model of translation. In lines 15 – 26, the translator writes: You are invited, therefore, to a reading with goodwill and attention, and to exercise forbearance in cases where we may be thought to be insipid with regard to some expressions that have been the object of great care in rendering (ἑρμηνείαν); for what was originally expressed in Hebrew does not have the same force when it is in fact rendered (μεταχθῇ) in another language. And not only in this case, but also in the case of the Law itself and the Prophets and the rest of the books the difference is not small when these are expressed in their own language.

The language of this sentence suggests that the grandson thought that some invariant existed that could be transferred to the receiving language, in this case at the least the rhetorical effect of the original, and likely the meaning

 Starting at the end of the nineteenth century, six fragmentary medieval copies of the Hebrew were discovered in the Cairo Geniza. Later some small fragments were found in Cave 2 at Qumran as was part of chapter 51 in Cave 11, which was included in a scroll containing a collection of psalms and hymns, and Sir 39:27– 44:17 of the Hebrew came to light in the Masada scroll, which dated within a century or so of the book’s composition.  All quotations of the Greek Sirach come from Albert Pietersma and Benjamin G. Wright, eds., A New English Translation of the Septuagint and the Other Greek Translations Traditionally Included Under that Title (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 715 – 62.

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as well, since rhetorical effect has an impact on meaning.¹⁵ The use of the verb μετάγω, which means to convey or transfer, also implies that the grandson was concerned that somehow the reader might not comprehend that invariant, since the rhetorical effect of the translation did not match the original. In order to situate his own translation, he notes that the same difficulty affects the Law, Prophets, and the rest of the books. Moreover, the parallels within the Prologue between the translator’s assessment of Ben Sira’s Hebrew and his Greek translation show that the grandson understood translation as transferring some invariant. So, for example, in lines 13 – 14, the grandson says that Ben Sira “was led to compose something pertaining to education and wisdom in order that lovers of learning, when they come under their sway [i. e., the sway of education and wisdom] as well, might gain much more in living by the law.” The grandson makes his translation so that his grandfather’s work might do the same for those “living abroad.” Thus, the grandson assumes that he can make available in Greek what his grandfather already had done in Hebrew. Yet if we look more closely at both the Prologue and the translator’s method of translating, we see that he applies several different interpretants, both formal and thematic, in inscribing an interpretation of his grandfather’s book. Even though he operates as if translation is instrumental, his application of these interpretants and the resulting translation itself point to a hermeneutic model of translation.

3.2 Formal Interpretants If we look at formal interpretants first, we find in those places where we can compare a Hebrew and Greek text that the grandson has an approach to equivalence that allows him to transform several different aspects of his source text. He does not work with a notion of equivalence that demands rigid adherence to the source with respect to word order, quantitative parity, the representation

 The meaning of this sentence has been the object of recent scholarly debate. On the meaning of the Prologue to Sirach and the extent to which it is a rhetorical exercise, see most recently, Benjamin G. Wright, “Translation Greek in Sirach in Light of the Grandson’s Prologue,” in The Texts and Versions of the Book of Ben Sira: Transmission and Interpretation (ed. Jean-Sébastien Rey and Jan Joosten; JSJSup 150; Leiden: Brill, 2011), 75 – 94; and James K. Aitken, “The Literary Attainment of the Translator of Greek Sirach,” in Rey and Joosten, The Texts and Versions of the Book of Ben Sira, 95 – 126.

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of each segment of a Hebrew morpheme, or to semantic equivalence.¹⁶ He does, however, remain relatively close to his text for some features, which likely signals a conception of translation that the Greek ought to reflect at least some correspondence to the Hebrew in matters of quantity and syntax.¹⁷ Where he departs most dramatically from his source is in semantic correspondence. He does apply the representation of the poetic lines of the Hebrew source as a formal interpretant, although without necessarily creating poetic lines in Greek, and he occasionally uses poetic words. The language of the text is standard Koine, but he uses this language with some sophistication.¹⁸ As a general rule, the translation does not rise to literary heights, but stylistically the grandson evinces an interest in producing a translation that exhibits literary features. He does not aim at a high literary level, however, which most likely results from his idea of translation—or perhaps his level of education. Several examples will illustrate his application of these interpretants. With respect to his concept of equivalence, the translator introduces numerous syntactic differences from his source text. For example, he often employs the Greek conjunctions γάρ and sometimes δέ, which take second position in a clause, to represent the Hebrew conjunction waw, which must begin the clause.¹⁹ These renderings suggest some concern on the translator’s part for logical connections between clauses in Greek. The translation also contains a good number of non-syntactic displacements from the order of the source text. Some of these represent stylistic considerations. So, for example in Sir 47:23 – 24: And Salomon rested with his fathers, and he left behind himself some of his seed, folly of the people and one lacking in understanding, Roboam, who caused the people to revolt because of his plan, and Ieroboam son of Nabat, who made Israel sin, also gave Ephraim a path of sin. And their sins multiplied greatly to remove them from their land.

 For a detailed study of these aspects of translation in Sirach, see Benjamin G. Wright, No Small Difference: Sirach’s Relationship to its Hebrew Parent Text (SBLSCS 26; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989), ch. 2.  Venuti gives a common definition of translation as “governed by an equivalence in meaning according to current dictionary definitions and generally respectful of sentence construction, line length, and enjambment” as far as the two languages will allow (Venuti, Translation Changes Everything, 209 – 30, here 216 – 17). Ben Sira’s grandson/translator adhered generally to these techniques.  See Aitken, “Literary Attainment,” 95 – 126.  See Wright, No Small Difference, 37– 38.

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[Hebrew: In order to remove them from their land, and their sins increased greatly.]

In v. 24, the translator reverses the two stichoi in order to give a better chronology following verse 23. Thus the multiplication of sins comes before the removal. Hebrew syntax does not require this displacement, but it reflects the translator’s sense of the flow of the action. A second example comes from 49:13. The translator renders the Hebrew clause ‫“( המקים את חרבתינו‬he raised up our ruins”) as τοῦ ἐγείραντος ἡμῖν τείχη πεπτωκότα (“he raised up for us fallen walls”).²⁰ Notwithstanding the interpretation of “ruins” as “fallen walls” (and this possibly could represent a different source text), the translator has taken the genitive pronoun “our” (‫ )נו‬and made it an indirect object “for us” (ἡμῖν), which results in both a word order displacement and a shift in meaning. As far as semantic coherence is concerned, the translator often translates one Hebrew verb by several different Greek verbs, thus introducing lexical differentiation. In other cases, we encounter semantic leveling, when one Greek word translates several Hebrew words. A good example of semantic leveling is the way he treats the Hebrew terms ‫“( חק‬statute”) and ‫“( ברית‬covenant”). In other JewishGreek translations, the translators employ the Greek term διαθήκη almost exclusively as a translation of ‫ברית‬. By using διαθήκη for both terms, the translator produces a very different sense in Greek. Take, for example, Sir 44:20 b–d, in which circumcision is transformed from a statute (‫ )חק‬to a covenant (διαθήκη). 44:20 Hebrew b: and he entered into a covenant (‫ )ברית‬with him [i. e., Abraham] c: and in his flesh he established a statute (‫)חק‬ d: and in a test he was found faithful. 44:20 Greek b: and he entered in a covenant (διαθήκη) with him; c: in his flesh he established a covenant (διαθήκη), d: and in a trial he was found faithful.

 Joseph Ziegler in his critical edition of Ben Sira reads ἡμῶν in agreement with the Hebrew (Septuaginta Vetus Testamentum Graecum Auctoritate Academiae Scientarum Gottingensis editum XII/2 Sapientia Iesu Filii Sirach [rev. ed.; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1980]). The Greek witnesses are the Origenic recension and the Lucianic recension, which often revises toward the Hebrew text. I have opted for the dative plural, since the genitive plural pronoun looks to me like a revision toward a Hebrew text like that of MS B.

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Elsewhere the translation reveals the translator’s interest in style and literary effect. I give just three examples: (1) The emphatic particle τοιγαροῦν occurs once in the book (Sir 41:16). It appears often in literary contexts, pointing to the translator’s intent to achieve some level of literary Greek. (2) The translator’s approach to semantic correspondence sometimes results in clever or sophisticated renderings of the source text. In Sir 3:15, the use of εὐδία (“fine weather”) for the Hebrew ‫“( חם‬heat”) brings a finer nuance to the translation than θερμός or its cognates that most often translate ‫ חם‬elsewhere. (3) We also encounter rhetorical devices. The translator employs variatio, as in 26:9 (no extant Hebrew) where the translator uses the standard term for eye—ὀφθαλμός—in one stichos and the poetic word βλέφαρον in the next. Other examples of passages where the translator may be employing poetic words are Sir 6:5 and 8:4.²¹

3.3 Thematic Interpretants The translator’s Prologue helps to identify the thematic interpretants that are at work in Greek Sirach. The foundational motivation for the translation is aimed at including the work among the books of the Law, the Prophets, and the ancestral books to which the grandson refers three separate times and which he positions as a corpus of authoritative texts that contain Israel’s education and wisdom (lines 1– 3). According to the translator, Ben Sira had “acquired considerable proficiency” in these books and so “he too was led to compose something pertaining to education and wisdom” for those who loved learning (line 12). The clear parallels between Ben Sira’s reason for composing the original Hebrew version and the grandson’s reason for translating it into Greek signal that the grandson wanted to include his grandfather’s wisdom among those works already translated into Greek for Egyptian Jews “if they wish to become learned, preparing their character to live by the law” (lines 34– 35).²² The goal of including his grandfather’s work with these others likely affected the approach to translation. Indeed, the statement in lines 15 – 26 in which the translator compares his own translation to those of the Law, Prophets, and other books demonstrates that he knew these translations, and his method of translation—keeping relatively close to his source text with room for exegetical interpretations and some literary flair—may well have been modeled on them. Thus, the translator’s primary interpretant—to produce a translation that

 All these examples come from Aitken, “Literary Attainment,” 95–126.  For the full argument, see Wright, “Translation Greek,” 83 – 85.

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would find inclusion in the corpus of admired and authoritative books—in all likelihood helped to determine how he translated. The translator applies a second and different thematic interpretant, which reflects the changed political circumstances from his grandfather’s time approximately sixty years earlier. By the grandson’s time, the Hasmoneans had displaced the Zadokites as high priests and political rulers of the temple-state of Judah. The way that the changed circumstances affected the translation is especially clear in Sir 50:24, where the Hebrew text has a blessing on Simon, the Zadokite high priest at the time of Ben Sira, connecting him with the eternal covenant of the priesthood made with Phinehas in Num 25:10 – 13. The translator eliminated any connection between Simon and Phinehas and replaced it with a general petition for mercy and redemption, although Phinehas’s priestly covenant remains at 45:23 – 24, suggesting that the translator understood it to be transferred to the Hasmoneans.²³ May his mercy toward Simon be lasting; may he fulfill for him the covenant of Phinehas so that it will not be cut off for him or for his descendants for all the days of heaven. (50:24 Heb.) May he entrust us with his mercy and in our days let him redeem us. (50:24 Gk.)

4 Greek Sirach, the Hermeneutic Model of Translation, and Historiography As we saw above, within the hermeneutic model, Venuti argues that a translation radically decontextualizes the source text and then recontextualizes it in three separate contexts. I want briefly to give a flavor of what this process looks like in Ben Sira. With respect to the intratextual context, Greek syntax differs markedly from Hebrew syntax, and thus the text is transformed syntactically in translation. As we saw, Greek has a more nuanced set of logical clause connectors than Hebrew, which fundamentally changes how the relationship between clauses and sentences is articulated. The translation creates new intertextual and interdiscursive contexts that replace the source contexts. In the Hebrew

 For more detail, see C. T. R. Hayward, The Jewish Temple: A Non-Biblical Sourcebook (London: Routledge, 1996), 73 – 84.

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text, Ben Sira often alludes to passages from the authoritative books of the Israelite literary heritage. In many cases, perhaps even most, the translator has not brought these same allusions into Greek. In Sir 36:27, for instance, the Hebrew makes a deliberate comparison between a man without a wife to the wandering and homeless Cain after he murdered his brother. The grandson translated the verse with different vocabulary from the Old Greek translation of Gen 4, and therefore (whether he recognized it or not) he did not bring the allusion into Greek.²⁴ In cases like this, the translation experiences the loss that Venuti argues happens with all translations. On the other hand, the translation also gains as well. In Sir 14:17, while the Hebrew might have a vague allusion to Gen 2:17, the translator certainly took it that way, and he introduced the language of the Old Greek of Gen 2:17.²⁵ The translator also introduces new intertextual relations. His use of the Greek verb θέλω, especially in places such as Sir 6:35 and 7:13, has resonances with Greek gnomic sayings. His use of the term ὀφιόδηκτος, “one bitten by a snake,” might derive from Greek scholia on Homer used by teachers with students learning Greek, and thus it echoes Greek educational texts.²⁶ Finally, the intersemiotic, or receiving context, is changed. Not only was the context changed from a Judean audience under Seleucid rule to an Egyptian audience under the Ptolemaic Empire, but the institutional context was likely shifted as well. Although we do not know with certainty in what institutional or social context the Greek translation would have been used, the Hebrew text reflects a school context that trained young men for service in the scribal bureaucracy, whereas the emphasis in the Greek on loving learning in the prologue perhaps suggests a wider reception for the translation. The Hebrew of Ben Sira and its Greek translation bear out the hermeneutic model of translation that Venuti proposes. Indeed, the Greek has inscribed a set of interpretations of the Hebrew for a Jewish audience in Egypt using various interpretants and recontextualizing the text for it, and we can, of course, look to the translation for evidence for the Jewish community in Egypt at the end of the second century B.C.E. But what about Ben Sira himself in the context of early second century Jerusalem and Judea? What impact does the hermeneutic model have on the historiography on Judea in the early second century using Ben Sira as primary evidence? Since we do not possess the complete Hebrew text on which the  For other examples, see Wright, No Small Difference, 148 – 54.  For other examples, see ibid., 161– 65.  These examples come from Aitken, “Literary Attainment,” 118 – 19. See the article for more possible examples.

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translation was based, and since the Hebrew manuscripts that we do have contain numerous textual problems of their own, historians often must rely on the Greek as the best witness to Ben Sira’s book.²⁷ The historian of ancient Judaism, then, can empathize with Venuti’s experience as a modern translator. In discussing reviews of his translation of the Catalan poet Ernest Farrés, he observes, “The habit of commenting on the translation as if it were the source text has long plagued the reception of translations, and it is still widespread among reviewers as well as readers, even among publishers and translators themselves.”²⁸ If we substitute scholars of ancient Israel for Venuti’s reviewers, this complaint becomes historiographically relevant. How can we read translations and do historiography, since “[t]ranslations can begin to be read as translations only when the reader assumes that translating is interpretive and therefore transformative of the source text, even when a semantic correspondence is constructed”?²⁹ We must approach translations as historiographical evidence with a hermeneutics of suspicion. Where the source text has survived, it obviously must serve as the primary evidence, but, lacking a source text with which to compare, we do not know exactly how the translator has transformed the source text.³⁰ We cannot, then, focus our analysis on facets of the translation such as the significance of word choice or syntactical arrangement in the translation, for example, since the translator has selected every word and arranged them for reasons that bear on the translation within its receiving context. We can pay attention to what interpretants the translator has applied and how they are deployed, however, if we can identify them. So, for example, in the Greek Sirach, if we know that the translator applies a thematic interpre-

 For discussion of the effect of scribal activity on the Hebrew and Greek traditions, see, e. g., Benjamin G. Wright, “Preliminary Thoughts about Preparing the Text of Ben Sira for a Commentary,” in Die Septuaginta—Text, Wirkung, Rezeption (ed. Wolfgang Kraus and Siegfried Kreuzer; WUNT 325; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014), 88 – 109; Benjamin G. Wright, “Scribes, Translators and the Formation of Authoritative Scripture,” in In the Footsteps of Sherlock Holmes: Studies in the Biblical Text in Honour of Anneli Aejmelaeus (ed. Kristin de Troyer, T. Michael Law, and Marketta Liljeström; CBET 72; Leuven: Peeters, 2014), 3 – 29; and John Screnock, “Translators as Scribes—A Comparison of Scribal Practice and Translation Practice: Exodus 1– 14 in the Hebrew Manuscript Tradition and the Old Greek” (Ph.D. diss., University of Toronto, 2015). We do also have Syriac and Latin translations that provide some additional evidence, but the same problems attend them, if Venuti’s hermeneutic model is to be accepted.  Venuti, Translation Changes Everything, 227.  Venuti, Translation Changes Everything, 228.  And even in cases such as Ben Sira where we do have some approximation of a source text, reconstruction of that source based on the translation will not necessarily produce trustworthy results. See the conclusions to Wright, No Small Difference, for Ben Sira.

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tant that dissociates the present high priests in Jerusalem from earlier Zadokite high priests and presents the current regime as both legitimate and divinely approved, then we must approach these issues with appropriate suspicion when trying to think about what Ben Sira thought of rulers or kings. If we read the translation as the equivalent of what Ben Sira wrote, we create in the translation an invariant that Venuti argues does not exist, and we assume an instrumental model of translation.

5 Reading Translations as Translations Are we then reduced to historiographical pessimism? While I admit that I need to think further about these issues, I think that the answer is a qualified yes. Without the source text, we possess one possible interpretation of it that is socially, culturally, historically, and linguistically contingent. By reading translations as translations and making the translator visible, we necessarily confront the limits of our historical methods. While all historical evidence is mediated, selected, and interpreted, translations are doubly so. We historians thus stand further removed from the social, cultural, historical, and linguistic contexts of the source text, if we have to rely on a translation as primary evidence. The extent to which a translation coheres with other historical evidence might enable its use in historical arguments, but to the extent that we build historical arguments on translations, we run the risk of building our houses on sand. Even in cases where the (presumed) source text survives, such as in the LXX/ OG translations of the Hebrew Scriptures, translations have usually not been considered as evidence for the historiography of early Judaism. In fact, they are often ignored altogether. If one looks at the history of scholarship on the LXX/OG, the preponderance of studies until recently look to the LXX/OG as evidence for the textual history of the Hebrew Bible, and the LXX/OG translations had a very minimal impact on the historiography of early Judaism. To a great degree, this preoccupation is understandable, since the LXX/OG translations are notorious for their difficulty, but beyond their difficulty, the fact that they were translations likely accounts for their relative absence from the historiography of early Judaism, since within an instrumental model of translation the target text reproduces or transfers elements of the source, making the translation derivative of that source. A fascinating example of the invisibility of the LXX/OG translation in historiography is the Compendia rerum iudaicarum ad Novum Testamentum series. In the volume Jewish Writings of the Second Temple Period, the LXX/OG translations

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receive no dedicated treatment. Although several translations do merit some discussion, their nature as translations makes no difference to the analysis (e. g., Ben Sira, 1 Maccabees).³¹ In the two-volume The Jewish People in the First Century, the LXX/OG translations do not appear in the index of sources, but in the 1159 pages of text, they are only discussed in the chapter “Greek in Palestine and the Diaspora,” where G. Mussies outlines the character of “translation Greek” in about two pages.³² Finally in the Mikra volume, the LXX/OG translations get special treatment, although issues connected with reading and reception get discussed in only few pages.³³ Yet, within a hermeneutic model of translation, these translations represent significant data about the interpretive and reception history of a text, and they may tell us much about how the text was read at the time of translation and about those who produced the translations. In the case of the LXX/OG translations, exactly when and where certain translations might have been executed, as well as the extent to which we actually do possess the source text that some of the translators had available to them, cannot be answered with a high degree of certainty, and such uncertainty affects what we can know. Even so, within a hermeneutic model of translation, a translation tells us more about the receiving culture and context than the source culture and context, and so translations deserve consideration as primary evidence for the historiography of the receiving culture (and later receiving cultures of the translations, for that matter, which actually is a better studied phenomenon).

 Michael E. Stone, ed., Jewish Writings of the Second Temple Period: Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, Qumran Sectarianism, Writings, Philo, Josephus (CRINT 2.2; Assen: Van Gorcum; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982).  Shmuel Safrai and Menahem Stern, in cooperation with David Flusser and W. C. van Unnik, ed., The Jewish People in the First Century: Historical Geography, Political History, Social Cultural and Religious Life and Institutions (CRINT 1.1– 2; Assen: Van Gorcum; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1974/1976). On Mussies’s article, see 2:1048 – 49.  Martin van Mulder, ed., Mikra: Text, Translation, Reading and Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity (CRINT 2.1; Assen: Van Gorcum; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988). See in that volume Emanuel Tov, “The Septuagint,” 161– 88, esp. 173 – 74 and 176 – 78. Thus in a little over 2500 pages, approximately 30 pages are specifically devoted to the LXX/OG translations, and of these, only about 3 or 4 pages treat the translation as an act of reading and interpretation. Nowhere are these translations treated as primary evidence for reconstructing the history of early Judaism.

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6 The Case of LXX/OG Job Most often the LXX/OG translations find their way into commentaries on Hebrew biblical books, and then mostly for their value as text-critical evidence. In his Illuminations commentary on Job 1– 21, Choon Leong Seow has a short section on OG Job. There, he makes several observations and comments about the translation of Job that ought to bear on the historiography of the Jewish translator and community to which he belonged.³⁴ Seow accepts that the MT likely served as the source text, so differences between the OG and the MT are attributed to the translator’s activity. So, for example, Seow accounts for the shorter length of the OG by one-sixth as reflecting the translator’s concern “about the wearying of the reader. The translator was eliminating the tediously long and seemingly repetitive work to produce a more circumscribed and ‘reader friendly’ version.”³⁵ Seow comments on the translator’s use of terms that have resonance from Hellenistic mythology, and he notes the possibility that the translation introduces ideas about resurrection into a text that in its source version does not grant the possibility of post-mortem existence.³⁶ Seow’s observations about the translation are relevant to any study of Jewish culture, society, and religion in Alexandria in the second century B.C.E., if indeed that is where and when the translation was made.³⁷ Despite the apparent relevance of the OG translation of Job for understanding the Alexandrian Jews in the Late Ptolemaic period, one looks in vain for its appearance in the historiography of that community. But it should be taken into consideration, since the translation transmits a reading and interpretive tradition of the book of Job that offers insight into that community’s theological, cultural, and social worlds. Claude Cox expresses it nicely when he remarks, “Twice Judaism gave Job to the world. The first time was a story now recast in Hebrew.…

 Choon Leong Seow, Job 1 – 21: Interpretation and Commentary (Illuminations; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans), 111– 14.  Ibid., 111.  Ibid., 111– 14.  Seow (Job 1 – 21, 111) assumes that the translation was executed in Alexandria, as do most scholars, although the evidence for Alexandria as the place of translation is thin. The date seems a bit more secure. On this issue, see Marieke Dhont, “The Style of Old Greek Job in Context” (Ph.D. diss., Université catholique de Louvain/KU Leuven, 2016), 45 – 56, and the summary comments of Claude E. Cox, “The Historical, Social, and Literary Context of Old Greek Job,” in XII Congress of the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies, Leiden, 2004 (ed. Melvin K. H. Peters; SBLSCS 54; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2006), 105 – 16, here 106.

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The second time Judaism gave Job to the world it did so in an international language, Greek.”³⁸ Hebrew Job and OG Job are two instantiations of the story. The first witnesses to the social and cultural world in which the Hebrew text was produced; the second tells us about the international world of the Hellenistic period in which the translator lived.

7 Conclusions Translation has existed traditionally on the margins of literature and scholarship. Indeed, in the modern academy, tenure and promotion committees often do not consider a translation to be a work of scholarship. Yet, translations have served as major vehicles for the transmission of texts and the traditions of interpreting them. Venuti’s hermeneutic model explicitly exposes the work of the translator to analysis, and he makes a compelling case for admitting the translator into the club of literary writers. As a contemporary translator and translation theorist, Venuti’s main occupation is not with history writing. But as I hope to have shown in this essay, translations and translation theory bear on the way that we do the historiography of early Judaism and how we think about the reception history of early Jewish texts. It is up to us historians to take the results of Translation Studies and think critically and theoretically about the relationship between translations and historiography and its effect on our enterprise.³⁹

 Cox, “Old Greek Job,” 105.  In my readings in Translation Studies, I have not encountered discussions of the problems that I have highlighted in this paper. An earlier version of this paper was read at the conference “Making Sense of Religious Texts: Patterns of Agency, Synergy and Identity” of the Netherlands Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences. Thanks to Michael Raposa, William Bulman, Khurram Hussain (my colleagues at Lehigh) and Anders Klostergaard Petersen (Aarhus University) for their comments. Raposa and Petersen especially have suggested that these problems be examined using semiotic theory. I agree that this would be a fruitful way to approach the issue in conjunction with Translation Studies insights, but I cannot take up that issue in the present study.

Markus Witte (Humboldt University–Berlin)

God and Evil in the Wisdom of Solomon* 1 Sapientia Salomonis as a Discourse on Overcoming Evil A fundamental concept in the sapiential theology of the Old Testament is that, as a just creator, God has ordered the world in such a way that those who align themselves with God’s created order are granted life to the full. Accompanying this idea is the constant reflection in the Wisdom Literature on the relationship between God and evil. On the one hand, God is the source of life; on the other hand, evil destroys life. From a long view, the history of wisdom in the Old Testament can be read as a history of the question of God and evil, of life and the forces which threaten to undo it. As the latest sapiential text of the Old Testament, the Wisdom of Solomon contains reflection about God and evil that adopts the characteristics of a philosophical treatise. Written between the first century B.C.E. and the first century C.E. in Alexandria, the Wisdom of Solomon participates in Greek philosophical discourse about the nature and origin of evil, which had been discussed intensively since the time of Plato, especially by the Stoics. It also addresses the relationship of evil both to God and to “the good,” as well as the meaning of overcoming evil and the possibilities for succeeding in doing so.¹ The linguistic shift between the appeal in Wis 1:1 and the address in Wis 7:25 confer a dialogical character on the book. On the one hand, Wis 1:1 appeals to the rulers of the world to love justice and seek wisdom. On the other hand, Wis 7:25 (cf. 11:23) addresses the one sovereign ruler—the God of Israel to whom the ideal king, Pseudo-Solomon, prays (8:21). The prayer of Solomon demonstrates the correct answer to the appeal in Wis 1:1 and gives readers a model of an appropriate dialogue with God.

* I warmly thank Tobias Tan (University of Oxford) and Scott C. Jones (Covenant College) for correcting an English version of this article.  Cf. also recently Ulrike Mittmann, “Das Bild des Menschen im Wandel – Die Rezeption von Genesis 1– 3 in Sapientia Salomonis 1 und 2,” in Evil and Death: Conceptions of the Human in Biblical, Early Jewish, Greco Roman and Egyptian Literature (ed. Beate Ego and Ulrike Mittmann; DCLS 18; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2015), 97– 126. DOI 10.1515/9783110428148-019

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In this essay, I argue that the Wisdom of Solomon shows a way out of evil and, therefore, a way into life.² In what follows, I trace four steps along this path out of evil and into life in selected passages. I then conclude with thematic consideration of evil in the Wisdom of Solomon.

2 “Think about the Lord in goodness” (Wis 1:1b) – The Good One The prologue of the book (1:1– 5) already reflects on essential theological and anthropological aspects in the discourse on evil. With the call “ἀγαπήσατε δικαιοσύνην” (1:1), two fundamental ethical, religious, and legal opponents of evil are mentioned: “love” and “justice.” They run through the whole book as keywords.³ As in the Shema Israel (Deut 6:4– 5), which stands behind Wis 1:1, the term “love” (here ἀγαπάω) describes an alignment of the whole person toward God. This love can be achieved by orienting oneself to the Torah and by a life lived according to it. In addition to ἀγαπάω, Wis 1:1 uses δικαιοσύνη as a synonym for Torah (νόμος). Rather than exhorting his audience to love νόμος, the author emphatically employs the term δικαιοσύνη, since this is an appeal to the pagan “judges” or “rulers of the world,” and since the entire book, in fact, might (at least theoretically) be read as a philosophical treatise by erudite pagans who are familiar with the discourse on justice. In the Israelite-Jewish tradition, however, “justice” (δικαιοσύνη) describes not so much a legal entity as a social relation, namely the salvific communion between God and humanity. This can be granted only by God as the righteous one, the universal giver and guarantor of justice (12:15). Furthermore, in the book of Wisdom δικαιοσύνη receives the special predicate “immortality” (ἀθανασία): “For righteousness is immortal (ἀθάνατος)” (1:15; cf. 15:3). In Sapientia Salomonis, then, “justice” is the decisive intermediary between a fulfilled life in this world and in the world to come. For this to work, however, the book must redefine divine justice by means of an eschatological, post-mortem outlook. More traditional conceptions of justice are called into question by the persecution of righteous, Torah-observant Jews in Alexandria (2:12– 13; cf. Isa 52:13—53:12), whose premature deaths would have served as a parade example of injustice in the world. Thus the book of Wisdom envisions

 Cf. Prov 6:23; 15:24; Ps 15:11LXX.  Cf. Wis 4:10; 6:12; 7:10, 12, 28; 8:3, 7; 11:24; 16:26; respectively, 1:15; 2:11; 5:6, 18; 8:7; 9:3; 12:16; 14:7; 15:3.

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justice beyond this life, when the righteous enter into an even more intensive communion with God (see esp. 3:4). As the author states in 1:3, “the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment will ever touch them” (NRSV; cf. Ps 49:15 – 16; Dan 12:1– 3; 2 Macc 7:9; Wis 4:7; 5:15; 1 En. 102:4– 103:3). The goodness (ἀγαθότης) of God appears in 1:1b (cf. 7:26) as an equivalent to God’s justice (δικαιοσύνη).⁴ As in the philosophy of Plato and the Stoics, evil is thereby excluded from the nature of God from the very beginning of the book.⁵ As in other early Jewish scriptures, God is characterized as goodness itself (‫ַהּטוֹב‬, ὁ χρηστός / ὁ ἀγαθός, 1:1b).⁶ At the same time, the aim of reflection and the destination of human existence are specified with the expression ἐν ἀγαθότητι, as the continuation of the third stichos with the phrase ἐν ἁπλότητι καρδίας (“with sincerity of heart”) shows (1:1c).⁷ The communion with God pictured here is a life in and with goodness, a life founded in the knowledge of God and in the divine gift of wisdom (1:3 – 5). At the same time the prologue emphasizes that, as a mediator of communion with God, the divine σοφία only inhabits those who avoid evil (1:4, cf. 7:27). Verse 5 goes on to refer to this σοφία as a ἅγιον πνεῦμα, with which wisdom is closely connected throughout the book (Wis 7:22; 9:17). The one whom wisdom inhabits then becomes a “friend of God” (φίλος θεοῦ)—an ideal that early Jewish Scriptures share with Greek philosophy.⁸ However in the Wisdom of Solomon, this designation is supplemented by the epithet “prophet” (προφήτης, 7:27; cf. 11:1; Sir 46:13), as is typical for the Old Testament. The sage is thus cast as a true successor of Moses, the exemplary friend of God and the great prophet.⁹

 On such an inclusive understanding of the formulation ἐν ἀγαθότητι, referring not only to the correctness of human reflection about God but also to the content of this reflection, see Helmut Engel, “Sophia Salomonos,” in Septuaginta Deutsch: Das griechische Alte Testament in deutscher Übersetzung (2d ed.; ed. Wolfgang Kraus and Martin Karrer; Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2010), 1058.  Cf. Plato, Tim. 29e; 69c; Resp. 379b; Euripides, Iph. taur. 391; SVF 2, 1164; SVF 2, 1186.  Cf. Jer 33:11 (Heb. 40:11); Nah 1:7; Ps 34:9 (Heb. 33:9); 100:5; 118:1, 29 (Heb. 117:1, 29; 119:68 (Heb. 118:68); 135:3 (Heb. 134:3); 136:1 (Heb. 135:1); 145:9 (Heb. 144:9); Lam 3:25; 2 Chr 30:18; Sir 45:25 (MSB); 4Q403 1 I, 5; Mk 10:18 // Matt 19:17; Lk 18:19.  Cf. 1 Chr 29:17.  Cf. for Abraham (Isa 41:8; 2 Chr 20:7; CD-A III, 2; 4Q252 1 II, 8; T. Ab. A 8:4; 9:7; 16:9; B 13:1; Jas 2:23), for Isaac (CD-A III, 3), for Jacob (CD-A III, 3; 4Q372 1 21), for Moses (Sir 45:1; Philo, Cher. 49) and for Samuel (Sir 46:13), generally: 4Q525 5 12; Philo, Her. 21:3. Also in a pagan context, the term “friend of god/gods” designates a pious person, cf. Plato, Leg. 716c–d; Tim. 53d; Symp. 193b; Resp. 621c; Arrian, Epict. diss. 4.3.9.  Cf. Exod 33:11; Deut 34:10; and to this Philo, Mos. 1.156.

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In Wis 1:4, evil and sin (ἁμαρτία) are synonymous, and the human being is understood to consist of both body (σῶμα) and soul (ψυχή). The parallelismus membrorum in this verse suggests a conception that corresponds to the traditional Israelite-Jewish anthropology. In other passages, however, the book of Wisdom speaks of the (pre-existent) soul in opposition to the human body, which is presented in a rather pejorative fashion (8:19 – 20; 9:15).¹⁰ It is possible that the passages which reflect this second, dichotomous viewpoint are secondary. With respect to evil, the opening sequence in 1:1– 5 attests theologically that God is essentially good, anthropologically that humans are capable of knowledge of God and can therefore know goodness and communion with God, and hamartologically that a lack of knowledge of God and ignorance (ἄφρων; λογισμοὶ ἀσυνετοί)¹¹ are sin and self-deception (δόλος).¹² These exclude a person from the wisdom which communion with God makes possible.

3 “Through the envy of the devil death came into the world” (Wis 2:24)—The Evil One In an anthropological and hamartological declaration of principle (Grundsatzerklärung), the book of Wisdom contrasts the characterization of God as the Good One, who created everything for life (1:13 – 14) and who is a “friend of life” (11:26),¹³ with the Evil One (ὁ διάβολος), who by envy brought death into the world (2:21– 24). This passage in Wis 2:1– 24 is a commentary on fictitious speech by godless persecutors, and it is modelled both on the fourth servant song of Deutero-Isaiah (Isa 52:13 – 53:12) and on the Hellenistic pattern of the mistreatment of philosophers.¹⁴ By misjudging life’s true purpose, these persecutors violate the fundamental commandments of the community and indulge in unrestrained hedonism (Wis 2:1– 20). Wisdom 2:21– 24 is based on the literary traditions in Gen 1– 4,¹⁵ and it also repeats motifs prominent in the midrash of the paradise story in the pseudepi-

 See Dieter Georgi, Weisheit Salomos (JSHRZ 3/4; Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1980), 433, 436; Otto Kaiser, Die Weisheit Salomos: Übersetzt, eingeleitet und durch biblische und außerbiblische Parallelen erläutert (Stuttgart: Radius, 2010), 22, 24.  Cf. Wis 1:3; respectively, 1:5; cf. Wis 10:8; 12:23; respectively, 11:15.  Cf. Wis 4:11; 14:25, 30.  Cf. Ezek 18:23, 32.  Following George W. E. Nickelsburg, Resurrection, Immortality, and Eternal Life in Intertestamental Judaism (HTS 56; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972), 62.  Not only in Gen 1– 3, as Mittmann (“Bild,” 99 – 107) has recently claimed.

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graphal Life of Adam and Eve (henceforth L.A.E.). In the Wisdom of Solomon the intertwining of the motifs “image of God” (Gen 1:26 – 27), “fall of humanity” (Gen 3 – 4), and “knowledge of God” is noteworthy and essential for its portrayal of evil. Following Gen 1:26 – 27LXX, Isa 44:7LXX, and 54:16LXX, the creation of humans in the “image”¹⁶ of God confers the basic potential for immortality (ἀφθαρσία, 2:23; cf. 6:18 – 19). As an image of the Living One, a human has the potential to participate in the life of God and thus gain eternal life. On the other hand, turning away from God means turning away from life. One turns away from God both by disregarding the life of those who search for God and by denying the afterlife (2:22). As already indicated in the prologue, evil and its hostility towards life arise from the lack of knowledge of God (2:22; cf. 13:1). They are founded upon human choice, specifically in the God-given freedom to differentiate between good and evil.¹⁷ Evil is both deed—doing acts of evil—and suffering—bearing the consequences of such acts in the form of sickness and punishment. In both cases, evil is self-inflicted. But given its blinding force (ἀποτυφλόω, 2:21) and its universal effects (5:23), evil is also portrayed in the book as an independent, personified force that exists outside of the individual. Beside evil stands the Evil One. There are several occasions in Sapientia Salomonis in which evil is spoken of in mythological language as a force which acts upon humans. In addition to mentioning Thanatos in 1:12 – 13, 16 and Hades in 1:14, the important passage in 2:24 traces the origins of death in the world back to the envy (φθόνος) of the devil: “Through the envy of the devil death came into the world, and those who belong to his party experience it.” The book of Wisdom here alludes to the motif of the devil’s envy of Adam, depending not only on the interpretation of Gen 3 in L.A.E. 11– 12, but also on other early Jewish and rabbinic texts.¹⁸ And the devil sighed and said: “O Adam, all my enmity and envy and sorrow concern you, since because of you I am expelled and deprived of my glory which I had in the heavens in the midst of angels, and because of you I was cast out onto the earth.” (L.A.E 12:1)¹⁹

As in the case of Job, the life-destroying misfortune which falls upon Adam and thus upon humankind in Wis 2:24 is traced back to the resentment of the διάβο-

 On Gen 1:26 – 27, see also Wis 9:2– 3 and Wis 10:2, where the dominion of the earth is attributed to humans only after the Fall.  Cf. Gen 3:1– 7; Deut 30:15 – 20; 1 Kgs 3:9; Sir 15:16 – 17; 17:7– 11.  Cf. 2 En. 31 (J); 3 Bar. 4:8; Apoc. Sedr. 5; Apoc. Ab. 13; t. Soṭah 4:17; b. Soṭah 9b; b. Sanh. 59b; Gen. Rab. 18:6; ᾽Abot R. Nat. 1.  Translation from M. D. Johnson, “Life of Adam and Eve,” in OTP 2:249 – 95, here 262.

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λος (cf. JobLXX 1:9). Although the Wisdom of Solomon does not elaborate on it further, destruction of life belongs to the very nature of the διάβολος: for “he was a murderer (ἀνθρωποκτόνος) from the beginning” (John 8:44). In addition to the tradition in L.A.E. 12 and the mythological motif of the envy of gods both in the ancient Near East and in classical antiquity, one should also note the interpretation of Gen 4 in Wis 2:24.²⁰ According to Gen 4, it is ultimately Cain’s envy of Abel’s success that brings about the realization of the threat of death announced to Adam at the end of the paradise narrative (Gen 4:8 – 10; cf. Gen 3:19). The aretalogy of σοφία in Wisdom 10 again mentions this fratricide and regards it as the real reason for the flood (10:3 – 4), suppressing the passage about the “angelmarriages” in Gen 6:1– 4 which other Hellenistic Jewish authors highlighted as the root cause for the deluge.²¹ For the author of Sapientia Salomonis, Cain’s fratricide of Abel stems from a lack of knowledge of God and radical injustice (ἀδικία, 10:3), and it results in a permanent exclusion from communion with God (cf. Gen 4:11– 14). 1 Clem. 3:4 quotes Wis 2:24 in precisely this sense—as evidence of the disastrous consequences of “unjust and godless jealousy” (cf. 1 Clem. 4:7).²² An educated pagan reader of Wis 2:24 who was unaware of the Jewish tradition of the envy of the devil might alternatively have thought of the platonic idea of the incompatibility of envy with the just creator god (see Timaeus 29e; Phaedrus 247a).²³ While Philo (De opificio mundi 21) shows that Plato’s Timaeus was known in Jewish circles during the first century B.C.E.,²⁴ it is unclear whether this platonic motif influenced Wis 2:24 in any direct way.²⁵ With a view to an “otherworldly reward” for the righteous, the Wisdom of Solomon contrasts the protology of death with the eschatology of life (2:22).

 Herodotus, Hist. 1.32; 3.40 – 41; 7.10; Pindar, Pyth. 10.20; cf. Hugh Lloyd-Jones, The Justice of Zeus (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), 68 – 70; Miriam von Nordheim-Diehl, “Der Neid Gottes, des Teufels und der Menschen–eine motivgeschichtliche Skizze,” in Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature Yearbook: Emotions from Ben Sira to Paul (ed. Renate Egger-Wenzel and Jeremy Corley; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2011), 431– 50.  Wis 14:6, however, juxtaposes the fate of the “arrogant giants” with the “hope of the world” which “took refuge on a raft,” suggesting an interpretation more along the lines of those in Ben Sira et al. (cf. Sir 16:7; Bar 3:26 – 28; 3 Macc 2:4; 1 En. 6 – 9; 4Q370 I 6).  Cf. Angela Y. Kim, “Cain and Abel in the Light of Envy: A Study in the History of the Interpretation of Envy in Genesis 4.1– 16,” JSP 12 (2001): 65 – 84, here 70 – 71.  Cf. Seneca, Lucil. 65.10.  Concerning the knowledge of Plato’s Timaeus by Hellenistic Jewish authors, see Martin Rösel, Übersetzung als Vollendung der Tora: Studien zur Genesis-Septuaginta (BZAW 223; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1994); and David T. Runia, Philo of Alexandria and the Timaeus of Plato (Philosophia Antiqua 44; Leiden: Brill, 1986).  So M.W. Dickie, “Envy,” ABD 2:528 – 32, here 530.

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While goodness is characterized by God, life, wisdom, and justice, evil is represented by the διάβολος, death, irrationality, and injustice.

4 “He was caught up in order that wickedness should not affect his understanding” (Wis 4:11a)—Evil in the World For the book of Wisdom, evil is a reality which is effective in the world created by God. As a supra-individual power, evil can also become dangerous for the righteous; it has the potential to infect a righteous person and hence to isolate the righteous from the surrounding community. The Wisdom of Solomon illustrates this by the example of Enoch (though he is not referred to by name), who is beloved by God and raptured from the midst of sinners, “that wickedness (τὰ κακία) should not affect his understanding or guile (δόλος) deceive his soul” (4:10 – 11; cf. Sir 44:16). Drawing upon Gen 5:22– 24 and the early Jewish Enoch tradition,²⁶ the just Enoch becomes a paradigm for God’s justice. Thus an early death in the case of the righteous (4:7) is not a sign of divine punishment,²⁷ but a means of admission into eternal communion with God, where the righteous will participate in the divine judgment of the godless (4:16; cf. 3:8). Also key to the preservation of the righteous in the face of the evil is the divine σοφία. Insofar as σοφία is indwelt by a spirit which “loves the good” (7:22), is not overcome by evil (7:30), and governs the universe “well” (χρηστῶς, 8:1), σοφία can act on behalf of God without any mediation.²⁸ Thus wisdom works against evil in the past and the present, and it is integrated into Yahwistic religion as a hypostasis of Yhwh—a kind of Jewish Isis.²⁹ Σοφία saves those who

 Cf. besides 1 Enoch: Sir 44:16; Jub. 4:23; Heb 11:5.  Cf. Job 8:14; 15:32; 22:16; 36:14. On the idea that the quality of life is more important than the length of life, see also Seneca, De brev. vit. I; Lucil. 78.28; 93.2; Plutarch, Mor. 111d; Cicero, Tusc. 1.45; 5.9; Philo, Abr. 271, 274.  On the transfer of divine functions to σοφία, see 8:1 versus 15:1 and 10:9, 15 versus 2:18, 15:8, 19:9.  Scholars have long believed that the portrayal of σοφία in the Wisdom of Solomon (and also in Sir 24) is literarily dependent upon the Isis traditions. This is evident primarily by comparing hymns to Isis. See Maria Totti, Ausgewählte Texte der Isis- und Sarapis-Religion (Subsidia Epigraphica 12; Hildesheim: Olms, 1985); Burton L. Mack, Logos und Sophia (SUNT 10; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1973), 63 – 107; and John S. Kloppenburg, “Isis and Sophia in the Book of Wisdom,” HTR 75 (1982): 57– 84.

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serve her—and thereby serve God—from all forms of hardship (πόνος, 10:9; 19:16). To illustrate wisdom’s salvific activity in the world, the author turns in the second part of the book to recount σοφία’s work among major figures of Israel’s pre-history and the exodus (10:1– 11:1). As in the case of Enoch in 4:10 – 11, these characters (Adam, Noah, Abraham, Lot, Jacob, Joseph, the Israelites, and Moses) are not mentioned by name. The motifs and the specific terminology associated with these figures, however, allow them to be identified easily by a reader who is familiar with the Jewish tradition and its sacred literature. Since these admonitions are simultaneously addressed to gentiles, a pagan reader likely would have associated these figures whom σοφία preserves with heroes of the pagan tradition, such as Deucalion, Heracles, or Bellerophon. Whether Jewish or pagan, a crucial function of σοφία is to save (σῴζω, 9:18) the righteous (δίκαιος) from evil.³⁰ That being said, however, the book avoids the title σώτειρα for wisdom, a term used in the pagan world for various goddesses, including Isis.³¹ In line with Jewish monotheism, only Yhwh is σωτήρ in the Wisdom of Solomon (16:7; cf. Sir 51:1). The πρωτόπλαστος “Adam” appears in 10:1 as a primeval exemplar of one whom σοφία delivered from evil, and thus also as a paradigm for a salvation of the righteous in every era.³² They, too, can be delivered from their transgressions (παράπτωμα), just as he was. Again going beyond Gen 2– 3, Wis 10:1 arguably reaches back to the tradition of Adam and Eve’s repentance after their expulsion from paradise, which is referenced in L.A.E. 4– 6, 32.³³ Repentance (μετάνοια) itself becomes a means of overcoming evil (cf. Wis 11:23; 12:10, 19). “Abraham” appears in 10:5 as another righteous person whom σοφία saved from evil. In a peculiar combination of Gen 11:1– 12:3 and Gen 22:1– 15, the Wisdom of Solomon portrays σοφία as effective in preserving the righteous in two ways. One the one hand, σοφία discovers the righteous among the people of a world united by πονηρία. Like a midrash, the book of Wisdom combines the narrative of the building of Babel and the construction of its tower (as presented in Gen 11:1– 9LXX) with Abraham’s call (Gen 12:1– 3). The early Jewish tradition found in Jub. 12:1– 14 about the election of Abraham for the worship of the one true God and the destruction of idols may also lie behind this formulation. On the other

 Cf. Wis 10:4; 14:4; 16:7; 18:5.  Cf. the first Isis hymn of Isidor (SEG 548; Totti, Ausgewählte Texte, nr. 21, line 26).  On the term πρωτόπλαστος cf. Wis 7:1; Sib. Or. 1, 285; Jub. (Gk.) 3:28; 4:2; Philo, QG 1.32.2; QE 2.46.8; T. Ab. 11:9 – 11; 13:2, 5; Gk. Apc. Ezra 2:10; Apoc. Sedr. 4:4; 3 Bar. 4:9; Apoc. Mos. 1:0.  Cf. Helmut Engel, Das Buch der Weisheit (NSKAT 16; Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1998), 168 – 69.

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hand, σοφία is presented as the foundation of Abraham’s fear of God and his blamelessness (cf. Gen 17:1), proven by his obedience to the commandment to sacrifice Isaac (cf. Gen 22:2). The example of Abraham teaches that the righteous individual can resist falling away from the true God by means of σοφία. Both the masses at Babel who thought wrongly about God and the paternal love Abraham had for his own child had the potential to seduce him to fall away. Thereby two extremes in which the righteous may encounter evil are revealed: as a collective, social force, characterized as πονηρία; and as individual emotion, here called “compassion” (σπλάγχνον). Insofar as the righteous person is characterized by his or her control of the passions, the book of Wisdom shares the ancient Egyptian and stoical ideal of the self-control—and more precisely the ἀταραξία—of the wise (cf. 4 Macc. 8:26). The chain of righteous figures saved from evil by σοφία continues with the example of “Lot” and the downfall of Sodom and Gomorrah (10:6 – 8; cf. Gen 19:23 – 25; Deut 29:22). As in both the Hebrew Bible and the Septuagint, both cities serve as ciphers for utterly godless (ἀσεβῆς) behavior. God’s justice becomes evident in the judgment upon Sodom and Gomorrah, while God’s loyalty to his followers is revealed through σοφία’s saving activity. Immediately after alluding to the mega-city Babel in 10:5, the author focuses on the cities Sodom and Gomorrah and the Pentapolis in 10:6.³⁴ This urban focus reflects his roots in the metropolis of Alexandria. This large city, characterized by countless cults, temples, and idols,³⁵ naturally poses a particular danger to faith in the one true God of Israel. Accordingly, in Wis 19:13 – 17, the author correlates Sodom with Egypt, specifically with Alexandria.³⁶ When the book then turns to portray “Jacob” as fleeing from the wrath (ὀργή) of his brother (10:10), it continues the association of anger with evil that began in the previous narrative on Cain (cf. 10:3: ὀργή // θυμός). As a remedy, σοφία teaches piety (εὐσέβεια, 10:12). Like σοφία itself, εὐσέβεια can do “everything,” and thus it can overcome evil as well (cf. 7:30; T. Job 27:5 – 7). Finally, it was σοφία that saved the just “Joseph” from sin (ἁμαρτία, 10:13). The report alludes to the story of the failed seduction by Potiphar’s wife (Gen 39:7– 10). In the book of Wisdom, adultery belongs to moral evil (cf. 3:16; 4:6; 14:24, 26), just as in the Testament of Joseph, which is dedicated to the theme

 Sodom, Gomorrah, Adma, Zebojim, Bel/Zoar (cf. Gen 14:2). The term “pentapolis” is familiar to Greek authors (cf. Herodotus, Hist., 1.144; Strabo, Geogr. 6.2.4; Aristides Milesius, fr. 23.2) for a compound of five cities.  On Alexandria see Tobias Georges, Felix Albrecht, and Reinhard Feldmeier, eds., Alexandria (Civitatum Orbis Mediterranei Studiae 1; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2013).  Cf. Josephus, Ant. 1.194 (= 1.9.1); Sir 16:8; 3 Macc 2:5; Jub. 16:5 – 6; T. Naph. 3.

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of σωφροσύνη in the sense of chastity.³⁷ But while the Testament of Joseph names the “God of the fathers” as the one who saves chaste God-fearers from the “wickedness (κακία) of the godless” (T. Jos. 6:7; 10:3), in Wis 10 it is σοφία that undertakes this divine task.

5 “For the worship of idols that may not be named is the beginning and cause and end of every evil” (Wis 14:27)—The Origin of Evil Wisdom 13:1– 16:14 offers fundamental reflections on true and false worship and therein concisely formulates the origin and nature of all evil: The lack of the knowledge of the one true God is both the beginning (ἀρχή) and the cause (αἰτία) of all evil. This ignorance expresses itself in the worship of idols and manifests itself in fundamental social offenses like theft, murder, fraud, corruption, infidelity, perjury, and adultery (14:22– 31; cf. Sib. Or. 3.584– 600). Xenophobia (μισοξενία) is added as a further example of wickedness in 19:13, more than likely on account of the contemporary experiences of Jews in Egypt. This section also reprises the essential connection between God and life, which is foundational for the book’s discussion about evil. God is distinguished by his own vitality and as the foundation of life. As in other passages, the book of Wisdom here shows itself to be an exegesis of Deutero-Isaiah and of other sapientially-shaped criticism in the prophetic books (e. g., Jer 10).³⁸ The Wisdom of Solomon incorporates Deutero-Isaiah’s mockery of idols and carries its arguments even further.³⁹ The book of Wisdom undertakes a fundamental defense of the Jewish belief in the one true God (12:13 – 14) over against the manifold idols present throughout the Hellenistic metropolis of Alexandria and in opposition to the flourishing Roman rulercult. The argumentation proceeds in three steps: (1) The worship of cosmic elements or meteorological phenomena as gods is indeed understandable in the light of their beauty, but unreasonable because it confuses creation and creator (13:1– 9). (2) Even more unreasonable is the veneration of the deceased or rulers whereby people are declared to be gods, thereby overlooking the difference between God and humanity (14:15 – 16). (3) The height of stupidity is the worship of  T. Jos. 0:1 (=superscription); 4:1; 10:2; Jos. Asen. 4:9, cf. 1 Tim 2:9, 15; Tit 2:2, 5.  Cf. Engel, Buch der Weisheit, 70 – 76; Sonja Ammann, Götter für die Toren: Die Verbindung von Götterpolemik und Weisheit im Alten Testament (BZAW 466; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2015), 192– 253.  Cf. Dan Bel; Ep Jer; Apoc. Ab.; Let. Aris. 135 – 139; Jub. 11:4– 7; Sib. Or. 3.547, 723.

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images as gods, particularly in images of animals as in contemporary Egypt. After all, humans can only form inanimate objects, not gods (15:17). Livingness, benevolence, truthfulness, patience, mercy, and universal sovereignty are the criteria of divinity and thus the antitheses of evil per se (15:1). Wisdom 14:12– 13 picks up on and expands the late deuteronomic prohibition against images found in Deut 4:15 – 16, and this passage supports its aniconic position historically, anthropologically, and hamartiologically. Historically speaking, idols are a human invention that “did not exist from the beginning, nor will they last forever” (14:13). From an anthropological and hamartiological perspective, idols are enemies of life because they lead one away from the true God of life who, in his livingness, is intangible (14:12). The same cannot be said of graven images. The question of whether the book of Wisdom does justice to the religious practice of its environment notwithstanding, this theology emphasizes the critical role of human rationality (νοῦς, 4:12). Alongside its dependence upon the Deuteronomistic tradition, the roots of this perspective in Sapientia Salomonis can be traced to the religious-philosophical tradition of Xenophanes of Colophon (ca. 570 – 470 B.C.E.) and Euhemerism, as well as to Stoicism.⁴⁰ But as in the Letter of Aristeas (131– 33, 140), Philo of Alexandria, or Paul, the book of Wisdom reflects the rational and ethical potential of faith in the one true God. Thus the monotheism of the book of Wisdom, enriched by the figure of the σοφία, is a power (δύναμις, 1:3b) against any form of intellectual and moral evil. This monotheistic viewpoint includes within it a judgment upon evil and thereby an answer to the question of theodicy. So the passage in 14:31 which reflects on the origin of evil closes with the view that the justice (δίκη) of God is realized in the punishment of sinners.⁴¹ Insofar as the book of Wisdom has God using creation to punish evildoers by way of natural disasters (16:24; cf. 5:27), the book represents the traditional Jewish theology of creation. According to this theology, God stands apart from the world as its sovereign creator, rules over it mercifully, and uses creation as a means of interacting with and acting on behalf of human beings.

 Cf. Plutarch, Superst. 6b (=Mor. 167D); Is. Os. 76 (=Mor. 382B–C). To the Jewish Euhemerism see Martin Hengel, Judentum und Hellenismus: Studien zu ihrer Begegnung unter besonderer Berücksichtigung Palästinas bis zur Mitte des 2. Jh.s v. Chr. (3d ed.; WUNT 10; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1988), 164, 484.  Cf. Wis 1:8; 11:20; 12:24.

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6 The Intellectual Context of the Discourse About Evil in the Book of Wisdom Pseudo-Solomon’s answer to the question of the origin and character of evil is simple. God—the one true God—is good. This is evident especially in the holy scriptures of Israel, particularly in the books of Exodus, Deuteronomy, and Isaiah, which the book of Wisdom repeatedly alludes to, cites, and interprets. God’s goodness finds its expression in God’s love for life and determination that creation—and humans in particular—shall be everlasting. The image of God given to humans at creation is found especially in the knowledge of God. This knowledge is gained through divine wisdom and experienced as an intense communion with God. Synonyms for such knowledge in the Wisdom of Solomon are “justice” and “immortality.” On the other hand, anything which hinders Godgiven eternal life or hinders communion with God—who is life itself—is evil. While evil is not willed by God, it is nevertheless efficacious. It originates from a lack of knowledge of God. Human beings are fundamentally able to recognize God, and, accordingly, they are capable of good moral action. Herein the book of Wisdom proves itself to be a faithful heir of Deut 30:15 – 19 and its basic definition of good and evil.⁴² The terms “good” and “life” find their contrastive counterparts in “evil” and “death” respectively.⁴³ Love of justice is love of God (Deut 30:16, Wis 1:1). Turning to other gods, and hence the failing to recognize the one true God, is the starting point of evil per se and the true source of death (Deut 30:17– 18; Wis 14:27). Here, for the first time within early Jewish literature, the book of Wisdom uses the term συνείδησις (17:11) in the narrow sense of a bad conscience,⁴⁴ something which plagues even wickedness (πονηρία). When a person consciously abuses their God-given freedom to do evil, this is a consequence of disregard for God as the creator of the world and Lord of history. For the book of Wisdom, the cause of evil is a lack of knowledge of God, the primeval sin par excellence. Thus Martin Luther’s characterization of the Wisdom of Solomon as a “rechte Auslegung des ersten Gebots” in his preface to the Ger-

 Cf. Patrick D. Miller, “Böse, das, II. Altes Testament,” RGG4 1:1704– 1805.  Deut 30:15, 19 – 20; Wis 1:12– 13; 2:23 – 24; 14:12; 15:1– 6; 16:13 – 14.  See also Job 27:6LXX (cf. 1 Cor 4:4); Eccl 10:20LXX; and T. Reub. 4:3; and more frequently (as τὸ συνειδός) in Philo (Det. 23; Deus 128; Fug. 159 et passim), thematically in T. Jud. 20:5; T. Gad 5:3; T. Ash. 1; on this see David Winston, The Wisdom of Solomon: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB 43; New York: Doubleday 1979), 307– 8; Max Pohlenz, Die Stoa. Geschichte einer geistigen Bewegung (2 vols.; 4th ed.; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1970, 1972), 1:317 and 2:184.

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man Bible (1545) is apt.⁴⁵ The true God is “the One who is” (ὁ ὤν, Exod 3:14LXX)— one who loves life and created all things that they might be (1:14). A misapprehension of this God results in a contempt for life which produces evil deeds. These deeds evoke God’s punishment in the form of malady, death, and separation from God, often presented as supra-individual in nature. The book of Wisdom underlines the justice of God by interpreting the suffering of the pious as a temporary trial by God, which concludes with their ascension to heaven, and by emphasizing the punishment of God that will eventually address all evil. In accordance with the biblical asymmetry of God’s mercy and wrath (for which the “mercy-formula” is exemplary),⁴⁶ the Wisdom of Solomon emphasizes that divine mercy (ἔλεος) always exceeds divine wrath (ὀργή; 9:1; 15:1). Therefore God’s punishment is ultimately aimed at producing knowledge (γνῶσις, 2:13; 7:17; 10:10; 14:22), conversion, and faith (11:16; 12:2). The book of Wisdom thus gives an eschatological solution to the problem of theodicy. Among the various typologies of the origins of evil, the Wisdom of Solomon predominantly follows the model that views human beings as being inherently disposed towards evil.⁴⁷ In contrast to Ben Sira, however, the book of Wisdom does not speak of fundamental inclinations (‫ ֵיֶצר‬, διαβούλιον) to evil.⁴⁸ The use of the “envy of the devil” (Wis 2:24) to explain the origin of death shows that the book of Wisdom is also aware of the idea of external, mythological derivation of evil. Such ideas dominated various early Jewish demonologies in 1 En. 6 – 11 and Jubilees, as well as apotropaic prayers and thematizations of Belial in various Qumran texts.⁴⁹ The book of Wisdom assigns σοφία a major role in protecting humans from evil. Σοφία appears in places not only as an instrument of God, but also as a force which acts independently. Σοφία is “advisor to the good” (8:9) and “saves from evil” (10:9). Wisdom thereby fulfils the function that many other sa-

 Martin Luther, Die gantze heilige Schrifft Deudsch Wittenberg 1545: Letzte zu Luthers Lebzeiten erschienene Ausgabe (ed. Hans Volz; München: Rogner & Bernhard, 1972), 2:1702.  Cf. Exod 34:6; Joel 2:13; Jon 4:2; Pss 86:15; 103:8; 145:8; Neh 9:17; Sir 2:11; CD-A II.4; 1QHa VIII, 24; 4Q511 52, 54– 55, 57– 59, 1 [col. III, 1]).  See the analysis of Miryam T. Brand, with various modifications for Ben Sira, Philo, 4 Ezra, 2 Baruch and diverse Qumran texts like 1QHa; 1QS V; X,9–XI,22; 4QBarNaf; 4Q393; 4Q504– 506; 11QPsa XXIV (Brand, Evil Within and Without: The Source of Sin and its Nature as Portrayed in Second Temple Literature [JAJSup 9; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013], 35 – 146).  T. Reub. 4:9; T. Jud. 11:1; 13:8; 18:3; T. Dan 4:2, 7; T. Gad 5:3, 7; 7:3; T. Ass. 1:8 – 9; T. Jos. 2:6; T. Ben 6:1, 4.  Cf. in 4Q444; 4Q510 – 511; 11QPsa XIX; ALD respectively in CD; 4QapocJer; 1QM; 4Q174; 4Q280; 4Q286 – 290; 1QS III–IV; Brand, Evil, 147– 274.

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piential books of early Judaism had assigned to Torah (νόμος).⁵⁰ The book of Wisdom also speaks of the νόμος, however, as having been revealed to Israel at Sinai as “an eternal light”⁵¹ and written in the Pentateuch according to God’s will. In Sapientia Salomonis, νόμος has a saving efficacy for all human beings (Wis 18:4).⁵² Conversely, in the book of Wisdom the term ἀνομία can stand for “sin,” “injustice,” or “evil” (5:7, 23), in the sense of a transgression of the Torah. Yet the book does not go so far as to identify the νόμος with the divine σοφία, as is the case in Ben Sira or Baruch (cf. Sir 24:23, Bar 4:1).⁵³ Nor does νόμος play a particularly important role in its theology, thematization of evil, or ethics. Where the book of Wisdom does talk about a particular concrete commandment (ἐντολή) of the νόμος, such as in the interpretation of Num 21:4– 9 (Wis 16:5 – 13), it characteristically turns to the commandment that Yhwh alone should be venerated as God and savior (16:6 – 7; cf. Exod 20:2– 6; Deut 5:6 – 10). For the book of Wisdom, prayer is an essential means to achieve wisdom and to participate in communion with God. This is shown by the example of the Solomon at prayer,⁵⁴ by the paraphrases of the prayers of the exodus generation,⁵⁵ and by the doxologies running through the third part of the book.⁵⁶ From a literary-historical perspective, Sapientia Salomonis shares the high estimation of prayer with early Jewish literature as a whole. With respect to reception history, the book of Wisdom provides biblical evidence for the thesis formulated by Eberhard Jüngel that “Prayer is faith’s decisive act of resistance (namely, against evil).”⁵⁷

7 Conclusions For the book of Wisdom, evil derives from a lack of insight into the true nature of God as the God who loves life and who, as the living God, cannot be worshipped

 Note especially the function of Torah in Ben Sira, the Hebrew version of which preceded the book of Wisdom by ca. 150 years.  Cf. Wis 5:6; respectively, Prov 6:23; Pss 19:9 (Heb. 18:9); 119:105 (Heb. 118:105).  Cf. Isa 42:6; 51:4.  Cf. Sir 1:26; 4Q185 1– 2 III; 4Q525 2 II + 3 3 – 4; and as precursor Pss 1; 19; 119.  Cf. Wis 7:7; 7:15 – 22a; 8:21– 9:17/18.  Wis 10:20 – 21 (cf. Exod 15); 11:4; 16:25, 28; 18:9, 20 – 25; 19:8 – 10 (11– 12, cf. Exod 15).  Wis 11:20 – 12:2; 12:15 – 18; 15:1– 3(4– 6); 16:13; 17:1a; 19:22.  Eberhard Jüngel, “Das Böse V. Dogmatisch,” RGG4 1:1707: “Entscheidender Widerstandsakt des Glaubens (sc. gegen das Böse) ist das Gebet.”

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through idols. The evil deeds and negative experiences associated with evil are thus derived from the irrationality (ἄνοια, 15:18; 19:3) of humans, who are endowed with free will. With such a conception of evil the book of Wisdom moves literarily and with respect to the history of religions in a three-fold frame of reference. The first and most important frame of reference is the Israelite-Jewish tradition. This tradition always sees evil in relation to God, and it is founded—at least predominantly—on the basic assumption that humans have the potential to know God and to decide freely between good and evil.⁵⁸ In this context, Deuteronomy is the essential text of reference for the book of Wisdom. In the shadow of Deuteronomy, Sapientia Salomonis describes the avoidance of evil as the imageless veneration of the one true creator and Lord of history. Conversely, the source of goodness is love for God and justice. A second frame of reference is Hellenistic Isis-theology. This theology (alongside the various Jewish conceptions of wisdom in Prov 8, Job 28, Sir 24, Bar 3 – 4 or 4Q525) influences the stylization of σοφία in the book of Wisdom as a mediator of essential knowledge of God and savior from all evil. Despite its convergence with the Egyptian goddess Isis (especially with regard to the foundation of law and justice to curb evil),⁵⁹ the Jewish σοφία is not a goddess, even where it acts like God or is sought by the pious as a lover. Instead, it is a quality associated with the one true God. The third frame of reference is Stoicism, together with its slightly younger contemporary, Philo. The book of Wisdom differs from Philo inter alia in its assessment of σοφία, particularly in connection with anthropology and eschatology. Like Stoicism, the Wisdom of Solomon is convinced of the fundamental goodness of creation and human free will. In concert with the Stoics, the book of Wisdom perceives human rationality as an important means of avoiding evil, though it concentrates this rationality on the knowledge of the one true God. The book of Wisdom equally aligns with Stoicism in its interpretation of the evil suffered of humans, especially the suffering of wise and virtuous people, as a temporary trial. In precisely the same vein as Seneca, Sapientia Salomonis stresses the exemplary character of the suffering of the virtuous and wise, who is mostly called the δίκαιος (‫ )ַצ ִדּיק‬according to the Jewish tradition. However, the book of Wisdom does diminish suffering to some extent, much like the Sto On the late Old Testament texts that postulate the fundamental sinfulness of human being (1 Kgs 8:46; Prov 20:9; Ps 143:2; Eccl 7:20; Job 4:17– 19; 15:14– 16; 25:4– 6), see Markus Witte, Vom Leiden zur Lehre: Der dritte Redegang (Hiob 21 – 27) und die Redaktionsgeschichte des Hiobbuches (BZAW 230; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1994), 106 – 13, 194– 205.  Cf. Kloppenburg, “Isis and Sophia,” 57– 84.

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ics, for whom suffering does not ultimately affect the inner life of the virtuous. A central difference between the Wisdom of Solomon and Stoicism is the book’s fundamental focus on the personality of and communion with the one true God of Solomon (though the Stoic Cleanthes prays to the “all-bountiful father Zeus” and confesses that Zeus can turn human evil into good).⁶⁰ But Seneca’s advice to pass from life voluntarily and thus escape from evil (De providentia, ch. 6) is completely foreign to the Wisdom of Solomon. On this issue the book of Wisdom is in accord with traditional Jewish theology when it teaches a high estimation of life as a gift from the one God, who alone is the master of life and death. In fact, the Jewish author of Sapientia Salomonis ends the book by praising God: “For everything, O Lord, you have exalted and glorified your people, and you have not neglected to help them at all times and in all places” (Wis 19:22, NRSV).

 Cf. Hymn to Zeus 32, 34, respectively 18 (see Johan C. Thom, Cleanthes’ Hymn to Zeus: Text, Translation, Commentary [STAC 33, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005], 99 – 107, 142– 56; Johan C. Thom, “Wisdom in the Wisdom of Solomon and Cleanthes’ Hymn to Zeus,” in Septuagint and Reception: Essays Prepared for the Association for the Study of the Septuagint in South Africa [ed. Johann Cook; VTSup 127; Leiden: Brill, 2009], 195 – 207).

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The Fall of Man (Gen 3) (Münster Bad Doberan, Germany, cross altar, Christus side, ca. 1368, photo: © Martin Heider, Bad Doberan, F 3113, Deutscher Kunstverlag Berlin / München)

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IV: Wisdom’s Echoes in the Hebrew Bible and Semitic Inscriptions

Konrad Schmid (University of Zurich)

The Ambivalence of Human Wisdom: Genesis 2 – 3 as a Sapiential Text 1 The Language and Thought of Wisdom in the Paradise Story Although scholars have sometimes treated the Paradise Story in Gen 2– 3 as a specimen of wisdom in the Hebrew Bible, most are quite cautious about the connection.¹ It has been accepted for some time that wisdom thinking can be found outside of the classic wisdom texts, such as Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes,² particularly in texts like the Joseph story and the so-called Succession Narrative.³ But is there any relationship between the Paradise Story and the wisdom literature of the Hebrew Bible? A survey of the secondary literature reveals a considerable number of contributions that address this question and answer in the affirmative: yes, Gen 2– 3 bear wisdom’s imprint. Noteworthy are the works of Dubarle, Alonso Schökel, Mendenhall, Whybray, Festorazzi, Wyatt, Blenkinsopp, Carr, Stratton, Jaroš, Mül This is a translation, revision, and expansion of my earlier essay “Die Unteilbarkeit der Weisheit: Überlegungen zur sogenannten Paradieserzählung Gen 2 f. und ihrer theologischen Tendenz,” ZAW 114 (2002): 21– 39.  Cf. Bernd Janowski, ed., Weisheit außerhalb der kanonischen Weisheitsschriften (VWGTh 10; Gütersloh: Gütersloher, 1996); see also the contributions in John Day, Robert P. Gordon, and H. G. M. Williamson, eds., Wisdom in Ancient Israel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); as well as Markus Saur, “Sapientia discursiva: Die alttestamentliche Weisheitsliteratur als theologischer Diskurs,” ZAW 123 (2011): 236 – 49; Markus Sauer, ed., Die theologische Bedeutung der alttestamentlichen Weisheitsliteratur (BThSt 125; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 2012); Markus Sauer, Einführung in die alttestamentliche Weisheitsliteratur (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2012).  For the Joseph story, cf. originally Gerhard von Rad, “Josephsgeschichte und ältere Chokma,” in Gesammelte Studien zum Alten Testament (TB 8; Munich: Kaiser, 1958): 272– 80; Gerhard von Rad, “Die Josephsgeschichte,” in Gottes Wirken in Israel: Vorträge zum Alten Testament (ed. Odil Hannes Steck; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1974), 22– 41; see the discussion of the history of scholarship in Carolin Paap, Die Josephsgeschichte Gen 37 – 50: Bestimmungen ihrer literarischen Gattung in der zweiten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts (EHS.T 23/534; Frankfurt: Lang, 1995). On wisdom thinking in the Succession Narrative, cf. R. Norman Whybray, The Succession Narrative: A Study of II Sam 9 – 20; I Kings 1 and 2 (SBT 2/9; London: SCM, 1968); see the discussion in Walter Dietrich and Thomas Naumann, Die Samuelbücher (EdF 287; Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1995), 216 – 20. DOI 10.1515/9783110428148-020

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ler, Görg, Albertz, Otto, Witte, Schmid, Mettinger, Forti, de Villiers, Berzosa Martínez, and Bauks.⁴  A.-M. Dubarle, Les sages d’Israël (LD 1; Paris: Cerf, 1946), 7– 24; Luis Alonso Schökel, “Motivos sapenciales y de alianza en Gn 2– 3,” Bib 43 (1962): 295 – 315; trans. as “Sapiential and Covenant Themes in Genesis 2– 3,” in Studies in Ancient Israelite Wisdom (ed. James L. Crenshaw; New York: KTAV, 1976), 468 – 80; George E. Mendenhall, “The Shady Side of Wisdom: The Date and Purpose of Genesis 3,” in A Light unto My Path: Old Testament Studies in Honor of Jacob M. Myers (ed. Howard N. Bream, Ralph D. Heim, and Carey A. Moore; Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1974), 319 – 34; R. Norman Whybray, The Intellectual Tradition in the Old Testament (BZAW 135; Berlin: de Gryuter, 1974), 105 – 6, 154; Franco Festorazzi, “Gen. 1– 3 e la sapienza d’Israele,” RivB 27 (1979): 41– 51; Nicolas Wyatt, “Interpreting the Creation and Fall Story in Genesis 2– 3,” ZAW 92 (1981): 10 – 21; Joseph Blenkinsopp, The Pentateuch: An Introduction to the First Five Books of the Bible (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 65 – 67; David M. Carr, “The Politics of Textual Subversion: A Diachronic Perspective on the Garden of Eden Story,” JBL 112 (1993): 577– 95 (Carr, however, identifies the conceptual approach of Gen 2– 3 as an “anti-wisdom story” [577]); Beverly J. Stratton, Out of Eden: Reading, Rhetoric, and Ideology in Genesis 2 – 3 (JSOTSup 208; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995): 223 – 50. Also see the note in R. B. Y. Scott, “The Study of the Wisdom Literature,” Int 24 (1970): 20 – 45, esp. 35; Karl Jaroš, “Die Motive der Heiligen Bäume und der Schlange in Gen 2– 3,” ZAW 92 (1980): 204– 15; Hans-Peter Müller, “Weisheitliche Deutungen der Sterblichkeit: Gen 3,19 und Pred 3,21; 12,7 im Licht antiker Parallelen,” in Mensch—Umwelt—Eigenwelt: Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Weisheit Israels (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1992), 69 – 100; see also Hans-Peter Müller, “Drei Deutungen des Todes: Genesis 3, der Mythos von Adapa und die Sage von Gilgamesch,” in Altes Testament und christlicher Glaube (ed. Bernd Janowski and Michael Welker; JBTh 6; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1991), 117– 34; Manfred Görg, “Weisheit als Provokation: Religionsgeschichtliche und theologische Aspekte der jahwistischen Sündenfallerzählung,” in Studien zur biblisch-ägyptischen Religionsgeschichte (SBAB 14; Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1992), 73 – 96; Manfred Görg, “Sündenfall,” NBL 13:742– 43; Rainer Albertz, “‘Ihr werdet sein wie Gott’: Gen 3,1– 7 auf dem Hintergrund des alttestamentlichen und sumerisch-babylonischen Menschenbildes,” WO 24 (1993): 89 – 111; Rainer Albertz, “‘Ihr werdet sein wie Gott’ (Gen 3,5),” in Was ist der Mensch …? Beiträge zur Anthropologie des Alten Testaments (ed. Frank Crüsemann, Christof Hardmeier, and Rainer Kessler; Gütersloh: Gütersloher, 1992), 11– 27; Eckart Otto, “Die Paradieserzählung Genesis 2– 3: Eine nachpriesterschriftliche Lehrerzählung in ihrem religionshistorischen Kontext,” in “Jedes Ding hat seine Zeit …”: Studien zur israelitischen und altorientalischen Weisheit (ed. Anja A. Diesel et al.; BZAW 241; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1996), 167– 92; Eckart Otto, “Woher weiß der Mensch um Gut und Böse? Philosophische Annäherungen der ägyptischen und biblischen Weisheit an ein Grundproblem der Ethik,” in Recht und Ethos im Alten Testament: Gestalt und Wirkung; Festschrift für Horst Seebass zum 65. Geburtstag (ed. Stefan Beyerle, Günter Mayer, and Hans Strauß; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1999), 207– 31. Klaus Koenen (“Gerechtigkeit und Gnade: Zu den Möglichkeiten weisheitlicher Lehrerzählungen,” in Recht—Macht—Gerechtigkeit [ed. Joachim Mehlhausen; Gütersloh: Gütersloher, 1998], 274– 303, esp. 302– 3 n. 117) only marginally mentions Otto’s evaluation of Gen 2– 3 as a “didactic narrative,” even though this bears great importance for his topic (“righteousness and favor”). See also Markus Witte, Die biblische Urgeschichte: Redaktions- und theologiegeschichtliche Beobachtungen (BZAW 265; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1998); Schmid, “Die Unteilbarkeit der Weisheit”; Tryggve N. D. Mettinger, The Eden Narrative: A

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These discussions point to such central themes as the knowledge of “good and evil” (‫ ַרע‬/‫)טוֹב‬, the “tree of life” known from the book of Proverbs,⁵ reflection on human mortality and the related dust metaphor,⁶ and motifs like the naming of the animals that recall ancient academic lists. Scholars often focus special attention on the terminology of the narrative, such as the “wise” (‫ )ָערוּם‬snake and the desire of the woman “to become wise” (‫)ְלַה ְשִּׂכיל‬, as well as a considerable number of other expressions that bear the imprint or influence of wisdom traditions.⁷ Added to these are the sixteen instances of paronomasia in Gen 2– 3.⁸ In my estimation, these data leave no doubt that wisdom language and wisdom thinking play an important role in the Paradise Story.

2 Genesis 2 – 3 and the Alleged Solomonic Wisdom Traditions In mainstream circles of exegesis, however, these kinds of observations regarding the Paradise Story appear only in footnotes in the scholarly literature well into the 1980s. Generally, interpreters were willing to acknowledge wisdom influences on the content that the Yahwist received and then edited, but no more than that.⁹ Literary and Religio-Historical Study of Genesis 2 – 3 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2007), 129 – 30; Tova Forti, “The Polarity of Wisdom and Fear of God in the Eden Narrative and in the Book of Proverbs,” BN 149 (2011): 45 – 57; Gerda de Villiers, “Sin, Suffering, Sagacity: Genesis 2– 3,” in Exile and Suffering: A Selection of Papers Read at the 50th Anniversary Meeting of the Old Testament Society of South Africa OTWSA/OTSSA: Pretoria August 2007 (ed. Bob Becking and Dirk Human; OtSt 50; Leiden: Brill, 2008), 3 – 17; Raul Berzosa Martínez “Relectura ‘sapiencial’ de los relatos de creación del Génesis,” Compostellanum 56 (2011): 139 – 64; Michaela Bauks, “Erkenntnis und Leben in Gen 2– 3—Zum Wandel eines ursprünglich weisheitlich geprägten Lebensbegriffs,” ZAW 127 (2015): 20 – 42; the discussion of Walter Bührer, Am Anfang …: Untersuchungen zur Textgenese und zur relative-chronologischen Einorndung von Gen 1 – 3 (FRLANT 256; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014), 290 – 305, esp. the bibliography in 290 n. 71 and his own conclusion in 303 – 4.  Prov 3:18; 11:30; 13:12; 15:4 (cf. Hermann Gunkel, Genesis [6th ed.; HKAT 1/1; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1964], 7).  Cf. Müller, “Weisheitliche Deutungen der Sterblichkeit,” 75 – 76.  The Hebrew term in Gen 3:1 alludes to the homonym ‫“ ערום‬naked” in Gen 2:25.  See Otto, “Paradieserzählung,” 175 n. 44.  Cf. Gerhard von Rad, Weisheit in Israel (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchner, 1970), 373 – 74 n. 9; cf. Werner H. Schmidt, Die Schöpfungsgeschichte der Priesterschrift: Zur Überlieferungsgeschichte von Gen 1,1 – 2,4a und 2,4b–3,24 (2d ed.; WMANT 17; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1967), 229 n. 1; Odil Hannes Steck Die Paradieserzählung: Eine Auslegung von Gen 2,4b–3,24 (BibS[N]

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This cautious approach was based in large part on the traditional early dating of the Yahwist to the Solomonic period. According to this view, the wisdom imprint of Gen 2– 3 could be brought into connection with the “Solomonic Enlightenment” as proposed by Gerhard von Rad. The supposed connection between the Paradise Story and the Solomonic Enlightenment could also be construed as confirming the Solomonic date of the Yahwist, to whom Gen 2 – 3 was usually assigned. Caution in accepting such a connection is fully justified. The portrayal of wisdom in Gen 2 – 3 is extraordinarily complex, and takes place at a very advanced stage of the biblical discussion about the nature of wisdom. In my view, the conception of wisdom in the Paradise Story was inconceivable for the Solomonic era.¹⁰ I give an example here to illustrate this complexity: The book of Kings depicts Solomon as the classic example of a wise king. God appears to Solomon in 1 Kgs 3 and promises to grant him one request. Solomon asks for a “listening heart that can distinguish between good and evil” (v. 9). God praises Solomon expressly for this request, fulfills it for him by giving him a “wise and understanding heart” (‫ֵלב ָחָכם ְו ָנבוֹן‬, v. 12), and then, on top of that, God gives to Solomon riches and fame. In this text, the ability to distinguish between good and evil is the epitome of wisdom. According to the Paradise Story in Gen 2– 3, however, humans remain deprived of this very ability; the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is off limits for them. As a result of the nature of the traditions presented in 1 Kgs 3 and represented by Prov 10 – 22, it appears that Gen 2– 3 does not belong to the older wisdom 60; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1970), 64 and n. 115; Werner H. Schmidt, “Gen 12,1– 3 und die Urgeschichte des Jahwisten,” in Probleme biblischer Theologie (ed. Hans Walter Wolff; Munich: Kaiser, 1971), 525 – 54, esp. 552 and n. 72 (for bibliography). An even more cautious evaluation appears in Horst Dietrich Preuß, Einführung in die alttestamentliche Weisheitsliteratur (UB 383; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1987), 161.  A date in the Solomonic era is accepted still by Manfred Görg (“Die ‘Sünde’ Salomos: Zeitkritische Aspekte der jahwistischen Sündenfallerzählung,” BN 16 [1981]: 42– 59) and Knut Holter, “The Serpent in Eden as a Symbol of Israel’s Political Enemies: A Yahwistic Criticism of the Solomonic Foreign Policy,” SJOT 4 (1990): 106 – 12. More recent scholarship instead still dates the text in pre-Priestly time but places the text not too far from the time of Gen 1 (cf. Bührer, Am Anfang …, 377– 81; Walter Bü hrer, “The Relative Dating of the Eden Narrative Gen *2– 3,” VT 65 [2015]: 365 – 76), or even later; see Otto, “Paradieserzählung”; Joseph Blenkinsopp, “A PostExilic Lay Source in Genesis 1– 11,” in Abschied vom Jahwisten: Die Komposition des Hexateuch in der jüngsten Diskussion (ed. Jan Christian Gertz, Konrad Schmid, and Markus Witte; BZAW 315; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2002), 49 – 61; Mettinger, Eden Narrative, 134– 35, and the critical response by Erhard Blum, “Von Gottesunmittelbarkeit zu Gottähnlichkeit: Überlegungen zur theologischen Anthropologie der Paradieserzählung,” in Textgestalt und Komposition: Exegetische Beiträge zu Tora und Vordere Propheten (FAT 69; Tübingen, Mohr Siebeck, 2010), 1– 19, esp. 6 – 7.

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traditions. The text can no longer be placed in the “Solomonic Enlightenment,” which, in any case, scholars have now abandoned. A new departure in Pentateuchal scholarship is needed to investigate the wisdom thematic in the Paradise Story without this prejudiced view, and this is what this essay is pursuing.¹¹ Furthermore, more recent studies have begun to solidify the view that the Paradise Story is a wisdom text. Even though the story is naturally influenced by other traditions, it especially bears the imprint of the wisdom tradition. Yet this statement alone does not say enough. What is the position of Gen 2– 3 within the wisdom of the Hebrew Bible?¹² Which point of view does this text present?¹³ As will become clear from what follows, the Paradise Story argues for the fundamental ambivalence of wisdom. Genesis 2– 3 narrates how the human species became “adult,” that is, “knowledgeable,” at the beginning of time, and it explains at the same time why their achievement of knowledge and wisdom produced a fundamental and inevitable distance from God.

 Cf. Thomas Römer, “Zwischen Urkunden, Fragmenten und Ergänzungen: Zum Stand der Pentateuchforschung,” ZAW 125 (2013): 2– 24; Thomas Römer, “Hauptprobleme der gegenwärtigen Pentateuchforschung,” TZ 60 (2004): 289 – 307; Thomas Römer, “La formation du Pentateuque: histoire de la recherche,” in Introduction à l’Ancien Testament (ed. Thomas Römer, JeanDaniel Macchi, and Christophe Nihan; MdB 49; Geneva: Labor et Fides, 2004), 67– 84; Thomas B. Dozeman, Konrad Schmid, and Baruch J. Schwartz, eds., The Pentateuch: International Perspectives on Current Research (FAT 78, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011); Konrad Schmid, Genesis and the Moses Story: Israel’s Dual Origins in the Hebrew Bible (Siphrut 3; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2010), 7– 16, 334– 47; Georg Fischer, “Zur Lage der Pentateuchforschung,” ZAW 115 (2003): 608 – 16.  On the extra-biblical comparisons see Arie van der Kooij, “The Story of Paradise in the Light of Mesopotamian Culture and Literature,” in Genesis, Isaiah and Psalms: A Festschrift to Honour John Emerton for his Eightieth Birthday (ed. Katherine J. Dell, Graham I. Davies, and Yee Von Koh; VTSup 135; Leiden: Brill, 2010), 3 – 22. On the post-biblical reception in Wisdom of Solomon and 4QInstruction see Matthew Goff, “Adam, the Angels and Eternal Life: Genesis 1– 3 in the Wisdom of Solomon and 4QInstruction,” in Studies in the Book of Wisdom (ed. Géza G. Xeravits and József Zsengellér; JSJSup 142; Leiden: Brill, 2010), 1– 21.  The narrative extends from Gen 2:4b–3:24 and is a literary unity except for the so-called “Paradise geography” (2:10 – 15). Cf. Bührer, Am Anfang …, 261; for a different point of view, cf. Blum, “Von Gottesunmittelbarkeit zu Gottähnlichkeit,” 10. This does not, however, exclude the possibility of growth in the previous oral tradition. See the anaylsis in Steck, Die Paradieserzählung. A strong redaction-historical differentiation appears in Christoph Levin, “Genesis 2– 3: A Case of Inner-Biblical Interpretation,” in Re-Reading the Scriptures (FAT 87; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 51– 64. Cf. the discussion of more recent composition-critical oriented approaches in Blum, “Von Gottesunmittelbarkeit zu Gottähnlichkeit,” 2– 6, as well as the synopsis (11).

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3 The Reception History of Gen 2 – 3 and its Domination over the Text’s Interpretation Scholars have noted since the early days of historical-critical interpretation that, after Gen 1, a second creation narrative follows in Gen 2– 3. The second is not connected organically to the first, but is only linked to it.¹⁴ This second creation narrative also belongs to the most well known and most interpreted texts in the Bible, giving rise to a variegated reception history that has often obscured the message of the biblical narrative itself.¹⁵ The elements from Gen 2 – 3 that appear prominently in reception historical memory are: (1) Paradise, (2) Adam, (3) Eve, (4) the apple, and (5) the Fall into sin. If one looks closely at the biblical text itself, however, the only element of that list that is present in Gen 2 – 3 is (3) Eve. I turn now to each of the other elements mentioned above, moving point by point: (1) The term παράδεισος (“paradise”) originates from the Septuagint to render “the Garden of Eden” and is a Persian loanword. This term does not appear in the Hebrew text of Gen 2– 3. (2) Adam is first named in Gen 4:1, while Gen 2– 3 speaks only of “the human” (‫)ָהָא ָדם‬. In Hebrew the difference between the two is clarified through the use of the definite article before the noun ‫ָא ָדם‬. It is not a proper name because proper names do not need the article to become a determined noun. (4) The identification of the forbidden fruit is not disclosed in the Paradise Story. Although it is often thought to be an apple, this identification results from the Latin reception of Gen 2– 3, which provides a wordplay in the homonyms malum (“evil”—“apple”). (5) Finally, the terms “sin” and “fall” do not appear anywhere in Gen 2– 3. Biblically speaking, Gen 2– 3 provides the conditions for the possibility of sin, while the actual “Fall” first takes place in Gen 4, the narrative of Cain’s fratricide of Abel. Genesis 4:7 is the first appearance of “sin” (‫ )ַח ָּטאת‬in the narrative of the Hebrew Bible.

4 The Narrative Flow of the Paradise Story The Paradise Story is not a collection of dogmatic statements, but rather a narrative arrangement whose meaning can only be unlocked within the narrative se-

 Cf. Bührer, “The Relative Dating of the Eden Narrative Gen *2– 3.”  Konrad Schmid and Christoph Riedweg, eds., Beyond Eden: The Biblical Story of Paradise and Its Reception History (FAT 2/34; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008).

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quence. It is thus appropriate for the discussion to follow the narrative flow itself.¹⁶ This narrative begins with God’s planting of the Garden of Eden and the creation of the human to be its gardener. The note that the human will be formed from ‫“( ָעָפר‬dust,” Gen 2:7) indicates that the human is created as mortal from the outset.¹⁷ This observation is worth emphasizing because interpreters have often argued that the human was originally immortal, and subsequently lost immortality as a result of the Fall. Another problem with that interpretation is the threat of punishment in 2:17, which takes the conventional form of a legal rule imposing the death penalty (and not the punishment of mortality).¹⁸ Furthermore, in 3:19b mortality does not appear as a punishment against the humans; it is instead presupposed by the punishment.¹⁹ Two trees stand in the middle of this garden, the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The purpose of the Tree of Life is revealed in 3:24: whoever eats from it will live forever. But what is the meaning of “Knowledge of Good and Evil”? The sexual interpretation for this text that is mentioned occasionally—fed by the “knowledge” terminology and the scene of the fig leaves and its thematic focus of nakedness and shame—should be rejected as strongly as possible. This text does not employ the terminology for “knowledge” (‫ ) ַדַּעת‬alone, which can indeed carry sexual connotations. The text is instead concerned with “the knowledge of good and evil” (‫ַה ַדַּעת טוֹב ְו ַרע‬, 2:9). The sexual aspect plays a minimal role, as the question of human reproduction is not settled before the Fall. However, the further development of the narrative shows clearly that human reproduction can take place as a consequence of the “knowledge of good and evil”—to the degree that it is “good” to have offspring. However, this does not indicate that reproduction is a direct result of the acquisition of this knowledge. The divine declaration in 3:22 that the human has now become like God in that it knows good and evil (‫)ֵהן ָהָא ָדם ָה ָיה ְכַּאַחד ִמ ֶמּנּוּ ְל ַדַעת טוֹב ָו ָרע‬ does not refer to human sexuality in any way.

 Hermann Spieckermann, “Ambivalenzen: Ermöglichte und verwirklichte Schöpfung in Genesis 2 f.,” in Verbindungslinien: Festschrift für Werner H. Schmidt zum 65. Geburtstag (ed. Axel Graupner; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 2000), 363 – 76; Blum, “Von Gottesunmittelbarkeit zu Gottähnlichkeit.”  Hans-Peter Müller, “Drei Deutungen des Todes: Genesis 3, der Mythos von Adapa und die Sage von Gilgamesch,” JBT 6 (1991): 117– 34.  The specific formulation in 2:17, ‫ מוֹת ָתּמוּת‬instead of ‫מוֹת יוַּמת‬, arises on account of the context: God is the one depicted as carrying out the capital punishment (cf. Gen 20:6 – 7; Num 26:65; Judg 3:22; Ezek 3:18). Contrast Blum, “Von Gottesunmittelbarkeit zu Gottähnlichkeit,” 15 – 16.  Cf. Bührer, Am Anfang …, 221 n. 256.

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Further evidence for the knowledge of good and evil in the Hebrew Bible speaks against a sexual interpretation (especially noteworthy are Deut 1:39 – 40 and 2 Sam 19:36; see also 1QSa 1:10 – 11;). These texts show instead that “knowledge of good and evil” indicates a differentiation between life-supporting and life-damaging knowledge, which, as Deut 1:39 – 40 and 1QSa 1:10 – 11 demonstrate, is especially characteristic of adults. Children do not yet possess this knowledge, and the aged do not retain it (cf. 2 Sam 19:36). It should be emphasized that the knowledge of good and evil does not concern something—of whatever sort—that is avoidable for humans. That knowledge is instead a human trait that every adult human relies on each and every day. One can affirm the first sentence from von Rad’s Weisheit in Israel: “No one would be able to live even for a single day without incurring considerable harm if he were not guided by a broad experiential knowledge.”²⁰ This is the nature of the knowledge of good and evil.²¹ Returning to the Genesis narrative, God then provides instruction with regard to the trees of the garden.²² The human may eat from all of the trees except for the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil: “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you must not eat, for in the day that you eat of it, you will surely die.” This means that, until this moment, enjoyment of the Tree of Life was still permitted. By eating of the Tree of Life, the human could attain immortality. This demonstrates that the Paradise Story does not treat the loss of an original immortality, but rather the missed opportunity to attain immortality.²³ Through the mediation of the snake and the woman who was created from the human, the human decides instead to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. The preceding conversation between the snake and the woman is therefore of great import for understanding the narrative as a whole. The woman answers the snake’s provocations as follows:

 Von Rad, Weisheit in Israel, 13 (my translation).  Cf. Bauks, “Erkenntnis,” 22.  Michaela Bauks, “Sacred Trees in the Garden of Eden and Their Ancient Near Eastern Precursors,” JAJ 3 (2012): 269 – 303; Michaela Bauks, “Der Garten in Eden und seine Baume: Ein Beitrag zur Botanik aus Sicht der biblischen Symbolsprache,” in Zur Kulturgeschichte der Botanik (ed. Michaela Bauks and Michael F. Meyer; AKAN-Einzelschriften 8; Tier: WVT, 2013), 37– 71. Bauks (“Erkenntnis,” 23) unconvincingly identifies the two trees in the middle of the garden.  James Barr, The Garden of Eden and the Hope of Immortality (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993); Mettinger, Eden Narrative, 99 – 122.

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From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat, but from the fruit of the tree²⁴ located in the middle of the garden, God said, “Do not eat from it and do not touch it, so that you do not die.” (3:2b–3, translation and emphasis mine)

The woman recounts God’s original prohibition (2:17) in a more restrictive form: that one should not touch the fruit was not a part of God’s command. The intensification of the prohibition indicates, in the first place, that the woman should be seen as being especially careful. She wanted in no way to transgress God’s prohibition.²⁵ The woman’s behavior seems even to foreshadow the latter mishnaic provision of “making a fence around the Torah” (Pirkei Avot 1:1). One may ask how the woman came to know about the prohibition (2:17), as she had not yet been created at that time. Apparently, the narrative is formulated in an elliptical way. It is tacitly assumed that the man and woman had talked about the prohibition, so that the woman knew about it. Second—and this is decisive—the woman no longer relates the prohibition to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, which was explicitly the case in 2:17. She instead relates the prohibition to the tree (in Hebrew ‫ ֵעץ‬is a collective plural and does not necessarily need to denote a single tree) in the middle of the garden —the Tree of Life. But according to 2:9, two trees, the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, are located there. Based on the fact that the woman relates God’s command to the Tree of Life, one can infer that the humans had not eaten from the permitted Tree of Life, nor would they eat from it in the future. Therefore, the possibility that existed in the beginning—that the human might attain immortality rather than the knowledge of good and evil—is proved to be only an apparent possibility. Immortal life in paradise was not, in fact, a true alternative to the so-called Fall. As a result of pure caution, the first human couple never ate from the Tree of Life. Had they never eaten from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the experiment of humanity would have ended with the death of the childlike first pair, who because of their child-likeness, would also have remained without progeny: children don’t procreate. The humans do, however, eat from the Tree of Knowledge and attain the ability to distinguish between “good and evil.” The transgression of the prohibition is not connected here with the concept of sin. The Hebrew term for sin (‫ )ַח ָּטאת‬appears first in the context of the fratricide of Abel in 4:7. The so-called Fall does not yet, biblically speaking, bring sin into the world. It instead provides the necessary condition of responsibility—namely, the ability to recognize good  The Hebrew word for “tree” (‫ )ֵעץ‬is a collective noun, and it can also mean “wood.”  Differently Walter L. Moberly, “Did the Serpent Get it Right?” JTS 39 (1988): 1– 27.

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and evil. The murder of Abel is therefore the first actual “Fall,” which also contains the appropriate terminology (4:7, ‫)ַל ֶפַּתח ַח ָּטאת ר ֵֹבץ‬. Also noteworthy in 3:1– 6 is the narrative presentation of the woman’s motivation for taking the fruit. In 3:6, the prospect presented by the snake in 3:5, namely, that the humans would become like God (‫) ֵּכאל ִֹהים‬, disappears without mention. The discourse mentions only that the woman desires to “become wise” (‫—)ַה ְשִּׂכיל‬a classic wisdom term. The hubristic interpretation of Gen 2– 3 has therefore little textual support: The woman does not eat from the Tree of Knowledge with the intent of elevating humanity above God; she does not desire to take God’s place. Rather, she desires to attain wisdom and knowledge.²⁶

5 Conclusion The Paradise Story revolves around an original withdrawal from, and then the successful acquisition of, practical knowledge that is necessary for human life. It is true that the narrative presents the acquisition of this knowledge as a result of transgressing a divine command. Nevertheless, the theological scope of the narrative does not emphasize God’s intent to deprive the human of the faculty of knowledge; rather, it emphasizes that such knowledge itself is experienced as ambivalent. For this reason, the author of Gen 2– 3 portrays knowledge as resulting in distance from God. At the end of the narrative there is no doubt that the human attained the knowledge of good and evil. This is stated in the divine speech of 3:22, which is formulated in the perfect tense: “See, the human has become like one of us in that he knows good and evil!” This declaration has repeatedly caused consternation among interpreters. Many earlier scholars understood the plural “like us” (3:22) as a reference to the angels, denying that this phrase refers to the divinity of the humans. Others, like Luther, interpreted the expression ironically: “Est sarcasmus et acerbissima irrisio” (it is bitter mockery and sarcasm).²⁷ Nevertheless, the text itself is clear: the human has acquired special knowledge, and through

 Cf. Thomas Krüger, “Sündenfall? Überlegungen zur theologischen Bedeutung der Paradiesgeschichte,” in Das menschliche Herz und die Weisung Gottes: Studien zur alttestamentlichen Anthropologie und Ethik (ATANT 96; Zurich: TVZ, 2009), 33 – 46; see also Carol Newsom, “Gen 2– 3 and 1 Enoch 6 – 16: Two Myths of Origins and Their Ethical Implications,” in Shaking Heaven and Earth: Essays in Honor of Walter Brueggemann and Charles B. Cousar (ed. Christine Roy Yoder et al.; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2005), 7– 22, here 11.  Martin Luther, Vorlesungen über 1. Mose von 1535 – 45 (ed. J. K. F. Knaake; WA 42; Weimar: H. Bohlau, 1911), 166, l. 13.

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this knowledge has become divine. It should be noted that Gen 2 – 3 does not speak of a delusional and hubristic human desire to become like God. Rather, through the knowledge of good and evil, the human has attained the state of having become like God. As such, the Paradise Story is a myth of adolescence that applies to the species of humanity as a whole. It reports how humanity developed into bearers of responsibility as a result of its attainment of knowledge—with all the connected ambivalence.²⁸ This attainment of practical knowledge carries within itself the consequence that the human must be cast out of Paradise so that humans can no longer eat from the Tree of Life. If humans were to do so, they would become completely like God—both knowledgeable and immortal. So the human is cut off from God’s presence and banished from Eden. The Paradise narrative, then, does not portray the loss of an unambiguously positive primordial condition that leads to a negative condition which endures into the present. The path is instead from one ambivalent situation to another.²⁹ The details of the life of the first humans in the Garden of Eden are omitted entirely by design. The only circumstantial clause appears in 2:25: “and they both were naked, the human and his wife, and they were not ashamed before each other.” This clause serves primarily as preparation for 3:7, where the humans recognize their nakedness after the so-called Fall. While the supralapsarian human was close to God, he did not possess the knowledge of good and evil. The human had neither eaten from the Tree of Life, nor discovered sexuality as a medium for reproduction (2:25). The infralapsarian human must now live at a distance from God, but humans are nonetheless able to procreate (4:1, 17, 25, etc.) and carry out cultural achievements such as agriculture, crafts, music, and art (4:17– 24). The point of the Paradise Story is to explain why there is an insoluble connection between humans who conduct their lives independently by continually distinguishing between good and evil and who are a substantial distance from God. There is no way back to the primordial condition in Paradise. For one, the acquired knowledge cannot simply be forgotten. Second, according to the depiction in Gen 2– 3, an angel stands guard with a flaming sword to keep Paradise

 Cf. esp. Blum, “Von Gottesunmittelbarkeit zu Gottähnlichkeit,” 15. See also Newsom, “Gen 2– 3 and 1 Enoch 6 – 16,” 18.  Cf. Spieckermann, “Ambivalenzen”; Friedhelm Hartenstein, “‘Und sie erkannten, dass sie nackt waren…’ (Gen 3,7): Beobachtungen zur Anthropologie der Paradieserzählung,” EvT 65 (2005): 277– 93, esp. 292– 93; Paul Kübel, Metamorphosen der Paradieserzählung (OBO 231; Fribourg: Academic Press; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007), 157– 62; Krüger, “Sündenfall?”

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locked forever. Within the framework of the Pentateuch, Gen 2 – 3 represents a completely non-eschatological position. Beginning only with texts from the prophetic corpus like Isa 11:6 – 9 or Isa 65 – 66 is a return to primordial circumstances offered as a possible ideal.

Hermann Spieckermann (University of Göttingen)

What is the Place of Wisdom and Torah in the Psalter? 1 The Problem Can one utter “wisdom” and “torah” in the same breath? What roles do these concepts play in the Psalter?¹ As R. B. Y. Scott noted in 1971, “The designation ‘Wisdom Psalms’ has been widely used, but no two scholars seem to agree as to which ones should be included in this category.”² This judgment, written almost half a century ago, applies equally well today. Scott attempted to bring clarity to the discussion by creating an array of criteria—both formal and thematic—that identified certain texts as sapiential literature, and other texts as shaped by wisdom, including parts of the Psalter.³ Among Scott’s formal criteria were several types of speech, such as the aphorism (‫)משל‬, numerical saying, riddle (‫)חידה‬, acrostic, and macarism (‫)אשרי‬. To these he added other characteristics which often entail clear value judgments, such as hortatory or pedagogical styles, and speech with a cognitive intention. Clues in this literature to pedagogical settings and to teacher-student relationships are evident everywhere.

 This essay is dedicated to my friend, the Weisheitslehrer, Choon Leong Seow. He is a bridgebuilder all the way from Asia, spanning North America, over to Europe. Biblical scholarship is indebted to his boundless curiosity and his vital and erudite stimuli for research on the reception history of the Bible. I owe him my sincere gratitude, both personally and professionally. Paul Michael Kurtz, Seow’s former student, masterfully translated this essay. Paul has, in his own right, become a bridge-builder between North America and Europe. I am deeply grateful to him. Scott C. Jones, my friend and the co-editor of this volume, spent a lot of time and energy improving my argument and thoroughly revising the text. I am very much indebted to him.  R. B. Y. Scott, The Way of Wisdom in the Old Testament (New York: Macmillan, 1971), 193.  On the following, see Scott, Way of Wisdom, 192– 201. Important contributions from earlier research include: Sigmund Mowinckel, “Psalms and Wisdom,” in Wisdom in Israel and in the Ancient Near East: Presented to Harold Henry Rowley by the Editorial Board of Vetus Testamentum in Celebration of his 65th Birthday, 24 March 1955 (ed. Martin Noth and D. Winton Thomas; VTSup 3; Leiden: Brill, 1955), 205 – 24; and Roland E. Murphy, “A Consideration of the Classification ‘Wisdom Psalms,’” in Congress Volume, Bonn 1962 (ed. G. W. Anderson et al.; VTSup 9; Leiden: Brill, 1962), 156 – 67; repr. in Studies in Ancient Israelite Wisdom (ed. James L. Crenshaw; New York: KTAV, 1976), 456 – 67. DOI 10.1515/9783110428148-021

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Scott’s thematic criteria do not differ sharply from his formal criteria. One of the clearest thematic elements is the opposition between the righteous and the wicked (or scoffers), who choose fundamentally different paths. Indeed, within the world of wisdom, the “path” (‫ )דרך‬is a crucial metaphor for life decisions, where the behavior that follows one’s choice yields consequences that correspond strikingly to one’s actions. This connection between human actions and their results is commonly called the “deed-consequence nexus” (Tun-ErgehenZusammenhang).⁴ A more appropriate portrayal of this phenomenon envisions the world as governed by a system of justice, or God as the primary actor in both reward and punishment. In any case, it is clear that one must account for a marked correspondence between divine and human activity. The knowledge gained from this awareness makes persistent demands on human conduct.⁵ Such is the extent of Scott’s most persuasive criteria for determining “wisdom,” presented all too briefly here.⁶ Among the thematic characteristics, Scott identified three other criteria that still require evaluation. The criterion “affirmation of and exhortation to personal trust in Yahweh” is certainly not foreign to wisdom, but it is not particularly characteristic of wisdom, either.⁷ One would

 On the history, problems, and dimensions of this conception, see Georg Freuling, “Wer eine Grube gräbt…”: Der Tun-Ergehen-Zusammenhang und sein Wandel in der alttestamentlichen Weisheitsliteratur (WMANT 102; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 2004).  Note this phenomenon in the Psalms: Pss 7:13 – 17; 9:16 – 17; 10:2; 28:4; 35:8; 57:7; 140:10; 141:10.  The acrostic is not an art form peculiar to wisdom. It is true that acrostics in the Psalter often contain sapiential concepts (Pss 25, 34, 37, 111– 112, 119), but these acrostic psalms are indebted to other traditions as well. Rather, in these psalms the wisdom tradition uses the acrostic not to carve out its own independent, “sapiential” space within the Psalms but to illuminate the Psalter’s theology of prayer and its relationship to torah. In one case, however, the acrostic form does have a particular affinity with wisdom. While the acrostics of Ps 145 and Lam 1– 4 do not seem to be sapiential at all, Sir 51:13 – 29 represents an acrostic shaped by wisdom. This final poem in Sirach shares the defining trends of the postexilic psalms (e. g., biographical fiction, personified Wisdom, erotic expressions), even if these characteristics never found a place in the psalms transmitted by the Masoretes. On the different versions of Sir 51:13 – 29, cf. Pancratius C. Beentjes, The Book of Ben Sira in Hebrew (VTSup 68, Leiden: Brill, 1997), 93 – 94, 177– 78; Eugene Ulrich, The Biblical Qumran Scrolls: Transcriptions and Textual Variants (VTSup 134, Leiden: Brill, 2010), 719 – 20; James A. Sanders with James H. Charlesworth and H. W. L. Rietz, “Non-Masoretic Psalms,” in Pseudepigraphic and Non-Masoretic Psalms and Prayers (ed. James H. Charlesworth; PTSDSSP 4A; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1997), 187– 91; Josef Ziegler, ed., Sapientia Iesu Filii Sirach (Septuaginta: Vetus Testamentum Graecum auctoritate Academiae Scientiarum Gottingensis editum 12/2; 2nd ed.; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1980), 365 – 68; and Eva Jain, Psalmen oder Psalter? Materielle Rekonstruktion und inhaltliche Untersuchung der Psalmenhandschriften aus der Wüste Juda (STDJ 109; Leiden: Brill, 2014), 271– 75.  Scott, The Way of Wisdom, 198.

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be more justified in applying this criterion to the speech acts of prayer literature, which do not necessarily arise from a sapiential background. The other two criteria do merit special attention, however: “the study of the written Torah as the focus of pious meditation and as a source of delight” on the one hand, and “the search for understanding of problems of faith” on the other.⁸ Scott did not highlight these two criteria, nor did he connect them to one another. Most likely he refrained from doing so because the texts themselves offer no explicit connection between them. Nonetheless, it is striking that it is precisely in those psalms that treat torah and that run up against the fundamental problems of human existence that the language and mindset of wisdom are important. Doesn’t this mean, then, that the sapiential praise of torah stands in tension with the experiences and torments of life? Mustn’t torah be the decisive remedy to life’s insecurities and crises? What led wisdom to get involved in these two theological flashpoints—the hardship of human existence and the torah as God’s instruction for life? At this point a working hypothesis emerges: if one wishes to trace the presence of wisdom and torah in the Psalter and their connection to each other, both of these themes—the torah and its life-skill on the one hand, and the distressing questions of human existence on the other—must be moved to the center of the discussion.⁹ In this essay, I hope to transform this working hypothesis into a well-founded thesis through short readings of Pss 1, 25, 34, 37, 39, 40, 78, 90, and 119. This venture represents both a rejection of any attempt to identify a group of “wisdom psalms” or a group of “torah psalms” by using formal and thematic criteria, and a refusal to collapse these two types into a single group. The lack of consensus that Scott noted among scholars with regard to identifying wisdom psalms should come as no surprise, since both wisdom and torah can make themselves at home in diverse forms of prayer. Following Scott, one can say that wisdom has a penchant for certain kinds of texts and forms of speech. But neither wisdom nor torah limits itself to such forms in the Psalter. Any enthusiasm about the presence of wisdom and torah in the Psalter must be tempered by the fact that the noun ‫“( חכמה‬wisdom”) appears only six times in the Psalter (Pss 37:30, 51:8, 90:12, 104:24, 107:27, 111:10), precisely as often (or as little) as the root ‫“( חכם‬to be wise,” Pss 19:8, 49:11, 58:6, 105:22, 107:43, 119:98). The root is found only once in clear proximity to ‫( תורה‬Ps 19:8).¹⁰ Viewed as a  Ibid.  The relevant psalms are Pss 1, 19, 25, 34, 37, 39, 40, 49, 73, 78, 90, 94, 105, 106, 111, 112, 119, 127, 128. This is a very wide-ranging list. Most of these psalms are treated in the following discussion.  For evidence of ‫ תורה‬in the Psalter, see Pss 1:2; 19:8; 37:31; 40:9; 78:1, 5, 10; 89:31; 94:12; 105:45; 119.

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whole, the prayers of the (proto‐)Masoretic Psalter do not bear the marks of a comprehensive, self-conscious synthesis of wisdom and torah. My aim is to identify the theological accents in the Psalter that would not otherwise exist without wisdom and torah. On the one hand, wisdom probes the existential and collective experiences of adversity (which, in any case, define the majority of prayers in the Psalter) and thereby draws upon torah from time to time. On the other hand, torah can make use of wisdom’s potential for discernment. Neither wisdom nor torah is endemic to the world of the Psalms, yet both make their presence felt in that world by giving prayers new impulses and by facilitating a certain theological orientation.¹¹

2 The Frail Human and the Silent God in Prayer: Psalm 39 Wisdom’s search for a place in the realm of prayer centers first and foremost not on the affirmation of long-established theological concepts, but on the problems of human existence coram Deo. Among them, human mortality is a pressing issue. Through its very first speech act, Ps 39 raises the problem that nothing

 The usual restraints of scope and space preclude a comprehensive treatment of every dimension of this problem and all the pertinent literature. The following resources, however, merit special mention: Ferdien de Meyer, La dimension sapientiale du psautier à la lumière des Ps. LXII; XC; XCIV: Avec un aperçu historique de l’exégèse critique concernant la Sagesse psalmique (D.Th. diss., Leuven, 1979); Joseph Reindl, “Weisheitliche Bearbeitung von Psalmen: Ein Beitrag zum Verständnis der Sammlung des Psalters,” in Congress Volume, Vienna 1980 (ed. J. A. Emerton; VTSup 32; Leiden: Brill, 1981), 333 – 56; R. N. Whybray, “The Wisdom Psalms,” in Wisdom in Ancient Israel: Essays in Honour of J. A. Emerton (ed. John Day, Robert P. Gordon, and H. G. M. Williamson; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 152– 60. Whybray’s ultimate judgment on “wisdom psalms” is confirmed through his observation that “a too indiscriminate use of [the title] tends to weaken the distinctiveness of the notion of ‘wisdom’ in Old Testament studies, and also draws attention away from the question of the character of the Psalter considered as a whole” (160). The dispute between James L. Crenshaw and J. Kenneth Kuntz is also instructive. See James L. Crenshaw, “Wisdom Psalms?” CBR 8 (2000): 9 – 17; J. Kenneth Kuntz, “Reclaiming Biblical Wisdom Psalms: A Response to Crenshaw,” CBR 1 (2003): 145 – 54; and James L. Crenshaw, “Gold Dust or Nuggets? A Brief Response to J. Kenneth Kuntz,” CBR 1 (2003): 155 – 58. Especially important among more recent contributions are Matthew J. Goff, Discerning Wisdom: The Sapiential Literature of the Dead Sea Scrolls (VTSup 116, Leiden: Brill, 2007), 230 – 63; and Catherine Petrany, Pedagogy, Prayer and Praise: The Wisdom of the Psalms and Psalter (FAT 2/83; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015).

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can be brought before God in an offhand fashion.¹² The psalm begins not with the Invocatio to God, but with the speaker’s own self-reflection that he has resolved to be silent (v. 2). The basis for this resolution is surprising: the presence of the wicked. The suppliant’s fear is fueled by the notion that his speech could turn into sin (cf. Ps 141:4). The wicked hinder his prayer, and this is a situation that the suppliant cannot bear for long (vv. 3 – 4). When he does break his silence, the suppliant’s plea is not for the annihilation of the wicked (cf. Pss 9:18; 31:18; 37:20, 38; 68:3; 75:9 – 11; 104:35; 145:20), but for knowledge concerning the limited span of his days (vv. 5 – 7). This is not a lament about transience itself (cf. Pss 89:47– 49; 103:15 – 16), but a desire for insight into human transience; the human being, as the very image of God, is no longer able to find any comforting counterbalance to it. The negative connotation of “image” (‫ )צלם‬in the sense of transience (v. 7) can be understood only as a pointed critique of Gen 1:26 – 27. In the face of this blunt perception of transience, God is the only hope (v. 8). Yet hope in God is not concretized here, but instead God’s punishment, which is formulated starkly as “the blow of your hand” suffered in “chastisement because of sin” (vv. 11– 12). The suppliant regards this beating as the true cause of human transience. The dilemma between God and the suppliant is obvious: God is both the source of his hardship and the horizon of his hope. In light of this fact, petition to God becomes all the more difficult. Now it becomes clear that the suppliant’s initial resolution to silence is not only because of the wicked, but also as a reaction to the God who has until now kept silent. The suppliant connects his appeal to God, “do not be silent” (39:13), to his self-assessment as a stranger (‫ )גר‬before God and a resident alien (‫“ )תושב‬like my forefathers.” To ears trained in the literature of the Hebrew Bible, this may sound positive (cf. Gen 23:4; Lev 25:23, 35; Num 35:15; 1 Chr 29:15), but the impression proves deceptive. This self-assessment introduces the closing plea that God may finally look away so the suppliant can be happy once more, before his frail existence ends in nothingness (v. 14). The God who keeps a careful watch is no longer, as commonly in the Psalms, the devoted, rescuing God, but the one who is now unrecognizable as the protector of life. What justifies claiming sapiential influence in Ps 39? Above all, it is the sharp focus on human transience. Amid affliction from the wicked and from God, the suppliant asks at the outset not for rescue, but for cognition of his  On Ps 39, see Christine Forster, Begrenztes Leben als Herausforderung: Das Vergänglichkeitsmotiv in weisheitlichen Psalmen (Zurich: Pano, 2000), 9 – 59; and Hermann Spieckermann, Lebenskunst und Gotteslob in Israel: Anregungen aus Psalter und Weisheit für die Theologie (FAT 91; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014), 243 – 44.

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own transience, which includes a sharp critique of the idea of humanity as the image of God. Quite apart from the rescue from guilt, this plea to God levies the charge that this silent God turns existence into death through corporal punishment. The accusatory plea that God would finally look away probably derives from Job 7:17– 21, a passage which is itself directed against Ps 8:5 – 6. Aside from Job 7, both Job 9:24– 35 and 10:13 – 22 serve as the models for Ps 39:11– 14, as evinced by numerous commonalities, both linguistically and thematically.¹³ Psalm 39 articulates a pointed focus on human transience in the tension between plea and accusation, between the silence of the suppliant and the silence of God. It is a daring attempt to incorporate Job’s sharp accusation of God into an act of prayer. The psalm thereby breaks the more theologico silence that exists between God and Job in the book of Job without glossing over the gaping problem between God and humanity at the heart of that work.¹⁴

3 The Frail Human and the Angry God in Prayer: Psalm 90 Psalm 39 turns sapiential thought into prayer in an attempt to overcome the silence between God and the human who suffers at God’s hand. In Ps 90, however, wisdom undergirds the sharp focus on human transience by enabling trust in God (vv. 1– 4) on the one hand, and, on the other, through the plea that God may accomplish God’s work in us not through anger, but through love and kindness (vv. 13 – 17). The two pillars of trust and plea support the middle portion of

 As but one important instance, Ps 39:14, Job 9:27, and 10:20 employ the root ‫ בלג‬Hiphil intransitively in the sense of “to become cheerful.” On Job 7, 9, and 10, see Choon Leong Seow, Job 1 – 21: Interpretation and Commentary (Illuminations; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2013), 491– 500, 550 – 53, 578 – 84.  By contrast, Will Kynes (My Psalm Has Turned into Weeping: Job’s Dialogue with the Psalms [BZAW 437; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2012], 122 – 41), assumes that Ps 39 constituted a reference text for the dialogue of Job. Although the question of direction of dependence cannot be answered beyond doubt, the reasons expressed above suggest that it is more probable that Ps 39 is responding to Job. In any case, Ps 39 comes to terms with other ideas from post-exilic literature (e. g., image of God, foreigners, resident aliens). Psalms 49 and 73 belong in close proximity to Ps 39. Concerning these two texts, cf. the interpretations—with different emphases—of Pierre Casetti, Gibt es ein Leben vor dem Tod? Eine Auslegung von Psalm 49 (OBO 44; Freiburg, Switzerland: Universitätsverlag; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1982); Hubert Irsigler, Psalm 73—Monolog eines Weisen: Text, Programm, Struktur (Arbeiten zur Text und Sprache im Alten Testament 20; St. Ottilien: EOS, 1984); Forster, Begrenztes Leben als Herausforderung, 61– 136; and Petrany, Pedagogy, Prayer and Praise, 155 – 93.

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the psalm (vv. 5 – 12), which treats human transience as the manifestation of God’s wrath in reaction to human guilt. In the central portion of the psalm, God’s anger becomes the experience of God per se. God allows for guilt “in the light of his face” (vv. 7– 9) but not, as elsewhere, guilt-laden humanity, who often expects salvation in the presence of God (Pss 80:4, 8, 20; 85:8).¹⁵ Out of this life-threatening situation emerges reflection on human longevity. The bicolon in Ps 90:10ab about a seventy- or eighty-year lifespan¹⁶ was more than likely an independent saying originally; it named an upper limit in the form of a numerical proverb and offered characteristically-sapiential food for thought through the phrase ‫“( בגבורת‬by strength”). That is to say, does this phrase “by strength” evoke human vigor alone, or also—perhaps even especially—the mighty acts of God?¹⁷ Integrated into Ps 90, this originally independent saying takes on an entirely different theological tone. The commentary in Ps 90:10cd–11 turns the positive evaluation of a lengthy lifespan into its opposite. Life is driven by disaster and evil (‫עמל ואון‬, cf. Pss 10:7, 55:11, 56:8, 59:6, 66:18), proceeding beneath the power of God’s wrath,¹⁸ which stands in inverse reciprocal relationship to humanity’s reverent love for God.¹⁹ Yet the intent of Ps 90 is not to turn the human into one driven by guilt and wrath, but to make the human wise. The ominous-sounding cry, “Who knows (‫ )מי־יודע‬the power of your wrath?” (v. 11a) is followed by the plea in v. 12a, “So teach [us] to count our days so that we may yield a heart of wisdom” (‫)למנות ימינו כן הודע ונבא לבב חכמה‬. This plea for knowledge (‫ ידע‬Hiphil) is offered in light of the long lifespan of seventy or even eighty years named in v. 10, for such a length of time cannot cover over the frailty and disaster of human life. Rather than representing one objective among many, focusing on this reality stands at the very center of sapiential literature. Only in this way is the “heart of wisdom” the product and purpose of the knowledge that the suppliant re-

 On Ps 90, see Johannes Schnocks, Vergänglichkeit und Gottesherrschaft: Studien zu Psalm 90 und dem vierten Psalmenbuch (BBB 140; Berlin: Philo, 2002), 17– 177.  Heb. ‫“( בהם‬among them”) in v. 10a is a secondary addition referring to ‫“( כל־ימינו‬all our days”) in v. 9a.  God’s power in the Psalter is comprehensively treated by Judith Krawelitzki, Gottes Macht im Psalter (FAT II; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, forthcoming 2017).  Here, the use of ‫ עז‬for God’s power is unique in the Psalter, for the term otherwise only refers to God’s ability to save. This context therefore reverses the meaning intentionally.  This interpretation explains the terseness of the expression ‫“( וכיראתיך עברתך‬and your wrath corresponds to reverence before you”) in v. 11. See also Reinhard Feldmeier and Hermann Spieckermann, Der Gott der Lebendigen: Eine biblische Gotteslehre (TOBITH 1; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 389; trans. by Mark E. Biddle as The God of the Living: A Biblical Theology (rev. ed.; Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2013).

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quests.²⁰ The person is wise who unwaveringly bears the knowledge that life stands inevitably in the tensions between guilt and divine wrath, incalculable disaster and long life. Such tension is bearable only by trusting in God, who grants eternal dwelling and return for those who will once again become dust (vv. 1– 4). At the same time, these confident sages ask God to return repentantly to God’s ‫“( חסד‬goodness, love”), God’s ‫“( הדר‬brilliance, majesty”), and God’s ‫נעם‬ (“kindness”), which together constitute God’s true work (‫ )פעל‬and being. Only then can finite human action have lasting effect (‫ כון‬Polel). Those who petition with the heart of wisdom make no small demand of God (vv. 14– 17).²¹ Where the focus on one’s own transience is sharpened, God’s actions also come sharply into view. This is the thought process of those who are wise. God must preserve the theologically-essential asymmetry between time-bound wrath and eternal kindness, as befits God’s character.

4 The People’s Past and Future in Prayer: Psalm 78 The focus on human existence that is sharpened by wisdom in Pss 39 and 90 is coupled with the suppliant’s attempt to carry to God in prayer the knowledge gained through reflection on human transience, thereby making it easier to bear. In addition, there are the communal laments, which focus on the fates suffered by the Israelite and Judean exiles after the downfall of the Northern and Southern kingdoms. The laments train their focus ruthlessly both on God and on those who offer the lament. The longer the diaspora lasts, the more subsequent generations want to know how this catastrophe came about and what  For the meaning of “heart of wisdom,” cf. Hellmut Brunner, Das hörende Herz: Kleine Schriften zur Religions- und Geistesgeschichte Ägyptens (ed. Wolfgang Röllig; OBO 80; Freiburg, Switzerland: Universitätsverlag; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1988), 3 – 41 (this is a collection of three essays from 1954, 1956, and 1965); and Jutta Hausmann, Studien zum Menschenbild der älteren Weisheit (Spr 10 ff) (FAT 7; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1995), 178 – 86.  In the third part of Ps 90, v. 15 is likely an expansion or updating (Fortschreibung). First, both ‫“( יום‬day”) and ‫“( שנה‬year”) occur in the feminine plural, while the masculine plural was used earlier (vv. 4, 14). Second, the assertion stands in a certain tension with v. 14. While there the suppliants can rejoice “in all our days,” the days of rejoicing in v. 15 are a counterpart to the days of affliction (‫ ענה‬Piel). This reference to affliction and ‫“( רעה‬evil, disaster”) reformulates the suffering under divine wrath envisioned in the second part (vv. 5 – 12) with words not employed there. The petition for God’s remorse (‫ נחם‬Niphal) toward the suppliant (v. 13) may have led to association with the formulation of God regretting evil, which is also connected with God’s ‫“( חסד‬goodness, love;” cf. Joel 2:13 – 14; Jon 3:9 – 4:2).

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hope might remain for them. In a few prayers, such as Pss 78 and 106, the combination of torah with sapiential thought helps the community refine their understanding and hold on to hope. Both Pss 78 and 106 belong to the post-exilic period, as is true of almost all the extant communal laments. The collections of various traditions which have been incorporated into the Psalms—already designated by the title “torah,” as one of the extant, if also still developing, literary corpora—speak to this in plain language. Furthermore, it is attested manifestly from the post-exilic period that the historical exile from Israel and Judah became a paradigm for understanding the enduring problem of corporate guilt and divine wrath in a theological way.²² In light of this theologically paradigmatic function, the questions of literary history that Ps 78 presents are not a priority.²³ The function of wisdom and torah in Ps 78 are clear from the beginning (vv. 1– 8) and end (vv. 60 – 72) of the psalm. Guilt and infidelity to God stand at the center of Ps 78. As savior and guardian since the time of the exodus, God has experienced nothing but ingratitude from the people of God. So finally, after many mediate punishments, God metes out justice in full. In explaining these events, wisdom and torah serve different, if closely connected, functions. The voice that commands ‫“( עמי‬my people”) to obey in 78:1 cannot be the voice of God because the voice speaks about God. Yet the connection between the voice and God cannot be ignored, since the content of the speech is ‫“( תורתי‬my instruction”). Only God (Exod 16:4; Isa 51:7; Jer 6:19; 9:12;  On the communal lament in general, cf. Michael Emmendörffer, Der ferne Gott: Eine Untersuchung der alttestamentlichen Volksklagelieder vor dem Hintergrund der mesopotamischen Literatur (FAT 21; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998). The so-called historical psalms have received much attention in recent years, yielding further insights. For Pss 78 and 106 in their respective contexts, see Judith Gärtner, Die Geschichtspsalmen: Eine Studie zu den Psalmen 78, 105, 106, 135 und 136 als hermeneutische Schlüsseltexte im Psalter (FAT 84; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012), 36 – 290; Anja Klein, Geschichte und Gebet: Die Rezeption der biblischen Geschichte in den Psalmentexten des Alten Testaments (FAT 94; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014), 80 – 138, 187– 269; Sophie Ramond, Les leçons et les énigmes du passé: Une exégèse intra-biblique des psaumes historiques (BZAW 459; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2014), 17– 208; and Markus Witte, Von Ewigkeit zu Ewigkeit: Weisheit und Geschichte in den Psalmen (BThSt 146, Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 2014), 117– 49.  Only the assessment of Ps 78:9 – 11 as an updating (Fortschreibung)—insofar as the Ephraimites are charged so early on with violation of the covenant and unfaithfulness to torah—is important here. Indeed, this expansion exonerates the exodus generation, whom the base layer of Ps 78 identifies as the guilty party (vv. 12– 17). This literary-historical judgment, along with other conclusions, presupposes the analysis in Hermann Spieckermann, Heilsgegenwart: Eine Theologie der Psalmen (FRLANT 148; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1989), 133 – 50.

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16:11; 26:4; 31:33; 44:10; Ezek 22:26; 44:24; Hos 8:1; Ps 89:31) or personified wisdom (Prov 3:1, 4:2, 7:2) speaks like that. While Ps 78:1 evokes personified wisdom, Wisdom herself is not mentioned expressly here.²⁴ Wisdom is not supposed to come between God and God’s people as an independent entity. Rather, she alone can serve to make the formative period and Israel’s subsequent history clear to “my people”—that is, post-exilic Jews and countless future generations —so that all who hear may know: tua res agitur. To that end Wisdom, who remains unnamed here, makes use of the aphorism (‫ )משל‬and the riddle (‫;חידה‬ v. 2; cf. 49:5; Prov 1:6). In this context, it is clear that these two terms are not intended as genre markers; rather, they express the cognitive intent of speech in a shortened form. Aphorisms and riddles encode problems or events in order to provoke the effort of decipherment, interpretation, and understanding. What is offered for interpretation and understanding holds meaning for all who wish to perceive it. For this reason, vocabulary of cognition (i. e., hearing, perceiving, narrating) is well attested in the context of aphorisms and riddles in Ps 78. The objects of cognition are Yhwh’s ‫“( תהלות‬praises”), ‫“( עזוז‬power”), ‫“( נפלאות‬wondrous deeds”), ‫“( עדות‬witness”), and ‫“( תורה‬instruction,” vv. 4– 5). The first three concepts are linked closely to God’s saving acts for God’s people; the last two are connected to the authoritative writings that testify to those acts—that is, the nascent Pentateuch. “Instruction” (‫ )תורה‬is intentionally listed as the last term, since it encompasses the four previous concepts and incorporates the first mention of ‫ תורה‬in Ps 78:1.²⁵ ‫ תורה‬is two things at once: It is Yhwh’s instruction, to be heeded ever anew and conferred by those in authority to grant it (in this case, Wisdom speaking incognito). Torah is also codified instruction that identifies and assesses obedience and disobedience to God with utter clarity. The weighty voices of torah and (in its wake) Ps 78 intimate the scandalous notion that the foundational history of God’s people is a history of disobedience by those whom God delivered. If Israel’s history to this point has been a history of external threat, the theological problem lies precisely in the fact that it is a history of threat that emerges from within, through the community’s infidelity to their savior. Consequently, Israel’s history is one of God’s wrath and judgment against God’s own people—even to the point of an imminent rift between them. While the community’s infidelity is scandalous, it is even more astonishing that  Gärtner (Die Geschichtspsalmen, 52– 53) and Ramond (Les leçons et les énigmes du passé, 46 – 49) rightfully consider a series of connections to the history of tradition, but the voice is probably that of Wisdom herself, not a wisdom teacher (cf. Witte, Von Ewigkeit zu Ewigkeit, 125) or a speaker “in Mosaic garments” (Klein, Geschichte und Gebet, 111).  ‫ תורה‬serves the same function in Ps 19:8, where it is listed first, followed by ‫עדות‬.

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this history carries the pointed title, “praises of Yhwh” (‫תהלות יהוה‬, v. 4). Is this not a downright mockery of the God whose acts of salvation have evoked only ingratitude and an utter lack of praise? The cognitive aid offered by wisdom makes the audience aware of this tension. It in no way conceals the anti-salvation history that Yhwh and the people have with one another. It tracks that history to the bitter end, when God lets “his might” (‫ )עזו‬go into captivity, and gives “his glory” (‫ )תפארתו‬into the hand of the enemy (78:61). Through this allotment which God grants, the people become first and foremost God’s people (vv. 62 – 64). In the execution of judgment, God hands the divine self over to God’s people, as it were. Though restrained, the charge against God here is still audible. This charge brazenly stamps Ps 89,²⁶ and it is also evident in Ps 78:65, where God is portrayed as one who awakes after the judgment like a hero felled by wine and then, only once sober, realizes the devastating consequences of his drunkenness. Psalm 78 surveys the downfall of the Northern and Southern kingdoms together as God’s dooming action, though not the ultimate consequences that result from it. These consequences are, first of all, the condemnation of the former Northern kingdom, which is designated here by the names “Joseph” and “Ephraim,” and even earlier by the name “Shiloh” (vv. 60, 67),²⁷ and, secondly, the selection of Judah and Zion (v. 68) as well as David, the servant of God (v. 70). Here David is the shepherd of Judah and Israel (v. 71), both terms that now refer to post-exilic Jews who worship Yhwh at the sanctuary in Zion (vv. 68 – 69). David’s relationship to Judah and Israel is deliberately obscure. The preposition ‫ ב‬in v. 71, which precedes both “Judah” and “Israel,” is inexplicable as a complement to the verb ‫“( רעה‬to shepherd”); it makes sense, however, as the complement of the verb ‫“( בחר‬to choose”) in the previous verse (v. 70), where ‫ בחר‬refers to the choice of David as God’s servant. The collective understanding of David as Israel and Judah, therefore, resonates in v. 71, though not as pointedly as in Ps 89:50 – 52, where Yhwh’s downtrodden servants demand that  It is clear why Ps 89 did not find a place among the Psalms of Asaph (Pss 73 – 83), where its contribution to the topic of anti-salvation history would have been perfectly fitting: the severe accusation that God had violated God’s loyalty to David made it difficult for Ps 89 to be included in the authoritative collections. The claims between the Korahites and the Asaphites for patronage of the united collections of Pss 2– 87* had long since been resolved (with a slight advantage for the Korahites, cf. the superscriptions of Pss 84; 85; 87) before Pss 88 and 89 found their place among them. In the Asaph Psalms (Pss 73 – 83), Ps 78 occupies a central place, bound to the rest by an interpretive Tendenz that permeates the entire collection (cf. Klein, Geschichte und Gebet, 138 – 86).  In 78:59 – 60, Israel is named before Shiloh. In this context, “Israel” can only mean the Northern Kingdom. This interpretation is confirmed indirectly by v. 71.

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Yhwh accept them as the Davidic Messiah.²⁸ In contrast to the ending of Ps 89, Ps 78 closes with the hope that the new David may shepherd and lead the people of Judah and the inheritance of Israel ‫“( בתם לבבו ובתבונות כפיו‬with his whole heart and with the insight of his hands,” v. 72). This hope illumines the initial parable in 78:2 and is, in fact, the solution to all the poem’s riddles. The David expected in Ps 78 will exercise dominion over his people and his heirs (v. 71), a rule that is fully in line with the heart of personified Wisdom, who speaks in the poem incognito. David’s people and heirs have always been Yhwh’s inheritance, power, and glory (v. 61), but now Yhwh’s and David’s people and heirs receive the double-names “Judah and Israel” (v. 71). Under the pair of names “Joseph and Ephraim,” the former Northern kingdom finally is rejected (v. 67). The eagerly anticipated, wise rule of the new David will make Judah and Israel equally new—so new, in fact, that every relationship with the former Northern and Southern kingdoms will be obsolete. Although personified Wisdom remains unnamed, she is present throughout the psalm in the long-awaited figure of David. Wisdom knows best how to create a heart that has perfect integrity. The conception of blamelessness features alongside obedience to God (Gen 20:5 – 6; cf. 1 Kgs 9:4, Ps 101:2). In both respects, the long-awaited David forms a counter-image to the people’s disobedience and history of guilt. The ‫“( תבונה‬insight”) that guides David’s hands (78:72) commonly occurs together with the term ‫“( חכמה‬wisdom”), and it is at home in the immediate presence of God.²⁹ Here, however, the two terms do not form a word-pair, since Wisdom functions discreetly as a mediator between God and the people throughout the psalm. Wisdom teaches in Ps 78 by starkly exposing the people’s history of guilt and setting hopes on the wise rule of a David-to-come, whose role

 Cf. Timo Veijola, Verheissung in der Krise: Studien zur Literatur und Theologie der Exilszeit anhand des 89. Psalms (AASF B/220; Helsinki: Soumalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1982), 135– 50; Marko Marttila, Collective Reinterpretation in the Psalms: A Study of the Redaction History of the Psalter (FAT 2/13; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006).  God is the one who created the heavens and earth with power, insight, and wisdom (Jer 10:12; 51:15; Prov 3:19; cf. 2:2; 3:13). God imparts these gifts to those hungry for knowledge (Prov 2:6); alternatively, personified Wisdom gives the same (Prov 5:1, 8:1). Wickedly, the king of Tyre considers himself to be God (Ezek 28:2) and fills his treasuries with wisdom and insight (28:4). The aphorism in Prov 21:30 has just such a person in mind (“No wisdom, no insight, and no counsel exist before Yhwh”). By contrast, King Solomon is richly endowed with wisdom, insight, and breadth of heart (1 Kgs 5:9); he knows to employ similarly endowed personnel in the construction of the temple (1 Kgs 7:14). This standard extends into the priestly instructions for temple building (Exod 31:3, 35:31, 36:1). In addition, both wisdom and insight facilitate the building not only of a temple, but also of every house that is built and that has permanence (Prov 24:3), just as it is characteristic of God’s creation.

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as shepherd will enable a new relationship between God and the people of God supported by innocence and insight.

5 Wisdom and Torah Instructing in Prayer: Psalms 1, 25, 34, 37 As in Ps 78, where the rule of the David-to-come has a sapiential character, wisdom is present in other psalms. As a rule, psalms do not name wisdom explicitly. But where the view of human existence assumes a fundamental character and the torah carries decisive significance for life, one also encounters sapiential ideas and arguments. In such cases one must examine the particular relationship between wisdom and torah, their relative weight in the text, and their intended purpose. Just as wisdom does not operate in the foreground in the Psalms, neither does torah strive for dominance. Thus it is problematic to speak of “wisdom psalms” or “torah psalms.” Both wisdom and torah seek to aid suppliants as they consider and evaluate the basis, content, and goal of their relationship with God. This does not mean that wisdom and torah are thematically dominant in these psalms; rather, wisdom and torah serve alongside other conceptions to facilitate knowledge of and assurance in one’s relationship to God. Precisely in this sense, several psalms merit consideration.

5.1 Psalm 1 Psalm 1 occupies a key position as Introitus to the Psalter and as a connecting link to the Torah and Prophets in the construction of the Jewish Bible. This fact has already received sufficient scholarly treatment.³⁰ This essay focuses instead on two things: whether the psalm owes its prominent position to sapiential considerations, and which of its conceptions pertains especially to wisdom

 Important observations regarding Ps 1 and its function in the canon of the Hebrew Bible appear in the following sources, together with full bibliographies on the subject: Friedhelm Hartenstein and Bernd Janowski, Psalmen (BKAT 15/1; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 2012), 1– 54; Robert L. Cole, Psalms 1 – 2: Gateway to the Psalter (Hebrew Bible Monographs 37; Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2013); Susan Gillingham, A Journey of Two Psalms: The Reception of Psalms 1 and 2 in Jewish and Christian Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); and Scott C. Jones, “Psalm 1 and the Hermeneutics of Torah,” Bib 97 (2016): 537– 51. On the poetry and history of interpretation of Ps 1, see Choon Leong Seow, “An Exquisitely Poetic Introduction to the Psalter,” JBL 132 (2013): 275 – 93.

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thought. In light of the position of Ps 1 in the Psalter and allusions to it in other psalms in the collection, it is clear that Ps 1 had already achieved lasting significance as Introitus for the nascent First Davidic Psalter (Pss 3 – 41) during the post-exilic period. The psalm offers a characteristically sapiential meditation on the meaning of torah for prayer. It is restrained in presentation, reserved in tone, yet pointed— even sharp—in its central concern. Sapiential coloring is evident in the beatitude of praise (‫ )אשרי‬for the one who desires torah, a single individual in contrast to the many evildoers, sinners, and mockers who have chosen a different path in life.³¹ In v. 6, sapiential thought judges such life-choices sharply: the righteous and the wicked go in distinctly different directions. The subject of this verse, however, is not so much the choice of one path or another but the consequences of that choice. Yhwh is involved only with the way of the righteous, not with the way of the wicked. This formulation is wrought very carefully and connected to the individual’s delight in torah in v. 2. In response, v. 6 intimates that Yhwh, as both the origin and substance of torah, likewise delights in this individual. This individual does not remain alone; in v. 6 that solitary individual finds among the righteous (‫ )צדיקים‬others who are like-minded. It becomes clear here for the first time that delight in torah and one’s choice of direction in life also presupposes the will and decision of each individual. But the decisive factor is something else: that Yhwh knows (‫ )ידע‬the way of the righteous, not that the righteous know their own way or even Yhwh’s way. Undoubtedly, the righteous know these things, too—through delight in Yhwh’s torah. But it was Yhwh who kindled that delight in the first place. Yhwh’s knowledge of the righteous is based on the delight God takes in those who love torah. God pays no mind whatsoever to the way of the wicked. Their path fades away. This pathless path is the subject of v. 6b, not Yhwh. Not even an angry God knows the way of the wicked. The wise think and judge as sharply as that. Their goal is to turn one’s joy in torah into delight in prayer. The wise do this by helping the suppliant understand both the act of prayer and who is involved in the process. At the same time, they identify quite clearly those whom the suppliant avoids during prayer. The wise know that other prayers will follow in which the suppliant will be severely challenged by the wicked and by God (Ps 39). Psalm 1 is designed to help the suppliant evaluate such circumstances. Of course one can understand Ps 1 without recognizing these echoes of wisdom. That is by design; wisdom in the Psalter wants it to work that way. The wise

 The wise try to understand the desire for torah, and they recognize here an affinity to the love of those who have heard personified Wisdom’s call (Prov 8:12– 21, 30 – 31).

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want to suggest that a decision for prayer is identical to a decision for torah. Both are decisions for a life based on relationship with Yhwh. In the torah, God has taken the first step by inaugurating the proper way of life. Through prayer, humans can take a step back toward Yhwh. Yet no one knows the path better than Yhwh, who is the basis of the psalm’s beatitude of praise (‫ )אשרי‬for those who love torah.

5.2 Psalm 25 Other prayers aspire to effect such evaluation and discernment. It is clear that these have been included in the First Davidic Psalter both in light of Ps 1 and as a recollection of it. These are reflective texts, through which the poets of the Psalms shape and structure this collection. Nevertheless, each of these psalms can also be used as a prayer without any awareness of its context in the Psalter. The acrostic in Ps 25 is a “psalm of the way.”³² In the first part (vv. 1– 11), trust and plea are directed to ‫“( אלהי ישעי‬the God of my salvation”), who is said to teach the suppliant and make God’s ways known to him (vv. 4– 5). Various words relating to the metaphor of the “way” are scattered throughout the psalm, together with numerous gnomic verbs, and, as a whole, these testify to sapiential thinking. Instruction in “the way” (v. 8) is a sign of God’s ‫חסד ואמת‬ (“love and faithfulness,” v. 10) which encourage the suppliant to plead for the forgiveness of sin (‫סלח‬, v. 11). In the second section (vv. 12– 21), the initial question (v. 12a) asks who the person is, who is a ‫“( ירא יהוה‬Yhwh-fearer” or, better yet, “the one who loves Yhwh reverently”). The answer is short and precise: ‫“( יורנו בדרך יבחר‬The one whom he instructs on a way that he chooses,” v. 12b). The divine instruction in vv. 8 and 12 employs the same root (‫ ירה‬Hiphil) from which the noun “torah” (‫ )תורה‬is formed. This is not a coincidence, since proclamation of the way is connected to instruction. The connection between proclamation of the “torah” and the “way” that Ps 1 made implicitly, Ps 25 makes explicitly. Yhwh instructs in a way—God’s way (v. 9)—which is precisely the same way that the God-fearer chooses. As the turning point and crux of the entire psalm, one can understand v. 12 as an attempt to interpret Ps 1 through this very prayer. As opposed to Ps 1, how-

 On the interpretation of Pss 25 and 34, cf. Spieckermann, Lebenskunst und Gotteslob in Israel, 255 – 60.

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ever, Ps 25 is actually a prayer that praises Yhwh for showing this way. At the same time, it strengthens the confidence and hope of those who realize that, as wretches and sinners, they are always in need of a forgiving God and, as people under threat, they are always in need of a saving God. Like Ps 1, Ps 25 focuses primarily on the individual’s relationship to God. What applies to the individual, however, also applies to Israel, and to that end, v. 22 collectivizes all of Ps 25.

5.3 Psalm 34 Psalm 34 is an acrostic poem that, like Ps 25, lacks a ‫ו‬-line. This small formal observation already fuels suspicion that the two texts are related. Of course, Ps 34 is not an announcement of “the way” as is Ps 25. In addition, Ps 34 does not address torah, either expressis verbis or indirectly. Ps 34 clearly does not wish to repeat what Ps 25 has already presented. Although Ps 34 is divided into praise (vv. 2– 11) and teaching (vv. 12– 22), the subject that holds the text together are those who sing the praises of God. As in Ps 1, they are called the ‫“( צדיקים‬the righteous,” vv. 16, 20), and, as in Ps 25, they are also called the ‫“( ענוים‬the wretched,” vv. 3, 7). The reproduction of these characterizations in Ps 34 appears purposeful and with the same goal as in the previous psalms. As those who are God-fearers (v. 8), holy ones (v. 10), seekers of Yhwh (v. 11), ‫“( נשרי־לב‬shattered of heart”), and ‫“( דכאי־רוח‬crushed of spirit,” 34:19; cf. 51:19), they are the objects of Yhwh’s special attention. All may see themselves paradigmatically in the one who is lauded in v. 9b: ‫אשרי הגבר‬ ‫יחסה־בו‬. Here the paradigmatic individual is not the one who loves torah, but the one who seeks refuge in Yhwh. Again, all may recognize themselves as those spoken of here who are to be instructed (through a sage or incognito through Wisdom herself?) in the fear of Yhwh (v. 12). The first and only lesson begins with the question: “Who is the person who takes delight in (‫ )חפץ‬life, who loves the days (of his life), to experience good?” (v. 13). Ps 25:12 posed a similarly fundamental question concerning the fear of Yhwh and the “way,” and Ps 1:1– 2 lauded the one who delights (‫ )חפץ‬in the torah. These themes are not concealed in Ps 34 but adapted as catalysts for the praise of God: those who expect all good things in life from Yhwh are predestined for such praise, for Yhwh is good and wants to be near the pious who are in need (vv. 9 – 13, 19). Once again, this point pertains not only to the lone individual but to all who take refuge in God, as the collectivizing addition in v. 23 makes clear (cf. 25:22).

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5.4 Psalm 37 With its connection to Ps 1, Ps 34 may be a post-exilic attempt to provide a conclusion to the First Davidic Psalter, with Ps 1 and Ps 34 at each end of the collection. Psalm 37 takes up this project once again.³³ The psalm does not make any secret of its close proximity to Pss 25 and 34,³⁴ nor does it seek to obscure its origin in sapiential thought.³⁵ Like Ps 1, Ps 37 is not a prayer in sensu stricto. Not only does the psalm lack an Invocatio to Yhwh at the beginning, Yhwh is, in fact, never addressed directly. In terms of form and content, Psalm 37 is a sage’s warning and encouragement to those on the verge of losing heart. They go by many names throughout the psalm, but they are primarily called “the righteous.” The sage invites them to speak this text as prayer and thereby convert its insights into support in times of trial. To a large extent, however, Ps 37 consists of gnomic diction which is aimed at describing authoritatively how Yhwh treats the righteous and the wicked. By combining sapiential exhortation and prayer, Ps 37 aims to foster hope. This undoubtedly occurred in times of severe need. The construction of a new temple on Zion, as Ps 78:68 – 69 envisions, has now been realized, but any hope of a nation dwelling there again or of a shepherd David (78:70 – 72) is still far from being fulfilled. It is not out of the question that Ps 37 also has this dashed hope in view. With reference back to Ps 25:13 and 34:17, the land in Ps 37 becomes a spiritual good that is awarded not to the nation, but to the

 On the interpretation of Ps 37, cf. Witte, Von Ewigkeit zu Ewigkeit, 39 – 65; and Petrany, Pedagogy, Prayer and Praise, 137– 55. On 4QpPs 37 and 45 = 4QpPsa = 4Q171, see Maurya P. Horgan, “Psalm Pesher 1,” in Pesharim, Other Commentaries, and Related Documents (ed. James H. Charlesworth; PTSDSSP 6B; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck; Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2002), 6 – 23. The pesher sheds light on the expectations with which the Qumran community read this text. The text’s eschatological focus is grounded above all in the conclusion in vv. 34– 40.  Like Pss 25 and 34, Ps 37 is an acrostic—the last in the first Davidic Psalter. Unlike those psalms, however, it is a complete acrostic in expanded form. Each acrostic line is followed by bicolon that relates to the previous lines. Divergences from this design are minor in Ps 37, and thus require no discussion here. In addition, Pss 1– 2, Pss 25, 34, and 37 have a common conclusion, naming Yhwh as refuge (cf. Pss 2:11, 25:20, 34:23, 37:40). It seems that Pss 25:20 and 34:9 prompted the construction of a connecting link based on this theme. The latest instance of the theme in 37:30 clearly indicates that the theme of Yhwh as refuge is an integral part of the base text.  Psalm 37 modifies aphorisms from the book of Proverbs, as in v. 16 (cf. Prov 15:16, 16:8) and v. 23a (= Prov 20:24a); in addition, v. 23b bears affinity to Prov 16:9b. Psalm 37 makes use of other texts as well, especially those from the preceding psalms.

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individual.³⁶ This person is promised that he will possess and inhabit the land (vv. 3, 9, 22, 27, 29, 34; cf. v. 18) while the wicked and those like them will be eradicated (vv. 9, 28, 34, 38; cf. vv. 20, 22). The exhortations in vv. 3 – 5 also allude to the unfulfilled hope of the shepherd David, spoken of in Ps 78:70 – 72. In v. 3b, the command ‫“( שכן־ארץ‬inhabit the land!”) occurs together with the summons to do good, to shepherd (‫)רעה‬ faithfulness (‫)אמנה‬, to delight in Yhwh (‫ ענג‬Hithpael; cf. v. 11; Isa 55:2; 58:14; 66:11), and to roll one’s path (‫ )דרך‬to Yhwh (cf. Ps 22:9). These exhortations are framed by the double command to “trust Yhwh” in vv. 3a and 5b. “Land” (‫ )ארץ‬in this context is a metaphor for the place where people shepherd what is proper to God: loyalty as well as goodness. Here it is not David who shepherds the people; rather, through human action, every individual who takes these exhortations to heart shepherds the very manifestation of God’s own essence and will. This individual action is made possible by trusting the God who gifts the “land”—a place where those who trust God roll their way to God. “Land” and “path” also occur together in vv. 18 – 20. This passage is introduced by ‫“( יודע יהוה‬Yhwh knows”) and thereby immediately thrusts the quintessence of Ps 1:6 before any suppliant familiar with these texts: Yhwh knows the way of the righteous, whereas the way of the wicked fades away. Psalm 1:5 already anticipated the instability of the wicked in the final judgment. It is quite likely that Ps 37:18 – 20 represent a new interpretation of both these statements from Ps 1. The ‫“( תמימם‬blameless”) mentioned in v. 18 are identical to the ‫“( צדיקים‬righteous”) of v. 17. There is no David-to-come envisioned here who tends his people with a blameless heart (cf. Ps 78). Rather, life for the blameless is found in their “heirs” (‫זרע‬, v. 26) which, like the “land” (‫ )ארץ‬in this psalm, is a metaphor for their security with God. “Life” in Ps 37 is also a central element of the metaphor of the “way,” but Ps 37 envisions a future life beyond this life, for possessing and inhabiting the land are not limited to earthly existence. This large-scale metaphorical dimension is accessible only to the one who constantly meditates on wisdom and has internalized torah. This is the focus of the psalm’s thematic center (vv. 27– 33). More than any other, this passage leads to the conclusion of the psalm (vv. 34– 40). Both ‫“( חכמה‬wisdom”) and ‫“( תורה‬instruction”) deepen the psalm’s reference to Ps 1, and they are named here as gifts from God that allow life to succeed in the face of the lethal threat

 Naturally, the individual is also a part of a community. In Ps 37, however, this community is not called a “nation.” Rather, it is identified by several positive theological characteristics, such as “lowly” (‫ענוים‬, v. 11), “blameless” (‫תמימם‬, v. 18), “blessed” (‫מברכים‬, v. 22), and “righteous” (‫צדיקים‬, vv. 29, 39).

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posed by the wicked.³⁷ While in Ps 1:2 it is ‫ תורה‬that the fortunate one meditates on, in Ps 37:30 it is ‫ חכמה‬that thoughtfully (‫ )הגה‬proceeds from the mouth of the ‫“( צדיק‬righteous,” vv. 30, 32), who belongs to the ‫“( צדיקים‬righteous ones,” v. 29) and to the ‫“( חסידים‬faithful ones,” v. 28). Wisdom and instruction (vv. 30 – 31) are at the very center of one’s relationship with God, both on the part of God and the suppliant. The righteous person says and does (v. 30) what Yhwh loves (v. 28), that is, ‫“( משפט‬justice”). Guided by the justice that Yhwh holds dear, the righteous person knows how to distinguish between good and bad (v. 27), for ‫“( משפט‬justice”) is nothing other than ‫“( תורה‬instruction”) that is put into practice in various ways. According to sapiential insight, instruction can be found in the righteous precisely where God and humans encounter each other most intensely: in the heart (v. 31; cf. 90:12). Yet ‫“( משפט‬justice”) is more than the sum of instruction in ‫תורה‬. Since it is God’s justice, justice not only concerns the sphere of earthly existence, but applies equally ‫“( בהשפטו‬by his execution of justice”) to God in the eschaton. At that time, God will not allow even a single righteous person to fall from God’s hand (v. 33; cf. 1:5). God guards (‫ שמר‬Niphal, v. 28) those who guard (‫ שמר‬Qal, v. 34) the divine way. The conclusion of Ps 37 speaks of this hope as the ‫“( אחרית‬the end”) where God will finally separate the wicked from the righteous (vv. 34– 40). The wicked will be uprooted (‫ כרת‬Niphal, v. 38), even out of that very “land” (cf. vv. 9, 28 – 29, 34), while those once again named as “righteous” (vv. 39 – 40) will have ‫אחרית‬ (“an end,” v. 37). The “end” of the righteous in vv. 34– 40 is clearly soteriological. Those who trustingly roll their lives to Yhwh in this life (v. 5) and thereby strive to be an ‫“( איש שלום‬person of peace,” v. 37) are those for whom “the end” means salvation by Yhwh. The very things that justify the honorific ‫איש‬ ‫שלום‬, and that must be protected in this life as indispensable qualities, are the same qualities that insure that those who exhibit them will ever be in need of rescue ‫“( בעת צרה‬in the time of need,” v. 39). The vocabulary of salvation dominates both of the psalm’s final verses (vv. 39 – 40). Verse 39 presents the nominal soteriological formulations, which articulate the reliability of the God who saves.

 Wisdom and torah are also closely related in terms of content and vocabulary in Ps 19:8. The proximity between the two in Ps 19, however, is in no way comparable to Ps 37. In addition, the designation “torah psalm” for Ps 19:8 – 11 is an unhappy one. The concept of ‫ תורה‬in Ps 19:8 does indeed play a central role in this passage, but its purpose is to equate a whole series of concepts with Yhwh’s law. On the arrangement of this passage within the entire psalm, see Spieckermann, Heilsgegenwart, 60 – 72.

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These are followed by the verbal formulations in v. 40, which underscore the same idea in the iterative or durative mood.³⁸ In Ps 37, sapiential exhortation serves the larger purpose of supporting the proclamation of salvation throughout the prayer. Wisdom (‫ )חכמה‬and instruction (‫ )תורה‬come into the closest possible contact in order to express anew—through the metaphors of “land,” “heirs,” and “dwelling”—the salvation of the righteous in both this life and the next and to offer a basis and object of contemplation for this hope.³⁹

 The Masoretes point the two first verbal forms in v. 40—‫ ויעזרם‬and ‫—ויפלטם‬as narrative forms, as they often do elsewhere in the Psalter, thereby characterizing God’s saving activity in the past as the basis of hope for God’s activity in the present and future. In all likelihood, all the verbal forms in v. 40 were originally modal imperfects, articulating iterative or durative action. The phrase ‫“( ויפלטם מרשעים‬and he will save them from the wicked,” v. 40) is an addition aimed at bringing the refuge-formula at the end of the verse (‫ )ויושיעם כי־חסו בו‬into the same prominent position that it has in Ps 2:12. While Ps 2:12 presents this refuge-formula as a macarism for those who seek refuge in Yhwh (‫)אשרי כל־חוסי בו‬, this formulation at the end of the First Davidic Psalter (which Ps 37 once brought to a close) confirms that those whom Yhwh saves have found refuge in God.  The hope articulated in Ps 37 concerning the “end” of the righteous distinguishes itself clearly from the more restrained expressions about the “end” in Pss 49 and 73. Already in its introduction in vv. 2– 5, Ps 49 has a decidedly sapiential character. This character is also clearly evident in its themes: namely, what or who has the ability to redeem frail humans, whether they be rich or poor? According to v. 16, God redeems. This is surprising, since the larger context does not prepare for this verdict. Rather, this judgment represents a carefully determined decision for hope for salvation, though it is situated within a skeptical wisdom discourse concerning the frailty of all creatures (cf. Eccl 3:18 – 21). Psalm 49 does not feature the righteous and wicked, nor even ‫תורה‬, which, together with wisdom, could well have served as the solution to the riddle this psalm poses (v. 5). It is no coincidence that texts laden with problems like this one found their place at the end of psalm collections, where they could be tolerated more easily (cf. Ps 89). The hope beyond mortal existence portrayed in Ps 73 is not the same as that in Ps 49, though Ps 49 employs the same verb (‫לקח‬, “to take”) in its formulation (v. 16b; cf. 73:24b). The two conceptions the psalms articulate are incommensurable. Psalm 49 envisions that the redeemed person is the one who has been snatched from the netherworld; Ps 73, however, envisions the reception of the person either into something or by something called ‫“( כבוד‬divine glory”), which is already granted as a portion to humans by God during their earthly existence. In Ps 73:23 – 28, this idea is put into concrete terms through the images of nearness to God and guidance by God, and especially through the metaphor of a ‫“( חלק‬portion”) of God (v. 26; cf. Ps 16:5). Ps 73 does not bring torah or wisdom (at least explicitly) into the picture. But the portrayal of “the wicked” (‫רשעים‬, vv. 3, 12) as the antagonists of “those who are pure in heart” (‫לברי לבב‬, v. 1; cf. ‫ זכיתי לבבי‬in v. 13) is more than likely a view that is colored by sapiential thought. Psalm 73 provides a fitting programmatic introduction to the Asaphite collection, with its pointed tension between temptation and God-given insight.

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6 Your Torah – For My Sake: Psalm 40 While Ps 37 was in all likelihood once destined to bring the First Davidic Psalter to a close (it was, however, neither the first nor the only text to serve this function), it obviously did not ultimately fulfill that role. Two texts follow Ps 37, both with the potential to generate profound theological problems. Psalm 39, discussed previously, had some difficulty finding a place within the collection. The same is true for Ps 38. The psalm’s Invocatio (v. 2) is identical to Ps 6:2 and is followed by an individual lament that drastically articulates the suppliant’s suffering and guilt. Theologically speaking, Ps 38 delivers what is missing in Ps 6. A short but impressive confession of hope binds Pss 38 and 39 together (38:16a, 39:9). The confession is accompanied in 38:16b, 22– 23 by a statement of confidence that Yhwh will heed the suppliant’s cries and pleas for nearness and rescue. Psalm 39:9 – 14 continues those themes with a record of divine punishment and with pleas that God will save and hear the psalmist’s prayer. These pleas culminate in the suppliant’s wish that God might finally look away (v. 14). This wish, in fact, almost precluded Pss 38 and 39 from being placed at the end of the First Davidic Psalter without being followed by Ps 40.⁴⁰ At the very beginning, Ps 40 so prominently foregrounds the suppliant’s hope and trust in Yhwh’s saving actions that it reads like an answer to Pss 38 – 39. Moreover, the psalm serves as further concluding remarks for the First Davidic Psalter, with its unmistakable allusions both to Ps 1 and Ps 37 (cf. 40:5, 9). Psalm 40 presents itself as a “new song” (v. 4). This “new song,” however, not only applies to the poet’s experience; it facilitates hope and trust for the many. According to vv. 6 – 9, God’s wondrous works and plans (which apply to every person) far exceed anything that we could possibly communicate in words. Nevertheless, we can live in God’s favor not by entering the temple and offering sacrifices, but by seeking entrance into the scroll as though it were a temple and ascertaining what is written there for our sake. This “scroll” is first and foremost the Torah, but doubtless other scrolls as well, including the scrolls of the psalms collections. When one desires entrance into this book, the book—the Torah—simultaneously seeks and finds entrance

 Furthermore, the final lines of Pss 38:23 and 40:18 bear a strong resemblance. For analysis and interpretation of Ps 40, cf. Georg Braulik, Psalm 40 und der Gottesknecht (Forschungen zur Bibel 18; Würzburg: Echter, 1975); Fredrik Lindström, Suffering and Sin: Interpretations of Illness in the Individual Complaint Psalms (ConBOT 37; Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1994), 271– 98; and Feldmeier and Spieckermann, God of the Living, 137– 38.

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into one’s innermost being so that one delights in doing God’s will, just as the one in Ps 1:2 delights in meditating on Yhwh’s torah day and night. Psalm 1 describes how the one who reads torah with passionate desire can no longer keep her hands off this book; Psalm 40 in turn analyzes how this happens. The analysis makes it reasonably clear that one must decide for the torah by reading it and hearing it. Only then will the one who identifies with the “I” of the poem notice that what one finds there is ‫“( כתוב עלי‬written for my sake,” v. 8). With one’s desire for torah thus roused, one recognizes that torah has long been present in one’s innermost being (‫תורתך בתוך מעי‬, v. 9). Only by entering the scroll like a temple can one recognize this God who goes before and acts on one’s behalf; only the one who seeks God will find God. The twofold movement of the human toward God and God toward the human is not a one-time decision. Rather, it is a life decision that must be made over and over again—a choice for a certain form of existence that must be preserved and proved. For that reason, the twofold movement in vv. 10 – 13 is concretized in the relationship—which must continually be proved anew—of the human’s praise of God and God’s readiness to preserve the human salvifically and mercifully. Recognition of a torah “for my sake,” which one carries deep within the self, leads to the praise of God, a praise that one shares with all those in the larger community who have experienced and recognized God’s beneficence. This beneficence is first called ‫“( צדק‬justice”) in v. 10 and then is explicated through a series of related concepts in v. 11 (‫צדקה‬, ‫אמונה‬, ‫תשועה‬, ‫חסד‬, ‫אמת‬, ‫)רחמים‬. These concepts reveal that God’s justice lies in God’s acts of salvation, and those acts are not contingent works but part of God’s very being. When this praise is not withheld from Yhwh, it is accompanied necessarily by the plea that Yhwh not withhold saving mercy from the suppliant. That is what happens in vv. 10, 12—both verses formulated intentionally with the same verb (‫כלא‬,”to withhold”). The twofold movement should be clear. The person who offers praise “with your torah in my very being” (v. 9) would be utterly lost were it not for God’s continuous acts of mercy, despite the claim to have “your justice … within my heart” (v. 11). That person would be left alone with one’s own heart and thus a creature forsaken by God (v. 13), a mere plaything of calamity and victim of one’s own guilt. Hope and trust, praise and supplication, belong in the closest possible relationship. The primary intention of Ps 40 is to make this clear. Thus the prayer ends with an urgent plea for Yhwh’s salvation and help (vv. 14– 18). This passage is identical to Ps 70 and was once an independent prayer that was adopted and

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made into the conclusion of Ps 40.⁴¹ The human, who by very nature stands in need of help, and God, who is ever ready to help, are closely bound together, not only in plea and lament but also in praise. In their pledge to offer praise, suppliants find a designation for themselves as ‫“( אהבי תשועתך‬those who love your salvation,” v. 17). Ever in need of rescue, humans can celebrate their love for this God by placing trust and hope in Yhwh’s being and works, for they are God’s constant emergency. Trust and hope are expressed in this way—both being based not only in experience, but also in theological knowledge. The torah as a scroll takes on special significance in Ps 40. The import of torah as “scroll” (‫מגלת־ספר‬, v. 8), however, is less a material claim than a theological one. The plural ‫ מגלות‬would have been used instead of the singular ‫מגלה‬ had the material of the scroll been the concern. As a paraphrastic reformulation of Ps 1, Ps 37:30 – 31 features wisdom, justice (‫)משפט‬, and torah. These three act in concert to foster success in a life founded upon relationship with God. The one characterized by a thoughtfulness facilitated by wisdom is called here “the righteous.” “The righteous,” therefore, is one who hungers for knowledge. Only the righteous know that they have the torah in their hearts, that they are already known by Yhwh, and that they have been granted the right of eternal abode (37:18, 23, 27– 31). Psalm 40, however, does not speak so much about the righteous person as it does about God’s righteousness, without which humans would be irretrievably lost. With this soteriological accent, Ps 40 does not cast its lot with the wisdom literature but adopts the sapientially-inspired insights about torah in Pss 1 and 37. It enriches them with the insight that pleasure in God’s will is not primarily about observing the Torah’s sacrificial regulations but about searching out God’s will as it is written down in the scroll especially “for my sake.” Naturally, this includes the Torah scroll, but also the scrolls that contain the psalms collection that once ended with Ps 40.⁴²

 Psalm 70 belongs to the trio of Pss 69 – 71, a sequence deliberately comprised of individual psalms, which was designed to close the Second Davidic Psalter before Ps 72 took over that function. The defining elements of the theological constellation reflected in Pss 69 – 71 are the suffering of the suppliant, the possibility of vicarious suffering, and divine salvation—understood here as decisive evidence of God’s justice (cf. Spieckermann, Lebenskunst und Gotteslob in Israel, 426 – 30). The connection between salvation and justice is also central in Ps 40.  Psalm 40 bears distant relation to Ps 50, both in terms of content and its position in the Psalter. The two psalms, however, make use of entirely different trajectories of tradition. While Ps 40 once brought the First Davidic Psalter to a close, there is good reason to believe that Ps 41 took over this function much later. This line of argument will not be developed here, however.

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7 Your Torah—My Delight: Psalm 119 The theology of Ps 119 overlaps significantly with that of Ps 40.⁴³ This statement may occasion some surprise. Given the poem’s introductory macarism and focus on Yhwh’s torah (v. 1), the link to Ps 1 seems much more obvious. Further, the acrostic form of Ps 119 presses the connection with Pss 25, 34, and 37 on the one hand, and with the twin acrostics in Pss 111– 112 on the other. In conjunction with Ps 1, Ps 119 provides a programmatic framework for the emerging Psalter with two torah psalms. It is clear that Ps 119 was composed with knowledge of Ps 1 and is therefore later than it. Like Ps 1, Ps 119 begins by lauding the one who loves Yhwh’s torah (vv. 1– 2; cf. Ps 1:1). There are differences between the two texts, however. Psalm 1 focuses on the characterization of this lone individual over against various groups with contradictory and divergent conceptions of “life.” Furthermore, a defining theme of the psalm is the classification of this individual as one who belongs to the circle of the righteous. In contrast, Ps 119 abandons the beatitude (‫ )אשרי‬as a speech-act by v. 4, and the remainder of the prayer utilizes the speech-acts of petition, thanksgiving, and praise. Furthermore, as the concluding piece to the provisional collection of Pss 1– 119, Ps 119 gives the torah-lover of Ps 1 a voice. Here, as in other prayers in this collection, the speaker makes his address to Yhwh about his concern into the determining factor in how he should carry out his life. The other acrostics in Pss 25, 34, 37, and 111– 112 are important connecting links in this collection, but of these only Ps 25 contains a direct address to God at its beginning and end (vv. 1– 7, 16 – 21). A hymnic, stylistic depiction of Yhwh dominates in Ps 34, while the twin acrostics in Pss 111– 112 intentionally create a hymnic correspondence between the portrayal of Yhwh in Ps 111 and the praise of the pious in Ps 112. By contrast, the elaborate acrostic of Ps 37 offers encouragement (probably from a sage) for those who, under various names, number among the righteous. Apart from Ps 37:31, none of these psalms (Pss 25, 34, 111– 112) mentions torah at all. To understand Ps 119 properly, one must keep two things in mind. On the one hand, the conscious reference to Ps 1 that takes the form of a macarism of the one who loves torah makes it clear that Ps 119 concerns precisely the same torah devotee. In this elaborate acrostic prayer, the torah devotee is the same one who, with entreaty, thanksgiving, and praise, makes Yhwh into the

 On Ps 119, see Frank-Lothar Hossfeld and Erich Zenger, Psalmen 101 – 150 (HThKAT; Freiburg: Herder, 2008), 337– 91; and Kent Aaron Reynolds, Torah as Teacher: The Exemplary Torah Student in Psalm 119 (VTSup 137; Leiden: Brill, 2010).

What is the Place of Wisdom and Torah in the Psalter?

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“Thou” of his life. On the other hand, with respect to the acrostics that precede it, the acrostic in Ps 119 takes the form of a prayer in sensu stricto. Whereas Ps 1 seeks to welcome into the world of prayer the one who has made torah the love of his life, Ps 119 makes this torah devotee into the exemplary suppliant who shows through his prayer that “your torah” is “written for my sake” (Ps 40:8 – 9) and that the God-given community of teaching and learning makes torah into the love of his life. This view is hardly excessive. It is telling that Ps 119 speaks only of “your torah” except in one instance where it mentions “Yhwh’s torah” much like Ps 1:2.⁴⁴ Moreover, apart from Pss 40:9 and 94:12,⁴⁵ the expression “your torah” appears in the Psalter only in Ps 119, where it is accompanied by an entire range of legal terminology in which the term ‫ תורה‬is not particularly prominent. In Ps 119, Yhwh as teacher of torah and the suppliant as willing student come together effortlessly. One may suspect wisdom influence here, but the correspondence between teaching and learning has crossed over entirely into the hymnic language of prayer. Yhwh is praised as a teacher (v. 12) and the suppliant, as student, praises the teacher with an upright heart (v. 7). Learning becomes a pleasure and the subject matter a delight (‫)שעע‬.⁴⁶ The recurrence of “delight” throughout the psalm evokes personified Wisdom in Prov 8, whose play incites Yhwh’s creativity. She simultaneously delights in humanity and brings delight to humanity (‫שעשעי את־בני אדם‬, 8:30 – 31). Wisdom’s role as mediatrix of delight between God and humans was not inconsequential for the stress on “delight” in Ps 119. But Ps 119 does not aim at any close relationship to wisdom. One even gains the impression that such a relationship was expressly avoided; indeed, the absence of specifically sapiential language in Ps 119 is striking. Psalm 119 does not associate torah with discipline or rebuke (cf. Ps 94:12; Prov 1:8; 6:23). Still more surprising is the complete lack (apart from one instance⁴⁷) of terminology

 Pss 119:18, 29, 34, 44, 51, 53, 55, 61, 70, 77, 85, 92, 97, 109, 126, 136, 142, 150, 153, 163, 165, 174. Compare “torah of your mouth” (‫תורת־פיך‬, v. 72).  In light of its several sapiential convictions, Ps 94 is more closely related to Pss 39 and 73. However, the teaching “from your torah” (‫מתורתך‬, 94:12) and the psalmist’s refreshment through God’s comfort (‫תנחומיך ישעשעו נפשי‬, 94:19) sound like anticipatory references to Ps 119.  ‫ שעע‬is attested in the Pilpel and Hithpolpel in vv. 16, 47, 70. The noun ‫ שעשעים‬occurs in vv. 24, 77, 92, 143, 174.  The exception is v. 98, in which the suppliant rejoices that God’s commandments have made him wiser (‫ חכם‬Piel) “than all my enemies.” However, if one were to compare statements in the remainder of the ‫מ‬-strophe in vv. 97– 104 (the suppliant’s claim in v. 99a to be wiser than his teachers is hardly a masterpiece, since Yhwh is praised as the suppliant’s teacher in vv. 12,

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related to the root ‫“( חכם‬to be wise”). By contrast, Ps 37:30 – 31 sets ‫“( חכמה‬wisdom”) and torah in such a close relationship that it is difficult to tell the difference between the two. In that passage, it is the ‫“( צדיק‬righteous one”) who has taken torah to heart, whose mouth meditates (‫ )הגה‬on ‫חכמה‬, and who therefore does what the fortunate one does with torah according to Ps 1:2. Psalm 119 likewise speaks readily about meditation on torah – admittedly, however, with the root ‫ שיח‬and never with the root ‫הגה‬.⁴⁸ The suppliant never calls himself ‫צדיק‬ (“the righteous”), nor does he identify himself implicitly or explicitly with the group of the righteous as has been done to this point by Pss 1, 34, and 37, but most of all by Pss 111– 112. The statement ‫“( צדקתו עמדת לעד‬his justice endures forever”) occurs twice in Pss 111– 112—both in the praise of Yhwh (111:3b) and in the double beatitude about the pious person (112:3b, 9b). Psalm 112:4– 6 underscore this same characterization that “the gracious, merciful, and just (God)” shines for the upright in the darkness (v. 4b; cf. 116:5) and, shortly thereafter, that the righteous are awarded both an eternal, unshakeable foundation and a perpetual memorial (v. 6). The torah is named neither among the gifts for which God is to be praised, nor as a manifesto of God’s will as observed by the pious. The twin psalms of 111– 112 (which show clear sapiential influence⁴⁹), as well as the other sapiential psalms mentioned previously, all find an echo in Ps 119, but with a decidedly different theological accent. Psalm 119 avoids the link with wisdom, for that link accepts an affinity between God and humans on the basis of righteousness. The poet of Ps 119 is suspicious of that calculus. Is the poet afraid that wise God-fearers will become self-important or self-righteous (cf. 111:10; 112:9)? In light of the fact that the suppliant invites the pious to return to God (v. 70), one could certainly arrive at this conclusion. At any rate, according to Ps 119, Yhwh is the only one who is righteous (‫צדיק אתה יהוה‬, v. 137). The psalm states emphatically that ‫“( משפטי צדקך‬the commandments of your righteousness,” v. 164, cf. vv. 7, 75, 106, 121, 172) and ‫“( כל־משפט צדקך‬the entire law of your righteousness”) are ‫“( ראש דברך‬the sum of your word,” v. 160). Yet ‫אמרת‬ ‫“( צדקך‬the word of your righteousness”) is identical to the salvation that the suppliant anticipates from God (v. 123), and this righteousness, in turn, is identical to ‫“( תורתך‬your torah,” v. 142). The torah here represents precepts for the suppliant’s life in terms of hope for the gift of life—a hope which remains unfulfilled in his current state and 26, 33, 64, 68, 102, 108, 124, 135, 171), any number of these expressions would easily rival the supposed sapiential expertise contained in v. 98.  See 119:15 (parallel to gazing upon the torah, ‫ נבט‬Hiphil), 23, 27 (parallel to the request for insight, ‫ בין‬Hiphil), 48 (parallel to ‫“ אהב‬to love”), 78, 148.  Cf. Pss 111:10; 112:1, 5, 10.

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way of seeing the world. A request for life permeates the entire psalm, a request based on the promise declared by torah.⁵⁰ Continually propelled by his pleasure in and love for torah,⁵¹ the suppliant reaches out for this life. At the same time, he maintains even up to the very last line of the prayer that he wanders ‫כשה אבד‬ (“like a lost sheep”) that must rely on God to search out (119:176). This psalm, nourished by hope and love for torah, closes with the suppliant declaring his need for salvation—much like Ps 40, to which Ps 119 has the closest theological connection.

8 Conclusions Through an analysis of the relevant texts, the hypothesis stated at the outset of this essay has, by and large, been transformed into an established thesis. Both sapiential theology and theology centered on torah performed central functions in the formation of the Psalter. This analysis demonstrates that the relationship between wisdom and torah in that formation is more multi-faceted than initially thought. Wisdom, on the one hand, advocates for awareness of existential need brought about by human transience, as well as for the questions that follow about why God would allow humans to suffer such frailty. On the other hand, torah stands at the center of God’s proclamation in order to help humans lead their lives according to God’s will. Both have different functions in the world of prayer. Torah serves a more theologically affirmative function, while wisdom serves a more cognitive function in the sense of analysis and assessment of the problem. Torah and wisdom can seek out a reciprocal relationship. Torah uses wisdom’s cognitive potential to illuminate the complexity of life; wisdom uses torah’s stabilizing potential with its recourse to God’s love and loyalty. Both of these approaches of torah and wisdom are undertaken in the Psalter wherever the relationship to God is concretized in sustaining words, whether in lack or fullness, failure or success. Alongside that synergy, however, is also a distance which torah and wisdom safeguard, each with its own emphasis. No amount of theological artistry can align or reconcile the foundation of life and the way of life based on torah with the unadorned observation of frustrations and setbacks that wisdom pro-

 Cf. 119:17, 25, 37, 49, 50, 76 – 77, 88, 93, 107, 116, 144, 149, 154, 156, 175.  Cf. 119:16, 49, 70, 76 – 77, 92– 93, 97, 113 – 114, 119, 127, 140, 142– 144, 147– 149, 159 – 160, 163 – 168, 174– 176.

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vides in perceiving in one’s relationship with God as a consequence of the trial and needs of human existence. The strength of the Psalter is that it includes a series of texts that represent both the association and dissociation of torah and wisdom—texts that are theologically meaningful for the practice of prayer, for the psalm collections in which they are found, and finally for the Psalter as a whole. The theological profile of these texts in terms of either their association or dissociation of torah and wisdom need not be rehearsed again. Instead, in closing, it should be emphasized that, according to the witness of the Psalter, neither the theological phenomenon of torah, nor the theological phenomenon of wisdom, had its home originally within the world of prayer. Torah and wisdom, along with their respective themes, first found a place in the nascent Psalter during the formative phase of the authoritative writings in the post-exilic period and the various mutually-influencing circles of tradition connected to them—that is to say, in compositions that are likely no earlier than the sixth century B.C.E. None of these compositions betrays any inclination toward the development of or increased emphasis on a definite train of thought. As a prime example, Ps 1, which served as a programmatic entrée to the First Davidic Psalter from a certain stage of formation onward, reveals a synergistic correspondence between torah theology and wisdom theology. Love of torah does not make one blind, but rather teaches one to recognize clearly not only that Yhwh knows and recognizes the righteous, but how Yhwh does so, and that Yhwh—more theologico —neither knows nor recognizes the wicked at all. This sharp view is schooled in wisdom. Ps 1 thrives on the successful interplay of torah and wisdom. At the same time, among an entire series of psalms in the nascent Psalter are two other texts that once could have served as its final word, both stemming from torah and wisdom circles: Pss 111– 112 and Ps 119. These two could not be more different, however. While the twin psalms position the praise of Yhwh in Ps 111 as the counterpart to the beatific praise of the pious and righteous in Ps 112, the word “torah” is lacking completely, even if legal terminology is well attested. Concerning the dictum of the fear of Yhwh as the origin of wisdom (111:10), the psalm pair aspires to such a close connection between that the righteousness of the one lasts forever, just like the righteousness of the other (111:3; 112:3, 9). This proximity of Yhwh and the God-fearer, which was likely perceived by the author of Pss 111– 112 as an appropriate interpretation of Ps 1 and other texts, is foreign to the author of Ps 119. While Ps 119 is also likely an interpretation of Ps 1, the author of Ps 119 stresses love for torah as the true life—a life for which the suppliant must constantly be revitalized by Yhwh. This is life as the praise of God, as delight in the torah, an existence characterized by pleas that Yhwh might search for lost sheep again and again (v. 176). That is the

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final line of this great text, once thought to be the conclusion to the nascent Psalter. Psalm 119 makes virtually no use of wisdom. It does not present torah and wisdom in happy harmony; rather, torah is accompanied by a centuries-old theology of prayer that is familiar with human forsakenness and Yhwh’s will to salvation. At least on a conceptual level, wisdom does not appear in the Psalter after Ps 111, and torah does not appear after Ps 119. Other modes of theological discourse define the formation of the Psalter up to its (proto‐)Masoretic final form. Still, reflection on the relationship between torah and wisdom continued in the circles in which prayers were composed and transmitted. One of the psalms scrolls from Qumran indicates that Ps 154—which is found in 11QPsa (= 11Q5) XVIII, 1– 18, and in all likelihood the precursor of Syriac Ps II—was used in the Yahad.⁵² At least to the extent that the psalm is preserved, the gift of wisdom stands at its center (‫חוכמה‬, line 3). That gift serves to make Yhwh’s glory known in the abundance of good deeds that God bestows on those who belong to him. Wisdom fosters praise of God, and for those who are familiar with the authoritative writings, wisdom clearly bears a personal connotation. The allusion to the personified Wisdom of Prov 8 and her invitation to the ‫“( פותאים‬simpletons,” lines 3 – 4; cf. Prov 8:5) and ‫“( חסרי לבב‬those who lack insight,” line 5; cf. Prov 9:4) is unmistakable. In Prov 8 – 9, Wisdom’s invitation is associated with eating and drinking. Psalm 154 follows suit, as the hymn of praise (‫זמרתה‬, line 13) to wisdom reverberates with this convivium, where Wisdom herself is cited (‫נאמרה‬, line 13) in the context of eating and drinking and, in addition, the torah of the Most High is presented as the object of meditation (‫שיחתם בתורת עליון‬, line 14). These utterances of the righteous and pious make God’s power known (line 14). The very next line is once again about “her word” (‫אמרה‬, line 15), which can only be Wisdom’s word in distinction to the preceding words of the torah. In Ps 154 there is no clear distinction between wisdom and torah. The proclamation of God in the world corresponds to personalized wisdom, and torah contrib-

 On 11Q5, see Sanders et al., “Non-Masoretic Psalms,” 155 – 215; Florentino García Martínez and Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar, The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition (2 vols.; Leiden: Brill; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000), 2:1172– 79; Ulrich, Biblical Qumran Scrolls, 694– 726; Jain, Psalmen oder Psalter, 159 – 77, 241– 84; and Eugene Ulrich, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Developmental Composition of the Bible (VTSup 169; Leiden: Brill, 2015), 194– 99. The editio princeps is J. A. Sanders, The Psalms Scroll of Qumrân Cave 11 (11QPsa) (DJD IV; Oxford: Clarendon, 1965). For the sake of convenience, the line numbers cited here and in the discussion below follow García Martínez and Tigchelaar, The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition, 2:1172– 75, which differs from the lineation of col. XVIII in the editio princeps. On the question of sapiential influence on 11Q5, see Goff, Discerning Wisdom, 230 – 63.

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utes to this proclamation as well. One can no longer speak of the dominance of torah here, as in Ps 119. The purpose of this essay is not to compare the different theological profiles of the (proto‐)Masoretic Psalter and the non-Masoretic psalms collections, insofar as they are known from the fragmentary scrolls found in the Judean Desert. It should simply be noted that already in the (proto‐)Masoretic tradition there is not a clearly defined relationship between torah and wisdom. On the contrary, the growth of the (proto‐)Masoretic Psalter indicates a theological discourse in which torah and wisdom each have advocates who assign different weights to each phenomenon. The psalms collections from Qumran, like the earlier example of Ps 154 and the Syriac psalms, provide evidence that prayers were also selected based on other theological criteria. The collection in 11QPsa gives much more weight to Davidizing and sapientializing than the (proto‐)Masoretic Psalter. Any enthusiasm over which version gained acceptance will certainly not be shared by all. Nevertheless, the reception history of the (proto‐)Masoretic Psalter indicates that tradents were at work, tactfully allowing diversity and respecting boundaries without theological furor. Overstepping these boundaries could well have been detrimental to their goal of handing down prayers that could be used in multifaceted ways by future generations.

Ludger Schwienhorst-Schönberger (University of Vienna)

Traces of an Original Allegorical Meaning of the Song of Songs 1 The State of the Discussion: A Brief Survey From the very earliest period of interpretation, both Jewish and Christian traditions have read the Song of Songs as a theological allegory.¹ According to these interpretations, the Song is an expression of love between God and God’s people or between Christ and his Church. The male protagonist in the Song of Songs represents God or Christ, whereas the woman represents God’s people (the Church) and each individual within it. In the Christian tradition, especially during the Middle Ages, the woman could also symbolize Mary, the Mother of God, as an image of the Church. One can, in fact, distinguish three main currents of interpretation in the Christian tradition: the ecclesiological (Christ and the Church), the mystical (Christ and the soul), and the mariological (Christ and Mary). Read along such lines, the Song of Songs was among the most theologically important and frequently exposited books of Holy Scripture. Indeed, it was thought to be a condensation and embodiment of the central topic of the Bible—God’s love for God’s people and even for all humanity. In sum, according to this theological tradition, the main topic of the Song of Songs is God’s love. In the eighteenth century, however, interpretation of the Song of Songs underwent radical change. The Song was no longer thought to be concerned with divine love but with human love. Johann Gottfried Herder (1744– 1803 C.E.) regarded the book as a collection of profane love songs. This profane interpretation became increasingly dominant during the nineteenth century, while the spiritual, allegorical interpretation was discarded as erroneous. Comparison with Egyptian love songs or Arabic wedding songs of the same period was thought to strengthen the profane line of interpretation. Some contemporary interpreters who employ this modern approach have been outspoken in their criticism of traditional, allegorical readings of the Song. According to Othmar Keel, an allegorical interpretation of the Song of Songs reflects “nothing other than an elegant way of despising the text; like a pack mule, the book is laden with every conceivable meaning, but in the process

 This essay is dedicated to our honored colleague, Choon Leong Seow, whom I especially appreciate for his admirable commentaries on Ecclesiastes and Job. DOI 10.1515/9783110428148-022

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its own voice and its own meaning are suppressed.”² According to Keel, these interpretations have contributed “nothing to a better understanding of the Song.”³ Liberated from what appeared to be a body-hostile and sexually oppressive exegetical tradition, this new insight was celebrated by some as the “homecoming of the Song of Songs from the Babylonian captivity of allegorical interpretation.”⁴

2 Which Method? Not all commentators, however, have held such a negative view of allegorical traditions. The most important of these are certainly André Robert and Raymond Jacques Tournay in their 1963 French commentary.⁵ Their work is commonly considered to be the last significant attempt to mount a rigorous exegetical defense of an allegorical interpretation over and against the new predominant form of exegesis developed in German-speaking Protestant countries. One could easily assume that this defense was due to the fact that Catholic exegesis has always been more closely connected with tradition. It is important to emphasize, however, that Robert and Tournay are at pains to justify the strictly academic character of their method. Their allegorical interpretation of the Song of Songs was not intended as a compromise in the form of a mere “both-and” strategy.⁶ The method they applied is now referred to commonly as “intertextuality.” Robert and Tournay’s intertextual and allegorical approach has been pursued further by André Feuillet. He had participated in the writing of their great commentary, and also published a monograph containing a synthetic exposition of Robert and Tournay’s theological allegorical approach in 1953. A new, revised edition of this work was published in 1999. In the preface to the second edition, Feuillet stresses the fact that an explicitly religious interpretation of the Song of Songs cannot be established by reference to tradition alone, but should take place on strictly academic grounds. He claims that this is possible,

 Othmar Keel, The Song of Songs: A Continental Commentary (trans. by F. J. Gaiser; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994), 31; trans. of Das Hohelied (ZBK.AT 18; Zurich: TVZ, 1986).  Ibid., 8.  Thomas Staubli, “Die Heimführung des Hoheliedes aus der babylonischen Gefangenschaft der Allegorese,” Bibel und Liturgie 70 (1997): 91– 9.  André Robert and Raymond Jacques Tournay, Le Cantique des Cantiques: Traduction et Commentaire (Études Bibliques; Paris: Gabalda, 1963).  Josef Schreiner argues for a “both-and” strategy in his epilogue on the commentary of Günther Krinetzki (Hoheslied [3d ed.; NEchtB 2; Würzburg: Echter, 1995]).

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even though the exegetical mainstream argues otherwise. Feuillet describes his own exegetical method simply as “the method of parallelisms.”⁷ Feuillet believes that this method is capable of furnishing academic proof of the religious character of the Song of Songs.⁸ The decisive point is that this “method of parallelisms” underscores the Song’s connection to certain prophetic texts, especially those which use the metaphors of love and marriage in order to express the renewed relationship and the New Covenant between God and God’s people. Some paradigmatic examples include Hos 1– 3; Jer 31; Ezek 16; 23; Isa 40 – 66; and Ps 45. At this point we can perceive a decisive methodological difference between profane and religious interpretations of the Song of Songs. The profane interpretation isolates the Song of Songs from the rest of the Bible, puts it into the context of ancient Near Eastern literature, and attempts to interpret it exclusively on this basis. In addition to this, form criticism (Gattungskritik) is applied as the main and nearly exclusive method. In this approach, the Song is treated often as wisdom literature which must be neatly distinguished from prophetic literature. Practically speaking, this means that one is forbidden to interpret the Song of Songs in relation to prophetic texts, even when there is a clear lexemic correspondence between them. As some scholars claim (e. g., Keel), prophetic and wisdom texts have their roots in different social settings (Sitz im Leben), which have nothing to do with one another. To be fair, Keel readily admits that the OT uses relations between men and women as models (metaphors) for the relation between Yhwh and Israel (Hosea 2; Jeremiah 2), occasionally giving these models allegorical development (Ezekiel 16 and 23). But these passages limit the comparison (tertium comparationis) to the legal aspects of the relationship, especially to the question of faithfulness.… This whole tradition is typical of the prophetic literature and limited strictly to it.⁹

3 Recent Developments Recently, the discussion concerning allegorical interpretation of the Song of Songs has been revived, and herein Yair Zakovitch takes the middle ground. He considers that although the original meaning of the Song of Songs is not of an allegorical kind, its position in the traditional biblical context nevertheless allows for a multitude of allegorical interpretations. He writes:

 André Feuillet, Comment lire le Cantique des Cantiques: Études de théologie biblique et réflexions sur une méthode d’exégèse (2d ed.; Paris: Téqui, 1999), 11: “la méthode des parallélismes.”  Ibid., 7ff.  Keel, The Song of Songs, 6 – 7.

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Many of the songs in the Song of Songs have an enigmatic or parabolic character. Therefore, the reader must take into account a complexity of meaning.… Generally speaking, allegory is not foreign to biblical literature.… Paradoxically enough, the complete absence of any explicit reference to God in the Song makes it easier to apply the text to the relationship between God and Israel. If God were mentioned alongside the male protagonist (bridegroom, shepherd, king) from time to time, the central male figure could not simply be identified with God. This [identification of the male protagonist with God] is more likely, since God does not appear at all.… In biblical terms, God is compared both to a shepherd (e. g., Gen 48:15; Ps 23:1– 2; 80:2) and a king (e. g., Ps 93:1; 98:6). Thus the corresponding references to the man in the Song of Songs may be applied to God.… Above all, the allegorical interpretation of the Song of Songs is supported by the fact that the relationship between God and Israel is depicted with the same terms and with the same images with which the Song of Songs describes the relationship between the beloved and his lover.¹⁰

In his Habilitationsschrift, Meik Gerhards goes one crucial step further.¹¹ He attempts to prove that the Song of Songs was intended as a religious, allegorical poem by its author. According to Gerhards, there are many reasons to believe that the Song “was composed as a book of edification and consolation for those who held onto the hope that God would yet bring about Israel’s promised and expected restoration, [cast] in the image of a marriage ceremony.”¹² In his view, “the assumption that the Song of Songs was composed by the author as a religious allegory … can be regarded as the most well-founded historical-critical hypothesis for the fundamental grasp of the poem.”¹³ The discredit brought upon the allegorical interpretation in the course of the history of exegesis is largely due to the widely practiced but clumsily executed enterprise of assigning an allegorical meaning to each and every element of the text. This leads to interpretations that prove untenable in view of the cultural context in which the Song of Songs was written. Such an overemphasis on the allegorical interpretation, however, does not invalidate Gerhards’ thesis that “the Song of Songs may be understood as a religious allegorical poem of the Seleucid period.”¹⁴  Yair Zakovitch, Das Hohelied (trans. Dafna Mach; HThKAT; Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 2004), 94– 95 (English translation here by Scott C. Jones and myself).  Meik Gerhards, Das Hohelied: Studien zu seiner literarischen Gestalt und theologischen Bedeutung (Arbeiten zur Bibel und ihrer Geschichte 35; Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2010) (translation by Scott C. Jones and myself). Cf. my review, Theologische Literaturzeitung 139 (2014): 566 – 69.  Gerhards, Das Hohelied, 542.  Ibid., 532 (translation by Scott C. Jones and myself).  Ibid., 538 (my translation). Applying the method of intertextuality, other scholars also arrive at an explicitly religious understanding of the Song of Songs. An example of such a reading might be Edmée Kingsmill’s monograph The Song of Songs and the Eros of God: A Study in Bib-

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My thesis, therefore, is that the Song of Songs may be read allegorically in connection with intertexts in the Law, Prophets, and Writings. Of particular importance are the numerous allusions to those prophetic texts in the Bible which mention a renewed love between God and God’s people. These allusions seem to be intended by the author. The following analysis of Song 1:2– 8 will give some evidence of this.

4 The Literary Evidence: Some Examples 4.1 First Impressions How one interprets the Song of Songs depends largely on one’s preconceptions. In the Hebrew canon, the Song of Songs is located after the Torah and the Prophets. The ideal reader, who knows these books well, is acquainted with the metaphorical language of the Bible. That reader is well aware of the fact that the books of the prophets and the books of wisdom contain allegories. Above all, the reader knows that the metaphor of gender is used in many books of the Bible in order to illustrate the relationship with God. The ideal reader thus approaches the Song of Songs with this knowledge in mind. The title (1:1) mentions Solomon. The reader knows that Solomon is the author of numerous proverbs and songs, some of which have an enigmatic character (Prov 1:1– 7; 1 Kgs 4). The superlative construction (Constructusverbindung) “Song of Songs” indicates that this song in a certain sense exceeds all the other songs hitherto known. Thus, the reader is invited to focus attention on the text and to participate in the unveiling of its sense. Contrary to one popular opinion, I find it highly unlikely that the Song of Songs was attributed to Solomon because he had many wives and was therefore well versed in matters of “love.” After all, it is precisely this side of Solomon that the Song subjects to mockery and criticism. In 8:11– 12, the male protagonist distances himself from Solomon’s harem. He is gladly willing to forgo the many wives of Solomon, and draws a vibrant portrait of his own unique and incomparable love: “My vineyard, my very own, is before me; you, O Solomon, may have the thousand, and the keepers of the fruit two hundred” (v. 12).¹⁵ What the title of

lical Intertextuality (Oxford Theological Monographs; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). She, too, argues that the Song is rooted deeply in biblical tradition and speaks of divine love.  All quotations from the Hebrew Bible are from the ESV, though I have modified the translation on occasion.

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the Song of Songs presents to the reader is therefore not a picture of Solomon as “the ladies’ man,” but a picture of Solomon as the teacher of wisdom. In the two textual units immediately following the title, the beloved appears as a king (1:2– 4) and a shepherd (1:7– 8). Both images are the most common metaphors that the Hebrew Bible applies to God. Anyone who is familiar with biblical literature and the complexity of its metaphorical language will immediately ask if the beloved one who awakened the woman’s ardent desire is perhaps the God of Israel. The beloved one also appears to be an anointed one: “Your anointing oils are fragrant, your name is oil poured out” (1:3). His name exercises a magic attraction. In this connection, one may be reminded of the revelation of God’s name (Exod 3:14; cf. 34:14) and of the great importance that is attached to this name in the biblical tradition: “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name!” (Ps 103:2; cf. e. g., Pss 7:18; 75:2; 96:2). In the Song of Songs, the beloved one is called “my beloved” (‫ )דוֹ ִדי‬exactly 26 times. The number 26 is the numerical value of God’s personal name, Yhwh. This does not seem to be a mere coincidence; rather, the beloved one of the Song is intended to signify Yhwh, the God of Israel. In doing so, the Song of Songs honors the commandment not to pronounce God’s name and, moreover, not to even mention God. Yet the nameless one is nonetheless present in the form of the beloved one. One central passage of the Song of Songs, however, contains an allusion to the name Yhwh. In 8:6, we read the word ‫ ַשְׁלֶהֶבְת ָיה‬, “the flames of Yā h,” where Yā h is an abbreviation for the divine name, Yhwh. The ESV fittingly translates the phrase as “the very flame of the Lord.” The love of this king is praised as a love which is sweeter than wine (1:2). This recalls the psalmist’s adoration of Yhwh in Ps 4:8: “You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound.” If the beloved represents God, then whom does the female voice represent? From the very beginning of the book, this voice articulates a strong desire for intimacy with the beloved king. The biblical writings often symbolize God’s people as a woman, especially in prophetic texts that deal with the rupture and the renewal of the relationship between God and his people (e. g. Isa 52:1– 2; 54:1– 10; 62:1– 5). In his extremely detailed and well-documented study, Ruben Zimmermann has analyzed the biblical metaphors of gender and shown their significance with regard to the relationship with God.¹⁶

 Ruben Zimmermann, Geschlechtermetaphorik und Gottesverhältnis: Traditionsgeschichte und Theologie eines Bildfelds in Urchristentum und antiker Umwelt (WUNT 122; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001). Cf. Dieter Böhler, “Das Hohelied und die Tochter Zion,” in Das Hohelied im Konflikt

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4.2 “Draw me after you” (Song 1:2 – 4) There are even more keyword allusions to related prophetic texts. In 1:4, the woman implores: “Draw me after you.” The Hebrew word ‫“( משך‬draw”) is used two more times in the Hebrew Bible in conjunction with the word “love.” Hos 11:4 interprets Israel’s liberation from slavery in Egypt as an expression of God’s love towards God’s people: “I drew them (‫ )ֶאְמ ְשֵׁכם‬with cords of kindness, with the bands of love.” In Jer 31:3, God announces Israel’s repatriation from exile as a sign of divine “eternal love and fidelity.” In the second half of 1:4, the woman speaks again, but this time in the plural form: “We will exult and rejoice in you.” This seems rather odd. Zakovitch asks bewilderedly: “How is one to imagine a situation in which the lover apparently talks to her female companions and her beloved one simultaneously, as if she were with him and at the very same time with the women—perhaps they are to be imagined as present behind a partition?”¹⁷ Moreover, does the woman invite both herself and her companions to rejoice with the king or over the king? Some commentators translate ‫ ָנ ִגיָלה ְו ִנ ְשְׂמָחה ָבְּך‬as “Let us be glad and rejoice with you.”¹⁸ However, the Hebrew expression ‫שמח ב‬ suggests a different idea, namely, that the woman and her companions rejoice over the king. In Ps 70:5, all those who are searching for God are praised with the words: “May all who seek you rejoice and be glad over you (‫”) ְויִ ְשְׂמחוּ ְבָּך‬ (cf. Ps 40:17, Prov 23:24). There are two other passages in the Hebrew Bible where we observe a successive use of the verbs “to be glad” (‫ )גיל‬and “to rejoice” (‫ )שמח‬in the first person plural. After the promise of the eschatological banquet on Zion “with the best of meats and the finest of wines,” Isa 25:9 says about the divine salvation: “Let us be glad (‫ ) ָנ ִגיָלה‬and rejoice over (‫ )… ְו ִנ ְשְׂמָחה ב‬his salvation” (cf. Ps 31:8). Ps 118:24 speaks about rejoicing and gladness after the salvation of one who had been rejected (“the stone that the builders rejected”). A series of lexemic connections makes it clear that the “rejected one” of Ps 118, who goes up to the temple, is God’s people returning from exile and ascending towards the temple. Much like in Song 1:4, one reads in Joel 2:23: “Be glad, O children of Zion, and rejoice in the Lord your God” (cf. Zech 10:7). The two verbs appear once more in the messianic prophecy in Isa 9:2, albeit in reverse order.

der Interpretationen (ed. Ludger Schwienhorst-Schönberger; Österreichische Biblische Studien 47; Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2017), 185 – 208.  Zakovitch, Das Hohelied, 110 (translation by Scott C. Jones and myself).  For example Keel, Das Hohelied, 48: “Ausgelassen wollen wir sein, uns mit dir vergnügen.”

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4.3 Black, but nevertheless beautiful (Song 1:5 – 6) I am very dark, but lovely, O daughters of Jerusalem, like the tents of Kedar, like the curtains of Solomon. Do not gaze at me because I am dark, because the sun has looked upon me. My mother’s sons were angry with me; They made me keeper of the vineyards, But my own vineyard I have not kept! (Song 1:5 – 6)

In this song, the woman talks to the daughters of Jerusalem and speaks exclusively about herself. The passage opens with an emphasis on the very first word—“black” (‫ ְשׁחוֹ ָרה‬, v. 5) that reappears in the next verse in a modified form, “blackish” (‫ח ֶרת‬ ֹ ‫ ְשַׁח ְר‬, v. 6). How is this expression to be understood? Some exegetes think of the fascination of an African beauty and translate: “I am black and beautiful.” The ambiguous waw allows two possible translations: (1) “I am black and beautiful,” or (2) “I am black but nevertheless beautiful.” The blackness of the woman attracts the eyes of the “daughters of Jerusalem” (v. 6). Are their glances fascinated and admiring, or are they contemptuous? In 6:10 the man describes his beloved as “beautiful as the white (i. e. the moon), bright as the glow” (i. e. the sun). In 5:10 the woman praises her beloved one by describing him as “white and ruddy,” while only his (curled) hair is black (5:11). Lam 4:6 – 8 contains an interesting opposition of white and black skin in connection with the “iniquity of the daughter of my people” that may suggest a metaphorical interpretation of lover’s black complexion in the Song. This passage contains a heartbreaking description of the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C.E. The fourth lamentation starts with the image of “gold [that has] become dim and fine gold that has changed” (4:1). In the same chapter, we read: For the chastisement of the daughter of my people has been greater than the punishment of Sodom.… Her princes were purer than snow, whiter than milk, their bodies were more ruddy than coral, the beauty of their form was like sapphire. Now their face is blacker than soot; they are not recognized in the streets; their skin has shriveled on their bones; it has become as dry as wood. (Lam 4:6 – 8)

The text refers not only to the external appearance that has become jarring but also to the iniquity of the people “that has become greater than the iniquity of Sodom.”¹⁹

 Ulrich Berges, Klagelieder (HThKAT; Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 2002), 247 (my translation).

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Song 1:5 – 6 talks twice about vineyards, but in two notably contrary ways. On the one hand, the woman says: “My mother’s sons were angry with me; they made me the keeper of the vineyards.” This affirmation is followed immediately by the admission: “but my own vineyard I have not kept.” It is clear that the use of “vineyard” in the second sentence is metaphorical. But the question is: a metaphor for what? Some interpreters understand the vineyard as a metaphor for the woman, especially for her body. “My own vineyard I have not kept” would therefore mean: “I did not preserve my virginity.” According to a popular interpretation, the woman admits this fact even with a certain degree of pride. If one were to accept this reading, however, it would still not be clear why the brothers decided to appoint her of all people as keeper of the family vineyard. If the intention is to keep her away from men, the vineyards would seem to be the least suitable place (cf. Judg 9:27; 21:20 – 21). As a matter of fact, vineyards were the best location for young people who wanted to meet without being seen. Ben Sira recommends to all fathers who are desirous to protect their daughter’s virginity that she be kept in a room without a window to the street (Sir 42:11). There is another, more plausible explanation which preserves the consistency of the text and its images. In the following passage (1:7– 8), the woman is seeking her beloved one desperately and longingly. He is presented there not as a king but as a shepherd. She calls to him, saying: “Tell me, you whom my soul loves, where you pasture (‫ ) ִתּ ְרֶעה‬your flock, where you make it lie down at noon.” Psalm 80 begins with the words: “Give ear, O Shepherd (‫ )ר ֶֹעה‬of Israel, you who lead Joseph like a flock!” The psalm bemoans Yhwh’s wrath against Yhwh’s people who have been unfaithful. The perspective goes back to the foundational history of God’s people. Israel is here compared to a vine: “You brought a vine out of Egypt, you drove out the nations and planted it” (Ps 80:9). This vine filled the whole land, but now it is abandoned, its hedges are broken down, and “the boar from the forest ravages it, and all that move in the field feed on it” (Ps 80:14; cf. Song 2:15). The image of the vine and the vineyard is used several times in the Hebrew Bible as a metaphor for God’s people and their land (e. g., Isa 27:2– 6; Jer 12:10; cf. Matt 21:33 – 44). The “song of the vineyard” in Isa 5 is a particularly well-known example. This song is an allegory, where the vineyard is meant to signify God’s people (v. 7), while the friend who planted the vineyard is God himself. Since God’s vineyard, however, did not bring forth sweet grapes, God abandons it and allows it to be destroyed (Isa 5:5 – 6; 1:8). Another allegory of the vineyard can be found in Ezek 19:10 – 14: “Your mother was like a vine in the vineyard.” The vine that was initially strong and fertile is uprooted “in fury” and is consumed by fire, which is an allusion to the end of the Judaic monarchy and the

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subsequent exile (Ezek 17:6). Furthermore, in Hos 1– 3 Israel’s unfaithfulness is compared with the unfaithfulness of a wife who follows other lovers (2:7). God, her “first spouse” (2:9), punishes her for her infidelity. God destroys her vine (2:14), but does not give up on his beloved. God tries to “allure her … and give her back her vineyards” (2:14– 15; cf. Ezek 28:26). Because of the close relationship between Israel and its land, the Bible can talk both of Israel’s unfaithfulness and of the unfaithfulness of the land whenever the people follow foreign gods (Hos 1:2). From this perspective, Song 1:5 – 6 may be interpreted in the following way: The vineyard at the end of v. 6 can be understood as a metaphor for both the woman and the land. The fact that the woman did not preserve it is a confession of her infidelity. The affirmation “But my own vineyard I have not kept” is, therefore, not a proud declaration of self-determined sexual behavior but rather an admission of her wrongdoings. This is also in accordance with the black appearance of the woman, which causes the daughters of Jerusalem to look contemptuously at her (cf. Lam 4:6 – 8; Ezek 16:57). But who are “my mother’s sons”? Song 1:5 mentions the woman’s brothers for the first time, introducing them as “my mother’s sons,” and they are mentioned once more at the end of the Song (8:8 – 10). There appear to be tensions between the young woman and her brothers. This is deduced easily from 1:5: “My mother’s sons were angry with me; they made me the keeper of the vineyards.” In opposition to this, the young woman declares: “But my own vineyard I have not kept.” In this sentence, the vineyard is a metaphor for the woman herself. If we read the text as a profane love song, this would mean that the woman did not preserve her virginity. As we have seen, there are key passages in the Bible where the vineyard is used as an image for God’s people and their land. This comparison is used especially when Israel is accused of infidelity towards Yhwh. The love story between God and God’s people is described several times in terms of a marriage history. The woman has abandoned Yhwh, “her spouse,” and has followed other lovers (Hos 2:7, 18). The daughter of Zion has left the one she loved (Ezek 16:8) and now finds herself abandoned “like a shelter in a vineyard” (Isa 1:4, 8). Song 1:6 can therefore be interpreted this way: The woman who failed to keep her own vineyard is condemned by her mother’s sons to keep other people’s vineyards (cf. 2 Kgs 18:31– 32) and must reckon with the anger of her brothers. This could be an allusion to the exile, when God’s people were forced to work in foreign countries for other people, like once in Egypt (Hos 8:13; 9:1– 6; 10). They had to “serve other gods” (Deut 4:28; 28:64; 29:1– 28). “My mother’s sons” probably refers to the inhabitants of Babylon (Gen 11:27– 32; 22:20 – 24; 25:20; 28:1– 9; Ezek 16:3, 45), but also to other people related to Israel like the

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Edomites, who assisted the Babylonians in the conquest of Jerusalem and treated its inhabitants with particular cruelty (cf. Lam 4:21; Obad 1:1– 15; Ps 137:7; Ezek 25:12– 14; Joel 4:2– 3:9; Amos 1:11). Despite the iniquity that manifests itself in her black, sunburned skin, the woman remains beautiful: “I am black but beautiful.” Her dark side, which she does not try to hide, has not destroyed her beauty altogether (Ezek 16:14). This awareness gives her the courage and the self-consciousness to turn (again) to her beloved. Now that she has been rejected and condemned to keep other people’s vineyards, she is again enflamed with love for her beloved one (cf. Deut 4:29; 30:1– 10). So she starts to search for him (1:7).

4.4 Go forth! (Song 1:7 – 8) Tell me, you whom my soul loves, where you pasture your flock, where you make it lie down at noon; for why should I be like one who strays beside the flocks of your fellows. If you do not know, O most beautiful among women, go forth in the tracks of the flock, and pasture your young goats beside the shepherds’ tents. (Song 1:7– 8)

For the first time we encounter a brief dialogue that consists of a question (v. 7) and an answer (v. 8). The woman starts the dialogue with a question directed to her beloved. She addresses him by calling him: “you whom my soul loves.” This designation for the beloved one is found only here and four times in 3:1– 4. It is used exclusively by the woman in order to designate her beloved, but never the other way around. An echo of her sentiment may be found in Deut 6:5, where Israel is invited to love the Lord their God “with all [their] soul.” In the initial song, the beloved one is a king (1:4). Now, the woman looks for him among the shepherds, desirous to find out where he will make his flock lie down at noon. This is a subtle allusion to Ps 23:3: “Yhwh is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures” (emphasis added). Psalm 23 alludes to the history of Israel’s beginnings with the exodus, the desert wandering, the settlement and, at the same time, “the prophetic promise of Israel’s renewal through the second exodus from exile.”²⁰  Frank-Lothar Hossfeld and Erich Zenger, Die Psalmen: Psalm 1 – 50 (NEchtB 29; Würzburg: Echter, 1993), 154 (my translation).

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King and shepherd are the two most common images that the Bible uses to describe God (Ps 93:1; Ezek 34). The metaphor god is a shepherd occurs mostly in texts that talk about Israel’s repatriation from exile. The image of Yhwh the good shepherd, who leads his people back to Zion, programmatically inaugurates the second part of the book of Isaiah: “He will tend his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms” (Isa 40:11; cf. Jer 23:3; 31:10). Noontime, when the force of the sun is at its highest, is also the time when God gives to those who trust in God “the desires of their heart” (Ps 37:4– 6). In opposition to this, the darkness of the night is synonymous with extreme distance from God (Isa 5:30; 59:10; Amos 5:18 – 20; 8:9). The woman justifies her wish with a rhetorical question: “for why should I be like one who strays beside the flocks of your fellows?” (1:7). The “flocks of the fellows” probably refers those nations and their monarchs among whom Israel is forced to live during exile. The kings of the ancient Near East saw themselves as shepherds of their people. From this point of view, they can be considered to be “fellows/companions” of Yhwh, Israel’s shepherd (Ps 80:2). Nevertheless, they cannot compare with God and God’s anointed. Psalm 45:8 puts particular emphasis on the divinely anointed, who is incomparable to his fellows: “Therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your fellows.” Song 1:3 mentioned the fragrant ointments that surround the royal beloved. The sense of v. 7 would therefore be: The daughter of Zion, who lives in a foreign country, searches for the one “whom her soul loves” (Deut 6:5). She asks: Why should I continue to wander around among the other peoples (“flocks”) of foreign kings (“fellows”)? Where can I find my beloved? The answer in v. 8 is probably given by the daughters of Jerusalem, who have already been mentioned in the preceding stanza (1:5). The woman who loves her beloved so much is asked to “go forth.” The Hebrew verb ‫ יצא‬is often used to describe Israel’s exodus from bondage in Egypt (Exod 20:1). But the same word also refers to the second exodus, namely, the exodus from Babylonian captivity. In Isa 48:20 the exiles are encouraged: “Go forth from Babylonia, flee from Chaldea!” Similarly, we read in Isa 52:11: “Depart, depart! Go out from there!” (cf. also Isa 49:9). Significantly, the Song of Songs concludes with an invitation to flee—a verse that has been particularly befuddling for interpreters: “Make haste/flee, my beloved, and be like a gazelle or a young stag upon the mountains of spices!” (8:14). The beloved one is asked to go forth “in the tracks of the flock” (1:8). This likely refers to the road by which Israel went into the Babylonian exile. Considering that meaning, this is probably an allusion to Jer 31:21– 22: “Set up road markers for yourself; make yourself guideposts; consider well the highway, the road by which you went. Return, O virgin Israel, return [cf. Song 7:1] to these your cities. How long will you waver, O faithless daughter? For the Lord has cre-

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ated a new thing on the earth: a woman encircles a man” (emphasis added). The virgin—that is, Israel—is invited to return to her country and to her spouse. This is also the desire of the woman in the Song of Songs. She wants to be together with the one “whom her soul loves.” She tries to find out where he makes his flock to lie down “at noon” (cf. John 6:10), when he fulfills her desire (Ps 23:3; cf. Mk 6:30 – 44). But her desire cannot be fulfilled unless she goes forth—like she did before, at the time of the exodus.

5 Conclusion: Theological Relevance The Song of Songs contains numerous allusions to those prophetic texts in the Bible that talk about a renewed love between God and God’s people. These allusions appear to be intended by the author. The Song of Songs is the fruit of a long history of religious experience and theological reflection. In both the Old and New Testaments, the relationship between God and God’s people is expressed through the concept of love. Because Yhwh loves his people, Yhwh has liberated them from slavery in Egypt (Deut 7:8). Israel’s appropriate answer to this is: “You shall love Yhwh your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (Deut 6:5). The love between God and God’s people could be described by using different metaphors. In the ancient Near East, contractual obligations between two unequal parties were often stylized as a love relationship and could, together with the concept of covenant, be applied to the relationship between Israel and their God. In this case, the most important aspects are loyalty, faithfulness, and obedience (Exod 34:10 – 26). God’s love for God’s people could also be expressed in terms of parental love. In this case, the aspects of care and education become more important (e. g., Deut 8:5). The particularity of the Song of Songs consists in the fact that the love between God and God’s people is revealed and developed according to the model of love between a man and a woman. It is worth noting that the usual motifs of patriarchal dominance are almost completely undermined and give way to a love that is face to face. It is quite possible that the original Sitz im Leben of some of the songs in the Song was a profane one. In their present context, however, the songs were most likely intended as an expression of the loving relationship between God and God’s beloved spouse, God’s own people. This thesis is supported by numerous connections to other key texts in the Hebrew Bible. Both Jewish and Christian traditions have understood these connections quite correctly. At some points, the divine lover even assumes messianic features. This is a motif which the

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New Testament, especially the Gospel of John, would take up and build upon (John 3:29).²¹

 The execution of this reading of the Song of Songs and its argumentation can be found in my short commentary, Das Hohelied der Liebe (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 2015).

Peter Machinist (Harvard University)

Royal Inscriptions in the Hebrew Bible and Mesopotamia: Reflections on Presence, Function, and Self-Critique To Leong, in admiration.

1 Introduction Royal inscriptions are among the most prominent manifestations of rulership in the ancient Near East, testifying in rhetorically charged ways to the ruler’s achievements as pious devotee of his kingdom’s gods and caregiver of his subjects. In these achievements, the ruler is represented, as Mario Liverani puts it, in two roles: “as a relentless builder and a victorious warrior.”¹ Royal inscriptions are among the earliest texts to be recovered and studied in modern scholarship on the ancient Near East, and remain a frequent and much debated source on its history. They are found all over the region, but arguably the largest, longest attested, and most diverse collection is from ancient Mesopotamia. But what of ancient Israel? Here the evidence is limited. Yet that has not impeded, indeed it may have encouraged, discussion. The discussion has focused on three issues: (1) whether and how Israelite and Judahite kings employed royal inscriptions; (2) what knowledge these kings had of other inscriptional traditions of the ancient Near East; and (3) what role, if any, such inscriptions played as sources for the great works of biblical historiography, namely, the Deuteronomistic History and Chronicles. The present paper, after laying out some basic features of the royal inscriptional genre, surveys these three issues, and then focuses on three biblical and three Mesopotamian texts that are not simply reflections of royal inscriptional language, but efforts to play with, even to polemicize against, the very category or genre of such inscriptions. Why they should be playing and polemicizing, what specific relationships, if any, they may have among one another, especially across the biblical-Mesopotamian divide, and what larger significance may be at work here—these will be our central questions.

 Mario Liverani, “The Deeds of Ancient Mesopotamian Kings,” in CANE, 4:2360. DOI 10.1515/9783110428148-023

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2 Overview of Royal Inscriptions 2.1 Royal Inscriptions: Structure and Settings Royal inscriptions are best attested, as noted, in Mesopotamia and its cultural relatives elsewhere in the ancient Near East, including the Hittites in Anatolia and northern Syria, and the rest of the Levant. In Mesopotamia, the inscriptional tradition extends, in a number of varieties, at least from the first half of the third millennium through the first millennium B.C.E. The high point in terms of abundance, elaboration, and variety is doubtless the Assyrian tradition, starting in the Middle Assyrian period of the second half of the second millennium B.C.E. (Late Bronze Age) through the Neo-Assyrian of the first half of the first millennium B.C.E. (Iron Age). Here is an adaptation of a standard discussion of these texts by A. Kirk Grayson,² wherein passages in parentheses may or may not occur: I. Introduction (Dedication to deity). The king speaks in 1st person, giving: name and genealogy; royal epithets, which regularly treat sovereign rule, military prowess, care for kingdom, including building activities; (statement of his commission by the gods or the principal god to rule). II. Historical narrative, regularly in 1st person singular from the king. Military campaign(s), accentuating the king’s successes. III. Description of king’s building activities, regularly in 1st person singular from the king. The building includes official structures, especially temples or palaces, and/or the stela or other monument on which the present text is inscribed. (NB. II. and III. can both occur and in this order, or either one can occur alone.) (IV. Conclusions) Prayer.

 A. Kirk Grayson, “Assyria and Babylonia,” Or 49 (1980): 140 – 71. Many other studies of royal inscriptions have been made, of which only one here may be cited: F. Mario Fales, ed., Assyrian Royal Inscriptions: New Horizons in Literary, Ideological, and Historical Analysis (Orientis Antiqui Collectio 17; Rome: Istituto per l’Oriente; Centro per le Antichità e la Storia dell’Arte del Vicino Oriente, 1981).

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Blessings on the king and/or the gods. Curses on violators of the buildings in III. and/or the inscription itself. (The above three, if they do occur, can occur all together, or just one or two of them can appear.) (V. Colophon) Date of inscription. Identification of the scribe with genealogy and title. These royal inscriptions are found in several settings: (1) They appear on standing stelae, usually in stone, in front of or even within official buildings, particularly palaces or temples—the stelae being either a flat or rounded surface or in human, animal, or hybrid form to represent the king, a god, or another supernatural creature. (2) They are also on cuneiform tablets, normally in clay, but occasionally in stone or, rarely, in metal (silver or gold), to be found both visibly, as in archives or libraries, or invisibly, that is, buried as foundation deposits of buildings and thus accessible only to the gods or to later kings who would renovate the buildings. (3) The inscriptions can appear on the walls of official buildings or on rock cliffs as parts of reliefs of royal and divine personages, wherein, in the Neo-Assyrian examples, the inscriptions can run right through the pictorial images, indicating that each partakes of the other. The above three settings, in turn, are found both within the central imperial area—the so-called Assyrian triangle off the upper Tigris formed by the capital cities of Assur, Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta, Kalaḫ, Nineveh, and Dur-Šarrukin—and, except as foundation deposits, out in imperial territory represented by the provinces and vassal states.

2.2 Royal Inscriptions in ancient Israel As against the abundance of evidence for Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptions, that for ancient Israel and its immediate environs is, as already noted, limited, even sparse. What evidence does exist is both biblical and archaeological, and some years ago was nicely catalogued and discussed by Simon Parker.³ The biblical evidence to which Parker pointed is all in very brief allusions: 1 Sam 15:12 (Saul erects [‫ ]מציב‬a ‫ יד‬in Carmel); 2 Sam 8:3 (Hadad-ezer of Zobah⁴ or David⁵ re-

 Simon Parker, “Did the Authors of the Books of Kings Make Use of Royal Inscriptions?” VT 50 (2000): 357– 78.  So, e. g., ibid., 361 and n. 10.  E. g., P. Kyle McCarter, Jr., II Samuel (AB 9; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1984), 242– 43, 247– 48.

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stores [‫ ]השׁיב‬his ‫ ;)יד‬and 2 Sam 8:13 (David makes a name after returning from a military campaign). The word ‫ יד‬in 2 Sam 8:3, however, is understood by others, like the RSV,⁶ in the meaning of “power,” namely that David defeated Hadadezer as David moved “to restore his power” at the River (= Euphrates). Such an interpretation is not impossible, but the parallel account in 1 Chr 18:3 has the verb “erect” (‫)הציב‬, just as in 1 Sam 15:12, which clearly indicates a physical object. Parker mentions two more occurrences, but he appears to have doubts about whether they are really connected in meaning to the three just mentioned. However, I see no reason not to connect them. The first is 2 Sam 18:18, in which Absalom, son of David, is described as “erecting” (‫ )יצב‬a “stela” (‫)מצבת‬, which is then called the ‫ יד‬of Absalom so that in lieu of his having a son, the stela will allow him to be remembered. And in Isa 56:5, the hendiadys ‫“ יד ושם‬a stela representing a name” is to be set up by God in the Jerusalem temple so that the eunuchs who have kept God’s sabbaths and covenant can have their names remembered forever. To be sure, this last example does not involve kings, but it is of the same type as the other four occurrences: the erection of a physical stela to remember a particular individual and sometimes, as in 2 Sam 8:13 and perhaps in 2 Sam 8:3, a particular deed. Note that in none of these examples is an inscription explicitly said to be on the stela, but this is a distinct possibility, particularly when the stela, as in 2 Sam 8:3, 13, appears to commemorate a deed. As for the archaeological evidence of royal inscriptions, to which Parker in part referred, the only more or less certain example composed within ancient Israel and Judah appears to be a fragmentary ostracon from Arad, whose palaeography places it toward the end of the eighth century B.C.E.⁷ Though not a monumental inscription, its text, particularly the first line, reveals the language of a royal inscription. The text and my translation run as follows:⁸ 1. ʾny . mlkty . bk[ 2. ʾmṣ . zrʿ . w[ 3. mlk . mṣ rym . l[

1. I have become king in x… 2. strong is the arm… 3. (the) king of (?) Egypt…

 The Holy Bible. RSV (New York: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1952), 328a ad 2 Sam 8:3.  See Parker, “Did the Authors of the Book of Kings Make Use of Royal Inscriptions,” 364– 65.  The transcription is taken from F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp, J. J. M. Roberts, C. L. Seow, and R. E. Whitaker, Hebrew Inscriptions: Texts from the Biblical Period of the Monarchy with Concordance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 98; the text is there designated, after its original publication, as “Arad 88.”

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Otherwise, the evidence attests to several monumental inscriptions in Iron Age Israel and Judah that either are not royal inscriptions, in terms of the structure described above, or are too broken to be understood with confidence. So, for example, there is a fragment of a limestone stela, found by the British team that excavated the site of Samaria in 1936 and dated on palaeographic grounds to the eighth century B.C.E.⁹ Inscriptionally, however, all that remains of it is one word, ‫אשר‬, plus a word divider, suggesting the possible restoration: “[I am King X, son of Y] who [ ].” Should this restoration be correct, we would have, again, a characteristic opening clause of a royal inscription, all the more possible, because ‫ אשר‬seems to be in the first line of the inscription. Yet, clearly, we cannot be certain. Similarly, from Jerusalem, there are at least two fragments of what seem to be monumental inscriptions, apparently of the later eighth/seventh centuries B.C.E. palaeographically; but what remains of their broken texts is not enough even to suggest royal inscriptions.¹⁰ One other inscription from Judah may be mentioned: the Siloam Tunnel inscription from Jerusalem, to be dated by palaeography and content from the end of the eighth century B.C.E.¹¹ But while this can be understood as monumental and appears to be essentially complete, its text does not appear to qualify as a royal inscription. To this uncertain or negative evidence, however, may be juxtaposed from within Israel or its close vicinity three other sets of inscriptions: the Tel Dan inscription in Aramaic from Israel roughly in the latter part of the ninth century B.C.E., doubtless representing the statement of an Aramaean king;¹² at least three inscriptions, originating in Transjordan, of Moabite kings of the ninth century B.C.E., two of them from King Mesha of the latter half of the ninth century, and all in Moabite;¹³ and six fragments from at least five different Neo-Assyrian inscriptions in Akkadian found at Samaria and Philistine Ashdod of the late eighth century B.C.E., and belonging, it appears, to Sargon II, and at Qaqun and the Ben Shemen forest, belonging to Esarhaddon of the early seventh cen-

 Parker, “Did the Authors of the Book of Kings Make Use of Royal Inscriptions,” 362, referring to Eleazer L. Sukenik, “Note on a Fragment of an Israelite Stele Found at Samaria,” PEFQS 68 (1936): 156 and pl. III. Sukenik proposes, and this is attractive to Parker, a variant restoration to that offered in this paper, viz., “Stela which (‫ )אשר‬so-and-so, king of Israel, set up….” Which restoration, if either, is correct depends, of course, on the amount of space preceding ‫ אשר‬in the fragment—something that cannot be estimated with any certainty.  Parker, “Did the Authors of the Book of Kings Make Use of Royal Inscriptions,” 362– 64. See more recently, with updated bibliography, Shmuel Aḥituv, Echoes from the Past: Hebrew and Cognate Inscriptions from the Biblical Period (Jerusalem: Carta, 2008), 25 – 26, 30 – 32.  See Aḥituv, Echoes from the Past, 19 – 25.  Ibid., 467– 73.  Ibid., 387– 423.

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tury.¹⁴ All these inscriptions, it is clear, are monumental, mostly stelae,¹⁵ and all, from their texts, appear to be royal, in which the king uses the first person. But none of them, it is equally clear, represents inscriptions of kings of Israel or Judah. What, then, to make of the evidence, biblical and non-biblical, that we have briefly reviewed? First, the evidence shows without question that royal inscriptions were known in and around the territories of Israel and Judah. Second, even if the evidence is exiguous, it appears to indicate that the kings of Israel and Judah not only knew of royal inscriptions, but in fact composed them. On this second point the bulk of scholars, though not all, agree; and in so agreeing, they point to some additional evidence, namely, the presence of royal inscriptional language, images, and motifs in Isaiah and other biblical prophetic books, which echo and in various instances, it can be argued, draw on Mesopotamian and West Semitic traditions.¹⁶ But what about the other parts of the Hebrew Bible, specifically the historical books of the Deuteronomistic History and the Chronicles? Do we find royal inscriptional echoes in them, and can royal inscriptions thus be supposed as a source for the composition of these books? On these historical books there is a divide. On the one hand, scholars like Baruch Halpern, Mario Liverani, and Nadav Naʾaman answer yes: there is royal inscriptional language in these books, particularly the books of Kings, which indicates that such inscriptions were sources—but not, by any means, the only, or even the dominant, ones—for the biblical historiographers.¹⁷ Livera-

 For a brief description of these six Akkadian fragments, see Mordechai Cogan, The Raging Torrent: Historical Inscriptions from Assyria and Babylonia Relating to Ancient Israel (2d. ed.; Jerusalem: Carta, 2015), 285 – 86, 170 (ad obverse, lines 6 – 18). Cogan refers to the editions of these fragments in Wayne Horowitz and Takayoshi Oshima, with Seth Sanders, Cuneiform in Canaan: Cuneiform Sources from the Land of Israel in Ancient Times (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society and Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2006), 40 – 41 (Ashdod 2– 4), 45 (Ben Shemen 1), 111 (Qaqun), 115 (Samaria 4).  The stelae are Tel Dan, Mesha Stela, and all the Akkadian fragments. The two other Moabite inscriptions are a statue of a human figure and a stela-like basalt column.  See, e.g, Peter Machinist, “Assyria and Its Image in the First Isaiah,” JAOS 103 (1983): 719 – 37; Chaim Cohen, “Neo-Assyrian Elements in the First Speech of the Biblical Rab-Saqe,” IOS 9 (1983): 32– 48; Shawn Z. Aster, “The Image of Assyria in Isaiah 2:5 – 22: The Campaign Motif Reversed,” JAOS 127 (2007): 249 – 78; Shawn Z. Aster, “Isaiah 19: The Burden of Egypt and Neo-Assyrian Imperial Policy,” JAOS 135 (2015): 453 – 70; Shalom M. Paul, “Deutero-Isaiah and Cuneiform Royal Inscriptions,” JAOS 88 (1968): 180 – 86.  Baruch Halpern, “The Construction of the Davidic State: An Exercise in Historiography,” in The Origins of the Ancient Israelite States (ed. Volkmar Fritz and Philip R. Davies; JSOTSup 228; Sheffield: Sheffield University Press, 1996), 44– 75; Mario Liverani, “The Book of Kings and Ancient Near Eastern Historiography,” in The Books of Kings: Sources, Composition, Historiography

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ni, indeed, undertakes in one of his essays an “experiment,” imagining what kinds of royal inscriptions might have been used and how in the composition of narratives from Kings.¹⁸ Parker, on the other hand, is skeptical virtually to the point of denial. As he writes, … the evidence to date does not support claims that the authors of Kings used royal epigraphic monuments as sources for their history.… Kings recorded their own achievements in memorial and dedicatory inscriptions to thank and win the favor of their gods and to impress their people and posterity. These royal interests were not particularly close to those of the authors of Kings … [who] were particularly interested in the continuity of the Davidic dynasty, but also in the succession of the kings of Israel, as means of demonstrating the connection between the character of the founder of each kingdom and the fate of that kingdom.¹⁹

Yet even Parker is not the final word on the matter. Aside from the possibility, which he admits, that a new inscription could be discovered that would change the picture,²⁰ he does appear to leave the door somewhat open in the present state of the evidence, allowing that at least in one instance, royal—or what he calls “memorial”—inscriptions like that of Mesha, king of Moab, might have served as a source for Kings.²¹ Most recently, Gary Rendsburg has taken Parker’s skepticism one step further, denying not only that royal inscriptions played a role in the composition of the biblical historical books, but that the kings of Israel and Judah composed such inscriptions at all. The reason for Rendsburg is simple: humility. He states, “The Bible’s constant emphasis on humility, I submit, was taken seriously by the people of Israel to such an extent, it appears, that the kings of both kingdoms

and Reception (ed. Baruch Halpern, Matthew J. Adams, and André Lemaire; VTSup 129; Leiden: Brill, 2010), 163 – 84; Mario Liverani, “Experimental Historiography: How to Write a Solomonic Royal Inscription,” in Recenti tendenze nella ricostruzione della storia antica d’Israele (ed. Mario Liverani et al.; Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 2005), 87– 101; Nadav Naʾaman, “The Sources Available for the Author of the Book of Kings,” in Recenti tendenze nella ricostruzione della storia antica d’Israele (ed. Mario Liverani et al.; Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 2005), 105 – 20, especially 112– 13; Nadav Naʾaman, “The Contribution of Royal Inscriptions for a Re-Evaluation of the Book of Kings as a Historical Source,” JSOT 82 (1999): 3 – 17. One should also mention the pioneering article of James Montgomery, “Archival Data in the Book of Kings,” JBL 53 (1934): 46 – 52. The latter includes royal inscriptions in what he calls “archival” or “official” sources for the “data” in Kings, but does not clearly separate out the inscriptions from other possible archival/official resources as Naʾaman tries to do.  Liverani, “Experimental Historiography,” 87– 101.  Parker, “Did the Authors of the Book of Kings Make Use of Royal Inscriptions,” 375 – 76.  Ibid., 375.  Ibid., 368.

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refrained from following the practices of neighboring monarchs in erecting stelae boasting of their accomplishments.”²² But the Hebrew Bible never prohibits its native kings from setting up royal inscriptions; quite the contrary, as we have seen, there are several passages alluding to such an act—passages which Rendsburg does not discuss.²³ To be sure, the biblical texts Rendsburg cites do commend the virtue of humility, and can condemn or praise a ruler on this basis. But celebrating a ruler’s achievements is not something that in itself is condemnatory, if it does not clash with God’ sovereignty. So David is described, without criticism, as capturing Jerusalem and calling it “the city of David” (2 Sam 5:9); and the kings had their courtiers who could, certainly with royal encouragement, praise their patrons even in extravagant terms for their achievements, as certain psalms illustrate (e. g., Pss 2, 72, 45, 110). Finally, it appears to me, Rendsburg’s utter dismissal of the archaeological evidence for royal inscriptions in Israel and Judah is too quick. Certainly the evidence is sparse and very fragmentary, but, as suggested above, the Samaria ‫ אשר‬inscription and the words in the Arad ostracon invite some real pause, which Rendsburg does not grant; indeed, he does not mention the Arad inscription at all.

3 Echoes of Royal Inscriptions in Isaiah, 2 Kings, and Ecclesiastes So far we have reviewed the basic layout and settings of royal inscriptions, especially as given in the Mesopotamian tradition, and have considered, even if briefly, three questions that concern ancient Israel/Judah in particular: whether their rulers employed royal inscriptions; whether they knew of other inscriptional texts and traditions; and whether the biblical historical books, especially Kings, used such texts as sources. On the first two questions, the answers

 Gary A. Rendsburg, “No Stelae, No Queens: Two Issues Concerning the Kings of Israel and Judah,” in The Archaeology of Difference: Gender, Ethnicity, Class and the “Other” in Antiquity: Studies in Honor of Eric M. Meyers (ed. Douglas R. Edwards and C. Thomas McCullough; AASOR 60/61; Boston: American Schools of Oriental Research, 2007), 97; the whole discussion is on 95 – 99, 102– 3.  Rendsburg (“No Stelae, No Queens,” 98) points to Isa 22:15 – 16, where the prophet criticizes Shebna, the high official of King Hezekiah of Judah, for carving out a tomb for himself from a cliff. But aside from the fact that the criticism does not mention a royal-like inscription as part of this tomb, the point being made is not that constructing such a tomb is ipso facto an arrogant act, but that Shebna, by his other behavior, has disqualified himself from having this kind of tomb.

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have been positive, but not always well attested. On the third, the scholarly discussion points toward a positive use as sources, but that discussion is inconclusive, and frankly I think we lack enough evidence at the moment to reach a definitive solution. I want, therefore, to move, at least in part, in another direction, and I do so by returning to the second question about other inscriptional traditions in Israel/Judah, more specifically, the echoes of royal inscriptional rhetoric and motifs in Isaiah and other biblical non-historical books. My question, as raised already in the introduction, is whether these echoes are just isolated phrases and motifs in the Bible or something more: actual royal inscriptions or large enough chunks of them to say that as a literary category or genre they were discerned and considered as such by the biblical authors? And if considered as such, so what? What is the meaning of their presence in the biblical text? Let us examine, therefore, three possible examples, two from Isaiah and one from Ecclesiastes.

3.1 Isaiah 10:5 – 15 The first is Isa 10:5 – 15, a well-known text that begins with the famous words, “Ah, Assyria, the rod of my anger…”²⁴ Here is a translation:²⁵ Ah, Aššur, the rod of my anger, The staff—it is my wrath in their hand. Against an ungodly nation I send him, And against a people of my indignation I command him, To take spoil and to seize plunder, And to trample him (= the nation/people) down like mire in the streets. But he does not so intend, And his mind does not so consider. To destroy, rather, is in his mind, And to cut off nations not a few. “Are not my officials altogether kings?

 The following discussion of Isa 10:5 – 15 is an abbreviated and revised version of two other publications of mine: “Final Response: On the Study of the Ancients, Language, Writing, and the State,” in Margins of Writing, Origins of Cultures (ed. Seth L. Sanders; Oriental Institute Seminar 2; Chicago: The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 2006), 296 – 98; and Machinist, “‘Ah, Assyria…’ (Isaiah 10:5 ff.): Isaiah’s Assyrian Polemic Revisited,” in Not only History: Proceedings of the Conference in Honor of Mario Liverani Held in Sapienza-Università di Roma, Dipartimento di Scienze dell’Antichità, 20 – 21 April 2009 (ed. Gilda Bartoloni and Maria Giovanna Biga, in collaboration with Armando Bramanti; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2016), 183 – 217.  This is my translation based on the Hebrew edition in BHS.

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Is not Calno like Carchemish, Or Hamath like Arpad, Or Samaria like Damascus? As when my hand reached out to idolatrous kingdoms, Their images more than (those of) Jerusalem and Samaria, Will it not (be that) what I have done to Samaria and its idols, I will so do to Jerusalem and its effigies?” Then it will come to pass when My Lord completes all his task on Mt. Zion and on Jerusalem, (that) I (= Yhwh) will punish the mindful arrogance of the king of Assyria and the glorified haughtiness in his eyes. For he has said: “By the strength of my (own) hand have I done (it), And by my wisdom, for I have powers of discernment. I removed the boundaries of peoples, And their possessions I plundered. And like a bull I brought down (their) inhabitants. My hand reached out to the wealth of the peoples (to gather it) like a nest. And like gathering abandoned eggs, I gathered all the earth. There was no one who (could) flutter his wings (to fly away), No one who (could) open his mouth and chirp.” Shall the axe glorify itself over the one who hews with it? Or shall the saw magnify itself over the one who wields it, Like a rod that wields him who raise it up? Like a staff that raises up one who is not made of wood? (Isa 10:5 – 15)

Our passage is presented as a speech by Isaiah at some unspecified public gathering, but probably in Jerusalem involving the ruling elites of Judah. The speech is directed against an Assyrian king, also unspecified, and his empire,²⁶ whose conquests of a number of Levantine city-states are listed geographically from north to south, ending with Jerusalem. Because the wording in Isa 10:11 indicates that the conquest of Jerusalem either has not yet occurred or is underway, the best context for the speech is on the eve of or during King Sennacherib’s military campaign against the southern Levant in 701 B.C.E. (his third by his own annalistic reckoning), climaxing with the investiture of Jerusalem and its surrender with tribute.²⁷ As many scholars have observed, the speech is replete with

 Note that Aššur (‫ )אשור‬in Isa 10:5 and 10:12 refers both to the people/state of Assyria and to its king. The intermixing of these two referents is reflected in the shift from a third person plural pronominal suffix in v. 5 to third person singular verbs and verbal suffixes in vv. 6 – 7, leading into the quotations from the king in vv. 8b-11 and vv. 13 – 14, with the king explicitly so labelled in v. 12. Aššur in our passage, as elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, does not appear to indicate the god Aššur. See Machinist, “‘Ah, Assyria…,’” 188 – 89.  On this campaign and the sources for it, see, e. g., William R. Gallagher, Sennacherib’s Campaign to Judah: New Studies (Studies in the History and Culture of the Ancient Near East 18; Leiden: Brill, 1999); Lester L. Grabbe, ed., ‘Like a Bird in a Cage’: The Invasion of Sennacherib in 701

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Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptional language and imagery.²⁸ Thus, the references to Aššur, i. e., the Assyrian king and Assyria, being the staff or rod of the god (10:5); taking spoil and booty (10:6); wiping out many nations, not simply one (10:7); erasing national borders (10:13); exiling conquered populations (10:13); gathering up such populations like abandoned eggs (10:14); whose own officials (‫)שר‬ are the equivalent of the kings (‫ )מלך‬of the conquered nations (10:8); and whose king boasts that all these conquests he carried out with his strength and wisdom (10:13)—all these claims not only correspond to actual accomplishments of the Neo-Assyrian rulers, but echo the language they employ in their inscriptions. The subtleties involved are exemplified by the claim concerning officials and kings.²⁹ The claim works on two levels. Historically, Assyrian imperial officials could be in their supervisory roles as powerful as the petty kings of the smaller states within the empire, and so could themselves be labelled in the royal inscriptions as kings. There was, in other words, a certain fluidity in roles and titles. But this fluidity is also captured, linguistically, by a pun between biblical Hebrew usage and the Akkadian as employed in the Assyrian royal inscriptions. Specifically, in Isa 10:8 biblical ‫“( שר‬official”) echoes Akkadian šarru (“king”), while biblical ‫“( מלך‬king”) echoes Akkadian malku (“petty kings subject to Assyrian power”) and māliku (“advisor/official”). The pun shows that an Assyrian ‫ שר‬is really a “king” (šarru), while a ‫ מלך‬is really a petty king (malku) or a mere official advisor (māliku). But more than individual echoes of Assyrian royal rhetoric are involved in Isaiah’s speech of Isa 10:5 – 15. Here we have also a substantial echo of the structure of a royal inscription, especially as known in the Neo-Assyrian period. Thus, the first two-thirds of the speech are presented as an address by the god Yhwh to the Assyrian king (= Aššur) (10:5 – 11; see especially vv. 5 – 7). This corresponds to a form of royal inscription, admittedly rarely attested,³⁰ that has been designated by modern scholars as a “letter of the god.” Here the god Aššur responds to the B.C.E. (JSOTSup 363; London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2003); Isaac Kalimi and Seth Richardson, eds., Sennacherib at the Gates of Jerusalem: Story, History and Historiography (Studies in the History and Culture of the Ancient Near East 17; Leiden: Brill, 2014).  E. g., Machinist, “‘Ah, Assyria…,’” 192, 196 – 201; Gallagher, Sennacherib’s Campaign to Judah, 75 – 87; Michael Chan, “Rhetorical Reversal and Usurpation: Isaiah 10:5 – 34 and the Use of Neo-Assyrian Royal Idiom in the Construction of an Anti-Assyrian Theology,” JBL 128 (2009): 717– 33.  Machinist, “‘Ah, Assyria…,’” 198 – 200.  The main example is a fragmentary inscription of Šamši-Adad V: A. Kirk Grayson, ed., Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium BC II (858 – 745 BC) (RIMA 3; Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), 192– 93: No. 4.

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Assyrian king’s report to him about the king’s military campaigns conducted under his, Aššur’s, aegis. First, the god quotes the first-person description of a campaign by the Assyrian king, and then repeats that description, referring to the king in the second person as having carried out the campaign by “my”— i. e., the god’s—command. In the Isaianic speech, it is the god Yhwh who introduces the Assyrian king, doing so by calling the king his “staff/rod” and then quoting the king’s first-person account of his military achievements. The first of these Isaianic features is not found in the extant main Assyrian example of the letter of the god, from Šamši-Adad V, which is missing an introduction where the staff/rod image, if it were used, would have occurred. But the image of staff/rod is part of other Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptions,³¹ as is the first-person narrative of the military achievements by the Assyrian king. To be sure, not all of the features of the royal inscriptional format have found their way into Isa 10:5 – 15. So no name of the Assyrian king is given, nor his genealogy, and, apart from the designation of the king as Yhwh’s staff/rod, there is no string of royal epithets. Nor is there a section describing the king’s building activities, nor a concluding set of prayer, blessings, and curses. On the other hand, the section on building is not a totally stable element in the Assyrian royal inscriptions: at least two related inscriptions lack it altogether, while some others, especially from find spots outside of buildings, describe the monument on which the inscription is found, but not the construction of buildings per se. ³² As for the absence of prayer, blessings, or curses, one might consider the final verse in our Isaianic passage, 10:15, with its ominous suggestion of punishment for the Assyrian king’s hubris against Yhwh, which picks up the sentiment in v. 12, and presents something like an equivalent of the curses threatening those who would damage or destroy the royal buildings or the inscription itself. More important, however, than these omitted features—or partially omitted, as the case may be—is what is in our Isaianic text: the emphasis on the king’s first-person speech and its glorification of his military successes, all within the framework of a speech by the god Yhwh. This framework is the key element of the letter of the god category, while the two-fold emphasis reflects the two fea-

 Chan, “Rhetorical Reversal and Usurpation,” 721– 26. As Chan correctly notes, Isa 10:5 imagines Aššur as both the rod/staff of Yhwh and the wielder of the rod/staff which comes from Yhwh; both usages, he shows, can be paralleled in the Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptions.  For the complete absence of a building description, see Grayson, Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium BC II, 94– 96: Nos. 23, 24. For the mention of the monument with inscription, see, e. g., Erle Leichty, The Royal Inscriptions of Esarhaddon, King of Assyria (680 – 669 BC) (RINAP 4; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2011), 181– 86: No. 98.

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tures of the Neo-Assyrian exemplars of the larger Mesopotamian tradition of royal inscriptions that come to dominate all the others. And yet something is terribly wrong with all this inscriptional material in Isa 10:5 – 15. The language and imagery of the royal inscriptions may be there; the essential features of the inscriptional structure may also be discernible; but all together it does not sound right when compared with its apparent Neo-Assyrian model. For one thing, the god who speaks in and is part of the center of this Isaiah text is not Aššur, the imperial deity of Assyria, but Yhwh, the god of one of the inferior subjects of Assyria, Judah. And when Yhwh speaks, he is not favorable to, does not allow praise for, his agent, the Assyrian king, as Aššur does in the royal inscriptions but is very critical, indeed vehemently, even violently so, against the king. Yhwh’s vehement criticism is directed against two acts of the Assyrian king, both of them, as noted, involving motifs and language from the Assyrian inscriptions themselves. The first is that the king has gone well beyond his divine mission to destroy one “ungodly” (‫ )חנף‬nation; he has, rather, destroyed many (Isa 10:6 – 7). Such a criticism, however, is never found in the Assyrian royal inscriptions, in which constant campaigns not simply to safeguard but to expand the empire are what are celebrated. Indeed, it is one of the king’s primary, godgiven duties, as the Assyrian coronation ritual proclaims, “to expand the land” (rappušu māta).³³ Yhwh’s criticism of the Assyrian’s multiple campaigns, therefore, looks like a reversal of the sentiment in the inscriptions. An even more striking criticism concerns the Assyrian king’s gloating over his campaign successes (Isa 10:8, 13). Especially in v. 13, the king goes so far as to announce that it was he alone, in his strength and wisdom, who achieved these successes. This boast, however, earns no praise from Yhwh or from Isaiah, whose voice directly intervenes in the preceding v. 12. It is rather viewed as a statement of extreme hubris against the very god who had sent the king on his campaign mission—something deserving, as Isaiah predicts in v. 12, of divine punishment. The hubris here stings all the more when we realize that it is playing against similar language in the Assyrian royal inscriptions. So when the king says he acts by his own wisdom, this looks like an echo in reverse of the motif particularly visible in the texts of King Sennacherib, whose achievements are praised for their wisdom.³⁴ And when the king claims he alone was responsible,

 For discussion, see Peter Machinist, “Kingship and Divinity in Imperial Assyria,” in Text, Artifact, and Image: Revealing Ancient Israelite Religion (ed. Gary M. Beckman and Theodore J. Lewis; BJS 346; Providence, RI: Brown University Press, 2006), 157– 59.  Gallagher, Sennacherib’s Campaign to Judah, 79 – 80.

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this again is a reverse echo, here of the charge in the Assyrian inscriptions against the enemies of Assyria: that they were doomed to defeat by Aššur and the Assyrian king, because they rebelled against Assyrian domination, doing it all by themselves and trusting only in themselves.³⁵ In short, in our Isaianic text, the Assyrian king by his hubris becomes the enemy king of his own inscriptions. In sum, Isa 10:5 – 15 appears to be a deliberate inversion not simply of individual elements of the Assyrian, especially Neo-Assyrian, royal inscriptional tradition, but of the genre and ideology of this tradition as a whole. In the inscriptions, the center is the Assyrian king as servant/agent of the Assyrian gods, especially the principal imperial god, Aššur. In Isaiah, that center remains the Assyrian king with the god, except that the god is not Aššur but Yhwh, and the Assyrian king’s complete failure to recognize and act on this is construed as a category mistake of the first order, leading to the charge that he will eventually disqualify himself as a legitimate divine agent. The possibility that the king could trust in Aššur, which is what the Assyrian inscriptions would affirm, is in Isaiah never even raised, since the foundational assumption is that the structure with Aššur in first position is false: the first position can belong only to Yhwh. Isa 10:5 – 15, in other words, may be said to be an Assyrian inscription in reverse, or, as Isaiah would doubtless have put it, an Assyrian inscription as it should properly be formulated.

3.2 Isaiah 37:24 – 25 // 2 Kings 19:23 – 24 The second biblical example of a royal inscription, or part of one, comes from Isa 37:24– 25 // 2 Kgs 19:23 – 24. The translation is as follows:³⁶ By the hand of your servants/messengers you have reviled My Lord, and you have said: “With the multitude of my chariotry I have scaled the heights of the mountains, The innermost recesses of the Lebanon, That I might cut down its tallest cedars, Its choicest junipers, And that I might enter its farthest reaches/lodging, Its forest thickly cultivated with trees. I dug (wells) and drank water,

 Machinist, “‘Ah Assyria…,’” 200 – 201.  The present translation, also based on BHS, uses the version of Isa 37 as a base; variants from 2 Kgs 19 that are not obvious mistakes are given as alternatives after a virgule.

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That I might dry up with the soles of my feet All the rivers of Egypt.” (Isa 37:24– 25 // 2 Kgs 19:23 – 24)

Like Isa 10:5 – 15, these verses belong to a text of Isaiah, in this case a letter to his king, Hezekiah of Judah (Isa 37:21– 29 // 2 Kgs 19:20 – 28), which, in turn, communicates a speech to Isaiah from Yhwh. The speech is directed explicitly against the Assyrian king, Sennacherib, pouring scorn on that king in response to his invasion of Judah and, in particular, to his speeches through his rab šāqēh demanding the surrender of Jerusalem (Isa 36:4– 10, 13 – 20; 37:9 – 13 // 2 Kgs 18:19 – 25, 28 – 35; 19:9 – 13)—all in the same campaign of 701 B.C.E. alluded to in Isa 10:5 – 15. And like Isa 10:5 – 15, Isa 37:24– 25 // 2 Kgs 19:23 – 24 represent Yhwh quoting a first person statement of Sennacherib as the basis of his scorn. Sennacherib’s statement refers to his military successes: of climbing the highest mountains in the Lebanon range and cutting down its choicest cedars and junipers, of digging wells for water, and of drying up and so taking control of the river system of Egypt. The statement is clearly treated by Yhwh, just as in 10:5 – 15, as an unwarranted—indeed hubristic—boast, requiring punishment, which is outlined in the following verses (Isa 37:26 – 29 // 2 Kgs 19:25 – 28). But Sennacherib’s statement is also being treated as a quotation of an official communication of this Assyrian king—the sort of communication that would appear in a royal inscription, in the military narrative section. Indeed, the climbing of the Lebanon and cutting down its trees is an old, even legendary, motif in the Mesopotamian royal inscriptional tradition, attested well before the Neo-Assyrian rulers, but then clearly beloved by them as a mark of heroic talent.³⁷ As for the digging (of wells) and drinking of water in v. 25, this notice, as Elnathan Weissert has recently demonstrated,³⁸ refers to Sennacherib’s extensive building of water works above and into Nineveh, which is both archaeologically attested and proclaimed particularly in his Bavian inscription. The rest of v. 25 has Sennacherib boasting about drying up the rivers of Egypt³⁹—something,  See Machinist, “Assyria and Its Image,” 723 – 24, 731 and n. 72. Add now J. J. M. Roberts, First Isaiah: A Commentary (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015), 469 – 70.  Elnathan Weissert, “Jesajas Beschreibung der Hybris des assyrischen Königs und seine Auseinandersetzung mit Ihr,” in Assur—Gott, Stadt und Land: 5. Internationales Colloquium der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft 18 – 21. Februar 2004 in Berlin (ed. Johannes Renger; Colloquien der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft 5; Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2011), 287– 309.  While the word ‫ ָמצוֹר‬here is not the usual term for “Egypt” in Biblical Hebrew, it looks like a variant of the usual term, ‫ִמְצ ַריִם‬. Pace Hayim Tawil (“2 Kings 19:24: ‫יארי מצור‬,” JNES 41 [1982]: 195 – 206), ‫ ָמצוֹר‬here, like ‫ִמְצ ַריִם‬, should designate “Egypt,” in the first instance because the companion term, ‫א ִרים‬ ֹ ‫( ְי‬here in the construct: ‫א ֵרי‬ ֹ ‫) ְי‬, is the plural of the Nile River, and doubtless here, as elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, the plural refers to the branches of the Nile as the river emerg-

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however, that, if he in fact had planned, he did not execute. Rather, the allusion here should be to the expeditions against Lower Egypt of his successors, Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal, recorded in inscriptional narratives from them.⁴⁰ Verse 25, then, appears to reflect a layered compositional history. Presented as a statement from Sennacherib, it seems to be composed of two parts, in which the first, about digging and drinking, apparently reflects Sennacherib, while the second, about Egypt, is an addition from or after the reigns of Esarhaddon and/or Ashurbanipal, which has been attached to the first as a consequence of it. If v. 25 as a whole, thus, is a construction of a biblical author, or of one author plus a later editor of the post-Sennacherib period, yet that construction, as its content makes clear, is drawn from some kind of knowledge of the Assyrian inscriptional tradition, more specifically of its military narrative, even as it turns that narrative upside-down. What we have in Isa 37:24– 25 // 2 Kgs 19:23 – 24 is, in short, a fragment of a royal inscription and, given its close connections with Isa 10:5 – 15, the two must be considered together as part of an interwoven collection of anti-Assyrian critiques in the Isaiah book.

3.3 Ecclesiastes 1:12 – 2:11 Our final biblical example of a royal inscription takes us to a different literary setting and historical context from the two Isaiah passages, namely to the wisdom book of Ecclesiastes, located later than the Neo-Assyrian period, though whether in the fifth-fourth centuries B.C.E. of Achaemenid Persian rule or in the third century B.C.E. of the Ptolemies is still debated.⁴¹ In any case, the

es into the Egyptian Delta: see, e. g., Roberts, First Isaiah, 470. For a full discussion of the verse here, see two articles in the volume of Ehud ben Zvi and Christoph Levin, eds., Thinking of Water in the Early Second Temple Period (BZAW 461; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2014): Diana Edelman, “The Nile in Biblical Memory,” 77– 102, especially 91– 95; and William S. Morrow, “Water Control and Royal Propaganda: Sennacherib’s Boast in 2 Kgs 19:24 (= Isa 37:25),” 313 – 37.  For a recent annotated translation of the Assyrian texts describing these Egyptian campaigns, see Cogan, The Raging Torrent, 162– 73, 175 – 83. The most comprehensive study is Hans-Ulrich Onasch, Die assyrischen Eroberungen Ägyptens (Ägypten und Altes Testament 27; Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1994).  For the date and setting, see the major recent commentaries on Ecclesiastes, e. g., Choon Leong Seow, Ecclesiastes (AB 18C; New York: Doubleday, 1997), 11– 33; Thomas Krüger, Qoheleth: A Commentary (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004), 19 – 22; Ludger SchwienhorstSchönberger, Kohelet (HThKAT; Freiburg: Herder, 2004), 101– 11; Anton Schoors, Ecclesiastes (HCOT; Leuven: Peeters, 2013), 2– 9; Robert Gordis, Koheleth: The Man and His World; A Study

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human persona at the center is not a foreign king, as in the Isaiah texts, but someone named Qohelet, who, as announced already in the first verse of the first chapter, stands forth as “the son of David, king in Jerusalem.” But this persona, we should remind ourselves, is not maintained throughout the entire book. In fact, it appears only in the first two of the twelve chapters, and more explicitly, in Eccl 1:1 and then 1:12– 2:11. Thereafter, it gives way to the image of Qohelet as a reflective sage, the latter continuing through the end of the book (cf. 12:9 – 11). Where the king or kingship appears elsewhere in the book, it is as a separate persona and institution from Qohelet, which can even be treated critically (e. g., Eccl 4:13 – 14; 8:2– 9; 9:14– 16; 10:16 – 18). Here is a translation of the passage we need to consider, Eccl 1:12– 2:11:⁴² I, Qohelet, was king over Israel in Jerusalem. And I applied my mind to inquire and to examine with the faculty of wisdom everything that was done under heaven; it was a sorry matter that God gave to humanity to be afflicted with/respond to. I saw all the deeds that were done under the sun, and lo and behold, everything was vanity and a chasing after wind. What is crooked cannot be straightened. What is lacking cannot be counted up. I conferred with myself (lit. spoke with my mind), saying, I have enlarged and increased wisdom over whoever was before me (ruling) over Jerusalem, and my mind experienced much wisdom and knowledge. And I applied my mind to know wisdom and knowledge, madness and folly: I knew that even this is a chasing after wind. For in much wisdom is much vexation, and the one who increases knowledge increases pain. I thought to myself (lit. said in my mind), Come now, let me make a test of pleasure, and see (if there is) good. But lo, this too is vanity. To laugh, I said, is mad. And as for pleasure, what does this accomplish? I applied my mind to examine (lit. examined in my mind) (the possibility of) getting filled up (lit. draw my flesh in) with wine, my mind (nonetheless) leading (me) on in wisdom, and of fastening on to folly, until I might observe whether this is good for humanity who do (their deeds) under heaven for the few days of their lives. I enlarged (the realm of) my activities. I built for myself houses. I planted for myself vineyards. I made for myself gardens and groves, and I planted in them every kind of fruit tree. I made for myself water pools, in order to water from them a forest that bloomed of trees. I acquired/bought male and female slaves, and I had house servants, also much livestock, (that is,) of small and large cattle—more than all who were before me in Jerusalem. I gathered also to myself silver and gold, and the treasures of kings and provinces. I acquired for myself male and female singers, and the “delicacies” of men, (namely,) a whole harem (?). (So) I enlarged and increased (my wealth) more than all that was before me in Jerusalem, with my wisdom in service to me. And all that my eyes craved (lit. asked) I did not withhold from them. I did not restrain my heart from any pleasure, for my heart took pleasure from all my labor. This was my share from all my labor.

of Ecclesiastes (3d. ed.; New York: Schocken, 1968), 59 – 68. See also James L. Kugel, “Qohelet and Money,” CBQ 51 (1989): 32– 40.  My translation, based on BHS.

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And I turned to all my deeds that my hands had done and to the work that I had undertaken, and lo, all was vanity, and a chasing after wind; there was no benefit under the sun. (Eccl 1:12– 2:11)

In Eccl 1:12– 2:11 above, Qohelet introduces himself in the first person, giving his name and royal title or epithet: “I, Qohelet, was king over Israel in Jerusalem” (1:12)—clearly a variant echo of the third person introduction of our figure at the beginning of the book: “The words of Qohelet, son of David, king in Jerusalem” (1:1). Many interpreters have observed that the first person introduction in Eccl 1:12 recalls the introduction of the king in the royal inscriptional tradition, as broadly attested in Mesopotamia, the Levant, and elsewhere in the ancient Near East.⁴³ But the inscriptional model does not stop here. The following verses in Eccl 1:13 – 18 focus on Qohelet as the king with exceptional wisdom—a motif that, granting its recall of Solomon in 1 Kgs 3 – 4, also finds a place in the royal inscriptional tradition, especially of Neo-Assyria, even as it appears in the Isa 10 speech, as noted above. A similar inscriptional echo, as Choon Leong Seow discerningly argues, is the repeated boast by Qohelet that as king he achieved more than any of his predecessors (1:16; 2:7, 9).⁴⁴ Most substantial is the passage, Eccl 2:1– 11, with 2:12 – 26 forming a series of elaborations on the conclusion of 2:11.⁴⁵ Here in Eccl 2:1– 11, Qohelet talks about how he enlarged his tangible wealth over a broad range of items like houses, gardens (‫ )גנות‬and groves (‫)פרדסים‬, male and female slaves (‫)עבדים ושפחות‬, herds, silver, gold, and other precious items gathered from kings and provinces, etc. What this list appears to represent is the equivalent of the booty and building activities that follow the military narrative in the Mesopotamian royal inscriptions; indeed, in the Neo-Assyrian exemplars,

 See the commentaries above in n. 41, especially Seow, Ecclesiastes, 119, 144– 45. Also Schoors, Ecclesiastes 103 – 5; Schwienhorst-Schönberger, Kohelet, 190 – 91. For more extensive discussions treating the whole issue of the royal inscriptional tradition, or what these authors call royal autobiography, in Ecclesiastes, see Choon Leong Seow, “Qohelet’s Autobiography,” in Fortunate the Eyes That See: Essays in Honor of David Noel Freedman in Celebration of His Seventieth Birthday (ed. Astrid B. Beck et al.; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995), 275 – 87; Martin A. Shields, “Qohelet and Royal Autobiography,” in The Words of the Wise Are Like Goads: Engaging Qohelet in the 21st Century (ed. Mark J. Boda, Tremper Longman III and Cristian G. Rata; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2011), 117– 36; and Yon Vee Koh, Royal Autobiography in the Book of Qoheleth (BZAW 369; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2006).  Seow, Ecclesiastes, 148; Seow, “Qohelet’s Autobiography,” 281– 82; Koh, Royal Autobiography, 78 – 85, 99 – 100. Here both Mesopotamian and West Semitic examples are discussed.  Exactly how to divide up this passage of Eccl 1:12– 2:26 and thus to talk about its composition has remained, as with so much else of the book of Ecclesiastes, a debated matter. For one proposal, see Seow, Ecclesiastes, 142– 44.

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these activities not occasionally include the construction of gardens and the like.⁴⁶ All of the information in Eccl 1:12– 2:11, from the royal introduction through the accumulation of wisdom to the building of wealth, is presented by Qohelet as an experiment (the verb he uses in 2:1 is ‫נסה‬, “make a test”).⁴⁷ Qohelet is trying on, as it were, the mask of Solomon, son of David, king of Israel, to see if, as Solomon with all the wealth he amassed, he—that is, Qohelet—can solve the problem of wisdom, namely, whether wisdom has the ability to discover the meaning and purpose of human life: what will bring satisfaction and fulfillment. As Solomon, therefore, Qohelet goes out to increase his wealth and to proclaim it—in a royal inscription. But what is the result of the experiment? As Qohelet openly concludes in Eccl 2:11, echoing his earlier negative suspicions in 1:14– 15, 17– 18; 2:1– 3, the experiment is a failure: the adoption of the Solomonic persona with its wisdom and wealth brings neither satisfaction nor meaning, and, we may add, trumpeting this persona in a royal inscriptional model shows only the futility of trying to gather such wisdom and wealth. The futility here is then elaborated in the following passage in 2:12– 26, which begins with a remark a fortiori: if a king cannot achieve satisfaction, then what can a (common) man expect who comes after a king? The inscriptional model, then, is the mask: the literary mechanism by which Qohelet can assume the persona of Solomon the king for his experiment. And that the model is a mask—a temporary, experimental persona—is made clear in at least two ways. First, the mask is taken off, as we have seen, by the end in 2:11—king and kingship treated, thereafter, separately from Qohelet himself. Second, the character as mask, not as essence, is revealed in the titles Qohelet uses for himself as king. To recall: in Eccl 1:1, the title is “son of David, king in Jerusalem,” while in Eccl 1:12, it is “king over Israel in Jerusalem.” Though partially paralleled in other biblical texts concerning Israelite kings (1 Sam 15:26; 2 Sam 2:11; 1 Kgs 11:37; 1 Chr 28:14; 29:25), neither of these titles is otherwise attested as such, particularly the phrase “in Jerusalem.” Given that the other titles come from narrative histories and perhaps the royal records that underlie

 For discussions of the parallels from Mesopotamian and West Semitic royal inscriptions, see Seow, Ecclesiastes, 151; Seow, “Qohelet’s Autobiography,” 282– 284; Koh, Royal Autobiography, 92– 99.  The remainder of my discussion of Ecclesiastes is a revision and elaboration of an earlier essay: Peter Machinist, “The Voice of the Historian in the Ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean World,” Int 57 (2003): 133 – 34.

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them, the versions in Ecclesiastes give the impression of being artificial imitations of them.⁴⁸ All of this suggests that our author is using quite deliberately his own “I” to play with the matter of royal authority. Put another way, if Qohelet dons the mask of Solomon with his royal inscription, he does not cover his face completely with the mask nor fully lay out the inscriptional model: there is no military narrative nor curses and blessings at the end. Rather, what Qohelet does is to allow his eyes and mouth to peek out from around the mask, thus revealing that it is just a mask, and to let the inscription fall apart in self-critique as a critique of the larger enterprise of royal rule.⁴⁹ This self-critique, it may be added, could be understood, as in the Isaiah examples above, as the equivalent of the curses section of normal inscriptions, but whereas in the inscriptions the curses apply to those would damage the achievements of the king, here, as in Isaiah, they are turned on the royal protagonist himself.

 My sense of this artificiality goes back to oral remarks by Prof. Judah Goldin, in his seminar on Qohelet at Yale University in the late 1960’s, who told us, his students, that he was stimulated by the work of Prof. H. L. Ginsberg. Ginsberg remarks on the strangeness of the royal titles for Qohelet in Eccl 1:1 and 1:12, but he develops these observations in a different direction from what I am trying to do here. See Harold Louis Ginsberg, Studies in Koheleth (TS 17; New York: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1950), 12– 15; Harold Louis Ginsberg, Koheleth (A New Commentary on the Torah, the Prophets, and the Holy Writings 1; Tel Aviv: Newman Publishing House, 1961), 59, 63 (in Hebrew).  Another indication of the experimental character of kingship in Qohelet may be in the royal introductory line of Eccl 1:12. The verb here is ‫ָהיִיִתי‬, and how to translate it has occasioned much discussion. See, e. g., the selection of commentaries in n. 41. The verb is a Qal perfect, and so it would appear that it should be translated as past: “I was” or “I have been,” thus: “I, Qohelet, was/have been king over Israel in Jerusalem” (and am no longer king). The verse would thus be at variance with the bulk of attested royal inscriptions, where the sense is a present: “I, NAME, am king….” / “I am NAME, king….” formulated normally as a nominative sentence. If this past meaning is retained for our verse, then Qohelet is indicating that what he is about to describe is an experiment at kingship which is over, in the past. And this would be confirmed by the fact that the experiment is not maintained beyond Eccl 2:12: king and kingship, thereafter as we have seen, being treated as something separate from who Qohelet is. Nonetheless, Seow argues that the perfect of ‫ היה‬can mark “an existing state, a reality that began in the past but continues into the present” (Ecclesiastes, 119). Thus, Seow takes the translation of ‫ ָהיִיִתי‬as “have been” in the sense of a past progressive, not of a full past, and he supports this interpretation by appealing to what he understands as parallel expressions in West Semitic royal inscriptions. But apart from the possibility that these inscriptions may not all require a past progressive meaning, Seow does not consider here the shift away from kingship after Eccl 2:12.

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4 Reversals of Royal Inscriptions in Mesopotamian Literature The three biblical texts we have discussed show, thus, not only an awareness of the royal inscriptional tradition in language and form, but a deliberate play on it, reversing the normal use of the inscription by royal authorities for the purpose of critique and even satire. But such reversals are not peculiar to ancient Israel and its biblical corpus. They can be found as well elsewhere in the ancient Near East, especially in Mesopotamia, as three examples make clear: the Cuthean Legend of Naram-Sin, the Standard Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic, and Ashurbanipal’s Satire of Bel-eṭir.

4.1 The Cuthean Legend of Naram-Sin The first is well known to modern scholarship, and from its several extant copies and recensions, stretching over a millennium from the Old Babylonian to the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian periods, it must have been well known also, at least to the ancient scribal and ruling elites. In modern times the text has been labelled the “Cuthean Legend of Naram-Sin,” to which its recent and standard editor, Joan Westenholz, adds: “Naram-Sin and the Enemy Hordes.”⁵⁰ The text is arguably the primary example of what Hans Güterbock and his teacher, Benno Landsberger, called a narȗ inscription, a pseudo-royal inscription, or by others with different labels, including “poetic” or “pseudo-autobiography.”⁵¹ That is, while the text was clearly based on some kind of knowledge of the authentic inscriptions of the historical Naram-Sin, of the Old Akkadian dynasty of Agade in the latter third millennium B.C.E., it was, in fact, composed about five

 Joan G. Westenholz, Legends of the Kings of Akkade: The Texts (MC 7; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1997), chapter 10. In what follows, I revise and expand on my discussion in Machinist, “Voice of the Historian,” 124– 25, 128 – 29. I want to add that my discussion of the Cuthean Legend and the following two texts, the Standard Gilgamesh Epic and Bel-eṭir, is indebted fundamentally to the penetrating analysis of Piotr Michalowski (“Commemoration, Writing, and Genre in Ancient Mesopotamia,” in The Limits of Historiography: Genre and Narrative in Ancient Historical Texts [ed. Christina S. Kraus; Mnemosyne Supplement 191; Leiden: Brill, 1999], 69 – 90, especially 77– 89).  See summary of scholarship in Westenholz, Legends of the Kings of Akkade, 16 – 24. Also Michael Haul, Stele und Legende: Untersuchungen zu den keilschriftlichen Erzählwerken über die Könige von Akkade (Göttinger Beiträge zum Alten Orient 4; Göttingen: Universitätsverlag Göttingen, 2009), especially chapter 5.

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centuries later, in the Old Babylonian period, as a simulacrum of an authentic Naram-Sin text. The difference here, apart from the kind of Akkadian language used, is apparent especially in the fact that the Cuthean narrative of NaramSin’s military exploits includes several battles with fantastic hybrid creatures— monsters or demons. The latter would not occur in authentic royal inscriptions, where real humans are the protagonists; the authentic inscriptions, to be sure, appeal to the gods, but the gods are not normally major actors in the events described. Furthermore, unlike authentic Mesopotamian royal inscriptions, the Cuthean Legend’s military narrative has a series of campaigns that do not bring success, but rather utter disaster to Naram-Sin, the main protagonist, involving the supernatural forces just mentioned. The end of this struggle is not preserved in the Old Babylonian recension of the Cuthean Legend, but it is found in the later Standard Babylonian text. Yet even here, though the gods promise Naram-Sin that the enemy will be defeated at some future point, they do not allow him to gain that victory. What, then, is going on here? Critical to an answer are some lines from the introductory, early, and concluding sections of the Cuthean Legend, here taken from Westenholz’s translation of the Standard Babylonian recension, the fullest extant recension, which dates from the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian periods:⁵² 1– 3 [Open the tablet-box (ṭupšenna)] and read out the stela (narȗ) [which I, Naram-Sin], son of Sargon, [have inscribed and left for] for future days. 4 – 5 [The king of Uruk] sought refuge in the mountain. [Enmerkar]⁵³ sought refuge in the mountain. 28 – 30 He (= Enmerkar) whose wisdom (and) whose weapons paralyzed, caught, and annihilated that army, on a stela (narȗ) he did not write (and) did not leave (it) to me, myself; he did not make a name for himself so that I could not pray for him. 147– 180 You, whoever you are, be it governor or prince or anyone else, whom the gods will call to perform kingship, I made a tablet-box (ṭupšenna) for you and inscribed a stela (narȗ) for you. In Kutha, in the Emeslam, in the cella of Nergal, I left (it) for you. Read this stela (narȗ)! Hearken unto the words of this stela (narȗ)! Be not bewildered! Be not confused! Be not afraid! Do not tremble! Let your foundations be firm! You, within the embrace of your wife, do your work! Strengthen your walls! Fill your moats with water! Your chests, your grain, your money, your goods, your possessions, bring into your stronghold! Tie up your weapons and put (them) into the corners! Guard your courage!

 Westenholz, Legends of the Kings of Akkade, 301, 307, 327, 329.  The tablet here reads actually not Enmerkar, but Enmekar (En-me-kár) (Westenholz, Legends of the Kings of Akkade, 336: 23). But Westenholz and other scholars agree that this must be a reference to the legendary Early Dynastic king of Uruk, Enmerkar. Cf. Piotr Michalowski, “Commemoration, Writing, and Genre,” 82– 84.

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Take heed of your own person. Let him roam through your land! Go not out to him! Let him consume the flesh of your offspring! Let him murder, (and) let him return (unharmed)! (But) you be self-controlled, disciplined. Answer them, ‘Here I am, sir!’ Requite their wickedness with kindness! And (their) kindness with gifts and supplementary presents (?)! Always precede them (i.e., do more than they ask)! Wise scribes, let them declaim your inscription (narȗ). You who have read my inscription (narȗ) and thus have gotten yourself out (of trouble), you who have blessed me, may a future (ruler) bless you!

Taken together, the above lines point to the importance of writing—of leaving a stela (narȗ), i. e., a royal inscription—if a ruler’s life is to have meaning. Indeed, without a stela, there is no fame, no “making the name,” to invoke a phrase in this text (30: šuma… ušēṣīma) which is found, sometimes in variant forms, in other Mesopotamian royal inscriptions.⁵⁴ That is to say, there is no immortality. Thus, in the initial sections of the Cuthean Legend, it is a previous ruler, Enmerkar of Uruk, who has not left a stela to commemorate his deeds, and so he cannot be remembered and prayed for by his later epigone, Naram-Sin.⁵⁵ Naram-Sin, in turn, seizes on this negative example to leave his own stela, but that stela, in its concluding section, provides a new negative example. For here, instead of the expected use of blessings and curses in an authentic royal inscription, we find Naram-Sin calling on future rulers to read his stela so as to learn of his military failures and the gods’ opposition to him, and by learning of these failures to learn, then, not to repeat them. In this way, says Naram-Sin, these rulers will come to bless him and so, we must implicitly understand, allow him to redeem himself, at least in part, from his grievous mistakes. What kind of statement is being made with this self-abnegating confession from Naram-Sin? That is to say, what did the Old Babylonian author and the later ancient editors of the Cuthean Legend intend here? The key point, as other evidence informs us, is that in the Old Babylonian period a number of authentic royal inscriptions, as well as statues, of Naram-Sin and other members of the Old Akkadian dynasty were preserved and still standing, especially, though not exclusively, in the Ekur, the principal temple of the principal god Enlil in Nip-

 See F. R. Kraus, “Altmesopotamisches Lebensgefühl,” JNES 19 (1960): 117– 32, and Karen Radner, Die Macht des Namens: Altorientalische Strategien zur Selbsterhaltung (SANTAG 8; Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2005), especially 70 – 110, 179 – 270.  Michalowski (“Commemoration, Writing, and Genre,” 82– 84) acutely observes the satire at work in the Cuthean Legend concerning Enmerkar. In the Sumerian tales about him, Enmerkar is celebrated as the one who invented writing, and so achieved victory over a rival king, but in the Cuthean Legend, he cannot even leave a stela, a written text that would keep the memory of his military deeds alive.

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pur.⁵⁶ Offerings were brought to these monuments by Old Babylonian and later kings, and of these the most intensely interested appear to have been the NeoBabylonian monarchs, who even undertook to rediscover and re-excavate inscriptions that in the meantime had been lost from view.⁵⁷ These survivals help us to argue that the texts of such inscriptions, with their aim to recount Naram-Sin’s military campaigns as great success stories, were in all likelihood known to our Cuthean Legend author. We must therefore suppose that our author, in recounting these campaigns as spectacular failures admitted by Naram-Sin himself, intended in some way to question the tradition of success, even indeed to turn it upside-down. And in that respect the Cuthean Legend joins other texts written about Naram-Sin after his rule, most importantly the Curse of Agade.⁵⁸ There is more, however. For by questioning the achievements of Naram-Sin, the Cuthean Legend also questions the purpose and nature of the textual form, that of the royal inscription as public stela designed originally as a showcase for these achievements. Put another way, the Cuthean Legend is ultimately not so much about Naram-Sin; it is, in its literary play with its forebears, about the meaning and purpose of texts—about itself.

 Westenholz, Legends of the Kings of Akkade, 1– 2 and n. 2; Benjamin R. Foster, The Age of Agade: Inventing Empire in Ancient Mesopotamia (London: Routledge, 2016), 249 – 51; Ignace J. Gelb and Burckhart Kienast, Die altakkadischen Königsinschriften des dritten Jahrtausends v. Chr. (Freiburger Altorientalische Studien 7; Stuttgart: Steiner, 1990), 129 – 56; F. R. Kraus, “Altbabylonische Quellensammlungen zur altmesopotamischen Geschichte,” AfO 20 (1963): 153 – 55.  Westenholz, Legends of the Kings of Akkade, 2 and nn. 4, 6; Foster, Age of Agade, 270 – 73; G. Goossens, “Les recherches historiques à l’époque neo-babylonienne,” RA 42 (1948): 149 – 59; Paul-Alain Beaulieu, The Reign of Nabonidus, King of Babylon 556 – 539 B.C. (YNER 10; New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989), 122, 128 – 32, 140 – 43; Paul-Alain Beulieu, “Antiquarianism and Concern for the Past in the Neo-Babylonian Period,” Bulletin of the Canadian Society for Mesopotamian Studies 28 (1994): 37– 42; Irene J. Winter, “Babylonian Archaeologists of the(ir) Mesopotamian Past,” in Proceedings of the First International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, Rome, May 18th-23rd 1998 (ed. Paolo Matthiae et al.; Rome: Universita` degli studi de Roma, 2000), 1785 – 98; repr. in Irene J. Winter, On Art in the Ancient Near East, Vol. II: From the Third Millennium BCE (Studies in the History and Culture of the Ancient Near East 34/2; Leiden: Brill, 2009), 461– 89; Piotr Michalowski, “The Doors of the Past,” ErIsr 27 (2003): 136*-52*.  The major edition of this text is by Jerrold S. Cooper, The Curse of Agade (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983). For the general subject of later reactions to the Old Akkadian dynasty, see Foster, The Age of Agade, 273 – 79.

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4.2 The Standard Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic This self-referentiality was not exclusive to the Cuthean Legend. Its mention of the “tablet box” (ṭupšennu) in which the “stela” (narȗ) was to be placed finds an echo in the prologue of the Standard Babylonian edition of the Gilgamesh Epic, as several scholars have pointed out.⁵⁹ In this prologue the poet asks his listeners to look down to the foundations of the wall of Uruk that Gilgamesh had built, and there locate a tablet-box with a lapis-lazuli cuneiform tablet (ṭuppi uqnî)—the tablet said to offer a narrative of the trials (marṣāti) confronted by Gilgamesh (I.24– 28).⁶⁰ The narrative inscribed on it appears to be, as C. B. F. Walker and Piotr Michalowski have suggested,⁶¹ the very text of the Epic or an epitome of it. This is confirmed by a preceding line of the same prologue (I. 10), which says that Gilgamesh “set down on a stela (narȗ) all his labors (mānaḫti)”;⁶² and between this line and those in 24– 28, narȗ and ṭuppi uqnî, must be read in parallel to mānaḫti and marṣāti. ⁶³ In other words, the Gilgamesh Epic, already in its prologue, announces itself, and given that the central theme of the Epic is Gilgamesh’s quest for immortality, it becomes clear that besides the still-standing wall of Uruk, it is the Epic itself that constitutes the hero’s deathlessness. In the final analysis, therefore, the Epic is really telling a story about itself.⁶⁴ On one level, this Gilgamesh self-reference is intended like the Cuthean Legend to be positive: affirming that without a written text—a stela (narȗ)—human immortality cannot be secured. But in both cases, the intention has irony attached to it. For the Cuthean Legend, the irony cuts rather deeply. In its first part, as

 See especially C. B. F. Walker, “The Second Tablet of ṭupšenna pitema, An Old Babylonian Naram-Sin Legend?” JCS 33 (1981): 193 – 94. Walker, as well as Michalowski (“Commemoration, Writing, and Genre,” 81) and Westenholz (Legends of the Kings of Akkade, 263), have observed that the introductory clause, “open the tablet box,” was the ancient name for the Cuthean Legend.  Andrew George, The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic: Introduction, Critical Edition, and Cuneiform Texts (2 vols.; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 1.538 – 39 (I.24– 28).  Walker, “The Second Tablet of ṭupšenna pitema,” 194; Michalowski, “Commemoration, Writing, and Genre,” 79 – 80.  George, Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic, 1.538 – 39 (I.10).  But these two lines could perhaps be understood to be in conflict with each other: did Gilgamesh leave for posterity a “stela” (narȗ) or a “tablet” (ṭuppu), or are the two really the same, in which case the “tablet box” would have to be imagined as fairly large to accommodate a stela? Perhaps lines I.24– 28, about the tablet and the tablet box, were intended as a gloss on I.10, which mentions the stela.  So Michalowski, “Commemoration, Writing, and Genre,” 80 – 81.

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we have seen, the Legend criticizes Enmerkar for not leaving a stela, and so keeping him from making a name for himself and being prayed to; yet something of his life is, after all, remembered in the stela of Naram-Sin, which constitutes the Cuthean Legend. But in a further move, as we have observed, the Cuthean stela does not do for Naram-Sin what such stelae are expected to do. For while it ostensibly serves as Naram-Sin’s memorial, it is not a memorial of his heroic victories, but of his defeats before phantasmagoric creatures; a positive element enters only at the end, and then rather weakly, as Naram-Sin openly admits his guilt for these defeats. The upshot is to undermine the original and basic function of such royal stelae. Something of the same ironic scheme occurs in the Gilgamesh Epic. For while its stela, as we have noticed, celebrates Gilgamesh’s unrivaled status as heroic king, it does so by recounting his “labors” and “trials,” the culmination of which is his failure to obtain his greatest wish—personal immortality. Yet like the Cuthean Legend, something positive remains, namely, the transformation of Gilgamesh’s failures into another kind of immortality, embodied in the Uruk wall and the stela/Epic that survive him. These monuments represent an immortality that is not personal, but impersonal and for Gilgamesh himself unimaginable, but no less significant and real for that. They give Gilgamesh in the end a heroic memory—one that is more positive than what the Cuthean Legend offers Naram-Sin.

4.3 Ashurbanipal’s Bel-eṭir Satire Ironical self-reference may also be found in our third and final Mesopotamian text, which echoes, but with some distinctive twists, the Cuthean Legend and Gilgamesh Epic. The text comes from the library of the seventh century B.C.E. NeoAssyrian king, Ashurbanipal, at Nineveh, and presents itself as a response to a stela (narȗ/ušmittu) of a certain Bel-eṭir, who also is the subject of a companion text from the Ashurbanipal library that appears to be labelled an “incantation.”⁶⁵ Both texts are meant as satires, castigating Bel-eṭir very directly and suggesting that he was some kind of political figure of no little ambition. But given the frequency of the name in eighth-seventh century B.C.E. Mesopotamia, it is not yet  The editio princeps of both texts is by Alisdair Livingstone, Court Poetry and Literary Miscellanea (SAA 3; Helsinki: Helsinki University Press), 64– 66: no. 29 (our primary text), 66: no. 30 (the other Bel-eṭir text); pls. XI-XII. See also the translations with notes of these two texts by Benjamin R. Foster, Before the Muses (3d. ed.; Bethesda: CDL Press, 2005), 1020 – 22: IV.59 (a)(b).

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possible to be certain of his identity. A solid guess, however, based on Simo Parpola,⁶⁶ starts from the mention of Bel-eṭir’s patronymic, “son of Iba”—once used alone to refer to the man (rev 4), which underscores the fact that Iba was a prominent Chaldean tribal group, bīt Ibâ, that was in conflict with Assyria during the reign of Ashurbanipal, specifically during the civil war with Babylonia, then ruled by Ashurbanipal’s brother and vassal, Šamaš-šuma-ukin. Other figures mentioned in the text, Ṣalla and Šamaš-ibni, were known rebels against Ashurbanipal’s father, Esarhaddon. These details come together, then, however tentatively, to suggest that Bel-eṭir was one among the leaders of Chaldean resistance to Assyrian rule of Babylonia under Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal roughly in the middle of the seventh century B.C.E. Here is the text communicating Bel-eṭir’s stela in the fluent and suggestive translation of Benjamin Foster, with slight adaptation involving Alisdair Livingstone’s treatment:⁶⁷ obv 1– 6 Open the tablet box (ṭupšenna) and re[ad] well the stela (narȗ) [that] Bel-eṭir, son of Iba, [left behind him], like a dog! When Ṣalla had not yet passed away, he, an underling, whom the king knew naught of, he, a lackey in attendance upon Shamash-ibni, son of a vile fisherman, [unwor]thy of kingship, that shit-bucket Zeru-kinu, that windbag, that catamite sidekick of Nummuraya, [damned if he] didn’t inscribe these words: “‘In the land of Assyria and Babylonia, I have none to rival me!’ This too: ‘Ms. Kissed (Nasqat) has praised me, where is my equal in all the world?’” 7– 17 (Fragmentary lines) obv 18 – rev 5 [ ] she talked frivolities to him, saying: “Who has taken away baby Bibi, who has clouded over your radiant countenance?” Later, to make cleaner than he had been, she called his name “Raging Pazuzu, son of Hanbu.” In the face of this, humanity bowed prayerfully, saying: “This is right conduct and reverence! This is the stela (ušmittu) which the whore set up for the son of Iba, the fart factory, (blank space left by scribe) she left for the future.” rev 6 – 9 In the whole of it, in the essence of it, there [ ] for the future: He praised himself, like a nitwit, a bungler, [bawling] countless obscenities about himself from his own imagination. He made his own declaration, he did his own praising, he did his

 Simo Parpola, “Assyrian Library Records,” JNES 42 (1983): 11. See also Grant Frame, Babylonia 689 – 627 B.C.: A Political History (Leiden: Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch Instituut te Istanbul, 1992/2007), 117– 18; Michalowski, “Commemoration, Writing, and Genre,” 84– 87. A prosopography of all the known figures of the period named Bel-eṭir, of whom our figure may be No. 17, is provided by S. M. Luppert-Barnard (“Bēl-ēṭir,” in The Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, vol. 1/2: B-G [ed. Simo Parpola et al.; Helsinki: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 1999], 298 – 300); see also the entry in that volume by J. A. Brinkman and P. Nielsen, “Bēleṭēra,” 298.  Cf. Livingstone, Court Poetry and Literary Miscellanea 64– 66: no. 29 (our primary text), 66: no. 30 (the other Bel-eṭir text); pls. XI-XII; Foster, Before the Muses, 1020 – 22: IV.59 (a)-(b).

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own talking, he [did his own bo]asting, he made himself a byword and an insult in common speech, yet this man hadn’t even enough sense to think straight! rev 10 (what follows is a scribal rubric in tiny characters) Though no abbreviated list, this that I have written, it is (only) a trifle [compared to the whole].

From the wording of this text, confirmed by the “incantation” text, it is plain that we are dealing with a sharp Assyrian response, doubtless from the imperial court, to Bel-eṭir and the danger he apparently represents. The invective here is really quite striking, filled as it is with words about Bel-eṭir that look unfit for polite company, whether of the ancient audiences or the modern. Indeed, various of these expressions, like “shit bucket” (išpik zȇ), “catamite sidekick” (tappȇ nîku), and “fart factory” (ṣarritu), seem to be hapax legomena as such in all the Akkadian vocabulary that has survived to us.⁶⁸ But more than just a string of “dirty words,” our text focuses on the political ambitiousness of Bel-eṭir. He is said, in several different ways, to be a boastful windbag, whose bragging is manifest not only in particular statements—the one quoted is: “In the land of Assyria and Babylonia I have none to rival me!” (obv 5)—but in the fact that these are to be found in a stela. The full stela text is not provided, but the statement just mentioned, as well as the repeated references to Bel-eṭir boasting about his prowess, and the emphasis on the stela as the source for all the statements and references—a stela that has been formally “set up/erected” (rev 4: tazqupu)—all of these are features indicating that this stela is being presented in our text as a kind of royal inscription.⁶⁹ In other words, Bel-eṭir is criticized savagely in our text not simply for boasting like a king, but for doing so through a royal prerogative, that of the royal inscription. The criticism thus aims to show that Bel-eṭir’s text is not a legitimate, but rather a false stela, something that undermines the genre of royal inscription, just as in the Cuthean Legend. Indeed, as especially Piotr Michalowski and Benjamin Foster have recognized, the Bel-eṭir text quite explicitly echoes the Cuthean Legend in several places: (1) in its opening line, also found in the Gilgamesh prologue: “Open the tablet box and re[ad] well the stela”; (2) in its statement about humanity “bow[ing] prayerfully, saying, ‘This is right conduct and reverence,’” which may recall Naram-Sin’s concluding appeal to future rulers to requite your enemies’ wickedness with kindness, self-control, and disci-

 See ad loc in AHw and CAD. The individual words listed do occur in other texts, but not in the expressions found in our text, no. 29 in Livingstone, Court Poetry and Literary Miscellanea. The only exception is nīku, which appears in the companion text about Bel-eṭir (Livingstone no. 30), describing him in the same way as in No. 29.  For the boast about unrivaled prowess in royal inscriptions, see n. 46.

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pline (Cuthean Legend 170 – 72); and (3) perhaps in the logographic writing of the name of Bel-eṭir as EN.KAR, which may play on the name of Enmerkar in the Cuthean Legend, written as En-me-kár.⁷⁰ But if these features allude to the Cuthean Legend, they suggest that the Bel-eṭir author has gone beyond allusion to parody —parody not only of the presumed Bel-eṭir stela, but of the Cuthean Legend itself. Thus, the direction to open the tablet box and read the stela concerns a stela not by a bona fide king, as Naram-Sin was, but by an imposter, “the son of Iba, the fart factory,”—a stela that was “set up” by “a whore.” The kindness, self-control, and discipline that the Cuthean Naram-Sin enjoins on his future rulers and readers are intended as genuine, but the “right conduct and reverence” that “humanity” proclaims in the Bel-eṭir text are a piece of fatuous nonsense in response to Bel-eṭir’s boastful behavior and the designation of him as a Pazuzulike monster demon. And if EN.KAR = Bel-eṭir is a playful echo of Enmerkar, then the association makes of Enmerkar—who in the Cuthean Legend is a failed, but not ridiculous ruler—someone who becomes a pilloried fool on the model of Beleṭir. In sum, the Bel-eṭir text, when compared with its apparent forebear in the Cuthean Legend and considering even the Gilgamesh Epic prologue, comes across as a gross extension, and disfigurement, of the royal inscriptional format that binds them all.

5 Conclusion Royal inscriptions, it is worth repeating, are a ubiquitous written source for Near Eastern antiquity, and those that emanate from the Mesopotamian, Anatolian, and Levantine worlds share a certain common structure, albeit with variations. Ancient Israel/Judah is a part of this textual group, although at present the evidence there is not extensive. But what exists shows, or at least makes it probable, that such inscriptions did figure into the self-display of rulers, the work of biblical historiographers, and the reaction of others to what kings and the institution of kingship represented. It is the last point on which the present paper has focused. The six texts here discussed, Hebrew Biblical and Mesopotamian, have been chosen because they illuminate a critical, even polemically critical, stance toward individual kings and kingship, by way of their manifestation in royal inscriptions. That is to say, the criticism emerges not only denotatively, in a direct attack on the king

 Foster, Before the Muses, 1020 – 21; and Michalowski, “Commemoration, Writing, and Genre,” 69 – 90—the latter being the one to suggest the possible play on Enme(r)kar.

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or the institution, but through each text’s citation of a royal inscription, which it then questions, undermines, or otherwise disfigures as a legitimate, heroic manifestation of the king or kingship. In three of our six texts—Isa 10:5 – 15, Isa 37:21– 29 // 2 Kgs 19:20 – 28, and the Bel-eṭir composition—the kings in question are foreigners, either an Assyrian emperor or a Chaldean opponent, and the texts serve as a point of resistance to and de-legitimization of them. In the other three—Eccl 1:12– 2:11; the Cuthean Legend; and the Standard Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic— the criticized kings are the putative authors of the inscriptions, thus marking the inscriptions cited as self-critiques of the kings’ ineffectiveness and, in the case of Ecclesiastes, also of his de-legitimization as king. Within the six texts discussed, one can trace particular streams of tradition. Thus, the two Isaiah texts show specific knowledge of the Neo-Assyrian tradition of royal inscriptions, as evidenced in Isaiah’s citations and manipulations of particular language and themes from these inscriptions, his modeling of the structure of the inscriptions, and, of course, his explicit statements that his citations are intended to represent the words of the Assyrian king. We must understand the Isaiah passages, then, as deliberate reactions to the Assyrian inscriptional tradition, wherein the manipulations are striking testimony to the power of the Assyrian inscriptions as imperial propaganda for vassal states like Israel/ Judah. The Isaiah passages also suggest that knowledge of Assyrian tradition in Israel had some depth in its understanding of the imperial ideology and rhetoric. How this understanding reached Israel is not finally clear, but the best guess is that it may have been through one or all of at least three channels: (1) oral exposure to Assyrian rhetoric, as in the rab šāqēh’s address to the Judahite ruling elite on the walls of Jerusalem during Sennacherib’s campaign against Judah, or in Judahite embassies bringing tribute to one of the Assyrian imperial capitals, especially, for the eighth-seventh century B.C.E., Nineveh; (2) written exposure to an actual Assyrian stela inscription; or (3) written exposure to a translation of such a stela into a West Semitic language used by the Assyrian administration and known in Judah, the likeliest being Aramaic, as the rab šāqēh’s address attests.⁷¹

 See Machinist, “Assyria and Its Image,” 729 – 34, and more extensively, Shawn Zelig Aster, “Transmission of Neo-Assyrian Claims of Empire to Judah in the Late Eighth Century B.C.E.,” HUCA 78 (2007): 1– 44; William S. Morrow, “Tribute from Judah and the Transmission of Assyrian Propaganda,” in “My Spirit at Rest in the North Country” (Zechariah 6.8): Collected Communications to the XXth Congress of the International Organization for the Study of the Old Testament, Helsinki 2010 (ed. Hermann Michael Niemann and Matthias Augustin; BEATAJ 57; Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang 2011), 183 – 92.

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As for the three Mesopotamian texts—the Cuthean Legend, the Standard version of the Gilgamesh Epic, and the Bel-eṭir composition—they attest to a tradition all their own, which reaches across two millennia from the historical NaramSin and his Old Akkadian dynasty of the latter third millennium B.C.E., through the Old Babylonian Cuthean Legend and the Gilgamesh Epic of the first half of the second millennium B.C.E., to the elaboration of these Old Babylonian texts into the Neo-Assyrian period of the first millennium B.C.E., along with the reappearance of some of their language and motifs in the Bel-eṭir composition. In regard to the particular motif of the stela (narȗ) and the tablet in the tablet box (ṭupšennu), the sequence of influence appears to have run from the Cuthean Legend, in its Old Babylonian recension, to the Standard Babylonian recension of the Gilgamesh Epic, with the Bel-etir text playing off the Cuthean Legend and perhaps the Standard Gilgamesh as well.⁷² As for the origin of this whole tradition in the historical Naram-Sin, here the center is clearly his great conquests and imperial consolidation, which involved, apparently as an innovation, his deification during his lifetime. Despite the collapse of the Old Akkadian dynasty several kings after Naram-Sin, its legacy, including royal deification, survived and was cultivated in the Ur III empire at the end of the third millennium. But after the end of Ur III, this kind of imperial glory with its strong deification did not continue as such into the various Isin-Larsa and then Old Babylonian states that followed, even if, as we observed, (a number of) the inscriptions of Naram-Sin and other Old Akkadian kings were preserved or re-copied. The Cuthean Legend, then, and the Gilgamesh Epic reflect a certain re-examination of the Naram-Sin and Old Akkadian legacy in the light of changed circumstances—an attempt to ruminate on past glory and to grapple with its loss, as this was manifest in the inscriptional tradition. From the longevity of transmission of the Cuthean Legend and the Gilgamesh Epic into the first millennium B.C.E., it is clear that these lessons of royal sovereignty remained as objects of meditation and application to new situations such as those Bel-eṭir presented.⁷³ In the discussion of specific traditions within our six texts, Ecclesiastes seems to be the isolate. And yet a second look suggests it may not be so far removed. For in both Ecclesiastes and the Cuthean Legend, we are dealing with a pseudo-king: Qohelet, the putative author, as a pseudo- and failed Solomon, and  See especially Michalowski, “Commemoration, Writing, and Genre,” 79 – 81, 84– 85, 87; also Walker, “The Second Tablet of ṭupšenna pitema,” 193 – 94.  In this regard, I am echoing a comment from Prof. William L. Moran, in a letter to me, that the Akkadian Gilgamesh Epic, in its Old Babylonian origins, was quite probably a reflection on the demise of divine kingship in Mesopotamia.

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the Cuthean putative author as a pseudo- and failed Naram-Sin, the failure in both cases casting shadows on the underlying royal personages being represented. This suggests that like the Cuthean Legend, we may consider Eccl 1:12– 2:11 as a pseudo-royal inscription, a narû . Of course, this parallel does not have to mean that the author of Ecclesiastes knew the Cuthean Legend directly, only that writing such critical pseudo-inscriptions was in the cultural air that the author of Ecclesiastes breathed. But here also there seems at first to be a problem. For there is no specific royal inscriptional tradition to which the Ecclesiastes author explicitly attaches his book, other than that of Solomon, king of Israel. But even if the historical Solomon commissioned royal inscriptions—which is not impossible—the constructed literary character of Solomon as “Qohelet” in Ecclesiastes can hardly be used as historical evidence for such inscriptions. Moreover, given the dating of Ecclesiastes to the Achaemenid Persian or early Hellenistic periods, thus after the heyday of the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian empires and their inscriptional activities to which our other five texts were exposed, would our author have known of the royal inscriptional tradition? At least two ways of understanding the channels of transmission here are possible, neither of them excluding the other. The author of Ecclesiastes could have known of the inscriptional tradition through its earlier embedding in the native Israelite/Judahite traditions that had come down to him, as exemplified in the Isaiah passages. To be sure, modern scholarship has customarily asserted that the biblical wisdom books show no knowledge, or even awareness, of the history of Israel, but that opinion has been decisively refuted, in the case of Ecclesiastes, by the recent work of Jennie Barbour.⁷⁴ Alternatively, we may note that royal inscriptions were still being written in the Achaemenid Persian period, with the famous cylinder of Cyrus II being, arguably, the most notable example.⁷⁵ We also have at least one example from the Seleucid ruler, Antiochus I (281– 261 B.C.E.),⁷⁶ and that example, in Akkadian,

 Jennie Barbour, The Story of Israel in the Book of Qohelet: Ecclesiastes as Cultural Memory (Oxford Theology and Religion Monographs; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).  See the edition of Hanspeter Schaudig, Die Inschriften Nabonids von Babylon und Kyros’ des Großen, samt den in ihrem Umfeld enstandenen Tendenzschriften: Textausgabe und Grammatik (AOAT 256; Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2001), 550 – 56.  In F. H. Weissbach, Die Keilinschriften der Achämeniden (VAB 3; Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1911), 132– 35. See the recent studies of Amelie Kuhrt and Susan Sherwin-White, “Aspects of Seleucid Royal Ideology: the Cylinder of Antiochus I from Borsippa,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 111 (1991): 71– 86; Paul Kosmin, “Seeing Double in Seleucid Babylonia: Rereading the Borsippa Cylinder of Antiochus I,” in Patterns of the Past (ed. Alfonso Moreno and Rosalind Thomas; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 173 – 98; Paul Kosmin, “Seleucid Ethnography and Indigenous Kingship:

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bears in content and structure a visible likeness to our Eccl 1:12– 2:11, with its royal introduction and epithets, followed by its description of the king’s building activities. Its concluding section, to be sure, does not have curses, which, in reversal, were posited as the self-critique in Ecclesiastes (2:11, with 2:12– 26); but it does contain prayers and blessings for the king. While, of course, our Ecclesiastes author may not have known—indeed, probably did not know—of these particular royal inscriptions, their existence may be enough to suggest that the tradition of such inscriptions was, indeed, still in the air during his lifetime. The preceding discussion about date and setting involves one other issue that must be addressed: who would have composed our six texts and for whom? It should be plain by now that the texts reflect a serious knowledge of their cultural settings, whether biblical/Israelite, Mesopotamian, or both. The knowledge, to repeat, extends to themes, rhetoric, and form—the form especially of royal inscriptions—and the ability to play with these in a range of subtle allusions, critical reversals, and satire. This kind of knowledge and talent, and the probability that it involves the interplay not simply of oral communications but of written texts, suggest that our authors belonged to an elite—a scribal elite that, given the forms and subject matter, was attached to royal courts in Israel and Mesopotamia. Their audiences, correspondingly, were in the first instance other elite scribes and officials who together comprised the ruling circles at court and related centers, including those of the cult. If there were any nonelite audiences, they, quite probably, would have heard about our texts mostly from oral readings or word of mouth, and have picked up just the broad messages, being ill-equipped to follow the sophisticated rhetorical byplay in which the royal inscriptional form was constructed and deconstructed. The elite audiences, however small, were, of course, of supreme importance, since it was with them, after all, that the power of the state and empire lay. And in the development of this power the importance of texts like ours should not be trivialized, since it was, at least in part, through such texts that the elites could find and shape their identity. In this way literature for these elites could become politics at a very high level, even as politics could be enacted through literature.

The Babylonian Education of Antiochus I,” in The World of Berossos (ed. Johannes Haubold et al.; Classica et Orientalia 5; Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2013), 193 – 206.

Raymond C. Van Leeuwen (Eastern University, Emeritus)

Agriculture and Wisdom: The Case of the “Gezer Calendar” 1 The Gezer Tablet as a Ditty on Agricultural Wisdom

The so-called “Gezer Calendar” has garnered a variety of interpretations as to its genre and function.¹ In this essay I argue, on the basis of ancient parallels, formal features, and function, that the “Gezer Calendar” distills a (usually much longer) genre of agricultural wisdom down to its lapidary essence.² The tablet indeed recounts a local, yearly calendar of main agricultural tasks, thus warranting its traditional designation as a “calendar.” However, its specific parallels and function require a more precise generic designation that relates it to the Sumerian “Farmer’s Instruction” and to a subsection of Hesiod’s Works and Days. In

 It is a joy for me to offer this small piece to Choon Leong Seow, my longtime friend and esteemed fellow traveler in wisdom studies. Ad multos annos!  For a commentary and bibliography on the inscription, see F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp, J. J. M. Roberts, C. L. Seow, and R. E. Whitaker, Hebrew Inscriptions: Texts from the Biblical Period of the Monarchy with Concordance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 156 – 65. For our purposes of genre analysis, it is not necessary to resolve the disputed question of whether the Gezer Tablet is epigraphically and linguistically Canaanite or Phoenician (according to McCarter, Pardee et al.) or whether it is Hebrew (according to Albright, Cross et al.). For the most recent thoroughgoing argument that the inscription is Phoenician, see Dennis Pardee, “A Brief Case for Phoenician as the Language of the ‘Gezer Calendar,’” in Linguistic Studies in Phoenician Grammar: In Memory of J. Brian Peckham (ed. Robert Holmstedt and Aaron Schade; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2013), 226 – 46. For a well-reasoned account of non-epigraphic factors that might lead to the conclusion that this little poem is linguistically (not necessarily epigraphically) Hebrew, see Aaron Demsky, “What’s the Oldest Hebrew Inscription? A Reply to Christopher Rollston,” BAR (8/22/2012). Cited 7 April 2016. Online: http:/www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-arti facts/inscriptions/what%E2 %80 %99s-the-oldest-hebrew-inscription/. In this connection and in line with his general argument on the development of Hebrew literature in a populist direction, it is worth noting Seth Sanders’s comment on the Gezer Tablet: “The Gezer calendar is a fragment of cultural activity in the opposite direction of bureaucratic regimentation: the literization, the setting-down in writing, of a local culture. If the Gezer calendar is useless as a bureaucratic tool, its language reflects the categories of farmers, in a common Canaanite vocabulary of timekeeping. It has the appearance of a non-scribal learning tool, teaching writing as an entertainment, not an instrument” (Seth L. Sanders, The Invention of Hebrew [Traditions; Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009], 111). DOI 10.1515/9783110428148-024

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passing, I also suggest that it displays features typical of ancient Canaanite/Hebrew poetry, namely lineation, parallelism, terseness, and wordplay.³ Shmuel Aḥituv wisely provides a neutral designation of the inscription, calling it simply the “Gezer Tablet” (‫)לוח גזר‬.⁴ As shall become clear in the course of this essay, the inscription might be called the “Gezer Farmer’s Ditty” (henceforth, GFD) in light of its generic characteristics, because the Tablet appears both to be and to function as a children’s ditty that sums up the annual cycle of farming tasks in ancient Canaan or Israel. This primary use does not exclude its probable secondary use as a writing exercise.

2 The Form and Translation of the Gezer Tablet A few preliminary observations on the form of the inscription are necessary. Physically, the small limestone tablet presents eight inscribed lines of text, the last of which appears to be the hypocoristic name Avi. The first seven inscribed lines of the GFD, the ditty proper, are only partly congruent with what are actually eight parallel poetic lines corresponding to eight sense units, each beginning with the anaphora, “two months” (‫ )ירחו‬or “a month” (‫)ירח‬, followed by the primary agricultural task appropriate to the months or month in question. Moreover, what might at first glance appear to be “word dividers” in the first two inscribed lines,⁵ prove to be line dividers that restore poetic lineation, according to sense and parallelism, by marking the otherwise invisible caesura. This observation is confirmed by the remaining five lines of the ditty, in which there is com On the importance of lineation, see most recently the comprehensive study of F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp, On Hebrew Poetry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 3 – 96. For a succinct summary, see his “Poetry, Hebrew,” in NIDB 4:550 – 58. Ian Young (“The Style of the Gezer Calendar and Some ‘Archaic Biblical Hebrew’ Passages,” VT 42 [1992]: 362– 75) argues on the basis of linguistic features that the “style” of the Gezer Tablet has its closest counterpart in “Archaic Biblical Hebrew” poetry as analyzed by the Albright school. Not all aspects of his argument are convincing, but his intuitions as to aspects of its poetic character seem correct. See also William H. Shea, “The Song of Seedtime and Harvest from Gezer,” in Verse in Ancient Near Eastern Prose (ed. Johannes C. de Moor and Wilfred G. E. Watson; AOAT 42; Kevelaer: Butzon & Bercker; NeukirchenVluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1993), 243 – 50, who argues for a poetic analysis of the inscription, but on different grounds.  Shmuel Aḥituv, Echoes From the Past: Hebrew and Cognate Inscriptions from the Biblical Period (Jerusalem: Carta, 2008), 252– 57; trans. of ‫( הכתב והמכתב‬Biblical Encyclopedia Library 21; Jerusalem: Bialik, 2005). On the ‫לוח גזר‬, see 228 – 32.  These two marks take the form of straight vertical lines, represented by medial dots in our transcription below. This function of line or colon division was also noticed by Shea (“Song of Seedtime and Harvest,” 245).

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plete congruence of physical and poetic lines based on the criteria of parallelism, sense, and grammar.⁶ Unlike the recent find at Kiryat Qeiyafah, the epigraphic reading, if not the detailed meaning, of the GFD presents few difficulties. With its original lineation and line-boundary markers, the GFD reads as follows: ‫ ירחו אספ • ירחו ז‬.1 ‫ רע • ירחו לקש‬.2 ‫ ירח עצד פשת‬.3 ‫ ירח קצר שערמ‬.4 ‫ ירח קצר וכל‬.5 ‫ ירחו זמר‬.6 ‫ ירח קצ‬.7 ‫ אבי‬.8

Oded Borowski translates as follows:⁷ 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Two months of ingathering (olives)⁸/ Two months⁹ of sowing (cereals)/ Two months of late sowing (legumes and vegetables) A month of hoeing weeds (for hay)¹⁰ A month of harvesting barley A month of harvesting (wheat) and measuring (grain)¹¹

 Similar observations were made already by Karl Marti, “Ein altpalästinischer landwirtschaftlicher Kalendar,” ZAW 28 – 29 (1909): 222– 29, here 223 – 24.  Oded Borowski, Agriculture in Iron Age Israel (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1987), 38; cf. 109.  Karl Jaroš (Hundert Inschriften aus Kanaan und Israel: Für den Hebräischunterricht bearbeitet [Freibourg: Schweizerisches Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1982], 38) understands this to mean ingathering from the threshing floor and wine press.  Strictly speaking, the waw ending is to be read as a dual/plural ending plus 3rd ms suffix, as first proposed by William F. Albright (“The Gezer Calendar,” BASOR 92 [1943]: 16 – 26). Thus: “its/ his two months.” See Pardee, “A Brief Case,” 232 n. 22, who, with most scholars, follows Albright.  Borowski follows N. H. Tur-Sinai and Shemaryahu Talmon, who read ‫ פשת‬as ps´t, “from the root ps´h ‘spread,’ and [assert] that it means weeds, grasses, and other plants which grow wild in the fields.” Borowski states, “Accordingly, the line can be read as ‘a month of hoeing weeds,’ which were probably collected, stored, and used as hay” (Agriculture, 35). Pardee (“A Brief Case,” 238 – 39 n. 40), however, presents a convincing case for the older translation (in his formulation): “its month: flax harvest,” where ‫ פשת‬is read as “flax.” He argues that in the Shephelah, flax could be harvested as early as late March.  Root ‫כיל‬, “to measure.” See the Yavneh Yam letter, lines 5 – 6, and Johannes Renz and Wolfgang Röllig, Band I: Die althebräischen Inschriften, Teil 1: Text und Kommentar (vol. 1 of Handbuch der althebräischen Epigraphik; Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1995), 325 (hereafter cited as Renz, HAHE); John C. L. Gibson, Hebrew and Moabite Inscriptions (vol. 1 of

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Sketch of the Gezer Tablet from Ada Yardeni, The Book of Hebrew Script: History, Palaeography, Script Styles, Calligraphy & Design (London: The British Library; New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2002), 14 (fig. 16). Used with permission.

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6. Two months of grape harvesting¹² 7. A month of ingathering summer fruit¹³ 8. Avi.…

3 The Genre of the Gezer Tablet Scholars have not sounded a clear note about this inscription’s genre. Shemaryahu Talmon, for example, argued that it was a fragment of a seasonal tax list.¹⁴ Johannes Renz, in his survey of ancient Hebrew inscriptions, rightly rejects Talmon’s argument. In kind agricultural taxes might function to provide the royal house with a regular income of foodstuffs distributed over the course of a year (cf. 1 Kgs 4:7; 5:7– 8 [Eng. 4:7, 27– 28]), but an irregular list of months could not have served such a purpose. Renz concludes instead that the text is a “list of months with the appropriate agrarian activities, no doubt used as a school exercise.”¹⁵ However, though the inscription’s clumsy hand and unaesthetic lines bespeak an unskilled writer,¹⁶ “school exercise” here is not an intrinsic genre but a means of learning to write materials of various intrinsic genres.¹⁷ That is, the

Textbook of Syrian Semitic Inscriptions; Oxford: Clarendon, 1971), 28 – 29. Pardee (“A Brief Case,” 239 – 40 n. 42) argues that ‫ כל‬in this line means the “completion” (of the grain harvest) (= root ‫)כלה‬.  Pardee (“A Brief Case,” 240 n. 43) prefers ‫ זמר‬as (green) “pruning,” but acknowledges uncertainty here.  The word ‫קצ‬, placed at the poem’s end, seems to be graphic and verbal word play: it refers to “summer fruits” (qê ṣ ), to “the end” (qēṣ ) of the yearly cycle, and to “the end” of the poem! Compare the famous word play of Amos 8:2 on qayiṣ and qēṣ.  Shemaryahu Talmon, “The Gezer Calendar and the Seasonal Cycle of Ancient Canaan,” JAOS 83 (1963): 177– 88, repr. in King, Cult and Calendar in Ancient Israel: Collected Studies (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1986), 89 – 112.  Renz, HAHE 1.1, 32 (my translation; the original reads: “Liste von Monaten und den dazugehörigen agrarischen Tätigkeiten, wohl als Schülerübung.”). Cf. the section on “Gattungen” in HAHE 2.1, 25.  So already Albright, “The Gezer Calendar,” 21.  See Gonzalo Rubio, “Early Sumerian Literature: Enumerating the Whole,” in De la Tablilla a la Inteligencia Artificial: Homenaje al Prof. Jesús-Luis Cunchillos en su 65 aniversario, vol. I (ed. Antonino González Blanco et al.; Próximo Oriente Antiguo; Zaragoza: Instituto de Estudios Islámicos y del Oriente Próximo, 2003), 197– 208, here 200. My statement must be qualified somewhat by Niek Veldhuis’s insightful argument that the true topic of Mesopotamian scribal training via lexical lists was writing itself, “the science of writing” (ṭupšarrūtum). See Veldhuis, “Continuity and Change in the Mesopotamian Lexical Tradition,” in Aspects of Genre and Type in PreModern Literary Cultures (ed. Bert Roest and Herman L. J. Vanstiphout; COMERS Communications 1; Groningen: Styx, 1999), 101– 18, especially 110 – 11.

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function of teaching writing is extrinsic to most of the intrinsic genres that were used to teach writing in the ancient world. A cuneiform sign list or alphabet list are intrinsically genres for the instruction and practice of elementary writing. In contrast, while a bill of sale or proverb may be used as a school exercise, the intrinsic use of these genres lies in commerce and social interaction, respectively. This distinction of intrinsic and extrinsic genre functions, however, is not absolute and needs to be qualified, as becomes clear below, notably in the case of Mesopotamia. Talmon’s use of the term “list,” on the other hand, appears correct, for the Gezer Tablet clearly contains a list. But lists are of various types, are made according to various principles, and serve a variety of primary and secondary purposes. This deserves further analysis. Since there are many types of lists, “list” must be considered a “meta-genre.” That is, a list remains a list in spite of all its sub-types, and this list-characteristic remains intrinsic to the form and function of its many sub-types: whether in a love poem (“How do I love thee, let me count the ways….”), as a hemeralogy of favorable and unfavorable days, or as the catalogue raisonné of an artist, they remain lists.¹⁸

4 The Earliest Use of Lists in the Ancient Near East The earliest use of lists, as with bullae before them, appears to have developed in response to the practical desire to create records of matters such as property, business transactions, or inventories of goods from sheep to ingots—such are the well-known, earliest beginnings of Sumerian writing. Practical lists serve to enumerate and make public and permanent groups of things whose quantity or quality might be forgotten or disputed if preserved only in the fallible memories of those involved or of their heirs. In addition, lists can serve to “catalog” numbers of objects, phenomena, or words generally of the same type or grouped according to the same organizing principle. Such lists inevitably organize more or less complex realities conceptually, simply by principles of sequence, selection (inclusion and exclusion), homogeneity, opposition, paradigmatic or syntagmatic relations, and the like, even though von Soden pushed his notion of an ancient

 On the move from list to literature or poetry, see Rubio, “Early Sumerian Literature,” 197– 208.

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Listenwissenschaft much too far.¹⁹ It seems to me that the Gezer inscription is a distillation or “outline” of the second type of literary list and is probably a written record of a once-oral genre that was attractive enough for a child to memorize.

5 The Proverb as the Quintessential Genre for Narrative Distillation Before proceeding with our argument, it is necessary to make a background remark about that most salient of wisdom genres, the saying or proverb. Sayings, as Alan Dundes has shown, are compact utterances that minimally consist of a linguistic Topic and Comment (e. g., “Money [T] talks [C]”).²⁰ But in proverb performance, a saying as a whole itself functions to make a Comment about a contingent or situational Topic in the real world. (For example, we say, “Look before you leap [C]!” when someone is too hasty on the road to marriage [Situational T], lest it be, “Marry in haste, repent at leisure,” instead of, “Happy is the wooing that is not long a-doing.”²¹) The point is that sayings contract an entire narrative into a nutshell to make a (wise) Comment that illuminates the critical issue in a situation, an issue that might otherwise be missed. A proverb is thus a Comment on reality that eliminates non-essentials and contracts a life issue or narrative down to its critical essence.

 Wolfram von Soden, “Leistung und Grenze sumerischer und babylonischer Wissenschaft,” Die Welt als Geschichte 2 (1936): 411– 64, 509 – 57. In von Soden’s line of thought, see Albrecht Alt, “Die Weisheit Salomos,” TLZ 76 (1951): 139 – 44, and the anthropological work of Jack Goody, The Domestication of the Savage Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), especially 74– 128 (entitled: “What’s in a List”); and Goody, The Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 45 – 86, which focuses on the role of writing in the ancient Near East. Veldhuis rightly rejects von Soden’s view, but also gives a useful account of principles of list organization in Mesopotamia, in which proverb lists provided a bridge from elementary education to literary education (Veldhuis, “Continuity,” 108).  Alan Dundes, “On the Structure of the Proverb,” in Analytic Essays in Folklore (ed. Alan Dundes; Studies in Folklore 2; The Hague: Mouton, 1975), 103 – 18. See further my Context and Meaning in Proverbs 25 – 27 (SBLDS 96; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988), 47– 52.  The second and third sayings here may be found in F. P. Wilson, ed., The Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs (3d ed.; Oxford: Clarendon, 1970), 515, 913; though they are no longer current, as marriage practices and divorce have greatly changed since they were first coined! “Money talks” appears to be American and not British in origin.

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In the ancient Near East, there are narratives, such as “Etana and the Eagle,” which also were distilled down to a key moment or issue, either graphically or verbally as a proverb. Similarly the widespread proverb, “Who can ascend to heaven, who can go down to the earth/underworld,” is a reduction of the Etana narrative and of the “Adapa and the South Wind” story. In its own way this same proverb also functions as a Comment within and on the Gilgamesh Epic, with its failed quest for human immortality.²² Conversely, a proverb can be greatly expanded as, for instance, Mario Puzo expanded part of a biblical saying into an entire novel called Fools Die (cf. Prov 10:21b).²³ We may assume that a proverb is usually a distillation of a narrative situation, but the possibility that traffic between narrative and proverb may run the other way should not be excluded. Indeed, as any writer knows, writing inevitably entails choices of both contraction (by omission of material) and expansion (by addition of material).

6 Agricultural Lists: From Sumer to Israel to Greece 6.1 Agricultural Instruction in Sumer and Greece The earliest written “list” of the yearly cycle of farming tasks is “The Farmer’s Instruction” from ancient Sumer (eighteenth–seventeenth century B.C.E.).²⁴ This “Agricultural Manual” provides the first known exemplar of this literary genre in history. The text begins with an announcement that it is Instruction. Thereupon it immediately begins a fairly detailed sequence of prescriptions for the tasks that are to be done from the beginning to the end of the farming year. For our purposes, it is enough to cite only the opening lines of the poem to give a sense of the Instruction portion proper:

 For references and discussion of these narratives, and their reduction into proverbs or pictures, see my “The Background to Prov 30:4aα,” in Wisdom, You are my Sister: Studies in Honor of Roland E. Murphy, O. Carm., on the Occasion of His Eightieth Birthday (ed. Michael L. Barré; CBQMS 29; Washington, DC: The Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1997), 102– 21.  Mario Puzo, Fools Die (New York: Putnam, 1978).  Miguel Civil, The Farmer’s Instruction: A Sumerian Agricultural Manual (Aula Orientalis Supplementa 5; Sabadell: Editorial Ausa, 1994). Transliterated text and translation are also available online: J. A. Brown et al., ETCSL 5.6.3 (Oxford, 1998 – 2006). Cited 13 April 2016. Online: http:// etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=c.5.6*#.

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1. Ud-ul-uru (Old man cultivator)²⁵ gave advice to his son: 2– 7. When you have to prepare a field, inspect the levees, canals and mounds that have to be opened. When you let the flood water into the field, this water should not rise too high in it. At the time that the field emerges from the water, watch its area with standing water; it should be fenced. Do not let cattle herds trample there. 8 – 13. After you cut back the plant bundles and establish the limits of the field, level it repeatedly with a thin hoe weighing two-thirds of a mina.… Let a flat hoe erase the oxen tracks, let the field be swept clean. A maul should flatten the furrow bottoms of the area. A hoe should go round the four edges of the field. Until the field is dry it should be smoothed out.²⁶

In ancient Greece, Hesiod provides us with a similar list of yearly tasks, as well as a hemerology of favorable and unfavorable days. The relevant passage in Hesiod is his Works and Days, lines 381– 617.²⁷ Like “The Farmer’s Instruction” and the GFD, Hesiod begins the yearly cycle of tasks in the Fall, and like them he also specifies what is to be done at each point in the year. Hesiod does not provide a great deal of actual “instruction.” In fact, he presupposes a good deal of knowledge on the part of the reader or “pupil,” which is simply unexpressed. As Martin West comments: He assumes a general understanding of the purpose and method of ploughing, reaping, threshing, and so forth. What he has to say is concerned primarily with the right times for beginning each job, or, to look at it the other way, with the jobs to be done at each time in the year.²⁸

 Or “In days of yore, a farmer instructed his son.” So Samuel N. Kramer, The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 105. Contrast Civil’s translation: “Old Man Tiller [understood as Ninurta] instructed his son” (Civil, Farmer’s, 29). For the grammar and parallels underlying the two translations, see Civil, Farmer’s, 67. The issue concerns whether the father in this line is a human farmer (so Kramer) or the god Ninurta (so Civil), whom the poem’s ending describes as the source of farming wisdom. As Kramer (The Sumerians, 108) puts it, “The document closes with a three-line statement intended to impress the reader and student with the claim that the instructions which the farmer has given to his son are actually those of the god Ninurta, who, according to the Sumerian theologians was the ‘trustworthy farmer of Enlil.’” The fact that ancient wisdom ultimately attributes instruction to the deity does not preclude human agency. On Ninurta as deity of farming, see Amar Annus, The God Ninurta in the Mythology and Royal Ideology of Ancient Mesopotamia (SAAS 14; Helsinki: The NeoAssyrian Text Corpus Project, 2002), 152– 56.  Brown et al., ETCSL 5.6.3 Cited 13 April 2016. Online: http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/ etcsl.cgi?text=t.5.6.3#.  Hesiod: Works and Days (ed. Martin L. West; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), 114– 125, and 252– 313 for West’s commentary on the lines.  Ibid., 52 (emphasis mine).

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West further explains that the purpose of this section is not so much literal instruction as aesthetic: The instruction offered … is remarkably sketchy and lacunose, and descriptive passages such as 504– 58 and 582– 96 make it clear that the poet’s aim is not severely didactic. A pictorial quality invests even his most technical precepts: by the end, while we may not be much better equipped to run a farm than before, we have a real sense of how it looked and felt at different stages of the year.²⁹

6.2 The Gezer Farmer’s Ditty as a Proverb-Like Agricultural List In the case of the GFD, I believe that we possess a reduction of such larger, widespread, cyclical narratives of the yearly round of farming tasks to an essential, proverb-like poetic list. The GFD preserves something repeatable and widely known: the annual farming activities corresponding to the natural cycle of the seasons. Renz, however, is no doubt correct in rejecting a “practical” farming use of the inscription as follows: “Also an understanding (of the text) taken from the practical activity of farmers is unlikely, since on the one hand the farmer certainly cannot write, and on the other such fundamental issues are learned from experience and do not need to be written.”³⁰ Such a list indeed tells a farmer nothing he does not already know. But whether or not the ancient adult farmer could write is actually irrelevant to our case. Ancient farmers did not need to write, but they did need to hand on traditional experience and practice orally to the next generation. Not least for ancient farmers, this concerned an aware-

 Hesiod: Works and Days, 252. In his treatment of “Wisdom Literature” (pp. 3 – 25), West provides a selective, world-wide survey of mostly ancient wisdom, including a number of agricultural “instructions,” one as late as the thirteenth century C.E. Greatly to be regretted is our loss of the most famous treatise on agriculture in Greco-Roman antiquity. Mago of Carthage wrote in Punic, and the Roman Senate financed the translation of his twenty-eight-book work into Greek and Latin. Unfortunately, the Romans also did their utmost to eradicate all things Carthaginian from the face of the earth: “Carthago delenda est!” We possess fragments of his writings in the Latin agricultural instructions of Columella and others. See J. P. Mahaffy, “The Work of Mago on Agriculture,” Hermathena 7/15 (1889): 29 – 35; and Vilhhelm Lundström, “Magostudien,” Eranos 2 (1898): 60 – 67.  Renz, HAHE 1/1, 32 n. 4, following K. A. D. Smelik, Historische Dokumente aus dem alten Israel (Kleine Vandenhoeck-Reihe 1528; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1987), 29 – 30 (my translation and emphasis). The original reads: “Auch eine Deutung aus der praktischen Tätigkeit des Bauern heraus ist unwahrscheinlich, da der Bauer einerseits kaum schreiben kann, andererseits derart Grundlegendes aus Erfahrung kennt und nicht aufschreiben muß.”

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ness of cyclic, cosmic time, including the annual movement of sun, moon, and stars correlated with seasonal changes that determined farming activities. That this sort of seasonal, cosmic knowledge is embodied in various forms of wisdom, ancient and modern, is well known; the biblical proverb about the ant and the sluggard is only one of many examples (Prov 6:6 – 11; 10:4– 5; cf. 26:1). It is this easily memorized, poetic oral instruction that the GFD preserves. And like the early Egyptian and Mesopotamian lists mentioned just below, it was probably accompanied by oral instruction that elaborated on the calendrical outline of tasks in the poem. For a farmer’s child, the yearly calendar of work is hung upon a little “ditty.”

6.3 Ancient Near Eastern Onomastica as Oral Teaching Preserved in Writing I make this suggestion based on a development in the list-writing traditions of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. Concerning the genre known as “onomastica,” comprising lists of words or realia, Michael V. Fox notes that only late in the genre’s history, in the Roman period, do we find lists with explanatory glosses. In the earlier stages of this genre’s literary history, such glosses are absent from the lists. Fox surmises that earlier lists were also accompanied with glosses and explanations, but that these existed only orally and remained unwritten. Fox writes, “As is the case for much Ptolemaic literature, this text [a late onomasticon] may show an attempt to put into writing a usage that was earlier taken for granted.”³¹ Such a two-stage literary development over time seems natural: Initially, a core oral “instruction,” which was accompanied with explanatory oral teaching, is written without those explanations. Later, as traditional oral knowledge and practice declined, a core “instruction” was written with the accompanying teachings or “glosses.” As Niek Veldhuis and others have shown, a virtually identical development took place in Mesopotamian schools. There, for example, a sign list could appear as (1) a single column of logograms; (2) a logogram column plus an explanatory column of the several Sumerian words that each sign might represent; or (3) a sign list with yet a third (or more) column/s of Akkadian or other equivalents.³² With the GFD then, we have a small written exemplar of an unaccompanied (ag Michael V. Fox, “Egyptian Onomastica and Biblical Wisdom,” VT 36 (1986): 302– 10, here 305 (emphasis mine).  Miguel Civil, “Ancient Mesopotamian Lexicography” in CANE 4:2308 – 10; Veldhuis, “Continuity.”

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ricultural) core instructional “list” in poetic form (i. e., extremely compact, with explicitly marked lineation, and structured by paradigmatic parallelism).

7 Agricultural Instruction in Ancient Israel 7.1 The Gezer Farmer’s Ditty as “Bauernweisheit” Thus we arrive at a key question: How and why did such oral teaching come to be preserved in writing? William Dever, following a suggestion first made by W. F. Albright, considered the GFD to belong “to the Solomonic era. It is one of the earliest Hebrew inscriptions, perhaps a schoolchild’s exercise tablet, giving a mnemonic ditty for the seasons of the agricultural year.”³³ Renz may have overlooked an early (and continuing) function of writing: to make permanent human experience and wisdom which is otherwise only oral and transitory. While the seasons and the appropriate agrarian activities are learned by experience and practice, such “wisdom” and “knowledge”—for so the ancients would call it— is accumulated over generations and, as tradition, is codified. First it becomes a part of the tradition of oral instruction for the young, and then it is made permanent in writing, to form a literary wisdom genre of “agricultural instruction” which is widely attested in world literature.³⁴ Such a function is not at all opposed to its use as a writing exercise. Oded Borowski (overlooked by Renz) provides perhaps the best-informed agricultural and calendrical treatment of this inscription to date.³⁵ On internal grounds, he recognized that the text was not so much a “calendar” as a manual of instruction. Thus he renamed it the “Gezer Manual,” because, as he says, “the inscription is obviously a list of chores and not a calendar to tell time,” though it clearly presupposes a lunar calendar of 12 months (‫)ירח‬.³⁶ Borowski’s identification of the GFD’s genre and function is confirmed by comparison with other in William Dever, “Gezer,” New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land (4 vols.; ed. Ephraim Stern; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society; New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993), 2:496 – 506, here 505. This quotation is virtually unchanged from his entry on Gezer in the Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land (4 vols.; ed. Michael AviYonah; Inglewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1975 – 1978), 2:428 – 33, here 431, though the word “perhaps” is a significant, qualifying addition. The date given (late tenth century B.C.E.) is generally accepted, but the identity of the text as “Hebrew” remains disputed (on which see note 2 above).  For a survey, see West, Hesiod: Works and Days, 3 – 25.  Borowski, Agriculture, 31– 44.  Ibid., 32.

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stances of “agricultural instruction.” As noted above, the oldest, archetypal exemplar of this genre is the Sumerian “Farmer’s Instructions” (eighteenth–seventeenth century B.C.E.). What the GFD does in an abstract, proverb-like form is done much more expansively in the Sumerian text and its many parallels. In form, the Gezer Manual is a culturally specific “outline” of this longer genre. Just as the Sumerian “Farmer’s Instructions” and the calendrical section of Hesiod’s Works and Days cover a complete year of agrarian activity,³⁷ so does the Gezer Manual; essential to farming wisdom is the right activity at the right time, in keeping with the cosmic order of seasons. The fundamental cosmic calendric order underlying wise human activity is everywhere presupposed and becomes explicit in great creation and re-creation texts such as those in Genesis: And God said, “Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens … and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years.” (Gen 1:14) “As long as earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease.” (Gen 8:22)

The Gezer Tablet is thus very close to oral instruction used to teach or describe for (very) young farmers their work according to the seasons. As an inscription, it may well be ancient Israel’s earliest archaeologically dateable piece of wisdom literature.³⁸ As noted, such Bauernweisheit or “agricultural instruction” has a long genre history beginning with the Sumerian “Farmer’s Instructions” and most famously exemplified in the orientalizing Works and Days of Hesiod, author also of the Theogony which of course is not an agricultural genre, though it does focus on the theogony cum cosmogony which underlies Hesiod’s view of human wisdom in a cosmos made difficult by the gods.

7.2 Agricultural Instruction in the Hebrew Bible The Bible provides two examples of agricultural instruction that we must consider as examples of the adaptation and embedding of the genre in a larger literary

 Civil, Farmer’s, 1 and 6 n. 2. Thus generic comparison supports the now generally accepted reading of ‫ ירחו‬as duals referring to “two months.” See also the complete calendar of Hesiod: Works and Days, lines 381– 617, and the commentary by West in Hesiod: Works and Days, 252– 313.  The question remains moot presently, though I am inclined to follow scholars who see it as Israelite. See note 2 above, and also Aḥituv, Echoes, 252, whose position agrees with Demsky.

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context.³⁹ Isaiah 28:23 – 29 is generally recognized as a prophetic adaptation of the wisdom “instruction” genre.⁴⁰ Like the GFD, the Isaiah text reduces large, complex agricultural processes to their essentials. But a comparison with the Sumerian “Farmer’s Instructions” is again illuminating. Both texts describe/prescribe plowing and threshing at the proper time and in the proper manner. Both texts use the imperative forms frequent in Instruction genres (“Farmer’s Instruction” and, in particular, Isa 28:23 open with a generic element typical of the “instruction” genre: “the call to attention” [cf. Prov 1:8; 3:1; 4:1– 2, 10, 20 etc.]).⁴¹ The similarity of the conclusion of the “Farmer’s Instructions” to the stanza endings of Isa 28:26, 29 is especially striking: 108 Instructions of the God Ninurta, son of Enlil. 109 Ninurta, faithful farmer of Enlil, your praise be good! He instructs him according to tradition (‫)משפט‬, His God teaches him…. (Isa 28:26) Also this (instruction) proceeds from Yhwh of Hosts, Marvelous is his counsel, great his skill. (Isa 28:29)

In each case the farmer’s instruction is based clearly on human experience, tradition, and know-how.⁴² Yet each text ascribes such wisdom to the culturally ap-

 Note that something similar happens in Hesiod’s Works and Days. The calendric section of the work is embedded in a larger, far more comprehensive wisdom instruction that includes topics such as social justice and the “ages” of humanity. These set the stage for the specific agricultural instruction of the piece. Ancient wisdom generally presupposes a comprehensive “worldview” and theology, which does not always have to be spelled out.  That the whole of Isaiah 28 is prophetic “Instruction” is not clear to me, pace Marvin A. Sweeney, Isaiah 1 – 39: With an Introduction to the Prophetic Literature (FOTL 16; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996), 359 – 73. In particular, I am not convinced by the appeal to the “Woe Cry” (Isa 28:1; 29:1) as derived from “wisdom circles” (Sweeney, Isaiah 1 – 39, 365). More convincing are those studies which show that the “hoy” cry is derived not from “wisdom” but from the funeral lament. Its adaptation in the prophetic literature portends the death of a group or of the nation as “body politic.” See especially the funeral theme in Amos 5:1– 20. In Amos 5:16, ‫ הו‬is a dialectical variant of ‫ הוי‬in 5:18. See Shalom Paul, Amos: A Commentary on the Book of Amos (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), 182 n. 2, (“that ‫ הוי‬never appears in wisdom literature is of decisive significance”); for Akkadian parallels of ‫הוי‬, see Paul, Amos, 178 – 179 and n. 200. For literature (clearly identified as pro and con on this issue), see Sweeney, Isaiah, 543.  Of course, the “call to attention” can appear outside of wisdom genres. But it is an integral element in the larger wisdom genre of “instruction,” because it furthers the purpose of instruction.  For this reason, I prefer Kramer’s translation of the first line of the Sumerian text. See n. 25 above.

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propriate deity (cf. Prov 2:6 – 7). In Isaiah, this ascription of wisdom teaching to Yhwh has a historical, prophetic function within its larger context: Yhwh will act like a wise farmer, doing the right thing, in the right way, at the right time, unlike the foolish Israelite leaders (‫אנשי לצון‬, Isa 28:14; cf. Prov 29:8) in their drunken behavior. Thus Sweeney’s designation of Isa 28:23 – 29 as an “Allegory” is appropriate, though “Parable” might serve just as well.⁴³ Yhwh’s wisdom is mirrored in the farmer’s apparently destructive activity (plowing and threshing), which finally produces good fruits. In the Sumerian text, Ninurta is the source of the farmer’s wisdom. Here Ninurta functions as a second-generation deity who passes on the attributes of his father, Enki, the ultimate Sumerian god of wisdom. A brief mention may be made of a third instance of embedded “agricultural instruction” which appears in the wisdom literature itself, namely in Prov 27:23 – 27. It begins with an imperative concerning animal husbandry in tune with the seasonal cycle of grass growth and harvest. It concludes with the benefits of heeding the admonition. I have argued elsewhere that this short poem (like that in Isa 28:23 – 29) has been adapted in its larger context (as a conclusion to chs. 25 – 27, which links them to chs. 28 – 29 on kingship and government)⁴⁴ to serve an “allegorical” or parabolic function concerning the duties of kings (as the “shepherd” of their people) to their subjects.⁴⁵ When we see that the GFD, the “Farmer’s Instruction,” Isa 28:23 – 29, and Prov 27:23 – 27 all bear a “family resemblance” based on common functions, the need to base generic definition on absolute lists of generic features or elements becomes less compelling. What is common remains, and individuality is also given its due. What is more, such a life-functional approach to genre is fruitful, for it permits us to recognize more instances of our genre, not in spite of their individuality, but in line with it. The little admonitory poem, “Go to the ant, you sluggard, and consider her ways, she gathers in harvest…” (Prov 6:6 – 11), is an instance of agricultural instruction, adapted for the more general purpose of instruction concerning sloth. Yet it has not lost its more specific agricultural generic function: the wise farmer works in harmony with the cosmic round of seasons (or months!) and in the appropriate way (cf. Prov 10:4– 5).

 Sweeney, Isaiah, 366.  See my “The Book of Proverbs” in NIB 5:19 – 262, here 234– 47.  See my Context and Meaning in Proverbs 25 – 27, 131– 143. For more recent elaboration and strengthening of this argument, see Ricardo Tavares, Eine königliche Weishheitslehre? Exegetische Analyse von Sprüche 28 – 29 und Vergleich mit den ägyptischen Lehren Merikaras und Amenemhats (OBO 234; Fribourg: Academic Press; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007), 13 – 19.

380

Raymond C. Van Leeuwen

8 The Farmer’s Art Among classical authors, the learned Roman, Columella, lists a diversity of human arts as “wisdom” (sapientia). But among these, he insists that farming is the wisest and most basic of the arts. His admittedly incomplete list includes oratory, surveying, mathematics, dancing, music, architecture, navigation, and warfare. He notes that all these arts have expert teachers and that there are schools even for arts such as cooking and hairdressing. But because farming is indispensable for life, Columella finds it ironic that for any study which one wishes to pursue he employs the most expert (consultissimum) director; in short, everyone summons from the company of the wise (sapientium) a man to mould his intellect and instruct him in the precepts of virtue; but agriculture alone, which is without doubt most closely related and, as it were, own sister to wisdom (sapientiae) is as destitute of learners as of teachers.⁴⁶

In Columella’s view, one who would master the farmer’s art (scientia) must be “extremely wise and knowledgeable concerning the natural world” (rerum naturae sagacissimus, I, 22, my translation, cf. I, 32). Just as in the GFD, he correlates farming activity to the yearly cycle (here in terms of the contrasts, summer and winter, spring and fall). But he does so, like Hesiod and “The Farmer’s Manual,” on a more sophisticated level, noting the rising and setting of stars and the complex variability of climatic factors within the general yearly cycle. The wise farmer knows not only the general patterns of nature, but also the variable particulars of land and soil, wind and rain (I, 18 – 19). The Gezer Farmer’s Ditty is the ABCs of wisdom; the other works are college or graduate school instruction.

 Columella, On Agriculture I, 3 – 4 (LCL, 4– 5). Among the arts derided by Columella is the “canine pursuit” of lawyers (causidici) “barking at every man of outstanding wealth, and the practice of legal banditry against the innocent and in defense of the guilty—a fraud despised by our ancestors, but even allowed by us” (I, 7, 9; LCL, 6 – 9).

List of Contributors William P. Brown Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, GA USA Richard J. Clifford Boston College School of Theology and Ministry (Emeritus), Chestnut Hill, MA USA James L. Crenshaw Duke University (Emeritus), Durham, NC USA Katharine J. Dell University of Cambridge, Cambridge, England Michael V. Fox University of Wisconsin-Madison (Emeritus), Madison, WI USA Agustinus Gianto Pontifical Biblical Institute, Rome, Italy Susanne Gillmayr-Bucher Catholic Private University, Linz, Austria Edward L. Greenstein Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel J. Gerald Janzen Christian Theological Seminary (Emeritus), Indianapolis, IN USA Thomas Krüger University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland Peter Machinist Harvard University, Cambridge, MA USA Judith H. Newman University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada Carol A. Newsom Emory University, Atlanta, GA Manfred Oeming University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany

382

List of Contributors

William H. C. Propp University of California–San Diego (Emeritus), San Diego, CA USA Bernd U. Schipper Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany Konrad Schmid University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland Ludger Schwienhorst-Schönberger University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria Hermann Spieckermann University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany Raymond C. Van Leeuwen Eastern University (Emeritus), St. David’s, PA USA Stuart Weeks University of Durham, Durham, England Markus Witte Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany Benjamin G. Wright III Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA USA

Index of Ancient Sources Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Gen 1 – 3 100, 279 Gen 1 – 4 258 Gen 1:14 377 Gen 2 – 3 110, 112, 262, 275 – 280, 284 – 286 Gen 3:7 223 Gen 3:22 85 Gen 3:24 281 Gen 5:22 – 24 261 Gen 8:22 377 Gen 18:25 179 Num 12:12 43 Deut 4:15 – 16 265 Deut 7:7 – 8 62 Deut 30:15 – 19 266 Deut 32:4, 36, 43 62 f. 1 Kgs 3 192 – 194, 229, 259, 278, 348 1 Kgs 5:12 – 13 194 1 Kgs 10 195 2 Kgs 19:23 – 24 344 – 346 2 Chr 9 195 Job 1:1, 10 41, 48, 53, 218 Job 1:6 – 12 119, 123 f. Job 1:10 54 Job 1:14 – 23 119 f. Job 2:3 52 Job 2:7 40, 43 Job 2:9 – 11 120 Job 3 30, 73 f., 76, 89, 100, 102, 106, 109 f., 112f., 121, 125 Job 4:7 – 18 120 Job 5:9 51 Job 5:18 40, 42 Job 6:12 41 Job 7:5 43 Job 9:10 51 Job 9:22 – 24 90 f. Job 10:10 – 11 44 Job 11:14 – 15 49 Job 13:28 44 Job 14:20 48 Job 16:12 – 13, 14 47

Job 17:7 45 Job 18:13 46 Job 19:20 43 Job 19:21 40 Job 19:25 – 26 92 Job 21:23 42 Job 22:21 49 Job 24:18 – 19, 20(LXX) 74 Job 27 21 – 24, 74, 263 Job 28 21, 23 – 29, 30, 33, 37 – 38, 39, 83, 86, 210, 217 – 220, 269 Job 28:23 – 28 35 Job 30:30 43 Job 38 32, 67, 76 f., 86, 105 f., 109, 125 Job 40:8 55, 67 Job 42:3 220 Job 42:7 – 8 71 – 74 Job 42:7 – 12 121 – 22 Job 42:7 – 17 72 Job 42:11 80 Ps 1 32, 43, 66, 79, 92, 112, 188, 212, 256, 269, 288 f., 291, 293, 296, 298– 312, 314 – 316, 322 f., 327 Ps 5 113, 119, 309 Ps 25 288, 301 – 303, 310 Ps 32 120, 122 Ps 34 209, 257, 302 f., 310 Ps 37 92, 209, 289, 303 – 307, 309 f., 312, 328 Ps 38:4 42, 47 Ps 39 211, 290 – 292, 294, 300, 311 Ps 40 307 – 311, 313, 323 Ps 49 257, 306 Ps 73 211, 215, 297, 306 Ps 78 192, 295 – 299, 303 f. Ps 90 292 – 294 Pss 111 – 112 310, 312, 314 Ps 119 181, 310 – 316 Prov 1 – 9 153 Prov 1:22 – 33 210 Prov 2:1 – 22 139

384

Index of Ancient Sources

Prov 2:4 – 5 218 f. Prov 6:6 – 11 375, 379 Prov 9:7 – 9 212 f. Prov 10:1 – 5 145 – 147 Prov 10:1 – 22:16 143 f., 155 Prov 10:4 149 Prov 10:4 – 5 375 Prov 10:6 – 11 147 f. Prov 10:10 149 Prov 10:10(LXX) 147 Prov 10:12 149 Prov 10:15 149 Prov 10:26 149 Prov 10:26(LXX) 149 Prov 11:24 158 f. Prov 11:25 159 Prov 12:18 – 19 159 Prov 13:7 159 Prov 13:23 160 Prov 18:24 160 f. Prov 20:15 160, 191 Prov 24:15 – 16 209 Prov 27:23 – 27 379 Prov 30:1 – 33 214 – 216 Prov 31:1 – 31 138 f. Eccl 1:12 – 2:10 221 Eccl 1:12 – 2:11 347 – 349, 360, 362 f. Eccl 3:16 – 17 184 Eccl 5:9 (5:10) 169 Eccl 5:10 (5:11) 171 Eccl 5:11 (5:12) 167 f. Eccl 6:8 171 Eccl 6:9 186 Eccl 7:27, 29 171 Eccl 10:1(LXX) 169

Eccl 11:9 186 Song 1:2 – 4 323 Song 1:5 – 6 324 – 326 Song 1:7 – 8 327 Song 8:6 322 Isa 1:6 42 Isa 10:5 – 15 339 – 346, 360 Isa 11:6 – 9 286 Isa 28:23 – 29 379 Isa 37:24 – 25 344 – 346 Isa 52:13 – 53:12 256, 258 Isa 65 – 66 286 Jer 31:31 – 34 152 Lam 3 47, 121, 257 Lam 4:6 – 8 324, 326 Amos 5:16 378 Amos 8:2 369 Wisdom of Ben Sira 239, 242 Wis 7 193 – 195, 229, 255, 257, 262, 268 Wis 10 258 f., 262, 264, 268 Sirach 92, 108, 157, 180, 195, 227 f., 230, 232 – 237, 243 – 248, 250, 288 Sir 1 111, 217, 233 – 236, 259 f., 263, 268 Sir 3:15 247 Sir 14:17 249 Sir 17 111, 233 f. Sir 24 230, 261, 268 f. Sir 26:9 247 Sir 36:27 249 Sir 39 80, 227 – 230, 233, 236, 243 Sir 41:16 247 Sir 44:20 246 Sir 47:23 – 24 245 Sir 49:13 246 Sir 50:24 248

Ancient Near Eastern Texts Adapa and the South Wind 372 Arad 88 334 Ashurbanipal’s Satire of Bel-eṭ ir 351 Babylonian Theodicy 79 Cuthean Legend of Naram-Sin 351 Etana and the Eagle 372 Gilgamesh Epic 351, 355 f., 359 – 361, 372

Instruction of Any 133 Instruction of Ptahhotep (Papyrus Prisse 5.7 – 8) 151 Ludlul bēl nēmeqi 78, 86 Ludlul bēl nēmeqi II.71/72, 75/81 39 f. Ludlul bēl nēmeqi II.92 – 93, 104 – 5 4 Stele of Isenkhebe 182

385

Index of Ancient Sources

The Farmer’s Instruction 372 f., 378 Treaty of Esarhaddon 570 – 572 43

Yavneh Yam Letter

367

Pseudepigrapha Aḥ iqar 130 Jub 12:1 – 14 262

Jubilees 106 f., 267 Testament of Abraham 10:12 – 13

180

Dead Sea Scrolls 1QApocryphal Prophecy (1Q25) 108 1QHa (Hodayot) 109 f., 112 1QS (Rule of the Community) xi 22 108 2QJob (2Q15) 100 4QBarkhi Nafshi (4Q434) 108

4QInstruction (4Q418) 108 4QJoba–c (4Q99 – 101) 100 – 101 11QPsa (11Q5) 108 11QPsa (11Q5) col. XVIII, lines 1 – 18 11QTargum Job (11Q10) 105

315

New Testament Luke 18:2 – 5

80

Jas 5:11

87

Rabbinic Works b. Pesaḥ 54a

137

Genesis Rabbah 49:9

180

Greco-Roman Literature On Agriculture 374, 380 Theogony 377

Works and Days

365, 373 f., 376 – 378

Islamic Literature Qur’an Al-Anbiya 21:83 – 84

87

Qur’an Sad 38:44

87

Index of Subjects agriculture 285, 365, 367, 376, 380 Agur 210, 214 – 216, 222 allegorical meaning 317, 320 ambivalence 78, 175, 275, 279, 285 ʾāmôn/ummânu 137 f. analogy 139 – 141 anthropology 88, 110 – 113, 152, 233, 237, 258, 269 aphorism 148 – 150, 153 f., 170, 287, 296, 298, 303 Aššur 339 – 344 Assyrian royal inscriptional language 341 Bakhtin, Mikhail 83 blessing 3, 51, 54 – 62, 65 – 69, 94 f., 147 f., 152, 154 f., 248, 333, 342, 350, 353, 363 bridegroom 320 calendar 195, 365 – 367, 369, 375 – 377 consumption 43, 45 f. creation 24, 35 f., 44, 57 f., 61, 65 f., 68, 88 – 90, 106 f., 110 – 114, 137, 175, 179, 218 – 220, 222, 233 f., 259, 264 – 266, 269, 276, 280 f., 298, 377 David-to-come 298 f., 304 Dead Sea Scrolls 99, 101, 106, 110 f., 114, 228, 290, 315 Deed-Consequence Nexus 85 – 88, 92 f., 95 – 97 destructivity 76 dialogue 22, 26 – 28, 66 f., 73 – 75, 78, 82, 115, 117 – 126, 146, 153, 177, 180, 185, 187, 190, 192, 198, 200, 203, 216, 218 f., 255, 292, 327 disintegration 41, 45, 47 – 50 drama 1, 4, 13, 89, 126, 130 f., 135 – 138 Elihu 5, 10 f., 21, 30, 38, 82 f., 89, 91, 95, 100, 113, 116 f., 122 f., 211, 217 embodiment 59, 219, 317 Enoch 108, 239, 261 f., 284 f.

failure 33, 180 f., 183, 195, 197, 209 f., 213 – 216, 218 – 223, 313, 344, 349, 353 f., 356, 362 father 26, 59, 62, 130 – 132, 134 – 136, 138, 140, 145, 183, 210 f., 213, 245, 264, 270, 325, 357, 373, 379 form criticism 319 frailty 125, 293, 306, 313 generosity 56 – 59, 61, 65 f., 68 f., 183 gloss 43, 104, 166, 177 f., 185, 355, 375 God 5 – 8, 12, 17, 21 – 39, 41 – 44, 46 – 52, 54, 56 – 69, 71 – 97, 106 f., 109, 111 – 113, 115 – 126, 137 f., 141, 146 f., 149, 151 f., 154 f., 162, 177, 179 – 188, 192 f., 201, 206, 209, 211, 214 – 222, 228, 233 – 236, 255 – 270, 277 – 279, 281 – 285, 288 – 302, 304 – 315, 317, 319 – 323, 325 – 329, 331 – 334, 337 f., 340 – 344, 347, 352 f., 373, 377 – 379 gratitude 18, 57 f., 287 guilt 75, 77, 89, 181, 197, 292 – 295, 298, 307 f., 356 hermeneutic model 239 – 241, 243 f., 248 – 250, 252, 254 hermeneutics 53, 72 f., 77, 87, 218 f., 250, 299 historiography 239 f., 243, 248 – 254, 331, 336 f., 341, 351 hope 1, 6, 11, 17 f., 28, 34, 67 f., 78, 80, 86, 92, 140, 155, 158, 176, 182, 187, 203, 210, 216, 254, 260, 282, 289, 291, 295, 298, 302 – 309, 312 f., 320 illness and disease 39 – 43, 45 – 50, 76, 81, 84, 235, 307 Imago dei 56, 58 f. immortality 182, 256, 258 f., 266, 281 – 283, 353, 355 f., 372 indecision 177, 179, 188 injustice 58, 68, 71 f., 75, 77 – 79, 89, 160, 181 – 184, 186 f., 256, 260 f., 268

388

Index of Subjects

inscriptions 2, 4, 101, 174, 182 f., 331 – 339, 341 – 346, 348 – 354, 358 – 363, 365 – 367, 369, 371, 374, 376 f. instruction 17, 37, 62, 85, 110, 129 – 132, 134 – 136, 138 – 141, 151, 153, 184, 209, 220, 227, 229, 236, 282, 289, 295 f., 298, 301, 304 – 306, 365, 370, 372 – 380 instrumental model 240, 243, 251 integrity 24, 48 – 50, 52, 120, 220, 298 intertextuality 107, 121 f., 193, 318, 320 f. inversion/reversal of language and imagery 344 irony 24, 33, 71, 187, 355 Isis 261 f., 269 Jenkins, David 116 – 120, 122 f. Jerome 104, 163, 167, 174, 240 judge 63, 75, 80, 86, 91, 151, 177, 179 – 182, 185 – 188, 192, 216, 234, 256, 300 justice 22, 33, 51, 54 f., 60 – 62, 66 – 69, 76, 78, 80 f., 85 f., 91, 131, 133, 179 – 182, 186 f., 206, 214, 216, 255 – 257, 260 f., 263, 265 – 267, 269, 288, 295, 305, 308 f., 312, 378 Kerygma 81 f., 94 – 96 king and kingship 349 f., 359 King Solomon 190 f., 197 – 200, 204 – 207, 229, 298 knowledge 1, 26, 28, 74 f., 85, 95, 111, 113, 138, 144, 151, 154 f., 160, 173, 179, 182, 187 f., 192 – 196, 198, 202, 206, 212, 214, 216, 218 – 221, 223, 229, 233, 257 – 260, 264, 266 f., 269, 277 – 279, 281 – 285, 288, 291, 293 f., 298 – 300, 309 f., 321, 331, 346 f., 351, 360, 362 f., 373, 375 f. lament 18, 77, 83, 90, 117 f., 121 f., 124, 214, 291, 294 f., 307, 309, 378 love 7, 18, 60, 62, 65 f., 118, 133, 137 f., 148 – 150, 157, 162, 169, 175, 193 f., 203, 207, 213, 255 f., 261, 263, 266 – 269, 292 – 294, 300 – 302, 305, 309 – 314, 317, 319 – 329, 370

Maxwell-Davies, Peter 116 f., 123, 125 f. metaphor 1, 3, 39, 41 f., 44 – 47, 49 f., 129 – 131, 209, 277, 288, 301, 304, 306, 319, 321 f., 325 f., 328 f. modern literature 191 narû (pseudo-royal inscription) 351, 362 neurocognition 227, 230 – 232, 234 oratorio

115 – 120, 122 f., 126

paradise 52, 258, 260, 262, 275, 277 – 280, 282 – 285 pedagogy 12, 18, 85 f., 213, 290, 292, 303 performance 371 Philo 108, 235, 252, 257, 260 – 262, 265 – 267, 269, 293 Plato 255, 257, 260 poetry 5, 10 f., 26, 39 f., 82, 116, 126, 147, 202, 217, 299, 356 – 358, 366, 370 polyphonic 83, 117, 123 prayer 39, 56, 58, 64 f., 86, 140, 181, 214, 227 – 231, 233 f., 236 – 238, 255, 267 f., 288 – 292, 294 f., 299 – 303, 306 – 308, 310 f., 313 – 316, 332, 342, 363 Qoheleth 8, 129, 172 f., 177 – 179, 181 – 188, 210, 220 – 222, 346, 348 rebuke 210 – 216, 220, 234, 311 reception 2, 8 – 10, 14, 17, 81 f., 84, 99, 114, 129, 152, 174, 194, 200, 207, 239, 241, 249 f., 252, 270, 279 f., 299, 306, 337 reception history 82, 190, 239, 252, 254, 268, 280, 287, 316 righteous 40, 49, 74, 78, 81, 89, 91, 94, 96, 119, 122, 124, 130, 144 – 152, 154 f., 186 f., 194, 209 f., 213, 216, 256 f., 260 – 263, 288, 300, 302 – 306, 309 f., 312, 314 f. righteousness 26, 61, 67, 80, 85, 122, 145 f., 155, 187, 221, 256, 276, 309, 312, 314 sapiential sayings 150 scribe 6, 138, 182, 199, 201 f., 227 – 230, 233, 237 f., 250, 333, 353, 357, 363

Index of Subjects

Septuagint 92, 96, 99, 103 f., 120, 123, 147, 149, 165 – 169, 178, 214, 229, 243, 251 – 253, 256, 259 f., 262 f., 266 f., 270, 280 Shadday 24, 31, 34, 57, 67, 216 silence (of God) 52 f., 65, 83, 89, 291 f. sin 31 – 33, 47, 52, 64 f., 75, 86, 89, 112 f., 147, 149, 180 f., 183, 186 f., 228, 235 – 237, 245 f., 258, 263, 266 – 268, 277, 280, 283, 291, 301, 307, 351 – 356, 358 f., 361 f. son 7, 10, 30, 43, 45, 59, 116, 119 – 121, 130 – 136, 139 f., 144 – 146, 148 – 150, 154, 158, 183, 203, 210 – 214, 245, 324 – 326, 334 f., 347 – 349, 352, 357, 359, 373, 378 Sontag, Susan 45, 48 f. Stoicism 265, 269 f. strange woman 133 f., 194 structural sin 88 Symmachus 167, 169 targum 102 – 106, 114, 171, 186 Text of Ecclesiastes 165 f., 170 theodicy 10, 74, 81 f., 89, 96, 181, 265, 267 theological proverbs 150 theory of truth 81, 83 transience 44, 291 – 294, 313 translation 4, 10, 40 – 43, 46, 72 – 74, 77, 82 f., 86, 89, 95, 99, 102 – 108, 114, 116, 123 – 125, 129, 132, 137, 141, 145, 158, 161, 163, 165, 167 f., 189, 199, 202 f., 213 f., 228, 239 – 254, 259, 266, 270, 275, 282 f., 320 f., 323 f., 327, 334, 339, 344, 346 f., 350, 352, 356 f., 360, 366 f., 369, 372 – 374, 378, 380 Translation Studies 240, 254

389

tree of Life 277, 281 – 283, 285 truth 21 f., 26, 53, 71 – 76, 91, 96, 170, 202 Venuti, Lawrence 239 – 243, 245, 248 – 251, 254 Vocalization 167 f. wellness 39, 42, 47, 49 wicked 22 – 25, 33 f., 37, 42, 46, 48, 74, 78, 90 f., 130, 132, 139, 144 – 150, 154, 186, 209 – 213, 216 f., 288, 291, 300, 303 – 306, 314 wisdom 1 f., 7 f., 12, 25 – 40, 44, 48, 57, 62, 68, 83, 86, 92, 94, 110, 117, 121, 123, 125, 129, 131 f., 134 – 141, 143 – 147, 150 – 155, 159 f., 169, 172, 180, 182 – 184, 190 – 207, 209 – 211, 213 – 222, 227, 229, 233 – 238, 242, 244, 247, 255 – 270, 275 – 279, 284, 287 – 290, 292 – 300, 302, 304 – 306, 309, 311 – 316, 319, 321 f., 340 f., 343, 346 – 349, 352, 362, 365, 371 – 380 wisdom tradition 110, 277, 279, 288 woman wisdom 129, 136 – 138, 141 wonder 29, 66, 76, 181, 211, 215, 222 wrath (of God) 23, 95, 121, 182, 199, 263, 267, 293 – 296, 325, 339 Yhwh 26, 28, 42, 46, 59, 62, 64, 71 – 74, 76 – 81, 84, 86, 90, 93 – 95, 131, 136, 138 f., 145 – 147, 149 f., 152, 154 f., 161 f., 179 – 181, 192 f., 211 f., 215 f., 218 f., 261 f., 268, 296 – 298, 300 – 312, 314 f., 319, 322, 325 – 329, 340 – 345, 378 f. Zophar 21 f., 24, 29 – 34, 37 f., 49, 118, 120 f., 124 f.