7. Weinfeld 1978/79:
wbzrh 'l ... wymsn hrm ... /lbrk b`l bym
mlh[mh] /lsm 'l bym mlh[mth].
8. On b`lplt at Tel Dan, and blntn on the
Calah ostracon, c.f.
Smith 1990:65 n. 3. The latter can certainly be construed as
Israelite, but could also be Transjordanian, or, for that matter,
Sam'alian. It should be added that names citing Qaus are so far
restricted to Negev ostraca of the late 7th century and later,
and probably reflect Edomite activity rather than a change in
onomastic patterns. A unprovenanced seal of the 9th/8th
centuries containing the name b`l`dn, and stemming from a private
collection, will be published shortly by Walter Aufrecht. For
the suppression of the lexeme ba`al in the 7th century, see
further below, regarding Hos 2:18 and terms for "husband".
9. For the best treatment of asherah as a (hypostatized)
sanctuary, see McCarter 1987. Note particularly
KAI 222.B:11 (a
treaty with Bit Agusi and its people, together with 'srthm,
presumably their cult places) and KAI 277:1,
'sr, m., presumably
as a cult place of Ashtoret; also, Akk. asirtu.
10. I take the intervening text between "Yhwh
" and "and his
asherah
" to have been incised over the original blessing, along
with much else in the epigraph. But see Lemaire 1977;
c.f. also Dever 1984; Zevit 1984; Hadley 1987.
11. c.f. the ivory pomegranate, in the Israel Museum, inscribed,
"sacred (thing) of the priests to the house of ...h
"
(qds khnm lbyt ...h). This can be the house of Yhwh,
of Asherah, or of
some priestly lineage. There is no adjudicating among these
alternatives, although the existence of a "house of Asherah" is
not yet witnessed in any text.
- "
Sacred to Yhwh
":
Lev 19:8 (> Mal 2:11); 23:20; 27:14, 21, 23,
30, 32; Josh 6:19; Isa 23:18; Jer 2:3; 31:40; Ezek 45:1; Zech
14:20,21; Ezra 8:28.
- "
Sacred to the priest(s)
":
Lev 23:20; Num 6:20; Ezek 45:4.
- "
Sacred to you
" (i.e., Israel):
Lev 25:12; Nu 18:10.
In DtrH, the term, qodes occurs only in Deut 26:13;
33:2; 1 Sam
21:5-7; 1 Kgs 7:51; 8:4,8,10 (the latter two reflecting the
meaning, "adyton"); 15:15.
The pattern of distribution in the Phoenician sphere is not
dissimilar: gods are called "sacred", and the term is restricted
to them alone.
12. Smith 1990:107 n. 52 cites
KTU 2.31.39
(read 2.31.41),
'atrty and 1.43.13 `nth,
neither of them in a transparent
context, neither certainly the name of a goddess. He also cites
EA 84:33 DA-MU-ia,
"my Tammuz
" and Ezek 8:14, "the Tammuz
",
and suffixes on the Ugaritic 'il'ib.
The usage in Ezekiel conforms
to other patterns in Hebrew explored here, and for that matter
may take Tammuz to represent a common noun rather than a proper
name. In the EA reference Rib-Addi is simply erecting a
contrast, telling the pharaoh to send emissaries to take whatever
belongs to his DA.MU to the pharaoh, but not to suffer the enemy
taking what belongs to the pharaoh's god (= DA.MU):
the cultic
establishment, not the abstracted divinity, is at issue; the
referent is probably the title, 'dn; and, in the contrast,
"my god::your god(s)
", it may be that the suffix is -- semantically,
if not formally -- attached to the determinative, "god", rather
than to the name itself. As to 'il'ib, the very strong
likelihood that it refers to an ancestral spirit (not, the god of
the father, but the father's ghost -- K. van der Toorn,
forthcoming) puts a strong dent in the value of the citation: it
is common for ancestral spirits to be mentioned with possessive
suffixes, at least in Akkadian, and apparently also in Ugaritic
("my ancestral spirits
", etc.).
13. In a forthcoming study, K. van der Toorn
adduces a text mentioning DINGIR a-bi ú dINNIN um-mi
(Meier 1941-44:142:36-37).
As he demonstrates, this must be "the ghost of the father and the
ghost of the mother
" because there is no evidence that women had
personal goddesses divorced from their husbands' or fathers'
personal gods. A parallel to the locution, also adduced by van
der Toorn, is DINGIR E and dINNIN E
// dIstar bitim.
14. K12033 + 82-5-22, 527 I 1'-14', line 8':
see Weippert 1981.
It is interesting to speculate on the possible appropriation of a
Middle Assyrian term in Israel as well: esirtu in the Middle
Assyrian Laws specifically denotes a concubine (pl. esrate:
Driver and Miles 1935:41). The term is cognate with
Heb. 'sr,
Akk. eseru, with the meaning, "captive
". However, the Assyrian
sibilant will have been experienced as /s/ in Israel
(see Millard
1976), as it was in some Hittite texts, and the automatic
association would have been with asherah. Since Hebrew seems to
have borrowed its term for "concubine" from some other language
family (pileges // Gr. pallax, Lat. pellex),
the possibility of a
congeneric assimilation of the Assyrian term with the term
asherah should not altogether be ruled out of court.
15. Against Andersen and Freedman 1980,
the phrase `sw lb`l is
to be compared to 2 Kgs 23:4, "vessels `swym
to the baal, and to
the asherah, and to all the Host of the Heavens
": clearly, these
vessels have not been hammered into the form of a baal or an
asherah, let alone of all the Host of Heaven. Rather, they have
been made for or dedicated to those objects of devotion. As
there is absolutely no indication in Hosea 2 of any polemic
against iconography, and as no identification of the baal(s) with
icons until 11:2, it seems most likely that the locution
in 2:10 refers to dedications as well.
16. The reference is probably to a stela, as in the Holy of
Holies of the Arad shrine -- stelae remained an integral part of
the cult at least until Josiah's reform not just on the literary
evidence, but on that of the state shrine at Arad as well (see
below on the Arad shrine). On the passage in question, see esp.
Olyan 1987.
17. First Isaiah prefers the nominal form, s'r, which otherwise
apppears in preexilic materials only in Zeph 1:4. The other
passages in which the term appears are: Isa 10:19,20,21,22;
11:11,16; 14:22; 16:14; 17:3; 21:17; 28:5. In none of these,
except Isa 14:22, is the reference to anything but the remainder
of a people, literally or metaphorically, who have survived
disaster. In post-exilic materials, the term appears in Mal 2:15
(the rest of the spirit); Esth 9:12 (in the rest of the states),
16 (the rest of the Jews); Ezra 3:8 (the rest of their brother
priests and Levites); 4:3 (the rest of the clan chiefs of
Israel), 7 (the rest of his cohorts); Neh 10:29; 11:1, 20 (the
rest of the people); 1 Chr 11:8 (the rest of the city); 16:41
(the rest of the singers); 2 Chr 9:29 (the rest of the affairs of
Solomon); 24:14 (the rest of the silver). None of the
post-exilic usage, except conceivably 1 Chr 11:8, remotely
implies survival of catastrophe, to which others have succumbed.
In fact, the lexeme in postexilic texts where it governs a
distributive term (Jews, states, cohorts, etc.) always has the
meaning, "other", as distinct from those who have been named to
this point.
Conversely, Deutero-Isaiah, Jeremiah, DtrH, Zephaniah,
Amos, Micah, Zechariah, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles all prefer
the form s'ryt for the survivors of cataclysm. This form also
appears in Isa 14:30; 15:9, and in Isa 37:4
(< 2 Kgs 19:4). But
its use is consistent across the other sources, although Haggai
(alone) seems to deploy it as the post-exilic sources use s'r
(1:12, 14; 2:2). It is frequently either affixed to or brought
into equivalence with plth (as Ezra 9:14, e.g.). It is always
used of a people, with the single exception of 2 Sam 14:7, where
the wise woman of Tekoa invokes it to plead for the provision of
"name and remnant
" (c.f. Isa 14:22) for her deceased husband.
18. So MT. G omits, and this is probably a double reading.
19. MT "their king
", but read with Sinaiticus and the Lucianic
recensions, Syriac, V.
20. 4QJudga omits Judg 6:7-10,
which is probably quite late.
Nevertheless, in identifying "the gods of the Amorites
" as the
objects of Israelite apostasy, the author of this text has
clearly understood the implications of Judges 1-3
that the baals
and ashtorets were in origin Canaanite deities absorbed by
Israel. This is also the perspective of Deuteronomy, which like
the Former Prophets is interested in tracing both the Host and
the high places to the supplanted Canaanites.
21. GA omits "and the gods of Aram
", which is most likely a
haplography by homoioarcton. That said, however, this is
precisely the sort of list which is subject to scribal expansion
over generations of transmission, and not all the present
elements may belong to the first edition of DtrH.
22. See A. Mazar, Sefunim 2:000-000.
[drr: c.f. Bibliography: the textfile source was corrupt]
23. Peckham 1987:84-87: the association of Astarte with the
dying god, Eshmun, may well be related to child sacrifice, as
Peckham; Robertson 1982:329. Given the parallel to
Genesis 22,
the tradition of Kronos sacrificing his only son as a part of the
Phoenician cult looks to be related to the thriving business of
infant sacrifice in Phoenician culture. The mourning ritual
connected with Astarte in KAI 37
and elsewhere, and the tradition
of "raising the god
" (mqm 'lm), identified as Astarte's
bridegroom in KAI 44:2, in Phoenician epigraphs (c.f.
the Eqron
epigraph, lmqm, in the seventh c., where other indications of
Phoenician influence are present), suggest the importance of the
cycle through the underworld in this cult.
24. Note the reflex in 2 Chr 28:3, which reflects
Jeremiah's
position on the baals and the Host in the Valley of ben-Hinnom.
It should be noted, too, that qtr, C, outside of P and
Chronicles, seems chiefly to pertain to the burning of the fat.
It can have the same valence within P, as at Exod 30:20; Lev
4:26; 8:21, 28; 9:13-20; 16:25; Num 18:17, for example, but this
is far from being its only implication.
25. The actual history of the Yeb temple controversy is probably
a bit more intricate than is usually indicated. Having failed,
during the troubles of 410, to extract any sign of support from
Jerusalem itself (or the high priest Yohanan) -- very likely
because of opposition to the existence of any functioning temple
outside of Jerusalem -- Yedaniah in 407 turned instead to the
governor of Samaria and to Bagoas, who was the person responsible
for the governance of the province of Yehud (Porten and Yardeni
1986:A4.7:1). Yet the response to this inquiry came from
Bagoas and Delaiah, son of Sanballat, then the governor of Samaria
(Porten and Yardeni 1986:A4.9, but also attested in the
Wadi
Daliyeh papyri). Josephus's tradition (Ant. IX.7.1-2) of a
Bagoses who came into conflict with a high priest, John
(Yohanan), and with Jerusalem generally, in conjunction with a
governor of Samaria, Sanballat, presumably telescopes the
Elephantine contretemps with the recognition of a subsequent
Sanballat by Alexander.
The conclusion to be drawn is that the Jerusalem
establishment rejected Elephantine's bona fides, and was perhaps
more sympathetic to the rebel, Vidranga, than not. Yet the
Judaeans of Yeb found willing ears in Samaria and in the
"general" (Josephus identifies him as an officer serving
Artaxerxes, but Josephus is not altogether reliable on the
identities of Persian kings at moments when their activities
intersect with his history -- a great deal of his information
concerning the Achaemenids derives from reconstruction, and, in
this case, the book of Esther interferes). The conflict between
Bagoses and Jerusalem is reflected in that between Yeb and
Jerusalem. Both the Samarian establishment and the
anti-Jerusalemite general/governor had an interest in subsidizing
the temple at Yeb.
26. Such a tradition is present in the Talmud, and is understood
in passages there referring to Michael as "the great official",
as TB Men 110a and the like. The implication is (and other
passages naming Gabriel, for example likewise imply) that there
are other "officials" of the Host. The tradition of
seventy(-two) great gods thus presumes that for each planet,
there are ten members of the officialdom (as captains of hundreds
versus captains of tens), plus two leaders (Yhwh and his
asherah?). The tradition of fifty great gods presupposes seven
members of the officialdom for each of the planets (plus Marduk,
or, in Zech 4:2-3, Yhwh). It is worth noting that the apologetic
emendation of Deut 32:9, "El" to "Israel" reflects an equation of
Israel with the stars, and of the stars with the administration
of human nations, a sort of combination of the P notion that
Israel was Yhwh's host, the notion, shared by P, that the host of
heaven were the stars and the view of Deut 32:8-9 itself, that
the host administered the nations.
27. Significantly, this usage for "husband" occurs only in the
following texts: Gen 20:3 (E);
Exod 21:3, 22; Deut 22:22 (phrase
of Gen 20:3); 24:4 (note also, however,
21:13; 24:1); 2 Sam
11:26; Hos 2:18; and, in postexilic texts,
Joel 1:8; Prov 12:4;
31:11, 23, 28; Esth 1:17, 20. Allowing that the concept,
"husband", presupposes that a female figure is the subject of
discourse, nevertheless, the absence of the term from J, P and
Ezekiel, and, two specific laws apart, from nearly all of
Deuteronomistic literature and from Jeremiah is striking -- a
virtual adoption of Hosea's advice (Jeremiah does, however, use
the verb -- 3:14; 31:32). This distribution, with a few
exceptions, basically characterizes the use of ba`al as a
designation for "owner" as well, though texts within DtrH do make
use of it -- in the following constellations:
- 1) Deut 15:2;
- 2) Josh 24:11;
- 3) Judg 9:2, 3, 6, 7, 18, 20 bis, 23, 24, 25, 26, 46,
47, 51;
- 4) Judg 19:22-23; 20:5;
- 5) 1 Sam 28:7;
- 6) 2 Sam 1:6;
- 7) 2 Sam 21:12;
- 8) 1 Kgs 17:17;
- 9) 2 Kgs 1:8.
[drr: placed into list for clarity]
Most of these passages
either derive from sources or reflect some other hand than that
of H(Dtr). For 'is, "man", as husband, see, e.g.,
Deut 22:23;
25:11; Judg 13:6, 9, 10; 14:15; 19:3; 20:4; 1 Sam 1:8, 22, 23;
2:19; 3:16; 4:19, 21; 25:19; 2 Sam 11:26; 14:5, 7; 2 Kgs 4:1, 9,
14, 22, 26. This term in this semantic capacity is much more
widely distributed outside DtrH in preexilic and exilic
literature than is ba`al, including occurrences in J (as
Gen 3:6;
16:3), E (as Gen 29:32, 34; 30:15, 18, 20),
P (Lev 21:7; Nu 5:13,
19-20, 27, 29; 30:11-15) and Ezekiel (16:32);
further, in the
plural, arguably Jer 29:6; Ezek 16:45, but more clearly,
Jer 44:19. In the postexilic period, however, ba`al alone assumes
this meaning.
